Best Buy Clerk: Thanks for shopping with us today. Would you like to sign up for a Sports Illustrated or Entertainment Weekly Subscription with your Napster purchase? Perhaps sign up for Rhapsody as well?
Customer: I'm not interested.
Clerk: You know for just $.45 you can purchase an extended warranty on your Napster download. It cover's against damage caused by power surges, unlike Naptster's own warranty.
Customer: Not interested.
Clerk: Oh, it looks like we're actually out of that song, sorry.
If Blair brings the EU Constitution up for a public referendum, you might want to vote yes. After all, why wouldn't you want France playing a major part in your defense or Germany helping decide how to lower unemployment?
RTFA and see that an EU store will be opening in the fall. Also, the U.S., while made up of many constituent states, has one unified copyright set by the federal government. Europe has many varying laws, from country to country, I'd imagine.
One of the ISP's he did his experiment on was in the UK. Why do you assume the US constitution would apply to them?
Correct (I did RTFA), but the point remains the same. The government isn't doing the censorship (if you can call it censorship) and so I don't see the big problem here. To be fair, I don't think it's a wise choice for the ISP, but that's just it, their choice.
Censorship is, in my opinion, something only the government can do. Or at the very least, censorship by your ISP is not illegal according to the Constitution of the U.S. Me and my ISP are two private entities, if he doesn't want my content on his servers, fine. I'll take my business elsewhere.
Now if the government saw my site with Mills' work posted and shut it down for any reason I would be scared.
I have music on two Macs and a PC, all running iTunes. I have my stereo hooked up to my tower Mac and then it shares all the other iTunes libraries. I control the tower using Chicken of the VNC from my iBook. Not sure how the Express will deal with shared iTunes libraries, but if your only problem is controlling the server (in the closet) with all your music, than try VNC. Works well for me, I even use it to control the WIN2K box.
If they wanted to restrict their offerings to just UK license payers why don't they do it now? I abuse their servers for streaming video of news and all kinds of radio programming, yet I'm a dyed-in-the-wool American, who lives in America. The best part is, while here, there are all kinds of restrictions on competitions (i.e. you must be a U.S. citizen to win) I won a Daft Punk DVD after e-mailing Annie Nightengale one Saturday night. They even sent it to me express shipping.
I realize that the things they'll be offering will likely be more bandwidth intensive just streaming audio, but I don't think (and certainly don't hope) that they'll be restricting this service too much.
I disagree with many of his positions, but do enjoy his work. I think "Roger and Me" was his best work. It was not too radical, and made some sense. "Bowling for Columbine" was entertaining, but to me it seemed like his was trying to link American foreign policy with our gun culture, a link that is tenuous at best. I'll watch "Fahrenheit 9/11" and probably disagree, but will be entertained. His art is well done.
On an aside, he visited my university in 2001. I love his t.v. shows (before I knew better I thought he was a republican) and always thought that his message was that ultimately the individual is responsible for his actions and his or her place in life. I asked him if that was one of his messages, and much to my surprise, he said yes. Thought it was odd coming from someone that thinks the U.S. needs and could afford universal, federally subsidized health care.
Did we not expect this to come from a state so desperate for cash that on the tax forms this year you are required to report purchases over the internet? This is so that while you didn't pay sales tax up front, they will get it somehow. They even talked about requiring people to report inter-county purchases. The NY state legislature never met a dollar they couldn't spend, although I highly doubt NY is alone in this arena. I need to move to New Hampshire.
Yes, the Chinese gov't did give its permission to publish this article as it's in the government run newspaper. Xinhua is the press arm of your favorite local despotic ruling party. As to their motives, I will never presume to know what irrational men (or women) are thinking.
I will say this, when I was in Beijing there was a huge complex of internet cafes just outside the South gate of Beijing University. We called them the flying fish (feiyu) because as students we could only read the pinyin and not the characters. Anyway, for 4 months I went almost everyday. I skipped a week while traveling. When I got back, they were all gone. We are talking about two blocks of cafes (it was massive). The reason? A communist party official touring the area thought the cafes were too Western. Granted, this was about the time that the U.S. spy plane landed on Hainan (sp) Island. The Commies are terribly conflicted. They want economic growth so they can skim off the top, but they have no desire to be responsible to the people. I give them 10, 15 years, tops.
iTunes now will transcode (?) WMA files into MP3's or AAC for you to transfer to your iPod. This is exactly what Sony's ATRAC does, at least on its MiniDisc units. Anything you put on a MiniDisc is converted from MP4/AIF/WAV/MP3/WMA/FLAC into ATRAC and then recorded on the MD. Again, my only experience is with MD, but if you use Sony's software to do this (I can't, I use a Mac), the ATRAC that is recorded to disk has a DRM Check In/Check Out system is very restrictive. Much tighter than Apple's DRM'd AAC.
I was in Japan for 10 months last year. I bought a middle of the road JPhone (now Vodaphone) model that has a camera, 10 secs of video, internet, e-mail, and an amazing alarm clock for about $30 (US)(had discounts). The best part was, I didn't even have to sign up for a year contract. I could do post-pay and not sign up for a year, how novel is that? I refuse to buy a cell phone in the States (or anywhere else I may live) unless I can buy the phone I want but not have to sign up for a year.
The stupid contracts and poor handsets (relative to Japan anyway) are really a function of the youth of the cell industry in the U.S. Here, market saturation is low and demand is high, so companies have tons of consumers willing to pay huge amounts on crap contracts and horrible handsets. In Japan, where something near 80% of people have a cell phone, the companies must offer better phones and contract options to steal customers away form competitors. Ah, the free market at work. But what do I know, I use a Mac.
The poor in the U.S. can afford DirecTV (given by the number of dishes you see on top of mobile homes -- and I have seen plenty, south and east of Buffalo, NY).
You leave the Southtowns out of this. Rick James if from Lackawanna, BITCH!!!
As an American that spent a year of high school in Sweden (and also spent time teaching English in Japan), I'd say Sweden probably has the best K-12 system. Although, it's only K-11 really.
I went to the 2nd biggest HS in Sweden, and they had a practical section and the more academic section. Meaning everyone took certain courses, but outside of those you either learned a trade or did more history, econ, etc. Perhaps it was because I didn't fully understand all the social intricacies, but both sets of students seemed to mix well, and there didn't seem to be any tension between the students. Compare that with America where those that learn a trade are typically looked down upon by the college bound students.
Furthermore, Sweden has high standards, but they don't seem to control the student's lives like in Japan. Having not attended university in either country, from what I hear it's the opposite of America. In the U.S., if you've got the average/.'s intelligence, high school probably wasn't too hard, and university was (perhaps) a bit more challenging. In both Sweden and Japan it was reversed, work your ass of in HS and you get into a "good" uni and then you don't need to do anything really. Again, that's just anecdotal evidence.
So really, no system is perfect, and money isn't the answer no matter where you are.
I was afraid of the same thing, so I used a debit card from a bank I rarely use but had a little money still in the account. I also had the bank contact me whenever the card was used. I've had no unauthorized use. Granted, it's a small three month period. I also suppose they might use that info to obtain other accounts in my name (is that possible), but my credit report is still clean, but I still watch it like a hawk. We are dealing with commies here.;-)
I read somewhere, maybe here on Slashdot, that there are systems that are that "fragile" and or susceptible to electronic interference, including even some CD players and computers. However, during cruising there isn't too much going on in the cockpit so the pilots can easily work around any interference, however, it's at take off and landing where there is so much going on that they would rather not risk it, so no electronic equipment during those times. Again, that's just what I hear.
What are you talking about? FrontPage makes beautiful, HTML compliant pages, that work perfectly in every browser. Clearly, you're just a Microsoft hater;-)
Actually, the only reason I comment is because your sig is in Swedish, but I can't translate it, as it's been 6 years since I lived there.
Apple is one step closer to dominating digital music distribution, mwahahaha. Soon we will be able to leverage our near monopoly status (I'm a share holder) and begin charging $1.50 per tune and force you to renew your ownership every year for an additional $.75, and you'll like it. Are your tunes are belong to us.
I'm not denying that the Supreme Court (rightly or wrongly) granted the same rights individuals enjoy to corporations. Also appreciate the other cases you listed (I knew about Minn RR v. Beckwith) However, in the beginning, corporations were formed for a specific purpose and only with the approval of the legislature, and typically for only a limited time. IE a railroad could only build tracks and run trains, they couldn't buy out a radio station without government approval. In the good old days, corporations existed under the watchful eye of the government, now it seems, more and more, that the government makes no decisions without corporations slanting the government's decisions. That, my friend is scary.
I'll grant you that copyright holders, whether they are corporations or people, have a right to protect their work. But tell me where in the Constitution a corporation is guaranteed any rights. It wasn't until the mid 1800's that corporations were granted the rights the Constitution granted to individual citizens.
My politics are far to the right, but one cannot reasonably agree with the powers that corporations have in influencing government policy, via money. I find it hard to believe that any reasonable person (on the left or right or center) cannot see this.
You do have some valid points, I guess I was lucky. Most, definitely not all, but most of my teachers seemed to care. However, my parents were probably the most important factor. I think with good parents you can overcome anything that the school may throw at you, like piss poor teachers, but if your parents suck you may be up shit creek. Obviously there will be many exceptions to both cases, but generally speaking.
Oh, and for any Americans/Canadians/Aussies/Kiwis/Brits/Germans who happen to be about 6ft (oh, say about 1.8M) tall, you will be an instant crush of the week for all of the girls (this I do know from experience).
Ah yes, it's amazing how even we (not necessarily referring to you CPM) ugly buggers are the dreamboats just because we're tall and white (or evidently black is now the cool color I hear). I still question my return to the States sometimes.
I can see your argument in regards to the suicide thing, but wouldn't failing a test bring shame on somebody worthy of suicide?
On an unrelated note, you mention you're proud to be an America, and that you've also lived 3 years abroad. Funny how those of us that have lived abroad (myself 1 year in Sweden, 5 months in China, 9 months in Japan, soon to be 10 months in England for grad school) are very proud to be American. I love living abroad, seeing how things are done differently and often times better. I cannot condone all of America's foreign policy, but I often wonder how many Americans that do nothing but talk down America have ever lived abroad. Just a thought. -1 Offtopic, -1 Troll, this is why I stockpile Karma.
My mom had her account frozen because of a similar mistake. I've been trying to get her to stop using AOL for years, but she was too afraid it'd be too complex. This was finally the straw that broke the camel's back. Now she uses Juno and I provided her (and my whole family) e-mail addresses through my account with Lunarpages in case she doesn't like Juno. The best part is, for some reason, attachments are now more intuitive to use for her, so I don't get a phone call 3 times a week as she tries to view the picture of her granddaughter. All at half the price.
Slashdot Mirror
Best Buy Clerk: Thanks for shopping with us today. Would you like to sign up for a Sports Illustrated or Entertainment Weekly Subscription with your Napster purchase? Perhaps sign up for Rhapsody as well?
Customer: I'm not interested.
Clerk: You know for just $.45 you can purchase an extended warranty on your Napster download. It cover's against damage caused by power surges, unlike Naptster's own warranty.
Customer: Not interested.
Clerk: Oh, it looks like we're actually out of that song, sorry.
Sorry about the RTFA comment earlier, I got my articles confused. You're right, the Register doesn't say so, but this article at Maccentral does.
Bet you wish you joined the Euro don't ya? ;-)
If Blair brings the EU Constitution up for a public referendum, you might want to vote yes. After all, why wouldn't you want France playing a major part in your defense or Germany helping decide how to lower unemployment?
RTFA and see that an EU store will be opening in the fall. Also, the U.S., while made up of many constituent states, has one unified copyright set by the federal government. Europe has many varying laws, from country to country, I'd imagine.
One of the ISP's he did his experiment on was in the UK. Why do you assume the US constitution would apply to them?
Correct (I did RTFA), but the point remains the same. The government isn't doing the censorship (if you can call it censorship) and so I don't see the big problem here. To be fair, I don't think it's a wise choice for the ISP, but that's just it, their choice.
Censorship is, in my opinion, something only the government can do. Or at the very least, censorship by your ISP is not illegal according to the Constitution of the U.S. Me and my ISP are two private entities, if he doesn't want my content on his servers, fine. I'll take my business elsewhere.
Now if the government saw my site with Mills' work posted and shut it down for any reason I would be scared.
I have music on two Macs and a PC, all running iTunes. I have my stereo hooked up to my tower Mac and then it shares all the other iTunes libraries. I control the tower using Chicken of the VNC from my iBook. Not sure how the Express will deal with shared iTunes libraries, but if your only problem is controlling the server (in the closet) with all your music, than try VNC. Works well for me, I even use it to control the WIN2K box.
If they wanted to restrict their offerings to just UK license payers why don't they do it now? I abuse their servers for streaming video of news and all kinds of radio programming, yet I'm a dyed-in-the-wool American, who lives in America. The best part is, while here, there are all kinds of restrictions on competitions (i.e. you must be a U.S. citizen to win) I won a Daft Punk DVD after e-mailing Annie Nightengale one Saturday night. They even sent it to me express shipping.
I realize that the things they'll be offering will likely be more bandwidth intensive just streaming audio, but I don't think (and certainly don't hope) that they'll be restricting this service too much.
I disagree with many of his positions, but do enjoy his work. I think "Roger and Me" was his best work. It was not too radical, and made some sense. "Bowling for Columbine" was entertaining, but to me it seemed like his was trying to link American foreign policy with our gun culture, a link that is tenuous at best. I'll watch "Fahrenheit 9/11" and probably disagree, but will be entertained. His art is well done.
On an aside, he visited my university in 2001. I love his t.v. shows (before I knew better I thought he was a republican) and always thought that his message was that ultimately the individual is responsible for his actions and his or her place in life. I asked him if that was one of his messages, and much to my surprise, he said yes. Thought it was odd coming from someone that thinks the U.S. needs and could afford universal, federally subsidized health care.
Did we not expect this to come from a state so desperate for cash that on the tax forms this year you are required to report purchases over the internet? This is so that while you didn't pay sales tax up front, they will get it somehow. They even talked about requiring people to report inter-county purchases. The NY state legislature never met a dollar they couldn't spend, although I highly doubt NY is alone in this arena. I need to move to New Hampshire.
Yes, the Chinese gov't did give its permission to publish this article as it's in the government run newspaper. Xinhua is the press arm of your favorite local despotic ruling party. As to their motives, I will never presume to know what irrational men (or women) are thinking.
I will say this, when I was in Beijing there was a huge complex of internet cafes just outside the South gate of Beijing University. We called them the flying fish (feiyu) because as students we could only read the pinyin and not the characters. Anyway, for 4 months I went almost everyday. I skipped a week while traveling. When I got back, they were all gone. We are talking about two blocks of cafes (it was massive). The reason? A communist party official touring the area thought the cafes were too Western. Granted, this was about the time that the U.S. spy plane landed on Hainan (sp) Island. The Commies are terribly conflicted. They want economic growth so they can skim off the top, but they have no desire to be responsible to the people. I give them 10, 15 years, tops.
iTunes now will transcode (?) WMA files into MP3's or AAC for you to transfer to your iPod. This is exactly what Sony's ATRAC does, at least on its MiniDisc units. Anything you put on a MiniDisc is converted from MP4/AIF/WAV/MP3/WMA/FLAC into ATRAC and then recorded on the MD. Again, my only experience is with MD, but if you use Sony's software to do this (I can't, I use a Mac), the ATRAC that is recorded to disk has a DRM Check In/Check Out system is very restrictive. Much tighter than Apple's DRM'd AAC.
I was in Japan for 10 months last year. I bought a middle of the road JPhone (now Vodaphone) model that has a camera, 10 secs of video, internet, e-mail, and an amazing alarm clock for about $30 (US)(had discounts). The best part was, I didn't even have to sign up for a year contract. I could do post-pay and not sign up for a year, how novel is that? I refuse to buy a cell phone in the States (or anywhere else I may live) unless I can buy the phone I want but not have to sign up for a year.
The stupid contracts and poor handsets (relative to Japan anyway) are really a function of the youth of the cell industry in the U.S. Here, market saturation is low and demand is high, so companies have tons of consumers willing to pay huge amounts on crap contracts and horrible handsets. In Japan, where something near 80% of people have a cell phone, the companies must offer better phones and contract options to steal customers away form competitors. Ah, the free market at work. But what do I know, I use a Mac.
You leave the Southtowns out of this. Rick James if from Lackawanna, BITCH!!!
As an American that spent a year of high school in Sweden (and also spent time teaching English in Japan), I'd say Sweden probably has the best K-12 system. Although, it's only K-11 really.
/.'s intelligence, high school probably wasn't too hard, and university was (perhaps) a bit more challenging. In both Sweden and Japan it was reversed, work your ass of in HS and you get into a "good" uni and then you don't need to do anything really. Again, that's just anecdotal evidence.
I went to the 2nd biggest HS in Sweden, and they had a practical section and the more academic section. Meaning everyone took certain courses, but outside of those you either learned a trade or did more history, econ, etc. Perhaps it was because I didn't fully understand all the social intricacies, but both sets of students seemed to mix well, and there didn't seem to be any tension between the students. Compare that with America where those that learn a trade are typically looked down upon by the college bound students.
Furthermore, Sweden has high standards, but they don't seem to control the student's lives like in Japan. Having not attended university in either country, from what I hear it's the opposite of America. In the U.S., if you've got the average
So really, no system is perfect, and money isn't the answer no matter where you are.
I was afraid of the same thing, so I used a debit card from a bank I rarely use but had a little money still in the account. I also had the bank contact me whenever the card was used. I've had no unauthorized use. Granted, it's a small three month period. I also suppose they might use that info to obtain other accounts in my name (is that possible), but my credit report is still clean, but I still watch it like a hawk. We are dealing with commies here. ;-)
I read somewhere, maybe here on Slashdot, that there are systems that are that "fragile" and or susceptible to electronic interference, including even some CD players and computers. However, during cruising there isn't too much going on in the cockpit so the pilots can easily work around any interference, however, it's at take off and landing where there is so much going on that they would rather not risk it, so no electronic equipment during those times. Again, that's just what I hear.
What are you talking about? FrontPage makes beautiful, HTML compliant pages, that work perfectly in every browser. Clearly, you're just a Microsoft hater ;-)
Actually, the only reason I comment is because your sig is in Swedish, but I can't translate it, as it's been 6 years since I lived there.
Apple is one step closer to dominating digital music distribution, mwahahaha. Soon we will be able to leverage our near monopoly status (I'm a share holder) and begin charging $1.50 per tune and force you to renew your ownership every year for an additional $.75, and you'll like it. Are your tunes are belong to us.
I'm not denying that the Supreme Court (rightly or wrongly) granted the same rights individuals enjoy to corporations. Also appreciate the other cases you listed (I knew about Minn RR v. Beckwith) However, in the beginning, corporations were formed for a specific purpose and only with the approval of the legislature, and typically for only a limited time. IE a railroad could only build tracks and run trains, they couldn't buy out a radio station without government approval. In the good old days, corporations existed under the watchful eye of the government, now it seems, more and more, that the government makes no decisions without corporations slanting the government's decisions. That, my friend is scary.
I'll grant you that copyright holders, whether they are corporations or people, have a right to protect their work. But tell me where in the Constitution a corporation is guaranteed any rights. It wasn't until the mid 1800's that corporations were granted the rights the Constitution granted to individual citizens.
My politics are far to the right, but one cannot reasonably agree with the powers that corporations have in influencing government policy, via money. I find it hard to believe that any reasonable person (on the left or right or center) cannot see this.
You do have some valid points, I guess I was lucky. Most, definitely not all, but most of my teachers seemed to care. However, my parents were probably the most important factor. I think with good parents you can overcome anything that the school may throw at you, like piss poor teachers, but if your parents suck you may be up shit creek. Obviously there will be many exceptions to both cases, but generally speaking.
Oh, and for any Americans/Canadians/Aussies/Kiwis/Brits/Germans who happen to be about 6ft (oh, say about 1.8M) tall, you will be an instant crush of the week for all of the girls (this I do know from experience).
Ah yes, it's amazing how even we (not necessarily referring to you CPM) ugly buggers are the dreamboats just because we're tall and white (or evidently black is now the cool color I hear). I still question my return to the States sometimes.
I can see your argument in regards to the suicide thing, but wouldn't failing a test bring shame on somebody worthy of suicide?
On an unrelated note, you mention you're proud to be an America, and that you've also lived 3 years abroad. Funny how those of us that have lived abroad (myself 1 year in Sweden, 5 months in China, 9 months in Japan, soon to be 10 months in England for grad school) are very proud to be American. I love living abroad, seeing how things are done differently and often times better. I cannot condone all of America's foreign policy, but I often wonder how many Americans that do nothing but talk down America have ever lived abroad. Just a thought. -1 Offtopic, -1 Troll, this is why I stockpile Karma.
My mom had her account frozen because of a similar mistake. I've been trying to get her to stop using AOL for years, but she was too afraid it'd be too complex. This was finally the straw that broke the camel's back. Now she uses Juno and I provided her (and my whole family) e-mail addresses through my account with Lunarpages in case she doesn't like Juno. The best part is, for some reason, attachments are now more intuitive to use for her, so I don't get a phone call 3 times a week as she tries to view the picture of her granddaughter. All at half the price.