One of the odd things I've seen about this is what the RIAA calls it and how they punish. If downloading songs is stealing and users are to be punished, then why punish them otherwise? By their logic, a user should be charged for theft of an item rather than copyright infringement. Maybe call it digital copy shoplifiting or whatever.
A user should pay for the materials downloaded. Rather than the $500,000 tag for copyright infringement, they should eat their words and charge users the way they say what the users are doing. If I download a song, I should pay list price for a song. DOwnload a DVD ripped movie and I should pay 21.99. People should be charged exactly for what they download. $500,000 for copyright infringement is bull crap.
Sometimes a videogames is just crap. Sometimes parents may buy one during a moment of stupidity for little jimmy.
1. Sometimes you may get the game in spite of all the negative reviews its gotten only to get it home and find out it is shite. Its buggy (console games are like that), the gameplay is horrible and you will hardly get any money back if you take it to a used game place. There are still titles being developed like that *cough* *cough* Ps2 Superman.
2. Little Jimmy see's commercials for Grand Theft Auto Vice City. Now little Jimmy is 10, and his parents get him whatever he wants. Little Jimmy has all 3 game systems, and has his hearts set on GTA Vice City. Parents go out and buy GTA Vice City, ignoring the label on the front only to bring it back and are disgusted by the content. What should said parents do? In cases like these, sometimes you've got to return the game. Aside from that, retailes still have no excuse not to accept return videogame console games because on the latest generation of consoles, piracy has nearly been eradicated (for now).
1. Ease of use. Kazaa is basically plug and play. For the life of me, I've never been able to find anything worthwhile on WinMX or log into any good servers. Its hard to find any good movies or software on there. Granted, the MP3 selection is decent, it dosn't hold a candle to Audio Galaxy or Napster in their hey days, or even kazaa right now (Imho).
2. Spyware. True, the regular kazaa is riddled with spyware, but there is an easy way to get rid of it. Its called kazaa lite. Getting kazaa lite is easy, and has all the features of the regular kazaa with zero fat. I still use kazaa over any of the others because frankly, its better.
What you all don't know is that secretly this whole Digital Television encryption and watermarking biz has been sponsored by Tv Turnoff.org. By ensuring that all future television becomes a pain in the ass watch, they are finally able to get everybody turn off ther tv sets.
"My own personal theoary as to why CD sales are down has to do with local bands."
Thats a good theory, but I think the RIAA's sales are down due more to economics.
1. The RIAA has abused its customers for a long time, and many have had enough. There are scores of websites devoted to boycotting our favorite monopolistic cartel
2. The nation has been in a recession for a while, and people just don't have the money to spend on commodities anymore. Plus, music now has to compete with DVD movies, which are often cheaper and games which can be found just as cheap depending on the system and age. Remember, not everyone has a 10gb collection of MP3s on a 3mb+ cable modem with a 40x burner.
3. The RIAA raised prices during a recession. Don't these people get it? There are executives who get payed more money than the average person will see in a lifetime and they can't understand simple high school economics. Don't raise prices when people don't have money to pay the current prices. People like products that are economical and have some sort of value. Raising prices during a rocky economy is not a good method of increasing sales
Its simple economics. They are losing money based on stupidity. Nothing more.
"I think this is why DRM will prevail. When the RIAA has the music locked down, then you can return a crap CD just because it was crap. When palladium has software locked down, you can return a game just because it crashes. Until then, the retailer will continue to think you are a thief."
Interesting, but no. It dosn't work. Businesses will not give up added profits to benefit customers. While it is easy to copy a CD and return it, what about console games. Game copying may have been rampant on Sony Playstation for those who posess a mod chip, at first, it was not really prevalent. What about those hard to copy/damn near impossible to copy systems. The Sega Saturn, N64, Playstation 2, X-Box and Gamecube all have pretty robust copy protection systems. Yet still, buy any games on any of those systems of that era and try to take it back, and you are out of luck. Your only recourse is to either trade it for an identical product. Stores used the piracy excuse to get out of refunding for products and intend to keep it that way even though piracy is no longer a part of the equation.
"1)Open a CD Shop. 2)Sell the original with a copy CD with the tracks in mp3/ogg/whatever as a backup/digital medium copy. 3)Shovel millions to lawyers. 4)Counter sue for violating fair use. 5)After losing every court battle give up and bitch about it on slashdot."
Sorry guy, the show your talking about is Blue Sub 6. I have the CN version and the uncut version on tape and yes, they do have smoking toothpicks. Spike always smokes real cigaretts on this one thank God. Lets just hope that the next three animes get similar if not better treatment than did Cowboy Bebop. I can't stand to have another Pilot Candidate or Gundam 0083 censored to TV-Y7 rating. It defeats the purpose of adult swim!
"Yikes, imagine what the computer world will be like in 30 years time! Assuming MS haven't screwed it up for everyone."
I don't think MS will be screwing it up for anyone. As much as we like to talk about how bloated and insecure MS products are, thats what drives the economy. The world runs on windows: a bloated, badly written, mish-mash of code that requires powrful processors to push it around.
Its almost like the auto industry. Imagine if the auto industry (hardware) had to manufacture cars that could drive in snow at high speeds without crashing. THe snow is the software IE: Windows. Now imagine if that snow got deeper, more dense and started containing debris. Car manufacturers would have to respond in kind by making cars that were more powerful with larger tires and some sort of debris guard to push its way through the snow.
Thats kind of like MS and the hardware manufactureres now. While the whole thing is starting to come to a head because people realize that you don't need 2ghz to see clippy's animations, it was this way for a long time and will no doubt return to that with the 3D longhorn or whatever they call their next os. Microsoft's poorly written code and monopolization of the OS market is the driving force behind X86 processors. I can't wait to see what they will have extracted out of that aging architecture in another 20 years.
Now when MS gets into hardware, then I'll be scared.
'If you're going to get broken into... we're going to start regulating,'"
Like they did with Microsoft?
Re: (Not So) Pointless
on
New Look at ADSL2
·
· Score: 3, Informative
"would imagine that telcos will start doing more of what they did for my neighborhood - install a box (looks like a large refridgerator on its side) that essentially functions as a mini Central Office. So even though we're 20,000 feet from the actual CO, we get DSL connections that are under 2,000 feet."
Your exactly right. I live out in what people would call the boonies. Cows, chickens and goats are my neighbors and I am waked up by howling dogs and roosters. However, I get very fast and reliable dsl access. I've had 1.5mb/s down and 256kbs up for a year now at $45 a month courtesy of my baby bell. It has only gone down 4x in the course of the year that I have had it, which is better than I can say about the dialup i used to have. I wish the bandwidth were higher, but I can't complain, because I don't get capped like so many cable users do. I live in an unencorporated town that is about 15 miles outside of Atlanta. They have one of those boxes not far from me, and the tech who had to repair my dsl told me that their little foray is doing well, we have 40 users on our Dslam. By extending the reach of DSL, they are able to capture the upper middle class market who live in the suburbs. Hopefully, your local telco will experiment in your area in a similar manner.
I keep reading from everyone here about how costly this thing is and how batteries, or a ups or a small generator would be better.
Hello? Is this slashdot or a luddite convention? This thing is new technology. Fuel cells have been around a while, but this is the first time that private citizens can get their hands on them. THat being said, I think its wonderful. As more competition comes about and the public will learn of their benefits, I expect to see more of these little wonders, making more power at cheaper prices.
Think of the benefits. A more powerful version could be built into new homes that would automatically kick in and provide silent, backup power for the refrigerator and freezer, to keep food from spoiling.
This could possibly kick off the infrastructure necessary for having hydrogen based vehicles replace the current internal combustion engine powered vehicles of today.
It could finally allay the public's fears about hydrogen being a volatile, explosive gas.
Increased competition and development to make smaller, more powerful hydro generators will also translate into cars. A 1000 mile range hydro powered car that goes 0-60 in 4 secs with comfortable seating for four, yet puts out almost no pollutants could be in our future if these things were to be seriously adopted by society.
Interesting approach, making the copyright violators pay. While I am still against it, I think its better than the US method of fining them $500,000. Instead of a flat rate, the list price of each item should be payed. If I bootleg Serious Sam, I shouldn't pay $50, I should pay $20. Aso, shouldn't the person who payed up for the IP in question get to keep the file?
Yes, these things could do some funny voodoo couldn't they? I remember playing one in a store kiosk, and not just getting a headache. I placed my face in the mask, and after a few minutes of playing, I began to feel sleepy. After I got up from the VB, I began to feel queasy and my balance was off kilter for a while. I'm not sure what it did, but I didn't like it. Oh well, every company has its follies.
Seems like a reasonably good start. I would think that watermarking the file would be good enough without hobbling them with encryption, because they could easily track pirated files if they ever escaped onto a P2P network. Oh well
Slashdot Mirror
One of the odd things I've seen about this is what the RIAA calls it and how they punish. If downloading songs is stealing and users are to be punished, then why punish them otherwise? By their logic, a user should be charged for theft of an item rather than copyright infringement. Maybe call it digital copy shoplifiting or whatever.
A user should pay for the materials downloaded. Rather than the $500,000 tag for copyright infringement, they should eat their words and charge users the way they say what the users are doing. If I download a song, I should pay list price for a song. DOwnload a DVD ripped movie and I should pay 21.99. People should be charged exactly for what they download. $500,000 for copyright infringement is bull crap.
Sometimes a videogames is just crap. Sometimes parents may buy one during a moment of stupidity for little jimmy.
1. Sometimes you may get the game in spite of all the negative reviews its gotten only to get it home and find out it is shite. Its buggy (console games are like that), the gameplay is horrible and you will hardly get any money back if you take it to a used game place. There are still titles being developed like that *cough* *cough* Ps2 Superman.
2. Little Jimmy see's commercials for Grand Theft Auto Vice City. Now little Jimmy is 10, and his parents get him whatever he wants. Little Jimmy has all 3 game systems, and has his hearts set on GTA Vice City. Parents go out and buy GTA Vice City, ignoring the label on the front only to bring it back and are disgusted by the content. What should said parents do? In cases like these, sometimes you've got to return the game. Aside from that, retailes still have no excuse not to accept return videogame console games because on the latest generation of consoles, piracy has nearly been eradicated (for now).
Why kazaa?
1. Ease of use. Kazaa is basically plug and play. For the life of me, I've never been able to find anything worthwhile on WinMX or log into any good servers. Its hard to find any good movies or software on there. Granted, the MP3 selection is decent, it dosn't hold a candle to Audio Galaxy or Napster in their hey days, or even kazaa right now (Imho).
2. Spyware. True, the regular kazaa is riddled with spyware, but there is an easy way to get rid of it. Its called kazaa lite. Getting kazaa lite is easy, and has all the features of the regular kazaa with zero fat. I still use kazaa over any of the others because frankly, its better.
What you all don't know is that secretly this whole Digital Television encryption and watermarking biz has been sponsored by Tv Turnoff.org. By ensuring that all future television becomes a pain in the ass watch, they are finally able to get everybody turn off ther tv sets.
"My own personal theoary as to why CD sales are down has to do with local bands."
Thats a good theory, but I think the RIAA's sales are down due more to economics.
1. The RIAA has abused its customers for a long time, and many have had enough. There are scores of websites devoted to boycotting our favorite monopolistic cartel
2. The nation has been in a recession for a while, and people just don't have the money to spend on commodities anymore. Plus, music now has to compete with DVD movies, which are often cheaper and games which can be found just as cheap depending on the system and age. Remember, not everyone has a 10gb collection of MP3s on a 3mb+ cable modem with a 40x burner.
3. The RIAA raised prices during a recession. Don't these people get it? There are executives who get payed more money than the average person will see in a lifetime and they can't understand simple high school economics. Don't raise prices when people don't have money to pay the current prices. People like products that are economical and have some sort of value. Raising prices during a rocky economy is not a good method of increasing sales
Its simple economics. They are losing money based on stupidity. Nothing more.
"I think this is why DRM will prevail. When the RIAA has the music locked down, then you can return a crap CD just because it was crap. When palladium has software locked down, you can return a game just because it crashes. Until then, the retailer will continue to think you are a thief."
Interesting, but no. It dosn't work. Businesses will not give up added profits to benefit customers. While it is easy to copy a CD and return it, what about console games. Game copying may have been rampant on Sony Playstation for those who posess a mod chip, at first, it was not really prevalent. What about those hard to copy/damn near impossible to copy systems. The Sega Saturn, N64, Playstation 2, X-Box and Gamecube all have pretty robust copy protection systems. Yet still, buy any games on any of those systems of that era and try to take it back, and you are out of luck. Your only recourse is to either trade it for an identical product. Stores used the piracy excuse to get out of refunding for products and intend to keep it that way even though piracy is no longer a part of the equation.
"1)Open a CD Shop.
2)Sell the original with a copy CD with the tracks in mp3/ogg/whatever as a backup/digital medium copy.
3)Shovel millions to lawyers.
4)Counter sue for violating fair use.
5)After losing every court battle give up and bitch about it on slashdot."
The all important step 6
6)Profit
Sorry guy, the show your talking about is Blue Sub 6. I have the CN version and the uncut version on tape and yes, they do have smoking toothpicks. Spike always smokes real cigaretts on this one thank God. Lets just hope that the next three animes get similar if not better treatment than did Cowboy Bebop. I can't stand to have another Pilot Candidate or Gundam 0083 censored to TV-Y7 rating. It defeats the purpose of adult swim!
mod this shit down!!!!!
African American's play Nintendo. I've been playing for 16 years!
See, that is why projects like ghostzilla exist.
In Soviet Russia, Tivo watches...
ah screw it.
"Yikes, imagine what the computer world will be like in 30 years time! Assuming MS haven't screwed it up for everyone."
I don't think MS will be screwing it up for anyone. As much as we like to talk about how bloated and insecure MS products are, thats what drives the economy. The world runs on windows: a bloated, badly written, mish-mash of code that requires powrful processors to push it around.
Its almost like the auto industry. Imagine if the auto industry (hardware) had to manufacture cars that could drive in snow at high speeds without crashing. THe snow is the software IE: Windows. Now imagine if that snow got deeper, more dense and started containing debris. Car manufacturers would have to respond in kind by making cars that were more powerful with larger tires and some sort of debris guard to push its way through the snow.
Thats kind of like MS and the hardware manufactureres now. While the whole thing is starting to come to a head because people realize that you don't need 2ghz to see clippy's animations, it was this way for a long time and will no doubt return to that with the 3D longhorn or whatever they call their next os. Microsoft's poorly written code and monopolization of the OS market is the driving force behind X86 processors. I can't wait to see what they will have extracted out of that aging architecture in another 20 years.
Now when MS gets into hardware, then I'll be scared.
2kb is enough for anybody
Why does this remind me of minority report?
"Psst! Eight Bits Gets You "The Two Towers" In China"
Now that's piracy! Huh? Huh?
Bite me!
'If you're going to get broken into ... we're going to start regulating,'"
Like they did with Microsoft?
"would imagine that telcos will start doing more of what they did for my neighborhood - install a box (looks like a large refridgerator on its side) that essentially functions as a mini Central Office. So even though we're 20,000 feet from the actual CO, we get DSL connections that are under 2,000 feet."
Your exactly right. I live out in what people would call the boonies. Cows, chickens and goats are my neighbors and I am waked up by howling dogs and roosters. However, I get very fast and reliable dsl access. I've had 1.5mb/s down and 256kbs up for a year now at $45 a month courtesy of my baby bell. It has only gone down 4x in the course of the year that I have had it, which is better than I can say about the dialup i used to have. I wish the bandwidth were higher, but I can't complain, because I don't get capped like so many cable users do. I live in an unencorporated town that is about 15 miles outside of Atlanta. They have one of those boxes not far from me, and the tech who had to repair my dsl told me that their little foray is doing well, we have 40 users on our Dslam. By extending the reach of DSL, they are able to capture the upper middle class market who live in the suburbs. Hopefully, your local telco will experiment in your area in a similar manner.
It just means that no one else can sell an Land/Sea RC Camouflage toy for $58.88.
Hello? Is this slashdot or a luddite convention? This thing is new technology. Fuel cells have been around a while, but this is the first time that private citizens can get their hands on them. THat being said, I think its wonderful. As more competition comes about and the public will learn of their benefits, I expect to see more of these little wonders, making more power at cheaper prices.
Think of the benefits.
A more powerful version could be built into new homes that would automatically kick in and provide silent, backup power for the refrigerator and freezer, to keep food from spoiling.
This could possibly kick off the infrastructure necessary for having hydrogen based vehicles replace the current internal combustion engine powered vehicles of today.
It could finally allay the public's fears about hydrogen being a volatile, explosive gas.
Increased competition and development to make smaller, more powerful hydro generators will also translate into cars. A 1000 mile range hydro powered car that goes 0-60 in 4 secs with comfortable seating for four, yet puts out almost no pollutants could be in our future if these things were to be seriously adopted by society.
That could be a bumper sticker!
Now if only gator were being sued as well...
Interesting approach, making the copyright violators pay. While I am still against it, I think its better than the US method of fining them $500,000. Instead of a flat rate, the list price of each item should be payed. If I bootleg Serious Sam, I shouldn't pay $50, I should pay $20. Aso, shouldn't the person who payed up for the IP in question get to keep the file?
Yes, these things could do some funny voodoo couldn't they? I remember playing one in a store kiosk, and not just getting a headache. I placed my face in the mask, and after a few minutes of playing, I began to feel sleepy. After I got up from the VB, I began to feel queasy and my balance was off kilter for a while. I'm not sure what it did, but I didn't like it. Oh well, every company has its follies.
Seems like a reasonably good start. I would think that watermarking the file would be good enough without hobbling them with encryption, because they could easily track pirated files if they ever escaped onto a P2P network. Oh well