Just ask all the people who bought quadras so they would be able to run OS X.
Who bought a Quadra to run Mac OS X, and are they interested in upgrading to a slightly used state-of-the-art PowerBook 3400? The last Quadra was discontinued in 1995, long before there was ever any speculation about X. The official minimum requirement for X is a beige G3, introduced in 1997, but there are hacks to get it installed on earlier PCI-based Macs, which date back to 1995. How far back should Apple have gone? Should Mac OS X be able to run on my 15.9 MHz SE/30?
Cablevision has refused to carry the YES Network since the beginning of the season
Actually, they refused to make it part of the basic package and raise their monthly price for all of their customers. It was the Yankees organization that kept YES off Cablevision by refusing to allow it to be made a premium station that only the people who wanted it would have to pay for. Believe it or not, there are a lot of people who aren't Yankee fans, even in New York (there are actually two Major League Baseball teams in New York, but one of them seems to have taken most of the season off).
Baseball is the only sport I follow, but I haven't watched a single game this year and would not like being forced to pay for a station that covers a single team, even if it happened to be my favorite team. It's all these special interest channels in the basic package that keep me from paying for premium channels I might actually want. I would gladly trade Animal Planet, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic, NESN, Fox Sports, The Golf Channel, The Game Show Network, Nickelodeon, ABC Family, Disney, Noggin, The Food Network, MTV, VH1, HGTV, E!, Fox News, CNN, QVC, HSN, CKSH, and all the religious channels for just the main HBO channel. However, if I have to pay for all that crap to begin with, I'm not going to spend even more for a channel I'll only watch once in a while. If only more cable companies would have the balls to stand up to pricks like Steinbrenner and irate Yankee fans and keep stations like this out of their basic cable packages...
Develop a leveraged business model and have a fully-realized exit strategy.
Whoa there, don't get so far ahead of yourself that you move the goal posts out of the ballpark and lose sight of the big picture. There's a whole knowledge base of lessons learned out there to use for value-added synergy, so there's no need to risk getting left out of the loop by thinking too far outside the box.
The bottom line is this: for your core business, you'll need a results-driven, client-focused game plan if you want to take the fast track to a win-win situation. You must have it in your mindset to push the envelope and be proactive in the pursuit of a total quality 100% solution that goes the extra mile in customer satisfaction. However, even with a best practice center of excellence, you'll still have to play hardball at the end of the day if you want to keep up with the movers and shakers.
I think I'm getting a little off-track here, let's take this offline; I'll touch base with you later to pencil in a time when we can revisit this issue and put this one to bed.
I am having a hard time getting my head around the concept that newer software equals software with "less risk".
You're not the only one. One of the main reasons why Office 97 is still in use is because of how long it has been around to prove itself. I know my company tests software fairly extensively before making any mandatory desktop upgrades - Office 97 is still the standard here, and Windows 2000 wasn't installed across the company until last fall. When productivity (money) is at stake, most companies will not risk switching to unproven software, and many might choose not to switch at all if the existing solution works. It is especially true with Windows that any significant change could result in serious problems, no matter how much testing has been done. Multiply that by thousands of employees, and that's some serious IT overtime, er, I mean decreased productivity.
In battlebots, all you get is invunerable robots scoring points on each other by getting weapon hits and doing no damage.
Aside from Hazard, which ones are invulnerable? Vlad the Impaler? Biohazard? Ziggo? Toro? Minion? Backlash? All of these have both won a championship and been knocked out by an opponent, usually with lots of damage. Lots of others have been reduced to scrap (well, except for the Scrap Daddy bots, those started as junk) by their opponents. None of the other shows can match the destruction in Battlebots because of ineffective weapons and poor durability. They need house robots and pits and stuff because the contestant robots can't do the job themselves.
They never show the little guys running around trying not to catch on fire.
Maybe not, but the last episode did have a big guy sitting in a broken heap catching fire. It's much more impressive to set your opponent on fire when you don't have a flamethrower.
If Apple require you to buy their burner to use the software, then it is not free. It costs the same as the burner.
Actually, it's $20 plus tax, with free shipping (FedEx Ground unfortunately) from the Apple Store, but that's just for an upgrade. iDVD is really (in theory) only available installed on a system with an Apple installed DVD-R drive. Unlike the other iApps, iDVD is not available as a free download from Apple. iDVD isn't free any more than the copy of Mac OS X that comes with a new system is free.
you should be aware that, under Title 42, Section 1983 of the United States Code, any person in a position such as yours who deprives a citizen of the United States of any right secured by the United States Constitution is subject to liability in legal actions.
By this reasoning, it should be illegal to filter any spam. Score one for the penis enlargement lobby!
I encourage you to exercise your First Amendment rights in speaking out against my e-mails. Write letters to your newspaper, send an e-mail to your colleagues, but do not try to act as a censor for the entire college community. It is violative of my First Amendment rights. It is also a disservice to those in the college community who do not object to receiving my e-mails and who want to participate in the marketplace of ideas.
Now, combine this with the first statement and you could have some fun. Cut off any spam filtering you have in place and be sure to let everyone know that you have taken this action because Steve Biener warned you that there could be legal consequences if you "act as a censor for the entire college community" and prevent people from receiving this "marketplace of ideas" that he has associated himself with. Be sure to suggest that they let him know how grateful they are that he helped you see the error of your ways.
we could send a message to the MPAA by boycotting [these] movies.
Yeah! We'll show those corporate bastards what we think of them by not going to see the movies we actually like! That'll teach them to make anything outside the fart jokes and bodily fluids genre!
Seriously, there are so many people who will spend money to see any piece of crap (even the latest Eddie Murphy flop had millions in ticket sales, but at least its $100 million price tag will make sure there is never a sequel) that a geek boycott would be lost in the noise floor. The only thing the MPAA will see is a spike in ticket sales (LOTR, Spider-Man, etc.).
Sure this won't do anything about the MPAA's business practices, but there is no way to have a realistic impact with a boycott - it will never gain enough support to put a dent in the billions of dollars the industry brings in each year. It is up to our legal system to resolve these issues, and boycotting the EFF, Congress, etc. isn't going to help on that front (hint, hint)...
The best reason for a boycott of this type isn't its effect on big corporations, but instead the impact on ourselves. By not spending money on crap, we have more money to spend on things we like. Instead of seeing "Adam Sandler Whines, Farts, and Beats People Up, Part XVII," you can buy a DVD of that obscure movie you love but nobody else has even heard of. Or you could buy stock in an undervalued company, or pay off some debts a little bit sooner, or get a few more minutes of entertainment at the nickel slots (ok, so maybe that one isn't such a good example). Considering the current state of Hollywood, it is easy to see how a boycott on crap could look like a boycott on the MPAA.
So while the US is used to paying $20 for a new DVD, if the region system breaks down . . .
Everybody will have to pay the same equivalent amount of money. It probably won't affect the prices of Anime, though.
You seem to have countered your own argument there. Prices will equalize for everything but anime? Anime DVDs (and related products - toys, models, etc.) tend to cost more in the US because either:
The item is a Japanese release that has been imported into the US, adding additional cost.
The item is an American release based on the Japanese release, with additional dubbing, marketing, etc., adding additional cost.
Even if the products are identical except for the intended distribution, the "local" version can be marked up by as much as it would cost to obtain a non-local version, without significantly hurting sales. It just has to be more convenient to buy the version they want you to buy.
Now let's say a movie studio wants to release a movie for distribution in a country with rampant poverty, such as India, Russia, etc., without region codes. They already have the audio and video tracks from the original release, so they can just recycle those and maybe add some more subtitles. They can leave out any special features, commentary tracks, deleted scenes, etc. that they don't feel will help sales in that market and might increase the price. They then use whatever production and distribution channels in that market that keep costs down to an acceptable level so that the final price is at a level that the market can bear. Now you have, for example, an Indian release of Titanic for the equivalent of $5.
So now I'm looking for a Titanic DVD (hypothetically of course, I will admit that I did buy a copy of it when I saw it for $10 or so during the.com boom), and I'm pissed off that it costs $20 in the US. I look around and see it on an Indian retailer's site for $5. Then I notice that it has no extra features, the picture quality is horrible due to the cheap quality of the production equipment, and it will cost $20 to have it shipped by any method that isn't likely to involve it being intercepted by pirates (the real kind, not copyright infringers) during a three month voyage to the US. The $20 US release doesn't look so bad by comparison.
Maybe an enterprising US retailer can purchase these cheaper DVDs in quantity and sell them in the US market. Well, shady outfits already do this with electronics, and they are universally hated for this. DVDs don't have warranties, so there may be more success with that particular product, but the methods used to cut costs on these releases will still be evident in the quality of the gray market product. Since raising prices in poorer countries would effectively kill sales there, the most effective way to maximize profits would be to lower the price of the US version to a price that would make selling a gray market copy unattractive.
The other side of region coding is preventing people in other countries from getting the US release of movies that are released in the US first or are never released in other countries. Without region coding, they would have to rely on silly laws banning the import of such movies. Of course, since region-free DVD players are common outside of the US, region coding probably has less of an impact on sales than the cost to import, so there shouldn't be much of an impact here.
The bottom line is that region coding isn't about cost, it's about control. It's about segmented distribution and making sure that everyone is buying the right version for their location at the right time to coincide with theatrical releases. However, the popularity of region-free players and the abundance of hacks to make players region-free have demonstrated that when confronted with a region issue, people will simply bypass it rather than do what the movie studios want them to do. Eliminating region codes would remove complication and costs in DVD production by removing the need to produce a different DVD for each region. This would result in a greater range of choices in many regions that don't have a large enough market to justify a separate release of less popular movies.
Of course, I could be completely wrong about everything above, since I'm no expert in matters like these. The fact is though that region coding only works when it is forced on everyone's hardware, and that clearly has not happened. Geographical barriers are still significant enough to maintain price differences between physically distant markets, so there should be little or no negative impact if region coding were to disappear.
You mean the sticky kind that said "Apple Computer inc." at the bottom and came in different sizes? I've got a stack of those around here somewhere, I could put some pictures of them up if you want. The more recent multi-colored non-sticky kind were available for free for a while from a promotional material order form on Apple's web site, but my second shipment never made it...
Their reasoning is that they raised everyone's price by $7/month and reduced the rental fee of the modem by $7, but basically, yes, they did raise the price by $7 for people who purchased their own equipment, and no, they did not back down.
It's actually a good strategy from their point of view - they bring in more money right away from cable modem owners and they discourage the purchase of a modem with a longer time to break even (I laughed when I saw the "I'm glad I didn't buy a modem" posts last time - I bought mine without hesitation, so I've already made up its cost by now, meaning that I don't have to pay a rental fee no matter how much they reduce it).
This premium service is good not just from their perspective, but from the customer's as well. It will bring in more cash right away and will satisfy customers who need more bandwidth on their residential networks. Hopefully, this will put a stop to the annual $6-7 monthly price increases AT&T Broadband has been hitting its customers with (It was only $30/month when I signed up...).
Is there anything illegal about a content provider (someone who works his ass off to make content that others might enjoy) saying "ok, you have two choices". "I can leave my new movie in my underwear drawer where noone can see it, or I can sell it to you under the condition that you will only be able to view it with devices that cannot easily copy the movie". Is there anything ammoral with this?
This is fine as long as people who legally purchase this content can give the content creator the finger and either:
a. bypass the copy protection for legal uses, or
b. choose similar content from other creators that is not similarly crippled.
DRM is only truly effective if bypassing it is illegal (and inclusion in hardware and software is mandatory) and non-DRM content is rejected by DRM devices. Otherwise, it is just like Macrovision, which prevents casual users from using the content they purchase in many legal ways while remaining completely useless against anyone who can buy a $50 signal cleaner. The Average Joe gets screwed, while the "pirate" is only out $50.
The BIG content providers who make this stuff want to protect their investment.
No, they want to preserve their monopoly on content creation, which guarantees future profits. To do this, they need to maintain control of their market, which they want to accomplish through technological and legal means instead of through the quality of their products.
Why shouldn't they try?
Because in doing so, they are criminalizing fair use and unfairly restricting competition by branding anything not authorized by them as "piracy." Since the technology can't tell piracy from fair use, they want to remove the distinction entirely.
Some of you have suggested that the whole process is futile ; people will always be able to hack it. The latter may be true, but if the recording companies can make it hard enough (with only allowing DRM devices to play their content, ect) they can make it so that the customer who is "on the fence" between warezing and buying it (i.e. someone who could do either) makes the right choice because warezing it is tedious.
And what about the legitimate uses that will be more tedious if done the "right" way? The same logic would make a great case for lost sales that would result if people are restricted from choosing how they want to use the content they purchase.
Thus, for the goal that the content providers want : to gain more sales from people who might otherwise pirate; DRM and other techniques may actually work!
Or they may drive away potential customers who don't like being treated like criminals for wanting to use what they buy. DRM can only work if all content uses it and there is no non-DRM alternative. This is the truly scary part.
Now, for the people who cannot or will not buy the content : yeah, they'll warez it...but the anti-piracy measures can make it tougher. By breaking up the big P2P networks, it becomes slightly harder to pirate music.
And it becomes harder to distribute independently created music. Remember how the RIAA wanted to clean up Napster? They wanted Napster to only allow the distribution of material that the content creator had specifically authorized Napster to distribute. This goes beyond "protecting" their works and impedes the distribution of works that are given away freely or are (if there are any) in the public domain, effectively giving the RIAA control over this distribution channel.
By copy protecting cds, it becomes less convenient for the average customer to burn his friend a copy.
Legitimate uses also become less convenient, decreasing the value of the product. If a price cut corresponding to the decrease in functionality does not accompany DRM, sales will drop.
But for the average joe who's been working all day and just wants to see a movie : he is probably going to get the legitimate copy to avoid all the technical headaches piracy can involve.
He would probably also want to avoid all the technical headaches that come with legitimate copies "protected" with DRM or some similar scheme. Of course, people seem to be putting up with Windows XP, so maybe most people enjoy that sort of treatment...
While making music may be an art that people do just to enjoy it, making a major movie is anything but.
Define "major." The technology needed to create something that would have been considered "major" a few years ago is now available to the masses at relatively low cost. As the tools to create movies become more readily available and the means to distribute them (P2P) remain available, the number of hobbyists will increase, resulting in an amateur talent pool similar to that of music.
While movies can be fun, its a lot of work especially for the people who add in all the extras that separate a big budget production from an Indie film.
But are these added expenses needed to produce something good? Even the worst of Hollywood movies take in millions of dollars in ticket sales, while the best of small budget films can go unnoticed. This is because the studios can get anything on a thousand screens - but what happens if more people start getting their movies from the internet instead of the theater? The studios don't have control over that distribution channel yet, and it takes more than just a few billions of dollars to get this control - it takes technology and laws. This is where some of our favorite acronyms (DMCA, DRM, SSSCA/CBDTPA, etc.) fit in.
So if noone paid for movies, films of the quality we currently experience would not be made.
What's wrong with that? If nobody is willing to pay for something, then it probably shouldn't be made. It certainly shouldn't be forced on people so they will have to spend money on something they don't want. However, there are two flaws with your argument, and both can be seen in the latest Adam Sandler movie:
1. There will always be people who will pay to see complete and utter crap.
2. Too many of the movies made today are complete and utter crap.
Making a good movie doesn't have to be expensive - even basic digital effects can be done with a few thousand dollars of equipment and the desire to learn and create. The key is a good script, and that usually requires creative freedom without influence from high-level management. Cut out the overhead and you can get a quality production at a low cost, which, if given the opportunity, could easily make its money back through viewings and direct sales. This, not "piracy," is the real threat to the copyright cartel - small content creators producing content that appeals to focused demographics, eroding the potential audience for mainstream watered down crap. With current technology and the ever-present desire to create, the creation of complex productions and the widespread distribution of them can be accomplished by anyone who chooses to do so - the cartels are no longer necessary. This is why you will see more DRM and more restrictive "protection," all backed up by law - the customer is also the enemy.
My completely unscientific and extremely quick and biased test resulted in a failing grade for this search engine. A search for mttlg (English only) brought up lots of stuff, most of it correctly, but it completely missed mttlg.net and its previous incarnations (they aren't even indexed). It did turn up plenty of/. posts, some of which link to mttlg.net, as well as some pages from a free web hosting service that I used to use but can't do anything with anymore (the service is essentially dead, but you can't tell this until you log in and try to use it...).
Worse than the outdated and useless search results is the way they are presented - there is no grouping by site to put similar pages under one entry. Of the 167 results, almost all of them are from two distinct sites, but you have to wade through all of them to find any different ones. With a more common search string, it will be almost impossible to find what you are looking for, and it is still difficult with a narrow focus search. Google ain't going down that easy...
You left out the most important one: cordless drill. Big and powerful, with lots of bits. And a Cat 5 toolkit is also good to have lying around. Common tools are fairly easy to find, even in a dorm.
If you live in the dorms, no one has these types of things and they are hard to come by. Anyone who has tools is instantly popular.
You might think so, but you would be wrong. As a 4 year veteran of college dorms, I can say that having lots of tools, computer equipment, and other assorted stuff and always being around to help people is not guaranteed to make you popular. Then again, when the population is heavy with antisocial freaks who make a minor antisocial freak with a lot of tools look like an overly social freak, there's really no way to win.
While everyone will shout and scream "I don't want AT&T to maintain my cable modem", but when the line gets dropped and AT&T need to diagnose the problem they will apply the first rule of problem resolution
"The user is a moron, the fault is at their end"
Actually, I have found them to be quite cooperative at diagnosing problems. When my connection slowed to a crawl, they took the time to work with me to locate the source of a problem. They then scheduled a service call for two days later (a Sunday), at which time the technician quickly verified that my equipment was working properly and determined that the problem was with load balancing and nothing on my end.
At no point did the ownership of the modem make any difference - if they owned it, the procedure would have been exactly the same. The only time this would matter would be with the resolution of the problem if the modem was found to be at fault. Until then, they are responsible for making sure that the service they provide is functioning properly.
Knowing the EUCD will trip up its much easier to ensure that there is a nail bed where it will land and you know when to stick your foot out as it streamrollers past, than it is to attempt to hit it head on.
At least he didn't start going on about Darmok at Tanagra...
Obviously, you've never done a search for "free movies" on google.
Of course not, that search term is too ambiguous to produce any meaningful results.
I've watched my 11 year old brother stumble across porn sites while searching for video games on the net. Pornographers explicitly design their pages to be found by children - they include keywords like "free games" and "free movies" which have absolutely nothing to do with the content they display.
Sure enough, a search on "free movies" does indeed result in a lot of porn sites. Of course, this should be obvious with stuff like "SEX MOVIE GALLERIES ULTRA HARDCORE MOVIES" and "porn movie archive with free sex movies" in the titles and descriptions. Oddly enough, these sites actually do have free movies, explaining why they show up on a search for "free movies." If your brother can't tell that a page called "Fucking Free Movies" contains porn, his problems extend well beyond his inability to use a search engine. I didn't have much luck finding porn by searching for "free games" though. All I found were sites with free arcade games, javascript games, role playing games, emulators, etc. In both cases though, there is no reason to believe that these search terms are targeted at kids - lots of adults like movies and games.
Furthermore, the pages are loaded with annoying popups that just won't go away.
I'll take your word for it, I have Mozilla set to block that garbage.
The notion that parents can control what their children see on the computer while surfing the web is intrinsically naive.
And of course is also a straw man... If parents actually take the time to raise their kids, they can have a tremendous impact on how online content affects their kids.
Even an innocent interest in cars or video games can inadvertently lead a child to a porn site.
In your case, it looks like your parents need to work on teaching their kids how to use a search engine.
You've got to love legal ambiguity used to clarify legal ambiguity:
jurors will not consider the community standards of any particular geographic area, but rather will be "instructed to consider the standards of the adult community as a whole, without geographic specification."
Yeah, that will work. When exactly is the entire adult community getting together to write up these standards? I know I haven't gotten my invitation yet. If this law survives long enough to be enforced (which it probably won't, due to the countless other possible challenges), the jurors on these trials are going to have lots of fun. "Ok, heads it is harmful to kids, tails it isn't..."
Of course, the courts have a long history of upholding community standards requirements in cases where there is no specific community to use as a standard, so this shouldn't be surprising. The major flaw in all of this, regardless of community, is that what is considered to be harmful to children and what actually is harmful to children aren't usually the same, and this varies from child to child.
Too bad we can't just make parents responsible for raising their kids... Oh, right, I forgot that porn sites automatically pop up whenever a parent's back is turned, completely unrequested by the kid at the computer. And porn sites hypnotize kids and force them to look at explicit material whether they want to or not, permanently corrupting them no matter what the parents do.
As mentioned in the article, the biggest concern about Linux in schools is support. Somehow, I don't think telling them that Larry over at the local LUG said he'd help out if you run into trouble would go over too well with the administration (assuming the debate even gets this far). It would seem that if there were an organization like the AAA that offered emergency support, training opportunities, and instructional publications all for a low annual fee, regardless of what kind of Linux boxes/boxen you have or where you got them, a lot of the reluctance to switch to Linux would be removed. (I know that there are some small companies that do this sort of thing, or at least there were during the.com boom, but I'm thinking of more of a LUG-for-hire outfit.) With the current situation in the Northwest, the stage seems set for a few of these organizations to spring up, eventually merging into a single nationwide Linux support organization. Anyone have any venture capital they need to get rid of?
There's a clear conflict of interests here - if the government (or a certain important part of it) is fully dependent on Microsoft, it will be very reluctant to do anything that could in any way harm Microsoft (regardless of the benefits to anyone else, like the general public). This gives Microsoft the perfect defense against any form of punishment - "But that could hurt us, and if you hurt us, we might not be able to keep your systems running, and you wouldn't want that." Essentially, this gives Microsoft the opportunity to play the abusive husband, with the government, and by extension the entire population of the US, in the role of the helpless wife who accepts any beating simply because she has nowhere else to go (or at least that's what she believes).
In the specific case described in the article, there are many options that would provide the same capabilities to the end user ("e-mail, the Internet, a word processor and the ability to create output") without making support more difficult, so going Microsoft-only provides no real benefit while increasing the risk of abuse (from a convicted abuser) or deficiencies resulting from a situation similar to a lack of genetic diversity. Nature and society are full of examples of why this is a very bad idea, but I guess reality isn't in the Senate's technology plan either...
I don't think so. Wesley don't play that shit no more, holmes.
Well, if you don't want to make out with Ashley Judd while saving the world from an alien mind control device, I suppose I could help out by taking the making-out-with-Ashley-Judd responsibility off your hands...
I would make some witty comment here involving the potential for computers to mimic the psychological behavior of girlfriends (most likely citing a specific instance of this behavior), except:
A: I really don't have much experience to use as a basis, and
B: A large portion of the audience probably doesn't either.
You'll just have to make up your own joke this time, you won't be getting a Score:5, Funny from me...
I was quite disappointed with MH - it felt too much like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Final Solution" - an author killing off a series that has become too popular, too much a millstone around the author's neck.
When I read it, it just felt like the entire tone was off. The previous book was kind of the same way, but a bit too far over on the light and cheery side. I read all 5 books for the first time in the span of a couple weeks, so these two books really stood out for me. By the time I was well into Mostly Harmless, everything seemed locked into a downward spiral that couldn't be escaped except with the kind of sudden shift that the book started with. The ending was more a sad goodbye than deliberate destruction.
Adams explained his thoughts on the book's depressing tone in his interview in The Onion:
Another reason is that the last one, Mostly Harmless, is a very bleak book. People have tried to read all sorts of complicated reasons into it, and the reason was that I just had a lousy year. Just for all sorts of personal reasons, from a terrible death in the family to... Every kind of area, whether it was personal or professional, had just gone sour on me, against a background in which I had to write a funny book, which turned out not to be very funny. So I'd quite like to maybe do another Hitchhiker book that sort of perks up the tone again.
The flawed assumption here is that every problem can be solved through legislation. In this case, there are already adequate laws in place to cover true copyright violations (and much, much more). The resent push has been for laws covering the possibility of violating copyright, which goes beyond what the government should be involved in. Stepping back from that gets us to the "net traffic cop" concept mentioned above. Any attempt by the government to regulate internet content will face First Amendment challenges, so this traffic cop system would probably have to be be passive and only report activity that is a legitimate violation of copyright law. Now you hit other problems (privacy, etc.), so any system of this type implemented through Congress is destined for endless debate and legal challenge. Add in that it is (or at least used to be) the burden of the copyright holder to identify and report violations, and I can't see anything coming from a legislated solution of this type.
The real solution, though few people will admit it, is to reform the copyright system. There is a desire to stamp out all piracy because money is made by exploiting an idea for all it is worth instead of creating new ideas, and there is a desire to pirate content because of a general lack of value in currently produced content. If copyright terms were reasonable, content providers would need to create new content with enough value to attract customers in order to stay in business. Combine this with a healthy public domain to satisfy people who do not want to pay for content, and the digital piracy problem should become much more manageable.
Of course, this means defining "reasonable" copyright terms. To do this, it is necessary to understand why copyright is needed in the first place. Despite what some corporate advocates might want you to think, copyright is intended to encourage the creation and distribution of information content for the public benefit. There must, therefore, be a balance between the incentive to the content creator and the benefit to the public. The immediately obvious first step in copyright reform is to retroactively repeal all retroactive copyright extensions - if the copyright terms were adequate to encourage creation, extending them does not benefit the public (at least as long as time travel is impossible or impractical).
Next, it is necessary to define an adequate copyright term for future use (not effective retroactively). Since copyright is supposed to cover a "limited time" and the content in question is used by humans, the obvious definition of a time limit to a human is the typical human lifespan. A factor of this number (recalculated regularly) would therefore make a reasonable copyright term. Something around.5 would give the content creator plenty of time to receive compensation (if not, the chances don't improve much with additional time) while giving the public access to the content before it is of no value (if it still has significant value at this point, it is of cultural significance, and therefore should be available for use by the general public). People would get their creative content, content creators would have incentive to create, and "pirates" would lose any moral high ground. What more could you want (aside from large corporate interests controlling access to the flow of creative content)?
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Who bought a Quadra to run Mac OS X, and are they interested in upgrading to a slightly used state-of-the-art PowerBook 3400? The last Quadra was discontinued in 1995, long before there was ever any speculation about X. The official minimum requirement for X is a beige G3, introduced in 1997, but there are hacks to get it installed on earlier PCI-based Macs, which date back to 1995. How far back should Apple have gone? Should Mac OS X be able to run on my 15.9 MHz SE/30?
Actually, they refused to make it part of the basic package and raise their monthly price for all of their customers. It was the Yankees organization that kept YES off Cablevision by refusing to allow it to be made a premium station that only the people who wanted it would have to pay for. Believe it or not, there are a lot of people who aren't Yankee fans, even in New York (there are actually two Major League Baseball teams in New York, but one of them seems to have taken most of the season off).
Baseball is the only sport I follow, but I haven't watched a single game this year and would not like being forced to pay for a station that covers a single team, even if it happened to be my favorite team. It's all these special interest channels in the basic package that keep me from paying for premium channels I might actually want. I would gladly trade Animal Planet, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic, NESN, Fox Sports, The Golf Channel, The Game Show Network, Nickelodeon, ABC Family, Disney, Noggin, The Food Network, MTV, VH1, HGTV, E!, Fox News, CNN, QVC, HSN, CKSH, and all the religious channels for just the main HBO channel. However, if I have to pay for all that crap to begin with, I'm not going to spend even more for a channel I'll only watch once in a while. If only more cable companies would have the balls to stand up to pricks like Steinbrenner and irate Yankee fans and keep stations like this out of their basic cable packages...
Whoa there, don't get so far ahead of yourself that you move the goal posts out of the ballpark and lose sight of the big picture. There's a whole knowledge base of lessons learned out there to use for value-added synergy, so there's no need to risk getting left out of the loop by thinking too far outside the box.
The bottom line is this: for your core business, you'll need a results-driven, client-focused game plan if you want to take the fast track to a win-win situation. You must have it in your mindset to push the envelope and be proactive in the pursuit of a total quality 100% solution that goes the extra mile in customer satisfaction. However, even with a best practice center of excellence, you'll still have to play hardball at the end of the day if you want to keep up with the movers and shakers.
I think I'm getting a little off-track here, let's take this offline; I'll touch base with you later to pencil in a time when we can revisit this issue and put this one to bed.
You're not the only one. One of the main reasons why Office 97 is still in use is because of how long it has been around to prove itself. I know my company tests software fairly extensively before making any mandatory desktop upgrades - Office 97 is still the standard here, and Windows 2000 wasn't installed across the company until last fall. When productivity (money) is at stake, most companies will not risk switching to unproven software, and many might choose not to switch at all if the existing solution works. It is especially true with Windows that any significant change could result in serious problems, no matter how much testing has been done. Multiply that by thousands of employees, and that's some serious IT overtime, er, I mean decreased productivity.
Aside from Hazard, which ones are invulnerable? Vlad the Impaler? Biohazard? Ziggo? Toro? Minion? Backlash? All of these have both won a championship and been knocked out by an opponent, usually with lots of damage. Lots of others have been reduced to scrap (well, except for the Scrap Daddy bots, those started as junk) by their opponents. None of the other shows can match the destruction in Battlebots because of ineffective weapons and poor durability. They need house robots and pits and stuff because the contestant robots can't do the job themselves.
They never show the little guys running around trying not to catch on fire.
Maybe not, but the last episode did have a big guy sitting in a broken heap catching fire. It's much more impressive to set your opponent on fire when you don't have a flamethrower.
Actually, it's $20 plus tax, with free shipping (FedEx Ground unfortunately) from the Apple Store, but that's just for an upgrade. iDVD is really (in theory) only available installed on a system with an Apple installed DVD-R drive. Unlike the other iApps, iDVD is not available as a free download from Apple. iDVD isn't free any more than the copy of Mac OS X that comes with a new system is free.
By this reasoning, it should be illegal to filter any spam. Score one for the penis enlargement lobby!
I encourage you to exercise your First Amendment rights in speaking out against my e-mails. Write letters to your newspaper, send an e-mail to your colleagues, but do not try to act as a censor for the entire college community. It is violative of my First Amendment rights. It is also a disservice to those in the college community who do not object to receiving my e-mails and who want to participate in the marketplace of ideas.
Now, combine this with the first statement and you could have some fun. Cut off any spam filtering you have in place and be sure to let everyone know that you have taken this action because Steve Biener warned you that there could be legal consequences if you "act as a censor for the entire college community" and prevent people from receiving this "marketplace of ideas" that he has associated himself with. Be sure to suggest that they let him know how grateful they are that he helped you see the error of your ways.
Yeah! We'll show those corporate bastards what we think of them by not going to see the movies we actually like! That'll teach them to make anything outside the fart jokes and bodily fluids genre!
Seriously, there are so many people who will spend money to see any piece of crap (even the latest Eddie Murphy flop had millions in ticket sales, but at least its $100 million price tag will make sure there is never a sequel) that a geek boycott would be lost in the noise floor. The only thing the MPAA will see is a spike in ticket sales (LOTR, Spider-Man, etc.).
Sure this won't do anything about the MPAA's business practices, but there is no way to have a realistic impact with a boycott - it will never gain enough support to put a dent in the billions of dollars the industry brings in each year. It is up to our legal system to resolve these issues, and boycotting the EFF, Congress, etc. isn't going to help on that front (hint, hint)...
The best reason for a boycott of this type isn't its effect on big corporations, but instead the impact on ourselves. By not spending money on crap, we have more money to spend on things we like. Instead of seeing "Adam Sandler Whines, Farts, and Beats People Up, Part XVII," you can buy a DVD of that obscure movie you love but nobody else has even heard of. Or you could buy stock in an undervalued company, or pay off some debts a little bit sooner, or get a few more minutes of entertainment at the nickel slots (ok, so maybe that one isn't such a good example). Considering the current state of Hollywood, it is easy to see how a boycott on crap could look like a boycott on the MPAA.
"If the movie stinks, just don't go!"
You seem to have countered your own argument there. Prices will equalize for everything but anime? Anime DVDs (and related products - toys, models, etc.) tend to cost more in the US because either:
- The item is a Japanese release that has been imported into the US, adding additional cost.
- The item is an American release based on the Japanese release, with additional dubbing, marketing, etc., adding additional cost.
Even if the products are identical except for the intended distribution, the "local" version can be marked up by as much as it would cost to obtain a non-local version, without significantly hurting sales. It just has to be more convenient to buy the version they want you to buy.Now let's say a movie studio wants to release a movie for distribution in a country with rampant poverty, such as India, Russia, etc., without region codes. They already have the audio and video tracks from the original release, so they can just recycle those and maybe add some more subtitles. They can leave out any special features, commentary tracks, deleted scenes, etc. that they don't feel will help sales in that market and might increase the price. They then use whatever production and distribution channels in that market that keep costs down to an acceptable level so that the final price is at a level that the market can bear. Now you have, for example, an Indian release of Titanic for the equivalent of $5.
So now I'm looking for a Titanic DVD (hypothetically of course, I will admit that I did buy a copy of it when I saw it for $10 or so during the .com boom), and I'm pissed off that it costs $20 in the US. I look around and see it on an Indian retailer's site for $5. Then I notice that it has no extra features, the picture quality is horrible due to the cheap quality of the production equipment, and it will cost $20 to have it shipped by any method that isn't likely to involve it being intercepted by pirates (the real kind, not copyright infringers) during a three month voyage to the US. The $20 US release doesn't look so bad by comparison.
Maybe an enterprising US retailer can purchase these cheaper DVDs in quantity and sell them in the US market. Well, shady outfits already do this with electronics, and they are universally hated for this. DVDs don't have warranties, so there may be more success with that particular product, but the methods used to cut costs on these releases will still be evident in the quality of the gray market product. Since raising prices in poorer countries would effectively kill sales there, the most effective way to maximize profits would be to lower the price of the US version to a price that would make selling a gray market copy unattractive.
The other side of region coding is preventing people in other countries from getting the US release of movies that are released in the US first or are never released in other countries. Without region coding, they would have to rely on silly laws banning the import of such movies. Of course, since region-free DVD players are common outside of the US, region coding probably has less of an impact on sales than the cost to import, so there shouldn't be much of an impact here.
The bottom line is that region coding isn't about cost, it's about control. It's about segmented distribution and making sure that everyone is buying the right version for their location at the right time to coincide with theatrical releases. However, the popularity of region-free players and the abundance of hacks to make players region-free have demonstrated that when confronted with a region issue, people will simply bypass it rather than do what the movie studios want them to do. Eliminating region codes would remove complication and costs in DVD production by removing the need to produce a different DVD for each region. This would result in a greater range of choices in many regions that don't have a large enough market to justify a separate release of less popular movies.
Of course, I could be completely wrong about everything above, since I'm no expert in matters like these. The fact is though that region coding only works when it is forced on everyone's hardware, and that clearly has not happened. Geographical barriers are still significant enough to maintain price differences between physically distant markets, so there should be little or no negative impact if region coding were to disappear.
You mean the sticky kind that said "Apple Computer inc." at the bottom and came in different sizes? I've got a stack of those around here somewhere, I could put some pictures of them up if you want. The more recent multi-colored non-sticky kind were available for free for a while from a promotional material order form on Apple's web site, but my second shipment never made it...
It's actually a good strategy from their point of view - they bring in more money right away from cable modem owners and they discourage the purchase of a modem with a longer time to break even (I laughed when I saw the "I'm glad I didn't buy a modem" posts last time - I bought mine without hesitation, so I've already made up its cost by now, meaning that I don't have to pay a rental fee no matter how much they reduce it).
This premium service is good not just from their perspective, but from the customer's as well. It will bring in more cash right away and will satisfy customers who need more bandwidth on their residential networks. Hopefully, this will put a stop to the annual $6-7 monthly price increases AT&T Broadband has been hitting its customers with (It was only $30/month when I signed up...).
This is fine as long as people who legally purchase this content can give the content creator the finger and either:
a. bypass the copy protection for legal uses, or
b. choose similar content from other creators that is not similarly crippled.
DRM is only truly effective if bypassing it is illegal (and inclusion in hardware and software is mandatory) and non-DRM content is rejected by DRM devices. Otherwise, it is just like Macrovision, which prevents casual users from using the content they purchase in many legal ways while remaining completely useless against anyone who can buy a $50 signal cleaner. The Average Joe gets screwed, while the "pirate" is only out $50.
The BIG content providers who make this stuff want to protect their investment.
No, they want to preserve their monopoly on content creation, which guarantees future profits. To do this, they need to maintain control of their market, which they want to accomplish through technological and legal means instead of through the quality of their products.
Why shouldn't they try?
Because in doing so, they are criminalizing fair use and unfairly restricting competition by branding anything not authorized by them as "piracy." Since the technology can't tell piracy from fair use, they want to remove the distinction entirely.
Some of you have suggested that the whole process is futile ; people will always be able to hack it. The latter may be true, but if the recording companies can make it hard enough (with only allowing DRM devices to play their content, ect) they can make it so that the customer who is "on the fence" between warezing and buying it (i.e. someone who could do either) makes the right choice because warezing it is tedious.
And what about the legitimate uses that will be more tedious if done the "right" way? The same logic would make a great case for lost sales that would result if people are restricted from choosing how they want to use the content they purchase.
Thus, for the goal that the content providers want : to gain more sales from people who might otherwise pirate; DRM and other techniques may actually work!
Or they may drive away potential customers who don't like being treated like criminals for wanting to use what they buy. DRM can only work if all content uses it and there is no non-DRM alternative. This is the truly scary part.
Now, for the people who cannot or will not buy the content : yeah, they'll warez it...but the anti-piracy measures can make it tougher. By breaking up the big P2P networks, it becomes slightly harder to pirate music.
And it becomes harder to distribute independently created music. Remember how the RIAA wanted to clean up Napster? They wanted Napster to only allow the distribution of material that the content creator had specifically authorized Napster to distribute. This goes beyond "protecting" their works and impedes the distribution of works that are given away freely or are (if there are any) in the public domain, effectively giving the RIAA control over this distribution channel.
By copy protecting cds, it becomes less convenient for the average customer to burn his friend a copy.
Legitimate uses also become less convenient, decreasing the value of the product. If a price cut corresponding to the decrease in functionality does not accompany DRM, sales will drop.
But for the average joe who's been working all day and just wants to see a movie : he is probably going to get the legitimate copy to avoid all the technical headaches piracy can involve.
He would probably also want to avoid all the technical headaches that come with legitimate copies "protected" with DRM or some similar scheme. Of course, people seem to be putting up with Windows XP, so maybe most people enjoy that sort of treatment...
While making music may be an art that people do just to enjoy it, making a major movie is anything but.
Define "major." The technology needed to create something that would have been considered "major" a few years ago is now available to the masses at relatively low cost. As the tools to create movies become more readily available and the means to distribute them (P2P) remain available, the number of hobbyists will increase, resulting in an amateur talent pool similar to that of music.
While movies can be fun, its a lot of work especially for the people who add in all the extras that separate a big budget production from an Indie film.
But are these added expenses needed to produce something good? Even the worst of Hollywood movies take in millions of dollars in ticket sales, while the best of small budget films can go unnoticed. This is because the studios can get anything on a thousand screens - but what happens if more people start getting their movies from the internet instead of the theater? The studios don't have control over that distribution channel yet, and it takes more than just a few billions of dollars to get this control - it takes technology and laws. This is where some of our favorite acronyms (DMCA, DRM, SSSCA/CBDTPA, etc.) fit in.
So if noone paid for movies, films of the quality we currently experience would not be made.
What's wrong with that? If nobody is willing to pay for something, then it probably shouldn't be made. It certainly shouldn't be forced on people so they will have to spend money on something they don't want. However, there are two flaws with your argument, and both can be seen in the latest Adam Sandler movie:
1. There will always be people who will pay to see complete and utter crap.
2. Too many of the movies made today are complete and utter crap.
Making a good movie doesn't have to be expensive - even basic digital effects can be done with a few thousand dollars of equipment and the desire to learn and create. The key is a good script, and that usually requires creative freedom without influence from high-level management. Cut out the overhead and you can get a quality production at a low cost, which, if given the opportunity, could easily make its money back through viewings and direct sales. This, not "piracy," is the real threat to the copyright cartel - small content creators producing content that appeals to focused demographics, eroding the potential audience for mainstream watered down crap. With current technology and the ever-present desire to create, the creation of complex productions and the widespread distribution of them can be accomplished by anyone who chooses to do so - the cartels are no longer necessary. This is why you will see more DRM and more restrictive "protection," all backed up by law - the customer is also the enemy.
Worse than the outdated and useless search results is the way they are presented - there is no grouping by site to put similar pages under one entry. Of the 167 results, almost all of them are from two distinct sites, but you have to wade through all of them to find any different ones. With a more common search string, it will be almost impossible to find what you are looking for, and it is still difficult with a narrow focus search. Google ain't going down that easy...
Such as a hammer, screw drivers, etc.
You left out the most important one: cordless drill. Big and powerful, with lots of bits. And a Cat 5 toolkit is also good to have lying around. Common tools are fairly easy to find, even in a dorm.
If you live in the dorms, no one has these types of things and they are hard to come by. Anyone who has tools is instantly popular.
You might think so, but you would be wrong. As a 4 year veteran of college dorms, I can say that having lots of tools, computer equipment, and other assorted stuff and always being around to help people is not guaranteed to make you popular. Then again, when the population is heavy with antisocial freaks who make a minor antisocial freak with a lot of tools look like an overly social freak, there's really no way to win.
"The user is a moron, the fault is at their end"
Actually, I have found them to be quite cooperative at diagnosing problems. When my connection slowed to a crawl, they took the time to work with me to locate the source of a problem. They then scheduled a service call for two days later (a Sunday), at which time the technician quickly verified that my equipment was working properly and determined that the problem was with load balancing and nothing on my end.
At no point did the ownership of the modem make any difference - if they owned it, the procedure would have been exactly the same. The only time this would matter would be with the resolution of the problem if the modem was found to be at fault. Until then, they are responsible for making sure that the service they provide is functioning properly.
At least he didn't start going on about Darmok at Tanagra...
Of course not, that search term is too ambiguous to produce any meaningful results.
I've watched my 11 year old brother stumble across porn sites while searching for video games on the net. Pornographers explicitly design their pages to be found by children - they include keywords like "free games" and "free movies" which have absolutely nothing to do with the content they display.
Sure enough, a search on "free movies" does indeed result in a lot of porn sites. Of course, this should be obvious with stuff like "SEX MOVIE GALLERIES ULTRA HARDCORE MOVIES" and "porn movie archive with free sex movies" in the titles and descriptions. Oddly enough, these sites actually do have free movies, explaining why they show up on a search for "free movies." If your brother can't tell that a page called "Fucking Free Movies" contains porn, his problems extend well beyond his inability to use a search engine. I didn't have much luck finding porn by searching for "free games" though. All I found were sites with free arcade games, javascript games, role playing games, emulators, etc. In both cases though, there is no reason to believe that these search terms are targeted at kids - lots of adults like movies and games.
Furthermore, the pages are loaded with annoying popups that just won't go away.
I'll take your word for it, I have Mozilla set to block that garbage.
The notion that parents can control what their children see on the computer while surfing the web is intrinsically naive.
And of course is also a straw man... If parents actually take the time to raise their kids, they can have a tremendous impact on how online content affects their kids.
Even an innocent interest in cars or video games can inadvertently lead a child to a porn site.
In your case, it looks like your parents need to work on teaching their kids how to use a search engine.
jurors will not consider the community standards of any particular geographic area, but rather will be "instructed to consider the standards of the adult community as a whole, without geographic specification."
Yeah, that will work. When exactly is the entire adult community getting together to write up these standards? I know I haven't gotten my invitation yet. If this law survives long enough to be enforced (which it probably won't, due to the countless other possible challenges), the jurors on these trials are going to have lots of fun. "Ok, heads it is harmful to kids, tails it isn't..."
Of course, the courts have a long history of upholding community standards requirements in cases where there is no specific community to use as a standard, so this shouldn't be surprising. The major flaw in all of this, regardless of community, is that what is considered to be harmful to children and what actually is harmful to children aren't usually the same, and this varies from child to child.
Too bad we can't just make parents responsible for raising their kids... Oh, right, I forgot that porn sites automatically pop up whenever a parent's back is turned, completely unrequested by the kid at the computer. And porn sites hypnotize kids and force them to look at explicit material whether they want to or not, permanently corrupting them no matter what the parents do.
As mentioned in the article, the biggest concern about Linux in schools is support. Somehow, I don't think telling them that Larry over at the local LUG said he'd help out if you run into trouble would go over too well with the administration (assuming the debate even gets this far). It would seem that if there were an organization like the AAA that offered emergency support, training opportunities, and instructional publications all for a low annual fee, regardless of what kind of Linux boxes/boxen you have or where you got them, a lot of the reluctance to switch to Linux would be removed. (I know that there are some small companies that do this sort of thing, or at least there were during the .com boom, but I'm thinking of more of a LUG-for-hire outfit.) With the current situation in the Northwest, the stage seems set for a few of these organizations to spring up, eventually merging into a single nationwide Linux support organization. Anyone have any venture capital they need to get rid of?
In the specific case described in the article, there are many options that would provide the same capabilities to the end user ("e-mail, the Internet, a word processor and the ability to create output") without making support more difficult, so going Microsoft-only provides no real benefit while increasing the risk of abuse (from a convicted abuser) or deficiencies resulting from a situation similar to a lack of genetic diversity. Nature and society are full of examples of why this is a very bad idea, but I guess reality isn't in the Senate's technology plan either...
Well, if you don't want to make out with Ashley Judd while saving the world from an alien mind control device, I suppose I could help out by taking the making-out-with-Ashley-Judd responsibility off your hands...
A: I really don't have much experience to use as a basis, and
B: A large portion of the audience probably doesn't either.
You'll just have to make up your own joke this time, you won't be getting a Score:5, Funny from me...
When I read it, it just felt like the entire tone was off. The previous book was kind of the same way, but a bit too far over on the light and cheery side. I read all 5 books for the first time in the span of a couple weeks, so these two books really stood out for me. By the time I was well into Mostly Harmless, everything seemed locked into a downward spiral that couldn't be escaped except with the kind of sudden shift that the book started with. The ending was more a sad goodbye than deliberate destruction.
Adams explained his thoughts on the book's depressing tone in his interview in The Onion:
Another reason is that the last one, Mostly Harmless, is a very bleak book. People have tried to read all sorts of complicated reasons into it, and the reason was that I just had a lousy year. Just for all sorts of personal reasons, from a terrible death in the family to... Every kind of area, whether it was personal or professional, had just gone sour on me, against a background in which I had to write a funny book, which turned out not to be very funny. So I'd quite like to maybe do another Hitchhiker book that sort of perks up the tone again.
Bookpool will give you between 30% and 40% off almost all O'Reilly books, no defacing required.
The real solution, though few people will admit it, is to reform the copyright system. There is a desire to stamp out all piracy because money is made by exploiting an idea for all it is worth instead of creating new ideas, and there is a desire to pirate content because of a general lack of value in currently produced content. If copyright terms were reasonable, content providers would need to create new content with enough value to attract customers in order to stay in business. Combine this with a healthy public domain to satisfy people who do not want to pay for content, and the digital piracy problem should become much more manageable.
Of course, this means defining "reasonable" copyright terms. To do this, it is necessary to understand why copyright is needed in the first place. Despite what some corporate advocates might want you to think, copyright is intended to encourage the creation and distribution of information content for the public benefit. There must, therefore, be a balance between the incentive to the content creator and the benefit to the public. The immediately obvious first step in copyright reform is to retroactively repeal all retroactive copyright extensions - if the copyright terms were adequate to encourage creation, extending them does not benefit the public (at least as long as time travel is impossible or impractical).
Next, it is necessary to define an adequate copyright term for future use (not effective retroactively). Since copyright is supposed to cover a "limited time" and the content in question is used by humans, the obvious definition of a time limit to a human is the typical human lifespan. A factor of this number (recalculated regularly) would therefore make a reasonable copyright term. Something around .5 would give the content creator plenty of time to receive compensation (if not, the chances don't improve much with additional time) while giving the public access to the content before it is of no value (if it still has significant value at this point, it is of cultural significance, and therefore should be available for use by the general public). People would get their creative content, content creators would have incentive to create, and "pirates" would lose any moral high ground. What more could you want (aside from large corporate interests controlling access to the flow of creative content)?