I dunno, being jobless all this time has made me realize a few things. There's no enjoyment in a job where you have to put out fires for 200+ people a day because they're too fucking stupid to figure out simple shit for themselves. They won't ever listen to your warnings, they don't seem to care that you have to spend several hours fixing their machines.
This will all sort itself out eventually, and Sysadmins/computer techs will be like auto mechanics and plumbers: able to charge through the nose to fix things that people are too stupid to learn how to maintain themselves. The secret to changing from "lack of enjoyment at fixing other people's stupidity" to "laughing at their stupidity all the way to the bank" is simple: CHARGE BY THE HOUR.
Well the article has been/.'d or something, so I can't read it, but is anyone else getting tons of Klez worms on the mail, either directly or as bounces? That's the one that exploits IE's problem with the word 'begin', *AND* forges return addresses from e-mail addresses found on infected computers.
It's very disturbing to get bounces from hotmail because you supposedly sent someone a virus. (No, I don't have it; all my e-mail reading and sending is done from a Linux box and its a Windows/Outlook worm.)
You have to have an original to make the first copy. The example in the story was a can of beans: the duplicator would make perfect copies of that can of beans, but you had to have an original can of beans in the first place.
Just like digital data... the data has to exist before it can be copied. You can't duplicate what does not exist.
Some points from that article about what Lucas is having us believe:
Elites have an inherent right to arbitrary rule; common citizens needn't be consulted. They may only choose which elite to follow.
"Good" elites should act on their subjective whims, without evidence, argument or accountability.
Any amount of sin can be forgiven if you are important enough.
True leaders are born. It's genetic. The right to rule is inherited.
Justified human emotions can turn a good person evil.
But hey, I think all these points could apply to Buffy.
Unfortunately, I couldn't read the original article because of my workplace's fascist filtering policies. However, these themes are fairly common in fantasy, which tends to glorify monarchy and aristocracy and tradition for the sake of itself. I would guess that is a holdover from our fairy tales and folktales, that were mostly composed by people for whom king and noblity were and had been the expected government for literally millenia, for whom change came in the form of rebellion, war, famine and plague, all of which were considered Bad Things.
OTOH, I am slightly disturbed by science fiction authors (*cough* Jerry Pournelle *cough*) who uphold rule by an elite as a great idea for the future, and portray democracy as nothing more than mob rule or rule by demogogues. If this idea seems good to you, go re-read A Connecticutt Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which isn't nearly as funny as movie adaptations make it out to be--it's rather a vicious attack on the apologists for slavery and on rule by an aristocracy. Eric Flint, in his author's notes to 1632, also had some rude things to say about this trend in science fiction. (Good book, btw.)
Most of the real myths of antiquity are too ambiguous, and have characters that are too much a mix of good and evil, too many shades of gray, and too many non-happy endings for the watered-down pap that is considered suitable for families and children these days. IMHO, the real myths have great value for children and adults of all ages, because they depict people as they really are, conflicted by emotions and desires both good and evil, and usually show the consequences of following the wrong path.
Recommended reading along those lines: The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Ramayana, and The Mahabharata(sp?). That's just the ones I'm most familiar with; I'm still exploring the literature of mythology.
One thing I really like is that, according to the Time article (and written SW publications?) the Empire doesn't come and attack the Republic. The Empire IS the Republic. As an American trudging through 2002 I seriously like the idea that Lucas is using the mass media to put forth THIS idea for people to think about: that the well intentioned Republic can turn into the Empire through expansion, greed and expediency.
And here I thought he was just translating the history of the Roman Republic/Empire into space opera... considering that the politics in TPM look just like late Roman Republic politics, and that they've got the exact same corruption and abuses that led to the fall of the Roman Republic. Unfortunately, I don't think Palpatine is going to be a Julius Caesar... more like a Tiberius or Diocletian.
How did Metallica (or the vast majority of bands who aren't marketed to the hilt the second they're signed) get so big in the 80s/90s? They had little to no radio airplay, no presence on MTV, and as far as I can remember no huge push from their record company?
In my long-ago youth, the guy holding down the counter at the local independent record store noticed that I came in regularly to browse the heavy metal section and check-out the Iron Maiden and Judas Priest T-shirts, and suggested that I might like this cool new heavy metal band Metallica. I was a bit skeptical, but he put on "Master of Puppets" from the then just-released album of the same name, and I was hooked. Damn, but that was some good, loud head-banging music!
What's the point? I had to listen to the music before I was convinced to buy it. Hell, the guy at the store was probably violating some "public performance" rule or something by playing it in the store!
In fact, I got into heavy metal in the first place when I was stationed overseas in personnnel support and spent the slow hours listening to my supervisor's tape collection. He had Black Sabbath, which I thought was neat, and prompted me to go out and actually buy some Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne. Later, I discovered Judas Priest from copies of a co-workers metal collection, and bought a lot of my own in tapes, and later CDs... none of which would ever have happened if I hadn't listened to someone's bootleg, copied tapes.
Imagine that there was a "duplication device" that could clone whatever you put into it - a watch, a TV, a car, whatever. Imagine it only cost $.20 per use. This device could literally destroy our society. Think about how many people would be driving Porche Boxters or (insert your favorite car here) versus how many would actually sell. Your friend bought a brand new HDTV? Now you've got one too! How would any manufaturer or store stay in business? Does this seem bad to anyone other than me?
Interestingly enough, there was a science-fiction short story published in Analog more decades ago than I care to admit exactly along those lines. I don't remember the title, but in the story, some alien race dumped a matter duplicater and the plans for it on the human race, with the apparent intent of causing human society to self-destruct. Instead, the humans worked out the obvious solution: since anything could now be duplicated, the only thing that has value is unique originals, and the way to make a living is to design and create unique originals of things.
I think of this story a lot whenever the debates over digital copying and copyright infringement comes up. The Internet + computers are that matter duplicator, as far as anything digital (music, software, books, data) is concerned. The only question is, how do you get people to pay you the necessarily hefty fee for the unique original when they can wait for someone else to buy the original and get a copy for free? It used to be that the guys in charge of the "matter duplicators" (printing presses, film duplicators, record presses) charged a fee for each duplicate to cover the cost of buying the "unique original" (the manuscript, artist's studio tape, composer's score, etc.), but when everyone owns a "matter duplicator" (computer), who buys the original?
Checking the VPC site for NRA-info is a lot like asking Microsoft about the effectiveness of Linux. They will both lie and cheat to smear their primary enemy. Trust nothing you find at that website; they are proven liars.
Funny, I always thought of freely giving the fruits of your labor to those who have not as Christian charity, not communism. I guess I'm old-fashioned that way.
The thing I've always liked about Free Software is that concept of generosity, of teaching, of sharing, of charity and kindness and giving. It's a very Christian ethic for a programmer. (And, if you're familiar with the great religions of the world, it is also follows the ethical ideals of Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. Don't know about the others.)
I wonder if anyone has reverse-engineered BDE's protocols yet? It would be a damn shame, wouldn't it, if their surreptiously installed thiefware should inadvertantly retrieve data containing a destructive worm as a payload, or if their computations were all skewed just enough to still be plausible, but uselessly wrong, or if the client on some computer that their server connected to wasn't quite the client they originally installed, and had unfortunate effects on said server....
Eavesdroppers can't complain if what they hear is unflattering, and thieves can't complain if the stuff they stole is dangerous to them.
From hard-earned experience, I can tell you that you should get out while the getting is good. Any time a company misses payroll, (or worse, issues rubber payroll checks), it's a bad sign--because making payroll is the very first priority and responsibility of any legitimate employer. Your company is going under.
Get out while they still have the funds to pay you severance. Also, if you jobhunt while still employed, you don't have that desperation that makes one jump at bad deals just to have a paycheck coming in.
Actually, I started with OS/2 2.0 back when the alternative was Windows 3.1. OS/2 2.0 was a bitch to install, and the WPS was a bit on the unstable side--patch o' the week from IBM was the norm---
--but in 1992 it could multi-task a GUI and input from multiple serial ports at once, without dropping characters on the floor or forgetting to draw on the screen, which was just what certain applications needed that I was writing for the company I then worked for. Windows 3.1 couldn't do that, and DOS sure the hell couldn't.
A lot of that was fixed with OS/2 2.1, and OS/2 3.0 (Warp) cleaned up the remainder. OS/2 Warp was a dream compared to Windoze 3.11 or 95. Much more stable, and could multi-task cleanly.
I learned GUI programming with OS/2 (ignoring some early dabbling with X/Motif), and got my first exposure to multi-threading with OS/2. Later, I applied what I had learned from OS/2 to learning Windows programming (that and Petzold's book), and have been stuck programming Windows ever since. (Professionally only).
I had OS/2 at home, and even wrote some command-line and GUI utilties for my Traveller (RPG) stuff. Some of them are still on my website, but not maintained for obvious reasons.
<digression> (No, I'm not going to link it from here. I pay for bandwidth; it ain't no free Geocities site! Especially since that Altavista spider went amok and tried to download every eBook and zip-file on my site several hundred times every three hours for a month. Had to deny access to the av.com netblock to stop it. Word of advice: if you pay for your bandwidth, check it now and then; something might be eating it up for you.) </digression>
At one time, my home machine dual-booted Win95 and OS/2. One day I found out that this Linux thing I had heard about in college (back in '91) was now available on CDs for a reasonable price. (I had only a 2400bps modem back in the days of Linux 0.96 and the SoftLanding distribution, so downloading all those packages was Right Out). So, I ordered my first Linux distribution, Slackware '96 (or was that my second?)
It was cool; I fell in love with it right off. It was no worse to install than OS/2 2.0, and in some ways easier: I had fewer hardware incompatibilities. There was no KDE or GNOME in those days; I used FVWM as my window manager. Worked fine. But the greatest thing was the feeling of sheer power I had compiling my own, custom-tailored kernel. You can't do THAT with OS/2, Windows, or DOS!
<digression> Do you know that kernel compiling hasn't changed much since the days of 1.x kernels? Sure, there's new menu options, and they introduced those new-fangled "module" things, and "make zImage" is now "make bzImage", but it's still "make mrproper; make config/make menuconfig; make dep; make bzImage; cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage <somewhere>/vmlinuz; vi/etc/lilo.conf; lilo -v" (and nowdays add "make modules; make modules_install" before the "cp"). </digression>
For a brief time, my home computer multi-booted OS/2, Windows 95, and Linux; but eventually I noticed that I never booted OS/2 anymore. I had moved most of my hobby-programming to Linux, and had decided that local web pages were an even better way than OS/2 help files to organize my vast amounts of data, writings, and RPG info. My games were all Windows games, so I didn't use OS/2 for that. Finally, Linux came with lots of free networking stuff, which worked better than the early OS/2 2.x TCP/IP packages, so I didn't need OS/2 for telnet or FTP, anymore. Besides, as I mentioned, the Linux TCP/IP implementation worked better and didn't bog down CPU and memory as much. Frankly, the only reason I still used OS/2 was for the PMTAPE tape backup program, and I eventually moved to LS120 super-floppies. (Now I burn CDs for data backup).
There finally came a day when I was re-installing my OSs on a new hard disk that I decided there was no point in re-installing OS/2 Warp, because I never used it. In my house, Linux killed OS/2. It's been gone for several years now, but I still have fond memories of it.
Since I didn't "agree" to any EULA terms when I (hypothetically; I wouldn't pay $0.01 for it or let it near my machines if you paid me) bought XP, click-thru dialog boxes after purchase don't apply. Doubly so if it is an OEM install. No legal signature, no contract.
Second, illegal contracts are not binding. There is plenty of precedent in anti-trust law that a company cannot forbid customers from using another company's products, or require the use of its own products as a condition of sale, ESPECIALLY if the company has been deemed a monopoly. Note that Microsoft has been found to be a monopoly by the federal courts.
It sounds like this EULA is another typical attempt to use barratry to intimidate those who don't know what their rights are. Judging from the responses on here, it's working.
Remember, just because some company stuck words on a piece of paper, that doesn't mean those words are right, legal or binding.
So is foresight. I knew that most of the dot.coms were going to crash way back when venture money was still being thrown at them hand over fist. So did most of the columnists of Forbes magazine. Why? Because the dot.coms were ignoring the fundamentals of business like "sell something for less than it costs you". Anyone with any business sense--which apparently did not include a great many VCs--could look at the collapse later and say "Well, duh! I saw that coming."
I'm not even in business; what I know about it comes from a couple of Small Business Management courses and reading Forbes for a few years back in the early 90s--but, well, DUH! What was the special power of the Internet that it suddenly took away so many people's common sense?
My only regret is that I didn't apply for some venture capital to play with during the 90s. Silly me--I thought you had to have a business plan that MADE SENSE before a bank or venture capitalist would touch you. I couldn't think of one that would work for me, so I didn't try.
But why do people visit Dell's web site? Because over the years Dell has built up a reputation as a manufacturer of good quality computers. They are a respected computer manufacturer. Respect cannot be directly bought for money, but a business can build it up through wise application of money. (Building quality products, good customer service, etc.) It can also loose that respect overnight with a few bad management decisions. ("Nobody will notice if we cut a few corners in quality to save money...")
Respect in the business community is considered valuable; it is known as an intangible, usually called customer goodwill. When buying or selling a business, it is considered an asset of the company, even though you can't touch it or measure it. You can even litigate over actions that cost a company goodwill.
My point? Businesses can't just go out and buy respect/reputation/goodwill, they have to earn it, and it is considered valuable. People wouldn't bother to visit Dell's website if Dell didn't have a reputation built up over the years. Without that reputation, they'd just be ABC Computers, and who would care?
Ok... I love it when people make statements that are just plain wrong...
I love it when people who try to correct others succeed in demonstrating their own blithering ignorance.
200 years of Constitutional jurisprudence, modern Constitutional scholars, and recent court decisions all agree: the right to keep and bear arms as protected by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is an individual right. Period. End of argument.
Don't believe me? Do your own Google search for citations and articles. "2nd Amendment individual right" is a good set of terms to start with.
The argument that the second amendment protects a "collective" right to a state militia is only advanced by goverment agencies who want to see citizens disarmed and by the fools in the "gun control" (i.e., disarmament and prohibition) movement who think we'll all be safe and live forever if no one has a legal gun.
In this respect the first amendment contradicts the preamble of the Constitution. There are situations in which the government cannot protect its citizens without in some way abridging the freedom of speech.
Oh, really? Please explain to me in very simple words how words printed on a page can harm you, me or any other citizen of the U.S? I have trouble grasping this concept.
There are situations in which the government cannot protect its citizens without in some way abridging the freedom of speech.
Forbidding Lying Under Oath (perjury) is the only abridgement I can think of that the government cannot protect its citizens without, as our legal systems relies on an impartial judiciary and honest witnesses. Without those, justice is reduced to arbitrary despotism, which is as bad if not worse than no legal system at all.
In my opinion, and apparently in the opinion of most others, one man's right to enable and urge others to kill a large number of people is not worth the possible deaths that may result from it.
Ah! I see. You are one of those people who believe that most adults are not to be trusted with responsibility for their own actions. So, most of us are sheep whose education and knowledge must be carefully restricted for our own good? Who, then, do you trust with weapons and powers for defense of the country and maintenance of public order? Apparently not the citizens of the country. I take it you prefer some small, "elite" group that is of course better than the rest of us to control such power and make the decision when to use it?
One's right to live is the most important right of all. It is the trump card and freedom of speech is really a petty thing next to it.
"I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
-- Patrick Henry
Fortunately for this country, a lot of people don't agree with you. Your attitude is that of the Tories, the collaborators, and those who just kept quiet and looked the other way when the secret police came to take away their neighbors in so many places, so many times.
Those who founded this country, and those who fought in its wars ever since didn't think like you--and you should be thankful for that, or you probably wouldn't have the freedom to post on this thread without fear of arrest. That's assuming something like the Internet would be allowed to exist, or be accessed by commoners.
Now, please explain how allowing people to make information available and to rant like a twits is going to keep the government from its very limited purpose of maintaining public order and common defense? I must have missed the mind-control rays being used by the likes of raisethefist....
Unfortunately for whoever the bozo who writes CDRWin is, if his access control scheme damages or disables anything besides his own program, he could be liable for some serious penalties. That kind of "copy protection" was tried back in the early 1980s, and after a few lawsuits it was established that doing anything destructive to the other guy's property is illegal and opens you up to some serious liability--even if they did illicitly copy and use your software.
Thanks for publicizing that this guy writes malware, though. I'll know to avoid any product of his, and recommend that my friends do the same.
I'd find Creationists a bit more convincing if they didn't have to resort to blatant misinformation in their arguments again and again. Half-truths and distortions do nothing more than convince me that some of these Creationists don't even believe their own propaganda, since they can't stick to the facts.
The whole argument is stupid, anyhow. It's based on a mistaken belief that one must cling to a questionable interpretation of the Bible as a matter of faith. Has anyone noticed that only Creationists tie Evolution, Geology, and Atheism together? Those who research Evolution do not insist that one must be an atheist if one believes that evolution rather than recent creation is a better explanation for the development of life on Earth. Those who teach and research modern geology do not insist that one must be an atheist if one believes that geologic processes rather than recent creation is a better explanation for the current geology of Earth.
However, since Creationists fallaciously tie acceptance of modern geology and evolutionary theory to disbelief that God created the Earth, and therefore disbelief in God (i.e., atheism), it has become a matter of faith to oppose evolutionary theory and modern geology as a false, atheistic (and thus, probably diabolic) doctrine by any and all means. If you don't believe me, go read articles and web sites by Creationists that are targetted toward Christians, as opposed to the general public.
To my mind, it is all very pointless because there is no contradiction between evolution and God; who are they to say how God created the universe and life? How can they know that evolution and geological processes are not just more tools in God's toolbox? They can't know, and they who presume to know how God created the universe or to put limits on the methods God used in creation are both small-minded and arrogant beyond belief!
To my mind, the power and grandeur of God is elevated, and not diminished by evolution and geology. To achieve His unknown goals, He started out at least 15 billion years ago with the Big Bang, and designed the entire process of star formation, planet formation, geological processes, evolution, etc! That's a lot bigger than POOF! The Earth was wished into existance a mere 6000-8000 years ago, complete with fake fossils and fake geology.
I wonder if Creationists are afraid of the power and knowledge of the God who created evolution and the Big Bang; I wonder if they want to cut Him down to a size they can comprehend?
WTF are you smoking? Feudal rule was dead as Julius Caesar by the 16th & 17th centuries! You're talking post-Renaissance, and the rise of the modern nation-state.
People 'worked' in order to provide things that others could not make, and were repaid by getting things they themselves could not make. But the 'cost/gain' measures were not nearly as qunatitative, and the exchange of goods and services was entwined inseperably with social and communal function.
Uhh... that sounds like people worked (no quotes, they did actual work, you know!) for a living. Wasn't that what the guy you're responding to said? And when did exchange of goods and services ever stop being intertwined with social and communal function? If your goods and services aren't of some use to the rest of the community, no one will buy them from you.
And your view of working for wealth is a little skewed historically. Prior to the dominance of Christianity, mercantile wealth was respected in, for example, the civilized Roman Republic and Empire. Commoditization of labor, goods and services is not new; again, I refer you to the ancient Romans. It only seems new because to exist, it requires a populous, (relatively) wealthy society with a (relatively) free market.
In medieval Western society, the teachings of the Church were such that work was regarded as a necessary evil, the curse on Adam for original sin. Therefore, you only worked as much as necessary to get by, because work was a Bad Thing. Holidays were good; loafing around was good. Work was bad; greed was bad--one of the Seven Deadly Sins. As you say, pursuit of wealth for its own sake was considered immoral and looked down on--but only during a certain historical period and place, not everywhere and at all times before the 16th C. (Hypothetically looked down on, that is; the power that can be obtained by judicious use of wealth was always respected.)
The end of medieval society and the Renaissance came because of several things, but one of those was the Protestant Reformation. Protestant theology looked at the rest of the Bible beyond Genesis and said, "God blesses those who work well at what they are given the gift to be good at; we aren't all good at being priests and monks, and besides, someone has to weave and plant and forge things and so on. All honest work is GOOD." Thus, the Protestant work ethic.
After the Reformation, work was seen as a Good Thing, provided it was honest work, and wealth obtain from hard work as the just fruits of one's honorable labor--at least among Protestants. If you were wealthy from doing honest work, that meant you were using your talents wisely and were to be respected.
There's a reason most of the businesses and much of the commercial wealth of England was controlled by Puritans and Quakers during the 16th - 18th centuries, and it had nothing to do with the ruling elite imposing anything on anyone.
For a similar reason, the tiny, but Protestant, Dutch Republic became a major commercial power during that period, while Catholic, monarchic Spain utterly destroyed its own economy looting the New World.
Where did your view of history come from? It seems a bit odd, and definitely dogmatic. Marx? Or later writers?
I note that actual freedoms are being lost, and you whine that potential money, probably not even yours, is being lost?
Oh man, I just bleed sympathy for you.
To everyone else:
I apologize if my language offends anyone I'm not responding directly to. As for those I'm responding directly to, in this and other posts, if you are offended--tough. I'm trying to offend you. And don't waste the effort telling me not to post again--I'll pay the same attention to you that I do to software EULAs.
(Yes, today's level of utter idiocy on/. has caused me to "go postal". What's the point of having a clue-by-4 if you can't hammer people over the head with it now and then?)
How about a desktop OS that makes it almost impossible for the average windows user to install and use a sound card, video card, play a DIV-x movie, open a document or in most cases even in some cases to simply install the damn OS next to impossible for anyone non geeky.
Are you referring to Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0, or OS/2 2.x?
I have had problems with all of the above on all of the above. Anyone who thinks Windows is easier than Linux to install and get working correctly with all the hardware is someone who got Windows pre-installed from the factory and has never added new hardware. A Windows install to a virgin system is just as complex as a modern Linux distribution install--in fact, I have fewer weird hardware driver issues with, say, a Redhat install than I do with a Windows 98 install. Finally, if you want to configure your Windows install in anything other than the default Microsoft-dictated "you entire disk is one huge paritition named C:" set up, it's a royal bitch compared to the ease of configuring multiple partitions your way in a Linux install.
And God help you if you want to install Windows on a spare partition of a disk with another OS! For the most part, it simply won't do it. With Linux, it's a no-brainer.
Hey, jackass -- you missed one important fact: if I bought the hardware, it's mine and I can legally do any damn thing I want to it. If Sony doesn't like that, boo-fucking-hoo.
Furthermore, as long as I don't infringe on any patents, I can SELL hardware that works with the original hardware perfectly legally. Obviously, these guys weren't infringing on any patents, or Sony would have easily trounced them on those grounds. No, they had to find a stupid judge or a stupid law and get a really warped ruling, one that wouldn't get past U.S. law, thank goodness.
BTW, I'm not suffering one bit because people mod PS2's to play copied games. I am suffering because greed & stupidity is encouraging anti-competitive trusts to buy laws that encroach on my hard-won freedoms.
I'd far rather see Sony, Universal, et al. go out of business than see one person arrested and jailed for writing a program that *might* be used for copyright infringement. If they can't compete in an open market, fuck 'em.
I don't know about in the U.K., but in most of the United States, "conditions imposed after sale" are invalid. Also, you have to agree to a contract to be bound by it; I can't unilaterally say that by reading this post you are bound to pay me $500 per view. (Correction:I can say it, but you're free to ignore my ravings.).
I've never been asked to sign a EULA contract before buying a piece of retail software, therefore no contract is agreed upon at sale.
Since most EULA's are hidden inside the box, or even in the install program, not displayed in the store or printed on the box, the so-called "click-thru licenses" are conditions imposed unilaterally after the sale, and thus are meaningless babble.
The manufacturer can put any bullshit he likes in the EULA; just because it's written in small print with the word "License" at the top doesn't make it stop being meaningless bullshit. You may worship bullshit in small print as if it were stone tablets handed down from Mt. Sinai; I don't.
It sounds as if the judge suspected the EULA to be bullshit (which, I think in the EU it may be) and had to find another justification for ruling in Sony's favor.
And, as someone else has repeatedly pointed out, "copy to memory" is non-infringing under U.S. Law, so mod chips should be just fine in the U.S.
Sony of Japan Inc does. Sony of America Inc doesn't.
So? It's NOT the business of the government or of me to guarantee any particular business a profit, or indeed that it stay in business. The producer of the original game gets the money from the sale of their product.
Just because Sony of America would rather you give your money to them rather than to Sony of Japan rates a big "Waah-fucking-Waaah!" in my book.
I am so sick of these dipshit corporations and anti-competitive trusts like the RIAA and MPAA who have so *little* confidence in their own products that they twist the legal system to try and force consumers to pay them "entertainment taxes". What they are doing is screaming at the top of their lungs via their actions that "OUR PRODUCTS REALLY SUCK AND WE KNOW YOU WOULDN'T BUY THEM OF YOUR OWN FREE WILL BECAUSE THEY ARE SO BAD!"
Why else are they so afraid of honest competition?
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I dunno, being jobless all this time has made me realize a few things. There's no enjoyment in a job where you have to put out fires for 200+ people a day because they're too fucking stupid to figure out simple shit for themselves. They won't ever listen to your warnings, they don't seem to care that you have to spend several hours fixing their machines.
This will all sort itself out eventually, and Sysadmins/computer techs will be like auto mechanics and plumbers: able to charge through the nose to fix things that people are too stupid to learn how to maintain themselves. The secret to changing from "lack of enjoyment at fixing other people's stupidity" to "laughing at their stupidity all the way to the bank" is simple: CHARGE BY THE HOUR.
Well the article has been /.'d or something, so I can't read it, but is anyone else getting tons of Klez worms on the mail, either directly or as bounces? That's the one that exploits IE's problem with the word 'begin', *AND* forges return addresses from e-mail addresses found on infected computers.
It's very disturbing to get bounces from hotmail because you supposedly sent someone a virus. (No, I don't have it; all my e-mail reading and sending is done from a Linux box and its a Windows/Outlook worm.)
You have to have an original to make the first copy. The example in the story was a can of beans: the duplicator would make perfect copies of that can of beans, but you had to have an original can of beans in the first place.
Just like digital data... the data has to exist before it can be copied. You can't duplicate what does not exist.
Some points from that article about what Lucas is having us believe:
Unfortunately, I couldn't read the original article because of my workplace's fascist filtering policies. However, these themes are fairly common in fantasy, which tends to glorify monarchy and aristocracy and tradition for the sake of itself. I would guess that is a holdover from our fairy tales and folktales, that were mostly composed by people for whom king and noblity were and had been the expected government for literally millenia, for whom change came in the form of rebellion, war, famine and plague, all of which were considered Bad Things.
OTOH, I am slightly disturbed by science fiction authors (*cough* Jerry Pournelle *cough*) who uphold rule by an elite as a great idea for the future, and portray democracy as nothing more than mob rule or rule by demogogues. If this idea seems good to you, go re-read A Connecticutt Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which isn't nearly as funny as movie adaptations make it out to be--it's rather a vicious attack on the apologists for slavery and on rule by an aristocracy. Eric Flint, in his author's notes to 1632, also had some rude things to say about this trend in science fiction. (Good book, btw.)
Most of the real myths of antiquity are too ambiguous, and have characters that are too much a mix of good and evil, too many shades of gray, and too many non-happy endings for the watered-down pap that is considered suitable for families and children these days. IMHO, the real myths have great value for children and adults of all ages, because they depict people as they really are, conflicted by emotions and desires both good and evil, and usually show the consequences of following the wrong path.Recommended reading along those lines: The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Ramayana, and The Mahabharata(sp?). That's just the ones I'm most familiar with; I'm still exploring the literature of mythology.
One thing I really like is that, according to the Time article (and written SW publications?) the Empire doesn't come and attack the Republic. The Empire IS the Republic.
As an American trudging through 2002 I seriously like the idea that Lucas is using the mass media to put forth THIS idea for people to think about: that the well intentioned Republic can turn into the Empire through expansion, greed and expediency.
And here I thought he was just translating the history of the Roman Republic/Empire into space opera... considering that the politics in TPM look just like late Roman Republic politics, and that they've got the exact same corruption and abuses that led to the fall of the Roman Republic. Unfortunately, I don't think Palpatine is going to be a Julius Caesar... more like a Tiberius or Diocletian.
How did Metallica (or the vast majority of bands who aren't marketed to the hilt the second they're signed) get so big in the 80s/90s? They had little to no radio airplay, no presence on MTV, and as far as I can remember no huge push from their record company?
In my long-ago youth, the guy holding down the counter at the local independent record store noticed that I came in regularly to browse the heavy metal section and check-out the Iron Maiden and Judas Priest T-shirts, and suggested that I might like this cool new heavy metal band Metallica. I was a bit skeptical, but he put on "Master of Puppets" from the then just-released album of the same name, and I was hooked. Damn, but that was some good, loud head-banging music!
What's the point? I had to listen to the music before I was convinced to buy it. Hell, the guy at the store was probably violating some "public performance" rule or something by playing it in the store!
In fact, I got into heavy metal in the first place when I was stationed overseas in personnnel support and spent the slow hours listening to my supervisor's tape collection. He had Black Sabbath, which I thought was neat, and prompted me to go out and actually buy some Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne. Later, I discovered Judas Priest from copies of a co-workers metal collection, and bought a lot of my own in tapes, and later CDs... none of which would ever have happened if I hadn't listened to someone's bootleg, copied tapes.
Imagine that there was a "duplication device" that could clone whatever you put into it - a watch, a TV, a car, whatever. Imagine it only cost $.20 per use. This device could literally destroy our society. Think about how many people would be driving Porche Boxters or (insert your favorite car here) versus how many would actually sell. Your friend bought a brand new HDTV? Now you've got one too! How would any manufaturer or store stay in business? Does this seem bad to anyone other than me?
Interestingly enough, there was a science-fiction short story published in Analog more decades ago than I care to admit exactly along those lines. I don't remember the title, but in the story, some alien race dumped a matter duplicater and the plans for it on the human race, with the apparent intent of causing human society to self-destruct. Instead, the humans worked out the obvious solution: since anything could now be duplicated, the only thing that has value is unique originals, and the way to make a living is to design and create unique originals of things.
I think of this story a lot whenever the debates over digital copying and copyright infringement comes up. The Internet + computers are that matter duplicator, as far as anything digital (music, software, books, data) is concerned. The only question is, how do you get people to pay you the necessarily hefty fee for the unique original when they can wait for someone else to buy the original and get a copy for free? It used to be that the guys in charge of the "matter duplicators" (printing presses, film duplicators, record presses) charged a fee for each duplicate to cover the cost of buying the "unique original" (the manuscript, artist's studio tape, composer's score, etc.), but when everyone owns a "matter duplicator" (computer), who buys the original?
Checking the VPC site for NRA-info is a lot like asking Microsoft about the effectiveness of Linux. They will both lie and cheat to smear their primary enemy. Trust nothing you find at that website; they are proven liars.
Funny, I always thought of freely giving the fruits of your labor to those who have not as Christian charity, not communism. I guess I'm old-fashioned that way.
The thing I've always liked about Free Software is that concept of generosity, of teaching, of sharing, of charity and kindness and giving. It's a very Christian ethic for a programmer. (And, if you're familiar with the great religions of the world, it is also follows the ethical ideals of Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. Don't know about the others.)
I wonder if anyone has reverse-engineered BDE's protocols yet? It would be a damn shame, wouldn't it, if their surreptiously installed thiefware should inadvertantly retrieve data containing a destructive worm as a payload, or if their computations were all skewed just enough to still be plausible, but uselessly wrong, or if the client on some computer that their server connected to wasn't quite the client they originally installed, and had unfortunate effects on said server....
Eavesdroppers can't complain if what they hear is unflattering, and thieves can't complain if the stuff they stole is dangerous to them.
From hard-earned experience, I can tell you that you should get out while the getting is good. Any time a company misses payroll, (or worse, issues rubber payroll checks), it's a bad sign--because making payroll is the very first priority and responsibility of any legitimate employer. Your company is going under.
Get out while they still have the funds to pay you severance. Also, if you jobhunt while still employed, you don't have that desperation that makes one jump at bad deals just to have a paycheck coming in.
Actually, I started with OS/2 2.0 back when the alternative was Windows 3.1. OS/2 2.0 was a bitch to install, and the WPS was a bit on the unstable side--patch o' the week from IBM was the norm---
/etc/lilo.conf; lilo -v" (and nowdays add "make modules; make modules_install" before the "cp").
--but in 1992 it could multi-task a GUI and input from multiple serial ports at once, without dropping characters on the floor or forgetting to draw on the screen, which was just what certain applications needed that I was writing for the company I then worked for. Windows 3.1 couldn't do that, and DOS sure the hell couldn't.
A lot of that was fixed with OS/2 2.1, and OS/2 3.0 (Warp) cleaned up the remainder. OS/2 Warp was a dream compared to Windoze 3.11 or 95. Much more stable, and could multi-task cleanly.
I learned GUI programming with OS/2 (ignoring some early dabbling with X/Motif), and got my first exposure to multi-threading with OS/2. Later, I applied what I had learned from OS/2 to learning Windows programming (that and Petzold's book), and have been stuck programming Windows ever since. (Professionally only).
I had OS/2 at home, and even wrote some command-line and GUI utilties for my Traveller (RPG) stuff. Some of them are still on my website, but not maintained for obvious reasons.
<digression>
(No, I'm not going to link it from here. I pay for bandwidth; it ain't no free Geocities site! Especially since that Altavista spider went amok and tried to download every eBook and zip-file on my site several hundred times every three hours for a month. Had to deny access to the av.com netblock to stop it. Word of advice: if you pay for your bandwidth, check it now and then; something might be eating it up for you.)
</digression>
At one time, my home machine dual-booted Win95 and OS/2. One day I found out that this Linux thing I had heard about in college (back in '91) was now available on CDs for a reasonable price. (I had only a 2400bps modem back in the days of Linux 0.96 and the SoftLanding distribution, so downloading all those packages was Right Out). So, I ordered my first Linux distribution, Slackware '96 (or was that my second?)
It was cool; I fell in love with it right off. It was no worse to install than OS/2 2.0, and in some ways easier: I had fewer hardware incompatibilities. There was no KDE or GNOME in those days; I used FVWM as my window manager. Worked fine. But the greatest thing was the feeling of sheer power I had compiling my own, custom-tailored kernel. You can't do THAT with OS/2, Windows, or DOS!
<digression>
Do you know that kernel compiling hasn't changed much since the days of 1.x kernels? Sure, there's new menu options, and they introduced those new-fangled "module" things, and "make zImage" is now "make bzImage", but it's still "make mrproper; make config/make menuconfig; make dep; make bzImage; cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage <somewhere>/vmlinuz; vi
</digression>
For a brief time, my home computer multi-booted OS/2, Windows 95, and Linux; but eventually I noticed that I never booted OS/2 anymore. I had moved most of my hobby-programming to Linux, and had decided that local web pages were an even better way than OS/2 help files to organize my vast amounts of data, writings, and RPG info. My games were all Windows games, so I didn't use OS/2 for that. Finally, Linux came with lots of free networking stuff, which worked better than the early OS/2 2.x TCP/IP packages, so I didn't need OS/2 for telnet or FTP, anymore. Besides, as I mentioned, the Linux TCP/IP implementation worked better and didn't bog down CPU and memory as much. Frankly, the only reason I still used OS/2 was for the PMTAPE tape backup program, and I eventually moved to LS120 super-floppies. (Now I burn CDs for data backup).
There finally came a day when I was re-installing my OSs on a new hard disk that I decided there was no point in re-installing OS/2 Warp, because I never used it. In my house, Linux killed OS/2. It's been gone for several years now, but I still have fond memories of it.
I love Linux!
Since I didn't "agree" to any EULA terms when I (hypothetically; I wouldn't pay $0.01 for it or let it near my machines if you paid me) bought XP, click-thru dialog boxes after purchase don't apply. Doubly so if it is an OEM install. No legal signature, no contract.
Second, illegal contracts are not binding. There is plenty of precedent in anti-trust law that a company cannot forbid customers from using another company's products, or require the use of its own products as a condition of sale, ESPECIALLY if the company has been deemed a monopoly. Note that Microsoft has been found to be a monopoly by the federal courts.
It sounds like this EULA is another typical attempt to use barratry to intimidate those who don't know what their rights are. Judging from the responses on here, it's working.
Remember, just because some company stuck words on a piece of paper, that doesn't mean those words are right, legal or binding.
So is foresight. I knew that most of the dot.coms were going to crash way back when venture money was still being thrown at them hand over fist. So did most of the columnists of Forbes magazine. Why? Because the dot.coms were ignoring the fundamentals of business like "sell something for less than it costs you".
Anyone with any business sense--which apparently did not include a great many VCs--could look at the collapse later and say "Well, duh! I saw that coming."
I'm not even in business; what I know about it comes from a couple of Small Business Management courses and reading Forbes for a few years back in the early 90s--but, well, DUH! What was the special power of the Internet that it suddenly took away so many people's common sense?
My only regret is that I didn't apply for some venture capital to play with during the 90s. Silly me--I thought you had to have a business plan that MADE SENSE before a bank or venture capitalist would touch you. I couldn't think of one that would work for me, so I didn't try.
But why do people visit Dell's web site? Because over the years Dell has built up a reputation as a manufacturer of good quality computers. They are a respected computer manufacturer. Respect cannot be directly bought for money, but a business can build it up through wise application of money. (Building quality products, good customer service, etc.) It can also loose that respect overnight with a few bad management decisions. ("Nobody will notice if we cut a few corners in quality to save money...")
Respect in the business community is considered valuable; it is known as an intangible, usually called customer goodwill. When buying or selling a business, it is considered an asset of the company, even though you can't touch it or measure it. You can even litigate over actions that cost a company goodwill.
My point? Businesses can't just go out and buy respect/reputation/goodwill, they have to earn it, and it is considered valuable. People wouldn't bother to visit Dell's website if Dell didn't have a reputation built up over the years. Without that reputation, they'd just be ABC Computers, and who would care?
Ok... I love it when people make statements that are just plain wrong...
I love it when people who try to correct others succeed in demonstrating their own blithering ignorance.
200 years of Constitutional jurisprudence, modern Constitutional scholars, and recent court decisions all agree: the right to keep and bear arms as protected by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is an individual right. Period. End of argument.
Don't believe me? Do your own Google search for citations and articles. "2nd Amendment individual right" is a good set of terms to start with.
The argument that the second amendment protects a "collective" right to a state militia is only advanced by goverment agencies who want to see citizens disarmed and by the fools in the "gun control" (i.e., disarmament and prohibition) movement who think we'll all be safe and live forever if no one has a legal gun.
In this respect the first amendment contradicts the preamble of the Constitution. There are situations in which the government cannot protect its citizens without in some way abridging the freedom of speech.
Oh, really? Please explain to me in very simple words how words printed on a page can harm you, me or any other citizen of the U.S? I have trouble grasping this concept.
There are situations in which the government cannot protect its citizens without in some way abridging the freedom of speech.
Forbidding Lying Under Oath (perjury) is the only abridgement I can think of that the government cannot protect its citizens without, as our legal systems relies on an impartial judiciary and honest witnesses. Without those, justice is reduced to arbitrary despotism, which is as bad if not worse than no legal system at all.
In my opinion, and apparently in the opinion of most others, one man's right to enable and urge others to kill a large number of people is not worth the possible deaths that may result from it.
Ah! I see. You are one of those people who believe that most adults are not to be trusted with responsibility for their own actions. So, most of us are sheep whose education and knowledge must be carefully restricted for our own good? Who, then, do you trust with weapons and powers for defense of the country and maintenance of public order? Apparently not the citizens of the country. I take it you prefer some small, "elite" group that is of course better than the rest of us to control such power and make the decision when to use it?
One's right to live is the most important right of all. It is the trump card and freedom of speech is really a petty thing next to it.
"I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
-- Patrick Henry
Fortunately for this country, a lot of people don't agree with you. Your attitude is that of the Tories, the collaborators, and those who just kept quiet and looked the other way when the secret police came to take away their neighbors in so many places, so many times.
Those who founded this country, and those who fought in its wars ever since didn't think like you--and you should be thankful for that, or you probably wouldn't have the freedom to post on this thread without fear of arrest. That's assuming something like the Internet would be allowed to exist, or be accessed by commoners.
Now, please explain how allowing people to make information available and to rant like a twits is going to keep the government from its very limited purpose of maintaining public order and common defense? I must have missed the mind-control rays being used by the likes of raisethefist....
Unfortunately for whoever the bozo who writes CDRWin is, if his access control scheme damages or disables anything besides his own program, he could be liable for some serious penalties. That kind of "copy protection" was tried back in the early 1980s, and after a few lawsuits it was established that doing anything destructive to the other guy's property is illegal and opens you up to some serious liability--even if they did illicitly copy and use your software.
Thanks for publicizing that this guy writes malware, though. I'll know to avoid any product of his, and recommend that my friends do the same.
I'd find Creationists a bit more convincing if they didn't have to resort to blatant misinformation in their arguments again and again. Half-truths and distortions do nothing more than convince me that some of these Creationists don't even believe their own propaganda, since they can't stick to the facts.
The whole argument is stupid, anyhow. It's based on a mistaken belief that one must cling to a questionable interpretation of the Bible as a matter of faith. Has anyone noticed that only Creationists tie Evolution, Geology, and Atheism together? Those who research Evolution do not insist that one must be an atheist if one believes that evolution rather than recent creation is a better explanation for the development of life on Earth. Those who teach and research modern geology do not insist that one must be an atheist if one believes that geologic processes rather than recent creation is a better explanation for the current geology of Earth.
However, since Creationists fallaciously tie acceptance of modern geology and evolutionary theory to disbelief that God created the Earth, and therefore disbelief in God (i.e., atheism), it has become a matter of faith to oppose evolutionary theory and modern geology as a false, atheistic (and thus, probably diabolic) doctrine by any and all means. If you don't believe me, go read articles and web sites by Creationists that are targetted toward Christians, as opposed to the general public.
To my mind, it is all very pointless because there is no contradiction between evolution and God; who are they to say how God created the universe and life? How can they know that evolution and geological processes are not just more tools in God's toolbox? They can't know, and they who presume to know how God created the universe or to put limits on the methods God used in creation are both small-minded and arrogant beyond belief!
To my mind, the power and grandeur of God is elevated, and not diminished by evolution and geology. To achieve His unknown goals, He started out at least 15 billion years ago with the Big Bang, and designed the entire process of star formation, planet formation, geological processes, evolution, etc! That's a lot bigger than POOF! The Earth was wished into existance a mere 6000-8000 years ago, complete with fake fossils and fake geology.
I wonder if Creationists are afraid of the power and knowledge of the God who created evolution and the Big Bang; I wonder if they want to cut Him down to a size they can comprehend?
WTF are you smoking? Feudal rule was dead as Julius Caesar by the 16th & 17th centuries! You're talking post-Renaissance, and the rise of the modern nation-state.
People 'worked' in order to provide things that others could not make, and were repaid by getting things they themselves could not make. But the 'cost/gain' measures were not nearly as qunatitative, and the exchange of goods and services was entwined inseperably with social and communal function.
Uhh... that sounds like people worked (no quotes, they did actual work, you know!) for a living. Wasn't that what the guy you're responding to said? And when did exchange of goods and services ever stop being intertwined with social and communal function? If your goods and services aren't of some use to the rest of the community, no one will buy them from you.
And your view of working for wealth is a little skewed historically. Prior to the dominance of Christianity, mercantile wealth was respected in, for example, the civilized Roman Republic and Empire. Commoditization of labor, goods and services is not new; again, I refer you to the ancient Romans. It only seems new because to exist, it requires a populous, (relatively) wealthy society with a (relatively) free market.
In medieval Western society, the teachings of the Church were such that work was regarded as a necessary evil, the curse on Adam for original sin. Therefore, you only worked as much as necessary to get by, because work was a Bad Thing. Holidays were good; loafing around was good. Work was bad; greed was bad--one of the Seven Deadly Sins. As you say, pursuit of wealth for its own sake was considered immoral and looked down on--but only during a certain historical period and place, not everywhere and at all times before the 16th C. (Hypothetically looked down on, that is; the power that can be obtained by judicious use of wealth was always respected.)
The end of medieval society and the Renaissance came because of several things, but one of those was the Protestant Reformation. Protestant theology looked at the rest of the Bible beyond Genesis and said, "God blesses those who work well at what they are given the gift to be good at; we aren't all good at being priests and monks, and besides, someone has to weave and plant and forge things and so on. All honest work is GOOD." Thus, the Protestant work ethic.
After the Reformation, work was seen as a Good Thing, provided it was honest work, and wealth obtain from hard work as the just fruits of one's honorable labor--at least among Protestants. If you were wealthy from doing honest work, that meant you were using your talents wisely and were to be respected.
There's a reason most of the businesses and much of the commercial wealth of England was controlled by Puritans and Quakers during the 16th - 18th centuries, and it had nothing to do with the ruling elite imposing anything on anyone.
For a similar reason, the tiny, but Protestant, Dutch Republic became a major commercial power during that period, while Catholic, monarchic Spain utterly destroyed its own economy looting the New World.
Where did your view of history come from? It seems a bit odd, and definitely dogmatic. Marx? Or later writers?
I note that actual freedoms are being lost, and you whine that potential money, probably not even yours, is being lost?
/. has caused me to "go postal". What's the point of having a clue-by-4 if you can't hammer people over the head with it now and then?)
Oh man, I just bleed sympathy for you.
To everyone else:
I apologize if my language offends anyone I'm not responding directly to. As for those I'm responding directly to, in this and other posts, if you are offended--tough. I'm trying to offend you. And don't waste the effort telling me not to post again--I'll pay the same attention to you that I do to software EULAs.
(Yes, today's level of utter idiocy on
How about a desktop OS that makes it almost impossible for the average windows user to install and use a sound card, video card, play a DIV-x movie, open a document or in most cases even in some cases to simply install the damn OS next to impossible for anyone non geeky.
Are you referring to Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0, or OS/2 2.x?
I have had problems with all of the above on all of the above. Anyone who thinks Windows is easier than Linux to install and get working correctly with all the hardware is someone who got Windows pre-installed from the factory and has never added new hardware. A Windows install to a virgin system is just as complex as a modern Linux distribution install--in fact, I have fewer weird hardware driver issues with, say, a Redhat install than I do with a Windows 98 install. Finally, if you want to configure your Windows install in anything other than the default Microsoft-dictated "you entire disk is one huge paritition named C:" set up, it's a royal bitch compared to the ease of configuring multiple partitions your way in a Linux install.
And God help you if you want to install Windows on a spare partition of a disk with another OS! For the most part, it simply won't do it. With Linux, it's a no-brainer.
Hey, jackass -- you missed one important fact: if I bought the hardware, it's mine and I can legally do any damn thing I want to it. If Sony doesn't like that, boo-fucking-hoo.
Furthermore, as long as I don't infringe on any patents , I can SELL hardware that works with the original hardware perfectly legally. Obviously, these guys weren't infringing on any patents, or Sony would have easily trounced them on those grounds. No, they had to find a stupid judge or a stupid law and get a really warped ruling, one that wouldn't get past U.S. law, thank goodness.
BTW, I'm not suffering one bit because people mod PS2's to play copied games. I am suffering because greed & stupidity is encouraging anti-competitive trusts to buy laws that encroach on my hard-won freedoms.
I'd far rather see Sony, Universal, et al. go out of business than see one person arrested and jailed for writing a program that *might* be used for copyright infringement. If they can't compete in an open market, fuck 'em.
I don't know about in the U.K., but in most of the United States, "conditions imposed after sale" are invalid. Also, you have to agree to a contract to be bound by it; I can't unilaterally say that by reading this post you are bound to pay me $500 per view. (Correction:I can say it, but you're free to ignore my ravings.).
I've never been asked to sign a EULA contract before buying a piece of retail software, therefore no contract is agreed upon at sale.
Since most EULA's are hidden inside the box, or even in the install program, not displayed in the store or printed on the box, the so-called "click-thru licenses" are conditions imposed unilaterally after the sale, and thus are meaningless babble.
The manufacturer can put any bullshit he likes in the EULA; just because it's written in small print with the word "License" at the top doesn't make it stop being meaningless bullshit. You may worship bullshit in small print as if it were stone tablets handed down from Mt. Sinai; I don't.
It sounds as if the judge suspected the EULA to be bullshit (which, I think in the EU it may be) and had to find another justification for ruling in Sony's favor.
And, as someone else has repeatedly pointed out, "copy to memory" is non-infringing under U.S. Law, so mod chips should be just fine in the U.S.
Sony of Japan Inc does. Sony of America Inc doesn't.
So? It's NOT the business of the government or of me to guarantee any particular business a profit, or indeed that it stay in business. The producer of the original game gets the money from the sale of their product.
Just because Sony of America would rather you give your money to them rather than to Sony of Japan rates a big "Waah-fucking-Waaah!" in my book.
I am so sick of these dipshit corporations and anti-competitive trusts like the RIAA and MPAA who have so *little* confidence in their own products that they twist the legal system to try and force consumers to pay them "entertainment taxes". What they are doing is screaming at the top of their lungs via their actions that "OUR PRODUCTS REALLY SUCK AND WE KNOW YOU WOULDN'T BUY THEM OF YOUR OWN FREE WILL BECAUSE THEY ARE SO BAD!"
Why else are they so afraid of honest competition?