My concern with the Liberals is they tend to be all over the place on these types of issues. Geist pointed out in his article on the Conservatives' IP21C legislative package that it was very similar to a piece of proposed Liberal legislation that died on the order paper in 2005.
They are desperate to get back in power, and will mimic the NDP and/or Conservatives on any given policy as need suites them if they think it will get them another vote.
The encouraging thing about this is that it brings it more in to the public consciousness. It's one thing for geeks and the younger generation to go on Facebook demanding privacy, net neutrality and balanced copyright legislation; if my parents' generation (who have a lot of time on their hands these days) started blogging, writing letters and calling in to all those conservative talk shows they like to listen to demanding the government protect the Internet and mind their own damn business when it comes to everything else, it could spell trouble for a party that gets out of step with that.
The second group tends to vote, where the first tends not to.
Now, if Ignatieff could take back the 34 years he spent outside Canada, his self-admitted snobbery, and his comment that he was American, he might stand a chance.
He is "American." So am I. What continent did you think Canada was on?
Then they're getting exactly what they asked for. Considering that users will hand out their passwords for a chocolate bar, this sort of line doesn't scare me much any more. Is that sad or am I just bitter?
That's an excellent point. It sounds like the city of Bozeman is setting itself up to be perfect target for social engineering. By selecting people who would put all of their usernames and passwords on a job application, they'll end up hiring people who would probably be just as happy to dole out information about their accounts on the city's network. Might be fun to see if whomever answers the phone at city hall would like to help "Tom from IT" resolve a printer issue by giving him her username and password.
Then again, maybe this is a clever way of not hiring people who would fall for that.
I didn't realize the entire iTunes catalog is now DRM free. I still buy most of my music in the popular CD format, and use iTunes mostly for impulse buying when I hear a song I like and don't have on radioparadise. I'm not as up to date as I should be.
I don't know how "public" their API is. I know there are Linux apps that work with iPods, not sure if they do this by utilizing a "public API" Apple is generously providing, or if they are employing mass storage mode.
Most mp3 players these days should have this option, so I still fail to see the problem
The problem is with the store, not iTunes itself. I've already ranted about that above, but basically it boils down to the fact that I own the music files I purchase from iTunes, and I should be able to play them on my choice of players. Apple has a effective monopoly in both industries. They are using their monopoly in the online music sales to force you to purchase their player. That's the problem.
Sorry, friend, that's not a "secret," and I wasn't arguing that iTunes should work with Sony players or Xboxes should run WII games. The comment I replied to suggested "many players" work with iTunes and I was disagreeing with that point, based on the link he provided.
Personally, I wouldn't expect iTunes to manage the music on my Walkman, or my iRiver. I also try to buy players that work as a USB mass storage device, even if they're running fat16 like I think my Walkman is. This eliminates the need to worry about installing some possibly malware-infested client that could be doing *anything*, accepting some loathsome EULA simply to put your player to the use it was purchased for, and having any sort of relationship with the manufacturer after the sale. If you deal with them further, it should be because you choose to, not because you need their software to continue to use your property.
I think the point of the gp I referenced is valid, though he too missed the mark. The EU and US DOJ should take them to task over the iTunes store. There are not a lot of alternatives for people out side of the US (which isn't the US DOJ's problem, I know) Unless you do the burn-to-cd-then-rip-to-mp3 routine, you're pretty much stuck with an iPod to play online-purchased music. I know they are offering non-drm files in some cases, but that needs to changes to their entire catalog and they should be offering it in a standard format like mp3. That, or they should prepare to be broken up, as they do have a monopoly in the distribution of the music as well as the manufacturing of the players.
Note the number of manufacturers on that list. Creative Labs makes seven, there are a bunch of "Rios" by Sonic Blue, a couple by Nike (?!?) and... oh, yeah. Apple.
So, which of those *many* players does my local electronics store stock? Well, I'm not sure cause their online search is hooped. I'm sure at least some of the players on that list are long obsolete.
I wouldn't call that a list of "many non-iPod players." I would call it a list of three companies who did a licensing deal with Apple.
If you meant to imply that the gp was full of it when he suggested that iTunes - for all practical purposes - really only works with iPods, sorry to burst your bubble.
Fair enough, and I agree with your point in that context. Saying things like "we're gonna make the RIAA pay back the money they stole" is good for getting headlines on Slashdot, but really doesn't do much to advance the average person's understanding of the issues at hand. It's a sound bite, so sorry if I missed your point in my haste to jump to the defense of lawyers. (I think they take more abuse than they deserve; there are scumbags in every profession, but that's neither here nor there).
Truth be told, my original reply to you - "don't you think lawyers should be paid for their work" - was a tongue-in-cheek play on the "don't you thing artists should be paid for their work" refrain we hear from those who defend the RIAA's tactics in these cases. Artists haven't benefited from these outrageous decisions any more than the parties taking part in Kiwi's class action lawsuit would. And I agree that most of the spoils go to the lawyers in either case, but then, plumbers make money when pipes break too. That doesn't mean you aren't happy to have one when there's six inches of water in your basement.
Taking on a class action suit is a huge risk for a law firm. They are basically gambling on the outcome of the case. If they lose, they have still had to pay their staff, invested countless hours researching and building their case and turned down other less risky but less profitable work. It's really no different than any other venture. The party who puts up the money and assumes the risk generally reaps most of the benefit if they are successful.
At the same time, the need for class action suits it huge. Most of us are "little people" who lack the resources to seek justice from powerful entities like corporations. Class actions allow us to work collectively for the greater good. You're not going to "strike it rich" by taking part in a class action, but that's not really the goal. The goal is to right a wrong, and provide a disincentive of other powerful entities who might be thinking about pulling the same stunt.
According to a recent survey, 0 editions of the NY Times have been updated in the last 120 days, meaning that 100 percent have essentially been abandoned, left to lie fallow in landfills, recycling plants and at the bottom of bird cages.
One idea, based on what I have seen work abroad, is to mandate, for a limited time, a fee of $1 on all Internet connections.
Right, just like income tax. The United States implemented one in 1861 to help pay for the Civil War. Canada introduced the Income War Tax Act in 1917 as a temporary measure. Oddly, they're still deducting it from my pay cheque, despite the fact that WW I ended in 1918.
So you want to charge us all $1.00 for our Internet connections to support the newspapers, who have been busy buying each other up and creating monopolies in most markets, ensuring the only viewpoint represented supports the interests large multinational corporations and funneling money out of the local economies.
We've heard this before. The music industry wants to tax our Internet connections too, to compensate them for all those "pirates" who "steal" their "content." They're already getting 21 cents for every blank CD sold in Canada, despite the fact that there are all sorts of uses for CDs that don't involve downloading music from peer-to-peer networks and burning it to CDs (a person would have to be crazy to do this, IMO).
So that's a dollar for the newspapers; a dollar for the music business; the movie studios will want their cut; don't forget television, radio... I'm sure the investment firms on Wall Street will have a compelling argument for why we should pay a dollar a month on our Internet bills to support them. I guess we should put the auto industry and the steel industry in there as well.
I'm afraid I don't agree.
It will be sad to see some of the great old "names" disappear from the newspaper scene, but most of them bear no resemblance to the great institutions whose names they use now anyway. I know that's the case where I live. One company owns both local newspapers, as well as the majority of the community weeklies, and guess what the editorial slant is in all of those publications? Not one that represents my viewpoint, that's for sure.
Maybe if these behemoths - who are really only about money anyway - collapse under their own weight, it will clear the way for locally owned and run publications to gain a foot hold again. There are still businesses in all of these cities who want to advertise, journalists with a burning desire to find out what's going on and tell people about it, and citizens who want to get news told from the perspective of someone who actually lives in their community.
You mean the post to which he directly responded? You know that doesn't add up, right?
Um... wrong.
spun (1352) on 09:29 AM -- Thursday May 28 2009 (#28125123) wrote:
I miss the days when just about everyone using the web was a developer, user, and content producer all in one.
Anonymous Coward on 09:34 AM -- Thursday May 28 2009 (#28125223)replied:
I miss the days when the most common message over the internet and email was, "when are you going to be in, so I can call you."
Captain Splendid (673276) on 09:41 AM -- Thursday May 28 2009 (#28125311) replied:
Pissant. I miss the days before we had a telephone... Now get off my lawn.
Bigjeff5 (1143585)on 10:00 AM -- Thursday May 28 2009 (#28125575) replied:
Captain Splended (673276) to spun (1352):
Now get off my lawn.
Never thought I'd see the day.
He incorrectly believed that Captain Splendid (673276) was replying to spun (1352) when he made the "get off my lawn" crack.
Ragzouken (943900) on 10:03 AM -- Thursday May 28 2009 (#28125629) replied:
Are we reading the same thread? He was responding to an anonymous coward.
Ragzouken (943900) was pointing out to Bigjeff5 (1143585) that Captain Splendid (673276) was in fact replying to Anonymous Coward, not spun (1352).
multisync (218450) on 10:24 AM -- Thursday May 28 2009 (#28125997) replied:
He probably browses at 1 and didn't see the AC's post.
I suggested to Ragzouken (943900) that Bigjeff5 (1143585) may not have seen the Anonymous Coward's post due to reading at +1, which means AC posts are hidden by default. That would explain the part where he said "never thought I'd see the day."
What makes you think that amendments to the US Constitution apply in France?
That wasn't the point at all.
mattack2 was simply saying the reason they are able to prosecute The Church of Scientology in France but not in the United States is because the First Amendment of the US Constitution apparently prohibits their Congress from passing any laws either respecting the establishment, or prohibiting the free exercise, of religion.
We have a similar situation where I live, where a polygamist community avoids prosecution (to some extent) because the local government is afraid a case would not withstand a Charter challenge. They don't want to end up enshrining polygamy in law.
I'm not sure how you got the idea anyone was suggesting that the First Amendment of the US Constitution would apply in France.
You're resisting gravity by moving tangentially at the same rate as you are falling toward the center of the body you're orbiting. So your weight would be the amount of force necessary to maintain your tangential velocity.
My boss emailed me a while back requesting that I get him a "video driver," as he had been unable to watch a YouTube video. His machine was fairly new, and I hadn't bothered to install DivX on it. I installed it and YouTube videos worked fine after that, but he was certain there was some piece of hardware called a "video driver" that I should have installed.
A month or so later, someone sent him a damn Quicktime video, which wouldn't play, and he insisted that I install the video driver so he wouldn't have these problems.
If there is no contact with any surface to provide such an opposing force then there is no sensation of weight (no apparent weight). This happens in free-fall, as experienced by sky-divers (until they approach terminal velocity) and astronauts in orbit, who feel "weightlessness" even though their bodies are still subject to the force of gravity: they're just no longer resisting it. The experience of having no apparent weight is also known as microgravity.
I wasn't confusing mass with weight, but you still need to exert force to support an object in a gravitational field, and the measure of that force is its weight. The fact that we're in free fall and the object is weightless relative to us doesn't change that.
Whereas, "460 pounds" makes sense to everyone (well, everyone using the imperial system) even if it's technically incorrect
Well, technically the batteries weigh the same while on Earth as they do while orbiting it, they're just falling at the same rate as the shuttle, astronauts and Hubble, so they appear weightless. Are you "weightless" while skydiving?
So lawyers make money. Big deal. So do doctors, and auto mechanics, and the geeks for chrissakes.
Imagine that, people who have specialized knowledge make money, even when idiots wreck their cars, bring disease upon themselves with their lifestyle choices or use litigation as a business model.
Many also do pro bono work for people who are in need of legal council but can not afford it. Despite this, nearly half of litigants in my country are forced to represent themselves, straining the court system and usually resulting in justice denied for those too poor to pay for an attorney.
But I'm sure organizations like the RIAA would welcome your lawyer bashing, and encourage you to continue spreading the myth that it's the lawyers - not the executives - who are at fault.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm ... interesting.
Anything they did back in the 60s, or perhaps the 1930s that we should be concerned about?
My concern with the Liberals is they tend to be all over the place on these types of issues. Geist pointed out in his article on the Conservatives' IP21C legislative package that it was very similar to a piece of proposed Liberal legislation that died on the order paper in 2005.
They are desperate to get back in power, and will mimic the NDP and/or Conservatives on any given policy as need suites them if they think it will get them another vote.
The encouraging thing about this is that it brings it more in to the public consciousness. It's one thing for geeks and the younger generation to go on Facebook demanding privacy, net neutrality and balanced copyright legislation; if my parents' generation (who have a lot of time on their hands these days) started blogging, writing letters and calling in to all those conservative talk shows they like to listen to demanding the government protect the Internet and mind their own damn business when it comes to everything else, it could spell trouble for a party that gets out of step with that.
The second group tends to vote, where the first tends not to.
He is "American." So am I. What continent did you think Canada was on?
That's an excellent point. It sounds like the city of Bozeman is setting itself up to be perfect target for social engineering. By selecting people who would put all of their usernames and passwords on a job application, they'll end up hiring people who would probably be just as happy to dole out information about their accounts on the city's network. Might be fun to see if whomever answers the phone at city hall would like to help "Tom from IT" resolve a printer issue by giving him her username and password.
Then again, maybe this is a clever way of not hiring people who would fall for that.
I didn't realize the entire iTunes catalog is now DRM free. I still buy most of my music in the popular CD format, and use iTunes mostly for impulse buying when I hear a song I like and don't have on radioparadise. I'm not as up to date as I should be.
I don't know how "public" their API is. I know there are Linux apps that work with iPods, not sure if they do this by utilizing a "public API" Apple is generously providing, or if they are employing mass storage mode.
The problem is with the store, not iTunes itself. I've already ranted about that above, but basically it boils down to the fact that I own the music files I purchase from iTunes, and I should be able to play them on my choice of players. Apple has a effective monopoly in both industries. They are using their monopoly in the online music sales to force you to purchase their player. That's the problem.
Sorry, friend, that's not a "secret," and I wasn't arguing that iTunes should work with Sony players or Xboxes should run WII games. The comment I replied to suggested "many players" work with iTunes and I was disagreeing with that point, based on the link he provided.
Personally, I wouldn't expect iTunes to manage the music on my Walkman, or my iRiver. I also try to buy players that work as a USB mass storage device, even if they're running fat16 like I think my Walkman is. This eliminates the need to worry about installing some possibly malware-infested client that could be doing *anything*, accepting some loathsome EULA simply to put your player to the use it was purchased for, and having any sort of relationship with the manufacturer after the sale. If you deal with them further, it should be because you choose to, not because you need their software to continue to use your property.
I think the point of the gp I referenced is valid, though he too missed the mark. The EU and US DOJ should take them to task over the iTunes store. There are not a lot of alternatives for people out side of the US (which isn't the US DOJ's problem, I know) Unless you do the burn-to-cd-then-rip-to-mp3 routine, you're pretty much stuck with an iPod to play online-purchased music. I know they are offering non-drm files in some cases, but that needs to changes to their entire catalog and they should be offering it in a standard format like mp3. That, or they should prepare to be broken up, as they do have a monopoly in the distribution of the music as well as the manufacturing of the players.
Note the number of manufacturers on that list. Creative Labs makes seven, there are a bunch of "Rios" by Sonic Blue, a couple by Nike (?!?) and ... oh, yeah. Apple.
So, which of those *many* players does my local electronics store stock? Well, I'm not sure cause their online search is hooped. I'm sure at least some of the players on that list are long obsolete.
I wouldn't call that a list of "many non-iPod players." I would call it a list of three companies who did a licensing deal with Apple.
If you meant to imply that the gp was full of it when he suggested that iTunes - for all practical purposes - really only works with iPods, sorry to burst your bubble.
Also, linuxjournal.com
So did a lot of Democrats
Fair enough, and I agree with your point in that context. Saying things like "we're gonna make the RIAA pay back the money they stole" is good for getting headlines on Slashdot, but really doesn't do much to advance the average person's understanding of the issues at hand. It's a sound bite, so sorry if I missed your point in my haste to jump to the defense of lawyers. (I think they take more abuse than they deserve; there are scumbags in every profession, but that's neither here nor there).
Truth be told, my original reply to you - "don't you think lawyers should be paid for their work" - was a tongue-in-cheek play on the "don't you thing artists should be paid for their work" refrain we hear from those who defend the RIAA's tactics in these cases. Artists haven't benefited from these outrageous decisions any more than the parties taking part in Kiwi's class action lawsuit would. And I agree that most of the spoils go to the lawyers in either case, but then, plumbers make money when pipes break too. That doesn't mean you aren't happy to have one when there's six inches of water in your basement.
Taking on a class action suit is a huge risk for a law firm. They are basically gambling on the outcome of the case. If they lose, they have still had to pay their staff, invested countless hours researching and building their case and turned down other less risky but less profitable work. It's really no different than any other venture. The party who puts up the money and assumes the risk generally reaps most of the benefit if they are successful.
At the same time, the need for class action suits it huge. Most of us are "little people" who lack the resources to seek justice from powerful entities like corporations. Class actions allow us to work collectively for the greater good. You're not going to "strike it rich" by taking part in a class action, but that's not really the goal. The goal is to right a wrong, and provide a disincentive of other powerful entities who might be thinking about pulling the same stunt.
Don't you think lawyers should be paid for their work?
I am interested in signing up for your TRON fanzine. Please advise, is it a monthly, or a quarterly?
According to a recent survey, 0 editions of the NY Times have been updated in the last 120 days, meaning that 100 percent have essentially been abandoned, left to lie fallow in landfills, recycling plants and at the bottom of bird cages.
Right, just like income tax. The United States implemented one in 1861 to help pay for the Civil War. Canada introduced the Income War Tax Act in 1917 as a temporary measure. Oddly, they're still deducting it from my pay cheque, despite the fact that WW I ended in 1918.
So you want to charge us all $1.00 for our Internet connections to support the newspapers, who have been busy buying each other up and creating monopolies in most markets, ensuring the only viewpoint represented supports the interests large multinational corporations and funneling money out of the local economies.
We've heard this before. The music industry wants to tax our Internet connections too, to compensate them for all those "pirates" who "steal" their "content." They're already getting 21 cents for every blank CD sold in Canada, despite the fact that there are all sorts of uses for CDs that don't involve downloading music from peer-to-peer networks and burning it to CDs (a person would have to be crazy to do this, IMO).
So that's a dollar for the newspapers; a dollar for the music business; the movie studios will want their cut; don't forget television, radio ... I'm sure the investment firms on Wall Street will have a compelling argument for why we should pay a dollar a month on our Internet bills to support them. I guess we should put the auto industry and the steel industry in there as well.
I'm afraid I don't agree.
It will be sad to see some of the great old "names" disappear from the newspaper scene, but most of them bear no resemblance to the great institutions whose names they use now anyway. I know that's the case where I live. One company owns both local newspapers, as well as the majority of the community weeklies, and guess what the editorial slant is in all of those publications? Not one that represents my viewpoint, that's for sure.
Maybe if these behemoths - who are really only about money anyway - collapse under their own weight, it will clear the way for locally owned and run publications to gain a foot hold again. There are still businesses in all of these cities who want to advertise, journalists with a burning desire to find out what's going on and tell people about it, and citizens who want to get news told from the perspective of someone who actually lives in their community.
Um ... wrong.
spun (1352) on 09:29 AM -- Thursday May 28 2009 (#28125123) wrote:
Anonymous Coward on 09:34 AM -- Thursday May 28 2009 (#28125223)replied:
Captain Splendid (673276) on 09:41 AM -- Thursday May 28 2009 (#28125311) replied:
Bigjeff5 (1143585)on 10:00 AM -- Thursday May 28 2009 (#28125575) replied:
He incorrectly believed that Captain Splendid (673276) was replying to spun (1352) when he made the "get off my lawn" crack.
Ragzouken (943900) on 10:03 AM -- Thursday May 28 2009 (#28125629) replied:
Ragzouken (943900) was pointing out to Bigjeff5 (1143585) that Captain Splendid (673276) was in fact replying to Anonymous Coward, not spun (1352).
multisync (218450) on 10:24 AM -- Thursday May 28 2009 (#28125997) replied:
I suggested to Ragzouken (943900) that Bigjeff5 (1143585) may not have seen the Anonymous Coward's post due to reading at +1, which means AC posts are hidden by default. That would explain the part where he said "never thought I'd see the day."
Lemme guess: you're reading at +1, right?
He probably browses at 1 and didn't see the AC's post.
That wasn't the point at all.
mattack2 was simply saying the reason they are able to prosecute The Church of Scientology in France but not in the United States is because the First Amendment of the US Constitution apparently prohibits their Congress from passing any laws either respecting the establishment, or prohibiting the free exercise, of religion.
We have a similar situation where I live, where a polygamist community avoids prosecution (to some extent) because the local government is afraid a case would not withstand a Charter challenge. They don't want to end up enshrining polygamy in law.
I'm not sure how you got the idea anyone was suggesting that the First Amendment of the US Constitution would apply in France.
And keep your eye on the sparrow
When the going gets narrow
Don't do it ...
You're resisting gravity by moving tangentially at the same rate as you are falling toward the center of the body you're orbiting. So your weight would be the amount of force necessary to maintain your tangential velocity.
My boss emailed me a while back requesting that I get him a "video driver," as he had been unable to watch a YouTube video. His machine was fairly new, and I hadn't bothered to install DivX on it. I installed it and YouTube videos worked fine after that, but he was certain there was some piece of hardware called a "video driver" that I should have installed.
A month or so later, someone sent him a damn Quicktime video, which wouldn't play, and he insisted that I install the video driver so he wouldn't have these problems.
Okay, but you're talking about the lack of the sensation of weight.
I wasn't confusing mass with weight, but you still need to exert force to support an object in a gravitational field, and the measure of that force is its weight. The fact that we're in free fall and the object is weightless relative to us doesn't change that.
(IANAAP, so correct me if I'm wrong).
Well, technically the batteries weigh the same while on Earth as they do while orbiting it, they're just falling at the same rate as the shuttle, astronauts and Hubble, so they appear weightless. Are you "weightless" while skydiving?
So lawyers make money. Big deal. So do doctors, and auto mechanics, and the geeks for chrissakes.
Imagine that, people who have specialized knowledge make money, even when idiots wreck their cars, bring disease upon themselves with their lifestyle choices or use litigation as a business model.
Many also do pro bono work for people who are in need of legal council but can not afford it. Despite this, nearly half of litigants in my country are forced to represent themselves, straining the court system and usually resulting in justice denied for those too poor to pay for an attorney.
But I'm sure organizations like the RIAA would welcome your lawyer bashing, and encourage you to continue spreading the myth that it's the lawyers - not the executives - who are at fault.