Ah, but you see, South Carolina is a state that already thinks it can ignore federal decisions at a whim. (I refer you to Governor Hodges' attempts to sic the state police on federal convoys transporting plutonium to SRS.) I am a proponent of states' rights and all, but there does need to be some checks and balances...
1) Consider that most people with criminal records are not charged with anti-trust violations.
2) Consider that persons/companies that are convicted of anti-trust violations probably do not need keep/be eligible for contracts that routinely run for years at a stretch, which only would enforce a monopoly, at least at that level.
Before you get your knickers all in a twist, consider something... if I buy a CD, burn a back up copy, I am not pirating it. I never argued that I wasn't.
However, if I take that same CD, burn hundreds of copies, and sell them on the street, then I am pirating the music. The file-sharing programs are just the latest incarnation of those guys on the streets selling the latest albums for half-price.
The reason the RIAA is so up in the wind about it is because with those street vendors, there was still a limit on how many they sold, overall quality of the product, etc. With file-sharing, technically, one copy could end up on thousands of computers.
I don't blame them for being upset about it. If I was in a similar circumstance, I would probably be upset too. I do,however, blame them for handling it the way they are. Trying to hit all the customers for the actions of a few is no way to run a business, and I am happy this class-action suit has been filed.
"Music creators have the right to protect their property from theft, just like owners of any other property," Sherman (President of the RIAA) said. "Motion picture studios and software and video game publishers have protected their works for years, and no one has even (thought) to claim that doing so was inappropriate, let alone unlawful."
Yeah, Sherman, old boy, but when the video game and movie industries do it, the games or movies don't show significantly less quality, fail to work, or break the machine they are used on. (Okay, generally speaking. I still can't get Diablo II installed correctly for my father...)
When will the RIAA learn that there is a vast difference between copyright protection and cripple-right protection? The RIAA may have a point about piracy, but that does not give them the right to push a "protection scheme" that is so inherently flawed as to be worthless (in more ways then one.)
The analogy doesn't hold. Owning a sports car does not entitle you to drive over the speed limit, and it is no guarentee that your reflexes are as good as you say they are.
With a high-speed/large bandwidth connection, however, what is the point of paying the current monthly fee if you are not using it? The cable businesses are in the position of wanting to raise rates because people are actually using the bandwidth that they sold them.
"Omigod Frank, the customers are actually using the bandwidth. What do we do? We had no business plan for our customers actually using our product. Should we raise rates speciously in order to take a supposed hard line against those 'bandwidth hogs' no matter what they're really using it for?"
If we weren't meant to use the bandwidth, they never should have provided it.
Right, he should have have said "One bad Apple spoils the whole Mac experience."
Are there bandwidth hogs? Yes, obviously. Should they pay higher prices? No. The Cable connection is rated at a certain bandwidth rating. They are merely getting the most out of what they pay for. If someone doesn't want to use their cable modem for more then e-mail or whatever, fine. Don't punish the people who are actually using the system for what it's designed for...
"Roadrunner: High-speed Internet"... that's what they keep advertising it as...
You know what? There is no legal obligation for me to watch commercials. If a PVR will never show a commercial and lets me watch my shows that much easier and quicker, then great.
Nothing says that big business has the right to have their message heard. They can say it, but I don't have to listen.
Hell(tm) no. And that's the point. Make the punishment harsh enough that you can make a large enough example, and it will cause other spammers to think twice about doing this kind of thing. Which is what we need.
Now, if South Carolina's legislature could only get off it's ass and sign a "No Call" law, I'd be much happier...
I believe the idea is that by holding your hands at the angle that the "broken keyboard" is at ameliorates the conditions that cause CTS. But, I don't know for sure...
All I can say about them is after coding for 6 hours on a box with one of those "broken keyboards", going home and using a standard one felt... odd. But I was able to sit and code on the ergonomic one for longer then I normally could.... but the Jolt Cola may have had some effect on that...
No, I find him odd because of the music he spins. I swear to God, he spins and mixes country music & techno together along with many other music genres...
Whether he makes money off of it now is not important to him. He's as much as said so. He's trying to make connections, make a name for himself, and so I don't find it surprising at all that he prefers to spin music that he buys. (Again, it's the music that he spins that I find odd...)
He's a counter-case to the whole "people who can download music never buy music" arguement.
Um, no. In the exact case of some friends of mine, whom I was referring to, they prefer vinyl. One of them buys a few records every couple weeks (and bemoans the fact that he can't buy more), and yes, he is that dedicated.
For him, it's not a question of what he can find online (because he can find quite a lot), it's more of being able to take them anywhere. He can set up his gear and spin the records he owns anywhere he can run electricity to. Yeah, he could probably do that with CDs too, but that's not his style. He's one of those odd people that while he _could_ pirate all the music he wants to spin, he prefers to buy it.
The only people I know who prefer vinyl are people who DJ in their spare time. Sure, there are systems out there that let you 'spin' CDs, but what can I say... they're purists.
Good technology sometimes beats out bad, bad technology (who defines what bad is?) sometimes beats out good. Heck, bad technology sometimes beats out worse technology. Remember 8-tracks?
Sure, all digital background movies are easier to make now then they were 5 years ago. 5 years from now, they will be even easier to make. How long until Hollywood no longer even needs actors, but merely makes composites bodies and faces from features that they license?
How long until entire movies feature an all composite cast? Or a entire cast that had been dead before filming even started?
Yeah, what was it, like $113 million in the opening weekend? Yes, yes, they're losing money hand-over-fist on that one... of course, didn't the production company for 'Titanic' claim that it didn't make money either?
I'm sure that the same thing will be said about Ep II, which only made $114 million or so in the first weekend it was out....
I can't remember the exact legal term, but there is something where the decisions found in one state may be legally binding in all others. The key thing is is "may be". Some states have laws on the books that are violations of law in other states.
Plus, through in the fact that this is a civil case, not a criminal one. In a criminal case, you must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. In a civil case, the guilt only needs to be established by a preponderance of evidence. What that means is in a civil case, it has to be "more likely then not" that guilt is evident. (This is, btw, how OJ was liable for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in a civil court, regardless of the fact that he had been found not guilty earlier in a criminal court.)
What this all boils down to is that _if_ this case goes through in Virginia, and _if_ the publisher is found guilty of libel, then it is possible that the decision may be used to affect other cases in other states. But there is also a good chance of this heading up to Appeals Court, and maybe even to the Supreme Court.
Exactly. Why bother with the XBOX at all when you can just write the game for the PC, not pay M$ any fees for developing the game for their system, and make even more money?
I mean, even as unattractive as the XBOX is, nothing makes it less worth buying then knowing that many titles on it will also be available on the computer that I (and here's the important part) don't have to pay another $199 more to play the game on. I already own the computer. So I might have to wait a couple months before the port? Big deal.
Well, M$ seems to take the view that they can buy game companies and/or try and bully them in order to get some more game titles. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
Quite frankly, since I don't play a lot of console games, especially games like Halo, nothing about the XBOX is an incentive for me to spend hard earned cash on it.
Whereas, when PS2 prices drop, inevitably, to $99, I probably will buy one, because it can play all the PS1 games, has a much, much larger title library (and therefore, more titles that are likely to interest me), etc.
Kierthos
Re:AOL is worse than a stalker
on
Disconnecting
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· Score: 1
AOL is a pain the ass to get off of. Luckily, I haven't had any of the credit card nonsense. However, when I tried to cancel my account, I goy handed off to three different people before they finally got the idea that I actually (horror of horrors) wanted to cancel my account.
And yes, I did get asked 'why?'. I told them it was none of their business why I was canceling their account, and to please move forward with getting rid of the damn thing.
1 minute later, no more AOL. Sometimes, cursing works.
Free speech has never meant freedom to say absolutely anything you want. Freedom of speech does not cover things like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, you cannot use it as a defense in slander or libel cases (okay, you shouldn't be able to, but I'm sure it's been done), and you can't claim rights of Freedom of Speech for diseminating information that the federal government has sealed for security reasons.
Now, I'm not arguing that all sites must meet the standards of each and every community (unless, of course, some community out there decides to ban all that Harry Potter junk), merely pointing out that "free speech" is not absolute.
It's not enforced. COPA is still being held in a lower court for review. The Supreme Court said that the "community standards" wasn't 'overly broad', and therefore not unconstitutional under that one criteria. It still may be found unconstitutional under other criteria, in the lower court to which the Supreme Court returned this ruling.
Next time, try a little thing I like to call "reading the article".
Prove that those companies that produce the music, videos, whatever actually have lost money. Guess what, you only have access to the number they feed you, so you can only prove what they want to show you.
The music industry losing money? Amazing how many albums are still going platinum, double platinum, etc. even with music pirating. Movies? Spider-Man made $114 million in it's first weekend. How much more will it make before it's done? But, oh wait, those movie studios are losing money. (Among these same movie studios claims is the one that Titanic lost money or barely broke even.)
Okay, diatribe aside, yes, they might actually be losing money. I'll feel bad about it later. Really, I will. The same instant that the music industry stops pushing the pop-crap that seems to be on every station, and the same time the movie studios stop pushing things like a live-action version of Scooby-Doo. (My god, who comes up with these ideas?)
Of course, I play Nethack, so I guess I am not the most unbiased person when it comes to free software/games vs. crap like EQ.
If I had a RoadRunner connection for free, then yeah, maybe I could deal with them wanting to plug themselves in my e-mails and news postings.
However, since RoadRunner is a pay-to-use service, aren't they getting money already? Why, yes, they are. And what if part of your organization is required to post to certain newsgroups, and all of a sudden, with no warning, instead of being from BlahCo, it says it's from RoadRunner? Wouldn't you be a touch upset about that?
I hate to come across as a logical person, but if it's free content, why does it matter if we do or don't register? It's free... they're obviously not losing money on the deal, and hey, we get to avoid some spam.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, but you see, South Carolina is a state that already thinks it can ignore federal decisions at a whim. (I refer you to Governor Hodges' attempts to sic the state police on federal convoys transporting plutonium to SRS.) I am a proponent of states' rights and all, but there does need to be some checks and balances...
Kierthos
1) Consider that most people with criminal records are not charged with anti-trust violations.
2) Consider that persons/companies that are convicted of anti-trust violations probably do not need keep/be eligible for contracts that routinely run for years at a stretch, which only would enforce a monopoly, at least at that level.
Kierthos
If that coward Charlie Condon hadn't dropped South Carolina out of the states' suit, I would be checking the local laws as we speak....
Kierthos
Before you get your knickers all in a twist, consider something... if I buy a CD, burn a back up copy, I am not pirating it. I never argued that I wasn't.
However, if I take that same CD, burn hundreds of copies, and sell them on the street, then I am pirating the music. The file-sharing programs are just the latest incarnation of those guys on the streets selling the latest albums for half-price.
The reason the RIAA is so up in the wind about it is because with those street vendors, there was still a limit on how many they sold, overall quality of the product, etc. With file-sharing, technically, one copy could end up on thousands of computers.
I don't blame them for being upset about it. If I was in a similar circumstance, I would probably be upset too. I do,however, blame them for handling it the way they are. Trying to hit all the customers for the actions of a few is no way to run a business, and I am happy this class-action suit has been filed.
Kierthos
"Music creators have the right to protect their property from theft, just like owners of any other property," Sherman (President of the RIAA) said. "Motion picture studios and software and video game publishers have protected their works for years, and no one has even (thought) to claim that doing so was inappropriate, let alone unlawful."
Yeah, Sherman, old boy, but when the video game and movie industries do it, the games or movies don't show significantly less quality, fail to work, or break the machine they are used on. (Okay, generally speaking. I still can't get Diablo II installed correctly for my father...)
When will the RIAA learn that there is a vast difference between copyright protection and cripple-right protection? The RIAA may have a point about piracy, but that does not give them the right to push a "protection scheme" that is so inherently flawed as to be worthless (in more ways then one.)
Kierthos
The analogy doesn't hold. Owning a sports car does not entitle you to drive over the speed limit, and it is no guarentee that your reflexes are as good as you say they are.
With a high-speed/large bandwidth connection, however, what is the point of paying the current monthly fee if you are not using it? The cable businesses are in the position of wanting to raise rates because people are actually using the bandwidth that they sold them.
"Omigod Frank, the customers are actually using the bandwidth. What do we do? We had no business plan for our customers actually using our product. Should we raise rates speciously in order to take a supposed hard line against those 'bandwidth hogs' no matter what they're really using it for?"
If we weren't meant to use the bandwidth, they never should have provided it.
Kierthos
Right, he should have have said "One bad Apple spoils the whole Mac experience."
Are there bandwidth hogs? Yes, obviously. Should they pay higher prices? No. The Cable connection is rated at a certain bandwidth rating. They are merely getting the most out of what they pay for. If someone doesn't want to use their cable modem for more then e-mail or whatever, fine. Don't punish the people who are actually using the system for what it's designed for...
"Roadrunner: High-speed Internet"... that's what they keep advertising it as...
Kierthos
More like speed, inertia, and gravity. Gravity is constanting trying to pull the ISS to the ground, the speed and inertia of the ISS keep it in orbit.
There is also such a thing as a Lagrange Point.
Kierthos
You know what? There is no legal obligation for me to watch commercials. If a PVR will never show a commercial and lets me watch my shows that much easier and quicker, then great.
Nothing says that big business has the right to have their message heard. They can say it, but I don't have to listen.
Kierthos
Hell(tm) no. And that's the point. Make the punishment harsh enough that you can make a large enough example, and it will cause other spammers to think twice about doing this kind of thing. Which is what we need.
Now, if South Carolina's legislature could only get off it's ass and sign a "No Call" law, I'd be much happier...
Kierthos
I believe the idea is that by holding your hands at the angle that the "broken keyboard" is at ameliorates the conditions that cause CTS. But, I don't know for sure...
All I can say about them is after coding for 6 hours on a box with one of those "broken keyboards", going home and using a standard one felt... odd. But I was able to sit and code on the ergonomic one for longer then I normally could.... but the Jolt Cola may have had some effect on that...
Kierthos
No, I find him odd because of the music he spins. I swear to God, he spins and mixes country music & techno together along with many other music genres...
Whether he makes money off of it now is not important to him. He's as much as said so. He's trying to make connections, make a name for himself, and so I don't find it surprising at all that he prefers to spin music that he buys. (Again, it's the music that he spins that I find odd...)
He's a counter-case to the whole "people who can download music never buy music" arguement.
Kierthos
Um, no. In the exact case of some friends of mine, whom I was referring to, they prefer vinyl. One of them buys a few records every couple weeks (and bemoans the fact that he can't buy more), and yes, he is that dedicated.
For him, it's not a question of what he can find online (because he can find quite a lot), it's more of being able to take them anywhere. He can set up his gear and spin the records he owns anywhere he can run electricity to. Yeah, he could probably do that with CDs too, but that's not his style. He's one of those odd people that while he _could_ pirate all the music he wants to spin, he prefers to buy it.
Kierthos
The only people I know who prefer vinyl are people who DJ in their spare time. Sure, there are systems out there that let you 'spin' CDs, but what can I say... they're purists.
Good technology sometimes beats out bad, bad technology (who defines what bad is?) sometimes beats out good. Heck, bad technology sometimes beats out worse technology. Remember 8-tracks?
Sure, all digital background movies are easier to make now then they were 5 years ago. 5 years from now, they will be even easier to make. How long until Hollywood no longer even needs actors, but merely makes composites bodies and faces from features that they license?
How long until entire movies feature an all composite cast? Or a entire cast that had been dead before filming even started?
Kierthos
Yeah, what was it, like $113 million in the opening weekend? Yes, yes, they're losing money hand-over-fist on that one... of course, didn't the production company for 'Titanic' claim that it didn't make money either?
I'm sure that the same thing will be said about Ep II, which only made $114 million or so in the first weekend it was out....
Kierthos
I can't remember the exact legal term, but there is something where the decisions found in one state may be legally binding in all others. The key thing is is "may be". Some states have laws on the books that are violations of law in other states.
Plus, through in the fact that this is a civil case, not a criminal one. In a criminal case, you must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. In a civil case, the guilt only needs to be established by a preponderance of evidence. What that means is in a civil case, it has to be "more likely then not" that guilt is evident. (This is, btw, how OJ was liable for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in a civil court, regardless of the fact that he had been found not guilty earlier in a criminal court.)
What this all boils down to is that _if_ this case goes through in Virginia, and _if_ the publisher is found guilty of libel, then it is possible that the decision may be used to affect other cases in other states. But there is also a good chance of this heading up to Appeals Court, and maybe even to the Supreme Court.
IANAL,
Kierthos
Exactly. Why bother with the XBOX at all when you can just write the game for the PC, not pay M$ any fees for developing the game for their system, and make even more money?
I mean, even as unattractive as the XBOX is, nothing makes it less worth buying then knowing that many titles on it will also be available on the computer that I (and here's the important part) don't have to pay another $199 more to play the game on. I already own the computer. So I might have to wait a couple months before the port? Big deal.
Kierthos
Well, M$ seems to take the view that they can buy game companies and/or try and bully them in order to get some more game titles. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
Quite frankly, since I don't play a lot of console games, especially games like Halo, nothing about the XBOX is an incentive for me to spend hard earned cash on it.
Whereas, when PS2 prices drop, inevitably, to $99, I probably will buy one, because it can play all the PS1 games, has a much, much larger title library (and therefore, more titles that are likely to interest me), etc.
Kierthos
AOL is a pain the ass to get off of. Luckily, I haven't had any of the credit card nonsense. However, when I tried to cancel my account, I goy handed off to three different people before they finally got the idea that I actually (horror of horrors) wanted to cancel my account.
And yes, I did get asked 'why?'. I told them it was none of their business why I was canceling their account, and to please move forward with getting rid of the damn thing.
1 minute later, no more AOL. Sometimes, cursing works.
Kierthos
Free speech has never meant freedom to say absolutely anything you want. Freedom of speech does not cover things like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, you cannot use it as a defense in slander or libel cases (okay, you shouldn't be able to, but I'm sure it's been done), and you can't claim rights of Freedom of Speech for diseminating information that the federal government has sealed for security reasons.
Now, I'm not arguing that all sites must meet the standards of each and every community (unless, of course, some community out there decides to ban all that Harry Potter junk), merely pointing out that "free speech" is not absolute.
BTW, it isn't free either.
Kierthos
It's not enforced. COPA is still being held in a lower court for review. The Supreme Court said that the "community standards" wasn't 'overly broad', and therefore not unconstitutional under that one criteria. It still may be found unconstitutional under other criteria, in the lower court to which the Supreme Court returned this ruling.
Next time, try a little thing I like to call "reading the article".
Kierthos
What? You mean the guvmint isn't required to bail out businesses that fail? Quick someone tell the media....
Kierthos
Prove that those companies that produce the music, videos, whatever actually have lost money. Guess what, you only have access to the number they feed you, so you can only prove what they want to show you.
The music industry losing money? Amazing how many albums are still going platinum, double platinum, etc. even with music pirating. Movies? Spider-Man made $114 million in it's first weekend. How much more will it make before it's done? But, oh wait, those movie studios are losing money. (Among these same movie studios claims is the one that Titanic lost money or barely broke even.)
Okay, diatribe aside, yes, they might actually be losing money. I'll feel bad about it later. Really, I will. The same instant that the music industry stops pushing the pop-crap that seems to be on every station, and the same time the movie studios stop pushing things like a live-action version of Scooby-Doo. (My god, who comes up with these ideas?)
Of course, I play Nethack, so I guess I am not the most unbiased person when it comes to free software/games vs. crap like EQ.
Kierthos
If I had a RoadRunner connection for free, then yeah, maybe I could deal with them wanting to plug themselves in my e-mails and news postings.
However, since RoadRunner is a pay-to-use service, aren't they getting money already? Why, yes, they are. And what if part of your organization is required to post to certain newsgroups, and all of a sudden, with no warning, instead of being from BlahCo, it says it's from RoadRunner? Wouldn't you be a touch upset about that?
They can fix it by making it opt out.
Kierthos
I hate to come across as a logical person, but if it's free content, why does it matter if we do or don't register? It's free... they're obviously not losing money on the deal, and hey, we get to avoid some spam.
Kierthos