Contracts hamper the free market and really shouldn't be allowed.
without contracts there would be no market free or otherwise. by entering any store and purchasing a cd or mp3 or a gallon of milk you are entering into a contract with that store, which allows you to walk out of that store with the item, in exchange for some pieces of green paper.
the world revolves around contracts, and capitalism does especially so.
i don't know about the grandparents proof that kerry wrote a significant part of the patriot act, but he certainly voted for it, which is just as bad, because it means he helped shove it down our throats. he showed his support for the law by voting for it, so it really doesn't matter if he wrote any part of it.
there was only one person that voted against it in the senate. and i am proud to say feingold is my states representative in that corrupt arena.
the entire problem is that it is a contactless card...meaning the reader doesn't need to touch the card to read it.
so lets say they do limit the range to just a centimeter or two. then it would merely take a new type of pickpocket carrying around a reader for these new types of cards and just swipe it past the wallet in your pocket. they won't even need to touch you, and yet would be able to steal money from you. and because no signature is required for purchases up to $25, they could charge $25 to your card and the credit card company wouldn't complain.
you may be right, but it is better pr to let the companies say they are "self censoring" than for the govt to say "we are censoring you"
but the point stands that those companies get fined in germany if they let certain "illegal" search results appear. it is similar to how US companies supposedly self censor, but are fined by the fcc if they don't bleep out bad words, or show a woman's tits during the superbowl. land of the free indeed...
personally i would prefer to see naked breasts over violence. i don't see why violence was deemed natural and acceptable, but breasts were deemed unnatural and immoral. seems to me they got it backwards.
it is unlikely ubisoft will be paying for that. it will likely be the army that will pay for that, so ultimately all the american taxpayers will be paying for it.
it very well could be released at no charge. but of course it won't be free, the game will be paid for in one way or another, and at least partially through taxes.
why not? it is their product, if they want to piss off the consumer with their annoying product then they darn well should be able to do it!
annoying your customer is a good way to drive them to a competitor. if you want microsoft to die, let it continue in its practices, eventually everyone will use something else, such as Linux, or maybe more practical at this time would be MacOSX, because it even gets a lot of the popular games ported to it.
exactly how does a national id card restrict yours or my freedom?
the linking up the dmv databases doesn't really worry me, what worries me is the "unspecified electronic means" that the id's are supposed to be readable by.
i just don't want someone reading my data on my id in my wallet from accross the street, but i don't see how a national id will invade my privacy any more than a state drivers license does.
i also don't see how this will help fight terrorists...i am to lazy to do an exact quote, but the article even stated the 9/11 hijakers had valid state issued drivers licenses. linking up the state dmv databases likely would not have affected that.
but if you live off of sales of your software and people aren't paying for it, you may not have physically lost anything, but those free downloads of software by people that didn't pay for it are not going to pay your bills.
it doesn't cost a store $29.95 to sell you a "widget 9000", so does that mean that you have a right to leave behind the maybe $25 it costs the store to put it on the shelf and then walk off with it? did the store then lose anything because you left behind enough money to replace the item? technically probably not, but does that give you a right to have that item just because the store didn't *LOSE* anything? it certainly doesn't make it legal.
fine then since you don't like adobe then substitute for another company such as sierra, maybe that one is too big for you too and you don't think that piracy would hurt them, so lets get even smaller yet...how about a really small company such as malfador
my arguement is not dependant on using adobe. i hate adobe with a passion. my argument could stand with any software company. find one you like and replace any instances of the word adobe with your own favorite software company's name.
yes, but copying songs 30 years old was illgeal at the time
and now copying any song after 1921 aparrently from now until the the rest of eternity will be illegal.
just because you don't like the law (i don't like it either) doesn't make it legal. don't complain to me about the law, complain to your congressman/senator
Why are media CEOs still raking down $30 million/year + options + bonuses + perks when people are going without paychecks? Clearly the DMCA and "piracy" is a diversionary tactic.
the CEO's may be milking the company for all it is worth, but it is their company, they can drive it into the ground if they want. they aren't doing anything illegal by taking a disproportiantely large pay check. however someone that copies a program or song that doesn't belong to them is clearly doing something illegal and that has been illegal since the constitution was written. just because you think it is hypocritical for the CEO's to be raking in so much money while talking about how much money they are losing doesn't make it legal for you to steal from them.
what gives someone else the right to take something that does not belong to them?
now, i am not saying i like the current state of copyright laws, i am a strong believer that copyrights shouldn't last forever. i also didn't intend for this to become a debate about them, if it did i would probably agree with you. i agree with you in that you can't hold a monopoly on an idea.
what this thread is about is all the stupid arguments/.'ers use about how the company doesn't lose any money, in order to justify their own actions. it makes them feel better so they don't think they are harming anyone by using software they didn't pay for. but because of it someone somewhere may be going without a paycheck because the company doesn't have enough revenue to pay them due to all the people using the software without paying for it.
it doesn't matter if the people pirating the software are not able to aford it, or never would have bought it anyway, it is still a person using adobe's software without paying for it. had that person paid for it adobe would have gained however much adobe charges for photoshop. so it indeed is a loss for adobe. you can't deny that the person is using software with a retail value of several thousand without paying a single dime. so the person gained something of value without paying for it. technically it maybe be true that adobe did not lose a real physical object, but that doesn't mean that someone pirating adobe's software doesn't hurt adobe.
these arguements of companies not "losing" anything from piracy are "complete bullshit". to use your own words...they may not "lose" anything, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt them.
it does matter, at least to me. as long as my computer is still intact it has an imprint of my soul, you could argue even more so for a programmer. as long as my computer is still running and executing programs that i have written i can cheat death and continue to to affect the world. remnants of my mind will still be alive within the data and programs on my computer. so i should be able to determine what they can and can't see.
ok, well change to smaller units and then my point is still valid.
also why not for added safety to avoid problems with power surges, force the laser through a lens before it gets to the eye. this lense would act like a fuse. if the laser gets too powerfull maybe it would start some chemical reaction in the lense that makes it go opaque, or maybe it simply causes it to melt a portion of the lense and thus causes it to difuse the light.
maybe there would never be total extinction, but if we reduce how much radio signals we output it could very well become difficult to detect from interstellar distances and indeed right now i doubt humans would reduce how much RF we are using at this time unless some vastly new technology comes out that makes it obselete. but that doesn't mean that some alien's version of the FCC isn't more restrictive on how much RF they can output. they could very well be there and be technologically advanced, but just aren't outputting enough RF for us to detect.
there indeed cyclic signals in the heavens, certain collapsed stars rotating very fast have a very regular patern to them...almost "mechanical"...and even gravitational wobbles induced by a planet orbiting a star appear on a very regular cycle, though i think most of these don't occur in the subsecond range.
i am not really trying to be sarcastic, just saying that you can get both random and cyclic noise from nature.
i guess it may very well turn out that cyclic or random noise from a machine is differentiatable from the cyclic or random noise of other natural objects
Slashdot Mirror
Contracts hamper the free market and really shouldn't be allowed.
without contracts there would be no market free or otherwise. by entering any store and purchasing a cd or mp3 or a gallon of milk you are entering into a contract with that store, which allows you to walk out of that store with the item, in exchange for some pieces of green paper.
the world revolves around contracts, and capitalism does especially so.
i don't know about the grandparents proof that kerry wrote a significant part of the patriot act, but he certainly voted for it, which is just as bad, because it means he helped shove it down our throats. he showed his support for the law by voting for it, so it really doesn't matter if he wrote any part of it.
there was only one person that voted against it in the senate. and i am proud to say feingold is my states representative in that corrupt arena.
the entire problem is that it is a contactless card...meaning the reader doesn't need to touch the card to read it.
so lets say they do limit the range to just a centimeter or two. then it would merely take a new type of pickpocket carrying around a reader for these new types of cards and just swipe it past the wallet in your pocket. they won't even need to touch you, and yet would be able to steal money from you. and because no signature is required for purchases up to $25, they could charge $25 to your card and the credit card company wouldn't complain.
why get a phony one? you can buy a normal magnetic card reader for about $100 and for a few hundred more you can get one that writes as well.
i am sure the readers for these new cards aren't going to be too expensive otherwise retailers probably wouldn't go for them.
you may be right, but it is better pr to let the companies say they are "self censoring" than for the govt to say "we are censoring you"
but the point stands that those companies get fined in germany if they let certain "illegal" search results appear. it is similar to how US companies supposedly self censor, but are fined by the fcc if they don't bleep out bad words, or show a woman's tits during the superbowl. land of the free indeed...
personally i would prefer to see naked breasts over violence. i don't see why violence was deemed natural and acceptable, but breasts were deemed unnatural and immoral. seems to me they got it backwards.
So why self-censor?
because they are breaking german law if they don't
last i heard cryptography was illegal to export from the US not that you can't use it.
it is unlikely ubisoft will be paying for that. it will likely be the army that will pay for that, so ultimately all the american taxpayers will be paying for it.
it very well could be released at no charge. but of course it won't be free, the game will be paid for in one way or another, and at least partially through taxes.
that won't work...a properly made rootkit will return the original file when scanned, but execute the malicious code when run.
and so tripwire continues to say everything is OK while the computer is still at the mercy of the malicious code
Frankly, neither should MS.
why not? it is their product, if they want to piss off the consumer with their annoying product then they darn well should be able to do it!
annoying your customer is a good way to drive them to a competitor. if you want microsoft to die, let it continue in its practices, eventually everyone will use something else, such as Linux, or maybe more practical at this time would be MacOSX, because it even gets a lot of the popular games ported to it.
exactly how does a national id card restrict yours or my freedom?
the linking up the dmv databases doesn't really worry me, what worries me is the "unspecified electronic means" that the id's are supposed to be readable by.
i just don't want someone reading my data on my id in my wallet from accross the street, but i don't see how a national id will invade my privacy any more than a state drivers license does.
i also don't see how this will help fight terrorists...i am to lazy to do an exact quote, but the article even stated the 9/11 hijakers had valid state issued drivers licenses. linking up the state dmv databases likely would not have affected that.
but if you live off of sales of your software and people aren't paying for it, you may not have physically lost anything, but those free downloads of software by people that didn't pay for it are not going to pay your bills.
it doesn't cost a store $29.95 to sell you a "widget 9000", so does that mean that you have a right to leave behind the maybe $25 it costs the store to put it on the shelf and then walk off with it? did the store then lose anything because you left behind enough money to replace the item? technically probably not, but does that give you a right to have that item just because the store didn't *LOSE* anything? it certainly doesn't make it legal.
fine then since you don't like adobe then substitute for another company such as sierra, maybe that one is too big for you too and you don't think that piracy would hurt them, so lets get even smaller yet...how about a really small company such as malfador
my arguement is not dependant on using adobe. i hate adobe with a passion. my argument could stand with any software company. find one you like and replace any instances of the word adobe with your own favorite software company's name.
yes, but copying songs 30 years old was illgeal at the time
and now copying any song after 1921 aparrently from now until the the rest of eternity will be illegal.
just because you don't like the law (i don't like it either) doesn't make it legal. don't complain to me about the law, complain to your congressman/senator
Why are media CEOs still raking down $30 million/year + options + bonuses + perks when people are going without paychecks? Clearly the DMCA and "piracy" is a diversionary tactic.
the CEO's may be milking the company for all it is worth, but it is their company, they can drive it into the ground if they want. they aren't doing anything illegal by taking a disproportiantely large pay check. however someone that copies a program or song that doesn't belong to them is clearly doing something illegal and that has been illegal since the constitution was written. just because you think it is hypocritical for the CEO's to be raking in so much money while talking about how much money they are losing doesn't make it legal for you to steal from them.
what gives someone else the right to take something that does not belong to them?
/.'ers use about how the company doesn't lose any money, in order to justify their own actions. it makes them feel better so they don't think they are harming anyone by using software they didn't pay for. but because of it someone somewhere may be going without a paycheck because the company doesn't have enough revenue to pay them due to all the people using the software without paying for it.
now, i am not saying i like the current state of copyright laws, i am a strong believer that copyrights shouldn't last forever. i also didn't intend for this to become a debate about them, if it did i would probably agree with you. i agree with you in that you can't hold a monopoly on an idea.
what this thread is about is all the stupid arguments
it doesn't matter if the people pirating the software are not able to aford it, or never would have bought it anyway, it is still a person using adobe's software without paying for it. had that person paid for it adobe would have gained however much adobe charges for photoshop. so it indeed is a loss for adobe. you can't deny that the person is using software with a retail value of several thousand without paying a single dime. so the person gained something of value without paying for it. technically it maybe be true that adobe did not lose a real physical object, but that doesn't mean that someone pirating adobe's software doesn't hurt adobe.
these arguements of companies not "losing" anything from piracy are "complete bullshit". to use your own words...they may not "lose" anything, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt them.
it does matter, at least to me. as long as my computer is still intact it has an imprint of my soul, you could argue even more so for a programmer. as long as my computer is still running and executing programs that i have written i can cheat death and continue to to affect the world. remnants of my mind will still be alive within the data and programs on my computer. so i should be able to determine what they can and can't see.
he may not be important, but they lost my sale also.
eventually these lost sales will add up.
my particular sale doesn't mean much, but when you add up all the sales from my peers suddenly we have a voice loud enough for them to hear.
you can also swap the word "sale" with "vote" and find this is still valid.
i would guess he doesn't really think it is a hate crime. he is just trying to get the fbi's attention by crying wolf
ok, well change to smaller units and then my point is still valid.
also why not for added safety to avoid problems with power surges, force the laser through a lens before it gets to the eye. this lense would act like a fuse. if the laser gets too powerfull maybe it would start some chemical reaction in the lense that makes it go opaque, or maybe it simply causes it to melt a portion of the lense and thus causes it to difuse the light.
and you think they are going to use a laser that powerful? that would be either insane or stupid.
why can't they use a laser that only outputs a few microwatts of power?
maybe there would never be total extinction, but if we reduce how much radio signals we output it could very well become difficult to detect from interstellar distances and indeed right now i doubt humans would reduce how much RF we are using at this time unless some vastly new technology comes out that makes it obselete. but that doesn't mean that some alien's version of the FCC isn't more restrictive on how much RF they can output. they could very well be there and be technologically advanced, but just aren't outputting enough RF for us to detect.
there indeed cyclic signals in the heavens, certain collapsed stars rotating very fast have a very regular patern to them...almost "mechanical"...and even gravitational wobbles induced by a planet orbiting a star appear on a very regular cycle, though i think most of these don't occur in the subsecond range.
i am not really trying to be sarcastic, just saying that you can get both random and cyclic noise from nature.
i guess it may very well turn out that cyclic or random noise from a machine is differentiatable from the cyclic or random noise of other natural objects
as do stars...or rather former stars.
ever hear of a pulsar?