> > It is much easier to download something than to go to the store and pay for it.
> I think the "easier" part is the crux of the issue.
Actually, a big part of the US economy is built on a "go shopping" culture. A lot of the sales of music, clothes, etc. is driven by a culturally driven desire to go out, spend some money, bring something home in a bag, and show it off to your friends. It's not clear that downloading will have much appeal to the "habitual shopper" crowd.
> I still dont get it; everybody and their dog downloads music and burns it on CD instead of buying it in the store. Yet, every story here on \. claims that the drop in CD sales is not caused by illegally copying and how bad the RIAA is (sure, the RIAA is bad). Could somebody please explain this to me -- I've never followed economy class, but to me all the music industry bashing just sounds like some crappy arguments to cover the fact that file sharing is just convenient (in many ways, not just economically).
It's never safe to assume that everyone on Slashdot has the same motive, but I suspect that for some of us it's merely an expression of rage at the RIAA for the crappification of the commercial music scene, with their facile attempt to pin the blame on someone else being seen as insult added to injury.
> They also got the end of the CD replacement cycle boom, as users across the spectrum finished replacing all of their old tapes and LPs with CDs.
That's true. Some of my less-mainstream stuff has only come out in the past five years.
> I recall an article from 1996 or 97 that was predicting a really poor outlook for the music companies then.
Surely the remastering craze was driven primarily by a desire to extend that boom. You can bet they're desperately trying to find a way to do it again with DVDs right now.
> For that matter, if the music the RIAA put out was SOOOO bad, why are all you jerkoffs so desperate to get your hands on it via Napster, Gnutella, et al? You're as shitty as the **AA fuckers you're supposedly against.
Boy, did you ever miss the point.
I have never downloaded any IP-restricted music off the internet, but I've still cut way back on my CD purchases.
Some of us aren't trying to justify theft; we just want to point out that the RIAA's finger-pointing game is utter bullshit.
Re: I think it's finally just time to stop...
on
Napster Not To Blame
·
· Score: 2
> If we arbitrarily assign 1957 as the first year of Rock and Roll, then we've got 45 years' worth of music we can all go back through and mine for gems
When the "Classic Rock" radio format first came out it was really nice, because they would play lots of B-sides and other non-warhorse material, and you could hear lots of stuff you missed during the Top 40 radio era.
Unfortunately, the broadcasters have the same "sure thing formula" mentality that the recording industry does, so they started airing all those "vote for your favorite tunes" programs, and five years later the top-voted tunes was all you ever heard on those stations anymore. Some of us tuned them out. I, for one, don't need to hear Bob Seeger sing "Old Time Rock and Roll" three times a day.
> Personally, I can definitely say that the labels are getting less money from me than they used to.
I went on an extended CD buying spree from ~95 - ~00, buying up all the remastered editions of my favorite "classic rock" albums as soon as they hit the shelves. But that's pretty much over with, so unless they can think of another way to sucker me into buying my old faves for a fourth time, my purchasing habits will remain at a background level from now on.
I'm somewhat on the tail end of the Baby Boomer generation, but if lots of other BB's did the same thing, you can imagine how the music industry might be feeling a morning-after effect from their remastering binge.
> This is why I avoid using the GPL as much as possible for my own work: if someone infringes upon it, they can just ignore your complaints and take an 'so sue me' attitude
> Have anyone noticed this buzzword used by every Microsoft lobbying effort after 9/11 just to trying to give the probably fake impression of Microsoft being "patriotic"?
Yeah, they're supposedly coming out with Red and White screens of death, too.
BTW, what you observe is hardly limited to Microsoft. Lots of businesses do it, anlong with almost every politician in the country.
> I got a 3rd party spam a few weeks ago on behalf of a company that sells retail women's clothing. Needless to say, since I am not a woman there was no way I had signed up for mail from them.
It's OK - most geeks are very open minded about this sort of thing.
> However, I *do* think it's important to focus on the format of the public data. Anything that is public property should not require proprietary software to access. I shouldn't have to buy MicroSoft products to read public documents.
Agreed. However, mandating open formats will in effect mandate OSS, since there will no longer be any excuse for paying for software to do something free software will do just as well.
If we ever got legislation mandating open formats for all public documents, Microsoft would be a minor player in the software world within five years.
> False positives could be a HUGE problem in this case...imagine the agony if you missed this email from your wife: "I'm feeling REALLY sexy today - meet me at the motel off 12th street at noon for some lunch-hour sex!"
Or worse, what if you missed a message like that from a total stranger!
> Evolutionists conveniently ignore any evidence that could support biblical fact, as well as any "holes" it their theory.
Actually, scientists are generally quite well informed about the problems with their theories, and quite concerned to correct them.
But I've never met a creationist who even knew what the theory of evolution actually says, let alone knew what the problem areas are.
For example:
> If Evolution is possible, then where are the fossils from all of the missing links between evolutionary stages?
It may come as a big surprise to you, but the ToE doesn't predict that every last species will be preserved in the fossil record - let alone found. We simply have to work with the evidence that's available.
> I think that the theory exists simply because many of us need to find a way to disprove the Bible, so that they can sleep soundly at night thinking that they will not have to answer for their actions to some supreme being.
That's the drill: when you can't win on the evidence, impugn the competition with bad motives.
> Besides, that would border on the dishonest, and God cannot lie.
"On that day you shall surely die."
Got any more easily falsifiable claims you'd like to try on us?
> Our scientists and archaeologists have claimed that only a global disaster could have wiped out so many of these creatures.
No, most scientists say that a global disaster did wipe out the dinosaurs, but none have ever said that only a global disaster could wipe them out. I would hazard a guess that most species have gone extinct due to regional or even local causes.
> Gee, isn't the great flood a global disaster?
And only real disasters can wipe stuff out anyway.
> So the question begs: What did this crackpot get a doctorate in?
Hovind claims to possess a masters degree and a doctorate in education from Patriot University in Colorado. According to Hovind, his 250-page dissertation was on the topic of the dangers of teaching evolution in the public schools. Formerly affiliated with Hilltop Baptist Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Patriot University is accredited only by the American Accrediting Association of Theological Institutions, an accreditation mill that provides accreditation for a $100 charge. Patriot University has moved to Alamosa, Colorado and continues to offer correspondence courses for $15 to $32 per credit. The school's catalog contains course descriptions but no listing of the school's faculty or their credentials. Name It and Frame It lists Patriot University as a degree mill [3].
> This raises the question of whether parts of the brain have evolved "for" grammar (a hypothesis supported by Noam Chomsky [xrefer.com] and argued by Steven Pinker in his excellent book The Language Instinct [amazon.com] ), or whether existing pattern-recognition and planning mechanisms turned out to be useful for language, influencing the form and scope of all subsequent languages (suggested by Mark Steedman [ed.ac.uk] among others).
I go heavily with Steedman. Lots of the evidence the chompskyites dredge up doesn't stand up to critical scrutiny. For example, there's a famous article where they cite the speech of some kids with "severe cognitive disorders" who are still able to speak well, but if you look at the cited speech you can very easily see examples of analogies, metaphors, expressions of relationships, etc., in the things the kids say. I.e., some very sophisticated modes of thought that we wouldn't expect from a signing ape; they aren't so completely mindless as the proponents of the "Speech is Special" school of thought would have you believe. This kind of literature can only stem from schools of thought where the proponents are so sure of the answer that they don't bother to think about their own claims critically before they go to press.
That's not to say that there isn't lots of weird stuff that demands an explanation, such as localized brain damage that causes very specific (and sometimes bizarre) linguistic defects, but in general there has been a lack of self-critical thought in the chomskian camp. IMO much of it is political, since it has the very noticeable effect of exempting the study of 'language' from the study of cognition, biology, historical linguistics, etc., leaving "generative grammar" as a 'pure' discipline involving nothing other than the application of formalisms to explain the proponent's notions of what constitutes a grammatically correct sentence.
I deliberately refer to Chomsky more than to Pinker, since I'm less familiar with the latter. From various quotes I've seen, I recognize that he makes some good points, and I think at least some of his views are in serious conflict with some of Chomsky's, but I did hear him speak once, and I was very unimpressed with his ability to make a case. He is sort of a pop star among linguists, and he draws audiences that are not generally very well informed about the subject matter, let alone inclined to think about his claims critically.
> No primate has signed a sentence longer than 3 signs, it is true.
I would guess that part of the limitation is the amount of working memory they have. Though certain idealizers like to ignore it, humans also have limits on how complex a sentence they can form without writing it down where they can make sure all the pieces match up, and the limitation appears to be working memory - which most idealizers consider an "extralinguistic" factor.
The other question is whether apes even have anything to say that's complex enough to need more than a few sequential signs.
Language idealizers like to think that 'language' is an essentially independent facility that operates independently of the rest of the 'mind' (whatever that is), and IMO they blunder seriously when they do that.
Generative linguistics started with a simple idea by Noam Chomsky half a century ago, but for the past ~40 years it has been nothing more than an industry of adding epicycles to fit various speech habits to the theory, and even then they won't touch certain kinds of languages, such as classical Greek, that are very unkind to the theory. And it's all because they treat language as if it were something like physics, that can be studied without reference to the organisms that use it.
> > Air New Zealand plans to use 150 Linux servers per mainframe, but the company tested the ability to run 10,000 copies of Linux simultaneously doing real work, Care said.
> 10,000 copies on one machine. Damn.
Yeah, imagine a virtual Beowulf cluster of those babies!
Slashdot Mirror
> > It is much easier to download something than to go to the store and pay for it.
> I think the "easier" part is the crux of the issue.
Actually, a big part of the US economy is built on a "go shopping" culture. A lot of the sales of music, clothes, etc. is driven by a culturally driven desire to go out, spend some money, bring something home in a bag, and show it off to your friends. It's not clear that downloading will have much appeal to the "habitual shopper" crowd.
> I still dont get it; everybody and their dog downloads music and burns it on CD instead of buying it in the store. Yet, every story here on \. claims that the drop in CD sales is not caused by illegally copying and how bad the RIAA is (sure, the RIAA is bad). Could somebody please explain this to me -- I've never followed economy class, but to me all the music industry bashing just sounds like some crappy arguments to cover the fact that file sharing is just convenient (in many ways, not just economically).
It's never safe to assume that everyone on Slashdot has the same motive, but I suspect that for some of us it's merely an expression of rage at the RIAA for the crappification of the commercial music scene, with their facile attempt to pin the blame on someone else being seen as insult added to injury.
> They also got the end of the CD replacement cycle boom, as users across the spectrum finished replacing all of their old tapes and LPs with CDs.
That's true. Some of my less-mainstream stuff has only come out in the past five years.
> I recall an article from 1996 or 97 that was predicting a really poor outlook for the music companies then.
Surely the remastering craze was driven primarily by a desire to extend that boom. You can bet they're desperately trying to find a way to do it again with DVDs right now.
> For that matter, if the music the RIAA put out was SOOOO bad, why are all you jerkoffs so desperate to get your hands on it via Napster, Gnutella, et al? You're as shitty as the **AA fuckers you're supposedly against.
Boy, did you ever miss the point.
I have never downloaded any IP-restricted music off the internet, but I've still cut way back on my CD purchases.
Some of us aren't trying to justify theft; we just want to point out that the RIAA's finger-pointing game is utter bullshit.
> If we arbitrarily assign 1957 as the first year of Rock and Roll, then we've got 45 years' worth of music we can all go back through and mine for gems
When the "Classic Rock" radio format first came out it was really nice, because they would play lots of B-sides and other non-warhorse material, and you could hear lots of stuff you missed during the Top 40 radio era.
Unfortunately, the broadcasters have the same "sure thing formula" mentality that the recording industry does, so they started airing all those "vote for your favorite tunes" programs, and five years later the top-voted tunes was all you ever heard on those stations anymore. Some of us tuned them out. I, for one, don't need to hear Bob Seeger sing "Old Time Rock and Roll" three times a day.
Maybe that's the same effect the RIAA is seeing?
> Personally, I can definitely say that the labels are getting less money from me than they used to.
I went on an extended CD buying spree from ~95 - ~00, buying up all the remastered editions of my favorite "classic rock" albums as soon as they hit the shelves. But that's pretty much over with, so unless they can think of another way to sucker me into buying my old faves for a fourth time, my purchasing habits will remain at a background level from now on.
I'm somewhat on the tail end of the Baby Boomer generation, but if lots of other BB's did the same thing, you can imagine how the music industry might be feeling a morning-after effect from their remastering binge.
> This is why I avoid using the GPL as much as possible for my own work: if someone infringes upon it, they can just ignore your complaints and take an 'so sue me' attitude
The same applies to code obtained via an NDA.
Unfortunately, sometimes suing is necessary.
What the heck is a forth quater?
> Have anyone noticed this buzzword used by every Microsoft lobbying effort after 9/11 just to trying to give the probably fake impression of Microsoft being "patriotic"?
Yeah, they're supposedly coming out with Red and White screens of death, too.
BTW, what you observe is hardly limited to Microsoft. Lots of businesses do it, anlong with almost every politician in the country.
> It's unfair, especially considering the fact that the government can subsidize any projects with tax money that comes from it's competitors.
In that case we know Microsoft won't be complaining.
No taxes; no dividends; sweet deal for Gates and his buddies.
> I got a 3rd party spam a few weeks ago on behalf of a company that sells retail women's clothing. Needless to say, since I am not a woman there was no way I had signed up for mail from them.
It's OK - most geeks are very open minded about this sort of thing.
> I'm not trying to sound like a fear monger, but...
Boo!
> This article is saying that for the thousands of numbers tested, every one except 196 has exhibited this property.
Now try it in base 195.
> However, I *do* think it's important to focus on the format of the public data. Anything that is public property should not require proprietary software to access. I shouldn't have to buy MicroSoft products to read public documents.
Agreed. However, mandating open formats will in effect mandate OSS, since there will no longer be any excuse for paying for software to do something free software will do just as well.
If we ever got legislation mandating open formats for all public documents, Microsoft would be a minor player in the software world within five years.
> False positives could be a HUGE problem in this case...imagine the agony if you missed this email from your wife: "I'm feeling REALLY sexy today - meet me at the motel off 12th street at noon for some lunch-hour sex!"
Or worse, what if you missed a message like that from a total stranger!
> 2) _0_ false positives. I'm perfectly happy to settle with "some small number of spams getting through" given there are NO false positives.
Also, you can stack NFP filters in series, so that each tries to catch any junk that the earlier ones missed.
> Just make this your new homepage: The Register [theregister.co.uk]
Yeah, but Slashdot is still handy for when you get behind on your reading and miss the story when it comes out on The Register.
And on Slashdot you get two chances to catch it.
> More importantly, where's the evidence that disproves creationism? This is definitely news to me.
Understandably, since it doesn't have much currency in creationist circles.
> People using this argument aren't looking for missing links, they are looking for a frigging family tree.
Rather, they're looking for an excuse.
Got any more easily falsifiable claims you'd like to try on us?> Evolutionists conveniently ignore any evidence that could support biblical fact, as well as any "holes" it their theory.
Actually, scientists are generally quite well informed about the problems with their theories, and quite concerned to correct them.
But I've never met a creationist who even knew what the theory of evolution actually says, let alone knew what the problem areas are.
For example:
> If Evolution is possible, then where are the fossils from all of the missing links between evolutionary stages?
It may come as a big surprise to you, but the ToE doesn't predict that every last species will be preserved in the fossil record - let alone found. We simply have to work with the evidence that's available.
> I think that the theory exists simply because many of us need to find a way to disprove the Bible, so that they can sleep soundly at night thinking that they will not have to answer for their actions to some supreme being.
That's the drill: when you can't win on the evidence, impugn the competition with bad motives.
> Besides, that would border on the dishonest, and God cannot lie.
> Our scientists and archaeologists have claimed that only a global disaster could have wiped out so many of these creatures.
No, most scientists say that a global disaster did wipe out the dinosaurs, but none have ever said that only a global disaster could wipe them out. I would hazard a guess that most species have gone extinct due to regional or even local causes.
> Gee, isn't the great flood a global disaster?
And only real disasters can wipe stuff out anyway.
> > Like it or not, they ARE profitable
> Then why hasn't Microsoft paid out dividends to its shareholders in its entire corporate existence?
He didn't say who they were profitable for!
More goodies are available on the same page.> So the question begs: What did this crackpot get a doctorate in?
> This raises the question of whether parts of the brain have evolved "for" grammar (a hypothesis supported by Noam Chomsky [xrefer.com] and argued by Steven Pinker in his excellent book The Language Instinct [amazon.com] ), or whether existing pattern-recognition and planning mechanisms turned out to be useful for language, influencing the form and scope of all subsequent languages (suggested by Mark Steedman [ed.ac.uk] among others).
I go heavily with Steedman. Lots of the evidence the chompskyites dredge up doesn't stand up to critical scrutiny. For example, there's a famous article where they cite the speech of some kids with "severe cognitive disorders" who are still able to speak well, but if you look at the cited speech you can very easily see examples of analogies, metaphors, expressions of relationships, etc., in the things the kids say. I.e., some very sophisticated modes of thought that we wouldn't expect from a signing ape; they aren't so completely mindless as the proponents of the "Speech is Special" school of thought would have you believe. This kind of literature can only stem from schools of thought where the proponents are so sure of the answer that they don't bother to think about their own claims critically before they go to press.
That's not to say that there isn't lots of weird stuff that demands an explanation, such as localized brain damage that causes very specific (and sometimes bizarre) linguistic defects, but in general there has been a lack of self-critical thought in the chomskian camp. IMO much of it is political, since it has the very noticeable effect of exempting the study of 'language' from the study of cognition, biology, historical linguistics, etc., leaving "generative grammar" as a 'pure' discipline involving nothing other than the application of formalisms to explain the proponent's notions of what constitutes a grammatically correct sentence.
I deliberately refer to Chomsky more than to Pinker, since I'm less familiar with the latter. From various quotes I've seen, I recognize that he makes some good points, and I think at least some of his views are in serious conflict with some of Chomsky's, but I did hear him speak once, and I was very unimpressed with his ability to make a case. He is sort of a pop star among linguists, and he draws audiences that are not generally very well informed about the subject matter, let alone inclined to think about his claims critically.
> No primate has signed a sentence longer than 3 signs, it is true.
I would guess that part of the limitation is the amount of working memory they have. Though certain idealizers like to ignore it, humans also have limits on how complex a sentence they can form without writing it down where they can make sure all the pieces match up, and the limitation appears to be working memory - which most idealizers consider an "extralinguistic" factor.
The other question is whether apes even have anything to say that's complex enough to need more than a few sequential signs.
Language idealizers like to think that 'language' is an essentially independent facility that operates independently of the rest of the 'mind' (whatever that is), and IMO they blunder seriously when they do that.
Generative linguistics started with a simple idea by Noam Chomsky half a century ago, but for the past ~40 years it has been nothing more than an industry of adding epicycles to fit various speech habits to the theory, and even then they won't touch certain kinds of languages, such as classical Greek, that are very unkind to the theory. And it's all because they treat language as if it were something like physics, that can be studied without reference to the organisms that use it.
> > Air New Zealand plans to use 150 Linux servers per mainframe, but the company tested the ability to run 10,000 copies of Linux simultaneously doing real work, Care said.
> 10,000 copies on one machine. Damn.
Yeah, imagine a virtual Beowulf cluster of those babies!