Welcome to Slashdot......where posting yet another unsubstantianted 'The guy with the most money always wins in court' whine is always good for a couple of free (+1, Insightful) Karma points.
You only think so because you didn't understand it.
The appropriate counter-action against theft is a fine and/or jail time. Not more theft. If it were, the societal rules against theft would deteriorate to the point of meaninglessness.
The appropriate counter-action against murder must not be murder, lest we condone vigilante justice and, ultimately, anarchy and lawlessness.
It's easy to cheer when the good guy murders the bad guy, but no see easy when the bad guy is someone you love.
At 8-14 tracks average per CD, going to Sam Goody and buying a disc costs the consumer somewhere between $1 and $2 per track. For them to charge anywhere near that price range for degraded-quality, use-limited, non-physical, no-cover-art-and-liner-notes-having version of the same content is ridiculous.
Additionally, with a pricing scheme like this, you end up paying the same price for a 20-second interlude skit between songs as you do for a 20-minute jam band improv. It's not equal value across the board.
I believe the Magic Price Point for downloadable music is closer to 10 cents/minute. Until legitimate downloads become TRULY affordable, and have a selection comparable to what's out there on Kazaa right now, most people will continue to steal music instead of buying it.
Hold the spoon next to the water, and it bends near the spoon.
Aha -- it only works if the spoon is NEXT TO the water. You can't bend the water stream by holding the charged spoon on the other side of the room.
And this is why an air purifier without a fan will not be effective -- it'll purify the air right next to it fine, but the air on the other side of the room will remain just as dusty.
You probably saw good performance in your classroom because the air in there is well-circulated, either by an HVAC system or the motion of people within the room. Under controlled conditions as in the Consumer Reports study, it would not do as well.
John Carmack (yes, that John Carmack) is competing to win the X-Prize, which gives $10 million to the first small team to put a man 62.5 miles above the surface of the earth.
Shouldn't he be focusing on game development instead? Currently, his reputation for THAT ain't looking so good...
I will say that The Wizard was cool, but it was not so much a movie based on a video game as it was...a commercial for Mattel's Power Glove and Nintendo's Super Mario 3?
people are still using the same amount of bandwidth payed for, no matter how many machines are using it.
Nope. This would only be true if the connection was constantly saturated.
Let's say you're on a cable modem connection that's capped at 750kb/s. Computer #1 is used for web browsing and averages maybe 100kb/s over the course of a session. Add a NAT router and Computer #2, and have them both browsing the web simultaneously, and the amount of data being transferred... you guessed it... doubles to 200kb/s.
when will these companies realize that many people have multiple computers in their home?
The majority of them already realize it, and would be glad to provision a second IP address for you for an additional $5/mo.
Come on...drive down a street, any street, and open a mailbox. You'll get the last name. Watch the house. You'll see if there are kids. If you listen, you'll hear the parents call out their kid's names.
Not coincidentally, this kind of surveillance (let's call it what it really is, "stalking") can get you arrested in the real world. Why should the bar be set any lower online?
In the screenshot above Netscape was used to display account "A" while Internet Explorer was used to simultaneously show account "B".
More likely, both website sessions were accessed from a single desktop, and the same browser couldn't be used for both because the user cookie for the site can only be used to log in one account or the other.
But hey, any opportunity to complain about Microsoft...
Kinda sneaky to pitch unlimited rentals and then use false availability numbers to limit your customers to a preset amount.
Yes, it would be sneaky, if that's what they were doing.
I doubt there will ever be a situation where NetFlix has NO movies available to send to a heavy user. The user's first choice might not be available, maybe not even any in their top 20, but that's not what NetFlix promises anyway.
Here, this guy is proposing something along the lines of eliminating car locks so that noone will be arrested for carrying burgulary tools.
No, he's not. His proposal is closer to "We lock our doors, but that's not enough to deter the car thieves. Why don't we try putting a Club on the steering wheel, too?".
Yes, I'm sure every 6 year old child dragging her mom thru Toys'R'us will now be saying, "Don't buy me THAT mommy - her manufacturer supresses free speech by threatening to persecute adult parodies of it on the web!"
The 6 year old child is not the customer. Mommy is.
(Still, it's pretty unlikely that Mommy reads Penny Arcade on a regular basis either...)
Unless someone can come up with a truly revolutionary interface (whose improvements to productivity are immense and can be measured) the QWERTY keyboard will remain as top dog.
There's this new thing called a MOUSE? Maybe you've heard of it?
The computer/human interface IS evolving, you just haven't noticed it.
1. Keyboards are sub-par input devices for games, anyway. There are a half-dozen companies that will sell you customizable joystick/wheel/throttle/control pad/button console devices that are comfortable and ergonomically sound, usually for under $100. This keyboard is not designed with you in mind.
2. NOW you're balking at a $300+ price tag for a peripheral??
There are very few companies anywhere that have the kind of experience with archival and searching of documents (ESPECIALLY legal documents) that Lexis-Nexis does, so it seems to me that they would be the obvious choice for California to award the contract to.
I'm curious, does anyone here think this news IS ominous, and if so why?
You don't have to SELL the patent to Goodyear in order for them to produce tires based on your rubber compound -- you can just license your patented invention to them, allowing them (and any other tire company you want to license to) to worry about producing the tires, while you sit back and let the dollars roll in. (Or work on your next invention, either one.)
If the "Goodyear steals your formula" scenario is as cut and dried as that, any lawyer in the world would gladly take up the case on contingency. Big Business has big pockets, and they want a cut.
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Welcome to Slashdot... ...where posting yet another unsubstantianted 'The guy with the most money always wins in court' whine is always good for a couple of free (+1, Insightful) Karma points.
An eye for an eye sounds just and equitable to me, not to mention very, very satisfactory.
Those who think this end up blind.
Your rebuttal is facetious.
You only think so because you didn't understand it.
The appropriate counter-action against theft is a fine and/or jail time. Not more theft. If it were, the societal rules against theft would deteriorate to the point of meaninglessness.
The appropriate counter-action against murder must not be murder, lest we condone vigilante justice and, ultimately, anarchy and lawlessness.
It's easy to cheer when the good guy murders the bad guy, but no see easy when the bad guy is someone you love.
If there's a rare album that I actually enjoy in its entirety, I'll probably consider buying the CD instead.
How are you going to know if you enjoy the album in its entirety without downloading (and therefore paying for) the whole thing first?
At 8-14 tracks average per CD, going to Sam Goody and buying a disc costs the consumer somewhere between $1 and $2 per track. For them to charge anywhere near that price range for degraded-quality, use-limited, non-physical, no-cover-art-and-liner-notes-having version of the same content is ridiculous.
Additionally, with a pricing scheme like this, you end up paying the same price for a 20-second interlude skit between songs as you do for a 20-minute jam band improv. It's not equal value across the board.
I believe the Magic Price Point for downloadable music is closer to 10 cents/minute. Until legitimate downloads become TRULY affordable, and have a selection comparable to what's out there on Kazaa right now, most people will continue to steal music instead of buying it.
No one complains when a thief gets fined
But do we let the victim into the thief's home and let them pick out something to keep?
or when the murdering bad guy in a movie gets killed
In the movies, murdering bad guys usually don't have families that care about and love them. In the real world, they do.
Your analogies are weak.
Because once you air this sort of thing, it sort of kills your career.
OH NO!! I could be blacklisted from the highly reputable Telemarketing industry FOREVER!!!!
Hold the spoon next to the water, and it bends near the spoon.
Aha -- it only works if the spoon is NEXT TO the water. You can't bend the water stream by holding the charged spoon on the other side of the room.
And this is why an air purifier without a fan will not be effective -- it'll purify the air right next to it fine, but the air on the other side of the room will remain just as dusty.
You probably saw good performance in your classroom because the air in there is well-circulated, either by an HVAC system or the motion of people within the room. Under controlled conditions as in the Consumer Reports study, it would not do as well.
John Carmack (yes, that John Carmack) is competing to win the X-Prize, which gives $10 million to the first small team to put a man 62.5 miles above the surface of the earth.
Shouldn't he be focusing on game development instead? Currently, his reputation for THAT ain't looking so good...
Ballmer is still a FUD afficianado.
Judging by his physique, he's still a FOOD afficionado too.
Gee, so 5 years down the road when M$ is integrating open source software to maintain value in the consumer market
You mean like Berkeley's TCP stack?
There are many, many things specific to Tomb Raider that helped build its success as a movie.
Really? I can only think of TWO...
I will say that The Wizard was cool, but it was not so much a movie based on a video game as it was ...a commercial for Mattel's Power Glove and Nintendo's Super Mario 3?
people are still using the same amount of bandwidth payed for, no matter how many machines are using it.
Nope. This would only be true if the connection was constantly saturated.
Let's say you're on a cable modem connection that's capped at 750kb/s. Computer #1 is used for web browsing and averages maybe 100kb/s over the course of a session. Add a NAT router and Computer #2, and have them both browsing the web simultaneously, and the amount of data being transferred... you guessed it... doubles to 200kb/s.
when will these companies realize that many people have multiple computers in their home?
The majority of them already realize it, and would be glad to provision a second IP address for you for an additional $5/mo.
Come on...drive down a street, any street, and open a mailbox. You'll get the last name. Watch the house. You'll see if there are kids. If you listen, you'll hear the parents call out their kid's names.
Not coincidentally, this kind of surveillance (let's call it what it really is, "stalking") can get you arrested in the real world. Why should the bar be set any lower online?
In the screenshot above Netscape was used to display account "A" while Internet Explorer was used to simultaneously show account "B".
More likely, both website sessions were accessed from a single desktop, and the same browser couldn't be used for both because the user cookie for the site can only be used to log in one account or the other.
But hey, any opportunity to complain about Microsoft...
Kinda sneaky to pitch unlimited rentals and then use false availability numbers to limit your customers to a preset amount.
Yes, it would be sneaky, if that's what they were doing.
I doubt there will ever be a situation where NetFlix has NO movies available to send to a heavy user. The user's first choice might not be available, maybe not even any in their top 20, but that's not what NetFlix promises anyway.
Here, this guy is proposing something along the lines of eliminating car locks so that noone will be arrested for carrying burgulary tools.
No, he's not. His proposal is closer to "We lock our doors, but that's not enough to deter the car thieves. Why don't we try putting a Club on the steering wheel, too?".
Yes, I'm sure every 6 year old child dragging her mom thru Toys'R'us will now be saying, "Don't buy me THAT mommy - her manufacturer supresses free speech by threatening to persecute adult parodies of it on the web!"
The 6 year old child is not the customer. Mommy is.
(Still, it's pretty unlikely that Mommy reads Penny Arcade on a regular basis either...)
Unless someone can come up with a truly revolutionary interface (whose improvements to productivity are immense and can be measured) the QWERTY keyboard will remain as top dog.
There's this new thing called a MOUSE? Maybe you've heard of it?
The computer/human interface IS evolving, you just haven't noticed it.
Dear Typical PC Gamer:
1. Keyboards are sub-par input devices for games, anyway. There are a half-dozen companies that will sell you customizable joystick/wheel/throttle/control pad/button console devices that are comfortable and ergonomically sound, usually for under $100. This keyboard is not designed with you in mind.
2. NOW you're balking at a $300+ price tag for a peripheral??
There are very few companies anywhere that have the kind of experience with archival and searching of documents (ESPECIALLY legal documents) that Lexis-Nexis does, so it seems to me that they would be the obvious choice for California to award the contract to.
I'm curious, does anyone here think this news IS ominous, and if so why?
The more important question is when did the first porn site start?
Come back tomorrow, when we'll be celebrating the 10-year anniversary of THAT.
You don't have to SELL the patent to Goodyear in order for them to produce tires based on your rubber compound -- you can just license your patented invention to them, allowing them (and any other tire company you want to license to) to worry about producing the tires, while you sit back and let the dollars roll in. (Or work on your next invention, either one.)
If the "Goodyear steals your formula" scenario is as cut and dried as that, any lawyer in the world would gladly take up the case on contingency. Big Business has big pockets, and they want a cut.
Software algorithms are essentially expressions of mathematical formula (in a broad sense).
The same sense in which a novel is an expression of the font used to typeset it...