"The Canadian version of the RIAA is spinning the news as being a direct result of music piracy."
Um...Maybe it's just my tiny brain not fully digesting the ramifications of this, but by spinning it in such a way, aren't they sending the message that piracy = cheaper music?
Not that this is a bad thing, mind you, but I can't help but think the RIAA (and its international cronies) have been so busy cutting off noses that they've forgotten whose face they're supposed to be spiting.
It's good to see that NASA is focusing on what's important. Sure, the astronauts might be hitting the sauce a little hard, and every once in a while one goes bonkers and tries to kill someone. Yeah, maybe they still can't quite get a handle on that whole "make sure the Shuttle gets into space without suffering potentially catastrophic damage" bit, but you know--at least they can send a movie prop into space!
Y'know...I'm as pro-space-exploration as the next geek. I really am. But sometimes I think someone needs to go to every individual member of NASA's board of directors, smack him or her upside the head, and yell "FOCUS!!!"
Well, Chairman Bill was right--Microsoft is all about innovation. They're constantly looking for new, innovative ways for their products to suck. They're practically making an art form out of bloatware.
Once this bad buy makes it into their final product, the guys over at OpenOffice should have a banner year.
I think sometimes Sir Elton is just grumpy and raving, but this time I think he has a point.
Music, especially when it comes to the major record labels, is becoming less and less an art form and more and more a simple factory production process designed to appeal to as many people as possible. The bland, inoffensive song (which is about as poetic as the morning's stock price listings) is written by someone with no name (who often as not is not even credited as such), the "singer" is someone chosen more for looks than talent (singing voice can be adjusted electronically), and much of the music production is done by computer. Where actual instruments are required, they are often recorded separately.
The internet helps this along, but it's really not the Net's fault. The Net, if anything, is fighting against this by giving musicians, consumers, producers, and independent labels a new way to find each other without relying on the recording cartel for distribution. There are real musicians and bands who get together and jam, who write songs together in basement studios, who really try to put the art in their music. There are musicians and bands like that, but you won't find them watching MTV.
It's absolutely bizarre--it keeps getting broken, but they keep trying it. Why bother with the time, energy, and expense? If I ran a bank, and my safes kept getting cracked, I'd probably stop bothering with them and start thinking about other solutions.
If DRM keeps getting cracked, or winds up being a bigger security threat than the piracy to begin with, then clearly DRM as a system is a failure. Time to think of something else, fellas.
I'm more of a developer than graphic designer, but the reason I haven't gone to trackball is that I just don't like it. I find it to be uncomfortable and unnatural (for lack of a better word) when using it. Maybe it's just that I've been using mice for so damn long that I can't get used to anything else, but at the end of the day it's just not my thing.
I don't think you could conclusively say that either one is "better" than the other; it's just a matter of personal preference. Some people like mice, some people like trackballs. Asking people why they don't switch is like asking them why they persist in using one color case rather than another.
The RIAA's motives are not "questionable," in that there is no question about what those motives are:
1. Ever-increasing profits at all costs. 2. Protection of their predatory, exploitative business model at all costs. 3. Complete market domination for 1) and 2) above. 4. Total control over the distribution of music.
Well, it might have to do with the fact that MS has outdone themselves in the pooch-screwing department. Every couple of days it seems there's another report about how a driver won't work in Vista, or how the right (or maybe I should say "wrong") conditions cause constant bluescreens. "Backward compatibility" is apparently two words that should never be seen together in Redmond.
So if you're a company, you have a choice:
1. Stick with XP, which (after a multitude of updates) is relatively stable. 2. Migrate to Vista, which A) will cost a bunch of money and B) leave you with an incredibly unstable OS that may cause massive hardware malfunctions or failures.
It's really not a difficult choice. Microsoft's incompetence has finally reached the point where even their domination of the market won't be able to help them.
I'm not all that outraged about this, to be honest.
"Probable Cause" is not a conviction; all it means is that the cops were able to convince a judge that there was a reasonable suspicion that something illegal was going down. If kiddie porn is being transmitted from a given IP address, yes, I think that's plenty of justification for going in and searching the premises.
Again, this is not a conviction. If Perez had been convicted based solely on the logs of kiddie porn coming from his IP, I'd be singing a much different tune. Instead, the cops followed legal procedure; they detected an illegal activity from a residential IP address, and asked the judge for permission to search the residence. There, they found additional evidence, and used it to convict Perez.
"An election is not only about counting the votes, but the process being accountable and verifiable by every voter."
I just wanted to repeat that.:)
IMHO, that's the most important aspect of the electronic voting "debate." Paper-ballot elections can be hacked, and most certainly have been in the past; the fact that electronic systems can be hacked does not make them unique. (Although one could argue that, by the nature of a networked system, a single "hack" of an electronic system would have far more reaching impact than a localized ballot-stuffing effort).
The difference is whether it's possible to go back and, to the best of your/our collective ability, verify that the tabulation was correct and the votes legitimate. There is *no* way to do that with electronic voting, especially as advocated by Diebold & Co. Not only can you not tell if the votes are legit, but the very system used for tabulation and accounting is proprietary.
All told, this does *not* make for a safe, secure, reliable, accountable system that can be verified.
I'm half-tempted to buy a bunch of them and give them out to 12-year-old kids just to piss off that obnoxious, self-righteous, arrogant, schmuck Thompson.
I'm a firm believer in the idea, "never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity."
I deal with my company's marketing department often; they inevitably display all the forethought and insight of a mentally challenged rutabaga. The chances of this being a consciously racist ad are virtually zero.
Furthermore, it's not like the PSP is doing poorly in the sales department; they really don't need to generate this kind of controversy just to get their name in the media. The planned prices for PS3 is doing that just fine.
At the end of the day, this just strikes me as another attack of the stupids.
"Why on God's green Earth did you take circa-1994 web design philosophy and foist it upon the youth of the world? We got rid of that crap for a reason, you blithering twit!"
And if you look at the FOSS movement as a whole, it really is composed of people from different backgrounds. You have communists, Christians, libertarians, Democrats, Scientologists, hell, dig far enough and you might even find a Republican or two.
Yeah, RMS is out there spreading his particular gospel, but he no more speaks for the FOSS community than I speak for the International Community of Fat Hairy Guys. I might count myself among their number, but that's not to say that my opinion speaks for, well, RMS.
Whether FOSS is "capitalist" or "communist" or "volunteerist" is completely irrelevant, and quite frankly I think anyone who constantly tries to hammer the FOSS square peg into one of those round holes is doing so for their own purposes.
FOSS is what it is. In some ways, it's capitalist, in others, it's communist, in others, it's volunteerist. That's really the beauty of the movement; you get out of it what you want to get out of it, and you put into it what you want to put into it.
Maybe that's anarchy. Or maybe that's just another way of saying "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." The question is, why does it matter?
Slashdot Mirror
"The Canadian version of the RIAA is spinning the news as being a direct result of music piracy."
Um...Maybe it's just my tiny brain not fully digesting the ramifications of this, but by spinning it in such a way, aren't they sending the message that piracy = cheaper music?
Not that this is a bad thing, mind you, but I can't help but think the RIAA (and its international cronies) have been so busy cutting off noses that they've forgotten whose face they're supposed to be spiting.
It's good to see that NASA is focusing on what's important. Sure, the astronauts might be hitting the sauce a little hard, and every once in a while one goes bonkers and tries to kill someone. Yeah, maybe they still can't quite get a handle on that whole "make sure the Shuttle gets into space without suffering potentially catastrophic damage" bit, but you know--at least they can send a movie prop into space!
Y'know...I'm as pro-space-exploration as the next geek. I really am. But sometimes I think someone needs to go to every individual member of NASA's board of directors, smack him or her upside the head, and yell "FOCUS!!!"
This is kind of a cool idea; it's a way for direct commentary from the people involved without a journalist's filter.
:D
Plus, it'll get really entertaining when they apply it to political campaigns and the press secretaries get into flame wars.
Oh, yay. Yet another way for big business to keep track of places we go, the food we eat, the air we breathe.
It's only a matter of time before toilets start detecting our DNA in order to show us targeted ads on the the stall door while we take a shit.
Well, Chairman Bill was right--Microsoft is all about innovation. They're constantly looking for new, innovative ways for their products to suck. They're practically making an art form out of bloatware.
Once this bad buy makes it into their final product, the guys over at OpenOffice should have a banner year.
It just goes to show that "Zero Tolerance" might as well be a synonym for "Zero Intelligence."
I think sometimes Sir Elton is just grumpy and raving, but this time I think he has a point.
Music, especially when it comes to the major record labels, is becoming less and less an art form and more and more a simple factory production process designed to appeal to as many people as possible. The bland, inoffensive song (which is about as poetic as the morning's stock price listings) is written by someone with no name (who often as not is not even credited as such), the "singer" is someone chosen more for looks than talent (singing voice can be adjusted electronically), and much of the music production is done by computer. Where actual instruments are required, they are often recorded separately.
The internet helps this along, but it's really not the Net's fault. The Net, if anything, is fighting against this by giving musicians, consumers, producers, and independent labels a new way to find each other without relying on the recording cartel for distribution. There are real musicians and bands who get together and jam, who write songs together in basement studios, who really try to put the art in their music. There are musicians and bands like that, but you won't find them watching MTV.
You can almost hear the cartoon music: "Wah-wah-wah-waaaaaaaaaah."
(Oh noes! Where will teenage boys buy their Accutane now? How will insecure old men buy their C.1.a.L.1.s anonymously? Anarchy and chaos, I tell you!)
It's absolutely bizarre--it keeps getting broken, but they keep trying it. Why bother with the time, energy, and expense? If I ran a bank, and my safes kept getting cracked, I'd probably stop bothering with them and start thinking about other solutions.
If DRM keeps getting cracked, or winds up being a bigger security threat than the piracy to begin with, then clearly DRM as a system is a failure. Time to think of something else, fellas.
I'm more of a developer than graphic designer, but the reason I haven't gone to trackball is that I just don't like it. I find it to be uncomfortable and unnatural (for lack of a better word) when using it. Maybe it's just that I've been using mice for so damn long that I can't get used to anything else, but at the end of the day it's just not my thing.
I don't think you could conclusively say that either one is "better" than the other; it's just a matter of personal preference. Some people like mice, some people like trackballs. Asking people why they don't switch is like asking them why they persist in using one color case rather than another.
Well, sure, it's not going to happen overnight. But bandwidth is only going up, not down--it's really just a matter of time.
The RIAA's motives are not "questionable," in that there is no question about what those motives are:
1. Ever-increasing profits at all costs.
2. Protection of their predatory, exploitative business model at all costs.
3. Complete market domination for 1) and 2) above.
4. Total control over the distribution of music.
Yeah. They've always been really good about revisiting myths and correcting themselves if they screwed up.
Well, it might have to do with the fact that MS has outdone themselves in the pooch-screwing department. Every couple of days it seems there's another report about how a driver won't work in Vista, or how the right (or maybe I should say "wrong") conditions cause constant bluescreens. "Backward compatibility" is apparently two words that should never be seen together in Redmond.
So if you're a company, you have a choice:
1. Stick with XP, which (after a multitude of updates) is relatively stable.
2. Migrate to Vista, which A) will cost a bunch of money and B) leave you with an incredibly unstable OS that may cause massive hardware malfunctions or failures.
It's really not a difficult choice. Microsoft's incompetence has finally reached the point where even their domination of the market won't be able to help them.
I'm not all that outraged about this, to be honest.
"Probable Cause" is not a conviction; all it means is that the cops were able to convince a judge that there was a reasonable suspicion that something illegal was going down. If kiddie porn is being transmitted from a given IP address, yes, I think that's plenty of justification for going in and searching the premises.
Again, this is not a conviction. If Perez had been convicted based solely on the logs of kiddie porn coming from his IP, I'd be singing a much different tune. Instead, the cops followed legal procedure; they detected an illegal activity from a residential IP address, and asked the judge for permission to search the residence. There, they found additional evidence, and used it to convict Perez.
Better yet--MORBO!
On Guantanamo and torture of detainees:
"Humans do not yet know the meaning of 'suffering!'"
After the upcoming election:
"Morbo congratulates the winners of the congressional races. My death come quickly to their enemies."
On global warming:
"One day, my race will destroy all you puny humans!"
Nifty! Now, how long before they come up with a Max Headroom version? :D
"An election is not only about counting the votes, but the process being accountable and verifiable by every voter."
:)
I just wanted to repeat that.
IMHO, that's the most important aspect of the electronic voting "debate." Paper-ballot elections can be hacked, and most certainly have been in the past; the fact that electronic systems can be hacked does not make them unique. (Although one could argue that, by the nature of a networked system, a single "hack" of an electronic system would have far more reaching impact than a localized ballot-stuffing effort).
The difference is whether it's possible to go back and, to the best of your/our collective ability, verify that the tabulation was correct and the votes legitimate. There is *no* way to do that with electronic voting, especially as advocated by Diebold & Co. Not only can you not tell if the votes are legit, but the very system used for tabulation and accounting is proprietary.
All told, this does *not* make for a safe, secure, reliable, accountable system that can be verified.
I'm half-tempted to buy a bunch of them and give them out to 12-year-old kids just to piss off that obnoxious, self-righteous, arrogant, schmuck Thompson.
I'm a firm believer in the idea, "never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity."
I deal with my company's marketing department often; they inevitably display all the forethought and insight of a mentally challenged rutabaga. The chances of this being a consciously racist ad are virtually zero.
Furthermore, it's not like the PSP is doing poorly in the sales department; they really don't need to generate this kind of controversy just to get their name in the media. The planned prices for PS3 is doing that just fine.
At the end of the day, this just strikes me as another attack of the stupids.
My question for him would be:
"Why on God's green Earth did you take circa-1994 web design philosophy and foist it upon the youth of the world? We got rid of that crap for a reason, you blithering twit!"
"more localized, focused and personal?"
What, are we talking warm, fuzzy, happy, huggie-time lawsuits from your friendly neighborhood big-brother cartel?
And this will happen because I support/use FOSS? Are you sure about that?
That was kinda the point. ;)
And if you look at the FOSS movement as a whole, it really is composed of people from different backgrounds. You have communists, Christians, libertarians, Democrats, Scientologists, hell, dig far enough and you might even find a Republican or two.
Yeah, RMS is out there spreading his particular gospel, but he no more speaks for the FOSS community than I speak for the International Community of Fat Hairy Guys. I might count myself among their number, but that's not to say that my opinion speaks for, well, RMS.
Whether FOSS is "capitalist" or "communist" or "volunteerist" is completely irrelevant, and quite frankly I think anyone who constantly tries to hammer the FOSS square peg into one of those round holes is doing so for their own purposes.
FOSS is what it is. In some ways, it's capitalist, in others, it's communist, in others, it's volunteerist. That's really the beauty of the movement; you get out of it what you want to get out of it, and you put into it what you want to put into it.
Maybe that's anarchy. Or maybe that's just another way of saying "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." The question is, why does it matter?