Then explain time shifting to me then and how that reconciles with what you've just said. If I videotape (or DVR or in other way capture) an over the air network TV show while my wife is at work, then show it to her when she gets home, am I not breaking the law by your strict interpretation?
So paying 99 or even 88 cents a track is a failure on their part? The only price most traders seem to agree to is zero.
Yes it is too much, to be honest. A full album can be had for around $12, most albums (that I've ever bought anyways) usually had around 8-10 tracks on them. Considering you're getting it in a lossy and often DRM'd format, I expect it to be cheaper than buying the CD. Simply being able to pick and choose tracks isn't enough, especially considering the DRM ties it to your PC and you the company offering it only pays for the bandwidth used to send it to you (which is arguably offset by the money you paid for bandwidth to download it from them).
If the formats were lossless and weren't DRM'd I think you'd see a different situation. Sure there'd still be the urge to share them via P2P, but had the record companies done this from the beginning, before Napster, the urge to run off to a P2P network wouldn't exist.
Now they have to overcome years of users being used to trading files over P2P networks, a situation they put themselves in by not innovating and desperately clinging to a broken business model.
Because the phone company is like the water company or the electric company. Sure they're also corrupt on occasion, but not nearly as much as the record companies or movie companies.
Have the courts actually touched the issue of downloading over the air broadcast television shows? I mean the SCOTUS seemed to indicate with the BetaMax case that time-shifting was okay-- would it really be at all different if it was someone else doing the time-shifting for you? You still could have taped it yourself or had your significant other do it for you, so where's the part that makes it illegal and punishable with fines and fees?
Movies, sure, there's not many ways to get those free. But music (FM radio) and television (rabbit ears)? Seems kind of shakey to me.
You have bandwidth limited DSL then. Get a better ISP.
Agreed on the older movies, but if you're talking unreleased or recent releases then it's significantly faster just to get it online (and if the movie isn't even out on DVD, sometimes it's the only way to get it short of a trip to your local cinema).
It takes an hour or two to download and a day or two to get in the mail. You don't consider that?
Just expanding on this a little bit:
It takes 12-16 hours (for me anyways) to download a DVDR movie (4.7 GB). It costs $0.25-0.50 USD for a disc to burn it to (assuming I don't mount it directly, watch it on my PC, and forego a disc altogether). If I go the burning route it's cheaper than NetFlix and faster, and that's for DVD quality. If I wanted the full DVD9 release, that'd probably take 24 hours to download, but that's still likely faster than NetFlix getting it into my mailbox.
Gimme a break. I don't see how you can say in one breath that these P2P laws are "stupid" while claiming that enforcement of said laws is "good". When is it ever good to enforce stupid laws?
If anything, people using these sites are engaging in the most peaceful form of resistance I can imagine-- nobody is getting physically harmed by someone downloading a movie or an MP3. Nobody is being threatened with a weapon. Nobody is being deprived of physical property.
I went to a theatre here in Spokane, WA, about 8 or 9 months ago. Here was my experience--
Got there early, auditorium was open, went and grabbed a seat. Auditorium was lit but slightly dim, advertising with full audio was playing on the screen.
One to two minutes after the movie was supposed to begin the lights dimmed to nearly total black. The first thing that came up was a good 10 minutes of advertising and/or public service announcements from the MPAA about the ills of movie piracy.
Following this was another 10-12 minutes of trailers (which I actually like, FWIW, especially if the trailers are either universally appealing or in a similar category to what I've come to see).
Finally the movie began, but not before a 1-2 minute theatre chain "intro" ran (which was horribly crappy quality, seemingly it'd been played a million times and never been replaced). It looked like something that may have been produced back in 1994 based on the quality of the 3D graphics. It consisted largely of a roller coaster ride perspective with product placements throughout (I recall distinctly seeing a Coca-Cola cup, as well as some candy). I believe I was in a Regal Cinema if that jogs anyones memory about what I was seeing.
Then the movie.
So let's see. Advertising while I was justing sitting there waiting for the movie. (Why not let the audience sit in silence so they can discuss things prior to the movie?) At the time the picture was to start I was blasted with advertising and PSA's for a good 10 minutes. After that we got to the trailers, also about 10 minutes.
So maybe not a half hour, but if you arrived early enough, I could see how you might feel like it'd been a half hour.
A few more observations while I'm at it:
I'm nearly 30 years old, and have gone to theatres off and on for the past 20 years. I recall at my earliest theatre experience, before the movie, they'd have a local ratio station playing music (the screen was fully covered by a curtain at this point which retracted once the movie was to begin). At the time the movie was to begin they'd show 2-3 trailers, then go directly to the movie.
Then I recall them adding the franchise logo/gimmick thingie (the roller-coaster ride I mentioned above). I think they also tacked on an extra trailer at around this time (bringing it to 3-4 trailers, not bad considering I enjoyed seeing previews for other movies I might be interested in; obviously not everyone enjoys this).
Then we got to a point where, in addition to a radio station playing prior to the movie, we also had the screen partially visible/opened with a slide show playing with visual advertising (which you could look away from and still talk to your companion during because the radio station volume was kept quite low). IIRC the number of trailers and the length of the theatre franchise advert remained about the same.
The next time I went they began including a Will Rogers PSA before the trailers asking me to buy a specific combo-pack of candy/sodas to help donate money to some institute to help kids or something. This seemed acceptable since it seemed charitable, and the ad was a short 30 seconds.
After this they started including (and I confess, it may have been awhile between theatre trips so it may have been more gradual) 2-3 minute commercials. Full blown productions. IIRC the one I saw was some Britney Spears Pepsi commercial. This was very annoying. I recall thinking to myself "I'm paying for this?", then going over in my head how ticket prices have gone up since I was a kid-- I recall being able to see a movie for $2, then $3.25, now a matinee costs $4-5 I believe.
Then they started adding the ads with the movie production crew people talking about how movie piracy makes it hard for them to make ends meet. I recall thinking it might have been better to just have Tom Cruise up on the screen discussing with us the harms movie piracy cause him-- such as his inability to buy a new yacht, or to
Intent will be really easy in case of sites like Suprnova that have entire sections named off for things like Movies, Comics, Music, Games, etcetera. The sub-grouping of categories, show titles and other such breakdowns within those areas I listed above will be the most presentable evidence used to show "Hey, these people knew they were distributing copies of X TV show or music by this specific artist - they have a section with X's name on it.".
Right, because only the MPAA releases "movies(TM)" and only the RIAA releases "music(TM)"... nobody else could possibly release movies or music and want to spread them as far and wide as possible to gain the most audience potential.
Seemed to me the promise was that cable (since you paid for it, vs. getting local/network channels over the air for free) would be advertising free.
And honestly, there's no reason it can't be. Shit, you pay $40-50 a month, minimum, in the US for cable television ($12-15 if you go with their "bare minimum" which is nothing more than local channels and a few informational/government channels). They can make ends meet with just that income (especially considering cable television is so pervasive now in the US). But pure greed has compelled the cable channels to go above and beyond that and look for advertising. And not just smallish amounts of advertising but literally the same amount of advertising as the regular over-the-air network channels.
I've pretty much written off television though. The only reason I have cable at all is because if I don't have the basic-basic cable setup (the $12-15 a month setup) the cost of my broadband internet goes up by $10 a month. The basic cable pretty much pays for itself at that point.
Anyways.. yeah, advertising-free cable, it could be a reality if not for greed.
Simply for it's increased storage. 25 GB (Blu-Ray) vs. 15 GB (HD-DVD). The disparity is far too great, and people buy DVD's by the truck load simply for the larger storage space.
I agree-- while I'm no big fan of Sony usurping the next-gen format from the DVD Forum, I'm also disappointed that the DVD Forum has endorsed a format that's simply too small for what it's intended for. In order to have space for high bitrate (and high resolution) MPEG2 as well as support for the various audio formats I think you'd need Blu-Ray.
HD-DVD might win out for players. But I'm betting Blu-Ray dominates the personal computer market.
Actually I'd be surprised if Blu-Ray didn't win out in both the home user group and the PC market. The only way HD-DVD could win the consumer market would be if it a) had more support and/or b) was cheaper (for both the set-top player and the actual discs). As long as they drive down prices like they did with DVD movies, I don't think cost will remain an issue for long.
I was talking about Delphi. I know that you can buy the individual Microsoft products on the cheap and that was my point-- with that $109 copy of VC# you listed you can do commercial development. With the $99 edition of Delphi you can't do commercial development. Not even donationware.
Borland is the wrong answer altogether if you're a hobbyist.
In all seriousness though, I imagine it will be the porn industry that pioneers this. You can talk all day about it being a scientific aid for engineers or doctors, but the possibilities of holo-porn will probably be one of the initial driving forces.
Scientists may use any technology they develop to demonstrate it's normal day to day applications, but getting it cheap for the masses will be the porn industries doing.
Never underestimate the millions of horny men around the world.
No kidding. Just as other advertisers were moving to large and intrusive Flash advertising (often with audio, meaning you'd visit a page only to forget you had your speakers turned up from listening to music and get blasted out of your chair), Google went the exact opposite direction with relevant search-based advertising (AdSense). Instead of seeing an ad for the latest feminine hygiene products while viewing technology articles you actually got advertising for technology, and often times for the very technology you were reading about.
I imagine the fight against fraudulent clicks will be a downhill battle, but hopefully they find a way. The alternative to Google AdSense is much much worse.
No kidding. Far too often I'm trying to find a review (and not a "review" like off of Amazon.com) for a product so I'll search by model number.
Whee! Tons and TONS of online shops crop up in the first fifty pages of results.
Sometimes I'll try adding "-shipping", "-cart" or "-order" to try and curb the online shop results but it's usually futile.
A way to filter out all online shops would be invaluable even if it was a bit difficult for Google to discern what was an online shop and what wasn't. (Obviously a lot of reviews sites tend to link to online shops like Amazon.com to try and get the associate bonus, etc. That could foul up any automated attempt to filter online shops from results.)
$399 is the upgrade price. $999 is the entry level for anything that you want to deploy. $99 gets you the tricycle edition with so many limitations that it'd pass for a demo from any other company.
Not worth the time. I've seen sources cited on Slashdot (which I have checked) repeatedly in past discussions such as this. You're welcome to believe Bush would have won, but unfortunately a full recount would have shown you to be wrong.
Happy trolling.
Re:The HEADLINE said Bush won ...
on
Buggy Voting Machines
·
· Score: 2, Informative
This has been disproven repeatedly. Under every possible scenario, if a recount had been conducted, Gore would have won the election.
Why do you people continue to insist the exact opposite? Do you enjoy living in a lie?
Slashdot Mirror
In a copyright free world you honestly believe DRM would stand a snowballs chance in hell of being accepted or even working?
Then explain time shifting to me then and how that reconciles with what you've just said. If I videotape (or DVR or in other way capture) an over the air network TV show while my wife is at work, then show it to her when she gets home, am I not breaking the law by your strict interpretation?
The SCOTUS didn't seem to think so.
Yes it is too much, to be honest. A full album can be had for around $12, most albums (that I've ever bought anyways) usually had around 8-10 tracks on them. Considering you're getting it in a lossy and often DRM'd format, I expect it to be cheaper than buying the CD. Simply being able to pick and choose tracks isn't enough, especially considering the DRM ties it to your PC and you the company offering it only pays for the bandwidth used to send it to you (which is arguably offset by the money you paid for bandwidth to download it from them).
If the formats were lossless and weren't DRM'd I think you'd see a different situation. Sure there'd still be the urge to share them via P2P, but had the record companies done this from the beginning, before Napster, the urge to run off to a P2P network wouldn't exist.
Now they have to overcome years of users being used to trading files over P2P networks, a situation they put themselves in by not innovating and desperately clinging to a broken business model.
Because the phone company is like the water company or the electric company. Sure they're also corrupt on occasion, but not nearly as much as the record companies or movie companies.
Have the courts actually touched the issue of downloading over the air broadcast television shows? I mean the SCOTUS seemed to indicate with the BetaMax case that time-shifting was okay-- would it really be at all different if it was someone else doing the time-shifting for you? You still could have taped it yourself or had your significant other do it for you, so where's the part that makes it illegal and punishable with fines and fees?
Movies, sure, there's not many ways to get those free. But music (FM radio) and television (rabbit ears)? Seems kind of shakey to me.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
You have bandwidth limited DSL then. Get a better ISP.
Agreed on the older movies, but if you're talking unreleased or recent releases then it's significantly faster just to get it online (and if the movie isn't even out on DVD, sometimes it's the only way to get it short of a trip to your local cinema).
Just expanding on this a little bit: It takes 12-16 hours (for me anyways) to download a DVDR movie (4.7 GB). It costs $0.25-0.50 USD for a disc to burn it to (assuming I don't mount it directly, watch it on my PC, and forego a disc altogether). If I go the burning route it's cheaper than NetFlix and faster, and that's for DVD quality. If I wanted the full DVD9 release, that'd probably take 24 hours to download, but that's still likely faster than NetFlix getting it into my mailbox.
Gimme a break. I don't see how you can say in one breath that these P2P laws are "stupid" while claiming that enforcement of said laws is "good". When is it ever good to enforce stupid laws?
If anything, people using these sites are engaging in the most peaceful form of resistance I can imagine-- nobody is getting physically harmed by someone downloading a movie or an MP3. Nobody is being threatened with a weapon. Nobody is being deprived of physical property.
Ghandi would be proud.
Try hours. I can pull down a DVDR on this shitty DSL connection of mine in 12-16 hours via BitTorrent.
..."shock and awe"?
I went to a theatre here in Spokane, WA, about 8 or 9 months ago. Here was my experience--
Got there early, auditorium was open, went and grabbed a seat. Auditorium was lit but slightly dim, advertising with full audio was playing on the screen.
One to two minutes after the movie was supposed to begin the lights dimmed to nearly total black. The first thing that came up was a good 10 minutes of advertising and/or public service announcements from the MPAA about the ills of movie piracy.
Following this was another 10-12 minutes of trailers (which I actually like, FWIW, especially if the trailers are either universally appealing or in a similar category to what I've come to see).
Finally the movie began, but not before a 1-2 minute theatre chain "intro" ran (which was horribly crappy quality, seemingly it'd been played a million times and never been replaced). It looked like something that may have been produced back in 1994 based on the quality of the 3D graphics. It consisted largely of a roller coaster ride perspective with product placements throughout (I recall distinctly seeing a Coca-Cola cup, as well as some candy). I believe I was in a Regal Cinema if that jogs anyones memory about what I was seeing.
Then the movie.
So let's see. Advertising while I was justing sitting there waiting for the movie. (Why not let the audience sit in silence so they can discuss things prior to the movie?) At the time the picture was to start I was blasted with advertising and PSA's for a good 10 minutes. After that we got to the trailers, also about 10 minutes.
So maybe not a half hour, but if you arrived early enough, I could see how you might feel like it'd been a half hour.
A few more observations while I'm at it:
I'm nearly 30 years old, and have gone to theatres off and on for the past 20 years. I recall at my earliest theatre experience, before the movie, they'd have a local ratio station playing music (the screen was fully covered by a curtain at this point which retracted once the movie was to begin). At the time the movie was to begin they'd show 2-3 trailers, then go directly to the movie.
Then I recall them adding the franchise logo/gimmick thingie (the roller-coaster ride I mentioned above). I think they also tacked on an extra trailer at around this time (bringing it to 3-4 trailers, not bad considering I enjoyed seeing previews for other movies I might be interested in; obviously not everyone enjoys this).
Then we got to a point where, in addition to a radio station playing prior to the movie, we also had the screen partially visible/opened with a slide show playing with visual advertising (which you could look away from and still talk to your companion during because the radio station volume was kept quite low). IIRC the number of trailers and the length of the theatre franchise advert remained about the same.
The next time I went they began including a Will Rogers PSA before the trailers asking me to buy a specific combo-pack of candy/sodas to help donate money to some institute to help kids or something. This seemed acceptable since it seemed charitable, and the ad was a short 30 seconds.
After this they started including (and I confess, it may have been awhile between theatre trips so it may have been more gradual) 2-3 minute commercials. Full blown productions. IIRC the one I saw was some Britney Spears Pepsi commercial. This was very annoying. I recall thinking to myself "I'm paying for this?", then going over in my head how ticket prices have gone up since I was a kid-- I recall being able to see a movie for $2, then $3.25, now a matinee costs $4-5 I believe.
Then they started adding the ads with the movie production crew people talking about how movie piracy makes it hard for them to make ends meet. I recall thinking it might have been better to just have Tom Cruise up on the screen discussing with us the harms movie piracy cause him-- such as his inability to buy a new yacht, or to
Right, because only the MPAA releases "movies(TM)" and only the RIAA releases "music(TM)"... nobody else could possibly release movies or music and want to spread them as far and wide as possible to gain the most audience potential.
Right?
Seemed to me the promise was that cable (since you paid for it, vs. getting local/network channels over the air for free) would be advertising free.
And honestly, there's no reason it can't be. Shit, you pay $40-50 a month, minimum, in the US for cable television ($12-15 if you go with their "bare minimum" which is nothing more than local channels and a few informational/government channels). They can make ends meet with just that income (especially considering cable television is so pervasive now in the US). But pure greed has compelled the cable channels to go above and beyond that and look for advertising. And not just smallish amounts of advertising but literally the same amount of advertising as the regular over-the-air network channels.
I've pretty much written off television though. The only reason I have cable at all is because if I don't have the basic-basic cable setup (the $12-15 a month setup) the cost of my broadband internet goes up by $10 a month. The basic cable pretty much pays for itself at that point.
Anyways.. yeah, advertising-free cable, it could be a reality if not for greed.
I agree-- while I'm no big fan of Sony usurping the next-gen format from the DVD Forum, I'm also disappointed that the DVD Forum has endorsed a format that's simply too small for what it's intended for. In order to have space for high bitrate (and high resolution) MPEG2 as well as support for the various audio formats I think you'd need Blu-Ray.
Actually I'd be surprised if Blu-Ray didn't win out in both the home user group and the PC market. The only way HD-DVD could win the consumer market would be if it a) had more support and/or b) was cheaper (for both the set-top player and the actual discs). As long as they drive down prices like they did with DVD movies, I don't think cost will remain an issue for long.
I was talking about Delphi. I know that you can buy the individual Microsoft products on the cheap and that was my point-- with that $109 copy of VC# you listed you can do commercial development. With the $99 edition of Delphi you can't do commercial development. Not even donationware.
Borland is the wrong answer altogether if you're a hobbyist.
In all seriousness though, I imagine it will be the porn industry that pioneers this. You can talk all day about it being a scientific aid for engineers or doctors, but the possibilities of holo-porn will probably be one of the initial driving forces.
Scientists may use any technology they develop to demonstrate it's normal day to day applications, but getting it cheap for the masses will be the porn industries doing.
Never underestimate the millions of horny men around the world.
Heh, don't apologize. I had that one downhillbattle.org on the mind.
1,000 years huh? I doubt we'd ever see Duke Nukem Forever even if we lived that long.
No kidding. Just as other advertisers were moving to large and intrusive Flash advertising (often with audio, meaning you'd visit a page only to forget you had your speakers turned up from listening to music and get blasted out of your chair), Google went the exact opposite direction with relevant search-based advertising (AdSense). Instead of seeing an ad for the latest feminine hygiene products while viewing technology articles you actually got advertising for technology, and often times for the very technology you were reading about.
I imagine the fight against fraudulent clicks will be a downhill battle, but hopefully they find a way. The alternative to Google AdSense is much much worse.
No kidding. Far too often I'm trying to find a review (and not a "review" like off of Amazon.com) for a product so I'll search by model number.
Whee! Tons and TONS of online shops crop up in the first fifty pages of results.
Sometimes I'll try adding "-shipping", "-cart" or "-order" to try and curb the online shop results but it's usually futile.
A way to filter out all online shops would be invaluable even if it was a bit difficult for Google to discern what was an online shop and what wasn't. (Obviously a lot of reviews sites tend to link to online shops like Amazon.com to try and get the associate bonus, etc. That could foul up any automated attempt to filter online shops from results.)
$399 is the upgrade price. $999 is the entry level for anything that you want to deploy. $99 gets you the tricycle edition with so many limitations that it'd pass for a demo from any other company.
Not worth the time. I've seen sources cited on Slashdot (which I have checked) repeatedly in past discussions such as this. You're welcome to believe Bush would have won, but unfortunately a full recount would have shown you to be wrong.
Happy trolling.
This has been disproven repeatedly. Under every possible scenario, if a recount had been conducted, Gore would have won the election.
Why do you people continue to insist the exact opposite? Do you enjoy living in a lie?
So I should leave my compass at home?