Re:It is our stupid pricing system
on
Making Change
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· Score: 1
And I presume that money is going to charity?
No, sorry, I forgot that not everyone may be familiar with these things.
The "take a penny/leave a penny" containers are for customers to take when they need them.People who don't want their pennies leave them in those things, and people who need them take them. So when your purchase results in a price that is up to and including.04, you can take the pennies you need out of these jars. They were created out of need, because cashiers and customers don't like pennies.
It is our stupid pricing system
on
Making Change
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· Score: 1
Maybe the problem with making change is the dumb way we price and charge for things. I spent a week in Paris, and didn't see a penny until the last day. Maybe I just got lucky, but it seemed everything was priced so that you didn't get pennies back for change. I also liked the fact that the tip was always included in the price of a meal.
Why do we still have pennies anyway? Nobody likes them. They are trying to outlaw them in tollbooths here in Illinois, so even the state doesn't want them. The "leave a penny" containers always seem full where I shop. They are just an annoyance, IMO.
This isn't related to NTBUGTRAQ's problem as I'm sure they are using legal license of Windows, however: blacklisted, warezed Windows don't update. If you run Windows update and don't get any service packs at all (even at clean install) you have illegal license of Windows, or at least your s/n has been blacklisted.
Can anyone confirm this? This would be quite an interesting fact if it is true. Why? Because I know several people from work who have lifted a copy of Win2k and installed it at home. I know that they have given copies to their friends as well. So if Microsoft notices the license coming from a non-corporate IP, do they blacklist the license number, or the license number/IP combination? If they only do the license number, then all of the company's updates wouldn't work either. If they do the license/IP combination, then they have your IP address and know that you are using an illegal key.
I am pretty sure that things like this happen at other companies too.
You can blame Nvidia for doing this, but look at the real reason they are doing it - people rely wayyy too much on benchmark tests when buying hi-end video cards. For some reason, it is possible to have a fanbase for video cards. Gamers have created this environment where the latest and greatest video card is a must have. So now you reap the results of that, companies cheating and lying to get the best benchmarks that their sales rely on so heavily. They rely on these to sell cards because of obsessive fanboys who have to have them.
Those of us who don't really care about comparing video card FPS, well, don't care about this.
It looks just like one of those home gyms. And then when the marketing speak said:
> The MasterPeace Rocks and Cradles you
I thought... "You can rock, rock, rock! yourself to firmer abs!"... damn those infomercials.
The biggest problem with those is there is no place to put good old fashion pen to paper.
Wow, did you miss your own joke. The biggest problem with this chair is that it looks like a home gym. Home gyms are like Kryptonite to a geek.
I have found that techno-geeks are the first to admit when they have done something stupid. Ever done an "rm -rf" in the wrong directory? I have. Ever written a shell script called "foo" that makes this call inside it: "./foo &". Try it sometime. Doing stupid things are part of the game, get over it. You were lucky you had someone who was willing to help, instead of just telling you to reboot your system, or reinstall the OS.
Depending on which flavour of zealot you ask you'll get a different answer as to which is more expensive in terms of man hours required to implement that infrastructure.
Yeah, you've got your technical zealots and your marketing zealots.
Allow me to paraphrase what you said: when someone transmits something, regardless of the media, I have the right to receive it and keep it for myself, but not to redistribute it without permission.
Allow me to take this even further, to illustrate a point.
I posted comments on Slashdot, and you reproduced it in your post. I didn't give you permission to repost it, yet you did anyway. You redistributed it for the world to read. By your reasoning, what you did was redistribute my works without my permission. What I write is copyrighted, and only I own the rights to it. I decide how it can be distributed, and I didn't give you permission to quote it in your response.
I don't know why anyone is surprised by this. Lyrics are basically poems, and no one would argue that poetry isn't covered by copyright. If I wanted to put up a page of poetry, I would have to contact the individual copyright holders and get their permission. Why is it people think music is somehow different from other forms of art and can be readily and freely stolen?
This is one of the most dumbass things I have read on slashdot. And that is saying a lot.
If I hear a song on the radio, am I breaking the law? How about if I write down the words to that song? Am I breaking the law now? OK, now I put the lyrics up on my web page. Now?
If song writers don't want their lyrics known, they shouldn't release their songs. What the fuck is going on in this country, where the main drive is owning everything? It isn't like anyone is publishing lyrics to a song and not attributing where they came from. Nobody is lying and claiming that they wrote the lyrics.
America is becoming a very embarassing place to live.
95% of the time, counterfeit bills are accepted by people who don't seem to notice that while the bill corners say $20, George Washington is in the center. Or that they're printed on normal grade paper.
It's usually so dark in strip clubs that the strippers don't notice. Only bring one or two though, or you'll get caught.
I actually know someone who did this in college. A couple of photocopied $20s on regular paper, crumpled many times, then folded up. He didn't get caught, but I really wouldn't want to get caught passing a fake bill in a strip club.
We find out that Ewoks and Jar-jar form a new, dark empire who crush the evil alliance of script-leakers and Kazaa users.
I think Lucas is effectively taking care of this evil alliance simply by making more movies. You know your movies suck when nobody on Kazaa wants them.
It can't be any worse than Episode I and II. And, after all, Lucas gives absolutely no freedom to his actors, so replacing them with animated characters wouldn't change a thing.
Sure it would - they would be, well, animated. As opposed to the plethora of wooden zombies in I and II, at least it would be *something*.
So it seems he likes the delivery to be either deadpan or goofy. At least if they were all animated he would have to do less rework to turn them into a cartoon on Nickelodeon or whatever else he has in the works to completely ruin the series.
Yeah, I'm bitter - didn't you see Episode I and II?
Anyone else feel that the Matrix Reloaded Heineken commercial just makes the Matrix franchise appear "cheap"?
It is already cheap if you can refer to it as a franchise and the second movie hasn't been released yet.
I am only hoping that they made a good movie in spite of all of the complete selling out that I have seen already. The movie doesn't need hyping, or over-the-top marketing. It *should* stand on its own, like the first movie did. But I realize that the movie industry will not be satisfied until it sucks the life out of everything worth watching.
One way it would be useful...
on
TiVo For Radio?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The only way I could see this being really useful is if you could set up a wishlist (song X, song Y, etc) and your RadioTivo would record it whenever it played. Or maybe if you could download the playlists from radio stations, you could select which songs you wanted to record, and the RadioTivo would do the rest.
Other than that, I agree that there isn't much reason to have this. Why would you need to pause/rewind/timeshift radio? It is 75% commercials, 24% crap anyway. And there doesn't exist a radio talkshow host (aka shock jock) who says much worth listening to, let alone recording. I thought about getting a cheap FM tuner card for my Linux box. You can get one for about $15. I could then set up a cron to record......
That was my problem, I couldn't think of anything to record. Although I catch Stern every once in a while, he hasn't said anything new for 10 years. And all the other idiot Stern imitators with their overdone radio voices and sound effects just make me ill. NPR has a great website where I can listen to anything I might miss. Sometimes a classic rock station might play an entire album by an artist, but I probably already have it.
So I passed on the easy and cheap Linux solution, I would see absolutely no reason to buy a more expensive commercial product.
The big argument against file sharing is that if it becomes "legal", then all of the musicians and performers will starve and die. They won't be able to make any money, and their careers will wither away. We will have killed the music industry in America.
Boo frickin hoo.
As we have been repeatedly shown, the music industry is a business, pure and simple. It has always been like that to some degree, but now it seems it is purely a business. In any business, you take risks, and you stand the chance that you might go under. This happens to every business. If you can't change with the times, you just might collapse. This is what is happening to the music business. They refuse to accept the change that is happening. They will not accept online music, even though online music won't be stopped. If they can't deal with it, they will die as a business. I can live with that.
If the music business as we know it dies, it won't be such a bad thing. Maybe we will go back to the majority of artists actually making music instead of simply "performing". It would be like a forest fire wiping out everything. Eventually, it will grow back. Music is too important to our culture, to everyone's culture, for it to die off totally. I don't want the music to die off, just the business that surrounds it. It is just another business, and brings no real value to the people who love music. If the music industry dies, it is simply evolution.
The ironic part is that the music industry has created and fueled this need for music. They have trained people to consume consume consume. CDs are $11.99 for the first few weeks they come out, to get people to buy them. After that, they go on the rack at $18. Why? So you can buy the next latest release. They created it so that we have portable music in portable cassette and CD players. They want us to want music. So now we want music! We want to hear it all the time, we have the capabilities to store thousands of songs on our computers, to take them with us wherever we go in smaller and smaller devices. So, RIAA, you have created a monster that you can't control any more. Reap what you sow, motherfuckers.
If, as you say, black hats arise from white hats who specifically... did not have the moral fortitude to remain on the white side how can anyone be sure that any given white hat will never turn to the black side if the incentive/threat is great enough.
My interest is fair use, the ability to record my compositions and performance with studio grade equipment at a reasonable cost.
No, this isn't "fair use"-- fair use [copyright.gov] is an allowance for you to use someone ELSE'S copyrighted material for a limited purpose-- a review, an excerpt, until recently a sample, etc for certain purposes. What you're talking about is a legitimate use that gives you the SAME powers as the RIAA has for their own copyrighted works.
The first thing I thought when I read the original statement was "It is pretty sad that we now have to qualify things in the terms that the frickin RIAA has set out." We are so skittish that we feel the need to qualify ourselves with "...and I will be using this device for legal activities."
What the F is going on!? I almost want to just stop following tech news, unsubscribe from the EFF newsletter and the DMCA discussion list , stick my fingers in my ears and yell LA LA LA LA LA! I am just growing more and more frustrated with the whole mess. I am ashamed that we have this kind of environment in what is supposed to be a country of Freedom.
Re:Apple's (& RIAA's) long-term plan
on
The Law and P2P
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· Score: 1
christ, herd mentality? what makes you a cut above the rest? do you get out much, i think you'll find in general the american public is your average american joe. they have a nice standard of living, dont mind shelling out money for the convienence of being able to make a call from anywhere, even if they dont use it that much.
Absolutely herd mentality. Why do you have such a problem being part of the herd?
You are missing the point. They get a cellphone because they are taught that they need one. They use it all the time because they are most likely getting "free" minutes, which is a stupid concept because they are paying for it. You are right about convenience - everything is so convenient that people don't think anymore. When in doubt, get on your cellphone and annoy everyone. If people used them responsibly I wouldn't have a problem, but THEY DO NOT. They don't turn them off in restaurants or movie theaters, they drive while yammering on them. Everyone likes to think that they are so important that they need to be reachable at all times. It is a farce that the providers are feeding people, and they are just standing in line eating it up. If it didn't impose on my life, it would simply be comical, but it does impose itself on me.
christ, you are just as bad as "followers" if by standing by on your soapbox you tear them down. you are being distracted and manipulated just as much.
Uhh, what? This makes no sense.
look at how excited you got over OTHER people wanting cell phones.
I don't care who has a cellphone. I care when it impacts me, and it does on a daily basis. People at work, in meetings, taking calls. People cutting me off on the road because they are not paying attention. People in the grocery store, or the video store, or everywhere else, just talking for the sake of talking. When it impacts me, it bothers me. It has become an annoying habit.
and by the way. nearly every major provider has prepaid cellphones now. you pay per unit of airtime. so ya, you can get by on 11$ a month. but im sure you know that. cause you seem to know everything, about everybody:)
Yep, that is the phone my wife has. We use it when we NEED to. I am not anti-cellphone, I am anti-cellphone simply for talking your stupid head off and not only annoying me in public places, but endangering me on the road.
Re:Apple's (& RIAA's) long-term plan
on
The Law and P2P
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Cell-phone pricing syndrome has everyone blissfully unaware that they are paying way more than they ever wanted to in the first place
Not unaware, they are just too stupid to care.
Not everyone (although it sure does frickin seem like it) has a cellphone. I used to own a cell-phone when you could pay for the minutes you used. I paid $11 a month for service, and got 0 free minutes. I loved it! Why should I pay for something I don't use? I am convinced that the American public is just stupid. "Hey, I've got 1000 minutes, I think I'll call my buddy and blather on about absolutely nothing." People are always asking for my cell number, and they look at me like I have a tree growing out of my forehead when I tell them I don't have one. I am no luddite, I just refuse to be convinced that I need something just because everyone else has it and it is the cool thing to have. I think that about 90% of people don't need a cellphone, or at least only need to use it 1% of the time they currently do. Same goes for SUVs. The herd mentality is just overwhelming, and is really sad. Maybe that is why I don't want Linux to succeed on the Desktop, because the idiot sheep in this country will suck all life out of it.
rrelevant. It's your interface to Linux in a lot of cases.
It is not the OS, and is completely optional. Big difference.
The DoJ ruled that MS wasn't guilty of creating a monopoly, they were guilty of maintaining it. They also ruled that niether Netscape nor Java had much chance of ruling the market without MS's involvement. Who's not getting what?
Huh? It isn't about Netscape or Java "ruling the market" it is about them being shut out of the market. In both cases, MS was key in doing this. There is a huge difference between needing MS's OS in order to prosper, and MS using that fact to sabotage them. THAT is what happened.
That's the great thing about the Sony case.
The manufacturer isn't liable for how people use stuff already in the marketplace. And he isn't liable because people _could_ abuse stuff he hasn't yet put in the marketplace.
Hrm. I am not so sure that I see it as a great thing.
So they gave them legal immunity. If a search engine complies with 17 USC 512(d), (c)(2), (c)(3), and (i) they CANNOT be sued for contributory or vicarious infringement, at least related to their activities relevant under that statute.
It's very easy to do this, but these kids didn't. I imagine, and I repeatedly mention it so as to encourage this, that future college kids running local search engines will in fact comply with that law and be able to avoid getting sued.
Well, as lawsuits have become part of our accepted culture, I don't think they would have avoided being sued. Even if they were in the legal right, it wouldn't have prevented them from being sued. They could still be threatened, strongarmed, sued, and their lives could be ruined by people with more money and time than them. That is why "protection under the law" technically applies, but realistically it is a farce.
Meh. The system isn't that bad, though there are some weak spots. It isn't as though these things just pop up out of nowhere. The US legal tradition ultimately dates back to the Norman Invasion of 1066.
Yeah, it dates back to then (I'll take your word on that) but I think it is safe to say it wasn't this bad then. Or even 100 years ago. I think the real problem is that the legal system is constantly being tweaked here and there, and the real insight into the purpose of it is lost. We are constantly getting new laws, revised laws, etc. All it does is make things more cloudy and complicated. I am sure if you are studying it you would agree. We rely entirely too much on our hugely imperfect legal system, while it is so malleable it allows those with more power to retain and gain more power. There may be an occasional win by the "little guy" but it is the exception to the rule. And I think things are only getting worse.
And before you ask, I don't have any answers on how to fix it. In this country we are creating and contributing to it daily, and my fear is that there is no good answer short of catostrophe.
Your "you are dumb" comments notwithstanding, why didn't you post this the first time? I still think the list you originally posted is flawed, because you wayyy oversimplified things. It made your comments ripe for the picking.
That being said, the kids aren't dumb, and didn't deserve what they got. The laws are clearly written to allow companies to do things that they don't want normal people doing. Fine, you cleared up wny my examples of hardware manufacturers may not apply, but they still manufacture CDRW drives.
You wrote: But that's okay. The manufacturer of a CDRW drive doesn't know that people will infringe just because the drive lets them. And even though he might know that people do infringe once they get the drives because he has seen it with his own two eyes, or been informed of it by the copyright holder -- what is the manufacturer going to do to stop it?
He can't take the CDRW drives in use back. He can't force people to stop misusing them. And this is the third factor I mentioned previously. He doesn't meet all three criteria, so he escapes liability.
First generation drives? Fine. What about now? Sure, they can't take back the ones they have sold, but they are still making them. Or are you saying that Sony doesn't know that people are using their drives to break the law? Hah.
So how about Google? Or MSN, or Yahoo, or any other search engine? Why didn't the RIAA go after them instead of these college kids? These kids were sued because they could be made an example of, as a scare tactic. Period. You can argue all the legal hoo-hah in favor of the companies who write the laws, but it won't change that fact.
So you may know "the law" better than me, whooptie-doo. All that means is that you can cite passages and argue with your blinders on. The legal system in the U.S. is such a cluster-fuck. It is only getting worse, because people like you are able to ANALyze every word and twist any meaning out of it you wish. It is a joke to say that "the law" clearly states *anything*. The laws are written ambiguously for a reason, so they can be twisted and contorted to suit the need at hand. The laws of the land should be a simple thing, but we have done nothing but make them more and more convoluted. Why? To suit those who purchase the laws. To all those lawyers who are fighting for the little guy - good luck, you need it. You are clearly outnumbered and outmatched.
As Plato said in Phaedrus, "the writer cannot determine his audience". and I have a feeling that most people who enjoyed The Matrix won't be able to handle lofty philosophical concepts, much less a fiercely logical structured argument for the existence of God and reality, without constant diversions in the form of gun battles, sex scenes, and other forms of violent eye candy.
Ahh, but is it truly violent if the people aren't real?
Seriously, most people won't tap into the deeper philosophical meanings in the Matrix, but they might get an intro to something they probably never thought about. The people with no philosophical interest will see an action movie, and others might tap into the meaning behind the movie and go somewhere with it.
I love philosophical discussions, even if they are based on non-philosophical things. If you want to, you can turn ANYTHING into a philosophical discussion. One of my friends can turn any discussion to something out of Lord of the Rings. I can do the same with the Simpsons. Sure, there is nothing new in this movie, but why do we need something new? All of the "old" stuff is still worth talking about.
Homer: Hey, I've got a question for you. Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he himself could not eat it. Ned: Well sure of course, he could, but then again... wow as melon scratchers go, that's a honey doodle.
Homer: Now you know what I've been going through.
Believe me, over a few beers, this could turn into quite the discussion with a few friends of mine.:-)
There are only three factors to be considered, and whether the search engine is general purpose or not is NOT one of them.
1) Does it help people infringe?
2) Does the provider know of specific infringements that it has helped? (more specific than knowing that they're possible; less specific than knowing individual filenames, though that would be good too)
3) Could the provider have stopped helping people infringe by changing his technology or failing to provide it anymore?
First, excuse me for being so brash, but you deserve it...
Put this list back in your ass from whence you pulled it.
How come the RIAA hasn't sued Sony (I know, a paradox) for making CDRW drives. It meets your three criteria. What about Sony's MP3 players? Check. How about the CDR manufacturers. Check. Or any VCR manufacturer. Check. Or photocopying machine makers. Check.
Shall I go on, or do you get the point yet? Besides, this list you made up contradicts the previous sentence you wrote: Remember the Sony decision: as long as there is a possible substantial non-infringing use of the technology, the mere fact that the technology exists isn't enough for the provider to be liable.
Slashdot Mirror
No, sorry, I forgot that not everyone may be familiar with these things.
The "take a penny/leave a penny" containers are for customers to take when they need them.People who don't want their pennies leave them in those things, and people who need them take them. So when your purchase results in a price that is up to and including .04, you can take the pennies you need out of these jars. They were created out of need, because cashiers and customers don't like pennies.
Why do we still have pennies anyway? Nobody likes them. They are trying to outlaw them in tollbooths here in Illinois, so even the state doesn't want them. The "leave a penny" containers always seem full where I shop. They are just an annoyance, IMO.
Can anyone confirm this? This would be quite an interesting fact if it is true. Why? Because I know several people from work who have lifted a copy of Win2k and installed it at home. I know that they have given copies to their friends as well. So if Microsoft notices the license coming from a non-corporate IP, do they blacklist the license number, or the license number/IP combination? If they only do the license number, then all of the company's updates wouldn't work either. If they do the license/IP combination, then they have your IP address and know that you are using an illegal key.
I am pretty sure that things like this happen at other companies too.
Those of us who don't really care about comparing video card FPS, well, don't care about this.
The biggest problem with those is there is no place to put good old fashion pen to paper.
Wow, did you miss your own joke. The biggest problem with this chair is that it looks like a home gym. Home gyms are like Kryptonite to a geek.
I have found that techno-geeks are the first to admit when they have done something stupid. Ever done an "rm -rf" in the wrong directory? I have. Ever written a shell script called "foo" that makes this call inside it: "./foo &". Try it sometime. Doing stupid things are part of the game, get over it. You were lucky you had someone who was willing to help, instead of just telling you to reboot your system, or reinstall the OS.
Yeah, you've got your technical zealots and your marketing zealots.
Allow me to take this even further, to illustrate a point.
I posted comments on Slashdot, and you reproduced it in your post. I didn't give you permission to repost it, yet you did anyway. You redistributed it for the world to read. By your reasoning, what you did was redistribute my works without my permission. What I write is copyrighted, and only I own the rights to it. I decide how it can be distributed, and I didn't give you permission to quote it in your response.
My lawyers will be in contact with you...
(kind of ridiculous, huh?)
This is one of the most dumbass things I have read on slashdot. And that is saying a lot.
If I hear a song on the radio, am I breaking the law? How about if I write down the words to that song? Am I breaking the law now? OK, now I put the lyrics up on my web page. Now?
If song writers don't want their lyrics known, they shouldn't release their songs. What the fuck is going on in this country, where the main drive is owning everything? It isn't like anyone is publishing lyrics to a song and not attributing where they came from. Nobody is lying and claiming that they wrote the lyrics.
America is becoming a very embarassing place to live.
That would be DRM, Dollar Restriction Management.
I am pretty sure that Microsoft is working on this already, but their method is to just own all the money. Own it all!
It's usually so dark in strip clubs that the strippers don't notice. Only bring one or two though, or you'll get caught.
I actually know someone who did this in college. A couple of photocopied $20s on regular paper, crumpled many times, then folded up. He didn't get caught, but I really wouldn't want to get caught passing a fake bill in a strip club.
I think Lucas is effectively taking care of this evil alliance simply by making more movies. You know your movies suck when nobody on Kazaa wants them.
Sure it would - they would be, well, animated. As opposed to the plethora of wooden zombies in I and II, at least it would be *something*.
So it seems he likes the delivery to be either deadpan or goofy. At least if they were all animated he would have to do less rework to turn them into a cartoon on Nickelodeon or whatever else he has in the works to completely ruin the series.
Yeah, I'm bitter - didn't you see Episode I and II?
It is already cheap if you can refer to it as a franchise and the second movie hasn't been released yet.
I am only hoping that they made a good movie in spite of all of the complete selling out that I have seen already. The movie doesn't need hyping, or over-the-top marketing. It *should* stand on its own, like the first movie did. But I realize that the movie industry will not be satisfied until it sucks the life out of everything worth watching.
Other than that, I agree that there isn't much reason to have this. Why would you need to pause/rewind/timeshift radio? It is 75% commercials, 24% crap anyway. And there doesn't exist a radio talkshow host (aka shock jock) who says much worth listening to, let alone recording. I thought about getting a cheap FM tuner card for my Linux box. You can get one for about $15. I could then set up a cron to record......
That was my problem, I couldn't think of anything to record. Although I catch Stern every once in a while, he hasn't said anything new for 10 years. And all the other idiot Stern imitators with their overdone radio voices and sound effects just make me ill. NPR has a great website where I can listen to anything I might miss. Sometimes a classic rock station might play an entire album by an artist, but I probably already have it.
So I passed on the easy and cheap Linux solution, I would see absolutely no reason to buy a more expensive commercial product.
Boo frickin hoo.
As we have been repeatedly shown, the music industry is a business, pure and simple. It has always been like that to some degree, but now it seems it is purely a business. In any business, you take risks, and you stand the chance that you might go under. This happens to every business. If you can't change with the times, you just might collapse. This is what is happening to the music business. They refuse to accept the change that is happening. They will not accept online music, even though online music won't be stopped. If they can't deal with it, they will die as a business. I can live with that.
If the music business as we know it dies, it won't be such a bad thing. Maybe we will go back to the majority of artists actually making music instead of simply "performing". It would be like a forest fire wiping out everything. Eventually, it will grow back. Music is too important to our culture, to everyone's culture, for it to die off totally. I don't want the music to die off, just the business that surrounds it. It is just another business, and brings no real value to the people who love music. If the music industry dies, it is simply evolution.
The ironic part is that the music industry has created and fueled this need for music. They have trained people to consume consume consume. CDs are $11.99 for the first few weeks they come out, to get people to buy them. After that, they go on the rack at $18. Why? So you can buy the next latest release. They created it so that we have portable music in portable cassette and CD players. They want us to want music. So now we want music! We want to hear it all the time, we have the capabilities to store thousands of songs on our computers, to take them with us wherever we go in smaller and smaller devices. So, RIAA, you have created a monster that you can't control any more. Reap what you sow, motherfuckers.
You underestimate the power of the dark side.
No, this isn't "fair use"-- fair use [copyright.gov] is an allowance for you to use someone ELSE'S copyrighted material for a limited purpose-- a review, an excerpt, until recently a sample, etc for certain purposes. What you're talking about is a legitimate use that gives you the SAME powers as the RIAA has for their own copyrighted works.
The first thing I thought when I read the original statement was "It is pretty sad that we now have to qualify things in the terms that the frickin RIAA has set out." We are so skittish that we feel the need to qualify ourselves with "...and I will be using this device for legal activities."
What the F is going on!? I almost want to just stop following tech news, unsubscribe from the EFF newsletter and the DMCA discussion list , stick my fingers in my ears and yell LA LA LA LA LA! I am just growing more and more frustrated with the whole mess. I am ashamed that we have this kind of environment in what is supposed to be a country of Freedom.
Absolutely herd mentality. Why do you have such a problem being part of the herd?
You are missing the point. They get a cellphone because they are taught that they need one. They use it all the time because they are most likely getting "free" minutes, which is a stupid concept because they are paying for it. You are right about convenience - everything is so convenient that people don't think anymore. When in doubt, get on your cellphone and annoy everyone. If people used them responsibly I wouldn't have a problem, but THEY DO NOT. They don't turn them off in restaurants or movie theaters, they drive while yammering on them. Everyone likes to think that they are so important that they need to be reachable at all times. It is a farce that the providers are feeding people, and they are just standing in line eating it up. If it didn't impose on my life, it would simply be comical, but it does impose itself on me.
christ, you are just as bad as "followers" if by standing by on your soapbox you tear them down. you are being distracted and manipulated just as much.
Uhh, what? This makes no sense.
look at how excited you got over OTHER people wanting cell phones.
I don't care who has a cellphone. I care when it impacts me, and it does on a daily basis. People at work, in meetings, taking calls. People cutting me off on the road because they are not paying attention. People in the grocery store, or the video store, or everywhere else, just talking for the sake of talking. When it impacts me, it bothers me. It has become an annoying habit.
and by the way. nearly every major provider has prepaid cellphones now. you pay per unit of airtime. so ya, you can get by on 11$ a month. but im sure you know that. cause you seem to know everything, about everybody :)
Yep, that is the phone my wife has. We use it when we NEED to. I am not anti-cellphone, I am anti-cellphone simply for talking your stupid head off and not only annoying me in public places, but endangering me on the road.
Not unaware, they are just too stupid to care. Not everyone (although it sure does frickin seem like it) has a cellphone. I used to own a cell-phone when you could pay for the minutes you used. I paid $11 a month for service, and got 0 free minutes. I loved it! Why should I pay for something I don't use? I am convinced that the American public is just stupid. "Hey, I've got 1000 minutes, I think I'll call my buddy and blather on about absolutely nothing." People are always asking for my cell number, and they look at me like I have a tree growing out of my forehead when I tell them I don't have one. I am no luddite, I just refuse to be convinced that I need something just because everyone else has it and it is the cool thing to have. I think that about 90% of people don't need a cellphone, or at least only need to use it 1% of the time they currently do. Same goes for SUVs. The herd mentality is just overwhelming, and is really sad. Maybe that is why I don't want Linux to succeed on the Desktop, because the idiot sheep in this country will suck all life out of it.
It is not the OS, and is completely optional. Big difference.
The DoJ ruled that MS wasn't guilty of creating a monopoly, they were guilty of maintaining it. They also ruled that niether Netscape nor Java had much chance of ruling the market without MS's involvement. Who's not getting what?
Huh? It isn't about Netscape or Java "ruling the market" it is about them being shut out of the market. In both cases, MS was key in doing this. There is a huge difference between needing MS's OS in order to prosper, and MS using that fact to sabotage them. THAT is what happened.
Hrm. I am not so sure that I see it as a great thing.
So they gave them legal immunity. If a search engine complies with 17 USC 512(d), (c)(2), (c)(3), and (i) they CANNOT be sued for contributory or vicarious infringement, at least related to their activities relevant under that statute. It's very easy to do this, but these kids didn't. I imagine, and I repeatedly mention it so as to encourage this, that future college kids running local search engines will in fact comply with that law and be able to avoid getting sued.
Well, as lawsuits have become part of our accepted culture, I don't think they would have avoided being sued. Even if they were in the legal right, it wouldn't have prevented them from being sued. They could still be threatened, strongarmed, sued, and their lives could be ruined by people with more money and time than them. That is why "protection under the law" technically applies, but realistically it is a farce.
Meh. The system isn't that bad, though there are some weak spots. It isn't as though these things just pop up out of nowhere. The US legal tradition ultimately dates back to the Norman Invasion of 1066.
Yeah, it dates back to then (I'll take your word on that) but I think it is safe to say it wasn't this bad then. Or even 100 years ago. I think the real problem is that the legal system is constantly being tweaked here and there, and the real insight into the purpose of it is lost. We are constantly getting new laws, revised laws, etc. All it does is make things more cloudy and complicated. I am sure if you are studying it you would agree. We rely entirely too much on our hugely imperfect legal system, while it is so malleable it allows those with more power to retain and gain more power. There may be an occasional win by the "little guy" but it is the exception to the rule. And I think things are only getting worse.
And before you ask, I don't have any answers on how to fix it. In this country we are creating and contributing to it daily, and my fear is that there is no good answer short of catostrophe.
That being said, the kids aren't dumb, and didn't deserve what they got. The laws are clearly written to allow companies to do things that they don't want normal people doing. Fine, you cleared up wny my examples of hardware manufacturers may not apply, but they still manufacture CDRW drives. You wrote:
But that's okay. The manufacturer of a CDRW drive doesn't know that people will infringe just because the drive lets them. And even though he might know that people do infringe once they get the drives because he has seen it with his own two eyes, or been informed of it by the copyright holder -- what is the manufacturer going to do to stop it? He can't take the CDRW drives in use back. He can't force people to stop misusing them. And this is the third factor I mentioned previously. He doesn't meet all three criteria, so he escapes liability.
First generation drives? Fine. What about now? Sure, they can't take back the ones they have sold, but they are still making them. Or are you saying that Sony doesn't know that people are using their drives to break the law? Hah.
So how about Google? Or MSN, or Yahoo, or any other search engine? Why didn't the RIAA go after them instead of these college kids? These kids were sued because they could be made an example of, as a scare tactic. Period. You can argue all the legal hoo-hah in favor of the companies who write the laws, but it won't change that fact.
So you may know "the law" better than me, whooptie-doo. All that means is that you can cite passages and argue with your blinders on. The legal system in the U.S. is such a cluster-fuck. It is only getting worse, because people like you are able to ANALyze every word and twist any meaning out of it you wish. It is a joke to say that "the law" clearly states *anything*. The laws are written ambiguously for a reason, so they can be twisted and contorted to suit the need at hand. The laws of the land should be a simple thing, but we have done nothing but make them more and more convoluted. Why? To suit those who purchase the laws. To all those lawyers who are fighting for the little guy - good luck, you need it. You are clearly outnumbered and outmatched.
Ahh, but is it truly violent if the people aren't real?
Seriously, most people won't tap into the deeper philosophical meanings in the Matrix, but they might get an intro to something they probably never thought about. The people with no philosophical interest will see an action movie, and others might tap into the meaning behind the movie and go somewhere with it.
I love philosophical discussions, even if they are based on non-philosophical things. If you want to, you can turn ANYTHING into a philosophical discussion. One of my friends can turn any discussion to something out of Lord of the Rings. I can do the same with the Simpsons. Sure, there is nothing new in this movie, but why do we need something new? All of the "old" stuff is still worth talking about.
Homer: Hey, I've got a question for you. Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he himself could not eat it.
Ned: Well sure of course, he could, but then again... wow as melon scratchers go, that's a honey doodle.
Homer: Now you know what I've been going through.
Believe me, over a few beers, this could turn into quite the discussion with a few friends of mine. :-)
1) Does it help people infringe?
2) Does the provider know of specific
infringements that it has helped? (more specific than knowing that they're possible; less specific than knowing individual filenames, though that would be good too)
3) Could the provider have stopped helping people infringe by changing his technology or failing to provide it anymore?
First, excuse me for being so brash, but you deserve it...
Put this list back in your ass from whence you pulled it.
How come the RIAA hasn't sued Sony (I know, a paradox) for making CDRW drives. It meets your three criteria. What about Sony's MP3 players? Check. How about the CDR manufacturers. Check. Or any VCR manufacturer. Check. Or photocopying machine makers. Check.
Shall I go on, or do you get the point yet? Besides, this list you made up contradicts the previous sentence you wrote: Remember the Sony decision: as long as there is a possible substantial non-infringing use of the technology, the mere fact that the technology exists isn't enough for the provider to be liable.