Check the list of most successful people in the world. I'd bet you be pretty surprised at the number of college-dropouts on there. A lot of those people are "well-rounded" and interesting to listen to.
You can get just as much education reading books, debating with friends, listening to good music, and watching good films as you can from 4 years of college.
Remember kids, the point of life is NOT to work your entire life. The point is to get to a "retirement" point as quickly as possible so you can do what you want to do -- whether that's programming, or reading, or researching, or relaxing all day, or... the list goes on and on. If your work just happens to be what you like to do, then you're even better off.
But don't listen to these high-and-might college pushers. Life isn't about bending to the pressure of those around you... it's about LIVING.
-thomas
P.S. This comes from someone with well over 100 college credits and NO DEGREE. I majored in music at FSU, played in the Marching Chiefs, lived on campus and off, and loved it! Then I went to UCF for a couple years majoring in CS. Ultimately I decided that the only way I'm returning to college is if I have no other choice... and that's not too likely in this digital world.
Isn't this the way it's supposed to work? The game makers rate games similar to movies, and if a kid really wants to play a violent game, he needs to get an adult to buy it for him.
I realize this won't stop some kid from buying a violent game, but it should increase the chances that the parents know what the kid is playing.
I don't see any problem with this. They just need to formalize the age restrictions.
I bought a portable CD player the other day. I wouldn't have bought it if it weren't for the CD's that RIAA produces. The manufacturer profited from the RIAA's music by allowing me to listen to the RIAA's music in more places. The manufacturer didn't have an agreement with the RIAA to profit from their works. Yet they did it anyway.
Your analogy is flawed for two reasons.
1. Yes, the device manufacturers are in bed with the RIAA and their ilk. Witness the infamous tax on all digital recording devices paid out by the US Gov to organizations such as RIAA.
2. The manufacturer did not load your personal music device with all of the music you already own. If they had, they'd be in just as much legal trouble as MP3.com.
-thomas
P.S. I can see both sides of this issue. I think MP3.com is the best attempt so far at bridging the gap...
Given that MS gets fined $1M dollars for attempting to put a company out of business by pulling a bait-and-switch, doesn't look like the world is flat on a legal basis does it?
That's OK, the world is not flat on a reality basis either.
In conclusion: how did "I paid for a burner so I can warez" get to +4?!
For the same reason that innocent people want to commit crimes after they are wrongly convicted of them... shit, you're paying for it, you might as well DO what they think you did.
Well, maybe because "neither the National Cancer Institute nor the American Cancer Society recognizes the reliability of such an association." Two unbiased organizations, I might add. Gee, I think I'd give their medical opinion a little bit more worth than a minority of "doctors" that claim otherwise (I wonder which side of the abortion fight they're on, eh?)
Lets see amazon try to claim that their cookies are not yours to sell.
Hmmm... well seeing as how my cookies are a direct lookup on my account information, I doubt amazon.com would really care if I sold them, but *I WOULD*!
This is not that uncommon. For example, I think priceline.com does the same thing. The first time a new customer makes a "bid" on a plane ticket, they will usually "win" it. This creates goodwill (loyalty?) on the part of the customer. After that, Priceline will alter their acceptance/rejection of that customer's bids, to determine how price sensitive the customer is. Their subsequent pricing will take advantage of that information. This is not traditional yield management (Priceline does not own the commodity, so from their perspective the commodity is not perishable), rather it is profile-based price management.
Uhhh... Priceline does not accept or reject your offer. The company making the sale does. After trying to purchase a car for certain amount directly, I was constantly rebuffed. They said my price was too low, even though I knew the invoice price and exactly how much the dealer would make on the vehicle.
I made a reasonable offer on priceline, and it was accepted. Not by priceline, but by a specific dealership nearby.
1 - I don't trust it deleting parts of my TV shows. It's good, but not perfect.
Ummm, how do you know how good it is? What I proposed has not even been invented yet. Besides, even if it was not perfect, you could decide whether or not you want to use it on a show by show basis.
I'm not talking about the current mechanisms that are used, which are dealing with an analog video signal. Who knows what kinds of techniques could be used for digital video signals. Perhaps special signals are sent indicating when an advertisement is being sent. Who knows... The fact that it is in a digital format holds many possibilities. Or... Since the signal is digital, it would be exactly the same for everyone that receives that signal, the device could download "signature" files for commercials that recognize a commercial and skip it. That's just a couple of ideas. More is possible with digital.
2 - It would if you're infringing on anyone's patents. And they found out about it.
First of all, no one has pointed out the patent in question. Would it even apply? I doubt it. I imagine their patent is on a specific technique to remove advertisements from analog video signals. If a different technique is developed for removing ads from a digital video signal, I doubt the original patent would apply.
Secondly, I am not talking about a company releasing an add-on that violates a patent. I am talking about Joe Blow releasing an open-source video processing add-on. If he feels he is violating a patent, it could be released anonymously. You can't stop something like that with a patent, and I don't think you should be able to...
This doesn't bother me so much. For one thing, they've been doing this same stuff (product placement) forever. Secondly, I can always stop watching a TV show that has become too commercial. As long as it doesn't detract from the entertainment, it shouldn't be a problem.
So what you're saying is, the suits want to replace all current hardware with new hardware that has "unbreakable" encryption technology on both ends (i.e. the video source and the television)?
Gee, I wonder under what guise they would be able to force consumers to upgrade to these new, tainted devices?
Supoosing that the MPAA is worried about digital recorders ala Tivo or ReplayTV - those still implement lossy compression schemes when making recordings so wouldn't the net result be the same?
No. Those devices currently use lossy compression. That's because they have to. There will be "digital" versions of those devices that simply store the already compressed video that you are receiving from your satellite or digital cable. No more loss than what was already introduced by the initial compression.
hope you figure out how to throw away 90% of the crud and cruft it ships with:)
Why bother? The whole thing is crud and cruft as far as I can tell. Oh, were you talking about W2K or MacOS?:-)
anecdotal evidence != 'open mind'.
Did I say it did? My open mind means that I am not an OS zealot (sadly, it seems that you are, at least with your Linux bent).
some open mind there, fellow slashdot user #210999;) next you'll be saying that linux can't be used on the desktop;)
You read my mind. Linux is not suited for the desktop, and the only way it will ever find a place there is if it is re-written from the ground up to be more user-friendly. Eazel has a chance there.
Uhhh, no. We went through the opening registration, attempted to setup networking, and experienced our first hard freeze requiring a hard reboot. The first of three for the day.
Conversely, I just rebooted my Win2K machine for the first time in a week. I can't remember the last time it crashed.
The writing is on the wall. The suits can see TiVo and ReplayTV becoming REAL popular as digital TV (i.e. compressed video signals which can be stored very efficiently on hard drives) becomes more popular with consumers.
You can bet that TiVo or ReplayTV or one of their upcoming competitors would love to add a nice "ad-blocking feature." It makes sense. These devices allow you to capture all the shows you want, and watch them later, even more easily than with VCR's.
How many more TV shows would fit on a drive if the ads could be blocked?
This is the real fear for the suits... not whether Joe Blow is going to have a perfect digital recording on his DVD-RAM. (Hell, they know as well as we do that copy protection will never stop a committed pirate.)
-thomas
P.S. Wouldn't it be cool if TiVo/ReplayTV/et. al. allowed consumers to write video-processing add-ons for their units? Gawd that would be awesome! Imagine how many ad-blocking units would be written in a few weeks. Talk about adding value to your product! (id Software has proved this technique time and time again.)
And as Gassee has pointed out, not only were they having to pay a lot in royalties, Microsoft also has agreements forcing the OEM's to keep other OS's "hidden" from the user if they are bundling windows on the machine...
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like sour grapes to me...
... the list goes on and on. If your work just happens to be what you like to do, then you're even better off.
Check the list of most successful people in the world. I'd bet you be pretty surprised at the number of college-dropouts on there. A lot of those people are "well-rounded" and interesting to listen to.
You can get just as much education reading books, debating with friends, listening to good music, and watching good films as you can from 4 years of college.
Remember kids, the point of life is NOT to work your entire life. The point is to get to a "retirement" point as quickly as possible so you can do what you want to do -- whether that's programming, or reading, or researching, or relaxing all day, or
But don't listen to these high-and-might college pushers. Life isn't about bending to the pressure of those around you... it's about LIVING.
-thomas
P.S. This comes from someone with well over 100 college credits and NO DEGREE. I majored in music at FSU, played in the Marching Chiefs, lived on campus and off, and loved it! Then I went to UCF for a couple years majoring in CS. Ultimately I decided that the only way I'm returning to college is if I have no other choice... and that's not too likely in this digital world.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Isn't this the way it's supposed to work? The game makers rate games similar to movies, and if a kid really wants to play a violent game, he needs to get an adult to buy it for him.
I realize this won't stop some kid from buying a violent game, but it should increase the chances that the parents know what the kid is playing.
I don't see any problem with this. They just need to formalize the age restrictions.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
I enjoyed your post, but I just can't let this one go.
Benjamin Franklin would keal over in his grave if he could see America today.
I believe, were he alive today, that a grave would be the best place in which to keel over.
If pro is the opposite of con then what is the opposite of progress?
Regress?
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
I bought a portable CD player the other day. I wouldn't have bought it if it weren't for the CD's that RIAA produces. The manufacturer profited from the RIAA's music by allowing me to listen to the RIAA's music in more places. The manufacturer didn't have an agreement with the RIAA to profit from their works. Yet they did it anyway.
Your analogy is flawed for two reasons.
1. Yes, the device manufacturers are in bed with the RIAA and their ilk. Witness the infamous tax on all digital recording devices paid out by the US Gov to organizations such as RIAA.
2. The manufacturer did not load your personal music device with all of the music you already own. If they had, they'd be in just as much legal trouble as MP3.com.
-thomas
P.S. I can see both sides of this issue. I think MP3.com is the best attempt so far at bridging the gap...
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Given that MS gets fined $1M dollars for attempting to put a company out of business by pulling a bait-and-switch, doesn't look like the world is flat on a legal basis does it?
That's OK, the world is not flat on a reality basis either.
Or did you mean the playing field? =)
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
The artists don't see enough of the profits from a CD. And that's why we've flocked to Napster and Gnutella and the like.
Can you please connect the dots for me?
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Are you saying it's not legal to take towels from hotel rooms?
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
In conclusion: how did "I paid for a burner so I can warez" get to +4?!
For the same reason that innocent people want to commit crimes after they are wrongly convicted of them... shit, you're paying for it, you might as well DO what they think you did.
Or something.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Well, maybe because "neither the National Cancer Institute nor the American Cancer Society recognizes the reliability of such an association." Two unbiased organizations, I might add. Gee, I think I'd give their medical opinion a little bit more worth than a minority of "doctors" that claim otherwise (I wonder which side of the abortion fight they're on, eh?)
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Lets see amazon try to claim that their cookies are not yours to sell.
Hmmm... well seeing as how my cookies are a direct lookup on my account information, I doubt amazon.com would really care if I sold them, but *I WOULD*!
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
This is not that uncommon. For example, I think priceline.com does the same thing. The first time a new customer makes a "bid" on a plane ticket, they will usually "win" it. This creates goodwill (loyalty?) on the part of the customer. After that, Priceline will alter their acceptance/rejection of that customer's bids, to determine how price sensitive the customer is. Their subsequent pricing will take advantage of that information. This is not traditional yield management (Priceline does not own the commodity, so from their perspective the commodity is not perishable), rather it is profile-based price management.
Uhhh... Priceline does not accept or reject your offer. The company making the sale does. After trying to purchase a car for certain amount directly, I was constantly rebuffed. They said my price was too low, even though I knew the invoice price and exactly how much the dealer would make on the vehicle.
I made a reasonable offer on priceline, and it was accepted. Not by priceline, but by a specific dealership nearby.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
1 - I don't trust it deleting parts of my TV shows. It's good, but not perfect.
Ummm, how do you know how good it is? What I proposed has not even been invented yet. Besides, even if it was not perfect, you could decide whether or not you want to use it on a show by show basis.
I'm not talking about the current mechanisms that are used, which are dealing with an analog video signal. Who knows what kinds of techniques could be used for digital video signals. Perhaps special signals are sent indicating when an advertisement is being sent. Who knows... The fact that it is in a digital format holds many possibilities. Or... Since the signal is digital, it would be exactly the same for everyone that receives that signal, the device could download "signature" files for commercials that recognize a commercial and skip it. That's just a couple of ideas. More is possible with digital.
2 - It would if you're infringing on anyone's patents. And they found out about it.
First of all, no one has pointed out the patent in question. Would it even apply? I doubt it. I imagine their patent is on a specific technique to remove advertisements from analog video signals. If a different technique is developed for removing ads from a digital video signal, I doubt the original patent would apply.
Secondly, I am not talking about a company releasing an add-on that violates a patent. I am talking about Joe Blow releasing an open-source video processing add-on. If he feels he is violating a patent, it could be released anonymously. You can't stop something like that with a patent, and I don't think you should be able to...
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
They did the same thing with MP3 players three months ago.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
This doesn't bother me so much. For one thing, they've been doing this same stuff (product placement) forever. Secondly, I can always stop watching a TV show that has become too commercial. As long as it doesn't detract from the entertainment, it shouldn't be a problem.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
So what you're saying is, the suits want to replace all current hardware with new hardware that has "unbreakable" encryption technology on both ends (i.e. the video source and the television)?
Gee, I wonder under what guise they would be able to force consumers to upgrade to these new, tainted devices?
*COUGH*HDTV*COUGH*
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word. - Andrew Jackson
Not to be confused with Androo Jaxon?
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Supoosing that the MPAA is worried about digital recorders ala Tivo or ReplayTV - those still implement lossy compression schemes when making recordings so wouldn't the net result be the same?
No. Those devices currently use lossy compression. That's because they have to. There will be "digital" versions of those devices that simply store the already compressed video that you are receiving from your satellite or digital cable. No more loss than what was already introduced by the initial compression.
Pretty neat, huh kids?
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Warning: "Commercial Advance" is patented.
1. I'm not talking about commercial advance, I'm talking about COMMERCIAL ERASURE..
2. I don't believe this would affect a private citizen from distributing an open source video processor that advances past commercials, would it?
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
How was I harmed? Uhh, by paying too much for their product, both in bug fixes... I mean upgrades... and in computers bundled with the software.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Uhhh, yeah, how much did that monster cost you? I can build an intel system that is just as good for half as much.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Oh- 'W2K'. My condolences.
:)
:-)
;) next you'll be saying that linux can't be used on the desktop ;)
Mine too. I prefer using a real OS like BeOS when I can, but work requires Win2K.
If you ever do actually get an iMac, rather than just making stuff up on slashdot,
Ho hum... here's the link to it on eBay. Yep, we took a loss to unload this piece of shit.
hope you figure out how to throw away 90% of the crud and cruft it ships with
Why bother? The whole thing is crud and cruft as far as I can tell. Oh, were you talking about W2K or MacOS?
anecdotal evidence != 'open mind'.
Did I say it did? My open mind means that I am not an OS zealot (sadly, it seems that you are, at least with your Linux bent).
some open mind there, fellow slashdot user #210999
You read my mind. Linux is not suited for the desktop, and the only way it will ever find a place there is if it is re-written from the ground up to be more user-friendly. Eazel has a chance there.
I'd prefer BeOS at this point.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"Perhaps, but the same applies to Mac OS 9.0.4. "
Uhhh, no. We went through the opening registration, attempted to setup networking, and experienced our first hard freeze requiring a hard reboot. The first of three for the day.
Conversely, I just rebooted my Win2K machine for the first time in a week. I can't remember the last time it crashed.
I have even better uptime on BeOS.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
The writing is on the wall. The suits can see TiVo and ReplayTV becoming REAL popular as digital TV (i.e. compressed video signals which can be stored very efficiently on hard drives) becomes more popular with consumers.
You can bet that TiVo or ReplayTV or one of their upcoming competitors would love to add a nice "ad-blocking feature." It makes sense. These devices allow you to capture all the shows you want, and watch them later, even more easily than with VCR's.
How many more TV shows would fit on a drive if the ads could be blocked?
This is the real fear for the suits... not whether Joe Blow is going to have a perfect digital recording on his DVD-RAM. (Hell, they know as well as we do that copy protection will never stop a committed pirate.)
-thomas
P.S. Wouldn't it be cool if TiVo/ReplayTV/et. al. allowed consumers to write video-processing add-ons for their units? Gawd that would be awesome! Imagine how many ad-blocking units would be written in a few weeks. Talk about adding value to your product! (id Software has proved this technique time and time again.)
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
And as Gassee has pointed out, not only were they having to pay a lot in royalties, Microsoft also has agreements forcing the OEM's to keep other OS's "hidden" from the user if they are bundling windows on the machine...
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
But Einstein's papers were copyrighted to him the moment he wrote them. Anything you create is automatically copyrighted to you.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."