Does it just feel different because it's a bunch of big evil corporations using shady practices to try and outdo each other?
I think it is different. When MS were using their power to prevent competitors from selling their software, it was unfair competition because MS has a monopoly. Here they don't have a monopoly. The blu-ray consortium are perfectly able to compete by doing exactly the same thing. I feel that makes the competition fair.
"To shield children right up to the age of 18 from exposure to violent descriptions and images would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it.'"
I agree with him, but surely this sort of thinking is more a matter of opinion. It's a good basis for enacting legislation but shouldn't the judges opinion be based on the specifics of the law?
Why is spam a problem? Because the cost of receiving a message, however minor, is more than the benefits,
I take offence at someone taking advantage of my email address to try to sell me stuff. I'd feel the same if they came up to me in the street. I was offended my spam the instant I received just one. It's nothing to do with price it's all to do with manners.
could you conceive of a kind of spam that would not be a nuisance?
No!
Suppose you sent an e-mail to millions of people offering them free $20 bills. And you actually followed through and sent the money to anybody who claimed the offer.
Still spam. Still don't want.
The "traditional argument" is just to justify the politics of eliminating spam. It's not the real reason it's just a more convincing argument position.
Totally agree. Website owners have every right to block me as a firefox user. I have every right to block parts of their site I don't want so it woiuld be hypocritical to demand they don't block trafic they don't want.
The only troulbe I have is the implication that I'm in the wrong. I'm not going to feel guilty about my preferences. It is not my responsibility to make their site profitable. It's theirs.
Diebold actually does have a good reputation. They make banking equipment (ATMs and things) and it appears they actually make a decent quality product in this area.
The high profile criticisms of the company cant be doing the banking sector any good.
No other company will touch Diebold's voting machine sector with a 10 foot barge pole. The risks of negative publicity are too great.
I find it easy to excuse the Star Trek "Whoosh" sounds, the planet-orbiting rumble, and the Star Wars tie-fighter sounds because none of these really implies that it's sound waves traveling through space.
I have even less trouble than you because it makes as much sense as dramatic music playing whenever there's an emergency. It's just a storytelling device.
The public are clamouring for something. The BBC exists to serve the public interest. The BBC isn't giong to choose not to commit to its primary purpose just because it's a hassle. If they did that what would be the point of the organisation?
Yes, you still receive the benefits, but that's not the point (good question though). The BBC isn't a private company offering a service for a fee. It's a national institution that exists to serve the British public. It has a responsibility to offer all of its services to everyone on an equal footing.
Those who do not wish to pay Microsoft money should be entitled to receive the same service as those who do. There is a possibility that as a result of this protest, the whole idea will be dropped, but most people consider this outcome unlikely. We hope that the BBC will drop the DRM concept entirely, and rely on the fact that several million households pay an annual fee to keep it afloat.
The BBC are quite good when it comes to open formats and open standards. The BBC is not being criticised in general. just this very specific decision. It's heading away from the openness that it should be promoting.
It makes no difference to me whether other people are getting our BBC for free. I've already paid for it and I've used it. I don't need it any more, everyone else can have it. Perhaps the BBC do want to make money from international sales. I have no objection over this as long as it doesn't inconvenience me. But this does inconvenience me. Aside from this, the DRM is pointless. The organisation is already broadcasting unencrypted MPEG 2 streams that can easily be captured directly by any home computer with a cheap USB DVB receiver.
The 70's era computers weren't so bad. You had a command line interface and generally human understandable commands.
A few of the classics are available as free downloads. They became more sophisticated over time. Have a look at Zork for an example of one of the popular ones.
Quite right.The fact that you can compress the music to 10% of its size using lossy compression doesn't mean that you're losing 90% of the signal. It just doesn't work like that.
Music is fairly predictable. It's mostly made up of a subset of audible frequencies. Predictable data is great for compression. You get a lot of redundancy, so you use fewer bits for repeated or common segments of data. At this point you're losing nothing.
Lossy formats go a step further. They add some additional noise. The additional noise distorts the music slightly so that there is considerably more redundancy. Even if the noise was arbitrary, you would still be able to clearly hear the music. I believe this is the sort of noise level you expect on a telephone (IANA Audio Engineer. This is second hand info). But engineers use a psycho-acoustical model. There are frequencies that the ear simply isn't going to process because they're masked by other frequencies. Listen to the noise on its own and all you'll hear is a low moan.
He might be innocent. If he is then he shouldn't have to pay a fine.
Actually I think this is highly unlikely but it's the way the legal system works. We have to give him every opportunity to challenge the prosecution's evidence.
Slashdot Mirror
If it's any consellation, he did win an award from the Libertarian Futurist society.
Funny, I didn't know Slashdotters held that much power at Worldcon
Yes, I get the joke, but I'd bet a hell of a lot of the people there were Slashdotters.
And yeah, a hell of a lot of them don't know how to talk to girls at parties:)
Of course you will. It becomes a TV tuner. Why wouldn't you? Most people already have a licence so it hardly matters.
There aren't actually a lot of good PVRs available in Europe. A half-assed Tivo would probably make it one of the best.
He could simply not use a PC. Allowing him to use a PC if monitoring software is installed is a concession.
Does it just feel different because it's a bunch of big evil corporations using shady practices to try and outdo each other?
I think it is different. When MS were using their power to prevent competitors from selling their software, it was unfair competition because MS has a monopoly. Here they don't have a monopoly. The blu-ray consortium are perfectly able to compete by doing exactly the same thing. I feel that makes the competition fair.
"To shield children right up to the age of 18 from exposure to violent descriptions and images would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it.'"
I agree with him, but surely this sort of thinking is more a matter of opinion. It's a good basis for enacting legislation but shouldn't the judges opinion be based on the specifics of the law?
Only if you do so in order to get some extra vouchers.
Is it OK to send unsolicited e-mail to...
No. Spam is bad.
Why is spam a problem? Because the cost of receiving a message, however minor, is more than the benefits,
I take offence at someone taking advantage of my email address to try to sell me stuff. I'd feel the same if they came up to me in the street. I was offended my spam the instant I received just one. It's nothing to do with price it's all to do with manners.
could you conceive of a kind of spam that would not be a nuisance?
No!
Suppose you sent an e-mail to millions of people offering them free $20 bills. And you actually followed through and sent the money to anybody who claimed the offer.
Still spam. Still don't want.
The "traditional argument" is just to justify the politics of eliminating spam. It's not the real reason it's just a more convincing argument position.
Totally agree. Website owners have every right to block me as a firefox user. I have every right to block parts of their site I don't want so it woiuld be hypocritical to demand they don't block trafic they don't want.
The only troulbe I have is the implication that I'm in the wrong. I'm not going to feel guilty about my preferences. It is not my responsibility to make their site profitable. It's theirs.
Diebold actually does have a good reputation. They make banking equipment (ATMs and things) and it appears they actually make a decent quality product in this area.
The high profile criticisms of the company cant be doing the banking sector any good.
No other company will touch Diebold's voting machine sector with a 10 foot barge pole. The risks of negative publicity are too great.
I find it easy to excuse the Star Trek "Whoosh" sounds, the planet-orbiting rumble, and the Star Wars tie-fighter sounds because none of these really implies that it's sound waves traveling through space.
I have even less trouble than you because it makes as much sense as dramatic music playing whenever there's an emergency. It's just a storytelling device.
What age is 9th grade?
Original Galactica opening narration.
The public are clamouring for something. The BBC exists to serve the public interest. The BBC isn't giong to choose not to commit to its primary purpose just because it's a hassle. If they did that what would be the point of the organisation?
Yes, you still receive the benefits, but that's not the point (good question though). The BBC isn't a private company offering a service for a fee. It's a national institution that exists to serve the British public. It has a responsibility to offer all of its services to everyone on an equal footing.
Those who do not wish to pay Microsoft money should be entitled to receive the same service as those who do. There is a possibility that as a result of this protest, the whole idea will be dropped, but most people consider this outcome unlikely. We hope that the BBC will drop the DRM concept entirely, and rely on the fact that several million households pay an annual fee to keep it afloat.
The BBC are quite good when it comes to open formats and open standards. The BBC is not being criticised in general. just this very specific decision. It's heading away from the openness that it should be promoting.
It makes no difference to me whether other people are getting our BBC for free. I've already paid for it and I've used it. I don't need it any more, everyone else can have it. Perhaps the BBC do want to make money from international sales. I have no objection over this as long as it doesn't inconvenience me. But this does inconvenience me. Aside from this, the DRM is pointless. The organisation is already broadcasting unencrypted MPEG 2 streams that can easily be captured directly by any home computer with a cheap USB DVB receiver.
Yeah, but those people also believe Starbuck's a guy:P
Really? Well, I got it by Googling "Zork online". Gives a lot of hits.
The 70's era computers weren't so bad. You had a command line interface and generally human understandable commands.
A few of the classics are available as free downloads. They became more sophisticated over time. Have a look at Zork for an example of one of the popular ones.
Quite right.The fact that you can compress the music to 10% of its size using lossy compression doesn't mean that you're losing 90% of the signal. It just doesn't work like that.
Music is fairly predictable. It's mostly made up of a subset of audible frequencies. Predictable data is great for compression. You get a lot of redundancy, so you use fewer bits for repeated or common segments of data. At this point you're losing nothing.
Lossy formats go a step further. They add some additional noise. The additional noise distorts the music slightly so that there is considerably more redundancy. Even if the noise was arbitrary, you would still be able to clearly hear the music. I believe this is the sort of noise level you expect on a telephone (IANA Audio Engineer. This is second hand info). But engineers use a psycho-acoustical model. There are frequencies that the ear simply isn't going to process because they're masked by other frequencies. Listen to the noise on its own and all you'll hear is a low moan.
Nuff said, discussion over.
You must be new here.
But surely that's the wrong figure. If sales double why does it matter if piracy triples?
Why couldn't these have happened at the end of March? Linux, GCC and Emacs to close source would have been fantastic April fools followups.
He might be innocent. If he is then he shouldn't have to pay a fine.
Actually I think this is highly unlikely but it's the way the legal system works. We have to give him every opportunity to challenge the prosecution's evidence.