10 years ago, Digital Signal Processing (DSP) technology wasn't good enough to make boob toting hacks like Britany Spears sound good.
Yeah, pop music was full of REAL TALENTS back in those days, like Tiffany, and Debbie Gibson!
I realize that they were closer to 15 years ago, but since you're still hung up on Britany (sic) and the Backstreet Boys as the Icons of pop music, I figure you're stuck about 5 years ago yourself.
Some of the Windows Media file formats (I forget which, there's like 20 of them) allow file authors to launch an arbitrary URL at a specified point in the file playback. Mostly this has been used by pr0n vendors to launch pop-up ads to their pr0n websites, but it could just as easily be used, perhaps in combination with known IE exploits, to do real damage to a system.
And prior to WMP9, there is no way to disable this. If you play that file, the embedded URLs will launch.
None of this would be a problem if judgements (and settlements) were forced to be expressed in terms of the percentage of the worth of the target.
I can't think of a system that would be more unjust than what you propose.
A poor man gets a parking ticket, it costs him $20. A multimillionaire gets the same ticket, because of his wealth it ends up costing him $20,000 -- more than the poor man's entire car. Is that fair?
Or a company loses a case and is penalized 20% of their worth. Suddenly, unemployment jumps, stock value plummets, and everyone involved with the company loses out (whether they had anything to do with the act being penalized or not).
What happens if the company loses 10 such cases in a row, perhaps in 10 different states? Boom, they're bankrupt.
Penalties must be tied to the act being penalized, not the worth of the entity performing the act.
You may as well expect a police review board to be critical about cops shooting people; they just don't do that since there is no dissenting viewpoint in the oversight mechanism to begin with.
I don't know what city you live in, but in most places if a police chief responds to a pattern of his cops shooting innocent people by shrugging his shoulders, the mayor's going to can him immediately.
Either your analogy is bad, or your conception of the legal system is.
Realistically if such limits were imposed across the board, 90% of the frivolous lawsuits in court would go away.
Realistically, such a law would mean the end of class action lawsuits forever. No attorney in America would take such a huge case as a CAL against a major corporation if it's not profitable for them. Lawyers, just like coders and musicians and everyone else, deserve to be compensated for their work.
If it was illegal ie there was a law against reverse engineering, benchmarking, etc it would not be in the EULA.
Why not? If there were a law against benchmarking, AND it was fobidden by the EULA, even if the law were overturned the software publisher could still go after a benchmarker for contract violation.
Not that I think benchmarking should be illegal (abrogation of free speech), but I'm just giving the corporate perspective on EULA authoring.
You played a game in which someone cheated. And now someone has to pay you for it? No, you go play a different game.
You get mugged on the street in your hometown and your wallet is stolen. Do you go to the police and try to get justice and get your wallet back, or do you just pick up and move to another town?
When the FBI screws this up, you may have agents busting your door down for no legitimate reason other than the computer says you may have links to terrorism.
If you have evidence that suggests that the FBI has ever raided someone's home just because "the computer says [they] may have links to terrorism," please share it. Otherwise you're just spreading fear and alarmism.
The FBI may call you and/or write you a letter and/or knock on your door and ask to have a chat, but that's not the same as "busting your door down."
You're trying to depict the FBI as an organization of jackbooted Gestapo thugs, and that's unfair.
NiMH batteries are great but they have the downside of losing charge very quickly "on the shelf" so you can't keep a bunch of charged MiMH batteries ready to use.
I'm still trying to figure out why a RECORDING industry association would care about sheet music.
Sheet music and performance rights are a completely different type of copyright than recordings. License fees would be collected by a composer's guild like ASCAP, not RIAA -- as just about any venue that holds live music performances can tell you.
Well, being a republican at least means that you folks in the US are less likely to have to foot the bill for his jackboots.
What is this supposed to mean?
While Republican voters are statistically higher-income than Democratic voters, the POLITICIANS on both sides are uniformly rich.
I could say that a Democrat would raise taxes to pay for the jackboots, and a Republican would just buy the boots on credit and add to the deficit, but neither of those would be a fair statement.
The fact remains though that you're not going to get the strength of cast aluminum or forged metal without very expensive equipment - that's not pessimism, that's physics.
Exactly.
The blender example in the the article is ludicrous -- you might be able to microfabricate a new plastic lid for the blender pretty easily, but there will NEVER come a time where your HP MaterialJet will be able to manufacture a sufficient blade for your blender, let alone a motor.
I've seen some of the cornstarch prototypes and such that come out of the current generation of micro-fab machines, and they're super cool. But I don't see this technology becoming usable for anything more than simple parts and machines for a long long time -- if ever.
It annoys me when legal types with an insufficient grasp of technology create laws without realising the consequences.
That annoys me too, but what does it have to do with this?
Your line of reasoning seems to be "some vendors' products do x by default, therefore a law that limits the situations where x may be used is unjust because those vendors could be in violation if they don't modify their products to be in compliance."
Shows aren't the product, they are merely bait that converts ordinary people into ad absorbers who might buy products later.
Likewise, from a musician's viewpoint, recordings are a way to convert people into future concert ticket buyers....phew! I thought you were about to suggest that CD's should have commercials in between songs.
It's been pointed out abundantly on Slashdot and elsewhere that musicians make money by performing, not by CD sales.
Pointing something out on Slashdot doesn't necessarily mean it's accurate. Many musicians might make more profit from peforming than recording, but not all. I know some fairly prominent musicians myself, and even after brisk ticket sales, respectable merch stand sales at each show, and travelling by rental truck and sleeping in Red Roof Inns to keep costs down, they still lose money every time they tour.
While the "stealing" of music is illegal and violates copyright laws, why is the RIAA using so much time and resources to elimate this? Is the pirating of mp3's an immediate threat to national security?
I wasn't aware that the RIAA was a government agency trusted with the national defense.
But then again, I haven't read the DMCA that closely...
Of course, the White House is still confused on the difference between the New York Times effect and the Slashdot effect.
Lose the hubris. Unless you're webmaster@whitehouse.gov, you don't have access to the referer logs for the site, and that means there's no proof for your assertion that the traffic increase was from/. and not from the NYT.
Slashdot Mirror
They were screaming how fur is murder in front of a McDonalds?
Gives a new meaning to the term "furburger".
10 years ago, Digital Signal Processing (DSP) technology wasn't good enough to make boob toting hacks like Britany Spears sound good.
Yeah, pop music was full of REAL TALENTS back in those days, like Tiffany, and Debbie Gibson!
I realize that they were closer to 15 years ago, but since you're still hung up on Britany (sic) and the Backstreet Boys as the Icons of pop music, I figure you're stuck about 5 years ago yourself.
Who needs buffer overflows?
Some of the Windows Media file formats (I forget which, there's like 20 of them) allow file authors to launch an arbitrary URL at a specified point in the file playback. Mostly this has been used by pr0n vendors to launch pop-up ads to their pr0n websites, but it could just as easily be used, perhaps in combination with known IE exploits, to do real damage to a system.
And prior to WMP9, there is no way to disable this. If you play that file, the embedded URLs will launch.
None of this would be a problem if judgements (and settlements) were forced to be expressed in terms of the percentage of the worth of the target.
I can't think of a system that would be more unjust than what you propose.
A poor man gets a parking ticket, it costs him $20. A multimillionaire gets the same ticket, because of his wealth it ends up costing him $20,000 -- more than the poor man's entire car. Is that fair?
Or a company loses a case and is penalized 20% of their worth. Suddenly, unemployment jumps, stock value plummets, and everyone involved with the company loses out (whether they had anything to do with the act being penalized or not).
What happens if the company loses 10 such cases in a row, perhaps in 10 different states? Boom, they're bankrupt.
Penalties must be tied to the act being penalized, not the worth of the entity performing the act.
You may as well expect a police review board to be critical about cops shooting people; they just don't do that since there is no dissenting viewpoint in the oversight mechanism to begin with.
I don't know what city you live in, but in most places if a police chief responds to a pattern of his cops shooting innocent people by shrugging his shoulders, the mayor's going to can him immediately.
Either your analogy is bad, or your conception of the legal system is.
Realistically if such limits were imposed across the board, 90% of the frivolous lawsuits in court would go away.
Realistically, such a law would mean the end of class action lawsuits forever. No attorney in America would take such a huge case as a CAL against a major corporation if it's not profitable for them. Lawyers, just like coders and musicians and everyone else, deserve to be compensated for their work.
A better headline for this article would be "Low-power FM Transmitters Still Banned in UK". Nothing new here.
As for the atory submitter's comment:
"Guess that makes me an outlaw, because you'll have to pry my iTrip from my cold, dead hands."
If you're willing to lose your life over a mere techno-gadget, I worry about you. But then again, this is Slashdot...
If it was illegal ie there was a law against reverse engineering, benchmarking, etc it would not be in the EULA.
Why not? If there were a law against benchmarking, AND it was fobidden by the EULA, even if the law were overturned the software publisher could still go after a benchmarker for contract violation.
Not that I think benchmarking should be illegal (abrogation of free speech), but I'm just giving the corporate perspective on EULA authoring.
If possible, switch on the machine for a few minutes before removing the heatsink.
This will heat the CPU and it will usually melt the thermal paste.
Am I crazy, or should a paste designed to conduct heat not MELT when a non-excessive amount of heat is applied to it?
You played a game in which someone cheated. And now someone has to pay you for it? No, you go play a different game.
You get mugged on the street in your hometown and your wallet is stolen. Do you go to the police and try to get justice and get your wallet back, or do you just pick up and move to another town?
Come on RIAA, dare you to pick on us Lou Reed fans!
You've probably already suffered enough (esp. if you downloaded Metal Machine Music).
More people would buy the album if they couldn't download the one good song on it. This is what the RIAA wants ...you to THINK.
When the FBI screws this up, you may have agents busting your door down for no legitimate reason other than the computer says you may have links to terrorism.
If you have evidence that suggests that the FBI has ever raided someone's home just because "the computer says [they] may have links to terrorism," please share it. Otherwise you're just spreading fear and alarmism.
The FBI may call you and/or write you a letter and/or knock on your door and ask to have a chat, but that's not the same as "busting your door down."
You're trying to depict the FBI as an organization of jackbooted Gestapo thugs, and that's unfair.
NiMH batteries are great but they have the downside of losing charge very quickly "on the shelf" so you can't keep a bunch of charged MiMH batteries ready to use.
Is that the "Secret of NiMH"?
Thinking that a NAT is fine just means that you don't do much with your computer.
95% of Internet users don't do much with their computers. Therefore a NAT is fine 95% of the time.
What's that Eric Blair/George Orwell (real name/pen name) quote about times of lies and revolutionary truths?
I would repeat that quote here, but it would be a violation of copyright.
I'm still trying to figure out why a RECORDING industry association would care about sheet music.
Sheet music and performance rights are a completely different type of copyright than recordings. License fees would be collected by a composer's guild like ASCAP, not RIAA -- as just about any venue that holds live music performances can tell you.
Well, being a republican at least means that you folks in the US are less likely to have to foot the bill for his jackboots.
What is this supposed to mean?
While Republican voters are statistically higher-income than Democratic voters, the POLITICIANS on both sides are uniformly rich.
I could say that a Democrat would raise taxes to pay for the jackboots, and a Republican would just buy the boots on credit and add to the deficit, but neither of those would be a fair statement.
The fact remains though that you're not going to get the strength of cast aluminum or forged metal without very expensive equipment - that's not pessimism, that's physics.
Exactly.
The blender example in the the article is ludicrous -- you might be able to microfabricate a new plastic lid for the blender pretty easily, but there will NEVER come a time where your HP MaterialJet will be able to manufacture a sufficient blade for your blender, let alone a motor.
I've seen some of the cornstarch prototypes and such that come out of the current generation of micro-fab machines, and they're super cool. But I don't see this technology becoming usable for anything more than simple parts and machines for a long long time -- if ever.
Suddenly, I'm really thankful for my Win98 (1st edition) install -- it only crashes 2 or three times a WEEK!
It annoys me when legal types with an insufficient grasp of technology create laws without realising the consequences.
That annoys me too, but what does it have to do with this?
Your line of reasoning seems to be "some vendors' products do x by default, therefore a law that limits the situations where x may be used is unjust because those vendors could be in violation if they don't modify their products to be in compliance."
Or at least store these on tfh.slashdot.org
/etc/hosts file:
You can do this yourself by adding the following line to your
66.35.250.151 tfh.slashdot.org
Shows aren't the product, they are merely bait that converts ordinary people into ad absorbers who might buy products later.
...phew! I thought you were about to suggest that CD's should have commercials in between songs.
Likewise, from a musician's viewpoint, recordings are a way to convert people into future concert ticket buyers.
It's been pointed out abundantly on Slashdot and elsewhere that musicians make money by performing, not by CD sales.
Pointing something out on Slashdot doesn't necessarily mean it's accurate. Many musicians might make more profit from peforming than recording, but not all. I know some fairly prominent musicians myself, and even after brisk ticket sales, respectable merch stand sales at each show, and travelling by rental truck and sleeping in Red Roof Inns to keep costs down, they still lose money every time they tour.
While the "stealing" of music is illegal and violates copyright laws, why is the RIAA using so much time and resources to elimate this? Is the pirating of mp3's an immediate threat to national security?
I wasn't aware that the RIAA was a government agency trusted with the national defense.
But then again, I haven't read the DMCA that closely...
Of course, the White House is still confused on the difference between the New York Times effect and the Slashdot effect.
/. and not from the NYT.
Lose the hubris. Unless you're webmaster@whitehouse.gov, you don't have access to the referer logs for the site, and that means there's no proof for your assertion that the traffic increase was from