There have been a bunch of studies that show that piracy doesn't harm sales
That's really an impossible thing to prove. I think there has been a lot of coincidental evidence with music that that might be the case but not with other formats unless I've missed it.
Music is different than movies or games though as you tend to listen to it many times over many years. A movie you may only watch once or twice, games, you'll probably play a lot to begin with, but once you've completed it, most won't go back to it. Music is probably re-consumed more than any other digital media and may be the exception. Fewer people are going to buy for a game they've played through- but music, due to the nature of how we consume it, someone might go back and buy.
Nonetheless, even if piracy HELPED sales- that doesn't change the fact that the rights of the owner of that digital media were violated. Someone illegally took their content without paying (without their consent).
> You copy some electrons harmlessly therefor you deserve your real world information stolen, potentially to real harm.
News flash, but piracy doesn't harm anyone. It's either people that wouldn't have paid anyway, and thus not a loss, or people that use piracy as a demo and end up paying BECAUSE of it.
That's true for some people but clearly not true for everyone; clearly not true for the majority of people either. I know lots of people who pirate material to avoid having to pay. Not many people PAY for something they have already. And, even if that were to occur isn't it up to the owner of that intellectual property to decide?
If you stole a TV set from Walmart and told the cops you were going to go back and pay for it later if you liked it you wouldn't get much sympathy. Or if you snuck into a cinema and went into a room and watched a movie you wouldn't get much sympathy if you told the cops you were going to pay for the movie if you liked it.
If you can't afford to buy a game, movie, or album... go without. Don't steal. There is actually lots of free content out there that is legitimately free and legally available for you to consume. Seek that out instead.
Not sure. Always wondered if 'Bing' was not chosen because 1. the domain was free, 2. the domain name was short, 3. "Bing" is the famous and most liked character of Friends...
It clearly wasn't #3. Noone liked Bing he was the sarcastic, annoying, member of the group... just like the search engine named after him... ahhhh... that's why they called it Bing.
I haven't even heard about Salon until this came up.
I can't help to wonder though - waste of CPU cycles through ads or through a mining operation. At least they are honest about it.
It's a shame. Salon sometimes has some really interesting articles. They are pretty much a left wing propaganda mouthpiece, but they sometimes have some interesting content nonetheless. I'd read something on their site occasionally. Never again now.
I'm really tired of the "I just bought that" ads. And then, since we share an Amazon account, my wife sees the surprise I purchased for her advertised to her...
Incentive not to buy your mistress anything without an adblocker installed.
Can't come from China if it's supposed to increased the forest-covered area from 21% to 23%
I'm sure they will be grown from saplings... but technically it could come from current Chinese forests if they thinned out the existing forests. If they moved one in five trees from an existing forest and replanted it in a new forest- technically the forest-covered area would increase even though it were the same number of trees.
The one child policy has been abolished... do you live in a cave?
That would only help in the short-term if women were able to give birth to 18-year old girls to copulate with the 18-year old boys who were born during the one child policy.
Everybody *knows* that with absolute certainty and no doubt at all so we should close down SETI because we all know it serves no purpose and never will.
There's a good chance that there are aliens out there somewhere. Maybe not advanced aliens in our part of the galaxy though. If we ever detect any through their use of radio waves though they'll probably be extinct by the time we receive their radio waves.
If aliens exist in the galaxy, it would probably be smart as a species NOT to let your presence be known. If as a species you're still using radio waves- it is perhaps best to disguise those waves from being broadcast into space (if that's possible).
Yeah! We'll mine for Starbucks. Surely that name isn't taken:)
You need to drink a cup of coffee to clear your mind. Starbucks is a name already taken. It was a major character in Battlestar Galactica. I don't think the show owners would like you mining for any of their characters.
I'm pretty sure if you get sign off from the owners of that show though the name is not used anywhere else.
I have never given Facebook my phone number, nor have I ever installed the app. Somehow they are texting me and BEGGING me to come back. It's kind of funny.
I never get any e-mails from Facebook (I wonder if I have them blocked and I forgot I blocked them). In the past I have signed up using temporary e-mail addresses and a VPN, just so I could check things out, fake name, and never logged back in with that account. They won't let me do that anymore, they ask for a phone number before I can sign up.
I know that where I am the local public transit is required to be "self sufficient" meaning that they can only spend what they get from fares and a local sales tax. So that means they're in a consistent downward spiral.
Yes, and I don't think that they be self-sufficient is a realistic requirement. Almost no mass transit is self-sufficient (that's why privatizing them so rarely works). Mass Transit benefits everyone, even those that don't use it, so I don't think it's too bad a problem if it makes a loss. Obviously, it depends on how much of a loss, and WHY it's making a loss. If it's using up half your budget and running routes no one wants- that's a problem.
There is no such thing as free. Governments are not a source of revenue. Anytime anyone says the government will provide something for "free" they'd be much more accurate if they'd instead say "paid for by someone else that is compelled by the government under threat of force and/or imprisonment."
I'm sure this will get down-modded repeatedly because we're at a point where over 50% of people are receiving "free" stuff from the government.
I would say close to 100% of people are getting "Free" stuff from the government. You travel on roads don't you? Walk on sidewalks? Have an emergency number you can call when you're in trouble.
These are all tax payer paid. When it comes to public transit- yeah, it costs government money (and we know who pays the government), but it might not all be a loss. A well used mass transit system means you need to build fewer roads, with fewer lanes, they get worn down slower. Emergency services can be spread out further due to less congestions, meaning a savings there. Everyone benefits from less congestion, less pollution.
A good mass transit system means desirability of city goes up. It attracts employers, makes people's home values go up and wages go up (which in turn leads to the city bringing in more money). More money a city have the more amenities it can offer.
You can quibble about mass transit not being free, but you can also learn what Japan learned; paying for mass transit actually is a lot less of a cost than the sum of the labour/materials/contracts to build and run the mass transit. It can bring in more wealth than it costs to run. It's a lot like roads and other infrastructure. It costs a heck of a lot of money to build an interstate in the US, but areas with access to one have a lot more vibrant economy that rural areas not serviced by one. You can't run a modern economy without roads. It's often best to look at the big picture.
Sometimes you need to invest to make money. Mass transit is an investment.
Slashdot Mirror
There have been a bunch of studies that show that piracy doesn't harm sales
That's really an impossible thing to prove. I think there has been a lot of coincidental evidence with music that that might be the case but not with other formats unless I've missed it.
Music is different than movies or games though as you tend to listen to it many times over many years. A movie you may only watch once or twice, games, you'll probably play a lot to begin with, but once you've completed it, most won't go back to it. Music is probably re-consumed more than any other digital media and may be the exception. Fewer people are going to buy for a game they've played through- but music, due to the nature of how we consume it, someone might go back and buy.
Nonetheless, even if piracy HELPED sales- that doesn't change the fact that the rights of the owner of that digital media were violated. Someone illegally took their content without paying (without their consent).
EA's DRM is so screwed up and invasive, it's been known to cause hardware such as optical drives to quit working.
> You copy some electrons harmlessly therefor you deserve your real world information stolen, potentially to real harm.
News flash, but piracy doesn't harm anyone. It's either people that wouldn't have paid anyway, and thus not a loss, or people that use piracy as a demo and end up paying BECAUSE of it.
That's true for some people but clearly not true for everyone; clearly not true for the majority of people either. I know lots of people who pirate material to avoid having to pay. Not many people PAY for something they have already. And, even if that were to occur isn't it up to the owner of that intellectual property to decide?
If you stole a TV set from Walmart and told the cops you were going to go back and pay for it later if you liked it you wouldn't get much sympathy. Or if you snuck into a cinema and went into a room and watched a movie you wouldn't get much sympathy if you told the cops you were going to pay for the movie if you liked it.
If you can't afford to buy a game, movie, or album... go without. Don't steal. There is actually lots of free content out there that is legitimately free and legally available for you to consume. Seek that out instead.
That's nothing... Back home in Britain the Welsh have been combining human and sheep DNA for centuries.
Not sure. Always wondered if 'Bing' was not chosen because 1. the domain was free, 2. the domain name was short, 3. "Bing" is the famous and most liked character of Friends ...
It clearly wasn't #3. Noone liked Bing he was the sarcastic, annoying, member of the group... just like the search engine named after him... ahhhh... that's why they called it Bing.
I haven't even heard about Salon until this came up.
I can't help to wonder though - waste of CPU cycles through ads or through a mining operation. At least they are honest about it.
It's a shame. Salon sometimes has some really interesting articles. They are pretty much a left wing propaganda mouthpiece, but they sometimes have some interesting content nonetheless. I'd read something on their site occasionally. Never again now.
Yep.
One or two static and unobtrusive ads at any given time that are guaranteed clean and the adblockers go away.
Indeed. I'm fine with a few ads. I'm not fine with modal ads, or interstitial ads, ads that dance around the page, ads that play videos or make sound.
Simple text ads that are tastefully done is fine. Salon's technique is going to make me blacklist Salon.
I'm really tired of the "I just bought that" ads. And then, since we share an Amazon account, my wife sees the surprise I purchased for her advertised to her...
Incentive not to buy your mistress anything without an adblocker installed.
It's hard to precisely match the tint and odor.
That's not true. McDonald's successfully replicates it in their food in thousands of franchises around the world.
OK... where do I sign up to become Belgian! First waffles, now this. Belgium is the place to be.
There is a joke here about Windows, but I can't seem to see it.
I saved that joke to my laptop desktop. Give me 5 minutes whilst I boot it up.
Another obvious solution would be ultrasonic sensors embedded in either the phones or the foreheads of the employees.
Ultrasonic sensors might detract from the beauty of the building so clearly they would have to be embedded in the employee's forehead instead.
Can't come from China if it's supposed to increased the forest-covered area from 21% to 23%
I'm sure they will be grown from saplings... but technically it could come from current Chinese forests if they thinned out the existing forests. If they moved one in five trees from an existing forest and replanted it in a new forest- technically the forest-covered area would increase even though it were the same number of trees.
The one child policy has been abolished... do you live in a cave?
That would only help in the short-term if women were able to give birth to 18-year old girls to copulate with the 18-year old boys who were born during the one child policy.
Human waste makes extremely poor fertilizer.
Good enough to grow potatoes on mars. Elon Musk should launch human feces to Mars next.
Indeed! Agree on a meta-tag to exclude such image-convenience-features, and sites that want to be Scrooges can add it to the pages.
Jeeez, stop slowing down my porn browsing to make a few bad apples happy.
Everyone knows that's the one area that bing outperforms google anyway. Switch to bing for that.
Hitler was quite a bit worse than Spelling Nazis. You should read a history book.
Spelling nazis are in charge of editing the history books. Revisionist history favors those with the power of the press.
Are yew tellin' me it woz really the grammar Nazis that coursed the holocaust?
Now we have to watch out, aliens could come to Earth undetected and mine all our cryptocurrency.
HEY! mining cryptocurrency is OUR job. I don't want no stinking aliens stealing our jobs.
Everybody *knows* that with absolute certainty and no doubt at all so we should close down SETI because we all know it serves no purpose and never will.
There's a good chance that there are aliens out there somewhere. Maybe not advanced aliens in our part of the galaxy though. If we ever detect any through their use of radio waves though they'll probably be extinct by the time we receive their radio waves.
If aliens exist in the galaxy, it would probably be smart as a species NOT to let your presence be known. If as a species you're still using radio waves- it is perhaps best to disguise those waves from being broadcast into space (if that's possible).
Yeah! We'll mine for Starbucks. Surely that name isn't taken :)
You need to drink a cup of coffee to clear your mind. Starbucks is a name already taken. It was a major character in Battlestar Galactica. I don't think the show owners would like you mining for any of their characters.
I'm pretty sure if you get sign off from the owners of that show though the name is not used anywhere else.
Ultra performance... meh...Wake me up when there is an ultra crappy performance mode.
I like my computers like I like my women, slow and full of viruses.
I have never given Facebook my phone number, nor have I ever installed the app. Somehow they are texting me and BEGGING me to come back. It's kind of funny.
I never get any e-mails from Facebook (I wonder if I have them blocked and I forgot I blocked them). In the past I have signed up using temporary e-mail addresses and a VPN, just so I could check things out, fake name, and never logged back in with that account. They won't let me do that anymore, they ask for a phone number before I can sign up.
No one likes a Spelling Nazi, you people are worse than Hitler.
No... not really. Hitler was quite a bit worse than Spelling Nazis. You should read a history book.
I know that where I am the local public transit is required to be "self sufficient" meaning that they can only spend what they get from fares and a local sales tax. So that means they're in a consistent downward spiral.
Yes, and I don't think that they be self-sufficient is a realistic requirement. Almost no mass transit is self-sufficient (that's why privatizing them so rarely works). Mass Transit benefits everyone, even those that don't use it, so I don't think it's too bad a problem if it makes a loss. Obviously, it depends on how much of a loss, and WHY it's making a loss. If it's using up half your budget and running routes no one wants- that's a problem.
There is no such thing as free. Governments are not a source of revenue. Anytime anyone says the government will provide something for "free" they'd be much more accurate if they'd instead say "paid for by someone else that is compelled by the government under threat of force and/or imprisonment."
I'm sure this will get down-modded repeatedly because we're at a point where over 50% of people are receiving "free" stuff from the government.
I would say close to 100% of people are getting "Free" stuff from the government. You travel on roads don't you? Walk on sidewalks? Have an emergency number you can call when you're in trouble.
These are all tax payer paid. When it comes to public transit- yeah, it costs government money (and we know who pays the government), but it might not all be a loss. A well used mass transit system means you need to build fewer roads, with fewer lanes, they get worn down slower. Emergency services can be spread out further due to less congestions, meaning a savings there. Everyone benefits from less congestion, less pollution.
A good mass transit system means desirability of city goes up. It attracts employers, makes people's home values go up and wages go up (which in turn leads to the city bringing in more money). More money a city have the more amenities it can offer.
You can quibble about mass transit not being free, but you can also learn what Japan learned; paying for mass transit actually is a lot less of a cost than the sum of the labour/materials/contracts to build and run the mass transit. It can bring in more wealth than it costs to run. It's a lot like roads and other infrastructure. It costs a heck of a lot of money to build an interstate in the US, but areas with access to one have a lot more vibrant economy that rural areas not serviced by one. You can't run a modern economy without roads. It's often best to look at the big picture.
Sometimes you need to invest to make money. Mass transit is an investment.