I'm not following you. Don't you actually have to go out of your way to install Flash? All you have to do to avoid Flash is... nothing. If your browser came with Flash, it should be easy enough to delete it.
I agree with you but keep in mind that our assessment of the intelligence of the judge is based on the story told by the loser of the suit, which means the storyteller has an incentive to misrepresent the facts. Your sureness should only be as strong as your trust in the author.
I can't say for sure, since I wasn't looking over your shoulder at your meta moderating, but if you are meta moderating two-thirds of down-mods as unfair, I proffer that you may be the one being unfair.
Great. It seems a few people in the industry and just beginning to dawn on the idiocy of their actions.
Bummer it's too god damned late. Sorry guys, you could have delivered musical nirvana in 1996 (musical nirvana, not the music of Nirvana) but instead you refused to take any action, followed by insisting on taking only the action of suing your customers. It's a decade late for you to start saying you 'get it', and the fact is there are only a few of you who get it anyway.
(Musical nirvana would be like Napster except with an inexpensive pay system: all the music ever recorded in high-quality format easily searchable for inexpensive cost. That would have been possible in ~1995, and certainly by 2000 or 2001.)
The music industry was like the drug industry and the RIAA acted like the government: consumers had a demand and the RIAA/government thought that demand was morally bad, so instead of meeting demand in a reasonable, safe, and profitable manner, they stuck their heads up their asses and made the problem worse. In reaction, consumers filled their own needs created by their own demands with their own products and services, cutting the RIAA/government completely out of the equation completely.
If the industry 'gets it' in the next five or six years, it won't matter; if they 'get it' tomorrow, it won't matter. The time to get it was about 1997, maybe 1998, and certainly by 2000. You didn't get it, and you have caused yourself irreparable harm. You will survive, but you will not thrive in the brave new world you allowed to be created without your input or help. And I'm happy enough to see them go. I think they add value to the music culture, but not much.
That's awesome advice, thanks. I'll keep my eye out for any of those brands. I live in Juneau, so we might have a slightly higher availability of Canadian beers than down in the lower 48.
A few of those I've even had already, and didn't know they were Canadian (Steam Whistle specifically).
My understanding is that Dateline has criminal lawyers advising them on how NOT to "offer sex with minors". Just like a police officer, they set up the situation without making the *offer*, and it's the offer that makes it entrapment.
Compare this to a drug bust: if you go up to a crack dealer and ask for a rock and he sells it to you, then arrests you because he's undercover, then that's not entrapment. But if you're sitting on the sidewalk looking kinda cracked out, and he walks up to you and offers you a rock, and you buy it, then he arrests you -- that is entrapment.
Basically, I think entrapment is a rather narrow exception to the law, more narrow than commonly believed. Also compare this to the recent closeted gay Republican senator Craig busted for gay bathroom sex: many people thought that would be entrapment, but it isn't.
Yepp. That's the way to do it, except of course a bit more politely in person than the way you described it in your post. Gently explaining and asserting your preference is the right way to get what you want.
No you missed his point, which is that money is the animating factor for these content producers, and P2P doesn't result in producers getting paid.
Reasonable counterarguments include: but they do get paid indirectly because filesharers buy more media; or that plenty of great content was produced by civilization before there were copyright laws.
Hey I was wondering, what are your good brands of Canadian beer? Because the Canadian beer we get in the states isn't very good (cf. Molson and Labatt's). I figure it's probably the same deal as with "American" beer, which makes everyone think of Budweiser, which is gross; whereas American beer is actually spectacularly good (Fat Tire, Long Trail, Alaskan Amber... I could go on) when it is done right. Same with Australia: Fosters is nasty. Same with Japan: Sapporo is bad. But probably all these places make right fine brews, but don't export them. Can you recommend a good brand of Canadian beer? You know, for next time I'm down south in Canada (I live in Alaska).
PS I'm willing to bet your telcos spy on you. Google for 'echelon'.
PPS Alaskan natural wonders put Canadian natural wonders to shame, but your half of Niagra is pretty cool.
The entertainment industry can either fight a rearguard action to delay the inevitable, hurting a lot of people along the way, or embrace the reality that copying data is cheap and easy and find new ways to profit from the situation.
Correction: the entertainment industry could have fought a rearguard action to delay the inevitable, or embrace reality...
The fact is the industry made that decision in 1998 and 1999, when the Napster thing happened. It is now too late for that industry, they have caused themselves irreparable harm, and will never recover the way they might have if they had been able to see the way the world was going. It is way too late for them now, especially considering they haven't even quickened to reality yet, let alone gone about providing services consistent with that truth.
Think about it. Television heaven would be a system where you turn on your TV and have push-button access to the entire catalog of television programs ever made from the beginning of time, easily available for an inexpensive price on demand. Something like that would have been possible for the bigwigs to build in, oh, say 1996 or 1997. So why the hell are we going into 2008 and the industry is pushing crap like this NBC Direct service? Why? The obvious answer is because they don't get it. They don't get it! Since they refused to take their heads out of their kiesters and make compelling services, the consumers built it themselves, not because they wanted to, but because they had to, because the content providers refused to do it.
Why did we have to invent torrents? Why did we have to invent Myth TV? Why did a tiny upstart company have to invent TiVo? Why didn't the RIAA come out with something like iTunes in 2001? Why can't I watch The Sopranos commercial-free for a dime? Why does all radio suck, driving me to downloads? WHY WHY WHY? Obvious answer: because they just don't get it, and they won't get it any time soon.
Yeah that's what I thought too. Doesn't he have any good examples of widely-broken laws which are actually good laws? Because drinking age, speed limits, and marijuana prohibition are downright terrible examples. The drinking age should be lower. I don't know how low, but lower, maybe graduated or something, but certainly the current state of that law is suboptimal. And it's not that "speeding" should be "legal", rather that speed limits should be higher, especially considering the high-quality cars with great handling that we have today. Older crappier cars should drive slower, and big trucks should drive slower, but a Jetta can do 75 safely, perhaps higher. And marijuana, don't get me started.
What is the most widely-broken law you can think of which is (in your opinion) a good law? None come to my mind.
As an American living in Juneau on Alaska's panhandle, I would love to see you "dispute" my home. The last time you tried to "dispute" Alaska was in 1997 when your fishermen got their panties in a twist over some salmon and absurdly blocked our ferries from their appointed rounds for a day or two. Egads! Canada's most aggressive behavior of the entire twentieth century and they were capable of putting our ocean transport a little bit behind schedule!
Furthermore, your dispute is dumb, since Canada never had a claim to Alaska. The USA rightly purchased Alaska from the Russians. Ferkrisake, if you're going to dispute some American territory, why don't you try disputing the Michigan upper peninsula? At least those people are Canadian sympathizers.
Point of fact: it's the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act not the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act, which is a good thing, because FISA is much easier to pronounce than FSIA.
It's not for two reasons. First, defending yourself against libel doesn't lead to "personal gain", it merely attempts to stop personal loss. More importantly, the libel was against individuals acting in official duties. I'm not familiar with the previous decisions saying governments can't be libeled, but I know in the recent Bong Hits For Jesus case the local school district had money set aside to defend the school principal, so I bet it's not a blanket rule. Are you well-versed in those precedents, such that you can explain them to me? If not, then I suggest we can't really come to a legally valid conclusion without that information.
I wouldn't necessarily say that defending yourself against libel qualifies as "personal gain". What did you gain by defending yourself? Really all you did was stop a loss of dignity, not gain any dignity; and if that dignity is professionally valuable, then it is reasonable that the employer might contribute to the defense.
Did Slashdot change to a system where submitters choose what stories go on the front page? I thought that's what the editors did. I thought it was their job to do some quality control on what got posted (even though they have long neglected that duty).
Slashdot Mirror
Some might call you a cynic, but I'd say you pointed out the obvious.
Yay. Amazon made five Kindles. Three people bought one and one lady bought one for each of her daughters. This story is not a story.
I've been reading "e books" for years. They're called text files. Anything that needs to be cracked isn't worth buying.
I'm not following you. Don't you actually have to go out of your way to install Flash? All you have to do to avoid Flash is... nothing. If your browser came with Flash, it should be easy enough to delete it.
Okay. Well imagine you could download an experience. What then?
Yeah, that's not bad advice, but I have some really really good advice for anyone in your situation: DON'T KNOCK UP YOUR GIRLFRIEND.
I agree with you but keep in mind that our assessment of the intelligence of the judge is based on the story told by the loser of the suit, which means the storyteller has an incentive to misrepresent the facts. Your sureness should only be as strong as your trust in the author.
Outside their mandate or outside their normal daily activities? cf echelon.
I can't say for sure, since I wasn't looking over your shoulder at your meta moderating, but if you are meta moderating two-thirds of down-mods as unfair, I proffer that you may be the one being unfair.
Great. It seems a few people in the industry and just beginning to dawn on the idiocy of their actions.
Bummer it's too god damned late. Sorry guys, you could have delivered musical nirvana in 1996 (musical nirvana, not the music of Nirvana) but instead you refused to take any action, followed by insisting on taking only the action of suing your customers. It's a decade late for you to start saying you 'get it', and the fact is there are only a few of you who get it anyway.
(Musical nirvana would be like Napster except with an inexpensive pay system: all the music ever recorded in high-quality format easily searchable for inexpensive cost. That would have been possible in ~1995, and certainly by 2000 or 2001.)
The music industry was like the drug industry and the RIAA acted like the government: consumers had a demand and the RIAA/government thought that demand was morally bad, so instead of meeting demand in a reasonable, safe, and profitable manner, they stuck their heads up their asses and made the problem worse. In reaction, consumers filled their own needs created by their own demands with their own products and services, cutting the RIAA/government completely out of the equation completely.
If the industry 'gets it' in the next five or six years, it won't matter; if they 'get it' tomorrow, it won't matter. The time to get it was about 1997, maybe 1998, and certainly by 2000. You didn't get it, and you have caused yourself irreparable harm. You will survive, but you will not thrive in the brave new world you allowed to be created without your input or help. And I'm happy enough to see them go. I think they add value to the music culture, but not much.
That's awesome advice, thanks. I'll keep my eye out for any of those brands. I live in Juneau, so we might have a slightly higher availability of Canadian beers than down in the lower 48.
A few of those I've even had already, and didn't know they were Canadian (Steam Whistle specifically).
My understanding is that Dateline has criminal lawyers advising them on how NOT to "offer sex with minors". Just like a police officer, they set up the situation without making the *offer*, and it's the offer that makes it entrapment.
Compare this to a drug bust: if you go up to a crack dealer and ask for a rock and he sells it to you, then arrests you because he's undercover, then that's not entrapment. But if you're sitting on the sidewalk looking kinda cracked out, and he walks up to you and offers you a rock, and you buy it, then he arrests you -- that is entrapment.
Basically, I think entrapment is a rather narrow exception to the law, more narrow than commonly believed. Also compare this to the recent closeted gay Republican senator Craig busted for gay bathroom sex: many people thought that would be entrapment, but it isn't.
Yepp. That's the way to do it, except of course a bit more politely in person than the way you described it in your post. Gently explaining and asserting your preference is the right way to get what you want.
Holy crap. That worked for you? Awesome.
No you missed his point, which is that money is the animating factor for these content producers, and P2P doesn't result in producers getting paid.
Reasonable counterarguments include: but they do get paid indirectly because filesharers buy more media; or that plenty of great content was produced by civilization before there were copyright laws.
Hey I was wondering, what are your good brands of Canadian beer? Because the Canadian beer we get in the states isn't very good (cf. Molson and Labatt's). I figure it's probably the same deal as with "American" beer, which makes everyone think of Budweiser, which is gross; whereas American beer is actually spectacularly good (Fat Tire, Long Trail, Alaskan Amber... I could go on) when it is done right. Same with Australia: Fosters is nasty. Same with Japan: Sapporo is bad. But probably all these places make right fine brews, but don't export them. Can you recommend a good brand of Canadian beer? You know, for next time I'm down south in Canada (I live in Alaska).
PS I'm willing to bet your telcos spy on you. Google for 'echelon'.
PPS Alaskan natural wonders put Canadian natural wonders to shame, but your half of Niagra is pretty cool.
Yes. Goodbye.
The entertainment industry can either fight a rearguard action to delay the inevitable, hurting a lot of people along the way, or embrace the reality that copying data is cheap and easy and find new ways to profit from the situation.
Correction: the entertainment industry could have fought a rearguard action to delay the inevitable, or embrace reality...
The fact is the industry made that decision in 1998 and 1999, when the Napster thing happened. It is now too late for that industry, they have caused themselves irreparable harm, and will never recover the way they might have if they had been able to see the way the world was going. It is way too late for them now, especially considering they haven't even quickened to reality yet, let alone gone about providing services consistent with that truth.
Think about it. Television heaven would be a system where you turn on your TV and have push-button access to the entire catalog of television programs ever made from the beginning of time, easily available for an inexpensive price on demand. Something like that would have been possible for the bigwigs to build in, oh, say 1996 or 1997. So why the hell are we going into 2008 and the industry is pushing crap like this NBC Direct service? Why? The obvious answer is because they don't get it. They don't get it! Since they refused to take their heads out of their kiesters and make compelling services, the consumers built it themselves, not because they wanted to, but because they had to, because the content providers refused to do it.
Why did we have to invent torrents? Why did we have to invent Myth TV? Why did a tiny upstart company have to invent TiVo? Why didn't the RIAA come out with something like iTunes in 2001? Why can't I watch The Sopranos commercial-free for a dime? Why does all radio suck, driving me to downloads? WHY WHY WHY? Obvious answer: because they just don't get it, and they won't get it any time soon.
Do you happen to have a link (or can you tell me which link on that page goes) directly to the podcast where you heard that?
Yeah that's what I thought too. Doesn't he have any good examples of widely-broken laws which are actually good laws? Because drinking age, speed limits, and marijuana prohibition are downright terrible examples. The drinking age should be lower. I don't know how low, but lower, maybe graduated or something, but certainly the current state of that law is suboptimal. And it's not that "speeding" should be "legal", rather that speed limits should be higher, especially considering the high-quality cars with great handling that we have today. Older crappier cars should drive slower, and big trucks should drive slower, but a Jetta can do 75 safely, perhaps higher. And marijuana, don't get me started.
What is the most widely-broken law you can think of which is (in your opinion) a good law? None come to my mind.
As an American living in Juneau on Alaska's panhandle, I would love to see you "dispute" my home. The last time you tried to "dispute" Alaska was in 1997 when your fishermen got their panties in a twist over some salmon and absurdly blocked our ferries from their appointed rounds for a day or two. Egads! Canada's most aggressive behavior of the entire twentieth century and they were capable of putting our ocean transport a little bit behind schedule!
Furthermore, your dispute is dumb, since Canada never had a claim to Alaska. The USA rightly purchased Alaska from the Russians. Ferkrisake, if you're going to dispute some American territory, why don't you try disputing the Michigan upper peninsula? At least those people are Canadian sympathizers.
Correction: as an Alaskan I would like to point out that Canada is not north, it is east.
Point of fact: it's the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act not the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act, which is a good thing, because FISA is much easier to pronounce than FSIA.
It's not for two reasons. First, defending yourself against libel doesn't lead to "personal gain", it merely attempts to stop personal loss. More importantly, the libel was against individuals acting in official duties. I'm not familiar with the previous decisions saying governments can't be libeled, but I know in the recent Bong Hits For Jesus case the local school district had money set aside to defend the school principal, so I bet it's not a blanket rule. Are you well-versed in those precedents, such that you can explain them to me? If not, then I suggest we can't really come to a legally valid conclusion without that information.
I wouldn't necessarily say that defending yourself against libel qualifies as "personal gain". What did you gain by defending yourself? Really all you did was stop a loss of dignity, not gain any dignity; and if that dignity is professionally valuable, then it is reasonable that the employer might contribute to the defense.
Did Slashdot change to a system where submitters choose what stories go on the front page? I thought that's what the editors did. I thought it was their job to do some quality control on what got posted (even though they have long neglected that duty).