I'll take your bet. SAP is the world's third largest software company, only behind Microsoft and IBM in terms of market cap. If anything, SAP would acquire Oracle to silence the lawsuit.
Pfft. Mozart wasn't metal. For a real metal musician from the era, look to Niccolò Paganini. "It was common for him to arrive at a concert in a black coach drawn by black horses. Paganini himself would wear black." and "Paganini's technique was outstanding and unusual, but it was his satanic bearing which caused great crowds to attend his concerts." Finally, because "Paganini had refused the final sacrament, he could not be buried. His remains were kept in a basement for five years"
So, you are saying that there are already resources for under-served women to get GYN care. That means that this is not an either/or situation. Mandatory vaccinations means that all children covered by health insurance will get the vaccination, and even those whose parents do not have health care will probably have access through a clinic or even directly at school. Even those who are not vaccinated will enjoy the benefits of "herd immunity" in that they will be less likely to be exposed to the virus.
Providing the resources for clinical exams and educating women (as well as men) about getting proper medical examinations and helping to reduce the stigma and shame that some women perceive in undergoing GYN exams (I imagine a large part of the reason that the under-served remain so) can go hand in hand with getting a vaccination against HPV, even if it only against certain strains. I imagine many of the "at risk" people you are talking about can easily spend $400 annually on condoms, but I imagine it would be quite difficult to find a medical professional who would tell these women to stop using the condoms as they can just be examined for STDs.
Actually, your examples are better than you thought. Shoveling does have the risk of side effects... every winter people are injured shoveling, from throwing out their back to heart attack (although in the latter the shoveling is more of a trigger than a cause.) And driving on the left side of the street? I think there is a risk of injury to oneself for driving on the wrong side of the street. Or at the very least a risk of becoming British.
This isn't assuming that people will have sex as teenagers. This is assuming that the majority of people will eventually have sex. Getting vaccinated early catches those who do have sex early. And you don't even have to assume that teenagers will have sex... studies have shown that the majority of people have lost their virginity by the time they are 18. It's a statistic, not an assumption.
I meant to say that on a long enough timescale we can expect the likelihood to approach one. We simply don't know the exact likelihood of the right chemicals coming into contact in the right setting in the right way to absolutely say that it is impossible for it to happen without a guiding hand. Hence, the disclaimer at the end of my post where I do not deny the possibility of god, but that I can reasonably expect life to have risen without a divine intervention.
I think you're looking for ProTools. It does pretty much what you say. It is, however, quite expensive and needs specialized hardware to be used to the full extent. Hence the Pro part of the name. I don't know if it natively works on a note by note basis, I think conceptually it's more of a software based multi-track recorder. It does, however, have plug-ins that allow for such thing as locking pitch/etc. You know, all the effects used on pop-divas to make them actually sound bearable.
Re:The most likely scenario
on
Interstellar Ark
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The formation of life isn't as unlikely as it may seem. If you put all the necessary chemicals for life together in a soup pot and let it sit for a day then, yes, it is extremely unlikely that a living organism will form. But if you have an entire ocean's worth of the chemical broth, with various energy sources (solar, lightning strike, geological) to drive some of the necessary exothermic reactions then the likelihood approaches 1 that some self replicating aggregation of chemicals will eventually arise. Once a chemical replicator is formed, evolutionary forces come into play producing the wide array of life that the earth sees and has seen.
If the formation of life is so likely, then the question arises of why we haven't seen definite evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. That's because the vast expanses of space make it very unlikely that separate alien cultures, or even instances of biogenesis will meet.
1)It is possible (even likely) that a body (such as a planet) with conditions that allow for the formation of life are very rare, and thus locations like The Earth is a very rare commodity.
2)If there are other planets (or other bodies) capable of biogenesis, it is possible, even likely that they are simply scattered so far that any civilization expansion would not reach us. It is likely that intelligent civilizations have arisen which we will never be able to learn of because they are past the light speed horizon, that is they are so far away that the time it would take for light to travel from us to them is longer than the entire existence of the universe.
3)The horizon is drawn even tighter when looking for evidence of an industrialized society. We must be looking at a patch of sky where the society exists, and be looking at a time when the society existed there and is transmitting a signal strong enough for our equipment to receive and appropriately identify.
4)The same exists for E.T.s looking for us, and they would then need to be able to send a reply at a time that we are listening, and hope that we are looking for a message from the patch of sky they send the message from. If it is not feasible to open up a space/time wormhole big enough, stable enough, and directed enough to send a living organism through, then any manned delegation to our planet would be constrained by the speeds of classical (or mildly relativistic) speeds. The energy required to accelerate a craft large enough to support complex lifeforms to true relativistic speeds is likely incomprehensible in terms of our entire industrial energy output. And even if the E.T.s were traveling at relativistic speeds, the timeframe of travel from our perspective would be stretched to the point where our society will have likely crumbled by the time the E.T. delegation arrived at Earth.
5)The requirement also exists that the message/probe/delegation or whatever arrives intact and on target. It is foreseeable if not extremely likely that the journey of something sent from an E.T. civilization will be interrupted by some cosmological phenomenon, whether collision with asteroid, damaged by the gamma burst of a dying star, or a manned delegation finding a more interesting place to explore. This greatly increases the chance that different alien civilizations will not meet us.
6)There is also a necessity that the alien civilizations would want to meet us. If their technology is good enough to provide for interstellar travel, it is likely their technology is good enough to provide evasion of our senses and sensors. It is possible that they indeed have come and observed us, or even interacted with us in a way that they covered their tracks for the most part. Although it is more likely that a civilization from outside of our solar system would simply not find us interesting enough to spend the vast resources needed to send anything more than an electromagnetic signal (radio, light... whatever frequency they choose.) And if that is the case, we get back to the horizon presented by the speed of light and the
1) Set up shop and charge maybe... one billion dollars for a spot on a martian/lunar/orbital station. Charge even more for the luxury suites where you don't need to perform grueling physical labor.
2) Convince the uber-wealthy that there is a chance (maybe 1% is enough?) that all life on earth will be wiped out, the only way to ensure survival is to move onto the off-world colony.
3) Profit!
4) ?????
Then malware will just have a Trojan horse that sits in users pace waiting for you to disable UAC. Once you disable UAC, the Trojan will unleash its payload into administrator space.
I'll take your example, and up you. Imagine explaining those musical terms to a deaf person. Explaining them to a hearing person will generally spark a memory of previous times they heard the technique used. A good music teacher will then play an example of the technique so the lesson becomes more effective.
Letters are, in essence, representations of sounds. Deaf people can not hear sounds. How do I think 5 year olds are taught to read and write? By watching as their parents read them a story. By reciting the alphabet in a song. By sounding the words out. All techniques that are reliant on hearing. I'm not saying that there are no techniques to teach deaf born people to read, but I am saying that the most effective techniques for teaching reading are not available to deaf people. If the deafness is paired with a learning disability or other mental impairment then teaching written English may indeed become prohibitively hard.
Piracy may hurt the indie artist more than the big rock star, but the free advertising affect of file sharing helps indie artists more than RIAA divas. Downloading music can show that there is more music out there than what Wal-Mart stocks. You can learn about non-major label artists without the catch-22 of indie record stores not giving the time of day to customers who don't know indie music. It is even a more valuable tool to those communities not large enough to support independent record stores or a college radio station. File sharing gives people a chance to try out a whole new genre of music without spending thousands of dollars finding the one gem in the offal. Face it, about 90% of indie music is crap. It can be difficult to True, 95% of RIAA's products are crap, too... but there are established lines for at least pushing music that is aimed at your general demographic.
I honestly believe that it's not a loss of customers to downloading free music that the RIAA is interested in. What scares the RIAA is the free advertisement factor. There were five major services RIAA Labels provided: recording, manufacturing of medium, distribution, advertising, and essentially a small business loan to cover the up-front costs.
For less than $5,000 a dedicated amateur can set up a studio capable of recording a five piece rock band at a quality that meets that of major label sound engineers. True, mixing may take a little longer, but if your not charging the band several hundred dollars an hour, they can afford for the engineer to take their time. Manufacturing of medium is also within the grasp of the dedicated amateur. Another $5,000 can set up a dedicated amateur with equipment for automatic CD duplication, printing a label directly on the cd, and even printing a glossy high color booklet. The facilities to do this have previously been an industrial factory. True, the factory can stamp out CDs cheaper once the volume goes way up (the break even point is around 1,000 cds) but the initial investment in getting a CD replicated (the industrial version) is out of the reach of most independent artists. The initial investment in starting up a CD replication factory was completely out of reach from an amateur, and requires the financial support of a large corporation. Now, anybody with dedication can save up and start their own recording studio and small scale manufacturing setup for less than the cost of a new car. If you include the price of the instruments, amplifiers, etc, a band can be self sufficient for less than the cost of a new Honda Civic. Definitely withing the reach of a gigging band.
Distribution and advertising are the big advantage that RIAA labels retain. File sharing can replace the distribution and advertising ends of the music business. But how can a band make money when someone is downloading their music? Easy... bands simply don't make money off album sales anymore. CDs are often given away at concerts as a form of advertising (for local acts, anyways.) It's the ticket money and sales of t-shirts and buttons that usually make money for a band. If fans can simply download the music, then the CDs that were given away before can now be sold, albeit at a much lower volume. And I repeat, almost no bands make money from the actual sale of CDs. Especially RIAA label signed artists. The money from CD sales in Sam Goody and Walmart goes to pay the record companies loan to the artist back before anything else. That loan is on services which already had hyperinflated costs. Most bands see CD sales as... advertising for the tour and merchandising.
That leaves the last major service that major label records perform for bands: that startup loan they give. Now any reasonably dedicated band whose member's have day jobs can afford to save up for recording at an independent local studio and get the CDs duplicated in a manner that sounds and looks professional. The members of the band could even take out small personal loans to build up their own studio, and make
I should have known my definition was way to simple to be actually useful in the real world. In theory the example of fiction would be exempt in the "putting forth an opinion" part, but I really don't have enough faith in those in power to make the right choice. Thank you.
Re:Before anyone says anything about free speech
on
EU Bans Sock-Puppet Blogs
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Legally speaking, corporations are people to some extent. Within limits, a corporation shares a large subset of the rights and responsibilities of a person, the name itself being derived from the Latin term for body, definitively meaning that a corporation is to be treated as somebody.
I personally think free speech should be redefined, in that a person or other legal entity should be allowed to share facts and express opinions which they believe to be true. Intentionally spreading misinformation hampers the working of a truly free society. This should hold as true in the press as it is supposed to in the courtroom or legislature.
I'm not so worried about advertisers putting pressure to change individual content... after all, they can already astroturf the site now. No, the real danger is that advertisers would put pressure on Wikimedia to change policies, such as who can edit, locking pages of interest to them with only a shining advertisement of their product rather than an open unbiased report. Individual advertisers would also attempt to push for more and more intrusive advertising... it would run the whole gamut from tasteful text only ads ala original adsense to static gifs to animated gifs to those annoying animated ads that have the fly buzzing, to spank the monkey or whatever ads to the really annoying Microsoft ads that popup when you mouse over key words to the full page wait fifteen seconds ads before your content comes up (And even longer if the server pushing the ads is slower and you have to wait for that several meg flash file, finally to the annoying flash ads that cover the content.
Granted, using AdSense one could claim that Google would eventually attempt to do the same things, but I really doubt the effects would be nearly as chilling as that of hundreds and thousands of companies each trying to have Wikipedia espouse their view of the world, with a wad of cash to entice them. Partially because I think Google is one of the very few companies that is dedicated to being in the game for the long run, and most of the people high up the chain realize that the most essential resources a company needs for long term success are social capital and the respect of your customer base. Without it, people will jump ship the moment things seem rocky or someone brings out a flashy new competing product.
Copyright law prevents making unauthorized copies, with the intent of preventing unauthorized distribution. By downloading it, you are making a copy. But by using BitTorrent, you are also distributing as other clients connect to you and download parts of the file anyway.
After reading the article, BayTSP is running the tracker. What this guy is doing is like walking up to an undercover police officer and asking them about any illegal wares they have for sale... when he already suspects that this is a cop. Okay, it's a private company... so it's more like walking up to a security guard and asking whether they'd be willing to help you steal something from the store they're guarding. Okay, bring on the "copyright infringement is not theft!!!" lines, I believe that's true. And in fact, so does the law... copyright infringement has much stiffer penalties than mere theft. I don't believe that's right if the infringer is not gaining financially (I.E. selling bootlegs on the street) but I don't feel there are many places where the law is not just.
Okay, I just came up a better analogy that doesn't cross the "copyright infringement/theft line." This is like going to a movie theater and asking an usher if he can hold your camcorder pointed at the screen while you go to the concession stand. Even if there is no tape in the camcorder (such as this guy's specially written client) you're still likely to get in trouble, and at least lose the camcorder (Like this guy's ISP reportedly responding to the take-down notice.) I wouldn't expect anything else in this situation... the online world is no longer some lawless frontier untouchable by the hands of the real world wielders of power (And I mean lawless in the dramatic Old West as represented by Hollywood way, not the lawlessness of a near future post-apocalyptic manner.)
Are you white? If so, go to the ghetto and drive around for a while. There's actually a pretty good chance that you will be stopped by the police, and asked if it's all right to search your car. Refusal of the search is often held up as suspicious enough to demand a search. This goes doubly so for areas frequented by prostitutes.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll take your bet. SAP is the world's third largest software company, only behind Microsoft and IBM in terms of market cap. If anything, SAP would acquire Oracle to silence the lawsuit.
Pfft. Mozart wasn't metal. For a real metal musician from the era, look to Niccolò Paganini. "It was common for him to arrive at a concert in a black coach drawn by black horses. Paganini himself would wear black." and "Paganini's technique was outstanding and unusual, but it was his satanic bearing which caused great crowds to attend his concerts." Finally, because "Paganini had refused the final sacrament, he could not be buried. His remains were kept in a basement for five years"
Mozart was more rock star than metal.
I think it was intended more as a (billion-billion)th.
That's simple... Intel should have saved all of the email because they were under a court order to save all of it.
So, you are saying that there are already resources for under-served women to get GYN care. That means that this is not an either/or situation. Mandatory vaccinations means that all children covered by health insurance will get the vaccination, and even those whose parents do not have health care will probably have access through a clinic or even directly at school. Even those who are not vaccinated will enjoy the benefits of "herd immunity" in that they will be less likely to be exposed to the virus.
Providing the resources for clinical exams and educating women (as well as men) about getting proper medical examinations and helping to reduce the stigma and shame that some women perceive in undergoing GYN exams (I imagine a large part of the reason that the under-served remain so) can go hand in hand with getting a vaccination against HPV, even if it only against certain strains. I imagine many of the "at risk" people you are talking about can easily spend $400 annually on condoms, but I imagine it would be quite difficult to find a medical professional who would tell these women to stop using the condoms as they can just be examined for STDs.
Actually, your examples are better than you thought. Shoveling does have the risk of side effects... every winter people are injured shoveling, from throwing out their back to heart attack (although in the latter the shoveling is more of a trigger than a cause.) And driving on the left side of the street? I think there is a risk of injury to oneself for driving on the wrong side of the street. Or at the very least a risk of becoming British.
This isn't assuming that people will have sex as teenagers. This is assuming that the majority of people will eventually have sex. Getting vaccinated early catches those who do have sex early. And you don't even have to assume that teenagers will have sex... studies have shown that the majority of people have lost their virginity by the time they are 18. It's a statistic, not an assumption.
I's think the analogy of jumping off a bridge would be dead by now.
I meant to say that on a long enough timescale we can expect the likelihood to approach one. We simply don't know the exact likelihood of the right chemicals coming into contact in the right setting in the right way to absolutely say that it is impossible for it to happen without a guiding hand. Hence, the disclaimer at the end of my post where I do not deny the possibility of god, but that I can reasonably expect life to have risen without a divine intervention.
I think you're looking for ProTools. It does pretty much what you say. It is, however, quite expensive and needs specialized hardware to be used to the full extent. Hence the Pro part of the name. I don't know if it natively works on a note by note basis, I think conceptually it's more of a software based multi-track recorder. It does, however, have plug-ins that allow for such thing as locking pitch/etc. You know, all the effects used on pop-divas to make them actually sound bearable.
The formation of life isn't as unlikely as it may seem. If you put all the necessary chemicals for life together in a soup pot and let it sit for a day then, yes, it is extremely unlikely that a living organism will form. But if you have an entire ocean's worth of the chemical broth, with various energy sources (solar, lightning strike, geological) to drive some of the necessary exothermic reactions then the likelihood approaches 1 that some self replicating aggregation of chemicals will eventually arise. Once a chemical replicator is formed, evolutionary forces come into play producing the wide array of life that the earth sees and has seen.
If the formation of life is so likely, then the question arises of why we haven't seen definite evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. That's because the vast expanses of space make it very unlikely that separate alien cultures, or even instances of biogenesis will meet.
1)It is possible (even likely) that a body (such as a planet) with conditions that allow for the formation of life are very rare, and thus locations like The Earth is a very rare commodity.
2)If there are other planets (or other bodies) capable of biogenesis, it is possible, even likely that they are simply scattered so far that any civilization expansion would not reach us. It is likely that intelligent civilizations have arisen which we will never be able to learn of because they are past the light speed horizon, that is they are so far away that the time it would take for light to travel from us to them is longer than the entire existence of the universe.
3)The horizon is drawn even tighter when looking for evidence of an industrialized society. We must be looking at a patch of sky where the society exists, and be looking at a time when the society existed there and is transmitting a signal strong enough for our equipment to receive and appropriately identify.
4)The same exists for E.T.s looking for us, and they would then need to be able to send a reply at a time that we are listening, and hope that we are looking for a message from the patch of sky they send the message from. If it is not feasible to open up a space/time wormhole big enough, stable enough, and directed enough to send a living organism through, then any manned delegation to our planet would be constrained by the speeds of classical (or mildly relativistic) speeds. The energy required to accelerate a craft large enough to support complex lifeforms to true relativistic speeds is likely incomprehensible in terms of our entire industrial energy output. And even if the E.T.s were traveling at relativistic speeds, the timeframe of travel from our perspective would be stretched to the point where our society will have likely crumbled by the time the E.T. delegation arrived at Earth.
5)The requirement also exists that the message/probe/delegation or whatever arrives intact and on target. It is foreseeable if not extremely likely that the journey of something sent from an E.T. civilization will be interrupted by some cosmological phenomenon, whether collision with asteroid, damaged by the gamma burst of a dying star, or a manned delegation finding a more interesting place to explore. This greatly increases the chance that different alien civilizations will not meet us.
6)There is also a necessity that the alien civilizations would want to meet us. If their technology is good enough to provide for interstellar travel, it is likely their technology is good enough to provide evasion of our senses and sensors. It is possible that they indeed have come and observed us, or even interacted with us in a way that they covered their tracks for the most part. Although it is more likely that a civilization from outside of our solar system would simply not find us interesting enough to spend the vast resources needed to send anything more than an electromagnetic signal (radio, light... whatever frequency they choose.) And if that is the case, we get back to the horizon presented by the speed of light and the
1) Set up shop and charge maybe... one billion dollars for a spot on a martian/lunar/orbital station. Charge even more for the luxury suites where you don't need to perform grueling physical labor.
2) Convince the uber-wealthy that there is a chance (maybe 1% is enough?) that all life on earth will be wiped out, the only way to ensure survival is to move onto the off-world colony. 3) Profit! 4) ?????
Then malware will just have a Trojan horse that sits in users pace waiting for you to disable UAC. Once you disable UAC, the Trojan will unleash its payload into administrator space.
The Cap'n might even agree to it
I'll take your example, and up you. Imagine explaining those musical terms to a deaf person. Explaining them to a hearing person will generally spark a memory of previous times they heard the technique used. A good music teacher will then play an example of the technique so the lesson becomes more effective.
Letters are, in essence, representations of sounds. Deaf people can not hear sounds. How do I think 5 year olds are taught to read and write? By watching as their parents read them a story. By reciting the alphabet in a song. By sounding the words out. All techniques that are reliant on hearing. I'm not saying that there are no techniques to teach deaf born people to read, but I am saying that the most effective techniques for teaching reading are not available to deaf people. If the deafness is paired with a learning disability or other mental impairment then teaching written English may indeed become prohibitively hard.
Piracy may hurt the indie artist more than the big rock star, but the free advertising affect of file sharing helps indie artists more than RIAA divas. Downloading music can show that there is more music out there than what Wal-Mart stocks. You can learn about non-major label artists without the catch-22 of indie record stores not giving the time of day to customers who don't know indie music. It is even a more valuable tool to those communities not large enough to support independent record stores or a college radio station. File sharing gives people a chance to try out a whole new genre of music without spending thousands of dollars finding the one gem in the offal. Face it, about 90% of indie music is crap. It can be difficult to True, 95% of RIAA's products are crap, too... but there are established lines for at least pushing music that is aimed at your general demographic.
I honestly believe that it's not a loss of customers to downloading free music that the RIAA is interested in. What scares the RIAA is the free advertisement factor. There were five major services RIAA Labels provided: recording, manufacturing of medium, distribution, advertising, and essentially a small business loan to cover the up-front costs.
For less than $5,000 a dedicated amateur can set up a studio capable of recording a five piece rock band at a quality that meets that of major label sound engineers. True, mixing may take a little longer, but if your not charging the band several hundred dollars an hour, they can afford for the engineer to take their time. Manufacturing of medium is also within the grasp of the dedicated amateur. Another $5,000 can set up a dedicated amateur with equipment for automatic CD duplication, printing a label directly on the cd, and even printing a glossy high color booklet. The facilities to do this have previously been an industrial factory. True, the factory can stamp out CDs cheaper once the volume goes way up (the break even point is around 1,000 cds) but the initial investment in getting a CD replicated (the industrial version) is out of the reach of most independent artists. The initial investment in starting up a CD replication factory was completely out of reach from an amateur, and requires the financial support of a large corporation. Now, anybody with dedication can save up and start their own recording studio and small scale manufacturing setup for less than the cost of a new car. If you include the price of the instruments, amplifiers, etc, a band can be self sufficient for less than the cost of a new Honda Civic. Definitely withing the reach of a gigging band.
Distribution and advertising are the big advantage that RIAA labels retain. File sharing can replace the distribution and advertising ends of the music business. But how can a band make money when someone is downloading their music? Easy... bands simply don't make money off album sales anymore. CDs are often given away at concerts as a form of advertising (for local acts, anyways.) It's the ticket money and sales of t-shirts and buttons that usually make money for a band. If fans can simply download the music, then the CDs that were given away before can now be sold, albeit at a much lower volume. And I repeat, almost no bands make money from the actual sale of CDs. Especially RIAA label signed artists. The money from CD sales in Sam Goody and Walmart goes to pay the record companies loan to the artist back before anything else. That loan is on services which already had hyperinflated costs. Most bands see CD sales as... advertising for the tour and merchandising.
That leaves the last major service that major label records perform for bands: that startup loan they give. Now any reasonably dedicated band whose member's have day jobs can afford to save up for recording at an independent local studio and get the CDs duplicated in a manner that sounds and looks professional. The members of the band could even take out small personal loans to build up their own studio, and make
And I'm stealing that for my sig.
I should have known my definition was way to simple to be actually useful in the real world. In theory the example of fiction would be exempt in the "putting forth an opinion" part, but I really don't have enough faith in those in power to make the right choice. Thank you.
Legally speaking, corporations are people to some extent. Within limits, a corporation shares a large subset of the rights and responsibilities of a person, the name itself being derived from the Latin term for body, definitively meaning that a corporation is to be treated as somebody.
I personally think free speech should be redefined, in that a person or other legal entity should be allowed to share facts and express opinions which they believe to be true. Intentionally spreading misinformation hampers the working of a truly free society. This should hold as true in the press as it is supposed to in the courtroom or legislature.
I'm not so worried about advertisers putting pressure to change individual content... after all, they can already astroturf the site now. No, the real danger is that advertisers would put pressure on Wikimedia to change policies, such as who can edit, locking pages of interest to them with only a shining advertisement of their product rather than an open unbiased report. Individual advertisers would also attempt to push for more and more intrusive advertising... it would run the whole gamut from tasteful text only ads ala original adsense to static gifs to animated gifs to those annoying animated ads that have the fly buzzing, to spank the monkey or whatever ads to the really annoying Microsoft ads that popup when you mouse over key words to the full page wait fifteen seconds ads before your content comes up (And even longer if the server pushing the ads is slower and you have to wait for that several meg flash file, finally to the annoying flash ads that cover the content.
Granted, using AdSense one could claim that Google would eventually attempt to do the same things, but I really doubt the effects would be nearly as chilling as that of hundreds and thousands of companies each trying to have Wikipedia espouse their view of the world, with a wad of cash to entice them. Partially because I think Google is one of the very few companies that is dedicated to being in the game for the long run, and most of the people high up the chain realize that the most essential resources a company needs for long term success are social capital and the respect of your customer base. Without it, people will jump ship the moment things seem rocky or someone brings out a flashy new competing product.
Copyright law prevents making unauthorized copies, with the intent of preventing unauthorized distribution. By downloading it, you are making a copy. But by using BitTorrent, you are also distributing as other clients connect to you and download parts of the file anyway.
Heh. I just finished watching Fear Factor for the first time in... I don't know how long. Ahh... Joe Rogan. NSFW due to language.
After reading the article, BayTSP is running the tracker. What this guy is doing is like walking up to an undercover police officer and asking them about any illegal wares they have for sale... when he already suspects that this is a cop. Okay, it's a private company... so it's more like walking up to a security guard and asking whether they'd be willing to help you steal something from the store they're guarding. Okay, bring on the "copyright infringement is not theft!!!" lines, I believe that's true. And in fact, so does the law... copyright infringement has much stiffer penalties than mere theft. I don't believe that's right if the infringer is not gaining financially (I.E. selling bootlegs on the street) but I don't feel there are many places where the law is not just.
Okay, I just came up a better analogy that doesn't cross the "copyright infringement/theft line." This is like going to a movie theater and asking an usher if he can hold your camcorder pointed at the screen while you go to the concession stand. Even if there is no tape in the camcorder (such as this guy's specially written client) you're still likely to get in trouble, and at least lose the camcorder (Like this guy's ISP reportedly responding to the take-down notice.) I wouldn't expect anything else in this situation... the online world is no longer some lawless frontier untouchable by the hands of the real world wielders of power (And I mean lawless in the dramatic Old West as represented by Hollywood way, not the lawlessness of a near future post-apocalyptic manner.)
Are you white? If so, go to the ghetto and drive around for a while. There's actually a pretty good chance that you will be stopped by the police, and asked if it's all right to search your car. Refusal of the search is often held up as suspicious enough to demand a search. This goes doubly so for areas frequented by prostitutes.