Ok, if you want to go by the letter of the law, RIAA is right. Copyrights are to be enforced. But if you go by the intent of the law, RIAA has a big problem. Why?
Because during the most Napster use where all kinds of 'illegal' copyrighted songs were being traded, the music industry was actually increasing sales. How can they prove that this was hurting them or the artists? They cannot. The argument boils down to the RIAA being greedy and wanting a little more money than they already have, therefore they try to stick to the letter of the law rather than its intent. The intent of copyright law was to protect the creator of that which is copyrighted so that they receive their just rewards. Now if music sales were increasing WHILE Napster use was also increasing, you cannot argue that the copyrighters were not receiving their just reward. At best they were not receiving as much of a bonus check in the mail, but nonetheless, they were receiving more than before Napster use.
In the end, if we as a nation try to stick to the letter of the law in all gray areas (like the Napster debate), rather than trying to interepret the intent of the law, we are sure to fail, and in our failure, other nations will pick up where we left off and zoom past us in their freedom and quality of life.
Now why would he pander to a bunch of people on the internet from all over the world, when he needs votes from Virginians in his constituency only? That's ridiculous. I for one believe what he had to say regarding the issues. For one, when he didn't have an answer, he clearly, simply stated it. Also, he referenced the exact manner in which he responded to the questions (Dragon NaturallySpeaking software) which not only explains to me how he had the time to personally respond to the questions, but also why the grammatical errors occurred.:)
As for the "political speak", I think it's just part of the jargon that politicians are used to speaking. There's a million acronyms in the tech industry, and you would expect any programmer to be called a geek when spouting such acronyms to his non-programmer friends. So take the form in which he replied with a grain of salt and realize it's more "business speak" than pandering for votes.
Point well spoken. I think also that if you'll notice the third part of that article where they played the "Truth or Dare" game, although they were just talking about sexual acts that they wished to perform, some of them actually went through with, or had already gone through with, performing them. I'm betting this played a role in tearing the company apart in the end. If the thoughts are dwelled upon, they become a 'sin', and obviously some carried their thoughts out, and others did not. I can't imagine a workplace where everyone was shackin' up every now and then. It would make for plenty of ugly rumors and discrimination in the workplace when it was as rampant as it seems to have been at Wizards. I can understand office romance, but keep the sordid details at home.
Well, the US sure seems to be getting bombarded. I didn't know there were that many political attackers and script kiddie crackers out there. Maybe this will show some US companies just how big a deal security (including protecting the info they always collect on me) really is.
And my bit of paranoia for the day:
Why do they keep saying how 'secure and private' the log files you send them are? Can't they just trace the IP that sent the log right back to the company and/or individual who owns the IP (unless of course it's a dynamic IP being assigned)? Not that they would want to do so, but let's just stop advertising privacy. There is no privacy on the net. It's like streaking thru a crowded marketplace; not many people notice, but those that do get to see the whole deal.
I think if you will notice, there is a link to the correct 'FrontPage' at the top of the window. If you think you're 'hacking' their site you're wrong. All you're doing is changing what is displayed upon access of the main page. Big deal.
Since when has it been a good idea to explicitly trust anyone with utter confidence that they are infallible?
Re:Free Tacos For All - This IS RELEVANT.
on
Mir Deathwatch
·
· Score: 1
HAHAHA! Anyone notice the 'Valid for US residents only' disclaimer at the bottom right of the target?! That target would have to be 40 acres for Mir to even have a chance of hitting it, and yet they still have to put a disclaimer on there. That cracks me up!
Haha! Read your story and I have to admit that I've seen the same sort of thing happen all the time when my 'bro hosts a LAN party. Although he has made it a LOT smoother than the first LAN party he had.
For one, he runs a local Linux server which auto-assigns IP's to all the machines as they connect. He also made sure to call his workgroup 'workgroup', since that's the default Windows setting and most people don't know how to change it. He also sends out an email about 2 weeks prior, with all the 'rules' for the party. That way, everyone knows which games will be played, what time to come, *exactly* what hardware to bring, etc. Our biggest party so far involved 10 people (all playing!). Five in the dining room of the house, 5 in the basement.
By the way, if you're thinking of doing this, make sure you have lots of fans and windows available. 10 machines + 1 server in a house make for an awfully warm house.:)
As for this GearGrip, I don't really see the need for it, as it's a short hike to lug my CPU into my car, then back out of it and into the house. What I need is a cheap, large (19"), high res flat screen monitor. That's the back breaker when it comes to LAN parties.
The above article indicates the loss of Palms as part of this internet appliance shake-out. I knew that companies would soon realize how frivolous too much of this stuff was. Palms are great and all, but now they have to discontinue them due to the market being saturated by gadgets that not everyone needs or wants.
I really like the refrigerator that dialed the internet to order its own food idea. That's rather lame, considering I get different kinds of food every time I go grocery shopping. Maybe it would be sort of helpful to a family that routinely gets milk, eggs, cheese, etc. but only if it's a standard feature, and not an additional $300 to the price tag. Besides, who wants to admin their refrigerator?
I didn't see Blair Witch specifically because it was so hyped before it came out. At first when I heard about it, I thought, "well that sounds cool". But once all the hype started coming I figured it probably wouldn't be worth my time. And I'm glad I never saw it, from what my friends told me 'bout it. So the internet hype did nothing for me. I'm much more prone to go see something that actually is proven to be a good flik (by word of mouth from co-workers and friends) than to rush into believing a bunch of hype from those pushing their product. If I based my decisions on hype, I'd be buying every last piece of M$ software I could get my hands on!:)
I'll pay $30 per year, only if it means every poster to slashdot that pays will *NEVER* have their content removed just because the Co$ decides to go ballistic over someone making fun of them.:)
I realize copyright infringement is wrong and for the uninformed, this was an attempt at hilarity.
As far as harming others; you don't just stumble onto porn, you have to go looking for it.
Are you joking?! I've stumbled across banner ads that are way out of line while just looking for computer equipment and games that do not have any such crap associated with them. You must not use the internet much if you think that is the case. Just watch a movie or TV, you'll stumble across some form of outright ludeness without even realizing it's coming!
Well, I think you're right about the original movie actually being better overall than the TV mini-series. I never have liked TV mini-series because of the poor acting and generally less well done overall production of the movie/show. I guess I'll go rent the original movie first, then maybe move on to the mini-series.
Ahhh, I forgot, certain movie houses still haven't released DVD's yet because of copyright infringement fears (hence no LucasArts stuff yet:( ). I guess that spills over into the network sitcoms that Fox owns, like The Simpsons. Bummer.
Well, I for one will at least go rent this DVD, even if it did suck. The book was so good, I'd like to see an interpretation of it on the screen.
As for releasing TV series on DVD, anyone know why networks haven't yet? Is it to increase re-run viewership? I would buy every episode of M*A*S*H* and The Simpsons in a heartbeat, and I know plenty of friends who would do the same. Leave it up to annoying corporate profit mongers!
You can't ! There is no universal truth - everyone
makes its own trouth, and you can't make your own,
if you have information from one source.
Using your logic, you would be REQUIRED to agree that those who have no problem with being a psycopathic racial biggot killing machine, are perfectly ok living in society and should not be jailed or punished because they may believe this to be their own truth. And you cannot judge whether or not they believe that killing and racism is true and good, because you are not them, and if you judged them then you would be forcing your 'truth' upon them. People who believe relativism is the way to go, do not think through to the conclusion of what that argument means for all people in a logical way.
The reason multiple information sources on the 'net (even if they ALL are not completely true) are important. Each person needs to sift through the bullcrap to find what IS true. Does that take some work, absolutely. However, this does not mean that everyone should make up their own truth. Rather, sift through that which is false to find the truth. Yes, this requires absolute truth, which I do believe exists regardless of the fact that people don't want to accept that view. For if I believe there is absolute truth, there must be that which is untrue that I must condemn myself for. That's why
I'm sure to be flamed for this post, but I think it is fundamentally, absolutely foolish to think that being spoon fed with one brand of 'the story' is a good thing.
Very interesting point, and a good reason for this type of technology to be used. But I, like many/.'ers, really dislike/distrust the idea that you never find out about what Earthlink or other companies are sending back to their servers until after someone digs through their code. I've only ever seen a few programs that actually explain up front what security issues are involved in using their software, AND how to protect yourself.
I wanted to try the free Earthlink service about a year ago, and when I installed it, it automatically installed their IE5.0 browser over top of what I already had. I was pissed! Their install program never asked me if I wanted to do that. To this day, that old computer of mine has the crappy Earthlink browser installed. I never use it, but I also haven't figured out a way to get rid of it other than a complete reworking of the registry (not a good idea!) to make sure I've irradicated Earthlink crap.
I agree with your assessment of our current economic and technological situation. The internet, more so than just a 'web browser' was the real innovation here. Just like Henry Ford first began mass production of the automobile, everyone wanted to be part of the revolution, devoloped all kinds of gadgets that went no where, and everything was a mess for awhile. Same thing with TV, and other 'revolutionary' technologies that have been invented over the ages. Lots of useless junk abounds early in a new tech's evolution.
So sure, we're bound to have economic slowdown, and maybe some technological slowdown to a more consistent growth rate, but it's not going away. And I highly doubt the DMCA or other craziness aimed at controlling the new technology known as the internet will really do much to stifle its growth. P2P, digital copies of copyrighted material, and other sorts of current issues will not go away. The question is, which country/region/group will most effectively embrace the new technology and let it grow. You may remember that the printing press was bad for the Catholic church back in the old days, as it allowed the masses to have their own copies of the Bible which the Catholic church wished to have strict control of who had and didn't have such info. Obviously, that didn't work, and it ended up helping form the USA. So the more the RIAA and laws like the DMCA try to restrict all this new tech, the more they set our country up for failure.
"Those who forget the past, are doomed to repeat it." - (I forget who said this first, but it's a famous quote.) -- Sorry if I went a little off topic, just my opinions on the state of this new technology.
If you don't send them dead trees, they don't think you vote.
Cmdr, what up? All the energy required to power the web, my computer, etc, certainly amounts to a lot of dead trees, or fossil fuel, or nuclear waste. So in a way, just sending email isn't being 'conservative' of the environment anyway. Plus, the written word on paper always says more than an electronic message shot off to whomever you want. Sending snail mail means you took some serious time to sit down and write/type it out and then put it in the mail. And W. already announced he isn't sending email anymore due to privacy concerns, so I think snail mail is still the way to go to be heard in this country.
Have you ever seen a National Enquirer magazine in the grocery store? Are you trying to tell me that the picture of George Bush Sr. walking next to an alien on said magazine several years ago was not doctored? They were trying to sell innocent slobs on the fact that they had 'inside evidence' of the then Pres. negotiating with space aliens based on the picture on the cover. Seems like the same thing as what M$ has done.
Yeah, I know they haven't sued anyone yet. They've still got 3 years to go before it would be worth their while.:)
Besides, suing people over patent and copyright infringement seems to be the new,new, NEW economy these days. I'm going to invest in some it myself I think!
Looks like M$ beat me to my own idea! Patent something, wait five years, then sue! I knew I should have patented that stupid idea. Give 'em a few years, then the lawsuits over polling on the web don't seem so frivolous and it's easier to contend that it has cost M$ lost revenue.
After all of today's talk about litigation and the US's out of control legal system, this article just makes sense.
I think I'm just going to start suing unspecified individuals, companies, and governments for unspecified, anonymous, unsubstantiated defamatory internet postings, news articles, laws, and other anonymous annoying things in my life. I can become a millionaire too!
You don't have freedom, you have socialism; where the government takes 50% of your paycheck to pay for social programs that I wouldn't approve of. No thanks. I'll just keep trying to yell at my politicians louder here in the USA.
On the other hand, you do have lots o topless beaches and finely crafted brews....
Ok, I admit that I am a rather lazy person, but this crap has GOT TO STOP! As CmdrTaco proposed earlier, we have got to start writing our Representatives. I'm going home tonight and writing all my city, state, and federal representatives about this BullS#!7 and how badly I want something done to restore what's left of this country. The legal system was meant to provide justice to everyone, not a steady paycheck to litigation companies, of all things!
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Because during the most Napster use where all kinds of 'illegal' copyrighted songs were being traded, the music industry was actually increasing sales. How can they prove that this was hurting them or the artists? They cannot. The argument boils down to the RIAA being greedy and wanting a little more money than they already have, therefore they try to stick to the letter of the law rather than its intent. The intent of copyright law was to protect the creator of that which is copyrighted so that they receive their just rewards. Now if music sales were increasing WHILE Napster use was also increasing, you cannot argue that the copyrighters were not receiving their just reward. At best they were not receiving as much of a bonus check in the mail, but nonetheless, they were receiving more than before Napster use.
In the end, if we as a nation try to stick to the letter of the law in all gray areas (like the Napster debate), rather than trying to interepret the intent of the law, we are sure to fail, and in our failure, other nations will pick up where we left off and zoom past us in their freedom and quality of life.
As for the "political speak", I think it's just part of the jargon that politicians are used to speaking. There's a million acronyms in the tech industry, and you would expect any programmer to be called a geek when spouting such acronyms to his non-programmer friends. So take the form in which he replied with a grain of salt and realize it's more "business speak" than pandering for votes.
Point well spoken. I think also that if you'll notice the third part of that article where they played the "Truth or Dare" game, although they were just talking about sexual acts that they wished to perform, some of them actually went through with, or had already gone through with, performing them. I'm betting this played a role in tearing the company apart in the end. If the thoughts are dwelled upon, they become a 'sin', and obviously some carried their thoughts out, and others did not. I can't imagine a workplace where everyone was shackin' up every now and then. It would make for plenty of ugly rumors and discrimination in the workplace when it was as rampant as it seems to have been at Wizards. I can understand office romance, but keep the sordid details at home.
And my bit of paranoia for the day:
Why do they keep saying how 'secure and private' the log files you send them are? Can't they just trace the IP that sent the log right back to the company and/or individual who owns the IP (unless of course it's a dynamic IP being assigned)? Not that they would want to do so, but let's just stop advertising privacy. There is no privacy on the net. It's like streaking thru a crowded marketplace; not many people notice, but those that do get to see the whole deal.
I think if you will notice, there is a link to the correct 'FrontPage' at the top of the window. If you think you're 'hacking' their site you're wrong. All you're doing is changing what is displayed upon access of the main page. Big deal.
Since when has it been a good idea to explicitly trust anyone with utter confidence that they are infallible?
HAHAHA! Anyone notice the 'Valid for US residents only' disclaimer at the bottom right of the target?! That target would have to be 40 acres for Mir to even have a chance of hitting it, and yet they still have to put a disclaimer on there. That cracks me up!
For one, he runs a local Linux server which auto-assigns IP's to all the machines as they connect. He also made sure to call his workgroup 'workgroup', since that's the default Windows setting and most people don't know how to change it. He also sends out an email about 2 weeks prior, with all the 'rules' for the party. That way, everyone knows which games will be played, what time to come, *exactly* what hardware to bring, etc. Our biggest party so far involved 10 people (all playing!). Five in the dining room of the house, 5 in the basement.
By the way, if you're thinking of doing this, make sure you have lots of fans and windows available. 10 machines + 1 server in a house make for an awfully warm house. :)
As for this GearGrip, I don't really see the need for it, as it's a short hike to lug my CPU into my car, then back out of it and into the house. What I need is a cheap, large (19"), high res flat screen monitor. That's the back breaker when it comes to LAN parties.
The above article indicates the loss of Palms as part of this internet appliance shake-out. I knew that companies would soon realize how frivolous too much of this stuff was. Palms are great and all, but now they have to discontinue them due to the market being saturated by gadgets that not everyone needs or wants.
I really like the refrigerator that dialed the internet to order its own food idea. That's rather lame, considering I get different kinds of food every time I go grocery shopping. Maybe it would be sort of helpful to a family that routinely gets milk, eggs, cheese, etc. but only if it's a standard feature, and not an additional $300 to the price tag. Besides, who wants to admin their refrigerator?
I didn't see Blair Witch specifically because it was so hyped before it came out. At first when I heard about it, I thought, "well that sounds cool". But once all the hype started coming I figured it probably wouldn't be worth my time. And I'm glad I never saw it, from what my friends told me 'bout it. So the internet hype did nothing for me. I'm much more prone to go see something that actually is proven to be a good flik (by word of mouth from co-workers and friends) than to rush into believing a bunch of hype from those pushing their product. If I based my decisions on hype, I'd be buying every last piece of M$ software I could get my hands on! :)
I realize copyright infringement is wrong and for the uninformed, this was an attempt at hilarity.
Are you joking?! I've stumbled across banner ads that are way out of line while just looking for computer equipment and games that do not have any such crap associated with them. You must not use the internet much if you think that is the case. Just watch a movie or TV, you'll stumble across some form of outright ludeness without even realizing it's coming!
Well, I think you're right about the original movie actually being better overall than the TV mini-series. I never have liked TV mini-series because of the poor acting and generally less well done overall production of the movie/show. I guess I'll go rent the original movie first, then maybe move on to the mini-series.
Ahhh, I forgot, certain movie houses still haven't released DVD's yet because of copyright infringement fears (hence no LucasArts stuff yet :( ). I guess that spills over into the network sitcoms that Fox owns, like The Simpsons. Bummer.
As for releasing TV series on DVD, anyone know why networks haven't yet? Is it to increase re-run viewership? I would buy every episode of M*A*S*H* and The Simpsons in a heartbeat, and I know plenty of friends who would do the same. Leave it up to annoying corporate profit mongers!
Using your logic, you would be REQUIRED to agree that those who have no problem with being a psycopathic racial biggot killing machine, are perfectly ok living in society and should not be jailed or punished because they may believe this to be their own truth. And you cannot judge whether or not they believe that killing and racism is true and good, because you are not them, and if you judged them then you would be forcing your 'truth' upon them. People who believe relativism is the way to go, do not think through to the conclusion of what that argument means for all people in a logical way.
The reason multiple information sources on the 'net (even if they ALL are not completely true) are important. Each person needs to sift through the bullcrap to find what IS true. Does that take some work, absolutely. However, this does not mean that everyone should make up their own truth. Rather, sift through that which is false to find the truth. Yes, this requires absolute truth, which I do believe exists regardless of the fact that people don't want to accept that view. For if I believe there is absolute truth, there must be that which is untrue that I must condemn myself for. That's why
I'm sure to be flamed for this post, but I think it is fundamentally, absolutely foolish to think that being spoon fed with one brand of 'the story' is a good thing.
I wanted to try the free Earthlink service about a year ago, and when I installed it, it automatically installed their IE5.0 browser over top of what I already had. I was pissed! Their install program never asked me if I wanted to do that. To this day, that old computer of mine has the crappy Earthlink browser installed. I never use it, but I also haven't figured out a way to get rid of it other than a complete reworking of the registry (not a good idea!) to make sure I've irradicated Earthlink crap.
So sure, we're bound to have economic slowdown, and maybe some technological slowdown to a more consistent growth rate, but it's not going away. And I highly doubt the DMCA or other craziness aimed at controlling the new technology known as the internet will really do much to stifle its growth. P2P, digital copies of copyrighted material, and other sorts of current issues will not go away. The question is, which country/region/group will most effectively embrace the new technology and let it grow. You may remember that the printing press was bad for the Catholic church back in the old days, as it allowed the masses to have their own copies of the Bible which the Catholic church wished to have strict control of who had and didn't have such info. Obviously, that didn't work, and it ended up helping form the USA. So the more the RIAA and laws like the DMCA try to restrict all this new tech, the more they set our country up for failure.
"Those who forget the past, are doomed to repeat it." - (I forget who said this first, but it's a famous quote.) -- Sorry if I went a little off topic, just my opinions on the state of this new technology.
Cmdr, what up? All the energy required to power the web, my computer, etc, certainly amounts to a lot of dead trees, or fossil fuel, or nuclear waste. So in a way, just sending email isn't being 'conservative' of the environment anyway. Plus, the written word on paper always says more than an electronic message shot off to whomever you want. Sending snail mail means you took some serious time to sit down and write/type it out and then put it in the mail. And W. already announced he isn't sending email anymore due to privacy concerns, so I think snail mail is still the way to go to be heard in this country.
Have you ever seen a National Enquirer magazine in the grocery store? Are you trying to tell me that the picture of George Bush Sr. walking next to an alien on said magazine several years ago was not doctored? They were trying to sell innocent slobs on the fact that they had 'inside evidence' of the then Pres. negotiating with space aliens based on the picture on the cover. Seems like the same thing as what M$ has done.
Besides, suing people over patent and copyright infringement seems to be the new,new, NEW economy these days. I'm going to invest in some it myself I think!
Looks like M$ beat me to my own idea! Patent something, wait five years, then sue! I knew I should have patented that stupid idea. Give 'em a few years, then the lawsuits over polling on the web don't seem so frivolous and it's easier to contend that it has cost M$ lost revenue.
After all of today's talk about litigation and the US's out of control legal system, this article just makes sense.
I think I'm just going to start suing unspecified individuals, companies, and governments for unspecified, anonymous, unsubstantiated defamatory internet postings, news articles, laws, and other anonymous annoying things in my life. I can become a millionaire too!
On the other hand, you do have lots o topless beaches and finely crafted brews....
P.S. Who wants to move to Sealand with me?