What I'm asking is what gives him the right to forcibly prevent other people from freely copying... the products that they've purchased.
If you mean they can freely copy and distribute then I disagree. By that logic, only one copy of any music CD need ever be purchased. One person buys it, and then slaps it onto eMule. Nobody else need buy it; they can get a free copy. Now if the copy is for personal use only, I'd agree that in that respect the current laws are a bit OTT. I can't count the number of CDs I've bought and then had damaged accidentaly, and it's a pain in the butt. OTOH, if I buy a sculptue and it falls down the stairs and shatters, I have to go and buy a new one.
As for "building on" the work - people are free to do that at the present time. - AFAIK. They just have to ensure they have changed the original enough. Fair play to take a short sample (or a chord sequence), enhance it and twist it around so it doesn't sound very like the original, and then use it in an innovative way. But if you wanted to (say) speed up the music by a few BPM (or just add a new bassline and keep it at the same speed) and then sell that as your own original work, it wouldn't be fair. These are the two extremes; so where should the line be drawn?
There are plenty of DJs who remix existing recordings, pay a royalty to the original artist, and everyone is happy. They use an original work, enhance it, create something which has some of the original and some of their own work, and pay a negotiated royalty which everyone is happy with. I really don't see the problem with that.
And I, for one, would not like to see any art I produce (ha! fat chance) being used on (say) a website for a Neo Nazi group. If they were free to use it as they saw fit simply because they bought a copy of it that they could listen to, they could chop it up a bit, claim it was not the exact original, and use it for their own nefarious purposes.
Also - if somebody has sat down for weeks and created a song lyric, I don't think anyone else should be able to repeat it verbatim and sell it on again whenever they want without paying for the work which has been done. If they want a lyric, they should do the work or pay for somebody else to do the work.
Sure, let them be inspired by the lyric and use that inspiration to create something new, which is their own work. But the closer it is to the original, and the more of the original they use, the less work they themselves have done - surely?
distorting the workings of the free market by tying together otherwise unrelated services: performances, recording, publication/duplication, distribution, and advertising
I don't accept that they are unrelated; they are all geared towards the production and distributiong of a specific item. I do accept that there are major cartels which are abusing the fact that these things are necessary to major artists, and bump up the prices of their products. That is wrong, but I don't think the solution is to allow anyone to become a distributor and pay no royalties to the original artist.. (forgive me if that's not what you are proposing below; that's how I read it).
Effectively, anyone who already has a copy can become a local distributor, at least until the market for the recording is saturated. Original performances, however, retain their value, because they are in limited supply. The copies, on the other hand, have nothing to do with the original creator.
In the modern world, a copy can have exactly the same quality as an original recording. If I make a recording and I can charge $5 for it, but a guy on a market stall or website can legally take an exact copy and charge $1 for it, then that removes my right to sell my work for the price I want. And if, as you say, the copying expense are effectively zero, then realistically, I cannot charge anything after the initial release, because nobody would pay it.
The artists have a right to charge for their own work, but not for the work of others.
I'm starting to think I've misinterpreted your reply; what work of others? If all they have done is copy an original, that's hardly creative work worthy of payment..
they already did the buttered toast falls butter side down myth, and it was busted
Just curious, as I've never seen the show; how was it busted? I've seen numerousarticles which appear plausable and well researched, showing that toast, when falling from table height, has enough time to rotate to butter-side-down, but not enough to rotate back to butter-side-up.
allegedly this was the first confirmed case of this being captured on camera, rather than being repeated as hearsay
I remember watching that being done on UK TV as a kid in the 70s. I wasn't that impressed, because the glass didn't shatter violently and spectactularly, like it would have done if Murdoch off the A Team had shot it with an AK-47 in a bar raid on local moonshine suppliers.
I don't know what that says about me, and I don't much care to ask.
So what, exactly, did he do to deserve all that pay?
He created a product while retailed for a price that several thousand people wanted to buy.
Who should get the money from that, if not the creator? If you're advocating that he should give it away for free, then can you explain what everyone in the world did to deserve his product for free?
the problems you attribute to touring apply equally well to any other business requiring personal appearances
If you read the parent, you will see that it was indicating that nobody who creates any music should be paid for so doing. They would have to make all their money from touring. And music (not entertainment) is different, precisely because it doesn't require personal appearances. They are optional.
I suspect that we probably made the bulk of his money touring and playing to large crowds. He still would have made that money if his album was good and distributed for free.
He didn't tour; just got lucky with one record.
And if touring is it would take to make money from something you have created, then what would you suggest a band does if they have a disabled or ill member who can't travel easily? What about musicians who are getting on in years? Extreme example: a guy gives up work for a year because he believes in his vision. Spends all his savings, and remortages the house. Gets a hit song. Then gets hit by a truck. Sorry, kids, your dad's life insurance was with his old firm. The record? Heck no, people don't pay for MUSIC! Tell you what, shove him in a coffin and we'll see if we can rig him up to mime.
If any musician want to adopt the "make money from touring" policy, they can. If it works well, it will become the most used method of its own accord; it needs no help or change in the law that could hurt others very badly.
How much do artists today get from the cartels? Nearly 0.
Call me sceptical, but if that were the case, then nobody would earn any real money from making music. From the big cars being bought, I suspect that many artists make more than "nearly 0". A friend of a friend, who I run in to from time to time, had a top ten hit a few years back, and it still gets onto 90s compilation CDs. He bought a house with the initial return, and last time I saw him, he was still happily living off the earnings of that one record, while he messes around in a studio doing new stuff.
If there was no copyright law, he wouldn't have seen a single penny, because as soon as it got popular, nobody would have any obligation to pay him anything for distributing his music. Sure, he could have had a website from which people could pay him money to download his track. But without copyright, I could have a website that offered the track for free; and it could generate revenue through ads. Or a monthly membership free - all the music you can download for $5 per month. Bargain!
Getting rid of copyright isn't a solution; artists and consumers alike being aware that in the real world, there are sharks looking to rip you off with bad deals - now that's a solution.
or, for that matter, Iain Banks -- they may not be SF, but they're still geeky
I read in an interview that Iain Banks regretted the use of his initial for his "Sci-Fi" novels, and not using it for his "straight" novels. His "straight" work isn't always so straight, you see... "Walking on Glass", for example, is partially set in another dimension. "The Wasp Factory" is.. well.. simply one of the sickest, twisted, wierdest, most brilliant works I've ever read. The point being that (at least with Banks), it's kind of hard to tell what's Sci-Fi and what isn't, sometimes... So the question perhaps should be: "Is it Sci-Fi? Who cares! Does it challenge and entertain me - and is it well written?"
Having said that, I do tend to dive straight for the Sci-Fi section of any given bookshop;-)
If 1000 people camped out in the middle of a public road in front of the entrance to a company, would they be breaking a crime by not allowing people to enter/exit? In essence, they would be executing a "denial of service" attack to the companies road.
Yes, they are comitting a crime. Such protests do take place occasionally, and there's always video footage of the police dragging protesters off to the cells, because you are not allowed to block a road or an entrance to a road. This is amply demonstrated during strikes, when the protesters must remain behind barriers so that the company can continue to trade.
Or what if a few 18-wheelers decided to park in the middle of an interstate to block it. This is also a DOS attack.
Likewise illegal here. We had some recent "go slow" fuel protests with large vehicles driving slowly down the motorway. This was legal, but I think the govt are discussing the possibility of changing that..
What if 1 million people concertedly & simultaneously dialed 911 for "testing purposes" once a month. This would also be a DOS attack.
I think you could prove conspiracy; and also make a case that it was wasting police time.
Now a question arises: is the Internet a public utility or just a privately owned network? Neither. It's a bunch of interconnected private networks.
IANAL, but the latter would seem to make the Britisher's offsense a Civil one, not a Criminal one.
And I think that the company may have a good case to make; but I don't know if any legislation applies...
Ahh, dude, he's got nothing on the timecube, which proves conclusively that there are in fact 4 simultaneous 24-hour days, and that all sceintist and teachers are liars.
Also, he uses different colour letters and his fonts get increasingly bigger, so it must be true.
I am wiser than any god or scientist, for I have squared the circle and cubed Earth's sphere, thus I have created 4 simultaneous separate 24 hour days within a 4-corner (as in a 4-corner classroom) rotation of Earth. See for yourself the absolute proof.
Retraction: I just remembered how, in days gone by, letters and notes were traced to a specific type writer due to the typewriter's "fingerprint" - each machine could be uniquely identified.
So it could be argued that this is simply taking us back to the good old days of Miss Marple and Columbo:)
This stuff is almost exactly how they caught the BTK killer
I think it's great that finally, we will be able to frame people we don't like with the greatest of ease. Just user their printer to print something illegal, or burn a CD on their PC!
A new crime, anyone? "Breaking And Entering With Intent To Print"
I did and got a nasty NSFW image of a huge asshole.
Verified. For all people who are curious and want to double check, don't.
To re-iterate: the link in the main article is a GOATSE troll picture.
If you don't know what that means, then you don't want to; especially if you're at work, or there are children nearby, or you have just eaten, or ever want to eat again.
Thing is that the European Union more or less binds the différent countries to each other
To an extent, but it's not tightly coupled in all areas of the law.
While not binding at all, this sets a european precedent
IANAL, but I think that would be the case only if the decision was based on a European law, implemented by all member states.
Each member state is free to have their own laws which do not contradict any European laws. Hence the hoo-haha here right now with our (British) govt wanting to introduce laws which may breach the EU Human Rights laws. They simply can't (legally), but that doesn't stop them from trying..
Granted. But here in the UK right now, the "right tools" for CC fraud are eyes and a place in the queue (or "line" as it is known West Of Here).
Not checking sigs is to the advantage of the customer; a disputed payment can have its signiture checked and a refund is then automatic. There's no talent required in typing in "6666", or whatever the PIN is.
That's my point. Signiture fraud: some skill required in most circumstances (in London most people used to check)
PIN fraud: no skill required, and no way to dispute payments - your ID was perfect.
And, IMHO, it's less secure than a signiture. Most shops have got these little PIN entry devices that allow anyone standing anywhere behind you to get a really good look at what your number is. Muggers now don't have to even be able to write; just to remember 4 numbers and leave the store.
If they could get the PIN entry secure, it would be a good system..
Reminds me of my sister's ex boyfriend. She met him in Hong Kong, and brought him to Scotland to meet the family. His Chinese name was a little hard on the Western tongue, so he opted to be called "Jimmy". It took him a three days to realise that my sister hadn't informed every shopkeeper in Edinburgh of his imminent arrival.
"Cheers, Jimmy, here's yer change."
For those unaware, "Jimmy" in Scotland is a just something friendly you call somebody you don't know. A bit like "Buddy" might be used in NYC.
Putting aside the arguments over "natural selection", it remains in the gene pool because it works
There's plenty of stuff in the gene pool that exists despite its harm to the individual concerned, or because it has a different (more common) combination that works well. In West Africa, for example, many people carry a gene which prevents the person from catching maleria. Great. But if both parents pass that gene to the child, then the child suffers from Sickle Cell. Hence the common occurrence of Sickle Cell in communities descended from West Africans.
I'd agree with pretty much everything you wrote, and would summarise thus:
- friendship
- love, romance etc
- horizontal jogging Nothing wrong with any of these, or any combination of these, as long as nobody is pretending that there is another element or elements involved in order to get the one they really want by deceptive means.
Though I'd quantify that by saying that a one-sided romantic feeling can be a Bad Thing, for obvious reasons, mostly involving tissues. Read that sentence in whatever context you choose. You perverts.
Same goes for women who give sex in order to get love. Never going to work, m'dear.
Actually I think it's more to do with confidence. Women find confident guys attractive. Bastards are confident. They are also very good liars, and have discovered that saying things like "I understand", or "Actually, I do like to go down" are more likely to get them laid rather than "shut up, the football is on" or "no, but you can do me".. which is what it turns into when enough condoms have been used.
The lesson I drew was to simply be confident and have a laugh. Nothing wrong with being a Nice Guy, and you won't get laid as much (especially when one has to turn down a damn good offer cos the woman is a bit emotional and vulnerable) but not getting laid ain't the end of the world.
Good friends (female or otherwise) are always a good thing.
I'm done; my Bloke Club membership will almost certainly be revoked now, and I will unable to discuss football down the pub any more, because I'm obviously really a big girl's blouse.
Slashdot Mirror
What I'm asking is what gives him the right to forcibly prevent other people from freely copying... the products that they've purchased.
If you mean they can freely copy and distribute then I disagree. By that logic, only one copy of any music CD need ever be purchased. One person buys it, and then slaps it onto eMule. Nobody else need buy it; they can get a free copy. Now if the copy is for personal use only, I'd agree that in that respect the current laws are a bit OTT. I can't count the number of CDs I've bought and then had damaged accidentaly, and it's a pain in the butt. OTOH, if I buy a sculptue and it falls down the stairs and shatters, I have to go and buy a new one.
As for "building on" the work - people are free to do that at the present time. - AFAIK. They just have to ensure they have changed the original enough. Fair play to take a short sample (or a chord sequence), enhance it and twist it around so it doesn't sound very like the original, and then use it in an innovative way. But if you wanted to (say) speed up the music by a few BPM (or just add a new bassline and keep it at the same speed) and then sell that as your own original work, it wouldn't be fair. These are the two extremes; so where should the line be drawn?
There are plenty of DJs who remix existing recordings, pay a royalty to the original artist, and everyone is happy. They use an original work, enhance it, create something which has some of the original and some of their own work, and pay a negotiated royalty which everyone is happy with. I really don't see the problem with that.
And I, for one, would not like to see any art I produce (ha! fat chance) being used on (say) a website for a Neo Nazi group. If they were free to use it as they saw fit simply because they bought a copy of it that they could listen to, they could chop it up a bit, claim it was not the exact original, and use it for their own nefarious purposes.
Also - if somebody has sat down for weeks and created a song lyric, I don't think anyone else should be able to repeat it verbatim and sell it on again whenever they want without paying for the work which has been done. If they want a lyric, they should do the work or pay for somebody else to do the work.
Sure, let them be inspired by the lyric and use that inspiration to create something new, which is their own work. But the closer it is to the original, and the more of the original they use, the less work they themselves have done - surely?
distorting the workings of the free market by tying together otherwise unrelated services: performances, recording, publication/duplication, distribution, and advertising
I don't accept that they are unrelated; they are all geared towards the production and distributiong of a specific item. I do accept that there are major cartels which are abusing the fact that these things are necessary to major artists, and bump up the prices of their products. That is wrong, but I don't think the solution is to allow anyone to become a distributor and pay no royalties to the original artist.. (forgive me if that's not what you are proposing below; that's how I read it).
Effectively, anyone who already has a copy can become a local distributor, at least until the market for the recording is saturated. Original performances, however, retain their value, because they are in limited supply. The copies, on the other hand, have nothing to do with the original creator.
In the modern world, a copy can have exactly the same quality as an original recording. If I make a recording and I can charge $5 for it, but a guy on a market stall or website can legally take an exact copy and charge $1 for it, then that removes my right to sell my work for the price I want. And if, as you say, the copying expense are effectively zero, then realistically, I cannot charge anything after the initial release, because nobody would pay it.
The artists have a right to charge for their own work, but not for the work of others.
I'm starting to think I've misinterpreted your reply; what work of others? If all they have done is copy an original, that's hardly creative work worthy of payment..
they already did the buttered toast falls butter side down myth, and it was busted
Just curious, as I've never seen the show; how was it busted? I've seen numerous articles which appear plausable and well researched, showing that toast, when falling from table height, has enough time to rotate to butter-side-down, but not enough to rotate back to butter-side-up.
allegedly this was the first confirmed case of this being captured on camera, rather than being repeated as hearsay
I remember watching that being done on UK TV as a kid in the 70s. I wasn't that impressed, because the glass didn't shatter violently and spectactularly, like it would have done if Murdoch off the A Team had shot it with an AK-47 in a bar raid on local moonshine suppliers.
I don't know what that says about me, and I don't much care to ask.
So what, exactly, did he do to deserve all that pay?
He created a product while retailed for a price that several thousand people wanted to buy.
Who should get the money from that, if not the creator? If you're advocating that he should give it away for free, then can you explain what everyone in the world did to deserve his product for free?
the problems you attribute to touring apply equally well to any other business requiring personal appearances
If you read the parent, you will see that it was indicating that nobody who creates any music should be paid for so doing. They would have to make all their money from touring. And music (not entertainment) is different, precisely because it doesn't require personal appearances. They are optional.
I suspect that we probably made the bulk of his money touring and playing to large crowds.
He still would have made that money if his album was good and distributed for free.
He didn't tour; just got lucky with one record.
And if touring is it would take to make money from something you have created, then what would you suggest a band does if they have a disabled or ill member who can't travel easily? What about musicians who are getting on in years? Extreme example: a guy gives up work for a year because he believes in his vision. Spends all his savings, and remortages the house. Gets a hit song. Then gets hit by a truck. Sorry, kids, your dad's life insurance was with his old firm. The record? Heck no, people don't pay for MUSIC! Tell you what, shove him in a coffin and we'll see if we can rig him up to mime.
If any musician want to adopt the "make money from touring" policy, they can. If it works well, it will become the most used method of its own accord; it needs no help or change in the law that could hurt others very badly.
How much do artists today get from the cartels? Nearly 0.
Call me sceptical, but if that were the case, then nobody would earn any real money from making music. From the big cars being bought, I suspect that many artists make more than "nearly 0". A friend of a friend, who I run in to from time to time, had a top ten hit a few years back, and it still gets onto 90s compilation CDs. He bought a house with the initial return, and last time I saw him, he was still happily living off the earnings of that one record, while he messes around in a studio doing new stuff.
If there was no copyright law, he wouldn't have seen a single penny, because as soon as it got popular, nobody would have any obligation to pay him anything for distributing his music. Sure, he could have had a website from which people could pay him money to download his track. But without copyright, I could have a website that offered the track for free; and it could generate revenue through ads. Or a monthly membership free - all the music you can download for $5 per month. Bargain!
Getting rid of copyright isn't a solution; artists and consumers alike being aware that in the real world, there are sharks looking to rip you off with bad deals - now that's a solution.
or, for that matter, Iain Banks -- they may not be SF, but they're still geeky
;-)
I read in an interview that Iain Banks regretted the use of his initial for his "Sci-Fi" novels, and not using it for his "straight" novels. His "straight" work isn't always so straight, you see... "Walking on Glass", for example, is partially set in another dimension. "The Wasp Factory" is.. well.. simply one of the sickest, twisted, wierdest, most brilliant works I've ever read. The point being that (at least with Banks), it's kind of hard to tell what's Sci-Fi and what isn't, sometimes... So the question perhaps should be: "Is it Sci-Fi? Who cares! Does it challenge and entertain me - and is it well written?"
Having said that, I do tend to dive straight for the Sci-Fi section of any given bookshop
Forget Arthur, and forget Pratchett!
Are they seriously trying to tell me that "The Complete ZX Spectrum ROM Disassembly" doesn't make the list?
OK, it's not fiction, but the sheer beauty...
</uber geek>
IANAL either, and I speak only for the UK
..
If 1000 people camped out in the middle of a public road in front of the entrance to a company, would they be breaking a crime by not allowing people to enter/exit? In essence, they would be executing a "denial of service" attack to the companies road.
Yes, they are comitting a crime. Such protests do take place occasionally, and there's always video footage of the police dragging protesters off to the cells, because you are not allowed to block a road or an entrance to a road. This is amply demonstrated during strikes, when the protesters must remain behind barriers so that the company can continue to trade.
Or what if a few 18-wheelers decided to park in the middle of an interstate to block it. This is also a DOS attack.
Likewise illegal here. We had some recent "go slow" fuel protests with large vehicles driving slowly down the motorway. This was legal, but I think the govt are discussing the possibility of changing that..
What if 1 million people concertedly & simultaneously dialed 911 for "testing purposes" once a month. This would also be a DOS attack.
I think you could prove conspiracy; and also make a case that it was wasting police time.
Now a question arises: is the Internet a public utility or just a privately owned network?
Neither. It's a bunch of interconnected private networks.
IANAL, but the latter would seem to make the Britisher's offsense a Civil one, not a Criminal one.
And I think that the company may have a good case to make; but I don't know if any legislation applies.
No, these people were generally fed by the town
Or fed to the town, if they weren't very good, and there were cruisaders resident.
Ahh, dude, he's got nothing on the timecube, which proves conclusively that there are in fact 4 simultaneous 24-hour days, and that all sceintist and teachers are liars.
Also, he uses different colour letters and his fonts get increasingly bigger, so it must be true.
I am wiser than any god or scientist, for I have squared the circle and cubed Earth's sphere, thus I have created 4 simultaneous separate 24 hour days within a 4-corner (as in a 4-corner classroom) rotation of Earth. See for yourself the absolute proof.
Firefox comes a preloaded RSS feed ... that points to the BBC for news
:-)
Maybe so, but that's not the homepage, which is from where the stats were taken
Retraction: I just remembered how, in days gone by, letters and notes were traced to a specific type writer due to the typewriter's "fingerprint" - each machine could be uniquely identified.
:)
So it could be argued that this is simply taking us back to the good old days of Miss Marple and Columbo
This stuff is almost exactly how they caught the BTK killer
I think it's great that finally, we will be able to frame people we don't like with the greatest of ease. Just user their printer to print something illegal, or burn a CD on their PC!
A new crime, anyone? "Breaking And Entering With Intent To Print"
I did and got a nasty NSFW image of a huge asshole.
Verified. For all people who are curious and want to double check, don't.
To re-iterate: the link in the main article is a GOATSE troll picture.
If you don't know what that means, then you don't want to; especially if you're at work, or there are children nearby, or you have just eaten, or ever want to eat again.
No wonder we don't have any flying cars
Flying cars.. controlled by bluetooth.. bluetooth hacking.. buffer overflows.
Now that's a scary combination.
Thing is that the European Union more or less binds the différent countries to each other
To an extent, but it's not tightly coupled in all areas of the law.
While not binding at all, this sets a european precedent
IANAL, but I think that would be the case only if the decision was based on a European law, implemented by all member states.
Each member state is free to have their own laws which do not contradict any European laws. Hence the hoo-haha here right now with our (British) govt wanting to introduce laws which may breach the EU Human Rights laws. They simply can't (legally), but that doesn't stop them from trying..
With the right tools
Granted. But here in the UK right now, the "right tools" for CC fraud are eyes and a place in the queue (or "line" as it is known West Of Here).
Not checking sigs is to the advantage of the customer; a disputed payment can have its signiture checked and a refund is then automatic. There's no talent required in typing in "6666", or whatever the PIN is.
That's my point. Signiture fraud: some skill required in most circumstances (in London most people used to check)
PIN fraud: no skill required, and no way to dispute payments - your ID was perfect.
Since Chip & Pin was introduced
And, IMHO, it's less secure than a signiture. Most shops have got these little PIN entry devices that allow anyone standing anywhere behind you to get a really good look at what your number is. Muggers now don't have to even be able to write; just to remember 4 numbers and leave the store.
If they could get the PIN entry secure, it would be a good system..
These aren't my ones, but I once lost a day's productivity when I found the site.
Mixed bag, but don't read in any circumstances where you can't afford to laugh out loud and squirt coffee through your nostrils.
And that's where everyone knows your name
Reminds me of my sister's ex boyfriend. She met him in Hong Kong, and brought him to Scotland to meet the family. His Chinese name was a little hard on the Western tongue, so he opted to be called "Jimmy". It took him a three days to realise that my sister hadn't informed every shopkeeper in Edinburgh of his imminent arrival.
"Cheers, Jimmy, here's yer change."
For those unaware, "Jimmy" in Scotland is a just something friendly you call somebody you don't know. A bit like "Buddy" might be used in NYC.
Oh, and while I'm here.. remember that just because your boss isn't a psychopath, it doesn't mean that he doesn't want to kill you.
Putting aside the arguments over "natural selection", it remains in the gene pool because it works
:)
There's plenty of stuff in the gene pool that exists despite its harm to the individual concerned, or because it has a different (more common) combination that works well. In West Africa, for example, many people carry a gene which prevents the person from catching maleria. Great. But if both parents pass that gene to the child, then the child suffers from Sickle Cell. Hence the common occurrence of Sickle Cell in communities descended from West Africans.
Natural selection isn't perfect
I'd agree with pretty much everything you wrote, and would summarise thus:
- friendship
- love, romance etc
- horizontal jogging
Nothing wrong with any of these, or any combination of these, as long as nobody is pretending that there is another element or elements involved in order to get the one they really want by deceptive means.
Though I'd quantify that by saying that a one-sided romantic feeling can be a Bad Thing, for obvious reasons, mostly involving tissues. Read that sentence in whatever context you choose. You perverts.
Same goes for women who give sex in order to get love. Never going to work, m'dear.
So - what do men do? Become "bastards"
Actually I think it's more to do with confidence. Women find confident guys attractive. Bastards are confident. They are also very good liars, and have discovered that saying things like "I understand", or "Actually, I do like to go down" are more likely to get them laid rather than "shut up, the football is on" or "no, but you can do me".. which is what it turns into when enough condoms have been used.
The lesson I drew was to simply be confident and have a laugh. Nothing wrong with being a Nice Guy, and you won't get laid as much (especially when one has to turn down a damn good offer cos the woman is a bit emotional and vulnerable) but not getting laid ain't the end of the world.
Good friends (female or otherwise) are always a good thing.
I'm done; my Bloke Club membership will almost certainly be revoked now, and I will unable to discuss football down the pub any more, because I'm obviously really a big girl's blouse.