For diabetics, the net effect is the SAME. Yet, they get away with promoting in BIG BOLD LETTERS "SUGAR-FREE".
More than one diabetic has killed themselves because they didn't read the fine print on that sugar-free candy.
I'd say that comes pretty damned close to criminal negligence on the food industry's part. Especially when they know that sugar alcohol raises the blood sugar of a diabetic in an identical manner as sugar does.
Just becuase it's *technically* correct, doesn't mean they can't be held responsible.
Yes - but where are the keys in esgro for all the users to *disable* the DRM once the copyright on the media has expired?
That's right, it's not there. There isn't a *disable* key set aside to allow all of our DRM'd content to be de-DRM'd once the copyright time period has expired. That makes these DRM technique's illegal, as it essentially extends the copyright time period to infinity. Add to that the DMCA laws, and we sit in a country (USA), where copyrights *NEVER* expire, as long as the copyrighted content is encrypted.
so - to get things legal - they have 2 choices. #1 Drop DRM, revoke the DMCA. #2 Set the DRM to expire and turn off after the copyright period expires.
If neither #1 or #2 are not followed, then the industry as a whole is in for a rude awakening - including the congressmen who passed the illegal law.
so, by the time the content reaches the subscriber, the network owners may have been paid 2 or 3 times for the traffic, depending on whether or not they are also the service provider for either the content owner, or the content subscriber.
Don't forget the fact that if for some reason, your packets get routed to some other carriers network (ie cable cut, dug up, etc..) , that *extra* extortion money that you paid to get your packets there at a high rate of speed, are now secondary to this carrier that didn't get it's payola.
That's the biggest thing that the two tiered internet folks are forgetting...
With all the different networks, owned and operated by different companies, sometime, somewhere, packets flow through at least 2, if not 3, 4 or more different networks, before it reaches you.
So, instead of paying for #1 Connection (your's to the ISP) #2 Content (in the way of service charge payable to provider) #3 Payola1 (don't want those packets gettin' hurt while on our network) #4 Payola2 (don't want those packets gettin' hurt while on our network) #5 Payola3 (don't want those packets gettin' hurt while on our network) #6 Payola4 (don't want those packets gettin' hurt while on our network) etc....
He suggests there'd be no difference between big media footing the bill for their own upload costs of their offerings and subsidizing the consumer's download costs of the same.
Umm - yes there would be.
Because they'd be paying for their own upload costs plus the consumer's download costs. This increases their costs, which in turn would increase our costs.
Now if only the artificial sweetener companies would forego their greed, and focus on left-handed sugar conversion/manufacturing, we wouldn't have to worry about any of this.
Left handed sugars look, taste, cook, etc. just like regular sugar, except that the molecule is built in reverse to normal right handed sugars. This means that the body cannot process it.
No wierd chemicals, no aftertaste, use as much as you like.
I could see people going in droves to a (your favorite soda) with a left handed sugar syrup. If they could apply the same process to corn syrup, that would rock too.
Thus sayeth one who at one time consumed close to 9 20oz bottles a day of the overly sweet and tasty Mt. Dew.
Letting someone else decide your morals - equates to letting dumb-ass shit-heads drive or shoot without licensure / training.... Hmmmmm - WOW - that's a really large illogical leap.
Since my child would not get to purchase a game without me being there (until they move out of the house) I don't see a real benefit.
So here we have society attempting to dump responsibility for another aspect of parenting off onto someone else.
Personal responsibility is EVERYONE's responsibility. It doesn't just end with yourself either. As a parent you are responsible for yourself and your child, until they become an adult. Schools aren't responsible, teachers aren't responsible. They play an important role, but in the end, it's the PARENT's responsibility.
Since you cannot get a license for a firearm, until you are considered by an adult in whichever area you live (at least in the US), I don't see how your statement applies. As far as drivers licenses go, that has nothing to do with parenting either. Training your child to drive, once they reach the legal age, is again the parent's responsibility, along with whatever state mandated driver's education program.
Credibility is earned, and to read that they want to change a rating because someone else hacked the game and *ADDED* content, causes them to LOSE credibility.
If the content was in the game to begin with, then yes, by all means - change the rating. However, to change a rating because of someone else's hacking is absurd.
As for gore or other things. Context is what states if it is GORE or not.
A dismembered body, mutilated by an animal attack isn't gore, it's a tragedy. A dismembered body, mutilated by another human being, in an attempt to save their life isn't gore, it's surgery (ie - an amputation). A disbembered body, mutilated by whatever means, in an attempt to destroy the person for whatever reason is gore.
To give flat unqualified *ratings* without giving the context for the rating is meaningless.
The ratings system is a crutch. If a parent reads the box, sees the images on the box - they can pretty well figure out for themselves what the *content* is. An MSRB rating isn't going to tell me if something in the content is offensive to me.
Here's an example....
Let's say a game comes out, and it's a goody-goody game, that portrays protective Angels. Your role in the game is protect the people of the game from being harmed in one way or another. There's no *gore*, there's no *language*, the only violence, is someone falls down, and scrapes their knee. The MSRB would find this acceptible and give a low (E) rating. Someone else would find this offensive, because they portray Angels in a manner that goes against their religious beliefs. How would the MSRB E rating help in this instance? It wouldn't. Are they then to add an RC rating, meaning religious content? Where does it end?
The question that I would ask, is *WHO* empowered the ESRB to be a ratings body? As far as I can tell, they did themselves. I have yet to see a government mandated or licensure that gives the ESRB the right / job to rate video games. Who pays the salaries of the ESRB employees? How do they generate revenue by just giving ratings?
Wow, I want to start the ratings company to rate Books. I would have to give the Bible an M for mature, because it involves sexual themes and explicit language.
Hmm, I seem to have wandered away from my original theme....
We'd have just that many more welfare recipients running around.
I mean, where else can incompetant, lazy, worthless individuals rise to power to think they get to determine what content I or my children should or should not see.
That's a decision for me alone. If I determine that my 12 year old is mature enough to handle gore/violence/nudity whatever, that's my choice - not some dork pulling a god trip trying to force feed the nation their *opinion*.
To me, there's a difference (and no, I've never shared / used / downloaded any music, ever).
Piracy, as I define it, is done by large groups of individuals who get their bootlegged copies of the music, and start stamping out CDs of the latest albums to hawk on street-corners and other venues.
File-sharers, take music they've purchased, rip the content to their harddrives, and place said data up for grabs on the internet.
Now, could pirates grab said rippings and create CDs to sell? Yes.
Does joe blow who doesn't know if he likes song x, who then goes out and grabs it, downloads it, listens to it then decides he does like it, goes to iTunes or wherever and buys the song, single or album, constitute pirating? Not in this context. It's no different than listening to the song on the internet.
Now, if someone spends hours, days, weeks scouring the various file sharing networks, downloading every song they can find, so that they have it, and never purchases a legitimate copy of the works, that would count as copyright infringement as the RIAA chooses to define it - it's still not piracy - no one made any money off the sale of that copy. This usage of file-sharing services is wrong, and should be stopped.
The occasional usage to find something that is obscure, not sure if they like it, or possibly something that is no longer being produced, in my opinion, is a perfectly legitimate usage of these services.
Let's face it - if people download one or two songs here and there, it's not going to hurt sales anywhere. It's not really any different than someone recording a song off of the radio, or the satellite music service (which can be done in pure digital format). Granted - the RIAA wants to put a stop to that as well, but, for now, it's legal.
I've probably spent more on media in my lifetime, than many people spend on their homes, yet I don't find myself even remotely tempted to go out and download anything.
Anyway, I digress.
My point I guess, was that I don't put file-sharing and pirating into the same column by default, because there are casual uses of file-sharing that do not, and will never, hurt sales. While piracy, defined as large scale copying and selling of media, does and will continue to hurt sales.
source of revenue... So it's no wonder that if the artist wishes to make more money, they would raise concert ticket prices.
There's really no change here.
It's been reported time and time again, that file-sharing has had very little or NO impact on music sales. Do a search withing/. to find stories regarding this topic.
I stand by my own opinion that the majority of music file sharers are the same type of folks who used to sit by the radio with cassette-recorder and recorded music off the air. They were NEVER going to buy the premium product, unless they absolutely loved the music.
There seems to be fewer high quality albums - ie, albums with more than one or two tracks actually worth listening to. Is it any wonder that sales have been declining? Now, let's add in those people who are still holding a grudge with the music industry over their CD price fixing and their attempts at forcing price changes on the legitimate online music sales.
Does the term "Shooting one's self in the foot" come to mind? Or would "blowing one's own head off" be more appropriate?
as well you shouldn't, as very little of the actual CD sales price ever makes it to the artists... It seems that the palms and pockets of every member of the recording industry that touches the money on it's way to the artist is covered in double sided tape, and most of the money is gone once the pile is actually handed off to the artist.
because I just posted a PPDALA (Programming provider device access license agreement) on my television set (it's nicely framed, easily viewable by anyone within 50 feet with a direct line of sight) that basically states that all advertisement must be stripped from the programming provided to my device.
Failure to comply with the PPDALA will result in fines of $1,000 per violation.
So far, DishNetwork owes me $3,312,232 from this last week alone...
For the simple fact, that if you jump to a command line within windows, and cd to the appropriate directory, and type the name of the.exe file, it WILL run.
if you do the same for a.wav or.mp3 - nothing happens..exe and.com are binaries - they are programs.
interpreted programs such as java, python, ruby etc... require an external program to run so they could be classed the same as the media..exe and.com have all they need to execute built in.
None of the currently used media file types have any *code* in them that causes actions to occur.
The computers that have media players on them, have settings defined that tell the computer what to do when that media type is selected.
Someone should explain the difference between media and the device.
I can strip the entries out of the registry, and drop media files and even double click them all day long and *NOTHING* will happen, except that I'll either get a sore finger, or break my mouse.
Well, probably not even the cable companies, as their units just record digital data as well.
No digitization to do this.
There's even talk of cable companies hosting the PVR unit on their end (essentially holding the programs on hard disks, so that users can select what they want to watch, when they want to watch it).
Slashdot Mirror
"You have to sign an Internet Use agreement before you can use the Internet."
Nuff said.
MORON!
DUMBASS!
TOO STUPID TO LIVE!
Get the idea?
According to the candy manufacturers you can.
Remove sugar - add sugar alcohol.
For diabetics, the net effect is the SAME. Yet, they get away with promoting in BIG BOLD LETTERS "SUGAR-FREE".
More than one diabetic has killed themselves because they didn't read the fine print on that sugar-free candy.
I'd say that comes pretty damned close to criminal negligence on the food industry's part. Especially when they know that sugar alcohol raises the blood sugar of a diabetic in an identical manner as sugar does.
Just becuase it's *technically* correct, doesn't mean they can't be held responsible.
Yes - but where are the keys in esgro for all the users to *disable* the DRM once the copyright on the media has expired?
That's right, it's not there. There isn't a *disable* key set aside to allow all of our DRM'd content to be de-DRM'd once the copyright time period has expired.
That makes these DRM technique's illegal, as it essentially extends the copyright time period to infinity.
Add to that the DMCA laws, and we sit in a country (USA), where copyrights *NEVER* expire, as long as the copyrighted content is encrypted.
so - to get things legal - they have 2 choices.
#1 Drop DRM, revoke the DMCA.
#2 Set the DRM to expire and turn off after the copyright period expires.
If neither #1 or #2 are not followed, then the industry as a whole is in for a rude awakening - including the congressmen who passed the illegal law.
Because the pointy headed bosses at the places that outsource their programming, haven't figured out yet, that cheaper programmers aren't....
I'm thinking that's the way it already is.
ie - I pay to get onto the net.
the provider pays to get onto the net.
the two connect.
now big network companies want *a piece of the action* beyond what they already get for keeping the networks going - which is a lot.
Oh, I forgot...
The content provider gets hit, probably the same way as well...
#1 Connection (ISP fees)
#2 Payola1
#3 Payola2
#4 Payola3
#5 Payola4
etc...
so, by the time the content reaches the subscriber, the network owners may have been paid 2 or 3 times for the traffic, depending on whether or not they are also the service provider for either the content owner, or the content subscriber.
Don't forget the fact that if for some reason, your packets get routed to some other carriers network (ie cable cut, dug up, etc..) , that *extra* extortion money that you paid to get your packets there at a high rate of speed, are now secondary to this carrier that didn't get it's payola.
That's the biggest thing that the two tiered internet folks are forgetting...
With all the different networks, owned and operated by different companies, sometime, somewhere, packets flow through at least 2, if not 3, 4 or more different networks, before it reaches you.
So, instead of paying for
#1 Connection (your's to the ISP)
#2 Content (in the way of service charge payable to provider)
#3 Payola1 (don't want those packets gettin' hurt while on our network)
#4 Payola2 (don't want those packets gettin' hurt while on our network)
#5 Payola3 (don't want those packets gettin' hurt while on our network)
#6 Payola4 (don't want those packets gettin' hurt while on our network)
etc....
He suggests there'd be no difference between big media footing the bill for their own upload costs of their offerings and subsidizing the consumer's download costs of the same.
Umm - yes there would be.
Because they'd be paying for their own upload costs plus the consumer's download costs. This increases their costs, which in turn would increase our costs.
Actually it's already available, and being tested in samples at your local seven eleven in a pepsi slurpee type product.
It's called tagatose.
http://www.jhu.edu/~jhumag/1102web/sweet.html
Now if only the artificial sweetener companies would forego their greed, and focus on left-handed sugar conversion/manufacturing, we wouldn't have to worry about any of this.
Left handed sugars look, taste, cook, etc. just like regular sugar, except that the molecule is built in reverse to normal right handed sugars. This means that the body cannot process it.
No wierd chemicals, no aftertaste, use as much as you like.
I could see people going in droves to a (your favorite soda) with a left handed sugar syrup. If they could apply the same process to corn syrup, that would rock too.
Thus sayeth one who at one time consumed close to 9 20oz bottles a day of the overly sweet and tasty Mt. Dew.
Hmmm - let's see...
Letting someone else decide your morals - equates to letting dumb-ass shit-heads drive or shoot without licensure / training.... Hmmmmm - WOW - that's a really large illogical leap.
Since my child would not get to purchase a game without me being there (until they move out of the house) I don't see a real benefit.
So here we have society attempting to dump responsibility for another aspect of parenting off onto someone else.
Personal responsibility is EVERYONE's responsibility. It doesn't just end with yourself either. As a parent you are responsible for yourself and your child, until they become an adult. Schools aren't responsible, teachers aren't responsible. They play an important role, but in the end, it's the PARENT's responsibility.
Since you cannot get a license for a firearm, until you are considered by an adult in whichever area you live (at least in the US), I don't see how your statement applies. As far as drivers licenses go, that has nothing to do with parenting either. Training your child to drive, once they reach the legal age, is again the parent's responsibility, along with whatever state mandated driver's education program.
Credibility is earned, and to read that they want to change a rating because someone else hacked the game and *ADDED* content, causes them to LOSE credibility.
If the content was in the game to begin with, then yes, by all means - change the rating. However, to change a rating because of someone else's hacking is absurd.
As for gore or other things. Context is what states if it is GORE or not.
A dismembered body, mutilated by an animal attack isn't gore, it's a tragedy.
A dismembered body, mutilated by another human being, in an attempt to save their life isn't gore, it's surgery (ie - an amputation).
A disbembered body, mutilated by whatever means, in an attempt to destroy the person for whatever reason is gore.
To give flat unqualified *ratings* without giving the context for the rating is meaningless.
The ratings system is a crutch. If a parent reads the box, sees the images on the box - they can pretty well figure out for themselves what the *content* is. An MSRB rating isn't going to tell me if something in the content is offensive to me.
Here's an example....
Let's say a game comes out, and it's a goody-goody game, that portrays protective Angels. Your role in the game is protect the people of the game from being harmed in one way or another. There's no *gore*, there's no *language*, the only violence, is someone falls down, and scrapes their knee. The MSRB would find this acceptible and give a low (E) rating. Someone else would find this offensive, because they portray Angels in a manner that goes against their religious beliefs. How would the MSRB E rating help in this instance? It wouldn't. Are they then to add an RC rating, meaning religious content? Where does it end?
The question that I would ask, is *WHO* empowered the ESRB to be a ratings body? As far as I can tell, they did themselves. I have yet to see a government mandated or licensure that gives the ESRB the right / job to rate video games. Who pays the salaries of the ESRB employees? How do they generate revenue by just giving ratings?
Wow, I want to start the ratings company to rate Books. I would have to give the Bible an M for mature, because it involves sexual themes and explicit language.
Hmm, I seem to have wandered away from my original theme....
We'd have just that many more welfare recipients running around.
I mean, where else can incompetant, lazy, worthless individuals rise to power to think they get to determine what content I or my children should or should not see.
That's a decision for me alone. If I determine that my 12 year old is mature enough to handle gore/violence/nudity whatever, that's my choice - not some dork pulling a god trip trying to force feed the nation their *opinion*.
Except when they artificially lower supply to enable them to *hype* sold-out.
They made resellers sign contracts that they would sell out all stock each day it was delivered.
Nah, send them to the rendering plant - although Purina may have to recall the dog-food made from them, if the animals get sick off of it....
I have yet to see a low profile version, however, I have seen v210s and v240s with this card in them. It could only be a matter of time.
Did I claim that "piracy" didn't hurt sales?
No, I said that "file-sharing" didn't hurt sales.
To me, there's a difference (and no, I've never shared / used / downloaded any music, ever).
Piracy, as I define it, is done by large groups of individuals who get their bootlegged copies of the music, and start stamping out CDs of the latest albums to hawk on street-corners and other venues.
File-sharers, take music they've purchased, rip the content to their harddrives, and place said data up for grabs on the internet.
Now, could pirates grab said rippings and create CDs to sell? Yes.
Does joe blow who doesn't know if he likes song x, who then goes out and grabs it, downloads it, listens to it then decides he does like it, goes to iTunes or wherever and buys the song, single or album, constitute pirating? Not in this context. It's no different than listening to the song on the internet.
Now, if someone spends hours, days, weeks scouring the various file sharing networks, downloading every song they can find, so that they have it, and never purchases a legitimate copy of the works, that would count as copyright infringement as the RIAA chooses to define it - it's still not piracy - no one made any money off the sale of that copy. This usage of file-sharing services is wrong, and should be stopped.
The occasional usage to find something that is obscure, not sure if they like it, or possibly something that is no longer being produced, in my opinion, is a perfectly legitimate usage of these services.
Let's face it - if people download one or two songs here and there, it's not going to hurt sales anywhere. It's not really any different than someone recording a song off of the radio, or the satellite music service (which can be done in pure digital format). Granted - the RIAA wants to put a stop to that as well, but, for now, it's legal.
I've probably spent more on media in my lifetime, than many people spend on their homes, yet I don't find myself even remotely tempted to go out and download anything.
Anyway, I digress.
My point I guess, was that I don't put file-sharing and pirating into the same column by default, because there are casual uses of file-sharing that do not, and will never, hurt sales. While piracy, defined as large scale copying and selling of media, does and will continue to hurt sales.
source of revenue... So it's no wonder that if the artist wishes to make more money, they would raise concert ticket prices.
/. to find stories regarding this topic.
There's really no change here.
It's been reported time and time again, that file-sharing has had very little or NO impact on music sales. Do a search withing
I stand by my own opinion that the majority of music file sharers are the same type of folks who used to sit by the radio with cassette-recorder and recorded music off the air. They were NEVER going to buy the premium product, unless they absolutely loved the music.
There seems to be fewer high quality albums - ie, albums with more than one or two tracks actually worth listening to. Is it any wonder that sales have been declining?
Now, let's add in those people who are still holding a grudge with the music industry over their CD price fixing and their attempts at forcing price changes on the legitimate online music sales.
Does the term "Shooting one's self in the foot" come to mind? Or would "blowing one's own head off" be more appropriate?
as well you shouldn't, as very little of the actual CD sales price ever makes it to the artists... It seems that the palms and pockets of every member of the recording industry that touches the money on it's way to the artist is covered in double sided tape, and most of the money is gone once the pile is actually handed off to the artist.
because I just posted a PPDALA (Programming provider device access license agreement) on my television set (it's nicely framed, easily viewable by anyone within 50 feet with a direct line of sight) that basically states that all advertisement must be stripped from the programming provided to my device.
Failure to comply with the PPDALA will result in fines of $1,000 per violation.
So far, DishNetwork owes me $3,312,232 from this last week alone...
Can't wait to get that check....
No it doesn't....
.exe file, it WILL run.
.wav or .mp3 - nothing happens. .exe and .com are binaries - they are programs.
.exe and .com have all they need to execute built in.
For the simple fact, that if you jump to a command line within windows, and cd to the appropriate directory, and type the name of the
if you do the same for a
interpreted programs such as java, python, ruby etc... require an external program to run so they could be classed the same as the media.
Again, I say, digital media does not cause any action.
.wav file?
.mpg file?
It is only when you or your machine acts on the file, that something happens.
Go ahead, place a CD on your speaker - does music come out of it?
Shuttle some music to your favorite flash media, not place it on your TV - do you hear the music?
No - MEDIA is just that - media - whether it's the data, or the carrier, it's just media.
It requires additional hardware / software / combination of the 2 to act upon the contents of the media to get something to happen.
That is what I am driving at.
Media, whether it's a CD, DVD or digital download, does absolutely NOTHING, without some other device to act upon it.
That is why it cannot be taxed as *SOFTWARE*, using the definition of 'a set of coded instructions designed to cause a computer...to perform a task,'
Digital media is not instructions, it's just DATA.
Can you run a
Can you boot a
Will your favorite IPOD run if overwrite the firmware with you're latest music purchase?
No to all of the above, because it's just data - not software.
Turn off autorun / autoplay - then it can't install.
Because they'll call it a service tax - not a sales tax.
Just like most states don't charge sales tax on food, yet restaraunts charge tax on prepared food - it's the service that's taxed.
Digital media does NOT cause any action to occur.
None of the currently used media file types have any *code* in them that causes actions to occur.
The computers that have media players on them, have settings defined that tell the computer what to do when that media type is selected.
Someone should explain the difference between media and the device.
I can strip the entries out of the registry, and drop media files and even double click them all day long and *NOTHING* will happen, except that I'll either get a sore finger, or break my mouse.
Well, probably not even the cable companies, as their units just record digital data as well.
No digitization to do this.
There's even talk of cable companies hosting the PVR unit on their end (essentially holding the programs on hard disks, so that users can select what they want to watch, when they want to watch it).