"Ah, but there is a difference", will be the first response if I don't type this quickly enough.
In the case of the PS3, SONY is actually deprived of their product to sell. In the case of copyrighted material, the copyright holder still has the material, they can still make a copy of their own for scratch, and sell that.
I.e. one is stealing (by fraud), the other is mere copyright infringement.. and not unethical.
Why, those darn music companies making meeeeeeellions coming after you for copying a single song are the ones who are unethical!
Indeed, the PC (IBM AT compatible blabla) demo scene has been *extremely* active for as long as there have been PCs. Check www.scene.org for details/demos.
However... there's no longer such a thing as 'The PC Demo Scene'; even those who claim there is are realizing it is rapidly degenerating. The reason for this is the extensive hardware acceleration of any type found in PCs these days. It used to be a challenge to stick a procedurally generated 3D scene with an 8-track MOD in a small exe and have it run fluidly on a 386 with a basic VGA card and a SoundBlaster. Nowadays one just takes the regular 3D scene along with an MP3 and feed it to the graphics card and through a simple decoder straight to audio.
From the Gravis UltraSound to the S3, every hardware development was greedily taken advantage of by showing new things that could be done on that hardware... but they've reached a saturation point several years back. If you want to pump the best results out of a graphics card now, you're not doing so in a demo.. you're doing so for profit on a major game engine.
What is left, then, is a limited form of a PC Demo Scene.. demos under 4k, 16k, 32k and 64k (existed before, but these are still challenging now even with all the hardware).. demos that must run on older hardware.. self-imposed restrictions like "no using pixel shaders", etc. But these are all highly artificial limits and no longer push the boundaries of what one can do on the hardware as is... it's pushing the boundaries of what one can do within those artificial limits.
To some that is the same spirit, to others it's nothing alike at all.
=====
To see what people are doing with PC demos nowadays, Farbrausch's debris is a nice one to check out. You don't need the hardware to run it, there's videos made of the things. http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=30244
In NL, if you get a package, they come to your door, ring.. if you're not there, they come back a second time - having left a notice the first time when they would be back - and if you're still not there, they leave the package at a post office. This is for safekeeping, to make sure the right household gets it, etc.
In the US, if you're not home - tough luck, the mailman leave it on your porch. Amazon book? Porch. Laptop? Porch. That giant new plasma TV? Porch. Just walking around in some of the neighborhoods while I was on vacation in Houston I was seeing all kinds of stuff on porches... and nobody stealing it. I came to realize that for all of the flaws in America, it must be rather nice to be able to have that sort of faith in fellow man.
( I'm sure stuff does get stolen off of porches, but apparently not significantly enough for the population to demand packages be stored at post offices instead. )
.. and they forever will be, and you are correct on every point.
Though I'd hate to tell any developer of a GPL piece of software to just "get over it" when a commercial entity takes their code, sells a binary version for profit and never releases the source code again.
Nor would I want to tell a photographer "sorry mate, but you're in the wrong business" if he wants to sell prints, if everybody would just print / buy copies for next-to-free when he wants to make a living sell them at $10/print. ( In your example, the photographer would get a lump sum from e.g. Corbis instead, and leave the worries about copies to Corbis - and yes, Corbis does worry, and does very actively police news outlets and graphics agencies to see if they're using Corbis content without having licensed it). Not for the base reason of "everybody knows it's illegal, but they do it anyway - sorry, chum".
That said - why would the student be concerned? Presumably, it's their paper, they already published it, they already reaped the benefits; just like the car designer who gets the money and doesn't worry about any copies / misrepresentations (get over it!). If they didn't, then I guess they went about things the wrong way?
Things are never that simple - but to many students, it is.. except when it affects them.
Would a better example be a father who punches a police officer for arresting his kid? Oh no, that would still be fear.. as the father would fear that his son may get a record.
All contempt could be rationalized to actually be fear that way. Would contempt be to find a spot where there is a cop doing speed checks, then speed by, again and again, and then refuse to pay any fines? That'd be contempt for the law, not for the the authority (cop) in question.
I don't see any fear, whatsoever, in the 14-year old who punches and strangles a cop. Somebody who would have fear would run from the cops, not assault them. Similarly, although the 2 French kids may have had fear for the cops when they fled, those in riots certainly had no fear - they had something more along the lines of contempt.
The password.exe does, however, address a controller chip. Without the correct password, the controller chip will simply refuse to provide further access to the flash memory.
So if you're really wondering - I would imagine that the entire thing won't work with Linux, period.
...where N could be set on first initializing the stick. And I assume you could change this later provided you had already given the correct password, but the article doesn't go into that.
So it's not a case of typing it wrong once and *poof* goes the data (note that they didn't find any physical evidence of things in there capable of physical destruction either). If you set it to 3 times, and you get it wrong 3 times yourself - oh well. Maybe you *could* set it to only once, though.. but if you do that, you're an idiot anyway:)
Once masses of people get in a destructive uproar over two kids dying because they knowingly fled from the police and decided an electrical housing was a dandy place to do so.. yes, yes it is a bad thing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_civil_unrest_in_ France
Once a smaller mass of people get in a, thankfully, more peaceful uproar over two kids dying because they knowingly fled from police on their moped, for the relatively minor offenses of not having a license plate and not wearing helmets, and wrapping themselves around a tree.. yes, yes it is a bad thing. http:/// dammit, can't find it right now
Don't get me wrong, people don't have to just take *everything* authority, in these cases the police, are doing. A certain level of 'contempt' is sane. But keep in mind that the slope of contempt for authority is a very slippery one.
Take the riots in France.. if I were a kid there now who committed a crime and I'm being chased by the police, I might be more inclined to flee as well - after all, a large portion of the population will stick by me should something go wrong - they'll tell the police that they shouldn't chase me at all, thanks to their new level of sheeple-contempt for authority. Heck, the police may be less inclined to chase me at all in fear of this contempt, and I could get away with whatever I was doing.
You and I may be able to keep our footing on it, but you and I both also know that plenty of people can't or even won't; regular news reports being ample evidence thereof.
Very often these drives some with two USB plugs for the computer end. If your 1 USB port happens not to be able to power the thing, you plug in the other. The down side is that you take up 2 USB ports, but if you just happen to need it.. there you go.
Of course you then have to figure out still if both ports aren't just on the same controller, etc. (or even if it is a powered port - though rare these days for them not to b) but typically any USB powered port is going to have its own rated 2.5W at disposal. Won't do any good if you stick them both in a USB hub, of course.
"If he could make a copy of your car, leaving the original intact and untouched, would you even care?"
I've been running a similar argument for a while now. Let's put it this way..
If my car was a copy itself - naw, I wouldn't care. If the person I copied it from allowed me to do so and gave me the right to let others make copies - naw, I wouldn't care.
Chances are, however, I paid money for my car. So do I care if somebody comes along and makes a copy of my car without going through the same effort of paying for it? I just might.
What if it gets a little bit more intrigueing. I paid for the car in blood, sweat and tears - as I built it pretty much from the ground up. It's a one-of-a-kind car. I have no intention of selling it or giving it away, etc. Then somebody comes along and makes a copy of it. Would I care? Yes.
Now let's say I have every intention of selling it - for $60,000 because the market is telling me that's what people would at least be paying for the thing. Now somebody comes along and makes a copy and puts it on sale for $4,000. Would I care? Hell yes.
In all of the above cases - I still have my car. And by some people's thoughts, no harm is done. True to the letter, but not true to the spirit.
Once everybody can make copies of everything physical, that's when these car analogies, or rather: digital vs physical analogies, will start to make sense. Because then I wouldn't care if I couldn't sell my car for $60,000 to be able to have housing, eat, etc. as I would just copy the housing, copy the food, etc. The baker would copy his flour, the farmer would copy his wheat, and so forth and so on all the way up to raw materials suppliers who, presumably, would be making these available for free because they enjoy doing so, and everything else they need, they can copy themselves.
Until then, though, whether it is theft or IP infringement (be it copyright infringement, patent infringement, trademark infringement, etc.), it's illegal all the same and students should be tought that it is such. Whether they grab the latest movie off of bittorrent 5 minutes after the class exits is then up to them, but if somebody were to then do much the same to them, I don't think they can cry foul.
the biggest problem - as I understand it, at least (if I understand incorrectly, then I guess the people who advocate them have more work to do to educate the masses), is this..
With a BSD license, I can include a piece of open source code in my project, compile it, release it in any which way I want, and be done with it. I *can* contribute back if I change any of the code in that open source code, but it is not required of me.
With a GPL license, if I include a piece of open source code in my project, compile it, and release it in any which way I want, I... - need to make not only the original open source code available - but also the source code of my entire project - whether I make changes to the open source code or not
The only other license that is a mix of both, is the LGPL, where I can use the source code in my project as long as it compiles to its own library (say, a DLL on Windows), and I tap into that library. I still have to release the source code to that library, including any changes I make to it, but my entire project doesn't automatically become GPL.
Given that libraries aren't always possible, and that not too many developers choose LGPL (it's mostly either GPL or BSD - dozens of other flavors to suit authors' specific demands notwithstanding), BSD code - for many developers - is 'better'... to that developer, not to the end-user, per se. Though one may always think otherwise: http://lwn.net/2001/0301/a/rms-ov-license.php3
...but they hardly own it. For one, they're still missing a killer 3D app. Yes, Maya is on the Mac - but you'll be hard-pressed to find many companies using Maya on said Mac. Nevermind that it's not an Apple app (unlike Shake (by acquisition), FCP, Logic Pro (by acquisition) etc.) If Autodesk hadn't grabbed it up, I would have expected Apple to do so.
Similarly, for editing/post, there's a ton of flint/flame/inferno/etc./etc. out there which are nowhere near Apple.
And that's completely ignoring everything hardware that you'll find in a typical broadcast facility. Avid, Thomson/Grass Valley, et al would have a chuckle at your post. So would Apple, for that matter - Apple isn't interested in replacing them at all... they're more on the software side and helping to sell Apple hardware.
Everybody who keeps comparing the EU to the USA and saying how cities in Europe are so much closer are only thinking about things like LA to SF, or even from either of those to New York. Nobody in Europe is going to take a train to get from Oslo to Lisboa either (well, some people do - just as some in the U.S. take roadtrips from coast to coast).
That's not entirely true... keep in mind that Access Software (Links golf, Countdown, and various other both visually and sound-wise impressive titles) offered an option called RealSound for sound playback. This sound would go through the PC Speaker (in the era of 386 and 486, this was an actual cone speaker) and produce reasonable sound output.
In addition, long before the SoundBlaster, there was the Covox - a parallel port piece of electronics you could build at home with the right components and a soldering iron - which produced superior sound. Eventually a stereo version was able to be made and addressed as well.
Now, I'll agree that the soundblaster line of products actually kicked off the real audio revolution as finally you got great quality -without- the parallel port fidgeting.. just plunk in the card and pray you get the address, irq and whatnot settings set up right; but once they were, off you were.
The service of slapping people would be considered assault. Every case of a slap would be assault.
Did I say it was a bad analogy yet? That said - hey, both are illegal.. go figure:D
Not every video on YouTube is infringing. Nor would everything people did with my hand. They could say that whenever anybody says "Hello", I would shake your hand. My (bad) analogy holds:P
For the nth time. Copyright law states that it is the copyright owner's responsibility to enforce copyright, and no one else's. That's because it's impossible to check every piece of content against every copyright owner, and this becomes exponentially more complicated when you factor in fair use/parody/etc.
As explained to the other commenter... The burden of proving copyright lays with the copyright holder - YouTube is under no obligation to check if every new video may be under copyright with somebody else, whether they consented the uploading of the material - and if not, whether it falls under 'fair use', etc. - that is absolutely the task of the copyright holder.. i.e. Viacom.
That said.. "for the nth time".. once a specific piece has been identified, it is well within the technical abilities of YouTube to prevent it from being entered into the system again... both bit-for-bit (duh) as well as using a different compression mechanism, 1 pixel shaved off the top, etc. etc. In fact, they offer this service.. as long as you - the copyright holder - are willing to pay for it. To continue the bad analogy - to stop me from slapping you, you'll just have to pay me. Well yes, I could ignore any requests for slapping you for free... but I don't have to by law, so "Hello!" *slap*
For the nth time. Viacom shouldn't be suing YouTube for allowing any video to be hosted, because people will inevitably use it to share copyrighted video. That the service is capable of infringement does not mean it lacks substantial non-infringing use. Viacom should be suing the people who upload the videos - you know, the people who actually broke the law, directly.
I fully agree. Now where was it that I entered my real information at YouTube? And even if I did - how was it again that a copyright holder would get a hold of that information from YouTube? Answers: nowhere, and you can't. If I got a court order I, at best, could get an IP address which resolves to an IP address which resolves to an IP address.. etc. My cost to find the user would be X, the damages I could sue the user for would be Y, X would be much greater than Y and in the mean time it doesn't stop a hundred different users from doing the exact same thing as the first user.
"For the nth time" - I'm not saying YouTube -has- to 'police' the uploads - but they can certainly do a very basic filter (hell, they blanket-filter for pr0n - that's more difficult than filtering against a hash of a file or a fingerprint of a video), and within the spirit of the law they very well know they probably should be.
That said - if they did, they'd shoot themselves in the foot, because despite the significant non-infringing uses of YouTube, there's a substantial infringing use of YouTube that makes people go there in the first place.
And *that* said - I fully agree that media companies / etc. should look into ways to leverage YouTube - rather than fight it.
Your point stands without question - but it does nothing to reduce my point. I'm not saying that YouTube should check every single upload to see if the user has consent from the copyright holder to do so; which is what it comes down to - they don't necessarily have to check with their own lawyers whether it would be considered fair use or not. Leave that to the copyright holder.
However... once a copyright owner has identified a specific piece as violating their copyright, and pointed this out to YouTube, and YouTube takes it down... that exact same piece, bit-for-bit, can be put online again by the same user or another user. And -that- is where YouTube should indeed take their own responsibility. They already *know* that specific content was illegal as they've already been through this.
I'm not saying that's the law - clearly, it isn't. I'm saying that maybe it should be. And I'm guessing that Viacom is definitely thinking this, and is thus suing.
I'm a service provider... the service I provide is to make my hands do things (no, not that... you pervs).
A user comes along, and uses my hand to slap you in the face anytime somebody says "Hello".
Somebody comes along, says "Hello", and through the user's directive I slap you.
You tell me to cut it out and I say "Ok.", and the next time somebody says "Hello"...
I slap you again. You tell me to fqn cut it out already, like you told me last time. I say "Ok." again. Somebody comes along again, says "Hello"...
And I slap you again. Now you're thinking "whatthefuck mate? STOP IT!". I say "Ok.".. again. Somebody says "Hello"...
And once more, I slap you. Now you might be thinking "what gives?" and instead of telling me to stop it, you check into why I slapped you. And you realize that the first time I slapped you because User A told me to do so whenever somebody said "Hello". The second time it was User B. The third time it was User C. The fourth time it was User A again. And then you realize - no matter how often you tell me to stop slapping you in the face, somebody else will just tell me to do do it all over again anyway.
Bad analogies aside, that's what the provision is allowing YouTube. Yes, you can ask them to remove a video (actually, it's not as simple as an e-mail saying "Hi, I'm Viacom - that's our material, please remove." It involves legal paperwork and all that stuff costing a small amount of money (well, small to Viacom)). But that same video (bit-for-bit) may be re-uploaded and YouTube can wash its hands in innocence pointing to the provision and saying they complied completely.
I.e. they comply with the letter of the law(directive/thing/whatever), but I think we all know it's not quite within the spirit of it. Any more than people complying with GPLv2 using the code to build server-side applications/etc. and ticking off a bunch of people are complying with the letter of the GPLv2, but not the spirit. Hence (and for other readsons) GPLv3. Same reason why the DMCA should be revisited as well - and while they do so, they can get rid of the utterly bad parts (stuff about not being allowed to break decryption/etc.).
yeah, that's the only bit that got a chuckle out of me. Overall, I'm disappointed by the results. But to each their own, I suppose - I'm sure they have their followings of devoted 'fans' who went votehappy and told their friends to be votehappy, etc.
darnit.. forgot to mention. I'm not a right-to-lifer.. I'm all for abortion in a great number of situations, and certainly don't consider a cluster of cells a 'human being'. I just feel that birthdays are arbitrary; totally unrelated to the whole pro/against abortion and whatnot stance.
funny you should mention that.. it's why I don't care for my birthday.. yes, it's tied into a shitload of legal bits and pieces, but other than that it is wholly arbitrary.
If labor were induced a day earlier for any medical reason or just for kicks, my birthday would be 1 day earlier. If my mother said "fsck it, I'm not giving labor while watching I Love Lucy" and postponed it for a day, my birthday would be 1 day later. Many people are born 2, 3, 4 weeks 'early', others are born 1, 2 weeks 'late'. That in and of itself means that birthdays are arbitrary and linked only to the actual event of being born.
Day of conception is vastly more important, imho. One snag, though.. it's a bit more difficult to determine from the get go, and I'm certainly not going to ask my parents;)
ah.. but what if you loved it, but stopped loving it? (e.g. you found it fun to play, but can't be bothered to play it again.) Would you still have purchased it? What if you didn't love it, but found it quite entertaining enough to play it through anyway? Would you still have purchased it? What if you only loved it half way through, then found yourself bored with it or just otherwise couldn't bring yourself to play it through anyway? Would you still have purchased it?
The problem is that for every 1 person that actually buys a game they loved playing in pirated form, there's 1+ person who thinks "I already played it, I have no desire to play it again anytime soon, why would I purchase it?".
If everybody was like you, piracy wouldn't be a particular problem. If everybody in the above situations said "Yes", piracy wouldn't be a particular problem. Sadly, most people don't go around buying games/movies they loved, as they already enjoyed it and have no particularly compelling reason to shell out money for it after the fact.
Slashdot Mirror
"Ah, but there is a difference", will be the first response if I don't type this quickly enough.
In the case of the PS3, SONY is actually deprived of their product to sell. In the case of copyrighted material, the copyright holder still has the material, they can still make a copy of their own for scratch, and sell that.
I.e. one is stealing (by fraud), the other is mere copyright infringement.. and not unethical.
Why, those darn music companies making meeeeeeellions coming after you for copying a single song are the ones who are unethical!
*chuckle*
Indeed, the PC (IBM AT compatible blabla) demo scene has been *extremely* active for as long as there have been PCs. Check www.scene.org for details/demos.
However... there's no longer such a thing as 'The PC Demo Scene'; even those who claim there is are realizing it is rapidly degenerating. The reason for this is the extensive hardware acceleration of any type found in PCs these days. It used to be a challenge to stick a procedurally generated 3D scene with an 8-track MOD in a small exe and have it run fluidly on a 386 with a basic VGA card and a SoundBlaster. Nowadays one just takes the regular 3D scene along with an MP3 and feed it to the graphics card and through a simple decoder straight to audio.
From the Gravis UltraSound to the S3, every hardware development was greedily taken advantage of by showing new things that could be done on that hardware... but they've reached a saturation point several years back. If you want to pump the best results out of a graphics card now, you're not doing so in a demo.. you're doing so for profit on a major game engine.
What is left, then, is a limited form of a PC Demo Scene.. demos under 4k, 16k, 32k and 64k (existed before, but these are still challenging now even with all the hardware).. demos that must run on older hardware.. self-imposed restrictions like "no using pixel shaders", etc. But these are all highly artificial limits and no longer push the boundaries of what one can do on the hardware as is... it's pushing the boundaries of what one can do within those artificial limits.
To some that is the same spirit, to others it's nothing alike at all.
=====
To see what people are doing with PC demos nowadays, Farbrausch's debris is a nice one to check out. You don't need the hardware to run it, there's videos made of the things.
http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=30244
that's always amazed me about the U.S...
In NL, if you get a package, they come to your door, ring.. if you're not there, they come back a second time - having left a notice the first time when they would be back - and if you're still not there, they leave the package at a post office. This is for safekeeping, to make sure the right household gets it, etc.
In the US, if you're not home - tough luck, the mailman leave it on your porch. Amazon book? Porch. Laptop? Porch. That giant new plasma TV? Porch. Just walking around in some of the neighborhoods while I was on vacation in Houston I was seeing all kinds of stuff on porches... and nobody stealing it. I came to realize that for all of the flaws in America, it must be rather nice to be able to have that sort of faith in fellow man.
( I'm sure stuff does get stolen off of porches, but apparently not significantly enough for the population to demand packages be stored at post offices instead. )
.. and they forever will be, and you are correct on every point.
Though I'd hate to tell any developer of a GPL piece of software to just "get over it" when a commercial entity takes their code, sells a binary version for profit and never releases the source code again.
Nor would I want to tell a photographer "sorry mate, but you're in the wrong business" if he wants to sell prints, if everybody would just print / buy copies for next-to-free when he wants to make a living sell them at $10/print. ( In your example, the photographer would get a lump sum from e.g. Corbis instead, and leave the worries about copies to Corbis - and yes, Corbis does worry, and does very actively police news outlets and graphics agencies to see if they're using Corbis content without having licensed it). Not for the base reason of "everybody knows it's illegal, but they do it anyway - sorry, chum".
That said - why would the student be concerned? Presumably, it's their paper, they already published it, they already reaped the benefits; just like the car designer who gets the money and doesn't worry about any copies / misrepresentations (get over it!). If they didn't, then I guess they went about things the wrong way?
Things are never that simple - but to many students, it is.. except when it affects them.
Would a better example be a father who punches a police officer for arresting his kid?
Oh no, that would still be fear.. as the father would fear that his son may get a record.
All contempt could be rationalized to actually be fear that way. Would contempt be to find a spot where there is a cop doing speed checks, then speed by, again and again, and then refuse to pay any fines? That'd be contempt for the law, not for the the authority (cop) in question.
I don't see any fear, whatsoever, in the 14-year old who punches and strangles a cop. Somebody who would have fear would run from the cops, not assault them. Similarly, although the 2 French kids may have had fear for the cops when they fled, those in riots certainly had no fear - they had something more along the lines of contempt.
...MGM is pwned by SONY, so no going around buying MGM content off of the Apple store now, ya hear?*
* does not supply to the more rational-thinking people who stated to only boycott SONY BMG.
... as far as the article details.
The password.exe does, however, address a controller chip. Without the correct password, the controller chip will simply refuse to provide further access to the flash memory.
So if you're really wondering - I would imagine that the entire thing won't work with Linux, period.
...where N could be set on first initializing the stick. And I assume you could change this later provided you had already given the correct password, but the article doesn't go into that.
:)
So it's not a case of typing it wrong once and *poof* goes the data (note that they didn't find any physical evidence of things in there capable of physical destruction either). If you set it to 3 times, and you get it wrong 3 times yourself - oh well. Maybe you *could* set it to only once, though.. but if you do that, you're an idiot anyway
...that they punch and strangle a police officer.. yes, yes it is a bad thing.e rt_agente_te_wurgen.html
_ France
d t_met_scooter_in_op_agenten.html_ rijdt_met_hoge_snelheid_in_op_agent.htmlr ijdt_agent_aan.html
http://www.nu.nl/news/1038914/14/rss/Jongen_probe
Once masses of people get in a destructive uproar over two kids dying because they knowingly fled from the police and decided an electrical housing was a dandy place to do so.. yes, yes it is a bad thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_civil_unrest_in
Once a smaller mass of people get in a, thankfully, more peaceful uproar over two kids dying because they knowingly fled from police on their moped, for the relatively minor offenses of not having a license plate and not wearing helmets, and wrapping themselves around a tree.. yes, yes it is a bad thing.
http:/// dammit, can't find it right now
Once there's several incidents where there's people taking their vehicle and purposefully trying to run into cops (rather, expect them to get out of the way as a means to escape whatever check (alcohol, speed, whatever) is being performed.. yes, yes it is a bad thing.
http://www.nu.nl/news/740197/14/rss/Tilburger_rij
http://www.nu.nl/news/849457/13/rss/Scooterrijder
http://www.nu.nl/news/726139/14/rss/Automobilist_
Don't get me wrong, people don't have to just take *everything* authority, in these cases the police, are doing. A certain level of 'contempt' is sane. But keep in mind that the slope of contempt for authority is a very slippery one.
Take the riots in France.. if I were a kid there now who committed a crime and I'm being chased by the police, I might be more inclined to flee as well - after all, a large portion of the population will stick by me should something go wrong - they'll tell the police that they shouldn't chase me at all, thanks to their new level of sheeple-contempt for authority. Heck, the police may be less inclined to chase me at all in fear of this contempt, and I could get away with whatever I was doing.
You and I may be able to keep our footing on it, but you and I both also know that plenty of people can't or even won't; regular news reports being ample evidence thereof.
Very often these drives some with two USB plugs for the computer end. If your 1 USB port happens not to be able to power the thing, you plug in the other. The down side is that you take up 2 USB ports, but if you just happen to need it.. there you go.
Of course you then have to figure out still if both ports aren't just on the same controller, etc. (or even if it is a powered port - though rare these days for them not to b) but typically any USB powered port is going to have its own rated 2.5W at disposal. Won't do any good if you stick them both in a USB hub, of course.
"If he could make a copy of your car, leaving the original intact and untouched, would you even care?"
I've been running a similar argument for a while now. Let's put it this way..
If my car was a copy itself - naw, I wouldn't care. If the person I copied it from allowed me to do so and gave me the right to let others make copies - naw, I wouldn't care.
Chances are, however, I paid money for my car. So do I care if somebody comes along and makes a copy of my car without going through the same effort of paying for it? I just might.
What if it gets a little bit more intrigueing. I paid for the car in blood, sweat and tears - as I built it pretty much from the ground up. It's a one-of-a-kind car. I have no intention of selling it or giving it away, etc. Then somebody comes along and makes a copy of it. Would I care? Yes.
Now let's say I have every intention of selling it - for $60,000 because the market is telling me that's what people would at least be paying for the thing. Now somebody comes along and makes a copy and puts it on sale for $4,000. Would I care? Hell yes.
In all of the above cases - I still have my car. And by some people's thoughts, no harm is done. True to the letter, but not true to the spirit.
Once everybody can make copies of everything physical, that's when these car analogies, or rather: digital vs physical analogies, will start to make sense. Because then I wouldn't care if I couldn't sell my car for $60,000 to be able to have housing, eat, etc. as I would just copy the housing, copy the food, etc. The baker would copy his flour, the farmer would copy his wheat, and so forth and so on all the way up to raw materials suppliers who, presumably, would be making these available for free because they enjoy doing so, and everything else they need, they can copy themselves.
Until then, though, whether it is theft or IP infringement (be it copyright infringement, patent infringement, trademark infringement, etc.), it's illegal all the same and students should be tought that it is such. Whether they grab the latest movie off of bittorrent 5 minutes after the class exits is then up to them, but if somebody were to then do much the same to them, I don't think they can cry foul.
Just my 2 unpopular cents.
the biggest problem - as I understand it, at least (if I understand incorrectly, then I guess the people who advocate them have more work to do to educate the masses), is this..
With a BSD license, I can include a piece of open source code in my project, compile it, release it in any which way I want, and be done with it. I *can* contribute back if I change any of the code in that open source code, but it is not required of me.
With a GPL license, if I include a piece of open source code in my project, compile it, and release it in any which way I want, I...
- need to make not only the original open source code available
- but also the source code of my entire project
- whether I make changes to the open source code or not
The only other license that is a mix of both, is the LGPL, where I can use the source code in my project as long as it compiles to its own library (say, a DLL on Windows), and I tap into that library. I still have to release the source code to that library, including any changes I make to it, but my entire project doesn't automatically become GPL.
Given that libraries aren't always possible, and that not too many developers choose LGPL (it's mostly either GPL or BSD - dozens of other flavors to suit authors' specific demands notwithstanding), BSD code - for many developers - is 'better'... to that developer, not to the end-user, per se. Though one may always think otherwise: http://lwn.net/2001/0301/a/rms-ov-license.php3
and I know Swahili just fine, you insensitive bardhuli!
...but they hardly own it. For one, they're still missing a killer 3D app. Yes, Maya is on the Mac - but you'll be hard-pressed to find many companies using Maya on said Mac. Nevermind that it's not an Apple app (unlike Shake (by acquisition), FCP, Logic Pro (by acquisition) etc.) If Autodesk hadn't grabbed it up, I would have expected Apple to do so.
Similarly, for editing/post, there's a ton of flint/flame/inferno/etc./etc. out there which are nowhere near Apple.
And that's completely ignoring everything hardware that you'll find in a typical broadcast facility. Avid, Thomson/Grass Valley, et al would have a chuckle at your post. So would Apple, for that matter - Apple isn't interested in replacing them at all... they're more on the software side and helping to sell Apple hardware.
Nice numbers... here's some others.
Florence, Italy -> Rome, Italy: 275km
Houston, TX, USA -> Austin, TX, USA: 162miles (260km)
Everybody who keeps comparing the EU to the USA and saying how cities in Europe are so much closer are only thinking about things like LA to SF, or even from either of those to New York. Nobody in Europe is going to take a train to get from Oslo to Lisboa either (well, some people do - just as some in the U.S. take roadtrips from coast to coast).
That's not entirely true... keep in mind that Access Software (Links golf, Countdown, and various other both visually and sound-wise impressive titles) offered an option called RealSound for sound playback. This sound would go through the PC Speaker (in the era of 386 and 486, this was an actual cone speaker) and produce reasonable sound output.
In addition, long before the SoundBlaster, there was the Covox - a parallel port piece of electronics you could build at home with the right components and a soldering iron - which produced superior sound. Eventually a stereo version was able to be made and addressed as well.
Now, I'll agree that the soundblaster line of products actually kicked off the real audio revolution as finally you got great quality -without- the parallel port fidgeting.. just plunk in the card and pray you get the address, irq and whatnot settings set up right; but once they were, off you were.
Did I say it was a bad analogy yet? That said - hey, both are illegal.. go figure
Your point stands without question - but it does nothing to reduce my point. I'm not saying that YouTube should check every single upload to see if the user has consent from the copyright holder to do so; which is what it comes down to - they don't necessarily have to check with their own lawyers whether it would be considered fair use or not. Leave that to the copyright holder.
However... once a copyright owner has identified a specific piece as violating their copyright, and pointed this out to YouTube, and YouTube takes it down... that exact same piece, bit-for-bit, can be put online again by the same user or another user. And -that- is where YouTube should indeed take their own responsibility. They already *know* that specific content was illegal as they've already been through this.
I'm not saying that's the law - clearly, it isn't. I'm saying that maybe it should be. And I'm guessing that Viacom is definitely thinking this, and is thus suing.
I'm a service provider... the service I provide is to make my hands do things (no, not that... you pervs).
A user comes along, and uses my hand to slap you in the face anytime somebody says "Hello".
Somebody comes along, says "Hello", and through the user's directive I slap you.
You tell me to cut it out and I say "Ok.", and the next time somebody says "Hello"...
I slap you again. You tell me to fqn cut it out already, like you told me last time. I say "Ok." again. Somebody comes along again, says "Hello"...
And I slap you again. Now you're thinking "whatthefuck mate? STOP IT!". I say "Ok.".. again. Somebody says "Hello"...
And once more, I slap you. Now you might be thinking "what gives?" and instead of telling me to stop it, you check into why I slapped you. And you realize that the first time I slapped you because User A told me to do so whenever somebody said "Hello". The second time it was User B. The third time it was User C. The fourth time it was User A again. And then you realize - no matter how often you tell me to stop slapping you in the face, somebody else will just tell me to do do it all over again anyway.
Bad analogies aside, that's what the provision is allowing YouTube. Yes, you can ask them to remove a video (actually, it's not as simple as an e-mail saying "Hi, I'm Viacom - that's our material, please remove." It involves legal paperwork and all that stuff costing a small amount of money (well, small to Viacom)). But that same video (bit-for-bit) may be re-uploaded and YouTube can wash its hands in innocence pointing to the provision and saying they complied completely.
I.e. they comply with the letter of the law(directive/thing/whatever), but I think we all know it's not quite within the spirit of it. Any more than people complying with GPLv2 using the code to build server-side applications/etc. and ticking off a bunch of people are complying with the letter of the GPLv2, but not the spirit. Hence (and for other readsons) GPLv3. Same reason why the DMCA should be revisited as well - and while they do so, they can get rid of the utterly bad parts (stuff about not being allowed to break decryption/etc.).
I know I'm late with an addition, but.. if you think that's cool - check out this guy:
http://www-math.mit.edu/~bush/
http://www-math.mit.edu/~bush/gallery.html
http://www-math.mit.edu/~bush/polyhedra.jpg
yeah, that's the only bit that got a chuckle out of me. Overall, I'm disappointed by the results. But to each their own, I suppose - I'm sure they have their followings of devoted 'fans' who went votehappy and told their friends to be votehappy, etc.
Me, I much prefer this one (not for comedic value, per se):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE
That said - the Kiwi is cool
You must use Linux..
darnit.. forgot to mention. I'm not a right-to-lifer.. I'm all for abortion in a great number of situations, and certainly don't consider a cluster of cells a 'human being'. I just feel that birthdays are arbitrary; totally unrelated to the whole pro/against abortion and whatnot stance.
funny you should mention that.. it's why I don't care for my birthday.. yes, it's tied into a shitload of legal bits and pieces, but other than that it is wholly arbitrary.
;)
If labor were induced a day earlier for any medical reason or just for kicks, my birthday would be 1 day earlier. If my mother said "fsck it, I'm not giving labor while watching I Love Lucy" and postponed it for a day, my birthday would be 1 day later. Many people are born 2, 3, 4 weeks 'early', others are born 1, 2 weeks 'late'. That in and of itself means that birthdays are arbitrary and linked only to the actual event of being born.
Day of conception is vastly more important, imho. One snag, though.. it's a bit more difficult to determine from the get go, and I'm certainly not going to ask my parents
ah.. but what if you loved it, but stopped loving it? (e.g. you found it fun to play, but can't be bothered to play it again.) Would you still have purchased it?
What if you didn't love it, but found it quite entertaining enough to play it through anyway? Would you still have purchased it?
What if you only loved it half way through, then found yourself bored with it or just otherwise couldn't bring yourself to play it through anyway? Would you still have purchased it?
The problem is that for every 1 person that actually buys a game they loved playing in pirated form, there's 1+ person who thinks "I already played it, I have no desire to play it again anytime soon, why would I purchase it?".
If everybody was like you, piracy wouldn't be a particular problem. If everybody in the above situations said "Yes", piracy wouldn't be a particular problem. Sadly, most people don't go around buying games/movies they loved, as they already enjoyed it and have no particularly compelling reason to shell out money for it after the fact.