But by that logic, how could anyone ever "take" a service? You've tied the notions of "taking" and "stealing" to physical actions when that is not necessarily so, thanks to the fluid nature of the Enlish language.
In the case of music or movie files, you aren't stealing property from the person who provided the file. They don't care, and that's why they've uploaded it in the first place. You're stealing the services provided by the rightful distributer of the music or movie, which mostly come down to distribution.
Similarly, I wouldn't care if you copied my car, but it sure would affect the auto industry if you had that ability. The auto industry has the advantage that such duplicating technology doesn't exist, but the disadvantage that there is no law protecting them from that technology should it ever exist. The entertainment industry is in the reverse position because they DO have a law to protect them from just that situation.
According to Merriam-Webster's dictionary of law, theft is "a criminal taking of the property or services of another without consent".
If services can be included in the definition of theft, so can copyright infringement. It would be easy to argue that the MPAA provides a "service" by distributing a movie to the public, a service that you are expected to pay for in the form of movie tickets or purchasing a DVD (with included license to view the movie on the DVD). It's fundamentally the same as illegally connecting to someone else's cable TV feed, or circumventing a toll booth to drive on a toll road without paying. You haven't denied anyone anything tangible in either case, but you have "stolen" a service.
There are different kinds of "stealing," including burglary, robbery, embezzlement, and other variations which include one or more other kinds of stealing such as (literal) piracy or bank fraud. Current definitions have been expanded to include intellectual property theft (patent, trademark, or copyright infringement) and things like "stealing" cable or phreaking a pay phone to get free long distance. You may not like it, but nobody gets to control the English language, and words take on new meanings with time. "Theft" is one of them.
Part of the reason open source games never have the production values of commercial games is that non-commercial open source projects cannot force their contributers to work 60 hour weeks like some game companies we know. Some will take that statement as a dismissal of open source games, others will see it as another reason to support them. Either way, it's the truth.
And it doesn't take 60 hour work weeks to beat open source games either. How many open source games have developers who are even putting in 40 hours a week? When it comes to a packaged, professional presentation of entertainment, a team of 100 full-time, professional game makers (artists, programmers, managers, accountants, the whole works) will beat even 500 people working on a non-commercial game in their spare time.
Sorry if I came across pissy. It just annoyed me that the answer to "why" and "in what way" were clearly laid out in the article, and if you read it you will see that your objections don't apply, at least not to all of the arguments.
The author doesn't say "let's make Blender look like Photoshop!" He suggests that graphics editing suites could benefit from shared widgets and command sets, as well as deeper level standards like file types and methods for handling color palettes. Every graphics program is going to have a "select" tool. Why not put it in the same place across a range of applications?
But again, the article already lays out the arguments in a clear, concise way. I can't really get the point across in a single posting. That's why the article is there in the first place.
Let me see if I understand you. You don't want to read the article, but you feel perfectly comfortable dismissing its premise outright while demanding that other people defend it to you?
Read the article, THEN you can tell me why it's a bad idea.
Ok, other than waste disposal, social security, electricity, amulance, fire, police, transportation and the aquaducts, what have the Romans ever done for us?
You're all a bunch of whiners. Either the strip is funny, or it's not. If it's not, don't read it and shut the hell up. Boycotting a strip that you're reading for free every day is not going to affect anything.
The main problem with biometrics is that once a hacker gets past it once, they've gotten past it forever. You can't change your thumbprint like you can your password, and your retinal scan is definitely permanent. So the security works great until someone figures out a way to fake your thumbprint. Then they can get into any of your thumbprint-protected resources anywhere in the world. Not only that, they have all the time in the world to come up with a perfect way to fake the print because they know it won't be changing in 30 (or 90, or 5) days.
What do you do when you realize that even one of them has been breached? How do you change your security settings to lock out the intruder from the vulerable resources while allowing you to retain access?
How about people stop making sites that are so similar to existing sites that they are unnecessary? Before you launch your internet business, maybe you should try this.
1.) Go to Google and type in the search terms you would use to find a site like the one you're proposing. 2.) If you get more than a page of sites offering the exact same thing, find another idea because you're fighting an uphill battle.
I understand that there are some fields where there will be similarity. Geico, Progressive, and State Farm would all like to be at the top of the "auto insurance" search. But if you want to open an online bookstore, you'd darn well better have something to set you apart from the million other online booksellers (especially Amazon) or you're dead meat no matter what your Google ranking is. Find out what that one thing is, and specialize in it. Be the best online seller of 18th century railroad books or two-headed troll dolls. If you can't rise to the top in a highly specialized area, you deserve your obscurity.
Don't you people see the potential here? This cancellation opens up a time slot that can be used for a new teen drama, or even (dare I dream?) TWO mediocre sitcoms!
If you don't backup your files, that's your funeral. If you're talking about losing your permission to play backed-up files, then it's not a problem with Apple. If you have to reinstall the OS, you can just re-certify your computer to play the files.
Not to mention that it's smart to always burn your DRM-protected music to a CD for backup purposes. That way you can listen to it on a CD player any time, and you can re-rip the tracks in case of data loss.
MP3tunes hopes to attract users who are fed up with restrictions on copying music from sites that use digital-rights-management techniques, such as iTunes.
Maybe I don't get out enough, but I don't know anyone who is "fed up" with the DRM on iTunes. To be "fed up" implies that you've used it and dealt with it for long enough that you just can't take it any more. The only people I hear with big gripes about iTunes' DRM are people who never used it in the first place for that reason. They don't count. The people who actually buy music from iTunes are generally satisfied customers, as far as I can tell.
Maybe they meant "fed up with the fact that they can't find legal music to download without DRM".
If you aren't even going to read the article (it's primarily about MSN.com, not just the search page), then WTF are you complaining about? The article didn't even waste any of your time, and some people find it interesting. If you have nothing to contribute, go find another article to read.
I totally agree. I do wonder, however, where the line between "slightly slowed response in an emergency" and "driving like a drunk" can be drawn.
I have no doubt that cell phones impair people's concentration more than a person in the car. On the other hand, I have trouble believing that the difference could be so great that talking to a passenger is completely acceptable while talking on the phone is likened to being under the influence of alcohol. Your explanation doesn't account for enough of that difference to satisfy my curiosity.
I'm not trying to be a smartass or a format evangelist here, but why are you insisting on MP3 format? AAC is just as good or better for most purposes, and as you mentioned, you can record uncompressed and convert it to any format you like.
Now that I think about it more, I supposed you'd want MP3 if you use a portable player that only supports MP3 files, or if you use a Mac and your player needs WMA or MP3. Still, it's not a surprising decision on the part of the developers. Apple has been doing well with AAC, and Griffin specializes in Apple products. Not to mention that MP3 requires a license to use legally in commercial products.
That's partially true, but the difference is that the government, and by extension, the school, is allowed to control what its own publications say. That's why we have a free market press. If we could trust government news to report everything 100% free from bias, we wouldn't need CNN, ABC, CBS, The New York Times, The Washington Post, C-Span, NPR... you get the idea.
I completely agree that the government cannot and should not control the output of any of these news outlets. However, when the government IS the news outlet, we cannot and should not expect them to report news that is contrary to their own interests.
Similarly, I don't expect Fox News to deliver a story detailing evidence of bias in Fox News reporting. I also don't expect CBS to run a story about how great smoking pot can be just because some of their reporters really think it's an interesting and relevant piece.
1.) Who should have won the last U.S. Presidential election? 2.) Which is better, Ford or Chevy? 3.) Which Star Trek captain is really the best? 4.) Abortion and gay marriage: should I be for or against them?
I just wanted the opinions of my fellow slashdotters on these questions. I figure that they're less inflammatory subjects than the original poster's.
A majority of Americans wrongfully believe that a majority of Americans believe that Iraq was behind 9/11.
Okay, so I just made this statistic up, but since hardly anyone bothers to back the oft-quoted "Americans believe Iraq caused 9/11" statistic with sources, I figure I'm in good company.
Because the school newspaper acts as a representative of the school, and the school is run by the principal, he was not acting as a government censor but as the chief editor.
You point out that the taxpayers are funding the paper. This is true, but it doesn't change that the principal was well within his authority. Assuming this was a typical public school, he was hired by the school board which was in turn elected by the voters. It's the principal's job, regarding the paper, to make sure that the paper is consistent with the wishes of the taxpayers. He made the (probably correct) decision that a majority of the community's taxpayers would rather not have that article published.
When a school official acts to control what goes into a school paper, they are acting as a representative of the "shareholders", the taxpaying members of the community. They don't have to be fair and unbiased, they just have to not offend the people who pay the bills. It's no different than any major news network. The head of CBS can veto a story because it would offend a major sponsor, or because it would offend enough viewers that it could cause problems for the network. For better or worse, this is not censorship, it is self-regulation.
Choosing that name for a character was an error on Lucas's part. There's an adjective to describe just how bad an error it was, but I can't seem to remember what it is.
Although it wasn't well worded, I don't think the OP was trying to say that all of those ideas from Apple were failures in the sense that they don't work or are bad ideas, but rather that they failed to inspire industry-wide trends. The one-button mouse works just fine for the Mac because it was designed with a one-button mouse in mind, so they continue to use it. Nobody else picked up on it, though.
This small form factor could turn out the same way, but I doubt it. Small seems to be the way to go, especially now that upgrades are getting less and less significant to most users (is 4 GHz really going to be better than 3.5?) If you can't make them faster, or if the consumers stop caring whether or not their computer is faster, form factor is a reasonable direction to push research.
Slashdot Mirror
But by that logic, how could anyone ever "take" a service? You've tied the notions of "taking" and "stealing" to physical actions when that is not necessarily so, thanks to the fluid nature of the Enlish language.
In the case of music or movie files, you aren't stealing property from the person who provided the file. They don't care, and that's why they've uploaded it in the first place. You're stealing the services provided by the rightful distributer of the music or movie, which mostly come down to distribution.
Similarly, I wouldn't care if you copied my car, but it sure would affect the auto industry if you had that ability. The auto industry has the advantage that such duplicating technology doesn't exist, but the disadvantage that there is no law protecting them from that technology should it ever exist. The entertainment industry is in the reverse position because they DO have a law to protect them from just that situation.
Wow. That is the most frenetic straw man defense I've heard in a long time. Congratulations!
According to Merriam-Webster's dictionary of law, theft is "a criminal taking of the property or services of another without consent".
If services can be included in the definition of theft, so can copyright infringement. It would be easy to argue that the MPAA provides a "service" by distributing a movie to the public, a service that you are expected to pay for in the form of movie tickets or purchasing a DVD (with included license to view the movie on the DVD). It's fundamentally the same as illegally connecting to someone else's cable TV feed, or circumventing a toll booth to drive on a toll road without paying. You haven't denied anyone anything tangible in either case, but you have "stolen" a service.
There are different kinds of "stealing," including burglary, robbery, embezzlement, and other variations which include one or more other kinds of stealing such as (literal) piracy or bank fraud. Current definitions have been expanded to include intellectual property theft (patent, trademark, or copyright infringement) and things like "stealing" cable or phreaking a pay phone to get free long distance. You may not like it, but nobody gets to control the English language, and words take on new meanings with time. "Theft" is one of them.
Part of the reason open source games never have the production values of commercial games is that non-commercial open source projects cannot force their contributers to work 60 hour weeks like some game companies we know. Some will take that statement as a dismissal of open source games, others will see it as another reason to support them. Either way, it's the truth.
And it doesn't take 60 hour work weeks to beat open source games either. How many open source games have developers who are even putting in 40 hours a week? When it comes to a packaged, professional presentation of entertainment, a team of 100 full-time, professional game makers (artists, programmers, managers, accountants, the whole works) will beat even 500 people working on a non-commercial game in their spare time.
Sorry if I came across pissy. It just annoyed me that the answer to "why" and "in what way" were clearly laid out in the article, and if you read it you will see that your objections don't apply, at least not to all of the arguments.
The author doesn't say "let's make Blender look like Photoshop!" He suggests that graphics editing suites could benefit from shared widgets and command sets, as well as deeper level standards like file types and methods for handling color palettes. Every graphics program is going to have a "select" tool. Why not put it in the same place across a range of applications?
But again, the article already lays out the arguments in a clear, concise way. I can't really get the point across in a single posting. That's why the article is there in the first place.
Let me see if I understand you. You don't want to read the article, but you feel perfectly comfortable dismissing its premise outright while demanding that other people defend it to you?
Read the article, THEN you can tell me why it's a bad idea.
I thought about paying for Enterprise, but in the end I decided to download Fedora Core for free.
*ducks*
Ok, other than waste disposal, social security, electricity, amulance, fire, police, transportation and the aquaducts, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Funny... he's not going to miss you...
You're all a bunch of whiners. Either the strip is funny, or it's not. If it's not, don't read it and shut the hell up. Boycotting a strip that you're reading for free every day is not going to affect anything.
The main problem with biometrics is that once a hacker gets past it once, they've gotten past it forever. You can't change your thumbprint like you can your password, and your retinal scan is definitely permanent. So the security works great until someone figures out a way to fake your thumbprint. Then they can get into any of your thumbprint-protected resources anywhere in the world. Not only that, they have all the time in the world to come up with a perfect way to fake the print because they know it won't be changing in 30 (or 90, or 5) days.
What do you do when you realize that even one of them has been breached? How do you change your security settings to lock out the intruder from the vulerable resources while allowing you to retain access?
How about people stop making sites that are so similar to existing sites that they are unnecessary? Before you launch your internet business, maybe you should try this.
1.) Go to Google and type in the search terms you would use to find a site like the one you're proposing.
2.) If you get more than a page of sites offering the exact same thing, find another idea because you're fighting an uphill battle.
I understand that there are some fields where there will be similarity. Geico, Progressive, and State Farm would all like to be at the top of the "auto insurance" search. But if you want to open an online bookstore, you'd darn well better have something to set you apart from the million other online booksellers (especially Amazon) or you're dead meat no matter what your Google ranking is. Find out what that one thing is, and specialize in it. Be the best online seller of 18th century railroad books or two-headed troll dolls. If you can't rise to the top in a highly specialized area, you deserve your obscurity.
Don't you people see the potential here? This cancellation opens up a time slot that can be used for a new teen drama, or even (dare I dream?) TWO mediocre sitcoms!
Be still, my heart!
It wasn't the stigma. All the trekkies just listened to him and proceeded to get a life! How could the ratings stay up after that?
If you don't backup your files, that's your funeral. If you're talking about losing your permission to play backed-up files, then it's not a problem with Apple. If you have to reinstall the OS, you can just re-certify your computer to play the files.
Not to mention that it's smart to always burn your DRM-protected music to a CD for backup purposes. That way you can listen to it on a CD player any time, and you can re-rip the tracks in case of data loss.
Maybe I don't get out enough, but I don't know anyone who is "fed up" with the DRM on iTunes. To be "fed up" implies that you've used it and dealt with it for long enough that you just can't take it any more. The only people I hear with big gripes about iTunes' DRM are people who never used it in the first place for that reason. They don't count. The people who actually buy music from iTunes are generally satisfied customers, as far as I can tell.
Maybe they meant "fed up with the fact that they can't find legal music to download without DRM".
If you aren't even going to read the article (it's primarily about MSN.com, not just the search page), then WTF are you complaining about? The article didn't even waste any of your time, and some people find it interesting. If you have nothing to contribute, go find another article to read.
I totally agree. I do wonder, however, where the line between "slightly slowed response in an emergency" and "driving like a drunk" can be drawn.
I have no doubt that cell phones impair people's concentration more than a person in the car. On the other hand, I have trouble believing that the difference could be so great that talking to a passenger is completely acceptable while talking on the phone is likened to being under the influence of alcohol. Your explanation doesn't account for enough of that difference to satisfy my curiosity.
I'm not trying to be a smartass or a format evangelist here, but why are you insisting on MP3 format? AAC is just as good or better for most purposes, and as you mentioned, you can record uncompressed and convert it to any format you like.
Now that I think about it more, I supposed you'd want MP3 if you use a portable player that only supports MP3 files, or if you use a Mac and your player needs WMA or MP3. Still, it's not a surprising decision on the part of the developers. Apple has been doing well with AAC, and Griffin specializes in Apple products. Not to mention that MP3 requires a license to use legally in commercial products.
That's partially true, but the difference is that the government, and by extension, the school, is allowed to control what its own publications say. That's why we have a free market press. If we could trust government news to report everything 100% free from bias, we wouldn't need CNN, ABC, CBS, The New York Times, The Washington Post, C-Span, NPR... you get the idea.
I completely agree that the government cannot and should not control the output of any of these news outlets. However, when the government IS the news outlet, we cannot and should not expect them to report news that is contrary to their own interests.
Similarly, I don't expect Fox News to deliver a story detailing evidence of bias in Fox News reporting. I also don't expect CBS to run a story about how great smoking pot can be just because some of their reporters really think it's an interesting and relevant piece.
1.) Who should have won the last U.S. Presidential election?
2.) Which is better, Ford or Chevy?
3.) Which Star Trek captain is really the best?
4.) Abortion and gay marriage: should I be for or against them?
I just wanted the opinions of my fellow slashdotters on these questions. I figure that they're less inflammatory subjects than the original poster's.
A majority of Americans wrongfully believe that a majority of Americans believe that Iraq was behind 9/11.
Okay, so I just made this statistic up, but since hardly anyone bothers to back the oft-quoted "Americans believe Iraq caused 9/11" statistic with sources, I figure I'm in good company.
Because the school newspaper acts as a representative of the school, and the school is run by the principal, he was not acting as a government censor but as the chief editor.
You point out that the taxpayers are funding the paper. This is true, but it doesn't change that the principal was well within his authority. Assuming this was a typical public school, he was hired by the school board which was in turn elected by the voters. It's the principal's job, regarding the paper, to make sure that the paper is consistent with the wishes of the taxpayers. He made the (probably correct) decision that a majority of the community's taxpayers would rather not have that article published.
When a school official acts to control what goes into a school paper, they are acting as a representative of the "shareholders", the taxpaying members of the community. They don't have to be fair and unbiased, they just have to not offend the people who pay the bills. It's no different than any major news network. The head of CBS can veto a story because it would offend a major sponsor, or because it would offend enough viewers that it could cause problems for the network. For better or worse, this is not censorship, it is self-regulation.
Choosing that name for a character was an error on Lucas's part. There's an adjective to describe just how bad an error it was, but I can't seem to remember what it is.
Of course, my comment would have made much more sense if they had used the word "failure" in the post. I meant "wrong".
Although it wasn't well worded, I don't think the OP was trying to say that all of those ideas from Apple were failures in the sense that they don't work or are bad ideas, but rather that they failed to inspire industry-wide trends. The one-button mouse works just fine for the Mac because it was designed with a one-button mouse in mind, so they continue to use it. Nobody else picked up on it, though.
This small form factor could turn out the same way, but I doubt it. Small seems to be the way to go, especially now that upgrades are getting less and less significant to most users (is 4 GHz really going to be better than 3.5?) If you can't make them faster, or if the consumers stop caring whether or not their computer is faster, form factor is a reasonable direction to push research.