A veteran American police detective, forced out of his New York job by a scandal he didn't cause, moves to Brussels to head up a special, babe-filled division of ENISA that tackles the cases the rest of the agency can't crack.
Thanks so much for finding and passing on this info! I was on the verge of buying this unit just now, based on the review and the $169 BestBuy price, but luckily decided to read people's comments first. Apart from music, my primary use for the unit would be to play my collection of several thousand Old Time Radio mp3s, almost all of which are under 80 kbps. This would have been a major disappointment.
Lots of people work 60 hour weeks, especially during crunch projects, and they generally don't get a half million dollar bonus at the end of the year. Maybe your CEO works harder than the one's I have known. In any case, I doubt that the job of the average CEO has gotten 17% harder in the past year.
As a member of a civilization that got along fine for thousands of years without the concept of Intellectual Property, I think it's a ridiculous attempt to graft a relatively recent and already obsolete legal contrivance onto an artificial world.
Seriously, what I want to see now is somebody to track down one of these "gangs" and then hire goons to break into where they live, destroy their computer equipment and bust their heads open. I know that probably sets a bad precedent, but I think it would be a great deterrent. "Cyber-gangs" might feel bold wreaking havoc from the safe end of a wire, but I expect that like most geeks they would be highly uncomfortable with the possibility of real violence upon themselves.
Whether it's an infinitely available resource doesn't have anything to do with whether it's stealing. The reason copyright infringement is not stealing is that nobody "owns" copyright. "Ownership" of copyright is just a way of speaking, which we have adopted thanks to lawyers and business people misusing the term. Copyright can't be owned because it isn't property, it is a temporary right granted by the government. In essence it is like the right to turn at red light when you are in the proper lane, whereas people in other lanes don't have that right. Nobody "owns" the lane or the right to turn, and turning from the wrong lane is not theft. Copyright holders benefit from miscasting infringement as "theft," because the public sees images of junkies running through alleys with stolen TV sets.
Copyright infringement may incur real or imagined losses for the copyright holder, but recovering those losses is a matter for civil courts, not for policemen and jailers. Unfortunately the copyright holding community also has a lot more money to bribe legislators, oops, I mean finance election campaigns, and get laws written to suit them. In modern democracies the mere public, which overwhelmingly seems to think copying is morally okay, doesn't matter. If we want to fix the source of the copyright problem (and many others), we have to fix the problem of lawmakers being "owned" by the same people who own just about everything else.
I'm skeptical of proposals to use tax dollars to "create investment opportunities." Those opportunities usually translate to a savvy few making money off everybody else's taxes. That may be why he chose to say the average income would quadruple, not the median income. If 99% of the profits go to 1% of the people, the average income could rise dramatically without most of us getting a dime.
Projects on this scale covering such a long time span usually require government investment, because private investors want a return in 3-5 years. So here's an idea: do this project as a public corporation, with the government as the sole investor. Every taxpayer is automatically a stockholder, and gets dividend payments when the thing starts to pay off. As developing countries buy power, Joe American receives a monthly check.
That's what I would call an investment opportunity worth paying for.
Apparently Paramount didn't win the case, they just waved their bully stick and the producers didn't have the money for a fight. At least I may have been wrong about them having to give up all their profits (see other comment above). That info came from an old article on the web.
I was one of the fortunate few who saw Star Drek, a musical takeoff featuring funny songs, nailed characterizations and cheesy special effects. The transporter beam, for example, was a handful of glitter tossed in the air under a spotlight. The show ran about a year and a half (94-95) before Paramount shut it down. Act one was the original series, act two was the next gen, with Q bringing Kirk forward in time on a bet with Picard that Kirk would be better able to cope with a plot to addict the crew to a traditional Romulan beverage called "jav-ya."
The night I saw it in Seattle the place was completedly packed, people sitting on stairs. Except there was a block of really good empty seats in one row. As the lights went down, four hooded figures shuffled in and sat in the seats. During Intermission they left, and the host came out and announced that it had been Nimoy and his friends, who were in town for one of his rare convention appearances. They had snuck in so as not to create a scene. The place went nuts.
I still remember parts of the theme song:
On boooooaaard the Enterpriiiiiiiise, Our paaaaaants don't have any fliiiiiies...
...another culture has been destooooyyyyed, but weeeee know Star Fleet won't be annooooooyyed, becaaaaause, We're Right!
Not long afterwards Paramount shut the show down on the grounds that it wasn't a parody of Star Trek, it was Star Trek. The producers had to fork over all the money they had made.
Repeat after me: Paramount is run by soulless, clueless Assholes.
According to the plan, artists who participate in the voucher system become ineligible for copyright protection for 5 years. Mega-stars would have no incentive to participate. That's an integral part of the plan. They probably couldn't if they wanted to anyway, because when they sign record contracts they largely lose control of their copyrights.
The impact on Microsoft's bottom line only reflects the impact on their customers' bottom lines. Well crafted EULAs may exempt MS from liability, but they can't exempt themselves from a deservedly bad rep created by poor security in their software.
If the wind blows right, sometimes shit does roll uphill.
The article clearly states that artists would get to opt in or out of the voucher plan. The only thing compulsory about it is the use of tax dollars, and the figures that you also didn't read make a pretty good case for the public payback being a lot larger than the input.
Did you actually read the article, or just see the word "voucher" and start typing?
First, there is nothing compulsory about this scheme. It's clearly stated that an artist would get to choose whether to use copyright protection or the voucher system.
Second, under this scheme any artist who receives voucher payments becomes ineligible for copyright protection for 5 years. Seems like a big commitment for a musician simply to get a few hundred dollars in vouchers from friends.
The thing I don't like about this scheme is that it really doesn't address any of the problems it brings up about copyright. The copyright system would still coexist, and we would still have DRM mania and the RIAA wanting to strip search everybody. But on its own I think it is a pretty well thought out idea, at least better thought out than some of the criticisms here from people who don't appear to have bothered to read the article.
The 60's were the hippie decade. The 70's were the "me" decade. The 80's were the Al Franken decade. The 90's were the dot com decade.
So far the 00's are shaping up to be the Who Cares If Everybody Knows You're An Asshole As Long As You Make Money decade.
The main thrust of 21st Century innovation, at least in America, seems to be in blatantly profiteering from defects in the system and shoving it in everybody's face. Sleazy business tactics like obstructive litigation, bogus intellectual property claims and political bribery are nothing new. The innovative element is that these activities now occur right out in the open. In many cases we know damn well that what some CEO is saying is absolute and utter crap. They know that we know; they just don't care. They've spent a lot of money tailoring the legal system to their needs, and they aren't going to hesitate to use it just because they might look bad. Advertising and low prices will eventually buy public forgiveness.
There is no pride or shame in high places anymore, only a pervasive arrogance.
Yeah, I bet ALL the big names in legislation were present for that hearing. Does something about the scheduling suggest that space policy is not exactly a top priority for our lawmakers?
Personally I like this feature, not only because it blocks banner ads but because it screws with the principle of business uber alles. We could outlaw more and more things that make it difficult to do business on the web, or we can let the web evolve as it will and let people who want to do business on it solve their own problems.
The fact that people don't like to look at ads isn't the only thing that can hurt business. Competitors can have a bigger advertising budget. Someone can give away something free that obsoletes a pay product. It can be raining. Making the Internet a more difficult place to make money shouldn't be a crime, or even discouraged. If advertising completely disappeared from the Internet, I bet search engines would still enable people to find products they are interested in. In fact, if advertising disappeared from the whole world I bet people would somehow find what they need. And it wouldn't have the cost of attracting their attention added to it.
Personally I believe the guy who posted that this is BS and that the devices are probably crap. But if they did work, how would they be any different from the proposed airport security fast-lane cards?
Just a minor point. The whole north polar ice cap could melt without affecting sea level, because north polar ice is floating. Water expands when it freezes, which is why a small portion of an iceberg sticks up out of the water. As the ice melts it shrinks again, occupying the same volume that it displaced when it was frozen. The water level around it will not rise.
Around 1990 I read a newspaper article about a documentary produced by some scientists in England that refuted the idea of global warming. Their thesis was that a large body of recorded temperature data, on which the idea of global warming was originally based, is known to have come from faulty equipment. Temperature recorders made before some point in the 20th century had a design defect that makes them accurate only to about 3 degrees, which is well outside the claimed variation.
The thing is, although this documentary won awards in Great Britain, the American PBS management refused to air it. One of the PBS spokespeople was quoted as saying that it wasn't always necessary to air all points of view on an issue, and if they did then viewers might be confused about what opinions to have. Or words to that effect. It was a stunning statement, which forever tainted my trust in what I see and hear on PBS.
Slashdot Mirror
Is Jackson doing a remake of the original King Kong, or a remake of the remake of King Kong?
1000 points goes to John Baez for having WAY too much free time.
"You destroyed it! You bastards!"
Soon as Enterprise folds up.
A veteran American police detective, forced out of his New York job by a scandal he didn't cause, moves to Brussels to head up a special, babe-filled division of ENISA that tackles the cases the rest of the agency can't crack.
Thanks so much for finding and passing on this info! I was on the verge of buying this unit just now, based on the review and the $169 BestBuy price, but luckily decided to read people's comments first. Apart from music, my primary use for the unit would be to play my collection of several thousand Old Time Radio mp3s, almost all of which are under 80 kbps. This would have been a major disappointment.
Remember, we are not citizens, we are consumers.
Just in case you were getting any wild ideas.
Lots of people work 60 hour weeks, especially during crunch projects, and they generally don't get a half million dollar bonus at the end of the year. Maybe your CEO works harder than the one's I have known. In any case, I doubt that the job of the average CEO has gotten 17% harder in the past year.
As a member of a civilization that got along fine for thousands of years without the concept of Intellectual Property, I think it's a ridiculous attempt to graft a relatively recent and already obsolete legal contrivance onto an artificial world.
Seriously, what I want to see now is somebody to track down one of these "gangs" and then hire goons to break into where they live, destroy their computer equipment and bust their heads open. I know that probably sets a bad precedent, but I think it would be a great deterrent. "Cyber-gangs" might feel bold wreaking havoc from the safe end of a wire, but I expect that like most geeks they would be highly uncomfortable with the possibility of real violence upon themselves.
Whether it's an infinitely available resource doesn't have anything to do with whether it's stealing. The reason copyright infringement is not stealing is that nobody "owns" copyright. "Ownership" of copyright is just a way of speaking, which we have adopted thanks to lawyers and business people misusing the term. Copyright can't be owned because it isn't property, it is a temporary right granted by the government. In essence it is like the right to turn at red light when you are in the proper lane, whereas people in other lanes don't have that right. Nobody "owns" the lane or the right to turn, and turning from the wrong lane is not theft. Copyright holders benefit from miscasting infringement as "theft," because the public sees images of junkies running through alleys with stolen TV sets.
Copyright infringement may incur real or imagined losses for the copyright holder, but recovering those losses is a matter for civil courts, not for policemen and jailers. Unfortunately the copyright holding community also has a lot more money to bribe legislators, oops, I mean finance election campaigns, and get laws written to suit them. In modern democracies the mere public, which overwhelmingly seems to think copying is morally okay, doesn't matter. If we want to fix the source of the copyright problem (and many others), we have to fix the problem of lawmakers being "owned" by the same people who own just about everything else.
I'm skeptical of proposals to use tax dollars to "create investment opportunities." Those opportunities usually translate to a savvy few making money off everybody else's taxes. That may be why he chose to say the average income would quadruple, not the median income. If 99% of the profits go to 1% of the people, the average income could rise dramatically without most of us getting a dime.
Projects on this scale covering such a long time span usually require government investment, because private investors want a return in 3-5 years. So here's an idea: do this project as a public corporation, with the government as the sole investor. Every taxpayer is automatically a stockholder, and gets dividend payments when the thing starts to pay off. As developing countries buy power, Joe American receives a monthly check.
That's what I would call an investment opportunity worth paying for.
Apparently Paramount didn't win the case, they just waved their bully stick and the producers didn't have the money for a fight. At least I may have been wrong about them having to give up all their profits (see other comment above). That info came from an old article on the web.
I was one of the fortunate few who saw Star Drek , a musical takeoff featuring funny songs, nailed characterizations and cheesy special effects. The transporter beam, for example, was a handful of glitter tossed in the air under a spotlight. The show ran about a year and a half (94-95) before Paramount shut it down. Act one was the original series, act two was the next gen, with Q bringing Kirk forward in time on a bet with Picard that Kirk would be better able to cope with a plot to addict the crew to a traditional Romulan beverage called "jav-ya."
...another culture has been destooooyyyyed,
The night I saw it in Seattle the place was completedly packed, people sitting on stairs. Except there was a block of really good empty seats in one row. As the lights went down, four hooded figures shuffled in and sat in the seats. During Intermission they left, and the host came out and announced that it had been Nimoy and his friends, who were in town for one of his rare convention appearances. They had snuck in so as not to create a scene. The place went nuts.
I still remember parts of the theme song:
On boooooaaard the Enterpriiiiiiiise,
Our paaaaaants don't have any fliiiiiies...
but weeeee know Star Fleet won't be annooooooyyed,
becaaaaause,
We're Right!
Not long afterwards Paramount shut the show down on the grounds that it wasn't a parody of Star Trek, it was Star Trek. The producers had to fork over all the money they had made.
Repeat after me:
Paramount is run by soulless, clueless Assholes.
According to the plan, artists who participate in the voucher system become ineligible for copyright protection for 5 years. Mega-stars would have no incentive to participate. That's an integral part of the plan. They probably couldn't if they wanted to anyway, because when they sign record contracts they largely lose control of their copyrights.
The impact on Microsoft's bottom line only reflects the impact on their customers' bottom lines. Well crafted EULAs may exempt MS from liability, but they can't exempt themselves from a deservedly bad rep created by poor security in their software.
If the wind blows right, sometimes shit does roll uphill.
The article clearly states that artists would get to opt in or out of the voucher plan. The only thing compulsory about it is the use of tax dollars, and the figures that you also didn't read make a pretty good case for the public payback being a lot larger than the input.
Did you actually read the article, or just see the word "voucher" and start typing?
First, there is nothing compulsory about this scheme. It's clearly stated that an artist would get to choose whether to use copyright protection or the voucher system.
Second, under this scheme any artist who receives voucher payments becomes ineligible for copyright protection for 5 years. Seems like a big commitment for a musician simply to get a few hundred dollars in vouchers from friends.
The thing I don't like about this scheme is that it really doesn't address any of the problems it brings up about copyright. The copyright system would still coexist, and we would still have DRM mania and the RIAA wanting to strip search everybody. But on its own I think it is a pretty well thought out idea, at least better thought out than some of the criticisms here from people who don't appear to have bothered to read the article.
There is so much more to this proposal than simply issuing vouchers, this comment doesn't deserve comment.
The 60's were the hippie decade.
The 70's were the "me" decade.
The 80's were the Al Franken decade.
The 90's were the dot com decade.
So far the 00's are shaping up to be the Who Cares If Everybody Knows You're An Asshole As Long As You Make Money decade.
The main thrust of 21st Century innovation, at least in America, seems to be in blatantly profiteering from defects in the system and shoving it in everybody's face. Sleazy business tactics like obstructive litigation, bogus intellectual property claims and political bribery are nothing new. The innovative element is that these activities now occur right out in the open. In many cases we know damn well that what some CEO is saying is absolute and utter crap. They know that we know; they just don't care. They've spent a lot of money tailoring the legal system to their needs, and they aren't going to hesitate to use it just because they might look bad. Advertising and low prices will eventually buy public forgiveness.
There is no pride or shame in high places anymore, only a pervasive arrogance.
Remember this? Two lights: one for for yes, one for no!
Couldn't find a larger version.
Yeah, I bet ALL the big names in legislation were present for that hearing. Does something about the scheduling suggest that space policy is not exactly a top priority for our lawmakers?
Personally I like this feature, not only because it blocks banner ads but because it screws with the principle of business uber alles. We could outlaw more and more things that make it difficult to do business on the web, or we can let the web evolve as it will and let people who want to do business on it solve their own problems.
The fact that people don't like to look at ads isn't the only thing that can hurt business. Competitors can have a bigger advertising budget. Someone can give away something free that obsoletes a pay product. It can be raining. Making the Internet a more difficult place to make money shouldn't be a crime, or even discouraged. If advertising completely disappeared from the Internet, I bet search engines would still enable people to find products they are interested in. In fact, if advertising disappeared from the whole world I bet people would somehow find what they need. And it wouldn't have the cost of attracting their attention added to it.
Personally I believe the guy who posted that this is BS and that the devices are probably crap. But if they did work, how would they be any different from the proposed airport security fast-lane cards?
Just a minor point. The whole north polar ice cap could melt without affecting sea level, because north polar ice is floating. Water expands when it freezes, which is why a small portion of an iceberg sticks up out of the water. As the ice melts it shrinks again, occupying the same volume that it displaced when it was frozen. The water level around it will not rise.
Of course, Antarctic ice is a different story.
Around 1990 I read a newspaper article about a documentary produced by some scientists in England that refuted the idea of global warming. Their thesis was that a large body of recorded temperature data, on which the idea of global warming was originally based, is known to have come from faulty equipment. Temperature recorders made before some point in the 20th century had a design defect that makes them accurate only to about 3 degrees, which is well outside the claimed variation.
The thing is, although this documentary won awards in Great Britain, the American PBS management refused to air it. One of the PBS spokespeople was quoted as saying that it wasn't always necessary to air all points of view on an issue, and if they did then viewers might be confused about what opinions to have. Or words to that effect. It was a stunning statement, which forever tainted my trust in what I see and hear on PBS.