I make this point up above somewhere... Ad agencies exist to sell *advertising* to COMPANIES, *not* to sell product to consumers.
Ad agencies find themselves in a position somewhat akin to the RIAA cartel, where thanks to broader distribution systems (which also distribute information about companies) find themselves teetering on the brink of obsolescence. Naturally they grab at everything in reach to maintain their position -- in the case of ad agencies, this means delivering every eyeball they possibly can by any means at their disposal, because otherwise their shrinking ad-watcher-demographics will plainly tell companies "buying this advertising was a waste of money."
Advertising agencies (which actually produce most of the ads you see) exist NOT to sell product to consumers, but rather, TO SELL ADVERTISING TO COMPANIES.
If companies don't buy advertising, *they* might not go out of business, but the *ad agencies* most certainly WILL.
I agree. Regardless of the teen's motives (whether that be social statement or dumb stunt) it serves as a fine example of how easily ANY random person or organization can abuse the DMCA takedown rule.
Re:My predictions for Wndows over the next year...
on
The End is Nigh for XP
·
· Score: 1
Something I observed during XP's beta: it was apparently designed around Dell hardware. Beta users with Dells had no problems. Anything else was an Adventure. This toned down a lot within a few months after XP's release, but a person had to wonder just how deliberate this compatibility skew was, and what backroom partnerships were in place.
Of course, it's MUCH easier (and cheaper) to ensure that an OS runs on *one* major hardware configuration (just ask Apple!) and let everyone else take their chances. From what you say, this may well be the direction they took with Vista.
Clones average about 40% of the PC market... a fact that no doubt peeves the OEMs no end. Draw your own conclusions.
Such a radical! None of my Windows machines have EVER needed a reinstall, not even the WinME/XP system that gets used to test all sorts of crap. (In fact it only gets *rebooted* about once a year. No, I don't update it.) And their average working lifespan, from install to retirement, is 7-8 years. I have clients with Windows setups that are over 10 years old, and were never reinstalled. (Actually, the oldest dates back to *1993*. Yes, he's still on Win3.1.)
This really isn't unusual. Most of the Windows machines I see are still on their original setup, have never been reinstalled, and are still reasonably functional/stable, despite years of abuse and neglect. Multiple reinstalls, despite the Slashdot meme, are the exception, not the rule. And even then, in my experience most reinstalls people do are unnecessary (nothing a good defrag and killing some garbage couldn't fix).
The upshot is that if it ain't broke, I don't upgrade it. Not exactly the ideal M$ customer.:)
IMO the "Winbloze Sucks!" meme works in Microsoft's FAVOUR, by making upgrades seem more desireable than they really are: "Old Windoze crashes, dies, sucks! New Vista better!"
But it COULD be. Other software products use feature comparison charts to guide new customers toward the most suitable product; why couldn't linux do the same? We can't assume that ALL potential linux users are steered into it by existing linux users!!
When I've checked out a bunch of disties (being a Windows user who'd really like to but has yet to find a linux that I could *happily* switch to), I would have welcomed a comparison that charted out the major (and perhaps minor) pros, cons, can-do, and can't-do features of all the significant disties, thus saving me the added frustration of installing those that I did not know were totally unsuitable for my needs. In the time (ie. patience) I had to mess with each, there was no way I was going to discover even the most common benefits and/or drawbacks of any given disty, beyond the most superficial desktop features. I might have been more patient if I'd known in advance that yes, Disty X can indeed do whatever necessary but non-obvious function.
ISTM that such a comparison could largely be generated wiki-style, where each feature or fault gets its own page, and expert users can write relevant comments under Pro and Con sections for each.
My main usin' boxes are from the 1998 era. (Yeah, I'm a caveman.) Which means they only have USB 1.x -- and it has exactly the bad habit the parent post mentioned. Sometimes it works fine, other times it doesn't (or only works after a certain amount of perseverence), and which I'll get is about 50-50. It is definitely the USB 1.x at fault. Same software on a system with USB 2.0 never has such issues.
So, my thought is: Could the USB components in Ubuntu be sticking on some old USB 1.x code, that never got fully updated for USB 2.0??
If so (and I don't doubt it) -- is there any potential to prosecute the RIAA, or at least their minions, in *criminal* court? Methinks that could have far more of an impact toward halting their shennanigans than any amount of civil litigation.
Or get a few of their lawyers disbarred for misconduct, and perhaps thereby discourage others from taking such cases.
I thought there was a prohibition against taking legal action in the name of someone who is not actually your client... if the RIAA lawyers are working for the RIAA but not for the actual copyright holders, isn't that what the RIAA is doing??
Nah, CTS isn't a troll. Been here a long time, usually fairly sensible.
I think the problem is that a lot of young people (and slashdotters tend to be young and often very lacking in realworld experience) have this "you are either WITH me or AGAINST me" mentality -- so they don't quite grok that defending someone against copyright *abuse* is NOT the same thing as encouraging copyright infringement.
And I think that was the parent post's real question (however snidely worded) -- to the effect of "If this EFF action results in crippling the RIAA's lawsuit engine, am I then immune to RIAA-style copyright lawsuits, even if I did actually infringe copyright?"
The obvious answer is "No, of course not" -- just as getting an *abusive* speeding ticket rightfully dismissed won't keep you from ever getting a *legit* speeding ticket.
The distinction seems obvious, but I've noticed is sometimes hard for young people to see.
It occurs to me that the real problem here is that none of Congress have been victims of hacked routers, RIAA lawsuits, etc. Were they to experience firsthand what they've wrought, mayhaps they'd begin to oppose it.
I recall an interview with former Senator McCarthy, in his day one of the worst offenders in helping pass legislation that crippled business. After he retired, he got the notion that he'd like to buy and operate a nice midsized independent hotel... and found that thanks to the legislation HE had helped make into law, his dream of owning and operating a hotel was completely out of reach -- being thoroughly buried in regulatory fees, taxes, and restrictions. McCarthy said that if he'd had any idea just how DIFFICULT his own pet bills were making it for business, ESPECIALLY FOR SMALL AND STARTUP BUSINESSES, he'd never have supported most of the anti-business legislation that he was famous for during his Congressional career.
I do kindof the same thing. Yeah, I always put some stuff in the same locations, so I don't have to think about which batch file works on which machine, and so all I have to do is copy my utility backup CD to a new machine and all is ready to go without having to relearn anything or wonder WTF is the path on this box??
But as to the desktop tweaks, the job the machine ends up doing (often not what it was intended for), what OS and apps it runs, etc. -- that just evolves. Some wind up pretty similar to my everyday work box, and others nothing like it at all. Even the OS tends to grow that way -- it's usually whatever OS was new and interesting when the machine was ready to have an OS installed. And appearance tends to evolve off the OS's quirks, or the way I use that machine.
And once a system evolves to a pleasantly useful state (which often takes weeks or months), it tends to stay pretty much set in stone.
During college I lived in what was called the "fruit section" of Bozeman MT, not only because of the street names (Plum, Avocado, Peach, etc.) but also because of the numbers of just plain fruity people living there. Anyway, one day I opened my garage (which was well off the street) to discover a bunch of stuff I didn't recognise had magically appeared -- a set of wheels, a kitchen stove, misc. household goods, garden tools, etc. Didn't appear to be dumped, stolen, nor broken. Landlord said it wasn't his stuff either. I never did find out where it came from.
The answer is probably to eliminate the "star-making machinery" entirely, and go back to a medieval-like system of direct payments and wealthy patrons, both for artists and composers (who are not necessarily one and the same, hence ASCAP). The internet makes artists more available to a wider audience (thus to more potential payments and patrons), without having to pay anyone else for that privilege.
Of course the RIAA cartel doesn't WANT to be eliminated, and doesn't WANT artists to get paid without the cartel's intervention (ie. taking all but one small cut of the pie the artist baked). And that's what the wailing over "piracy" is really all about.
Sortof like if King George didn't care if your ship sank, so long as you paid your tariffs to the crown.
Precisely how it works for me... trip over some artist I never heard of, either as a random download, a recommendation, or via internet radio; listen to the MP3 too many times, get addicted, hunt down and buy CDs.
Funny thing, I only buy music when I'm getting this sort of exposure. When I'm not, I just don't get sufficiently interested in anyone to buy their stuff. (In fact, I usually don't even hear 'em in the first place, so don't know they exist.)
So for me it's real simple: When I can copy or download, I buy CDs. When I can't, I don't.
It was the same when I was DJing and the exposure-and-addiction route was a library of vinyl LPs and a tape deck, rather than the internet and MP3s.
BTW, clips don't work, and have never sold me an album. They never have the same power to interest and addict that the full song does, in fact more often leave me feeling vaguely annoyed with the song.
And always-on doesn't need to mean always-full-powered, or even always-at-idle. It only needs to mean "always responds on demand".
With a GPS system, it could also mean "auto-responds when inside Designated Sensitive Areas" (stadiums, schools, whatever is the gov't-fantasy terrorist target of the week).
If the always-on is thus fairly selective, it probably wouldn't impact battery life in a way that most people would notice -- they're already too used to cell phones never lasting as long as they think they should anyway.:/
Okay, show of hands: how many of you will start carrying your cell phone inside a lead-foil pouch?:)
Not only that, but even a known criminal or known terrorist might go to the Super Bowl solely because he loves football. He might go to the opera because he loves music. He might go to the park to feed the ducks.
If you assume every move made by any known perp is for the commission of yet another crime -- anyone with so much as a speeding ticket is in trouble, because every time you get in your car, it will be assumed that you intend to speed again!!
That's why I suggested some sort of caching or pooling system, where unspent funds would remain unspent, so they'd be available against future shortfalls. I suppose to prevent the perception of "you don't need that money ever again" there'd need to be some sort of accounting system where such surpluses remain part of your department's budget, even tho they're temporarily in the general pool.
Of course knowing how gov't works, everyone would mysteriously need more funds every time the pool showed a surplus:/ Kindof like how California does things:(
Slashdot Mirror
I make this point up above somewhere... Ad agencies exist to sell *advertising* to COMPANIES, *not* to sell product to consumers.
Ad agencies find themselves in a position somewhat akin to the RIAA cartel, where thanks to broader distribution systems (which also distribute information about companies) find themselves teetering on the brink of obsolescence. Naturally they grab at everything in reach to maintain their position -- in the case of ad agencies, this means delivering every eyeball they possibly can by any means at their disposal, because otherwise their shrinking ad-watcher-demographics will plainly tell companies "buying this advertising was a waste of money."
Advertising agencies (which actually produce most of the ads you see) exist NOT to sell product to consumers, but rather, TO SELL ADVERTISING TO COMPANIES.
If companies don't buy advertising, *they* might not go out of business, but the *ad agencies* most certainly WILL.
Dear Government:
Sales are slumping... Please ban my works!!
I agree. Regardless of the teen's motives (whether that be social statement or dumb stunt) it serves as a fine example of how easily ANY random person or organization can abuse the DMCA takedown rule.
Something I observed during XP's beta: it was apparently designed around Dell hardware. Beta users with Dells had no problems. Anything else was an Adventure. This toned down a lot within a few months after XP's release, but a person had to wonder just how deliberate this compatibility skew was, and what backroom partnerships were in place.
Of course, it's MUCH easier (and cheaper) to ensure that an OS runs on *one* major hardware configuration (just ask Apple!) and let everyone else take their chances. From what you say, this may well be the direction they took with Vista.
Clones average about 40% of the PC market... a fact that no doubt peeves the OEMs no end. Draw your own conclusions.
Such a radical! None of my Windows machines have EVER needed a reinstall, not even the WinME/XP system that gets used to test all sorts of crap. (In fact it only gets *rebooted* about once a year. No, I don't update it.) And their average working lifespan, from install to retirement, is 7-8 years. I have clients with Windows setups that are over 10 years old, and were never reinstalled. (Actually, the oldest dates back to *1993*. Yes, he's still on Win3.1.)
:)
This really isn't unusual. Most of the Windows machines I see are still on their original setup, have never been reinstalled, and are still reasonably functional/stable, despite years of abuse and neglect. Multiple reinstalls, despite the Slashdot meme, are the exception, not the rule. And even then, in my experience most reinstalls people do are unnecessary (nothing a good defrag and killing some garbage couldn't fix).
The upshot is that if it ain't broke, I don't upgrade it. Not exactly the ideal M$ customer.
IMO the "Winbloze Sucks!" meme works in Microsoft's FAVOUR, by making upgrades seem more desireable than they really are: "Old Windoze crashes, dies, sucks! New Vista better!"
But it COULD be. Other software products use feature comparison charts to guide new customers toward the most suitable product; why couldn't linux do the same? We can't assume that ALL potential linux users are steered into it by existing linux users!!
When I've checked out a bunch of disties (being a Windows user who'd really like to but has yet to find a linux that I could *happily* switch to), I would have welcomed a comparison that charted out the major (and perhaps minor) pros, cons, can-do, and can't-do features of all the significant disties, thus saving me the added frustration of installing those that I did not know were totally unsuitable for my needs. In the time (ie. patience) I had to mess with each, there was no way I was going to discover even the most common benefits and/or drawbacks of any given disty, beyond the most superficial desktop features. I might have been more patient if I'd known in advance that yes, Disty X can indeed do whatever necessary but non-obvious function.
ISTM that such a comparison could largely be generated wiki-style, where each feature or fault gets its own page, and expert users can write relevant comments under Pro and Con sections for each.
Your comment made me wonder...
My main usin' boxes are from the 1998 era. (Yeah, I'm a caveman.) Which means they only have USB 1.x -- and it has exactly the bad habit the parent post mentioned. Sometimes it works fine, other times it doesn't (or only works after a certain amount of perseverence), and which I'll get is about 50-50. It is definitely the USB 1.x at fault. Same software on a system with USB 2.0 never has such issues.
So, my thought is: Could the USB components in Ubuntu be sticking on some old USB 1.x code, that never got fully updated for USB 2.0??
If so (and I don't doubt it) -- is there any potential to prosecute the RIAA, or at least their minions, in *criminal* court? Methinks that could have far more of an impact toward halting their shennanigans than any amount of civil litigation.
Or get a few of their lawyers disbarred for misconduct, and perhaps thereby discourage others from taking such cases.
So what they're looking for is an assurance that everyone will have equal rights in the courtroom, rather than all being weighted one way, yes?
Any action that improves fairness in defense against the RIAA's legal charades has got to be a good thing.
Feinstein is a good example of what's wrong with California, and with the brains issued to California voters :/
I thought there was a prohibition against taking legal action in the name of someone who is not actually your client... if the RIAA lawyers are working for the RIAA but not for the actual copyright holders, isn't that what the RIAA is doing??
Another reader of Cpt.Kangarooski :) (sp?)
Not only an ethical issue for the lawyer, but certain statements, if made in public, could jeopardize ongoing and even future cases.
Nah, CTS isn't a troll. Been here a long time, usually fairly sensible.
I think the problem is that a lot of young people (and slashdotters tend to be young and often very lacking in realworld experience) have this "you are either WITH me or AGAINST me" mentality -- so they don't quite grok that defending someone against copyright *abuse* is NOT the same thing as encouraging copyright infringement.
And I think that was the parent post's real question (however snidely worded) -- to the effect of "If this EFF action results in crippling the RIAA's lawsuit engine, am I then immune to RIAA-style copyright lawsuits, even if I did actually infringe copyright?"
The obvious answer is "No, of course not" -- just as getting an *abusive* speeding ticket rightfully dismissed won't keep you from ever getting a *legit* speeding ticket.
The distinction seems obvious, but I've noticed is sometimes hard for young people to see.
It occurs to me that the real problem here is that none of Congress have been victims of hacked routers, RIAA lawsuits, etc. Were they to experience firsthand what they've wrought, mayhaps they'd begin to oppose it.
I recall an interview with former Senator McCarthy, in his day one of the worst offenders in helping pass legislation that crippled business. After he retired, he got the notion that he'd like to buy and operate a nice midsized independent hotel... and found that thanks to the legislation HE had helped make into law, his dream of owning and operating a hotel was completely out of reach -- being thoroughly buried in regulatory fees, taxes, and restrictions. McCarthy said that if he'd had any idea just how DIFFICULT his own pet bills were making it for business, ESPECIALLY FOR SMALL AND STARTUP BUSINESSES, he'd never have supported most of the anti-business legislation that he was famous for during his Congressional career.
I do kindof the same thing. Yeah, I always put some stuff in the same locations, so I don't have to think about which batch file works on which machine, and so all I have to do is copy my utility backup CD to a new machine and all is ready to go without having to relearn anything or wonder WTF is the path on this box??
But as to the desktop tweaks, the job the machine ends up doing (often not what it was intended for), what OS and apps it runs, etc. -- that just evolves. Some wind up pretty similar to my everyday work box, and others nothing like it at all. Even the OS tends to grow that way -- it's usually whatever OS was new and interesting when the machine was ready to have an OS installed. And appearance tends to evolve off the OS's quirks, or the way I use that machine.
And once a system evolves to a pleasantly useful state (which often takes weeks or months), it tends to stay pretty much set in stone.
During college I lived in what was called the "fruit section" of Bozeman MT, not only because of the street names (Plum, Avocado, Peach, etc.) but also because of the numbers of just plain fruity people living there. Anyway, one day I opened my garage (which was well off the street) to discover a bunch of stuff I didn't recognise had magically appeared -- a set of wheels, a kitchen stove, misc. household goods, garden tools, etc. Didn't appear to be dumped, stolen, nor broken. Landlord said it wasn't his stuff either. I never did find out where it came from.
Dunno about that, but here's one based on NetBSD:
http://firewall.dubbele.com/
I haven't tried it, but I did read the instructions, and it looks like it's relatively a no-brainer.
I have a USB-IDE adapter too, and it came with a power brick specifically for powering the HD whilst thusly connected.
The answer is probably to eliminate the "star-making machinery" entirely, and go back to a medieval-like system of direct payments and wealthy patrons, both for artists and composers (who are not necessarily one and the same, hence ASCAP). The internet makes artists more available to a wider audience (thus to more potential payments and patrons), without having to pay anyone else for that privilege.
Of course the RIAA cartel doesn't WANT to be eliminated, and doesn't WANT artists to get paid without the cartel's intervention (ie. taking all but one small cut of the pie the artist baked). And that's what the wailing over "piracy" is really all about.
Sortof like if King George didn't care if your ship sank, so long as you paid your tariffs to the crown.
Precisely how it works for me... trip over some artist I never heard of, either as a random download, a recommendation, or via internet radio; listen to the MP3 too many times, get addicted, hunt down and buy CDs.
Funny thing, I only buy music when I'm getting this sort of exposure. When I'm not, I just don't get sufficiently interested in anyone to buy their stuff. (In fact, I usually don't even hear 'em in the first place, so don't know they exist.)
So for me it's real simple: When I can copy or download, I buy CDs. When I can't, I don't.
It was the same when I was DJing and the exposure-and-addiction route was a library of vinyl LPs and a tape deck, rather than the internet and MP3s.
BTW, clips don't work, and have never sold me an album. They never have the same power to interest and addict that the full song does, in fact more often leave me feeling vaguely annoyed with the song.
Two words: Voice-activated.
:/
:)
And always-on doesn't need to mean always-full-powered, or even always-at-idle. It only needs to mean "always responds on demand".
With a GPS system, it could also mean "auto-responds when inside Designated Sensitive Areas" (stadiums, schools, whatever is the gov't-fantasy terrorist target of the week).
If the always-on is thus fairly selective, it probably wouldn't impact battery life in a way that most people would notice -- they're already too used to cell phones never lasting as long as they think they should anyway.
Okay, show of hands: how many of you will start carrying your cell phone inside a lead-foil pouch?
I'd kinda prefer it if dead things didn't "act" at all!!
Not only that, but even a known criminal or known terrorist might go to the Super Bowl solely because he loves football. He might go to the opera because he loves music. He might go to the park to feed the ducks.
If you assume every move made by any known perp is for the commission of yet another crime -- anyone with so much as a speeding ticket is in trouble, because every time you get in your car, it will be assumed that you intend to speed again!!
Just as I suspected :(
:/ Kindof like how California does things :(
That's why I suggested some sort of caching or pooling system, where unspent funds would remain unspent, so they'd be available against future shortfalls. I suppose to prevent the perception of "you don't need that money ever again" there'd need to be some sort of accounting system where such surpluses remain part of your department's budget, even tho they're temporarily in the general pool.
Of course knowing how gov't works, everyone would mysteriously need more funds every time the pool showed a surplus