If we worked it by popular vote, only fewer than 10 states would be needed to win the election. That is not very representative either.
The electoral college assures that each candidate will visit every state, not just the ones needed to win. If we did it by popular vote, a Democrat would win nearly every time because CA, NY, and a couple of other states have the most population.
Fair would actually be like the Senate. Each state gets (1) electoral vote. Those votes can be determined by however the state wishes to give them.
Yes...paper works much better. With electronic systems one could use dead people's names, make up people, use children's names, or worse show up and vote for someone else. You could enter a whole bunch of fake votes that way.
Paper allows you to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone voted properly and for whom they voted. *
As is being said over and over, a system can and should be put in place and get rid of the current one. To me, nothing could more absolute than an electronic count. Don't forget the same people counting your paper votes cannot balance their checkbooks, yet they are going to be required to run their finger over a bump and determine who you intended to vote for.
Your footnotes exposed your bias. To you this is a political issue, not one of technology. Marking this one insightful was just plain wrong.
* I have no agenda in this one. I hate all parties equally, but make no mistake...anyone who says paper is better than the electron obviously has no idea of how fraud is used time and time again in the ballot system. Ask Edgar Allen Poe.
Re:Good, Original SF Recommendations
on
Farscape is Back
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· Score: 1
You really need to be watching this season then. The Trek boards I lurk on were all mainly in agreement that season1 and 2 sucked, but almost no one says that anymore. Even the most die hard critics grudgingly agree it is better and in some cases as good as Trek gets. You should give this season another chance.
I work for a Tier 1 company that does Enterprise Hosting. We use the burstable method and the 95th percentile. You commit to say 1 mbps. As long as you stay under that you know your costs. You can burst 5% of the time the link is up for a month and not pay anything extra. That equates to something like 20+ hours you could burst, which is good for those who take a/. hit.
I also know that we mark it up so much that I think it is ludicrous, but we can because we can.
As I see no links for your post I will discount it.
I have looked. Kylix is the only real competitor for Linux. Freepascal is not ready yet. XBasic is not.
There are compilers certainly, but VB is about RAD and a good IDE with an easy to understand syntax. Nothing is more pointless than saying "VB? Then you aren't ready for Linux."
It's an obvious troll. Don't sweat a troll; they smell bad enough as it is. Turns out that most people will do the worst things when they know they wont get caught. That's why they are AC.
I work for a major Hosting company and we have to deal with this sort of stuff all the way around. Our NOC engineers get access to the machine too. Technically this would also violate HIPAA standards. Still, HIPAA requires that the records be secure. ANYONE can read the data, if only by sitting at the main terminal. Technically the EULA does violate HIPAA, but so does giving the password to your firewall to ANYONE.
In the end the only way to be truly compliant is to disconnect the machine from all networks, wrap it in chains, and bury it under concrete.
I am totally serious when I say this, but what ever happened to being responsible for your own actions and your own protection? I'm not talking about protecting yourself against crime (the violent ones anyway) but the plain old simple protection that is the result of common sense. That word is an oxymoron but must still be heeded.
For example:
1. Get Caller ID and some sort of answering machine/voicemail.
You know, if I don't recognize the number I don't answer it. If it is important, they will leave a message. If it isn't then you can forget about it. I mean, if someone was in an accident then I'd expect the caller to leave a message, don't you? Besides, you might be in the shower and unable to answer the phone. How is that any different than simply refusing the answer the phone when you don't recognize the number?
I can tell a telemarketer a mile away with Caller ID. Their number rarely displays since they are trying to hide. I don't know about you but most of the people I know who might work at a place that shields their number at least have a cell phone, which does show its number.
Suffice it to say I do not answer the phone but once or twice a night anymore. The rest are JUNK!
2. Go ahead and give your mailing address and phone number.
See number one. And when they snail mail you, it will be obvious. I mean, take a good look at your postal mail and you will know what is legit and what is not. Recycle if it makes you less angry about the paper being wasted. I am amazed at how much money has been spent trying to get me to sign up for more credit cards.
3. Hit delete in your email program.
I do not hate spam. I laugh at spam. I am curious about spam and how it works and I do think it is a problem, but I do not evangelize about it. It is so darn easy to handle. DELETE! Oopps...I accidentally hit delete on that one. DELETE DELETE...doggone it. I did it again. I don't know what happened Mr./Mrs. Spammer.
I also recognize the cost of SPAM, but until we reform the SMTP method of delivering email and ISP's filter out rogue SMTP servers, we will be stuck with the problem. The issue here is that it still costs too much to weed them out and no one has time for the chore.
So I know this is a trollish post and sets me up as elitist, but my method works for me. My family swears I screen their calls, but I almost never do unless I am simply unable to answer the phone. Just because I may be at home when they call and I don't answer doesn't mean anything. Unable to answer the phone is being unable to answer the phone.
4. But my privacy has ben violated!
Not it hasn't. You gave them all that information the first go round anyway. And besides, who ever said you anonymity was a right? If you circulate among the living then someone is going to notice you eventually. Your home sale is public, your credit report is pretty much public, and if you use anything other than cold hard cash then you are being tracked. Honestly, if knowing how much I like Booberry makes them happy then great! Maybe they'll put it on sale.
All I am saying is that all you have to do is put forth just a smidgen of effort. All of this privacy invasion everyone screams about is rarely anything of the sort. The earlier message from 5/13 here on Slashdot concerning Flash 6 is much more disturbing and invasive than simply using information I gave for a FREE service. Give bogus information if it makes you feel better. Just do something, don't assume that getting upset is all you need to do. A little effort goes a long way really and if that is not good enough then become politically active (not protest, get into politics) and help change it.
Thank you for a spot of sanity. Big company builds infrasturcture and must lease itout at a set rate to his competitors, who spent NOTHING in the building of the network. So I can come along and for little or no money charge the same or less than the baby bell and they end up losing money. Why not simply not build it at all, save the infrastructure cost, and keep making money on T-1 lines?
Liberal govermental policies benefit the cheap at the expense of those who worked hard to get where they are.
Come on people. Amusingly enough it seems that there will always be a few liberals willing to take an opportunity to say "hey look...it ain't liberals doing this sort of thing. It's usually conservatives."
I don't know what the current costs of bandwidth are for RedHat
I know how much they are paying because I work for the company that hosts their FTP servers. Trust me...they sit upon dual OC-48 feeds, right on the backbone which means low latency. I don't know what kind of bandwidth they commit to each month but I do know our company loves them. But that kind of access costs. You folks should appreciate the free downloads and help when you can. I have always bought my Red Hat CD.
And then we all die, no more additional CO2, and the Earth begins to reclaim.
The issue here is not that the Earth will continue to get hotter, but that humans will find it inhospitable. While certainly undesirable, it is not the end. Only of us. Ask a dinosaur what it was like to have his atmosphere altered.
All of you need to shut up and go invest in alternative fuels. If we all did that there would be a market. Lowering emissions is not the way. Like losing weight, a crash diet will not work. You have to change your lifestyle. Time to find another way to power things. Just as this country will never outlaw tobacco (which they should not) they will never outlaw fossil fuels. Don't expect the big companies to roll over. Start the revolution now, or go back to your gas guzzlers and be quiet.
I wish to God people would stop idolizing Kevin Smith. His movies are interesting, but not remarkable. He should stick to writing essays and op-ed pieces instead of masquerading his mental debates as dramatic or comedic dialogue. I guess everyone has a need to feel that what they are watching is deep and important and while his movies are deep, they are certainly not important. Give us some classic character development and plot solidity.
You are not paying for bandwidth AND the cd you bought.
Fallacy 1
If it weren't for Napster I would not be paying for bandwidth.
Of course you would. How do yu download all your porn? You pay for gas to go to the store and buy stuff, go to the movies, or pick up your date. Should all the retailers give you a discount because you had to pay to get there? It is a fact of life that you pay for the highway whether you use it or not. If you only use your bw for Napster then yes, go to the store and just buy the CD. Ooopss...I just used gas. Get over the fact that you bought the bw for email, surfing, napster, IRC, AIM, telnet, DDoS, etc. You buy electricity too.
Fallacy 2
To share CD's I already bought.
Come on people. Stop this lie. You do not go on Napster to download a song you already have. It would be faster and more reliable to rip it yourself. You download stuff you don't have. Few people borrow a paperback from the library, read it, and go buy the thing if they like it. What they are actually doing is sharing their own bought files because...well they want to share them so others do not have to pay for them. I am not paying to share my files. I am paying to download other people's files. If I don't share them then I am not paying to stream them. But, if everyone does this then there will be no files on Napster! What am I paying for? The search engine. Solution? Napster needs to host some songs themselves.
You see, if we are paying we don't want to share. If we are stealing we want to help others do the same. In the end everyone is whining about a cool service that let them get free music going away. The truth is in the juvenille statement "see you on gnutella." Just buy a goddamn CD once in a while. The real proof will be when MP3.com offers mp3's online for purchase and download. If their service does nto take off then the music industry will have been right. We don't really want to pay for it.
Good...some relevant points were made. In the end it will depend on how they implement the "proof of purchase" method. It will most likely end up being something like keeping an online db. Or, they will have to grandfather all older music but begin doing it with newer stuff.
I believe in the honor system, folks. I do not believe they will be able to pull it off, but I don't see anything wrong with them trying because I know that they can't enforce it. I just hate the music thiefs acting like it is their right to share music. The Home Use thing was for sharing to entice purchase. We all know that most people used Napster and Gnutella to pirate, not to try it out. The way you can tell if they are leeches is to ask them "will you pay for access to Napster?" and they all say "hell no. I'll switch to someplace where I don't have to pay."
I was paying $49.95 when they lowered it to $39.95. I convinced them to lower it and have been paying the lower cost. I will wait and see if they raise it for this next month. I only have about 10 more days to wait.
Again I disagree. Lawyers will do no good if one can establish previous use. See the eToys saga.
Advertising has everything to do with maintaining IP. Advertising shows possession for the IP holder, in addition to all the other stuff they have to do. The point of the post was to discuss the reasoning behind why Coke is trademarked and not copyrighted. If they copyrighted the ingredients in Coke they would have to disclose them. Disclosing them is revealing their IP. Coke will not sue someone for making something that tastes like Coke, only something that IS Coke.
Did you know that Coke has their own police force? They send out people to eat in restaurants who order a Coke. If they are brought Pepsi without being told it is a Pepsi, they report the establishment. The idea here is that the IP for Coke is being diluted and while the customer may know instinctively they are drinking Pepsi, they may still have the word Coke in their head.
Trust me...we had Coke people and lawyers in the room teaching us this. all I was doing was drawing attention to this fact.
If you want to see an intrusive ad, go to space.com and see the Intel ad. Now THAT is intrusive and Intel is just like Coke in this respect.
The only problem with this argument is that it doesn't explain reverse engineering. If I wrote the same story as Gibson but changed all the names and words, I would be considered at best a hack. At worst I would be a plagiarist. IP would deny me the right to write about jacking in to a neural network if Gibson had established IP rights to it. If I totally reverse-engineer the Intel chip, and don't pay royalties, I get sued. It's the concept, as in the genome project, that people are suing for. Thank God Einstein did not assert IP over his equations.
In the end it takes considerable effort to transfer from a Tivo on to another device and the average Tivo user (read home user) will not be doing this. Dvorak is like Jessie Berst. He writes about whatever will generate a column and move on. When he changes his mind he will claim he never had a contrary opinion.
To wrap up yourpoint, companies like Coke advertise not to get more revenue, but to protect their trademark. They have to advertise or else they lose the right to use this trademark.
Ever wonder why Coke's little name says TM and not copyrighted? A copyright runs out, but a trademark is forever as long as you show you are actively promoting it. Sneaky little way, really. If the Beatles wanted to keep all the copyrights to their songs and keep Michael Jackson from owning some of them, they should have marketed themselves better and not filled out all that paperwork.
Don't you just love all the education some corporations will give you just to make sure you don't give away any of that IP or harm the trademark? I hated the classes, but somethings were kind of cool.
1. Music costs money to make.
2. Artists get paid to play music.
3. Record companies get paid to distribute music.
4. You pay for CD that artists make.
ooppss...silly me. Why pay for music when you can download it for free?
Now for the facts:
1. Stealing is illegal.
2. If you take the CD from the store it is stealing.
3. If you take the CD from your neighbors house without them knowing, it is stealing.
4. If your neighbor lends you his CD and you give it back without making an exact copy that never wears out, it is NOT stealing.
So, now that we all agree on the rules here, how is giving out the music on Napster not illegal? Hmmm? Why I suppose it is. To "jump ship" because Napster asks you to pay for what you would have paid in the store for is saying "I don't want to pay for it. I want it free."
Well, the rules don't allow for it. You are stealing. End of game.
At least admit you are stealing and don't cover it with any namby pamby socialist "everyone deserves music for free" crap. If I install a piece of software on my PC that I did not buy and I get in trouble for it I am not going to say "But they make enough money as it is!" You are a thief now shut up. Everything else is just whining.
The whole problem with the Napster argument is that people actually try and defend the stealing of the music. At least admit what you are doing and don't try to legitimize it.
I am certainly not going to spend 8 hours a day doing what I do for free. If you ask these artists to do the same, but are not willing to pay for what you get, then you don't deserve to be called anything more than a whiny freeloader. Get up off your ass, start a digital distribution center where all you need money for is to cover the cost of distributing the music and that way you can spend all your profits on paying the artist. Oh yeah, you don't believe in paying. Silly me. I hope some day your career becomes something that people demand you not get paid for.
When I was a teacher people said "you didn't become one to become rich. You should be dedicated." That didn't put gas in my car and food on my table. I need money to live. To ask these people not to get paid is no different. I can't wait for the day when you demand that the Internet be free, or that computers cost $50, or that all software be free. Get a grip...getting paid for what you do is how things work!
Now admit it, you have no other answer than to say "screw you." Anything else you say will consist of:
- They already make too much money.
- I don't wanna pay!!!
- Why should I pay Napster when I am essentially paying to offer my files? Where is my money? (This one makes me laugh because it violates your own argument against having to pay for something you can get for free. I thought trying to make money was wrong?)
- I don't want to line the pockets of the company!
Give me one good reason why you DESERVE this service for free that does not include anything about how much money someone else is making. And don't bring up the fair use crap...you are downloading the songs without any intention of paying for the CD nearly 9 times out of 10. How is that fair use? Fair use is fine as long as someone gets paid eventually. A DJ buys the CD so the artist gets paid, even though hundreds may hear the song each night. The radio station has to pay. Everyone else pays except you!
I say make the song free but make you listen to an ad at the beginning. Nah, the you will whine about having to listen to the ad. Go out and work for free and tell me how it feels.
When I taught I had a student tell me he stood in line for the free cheese being given to poor families. I taught very rich kids. I said "that was meant for those who can't afford to eat." He said, "But it was free." I said, "But you don't need it and others do." And he said "But it was free. Why should I pay for it if it is free?" And I said "If you had $1000 in your pocket and someone was giving out $5 dollars to anyone who said they needed money for food, would you ask for the $5 because it was free?" And he said "Heck yeah! They are giving it away, aren't they?"
It was then and there that I decided that America was morally corrupt in many areas.
Forget it...the best I can do is to raise a child who knows better and wont lie. Me? I use Napster, I know why I use it, and I will pay for the service. I wont hide behind some ideal because I am too much of a coward to admit that I just don't wanna pay for what others make? When are you going to learn that everything costs somebody something to produce. All the free services out there will eventually go away when they cannot support themselves. Hell, even Slashdot has to make money to stay alive. How long will Andover/VA Linux be able to keep the money flowing? When they cannot and they sell this site to someone else, what then? WIll all of you pay CmdrTaco and Roblimo to keep Slash alive for you? Would Slash have survived if they had not been bought? No...we all are expected to show some value eventually. When VA Linux cannot say "These web sites strengthen our business" they will sell. You and your kind will just jump to the next free thing. And you will be the next in line to eat the cheese.
Sorry, but I have to disagree with you too. The whole point in joining a Union is to keep you from having to worry about your job. That is good, but as others have said, it also prevents the firing of otherwise worthless employees. It is as bad a tenure for teachers. And before anyone gets their panties ina wad, I was a teacher and I hated tenure. Veteran teachers who had given up long ago on teaching got to keep their jobs. You want to know why some kids can't learn? Sometimes it is as much the teacher's fault as the parents and students.
But, having been management everywhere I go I have had to deal with it beinghard enough to fire a worker who would not work. If it wasn't thefear of it being termed racial, or gender, or sexual preference, or ethinic preference, then it would be because I just didn't like them. Heaven forbid it be that they didn't work!
Now I am the kind of person that doesn't care if I like you or not. If you do a good job I can live with not liking you. But I do insist that you have the same work ethic as I do. Unions allow people with no work ethic to continue working, remaining a parasite on those that carry the group along.
But what about the union worker? If I had been inthe Union when I started in this field I would never have been able to leap from a lowly tech support phone guy to Supervisor and beyond had I been in the Union. Tell that to my wife and my upcoming child that I couldn't make better money because the Union didn't allow me to leap frog based on my abilities.
Absolutely...when I was in tech support it cost our company something on the order of $7 just for saying "Thank you for calling MCI Internet tech support..." This was when you calculate everything in like the phone lines, your salary, the computers, the electricity, the printing of the advertisements etc. If you call I can guarantee you that something will get done. Nothing is more effective than filling up a phone queue for a week or two. Just be kind to the people who answer the phone.
If there were a better place to do auctions than EBay, why aren't you already there?
I wish everyone were so principled about things in their everyday life like they are when it comes to SPAM. The same people cancelling EBay are the same ones who fire up Napster and say "When they start charging for it I will just go to something else." You are right to be upset, but do you want to change it or do you just want to have a hissy fit?
Please note that I am not directing this to the above poster, but to folks in general in this whole thread.
Slashdot Mirror
If we worked it by popular vote, only fewer than 10 states would be needed to win the election. That is not very representative either.
The electoral college assures that each candidate will visit every state, not just the ones needed to win. If we did it by popular vote, a Democrat would win nearly every time because CA, NY, and a couple of other states have the most population.
Fair would actually be like the Senate. Each state gets (1) electoral vote. Those votes can be determined by however the state wishes to give them.
I am not trolling here, but I am curious about how they are extorting. I simply pay for the service they provide.`Are you saying they charge too much?
Yes...paper works much better. With electronic systems one could use dead people's names, make up people, use children's names, or worse show up and vote for someone else. You could enter a whole bunch of fake votes that way.
Paper allows you to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone voted properly and for whom they voted. *
As is being said over and over, a system can and should be put in place and get rid of the current one. To me, nothing could more absolute than an electronic count. Don't forget the same people counting your paper votes cannot balance their checkbooks, yet they are going to be required to run their finger over a bump and determine who you intended to vote for.
Your footnotes exposed your bias. To you this is a political issue, not one of technology. Marking this one insightful was just plain wrong.
* I have no agenda in this one. I hate all parties equally, but make no mistake...anyone who says paper is better than the electron obviously has no idea of how fraud is used time and time again in the ballot system. Ask Edgar Allen Poe.
They have.
I hope they don't screw it up.
You really need to be watching this season then. The Trek boards I lurk on were all mainly in agreement that season1 and 2 sucked, but almost no one says that anymore. Even the most die hard critics grudgingly agree it is better and in some cases as good as Trek gets. You should give this season another chance.
I work for a Tier 1 company that does Enterprise Hosting. We use the burstable method and the 95th percentile. You commit to say 1 mbps. As long as you stay under that you know your costs. You can burst 5% of the time the link is up for a month and not pay anything extra. That equates to something like 20+ hours you could burst, which is good for those who take a /. hit.
I also know that we mark it up so much that I think it is ludicrous, but we can because we can.
As I see no links for your post I will discount it.
I have looked. Kylix is the only real competitor for Linux. Freepascal is not ready yet. XBasic is not.
There are compilers certainly, but VB is about RAD and a good IDE with an easy to understand syntax. Nothing is more pointless than saying "VB? Then you aren't ready for Linux."
Sadly you are right. I almost NEVER used the 128 mode on that machine. GO64!
It's an obvious troll. Don't sweat a troll; they smell bad enough as it is. Turns out that most people will do the worst things when they know they wont get caught. That's why they are AC.
I work for a major Hosting company and we have to deal with this sort of stuff all the way around. Our NOC engineers get access to the machine too. Technically this would also violate HIPAA standards. Still, HIPAA requires that the records be secure. ANYONE can read the data, if only by sitting at the main terminal. Technically the EULA does violate HIPAA, but so does giving the password to your firewall to ANYONE.
In the end the only way to be truly compliant is to disconnect the machine from all networks, wrap it in chains, and bury it under concrete.
I am totally serious when I say this, but what ever happened to being responsible for your own actions and your own protection? I'm not talking about protecting yourself against crime (the violent ones anyway) but the plain old simple protection that is the result of common sense. That word is an oxymoron but must still be heeded.
For example:
1. Get Caller ID and some sort of answering machine/voicemail.
You know, if I don't recognize the number I don't answer it. If it is important, they will leave a message. If it isn't then you can forget about it. I mean, if someone was in an accident then I'd expect the caller to leave a message, don't you? Besides, you might be in the shower and unable to answer the phone. How is that any different than simply refusing the answer the phone when you don't recognize the number?
I can tell a telemarketer a mile away with Caller ID. Their number rarely displays since they are trying to hide. I don't know about you but most of the people I know who might work at a place that shields their number at least have a cell phone, which does show its number.
Suffice it to say I do not answer the phone but once or twice a night anymore. The rest are JUNK!
2. Go ahead and give your mailing address and phone number.
See number one. And when they snail mail you, it will be obvious. I mean, take a good look at your postal mail and you will know what is legit and what is not. Recycle if it makes you less angry about the paper being wasted. I am amazed at how much money has been spent trying to get me to sign up for more credit cards.
3. Hit delete in your email program.
I do not hate spam. I laugh at spam. I am curious about spam and how it works and I do think it is a problem, but I do not evangelize about it. It is so darn easy to handle. DELETE! Oopps...I accidentally hit delete on that one. DELETE DELETE...doggone it. I did it again. I don't know what happened Mr./Mrs. Spammer.
I also recognize the cost of SPAM, but until we reform the SMTP method of delivering email and ISP's filter out rogue SMTP servers, we will be stuck with the problem. The issue here is that it still costs too much to weed them out and no one has time for the chore.
So I know this is a trollish post and sets me up as elitist, but my method works for me. My family swears I screen their calls, but I almost never do unless I am simply unable to answer the phone. Just because I may be at home when they call and I don't answer doesn't mean anything. Unable to answer the phone is being unable to answer the phone.
4. But my privacy has ben violated!
Not it hasn't. You gave them all that information the first go round anyway. And besides, who ever said you anonymity was a right? If you circulate among the living then someone is going to notice you eventually. Your home sale is public, your credit report is pretty much public, and if you use anything other than cold hard cash then you are being tracked. Honestly, if knowing how much I like Booberry makes them happy then great! Maybe they'll put it on sale.
All I am saying is that all you have to do is put forth just a smidgen of effort. All of this privacy invasion everyone screams about is rarely anything of the sort. The earlier message from 5/13 here on Slashdot concerning Flash 6 is much more disturbing and invasive than simply using information I gave for a FREE service. Give bogus information if it makes you feel better. Just do something, don't assume that getting upset is all you need to do. A little effort goes a long way really and if that is not good enough then become politically active (not protest, get into politics) and help change it.
Thank you for a spot of sanity. Big company builds infrasturcture and must lease itout at a set rate to his competitors, who spent NOTHING in the building of the network. So I can come along and for little or no money charge the same or less than the baby bell and they end up losing money. Why not simply not build it at all, save the infrastructure cost, and keep making money on T-1 lines?
Liberal govermental policies benefit the cheap at the expense of those who worked hard to get where they are.
Come on people. Amusingly enough it seems that there will always be a few liberals willing to take an opportunity to say "hey look...it ain't liberals doing this sort of thing. It's usually conservatives."
How soon we forget.
Halo too bright for wearer.
I don't know what the current costs of bandwidth are for RedHat
I know how much they are paying because I work for the company that hosts their FTP servers. Trust me...they sit upon dual OC-48 feeds, right on the backbone which means low latency. I don't know what kind of bandwidth they commit to each month but I do know our company loves them. But that kind of access costs. You folks should appreciate the free downloads and help when you can. I have always bought my Red Hat CD.
Myxx
And then we all die, no more additional CO2, and the Earth begins to reclaim.
The issue here is not that the Earth will continue to get hotter, but that humans will find it inhospitable. While certainly undesirable, it is not the end. Only of us. Ask a dinosaur what it was like to have his atmosphere altered.
All of you need to shut up and go invest in alternative fuels. If we all did that there would be a market. Lowering emissions is not the way. Like losing weight, a crash diet will not work. You have to change your lifestyle. Time to find another way to power things. Just as this country will never outlaw tobacco (which they should not) they will never outlaw fossil fuels. Don't expect the big companies to roll over. Start the revolution now, or go back to your gas guzzlers and be quiet.
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I wish to God people would stop idolizing Kevin Smith. His movies are interesting, but not remarkable. He should stick to writing essays and op-ed pieces instead of masquerading his mental debates as dramatic or comedic dialogue. I guess everyone has a need to feel that what they are watching is deep and important and while his movies are deep, they are certainly not important. Give us some classic character development and plot solidity.
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You are not paying for bandwidth AND the cd you bought.
Fallacy 1
If it weren't for Napster I would not be paying for bandwidth.
Of course you would. How do yu download all your porn? You pay for gas to go to the store and buy stuff, go to the movies, or pick up your date. Should all the retailers give you a discount because you had to pay to get there? It is a fact of life that you pay for the highway whether you use it or not. If you only use your bw for Napster then yes, go to the store and just buy the CD. Ooopss...I just used gas. Get over the fact that you bought the bw for email, surfing, napster, IRC, AIM, telnet, DDoS, etc. You buy electricity too.
Fallacy 2
To share CD's I already bought.
Come on people. Stop this lie. You do not go on Napster to download a song you already have. It would be faster and more reliable to rip it yourself. You download stuff you don't have. Few people borrow a paperback from the library, read it, and go buy the thing if they like it. What they are actually doing is sharing their own bought files because...well they want to share them so others do not have to pay for them. I am not paying to share my files. I am paying to download other people's files. If I don't share them then I am not paying to stream them. But, if everyone does this then there will be no files on Napster! What am I paying for? The search engine. Solution? Napster needs to host some songs themselves.
You see, if we are paying we don't want to share. If we are stealing we want to help others do the same. In the end everyone is whining about a cool service that let them get free music going away. The truth is in the juvenille statement "see you on gnutella." Just buy a goddamn CD once in a while. The real proof will be when MP3.com offers mp3's online for purchase and download. If their service does nto take off then the music industry will have been right. We don't really want to pay for it.
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Good...some relevant points were made. In the end it will depend on how they implement the "proof of purchase" method. It will most likely end up being something like keeping an online db. Or, they will have to grandfather all older music but begin doing it with newer stuff.
I believe in the honor system, folks. I do not believe they will be able to pull it off, but I don't see anything wrong with them trying because I know that they can't enforce it. I just hate the music thiefs acting like it is their right to share music. The Home Use thing was for sharing to entice purchase. We all know that most people used Napster and Gnutella to pirate, not to try it out. The way you can tell if they are leeches is to ask them "will you pay for access to Napster?" and they all say "hell no. I'll switch to someplace where I don't have to pay."
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I was paying $49.95 when they lowered it to $39.95. I convinced them to lower it and have been paying the lower cost. I will wait and see if they raise it for this next month. I only have about 10 more days to wait.
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Again I disagree. Lawyers will do no good if one can establish previous use. See the eToys saga.
Advertising has everything to do with maintaining IP. Advertising shows possession for the IP holder, in addition to all the other stuff they have to do. The point of the post was to discuss the reasoning behind why Coke is trademarked and not copyrighted. If they copyrighted the ingredients in Coke they would have to disclose them. Disclosing them is revealing their IP. Coke will not sue someone for making something that tastes like Coke, only something that IS Coke.
Did you know that Coke has their own police force? They send out people to eat in restaurants who order a Coke. If they are brought Pepsi without being told it is a Pepsi, they report the establishment. The idea here is that the IP for Coke is being diluted and while the customer may know instinctively they are drinking Pepsi, they may still have the word Coke in their head.
Trust me...we had Coke people and lawyers in the room teaching us this. all I was doing was drawing attention to this fact.
If you want to see an intrusive ad, go to space.com and see the Intel ad. Now THAT is intrusive and Intel is just like Coke in this respect.
Jeff
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The only problem with this argument is that it doesn't explain reverse engineering. If I wrote the same story as Gibson but changed all the names and words, I would be considered at best a hack. At worst I would be a plagiarist. IP would deny me the right to write about jacking in to a neural network if Gibson had established IP rights to it. If I totally reverse-engineer the Intel chip, and don't pay royalties, I get sued. It's the concept, as in the genome project, that people are suing for. Thank God Einstein did not assert IP over his equations.
In the end it takes considerable effort to transfer from a Tivo on to another device and the average Tivo user (read home user) will not be doing this. Dvorak is like Jessie Berst. He writes about whatever will generate a column and move on. When he changes his mind he will claim he never had a contrary opinion.
Myxx
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To wrap up yourpoint, companies like Coke advertise not to get more revenue, but to protect their trademark. They have to advertise or else they lose the right to use this trademark.
Ever wonder why Coke's little name says TM and not copyrighted? A copyright runs out, but a trademark is forever as long as you show you are actively promoting it. Sneaky little way, really. If the Beatles wanted to keep all the copyrights to their songs and keep Michael Jackson from owning some of them, they should have marketed themselves better and not filled out all that paperwork.
Don't you just love all the education some corporations will give you just to make sure you don't give away any of that IP or harm the trademark? I hated the classes, but somethings were kind of cool.
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This rant applies to all, not the person above.
Which still does not remove the fact that:
1. Music costs money to make.
2. Artists get paid to play music.
3. Record companies get paid to distribute music.
4. You pay for CD that artists make.
ooppss...silly me. Why pay for music when you can download it for free?
Now for the facts:
1. Stealing is illegal.
2. If you take the CD from the store it is stealing.
3. If you take the CD from your neighbors house without them knowing, it is stealing.
4. If your neighbor lends you his CD and you give it back without making an exact copy that never wears out, it is NOT stealing.
So, now that we all agree on the rules here, how is giving out the music on Napster not illegal? Hmmm? Why I suppose it is. To "jump ship" because Napster asks you to pay for what you would have paid in the store for is saying "I don't want to pay for it. I want it free."
Well, the rules don't allow for it. You are stealing. End of game.
At least admit you are stealing and don't cover it with any namby pamby socialist "everyone deserves music for free" crap. If I install a piece of software on my PC that I did not buy and I get in trouble for it I am not going to say "But they make enough money as it is!" You are a thief now shut up. Everything else is just whining.
The whole problem with the Napster argument is that people actually try and defend the stealing of the music. At least admit what you are doing and don't try to legitimize it.
I am certainly not going to spend 8 hours a day doing what I do for free. If you ask these artists to do the same, but are not willing to pay for what you get, then you don't deserve to be called anything more than a whiny freeloader. Get up off your ass, start a digital distribution center where all you need money for is to cover the cost of distributing the music and that way you can spend all your profits on paying the artist. Oh yeah, you don't believe in paying. Silly me. I hope some day your career becomes something that people demand you not get paid for.
When I was a teacher people said "you didn't become one to become rich. You should be dedicated." That didn't put gas in my car and food on my table. I need money to live. To ask these people not to get paid is no different. I can't wait for the day when you demand that the Internet be free, or that computers cost $50, or that all software be free. Get a grip...getting paid for what you do is how things work!
Now admit it, you have no other answer than to say "screw you." Anything else you say will consist of:
- They already make too much money.
- I don't wanna pay!!!
- Why should I pay Napster when I am essentially paying to offer my files? Where is my money? (This one makes me laugh because it violates your own argument against having to pay for something you can get for free. I thought trying to make money was wrong?)
- I don't want to line the pockets of the company!
Give me one good reason why you DESERVE this service for free that does not include anything about how much money someone else is making. And don't bring up the fair use crap...you are downloading the songs without any intention of paying for the CD nearly 9 times out of 10. How is that fair use? Fair use is fine as long as someone gets paid eventually. A DJ buys the CD so the artist gets paid, even though hundreds may hear the song each night. The radio station has to pay. Everyone else pays except you!
I say make the song free but make you listen to an ad at the beginning. Nah, the you will whine about having to listen to the ad. Go out and work for free and tell me how it feels.
When I taught I had a student tell me he stood in line for the free cheese being given to poor families. I taught very rich kids. I said "that was meant for those who can't afford to eat." He said, "But it was free." I said, "But you don't need it and others do." And he said "But it was free. Why should I pay for it if it is free?" And I said "If you had $1000 in your pocket and someone was giving out $5 dollars to anyone who said they needed money for food, would you ask for the $5 because it was free?" And he said "Heck yeah! They are giving it away, aren't they?"
It was then and there that I decided that America was morally corrupt in many areas.
Forget it...the best I can do is to raise a child who knows better and wont lie. Me? I use Napster, I know why I use it, and I will pay for the service. I wont hide behind some ideal because I am too much of a coward to admit that I just don't wanna pay for what others make? When are you going to learn that everything costs somebody something to produce. All the free services out there will eventually go away when they cannot support themselves. Hell, even Slashdot has to make money to stay alive. How long will Andover/VA Linux be able to keep the money flowing? When they cannot and they sell this site to someone else, what then? WIll all of you pay CmdrTaco and Roblimo to keep Slash alive for you? Would Slash have survived if they had not been bought? No...we all are expected to show some value eventually. When VA Linux cannot say "These web sites strengthen our business" they will sell. You and your kind will just jump to the next free thing. And you will be the next in line to eat the cheese.
Myxx
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Sorry, but I have to disagree with you too. The whole point in joining a Union is to keep you from having to worry about your job. That is good, but as others have said, it also prevents the firing of otherwise worthless employees. It is as bad a tenure for teachers. And before anyone gets their panties ina wad, I was a teacher and I hated tenure. Veteran teachers who had given up long ago on teaching got to keep their jobs. You want to know why some kids can't learn? Sometimes it is as much the teacher's fault as the parents and students.
But, having been management everywhere I go I have had to deal with it beinghard enough to fire a worker who would not work. If it wasn't thefear of it being termed racial, or gender, or sexual preference, or ethinic preference, then it would be because I just didn't like them. Heaven forbid it be that they didn't work!
Now I am the kind of person that doesn't care if I like you or not. If you do a good job I can live with not liking you. But I do insist that you have the same work ethic as I do. Unions allow people with no work ethic to continue working, remaining a parasite on those that carry the group along.
But what about the union worker? If I had been inthe Union when I started in this field I would never have been able to leap from a lowly tech support phone guy to Supervisor and beyond had I been in the Union. Tell that to my wife and my upcoming child that I couldn't make better money because the Union didn't allow me to leap frog based on my abilities.
I am done.
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Absolutely...when I was in tech support it cost our company something on the order of $7 just for saying "Thank you for calling MCI Internet tech support..." This was when you calculate everything in like the phone lines, your salary, the computers, the electricity, the printing of the advertisements etc. If you call I can guarantee you that something will get done. Nothing is more effective than filling up a phone queue for a week or two. Just be kind to the people who answer the phone.
If there were a better place to do auctions than EBay, why aren't you already there?
I wish everyone were so principled about things in their everyday life like they are when it comes to SPAM. The same people cancelling EBay are the same ones who fire up Napster and say "When they start charging for it I will just go to something else." You are right to be upset, but do you want to change it or do you just want to have a hissy fit?
Please note that I am not directing this to the above poster, but to folks in general in this whole thread.
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