You are quite correct because the EULA is all about covering your ass as a company. Most of it boils down to "You're paying us for this software and we're not even going to promise you that it will work, much less work properly. If it doesn't work, you're screwed. Have a nice day."
Yes, but you know, I'll be using my heaping piles of cash to make sure *YOU* go with me... so I can continue to bombard you with messages from various applications... because that will be HELL for you.
NO ONE abuses musicians more than the RIAA. I'm going to explain the recording industry for you folks. Follow along and see if you kids can keep up. Let's pretend for a few minutes that you're a musician. You bust your butt gigging, playing all over town and one day some guy walks up to you and says, "Hi! I'm with (fill in name of record company here), and we'd really like to sign you to a recording contract." Well, you get all excited and you sign your deal with the devil.
The devil says "Come to my recording studio and we'll cut the record." Once you get there, they've got the studio lined up, the producer, and a few other people to "help you" make your record. If you ask about how much is going to cost, you get told, as is standard in the recording industry that "it will come out of the profits." Then you cut your album and "you have to promote it". If you ask how much that's going to cost...you guessed it kids, "it comes out of the profits". Now that you have to market your album, you have to go on tour. That means a bus, lights, roadies, stage, sound equipment, etc. If you ask how much that's going to cost...you guessed it kids, "it comes out of the profits".
While you're on tour, you need to have T-shirts, posters, bumper sticker, etc. You also need to have hot dogs, twinkies, beer, and cokes for people to consume during the concert. If you ask how much that's going to cost...you guessed it kids, "it comes out of the profits". By the time they're through pulling all the costs out of "the profits", there usually aren't any profits left, which means all that the artist gets is what ever they get as a signing bonus. Not the advance - the signing bonus - since the advance comes "out of the profits", too.
The way that this works out is that if you're lucky, the artist on any given album might see 1 or 2 cents of the $16.99 you pay for CD of music at Wal-Mart. Given that the Internet is the ideal distribution medium for music, I'd rather just go to the artists web site and buy the songs directly from them. Then the artist would get the whole $16.99 for the album instead of $0.02. But you see, the RIAA can't allow that because in that $16.97 lies their profit margins. Without them, it's a brave new world for digital music.
Why do you and I have to pay a third party middleman to broker the transaction for nothing more than a song? Worse yet, we are required to continue to pay this middleman who threatens to sue both the consumer and the musician when we try to cut him out of the transaction. If the artist tries to sell their songs on the website the RIAA will try to sue them for contract violations. If you and I try to download the music, we get sued. The only reason for this is that it leaves the big, fat RIAA profit margin intact.
The RIAA complains that their sales are down and points an accusing finger at "piracy". I'd like to take a moment to dispel that myth. When Napster was operating at it's peak, music sales were up 20% without the RIAA doing any additional marketing. Viral, word-of-mouth would spread quickly about new bands and good new interesting music. People were buying CD's because they'd get a taste of some stuff and like it. Then they'd go to the store, find the artist and buy some stuff. Now, there's no place to share that isn't full of viruses, worms, trojans, fake files, etc. No more free marketing RIAA - you pretty much litigated the goose that laid the golden egg out of existence.
Compounding the problem is that the RIAA is key in determining what gets pushed to the public. Frankly, I think that they've lost the pulse. We don't care about Brittany Spears, although my husband was caught peering at her photos when she got snapped sans the undies. For some reason, the music industry has decided to cater to 14 year old girls. Why? I don't really know. When's the last time you saw a 14 year old that had more than $20 of disposable income at any given moment? If you have no money, how are you supposed to buy a CD? Yet, this is the market segment that they've chosen to
Why are we soooo certain that we *want* to be found? I personally would prefer not to be a slave or a menu item to another race of beings. Honestly, what makes you think they will be peaceful or even tolerant of our existence if do find another civilization?
You picked up a lot of former AOL people and you wonder why your company sucks. AOL sucks. AOL has always sucked. It sucked when it was pretty much the only ISP a lot of people could get. It sucked when you tried to cancel and ended up cancelling your credit card instead because no matter what you did they wouldn't stop billing you. It sucked when you tried to make them refund you for the months where you should have been cancelled but they just kept on billing. It sucked when you finally gave up and disputed the charge with your credit card company.
Any company with those kind of ethics is about to produce a slew of unethical jackasses. And your company was dumb enough to hire them.
...and consider anything you say via that account to be as public as if it were announced over a PA system at an airport. I have to concur with this. If the terminal is pwned, so are you.
Not even a VPN connection will save you from that.
If you need to trust your computer, than use your own and set up a VPN connection to send email. That way you can use the network that your on but your traffic is encrypted from a known good computer.
Why Debate It - Jobs All Getting Shipped Oveseas
on
Science Debate 2008
·
· Score: 1
We've become a country that produces NOTHING. We do nothing. We sell nothing. We just consume what other people send us. All the science jobs, programming jobs, etc. are getting shipped over seas. They're obviously not important enough to keep so why talk about it?
Seriously.... give them bingo blotters. Make the ballot look like a bingo card. Even the biggest id10t *ought* to be able to figure that out. If you're not smart enough to figure out *how* to vote, you don't get to. - I'm calling this principle democratic darwinism.
I don't really see what you have to question. The BSA has been pretty blatant that they're *all* about collecting money via any means possible from any one that they can basically extort it from.
Quite frankly, a quick look at their business model shows them to be what they are - the new corporate raiders.
You can mod me as a troll or flame bait or what ever you like. The fact of the matter is that we're on the slippery slope toward becoming a police state. Stay with me...
First the Patriot Act - no more do you have show probable cause and get a search warrant. The enforcement branch is now unfettered by little things like the Bill of Rights.
Second the Emergency Powers Act - this allows martial law to be declared and turns the President into a military dictator if there's "catastrophic emergency" but utterly and complete fails to define what qualifies as a "catastrophic emergency"
Third is this - Now they have the unlimited ability to spy on the average citizen.
Am I seriously the only one who sees a pattern in all of this? Shall I start citing historical examples? Wake up people!!!
I can tell you this much, since U2 has chosen to allow him to co-op their name for this, I'll not be purchasing anything else that says U2 on it anywhere. Instead, hoist the Jolly Roger.....
Ever since Adobe sued Microsoft for bundling a PDF writer in with Office 2007, Microsoft has been pushing out a series of patches that breaks Flash Player content in IE. I'd love to see someone smack them with the equivalent of a cast iron skillet just because of how miserable they make every web developer world over.
My father is in a nursing home and the home has started jamming cell phone signals so that residents and family members cannot call outside the facility to complain or seek medical assistance. If it can be used for things like movie theaters, it can be used like these people are using it. I'm headed over now to file an FCC complaint.
I don't know what the rate of internet access is in Australia, but I'm absolutely certain it's not 100%. While I applaud the idea, there needs to be some sort of free access for those that either don't own a computer or or don't have an internet connection. Maybe 5 free minutes at the internet cafe so that people can read and vote on their legislation.
Tell the truth and get modded as "Flamebait" by the M$ fanbois. The facts still stand -.Net has issues - all kinds of issues and has for a long time. I can't even list them all here because no one wants to read through my laundry list of gripes. I don't know that./ would even allow me to write a post that big. You can flip through some of the posts below this one to see what a few of them they are. Microsoft hasn't really put any effort in to fixing them.
Instead, the follow their usual business model. They just write stuff, release it, and use the general public (e.g. any one who is not a Microsoft employee) as a beta tester. It's much better for their profit margin to do that than it is to actually *gasp* OMFG pay to do some beta testing and fix a few things before you actually start selling the stuff.
If you're honest with yourself, you know that they do this with most all of their products. The versions that they initially release for sale most always suck because of bugs. It doesn't matter what it is - Office, Operating System, etc. The only two products that Microsoft makes that are worth paying for are Visio & Visual Studio.
Slashdot Mirror
For 5 grand and at 12#, it needs to come with a hover device to make it follow along behind me.
2 cents,
QueenB.
You are quite correct because the EULA is all about covering your ass as a company. Most of it boils down to "You're paying us for this software and we're not even going to promise you that it will work, much less work properly. If it doesn't work, you're screwed. Have a nice day."
2 cents,
QueenB.
Yes, but you know, I'll be using my heaping piles of cash to make sure *YOU* go with me... so I can continue to bombard you with messages from various applications... because that will be HELL for you.
2 cents,
QueenB.
NO ONE abuses musicians more than the RIAA. I'm going to explain the recording industry for you folks. Follow along and see if you kids can keep up. Let's pretend for a few minutes that you're a musician. You bust your butt gigging, playing all over town and one day some guy walks up to you and says, "Hi! I'm with (fill in name of record company here), and we'd really like to sign you to a recording contract." Well, you get all excited and you sign your deal with the devil.
The devil says "Come to my recording studio and we'll cut the record." Once you get there, they've got the studio lined up, the producer, and a few other people to "help you" make your record. If you ask about how much is going to cost, you get told, as is standard in the recording industry that "it will come out of the profits." Then you cut your album and "you have to promote it". If you ask how much that's going to cost...you guessed it kids, "it comes out of the profits". Now that you have to market your album, you have to go on tour. That means a bus, lights, roadies, stage, sound equipment, etc. If you ask how much that's going to cost...you guessed it kids, "it comes out of the profits".
While you're on tour, you need to have T-shirts, posters, bumper sticker, etc. You also need to have hot dogs, twinkies, beer, and cokes for people to consume during the concert. If you ask how much that's going to cost...you guessed it kids, "it comes out of the profits". By the time they're through pulling all the costs out of "the profits", there usually aren't any profits left, which means all that the artist gets is what ever they get as a signing bonus. Not the advance - the signing bonus - since the advance comes "out of the profits", too.
The way that this works out is that if you're lucky, the artist on any given album might see 1 or 2 cents of the $16.99 you pay for CD of music at Wal-Mart. Given that the Internet is the ideal distribution medium for music, I'd rather just go to the artists web site and buy the songs directly from them. Then the artist would get the whole $16.99 for the album instead of $0.02. But you see, the RIAA can't allow that because in that $16.97 lies their profit margins. Without them, it's a brave new world for digital music.
Why do you and I have to pay a third party middleman to broker the transaction for nothing more than a song? Worse yet, we are required to continue to pay this middleman who threatens to sue both the consumer and the musician when we try to cut him out of the transaction. If the artist tries to sell their songs on the website the RIAA will try to sue them for contract violations. If you and I try to download the music, we get sued. The only reason for this is that it leaves the big, fat RIAA profit margin intact.
The RIAA complains that their sales are down and points an accusing finger at "piracy". I'd like to take a moment to dispel that myth. When Napster was operating at it's peak, music sales were up 20% without the RIAA doing any additional marketing. Viral, word-of-mouth would spread quickly about new bands and good new interesting music. People were buying CD's because they'd get a taste of some stuff and like it. Then they'd go to the store, find the artist and buy some stuff. Now, there's no place to share that isn't full of viruses, worms, trojans, fake files, etc. No more free marketing RIAA - you pretty much litigated the goose that laid the golden egg out of existence.
Compounding the problem is that the RIAA is key in determining what gets pushed to the public. Frankly, I think that they've lost the pulse. We don't care about Brittany Spears, although my husband was caught peering at her photos when she got snapped sans the undies. For some reason, the music industry has decided to cater to 14 year old girls. Why? I don't really know. When's the last time you saw a 14 year old that had more than $20 of disposable income at any given moment? If you have no money, how are you supposed to buy a CD? Yet, this is the market segment that they've chosen to
Hmmm.... given that the video cards are known to barf and the display is crap, how is it that Apple is catering to the artists and creative people???
That's their core market. Alienating your core market is never a smart move.
2 cents,
QueenB.
Seriously.... how is this news???? SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) should not be news.
2 cents,
QueenB.
That's how much money is missing from the books that they haven't been able to cook since SOX.
2 cents,
QueenB.
So how does it print color?
I can hear my end users asking now....
2 cents,
QueenB.
Maybe now I can justify the cost of the coffee and coffee maker in our budget.
2 cents,
QueenB.
Other than pork being a dietary staple in Korea, it seems that they'll now be serving up high speed spam..... wheeeee. I can't wait.
2 cents,
QueenB.
Why are we soooo certain that we *want* to be found? I personally would prefer not to be a slave or a menu item to another race of beings. Honestly, what makes you think they will be peaceful or even tolerant of our existence if do find another civilization?
2 cents,
QueenB
Why is it that I think VPN just became the new digital equivalent of the tin foil hat?
You picked up a lot of former AOL people and you wonder why your company sucks. AOL sucks. AOL has always sucked. It sucked when it was pretty much the only ISP a lot of people could get. It sucked when you tried to cancel and ended up cancelling your credit card instead because no matter what you did they wouldn't stop billing you. It sucked when you tried to make them refund you for the months where you should have been cancelled but they just kept on billing. It sucked when you finally gave up and disputed the charge with your credit card company.
Any company with those kind of ethics is about to produce a slew of unethical jackasses. And your company was dumb enough to hire them.
HAHHAHAH
...and consider anything you say via that account to be as public as if it were announced over a PA system at an airport. I have to concur with this. If the terminal is pwned, so are you.Not even a VPN connection will save you from that.
If you need to trust your computer, than use your own and set up a VPN connection to send email. That way you can use the network that your on but your traffic is encrypted from a known good computer.
We've become a country that produces NOTHING. We do nothing. We sell nothing. We just consume what other people send us. All the science jobs, programming jobs, etc. are getting shipped over seas. They're obviously not important enough to keep so why talk about it?
2 cents,
QueenB.
Seriously.... give them bingo blotters. Make the ballot look like a bingo card. Even the biggest id10t *ought* to be able to figure that out. If you're not smart enough to figure out *how* to vote, you don't get to. - I'm calling this principle democratic darwinism.
2 cents,
QueenB.
I don't really see what you have to question. The BSA has been pretty blatant that they're *all* about collecting money via any means possible from any one that they can basically extort it from.
Quite frankly, a quick look at their business model shows them to be what they are - the new corporate raiders.
2 cents,
QueenB.
You can mod me as a troll or flame bait or what ever you like. The fact of the matter is that we're on the slippery slope toward becoming a police state. Stay with me...
First the Patriot Act - no more do you have show probable cause and get a search warrant. The enforcement branch is now unfettered by little things like the Bill of Rights.
Second the Emergency Powers Act - this allows martial law to be declared and turns the President into a military dictator if there's "catastrophic emergency" but utterly and complete fails to define what qualifies as a "catastrophic emergency"
Third is this - Now they have the unlimited ability to spy on the average citizen.
Am I seriously the only one who sees a pattern in all of this? Shall I start citing historical examples? Wake up people!!!
2 cents,
QueenB
Seriously, how many of you see all kinds of stuff coming out of China, Korea, Nigeria, etc.?
NONE of them get prosecuted either....
2 cents,
QueenB
I can tell you this much, since U2 has chosen to allow him to co-op their name for this, I'll not be purchasing anything else that says U2 on it anywhere. Instead, hoist the Jolly Roger.....
2 cents,
QueenB.
Ever since Adobe sued Microsoft for bundling a PDF writer in with Office 2007, Microsoft has been pushing out a series of patches that breaks Flash Player content in IE. I'd love to see someone smack them with the equivalent of a cast iron skillet just because of how miserable they make every web developer world over.
2 cents,
QueenB.
My father is in a nursing home and the home has started jamming cell phone signals so that residents and family members cannot call outside the facility to complain or seek medical assistance. If it can be used for things like movie theaters, it can be used like these people are using it. I'm headed over now to file an FCC complaint.
Just my 2 cents,
QueenB.
I don't know what the rate of internet access is in Australia, but I'm absolutely certain it's not 100%. While I applaud the idea, there needs to be some sort of free access for those that either don't own a computer or or don't have an internet connection. Maybe 5 free minutes at the internet cafe so that people can read and vote on their legislation.
2 cents,
QueenB.
Please mail all the stale donuts you can find to:
Rock Star Games
622 Broadway
New York, NY 10012
Attention: Sam Houser, President
2 cents,
QueenB.
Tell the truth and get modded as "Flamebait" by the M$ fanbois. The facts still stand - .Net has issues - all kinds of issues and has for a long time. I can't even list them all here because no one wants to read through my laundry list of gripes. I don't know that ./ would even allow me to write a post that big. You can flip through some of the posts below this one to see what a few of them they are. Microsoft hasn't really put any effort in to fixing them.
Instead, the follow their usual business model. They just write stuff, release it, and use the general public (e.g. any one who is not a Microsoft employee) as a beta tester. It's much better for their profit margin to do that than it is to actually *gasp* OMFG pay to do some beta testing and fix a few things before you actually start selling the stuff.
If you're honest with yourself, you know that they do this with most all of their products. The versions that they initially release for sale most always suck because of bugs. It doesn't matter what it is - Office, Operating System, etc. The only two products that Microsoft makes that are worth paying for are Visio & Visual Studio.
2 more cents,