Actually, that's quite easy. Leak the fact that the CEO did this, and that it cost a buttload of money to clean it up. The shareholders will take it from there.
Two things to consider: the connectors could be made to handle the abuse (think XLR-like, but with 8 prongs), and even if the cable ends break, replacing them is a snap (no pun intended). This wouldn't be much of an issue if it really caught on.
It doesn't matter if you're trolling; this statement needs response. All arguments about digital effects quality aside, that's only part of the story. There's an issue with the signal generated by the instrument to begin with. Most digital samples cut off at 22,500 (20,000 for CD) hertz, which many will say is unimportant as those frequencies are too high to hear by themselves. However, those high frequencies interplay with the audible ones in ways that are noticeable when they're absent. So, even with perfect replication of the coloring, the base signal is often short of the original. Such is not the case with analog equipment. Although I tend to like digital signal myself (because of its uses in signal processing), it does make a difference to the sound, which is why so many musicians disfavor it.
I'm very much with you on the idea of tubes making for a great sound and solid state not so much, but I'm not so mighty about my tube amp since I heard a few effects systems on computer systems that did a passing good job of coloring a digital signal like tubes. Now, it's not 100 percent, but it was better than anything solid state that I've heard. That said, it's looking like it would be worth having digital signal from the guitar, and then running your effects afterwards. It probably won't ever please a strict purist, but it adds a level of flexibility that wasn't there before, and the best part is that one can record a pure signal and then manipulate it many different ways to find just the right sound.
Also, don't rule out Ethernet just because you're acoustic. I play mostly classical guitar, and I would love to be able to take the signal from the end-block mike and send it noise-free to the sound board. In this instance, coloring by the amplifier is a bad thing (at least for me).
You're not a recording artist, are you? Virtually nobody makes money on records. For example, Glen Campbell, who has had more than twenty gold records, has publicly stated that because of the recording contracts he was forced to sign, he would never have made a living at music if he had to live on royalties. Most artists lose money on recording, in fact. The real money is to be made in live performances. This is in no small part a factor in the draconian nature of recording contracts. To get enough exposure to make a living playing concerts, artists are required to sign contracts that generally give the artist less than 25 cents per CD sold, and those quarters must be used to pay back the record company for the costs involved in making the CD (studio fees, distribution costs, advertising, etc.) before the artist sees a penny of it. For this reason, the vast majority of artists never see any money from a record, and some of them actually take such a huge loss that they quit the professional music scene entirely (which is one of the main reasons behind the "one-hit wonder" phenomenon).
More to the point, however, is that many of the artists that are presented with a recording contract are young and inexperienced, and most are not given the chance to refer to legal assistance before signing. I personally know several artists who were presented with contracts on a "this night only" basis. When one of them asked to have a copy before signing so that his attorney could look it over, the exec told him, "No way. If you don't sign it now, you won't sign it ever." He refused, and the exec made good on the threat. With the fear of oblivion hanging over them, many artists fold under pressure and sign, hoping to hit the big time and make it back. Others will sign anything that's put in front of them by someone claiming to be a record company. For the most part, it's a screw-time by the record companies, designed to get money for the record company execs, with little concern for the artist, because, as was said to me by a contracted musician, "if you don't sign up, there's always someone behind you waiting."
So, in response, yes, most artists under record contract are mistreated. Some accept it more readily than others, but it's still mistreatment.
Well, despite the fact that the "Slippery Slope" is a well-known logical fallacy, there are other faults in the argument. First, kids develop attachments to and crushes on artifical characters now. If you're careful to teach them the difference between reality and virtuality, it's not an issue, and teaching them this idea also has a few other benefits which I don't think I need to address. As to your fear that a company could make and copyright a virtual you, you could certainly claim prior art in the case of existing before the virtual character (and possibly have basis for countersuit), and you could claim an exception to copyright law if you were born looking like an already-created avatar (as opposed to having yourself altered to match said avatar). So again, no issue.
> Not really. Try this instead: "The only way to fight gun
> control is to reduce gun fatalities."
Sorry, this also falls under "Not Really". Try this: "The only way to fight gun control is to prove that it doesn't reduce gun fatalities." If it can be proven that gun control doesn't make for fewer gun fatalities, gun control becomes meaningless. To return to the original point, the only way to get laws pertaining to personal freedom repealed is to prove that they're ineffective. Since the intent of the DMCA (at least ideally) is to protect copyright holders without infringing on the rights of citizens, we need to prove demonstrably that the law can't (as it exists today) avoid overly infringing behavior (too easy to pervert the law, too broad in its restrictions), and so is ineffective for its intended use.
Now, we must consider how to prove that the law is ineffective in this way. Your response is to stop hacking to eliminate laws against hacking. This is not logical, and is roughly equivalent to saying that Rosa Parks would have done more for the equal rights movement by simply moving to the back of the bus when she was told to do so.
> Don't pick a fight with a cop if you've got something to hide.
In a very literal sense, if this was a good idea we'd all be British citizens right now. The thing that invalidates the statement is the assumption that the law is fair in defining "something to hide". If the government passed a law saying you weren't allowed (for example) to be Muslim, you'd have "something to hide" if you were Muslim, but you'd be wrong not to pick a fight with the cops (and, by extension, the courts) about it.
> Please tell me how the DMCA has adversely affected your life.
Sorry, but that's not relevant. To wit, segregation laws did not adversely affect my life, since I'm white, but I can't in good conscience accept that as a valid reason not to have repealed those laws. If a law steps on the rights of individuals in violation of the Constitution, even if I'm not one of those people, it's my responsibility as a citizen of the U.S. to fight to have that law repealed. That's the "...by the people" part of "Government of the people, by the people, for the people."
You can tell your employer not to do this, and they'll stop. Be forewarned, however, that it's against the law, since you can be fined for withholding too little (or too much, for that matter). You're not likely to get anything worse than a fine (unless you then don't pay your taxes), but it'll still cost you.
You're right that you couldn't build a PC with XBox specifications for less than the cost of an XBox, but that's not likely to be the goal for most of us. The more likely target is to answer the question, "what PC hardware do I need at a minimum so that I can run an XBox emulator and play XBox games without buying an XBox?"
Actually, the phenomenon you're describing is related not to the battery's charge containing capacity so much as its charge delivery capacity. This same thing happens to car batteries left on cold concrete floors. The charge doesn't disappear from the battery (well, a tiny bit does), but as the battery cools its ability to deliver the charge decreases. You'll find that if you chill a fully-charged battery, it'll stop working. But rather then recharging it, if you heat it back up it'll go back to working normally.
Of course, fuel cells do work at virtually any temperature that won't damage the device it's powering, so, as you stated, this wouldn't be an issue.
> Can anyone explain to me how a court of law can find a giant
> monopolistic music/entertainment/whatever it's bought recently company
> can be granted the rights to music over the artist who wrote it?
If the court is presented with a document stating that the artist signs over rights to the work created, the court has no choice. Most, if not all, recording contracts have a clause like this. This is not to say that it's fair, but the court has to assume that the contract was willingly entered by both parties (in the absence of proof of coercion). Since the artist signs (and then does not successfully press coercion charges), the law is clear.
The question that you must ask now is why so many artists sign contracts that give rights to their works to these companies. There are many other posts that address this issue, and I lack the time to approach this now, but the simple answer to your question is that the court finds for the company because the artist gave the rights to the company.
Actually, the story of what happened here is worse than you think. What happened is that, after he gained popularity, he decided to leave the recording contract he was in because it was draconian. However, the label pursued (and won) the rights to the stage name "Prince", so he couldn't record under that name for anyone else. Hence, he changed his name to a symbol (to get around legal issues as much as any other reason), wrote the word "slave" on his forehead and finished out his contract. When it was done he started his own label and became The Artist Formerly Known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.
The worst part about this is that when he said he wanted out of his contract, his label actually decided that the best course of action was to take away his right to his own stage name, which I found to serve no purpose except spite. I must admit that after hearing this I have a lot more respect for him than when I thought he did it just to be eccentric (which I found out was just the way the recording industry spun it to keep them from looking bad).
Unfortunately, sometimes being a parent is playing censorship cop. Giving them values is a matter of course, but that takes time, and in the interim it's sometimes necessary to censor. I take the view that it's better to preview a movie myself to decide if it's appropriate for my kids, but sometimes there's a movie of much value that has inappropriate parts, and (like the original story said) I don't necessarily want to wait for the sanitized version to appear on network TV. In this case, my goal isn't to prevent them from watching the movie, but to let them watch the movie but cut out the few parts that are not appropriate for them. The best example is "The Name of the Rose", which is a really good murder mystery, but has one rather graphic sex scene. I'd let a thirteen year-old watch the movie, as it's a good film, but that one scene throws the whole thing, and IMHO removing it is a better approach than simply forbidding the whole movie.
...to know the details of a case before you shoot your mouth off about it? Let's do this again.
> Right, and that's why a Russian Programmer was arrested in the US for breaking US law in russia.
He was arrested in the U.S. for breaking U.S. law in the U.S., not Russia. Writing the program (which he did in Russia) was not his crime. The crime was that his company then sold the program to U.S. customers, in the U.S., hosted on a U.S. website. Since the program violated the DMCA, that's against U.S. law. Since he happened to be the guy who represented his company in the U.S. the U.S. grabbed him when he entered the U.S. for a conference. Unfortunate, perhaps, but he wasn't grabbed for breaking the law in Russia. If his company hadn't sold the program in the U.S., he wouldn't have been arrested.
The lesson here is to read the full story before commenting.
> This is why I use Active Desktop to make my computer boot up and look like a bomb timer.
And when you pull this little trick, I truly hope that some overly nervous airline employee calls in the cavalry on you, and you get detained for an annoying long time. Pulling pranks that serve only to make people nervous is rude, because it takes up time, especially the time of the people waiting in the now-stalled line who just want to get through the damn checkpoint in time to grab a muffin before they have to board the plane. Perhaps if you get your cute-joke laptop confiscated and have to spend three days getting it back, you'll get a handle on the whole "actng like an adult" thing.
> You can hold enough plastique in your shirt pocket to blow out a window and crash a plane.
A pocket full of plastique would not be sufficient to take down a passenger airliner from the inside without a large measure of luck. Blowing out a window will depressurize the cabin (if it's done at sufficient altitude) but that's extremely unlikely to disable the aircraft. Taking down a plane by breaking a window is Hollywood stuff, not reality.
Now, if you threatened to blow up the food cart, that would frighten more people. Of course, based on some airline food, you might just get a medal for that...
The post was serious, and the lack of vast multimedia features only goes further to prove my point. His point was that we need these snazzy features to get a point across well, but got that very point across well without them, hence the irony.
The most ironic part of this message is that you spent the whole post talking about how presentation is so important, and yet you presented the whole thing in a single typeface without HTML tags of any kind, and the only formatting you used is positioning.
More importantly, the post made your point well, and in so doing, it refuted your point nicely.
No matter what you may think they did or didn't do, or what they actually did or didn't do, they were recruited from the street, not the jail. Based on the time-honored idea of innocent until proven guilty you are incorrect to call them criminals. More to the point, there are testimonials elsewhere in the comments to this story from people who went through this program, and several of them stated that they were not members of any gang at the time they were recruited. Again, whether you believe them or not is immaterial. Since there's no criminal record, I presume them innocent, and you need to as well. You cannot paint them as criminals because you feel it's likely that they are. That's prejudicial, and wrong.
> Why struggle to work while going to school,
so you can pay the bills, when you could sit in jail for free and get a free education?
No matter what your education cost you, spending a few years in prison isn't worth what you'd save. If someone told me I could have a million dollars to be in prison for two years, I'd turn it down in a heartbeat.
I've never found anyone who has been in prison who would disagree. That alone should tell you quite a bit.
I've found that nobody who hasn't been there has any real idea what it's like. Your statement bears that out nicely.
Slashdot Mirror
> Do *you* want to try to fire the CEO?
Actually, that's quite easy. Leak the fact that the CEO did this, and that it cost a buttload of money to clean it up. The shareholders will take it from there.
Virg
Two things to consider: the connectors could be made to handle the abuse (think XLR-like, but with 8 prongs), and even if the cable ends break, replacing them is a snap (no pun intended). This wouldn't be much of an issue if it really caught on.
Virg
> Digital effects can match any tube amp...
It doesn't matter if you're trolling; this statement needs response. All arguments about digital effects quality aside, that's only part of the story. There's an issue with the signal generated by the instrument to begin with. Most digital samples cut off at 22,500 (20,000 for CD) hertz, which many will say is unimportant as those frequencies are too high to hear by themselves. However, those high frequencies interplay with the audible ones in ways that are noticeable when they're absent. So, even with perfect replication of the coloring, the base signal is often short of the original. Such is not the case with analog equipment. Although I tend to like digital signal myself (because of its uses in signal processing), it does make a difference to the sound, which is why so many musicians disfavor it.
Virg
I'm very much with you on the idea of tubes making for a great sound and solid state not so much, but I'm not so mighty about my tube amp since I heard a few effects systems on computer systems that did a passing good job of coloring a digital signal like tubes. Now, it's not 100 percent, but it was better than anything solid state that I've heard. That said, it's looking like it would be worth having digital signal from the guitar, and then running your effects afterwards. It probably won't ever please a strict purist, but it adds a level of flexibility that wasn't there before, and the best part is that one can record a pure signal and then manipulate it many different ways to find just the right sound.
Also, don't rule out Ethernet just because you're acoustic. I play mostly classical guitar, and I would love to be able to take the signal from the end-block mike and send it noise-free to the sound board. In this instance, coloring by the amplifier is a bad thing (at least for me).
Virg
You're not a recording artist, are you? Virtually nobody makes money on records. For example, Glen Campbell, who has had more than twenty gold records, has publicly stated that because of the recording contracts he was forced to sign, he would never have made a living at music if he had to live on royalties. Most artists lose money on recording, in fact. The real money is to be made in live performances. This is in no small part a factor in the draconian nature of recording contracts. To get enough exposure to make a living playing concerts, artists are required to sign contracts that generally give the artist less than 25 cents per CD sold, and those quarters must be used to pay back the record company for the costs involved in making the CD (studio fees, distribution costs, advertising, etc.) before the artist sees a penny of it. For this reason, the vast majority of artists never see any money from a record, and some of them actually take such a huge loss that they quit the professional music scene entirely (which is one of the main reasons behind the "one-hit wonder" phenomenon).
More to the point, however, is that many of the artists that are presented with a recording contract are young and inexperienced, and most are not given the chance to refer to legal assistance before signing. I personally know several artists who were presented with contracts on a "this night only" basis. When one of them asked to have a copy before signing so that his attorney could look it over, the exec told him, "No way. If you don't sign it now, you won't sign it ever." He refused, and the exec made good on the threat. With the fear of oblivion hanging over them, many artists fold under pressure and sign, hoping to hit the big time and make it back. Others will sign anything that's put in front of them by someone claiming to be a record company. For the most part, it's a screw-time by the record companies, designed to get money for the record company execs, with little concern for the artist, because, as was said to me by a contracted musician, "if you don't sign up, there's always someone behind you waiting."
So, in response, yes, most artists under record contract are mistreated. Some accept it more readily than others, but it's still mistreatment.
Virg
Well, despite the fact that the "Slippery Slope" is a well-known logical fallacy, there are other faults in the argument. First, kids develop attachments to and crushes on artifical characters now. If you're careful to teach them the difference between reality and virtuality, it's not an issue, and teaching them this idea also has a few other benefits which I don't think I need to address. As to your fear that a company could make and copyright a virtual you, you could certainly claim prior art in the case of existing before the virtual character (and possibly have basis for countersuit), and you could claim an exception to copyright law if you were born looking like an already-created avatar (as opposed to having yourself altered to match said avatar). So again, no issue.
Virg
> However, you can just mail in your quarterly payment yourself
> that satisfies the minimum requirements to not be fined.
Agreed, but since the original goal is not to pay the taxes (as a civil disobedience thing), that would be defeating the purpose.
Virg
> Not really. Try this instead: "The only way to fight gun
> control is to reduce gun fatalities."
Sorry, this also falls under "Not Really". Try this: "The only way to fight gun control is to prove that it doesn't reduce gun fatalities." If it can be proven that gun control doesn't make for fewer gun fatalities, gun control becomes meaningless. To return to the original point, the only way to get laws pertaining to personal freedom repealed is to prove that they're ineffective. Since the intent of the DMCA (at least ideally) is to protect copyright holders without infringing on the rights of citizens, we need to prove demonstrably that the law can't (as it exists today) avoid overly infringing behavior (too easy to pervert the law, too broad in its restrictions), and so is ineffective for its intended use.
Now, we must consider how to prove that the law is ineffective in this way. Your response is to stop hacking to eliminate laws against hacking. This is not logical, and is roughly equivalent to saying that Rosa Parks would have done more for the equal rights movement by simply moving to the back of the bus when she was told to do so.
> Don't pick a fight with a cop if you've got something to hide.
In a very literal sense, if this was a good idea we'd all be British citizens right now. The thing that invalidates the statement is the assumption that the law is fair in defining "something to hide". If the government passed a law saying you weren't allowed (for example) to be Muslim, you'd have "something to hide" if you were Muslim, but you'd be wrong not to pick a fight with the cops (and, by extension, the courts) about it.
Virg
> Please tell me how the DMCA has adversely affected your life.
Sorry, but that's not relevant. To wit, segregation laws did not adversely affect my life, since I'm white, but I can't in good conscience accept that as a valid reason not to have repealed those laws. If a law steps on the rights of individuals in violation of the Constitution, even if I'm not one of those people, it's my responsibility as a citizen of the U.S. to fight to have that law repealed. That's the "...by the people" part of "Government of the people, by the people, for the people."
Virg
You can tell your employer not to do this, and they'll stop. Be forewarned, however, that it's against the law, since you can be fined for withholding too little (or too much, for that matter). You're not likely to get anything worse than a fine (unless you then don't pay your taxes), but it'll still cost you.
Virg
Oh, my, a member of MENSA, don't like stupidity, and you spell "tolerance" incorrectly in your .sig line?
None too bright, that.
Virg
You're right that you couldn't build a PC with XBox specifications for less than the cost of an XBox, but that's not likely to be the goal for most of us. The more likely target is to answer the question, "what PC hardware do I need at a minimum so that I can run an XBox emulator and play XBox games without buying an XBox?"
Virg
Two bads:
1.) They're talking methanol, the liquid, not methane, the gas.
2.) Pure methane is odorless.
Bad doggie. No biscuit.
Virg
Actually, the phenomenon you're describing is related not to the battery's charge containing capacity so much as its charge delivery capacity. This same thing happens to car batteries left on cold concrete floors. The charge doesn't disappear from the battery (well, a tiny bit does), but as the battery cools its ability to deliver the charge decreases. You'll find that if you chill a fully-charged battery, it'll stop working. But rather then recharging it, if you heat it back up it'll go back to working normally.
Of course, fuel cells do work at virtually any temperature that won't damage the device it's powering, so, as you stated, this wouldn't be an issue.
Virg
> Can anyone explain to me how a court of law can find a giant
> monopolistic music/entertainment/whatever it's bought recently company
> can be granted the rights to music over the artist who wrote it?
If the court is presented with a document stating that the artist signs over rights to the work created, the court has no choice. Most, if not all, recording contracts have a clause like this. This is not to say that it's fair, but the court has to assume that the contract was willingly entered by both parties (in the absence of proof of coercion). Since the artist signs (and then does not successfully press coercion charges), the law is clear.
The question that you must ask now is why so many artists sign contracts that give rights to their works to these companies. There are many other posts that address this issue, and I lack the time to approach this now, but the simple answer to your question is that the court finds for the company because the artist gave the rights to the company.
Virg
Actually, the story of what happened here is worse than you think. What happened is that, after he gained popularity, he decided to leave the recording contract he was in because it was draconian. However, the label pursued (and won) the rights to the stage name "Prince", so he couldn't record under that name for anyone else. Hence, he changed his name to a symbol (to get around legal issues as much as any other reason), wrote the word "slave" on his forehead and finished out his contract. When it was done he started his own label and became The Artist Formerly Known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.
The worst part about this is that when he said he wanted out of his contract, his label actually decided that the best course of action was to take away his right to his own stage name, which I found to serve no purpose except spite. I must admit that after hearing this I have a lot more respect for him than when I thought he did it just to be eccentric (which I found out was just the way the recording industry spun it to keep them from looking bad).
Virg
> Don't play censorship cop, be a parent...
Unfortunately, sometimes being a parent is playing censorship cop. Giving them values is a matter of course, but that takes time, and in the interim it's sometimes necessary to censor. I take the view that it's better to preview a movie myself to decide if it's appropriate for my kids, but sometimes there's a movie of much value that has inappropriate parts, and (like the original story said) I don't necessarily want to wait for the sanitized version to appear on network TV. In this case, my goal isn't to prevent them from watching the movie, but to let them watch the movie but cut out the few parts that are not appropriate for them. The best example is "The Name of the Rose", which is a really good murder mystery, but has one rather graphic sex scene. I'd let a thirteen year-old watch the movie, as it's a good film, but that one scene throws the whole thing, and IMHO removing it is a better approach than simply forbidding the whole movie.
Virg
> The basis for the charges seem to be that the program is sold
> by a Russian company on the web, therefore Americans can buy it.
This is too simplistic. The charge is that the company used a U.S.-based site for the sales, not just that it was made available to U.S. citizens.
And not to pick nits, but it's Sklyarov, not Skylarov.
Virg
...to know the details of a case before you shoot your mouth off about it? Let's do this again.
> Right, and that's why a Russian Programmer was arrested in the US for breaking US law in russia.
He was arrested in the U.S. for breaking U.S. law in the U.S., not Russia. Writing the program (which he did in Russia) was not his crime. The crime was that his company then sold the program to U.S. customers, in the U.S., hosted on a U.S. website. Since the program violated the DMCA, that's against U.S. law. Since he happened to be the guy who represented his company in the U.S. the U.S. grabbed him when he entered the U.S. for a conference. Unfortunate, perhaps, but he wasn't grabbed for breaking the law in Russia. If his company hadn't sold the program in the U.S., he wouldn't have been arrested.
The lesson here is to read the full story before commenting.
Virg
> Joking aside, I have one word for comdex since a few years... unorganized computer flea market...
I hope joking isn't aside here, since "unorganized computer flea market" is a little big for one word....
Virg
> This is why I use Active Desktop to make my computer boot up and look like a bomb timer.
And when you pull this little trick, I truly hope that some overly nervous airline employee calls in the cavalry on you, and you get detained for an annoying long time. Pulling pranks that serve only to make people nervous is rude, because it takes up time, especially the time of the people waiting in the now-stalled line who just want to get through the damn checkpoint in time to grab a muffin before they have to board the plane. Perhaps if you get your cute-joke laptop confiscated and have to spend three days getting it back, you'll get a handle on the whole "actng like an adult" thing.
> You can hold enough plastique in your shirt pocket to blow out a window and crash a plane.
A pocket full of plastique would not be sufficient to take down a passenger airliner from the inside without a large measure of luck. Blowing out a window will depressurize the cabin (if it's done at sufficient altitude) but that's extremely unlikely to disable the aircraft. Taking down a plane by breaking a window is Hollywood stuff, not reality.
Now, if you threatened to blow up the food cart, that would frighten more people. Of course, based on some airline food, you might just get a medal for that...
Virg
The post was serious, and the lack of vast multimedia features only goes further to prove my point. His point was that we need these snazzy features to get a point across well, but got that very point across well without them, hence the irony.
Virg
The most ironic part of this message is that you spent the whole post talking about how presentation is so important, and yet you presented the whole thing in a single typeface without HTML tags of any kind, and the only formatting you used is positioning.
More importantly, the post made your point well, and in so doing, it refuted your point nicely.
Virg
> I'm so sorry for calling them criminals.
No matter what you may think they did or didn't do, or what they actually did or didn't do, they were recruited from the street, not the jail. Based on the time-honored idea of innocent until proven guilty you are incorrect to call them criminals. More to the point, there are testimonials elsewhere in the comments to this story from people who went through this program, and several of them stated that they were not members of any gang at the time they were recruited. Again, whether you believe them or not is immaterial. Since there's no criminal record, I presume them innocent, and you need to as well. You cannot paint them as criminals because you feel it's likely that they are. That's prejudicial, and wrong.
Virg
> Why struggle to work while going to school, so you can pay the bills, when you could sit in jail for free and get a free education?
No matter what your education cost you, spending a few years in prison isn't worth what you'd save. If someone told me I could have a million dollars to be in prison for two years, I'd turn it down in a heartbeat.
I've never found anyone who has been in prison who would disagree. That alone should tell you quite a bit.
I've found that nobody who hasn't been there has any real idea what it's like. Your statement bears that out nicely.
Virg