Yeah, yeah. I got that wrong. They're flooding the patent office with BS paperwork, rather than a court. The sentiment is still the same; its sleazeball tactics designed to overwhelm an already overwhelmed system to delay the eventual unfavorable decision.
That's more or less the point. Amazon's lawyers are using sleazeball tactics to stall the verdict at this point. As long as they keep shoving new briefs at the court, the examination will never end. I don't understand why they keep fighting it.
Perhaps its so deeply rooted in the Amazon legal department that they just don't want to give up. I'm sure being a total pain-in-the-ass is a full time job for at least a couple of lawyers, so if they give up the fight, they are out of a job. The licensing fees Amazon receives on this (Apple licenses 1-click for their online store, and I assume there must be other suckers) must be more than its costing them to drag out the inevitable, or else this makes no business sense either.
As for Bezos, it makes him look like a fool. On the one hand he's fighting for patent reform, while in the other he holds one of the most absurd patents ever granted. If he'd give up on this one, perhaps people would take his call for reform a bit more seriously. Was this the first patent he ever received? Maybe he has a sentimental attachment to it, like a woobie. Grow up, stick a copy in a scrapbook and let it go, Jeff.
Ok, not to sound too stupid with this question, but since the iPhone is running linux already... why not use whatever drivers are there already?
<sarcasm> What's wrong with that comment? If you recall from history, SCO stole linux to make Unix, which they time travelled back and sold to AT&T and Berkeley. Then Apple fired Steve Jobs, who put Linux in a black box and called it "NeXT". Then Apple bought him, made their own Linux, then retroactively created 6 major versions of FreeBSD as a front.
Then Darwin created a kernel (evolution my ass!), which he published steganographically in that ridiculous "Origin of Species". Babbage was the first to discover the hidden message when he was reading the book to to figure out why his engine got such bad gas mileage (he later discovered the flaw was that the car hadn't been invented yet, and pouring gasoline into a stationary computing engine wasn't getting him anywhere. But I digress.
Its turtles all the way down. </sarcasm>
I used to be amazed at how many self-proclaimed geeks didn't know the difference between FreeBSD and Linux. How can you expect regular mortals to know what brand of unix-like subsystem Apple has running under the hood?
I'm a little impressed when non-technical folks know that there's some sort of open source unix behind the pretty Apple curtains, even if they don't get it exactly right.
Just like Richard Stallman says: who cares what they call it, as long as they didn't have to pay for it;)
That will probably happen in a few years. First, the TBAA (Toy Brick Association of America) will have to bribe the government to pass new trademark laws protecting the sanctity of Lego Bricks. Next they can build clout by suing any children found interlocking Lego bricks with other brands, mostly in John Doe cases, with mass subpoenas sent to preschools and day care centers in effort to discover the identities of potential offenders.
After that action *totally* works, the TBAA can then get the US Congress to put pressures on the Europeans to bring their trademark laws "up to date", and allow Lego to continue bringing in the revenue they deserve.
If it works as well as it did for the RIAA and MPAA, we should have open source bricks before too long.:)
That is a wise use of the version numbers. Let the initial flurry of issues get fixed, and get an idea of how responsive the developer is to bug reports before jumping in bed with them.
On the other hand, if Version 6.3 comes out and you look at the changelog containing the sole entry:
Version 6.3: Initial revision
I'm guessing that makes the purchasing decision is pretty easy. Messing with version numbers will only fool the fools. Enjoy the customer service calls.;)
Ignorance of the law is not an excuse for breaking the law. I guess this is just a report, not a law, but still... Not opening the email out of spite is so freaking childish.
George W Bush is a complete douchebag. I can't wait for him to be out of office, so we can get this country back on track. I wouldn't mind so much if he was just incompetent or ineffective. What I do mind is that he seems to be so very effective at doing bad things for the direct benefit of a few of his friends. The jury is still out on incompetence.
Obama is going to have his hands full cleaning up the mess GWB has made.
Totally. I'm still amazed when my parents tell me how many emails they get in their "junk mail" box and that they actually spend time looking through them to delete them. No matter how many times I tell them to just let it go, they keep looking.
On the flip side, I've looked in my junkmail box a few times, usually when I add some new anti-spam rule and want to make sure its not overreaching, or when my mom says my aunt emailed me and I never replied. Turns out her message was a false positive, got filed in Junk, and I missed her telling me that she was coming to town and wanted to see me (missed it by 6 months, but maybe next time she'll call). It sucks when that happens, but its so rare that I can't really check for it. (I have whitelisted her so it won't happen in the future, but it won't help other relatives I don't see much.)
It sucks that email is so abused by "marketers" to the point of being practically useless as a reliable communication medium.
I've "solved" my junkmail problem by putting a recycling bin by my front door. I let the mail collect by the door for a week, then on trash day I go through the pile, separating the bills and throwing everything else in the recycler without even bothering to open them. Its absurd.
My email still gets spam, but spamassassin and Apple's junkmail filter do a pretty good job of hiding most of it. Hitting "delete" a few times a day is annoying, but tolerable, especially since I don't constantly check email, so I can batch delete the spams that slip through. I don't check for false positives anymore, since about 97% of my email is spam (I get over 1000 spams a day.. its ridiculous), so false positives are rare and too hard to find.
As for the phone, I don't answer my home phone anymore. The last time I did, it was "Jill with a recorded message from ". F That. I keep the phoneline for my alarm system, and to receive faxes. In fact, the fax machine is what answers calls, which has done more to eliminate telemarketing calls than any of the "pay extra to not be annoyed" extortion services offered by Qwest.
If I start getting spam calls on my cell phone, my cellular provider will either fix it or lose my business.
I already filter calls based on the caller ID. If I don't recognize the caller (or I'm not expecting an unknown caller... like when I'm expecting a call from a delivery driver), I don't answer. If its important, they'll probably leave a message and I'll check it later. I don't think I've had more than one or two spam calls on my cell phone for as long as I can remember.
I check my voicemail maybe once a week, but only when I suspect there's an important message. I wish I had the iPhone's "Visual Voicemail", since then I could selectively listen to the important message and delete all the, "Hi. its me. call me back" messages that are redundant with the missed call log. I wish providers would enable that feature for other phones (and I really hope Apple doesn't have some retarded patent on the "technology").
If VoIP spit starts clogging my voicemail, I'll just stop checking it, period. In fact I'll ask my provider to remove voicemail from my account, and if they cannot do it, I'll switch to a carrier that can. I already consider voicemail an inconvenient, inefficient means of communication, so I really wouldn't miss it.
I'm still dumbfounded that spam (and junkmail, and etc) are viable businesses.
My 21-year-old Toyota FX-16 is getting about 25mpg, which makes me pretty happy. I could probably get close to 30mpg if I didn't mash the gas pedal so much (but its so much more fun). A tune up could probably get a few more.
It blows away the 13mpg I was getting in my Defender (which is now collecting dust until winter rolls around again).
For me all the storyline crap in these games is filler. Then again, I don't really like the GTA series, because it wastes so much time playing the scenes (where the voice actors are most important). I want gameplay all the time.
I like Gran Turismo, Dirt, Doom, and other games where you just play all the time.
I actualy enjoyed GTA3, but I never made it out of Liberty City (or whatever the first one is called). I liked driving around, finding the different cars, blowing things up, running people down (guilty pleasure). I didn't so much care for all the scenes, so I never made it very far in the missions (since you can't easily skip the scenes and guess what you're supposed to be doing).
In my opinion, the voice actors are totally unnecessary and most of their work is extraneous to the gameplay. If I wanted to watch a movie, I'd watch a movie. I want to play a game. I'd rather see more money going to the creators and developers, since they're the ones who will be making the next game even better. Actors are a dime a dozen.
Costs too much? They can work it into the price, for a limited run (further increasing the perceived value of the bonus pack).
There's special editions of many of the big games. I saw a Halo 3 set with all sorts of extras. Sure they can't throw it into every box, but plenty of diehard fans will pay a little extra for something cool.
Steam, etc, are certainly the future for mass distribution, but there's always a market for something truly special. I wouldn't consider these special editions to be investments, but much like your old collection of cool video game boxes, the sentimental value is priceless.
Unfortunately, not everyone can handle alcohol as well as you think you can (impaired judgement is also an affect of alcohol, so take what you think with a grain of salt). I'm sure plenty of people who kill someone while driving drunk thought they were fine when they got in the car.
It is hard to design laws to be adaptable to every possible situation. They had to pick a point and.08% is what they determined. Maybe you are fine driving at 0.1 or higher, but that makes you an exception. There are probably some people who are dangerous well below that level, but they can still legally drive.
If you are driving period, you are risking your life and the lives of others. Adding further impairment to the situation (such as drinking, drugs, being tired, distractions) makes the risk even worse.
DUI laws are not prohibition. They are a deterrent for hazardous behavior. If you think you're over the limit, take a cab. Its easy and safe. Plus you can have another drink and not have to worry that you might get pulled over for some minor infraction and have a "DUI" charge stacked on top of it.
BUT in this case, the guy hosting audio files isn't a danger to anyone's life. His actions are not criminal, except in the view of an overbearing law payed for by an industry desperate to maintain their anachronistic revenue streams. Contrary to the scientific evidence that alcohol impairs judgement and motor skills, scientific evidence shows that file sharing actually increases music sales.
Whew! For a second there, I thought you lost your mind mid-paragraph.
Bang on, dude. When all the money is tied up in patent and copyright litigation, and no one can actually legally make anything tangible without infringing, the bottom is going to drop out faster than gasoline prices on Jan 20, 2009.
Yes, but that is (well, i suppose "was") not a criminal offense, its a civil offense.
I agree 100% with you that pre-existing laws were more than sufficient to cover this incident. We did not need the DMCA or the NET Act (or whatever it was. i've never heard of it until now). Those laws are overbearing and give way too much power to a few at the expense of our citizens. The police should be protecting us (the people) from murder, theft, and other crimes. It should not be their job to force us to adhere to outdated business models.
The RIAA has basically hijacked the government to do their jobs for them. Instead of finding infringers and hiring their lawyers to fight to protect their copyrights, they now get to use public institutions to do their work, at taxpayers expense. This is so bogus on so many levels.
American society is way too litigation-happy. We lock away a larger percentage of our citizens than any other country (ok, maybe not china... i don't know the current statistics), and BS laws like this will only end up putting more people in jail unnecessarily.
My sister was looking at a few Vista computers and asked my advice. I bought her a Mac.
Of course Ballmer is going to say Vista is selling well. What TF else is he going to say? He has to lie to his shareholders to keep the stock up, or else they'll run out of funding and won't be able to crush their competition.
If Microsoft had to survive on the merits of their products, they'd have been gone a long, long time ago.
They may well have a point, but pre-existing copyright laws already made this act a civil offense. They could have gone after him. They didn't need a law that allows them to lock people away with murderers, rapists, and arsonists.
This guy "stole" imaginary property. He shared music online. Music that the RIAA effectively stole from the artists who created it (but that's another topic completely).
My issue in this case is not with the RIAA, but with the US government being hijacked by corporations for the benefit of a few. Sony has plenty of money, and continues to make plenty of money even with the "rampant piracy" that happens today. Sure, their aging business model is starting to have diminshing returns, but that's life. Progress happens. Technology improves and outdated methods go the way of the horse and buggy.
This law is a clear demonstration of the government being in the pockets of the corporations. It gives way too much power, and eliminates virtually all of the real benefits of copyright (aside from the single purpose of diverting money from the people into the hands of a few corporations).
America is so screwed.
I started boycotting RIAA music when the DMCA was first passed. And I truly boycott the crap. I don't buy it. I don't download it. I don't go to concerts of artists on the RIAA (yes, screw those artists, too, for enabling the corrupt system). I guess this verdict gives me even more reason to not touch the RIAA's poison.
There's nothing like making a bad situation worse. The last thing you should do when you're in no condition to drive is to add distractions to the mix.
If you're too tired to drive but really need to get somewhere, call a cab!
Doom (the first one) was insane. As far as I'm concerned, it created the FPS genre, even if Wolfenstein 3D existed before it. Doom is all about "if it moves, shoot it dead." There's no story. Doom is primal. Its my favorite computer game ever.
What I really don't get is GTA. Don't get me wrong. I loved GTA3. I totally dug the environment. I loved driving around and crashing into everything and running people over. I just wasn't so into the story part of it (and never actually got beyond the first city simply because I didn't care enough). "GTA San Andreas" was totally not my thing; I didn't like being a gang thug. I didn't like doing drive by shootings. In fact, the first drive-by was my last mission in San Andreas before I stopped playing it forever. As such, I couldn't care less about GTA4.
On the other hand, I'm kind of excited for Doom 4. As long as it runs on an operating system I have (ie. anything other than Windows), I'll probably play it. I don't care if its revolutionary. I just want a new shoot-em-up without some BS story line to turn me off.
I'm nostalgic for the original Doom. If 4 is just Doom with... what... 15 years later technology? Oooh, bring it on!
Women don't give half a damn about what anyone does (unless its being done to them, but that's another topic). Ted Bundy had a fan club, and surely those women weren't into him because they thought murder was cool. They liked him because he was so good at it.
No one enjoys overly technical conversations about subjects they don't understand. You just have to tailor the discussion to your audience and keep it interesting. Surely there's plenty you do with computers that is interesting without having to read the source code.
My problems is more one of forgetfulness than thinking I know better than the doctor. I keep taking the pills (well, in theory anyway...) after I start feeling better, until the end of the 10 or 14 day (or whatever) course. I start feeling better in the first few days because the antibiotics start to knock out the virus and my body can begin functioning normally.
The virus is still multiplying and trying to do its thing, but the antibiotics are keeping it down below the threshold that my body can tolerate. If I take away the antibiotics right when I start to feel good, the virus just has to spread a little bit to knock me out again. So instead I keep taking the pills as prescribed and overload the virus until its gone.
That's the theory anyway. In practice I don't take anything on a regular basis, so when I get sick enough to go to the doctor, and I get a presciption it is not part of my routine; its something new. When I wake up in the morning feeling groggy, I don't always remember to take the pill. If I'm not home in the evening to take another with dinner, I usually don't remember to take it when I get home. At the end of the course I'll have at least half a dozen extras, and then I don't know if I should try to finish them off over the next few days or do I timeout on the 10 days and stop? Ugh.
I'm much better about giving my pets their prescribed medications than I am myself. But still not perfect.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, yeah. I got that wrong. They're flooding the patent office with BS paperwork, rather than a court. The sentiment is still the same; its sleazeball tactics designed to overwhelm an already overwhelmed system to delay the eventual unfavorable decision.
That's more or less the point. Amazon's lawyers are using sleazeball tactics to stall the verdict at this point. As long as they keep shoving new briefs at the court, the examination will never end. I don't understand why they keep fighting it.
Perhaps its so deeply rooted in the Amazon legal department that they just don't want to give up. I'm sure being a total pain-in-the-ass is a full time job for at least a couple of lawyers, so if they give up the fight, they are out of a job. The licensing fees Amazon receives on this (Apple licenses 1-click for their online store, and I assume there must be other suckers) must be more than its costing them to drag out the inevitable, or else this makes no business sense either.
As for Bezos, it makes him look like a fool. On the one hand he's fighting for patent reform, while in the other he holds one of the most absurd patents ever granted. If he'd give up on this one, perhaps people would take his call for reform a bit more seriously. Was this the first patent he ever received? Maybe he has a sentimental attachment to it, like a woobie. Grow up, stick a copy in a scrapbook and let it go, Jeff.
>
<sarcasm>
What's wrong with that comment? If you recall from history, SCO stole linux to make Unix, which they time travelled back and sold to AT&T and Berkeley. Then Apple fired Steve Jobs, who put Linux in a black box and called it "NeXT". Then Apple bought him, made their own Linux, then retroactively created 6 major versions of FreeBSD as a front.
Then Darwin created a kernel (evolution my ass!), which he published steganographically in that ridiculous "Origin of Species". Babbage was the first to discover the hidden message when he was reading the book to to figure out why his engine got such bad gas mileage (he later discovered the flaw was that the car hadn't been invented yet, and pouring gasoline into a stationary computing engine wasn't getting him anywhere. But I digress.
Its turtles all the way down.
</sarcasm>
I used to be amazed at how many self-proclaimed geeks didn't know the difference between FreeBSD and Linux. How can you expect regular mortals to know what brand of unix-like subsystem Apple has running under the hood?
I'm a little impressed when non-technical folks know that there's some sort of open source unix behind the pretty Apple curtains, even if they don't get it exactly right.
Just like Richard Stallman says: who cares what they call it, as long as they didn't have to pay for it ;)
That will probably happen in a few years. First, the TBAA (Toy Brick Association of America) will have to bribe the government to pass new trademark laws protecting the sanctity of Lego Bricks. Next they can build clout by suing any children found interlocking Lego bricks with other brands, mostly in John Doe cases, with mass subpoenas sent to preschools and day care centers in effort to discover the identities of potential offenders.
After that action *totally* works, the TBAA can then get the US Congress to put pressures on the Europeans to bring their trademark laws "up to date", and allow Lego to continue bringing in the revenue they deserve.
If it works as well as it did for the RIAA and MPAA, we should have open source bricks before too long. :)
That is a wise use of the version numbers. Let the initial flurry of issues get fixed, and get an idea of how responsive the developer is to bug reports before jumping in bed with them.
On the other hand, if Version 6.3 comes out and you look at the changelog containing the sole entry:
Version 6.3: Initial revision
I'm guessing that makes the purchasing decision is pretty easy. Messing with version numbers will only fool the fools. Enjoy the customer service calls. ;)
Um, duh. Product better-osity varies exponentially with version numbers. Why else would a new products initial version number matter?
Jeez. Some people... ;)
Ignorance of the law is not an excuse for breaking the law. I guess this is just a report, not a law, but still... Not opening the email out of spite is so freaking childish.
George W Bush is a complete douchebag. I can't wait for him to be out of office, so we can get this country back on track. I wouldn't mind so much if he was just incompetent or ineffective. What I do mind is that he seems to be so very effective at doing bad things for the direct benefit of a few of his friends. The jury is still out on incompetence.
Obama is going to have his hands full cleaning up the mess GWB has made.
Totally. I'm still amazed when my parents tell me how many emails they get in their "junk mail" box and that they actually spend time looking through them to delete them. No matter how many times I tell them to just let it go, they keep looking.
On the flip side, I've looked in my junkmail box a few times, usually when I add some new anti-spam rule and want to make sure its not overreaching, or when my mom says my aunt emailed me and I never replied. Turns out her message was a false positive, got filed in Junk, and I missed her telling me that she was coming to town and wanted to see me (missed it by 6 months, but maybe next time she'll call). It sucks when that happens, but its so rare that I can't really check for it. (I have whitelisted her so it won't happen in the future, but it won't help other relatives I don't see much.)
It sucks that email is so abused by "marketers" to the point of being practically useless as a reliable communication medium.
I've "solved" my junkmail problem by putting a recycling bin by my front door. I let the mail collect by the door for a week, then on trash day I go through the pile, separating the bills and throwing everything else in the recycler without even bothering to open them. Its absurd.
My email still gets spam, but spamassassin and Apple's junkmail filter do a pretty good job of hiding most of it. Hitting "delete" a few times a day is annoying, but tolerable, especially since I don't constantly check email, so I can batch delete the spams that slip through. I don't check for false positives anymore, since about 97% of my email is spam (I get over 1000 spams a day.. its ridiculous), so false positives are rare and too hard to find.
As for the phone, I don't answer my home phone anymore. The last time I did, it was "Jill with a recorded message from ". F That. I keep the phoneline for my alarm system, and to receive faxes. In fact, the fax machine is what answers calls, which has done more to eliminate telemarketing calls than any of the "pay extra to not be annoyed" extortion services offered by Qwest.
If I start getting spam calls on my cell phone, my cellular provider will either fix it or lose my business.
I already filter calls based on the caller ID. If I don't recognize the caller (or I'm not expecting an unknown caller... like when I'm expecting a call from a delivery driver), I don't answer. If its important, they'll probably leave a message and I'll check it later. I don't think I've had more than one or two spam calls on my cell phone for as long as I can remember.
I check my voicemail maybe once a week, but only when I suspect there's an important message. I wish I had the iPhone's "Visual Voicemail", since then I could selectively listen to the important message and delete all the, "Hi. its me. call me back" messages that are redundant with the missed call log. I wish providers would enable that feature for other phones (and I really hope Apple doesn't have some retarded patent on the "technology").
If VoIP spit starts clogging my voicemail, I'll just stop checking it, period. In fact I'll ask my provider to remove voicemail from my account, and if they cannot do it, I'll switch to a carrier that can. I already consider voicemail an inconvenient, inefficient means of communication, so I really wouldn't miss it.
I'm still dumbfounded that spam (and junkmail, and etc) are viable businesses.
My 21-year-old Toyota FX-16 is getting about 25mpg, which makes me pretty happy. I could probably get close to 30mpg if I didn't mash the gas pedal so much (but its so much more fun). A tune up could probably get a few more.
It blows away the 13mpg I was getting in my Defender (which is now collecting dust until winter rolls around again).
For me all the storyline crap in these games is filler. Then again, I don't really like the GTA series, because it wastes so much time playing the scenes (where the voice actors are most important). I want gameplay all the time.
I like Gran Turismo, Dirt, Doom, and other games where you just play all the time.
I actualy enjoyed GTA3, but I never made it out of Liberty City (or whatever the first one is called). I liked driving around, finding the different cars, blowing things up, running people down (guilty pleasure). I didn't so much care for all the scenes, so I never made it very far in the missions (since you can't easily skip the scenes and guess what you're supposed to be doing).
In my opinion, the voice actors are totally unnecessary and most of their work is extraneous to the gameplay. If I wanted to watch a movie, I'd watch a movie. I want to play a game. I'd rather see more money going to the creators and developers, since they're the ones who will be making the next game even better. Actors are a dime a dozen.
You make land? Neat trick.
$ grep slashdot /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 idle.slashdot.org
$
Costs too much? They can work it into the price, for a limited run (further increasing the perceived value of the bonus pack).
There's special editions of many of the big games. I saw a Halo 3 set with all sorts of extras. Sure they can't throw it into every box, but plenty of diehard fans will pay a little extra for something cool.
Steam, etc, are certainly the future for mass distribution, but there's always a market for something truly special. I wouldn't consider these special editions to be investments, but much like your old collection of cool video game boxes, the sentimental value is priceless.
Unfortunately, not everyone can handle alcohol as well as you think you can (impaired judgement is also an affect of alcohol, so take what you think with a grain of salt). I'm sure plenty of people who kill someone while driving drunk thought they were fine when they got in the car.
.08% is what they determined. Maybe you are fine driving at 0.1 or higher, but that makes you an exception. There are probably some people who are dangerous well below that level, but they can still legally drive.
It is hard to design laws to be adaptable to every possible situation. They had to pick a point and
If you are driving period, you are risking your life and the lives of others. Adding further impairment to the situation (such as drinking, drugs, being tired, distractions) makes the risk even worse.
DUI laws are not prohibition. They are a deterrent for hazardous behavior. If you think you're over the limit, take a cab. Its easy and safe. Plus you can have another drink and not have to worry that you might get pulled over for some minor infraction and have a "DUI" charge stacked on top of it.
BUT in this case, the guy hosting audio files isn't a danger to anyone's life. His actions are not criminal, except in the view of an overbearing law payed for by an industry desperate to maintain their anachronistic revenue streams. Contrary to the scientific evidence that alcohol impairs judgement and motor skills, scientific evidence shows that file sharing actually increases music sales.
The NET law really is out of control.
Whew! For a second there, I thought you lost your mind mid-paragraph.
Bang on, dude. When all the money is tied up in patent and copyright litigation, and no one can actually legally make anything tangible without infringing, the bottom is going to drop out faster than gasoline prices on Jan 20, 2009.
Yes, but that is (well, i suppose "was") not a criminal offense, its a civil offense.
I agree 100% with you that pre-existing laws were more than sufficient to cover this incident. We did not need the DMCA or the NET Act (or whatever it was. i've never heard of it until now). Those laws are overbearing and give way too much power to a few at the expense of our citizens. The police should be protecting us (the people) from murder, theft, and other crimes. It should not be their job to force us to adhere to outdated business models.
The RIAA has basically hijacked the government to do their jobs for them. Instead of finding infringers and hiring their lawyers to fight to protect their copyrights, they now get to use public institutions to do their work, at taxpayers expense. This is so bogus on so many levels.
American society is way too litigation-happy. We lock away a larger percentage of our citizens than any other country (ok, maybe not china... i don't know the current statistics), and BS laws like this will only end up putting more people in jail unnecessarily.
My sister was looking at a few Vista computers and asked my advice. I bought her a Mac.
Of course Ballmer is going to say Vista is selling well. What TF else is he going to say? He has to lie to his shareholders to keep the stock up, or else they'll run out of funding and won't be able to crush their competition.
If Microsoft had to survive on the merits of their products, they'd have been gone a long, long time ago.
They may well have a point, but pre-existing copyright laws already made this act a civil offense. They could have gone after him. They didn't need a law that allows them to lock people away with murderers, rapists, and arsonists.
This guy "stole" imaginary property. He shared music online. Music that the RIAA effectively stole from the artists who created it (but that's another topic completely).
My issue in this case is not with the RIAA, but with the US government being hijacked by corporations for the benefit of a few. Sony has plenty of money, and continues to make plenty of money even with the "rampant piracy" that happens today. Sure, their aging business model is starting to have diminshing returns, but that's life. Progress happens. Technology improves and outdated methods go the way of the horse and buggy.
This law is a clear demonstration of the government being in the pockets of the corporations. It gives way too much power, and eliminates virtually all of the real benefits of copyright (aside from the single purpose of diverting money from the people into the hands of a few corporations).
America is so screwed.
I started boycotting RIAA music when the DMCA was first passed. And I truly boycott the crap. I don't buy it. I don't download it. I don't go to concerts of artists on the RIAA (yes, screw those artists, too, for enabling the corrupt system). I guess this verdict gives me even more reason to not touch the RIAA's poison.
There's nothing like making a bad situation worse. The last thing you should do when you're in no condition to drive is to add distractions to the mix.
If you're too tired to drive but really need to get somewhere, call a cab!
Bingo!
Doom (the first one) was insane. As far as I'm concerned, it created the FPS genre, even if Wolfenstein 3D existed before it. Doom is all about "if it moves, shoot it dead." There's no story. Doom is primal. Its my favorite computer game ever.
What I really don't get is GTA. Don't get me wrong. I loved GTA3. I totally dug the environment. I loved driving around and crashing into everything and running people over. I just wasn't so into the story part of it (and never actually got beyond the first city simply because I didn't care enough). "GTA San Andreas" was totally not my thing; I didn't like being a gang thug. I didn't like doing drive by shootings. In fact, the first drive-by was my last mission in San Andreas before I stopped playing it forever. As such, I couldn't care less about GTA4.
On the other hand, I'm kind of excited for Doom 4. As long as it runs on an operating system I have (ie. anything other than Windows), I'll probably play it. I don't care if its revolutionary. I just want a new shoot-em-up without some BS story line to turn me off.
I'm nostalgic for the original Doom. If 4 is just Doom with... what... 15 years later technology? Oooh, bring it on!
Choice in the messenger market? Doesn't everyone pretty much use AIM anyway?
If I had been his TA, I'd have given him a gold star for sure.
Women don't give half a damn about what anyone does (unless its being done to them, but that's another topic). Ted Bundy had a fan club, and surely those women weren't into him because they thought murder was cool. They liked him because he was so good at it.
No one enjoys overly technical conversations about subjects they don't understand. You just have to tailor the discussion to your audience and keep it interesting. Surely there's plenty you do with computers that is interesting without having to read the source code.
My problems is more one of forgetfulness than thinking I know better than the doctor. I keep taking the pills (well, in theory anyway...) after I start feeling better, until the end of the 10 or 14 day (or whatever) course. I start feeling better in the first few days because the antibiotics start to knock out the virus and my body can begin functioning normally.
The virus is still multiplying and trying to do its thing, but the antibiotics are keeping it down below the threshold that my body can tolerate. If I take away the antibiotics right when I start to feel good, the virus just has to spread a little bit to knock me out again. So instead I keep taking the pills as prescribed and overload the virus until its gone.
That's the theory anyway. In practice I don't take anything on a regular basis, so when I get sick enough to go to the doctor, and I get a presciption it is not part of my routine; its something new. When I wake up in the morning feeling groggy, I don't always remember to take the pill. If I'm not home in the evening to take another with dinner, I usually don't remember to take it when I get home. At the end of the course I'll have at least half a dozen extras, and then I don't know if I should try to finish them off over the next few days or do I timeout on the 10 days and stop? Ugh.
I'm much better about giving my pets their prescribed medications than I am myself. But still not perfect.