Re:SPAM thrives best where it is consumed.
on
Spam's U.S. Roots
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· Score: 4, Insightful
That's just not true at all--a very common misconception. If people just stop buying stuff from the spam, the success rates will go down low enough that spam will no longer be effective and go away, right? Hooey. The people doing the spamming and the crap for sale or whatever are two different things. Spammers don't care what the response rates are, they sell the service of bulk emails. They get paid no matter what. Of course that's not what they tell the businesses buying their services. They pitch how cheap it is to reach millions of people and the whole "if just 1% buys something" fallacy. The problem is the greed of the businesses continues to let them believe the sales pitch of the spammers. That's why legitimate companies don't do spam--not because it's immoral or illegal but because it already doesn't make financial sense.
That's why my answer is not to go after the spammers who are slime but often out of US jurisdiction, or even the ISPs because while some of them are evil & look the other way, a lot of them are trying, but it's hard work. No don't bother with them, I think they should go after the companies selling the crap. There's a contact in most of the spam for people to actually buy the crap. And that's a hell of a lot easier than tracking the spammers, nail the businesses paying for the spam. I guess it's kinda like going after the Johns instead of the prositutes.
Re:GNU/Linux is not ready for "vs. Windows"
on
Linux vs. Windows
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· Score: 1
I think a good point here is that to some extent, it doesn't matter what computer or operating system someone buys, no matter what they're going to have to learn something new. If you're talking about the very low end users, they don't have a vast knowledge of Windows built up to begin with, so whether they have to learn how to use their new Windows Dell or Walmart Linux, isn't really important. Of course if they're going to call their kids or whatever to show them how to use it, then there's a little bigger hill to climb. Then again, most of us hate having to fix the family's computer anyway so there's a great opportuntiy for Linux on the desktop as as well.
But there's no reason a Linux box can't be set up to be extremely easy to use.
One of the great things about computers--the general purpose abilities--also makes the more difficult to use. But the last market segment to be reached, the I'm afraid of computers type don't need the flexibility or vast choices. Give them a linux box where they can easily surf, check email and some general office type stuff with shortcuts on their desktop labeled "Email", "Internet"...and they'll be just fine. It works for my 88 year old grandma.
Let's say Napster needed $50m in cash in the next three months to be able to put together a plan to become a major contender in online music distribution networks. Maybe they need to pay $5m to each major label, get a huge server farm, whatever. They know what they need, but they don't have any capital. Selling the profitable division is a good business idea if through this change, Napster can become wildly profitable.
I think most of the negative posters get this full well. We just happen to believe that the odds of Napster becoming even modestly profitable are somewhere between slim and none. $80 million is a drop in the bucket to much of their already established competition. Right now even the winners are at best just scraping by.
Kinda but that really depends. For example, a group of Intel shareholders got a motion to expense options on the proxy not too long ago. And it passed by a majority of shareholders. Yet Intel management has decided to ignore the shareholders wishes and not expense the options despite the proxy vote passing. Now whether you're for or against expensing options really doesn't really matter here, my point is management disregarded the expressed, explicit wishes of their shareholders.
So while there may be some general sense of apprehension about getting sacked by the shareholders, in any real terms the chances are pretty unlikely. And certainly management at many companies are very gifted at controlling the board of directors through misinformation, omission or flat-out lying.
The thing is the MPAA & RIAA are just (barely) smart enough to know not to push it to that level. They will continue to write laws that our elected officials pass that are 100% in their favor with no balance or sense of reason or respect for anyone's rights or opionions other than their own. They won't go after everyone and will focus on big offenders and other token ones just enough to scare most people into behaving the way they want. And finally, the third front of their attack is to spend some of the billions of dollars they've gotten, millions of which was illegal forcing the MAP settlement, on marketing campaigns. "Copying is stealing," and all of their other propaganda have been enough to make the vast majority of people completely misunderstand itellectual property laws and rights.
Exactly. To say Investors are where the paychecks come from. is at best extremely narrowly true. I guess during the bubble, there were a lot of companies living off their IPO capital without actually making revenues, but that's just not true anymore. Tell me how many companies are paying salaries from their stock offering? Very few, and less every day or they'll be gone. The paychecks come from revenues--predominantly from sales to customers.
The obsession over stock price drives me crazy. There's only one real reason management gives a crap about stock price--not because it is any real indicator of a company's performance or health--it's because they personally have options & compensation dependant on it.
Ok thought I posted a reply to this but must've gotten lost in the ether. My interest was piqued by your endorsement of Picasa so I gave it a try. Installed it, tried it & thought it was quite cool. But when I logged in as user instead of admin it won't work. Checked out their support FAQ and sure enough, "To use Picasa in Windows XP, the user must be signed on as an Administrator."
What's up with that crap? I use my admin user for admin things like installing hardware & software. My family uses the limited user accounts for everything else--for plenty of reasons. Playing with photo software no matter how cool is not going to work if we have to switch to the admin account every time.
It may also prove important to journalists, said John V. Pavlik, a professor and chairman of the department of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University. "One problem with eyewitness accounts that journalists and others rely on is that these accounts are limited," he said, by people's ability to recall accurately what they have seen.
Well now if there's actually a camera there that happens to take a high resolution photo of an eyewitness, wouldn't it be much more likely that the actual incident gets photographed. You don't really need eyewitnesses so much if there's actually photos of a scene. On the off chance that there happens to be a camera around, and on the slight possibility that the photographer ignores whatever event is going on and just snaps high quality photos of people's eyes then by all means this could be a revolutionary tool. Sure.
This is no longer true--with the Bush's Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 capital gains rates dropped to 15% or 5% depending on income level and dividend rates are now 15% or 5% again depending on income level. But of course Bush's tax cut was all about taking care of the rich & screwing the poor.
I was finally to the point of having some money saved up for laser surgery. On a regular checkup, my eye doc suggested the Focus Night & Days and gave me a free sample pack. It took me a week or so to get used to blinking a little more because they let so much more air into your eyes but after that, life is terrific. Now I've never really had much of problems with my eyes to begin with (except for some floaters recently, damn old age) but with the Night & Days I literally put them in and forget about them. I actually put reminders on my PDA once a month so I don't forget. And I've always been guilty of rubbing my eyes--I used to fold up a contact or lose it in my eye pretty often before. The Night & Days fit so good, I haven't had this problem yet in over a year. Of course they are more expensive, but still less than surgery. I figure it just doesn't make sense to undergo a surgery (which always has some risk even if it's been pretty mimimalized by now) when I can see perfectly and never have any problems.
I don't understand the straight to DVD wish. I mean sure if you want immediate playback or whatever for low end users. But otherwise you're just throwing out a big chunk of quality right off the bat. MiniDV is 25 Mb/s for video alone vs. a maximum of 9.8 Mb/s for video and audio for DVD. And do any editing and you're working with more highly compressed material which you'll turn around and recompress even more to go to DVD again.
I agree it was slimy of him, but was it illegal? If bold face lying to the american public was an impeachable offence, I have no doubt that every president since Carter (and probably him as well), would have been impeached.
True. But maybe if we held elected officials to any sort of standard befitting their postion instead of wringing our hands and saying "what are you gonna do, they're all are like that", the bar might be raised. Then again since only a small fraction of people vote and even less actually pay any attention to the world around them beyond their surrounding 20 feet, I guess we get what we deserve.
OK so he applied a judge's definition to his answers there. But whose definition was he using when he got in front of a national TV audience & said the same thing? While that very specific definition may have applied during the scope of his testimony, he knew full well that the rest of the country had no such limited connotation.
What to this day still upsets me is the limousine liberal mentality that some how the rules don't apply. Most of the same people who fought so hard for society to take seriously sexual harassment and in particular, women taken advantage of by their bosses or other men in authoritative positions, were so quick to completely excuse and defend Clinton for doing it. And no it's not relevant that she was a willing participant--he was the President of the United States and she was an intern!
Me too on the 'who cares?' Or at least, I don't care. I have stuff that's been sitting in my basement, just taking up space--I've been meaning to get rid of it, but to properly do so requires me to pay money--between $25-40 for monitors & CPUs. This gives me a way to get ride of my junk for free. If they can work it out to make money off of it, then it's a win-win. And presumably whatever they do with it is better than people trowing them in landfills without any processing.
Of course unlike tech workers who can face major age discrimination problems, just the opposite most teachers eventually get tenure (official or de-facto) and wind up being very well paid with almost perfect job security. Most of the teachers I had in high school are now quite comfortablly retired at 55-60. Not that it's fair to pay them squat and make it so tough early on, but if they put the time in, things certainly seem to balance out pretty nicely.
You should fight to repeal laws you feel are unjust.
Do not just surreptitiously break them because you don't agree with them.
I agree with your sentiment, and but also believe that it is sometimes true that copyright infringement is a victimless crime. It is still illegal but if I wouldn't buy something anyway, there is no harm. Put the crime in the same category as minor traffic violations like speeding or rolling stops which are enforced a small fraction of the time.
All that aside, the fact of the matter is, people who actually understand the principles of intellectual property and believe in balance and reason in copyright law are in such a powerless minority that fighting to repeal the laws is useless. As long as the lawmakers are allowed to accept buckets of money from people and corporations, and as long as the media companies continue to have buckets of money, they will continue to craft intellectual property legislation that is in their favor and to the detriment to the rest of society. Not that I necessarily blame the media companies--of course they're going to act in their own best interests. I'm disappointed in the politicians who take the money over serving the best interests of their constitutients. But most of all, I blame the Supreme Court. Until the day they decide that money is not speech, the system is irrepairably broken.
But pretty pictures are important too. Though sad, if it takes some fluff to keep/get people excited about science and to help get funding for efforts to expand human knowledge then so be it. I'm extremely critical of how my tax dollars are spent, but I also believe pretty strongly that pure research makes the world a better place. And that pretty picture of some far off nebula may not teach us anything we don't already know. But it's also the sort of thing that can get kids excited to learn about science which is no small feat these days. Though it may be impossible to put a dollars figure on it, it's reasonable to believe that the effect on the next generation is worth the cost.
Yes, there's shareholder dilution. Big. Fucking. Deal. It's the shareholders' money, stupid! They're allowed to dilute! That is, the board (that makes the decisions) is hired by the shareholders, not the other way around. Read a proxy statement; that's how it works. The board fucks up? Then the shareholders can fire the board!
While it may be difficult to decide how to expense them, and this proposal may not be the right way, hopefully a reasonable compromise can be reached. Options are used as an incentive just like salary and as such should be included in the books as a cost of doing business. Or should salary, bonus pay and benefit expenses just be up to the company to account for however they choose too? Otherwise tell me how options are different than other incentive based pay.
No--Mac Office 98 was actually really nice, and somewhat independant from the Windows version. Perhaps most notable was the installer--you copied the Office 98 Folder onto your hard drive, and from there you launched the program you wanted! Mac Office 98 had a number of new features that Office 97 for Windows did not have and was really built from the ground up to be a Macintosh suite rather than a port. I don't know if that's still the case--the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft used to be a separate entity and I believe it's been rolled back into the rest of Borg now.
Good point on drawing the line between the Supreme Court ruling in Betamax vs. the legislators. Of course one of the implications of this is that the legislators probably never were in favor of fair use. Clearly congress as a whole will take the side of the media corporations paying them, and unfortunately, the Supreme Court can't or won't do anything about it. Their take from Eldred v. Ashcroft seemed to be that they pretty clearly thought Congress was crazy, corrupt and making bad laws, but that they aren't empowered to rule against bad laws only unconstitutional ones which Sonny Bono may barely be.
Perfect digital copies, however, do not have this limitation, and it is merely common sense that they should be covered by a different law.
The problem with this argument is that it's not really about the multiple copies that digital allows vs. the cumulative degradation of analog. Anyone who makes that argument is acknowledging fair use. The media corporations' legislation doesn't ever aim to just make it a mortal sin to make the multiple copies that digital allows, they want to make it a mortal sin to even make a single copy.
The biggest problem is there is no reason or balance in the debate. The media corporations control the lawmakers--of course they're going to push things to whatever extreme they can in their favor. The Supreme Court either can't or won't act. The mass of the general public doesn't understand the difference between physical property and intellectual property, and for the ones that do, it's kinda low on the priority list. And unless something changes with campaign finance reform, the lawmakers will continue to act in the interests of those lining their pockets. And the courts have made it abundantly clear money=speech and won't allow any real campaign finance reform. Lather, Rince, Repeat.
I remember them from the '80s--Ollie North on lead vocals (though he never seemed to be able to remember the lyrics) and John Poindexter played a mean bass guitar.
I think the larger issue may be recordability. While the siginficant quality jump, convience and ultimately price have been enough to bring millions of people to DVD, the only thing HD-DVD & Blu-Ray bring is a marginally better quality (because XX% of consumers have TVs that won't really show the improvement). If they're serious about getting a critical mass to adopt next-gen DVD, they need to get recording at least closer to VCR cost & ease of use. Granted I guess that may just be a pipe dream with the MPAA & others believing recording is stealing.
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That's why my answer is not to go after the spammers who are slime but often out of US jurisdiction, or even the ISPs because while some of them are evil & look the other way, a lot of them are trying, but it's hard work. No don't bother with them, I think they should go after the companies selling the crap. There's a contact in most of the spam for people to actually buy the crap. And that's a hell of a lot easier than tracking the spammers, nail the businesses paying for the spam. I guess it's kinda like going after the Johns instead of the prositutes.
But there's no reason a Linux box can't be set up to be extremely easy to use. One of the great things about computers--the general purpose abilities--also makes the more difficult to use. But the last market segment to be reached, the I'm afraid of computers type don't need the flexibility or vast choices. Give them a linux box where they can easily surf, check email and some general office type stuff with shortcuts on their desktop labeled "Email", "Internet"...and they'll be just fine. It works for my 88 year old grandma.
I think most of the negative posters get this full well. We just happen to believe that the odds of Napster becoming even modestly profitable are somewhere between slim and none. $80 million is a drop in the bucket to much of their already established competition. Right now even the winners are at best just scraping by.
So while there may be some general sense of apprehension about getting sacked by the shareholders, in any real terms the chances are pretty unlikely. And certainly management at many companies are very gifted at controlling the board of directors through misinformation, omission or flat-out lying.
The thing is the MPAA & RIAA are just (barely) smart enough to know not to push it to that level. They will continue to write laws that our elected officials pass that are 100% in their favor with no balance or sense of reason or respect for anyone's rights or opionions other than their own. They won't go after everyone and will focus on big offenders and other token ones just enough to scare most people into behaving the way they want. And finally, the third front of their attack is to spend some of the billions of dollars they've gotten, millions of which was illegal forcing the MAP settlement, on marketing campaigns. "Copying is stealing," and all of their other propaganda have been enough to make the vast majority of people completely misunderstand itellectual property laws and rights.
The obsession over stock price drives me crazy. There's only one real reason management gives a crap about stock price--not because it is any real indicator of a company's performance or health--it's because they personally have options & compensation dependant on it.
What's up with that crap? I use my admin user for admin things like installing hardware & software. My family uses the limited user accounts for everything else--for plenty of reasons. Playing with photo software no matter how cool is not going to work if we have to switch to the admin account every time.
Fantastic, good job!
Well now if there's actually a camera there that happens to take a high resolution photo of an eyewitness, wouldn't it be much more likely that the actual incident gets photographed. You don't really need eyewitnesses so much if there's actually photos of a scene. On the off chance that there happens to be a camera around, and on the slight possibility that the photographer ignores whatever event is going on and just snaps high quality photos of people's eyes then by all means this could be a revolutionary tool. Sure.
This is no longer true--with the Bush's Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 capital gains rates dropped to 15% or 5% depending on income level and dividend rates are now 15% or 5% again depending on income level. But of course Bush's tax cut was all about taking care of the rich & screwing the poor.
I was finally to the point of having some money saved up for laser surgery. On a regular checkup, my eye doc suggested the Focus Night & Days and gave me a free sample pack. It took me a week or so to get used to blinking a little more because they let so much more air into your eyes but after that, life is terrific. Now I've never really had much of problems with my eyes to begin with (except for some floaters recently, damn old age) but with the Night & Days I literally put them in and forget about them. I actually put reminders on my PDA once a month so I don't forget. And I've always been guilty of rubbing my eyes--I used to fold up a contact or lose it in my eye pretty often before. The Night & Days fit so good, I haven't had this problem yet in over a year. Of course they are more expensive, but still less than surgery. I figure it just doesn't make sense to undergo a surgery (which always has some risk even if it's been pretty mimimalized by now) when I can see perfectly and never have any problems.
I don't understand the straight to DVD wish. I mean sure if you want immediate playback or whatever for low end users. But otherwise you're just throwing out a big chunk of quality right off the bat. MiniDV is 25 Mb/s for video alone vs. a maximum of 9.8 Mb/s for video and audio for DVD. And do any editing and you're working with more highly compressed material which you'll turn around and recompress even more to go to DVD again.
True. But maybe if we held elected officials to any sort of standard befitting their postion instead of wringing our hands and saying "what are you gonna do, they're all are like that", the bar might be raised. Then again since only a small fraction of people vote and even less actually pay any attention to the world around them beyond their surrounding 20 feet, I guess we get what we deserve.
I agree. Most people do consider them to be different. But that's not what he said. He said "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
'Cuz hardly anyone watches Friends?
What to this day still upsets me is the limousine liberal mentality that some how the rules don't apply. Most of the same people who fought so hard for society to take seriously sexual harassment and in particular, women taken advantage of by their bosses or other men in authoritative positions, were so quick to completely excuse and defend Clinton for doing it. And no it's not relevant that she was a willing participant--he was the President of the United States and she was an intern!
Me too on the 'who cares?' Or at least, I don't care. I have stuff that's been sitting in my basement, just taking up space--I've been meaning to get rid of it, but to properly do so requires me to pay money--between $25-40 for monitors & CPUs. This gives me a way to get ride of my junk for free. If they can work it out to make money off of it, then it's a win-win. And presumably whatever they do with it is better than people trowing them in landfills without any processing.
Of course unlike tech workers who can face major age discrimination problems, just the opposite most teachers eventually get tenure (official or de-facto) and wind up being very well paid with almost perfect job security. Most of the teachers I had in high school are now quite comfortablly retired at 55-60. Not that it's fair to pay them squat and make it so tough early on, but if they put the time in, things certainly seem to balance out pretty nicely.
I agree with your sentiment, and but also believe that it is sometimes true that copyright infringement is a victimless crime. It is still illegal but if I wouldn't buy something anyway, there is no harm. Put the crime in the same category as minor traffic violations like speeding or rolling stops which are enforced a small fraction of the time.
All that aside, the fact of the matter is, people who actually understand the principles of intellectual property and believe in balance and reason in copyright law are in such a powerless minority that fighting to repeal the laws is useless. As long as the lawmakers are allowed to accept buckets of money from people and corporations, and as long as the media companies continue to have buckets of money, they will continue to craft intellectual property legislation that is in their favor and to the detriment to the rest of society. Not that I necessarily blame the media companies--of course they're going to act in their own best interests. I'm disappointed in the politicians who take the money over serving the best interests of their constitutients. But most of all, I blame the Supreme Court. Until the day they decide that money is not speech, the system is irrepairably broken.
But pretty pictures are important too. Though sad, if it takes some fluff to keep/get people excited about science and to help get funding for efforts to expand human knowledge then so be it. I'm extremely critical of how my tax dollars are spent, but I also believe pretty strongly that pure research makes the world a better place. And that pretty picture of some far off nebula may not teach us anything we don't already know. But it's also the sort of thing that can get kids excited to learn about science which is no small feat these days. Though it may be impossible to put a dollars figure on it, it's reasonable to believe that the effect on the next generation is worth the cost.
You mean like when Intel shareholders (myself included) voted in favor of a proxy that the company expense options and "Intel executives said at the company's annual meeting Wednesday that they will not begin expensing stock options until they are required to do so by law."
While it may be difficult to decide how to expense them, and this proposal may not be the right way, hopefully a reasonable compromise can be reached. Options are used as an incentive just like salary and as such should be included in the books as a cost of doing business. Or should salary, bonus pay and benefit expenses just be up to the company to account for however they choose too? Otherwise tell me how options are different than other incentive based pay.
No--Mac Office 98 was actually really nice, and somewhat independant from the Windows version. Perhaps most notable was the installer--you copied the Office 98 Folder onto your hard drive, and from there you launched the program you wanted! Mac Office 98 had a number of new features that Office 97 for Windows did not have and was really built from the ground up to be a Macintosh suite rather than a port. I don't know if that's still the case--the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft used to be a separate entity and I believe it's been rolled back into the rest of Borg now.
Perfect digital copies, however, do not have this limitation, and it is merely common sense that they should be covered by a different law.
The problem with this argument is that it's not really about the multiple copies that digital allows vs. the cumulative degradation of analog. Anyone who makes that argument is acknowledging fair use. The media corporations' legislation doesn't ever aim to just make it a mortal sin to make the multiple copies that digital allows, they want to make it a mortal sin to even make a single copy.
The biggest problem is there is no reason or balance in the debate. The media corporations control the lawmakers--of course they're going to push things to whatever extreme they can in their favor. The Supreme Court either can't or won't act. The mass of the general public doesn't understand the difference between physical property and intellectual property, and for the ones that do, it's kinda low on the priority list. And unless something changes with campaign finance reform, the lawmakers will continue to act in the interests of those lining their pockets. And the courts have made it abundantly clear money=speech and won't allow any real campaign finance reform. Lather, Rince, Repeat.
I remember them from the '80s--Ollie North on lead vocals (though he never seemed to be able to remember the lyrics) and John Poindexter played a mean bass guitar.
I think the larger issue may be recordability. While the siginficant quality jump, convience and ultimately price have been enough to bring millions of people to DVD, the only thing HD-DVD & Blu-Ray bring is a marginally better quality (because XX% of consumers have TVs that won't really show the improvement). If they're serious about getting a critical mass to adopt next-gen DVD, they need to get recording at least closer to VCR cost & ease of use. Granted I guess that may just be a pipe dream with the MPAA & others believing recording is stealing.