I can see it now, a Ken Burns-esque narrative flashing up pictures of people playing beer pong and puking, and a deep voiced narrator saying with the utmost gravitas:
"Oh Em Gee, I can't believe I got so super smashed last night. Wut did I do? Seriously? Who's got the pics? El Oh El"
600? Really? I know your trying to make a point but making up shit just makes you sound dumb. Its been 4 or more years since the highest end ps3 was 600, and youve been able to get an xbox for under 200 for 3 or so. If walmart is just 5 minutes away you should know this.
Ok, but my response was to "It's easy to reduce piracy...just put the copyright terms back to the length thought fair by our founding fathers: 28 years after publication.". The GP was postulating that piracy somehow is related to the length of copyright. I don't think the two relate.
Right, because most of the stuff being pirated is 28 years and 1 day old. There's no reasonable time limit to copyright that would satisfy pirates (0 days) and copyright cartels (forever - 1 day) as they have different views of the information ("I shouldn't pay for it", "you should _always_ pay for it, per view, in every format possible, and maybe just for the right for it to exist in the first place!").
I'm guessing a quick scan of pirate bay would show the most popular stuff is 10 years old.
I really think this is a distribution/price problem, not a technical problem and certainly not a legal one. You won't stop it with either of the latter, but you'd make a whole lot more money by fixing the former.
I don't think you can make that claim wholesale, unless there's some mechanism to eliminate users who have done the transfer. Generally arbitrarily deleting user content to free up space is a Bad Thing. (Think "video uploading" or something of that nature). You do have a point when it comes to things like net bandwidth - if I no longer have a game I'm not using the server - but the burden would be on the seller to officially relinquish rights to their account, etc. before transfering the game.
Its not impossible, of course, and I think companies (esp. services like Steam) should be trying to support the behavior of legitimate customers doing a legitimate transaction, not make it so difficult that they give up or pirate.
Apologies, original poster had talked about Battlefield 3 and a one-time use code, but could still play single player. I agree whole heartedly that DRM preventing used game sales for offline play is wrong.
When you're talking about bits on a disc, you're completely right of course. There's nothing owed to companies and nothing you owe them. But in terms of an online service, there's nothing they owe _you_ in terms of allocating storage and bandwidth within the service for your online experience. There was no exchange of money, you're not their customer, etc. You aren't buying anything from them, so you don't have a right to anything from them.
Whether that's a good business strategy of course is up for debate.
I actually don't mind shill accounts if they're backing up stances with factual information. Its when they come in with obvious biased opinion "This is the best, I've used it, trust me" that people get cranky with the labels. Also if its an obvious repetitive drum beat of "X sucks, Y is good, end of discussion!" without any thought or measure. If you continually get first post, and you continually have the same opinion, you either aren't putting a lot of thought into them or are so completely biased with zealotry it doesn't matter what the article is about. Either way you add zilch to the community and nothing to the discussion. Sockpuppets (care to comment on one of the links above where you type a suspiciously similar comment as another poster) are particularly frowned upon because its seen as gaming the system, or an attempt to do so, and again is dishonest in the course of the discussion (esp. when they are posed specifically as separate people replying to each other, etc.).
I actually wouldn't mind actual company representatives responding directly to the community. Having an "Official MS Rep" in the comments section (and labeled as so) would probably garner more interesting conversation, and could possibly end the "shill" accusation. (not the "troll" one of course:)
The fact of the matter is at a big company (usually) there's no evil overlord saying "fuck these people out of their PTO". For one that guy is personally liable and it gets quite expensive if the employees sue. What instead usually happens is that this type of policy is local to a specific department of pointed haired evil troll boss. This guy "gets results" and gets ahead on the backs of his employees. If you've worked long enough you've probably had both types of bosses. Of course, this type of boss is actually _bad_ for the company as it creates a short term gain by exchanging it for morale and eventual turnover. If the manager gets a promotion, he doesn't care, the dept. health is someone elses issue. (And perversely it looks better for him "hey, that dept. ran great when _I_ was there!").
So how does an institution fight this? By punishing the managers. We have a rule where if the employee hits X hours of vacation they are then just paid out instead of getting more. X is a large #, like it would take more than a year of no vacation to get there. If you get close to X, the first thing that happens is your boss's boss sees this and says "how come Bob is maxing hours?". Its his fault. So managers are trained to make sure they track employee vacation and ensure they're taking it in reasonable chunks.
There's always exceptions, and sometimes there are legitimate reasons IMO for denying vacation. For instance, 2 guys are already out of a 4 man team. Probably not a good time for the other two to leave. Or your big product launch is next month and you need everyone around. These are generally not an issue with proper scheduling. Another good thing good companies will do is just close down certain weeks of the year, like Xmas to New years, or 4th of july weekend, etc. Most people are gone, so the ones who didn't take PTO will just goof off anyways. Give less PTO, but more standard holidays.
Anyways, doesn't have to be all doom and gloom if the managers have their shit together.
I agree completely, migla. People should really spend more time digging in depth to find well thought out arguments instead of knee jerk reactions based on something as superficial as a title. Its not like a title is supposed to be some type of summary of the internal contents. They should probably just get rid of that box completely.
I'm not debating the benefits of Free software, I understand those well enough, believe me. I'm saying that copyright helps Free software, and the lack of copyright would not aid it in any manner, as there would be no enforcement that software stays Free in the manner of the GPL. How much that matters of course is debatable.
I fail to see what impact restricting binary distribution has on source distribution. You can be "open source" (lower case o) and still have a restricted binary clause. (See MS "Shared Source" licenses).
Basically, my point is that not having copyright is the exact same as putting code in the public domain, which we already have today. If there's no problem with that, why have the GPL at all? People could share freely, and not share at the same time to their own benefit/detriment. The GPL exists as an enforcement to encourage Free software, not as an answer to copyright.
I think you're in the wrong - we're trying to quantify "fan" and "fanboy/fanboi", which is a much much more radical, rabid version of a fan. The type of behavior you'll see when presented with some evidence of a flaw or weakness in comparison to a competitor is flat out denial or applying spin (aka resolving cognitive dissonance). Given the emotional ties, there's no way they can then just go and admit in another forum that "ok yeah, that sucks and product X is better". They truly believe what they're saying. Otherwise that's just trolling or flat out lying, and I don't think those are quite the same behaviors.
Ok, but in a non-copyright world I would have absolutely 0 obligation to share changes for source, or publish source for anything I make. I think the goals of anti-copyright and Free software are at opposition here - one says "copy freely, do what you please", the other says "copy freely, you must let others copy too!", which is a restriction that could have no weight or bearing in a no copyright world.
No, it generally means "someone who likes something different from the thing I really really like in the same domain". See sports teams, etc. Generally its a result of it being a zero sum game (Only one team can win the super bowl/world cup/whatever), whether that means there's an actual limitation or a perceived one (I only get one phone so my choice is the best, or "My mom said I can only get one console, so that one that I have is obviously the best"). Those of use who recognize that one can often have more than one flavor of ice cream/console/operating system/mobile device/programming language/text editor are perplexed by the behavior, but understanding the base motivation helps a bit.
(Except of course for people who like the Dodgers. They objectively suck, and their fans are doo doo heads. That's a fact.)
I propose then we name the new "good virus" "Agent Smith"
Agent Smith: I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your operating system and I realized that its not actually an operating system at all. Every OS on the Internet develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding hardware environment, but your Windows does not. Its installed on fresh hardware and grows and grows until every hardware resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to wipe the machine and start over. There is another program on the Internet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Windows is a disease, a cancer of the Internet. You're a plague and we are the cure.
I can get something like the/. changes, but there's still a search box and a button. What's different about the primary UI? Is it harder to search? Are people actually confused about it?
Being in a good relationship doesn't mean being 100% codependent and having identical interests. In fact I think it helps to have a few things you can claim as your own.
Slashdot Mirror
"Which is why Facebook has introduced timelines"
I can see it now, a Ken Burns-esque narrative flashing up pictures of people playing beer pong and puking, and a deep voiced narrator saying with the utmost gravitas:
"Oh Em Gee, I can't believe I got so super smashed last night. Wut did I do? Seriously? Who's got the pics? El Oh El"
- Bob Henderson, August 5th, 2012
Irregardless, for all intensive purposes its the same thing. We knew what he mint.
600? Really? I know your trying to make a point but making up shit just makes you sound dumb. Its been 4 or more years since the highest end ps3 was 600, and youve been able to get an xbox for under 200 for 3 or so. If walmart is just 5 minutes away you should know this.
Ok, but my response was to "It's easy to reduce piracy...just put the copyright terms back to the length thought fair by our founding fathers: 28 years after publication.". The GP was postulating that piracy somehow is related to the length of copyright. I don't think the two relate.
^ "is under 10 years old"
Right, because most of the stuff being pirated is 28 years and 1 day old. There's no reasonable time limit to copyright that would satisfy pirates (0 days) and copyright cartels (forever - 1 day) as they have different views of the information ("I shouldn't pay for it", "you should _always_ pay for it, per view, in every format possible, and maybe just for the right for it to exist in the first place!").
I'm guessing a quick scan of pirate bay would show the most popular stuff is 10 years old.
I really think this is a distribution/price problem, not a technical problem and certainly not a legal one. You won't stop it with either of the latter, but you'd make a whole lot more money by fixing the former.
Yeah, like that Solyndra place! They wasted half a billion dollars of investors...shit...
I don't think you can make that claim wholesale, unless there's some mechanism to eliminate users who have done the transfer. Generally arbitrarily deleting user content to free up space is a Bad Thing. (Think "video uploading" or something of that nature). You do have a point when it comes to things like net bandwidth - if I no longer have a game I'm not using the server - but the burden would be on the seller to officially relinquish rights to their account, etc. before transfering the game.
Its not impossible, of course, and I think companies (esp. services like Steam) should be trying to support the behavior of legitimate customers doing a legitimate transaction, not make it so difficult that they give up or pirate.
Apologies, original poster had talked about Battlefield 3 and a one-time use code, but could still play single player. I agree whole heartedly that DRM preventing used game sales for offline play is wrong.
When you're talking about bits on a disc, you're completely right of course. There's nothing owed to companies and nothing you owe them. But in terms of an online service, there's nothing they owe _you_ in terms of allocating storage and bandwidth within the service for your online experience. There was no exchange of money, you're not their customer, etc. You aren't buying anything from them, so you don't have a right to anything from them.
Whether that's a good business strategy of course is up for debate.
I actually don't mind shill accounts if they're backing up stances with factual information. Its when they come in with obvious biased opinion "This is the best, I've used it, trust me" that people get cranky with the labels. Also if its an obvious repetitive drum beat of "X sucks, Y is good, end of discussion!" without any thought or measure. If you continually get first post, and you continually have the same opinion, you either aren't putting a lot of thought into them or are so completely biased with zealotry it doesn't matter what the article is about. Either way you add zilch to the community and nothing to the discussion. Sockpuppets (care to comment on one of the links above where you type a suspiciously similar comment as another poster) are particularly frowned upon because its seen as gaming the system, or an attempt to do so, and again is dishonest in the course of the discussion (esp. when they are posed specifically as separate people replying to each other, etc.).
I actually wouldn't mind actual company representatives responding directly to the community. Having an "Official MS Rep" in the comments section (and labeled as so) would probably garner more interesting conversation, and could possibly end the "shill" accusation. (not the "troll" one of course :)
The fact of the matter is at a big company (usually) there's no evil overlord saying "fuck these people out of their PTO". For one that guy is personally liable and it gets quite expensive if the employees sue. What instead usually happens is that this type of policy is local to a specific department of pointed haired evil troll boss. This guy "gets results" and gets ahead on the backs of his employees. If you've worked long enough you've probably had both types of bosses. Of course, this type of boss is actually _bad_ for the company as it creates a short term gain by exchanging it for morale and eventual turnover. If the manager gets a promotion, he doesn't care, the dept. health is someone elses issue. (And perversely it looks better for him "hey, that dept. ran great when _I_ was there!").
So how does an institution fight this? By punishing the managers. We have a rule where if the employee hits X hours of vacation they are then just paid out instead of getting more. X is a large #, like it would take more than a year of no vacation to get there. If you get close to X, the first thing that happens is your boss's boss sees this and says "how come Bob is maxing hours?". Its his fault. So managers are trained to make sure they track employee vacation and ensure they're taking it in reasonable chunks.
There's always exceptions, and sometimes there are legitimate reasons IMO for denying vacation. For instance, 2 guys are already out of a 4 man team. Probably not a good time for the other two to leave. Or your big product launch is next month and you need everyone around. These are generally not an issue with proper scheduling. Another good thing good companies will do is just close down certain weeks of the year, like Xmas to New years, or 4th of july weekend, etc. Most people are gone, so the ones who didn't take PTO will just goof off anyways. Give less PTO, but more standard holidays.
Anyways, doesn't have to be all doom and gloom if the managers have their shit together.
Well...it certainly would.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
You didn't think they would just LET it happen, did you? This kind of change will require more than a few pounds of flesh.
I agree completely, migla. People should really spend more time digging in depth to find well thought out arguments instead of knee jerk reactions based on something as superficial as a title. Its not like a title is supposed to be some type of summary of the internal contents. They should probably just get rid of that box completely.
I'm not debating the benefits of Free software, I understand those well enough, believe me. I'm saying that copyright helps Free software, and the lack of copyright would not aid it in any manner, as there would be no enforcement that software stays Free in the manner of the GPL. How much that matters of course is debatable.
I fail to see what impact restricting binary distribution has on source distribution. You can be "open source" (lower case o) and still have a restricted binary clause. (See MS "Shared Source" licenses).
Basically, my point is that not having copyright is the exact same as putting code in the public domain, which we already have today. If there's no problem with that, why have the GPL at all? People could share freely, and not share at the same time to their own benefit/detriment. The GPL exists as an enforcement to encourage Free software, not as an answer to copyright.
I think you're in the wrong - we're trying to quantify "fan" and "fanboy/fanboi", which is a much much more radical, rabid version of a fan. The type of behavior you'll see when presented with some evidence of a flaw or weakness in comparison to a competitor is flat out denial or applying spin (aka resolving cognitive dissonance). Given the emotional ties, there's no way they can then just go and admit in another forum that "ok yeah, that sucks and product X is better". They truly believe what they're saying. Otherwise that's just trolling or flat out lying, and I don't think those are quite the same behaviors.
Ok, but in a non-copyright world I would have absolutely 0 obligation to share changes for source, or publish source for anything I make. I think the goals of anti-copyright and Free software are at opposition here - one says "copy freely, do what you please", the other says "copy freely, you must let others copy too!", which is a restriction that could have no weight or bearing in a no copyright world.
No, it generally means "someone who likes something different from the thing I really really like in the same domain". See sports teams, etc. Generally its a result of it being a zero sum game (Only one team can win the super bowl/world cup/whatever), whether that means there's an actual limitation or a perceived one (I only get one phone so my choice is the best, or "My mom said I can only get one console, so that one that I have is obviously the best"). Those of use who recognize that one can often have more than one flavor of ice cream/console/operating system/mobile device/programming language/text editor are perplexed by the behavior, but understanding the base motivation helps a bit.
(Except of course for people who like the Dodgers. They objectively suck, and their fans are doo doo heads. That's a fact.)
I propose then we name the new "good virus" "Agent Smith"
Agent Smith: I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your operating system and I realized that its not actually an operating system at all. Every OS on the Internet develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding hardware environment, but your Windows does not. Its installed on fresh hardware and grows and grows until every hardware resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to wipe the machine and start over. There is another program on the Internet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Windows is a disease, a cancer of the Internet. You're a plague and we are the cure.
I can get something like the /. changes, but there's still a search box and a button. What's different about the primary UI? Is it harder to search? Are people actually confused about it?
Did you install the "extended codec pack" on the box? You really need that for a lot of things. Nothing for mkv of course at the moment.
Guess I won't see you in Battlefield 3.
Being in a good relationship doesn't mean being 100% codependent and having identical interests. In fact I think it helps to have a few things you can claim as your own.