I've been thrilled with Rhapsody. You may not be able to burn to CD without an extra 79 cents per track, but they haven't stopped up the analog hole.
You're thrilled at buying - sorry, licensing - copy-crippled malware, and justify it by saying that they haven't stopped you doing something that they are unable to stop?
Wow, how happy would you be if you could just download full fat mp3s for the same price?
What with the threat of being sued by the RIAA for sharing music, I was considering just switching to buying pirated CDs at my local market. I'm sure buying pirated CDs probably helps support evil mobsters, but... wait, sorry, "pirated" was redundant in that last sentence.
Producer decides that he needs to build a bigger swimming pool. This can happen for many reasons, but most often because he needs somewhere to bury all the dead hookers he's been stashing for Ben Affleck.
Producer approaches other producers who need bigger swimming pools. They all agree that they should have bigger swimming pools, but they need to find some rubes to pay for them.
Producers look at what films were popular last summer, and decide to do exactly the same, but with more explosions and titties.
Producer picks either a director, scriptwriter or actor that was in a profitable film last summer, but who hasn't done anything since, and allows the "talent" to plead for the chance to get in just one more movie before everyone forgets who they are.
Producer instructs "talent" that they'll be doing exactly the same as they did last summer, only with more explosions and titties. Talent gibbers and moans in pleasure.
With one talent safely secured, Producer approaches increasingly less desparate cast and crew, and gets them onboard one by one. This is much like the communist "domino theory" of the 1950's, only with more explosions and titties.
With some talent secured, Producer now approaches studio and sells them the film based on it being exactly like last year's film. Studio demands something more. Producer promises more explosions and titties. Cocaine and hookers all round!
Studio approaches theatre chains and offers them the movie. Theatre chains demand to know why they should take it. It's explained to them that it's exactly the same as an already profitable movie, only more so. Theatre chains commit to taking it.
The movie is made. Does it suck? Who cares! The chains have already agreed to take it. The Producer gets his new swimming pool, Ben Affleck's dead hookers get buried, the studio gets to buy the "coffee" output of a small Central American country. Everybody wins!
The movie opens to crappy reviews. The theatre chains have to suck it up, because they've already paid for it. People go and watch it anyway, because it's the least bad thing on, and they've got used to making excuses. The movie makes money. The cycle of life continues.
This doesn't always happen. Sometimes movies go into production before they've been pre-sold to theatre chains. Those are the movies destined for "straight to video/DVD" status, although very occasionally, a small film is picked up by theatre chains to fill a hole where a pre-sold movie hasn't made it out of post-production in time, usually because some snotty director mistakenly believes that it matters that it sucks. When this happens, we tell ourselves that the system works, and that it's vitally important that it continue to work in just this precise way, for ever and ever, otherwise society will fall apart, cannibalism will ensue, cats and dogs living together...
And nobody ever asks what happened to all the music hall performers when movies came out. Nobody cares what became of the movie theatre pianists when talkies appeared. We don't recall the MPAA saying that the VCR would spell the death knell for the movie industry. We don't wonder whether movie theatre box office takes might be being transmuted into DVD and home theatre sales. We don't dare to consider that people will spend exactly the same amount of their disposable income on entertainment, but that they'll spend it in different ways.
We just accept the line that the system works, that it's always worked, and that it must go on working exactly the same way - whatever the MPAA declares that to be - until the end of time. Or it will be cats and dogs, living together...
>I seem to remember Britney spears making millons and millions for her first CD, the those shitty boybands doing the same
You misremember. They were loaned millions, most of which was recouped in production costs. Any real money they made was from whoring themselves independently.
Also, remind me who Britney was again? What boy bands? Can you remember the names of the guys in them? What are they doing now? Opening malls? Stacking shelves in malls? Giving handjobs for crack?
A very, very few artists make money at this, but they don't make it from their labels. And there's no reason that they should, given that the vast majority of them are dancing meat puppets doing work-for-hire. Session musicians and backing singers make more over their careers (net, directly) than a typical boy band clone.
Ticket prices are set by theatres, as are concession prices. Studios charge theatres per reel, not per seat. If studios charge less, they get less. There's no upside. Theatres are limited in the number of seats that they have. If they lower their prices, they get more full houses, but less per full house. They also need to hire more staff. There's no clear upside to them having full houses all the time. If there were, do you think that none of them would have realised this already?
Talent prices are set by the talent. Go ahead and offer Ben Affleck $50,000 per movie. Unless he used to sleep on your couch (Kevin Smith), he'll laugh in your face then date rape your sister. Granted, I wouldn't pay Affleck $10, but some people demonstrably like watching him.
And that's the problem. People are dumb. Understand that. They know what they like, and it's more of what they saw last year. And here's a dirty little secret for you: theatre chains commit to taking reels from studios months or years in advance. They don't wait for the reviews. They just look at who's involved - actors, director, producers, scriptwriters - and they make their decisions based on that. They only care about how good your last movie was, not your current one.
If Affleck's in a film that makes its money back, then he becomes worth that money to a studio, because he ensures that they can pre-sell the film, which gives them more time to cook the books. It all works rather well.
You should really do some basic research into your subject that ain't broke before deciding how to fix it.
By violating the terms of the GPL, SCO is breaching the copyrights held by the FSF in other parts of the linux distro that SCO continues to distribute. As they keep saying, the GPL is based on copyright. Well, let's see them make it clear that you can't just rip off FSF copyrighted code.
Also, the onus on me isn't to prove anything, because you is a cunt.
Building a better tomorrow by cloning obsolete engines!
Given that you need a copy of the original game to play it, and given that wine has been around for a good few years now, this is a vanity project. Good for them, but it just reenforces the impression that open source is largely imitative rather than innovative.
CAPPS II will [reduce] the number of people who [are] are misidentified as potential terrorists.
How can you correctly identify "potential" terrorists? This is meaningless "brown alert" blurb. You either are or you aren't. What exactly is the penalty for being one? How can you prove that you're not a "potential" terrorist? Is a "potential" terrorist different from a "suspected" terrorist?
Look, it's a perfectly simple proposition. How many actual terrorists has CAPP I caught, and how many actual terrorists will CAPP II catch? "Potential" my huge hairy arse.
My experience is that commercial outfits steal GPL code without fear and without hesitation. I've seen it in my previous three jobs. The first time I saw it happen, I was thanked through clenched teeth for pointing it out, but the code stayed there, they just made sure to change the copyright and remove the license terms. The second time, I was told to shut up, and further that I was likely to be sued by my own employer for Obstruction of Evil if any action was taken against them as a result of me blabbing. I got smarter after that.
The GPL is regarded as a fucking joke by small to mid sized companies (and I'm talking multinationals here). Sometimes it's viewed with such contempt that they don't even bother removing the copyright or license terms.
I'm sorry if you believe differently, but your absense of such experience doesn't invalidate mine.
When a lawyer says that what he just said doesn't constitute legal advice, what message do you take from that? It seems pretty clear to me. If you think you're right, put your responsibility where your mouth is.
>Proof is, there have been scores of GNU GPL violations, and not one of the violators has taken his chances on court.
List them. Make sure the list the ones that the EFF don't pursue and don't tell you about. Wait, how would you know about them?
We need a test case. Why are they letting SCO pick the terms?
What do we actually need from this aircraft? What's the opponent going to be?
Do we need a fast interceptor? Why? Against what? Airliners? Heck, F-4's (yes 4, not 14) could fill that role. Enemy fighters or bombers? What war are we going to be in where we're having to intercept incoming aircraft? Do we think China is planning to invade us? Why do we need the Raptor and a nukular deterrent?
Do we need a bomber? Sure, and we've already got one. It's called the B52, and for all the masturbation over F117s and B2s, it's still by far the most useful weapon we have at pounding the crap out of the evil oil hoarding sand niggers that will be our opponents for the next half century. It's not stealthy, but how many got shot down over Iraq? Can you guess why that is?
It's because the USA isn't dumb enough to pick fights that it won't win. We can pulverise any opponent to our own schedule. Who's going to stop us? Do we all remember USKA aircraft bombing the crap out of ground-to-ground targets for weeks before we declared a start to hostilities in 1993? All while the Eurotrash and UN dithered and wrung their hands and asked if war was necessary, while everyone (us, them, the sand niggers) knew that it had already started.
Air superiority then, to gain that overwhelming advantage. Well, sure, but it's missiles that kill planes, not vectored thrust engines. What's the Raptor's agility going to be used against? And more to the point, why? What's a quarter of a billion dollar (plus the rest) machine doing taking on ten million dollar MiGs? Better to use unmanned drones, effectively sabot for AAM. Using Raptors is an an insane proposition, you simply can't afford to lose an aircraft under circumstances like that.
And that's what it comes down to, really. The Raptor is designed to be unkillable (as usual). It's the ultimate machine (until the next one). It's the weapon to end all wars (again). It's the weapon that the military want, not the tool that they need.
The Raptor is just the latest step in the project to make wars bloodless in every way that counts, i.e. zero US casualties. Who cares how many sand niggers we kill off camera, as long as not one American serviceman buys the farm. Hey, dollars are just tax money, but dead air grunts mean lower approval ratings.
What's all this got to do with the software? Well, I believe that what we're seeing is the result of the military being allowed to run wild. Hell, it doesn't matter if it don't work, because they don't need it. Just throw another billion dollars at it, and wait another few years. What's the hurry? All it's going to do is to fly around at airshows and send a message to all the uppity sand niggers that we'll pay whatever we need to kill as many of them as we need to to get their oil.
If we needed the Raptor, it would have been in service years ago. As it stands, it's too expensive to kill, and it'll never be used, so what on earth is the incentive to complete it? We've told the R&D guys that they can take as long as they want, but when they're done, they're out of a job. Nice plan.
What is the challenger for the Eagle in the next ten years? You're claiming knowledge, demonstrate it. I'm not sure what the Raptor is designed to fight, unless it's the Eurofighter.
Your point about the Hustler is irrelevent, except in as much as it demonstrates that if your primary criteria is to stay on the bleeding edge, that you get locked into a constant and expensive state of upgrades.
The thing is, I don't believe that we're at war, I don't believe that we've always been at war, and frankly I don't believe that we've got the balls to take on anyone more dangerous than a bunch of sand niggers throwing obselete crap randomly into the air.
Again, what is the - actual, not hypothetical - opponent that the Raptor is required to fight?
But just occasionally I wonder who the fuck half these people are that Slashdot stalks with such regularity. Cringely who? Cringely Whiplash? Or am I thinking of something else?
Who'd win in a fight between a karate black belt and a hopscotch champion? Ahahahah, neither, because with great power comes great responsibility, and so they would not fight.
Well, let's shake the jar and make them fight, because I'm tired of reading mealy mouthed articles about how all mighty the GPL is by law speaking guys with 2 years of practice, and a huge disclaimer stating that they don't believe what they're saying.
Moglen is all talk. When he proactively starts putting the GPL to the test where it matters, in court, I'll reconsider.
Slashdot Mirror
Yoink.
I've been thrilled with Rhapsody. You may not be able to burn to CD without an extra 79 cents per track, but they haven't stopped up the analog hole.
You're thrilled at buying - sorry, licensing - copy-crippled malware, and justify it by saying that they haven't stopped you doing something that they are unable to stop?
Wow, how happy would you be if you could just download full fat mp3s for the same price?
Hey, fuck you, buddy. I used to listen to NSYNC when they were underground.
What with the threat of being sued by the RIAA for sharing music, I was considering just switching to buying pirated CDs at my local market. I'm sure buying pirated CDs probably helps support evil mobsters, but... wait, sorry, "pirated" was redundant in that last sentence.
This doesn't always happen. Sometimes movies go into production before they've been pre-sold to theatre chains. Those are the movies destined for "straight to video/DVD" status, although very occasionally, a small film is picked up by theatre chains to fill a hole where a pre-sold movie hasn't made it out of post-production in time, usually because some snotty director mistakenly believes that it matters that it sucks. When this happens, we tell ourselves that the system works, and that it's vitally important that it continue to work in just this precise way, for ever and ever, otherwise society will fall apart, cannibalism will ensue, cats and dogs living together...
And nobody ever asks what happened to all the music hall performers when movies came out. Nobody cares what became of the movie theatre pianists when talkies appeared. We don't recall the MPAA saying that the VCR would spell the death knell for the movie industry. We don't wonder whether movie theatre box office takes might be being transmuted into DVD and home theatre sales. We don't dare to consider that people will spend exactly the same amount of their disposable income on entertainment, but that they'll spend it in different ways.
We just accept the line that the system works, that it's always worked, and that it must go on working exactly the same way - whatever the MPAA declares that to be - until the end of time. Or it will be cats and dogs, living together...
>Question, really.... How can one get infected by playing an MP3 or a DivX file? Neither have macros or anything executable in them. Or Do they?
Question: if you don't know, why do you assume they don't? Just because the MPAA told you they do?
Dear god, you have a sense of perspective, context and history. What the hell are you doing in the movie business?
Also, what's the real emergency code for sneaking a dead hooker out of Ben Affleck's trailer?
>I seem to remember Britney spears making millons and millions for her first CD, the those shitty boybands doing the same
You misremember. They were loaned millions, most of which was recouped in production costs. Any real money they made was from whoring themselves independently.
Also, remind me who Britney was again? What boy bands? Can you remember the names of the guys in them? What are they doing now? Opening malls? Stacking shelves in malls? Giving handjobs for crack?
A very, very few artists make money at this, but they don't make it from their labels. And there's no reason that they should, given that the vast majority of them are dancing meat puppets doing work-for-hire. Session musicians and backing singers make more over their careers (net, directly) than a typical boy band clone.
Sorry, you fail the cluecheck.
Ticket prices are set by theatres, as are concession prices. Studios charge theatres per reel, not per seat. If studios charge less, they get less. There's no upside. Theatres are limited in the number of seats that they have. If they lower their prices, they get more full houses, but less per full house. They also need to hire more staff. There's no clear upside to them having full houses all the time. If there were, do you think that none of them would have realised this already?
Talent prices are set by the talent. Go ahead and offer Ben Affleck $50,000 per movie. Unless he used to sleep on your couch (Kevin Smith), he'll laugh in your face then date rape your sister. Granted, I wouldn't pay Affleck $10, but some people demonstrably like watching him.
And that's the problem. People are dumb. Understand that. They know what they like, and it's more of what they saw last year. And here's a dirty little secret for you: theatre chains commit to taking reels from studios months or years in advance. They don't wait for the reviews. They just look at who's involved - actors, director, producers, scriptwriters - and they make their decisions based on that. They only care about how good your last movie was, not your current one.
If Affleck's in a film that makes its money back, then he becomes worth that money to a studio, because he ensures that they can pre-sell the film, which gives them more time to cook the books. It all works rather well.
You should really do some basic research into your subject that ain't broke before deciding how to fix it.
You mean it doesn't run on Symbian? Pah, useless piece of crap. ;-P
So, you can't cite a single example of an opponent that exists even at the design stage that the F15 can't roundly defeat? Thanks.
So, you can't cite a single example of an opponent that exists even at the design stage that the F15 can't roundly defeat? Thanks.
By violating the terms of the GPL, SCO is breaching the copyrights held by the FSF in other parts of the linux distro that SCO continues to distribute. As they keep saying, the GPL is based on copyright. Well, let's see them make it clear that you can't just rip off FSF copyrighted code.
Also, the onus on me isn't to prove anything, because you is a cunt.
Building a better tomorrow by cloning obsolete engines!
Given that you need a copy of the original game to play it, and given that wine has been around for a good few years now, this is a vanity project. Good for them, but it just reenforces the impression that open source is largely imitative rather than innovative.
CAPPS II will [reduce] the number of people who [are] are misidentified as potential terrorists.
How can you correctly identify "potential" terrorists? This is meaningless "brown alert" blurb. You either are or you aren't. What exactly is the penalty for being one? How can you prove that you're not a "potential" terrorist? Is a "potential" terrorist different from a "suspected" terrorist?
Look, it's a perfectly simple proposition. How many actual terrorists has CAPP I caught, and how many actual terrorists will CAPP II catch? "Potential" my huge hairy arse.
My experience is that commercial outfits steal GPL code without fear and without hesitation. I've seen it in my previous three jobs. The first time I saw it happen, I was thanked through clenched teeth for pointing it out, but the code stayed there, they just made sure to change the copyright and remove the license terms. The second time, I was told to shut up, and further that I was likely to be sued by my own employer for Obstruction of Evil if any action was taken against them as a result of me blabbing. I got smarter after that.
The GPL is regarded as a fucking joke by small to mid sized companies (and I'm talking multinationals here). Sometimes it's viewed with such contempt that they don't even bother removing the copyright or license terms.
I'm sorry if you believe differently, but your absense of such experience doesn't invalidate mine.
When a lawyer says that what he just said doesn't constitute legal advice, what message do you take from that? It seems pretty clear to me. If you think you're right, put your responsibility where your mouth is.
>Proof is, there have been scores of GNU GPL violations, and not one of the violators has taken his chances on court.
List them. Make sure the list the ones that the EFF don't pursue and don't tell you about. Wait, how would you know about them?
We need a test case. Why are they letting SCO pick the terms?
What do we actually need from this aircraft? What's the opponent going to be?
Do we need a fast interceptor? Why? Against what? Airliners? Heck, F-4's (yes 4, not 14) could fill that role. Enemy fighters or bombers? What war are we going to be in where we're having to intercept incoming aircraft? Do we think China is planning to invade us? Why do we need the Raptor and a nukular deterrent?
Do we need a bomber? Sure, and we've already got one. It's called the B52, and for all the masturbation over F117s and B2s, it's still by far the most useful weapon we have at pounding the crap out of the evil oil hoarding sand niggers that will be our opponents for the next half century. It's not stealthy, but how many got shot down over Iraq? Can you guess why that is?
It's because the USA isn't dumb enough to pick fights that it won't win. We can pulverise any opponent to our own schedule. Who's going to stop us? Do we all remember USKA aircraft bombing the crap out of ground-to-ground targets for weeks before we declared a start to hostilities in 1993? All while the Eurotrash and UN dithered and wrung their hands and asked if war was necessary, while everyone (us, them, the sand niggers) knew that it had already started.
Air superiority then, to gain that overwhelming advantage. Well, sure, but it's missiles that kill planes, not vectored thrust engines. What's the Raptor's agility going to be used against? And more to the point, why? What's a quarter of a billion dollar (plus the rest) machine doing taking on ten million dollar MiGs? Better to use unmanned drones, effectively sabot for AAM. Using Raptors is an an insane proposition, you simply can't afford to lose an aircraft under circumstances like that.
And that's what it comes down to, really. The Raptor is designed to be unkillable (as usual). It's the ultimate machine (until the next one). It's the weapon to end all wars (again). It's the weapon that the military want, not the tool that they need.
The Raptor is just the latest step in the project to make wars bloodless in every way that counts, i.e. zero US casualties. Who cares how many sand niggers we kill off camera, as long as not one American serviceman buys the farm. Hey, dollars are just tax money, but dead air grunts mean lower approval ratings.
What's all this got to do with the software? Well, I believe that what we're seeing is the result of the military being allowed to run wild. Hell, it doesn't matter if it don't work, because they don't need it. Just throw another billion dollars at it, and wait another few years. What's the hurry? All it's going to do is to fly around at airshows and send a message to all the uppity sand niggers that we'll pay whatever we need to kill as many of them as we need to to get their oil.
If we needed the Raptor, it would have been in service years ago. As it stands, it's too expensive to kill, and it'll never be used, so what on earth is the incentive to complete it? We've told the R&D guys that they can take as long as they want, but when they're done, they're out of a job. Nice plan.
What is the challenger for the Eagle in the next ten years? You're claiming knowledge, demonstrate it. I'm not sure what the Raptor is designed to fight, unless it's the Eurofighter.
Your point about the Hustler is irrelevent, except in as much as it demonstrates that if your primary criteria is to stay on the bleeding edge, that you get locked into a constant and expensive state of upgrades.
The thing is, I don't believe that we're at war, I don't believe that we've always been at war, and frankly I don't believe that we've got the balls to take on anyone more dangerous than a bunch of sand niggers throwing obselete crap randomly into the air.
Again, what is the - actual, not hypothetical - opponent that the Raptor is required to fight?
SDL, OGL, wxWindows, write to the game APIs, not the underlying OS.
Bah, Nethack is just a shoddy Diablo clone. ;-P
Sure, because the absolute disclaimer of warranty and liability and no-money-back-not-never clause really keeps the vendors honest.
But just occasionally I wonder who the fuck half these people are that Slashdot stalks with such regularity. Cringely who? Cringely Whiplash? Or am I thinking of something else?
Who'd win in a fight between a karate black belt and a hopscotch champion? Ahahahah, neither, because with great power comes great responsibility, and so they would not fight.
Well, let's shake the jar and make them fight, because I'm tired of reading mealy mouthed articles about how all mighty the GPL is by law speaking guys with 2 years of practice, and a huge disclaimer stating that they don't believe what they're saying.
Moglen is all talk. When he proactively starts putting the GPL to the test where it matters, in court, I'll reconsider.
Oh my gosh, he spent 2 years actually practicing law rather than just talking about it. Consider me chastised.
He has tenure, not experience.