Write the license key on the CD you back it up to.
Most downloadable software I've gotten just has a simple "license key" mechanism. Most everything from smaller distributors, as well as a fair amount from the bigger companies. It's probably not worth it, unless you're the high-value Autodesks or Quarks of the world, to have to deal with maintaining license servers, when a static or algorithmic key will work decently well until such time as pirating the years'-old version of the software is a moot point anyhow.
There's also the fact that 20-30 year old music has had quite a bit of time to let the cream rise to the top (or barring the cream, at least the most well known). I've found that I can probably sing along to 3/4 of the stuff on a classic-rock station, and that's probably not extraordinary. When you consider the sheer amount of music that was produced in those years, the classic-rock radio stations (or most other genre stations, for that matter) are only giving a sliver subset... there was much more "music of the times".
Yeah, but what if they're not on Skype or near a phone, but they're on IRC? What if they communicate by smoke signals? The no-smoking office is oppressive and hinders workflow!
Really, though, if enough of your contacts would be using Skype but not telephone or email, chances are that your office would be one of those supporting Skype.
Why is skype targeted? How does that lead to more uncontrolled data exchange than if I start uploading or downloading data with FTP which they probably don't include in the ban.
Because, chances are, far fewer people send those amounts of FTP data on as regular a basis.
OTOH, if a majority of calls going out of your office are local or within the bounds of whatever telephone service plan your company subscribes to, it might not be worth the bandwidth hit and other associated problems and uncertainties to allow Skype.
That's great for the sake of completeness, but it does lend basis for criticism in that the average user of Wikipedia is going to utilize it in the manner of a static document, an encyclopedia, reading the current page and considering it definitive (and citing it to others as such as well). Structurally, ithere's no flaw, but on an interface level, more could be done to integrate previously edited content into the flow of the single page.
ICQ lost me just around v2000 or 2002. They lost the one good feature that kept me around (a very good chat logging interface) and replaced it with adver-crap that bloated the app and bogged down the system. Luckily, that's about the time Trillian came around... ICQ is just a protocol to me now.
They get some points for being the first, but they just seemed to have lost sight of the purpose of the app.
The thing of it is, though, with things like exit polling, it's nearly impossible to throw an election that isn't close, without arousing enough suspicion to recount the paper ballots.
I'd say the problem rests with radio. DJs that actually played music are replaced with talking heads and remotely-programmed playlists from the Central Office. The problem is that with radio regulation (and the underlying fact that there is only so much bandwidth between 88 and 108), broadcast is a nearly impossible arena for new players to break into, and assembly-line LCD radio, as sad as it is, has the competitive advantage.
Sure, there are new media out there, such as XM or Web radio, but they lack broadcast's "critical mass", so any buzz they might generate is a flicker at best. Broadcast, in its simplicity and 88-108 limitedness, does have the advantage of being a single-point resource for getting content you know is up to a certain standard. The problem is that radio stations have taken that to an extreme, producing lukewarm mush that won't revolt anyone enough to change the station, but as such lacks any meat or substance. On the other end, there's web radio or other alternative delivery: Edgier music, but the more involved method of delivery and the much smaller, more geographically diffuse market means that they'll rarely have radio's ability for listeners to converse over what they "heard on the radio", and word just won't get out in a big way.
A fair amount of people could really care less about finding higher quality music, once it reaches a certain acceptable threshold... it's just not their interest. As such, the simple delivery method, easy categorization, and common shared cultural references airplay music gives make a whole lot more value than something obscure that might have an edge on quality.
I've never quite understood this logic. When you want a specific song, you want that song. Not a similar song by some band you never heard of.
The trick is not wanting "that song". That's the whole idea behind boycotts or "voting with your wallet". It involves a bit of sacrifice or concious witholding on the idea that you're making them give up more from the transaction.
That said, I'd still like to see a "Virtual CD Burner" device that will fool apps into thinking it's a burner, then write out ISOs or maybe even MP3/WAV/etc from a CDDA disc.
Whine, whine, whine, war, war, war, oppression, oppression, oppression.
It's an old and simple concept, really. It's just the government backing up the idea of "If you didn't make it, then either go make something for yourself, or get permission from the thusly-skilled people who did."
I'll grant that the law does need some updating, with the advent of sampling and the use of insignificant snippets to make further creative-in-their-own-right compositions, and I suppose cumpolsory licensing schemes such as this are a step toward reform. It's actually a good thing -- instead of having to hunt for both the artist's terms and permission *and* a royalty to pay them off, you have the option of paying the various government-mandated rates, and the right is yours, without even needing to contact or consult the rightsholder. If that seems too steep for you, there's always the legwork route of just asking the artists or labels in question about better terms.
Although there is more music around today that people can't use, this is a result of the fact that there is just more music around today, less than a matter of more restriction on using music. A poster above mentioned that "artists used to be happy to hear their work played". I'd say a similar number of artists today would have much the same viewpoint as "back then". It's just that those aren't the major-label-superstars that seem to make up "all music" if you don't go looking. Granted, you might not find many that would support wholesale copying or Napsterization, but I personally have written and gotten permission from one band for Podcast interstitial play, and I know of one or two labels that allow that too. I don't doubt there are more out there, if you talk to the right people.
I bought a year of hosting and a domain name from superuser.net, just something to host a personal domain and emails. The place was just a fly-by-night budget host, I came to find out. But, they had a "99 and some nines" uptime guarantee, and a phone tech support line, so I bought in. It was cheap, but I ended up getting what I paid for, and less. About a month or two after the year was up, my site started going up and down on a regular basis. I found that the "tech support" phone number had gone from giving me an answering machine to giving me a "disconnected" message. Sure enough, the tech support number had disappeared from the page. Tech support emails were either blackholed or poorly answered.
Then, the big bomb hit. I know that SSH shell access isn't absolutely necessary to run a simple website, but I needed to run a few programs (ImageMagick and the like) and do some testing, management, and the like through a shell. When my shell access started coming up "denied", I started to get angry. Since letters addressed with ALL CAPITAL THREATS OF CUSTOMER LOSS OR RETRIBUTION, triple-CCed to "sales", "service", and "support" seemed to be the only thing that got through (trust me, I tried politer methods first), I sent off my trouble and heard back that "These features have been turned off because the server got hacked." These services were the ones listed in the product description... the ones that got me to buy in in the first place.
Well, long story short, I ended up transferring the domain (with excellent assistance by DotRegistrar, whom I still use). It was a bit of a hassle, since I'd stupidly abandoned the contact email for the domain name, but I got it worked out. Then, as a final goodbye, my site was unceremoniously terminated, not honoring the 99% uptime guarantee that should have given me a free month.
After some further research, I found out that the site has been noted for shoddy service and poor support, and "Derek" of Superuser has even been known to vigorously argue with folks, on other web sites and boards, who disparage the service.
From there, though, I stayed with DotRegistrar for the domain name. This was the company that Superuser used, but they were unaffiliated and quite helpful in recovering my domain name. For webspace, I went with Just-hosting. They're another budget shared-host setup, and I have had the not-unexpected shared-host downtimes every so often, but their technical support is quite good, they get it up and running... and often even relay what the problem was... and they were willing to accomadate my needs for extra domains, an alternate SMTP port (since my ISP blocks port 25), and working with me through the weirdness that some of my setups cause.
So, just to retierate-- Superuser.net: evil. Just-hosting.com and DotReg.com: recommended.
For example, if I take slashdot's RSS feed, often I find that the headlines aren't descriptive and I ended up clicking the link and just reading the story. Im not sure how that saved me any time then just going to slashdot.org and scrolling down and scanning the site.
I find it time-saving, if not useful. I have the RSS plugin for Trillian, so I can get a quick overview of the sites I like and hover over them for a preview. Although, in many cases, putting the whole story in is overkill, but a summary or leading paragraph can give enough information.
Well I would hope and pray that anyone who has ever tried to make $1 on the internet would see how stupid that is. Giving away content went out in 99 I think.
Must every technology be used or tailored for money-making? RSS costs little to implement, and with a heavy readership, can even be less load than HTML. Even given that there're surely ways to include RSS in a profitable venture, RSS-sans-profit still has a decent place as an option for publishers or readers.
Slashdot Mirror
Write the license key on the CD you back it up to.
Most downloadable software I've gotten just has a simple "license key" mechanism. Most everything from smaller distributors, as well as a fair amount from the bigger companies. It's probably not worth it, unless you're the high-value Autodesks or Quarks of the world, to have to deal with maintaining license servers, when a static or algorithmic key will work decently well until such time as pirating the years'-old version of the software is a moot point anyhow.
There's also the fact that 20-30 year old music has had quite a bit of time to let the cream rise to the top (or barring the cream, at least the most well known). I've found that I can probably sing along to 3/4 of the stuff on a classic-rock station, and that's probably not extraordinary. When you consider the sheer amount of music that was produced in those years, the classic-rock radio stations (or most other genre stations, for that matter) are only giving a sliver subset... there was much more "music of the times".
Did I just say "national and federal?"
Scratch. "National and international."
Actually, the Red Cross mark is one of the most "trademarked" symbols out there. Specific laws, both national and federal, cover its use.
Yeah, but what if they're not on Skype or near a phone, but they're on IRC? What if they communicate by smoke signals? The no-smoking office is oppressive and hinders workflow!
Really, though, if enough of your contacts would be using Skype but not telephone or email, chances are that your office would be one of those supporting Skype.
Why is skype targeted? How does that lead to more uncontrolled data exchange than if I start uploading or downloading data with FTP which they probably don't include in the ban.
Because, chances are, far fewer people send those amounts of FTP data on as regular a basis.
OTOH, if a majority of calls going out of your office are local or within the bounds of whatever telephone service plan your company subscribes to, it might not be worth the bandwidth hit and other associated problems and uncertainties to allow Skype.
That's great for the sake of completeness, but it does lend basis for criticism in that the average user of Wikipedia is going to utilize it in the manner of a static document, an encyclopedia, reading the current page and considering it definitive (and citing it to others as such as well). Structurally, ithere's no flaw, but on an interface level, more could be done to integrate previously edited content into the flow of the single page.
ICQ lost me just around v2000 or 2002. They lost the one good feature that kept me around (a very good chat logging interface) and replaced it with adver-crap that bloated the app and bogged down the system. Luckily, that's about the time Trillian came around... ICQ is just a protocol to me now.
They get some points for being the first, but they just seemed to have lost sight of the purpose of the app.
Oh, sure, burst my pessimistic naysaying bubble with reason and forethought, why don't you.
"Limit 1 per household."
If that's the case, you might have to declare the rebate as income, though.
(I, as well, am nothing even approximating a tax lawyer. Lovely day, isn't it?)
The profit's in licensing the stickers. Although, I agree, a retailer could just as easily apply their own snappily-labeled guarantee program.
I've seen this in the arcades... something with a flying bike. It cost a buck a play, though, so I don't think I actually ever went for it.
The thing of it is, though, with things like exit polling, it's nearly impossible to throw an election that isn't close, without arousing enough suspicion to recount the paper ballots.
Does FF give you a hug and a kiss when you get back from work? No.
So STFU and write an extension.
I'd say the problem rests with radio. DJs that actually played music are replaced with talking heads and remotely-programmed playlists from the Central Office. The problem is that with radio regulation (and the underlying fact that there is only so much bandwidth between 88 and 108), broadcast is a nearly impossible arena for new players to break into, and assembly-line LCD radio, as sad as it is, has the competitive advantage.
Sure, there are new media out there, such as XM or Web radio, but they lack broadcast's "critical mass", so any buzz they might generate is a flicker at best. Broadcast, in its simplicity and 88-108 limitedness, does have the advantage of being a single-point resource for getting content you know is up to a certain standard. The problem is that radio stations have taken that to an extreme, producing lukewarm mush that won't revolt anyone enough to change the station, but as such lacks any meat or substance. On the other end, there's web radio or other alternative delivery: Edgier music, but the more involved method of delivery and the much smaller, more geographically diffuse market means that they'll rarely have radio's ability for listeners to converse over what they "heard on the radio", and word just won't get out in a big way.
A fair amount of people could really care less about finding higher quality music, once it reaches a certain acceptable threshold... it's just not their interest. As such, the simple delivery method, easy categorization, and common shared cultural references airplay music gives make a whole lot more value than something obscure that might have an edge on quality.
I've never quite understood this logic. When you want a specific song, you want that song. Not a similar song by some band you never heard of.
The trick is not wanting "that song". That's the whole idea behind boycotts or "voting with your wallet". It involves a bit of sacrifice or concious witholding on the idea that you're making them give up more from the transaction.
Most people won't be able to notice higher fidelity
Who needs to when you've got marketing to tell you it's there? (And it sounds even better on my BOSE Wave!)
That said, I'd still like to see a "Virtual CD Burner" device that will fool apps into thinking it's a burner, then write out ISOs or maybe even MP3/WAV/etc from a CDDA disc.
Whine, whine, whine, war, war, war, oppression, oppression, oppression.
It's an old and simple concept, really. It's just the government backing up the idea of "If you didn't make it, then either go make something for yourself, or get permission from the thusly-skilled people who did."
I'll grant that the law does need some updating, with the advent of sampling and the use of insignificant snippets to make further creative-in-their-own-right compositions, and I suppose cumpolsory licensing schemes such as this are a step toward reform. It's actually a good thing -- instead of having to hunt for both the artist's terms and permission *and* a royalty to pay them off, you have the option of paying the various government-mandated rates, and the right is yours, without even needing to contact or consult the rightsholder. If that seems too steep for you, there's always the legwork route of just asking the artists or labels in question about better terms.
Although there is more music around today that people can't use, this is a result of the fact that there is just more music around today, less than a matter of more restriction on using music. A poster above mentioned that "artists used to be happy to hear their work played". I'd say a similar number of artists today would have much the same viewpoint as "back then". It's just that those aren't the major-label-superstars that seem to make up "all music" if you don't go looking. Granted, you might not find many that would support wholesale copying or Napsterization, but I personally have written and gotten permission from one band for Podcast interstitial play, and I know of one or two labels that allow that too. I don't doubt there are more out there, if you talk to the right people.
I bought a year of hosting and a domain name from superuser.net, just something to host a personal domain and emails. The place was just a fly-by-night budget host, I came to find out. But, they had a "99 and some nines" uptime guarantee, and a phone tech support line, so I bought in. It was cheap, but I ended up getting what I paid for, and less. About a month or two after the year was up, my site started going up and down on a regular basis. I found that the "tech support" phone number had gone from giving me an answering machine to giving me a "disconnected" message. Sure enough, the tech support number had disappeared from the page. Tech support emails were either blackholed or poorly answered.
Then, the big bomb hit. I know that SSH shell access isn't absolutely necessary to run a simple website, but I needed to run a few programs (ImageMagick and the like) and do some testing, management, and the like through a shell. When my shell access started coming up "denied", I started to get angry. Since letters addressed with ALL CAPITAL THREATS OF CUSTOMER LOSS OR RETRIBUTION, triple-CCed to "sales", "service", and "support" seemed to be the only thing that got through (trust me, I tried politer methods first), I sent off my trouble and heard back that "These features have been turned off because the server got hacked." These services were the ones listed in the product description... the ones that got me to buy in in the first place.
Well, long story short, I ended up transferring the domain (with excellent assistance by DotRegistrar, whom I still use). It was a bit of a hassle, since I'd stupidly abandoned the contact email for the domain name, but I got it worked out. Then, as a final goodbye, my site was unceremoniously terminated, not honoring the 99% uptime guarantee that should have given me a free month.
After some further research, I found out that the site has been noted for shoddy service and poor support, and "Derek" of Superuser has even been known to vigorously argue with folks, on other web sites and boards, who disparage the service.
From there, though, I stayed with DotRegistrar for the domain name. This was the company that Superuser used, but they were unaffiliated and quite helpful in recovering my domain name. For webspace, I went with Just-hosting. They're another budget shared-host setup, and I have had the not-unexpected shared-host downtimes every so often, but their technical support is quite good, they get it up and running... and often even relay what the problem was... and they were willing to accomadate my needs for extra domains, an alternate SMTP port (since my ISP blocks port 25), and working with me through the weirdness that some of my setups cause.
So, just to retierate-- Superuser.net: evil. Just-hosting.com and DotReg.com: recommended.
Time is cubic?
Yeah, but you probably get paid by the hour.
For example, if I take slashdot's RSS feed, often I find that the headlines aren't descriptive and I ended up clicking the link and just reading the story. Im not sure how that saved me any time then just going to slashdot.org and scrolling down and scanning the site.
I find it time-saving, if not useful. I have the RSS plugin for Trillian, so I can get a quick overview of the sites I like and hover over them for a preview. Although, in many cases, putting the whole story in is overkill, but a summary or leading paragraph can give enough information.
Well I would hope and pray that anyone who has ever tried to make $1 on the internet would see how stupid that is. Giving away content went out in 99 I think.
Must every technology be used or tailored for money-making? RSS costs little to implement, and with a heavy readership, can even be less load than HTML. Even given that there're surely ways to include RSS in a profitable venture, RSS-sans-profit still has a decent place as an option for publishers or readers.