I'd say that's because you can get music that isn't produced by Sony, you can get stereos/CD players/mixers/whatever that aren't produced by Sony, etc. They don't have a virtual monopoly on what you see and hear. (Unless of course you haven't left the chair in front of your monitor for days because you're an EQ addict, but then if you are one of them, you aren't reading this.)
It's already been determined that M$ has a monopoly, and has used their practices to force other business to "do their bidding". Now, they are producing and heavily marketing items that fall outside of their previous "competency", OSes. It should scare people that the same company that has a virtual stranglehold on the OS market is trying to get involved in so many other aspects of modern appliances. Okay, no M$ brand soda yet, but they're trying to wire the fridge. No M$ pizzas, but they want to hook up the microwave.
And with their horrible record regarding security, I don't think I want my appliances hooked up to something that could be pretty easily hacked and set to self-destruct in some odd way.
So it _might_ hurt Open Source. So what. Software should be treated like damn near every other product. If I build an appliance with known design flaws, and those flaws result in damage to real property or injuries, I am liable for damages and penalties. Likewise, if a piece of software is buggy and/or has security flaws that consequently cause damages, the maker of the software should be liable.
Innocent until proven guilty, at least in the U.S., if you aren't on Herr Ashcroft's list. They can prove that you over-wrote the file, but in the case you list, they can't prove what was originally on the file.
Of course, if you insist on labeling your files with names like FBI-doc18086a, then you deserve anything that happens to you.
I know exactly what you're talking about. Apparently, it was getting so bad that the mere rumour of bandwidth caps on the dorms was enough to cut down on usage in several of them, while others (like the Preston dorm) had so many people over-using Napster that it got to the point where they could find almost any song they wanted by searching the dorm LAN instead of going outside of it.
It never got to be enough trouble where they cut it down to so little that the Counterstrike fanatics couldn't play, but the university was considered banning Napster. Not a problem now, of course, with Napster's anemic state, but I'm sure if someone in the Computer Services department has half a brain, they could close off Limewire, Morpheus, Kazaa and all of their friends....
And it's not always just filesharing either. A couple of years ago, one entire floor of one of the dorms at USC (Univ. of South Carolina) was playing any online FPS game you could think of. When they're all trying to optimize their systems to get good ping, I imagine it plays hell with bandwidth usage statistics.
I know what you mean. For several years now, the University of South Carolina (the original USC) has been charging all full-time students a "technology fee", which was ostensibly so the university could make all the dorm rooms "Internet ready". Needless to say, when they actually got within eyesight of that goal, they promptly decided to (1) build more dorms, and (2) redefine what the fee goes for.
What always bothered me most about the campus computer setup was how the Business Administration department got new computers every year while the C.S. department and College of Engineering had to wait every four or five years before they could get new computers.
Am I the only one thinking antimatter costs more energy to produce than you get out of it?
Currently it does; maybe some day that won't be the case.
Be sure and let the rest of know when you manage to get around the Laws of Thermodynamics. Remember, you can't win, you can't break even, and you can't get out of the game.
Sure you can plug in negative numbers. But you know what, the negative number doesn't mean that you automatically have a negative mass. It's a mathematical equation, therefore, you could just shift the negative sign over to the "a" in the equation and have negative acceleration, also known as deceleration. The resultant force would then also be negative, stating the force that needs to be applied in the opposite vector of the original acceleration in order to produce the decelaration on that mass.
And many more people just get annoyed by it. I mean, a little less then two months into my most recent job, I started getting "toner supplies" spam. Apparently, even though I was the most recent hire, was not directly responsible for purchasing any sort of supplies, and wasn't in anything that could be remotely construed as a management position, I somehow am considered a viable target for spam that wants me to switch suppliers for printing supplies. And it wasn't random.... I didn't get a single one until after I started the job. (Oddly enough, that was about the time I joined the now seemingly defunct info-gne mailing list. I suspect another possible pattern...)
Well, hold on. What if they passed out flyers saying what absolute dicks (or something to that effect) their former bosses were? Okay, ignoring aspects of slander or libel, wouldn't that be free and protected speech?
If I protest a business' policy outside their corporate headquarters, but stay on public land, it's free speech. If I hand out flyers on how J. Random Chemical Company is polluting the environment, it's free speech. If I rant drunkenly in a bar about my boss/coworkers, it's free speech. Why does everyone treat e-mail that differently?
Face it, e-mail is the easier to handle. Delete it. I can't delete protestors or drunken ranting idiots without getting in major trouble, but there is no way they can force me to read e-mail.
So it may be spam. Delete it, just like all that other spam.
Too true. The weatherman can't even accurately predict tomorrow's weather, much less next week, much less years from now. And there are just as many models indicating that increased temperatures would result in the polar ice caps melting completely as there are models which show that the same increased temperatures would increase the size of those same caps.
Frankly, I think those areas of climate modeling are bound to stay poorly understood for quite some time. Until a point is reached where the field becomes "sexy and popular" it's just not going to get as much funding and interest as other fields.
You do realize that just a little bit of the polar ice caps are technically on "dry land", right? And if they melt, then it will add to the level of the ocean. Furthermore, if the polar ice caps go, I daresay most of the mountainous ice and snow will be gone as well, creating (at least temporarily) flash floods, and thereby again adding to the sedementation of the ocean, causing levels to rise further.
Now, while I doubt that I'm going to need to break out a pair of trunks, I think that some other areas might have something to worry about. Something about a large portion of New Orleans being under sea level?
Okay, it's anti-MS. This is news? When was the last time a pro-MS article made it's way to Slashdot?
Now, gaming console-wise, let's take a look at what I have owned/played and any problem those consoles had.
NES: Worked fine for several months, eventually had to do silly little ritual to get any cartridge to play.
SNES: Worked fine every time I used it.
N64: Worked fine every time I used it.
Dreamcast: Worked fine every time I used it.
PS1: Worked fine every time I used it until it got dropped. Then it stopped working.
PS2: Works fine every time I use it.
Of course, this is all anecdotal. Odds are that the vast majority of any console will work fine. (Okay, except for the NES after about 6+ months of play.) If there is some grotesque design flaw in the XBOX, we will soon find out about it. This is not it. A few went tits-up? Big deal. People in my dorm had to replace consoles that they bought because of defects. It happens.
Now, if the silly damn thing is revealed to have a major design flaw at some point down the road, that's different...
Hrm... I don't know... I have degrees in both Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science, and while getting my B.S. in Mech.E, we only had one course on FORTRAN programming after the 101 intro. Whereas in the Comp.Sci. program, there were multiple courses involved in programming in C/C++.
Maybe Engineering grad students get more FORTRAN, but I tend to doubt it.
Actually, a proprietary computer virus would be... interesting, legally. Assuming that it did not do actual damage, or invade privacy, then if MacAfee or Norton patched their anti-virus programs using the source code of the virus, they would be violating law themselves.
I never liked the student activity fee myself, but not because of which organizations it went to, but the blatant extortion (first you automatically pay the fee when you register for classes, then you have to jump through a quarter of a million hoops to get it back) and the, to me, obvious embezzling that was going on. Out of the $50/student fee, only a little over a dollar went to undergraduate organizations, and that amount of money available _never_ changed, regardless of how many students were enrolled. (I personally found it odd that the total amount available didn't change by a cent over a period of 10 years...)
If you want your rights, you have to fight for them. The Founding Fathers understood this. We (okay, Americans, as not every/.er is from the States...) need to relearn this. Freedoms are something that you occassionally have to fight for.
Did I miss something, and the EFF was added to a list of suspected terrorist organizations? I don't think so, and I tend to think that even Herr Ashcroft is not going to go that far. (Yeah, EFF has Freedom in the title, but that doesn't automatically make it a target.)
Define reasonable price. I'm serious. We all have our own limits on what we will spend for music, movies, etc. I know someone who spent $80 getting a 4 song, promotional Kiss album. To him, that was entirely reasonable.
Sure, CDs are overpriced. Most of the current artists, IMAO, suck. And no one is forcing you to buy music. You don't like the prices, don't pay them. Vote with your wallet. Problem is, no matter how much we would like to think otherwise, Slashdotters make up a remarkably small percentage of the population. If every last person who even occassionally checks the site stopped buying any CDs, it would barely make a mark, much less a dent, in the total sales of CDs. And let's face facts: even if a Slashdot boycott of RIAA produced music did cause a significant reduction in CD sales, the RIAA would just claim it as more proof of pirating. And because they get to make up their own statistics, the general public (i.e. the vast majority of people) will never know otherwise.
You want to "help the consumer"? Educate them. We know all this already. Repeating the same anti-RIAA diatribes here doesn't get you anything save perhaps some more karma.
Kierthos
(Above comments are completely ironic considering how many CDs and movies I got for Christmas.)
Well, the DVD will probably have actor and director interviews and a background on the whole Tokien "mythology". Probably not as comprehensive as say, actually reading the books or trying to read the Silmarrilion(sp?), but there you go...
What I was really disappointed with was the omission of the Tom Bombadil and barrow-wight scenes and the fact that 17 years pass between Bilbo leaving the Shire on his 111th birthday, and Frodo starting the Ring quest. Just from what I saw in the movie, it seemed like it was only supposed to be a couple of months or so. Would it have hurt to include the scenes I mentioned? Maybe... the movie was good without them, but I think it would have added to the character development. The loss of the 17 year gap really, in my opinion, hurt the feel of the movie.
Ah, so those of us who pay cash for a large number of our purchases are what then, SOL? How about tourists? Oh wait, we're ignoring that effect on the economy, right?
Couple other factors:
1) Lost cards. Details and bureaucracy for replacements.
2) Forgeries. Trust me, it can and will be done.
3) Assumed 100% compliance. That won't happen either. I personally don't want a national ID card, as enough people ask for my damn SSN as it stands when they don't need it.
Well, you have to admit, a lot of what we hear about books is either popularized by the media, promulgated by our friends, or... or... shit, guess that's it...
I mean, when was the last time you were in a bookstore just looking for a particular book, and you bought something else because it just looked interesting? Not because it had a celebrity on the front cover, not because you had heard about it on Oprah or wherever. You had an extra 10-spot and just bought it.
Lemme guess. Been a while. Same for me, really. The only reason I started buying any of the old Nero Wolfe mysteries by Rex Stout was because I really dig the series on A&E. Am I hooked on the books, even though a lot of the ones I have read haven't been turned into TV shows? Hell(tm) yes! But I had that impetus because of the show. Without that show, I probably never would have bought any of them.
Same with web-sites. Unless you get that initial "oomph" to check it out AND unless it hooks you, odds are you're never going back. And even then, if you find something newer, shinier and better, it's still a toss-up as to whether you'll stay.
And if you read the post you're responding to, you'd notice that NecroPuppy asked how the RIAA was able to file suit. Heads up here kids. Jurisdiction works _both_ ways. Dmitry is in the slammer because the company that produced his program allegedly violated U.S. copyright laws. However, if Adobe had a corporate presence in Russia, they would also be in legal troubles because, as it stands right now, their system violates Russian law by not allowing the ability to make backup copies.
Bottom line is, what presence does the RIAA have in the Netherlands?
Slashdot Mirror
I'd say that's because you can get music that isn't produced by Sony, you can get stereos/CD players/mixers/whatever that aren't produced by Sony, etc. They don't have a virtual monopoly on what you see and hear. (Unless of course you haven't left the chair in front of your monitor for days because you're an EQ addict, but then if you are one of them, you aren't reading this.)
It's already been determined that M$ has a monopoly, and has used their practices to force other business to "do their bidding". Now, they are producing and heavily marketing items that fall outside of their previous "competency", OSes. It should scare people that the same company that has a virtual stranglehold on the OS market is trying to get involved in so many other aspects of modern appliances. Okay, no M$ brand soda yet, but they're trying to wire the fridge. No M$ pizzas, but they want to hook up the microwave.
And with their horrible record regarding security, I don't think I want my appliances hooked up to something that could be pretty easily hacked and set to self-destruct in some odd way.
Kierthos
So it _might_ hurt Open Source. So what. Software should be treated like damn near every other product. If I build an appliance with known design flaws, and those flaws result in damage to real property or injuries, I am liable for damages and penalties. Likewise, if a piece of software is buggy and/or has security flaws that consequently cause damages, the maker of the software should be liable.
Kierthos
Innocent until proven guilty, at least in the U.S., if you aren't on Herr Ashcroft's list. They can prove that you over-wrote the file, but in the case you list, they can't prove what was originally on the file.
Of course, if you insist on labeling your files with names like FBI-doc18086a, then you deserve anything that happens to you.
Kierthos
I know exactly what you're talking about. Apparently, it was getting so bad that the mere rumour of bandwidth caps on the dorms was enough to cut down on usage in several of them, while others (like the Preston dorm) had so many people over-using Napster that it got to the point where they could find almost any song they wanted by searching the dorm LAN instead of going outside of it.
It never got to be enough trouble where they cut it down to so little that the Counterstrike fanatics couldn't play, but the university was considered banning Napster. Not a problem now, of course, with Napster's anemic state, but I'm sure if someone in the Computer Services department has half a brain, they could close off Limewire, Morpheus, Kazaa and all of their friends....
Kierthos
And it's not always just filesharing either. A couple of years ago, one entire floor of one of the dorms at USC (Univ. of South Carolina) was playing any online FPS game you could think of. When they're all trying to optimize their systems to get good ping, I imagine it plays hell with bandwidth usage statistics.
Kierthos
I know what you mean. For several years now, the University of South Carolina (the original USC) has been charging all full-time students a "technology fee", which was ostensibly so the university could make all the dorm rooms "Internet ready". Needless to say, when they actually got within eyesight of that goal, they promptly decided to (1) build more dorms, and (2) redefine what the fee goes for.
What always bothered me most about the campus computer setup was how the Business Administration department got new computers every year while the C.S. department and College of Engineering had to wait every four or five years before they could get new computers.
Kierthos
Ah, but all computers these days have those handy cup-holders so you can have your glass of beer while you download porn.
Kierthos
Am I the only one thinking antimatter costs more energy to produce than you get out of it?
Currently it does; maybe some day that won't be the case.
Be sure and let the rest of know when you manage to get around the Laws of Thermodynamics. Remember, you can't win, you can't break even, and you can't get out of the game.
Kierthos
Sure you can plug in negative numbers. But you know what, the negative number doesn't mean that you automatically have a negative mass. It's a mathematical equation, therefore, you could just shift the negative sign over to the "a" in the equation and have negative acceleration, also known as deceleration. The resultant force would then also be negative, stating the force that needs to be applied in the opposite vector of the original acceleration in order to produce the decelaration on that mass.
Kierthos
And many more people just get annoyed by it. I mean, a little less then two months into my most recent job, I started getting "toner supplies" spam. Apparently, even though I was the most recent hire, was not directly responsible for purchasing any sort of supplies, and wasn't in anything that could be remotely construed as a management position, I somehow am considered a viable target for spam that wants me to switch suppliers for printing supplies. And it wasn't random.... I didn't get a single one until after I started the job. (Oddly enough, that was about the time I joined the now seemingly defunct info-gne mailing list. I suspect another possible pattern...)
Kierthos
Well, I don't know about that... I used to have an AOL account... (You have SPAM!)
Kierthos
Well, hold on. What if they passed out flyers saying what absolute dicks (or something to that effect) their former bosses were? Okay, ignoring aspects of slander or libel, wouldn't that be free and protected speech?
If I protest a business' policy outside their corporate headquarters, but stay on public land, it's free speech. If I hand out flyers on how J. Random Chemical Company is polluting the environment, it's free speech. If I rant drunkenly in a bar about my boss/coworkers, it's free speech. Why does everyone treat e-mail that differently?
Face it, e-mail is the easier to handle. Delete it. I can't delete protestors or drunken ranting idiots without getting in major trouble, but there is no way they can force me to read e-mail.
So it may be spam. Delete it, just like all that other spam.
Kierthos
Too true. The weatherman can't even accurately predict tomorrow's weather, much less next week, much less years from now. And there are just as many models indicating that increased temperatures would result in the polar ice caps melting completely as there are models which show that the same increased temperatures would increase the size of those same caps.
Frankly, I think those areas of climate modeling are bound to stay poorly understood for quite some time. Until a point is reached where the field becomes "sexy and popular" it's just not going to get as much funding and interest as other fields.
Kierthos
You do realize that just a little bit of the polar ice caps are technically on "dry land", right? And if they melt, then it will add to the level of the ocean. Furthermore, if the polar ice caps go, I daresay most of the mountainous ice and snow will be gone as well, creating (at least temporarily) flash floods, and thereby again adding to the sedementation of the ocean, causing levels to rise further.
Now, while I doubt that I'm going to need to break out a pair of trunks, I think that some other areas might have something to worry about. Something about a large portion of New Orleans being under sea level?
Kierthos
Okay, it's anti-MS. This is news? When was the last time a pro-MS article made it's way to Slashdot?
Now, gaming console-wise, let's take a look at what I have owned/played and any problem those consoles had.
NES: Worked fine for several months, eventually had to do silly little ritual to get any cartridge to play.
SNES: Worked fine every time I used it.
N64: Worked fine every time I used it.
Dreamcast: Worked fine every time I used it.
PS1: Worked fine every time I used it until it got dropped. Then it stopped working.
PS2: Works fine every time I use it.
Of course, this is all anecdotal. Odds are that the vast majority of any console will work fine. (Okay, except for the NES after about 6+ months of play.) If there is some grotesque design flaw in the XBOX, we will soon find out about it. This is not it. A few went tits-up? Big deal. People in my dorm had to replace consoles that they bought because of defects. It happens.
Now, if the silly damn thing is revealed to have a major design flaw at some point down the road, that's different...
Kierthos
Hrm... I don't know... I have degrees in both Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science, and while getting my B.S. in Mech.E, we only had one course on FORTRAN programming after the 101 intro. Whereas in the Comp.Sci. program, there were multiple courses involved in programming in C/C++.
Maybe Engineering grad students get more FORTRAN, but I tend to doubt it.
Kierthos
Actually, a proprietary computer virus would be... interesting, legally. Assuming that it did not do actual damage, or invade privacy, then if MacAfee or Norton patched their anti-virus programs using the source code of the virus, they would be violating law themselves.
Kierthos
I never liked the student activity fee myself, but not because of which organizations it went to, but the blatant extortion (first you automatically pay the fee when you register for classes, then you have to jump through a quarter of a million hoops to get it back) and the, to me, obvious embezzling that was going on. Out of the $50/student fee, only a little over a dollar went to undergraduate organizations, and that amount of money available _never_ changed, regardless of how many students were enrolled. (I personally found it odd that the total amount available didn't change by a cent over a period of 10 years...)
/.er is from the States...) need to relearn this. Freedoms are something that you occassionally have to fight for.
If you want your rights, you have to fight for them. The Founding Fathers understood this. We (okay, Americans, as not every
Kierthos
Did I miss something, and the EFF was added to a list of suspected terrorist organizations? I don't think so, and I tend to think that even Herr Ashcroft is not going to go that far. (Yeah, EFF has Freedom in the title, but that doesn't automatically make it a target.)
Kierthos
Define reasonable price. I'm serious. We all have our own limits on what we will spend for music, movies, etc. I know someone who spent $80 getting a 4 song, promotional Kiss album. To him, that was entirely reasonable.
Sure, CDs are overpriced. Most of the current artists, IMAO, suck. And no one is forcing you to buy music. You don't like the prices, don't pay them. Vote with your wallet. Problem is, no matter how much we would like to think otherwise, Slashdotters make up a remarkably small percentage of the population. If every last person who even occassionally checks the site stopped buying any CDs, it would barely make a mark, much less a dent, in the total sales of CDs. And let's face facts: even if a Slashdot boycott of RIAA produced music did cause a significant reduction in CD sales, the RIAA would just claim it as more proof of pirating. And because they get to make up their own statistics, the general public (i.e. the vast majority of people) will never know otherwise.
You want to "help the consumer"? Educate them. We know all this already. Repeating the same anti-RIAA diatribes here doesn't get you anything save perhaps some more karma.
Kierthos
(Above comments are completely ironic considering how many CDs and movies I got for Christmas.)
AOL 12.0, it's not like you have a choice.
Kierthos
Well, the DVD will probably have actor and director interviews and a background on the whole Tokien "mythology". Probably not as comprehensive as say, actually reading the books or trying to read the Silmarrilion(sp?), but there you go...
What I was really disappointed with was the omission of the Tom Bombadil and barrow-wight scenes and the fact that 17 years pass between Bilbo leaving the Shire on his 111th birthday, and Frodo starting the Ring quest. Just from what I saw in the movie, it seemed like it was only supposed to be a couple of months or so. Would it have hurt to include the scenes I mentioned? Maybe... the movie was good without them, but I think it would have added to the character development. The loss of the 17 year gap really, in my opinion, hurt the feel of the movie.
Kierthos
Ah, so those of us who pay cash for a large number of our purchases are what then, SOL? How about tourists? Oh wait, we're ignoring that effect on the economy, right?
Couple other factors:
1) Lost cards. Details and bureaucracy for replacements.
2) Forgeries. Trust me, it can and will be done.
3) Assumed 100% compliance. That won't happen either. I personally don't want a national ID card, as enough people ask for my damn SSN as it stands when they don't need it.
Just my $0.02
Kierthos
Well, you have to admit, a lot of what we hear about books is either popularized by the media, promulgated by our friends, or... or... shit, guess that's it...
I mean, when was the last time you were in a bookstore just looking for a particular book, and you bought something else because it just looked interesting? Not because it had a celebrity on the front cover, not because you had heard about it on Oprah or wherever. You had an extra 10-spot and just bought it.
Lemme guess. Been a while. Same for me, really. The only reason I started buying any of the old Nero Wolfe mysteries by Rex Stout was because I really dig the series on A&E. Am I hooked on the books, even though a lot of the ones I have read haven't been turned into TV shows? Hell(tm) yes! But I had that impetus because of the show. Without that show, I probably never would have bought any of them.
Same with web-sites. Unless you get that initial "oomph" to check it out AND unless it hooks you, odds are you're never going back. And even then, if you find something newer, shinier and better, it's still a toss-up as to whether you'll stay.
Kierthos
And if you read the post you're responding to, you'd notice that NecroPuppy asked how the RIAA was able to file suit. Heads up here kids. Jurisdiction works _both_ ways. Dmitry is in the slammer because the company that produced his program allegedly violated U.S. copyright laws. However, if Adobe had a corporate presence in Russia, they would also be in legal troubles because, as it stands right now, their system violates Russian law by not allowing the ability to make backup copies.
Bottom line is, what presence does the RIAA have in the Netherlands?
Kierthos