"Sharing". You mean that it's ethical that only one person buys the new CD and "shares" it to everyone else on the globe? What about the people who made the album? I'm not talking about the corporations, I mean the actual musicians who made the album.
You're talking about ethics while you're defending the misuse of a loophole in old legislation which made giving copies ("sharing") to your friends legal.
If you really think you're supposed to get that album for free, why don't you go to the nearest store and grab a copy or a few (to share with your friends). Remember to run after the alarm goes off.
I'm not defending filthy capitalism. I hate it more than the next man but I hate the idea that some poeple think that they can just rip off musicians.
Do you think it's fun to do music for a living if you don't get paid? See the contradiction there? There are actual people (I'm not talking about plastic-Britney or gucci-Christina) whose livelyhood is dependant on record sales. I think it's perfectly ethical for people to ask for a payment for their work.
But the truly righteous P2P users are a very selected few. Most of the people using P2P networks are stealing.
This is something that most slashdotters don't seem to understand. It's true that the lables are greedy and that the technology is new and great, but that doesn't make it legal or ethical.
"Search results enhanced by Google. Results also provided by A9.com and Alexa."
Google is mentioned first. I wonder how much of the technology relies on Google?
Business models demanded by today's consumer
on
The File Sharing Report
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
file sharing is a result of the industry's failure to meet the business models demanded by today's consumer
Yeah, that missing business model is "make things and give them to consumers for free".
I know that there are a lot of people that buy the stuff after downloading if they like it, but I really don't think that's most people. And from the people who buy stuff based on p2p "testing", not many actually delete those albums/movies/software which they decide not to buy.
There are problems with identifying files with their mime types.
A very problematic format is XML. Many programs use XML for storing data. At least in gnome 2.6 you can set a program X to open files with a suffix.Y, Gnome still tries to open the file with program Z which is marked as the XML handler. This is also a problem for programs which gzip their data.
Mime magic should be able to be overriden: "Open files.Y with program X even though the file would be of a mime type registered to another program"
PAM provide a standard way of interfacing different types of user directories. There are LDAP modules for using a common LDAP server for all user authentication. There is also a winbind module to authenticate against Windows networks. No kludge scripting required.
Also, companies like SuSe, RH etc. provide tools for configuring such integration. We geeks do these things ourselves, but they are also available enteprise-style.
Yeah, so Slashdot doesn't want immature people modding their own comments up. Big deal.
Posted !AC due to having paranoia in only moderate amounts.
Re:For those of us without bit torrent
on
Random Humor
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Well. BitTorrent is very nice. But it still doesn't work for all of us. Some of us are behind firewalls and the only way out is through a proxy. And:
a) I haven't been able to configure a proxy in any torrent client. Burst has a page for proxy settings but it reads that those settings don't do anything at the moment.
b) How about proxies that don't let connections to any other port than 80 for HTTP and 443 for SSL.
Normal links would be nice, thank you. Most of the nerds in here will click on the torrent link insted of the 'normal' link anyway, so only us crippled will need the normal one.
Yeah they could. But they do that already, with analog. You know, they work kinda like walkie-talkies, those things you talk into and the sound comes from the second one.
This is just one case where record companies are trying hard to fight a real problem. Before flaming please read:
How would you like it if you would get thousands of complaints on your work before you published it, or before you even finished it? Record companies have a very hard time keeping music from leaking into the public before the release date. The music in these walkmans may not even be finished. It is sent in to the critics because it has become a habit in the industry. Not sending a copy could even result in getting no review because the critic missed the release.
More on the too-much-discussed topic: Record companies have a very hard time keeping people from stealing their products. Whether you like it or not, people are allowed to ask a price on what they do for a living. This is something that seems to be forgotten on/. You speak highly about customers rights and the legality of P2P networks, but we've forgetten something: these 'poor' bastards need to make a living. Don't like it? Don't support it: don't buy it and don't rip them off - that's what it is, don't try to sugarcoat it.
Some bands have said that they don't mind their music being copied. So be it, but they might have given the power to make that decision to the record company. Evil or not, that is how it is. If a band wants their music to be free, they can do it, no sweat, but the music in these Walkmans is made by bands selling their music and trying to make a living. Even a hugely successful band is allowed to sell their music. Don't like giving money to the rich? Then don't, but don't rip them off.
I don't like the rich getting richer, but people are allowed to choose the license they produce under. Some like it GPL and some like it M$ -style. We might like it GPL but we are not the ones to make that decision for others.
Record companies do work for their share of the profit too. If someone wants to sell something, they should be able to. If I want to sell my buggers, I can, and if you don't want to buy them, hey, that's okay too. Just don't come stealing my buggers, their mine!
My point is that we should be able to ask for something back for what we do, if we want to. It's the customers choice to use the product or not. If they want to use it, they should fill our requests of what we want back for it. That's what the record companies are doing. They are selling a product, like bananas or shirts or motherboards. It is no different from 'physical products' even though many people like to think so.
Record companies are not getting their huge lumps of money for nothing. They do quite a bit of work for the artists: gigs, studios, production, printing, promotion... A lot of work that the artists don't want to do, they want to concentrate on the music. If a musician wants to do these things, him/herself he/she can do it, it's a choice. Musicians are in effect buying very important services from the record labels.
I like to go in record stores and look at cds. I like to see and feel them. When I buy music, I like to have the covers, the leaflets, the full experience. Even if it's not an 12" vinyl, it's still a physical record with a physical presence, with it's physical cover art. If the media goes down to the size of a quarter the cover art would probably go down to about the size of a minidisc. Yuk. Not to mention having no media at all. Whoopee, I've got a.jpg of the cover.
And to stream everything off the net? This geek 'utopia' is far from A Good Thing (tm). I like to go on the bus and listen to music. I don't wan't to pay by the minute to listen to music I already purchased. Also, not everyone has an wireless internet connection. Hey, there are even people on this planet who don't have an internet connection at all! Also, the sound quality? When you pack something with a lossy compression, you will - suprise, suprise - lose something in the compression.
If streaming would become the trend, cds (or whatever the media is at that time) wouldn't probably die, but it would be increasingly difficult to find what you're looking for in a physical form. Yes, you could (I hope) always burn it yourself, but if I'm paying for it, I don't want any extra hassle for me to be able to listen to it.
I'm getting very bad vibes off both geek and RIAA fronts..
Ok, so lets form a union so that our obsolete jobs don't disapear.
We have jobs now because we can do something. In the end coding is not about knowing C or Java syntax. It's about a way of thinking. Maybe what we're doing now is PHP or something similar. It's not a big task to learn something new. But what if the company you're working for doesn't have the patience to let you learn? They can always hire a young kid how knows what you would have to learn.
Tech companies are notorious for not wanting old employees. If someone get's old, they're dumped. We have no job protection when we get old if there are no unions. The problem is that tech companies don't realize that they are hiring people, not skills. If they would want to hire skills they should outsource everything.
There have been cases where union were good for a while, but let me tell you, in an industry where if you don't like your job that you can spend just a litle time improving yourself and end up with a better job....no, unions aren't the answer.
Unions aren't here to give us better jobs. If someone wants a better job then go for it. Unions are here to protect us from abuse from the company. How many of you feel that you have too much work? I have felt that, for a long time. What do you do? Do you tell your employer that you have too much work? No. You work more. With contracts between employers and unions people get protected from this kind of abuse.
Sure, HellDesk sucks....BUT it IS the bottom of the food chain. What do you want, there is no such industry where the bottom job doesn't suck. But this ins't some industry where it takes 10 years to lean a new skill(by the way, in a union you would not be allowed to learn/practice a new skill if it threatend one of your "brothers" job), it takes months or a year to be proficient enough to get a job.
There are industries where workers aren't in a 'food chain', those industries are mostly the ones with unions protecting workers. And on not letting you learn... That's a riot. Here in Finland our central organization of trade unions (SAK) educate their members. Every year 50000 people attend on their courses (that's almost 1% of our population).
Unions do have some side-effects, I agree. But the side-effects are very small compared with the benefits.
They are talking about mimicing the movement of our arms. Shoulders have ball-and-socket joints. It is almost the same thing, except that the ball is moved in the socket, the socket doesn't move the joint. It shouldn't be that difficult to create mechanical version of our joints. The mechanics of our limbs is a bit different, but in the end that does not matter so much. We might not get a full range of motion in the robotic limbs, but with a few joints the arms can move about as they wish. Like ours do.
Everyone here is interested only in one thing: is this illegal? What kind of question is that.
I like to write software, infact I like to write free software. The reason why the software I write is free because I want it to be free. But, I have the option of charging money for the software = I have the option to get paid for my job.
The question here shouldn't be is it illegal or not. The question should be is it right to do that. Laws are supposed to be guidelines for how the society should work. If Verant wants to charge people a fee to play the game, they should have that option. Remember, they did make the client which all of you have praised here. They have done a good job, why not reward them? If the price is too high for your taste: don't play the game.
Would you like to live in a world where you couldn't ask for something back for what you give?
I have to be nuts to think this way. I think that when someone makes a movie, he/she can ask money for it. Is that so bad? Is it so bad that artists/directors/actors etc. want to get paid for their job. Just like we get paid for our jobs. I would love to make music. I would probably have an orgasm seeing my own record on a shelf of a record store, or someone buying it. I would also love to make music for a living. The attitudes of many people here suggest that art will not pay the bills in the future. I dislike this very much. That will mean that art will go Britney and movies will go Titanic.
Even though skins are in a way quite lame - having pictures of cheese on you gimp does not look good - they are a byproduct of good code. The fact that GTK can load a theme engine, which shapes & color all widgets is quite a feat. The fact that we have a gui toolkit which doesn't break applications when themeing them just shows how good code there really is underneath. True, we should put more effort into GUI design, but that is no reason to squash themes. I personally don't like themes with pixmaps etc. they either look dumb or you get bored quite fast. But hey, the truth is that some people like windoze scrollbars, some people like motif scrollbars, some like gtk scrollbars. The fact we can change fonts, colors and widgets cat not bad a bad thing.
Slashdot Mirror
'nuff said.
NTFS supports hard links. There just aren't that many tools which can create them.
I wonder how long it takes Apple to sue G4?
"Sharing". You mean that it's ethical that only one person buys the new CD and "shares" it to everyone else on the globe? What about the people who made the album? I'm not talking about the corporations, I mean the actual musicians who made the album.
:) }
You're talking about ethics while you're defending the misuse of a loophole in old legislation which made giving copies ("sharing") to your friends legal.
If you really think you're supposed to get that album for free, why don't you go to the nearest store and grab a copy or a few (to share with your friends). Remember to run after the alarm goes off.
I'm not defending filthy capitalism. I hate it more than the next man but I hate the idea that some poeple think that they can just rip off musicians.
Do you think it's fun to do music for a living if you don't get paid? See the contradiction there? There are actual people (I'm not talking about plastic-Britney or gucci-Christina) whose livelyhood is dependant on record sales. I think it's perfectly ethical for people to ask for a payment for their work.
{ I wonder how long this will continue?
But the truly righteous P2P users are a very selected few. Most of the people using P2P networks are stealing.
This is something that most slashdotters don't seem to understand. It's true that the lables are greedy and that the technology is new and great, but that doesn't make it legal or ethical.
"Search results enhanced by Google. Results also provided by A9.com and Alexa."
Google is mentioned first. I wonder how much of the technology relies on Google?
file sharing is a result of the industry's failure to meet the business models demanded by today's consumer
Yeah, that missing business model is "make things and give them to consumers for free".
I know that there are a lot of people that buy the stuff after downloading if they like it, but I really don't think that's most people. And from the people who buy stuff based on p2p "testing", not many actually delete those albums/movies/software which they decide not to buy.
There are problems with identifying files with their mime types.
.Y, Gnome still tries to open the file with program Z which is marked as the XML handler. This is also a problem for programs which gzip their data.
.Y with program X even though the file would be of a mime type registered to another program"
A very problematic format is XML. Many programs use XML for storing data. At least in gnome 2.6 you can set a program X to open files with a suffix
Mime magic should be able to be overriden: "Open files
PAM provide a standard way of interfacing different types of user directories. There are LDAP modules for using a common LDAP server for all user authentication. There is also a winbind module to authenticate against Windows networks. No kludge scripting required.
Also, companies like SuSe, RH etc. provide tools for configuring such integration. We geeks do these things ourselves, but they are also available enteprise-style.
But there is a subtle difference.
Racists, neo-Nazis etc. are trying to limit the rights of others. That is why it is justifiable to limit that right.
Yeah, so Slashdot doesn't want immature people modding their own comments up. Big deal.
Posted !AC due to having paranoia in only moderate amounts.
Well. BitTorrent is very nice. But it still doesn't work for all of us. Some of us are behind firewalls and the only way out is through a proxy. And:
a) I haven't been able to configure a proxy in any torrent client. Burst has a page for proxy settings but it reads that those settings don't do anything at the moment.
b) How about proxies that don't let connections to any other port than 80 for HTTP and 443 for SSL.
Normal links would be nice, thank you. Most of the nerds in here will click on the torrent link insted of the 'normal' link anyway, so only us crippled will need the normal one.
Great! Now I will have a use for all that bootlegged , smuggled, cheap booze from russia which burns with a green flame!
Yeah they could. But they do that already, with analog. You know, they work kinda like walkie-talkies, those things you talk into and the sound comes from the second one.
This is just one case where record companies are trying hard to fight a real problem. Before flaming please read:
How would you like it if you would get thousands of complaints on your work before you published it, or before you even finished it? Record companies have a very hard time keeping music from leaking into the public before the release date. The music in these walkmans may not even be finished. It is sent in to the critics because it has become a habit in the industry. Not sending a copy could even result in getting no review because the critic missed the release.
More on the too-much-discussed topic: Record companies have a very hard time keeping people from stealing their products. Whether you like it or not, people are allowed to ask a price on what they do for a living. This is something that seems to be forgotten on /. You speak highly about customers rights and the legality of P2P networks, but we've forgetten something: these 'poor' bastards need to make a living. Don't like it? Don't support it: don't buy it and don't rip them off - that's what it is, don't try to sugarcoat it.
Some bands have said that they don't mind their music being copied. So be it, but they might have given the power to make that decision to the record company. Evil or not, that is how it is. If a band wants their music to be free, they can do it, no sweat, but the music in these Walkmans is made by bands selling their music and trying to make a living. Even a hugely successful band is allowed to sell their music. Don't like giving money to the rich? Then don't, but don't rip them off.
I don't like the rich getting richer, but people are allowed to choose the license they produce under. Some like it GPL and some like it M$ -style. We might like it GPL but we are not the ones to make that decision for others.
You really go to McDonalds? Who the heck eats at McDonalds?
Record companies do work for their share of the profit too. If someone wants to sell something, they should be able to. If I want to sell my buggers, I can, and if you don't want to buy them, hey, that's okay too. Just don't come stealing my buggers, their mine!
My point is that we should be able to ask for something back for what we do, if we want to. It's the customers choice to use the product or not. If they want to use it, they should fill our requests of what we want back for it. That's what the record companies are doing. They are selling a product, like bananas or shirts or motherboards. It is no different from 'physical products' even though many people like to think so.
Record companies are not getting their huge lumps of money for nothing. They do quite a bit of work for the artists: gigs, studios, production, printing, promotion... A lot of work that the artists don't want to do, they want to concentrate on the music. If a musician wants to do these things, him/herself he/she can do it, it's a choice. Musicians are in effect buying very important services from the record labels.
They're not all bad you know.
I like to go in record stores and look at cds. I like to see and feel them. When I buy music, I like to have the covers, the leaflets, the full experience. Even if it's not an 12" vinyl, it's still a physical record with a physical presence, with it's physical cover art. If the media goes down to the size of a quarter the cover art would probably go down to about the size of a minidisc. Yuk. Not to mention having no media at all. Whoopee, I've got a .jpg of the cover.
And to stream everything off the net? This geek 'utopia' is far from A Good Thing (tm). I like to go on the bus and listen to music. I don't wan't to pay by the minute to listen to music I already purchased. Also, not everyone has an wireless internet connection. Hey, there are even people on this planet who don't have an internet connection at all! Also, the sound quality? When you pack something with a lossy compression, you will - suprise, suprise - lose something in the compression.
If streaming would become the trend, cds (or whatever the media is at that time) wouldn't probably die, but it would be increasingly difficult to find what you're looking for in a physical form. Yes, you could (I hope) always burn it yourself, but if I'm paying for it, I don't want any extra hassle for me to be able to listen to it.
I'm getting very bad vibes off both geek and RIAA fronts..
We have jobs now because we can do something. In the end coding is not about knowing C or Java syntax. It's about a way of thinking. Maybe what we're doing now is PHP or something similar. It's not a big task to learn something new. But what if the company you're working for doesn't have the patience to let you learn? They can always hire a young kid how knows what you would have to learn.
Tech companies are notorious for not wanting old employees. If someone get's old, they're dumped. We have no job protection when we get old if there are no unions. The problem is that tech companies don't realize that they are hiring people, not skills. If they would want to hire skills they should outsource everything.
Unions aren't here to give us better jobs. If someone wants a better job then go for it. Unions are here to protect us from abuse from the company. How many of you feel that you have too much work? I have felt that, for a long time. What do you do? Do you tell your employer that you have too much work? No. You work more. With contracts between employers and unions people get protected from this kind of abuse.
There are industries where workers aren't in a 'food chain', those industries are mostly the ones with unions protecting workers. And on not letting you learn... That's a riot. Here in Finland our central organization of trade unions (SAK) educate their members. Every year 50000 people attend on their courses (that's almost 1% of our population).
Unions do have some side-effects, I agree. But the side-effects are very small compared with the benefits.
They are talking about mimicing the movement of our arms. Shoulders have ball-and-socket joints. It is almost the same thing, except that the ball is moved in the socket, the socket doesn't move the joint. It shouldn't be that difficult to create mechanical version of our joints. The mechanics of our limbs is a bit different, but in the end that does not matter so much. We might not get a full range of motion in the robotic limbs, but with a few joints the arms can move about as they wish. Like ours do.
Everyone here is interested only in one thing: is this illegal? What kind of question is that.
I like to write software, infact I like to write free software. The reason why the software I write is free because I want it to be free. But, I have the option of charging money for the software = I have the option to get paid for my job.
The question here shouldn't be is it illegal or not. The question should be is it right to do that. Laws are supposed to be guidelines for how the society should work. If Verant wants to charge people a fee to play the game, they should have that option. Remember, they did make the client which all of you have praised here. They have done a good job, why not reward them? If the price is too high for your taste: don't play the game.
Would you like to live in a world where you couldn't ask for something back for what you give?
I have to be nuts to think this way. I think that when someone makes a movie, he/she can ask money for it. Is that so bad? Is it so bad that artists/directors/actors etc. want to get paid for their job. Just like we get paid for our jobs.
I would love to make music. I would probably have an orgasm seeing my own record on a shelf of a record store, or someone buying it. I would also love to make music for a living. The attitudes of many people here suggest that art will not pay the bills in the future. I dislike this very much. That will mean that art will go Britney and movies will go Titanic.
Even though skins are in a way quite lame - having pictures of cheese on you gimp does not look good - they are a byproduct of good code. The fact that GTK can load a theme engine, which shapes & color all widgets is quite a feat. The fact that we have a gui toolkit which doesn't break applications when themeing them just shows how good code there really is underneath. True, we should put more effort into GUI design, but that is no reason to squash themes.
I personally don't like themes with pixmaps etc. they either look dumb or you get bored quite fast. But hey, the truth is that some people like windoze scrollbars, some people like motif scrollbars, some like gtk scrollbars. The fact we can change fonts, colors and widgets cat not bad a bad thing.