You make an excellent point. This all could have been avoided in the beginning if they had applied all the ingenuity they have used to sue people in novel ways to deliver music to the people with more, not less, value added.
That picture makes me think that Verizon guy better stay the hell away from Logan Airport -
Verizon Guy: Can you hear me now? Good. Cops (whachagonnado...): FACE DOWN ON THE GROUND!!! Verizon Guy: Can you hear me now? Good. Cops: LAST CHANCE AHMED!! FUCKING ON THE GROUND!!!! Verizon Guy: Can you hear me now? Good.
*BLAM*
Verizon Guy: Can you... hear.. me now...? Tell.. my.. wife... I love... her...
... when I worked for Geek Squad. I'd tell them the best way to stop them from accessing porn is to keep the computer in a common area. Little Billy won't be looking at any dirty pictures if his mom is working in the kitchen right behind him. Aside from that, I told them to talk about computer use the same way they would talk about dating, sex, driving, etc. Let them know clearly what behavior is expected, what the dangers are, and what the consequences will be if they break the rules. You know, parenting.
Duh, of course not. No one is that stupid. You obviously didn't read the article. Because the article explicitly quotes:
In this study, the weighted average substitution rate used for the physical piracy of recorded music is 65.7 percent.
He might not have read the article, but you didn't read far enough:
It is then assumed that only 20% (1 in 5) of these downloaded songs would have been purchased legitimately if piracy did not exist." Your quote is related to the lost due to physical copies, not digital ones. The report authors say the kid would have purchased $300,000 worth of the software. Ars Technica rightly calls this estimate into question as well.
I know you were trying to be funny, but all these estimates are nothing more than a fart in the wind. (Don't even think about trying to record and distribute that fart either or Universal will own your grandchildren)
The demand for medical care is almost infinite. This is not a hypothesis or an ideology, it is an observed fact.
Since the number of those requesting medical care is most definitely finite I'm not sure how you arrive at infinite demand. Because you insist it is an "observed fact", I have decided to stop reading your post. I suspect you may have need for mental medical care.
So does that mean that we may end up being the advanced civilizations that other aliens dream of discovering?
Christ, I hope not. Once the alien civilizations "grow up" we'd quickly become the idiot savants of the galaxy. Sure we will have split the atom, manipulated our genes, and developed FTL travel, but we will probably still entertain ourselves with reruns of Bret Michael's Rock of Love, burn down our cities when sports teams win championships, and get our "news" from Bill O'Reilly IV.
I completely agree. The whole premise is silly and obviously just pointless dramatization. Everyone knows the way To Catch A Predator is to cover yourself in mud, light a torch, unleash a primal roar, and then drop a 2-ton tree on him. NBC thinks we're idiots.
... did he bring the condoms and beer? In the producer's defense, I'm sure he just wanted to be friends with the hackers and talk with them, nothing more.
Loss of a potential sale does not equal theft. They have no right to my money. If I can find what I want at a lower price due to a legal loophole, then the law needs to be changed. I won't stop using a superior service that charges me far less solely on the specious reasoning of a corrupt cartel that preaches doing what's "moral" and "right" despite their decades-long history of doing the opposite when it suited them.
By your logic, were I to acquire your credit card and purchase items, I am not committing theft because i never actually took anything from you and never intended to permanently deprive you of the use of any property.
Don't be a fool. Of course you are depriving someone of something - either the credit card holder who is responsible to pay the balance, or the credit card company who has to eat the cost due to fraud. If you're going to intentionally disingenuous, then stay out of the discussion.
If people are allowed to lie to grand juries and face no consequences, then we might as well install Bush as King George and be done with the great experiment of American Democracy. Truthful testimony is one of the cornerstones of our justice system. By not severely punishing those who would pervert it, we send the message that honesty has no place in a courtroom. There was no justice served today, only a continued undermining of our national principles and Rule of Law. Bush is not moral and the only conviction he stands by is that of his belief in unlimited executive power and the ability to disregard any law he does not like.
Restore honor and dignity to the White House, indeed.
I play EVE Online religiously. It was reported in E-ON, the "official" magazine of EVE, that 97% of the player community is male in RL, but 53% of the in-game characters are female. Do the math.
The world you want to live in is the one where criminals rob you all day because they know you are too weak and afraid to defend yourself. The rule of law is not just what the government does, but what free citizens do to uphold the law and that includes defending themselves from crime
You should have been modded +5, Confused. You talk about the Rule of Law but you clearly don't understand it. You support the Rule of Law by contacting proper authorities who have been vested with the power to apprehend the suspect during the crime and use deadly force in specific, defined circumstances or by providing evidence used to identify and detain the suspect at a later time. The idea that someone is innocent until proven guilty and can only be convicted and punished when his or her guilt has been established through evidence that removes reasonable doubt in a jury of his or her peers is the central idea of the Rule of Law.
Also, the word "law" in "Rule of Law" is key. Laws are created by people elected to represent the citizenry, written down and publicly disclosed, enforced by proper authorities and upheld or repealed, constitutionally, by our court system. It is called "checks and balances". Contrast this to the "Rule of Man" which is the paramount idea of dictatorship, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism. The Rule of Man holds that a dictator or government may act of its own volition, charge and punish people without regard to any established law or system of prosecution, and not be accountable by checks or limitations in their actions. In shooting someone who boosts your stereo, you are exercising the Rule of Man by acting as judge, jury, and executioner.
Furthermore, there is a reason we have a constitutional amendment against cruel and unusual punishment. It is so the government will not administer punishment that is worse than the crime. The loss of life is not equal to the loss of posessions. Shooting someone who takes your stereo is not a proportional response to the crime. That person should be charged and convicted of murder. Otherwise, people will use deadly force in response to all sorts of situations that do not warrant it and in doing so eliminate the Rule of Law from our society.
The Rule of Law may seem like it favors criminals or allows the guilty to go free. But it doesn't. It protects people like you and me from being taken in the middle of the night, detained without charge, and punished without trial. It is what keeps our society civil and protects us not only from each other, but our government as well.
I believe the law says that a person has no expectation of privacy in their home if what goes on inside is visible from the street. In other words, if she wants privacy, she should close her curtains. If she leaves them open, anything visible in her home from the street is fair game and does not qualify as a privacy invasion.
I agree. People take this game waaaaaaay too seriously. Sure, cheating sucks. For those who invest their whole lives in the game, I get why they go ape over allegations like this. Me, I've been a weekend warrior player for about 2 years now and stay mostly in Empire space. This drama in no way affects my gameplay or enjoyment. This game is a diversion and has always been an entertaining one at that.
I agree with your assessment of the players who bitch about this stuff constantly, but they would be bitching about something else, if it wasn't this. That's just the type of players/people they are. Don't put much stock in what they say. In my opinion, this game is fun and continually gets better.
I think you're missing the larger picture. Maybe it doesn't compare to the "evilness" of the Bush Administration but it is unsettling. With social networking exploding, politicians, always the last to the party, are trying to figure out ways to leverage it to propagate their messages. But where does the little guy fall into this? Who controls the message?
This uncomfortably smacks of the cyber-squatting battles from several years back when corporations decided the internet was here to stay and wanted to use it. Unfortunately, many of us were already here, registering domain names and maintaining enthusiast websites. Some offered to purchase the domains, others brought the hammer of trademarks and copyrights down on the little guys who didn't want to relinquish their passion. All kinds of arguments were made about people profiting from things they didn't own. Regardless of the validity of that argument, at the end of the day, the issue was one of control.
The same is happening here. Sure, this guy didn't have any connection to the campaign, but what rights does he have in maintaining an enthusiast site? It's not his fault Obama's campaign didn't have foresight 2 years ago to create a MySpace account. From all indications, the unofficial Obama account this guy created was an asset to the campaign. Why bother with the shady, strong arm tactics when they could have bought this guy out for a paltry sum compared to what it would have cost them to build the community? Why not bring a massive supporter and advocate into the campaign officially? Why the fuck did MySpace allow the campaign to seize control of something they did not create nor maintain for the last 2 years?
These are the interesting questions this raises for me, even more so because it is Obama's campaign embroiled in this. Being a resident of Illinois, I voted for the Senator in every election he has run in and planned on voting for him for President, should he win the nomination. But this issue contradicts so much of what he has campaigned on. At best, it tells me that he doesn't get bleeding-edge technology issues and rights anymore than shitheads like Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens do. At worst, it tells me that he currently employs fucking weasels in his campaign and would most likely employ fucking weasels in his administration. That's the biggest issue for me after all the cronyism and incompetency with which Bush & Co. have raped America the last 7 years.
Ultimately, this was handled completely wrong and they alienated at least one staunch supporter and possibly many others. No one likes to see the little guy get shit on and that really seems like what the Obama campaign is doing. Maybe you don't care about that, but I certainly do.
They're only "straw men" in your mind, and because you don't like them.
That's not true. They are absurd examples that leave out the point the original post made: "My freedom ends at your nose". Most of the points he made are clear examples of the government outlawing things that some people find immoral or distasteful, and not because they hurt or endanger anyone else.
A band can play a small joint, record the show to a Notebook and burn a CD to sell to the patrons for $5. Profitable gig. DONE.
You make an excellent point that speaks to the industry's lack of imagination as a whole. I see a lot of concerts and I generally prefer the live versions to the studio recorded songs of the artists I like. For years, I have been collecting bootlegged recordings of concerts, particularly those I have attended. To me, there is nothing like remembering the performance as I listen to the music recorded at that very show.
That said, how hard would it be to record the music in real-time, upload it to a few servers and provide kiosks for patrons to pay $10 and copy the show *they just heard* onto a USB drive they brought to the show? No DRM bullshit. No pre-approved licensed playback devices. Just pure, unfettered MP3. I would gladly pay it because bootleg trading is an enormous fucking hassle and you have to take many precautions to keep from getting screwed by crappy traders. The cost to the record companies is minimal as they only have to invest in the fixed cost of some hardware. Just like that, another revenue stream is born.
Instead, they spend their time deciding if they should allow a song to be played three times should someone jizz it from one Zune to another. The music industry isn't succeeding because they aren't even trying.
It actually happened in his main title, not the Civil War mini-series. But in all fairness, finding out was unavoidable. I'm out of town and can't pick up my books until this weekend. It was ruined for me just by reading CNN earlier. The AP Wire even has the spoiler in the title. If you didn't get your issue by the time the comic shops opened on the East coast, then you were SOL on this surprise.
Joe Quesada is dissembling because "death" in comic books rarely is. Hiatus is a better word to use for characters that supposedly die only to be brought back to life by the new writer on the next arc (Magneto anyone?).
That said, Cap will be back. Steve Rogers was not the only Captain America and he won't be the last. William Naslund, Jeff Mace, a "fake" Steve Rogers, and most recently, John Walker briefly took the mantle of "Captain America" from Rogers. I am sure another Marvel hero will assume the role of Captain America in his stead.
As a collector of the series, I am disappointed as Steve Rogers has been the one and only Captain America in my opinion and he can never be replaced, no matter who wears the costume.
Slashdot Mirror
You make an excellent point. This all could have been avoided in the beginning if they had applied all the ingenuity they have used to sue people in novel ways to deliver music to the people with more, not less, value added.
That picture makes me think that Verizon guy better stay the hell away from Logan Airport -
Verizon Guy: Can you hear me now? Good.
Cops (whachagonnado...): FACE DOWN ON THE GROUND!!!
Verizon Guy: Can you hear me now? Good.
Cops: LAST CHANCE AHMED!! FUCKING ON THE GROUND!!!!
Verizon Guy: Can you hear me now? Good.
*BLAM*
Verizon Guy: Can you... hear.. me now...? Tell.. my.. wife... I love... her...
... when I worked for Geek Squad. I'd tell them the best way to stop them from accessing porn is to keep the computer in a common area. Little Billy won't be looking at any dirty pictures if his mom is working in the kitchen right behind him. Aside from that, I told them to talk about computer use the same way they would talk about dating, sex, driving, etc. Let them know clearly what behavior is expected, what the dangers are, and what the consequences will be if they break the rules. You know, parenting.
He might not have read the article, but you didn't read far enough: It is then assumed that only 20% (1 in 5) of these downloaded songs would have been purchased legitimately if piracy did not exist." Your quote is related to the lost due to physical copies, not digital ones. The report authors say the kid would have purchased $300,000 worth of the software. Ars Technica rightly calls this estimate into question as well.
I know you were trying to be funny, but all these estimates are nothing more than a fart in the wind. (Don't even think about trying to record and distribute that fart either or Universal will own your grandchildren)
environments/events... religious/mythology... poor/diseased... and/or... religious/mythology... pseudo-religious/mythology... mythology/religion... groups/members... null/zero... sign/line... popes/bishops... and/or... pseudo-religious/political... pontificate/fatwa... nations/religions... their/other... MF/FF/Gay/Incest/Donkey... questionable/objectionable... inaction/proxy... flame/troll/offend...
Is someone paying you by the foward-slash?
The demand for medical care is almost infinite. This is not a hypothesis or an ideology, it is an observed fact.
Since the number of those requesting medical care is most definitely finite I'm not sure how you arrive at infinite demand. Because you insist it is an "observed fact", I have decided to stop reading your post. I suspect you may have need for mental medical care.
So does that mean that we may end up being the advanced civilizations that other aliens dream of discovering?
Christ, I hope not. Once the alien civilizations "grow up" we'd quickly become the idiot savants of the galaxy. Sure we will have split the atom, manipulated our genes, and developed FTL travel, but we will probably still entertain ourselves with reruns of Bret Michael's Rock of Love, burn down our cities when sports teams win championships, and get our "news" from Bill O'Reilly IV.
I completely agree. The whole premise is silly and obviously just pointless dramatization. Everyone knows the way To Catch A Predator is to cover yourself in mud, light a torch, unleash a primal roar, and then drop a 2-ton tree on him. NBC thinks we're idiots.
Damn. You're right. I'm a donkey. I did about as much due diligence as the guys on To Catch A Predator
... did he bring the condoms and beer? In the producer's defense, I'm sure he just wanted to be friends with the hackers and talk with them, nothing more.
Me too! Did she Friend you on MySpace as well?
At the end of the day it is all too easy for this stuff to trigger an unbalanced mind.
I guess that means the Bible, Torah, and Koran are next.
Loss of a potential sale does not equal theft. They have no right to my money. If I can find what I want at a lower price due to a legal loophole, then the law needs to be changed. I won't stop using a superior service that charges me far less solely on the specious reasoning of a corrupt cartel that preaches doing what's "moral" and "right" despite their decades-long history of doing the opposite when it suited them.
By your logic, were I to acquire your credit card and purchase items, I am not committing theft because i never actually
took anything from you and never intended to permanently deprive you of the use of any property.
Don't be a fool. Of course you are depriving someone of something - either the credit card holder who is responsible to pay the balance, or the credit card company who has to eat the cost due to fraud. If you're going to intentionally disingenuous, then stay out of the discussion.
If people are allowed to lie to grand juries and face no consequences, then we might as well install Bush as King George and be done with the great experiment of American Democracy. Truthful testimony is one of the cornerstones of our justice system. By not severely punishing those who would pervert it, we send the message that honesty has no place in a courtroom. There was no justice served today, only a continued undermining of our national principles and Rule of Law. Bush is not moral and the only conviction he stands by is that of his belief in unlimited executive power and the ability to disregard any law he does not like.
Restore honor and dignity to the White House, indeed.
You should have been modded +5, Confused. You talk about the Rule of Law but you clearly don't understand it. You support the Rule of Law by contacting proper authorities who have been vested with the power to apprehend the suspect during the crime and use deadly force in specific, defined circumstances or by providing evidence used to identify and detain the suspect at a later time. The idea that someone is innocent until proven guilty and can only be convicted and punished when his or her guilt has been established through evidence that removes reasonable doubt in a jury of his or her peers is the central idea of the Rule of Law.
Also, the word "law" in "Rule of Law" is key. Laws are created by people elected to represent the citizenry, written down and publicly disclosed, enforced by proper authorities and upheld or repealed, constitutionally, by our court system. It is called "checks and balances". Contrast this to the "Rule of Man" which is the paramount idea of dictatorship, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism. The Rule of Man holds that a dictator or government may act of its own volition, charge and punish people without regard to any established law or system of prosecution, and not be accountable by checks or limitations in their actions. In shooting someone who boosts your stereo, you are exercising the Rule of Man by acting as judge, jury, and executioner.
Furthermore, there is a reason we have a constitutional amendment against cruel and unusual punishment. It is so the government will not administer punishment that is worse than the crime. The loss of life is not equal to the loss of posessions. Shooting someone who takes your stereo is not a proportional response to the crime. That person should be charged and convicted of murder. Otherwise, people will use deadly force in response to all sorts of situations that do not warrant it and in doing so eliminate the Rule of Law from our society.
The Rule of Law may seem like it favors criminals or allows the guilty to go free. But it doesn't. It protects people like you and me from being taken in the middle of the night, detained without charge, and punished without trial. It is what keeps our society civil and protects us not only from each other, but our government as well.
I believe the law says that a person has no expectation of privacy in their home if what goes on inside is visible from the street. In other words, if she wants privacy, she should close her curtains. If she leaves them open, anything visible in her home from the street is fair game and does not qualify as a privacy invasion.
I agree. People take this game waaaaaaay too seriously. Sure, cheating sucks. For those who invest their whole lives in the game, I get why they go ape over allegations like this. Me, I've been a weekend warrior player for about 2 years now and stay mostly in Empire space. This drama in no way affects my gameplay or enjoyment. This game is a diversion and has always been an entertaining one at that.
I agree with your assessment of the players who bitch about this stuff constantly, but they would be bitching about something else, if it wasn't this. That's just the type of players/people they are. Don't put much stock in what they say. In my opinion, this game is fun and continually gets better.
This uncomfortably smacks of the cyber-squatting battles from several years back when corporations decided the internet was here to stay and wanted to use it. Unfortunately, many of us were already here, registering domain names and maintaining enthusiast websites. Some offered to purchase the domains, others brought the hammer of trademarks and copyrights down on the little guys who didn't want to relinquish their passion. All kinds of arguments were made about people profiting from things they didn't own. Regardless of the validity of that argument, at the end of the day, the issue was one of control.
The same is happening here. Sure, this guy didn't have any connection to the campaign, but what rights does he have in maintaining an enthusiast site? It's not his fault Obama's campaign didn't have foresight 2 years ago to create a MySpace account. From all indications, the unofficial Obama account this guy created was an asset to the campaign. Why bother with the shady, strong arm tactics when they could have bought this guy out for a paltry sum compared to what it would have cost them to build the community? Why not bring a massive supporter and advocate into the campaign officially? Why the fuck did MySpace allow the campaign to seize control of something they did not create nor maintain for the last 2 years?
These are the interesting questions this raises for me, even more so because it is Obama's campaign embroiled in this. Being a resident of Illinois, I voted for the Senator in every election he has run in and planned on voting for him for President, should he win the nomination. But this issue contradicts so much of what he has campaigned on. At best, it tells me that he doesn't get bleeding-edge technology issues and rights anymore than shitheads like Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens do. At worst, it tells me that he currently employs fucking weasels in his campaign and would most likely employ fucking weasels in his administration. That's the biggest issue for me after all the cronyism and incompetency with which Bush & Co. have raped America the last 7 years.
Ultimately, this was handled completely wrong and they alienated at least one staunch supporter and possibly many others. No one likes to see the little guy get shit on and that really seems like what the Obama campaign is doing. Maybe you don't care about that, but I certainly do.
For some reason, I find it funny that the first obscenity was censored but the second wasn't. Well done, sir!
That's not true. They are absurd examples that leave out the point the original post made: "My freedom ends at your nose". Most of the points he made are clear examples of the government outlawing things that some people find immoral or distasteful, and not because they hurt or endanger anyone else.
You make an excellent point that speaks to the industry's lack of imagination as a whole. I see a lot of concerts and I generally prefer the live versions to the studio recorded songs of the artists I like. For years, I have been collecting bootlegged recordings of concerts, particularly those I have attended. To me, there is nothing like remembering the performance as I listen to the music recorded at that very show.
That said, how hard would it be to record the music in real-time, upload it to a few servers and provide kiosks for patrons to pay $10 and copy the show *they just heard* onto a USB drive they brought to the show? No DRM bullshit. No pre-approved licensed playback devices. Just pure, unfettered MP3. I would gladly pay it because bootleg trading is an enormous fucking hassle and you have to take many precautions to keep from getting screwed by crappy traders. The cost to the record companies is minimal as they only have to invest in the fixed cost of some hardware. Just like that, another revenue stream is born.
Instead, they spend their time deciding if they should allow a song to be played three times should someone jizz it from one Zune to another. The music industry isn't succeeding because they aren't even trying.
Then that means either you've never heard Marilyn Manson, or you don't know what qualifies as Metal.
That said, Cap will be back. Steve Rogers was not the only Captain America and he won't be the last. William Naslund, Jeff Mace, a "fake" Steve Rogers, and most recently, John Walker briefly took the mantle of "Captain America" from Rogers. I am sure another Marvel hero will assume the role of Captain America in his stead.
As a collector of the series, I am disappointed as Steve Rogers has been the one and only Captain America in my opinion and he can never be replaced, no matter who wears the costume.