MPAA," "RIAA"...never mind that these organizations merely represent the people making the content that otheres are ripping off
Yes, boo-hoo that people are ripping of Sony & the gang by not wanting to buy CD:s for $20 any longer.
Uh, yes you can. You steal something when you don't pay for it. You steal owed payment. You steal value (by diminishing it with a copy).
Nobody is forcing music and movie companies to make music the way they do. Just because someone does not make money due to someone elses activity does not make it stealing! Read my lips: IT'S NOT STEALING!
That point is supported morally, ethically, and legally.
Morally: By whom? You? Fine, but you are not Emperor of Earth, so your personal will is not law and dictate. It's still not stealing.
Ethically: Aaah, you mean it's stealing because everyone know it's stealing. Well, a lot of people know it's not stealing, that's why you can't get thrown in jail for 'theft' for sharing music (if that's your thing).
This isn't especially novel or unique, and I'm sure plenty of people (myself included) have been doing this for quite some time.
And since XHTML is a subset of XML, I guess a webpage written in XHTML containing CSS and JavaScript with a timestamp before the granting date of this patent should get Microsoft laughed out of the courtroom. Hell, if there is one published article about embedding scripts in XML (JSP, anyone?), then the patent is worthless.
Seems like patents are more of a point of entry to litigation than anything else. Crash and burn, America!
The only reason the entertainment industry is having trouble right now is because their product is easy to steal!
Actually, it's not even stealing according to the law. You do, however, have a (populistic) point.
However, the real reason behind all the fuss is the big money. If media-companies had not invested loads of money in these more and more obsolete delivery mechanisms, there would not be a problem. The question isn't if media publsihers going to get paid per se, but rather if the current media publishers are going to get paid according to outdated business practices.
All in all: if you don't have a product that people want to buy, either your product sucks or it's too expensive. Tough titty.
Well, if 99% of alleys were filled with drug pushers, and 99% of the people who used the alleys were drug pushers, then yes, i'd be supporting shutting down alleys.
Instead of making it useless for drug pushers to operate? Or making pushing legal? Seems to me it would be alot easier than outlawing alleys and forcing everybody that lives in the city to move to a country house.
The same applies to P2P. Wouldn't it make more sense to redraft copyright law instead of trying to force people to submit to idiotic markets and ban technology?
No? Well, tough shit, people are going to continue to live in cities and people are going to continue to steal content as long as it costs way too much.
The music and movie industry has had 50 golden years to put away some money for a rainy day. If they were stupid enough to think that movie theaters, radio stations and music discs were an eternal cash-cow while using their profits to build castles in the sand, well... give them a Darwin Award.
Don't make the rest of the population pay for bad economics and planning.
SCO has argued both directly and indirectly that when the GPL is declared invalid, then any GPLed software will be in the public domain and not covered under ANY copyright protection.
This is utterly impossible. Just because your licensing scheme is illegal does not invalidate your copyright. For GPLd software to become public domain the US must sack all international copyright agreements and basically reinvent what copyright in itself means... which maybe would be a good thing, but probably quite catastrophic for SCO.
What does SCO want? As a company, who knows. What does McBride want? Attention, most probably. Money from sold stocks, coming book-deals, and what-not doesn't hurt either.
That's a good point. It does not, however, imply that the Internet could not have been developed without military support.
I'm sure that some of the stuff the military develops has other uses (rocketry is an example), but those are spin-offs. The military, no matter which country's, exists solely for the destruction of human life.
There are countless examples of Bad Things (TM) with a nice-to-have morsel in them, but embracing them is just head-in-bush utilitarism.
So either way SETI is unlikely to find anything meaningful. I'm with the Christians on this one. The search for extra-terrestrial life is only a substitute for the search for meaning within one's self and with one's God.
Maybe the search for meaning within one's self and with one's God (wow, not only do you assume everyone has a god, but you mean THE god with a capital G) is just a nice bush to hide your head in instead of facing up to mortality and a universe without clear meaning.
Basically you are saying we should go to church and pray to some deathcult-deity instead of listening for radio waves from outer space. Somebody did a nice mind-job on you....
Yup, and if you don't uncover cache after cache after cache you can still bash the rest of the world for being too weak/leftist/communist/soft-on-terror/stuck-up/wha tever.
However, until the day you uncover them (or lose interrest in looking): HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Everybody told you so.... not that any of all this shit is really funny, but it's still your shit, so start smelling it.
Wow. I guess you must be really special since you seem to assume that you would be a slave owner and not a slave. But I guess that's what all imperialist think, that they are better than most other people.
secured trade, new markets... Why would anyone want to resist? Of course, its good to have a nice motivator.
China can provide you with all that. Let's hope they invade your country and give you all that you ever dreamed of.
I think slavery is much more humane.
Of course it. How convenient that it also provides you with the alternative not to work yourself but force others to do it. I wonder exactly who you feel should be your slaves.
Really? How about Carthage? The Romans slaughtered all of it's inhabitants, then the livestock, then burned the city and promptly after that pulverized the rocks the houses were built with.
Rome was a melting pot if you succumed to it, but if you resisted there was no mercy.
The Romans were able to create an island of civilization out of the natural world. No one was forced to live there.
The Roman Empire was in most part successful because of it's ability to conquer new ground and thus provide millions of slaves for it's citizens. When the empire grew very large and the forces spread out thinly, victory was no longer as easy, and thus the slave trade subsided. But so did prosperity.
Now, you may ask "So what!?". Well, your gilded vision of a glorious roman empire is a bit off. The romans were a miltitant, slavetrading, genocidial bunch who didn't have a lot of tolerance for dissent.
People moved into those conquered regions, civilization began anew into many of the modern countries of Europe.
Yes, some Romans moved in to replace those who were slaughtered or traded as slaves. Cities that surrendered quitely were allowed to be integrated into the Empire without a fuss and were allowed freedoms as long as they payed tax to the Emperor.
I would say we are far worse off than the Romans ever were
No, we ARE the Romans, where 'we' is the Western World. We have slaves all over the world picking bananas, making cell phones, growing rice, etc. for us to buy for next to nothing. Surrender quietly to our cause, and you get to join the Empire eventually. Get in our way, and we will bomb you into oblivion.
Putting real player out of business? How does that make Microsoft more money?
Make everything WMA (or something like it), then use licensing to make WMA. Do you use the SysRq button on your keyboard? Probably not. Why is it there? Because IBM put it there. Given, it doesn't give IBM money, but if every whateverplayer must have the de facto standard, and pay licensing, Microsoft has everything to gain.
How does their network configuration scheme make Microsoft more money?
Try syncing Windows and UNIX passwords.
How does MS Passport make Microsoft more money?
Make sure it becomes THE standard and force banks, on-line serives, you name it, to pay for using their Intellectual Property.
How does using a proprietary file system make Microsoft more money?
Hmm, should I pay $500 for Office 2003 or use something free that can read the format 100%... but wait, it's closed, you can't read it at 100% accuracy... so there is no real competition!
No, I want people to stop arguing that Microsoft is doing people a favor by making computers "easy". They are not making computers easy, they are making computers a cash cow for them, as in lock-in and bundling. The "easy"-bit is the bait, domains, passport, NTFS, proprietary formats and all embrace-and-extend are the hook. And all that free stuff for just $300 per license!
Oh wait! A new licensing scheme! It goes on. UNIX isn't free either, but at least there are specifications for how most things work...
First, the free mediaplayer, of free TV isn't free. Windows (and cars) costs a lot, and if they have more bundled stuff, they cost even more.
Also, inconvenience of computer users is hardly an issue here. We are talking about one company dominating an entire industry. Millions of jobs and lives are directly or indirectly linked to what Microsoft does or doesn't do.
In short, if you are too stupid to use a computer, either learn or don't use it. Do NOT allow thieves and thugs bully the rest of us just because you are clueless. If you want that kind of society, move to Sicily and deal with the Mafia instead. "Hey, I just want my house not to burn down, so I pay for protection!"
News like this will be very funny in 20 years. Incredible fuss over something as boring as simple push-entertainment.
Wake up! TV is dead. Or will be quite soon. I don't give a damn if I can watch sit-coms in high definition in 5 years and not record. I want to kill people online in high-res. I want to walk on other planets and meet interesting people in high-res.
Guess what? I already can! So good luck to broadcast technology (the name kinda says it all). A "don't copy" flag will not save you.
Yes, damn Third-World people, why don't they get jobs like normal hard-working Westerners? Ditto for people growing up in the inner-city slums of US cities!
Boo-hoo about all those people in the Twin Towers, fuckit, people always die. Collateral damage. Sounds lovely, doesn't it?
Besides, Coalition forces have killed probably around 200-300 times more people in Iraq alone in the last 13 years than died in New York. So it was just payback... even though the hi-jackers were Saudis! But that's not important! We had to invade Iraq because *INSERT REASON OF THE WEEK*.
For the record, the Food For Oil program allowed sale of oil that filled around a few percent of the actual need for food in Iraq. Guess what nation always vetoed sales?
Same thing if you leave the keys in your car and someone takes it and mows down a bunch of pedestrians with it.
Do you live on another planet? Those aren't laws I ever heard of.
Everywhere I ever heard of there is nothing illegal with leaving keys in a car. Perhaps someone can sue you for negligence in a civil suit, but that doesn't mean they will win.
And you can ALWAYS claim innocence, even if you shot someone through the head with a tank on national televison.
You've made a substantial contribution in the commission of a crime, and you would be expected to pay for that crime.
Idiot. What about:
Trial by jury
Innocent until proven guilty
Interpretation of law
Special circumstance
Spirit, not word, of the law
There is no black-and-white rule that specifies when a person is negligent enough to be deemed guilty by default, at least not one I heard of. Except maybe anti-terrorism laws...
Slashdot Mirror
MPAA," "RIAA"...never mind that these organizations merely represent the people making the content that otheres are ripping off
Yes, boo-hoo that people are ripping of Sony & the gang by not wanting to buy CD:s for $20 any longer.
Uh, yes you can. You steal something when you don't pay for it. You steal owed payment. You steal value (by diminishing it with a copy).
Nobody is forcing music and movie companies to make music the way they do. Just because someone does not make money due to someone elses activity does not make it stealing! Read my lips: IT'S NOT STEALING!
That point is supported morally, ethically, and legally.
Morally: By whom? You? Fine, but you are not Emperor of Earth, so your personal will is not law and dictate. It's still not stealing.
Ethically: Aaah, you mean it's stealing because everyone know it's stealing. Well, a lot of people know it's not stealing, that's why you can't get thrown in jail for 'theft' for sharing music (if that's your thing).
Legally: Wake up.
gah, the parent is a troll from usenet over a year back...
get a life, copy-cat
This isn't especially novel or unique, and I'm sure plenty of people (myself included) have been doing this for quite some time.
And since XHTML is a subset of XML, I guess a webpage written in XHTML containing CSS and JavaScript with a timestamp before the granting date of this patent should get Microsoft laughed out of the courtroom. Hell, if there is one published article about embedding scripts in XML (JSP, anyone?), then the patent is worthless.
Seems like patents are more of a point of entry to litigation than anything else. Crash and burn, America!
The only reason the entertainment industry is having trouble right now is because their product is easy to steal!
Actually, it's not even stealing according to the law. You do, however, have a (populistic) point.
However, the real reason behind all the fuss is the big money. If media-companies had not invested loads of money in these more and more obsolete delivery mechanisms, there would not be a problem. The question isn't if media publsihers going to get paid per se, but rather if the current media publishers are going to get paid according to outdated business practices.
All in all: if you don't have a product that people want to buy, either your product sucks or it's too expensive. Tough titty.
Well, if 99% of alleys were filled with drug pushers, and 99% of the people who used the alleys were drug pushers, then yes, i'd be supporting shutting down alleys.
Instead of making it useless for drug pushers to operate? Or making pushing legal? Seems to me it would be alot easier than outlawing alleys and forcing everybody that lives in the city to move to a country house.
The same applies to P2P. Wouldn't it make more sense to redraft copyright law instead of trying to force people to submit to idiotic markets and ban technology?
No? Well, tough shit, people are going to continue to live in cities and people are going to continue to steal content as long as it costs way too much.
The music and movie industry has had 50 golden years to put away some money for a rainy day. If they were stupid enough to think that movie theaters, radio stations and music discs were an eternal cash-cow while using their profits to build castles in the sand, well... give them a Darwin Award.
Don't make the rest of the population pay for bad economics and planning.
We ain't bouncing shit, because not all senders are real, and thus not deliverable.. don't want them in our queue.
In my opinion, case senssitivity allows for more readable code if using long variable or method names .
For instance:
MySteadfastObject.doSomeReallyBizarreParsing()
instead of
mYSTEadfasoBJEct.DOSomerEAllybizaReparsiNG()
Emphasizing readability instead of easy-writing is (mostly) a Good Thing (TM).
SCO has argued both directly and indirectly that when the GPL is declared invalid, then any GPLed software will be in the public domain and not covered under ANY copyright protection.
This is utterly impossible. Just because your licensing scheme is illegal does not invalidate your copyright. For GPLd software to become public domain the US must sack all international copyright agreements and basically reinvent what copyright in itself means... which maybe would be a good thing, but probably quite catastrophic for SCO.
What does SCO want? As a company, who knows. What does McBride want? Attention, most probably. Money from sold stocks, coming book-deals, and what-not doesn't hurt either.
That's a good point. It does not, however, imply that the Internet could not have been developed without military support.
I'm sure that some of the stuff the military develops has other uses (rocketry is an example), but those are spin-offs. The military, no matter which country's, exists solely for the destruction of human life.
There are countless examples of Bad Things (TM) with a nice-to-have morsel in them, but embracing them is just head-in-bush utilitarism.
If the military wasn't funding autonomous sensors, who else would?
Gee, I don't know, maybe those who need them? And if no-one else needs them, end of story.
If the military wasn't funding mustard gas, nerve poison, clusterbombs, tactical nukes, etc., who else would?
Let the military stay out of non-military institutions. They engineer stuff with one ultimate applicable purpuse only: killing human beings.
So either way SETI is unlikely to find anything meaningful. I'm with the Christians on this one. The search for extra-terrestrial life is only a substitute for the search for meaning within one's self and with one's God.
Maybe the search for meaning within one's self and with one's God (wow, not only do you assume everyone has a god, but you mean THE god with a capital G) is just a nice bush to hide your head in instead of facing up to mortality and a universe without clear meaning.
Basically you are saying we should go to church and pray to some deathcult-deity instead of listening for radio waves from outer space. Somebody did a nice mind-job on you....
Yup, and if you don't uncover cache after cache after cache you can still bash the rest of the world for being too weak/leftist/communist/soft-on-terror/stuck-up/wha tever.
... not that any of all this shit is really funny, but it's still your shit, so start smelling it.
However, until the day you uncover them (or lose interrest in looking): HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Everybody told you so.
I bet enron execs were super-commies, because captialist CEO's never embezle or steal or lie.
Since you hate cults and such, I must assume that you are an atheist (yeah right...).
Go get comfortable a priest, altar-boy.
Its not off. It sounds like a great place to me.
Wow. I guess you must be really special since you seem to assume that you would be a slave owner and not a slave. But I guess that's what all imperialist think, that they are better than most other people.
secured trade, new markets... Why would anyone want to resist? Of course, its good to have a nice motivator.
China can provide you with all that. Let's hope they invade your country and give you all that you ever dreamed of.
I think slavery is much more humane.
Of course it. How convenient that it also provides you with the alternative not to work yourself but force others to do it. I wonder exactly who you feel should be your slaves.
Really? How about Carthage? The Romans slaughtered all of it's inhabitants, then the livestock, then burned the city and promptly after that pulverized the rocks the houses were built with.
Rome was a melting pot if you succumed to it, but if you resisted there was no mercy.
The Romans were able to create an island of civilization out of the natural world. No one was forced to live there.
The Roman Empire was in most part successful because of it's ability to conquer new ground and thus provide millions of slaves for it's citizens. When the empire grew very large and the forces spread out thinly, victory was no longer as easy, and thus the slave trade subsided. But so did prosperity.
Now, you may ask "So what!?". Well, your gilded vision of a glorious roman empire is a bit off. The romans were a miltitant, slavetrading, genocidial bunch who didn't have a lot of tolerance for dissent.
People moved into those conquered regions, civilization began anew into many of the modern countries of Europe.
Yes, some Romans moved in to replace those who were slaughtered or traded as slaves. Cities that surrendered quitely were allowed to be integrated into the Empire without a fuss and were allowed freedoms as long as they payed tax to the Emperor.
I would say we are far worse off than the Romans ever were
No, we ARE the Romans, where 'we' is the Western World. We have slaves all over the world picking bananas, making cell phones, growing rice, etc. for us to buy for next to nothing. Surrender quietly to our cause, and you get to join the Empire eventually. Get in our way, and we will bomb you into oblivion.
Putting real player out of business? How does that make Microsoft more money?
Make everything WMA (or something like it), then use licensing to make WMA. Do you use the SysRq button on your keyboard? Probably not. Why is it there? Because IBM put it there. Given, it doesn't give IBM money, but if every whateverplayer must have the de facto standard, and pay licensing, Microsoft has everything to gain.
How does their network configuration scheme make Microsoft more money?
Try syncing Windows and UNIX passwords.
How does MS Passport make Microsoft more money?
Make sure it becomes THE standard and force banks, on-line serives, you name it, to pay for using their Intellectual Property.
How does using a proprietary file system make Microsoft more money?
Hmm, should I pay $500 for Office 2003 or use something free that can read the format 100%... but wait, it's closed, you can't read it at 100% accuracy... so there is no real competition!
It goes on, but I won't.
No, I want people to stop arguing that Microsoft is doing people a favor by making computers "easy". They are not making computers easy, they are making computers a cash cow for them, as in lock-in and bundling. The "easy"-bit is the bait, domains, passport, NTFS, proprietary formats and all embrace-and-extend are the hook. And all that free stuff for just $300 per license!
Oh wait! A new licensing scheme! It goes on. UNIX isn't free either, but at least there are specifications for how most things work...
First, the free mediaplayer, of free TV isn't free. Windows (and cars) costs a lot, and if they have more bundled stuff, they cost even more.
Also, inconvenience of computer users is hardly an issue here. We are talking about one company dominating an entire industry. Millions of jobs and lives are directly or indirectly linked to what Microsoft does or doesn't do.
In short, if you are too stupid to use a computer, either learn or don't use it. Do NOT allow thieves and thugs bully the rest of us just because you are clueless. If you want that kind of society, move to Sicily and deal with the Mafia instead. "Hey, I just want my house not to burn down, so I pay for protection!"
News like this will be very funny in 20 years. Incredible fuss over something as boring as simple push-entertainment.
Wake up! TV is dead. Or will be quite soon. I don't give a damn if I can watch sit-coms in high definition in 5 years and not record. I want to kill people online in high-res. I want to walk on other planets and meet interesting people in high-res.
Guess what? I already can! So good luck to broadcast technology (the name kinda says it all). A "don't copy" flag will not save you.
How true. Hope you can remember writing this comment when an airliner screams into a building near you.
America is a budding empire flailing it's iron fist this way and that. The rest of the world is not pleased. YOU grow up.
War is the last resort of the incompetent.
Whoa! News for me! I feel so special!
Yes, damn Third-World people, why don't they get jobs like normal hard-working Westerners? Ditto for people growing up in the inner-city slums of US cities!
Then let them eat cake!
Idiot.
Boo-fucking-hoo, people died. People always die.
Boo-hoo about all those people in the Twin Towers, fuckit, people always die. Collateral damage. Sounds lovely, doesn't it?
Besides, Coalition forces have killed probably around 200-300 times more people in Iraq alone in the last 13 years than died in New York. So it was just payback... even though the hi-jackers were Saudis! But that's not important! We had to invade Iraq because *INSERT REASON OF THE WEEK*.
For the record, the Food For Oil program allowed sale of oil that filled around a few percent of the actual need for food in Iraq. Guess what nation always vetoed sales?
Do you live on another planet? Those aren't laws I ever heard of.
Everywhere I ever heard of there is nothing illegal with leaving keys in a car. Perhaps someone can sue you for negligence in a civil suit, but that doesn't mean they will win.
And you can ALWAYS claim innocence, even if you shot someone through the head with a tank on national televison.
You've made a substantial contribution in the commission of a crime, and you would be expected to pay for that crime.
Idiot. What about:
Trial by jury
Innocent until proven guilty
Interpretation of law
Special circumstance
Spirit, not word, of the law
There is no black-and-white rule that specifies when a person is negligent enough to be deemed guilty by default, at least not one I heard of. Except maybe anti-terrorism laws...