I wouldn't be surprised if the upcoming introduction of Vista next year led to a small bump in 4th-quarter sales this year. My sister was recently talking about replacing their old clunker, and wanted to get one with Win XP (which she at leaast knows and tolerates) instead of having to learn how to use a computer all over again with Vista and Office 2007.
Good. That means that maybe you're not as ethically retarded as so many of your file swapping buddies, and might eventually develop enough of a conscience to feel bad about fucking over the musicians you claim to be a fan of.
I'm not saying that I never pirated music, just that I grew out of that self-centered phase of my life before the file-"sharing" phenom hit, started supporting the musicians whose work I enjoyed, and today I'm 100% above-board. There was a time when I didn't give a second thought to copying music my friends had bought. But in college I found myself with several friends who were in a band, and after I graduated and got a job, I put up most of them funds for them to record and release an album. I wasn't in it for the money; I wrote up a contract that stipulated that the most I would ever get was my money back. And as I waited for that to trickle in, every home-taped copy of that album that I encountered (e.g. in the hands of a friend who didn't know the band personally) was like a kick in the nuts. I eventually did get my investment back, because most of the people who wanted copies of the music had enough personal connection with the band (even if it was only friend of a friend of a friend of a friend) that they didn't want to rip them off. Not so lucky are the musicians who try to sell their music to strangers, who don't give a damn about them personally and whose evident inability to empathize with other human beings allows them to think that no one's being harmed when they take and take without giving anything back (except maybe a "dude, you rock!") to people who created the music they enjoy.
So, yeah... please be offended, because your self-centered attitude - lamely justified by the fact that you bathe frequently and don't rape puppies - offends me.
There isn't a single unlicensed track anywhere on my iPod. Not even one unauthorized sample. If the music cartels start charging me for music that I haven't downloaded, ripped, or otherwise pirated, then I'm going to have to stop spending money at iTMS and my local funky CD shop, and treat that "royalty charge" as a blanket license to their entire library. I've never waded into the content-piracy cesspool so far, but I sure as heck can't afford to pay for music twice, so that may be where I have to go.
Morality isn't necessarily an outcome-defined question. Sometimes - such as when your contributions to the project can be easily replaced - the best you can do is to personally remove yourself from an project you find personally distasteful. If enough people share your moral judgment, that may successfully put a stop to it, but the inability to effect that outcome by yourself doesn't make your personal choice to not participate any less virtuous.
Since you ask, I'm not particularly fond of the way children and grandchildren tend to inherit companies they had no part in building, either. I've seen several examples first-hand where the heirs either screwed it up or abused the fortune for personal gain; they didn't deserve it. Business inheritance serves to create a hereditary aristocracy that gives economic advantages and power to people based on who their parents were. Level playing fields and equal opportunity be damned. But I'm not actually radical enough to advocate the abolition of inheritance, so I won't press that point.
I don't believe that intellectual property should be as sacrosanct as real property. I think the framers of the U.S. Constitution (who definitely believed in real property and inheritance thereof) got it right: copyright exists for reasons that serve the public good, not for the private good.
This applies only to music recordings, not to copyrights in general. For other works (such as the musical compositions and lyrics themselves), the rule in the UK is that copyrights last for the life of the creator plus 70 years. Although the recordings of the Beatles' early recordings may become PD in the UK in 2013, even if Paul were to choke on a stalk of brocolli tomorrow morning, all those Lennon-McCartney compositions would still be copyrighted until 2077, and until then you wouldn't be able to make copies of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" without paying composition royalties to... well... Michael Jackson, I guess.
The paperwork needn't be complex or costly, but it is important that it exists so that we can limit copyright to only those works where the creator bothered to ask for one.
Like it or not, that idea's dead in the water. While registration used to be required in certain minor jurisdisctions (e.g. the U.S.) the terms of the Berne Convention require that "formalities" of this sort be abolished. The U.S. dropped them in '78.
That's not a true copyright, however. Parliament merely granted the Great Ormond Street Hospital perpetual royalties on Peter Pan. They do not have the right to grant/deny permission to perform the play or to create derivative works (at least after 2007), as a true copyright would give them. It's really more of a Peter tax, earmarked for GOSH.
Regardless, why do the adult children (and especially grand-children) of a musician, author, etc deserve to get money for work they had no part in creating? Let them create their own income-producing works, or earn a living some other way. My parents have told me that I shouldn't count on any special inheritance from them (they expect to spend most of what they've saved), and I'm perfectly content with that because I've done nothing to earn that money.
Providing for one's minor children and/or dependent spouse is a noble and admirable goal, which should be supported by keeping copyrights valid for some term after the creator's death if he has dependents... but not a term so long that every person who even knew the creator is dead before it expires.
Personally, since I have no dependents, I've decided to draft a will that specifies that upon my death, all intellectual property I own will be bequeathed to the public domain.
Check with your state Bar to see if they can refer you to a labor-law specialist in your city. They'll be more familiar with any state laws that apply.
I used to read a comic strip that had a running gag several years ago about 24-hour diner that was staffed by a single person. So she never got to sleep... get it? Sounds like the exact same mistake.
You said you have a girlfriend but not a wife, so it's understandable that you don't get the point of a honeymoon. Yes, it is about spending all of your time together, to the exclusion of everyone else back home. That's not what the rest of the marriage will be like (nor should it), but that's exactly what a honeymoon is for.
One time I came back on a Monday from a week-long trip, and discovered that I'd just missed "Black Friday", when 10% of the staff was laid off. "Hey, where's Patty? And Jeff? And... do I need to go see the boss, or should I get to work?"
Criminals love those kinds of messages. "Yay, guaranteed no one at home for so long - time for some burglary!"
Not a problem for me: I'm on the Burglar Union's do-not-call list.
Seriously, I sometimes put "I'm on vacation" messages on my home answering machine, and my friends have freaked out saying the same thing you did. But when was the last time you got a phone call from a burglar trolling for vacationing homeowners?
When I go on vacation (at least one that I plan myself), the only way to communicate with me would probably involve the use of a search-and-rescue team to find me. This past June I disappeared from the grid for 10 days on Isle Royale, a wilderness preserve in Lake Superior. I told my family I'd bring my cell phone (powered off) in case of emergency, but A) it's notoriously hard to get a signal there, and B) I lied. The only integrated circuits I took with me were in my camera.
As for that "worrying about work" nonsense... that simply isn't a problem when I go somewhere. If you're doing that, you either went some place astonishinly uninteresting (and I mean, waiting-in-line-at-the-DMV-level uninteresting), or you should consider spending a week in therapy next time because you're suffering from obsession or some other psychopathy. I love my job and I find it engrossing, but when I'm hiking through a forest that's home to moose and wolves with beautiful scenery waiting around every bend of the trail, things like NetRestore and MySQL don't even make their way into my consciousness.
The G3 AIO certainly is compatible with OS X.3 (and from what I've heard, X.4). I have one sitting right in front of me that proves it. It's not supported by Apple for running those versions, but that's a very different question. Apple doesn't support running PPC Linux or OpenDarwin on this machine either, but that doesn't make them incompatible with it.
I'm sorry; I should have said that I like clever word plays.:)
But I agree wholeheartedly with your criticism of these laws that make something a crime in a specific context. Some of those come from lawmakers trying to establish jurisdiction over matters that they wouldn't have otherwise, such as "transporting a minor across state lines for immoral purposes" which makes it a federal issue instead of a matter that'd otherwise be left to state lawmakers. The "interstate commerce" clause of the U.S. Constitution has been used to federalize a lot of crimes.
This is why we use human juries and judges rather than literal linguistic processors to interpret the law: to allow the courts to make the judgment that, if doing something via e-mail is a punishable offense, then doing it via IM is as well. While technically different, they are effectively the same thing in this context. I'm a card-carrying civil libertarian, and love playing pedantic word games as much as any lawyer, but sometimes common sense is a good idea.
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I wouldn't be surprised if the upcoming introduction of Vista next year led to a small bump in 4th-quarter sales this year. My sister was recently talking about replacing their old clunker, and wanted to get one with Win XP (which she at leaast knows and tolerates) instead of having to learn how to use a computer all over again with Vista and Office 2007.
Sure, as soon as you declare that money is off-topic, sure, there's not ethical or moral problems with it at all.
You also demonstrate that you're not talking about the real world, but a fantasy that makes you feel better about your behavior.
Good. That means that maybe you're not as ethically retarded as so many of your file swapping buddies, and might eventually develop enough of a conscience to feel bad about fucking over the musicians you claim to be a fan of.
I'm not saying that I never pirated music, just that I grew out of that self-centered phase of my life before the file-"sharing" phenom hit, started supporting the musicians whose work I enjoyed, and today I'm 100% above-board. There was a time when I didn't give a second thought to copying music my friends had bought. But in college I found myself with several friends who were in a band, and after I graduated and got a job, I put up most of them funds for them to record and release an album. I wasn't in it for the money; I wrote up a contract that stipulated that the most I would ever get was my money back. And as I waited for that to trickle in, every home-taped copy of that album that I encountered (e.g. in the hands of a friend who didn't know the band personally) was like a kick in the nuts. I eventually did get my investment back, because most of the people who wanted copies of the music had enough personal connection with the band (even if it was only friend of a friend of a friend of a friend) that they didn't want to rip them off. Not so lucky are the musicians who try to sell their music to strangers, who don't give a damn about them personally and whose evident inability to empathize with other human beings allows them to think that no one's being harmed when they take and take without giving anything back (except maybe a "dude, you rock!") to people who created the music they enjoy.
So, yeah... please be offended, because your self-centered attitude - lamely justified by the fact that you bathe frequently and don't rape puppies - offends me.
There isn't a single unlicensed track anywhere on my iPod. Not even one unauthorized sample. If the music cartels start charging me for music that I haven't downloaded, ripped, or otherwise pirated, then I'm going to have to stop spending money at iTMS and my local funky CD shop, and treat that "royalty charge" as a blanket license to their entire library. I've never waded into the content-piracy cesspool so far, but I sure as heck can't afford to pay for music twice, so that may be where I have to go.
Morality isn't necessarily an outcome-defined question. Sometimes - such as when your contributions to the project can be easily replaced - the best you can do is to personally remove yourself from an project you find personally distasteful. If enough people share your moral judgment, that may successfully put a stop to it, but the inability to effect that outcome by yourself doesn't make your personal choice to not participate any less virtuous.
In the sense that you won't have to pay royalties to John, Paul, George, and Ringo (or their estates) for their performance.
Since you ask, I'm not particularly fond of the way children and grandchildren tend to inherit companies they had no part in building, either. I've seen several examples first-hand where the heirs either screwed it up or abused the fortune for personal gain; they didn't deserve it. Business inheritance serves to create a hereditary aristocracy that gives economic advantages and power to people based on who their parents were. Level playing fields and equal opportunity be damned. But I'm not actually radical enough to advocate the abolition of inheritance, so I won't press that point.
I don't believe that intellectual property should be as sacrosanct as real property. I think the framers of the U.S. Constitution (who definitely believed in real property and inheritance thereof) got it right: copyright exists for reasons that serve the public good, not for the private good.
This applies only to music recordings, not to copyrights in general. For other works (such as the musical compositions and lyrics themselves), the rule in the UK is that copyrights last for the life of the creator plus 70 years. Although the recordings of the Beatles' early recordings may become PD in the UK in 2013, even if Paul were to choke on a stalk of brocolli tomorrow morning, all those Lennon-McCartney compositions would still be copyrighted until 2077, and until then you wouldn't be able to make copies of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" without paying composition royalties to... well... Michael Jackson, I guess.
That's not a true copyright, however. Parliament merely granted the Great Ormond Street Hospital perpetual royalties on Peter Pan. They do not have the right to grant/deny permission to perform the play or to create derivative works (at least after 2007), as a true copyright would give them. It's really more of a Peter tax, earmarked for GOSH.
Regardless, why do the adult children (and especially grand-children) of a musician, author, etc deserve to get money for work they had no part in creating? Let them create their own income-producing works, or earn a living some other way. My parents have told me that I shouldn't count on any special inheritance from them (they expect to spend most of what they've saved), and I'm perfectly content with that because I've done nothing to earn that money.
Providing for one's minor children and/or dependent spouse is a noble and admirable goal, which should be supported by keeping copyrights valid for some term after the creator's death if he has dependents... but not a term so long that every person who even knew the creator is dead before it expires.
Personally, since I have no dependents, I've decided to draft a will that specifies that upon my death, all intellectual property I own will be bequeathed to the public domain.
You misspelled "week".
Check with your state Bar to see if they can refer you to a labor-law specialist in your city. They'll be more familiar with any state laws that apply.
If this place has electricity, radio stations, and a phone available, you're not getting away from it all. :)
I used to read a comic strip that had a running gag several years ago about 24-hour diner that was staffed by a single person. So she never got to sleep... get it? Sounds like the exact same mistake.
You said you have a girlfriend but not a wife, so it's understandable that you don't get the point of a honeymoon. Yes, it is about spending all of your time together, to the exclusion of everyone else back home. That's not what the rest of the marriage will be like (nor should it), but that's exactly what a honeymoon is for.
One time I came back on a Monday from a week-long trip, and discovered that I'd just missed "Black Friday", when 10% of the staff was laid off. "Hey, where's Patty? And Jeff? And... do I need to go see the boss, or should I get to work?"
Seriously, I sometimes put "I'm on vacation" messages on my home answering machine, and my friends have freaked out saying the same thing you did. But when was the last time you got a phone call from a burglar trolling for vacationing homeowners?
When I go on vacation (at least one that I plan myself), the only way to communicate with me would probably involve the use of a search-and-rescue team to find me. This past June I disappeared from the grid for 10 days on Isle Royale, a wilderness preserve in Lake Superior. I told my family I'd bring my cell phone (powered off) in case of emergency, but A) it's notoriously hard to get a signal there, and B) I lied. The only integrated circuits I took with me were in my camera.
As for that "worrying about work" nonsense... that simply isn't a problem when I go somewhere. If you're doing that, you either went some place astonishinly uninteresting (and I mean, waiting-in-line-at-the-DMV-level uninteresting), or you should consider spending a week in therapy next time because you're suffering from obsession or some other psychopathy. I love my job and I find it engrossing, but when I'm hiking through a forest that's home to moose and wolves with beautiful scenery waiting around every bend of the trail, things like NetRestore and MySQL don't even make their way into my consciousness.
The G3 AIO certainly is compatible with OS X.3 (and from what I've heard, X.4). I have one sitting right in front of me that proves it. It's not supported by Apple for running those versions, but that's a very different question. Apple doesn't support running PPC Linux or OpenDarwin on this machine either, but that doesn't make them incompatible with it.
That's right. Glad someone finally figured that out.
I'm sorry; I should have said that I like clever word plays. :)
But I agree wholeheartedly with your criticism of these laws that make something a crime in a specific context. Some of those come from lawmakers trying to establish jurisdiction over matters that they wouldn't have otherwise, such as "transporting a minor across state lines for immoral purposes" which makes it a federal issue instead of a matter that'd otherwise be left to state lawmakers. The "interstate commerce" clause of the U.S. Constitution has been used to federalize a lot of crimes.
This is why we use human juries and judges rather than literal linguistic processors to interpret the law: to allow the courts to make the judgment that, if doing something via e-mail is a punishable offense, then doing it via IM is as well. While technically different, they are effectively the same thing in this context. I'm a card-carrying civil libertarian, and love playing pedantic word games as much as any lawyer, but sometimes common sense is a good idea.
Of course it's late in coming.
But that doesn't mean it should be done hastily and badly.