Re:The problem is not a failure of the market
on
Homogenized Music
·
· Score: 1
Sure there are alternatives. Not on the radio dial, but elsewhere: CD's, internet, satellite radio. As I said.
The problem is not a failure of the market
on
Homogenized Music
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The market is working just fine. The problem is that the majority are willing to listen to the homogeneous crap that CCU broadcasts. You can argue all you want that the airwaves are a "public good" and not just another form of property, but in the end of the day, someone is going to be arbitrarily choosing what goes on the airwaves no matter how the power to choose is apportioned. And if it's the public (read: majority) choosing how to use that good, you can be assured they're not going to waste that bandwidth on indie rock, metal, big-band music, or African tongue-clicking.
Instead of complaining, choose one of the alternatives: listen to satellite radio, internet radio, listen to CD's (the real ones, not those phony pseudo-CD's), etc. If CCU truly isn't performing a service that people want, advertisers will stop buying airtime and it will go bankrupt. I'm guessing that isn't about to happen anytime soon.
I fail to see how 16,000 lives over 27 years justifies the incalculable loss of liberty inherent in taking away the rights of an adult to do as he pleases.
Please, no comments about how drinking isn't that important and how it's a right people don't need to survive. That's not the point: the point is that people should be free to live their lives without the interference of others, as long as they don't infringe on anyone else's rights.
The proper thing to do in this situation would have been to prosecute more enthusiastically those who drank and then proceeded to drive under the influence. But it's a lot easier just to take away the rights of the 90% who would obey the laws in order to protect the rest of society from the actions of the remaining 10%, right?
This is America, and that sentiment is un-American.
Re:Bitching and moaning about the price of CD's
on
CDs Want To Be Free
·
· Score: 1
Point is they shouldn't make it unduly difficult. "Easy" means not intentionally encumbering it.
And it isn't part of the law. I never claimed it was. I think it should be. Read more carefully.
Bitching and moaning about the price of CD's
on
CDs Want To Be Free
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I do it too. Every time I go to Newbury Comics, it seems those bastards have upped the price of CD's.
But bitching about it doesn't really do anything. The CD producers can charge whatever price they think the market will bear. Some people actually buy CD's at stores like Sam Greedy and Record Frown, both of which seem to sell everything at MSRP (about $19 now), so it's obvious people are willing to pay.
My answer? I simply buy fewer CD's: at $10 I'll buy almost anything, at $13 I'll buy most stuff, but at $15+ I'll only buy what I really want. The rest of it just isn't worth that price.
However, just because I think they can charge whatever they want doesn't also mean they get to dictate terms. If they want a limited-time monopoly on distributing their recordings, they have to fulfill their side of the copyright bargain, which IMO means that they have to make it easy for me to exercise my fair use rights. It isn't enough simply not to prosecute me for attempting to exercise those rights, such as space-shifting (ripping to.ogg, making a copy for the car, etc.) and time-shifting (taping stuff off the radio to play later); they should not even be able to make it difficult to perform such tasks. This means that copyright should not apply to recordings with fair use interference measures/anti-free trade measures (collectively and inaccurately known as "copy protection").
Go sign the Digital Consumer Bill of Rights and stand up for preservation of your fair use rights. Call your Congressmen. Donate to Rick Boucher and let him know why. Join the EFF. (And if all else fails, join the NRA, buy a handgun, and get ready to defend your liberties with force.) Stop simply complaining, and do something about it.
The real problem here is that our government is so powerful that it is allowed to collect such information on us in the first place. Look, people: it's an intelligence organization. Once they have the information, they are unaccountable to anyone as to what they do with it. There is no public oversight of the FBI, because that would violate "national security."
So, you think, "I'm not so important. The FBI isn't coming after me." Repeat the litany about not speaking up for the Jews, etc. and realize that this particular abuse is only one of countless ways in which our too-powerful federal government violates our rights on a daily basis.
Don't be so quick to give up rights you don't exercise: instead, think of what kinds of rights you exercise that the majority might not care about (fair use, use of strong cryptography, etc.), and realize that if you have the ability to surrender their rights, they have the ability to surrender yours.
On the other hand, this is one stupid patent I'd love to see held up, just so that the licensing fees could discourage advertisers from attacking their potential clients.
You know, Malda, this is exactly what I've been talking about. This is the wrong attitude. If you complain endlessly about your own rights being eroded, but then stand idly by as someone else you don't like gets screwed for the exact same reasons, you are nothing but a hypocrite.
Repeat the litany about not standing up for the Jews, etc., and you'll get the idea. A government that can't screw the people you don't like is a government that can't screw you. This is primary tenet of Libertarianism, and a lesson we should all learn, but never seem to.
...keep their goddamn hands off the things I enjoy.
If you think regulating roller coasters is such a great idea, remember that a government that has power to regulate something you don't think is important about also has the power to regulate something you do think is important!
A story like this should not have you thinking, "Well, that sounds reasonable." It should have have you thinking, "How much more personal freedom are We the People willing to give up?"
There is no perceptible difference between acceleration and gravitation, assuming general relativity is correct.
Wanna see general relativity in action? Put a helium balloon in a car and go around a corner. The balloon will move toward the side of the car on the inside of the turn!
To sue someone, you have to claim actual damages
on
More on Intel v. Hamidi
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I've found that civil courts are greatly misunderstood by most Americans. If you can't prove that you were actually damaged by the other party, you won't be awarded any damages.
Most confusion regarding civil courts revolves around two points:
In general, laws have little to do with civil courts. Civil court judgments are generally based on precedent. Laws that apply to civil courts are generally to limit or regulate penalties.
Civil courts only have to show a "preponderance of evidence," as opposed to "clear and convincing" or "beyond a reasonable doubt," the latter of which is used in criminal trials. (I am unclear on the exact reason; surely, taking away someone's fundamental civil liberties by putting them in jail should be very hard, but that doesn't mean evidence in civil trials should be weaker.)
An example of this in action is OJ's criminal acquittal followed by the "wrongful death" judgment against him in civil court. Essentially, he was convicted of murder under a lesser standard of evidence, with a lesser penalty (money to the damaged parties) as well.
It's not clear anyone is going to see this above the din, but I figured I'd ask since knowledgable types will probably be here.
What are the chances of me getting a reliable ATAPI Ultra66 cable longer than 36 inches? I don't care what the spec says; I want something that works, whether it's within the spec or not.
The problem is that my motherboard (Tyan Tiger MP) was designed with the ATAPI interfaces on the side of the motherboard next to the bottom of the case. This makes all but the bottom two external drive bays in my full tower unusable by ATAPI devices!
Of course, I'd be more than willing to switch to firewire, but only when native internal firewire drives are cheap and plentiful. I don't want to go with SCSI, b/c the drives are overpriced relative to performance gain.
I'd like to see all the US internet-based companies collude and refuse to sell goods to Europeans. Let them get all the way through the ordering process, and then tell them, "Sorry, before this transaction can be completed, you need to get your representatives to repeal this ridiculous VAT."
This is the same type of action I'd like to see the car manufacturers take against California's ridiculous proposal to regulate CO2 emissions. You can bet Californians would become very pissed at their state representatives very fast if they were unable to purchase new cars or register out-of-state cars in CA. "Sorry, you're in CA: you can't buy any of our cars because your state's emissions regulations are too stringent. Try again in late November."
Why are all the other replies to this message marked -1 troll or off-topic? This seems systematic, especially since most of them make the same valid point.
I think even you are missing the point. The copy is identical to the original. If you can play the original, you can play the copy. The problem is playing either; without DeCSS, that is impossible for unlicensed players.
I know I speak for a lot of old-timers (yeah, I'm a geezer at 26) who agree with me that the new games just don't have the atmosphere the old games had.
Doom was and still is my favorite first-person shooter because it had great music and horrifying imagery in addition to great gameplay and the prototype deathmatch.
Remember the first time you saw one of the damned marines twitching, impaled on a pole? Remember the first time a Baron of Hell surprised you to death with some green spooge? Or the first time a Cyberdemon tore you a new bunghole in about 2 seconds with blast from his missile launcher? Or how incredible you felt rampaging your way through level 7 of Episode II with the tune to "Behind the Crooked Cross" by Slayer acting as a Wagner-like anthem to your greatness?
Doom rocked. The new games are all substance (great 3D graphics, immaculate sound) and no style.
Region encoding was never about piracy or release dates. It was always about extracting the maximum amount of money from each market, by making it very difficult for people in richer countries to play the same imported content sold in a poorer country at a lower price.
First he tries to convince the public of California that power companies are trying to extort them by raising their rates closer to what New Yorkers have been paying for the past 25 years.
He succeeds only part-way, managing to sign long-term energy contracts with the power generators at the peak of the energy market pricing, effectively screwing the citizens of California out of a huge amount of money through poor business sense.
In an attempt to endear himself to the public he screwed, he then raises his hand in the one-fingered salute to any sense of responsibility or rule of law and tries to sue his way out of contracts he foolishly got himself into.
But perhaps this last move was just a decoy. Someone should look into his relationship with the power generators, whom he made much richer through those contracts signed apparently in a fit of panic at the ridiculous prospect of even higher long-term prices. Can a single man be so dumb?
In the same way, someone should do an intersect of the set of large Oracle shareholders and the set of decision-makers in this situation.
Can someone explain to me how the government spending money means we don't have to spend our own money? Uh, where the fuck do you think the government gets its money? From taxes on the us!!
I wish everyone would get it through their heads that government services aren't free!
Capitalism is not what keeps 3rd world countries poor. In fact, capitalism is their sole potential for escape. What is keeping them down are labor unions and Greens, who insist on labor and environmental controls in countries that can afford neither at such an early stage of industrialization.
Good for you for buying fewer CD's, but don't give me that crap about vinyl sounding better: audiophiles can go on and on about how great records are, but if I really wanted that "warm" vinyl sound, I would just turn up the bass and find some way to add pops and static artificially.
The real reason we haven't switched to ethanol fuel is that studies have pointed out that the entire surface of the United States would have to be planted with corn all year 'round to provide enough ethanol to replace the gasoline we use. Ethanol is therefore not a viable replacement. And ethanol combustion still produces some greenhouse gas emissions, if you believe in that sort of thing.
Fuel cell batteries (i.e., spend nuclear-generated electricity on electrolysis to store energy in the form of hydrogen) are the only reasonable replacements for gasoline that we can see today. But the freakin' enviro-freaks get all up-in-arms over the use of nuclear power. I think they would be unsatisfied with anything short of returning to the stone age---as long as they all get their lattes, of course.
I consider myself a conservationist primarily because I like having natural wilderness areas around for my own enjoyment: camping, hiking, snowmobiling, etc. are all more interesting with interesting plant and animal life.
But one sentiment I don't understand is this need to make environmentalism some kind of religion. I do not believe that the Earth and its creatures are sacred in any sense: why shouldn't Man have the right to do with the Earth as he pleases?
Rights are a civilized construct (e.g., humans in the wild didn't have a right to diddly-squat). If we choose to give rights to other plant and animal life, that's fine: I may not agree with that, but at least it would be an explicit choice. What irks me is that lots of environmentalists presume that other species have rights, when in fact they do not a priori.
But any choice to give rights to animals or plants will (and should) ultimately be for our own benefit. In this case, if it can be proved (yes, difficult) that annihiliating the tse tse fly will have no appreciable negative effect on human life (and in this case, I include the enjoyment and survival that humans derive from the environment), then it should in fact be annihilated, given the substantial negative effects tse tse flies have on humans.
That, and I think it's really hypocritical whenever people in industrialized nations try to tell third-worlders that they can't modernize because that would be bad for the Earth. =)
Meshuggah is the archetype of metalcore: they basically define the genre. Metalcore is just hardcore with a metal edge, exactly what Meshuggah does.
On a side note, Dillinger cancelled their show on the 28th of this month, the only one that was to be close to me, and now I can't go. It's been too long since I've seen those guys play. Forget Europe, dammit, come play the::cough:: midwest!
LOL... yeah, real metal bands don't play America much. Do what I do, and fly to a metal festival every so often; it's worth the trip.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure there are alternatives. Not on the radio dial, but elsewhere: CD's, internet, satellite radio. As I said.
The market is working just fine. The problem is that the majority are willing to listen to the homogeneous crap that CCU broadcasts. You can argue all you want that the airwaves are a "public good" and not just another form of property, but in the end of the day, someone is going to be arbitrarily choosing what goes on the airwaves no matter how the power to choose is apportioned. And if it's the public (read: majority) choosing how to use that good, you can be assured they're not going to waste that bandwidth on indie rock, metal, big-band music, or African tongue-clicking.
Instead of complaining, choose one of the alternatives: listen to satellite radio, internet radio, listen to CD's (the real ones, not those phony pseudo-CD's), etc. If CCU truly isn't performing a service that people want, advertisers will stop buying airtime and it will go bankrupt. I'm guessing that isn't about to happen anytime soon.
I fail to see how 16,000 lives over 27 years justifies the incalculable loss of liberty inherent in taking away the rights of an adult to do as he pleases.
Please, no comments about how drinking isn't that important and how it's a right people don't need to survive. That's not the point: the point is that people should be free to live their lives without the interference of others, as long as they don't infringe on anyone else's rights.
The proper thing to do in this situation would have been to prosecute more enthusiastically those who drank and then proceeded to drive under the influence. But it's a lot easier just to take away the rights of the 90% who would obey the laws in order to protect the rest of society from the actions of the remaining 10%, right?
This is America, and that sentiment is un-American.
Point is they shouldn't make it unduly difficult. "Easy" means not intentionally encumbering it.
And it isn't part of the law. I never claimed it was. I think it should be. Read more carefully.
I do it too. Every time I go to Newbury Comics, it seems those bastards have upped the price of CD's.
.ogg, making a copy for the car, etc.) and time-shifting (taping stuff off the radio to play later); they should not even be able to make it difficult to perform such tasks. This means that copyright should not apply to recordings with fair use interference measures/anti-free trade measures (collectively and inaccurately known as "copy protection").
But bitching about it doesn't really do anything. The CD producers can charge whatever price they think the market will bear. Some people actually buy CD's at stores like Sam Greedy and Record Frown, both of which seem to sell everything at MSRP (about $19 now), so it's obvious people are willing to pay.
My answer? I simply buy fewer CD's: at $10 I'll buy almost anything, at $13 I'll buy most stuff, but at $15+ I'll only buy what I really want. The rest of it just isn't worth that price.
However, just because I think they can charge whatever they want doesn't also mean they get to dictate terms. If they want a limited-time monopoly on distributing their recordings, they have to fulfill their side of the copyright bargain, which IMO means that they have to make it easy for me to exercise my fair use rights. It isn't enough simply not to prosecute me for attempting to exercise those rights, such as space-shifting (ripping to
Go sign the Digital Consumer Bill of Rights and stand up for preservation of your fair use rights. Call your Congressmen. Donate to Rick Boucher and let him know why. Join the EFF. (And if all else fails, join the NRA, buy a handgun, and get ready to defend your liberties with force.) Stop simply complaining, and do something about it.
The real problem here is that our government is so powerful that it is allowed to collect such information on us in the first place. Look, people: it's an intelligence organization. Once they have the information, they are unaccountable to anyone as to what they do with it. There is no public oversight of the FBI, because that would violate "national security."
So, you think, "I'm not so important. The FBI isn't coming after me." Repeat the litany about not speaking up for the Jews, etc. and realize that this particular abuse is only one of countless ways in which our too-powerful federal government violates our rights on a daily basis.
Don't be so quick to give up rights you don't exercise: instead, think of what kinds of rights you exercise that the majority might not care about (fair use, use of strong cryptography, etc.), and realize that if you have the ability to surrender their rights, they have the ability to surrender yours.
Do you want small government? Join the Libertarian Party.
You know, Malda, this is exactly what I've been talking about. This is the wrong attitude. If you complain endlessly about your own rights being eroded, but then stand idly by as someone else you don't like gets screwed for the exact same reasons, you are nothing but a hypocrite.
Repeat the litany about not standing up for the Jews, etc., and you'll get the idea. A government that can't screw the people you don't like is a government that can't screw you. This is primary tenet of Libertarianism, and a lesson we should all learn, but never seem to.
...keep their goddamn hands off the things I enjoy.
If you think regulating roller coasters is such a great idea, remember that a government that has power to regulate something you don't think is important about also has the power to regulate something you do think is important!
A story like this should not have you thinking, "Well, that sounds reasonable." It should have have you thinking, "How much more personal freedom are We the People willing to give up?"
There is no perceptible difference between acceleration and gravitation, assuming general relativity is correct.
Wanna see general relativity in action? Put a helium balloon in a car and go around a corner. The balloon will move toward the side of the car on the inside of the turn!
Most confusion regarding civil courts revolves around two points:
An example of this in action is OJ's criminal acquittal followed by the "wrongful death" judgment against him in civil court. Essentially, he was convicted of murder under a lesser standard of evidence, with a lesser penalty (money to the damaged parties) as well.
It's not clear anyone is going to see this above the din, but I figured I'd ask since knowledgable types will probably be here.
What are the chances of me getting a reliable ATAPI Ultra66 cable longer than 36 inches? I don't care what the spec says; I want something that works, whether it's within the spec or not.
The problem is that my motherboard (Tyan Tiger MP) was designed with the ATAPI interfaces on the side of the motherboard next to the bottom of the case. This makes all but the bottom two external drive bays in my full tower unusable by ATAPI devices!
Of course, I'd be more than willing to switch to firewire, but only when native internal firewire drives are cheap and plentiful. I don't want to go with SCSI, b/c the drives are overpriced relative to performance gain.
Suggestions?
Get the leftists and big-government Republicans out of office. Join the Libertarian Party.
I'd like to see all the US internet-based companies collude and refuse to sell goods to Europeans. Let them get all the way through the ordering process, and then tell them, "Sorry, before this transaction can be completed, you need to get your representatives to repeal this ridiculous VAT."
This is the same type of action I'd like to see the car manufacturers take against California's ridiculous proposal to regulate CO2 emissions. You can bet Californians would become very pissed at their state representatives very fast if they were unable to purchase new cars or register out-of-state cars in CA. "Sorry, you're in CA: you can't buy any of our cars because your state's emissions regulations are too stringent. Try again in late November."
I would have a huge laugh if either happened. =)
Why are all the other replies to this message marked -1 troll or off-topic? This seems systematic, especially since most of them make the same valid point.
I think even you are missing the point. The copy is identical to the original. If you can play the original, you can play the copy. The problem is playing either; without DeCSS, that is impossible for unlicensed players.
I know I speak for a lot of old-timers (yeah, I'm a geezer at 26) who agree with me that the new games just don't have the atmosphere the old games had.
Doom was and still is my favorite first-person shooter because it had great music and horrifying imagery in addition to great gameplay and the prototype deathmatch.
Remember the first time you saw one of the damned marines twitching, impaled on a pole? Remember the first time a Baron of Hell surprised you to death with some green spooge? Or the first time a Cyberdemon tore you a new bunghole in about 2 seconds with blast from his missile launcher? Or how incredible you felt rampaging your way through level 7 of Episode II with the tune to "Behind the Crooked Cross" by Slayer acting as a Wagner-like anthem to your greatness?
Doom rocked. The new games are all substance (great 3D graphics, immaculate sound) and no style.
Region encoding was never about piracy or release dates. It was always about extracting the maximum amount of money from each market, by making it very difficult for people in richer countries to play the same imported content sold in a poorer country at a lower price.
Gray Davis in prison for racketeering.
First he tries to convince the public of California that power companies are trying to extort them by raising their rates closer to what New Yorkers have been paying for the past 25 years.
He succeeds only part-way, managing to sign long-term energy contracts with the power generators at the peak of the energy market pricing, effectively screwing the citizens of California out of a huge amount of money through poor business sense.
In an attempt to endear himself to the public he screwed, he then raises his hand in the one-fingered salute to any sense of responsibility or rule of law and tries to sue his way out of contracts he foolishly got himself into.
But perhaps this last move was just a decoy. Someone should look into his relationship with the power generators, whom he made much richer through those contracts signed apparently in a fit of panic at the ridiculous prospect of even higher long-term prices. Can a single man be so dumb?
In the same way, someone should do an intersect of the set of large Oracle shareholders and the set of decision-makers in this situation.
Can someone explain to me how the government spending money means we don't have to spend our own money? Uh, where the fuck do you think the government gets its money? From taxes on the us!!
I wish everyone would get it through their heads that government services aren't free!
Capitalism is not what keeps 3rd world countries poor. In fact, capitalism is their sole potential for escape. What is keeping them down are labor unions and Greens, who insist on labor and environmental controls in countries that can afford neither at such an early stage of industrialization.
Good for you for buying fewer CD's, but don't give me that crap about vinyl sounding better: audiophiles can go on and on about how great records are, but if I really wanted that "warm" vinyl sound, I would just turn up the bass and find some way to add pops and static artificially.
That's news to me. Most of it is synthesized through photosynthesis from minerals in the ground.
The real reason we haven't switched to ethanol fuel is that studies have pointed out that the entire surface of the United States would have to be planted with corn all year 'round to provide enough ethanol to replace the gasoline we use. Ethanol is therefore not a viable replacement. And ethanol combustion still produces some greenhouse gas emissions, if you believe in that sort of thing.
Fuel cell batteries (i.e., spend nuclear-generated electricity on electrolysis to store energy in the form of hydrogen) are the only reasonable replacements for gasoline that we can see today. But the freakin' enviro-freaks get all up-in-arms over the use of nuclear power. I think they would be unsatisfied with anything short of returning to the stone age---as long as they all get their lattes, of course.
Is the Earth somehow sacred?
I consider myself a conservationist primarily because I like having natural wilderness areas around for my own enjoyment: camping, hiking, snowmobiling, etc. are all more interesting with interesting plant and animal life.
But one sentiment I don't understand is this need to make environmentalism some kind of religion. I do not believe that the Earth and its creatures are sacred in any sense: why shouldn't Man have the right to do with the Earth as he pleases?
Rights are a civilized construct (e.g., humans in the wild didn't have a right to diddly-squat). If we choose to give rights to other plant and animal life, that's fine: I may not agree with that, but at least it would be an explicit choice. What irks me is that lots of environmentalists presume that other species have rights, when in fact they do not a priori.
But any choice to give rights to animals or plants will (and should) ultimately be for our own benefit. In this case, if it can be proved (yes, difficult) that annihiliating the tse tse fly will have no appreciable negative effect on human life (and in this case, I include the enjoyment and survival that humans derive from the environment), then it should in fact be annihilated, given the substantial negative effects tse tse flies have on humans.
That, and I think it's really hypocritical whenever people in industrialized nations try to tell third-worlders that they can't modernize because that would be bad for the Earth. =)
LOL... yeah, real metal bands don't play America much. Do what I do, and fly to a metal festival every so often; it's worth the trip.