So in other words, you want government to control the population through taxes. Why not tax certain religions that "we like," and not others? Or certain races? In other words, if I want to smoke, and I'm not bothering anyone, why should I be taxed for it more than any other consumer good? (Presuming I have my own healthcare plan, and will not suck up any of your tax money when I start dying of lung/throat cancer.)
My current project is to build a floor standing MP3 jukebox (like you would find in a tavern). It will be styled like a classic wurlitzer... crossed with an alien artifact (ala H.R. Giger). I'm shaping the exterior out of epoxy resin painted over an inverse mold made of styrofoam. After scooping out most of the styrofoam, the interior will be loaded with a linux computer and monitor. The sound will pipe through my stereo, and the entire thing will be controlled by two big dials and three buttons (which will be interpreted as mouse input by a custom written interface).
I'll be documenting the entire thing on a web page as the project gets farther along. I have all the materials, and the custom software is 75% written. Should I try to create downloadable plans so anyone can reproduce this thing?
If I remember correctly, that is exactly what happened in Britan. First a registration scheme, then confiscation. Oh, that old family heirloom mauser - give it here so we can crush it...
Britain is entirely different from the USA. We have far more weapons per household than Britain ever had. They never had a constitution written with "the right to bear arms." They never had to fight a war against their own government, like we had to against theirs. Their police officers didn't start carrying guns habitually until a few years ago (nightsticks were preferred), because most criminals weren't using guns.
Comparing apples to oranges. (Or rather apple pie to key limey pie.:-)
To take power into their own hands. This is the ONLY reason for the govt. to be passing these laws.
Yeah it's easy to retort to my original reply when you cut out my entire argument. I fully understand WHY a government would want to disarm the entire population, theoretically.
My point was they could never disarm the public without running into a huge fight.
Hell, they can't even amend gun laws without a fight.
I mentioned this a few weeks ago, but, if you can't record what's broadcast, how can you prove that it ever was?
If a government, anywhere, chooses to rewrite history so that an event 'never happened', it will be of great importance to them that news broadcasts can not be recorded.
Yeah, because lord knows we only get out news and history from the TV set.
Not everyone on the NEt can use Napster. There are many people who can't install a simple program without help. Do you think these people are going to download and install Napster by themselves? And if only 2 million people use Napster, I would bet money that 1,999,999 at least have downloaded pirated music. HEll, you can't find anything else on Napster. As for the actually number of users...as of the press release on July 28, there were 20 million users of Napster. And I would bet that 99.99% of them have downloaded a copyrighted MP3. You don't need to download a whole CD, you only need to download a song. It could be the single that you didn't want to buy, or the song of that soundtrack that you liked, not a complete CD. And what happens as the NEt grows? When 75% of people are on the net, how many people will be using Napster?
If your numbers were accurate, CD sales would most definitely have gone down or at the very least, stagnated. Instead, they have increased.
Otherwise you are implying that without Napster, CD sales would have soared, but with Napster they've just made a small gain due to the loss attributed to Napster?
Do you count the trouble of going to the store and buying a CD into it's cost? It's the same thing as finding it on Napster, except it's harder and uses gas and more time.
How is it harder to buy a CD? You drive a few minutes to the store, such as Best Buy, and instantly find the CD you want. On Napster, it might take you anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours to compile and download all the songs for a given CD. Even then, you're often left with missing songs or poor quality.
As for all the people that Napster being "illegal" will stop, um....it's "illegal" now. Everyone knows that pirating MP3s is illegal and it's not stopping anyone. Most people will tell you it's illegal, but they don't worry about it.
That's not important. What is important is how many of those people would pay a reasonable price to download the official, high-quality MP3 album from the rightful owner. I guarantee you the anwer is: the majority.
People don't steal unless one of the following is true: (1) They have to, i.e. no means to buy, or (2) it's easier to steal something than it is to get it legally, or (3) they're a criminal.
I think it's safe to say most people are not criminals, and most people with means to access the internet are able to afford purchasing music. That means the only reason left is (2): it's easier to steal it on napster than it is to buy the CD and rip to MP3. If the music industry would make it easier to buy an album in MP3 format than it is to steal it, they will have nothing to worry about.
You must be one of those, "people are inherantly evil," guys I keep hearing about.
if i wanted a next, i would have bought a next. obviously A LOT of people didn't want a next. else we'd all have them on our desktops.
Funny, I thought it had more to do with the extreme price of the NeXT cubes, and the fact that you had to buy hardware. (The same reason BeBox never went far.)
Apple survived because they had a niche in the graphics market, even though they also forced you to buy hardware. NeXT didn't really have a niche, AFAIK.
beauty is only skin deep. cube looks great, and tons of problems. aqua looked "lickable" but worked horrible.
What exactly are the "tons of problems" with cubes? As for Aqua working horribly, I've never heard that. Then again, it's a matter of taste.
No, it won't stop everyone from pirating music, but it will stop a lot of people. There is no way to stop everyone from doing anything, but if you can limit a large number of people froim doing it, that's still a good thing.
What are you, some sort of RIAA goon? "Limiting a large number of people" is EXACTLY the problem with the music industry. Why limit a large group of people, the people that pay for the music, when the real problem is the minority of people that pirate the music? The piraters, as you fully attest, will not be stopped by encryption, watermarks, or the like. History has proven that they will find always find a way.
If watermarks and encryption did not cause problems for honest people, I wouldn't care about this. But the problem is you can't do encryption or watermarks without limiting what your paying customers can do with their property.
These are too fields [software and music piracy] that are completely different.
No, they're exactly the same. Digital content that can be reproduced at no cost, distributed by file-sharing programs, and are typically sold, not free (as in beer).
Is there a chance of getting a virus with MP3s? Are the MP3 files huge like software?
The size of the software does not play into this at all. Similarly, viruses and trojan horses are not a big deal for pirated software anyway. (Ever heard of a CRC or MD5 hash? You can tell if the software is legit or not.)
Is there a system as simple as Napster to use for getting software?
Uhhh, yeah it's called Gnutella (and other similar file-sharing programs). There's nothing about Napster that makes it unique to sharing music files. The same concept can and will be applied to other files. And there's usenet, IRC, HTTP, FTP, etc.
What are the chances of getting non-working pirated software as compared to non-working MP3s? These two things aren't in the same ballpark, hell, their not even playing the same sport.
You are insane. They are not only the same sport, they're playing for the same team.
Most people would buy something that they can get for free? I don't know what planet you're living on, but most people I know take free over paid any day.
The software industry would be destroyed if this were true. On top of that, getting music by Napster is not exactly "free." You have to do the work to locate the songs, especially if you're compiling an entire album, and the quality of the music is unknown or not guaranteed.
Still, presuming it is "free" as you say, most people are honest enough to buy the album, especially if it is considered "illegal" for them to download it on Napster.
Napster usage is not as high as CD sales, then again not nearly as many people have access to Napster.
That's not a logical argument. I think we can safely say that most everyone on the internet could use Napster to download music. And those same people could also buy a music CD if they wanted.
There are hundreds of millions of people using the internet, and it's growing all the time.
How many people use Napster? A million? Two million? How many of those people actually pirated an entire CD album they hadn't already bought on CD? Ten thousand? Fifty thousand?
And we're only talking about the people on the internet. Add the rest of the people that can access CD's only, and even if you're poor at math, you should be able to see how small the damage by Napster really is.
And yes, people are still buying CDs, but that doesn't mean Napster doesn't have a negative affect. Correlation is not causation.
I never said it didn't have a negative effect. Likewise, you can't prove it does have a negative effect. No one can without a massive, scientific, unbiased study that will never happen.
There are a million reason why CD sales went up last year, and there is nothing I've seen that can draw a direct connection between Napster use and CD sales going up. The question isn't how many CDs were sold last year, it's how many would have been sold if Napster (and the resulting MP3 explosion) would not have happened.
Again, I did not say anything about CD sales on the rise. But I'm glad you brought it up... If Napster really was having a measurable impact on CD sales, they would have gone down, regardless of how you measure causation or correlation.
Well, simple watermarking is a fantastic idea. It means that people aren't going to be doing a napster and share music with everyone and his dog
Do you really believe that a company or organization will ever be able to do anything to protect their music, video, or software from piraters if they really want it?
The music industry simply needs to be concerned about making it easy for consumers to buy and use digital music. If they do this, they might be just as successful as the software market.
Much in the way that the real reason for registration of firearms is to make the later collection of those weapons from the law abiding easier.
A little paranoid, are we?
Yeah, I'm so sure the government would be successful in that matter. Why exactly would they want to collect the firearms of "law abiding citizens"? All that'd do is give all the power to the criminals, since they don't register their guns.
And how exactly are they going to collect these guns from these law abiding citizens? Don't you think it would be a slightly risky proposition to try and go through a town and demand all the weapons? (I.e. what are your chances of having those weapons turned against you immediately.)
As the RIAA has gone after Napster, everyone has been talking about how they would buy digital music if is was available. Well, that's what they are trying to do.
No, they are trying to prevent people from using digital music however they see fit.
They simply cannot release the music in an unsecure format.
Why not? Encryption and SDMI will not stop piraters of music, it will only prevent regular people from easily listening to the music for which they've already paid... just like DVD.
The only thing that would accomplish to make the music easy to put on Napster (or whatever). Someone would buy the music, and the first thing they would do is put it in with all of their other MP3s, shared on Napster. Then everyone else finds it on Napster, and has no need to buy it (and this is especially true for digital music, as you have exactly what you would be purchasing).
Yeah, just like nobody buys software nowadays, it's all pirated in usenet and IRC, and all the software companies are losing money! Right?
What they need to do is: release their albums in high quality, MP3 (or similar unsecured digital music format), for a discount over CD's. Most people, if given the opportunity, would pay for the music, and support their favorite artists.
Some people would download songs off of Napster. Some of those people will then buy the album if they like it, and others will not. We are talking about a minority of people.
Right now, Napster usage is high, but nothing compared to the amount of people actually buying CD's in stores. Napster usage would be reduced dramatically if the labels were selling inexpensive MP3 albums ($5 - $10). They'd be making money hand over fist.
So the only way to offer music online and to have a chance to make any profit is to offer it is some kind of either encrypted or watermarked format. If you want music available for download (legally), there is no other way.
The biggest problems with Search Engines, is relevancy. The problem being that when I do a search for a word like "magic" the search engine will return results based upon its algorithm, but trying to produce relevancy from a single search word is just about impossible as a task. With a term like "magic" I could be looking for:
Magic as in Magic the Gathering - a collectible card game I used to play.
Magic as in the occult.
Magic as in sleight-of-hand.
I know this will blow your mind, but no advanced AI is necessary.
Instead of typing "magic," you can add one or two more words to your query, and actually get the info you need! E.g. "Magic the Gathering."
God knows many times even on google obviously poisonous sites come up in the search, it would be so nice to have a button to click to moderate down the page or the domain itself...
Yeah, and god also knows that system would never be exploited. Jeez, it'd be worse than it is now!
Shit, do you think Microsoft matches would EVER show up after the first few weeks of use?
AOL has a "monopoly" on the instant messaging market. In other words, they can and will stifle future development of IM products BECAUSE they dominate.
You're confused. Monopolies are not illegal, and they can't be broken unless the corporation with the monopoly poses a significant barrier to entry. There are plenty of other successful clients out there. AOL is not preventing these in any way from coming out (unlike Microsoft, for example, who used squeeze tactics on OEM's to prevent the spread of alternative OS's... among other things).
AOL should be allowed to prevent competing companies from using THEIR resources. Do I think it's in their best interest? Not really, but it's not up to me, or you, or even the FCC.
It's the RIGHT thing to do to tell them to open up and follow a standard so that all can communicate.
No, the "right" thing to do is to let the market dictate until such time as AOL breaks an anti-trust law. Nothing is preventing a better IM client (or protocol) from taking over AOL's turf. If that separate userbase gets big enough, AOL will do the common sense thing of making their client compatible, as a service to their users.
It's not like they're preventing you from talking to certain people... use a different client or send them an email, or meet on IRC, or call them on the phone, or write them a letter.
I think AOL *should* open up the spec, but I'd rather have the market dictate it than the government... at least until such time as AOL breaks an anti-trust law.
First of all, most people on high speed connections due have a static IP (even when they are told it is dynamic... my ADSL IP address hasn't changed in many, many months).
Second of all, an IP address can be used to find the person's general location, what ISP they used, and can usually be linked to other page views on other sites for the same day.
This is the price you pay for surfing the web. A small price, I think.
I hope it's clear how an IP address is much more useful for tracking and gaining info about someone, rather than an easily faked email and name.
Again, all these minor, idiotic privacy flaps are like crying wolf. Pretty soon people will tune this stuff out, and a real problem will not get through.
You can bet that if another company was violating one of compaq's licenses, compaq's lawyers would be in jihad mode before you could blink. By not being aggressive towards companies which violate the GPL, the message sent to companies is that it's okay to violate the GPL and if you're caught all you have to do is comply with it once caught. If any other law were being broken, a simple "okay, I'll stop" would not suffice, and if compaq caught you violating their license I doubt they'd settle for a simple "I'm sorry".
This is absurd on multiple levels.
First of all, no one has proven they are violating the GPL. It looks very doubtful at this point.
Second of all, the first thing Compaq would do is send a cease-and-decist letter. They would not (could not) simply launch a jihad against you without giving you a chance to rectify the mistake (if one was made).
And finally, no law has been broken. We're talking about a possible license violation. I'm afraid that doesn't qualify.
Why in the hell your post was modded to +4 I'll never know.
so if I wanted real news for nerds, where would I go?
ArsTechnica has some of the best articles. They are similar to slashdot in that they post links to other cool geeky things, but they also generate a lot of their own content (well written, geeky articles). In addition, they are not as biased towards one OS over another. They cover Linux, BeOS, MacOS, and Windows.
It's news for geeks, minus the paranoia, propaganda, and pandering to Linux zealots.
Slashdot Mirror
So in other words, you want government to control the population through taxes. Why not tax certain religions that "we like," and not others? Or certain races? In other words, if I want to smoke, and I'm not bothering anyone, why should I be taxed for it more than any other consumer good? (Presuming I have my own healthcare plan, and will not suck up any of your tax money when I start dying of lung/throat cancer.)
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Do you expect any rational human to take you seriously? All the things you listed seem pretty fair ways to cut down on gun crime.
Let me know when they want to prevent a law-abiding citizen from owning a standard handgun with regular bullets. Then I might be worried.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
My current project is to build a floor standing MP3 jukebox (like you would find in a tavern). It will be styled like a classic wurlitzer... crossed with an alien artifact (ala H.R. Giger). I'm shaping the exterior out of epoxy resin painted over an inverse mold made of styrofoam. After scooping out most of the styrofoam, the interior will be loaded with a linux computer and monitor. The sound will pipe through my stereo, and the entire thing will be controlled by two big dials and three buttons (which will be interpreted as mouse input by a custom written interface).
I'll be documenting the entire thing on a web page as the project gets farther along. I have all the materials, and the custom software is 75% written. Should I try to create downloadable plans so anyone can reproduce this thing?
Why bother? It sounds pretty simple to me.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
If I remember correctly, that is exactly what happened in Britan. First a registration scheme, then confiscation. Oh, that old family heirloom mauser - give it here so we can crush it...
:-)
Britain is entirely different from the USA. We have far more weapons per household than Britain ever had. They never had a constitution written with "the right to bear arms." They never had to fight a war against their own government, like we had to against theirs. Their police officers didn't start carrying guns habitually until a few years ago (nightsticks were preferred), because most criminals weren't using guns.
Comparing apples to oranges. (Or rather apple pie to key limey pie.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
To take power into their own hands. This is the ONLY reason for the govt. to be passing these laws.
Yeah it's easy to retort to my original reply when you cut out my entire argument. I fully understand WHY a government would want to disarm the entire population, theoretically.
My point was they could never disarm the public without running into a huge fight.
Hell, they can't even amend gun laws without a fight.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Fer chrissakes, Hagelin has a PhD in nuclear physics! An IQ of 165! And he's not as much of a socialist as Nader...
http://www.hagelin.org/
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
I mentioned this a few weeks ago, but, if you can't record what's broadcast, how can you prove that it ever was?
If a government, anywhere, chooses to rewrite history so that an event 'never happened', it will be of great importance to them that news broadcasts can not be recorded.
Yeah, because lord knows we only get out news and history from the TV set.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Not everyone on the NEt can use Napster. There are many people who can't install a simple program without help. Do you think these people are going to download and install Napster by themselves? And if only 2 million people use Napster, I would bet money that 1,999,999 at least have downloaded pirated music. HEll, you can't find anything else on Napster. As for the actually number of users...as of the press release on July 28, there were 20 million users of Napster. And I would bet that 99.99% of them have downloaded a copyrighted MP3. You don't need to download a whole CD, you only need to download a song. It could be the single that you didn't want to buy, or the song of that soundtrack that you liked, not a complete CD. And what happens as the NEt grows? When 75% of people are on the net, how many people will be using Napster?
If your numbers were accurate, CD sales would most definitely have gone down or at the very least, stagnated. Instead, they have increased.
Otherwise you are implying that without Napster, CD sales would have soared, but with Napster they've just made a small gain due to the loss attributed to Napster?
I have an extremely hard time believing that.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Do you count the trouble of going to the store and buying a CD into it's cost? It's the same thing as finding it on Napster, except it's harder and uses gas and more time.
How is it harder to buy a CD? You drive a few minutes to the store, such as Best Buy, and instantly find the CD you want. On Napster, it might take you anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours to compile and download all the songs for a given CD. Even then, you're often left with missing songs or poor quality.
As for all the people that Napster being "illegal" will stop, um....it's "illegal" now. Everyone knows that pirating MP3s is illegal and it's not stopping anyone. Most people will tell you it's illegal, but they don't worry about it.
That's not important. What is important is how many of those people would pay a reasonable price to download the official, high-quality MP3 album from the rightful owner. I guarantee you the anwer is: the majority.
People don't steal unless one of the following is true: (1) They have to, i.e. no means to buy, or (2) it's easier to steal something than it is to get it legally, or (3) they're a criminal.
I think it's safe to say most people are not criminals, and most people with means to access the internet are able to afford purchasing music. That means the only reason left is (2): it's easier to steal it on napster than it is to buy the CD and rip to MP3. If the music industry would make it easier to buy an album in MP3 format than it is to steal it, they will have nothing to worry about.
You must be one of those, "people are inherantly evil," guys I keep hearing about.
The glass is half full.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
if i wanted a next, i would have bought a next. obviously A LOT of people didn't want a next. else we'd all have them on our desktops.
Funny, I thought it had more to do with the extreme price of the NeXT cubes, and the fact that you had to buy hardware. (The same reason BeBox never went far.)
Apple survived because they had a niche in the graphics market, even though they also forced you to buy hardware. NeXT didn't really have a niche, AFAIK.
beauty is only skin deep. cube looks great, and tons of problems. aqua looked "lickable" but worked horrible.
What exactly are the "tons of problems" with cubes? As for Aqua working horribly, I've never heard that. Then again, it's a matter of taste.
Personally, I like BeOS best.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
NeXTStep is old technology. Apple could have gone with BeOS but they wanted too much control over it
Oh I agree that BeOS is far superior to NeXT (and most other OS's for that matter), but NeXT is still an upgrade from MacOS...
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
No, it won't stop everyone from pirating music, but it will stop a lot of people. There is no way to stop everyone from doing anything, but if you can limit a large number of people froim doing it, that's still a good thing.
What are you, some sort of RIAA goon? "Limiting a large number of people" is EXACTLY the problem with the music industry. Why limit a large group of people, the people that pay for the music, when the real problem is the minority of people that pirate the music? The piraters, as you fully attest, will not be stopped by encryption, watermarks, or the like. History has proven that they will find always find a way.
If watermarks and encryption did not cause problems for honest people, I wouldn't care about this. But the problem is you can't do encryption or watermarks without limiting what your paying customers can do with their property.
These are too fields [software and music piracy] that are completely different.
No, they're exactly the same. Digital content that can be reproduced at no cost, distributed by file-sharing programs, and are typically sold, not free (as in beer).
Is there a chance of getting a virus with MP3s? Are the MP3 files huge like software?
The size of the software does not play into this at all. Similarly, viruses and trojan horses are not a big deal for pirated software anyway. (Ever heard of a CRC or MD5 hash? You can tell if the software is legit or not.)
Is there a system as simple as Napster to use for getting software?
Uhhh, yeah it's called Gnutella (and other similar file-sharing programs). There's nothing about Napster that makes it unique to sharing music files. The same concept can and will be applied to other files. And there's usenet, IRC, HTTP, FTP, etc.
What are the chances of getting non-working pirated software as compared to non-working MP3s? These two things aren't in the same ballpark, hell, their not even playing the same sport.
You are insane. They are not only the same sport, they're playing for the same team.
Most people would buy something that they can get for free? I don't know what planet you're living on, but most people I know take free over paid any day.
The software industry would be destroyed if this were true. On top of that, getting music by Napster is not exactly "free." You have to do the work to locate the songs, especially if you're compiling an entire album, and the quality of the music is unknown or not guaranteed.
Still, presuming it is "free" as you say, most people are honest enough to buy the album, especially if it is considered "illegal" for them to download it on Napster.
Napster usage is not as high as CD sales, then again not nearly as many people have access to Napster.
That's not a logical argument. I think we can safely say that most everyone on the internet could use Napster to download music. And those same people could also buy a music CD if they wanted.
There are hundreds of millions of people using the internet, and it's growing all the time.
How many people use Napster? A million? Two million? How many of those people actually pirated an entire CD album they hadn't already bought on CD? Ten thousand? Fifty thousand?
And we're only talking about the people on the internet. Add the rest of the people that can access CD's only, and even if you're poor at math, you should be able to see how small the damage by Napster really is.
And yes, people are still buying CDs, but that doesn't mean Napster doesn't have a negative affect. Correlation is not causation.
I never said it didn't have a negative effect. Likewise, you can't prove it does have a negative effect. No one can without a massive, scientific, unbiased study that will never happen.
There are a million reason why CD sales went up last year, and there is nothing I've seen that can draw a direct connection between Napster use and CD sales going up. The question isn't how many CDs were sold last year, it's how many would have been sold if Napster (and the resulting MP3 explosion) would not have happened.
Again, I did not say anything about CD sales on the rise. But I'm glad you brought it up... If Napster really was having a measurable impact on CD sales, they would have gone down, regardless of how you measure causation or correlation.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
throw NeXTOS on top of new hardware (sorry OSX is NeXT in mac's clothing)
I'm sorry... how exactly is this a bad thing?
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Well, simple watermarking is a fantastic idea. It means that people aren't going to be doing a napster and share music with everyone and his dog
Do you really believe that a company or organization will ever be able to do anything to protect their music, video, or software from piraters if they really want it?
The music industry simply needs to be concerned about making it easy for consumers to buy and use digital music. If they do this, they might be just as successful as the software market.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Much in the way that the real reason for registration of firearms is to make the later collection of those weapons from the law abiding easier.
A little paranoid, are we?
Yeah, I'm so sure the government would be successful in that matter. Why exactly would they want to collect the firearms of "law abiding citizens"? All that'd do is give all the power to the criminals, since they don't register their guns.
And how exactly are they going to collect these guns from these law abiding citizens? Don't you think it would be a slightly risky proposition to try and go through a town and demand all the weapons? (I.e. what are your chances of having those weapons turned against you immediately.)
Nice logic...
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
As the RIAA has gone after Napster, everyone has been talking about how they would buy digital music if is was available. Well, that's what they are trying to do.
No, they are trying to prevent people from using digital music however they see fit.
They simply cannot release the music in an unsecure format.
Why not? Encryption and SDMI will not stop piraters of music, it will only prevent regular people from easily listening to the music for which they've already paid... just like DVD.
The only thing that would accomplish to make the music easy to put on Napster (or whatever). Someone would buy the music, and the first thing they would do is put it in with all of their other MP3s, shared on Napster. Then everyone else finds it on Napster, and has no need to buy it (and this is especially true for digital music, as you have exactly what you would be purchasing).
Yeah, just like nobody buys software nowadays, it's all pirated in usenet and IRC, and all the software companies are losing money! Right?
What they need to do is: release their albums in high quality, MP3 (or similar unsecured digital music format), for a discount over CD's. Most people, if given the opportunity, would pay for the music, and support their favorite artists.
Some people would download songs off of Napster. Some of those people will then buy the album if they like it, and others will not. We are talking about a minority of people.
Right now, Napster usage is high, but nothing compared to the amount of people actually buying CD's in stores. Napster usage would be reduced dramatically if the labels were selling inexpensive MP3 albums ($5 - $10). They'd be making money hand over fist.
So the only way to offer music online and to have a chance to make any profit is to offer it is some kind of either encrypted or watermarked format. If you want music available for download (legally), there is no other way.
You are dead wrong.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Tesla was a true genius, and the smithsonian won't even recognize him.
Hell, he's been dead for a long time. I doubt I'd recognize him either.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
why the hell did they decide to call it a "mouse"?
Let's see... a small grey thing with a long tail.
Shit! I can't figure it out either!
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Tesla was a true genius, and the smithsonian won't even recognize him.
Then, in protest, I won't recognize the Smithsonian! Something like this:
Fred: "Hey, what's that big building over there?"
Me: "Why, I don't know. I don't recognize it!"
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
The biggest problems with Search Engines, is relevancy. The problem being that when I do a search for a word like "magic" the search engine will return results based upon its algorithm, but trying to produce relevancy from a single search word is just about impossible as a task. With a term like "magic" I could be looking for:
Magic as in Magic the Gathering - a collectible card game I used to play.
Magic as in the occult.
Magic as in sleight-of-hand.
I know this will blow your mind, but no advanced AI is necessary.
Instead of typing "magic," you can add one or two more words to your query, and actually get the info you need! E.g. "Magic the Gathering."
Pretty neat, huh kids?
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
God knows many times even on google obviously poisonous sites come up in the search, it would be so nice to have a button to click to moderate down the page or the domain itself...
Yeah, and god also knows that system would never be exploited. Jeez, it'd be worse than it is now!
Shit, do you think Microsoft matches would EVER show up after the first few weeks of use?
Need we go on...
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
AOL has a "monopoly" on the instant messaging market. In other words, they can and will stifle future development of IM products BECAUSE they dominate.
You're confused. Monopolies are not illegal, and they can't be broken unless the corporation with the monopoly poses a significant barrier to entry. There are plenty of other successful clients out there. AOL is not preventing these in any way from coming out (unlike Microsoft, for example, who used squeeze tactics on OEM's to prevent the spread of alternative OS's... among other things).
AOL should be allowed to prevent competing companies from using THEIR resources. Do I think it's in their best interest? Not really, but it's not up to me, or you, or even the FCC.
It's the RIGHT thing to do to tell them to open up and follow a standard so that all can communicate.
No, the "right" thing to do is to let the market dictate until such time as AOL breaks an anti-trust law. Nothing is preventing a better IM client (or protocol) from taking over AOL's turf. If that separate userbase gets big enough, AOL will do the common sense thing of making their client compatible, as a service to their users.
It's not like they're preventing you from talking to certain people... use a different client or send them an email, or meet on IRC, or call them on the phone, or write them a letter.
I think AOL *should* open up the spec, but I'd rather have the market dictate it than the government... at least until such time as AOL breaks an anti-trust law.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
First of all, most people on high speed connections due have a static IP (even when they are told it is dynamic ... my ADSL IP address hasn't changed in many, many months).
Second of all, an IP address can be used to find the person's general location, what ISP they used, and can usually be linked to other page views on other sites for the same day.
This is the price you pay for surfing the web. A small price, I think.
I hope it's clear how an IP address is much more useful for tracking and gaining info about someone, rather than an easily faked email and name.
Again, all these minor, idiotic privacy flaps are like crying wolf. Pretty soon people will tune this stuff out, and a real problem will not get through.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
You can bet that if another company was violating one of compaq's licenses, compaq's lawyers would be in jihad mode before you could blink. By not being aggressive towards companies which violate the GPL, the message sent to companies is that it's okay to violate the GPL and if you're caught all you have to do is comply with it once caught. If any other law were being broken, a simple "okay, I'll stop" would not suffice, and if compaq caught you violating their license I doubt they'd settle for a simple "I'm sorry".
This is absurd on multiple levels.
First of all, no one has proven they are violating the GPL. It looks very doubtful at this point.
Second of all, the first thing Compaq would do is send a cease-and-decist letter. They would not (could not) simply launch a jihad against you without giving you a chance to rectify the mistake (if one was made).
And finally, no law has been broken. We're talking about a possible license violation. I'm afraid that doesn't qualify.
Why in the hell your post was modded to +4 I'll never know.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
so if I wanted real news for nerds, where would I go?
ArsTechnica has some of the best articles. They are similar to slashdot in that they post links to other cool geeky things, but they also generate a lot of their own content (well written, geeky articles). In addition, they are not as biased towards one OS over another. They cover Linux, BeOS, MacOS, and Windows.
It's news for geeks, minus the paranoia, propaganda, and pandering to Linux zealots.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."