You really have no idea what a symbiotic relationship is. "Helpless without a specific entity" is quite different from "needing assistance." The point is that a fetus is NOT its own entity until it can survive outside of its mother. After that, it's no longer symbiotic. Though babies are certainly quite helpless, the care need not come from a specific person.
Furthermore, where the fuck do you derive "crippled persons should be sacrificed" from "fetuses are not their own entity?" These are two completely different and unrelated statements. You're right that the first one makes no sense. You're wrong that this has anything to do with the abortion debate.
Incidentally, if a crippled person WANTED to be "sacrificed," I believe he should be given the same options -- and counseling -- as a potential mother seeking abortion. I think it's fucking COLD that we force the crippled to burden their families and insurers if they don't want to be. It's why I have a "living will" saying KILL my ass.
The reason why so many Greens are against nuclear power and GM foods is not because there is anything inherently wrong with these concepts but because they generally require a large system (corporate or governmental) to sustain them. Greens have a fear of large systems, which is well justified as small systems are generally more fault tolerant and less essential.
This is actually my biggest problem with the Greens: they can never get elected, because they'll never get the funding, because they are anti-corporate. And who has the money? Corporations and their leaders. For the Greens to win, they have to appeal to the working class, and for many people, Environment + Anti-corporate + Pro worker = Socialism. They need to change their perception, and they're not doing it.
I posed a question about that to the "Ask Dave Cobb" story. It was modded well, but he must not have liked the implication cause he sure as shit didn't address my concerns. I'm not voting for him, damnit, thought I did vote for Nader (and would do it again!)
As you may know this country uses what's called the "electoral college." In this system, we abstract the numeric vote in such a way that regional populations have a greater say in the presidency than their numbers alone would allow.
In 2000, the electoral vote came down to a handful of points. The closest contest was in Florida, where the electoral vote went to Bush by a handful of votes. The winner of Florida won the election.
In Florida, had the voters who selected Nader selected Gore instead, Gore would have won the election. This is why people say that Nader stole votes...if you make the assumption that everybody who voted for Nader would have voted for the less extreme liberal choice, as many people do, no Nader would have meant Gore would be out president.
Of course, this assumes that said voters would have voted at all, or wouldn't have voted for Bush. You can't make this assumption without stereotyping the Nader voters, and this isn't fair. But the media loves to stereotype, and it's a good story: infighting among liberals destroys their chance at the presidency? I don't agree with the particulars but I'd say it wasn't far from the truth.
As for FUD...I voted for Nader in 2000 (I was in NY, who cares) and would vote for a well backed independent this year as well. There is no reason a clever, charismatic candidate can't raise real money in this country and offer himself as a viable solution. No reason other than that it would take a LOT of work, and most of the third parties in this country appeal mostly to the fringe...libertarians, greens, right-to-lifers and marijuana reformers. Still, I think a third party candidate who had the fire of Howard Dean, the sensible outlook of Al Gore, the rhetorical fervor of Kerry and the down home charm that Bush fakes^H^H^H^H exudes could do very well in the US. Said candidate just needs the dough.
The cabinet should be given a lot of the blame as well. The one Bush selected. Do you honestly think Kerry will put former oil industry folks in charge of energy AND environment?
Since the cabinet researches problems and proposes solutions to the president, having a good cabinet can make or break a presidency. It seems to me Bush's cabinet is amazingly incompetent, biased and ignorant of the things they're deciding. To turn away your own agency's scientific reports because they aren't convenient to your political and business agenda is pure hubris. And it certainly doesn't improve our overseas relationships.
Here's my problem though: there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with GMO foods, just like there isn't anything wrong with organic farming. If GMO foods can increase worldwide production or create a tastier vegetable, more power to them. It should not be illegal merely because it uses the specter of genetic modification. After all, we've been genetically modifying plants and animals since the beginning of time. We call it agriculture -- taking a type of grapes that doesn't taste good but it hardy and joining it with a type of grapes that tastes great but won't grow anywhere.
The idea that GMO is going to invent new disasters that won't be discovered during testing is preposterous, because this isn't a fear that's new to GMO. The same thing happens with regular agriculture.
Interestingly enough, I doubt that any farmer would protest if we discovered that flipping a few peptide chains could result in a plant that grew faster and needed less pesticides and water. They're not afraid of new strains, and the ones that are are already trying their hand in the organic world. I like organic farming, they make some delicious fucking apples man. But I don't think that it's the only possible way.
The main difference is that a fetus is a symbiote, it can't exist without its mother. If the mother is an unwilling partner in the symbiosis, there is a good chance that the fetus will be damaged through neglect or malice even if it isn't aborted. I see abortion as an inevitably, something outside of law -- but something that we can curtail through legalized abortion.
Huh?
It's simple: a new potential mother is scared shitless. She has been informed by our culture that she is ruining her life, that she's a slut, that she's in trouble. In danger. She's frightened as hell and sees abortion as an easy out.
But it isn't the only way out. There are so many other options for an unexpected pregnancy, options which are viable and won't destroy a person's life. What this woman needs is comfort and reassurance, which she won't get from a back alley abortionist or a cup of poison tea or a bottle of liquor. She very well might get it from one of the counseling sessions she's required to attend before her "legal" abortion.
Legalized abortion could save more lives than illegal abortion, so long as you remember: it's not about abortion. It's about helping these women understand that all of that "now your life is over because you're a mother" rhetoric is a load of horse pucky.
I was adopted. My birth mother was talked into choosing adoption by a state sponsored councillor. A significant number of us adoptees lead happy lives because their mothers had a choice and weren't treated as amoral birthing vessels. So you have to understand I'm a little biased here.
Actually, it'd be more like buying a broken down pickup truck and replacing it with an engine good enough to get you where you have to go. Have you ever bought a PC with Linux pre installed? It's generally half broken and full of more bloat than even a Windows machine. We got a cheap-o dev box with SuSE 9.1 and the first thing I had to do before it would run ANYTHING is wipe it clean. Red hat machines came, for awhile, with about 3 gig of shit on them, including both GNOME and KDE and specialized software for each.
There's no money in cheap PCs. So there's no quality control. So long as the OS looks like it runs, the manufacturer considers it done. This effects Linux as much, if not more, than Windows, because there are far more choices and far more work that goes into integrating Linux with your needs. I don't know why folks on/. treat Linux like it's a single entity when installs are so greatly varied...but I wouldn't trust Lindows to install the Linux I want any more than I'd trust Dell to install Windows without a stack of useless bullshit.
Even Apple adds, by default, scads of stuff I don't want. For example, I have never needed the ability to write in Dutch. I certainly don't need 120 meg of support files for it.
Insightful, but largely irrelevant pertaining to the article. One of the things courts WILL uphold is a vendor's right to restrict the usage of their software to one machine per license. They may not force you to become Bill's cabana boy or whatever else is in the license, but the fact that this is in there does not give you permission to freely pirate Windows.
Funny...this cat will pay $70 for a ram chip built by some guy in China, but won't pay $75 for an OEM copy of an OS he OBVIOUSLY wants to use, made in the USA?
Which do you suppose enables him more? And why is software not worth paying for? Is it just because it's easier to steal than a stick of ram?
Cheap fuck. No wonder our jobs are going overseas. People aren't willing to buy anything having to do with computers unless it used to be made of sand. Nobody pays for abstracted complexity, even though that's where the value is...
You also can't buy a TV without a remote control. This is not a remote tax. The two are inseparable. In cases where required accessories are left out (batteries not included, charger not available, lenses sold separately, no games included with new console, etc), we generally chastise the company for being cheap.
Apple sees their software and their hardware the same way -- inseparable. They develop it as such. And they sell it as such. It's their choice to do so. It's the allure of their machines. If you want to buy one, you buy all of it. You are not TAXED for the software, any more than you are TAXED the the hardware.
Just a quick aside: "Fair Use" does not cover software. It only covers "artistic" works: books, recorded music, films and so forth.
Software and other digital works are covered by a similar, but different clause of copyright law that allows for backups of software for archival purposes only.
The two are very different concepts with very different intent. "Fair use" regulations are there to permit reasonable references for parody, review and educational purposes. They allow teachers to show a film clip or play back a song in class without first clearing the performance rights to a song. They allow Mad TV to poke fun at Survivor without having to license the rights to survivor. The idea is that a copyright owner might not be willing to give up the rights to his work, but that this shouldn't interfere with our right to talk about it. Without fair use, your first amendment rights would be in jeopardy. Fair Use also protects "personal" use of material (e.g. making your own remake of the Matrix for kicks). The Supreme Court recently ruled to extend fair use to include "format shifting," which is why it's legal to rip your CDs down to MP3 (though not ILLEGAL for a company to try to stop you).
Software, on the other hand, can be legally copied but only for backup purposes. In fact, many companies expect you to make copies, hence why Microsoft disks are stamped "DO NOT MAKE ILLEGAL COPIES OF THIS DISC," rather than wrapped in copy protections like some games. It is not covered by fair use laws...you can't freely use software for review, parody or educational purposes and you can't use it however you like at home, but I doubt anybody would make a stink if you did.
You're overthinking this. The biggest audience for wireless gaming isn't strangers...it's siblings, and groups of friends, who plan to buy the same game and play each other.
I've played big Advance Wars 4 way tournaments with my friends, and they were hella fun...EXCEPT they were too slow, and even the slightest jolt on any of the cables stopped everybody's game. Annoying.
A game like Advance Wars, Pokemon or Shining Soul would be a lot of fun when hanging out, IF they were wireless, fast, and could deal with disconnects gracefully.
Re:What about battery life?
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Nintendo DS Network
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· Score: 2, Informative
The wireless adapter that comes with Pokemon fire/leaf sucks battery like crazy. I plugged it in when I first got the game, thinking it'd be ignored when not in use. It cut battery life by at least half. And it's not even 802.11b!
Well, a picture is worth a thousand words. And in the rumors community, a photoshopped "artist's rendering" based on a press release and some sophomore CS student musings on a forum are worth TENS of thousands of words.
Come on, man. Even if it's full of shit, it's fun to dream about pervasive wireless networking. But speaking as somebody who's USED the Pokemon GBA wireless adapter, it'll probably be slow, weak crap.
Depends. If he sold mostly Goodyear tires, and was willing to sign an exclusivity deal with Goodyear to get 10% off if every tire he sold was a Goodyear, he'd probably take it. Meaning he WOULD have to pay Goodyear, even if he delivered those Atlas tires.
This isn't that unusual a deal when the vast majority of customers want a single something and the distributor would rather have the assurance of income implicit in the agreement than the extra income per sale. We ask our independent sales staff and consultants not to sell anything else that does what our program does, because otherwise there's no real incentive to let them in on our program's inner workings. I don't think there's anything wrong with this, and if our customers do, they can go with a non-affiliated consultant (and we'll probably get a lot more money as a result of the increased service costs).
Hey, you've been reading my website! Mazeltov, AC!
Incidentally, I've seen you use "fucktard" and "fuckwit" an awful lot. Really, man, originality is the soul of comedy and it's really easy to create a compound insult. Try adding fuck to other nouns, suck as "fuckcake," "fuckbarrel," "fuckcoupon," "fucklaser'" or "fucktopeka, Kansas."
I think you'll find your posts to be imminently more pleasing if you make the extra effort.
Taxes are levied by governments, not by companies. Just because you don't want to pay for something doesn't mean it's a tax.
It's annoying that my car came with these ugly wheels that I replaced anyway, but they wouldn't sell it to me otherwise. In fact, I think it's illegal to sell a car with no wheels. I don't refer to it as a "rim tax." It's just the way things are.
If you don't like that your vendor passes the cost of their distribution deal with Microsoft, necessitating a license per computer, you should go with another vendor. If you can't go with another vendor, you're just gonna have to deal with it. Said deal probably saves their other customers who want Windows thousands of dollars per year, and it's not likely they're going to risk inconveniencing all of them for your politics.
Now there's a market for simple bootloaders. Want to make a killing? Spend about an hour writing a program that loads other programs as its own threads. Sell it for $5. Viola, the biggest crippling disabled.
Then write a program that ports samba as a disk driver. Sell it for $5.
For $10, a person can get the equivalent of full Windows. You're not technically "unlocking" features, so you're DMCA home free. And the money goes to you, not Microsoft.
As somebody who buys about ten CDs, records or 8 tracks per month, I agree with you.
However, just because a CD is BETTER than iTunes, doesn't mean iTunes also isn't completely awesome. The great thing about iTunes: it's always on, always accessible, always has what you're looking for and doesn't cost $19.
I've even bought music on iTunes I already own on record. It's just easier (and better sound quality) than ripping the vinyl for playback on the iPod. I bought Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde" on vinyl, CD AND off iTunes...because my CD was scratched to shit and I didn't feel like shelling out the $50 or whatever Coconuts wanted for it. I put my iTunes burnt CD in the original case.
Okay. Culling out the features NOT offered by the iTunes Music Store:
Lossless compression: Consider how many people can tell the difference. Now consider the hassles and long download times involved with 16 meg per song downloads. Is it really worth all these people clogging up the download pipe for a 5-10% improvement in perceptual quality?
50 cents or less pricing: Why? Why should music be so cheap? They'd have to sell twice as much. I wouldn't buy twice as much. Certainly doesn't seem to be helping Rhapsody at all.
Good Music Selection: iTunes has the beach boys and u2. I don't think anybody has the Beatles or Led Zepp. They guard their catalog tightly, because they get a lot of money every time they re-release some material. Think, man: you have not made anything people really liked in 30 years, why would you reduce the value of your old shit to $.50 for a hit when you're already getting $20 per hit?
Less popular artists on Front Page: Not gonna happen, man, because these are the guys who sell. If they sell, put them where people can see them, they'll sell more. Of course, iTunes usually has about 50 artists on their front page, many of them obscure indepedents and always from multiple genres. Today it's (lets see) U2, Green Day, keb Mo, Jeff Fozworthy, lil Romeo, Franz Ferdiand, James Galway, The Samples, Spymob, Mark Knopfler, Lindsay Lohan, REM, Mario, Herbie Hancock, John FOgerty and Baaba Maal. That's pretty fucking ecclectic, man.
Reasonable DRM (none): Come on. People need a little assurance that online music isn't some pandora's box. Is DRM so bad? It's never hurt me and I listen to music all fucking day on a half dozen devices. I can't imagine other people having such radical needs that DRM can't be stepped around sanely. Shit, burn it to disc and rip it lossless to ALC or FLAC or SHN. Bye bye DRM, no loss in quality, you can do it from within iTunes. And it gives your favorite artists the peace of mind that allows them to loosen up and let you hear them.
Jeez, man, just use etree.archive.org for that jamband shit. Bootleg acts and commercial music shouldn't mix, though. What a mixed signal..."oh yeah, the high quality live stuff is free, but the lukewarm studio records are $.99 per track." Silly when they're already available, free and easy, elsewhere.
I don't like jam acts, but a few of my favorite bands (Tenacious D, Rustic Overtones & the Paranoid Social Club) are on archive.org. Downloads were painless and easy converted from SHN (preserving every drunken idiot, feedback loop, forgotten lyric and failed solo in pure lossless quality) to something useful like AAC.
Create magazines by genre. Example, a punk page with weekly news album reviews highlights etc. Tour dates. Could have one for Classical etc...
I wouldn't want Apple to do this...but their affiliate program means YOU could do this, keep it real and still make some cash. I'd like to see one of the big, pretentious online review sites plug in to iTunes...and Apple reciprocate by signing up all of their reviewed artists...
More indy music, most stores do not have the more esoteric independant stuff that I want.
It's coming, man. iTunes just signed a deal with the Hieroglyphics Imperium, my all time favorite hip hop label (Casual, Pep Love, Souls of Mischief and Del the Funkee Homosapien). And they're adding new bands all the time...they have a backlog of indies just waiting to get signed up. No other music store has as much obscure shit, and I doubt they will. Rhapsody et al seem to be about the NUMBER of songs, not about the quality of the artists they sign.
Allow bands to set up their own bootleg store page, where they can upload and sell live albums or singles - all to be billed thorugh the main store
This is an awesome idea and I'm sure it's coming. But remember that good software takes time and iTMS is only a little over a year old. I'll bet this feature is planned for when artist additions die down to a dull roar. iTunes certainly loves exclusives.
Set up store preferences
Yes. I never want to see another Nelly record again and I couldn't give less of a fuck about U2. But I'll download anything Elvis Costello does. License that spooky technology from Amazon and do it up.
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You really have no idea what a symbiotic relationship is. "Helpless without a specific entity" is quite different from "needing assistance." The point is that a fetus is NOT its own entity until it can survive outside of its mother. After that, it's no longer symbiotic. Though babies are certainly quite helpless, the care need not come from a specific person.
Furthermore, where the fuck do you derive "crippled persons should be sacrificed" from "fetuses are not their own entity?" These are two completely different and unrelated statements. You're right that the first one makes no sense. You're wrong that this has anything to do with the abortion debate.
Incidentally, if a crippled person WANTED to be "sacrificed," I believe he should be given the same options -- and counseling -- as a potential mother seeking abortion. I think it's fucking COLD that we force the crippled to burden their families and insurers if they don't want to be. It's why I have a "living will" saying KILL my ass.
The reason why so many Greens are against nuclear power and GM foods is not because there is anything inherently wrong with these concepts but because they generally require a large system (corporate or governmental) to sustain them. Greens have a fear of large systems, which is well justified as small systems are generally more fault tolerant and less essential.
This is actually my biggest problem with the Greens: they can never get elected, because they'll never get the funding, because they are anti-corporate. And who has the money? Corporations and their leaders. For the Greens to win, they have to appeal to the working class, and for many people, Environment + Anti-corporate + Pro worker = Socialism. They need to change their perception, and they're not doing it.
I posed a question about that to the "Ask Dave Cobb" story. It was modded well, but he must not have liked the implication cause he sure as shit didn't address my concerns. I'm not voting for him, damnit, thought I did vote for Nader (and would do it again!)
As you may know this country uses what's called the "electoral college." In this system, we abstract the numeric vote in such a way that regional populations have a greater say in the presidency than their numbers alone would allow.
In 2000, the electoral vote came down to a handful of points. The closest contest was in Florida, where the electoral vote went to Bush by a handful of votes. The winner of Florida won the election.
In Florida, had the voters who selected Nader selected Gore instead, Gore would have won the election. This is why people say that Nader stole votes...if you make the assumption that everybody who voted for Nader would have voted for the less extreme liberal choice, as many people do, no Nader would have meant Gore would be out president.
Of course, this assumes that said voters would have voted at all, or wouldn't have voted for Bush. You can't make this assumption without stereotyping the Nader voters, and this isn't fair. But the media loves to stereotype, and it's a good story: infighting among liberals destroys their chance at the presidency? I don't agree with the particulars but I'd say it wasn't far from the truth.
As for FUD...I voted for Nader in 2000 (I was in NY, who cares) and would vote for a well backed independent this year as well. There is no reason a clever, charismatic candidate can't raise real money in this country and offer himself as a viable solution. No reason other than that it would take a LOT of work, and most of the third parties in this country appeal mostly to the fringe...libertarians, greens, right-to-lifers and marijuana reformers. Still, I think a third party candidate who had the fire of Howard Dean, the sensible outlook of Al Gore, the rhetorical fervor of Kerry and the down home charm that Bush fakes^H^H^H^H exudes could do very well in the US. Said candidate just needs the dough.
You're right.
The cabinet should be given a lot of the blame as well. The one Bush selected. Do you honestly think Kerry will put former oil industry folks in charge of energy AND environment?
Since the cabinet researches problems and proposes solutions to the president, having a good cabinet can make or break a presidency. It seems to me Bush's cabinet is amazingly incompetent, biased and ignorant of the things they're deciding. To turn away your own agency's scientific reports because they aren't convenient to your political and business agenda is pure hubris. And it certainly doesn't improve our overseas relationships.
Here's my problem though: there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with GMO foods, just like there isn't anything wrong with organic farming. If GMO foods can increase worldwide production or create a tastier vegetable, more power to them. It should not be illegal merely because it uses the specter of genetic modification. After all, we've been genetically modifying plants and animals since the beginning of time. We call it agriculture -- taking a type of grapes that doesn't taste good but it hardy and joining it with a type of grapes that tastes great but won't grow anywhere.
The idea that GMO is going to invent new disasters that won't be discovered during testing is preposterous, because this isn't a fear that's new to GMO. The same thing happens with regular agriculture.
Interestingly enough, I doubt that any farmer would protest if we discovered that flipping a few peptide chains could result in a plant that grew faster and needed less pesticides and water. They're not afraid of new strains, and the ones that are are already trying their hand in the organic world. I like organic farming, they make some delicious fucking apples man. But I don't think that it's the only possible way.
The main difference is that a fetus is a symbiote, it can't exist without its mother. If the mother is an unwilling partner in the symbiosis, there is a good chance that the fetus will be damaged through neglect or malice even if it isn't aborted. I see abortion as an inevitably, something outside of law -- but something that we can curtail through legalized abortion.
Huh?
It's simple: a new potential mother is scared shitless. She has been informed by our culture that she is ruining her life, that she's a slut, that she's in trouble. In danger. She's frightened as hell and sees abortion as an easy out.
But it isn't the only way out. There are so many other options for an unexpected pregnancy, options which are viable and won't destroy a person's life. What this woman needs is comfort and reassurance, which she won't get from a back alley abortionist or a cup of poison tea or a bottle of liquor. She very well might get it from one of the counseling sessions she's required to attend before her "legal" abortion.
Legalized abortion could save more lives than illegal abortion, so long as you remember: it's not about abortion. It's about helping these women understand that all of that "now your life is over because you're a mother" rhetoric is a load of horse pucky.
I was adopted. My birth mother was talked into choosing adoption by a state sponsored councillor. A significant number of us adoptees lead happy lives because their mothers had a choice and weren't treated as amoral birthing vessels. So you have to understand I'm a little biased here.
Actually, it'd be more like buying a broken down pickup truck and replacing it with an engine good enough to get you where you have to go. Have you ever bought a PC with Linux pre installed? It's generally half broken and full of more bloat than even a Windows machine. We got a cheap-o dev box with SuSE 9.1 and the first thing I had to do before it would run ANYTHING is wipe it clean. Red hat machines came, for awhile, with about 3 gig of shit on them, including both GNOME and KDE and specialized software for each.
/. treat Linux like it's a single entity when installs are so greatly varied...but I wouldn't trust Lindows to install the Linux I want any more than I'd trust Dell to install Windows without a stack of useless bullshit.
There's no money in cheap PCs. So there's no quality control. So long as the OS looks like it runs, the manufacturer considers it done. This effects Linux as much, if not more, than Windows, because there are far more choices and far more work that goes into integrating Linux with your needs. I don't know why folks on
Even Apple adds, by default, scads of stuff I don't want. For example, I have never needed the ability to write in Dutch. I certainly don't need 120 meg of support files for it.
Insightful, but largely irrelevant pertaining to the article. One of the things courts WILL uphold is a vendor's right to restrict the usage of their software to one machine per license. They may not force you to become Bill's cabana boy or whatever else is in the license, but the fact that this is in there does not give you permission to freely pirate Windows.
Funny...this cat will pay $70 for a ram chip built by some guy in China, but won't pay $75 for an OEM copy of an OS he OBVIOUSLY wants to use, made in the USA?
Which do you suppose enables him more? And why is software not worth paying for? Is it just because it's easier to steal than a stick of ram?
Cheap fuck. No wonder our jobs are going overseas. People aren't willing to buy anything having to do with computers unless it used to be made of sand. Nobody pays for abstracted complexity, even though that's where the value is...
You also can't buy a TV without a remote control. This is not a remote tax. The two are inseparable. In cases where required accessories are left out (batteries not included, charger not available, lenses sold separately, no games included with new console, etc), we generally chastise the company for being cheap.
Apple sees their software and their hardware the same way -- inseparable. They develop it as such. And they sell it as such. It's their choice to do so. It's the allure of their machines. If you want to buy one, you buy all of it. You are not TAXED for the software, any more than you are TAXED the the hardware.
Just a quick aside: "Fair Use" does not cover software. It only covers "artistic" works: books, recorded music, films and so forth.
Software and other digital works are covered by a similar, but different clause of copyright law that allows for backups of software for archival purposes only.
The two are very different concepts with very different intent. "Fair use" regulations are there to permit reasonable references for parody, review and educational purposes. They allow teachers to show a film clip or play back a song in class without first clearing the performance rights to a song. They allow Mad TV to poke fun at Survivor without having to license the rights to survivor. The idea is that a copyright owner might not be willing to give up the rights to his work, but that this shouldn't interfere with our right to talk about it. Without fair use, your first amendment rights would be in jeopardy. Fair Use also protects "personal" use of material (e.g. making your own remake of the Matrix for kicks). The Supreme Court recently ruled to extend fair use to include "format shifting," which is why it's legal to rip your CDs down to MP3 (though not ILLEGAL for a company to try to stop you).
Software, on the other hand, can be legally copied but only for backup purposes. In fact, many companies expect you to make copies, hence why Microsoft disks are stamped "DO NOT MAKE ILLEGAL COPIES OF THIS DISC," rather than wrapped in copy protections like some games. It is not covered by fair use laws...you can't freely use software for review, parody or educational purposes and you can't use it however you like at home, but I doubt anybody would make a stink if you did.
You're overthinking this. The biggest audience for wireless gaming isn't strangers...it's siblings, and groups of friends, who plan to buy the same game and play each other.
I've played big Advance Wars 4 way tournaments with my friends, and they were hella fun...EXCEPT they were too slow, and even the slightest jolt on any of the cables stopped everybody's game. Annoying.
A game like Advance Wars, Pokemon or Shining Soul would be a lot of fun when hanging out, IF they were wireless, fast, and could deal with disconnects gracefully.
The wireless adapter that comes with Pokemon fire/leaf sucks battery like crazy. I plugged it in when I first got the game, thinking it'd be ignored when not in use. It cut battery life by at least half. And it's not even 802.11b!
Well, a picture is worth a thousand words. And in the rumors community, a photoshopped "artist's rendering" based on a press release and some sophomore CS student musings on a forum are worth TENS of thousands of words.
Come on, man. Even if it's full of shit, it's fun to dream about pervasive wireless networking. But speaking as somebody who's USED the Pokemon GBA wireless adapter, it'll probably be slow, weak crap.
They said I was mad to install a rocket launcher in an AIBO. Well, what else are they gonna do? Play with that gay pink ball? Not my doggy!
Say hello to AIBO, destroyer of worlds! Piro-riro, bitch.
Depends. If he sold mostly Goodyear tires, and was willing to sign an exclusivity deal with Goodyear to get 10% off if every tire he sold was a Goodyear, he'd probably take it. Meaning he WOULD have to pay Goodyear, even if he delivered those Atlas tires.
This isn't that unusual a deal when the vast majority of customers want a single something and the distributor would rather have the assurance of income implicit in the agreement than the extra income per sale. We ask our independent sales staff and consultants not to sell anything else that does what our program does, because otherwise there's no real incentive to let them in on our program's inner workings. I don't think there's anything wrong with this, and if our customers do, they can go with a non-affiliated consultant (and we'll probably get a lot more money as a result of the increased service costs).
Hey, you've been reading my website! Mazeltov, AC!
Incidentally, I've seen you use "fucktard" and "fuckwit" an awful lot. Really, man, originality is the soul of comedy and it's really easy to create a compound insult. Try adding fuck to other nouns, suck as "fuckcake," "fuckbarrel," "fuckcoupon," "fucklaser'" or "fucktopeka, Kansas."
I think you'll find your posts to be imminently more pleasing if you make the extra effort.
The news of my death has been greatly exaggerated. But there's Matt Drudge for you.
Taxes are levied by governments, not by companies. Just because you don't want to pay for something doesn't mean it's a tax.
It's annoying that my car came with these ugly wheels that I replaced anyway, but they wouldn't sell it to me otherwise. In fact, I think it's illegal to sell a car with no wheels. I don't refer to it as a "rim tax." It's just the way things are.
If you don't like that your vendor passes the cost of their distribution deal with Microsoft, necessitating a license per computer, you should go with another vendor. If you can't go with another vendor, you're just gonna have to deal with it. Said deal probably saves their other customers who want Windows thousands of dollars per year, and it's not likely they're going to risk inconveniencing all of them for your politics.
Hey, look at it this way:
Now there's a market for simple bootloaders. Want to make a killing? Spend about an hour writing a program that loads other programs as its own threads. Sell it for $5. Viola, the biggest crippling disabled.
Then write a program that ports samba as a disk driver. Sell it for $5.
For $10, a person can get the equivalent of full Windows. You're not technically "unlocking" features, so you're DMCA home free. And the money goes to you, not Microsoft.
This is utter garbage, man.
But I'll give you that it's better than the last Beastie Boys album.
As somebody who buys about ten CDs, records or 8 tracks per month, I agree with you.
However, just because a CD is BETTER than iTunes, doesn't mean iTunes also isn't completely awesome. The great thing about iTunes: it's always on, always accessible, always has what you're looking for and doesn't cost $19.
I've even bought music on iTunes I already own on record. It's just easier (and better sound quality) than ripping the vinyl for playback on the iPod. I bought Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde" on vinyl, CD AND off iTunes...because my CD was scratched to shit and I didn't feel like shelling out the $50 or whatever Coconuts wanted for it. I put my iTunes burnt CD in the original case.
Okay. Culling out the features NOT offered by the iTunes Music Store:
Lossless compression: Consider how many people can tell the difference. Now consider the hassles and long download times involved with 16 meg per song downloads. Is it really worth all these people clogging up the download pipe for a 5-10% improvement in perceptual quality?
50 cents or less pricing: Why? Why should music be so cheap? They'd have to sell twice as much. I wouldn't buy twice as much. Certainly doesn't seem to be helping Rhapsody at all.
Good Music Selection: iTunes has the beach boys and u2. I don't think anybody has the Beatles or Led Zepp. They guard their catalog tightly, because they get a lot of money every time they re-release some material. Think, man: you have not made anything people really liked in 30 years, why would you reduce the value of your old shit to $.50 for a hit when you're already getting $20 per hit?
Less popular artists on Front Page: Not gonna happen, man, because these are the guys who sell. If they sell, put them where people can see them, they'll sell more. Of course, iTunes usually has about 50 artists on their front page, many of them obscure indepedents and always from multiple genres. Today it's (lets see) U2, Green Day, keb Mo, Jeff Fozworthy, lil Romeo, Franz Ferdiand, James Galway, The Samples, Spymob, Mark Knopfler, Lindsay Lohan, REM, Mario, Herbie Hancock, John FOgerty and Baaba Maal. That's pretty fucking ecclectic, man.
Reasonable DRM (none): Come on. People need a little assurance that online music isn't some pandora's box. Is DRM so bad? It's never hurt me and I listen to music all fucking day on a half dozen devices. I can't imagine other people having such radical needs that DRM can't be stepped around sanely. Shit, burn it to disc and rip it lossless to ALC or FLAC or SHN. Bye bye DRM, no loss in quality, you can do it from within iTunes. And it gives your favorite artists the peace of mind that allows them to loosen up and let you hear them.
Jeez, man, just use etree.archive.org for that jamband shit. Bootleg acts and commercial music shouldn't mix, though. What a mixed signal..."oh yeah, the high quality live stuff is free, but the lukewarm studio records are $.99 per track." Silly when they're already available, free and easy, elsewhere.
I don't like jam acts, but a few of my favorite bands (Tenacious D, Rustic Overtones & the Paranoid Social Club) are on archive.org. Downloads were painless and easy converted from SHN (preserving every drunken idiot, feedback loop, forgotten lyric and failed solo in pure lossless quality) to something useful like AAC.
Create magazines by genre. Example, a punk page with weekly news album reviews highlights etc. Tour dates. Could have one for Classical etc...
I wouldn't want Apple to do this...but their affiliate program means YOU could do this, keep it real and still make some cash. I'd like to see one of the big, pretentious online review sites plug in to iTunes...and Apple reciprocate by signing up all of their reviewed artists...
More indy music, most stores do not have the more esoteric independant stuff that I want.
It's coming, man. iTunes just signed a deal with the Hieroglyphics Imperium, my all time favorite hip hop label (Casual, Pep Love, Souls of Mischief and Del the Funkee Homosapien). And they're adding new bands all the time...they have a backlog of indies just waiting to get signed up. No other music store has as much obscure shit, and I doubt they will. Rhapsody et al seem to be about the NUMBER of songs, not about the quality of the artists they sign.
Allow bands to set up their own bootleg store page, where they can upload and sell live albums or singles - all to be billed thorugh the main store
This is an awesome idea and I'm sure it's coming. But remember that good software takes time and iTMS is only a little over a year old. I'll bet this feature is planned for when artist additions die down to a dull roar. iTunes certainly loves exclusives.
Set up store preferences
Yes. I never want to see another Nelly record again and I couldn't give less of a fuck about U2. But I'll download anything Elvis Costello does. License that spooky technology from Amazon and do it up.