P2P filesharing activity has decreased very little since they began their end-user legal campaign.
Given that all evidence was that P2P had been increasing nearly exponentially previously, and given that the quote above implies that activity has decreased at least a little, this result shows that the RIAA's actions have probably had a very great effect on P2P activity. But I guess the spin sounds better to state almost exactly the opposite conclusion.
And even if the RIAA's legal actions DIDN'T affect P2P activity, so what ? Would it mean anything if severely increasing the penalty for (to argue from the extreme) murdering your wife and kids failed to decrease the incidence of such crimes ?
I think it would be fitting if some entrepeneur ripped their copyrighted designs and sold their OWN shirts (they are charging quite a lot for them, considering they paid an absolute pittance for the design). After all, it's not like printing off t-shirts with the exact same design is depriving anyone else of physical property now, is it ? How would VA be hurt ?
Makes you wonder why/. saw fit to ensure they own the copyrights when it seems like the editors and many of their more vocal readers are always pooh-poohing them.
More than that, what is the purpose of linking to these companies ? Corporate behemoths that they are, with websites to match, you're surely not going to find anything at the linked-to URLs that will illuminate this story.
includes Sony, Philips, Matsushita/Panasonic, Hitachi, Sharp, Samsung, NEC, IBM, LG, Thomson/RCA and Toshiba.
What I find interesting is that many of these companies are selling consumer electronics that use OTHER OSes than Linux. So, what exactly does this context mean when they call Linux "the operating system of choice" ?
Any results on what computer games do to people's vision ? I know my vision started deteriorating once I started programming full time and I believe it has gotten worse in the last few months when I have been doing lots of heavy reading at night.
Maybe these kids' hearing is improving to compensate for worsened vision....
If that's true then there's something very very wrong with you and you should see an opthamalogist. Acuity - if that's the term you meant to use - is MUCH lower in the periphery than looking "forward" and that is by design.
Since an article here yesterday pointed out that viruses are actually good for us, I suppose we must now conclude that spamming is good for us too, because it helps strengthen our anti-spamming ability.
What if your CDs were simply lost ? Would you still expect to be entitled to fair use of those CDs ? Would you expect that the person who found your CDs would *also* be entitled to fair use ? What if the CDs were stolen ? What if you lent the CDs to your friend who lost them ? What if you sold the CDs but, if you were ever prosecuted, planned to claim they were stolen in order to claim fair use ?
I think the wide opportunity for abuse makes the only practicable interpretation of fair use to rest with physical possession of the original media.
Will the games industry go down the route of the razor manufacturers where consoles are almost given away with the games?
Given that MS, for one, is already losing money on each console they sell, I'd say we've *already* gone down that route. But since this means that the console makers are losing money if not for the collection of licensing fees, I wonder what more widespread pirating of games will do to the whole industry.
Right, until one of your employees sells your secret code to your competitors. In a world without IP, it'd probably be pretty hard to even call this a crime.
What's the big deal. If people learn how to use Word, or Excel, or VisualBlahBlah, they've still learned how to use computer software, or they've learned how to program in at least one environment, and this learning should transfer to some other environment. At least, that's what OSS advocates are always saying when asked about students are being done a disservice by training them on, say, OpenOffice instead of Word, even when Word is dominant in the workplace. Does teaching students Word mean it would be harder for them to use an alternative later ? If so, one could well argue we should ONLY EVER teach students Word because presumably teaching them something else would make it harder for them to use the standard Word.
Taken to an extreme, one could argue about whether or not students ought to be taught on OS X, FreeBSD, Solaris, or Debian/RedHat/Mandrake - after all, they're all different to some extent. The question is, how much difference makes a material difference to the student ?
When someone makes a convincing argument that teaching kids on Windows software hurts them, that's when I'll kiss away the subsidies and grants that MS is giving away by the bushel.
In this interview he asserts that immunity is built by infection, and without it you would have a much weaker ecosystem.
This is really just an unhappy coincidence brought on by what is really a poor analogy.
By his analogy, we should thank burglars for helping create better security systems. We should thank child molesters and child beaters for helping us create tougher child abuse laws. WWe should thank police brutality for making us more vigilant of abuses of police authority. We should thank the 9/11 terrorists for helping toughen up airport screenings.
Objectivity gots'ta gots'ta go, fo' one wahtahmellun. Anyone who says dat da damn sucka'al 'espuh'ience uh interactin' wid some game kin be discussed objectively sheeit deyre plum flat out wrong t'even try. Slap mah fro! Expuh'ience colo's everydin' we scribble, bein' humans and all. What we gots'ta do be weigh our desire t'share our opinion, de one were sho' nuff be right, against da damn fact dat no two sucka's gots'ta 'sperience sump'n in de same way. Slap mah fro!
But I think insertcredit's articles today are a part of that idea that were moving from "games are just fun!" to "games should be taken a little more seriously and a little more professionaly."
I hardly think unprofessional, self-involved hack-work like that is going to make anyone take games more seriously or professionally.
Here are some more "highlights" from the most incisive critique I've ever read:
Yes, I feel - surmounting the inherent self deprecation that all thoughtful human beings hold dear - that I have something to say about videogames that hasn't been said before, at least not in just the way that I say it. Those metaphorically under/oversigned to this article feel the same or similarly.
Wtf ??? and more:
Objectivity has got to go, for one thing. Anyone who says that the personal experience of interacting with a game can be discussed objectively - well they're just flat out wrong to even try. Experience colors everything we write, being humans and all. What we have to do is weigh our desire to share our opinion, the one we're sure is right, against the fact that no two persons will experience something in the same way.
And that's just from the first page. Has there ever been a bigger bag of long-winded self-aggrandizing tripe than has been produced by these guys ? Not since Jon Katz, I'd wager. If we ever needed proof the editors here don't read the articles posted to... THIS IS IT !!!
*Especially* (but not only) at a time when so many networks are still hobbled, I think it's absolutely brain-dead that anybody would think of having people download VIDEO of information that is almost certainly as well represented in text, and certainly more easily distributable. A product review of a router (or was it a firewall) ? An interview with some hacker ? This is stuff that needs to be in *video* ? If they were highlights from the Superbowl, or clips of Bill Gates getting a pie in the face, fine, but by the content they're choosing to distribute it's pretty clear to me that this group is about as clueless as can be.
Re:Thinkgeek has been making these for ages
on
Aquarium Modcase
·
· Score: 2, Flamebait
In other words, you mean this august website just linked to another website showing how some guy followed the instructions on how to put his case together ? Bwahahahaha. This place kills me. What's next ? An article in Finnish showing some guy installing a CD-ROM ?
They are pretty immune to current transients and can tollerate temps up to 35C.
That's not going to help you much if you own an Athlon like I do *rimshot*. But you're quite right, it's not nearly an aquarium, and there is more than one case maker out there selling this stuff. *Why* you would want to do this, however, is completely beyond me.
Perhaps a more important question is, WHY does it have so many lines of code ? Unless it is written in assembly, I can't even imagine that the application NEEDS as many lines of code as perl or Postgresql. Maybe THAT is their problem.
If James Bond were a wireless hacker, there would be no Pussy Galore.
Re:Ever see a review on /. that doesn't point to B
on
The Career Programmer
·
· Score: 1
If you haven't noticed, EVERY SINGLE/. BOOK REVIEW points to bn.com. I hope that/. collects either: 1) a goodly chunk of the difference between bn.com's prices and Amazon's in its affiliate payments, 2) a big fat lump-sum affiliate payment for always linking to bn.com
At least that way we could rationalize how/. could do such a disservice to their readers. bn.com is almost always WAY more expensive than Amazon. How much more does bn.com pay its affiliates than Amazon ?
With/. being one of the largest content delivery systems on the net, I'd be curious to find out how much revenue they generate based upon subscribers alone.
The dubious claim of/. being "one of the largest content delivery systems" aside, I don't think the testimonials of a few subscribers tells us very much about whether people in general are willing to subscribe to something or not. Someone is ALWAYS willing to do something, and this inevitability tells us nothing about the likely success of a given business practice catered to those people.
Far more interesting and relevant questions are what proportion of/. (or Salon, or...) readers actually subscribe ? What proportion of Mandrake downloads go to MandrakeClub members ? etc. It seems clear to me that here, anyways, subscribers constitute a very small proportion of readers which may well be inflated for a number of self-evident reasons (and the reader may have already noticed I do not subscribe). Does a subscription rate of.1%,.5%, 1% or 5% tell us more about people's willingness to pay, or about people's unwillingness to do the same ?
Slashdot Mirror
P2P filesharing activity has decreased very little since they began their end-user legal campaign.
Given that all evidence was that P2P had been increasing nearly exponentially previously, and given that the quote above implies that activity has decreased at least a little, this result shows that the RIAA's actions have probably had a very great effect on P2P activity. But I guess the spin sounds better to state almost exactly the opposite conclusion.
And even if the RIAA's legal actions DIDN'T affect P2P activity, so what ? Would it mean anything if severely increasing the penalty for (to argue from the extreme) murdering your wife and kids failed to decrease the incidence of such crimes ?
I think it would be fitting if some entrepeneur ripped their copyrighted designs and sold their OWN shirts (they are charging quite a lot for them, considering they paid an absolute pittance for the design). After all, it's not like printing off t-shirts with the exact same design is depriving anyone else of physical property now, is it ? How would VA be hurt ?
/. saw fit to ensure they own the copyrights when it seems like the editors and many of their more vocal readers are always pooh-poohing them.
Makes you wonder why
I would hate to have to relive those all of those "You can enlarge your penis!!" moments
Why not ? Talk about targeted marketing at its zenith...
When our bank of computers has heard enough music, it will go to work on making more just like it.
But what will the RIAA do when there are no more artists ?
More than that, what is the purpose of linking to these companies ? Corporate behemoths that they are, with websites to match, you're surely not going to find anything at the linked-to URLs that will illuminate this story.
includes Sony, Philips, Matsushita/Panasonic, Hitachi, Sharp, Samsung, NEC, IBM, LG, Thomson/RCA and Toshiba.
What I find interesting is that many of these companies are selling consumer electronics that use OTHER OSes than Linux. So, what exactly does this context mean when they call Linux "the operating system of choice" ?
Any results on what computer games do to people's vision ? I know my vision started deteriorating once I started programming full time and I believe it has gotten worse in the last few months when I have been doing lots of heavy reading at night.
Maybe these kids' hearing is improving to compensate for worsened vision....
If that's true then there's something very very wrong with you and you should see an opthamalogist. Acuity - if that's the term you meant to use - is MUCH lower in the periphery than looking "forward" and that is by design.
Well then, noone is forcing you to use an ISP that forces you to use a block list.
Since an article here yesterday pointed out that viruses are actually good for us, I suppose we must now conclude that spamming is good for us too, because it helps strengthen our anti-spamming ability.
Now I feel much better.
What if your CDs were simply lost ? Would you still expect to be entitled to fair use of those CDs ? Would you expect that the person who found your CDs would *also* be entitled to fair use ? What if the CDs were stolen ? What if you lent the CDs to your friend who lost them ? What if you sold the CDs but, if you were ever prosecuted, planned to claim they were stolen in order to claim fair use ?
I think the wide opportunity for abuse makes the only practicable interpretation of fair use to rest with physical possession of the original media.
Will the games industry go down the route of the razor manufacturers where consoles are almost given away with the games?
Given that MS, for one, is already losing money on each console they sell, I'd say we've *already* gone down that route. But since this means that the console makers are losing money if not for the collection of licensing fees, I wonder what more widespread pirating of games will do to the whole industry.
You can always just keep stuff secret.
Right, until one of your employees sells your secret code to your competitors. In a world without IP, it'd probably be pretty hard to even call this a crime.
What's the big deal. If people learn how to use Word, or Excel, or VisualBlahBlah, they've still learned how to use computer software, or they've learned how to program in at least one environment, and this learning should transfer to some other environment. At least, that's what OSS advocates are always saying when asked about students are being done a disservice by training them on, say, OpenOffice instead of Word, even when Word is dominant in the workplace. Does teaching students Word mean it would be harder for them to use an alternative later ? If so, one could well argue we should ONLY EVER teach students Word because presumably teaching them something else would make it harder for them to use the standard Word.
Taken to an extreme, one could argue about whether or not students ought to be taught on OS X, FreeBSD, Solaris, or Debian/RedHat/Mandrake - after all, they're all different to some extent. The question is, how much difference makes a material difference to the student ?
When someone makes a convincing argument that teaching kids on Windows software hurts them, that's when I'll kiss away the subsidies and grants that MS is giving away by the bushel.
In this interview he asserts that immunity is built by infection, and without it you would have a much weaker ecosystem.
This is really just an unhappy coincidence brought on by what is really a poor analogy.
By his analogy, we should thank burglars for helping create better security systems. We should thank child molesters and child beaters for helping us create tougher child abuse laws. WWe should thank police brutality for making us more vigilant of abuses of police authority. We should thank the 9/11 terrorists for helping toughen up airport screenings.
For even better results..
:
cat navel-gazing.txt | jive
et voila
Objectivity gots'ta gots'ta go, fo' one wahtahmellun. Anyone who says dat da damn sucka'al 'espuh'ience uh interactin' wid some game kin be discussed objectively sheeit deyre plum flat out wrong t'even try. Slap mah fro! Expuh'ience colo's everydin' we scribble, bein' humans and all. What we gots'ta do be weigh our desire t'share our opinion, de one were sho' nuff be right, against da damn fact dat no two sucka's gots'ta 'sperience sump'n in de same way. Slap mah fro!
I find this makes the article much clearer.
I hardly think unprofessional, self-involved hack-work like that is going to make anyone take games more seriously or professionally.
Wtf ??? and more:
And that's just from the first page. Has there ever been a bigger bag of long-winded self-aggrandizing tripe than has been produced by these guys ? Not since Jon Katz, I'd wager. If we ever needed proof the editors here don't read the articles posted to... THIS IS IT !!!
*Especially* (but not only) at a time when so many networks are still hobbled, I think it's absolutely brain-dead that anybody would think of having people download VIDEO of information that is almost certainly as well represented in text, and certainly more easily distributable. A product review of a router (or was it a firewall) ? An interview with some hacker ? This is stuff that needs to be in *video* ? If they were highlights from the Superbowl, or clips of Bill Gates getting a pie in the face, fine, but by the content they're choosing to distribute it's pretty clear to me that this group is about as clueless as can be.
In other words, you mean this august website just linked to another website showing how some guy followed the instructions on how to put his case together ? Bwahahahaha. This place kills me. What's next ? An article in Finnish showing some guy installing a CD-ROM ?
They are pretty immune to current transients and can tollerate temps up to 35C.
That's not going to help you much if you own an Athlon like I do *rimshot*. But you're quite right, it's not nearly an aquarium, and there is more than one case maker out there selling this stuff. *Why* you would want to do this, however, is completely beyond me.
Perhaps a more important question is, WHY does it have so many lines of code ? Unless it is written in assembly, I can't even imagine that the application NEEDS as many lines of code as perl or Postgresql. Maybe THAT is their problem.
If James Bond were a wireless hacker, there would be no Pussy Galore.
If you haven't noticed, EVERY SINGLE /. BOOK REVIEW points to bn.com. I hope that /. collects either:
/. could do such a disservice to their readers. bn.com is almost always WAY more expensive than Amazon. How much more does bn.com pay its affiliates than Amazon ?
1) a goodly chunk of the difference between bn.com's prices and Amazon's in its affiliate payments,
2) a big fat lump-sum affiliate payment for always linking to bn.com
At least that way we could rationalize how
With /. being one of the largest content delivery systems on the net, I'd be curious to find out how much revenue they generate based upon subscribers alone.
/. being "one of the largest content delivery systems" aside, I don't think the testimonials of a few subscribers tells us very much about whether people in general are willing to subscribe to something or not. Someone is ALWAYS willing to do something, and this inevitability tells us nothing about the likely success of a given business practice catered to those people.
/. (or Salon, or ...) readers actually subscribe ? What proportion of Mandrake downloads go to MandrakeClub members ? etc. It seems clear to me that here, anyways, subscribers constitute a very small proportion of readers which may well be inflated for a number of self-evident reasons (and the reader may have already noticed I do not subscribe). Does a subscription rate of .1%, .5%, 1% or 5% tell us more about people's willingness to pay, or about people's unwillingness to do the same ?
The dubious claim of
Far more interesting and relevant questions are what proportion of