If we assume that only an extreme situation will persist in the end--anarchy or totalitarianism, then the appropriate action is to pick a position and push it farther to the edge. But the inevetability of extremes is not generally supportable.
How about copyrights? It's been extended yet again due to lobbying by Disney to protect Mickey Mouse (or really Steamboat Willie) from going into the public domain. For the sake of Disney's cash cow, thousands of works are also languishing which could have been reprinted and redistributed. Do you see Disney not lobbying an extension when the current term expires? Do you see Disney ever letting any of its characters lapse into public domain? There you go, one solid example of an extreme right before your eyes. And there are many more.
The world will not erupt into anarchy because a 5-year old steals a candy bar.
According to chaos theory, it could.
In most instances, it is possible for an agreeable compromise between competing desires to be reached.
I'm guessing you know nothing about the RIAA? There will be no compromise, there can't be a compromise. Yes, the RIAA has/will settle out of court, but they are settling cases; they are not compromising their stance, there's nothing in the settlement that allows the defendant to share music.
Admittedly, there are sociapaths on either side of this issue that would prefer absolute anarchy or absolute regulation. But sociopaths are generally not as effective as social participants in defining society.
No, Hitler's actions had no lasting effects. Martin Luthor did nothing for protestant christians, not to mention the wasted efforts of Jesus. Gandhi isn't even worth mentioning. Look at history; major changes in the world are brought about by "sociopaths" for good or for bad. Or brought around by capitalists looking to make a buck; Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford, Gates.
Social participants are sheep. Governments know this, the primary job of the government is to herd these sheep and to protect these sheep against sociopaths and corporations; otherwise there's no need for government. Social participants are the least effective in defining society- an excellent example is the 2000 Presidential elections; how many people didn't vote because they didn't care? How many people voted along party lines because they couldn't be bothered to find out what the issues were?
Much more effective than the social participants are companies with large amounts of cash. That can buy lobbyists, influence government and legislative decisions. That can convince the masses that yes, DRM is good for them and they should just accept it. That is what is happening here.
For you to concede to either camp at this point is throwing in the towel way too early.
And how do you know that person isn't a major player in the RIAA/kazaa battle? How do you know they don't have an inside view of it. Just because you personally don't see the writing on the wall doesn't mean it isn't there, or that other people don't see it.
So, long and short of it, I think we can rule out time travel as a possible saviour for this particular problem, so we'll have to concentrate on the here and now.
I think this actually proves time travel does exist, and that it was (or will be) invented by IBM. Really, I can't imagine why IBM hasn't squashed SCO yet, and I have to assume it's because an IBM lawyer has travelled back from the future and told the IBM honchos "Nah, don't do anything just yet. Sit back, enjoy the show, it really gets funny from here on..."
I can see the army of lawyers in blue suits gearing up for battle right now.
Hmm... I can see the next project at IBM being a supercomputer capable of playing an intricate game that requires thinking ahead many moves to counter opponent's moves... it'll be called "Deep Tort".
The National Weather Service is using AIX for some of their weather modeling. What do they do, just cease operations for a few months while they port their software...
They could stick their heads out the window and say "it looks like rain, better bring your umbrella"
Man, I hated those things. Terrible idea. The speaker sat right next to dad's ear, so of course he'd turn down the volume to a point the rest of us couldn't hear a thing. Much better when they started broadcasting the audio track on the radio(back in the 80's?)
Ah, the memories of drive-ins with my high school sweetheart... we'd back into the spot, fold down the rear seats, be nice and comfy with pillows and blankets... and halfway through the show we'd get around to popping the back hatch to watch the movie.
Heh heh... yeah, I got a car when I started dating, really embarrassing to have your parents shuttle you around. Not to mention more difficult to have sex in the back seat with the folks in the front.
No, you use some sort of GRID routing algorithm. Google for "GRID routing ad-hoc" and you'll get hits including a PPT overview from MIT titled "Grid: Scalable Ad Hoc Networking"
The problem with GRID is that it doesn't scale, which was my point; it works for small communities but to scale it up to a metro area you need something else, a geographic indicator; i said zip+4 and huge routing tables... I think it's easier to implement that in software upgrades than it would be to get people to buy a GPS receiver or pay more for equipment upgrades that include one.
Your ad-hoc networks would be OK for MAN's (Metropolitan Area Networks), but are simply unusable for anykind of backbone.
Heh heh... data would take about 300 hops to get from my apartment in Brooklyn to a server in NYC going wireless to wireless. Where's the routing info going to come from in such a flat space? A huge 200GB routing table on each WAP? Some new border protocol that takes up 99% of the available bandwidth keeping itself current? A new IP addressing scheme based on location (like zip+4+IPv6)?
What if I want to reach a server in Cali? I can see a string of single houses running through South Dakota through which all the east/west data has to pass. All choked down to 802.11b speeds. And suppose one of those guys gets fed up with the traffic and shuts down his WAP? Pony Express was more reliable.
Re: JOKE - YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE. CEASE AND DESIST
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FreeBSD 5.1 Released
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I know this was a joke, but some people may think this is true. FreeBSD (and Net and OpenBSD) are indemnified against UNIX claims from SCO or anyone else. They've already gone through their hell (daemon mascot pun intended) and came out legally unscathed, though pushed back in mindshare that they still haven't recovered from.
And this will stop SCO from sending cease & desist letters or filing lawsuits? You don't know much about the legal system, do you? They can send as many letters as they want, until someone files a restraining order against them. They can file any lawsuit they want, it doesn't matter if it has no merit if they're expecting it never to go to trial. That's exactly what the RIAA did with the RPI student. If you threaten enough you might just make some money in the process. As long as you don't let the case get to court and be thrown out...
I realize this is probably a joke, but bootable ISOs have been available for FreeBSD since the dawn of CDROM time
Ultra portables don't come with CD's either. Mine won't boot off an external (USB) CD drive... but hey, I paid the extra $100 to get an external USB floppy, which is bootable and loads via FTP just fine.
You miss the fact that it's RPI? We're talking $26K a year tuition. It's not a community college with a bunch of starving students. $12K fine is less than half a year's tuition. Worn-out jeans are a fashion statement, PIIs are used in beowulf clusters, and old bikes are all in the machine shop being turned into fighting robots.
Yeah, it sucks, RIAA bully tactics amount to no less than extortion. Hopefully he'll keep his nose down, study hard, graduate and get that $120k a year job, and then turn his talents, money, and pent up frustrations to completely fucking the RIAA.
Hmm... I've never seen them used as monitors and I'm wondering how the SXGA or UXGA digital scaling works on Plasmas, are they blurry, look awkward, seem slower?
We have 42" plasma displays in most of our conference rooms (about a hundred of them). They're used mostly for video conferencing (low resolution) and Powerpoint presentations (again low res). The system uses a switch box that's pretty cool; it as Coax cable, analog video, RGB, and SVGA inputs. Ours has a dish satellite feed and a VCR hooked up as well, although it gets the most use when we plug a laptop in and watch DVDs on it. Once in a while someone brings in a PS2 or Xbox, looks fantastic!
As a monitor, it's blurry and a bit squashed, I wouldn't want to use it as a monitor. The problem with such a wide monitor is that as you look from the center of the screen to the edges, the distance between your eyes and the screen gets longer so your eyes are constantly forced to refocus, which is a real headache.
...that can filter my inbox. That's real art, man.
My filters work just fine for that... I'd rather have a pornbot that goes through and downloads high quality porn... I mean art, and filters out all that low resolution junk.
The Longest Journey 2 just reported here yesterday too... probably no guns there. The original TLJ was a fresh break from your typical FPS.
Syberia came out a while back- decent game play, too easy for veterans, crashed on most FMV sequences, but interesting story. At least small shops are trying to put out different games.
It's just FPS and PvP sells, sells really big; can't blame stores for putting big selling games in prime shelf locations. Those of us who want *different*, *innovative* games are used to looking around on the bottom shelf and in the back corners for them.
I'm guessing there's some creative making-up-of-numbers going on. If 'they' (the anti-internet people) had their way, the breakdown would be as follows:
60%: p2p traffic
30%: Spam
20%: Kiddie porn
_________________
110% evil.
You forgot- 10%: terrorists planning attacks using stenographically hidden, pgp encrypted messages, for a total 120% evil.
Why buy a Mac G4 when a cheap PC at 1/3rd the price can do everything it does plus play the latest games?
Spoken like a true guy-who's-never-owned-a-Mac.
I loved my SE. Loved my Classic. Loved my PB140. Hated the Performa. Things went downhill from there.
Wrong. Most people are happy to pay a fair price for what they perceive to be good value. It's only a tiny slice of the population who are willing to steal music rather than paying for it.
Which is why teaching is the highest paid profession and schools are so well funded, right?
Did you miss out on the Commodore 64 years, when 100 kids in your school had a copy of a program but nobody knew who had the original? Ditto the Amiga days? Ditto the early PC days? Yeah, Mac too.
Yes, there are many who would be willing to pay a fair price. Of course, the big question is what is a fair price? Big artist making millions, record execs making millions, person struggling to eat... zero seems like a fair price.
Either most people will steal as long as they can and we have to get rid of "P2P," or most people will choose legal options when they're available and "P2P" can continue to exist. Choose.
I doubt option 2 will ever happen voluntarily. Thanks to the DMCA making copyright voliations federal offense, greater powers of surveilence granted by the USAPA to authorities, pressure from the RIAA and MPAA, Windows DRM, I think we'll see an end to P2P music sharing in a matter of a few years. Unless there's a huge backlash (as with Inuit and the use of c-dilla) by the masses when their (percieved) rights to freely copy music is trampled. Which may put it off a few years, but technology will ensure all music is paid for, at a price set by music execs, not the market or what people think is "fair".
Not necessarily, where do you gt your evidence? Perhaps the popularity of Kazaa has much more to do with the wholly unreasonable licensing restrictions and prices placed on legal music nowadays
Evidence? Well, the RIAA has some numbers about piracy levels, which we all assume to be BS, but are there any numbers to counter it? How many of the people using P2P understand the licensing restrictions? How many times do I hear "hey, can I get a copy of that?" Quite a bit. How many times do I hear "no, it's illegal to do that?" Rare that anyone ever says that.
Since the 70s and personal cassette tape recorders, people have been making copies of music for themselves, to share with others. For 30 years people have been freely sharing music someone purchased, without thinking about licensing or any legal ramifications of it. The medium was the cassette tape, the means was handing a copied tape to a friend. Today, the medium is the computer, the means p2p. Kazaa hasn't changed anything, it's just made it easier for people to copy and share music. If attitudes have changed, it's made it worse. It's much easier to find and download music off P2P, it's higher quality than cassettes, and there's the backlash against the music industry for gouging consumers as well. People don't think of it as stealing as much as they think it's a freedom to copy music. They might intrinsically think it's wrong, like exceeding the speed limit on the highway is wrong. But they'll do it anyway, what are the chances of getting caught and punished?
I think that's a ridiculous assertion. Why wouldn't pay-per-download catch on with the masses? Subscription sucks, but ownership doesn't.
You don't own the songs, any more than you own songs you download from p2p illegally. What you do own is the right to have those songs on your system. So when the RIAA sues everyone who has a portable music player, you'll be able to whip out the receipt and say "I've got a legal right to have these copies of these songs on my system, here's the receipt for each song and a copy of the contract from Apple that says I have a right to have these songs." That's what you're buying, you're not buying the song.
Maybe I'm being overly cynical, but I don't think people will be willing to pay for it.
'As long as some form of black market exists, people will never pay more legally for a computer game'. That's not true... so why should this be?
But it is true. The only reason it doesn't seem that way is because of copyright protection built into the games. I haven't looked at *all* the games, but the most popular require the CD to be in the system to play. The CDs themselves have some sort of copy protection. The latest online games come with unique serial numbers required to connect to the gaming servers. PS2 games are on dual-layered DVDs which can't be copied. Mod this to oblivion if you want, but there are more people out there who'd rather copy a game than buy it. Otherwise, what's the point of copy protection? To prevent people making personal backups?
Yes, indeed. And they did it with a platform that only has 2 to 4% of the market (depending on who you believe). AND they've announced that they're porting iTunes to Windows. Imagine how many songs they would've sold if their store was available for the other 90% of the market.
I gotta disagree, it's not gonna have much impact at all on the PC user market. Why? Well, first ask yourself why it did so well in the Mac market?
Mac users are used to paying extra money for quality/convenience/glamour/glitz. Why buy a Mac G4 when a cheap PC at 1/3rd the price can do everything it does plus play the latest games? Why pay so much for a PB Ti when you can spend a lot less on a Dell laptop? The service was well tailored for the Mac user market, Jobs knew what he was doing there. But has he ever understood what the masses want?
Even with a Windows client, the service will remain a niche player. The masses want things free. If there's a free option, people will choose that over any subscription service. We've seen it online with websites that tried or considered charging for access... how many of those are still around? How many sites today are making you sit through a full page ad before you see the content, because people refuse to pay for the content and will go elsewhere if the site makes it exclusive.
As long as some form of P2P exists, subscription or pay-per-download will never catch on with the masses.
Though parent might not have R'dTFA, his analogy is still sound - there's a reason stun guns aren't legal. Now if we can only get real guns out of the hands of morons...
Yes, stun guns are illegal because there is no distinction in their use; they can be used just as effectively as an offensive weapon as they can as a defensive weapon. Ditto with handguns. A jacket, however, designed to be worn, designed to be powered on and used only when worn, designed too small to be worn by (more aggressive as implied by the article) men. It's not the same as either a handgun or stun gun in that the design has clearly defensive in nature.
Could it be used as an offensive weapon? Yes, sure. Baseball bats can be used as offensive weapons. So can tire irons. Neither are illegal to carry... in context. If you have a baseball bat over your shoulder- on a sunday afternoon with a bunch of other guys carrying helmets, dusty uniforms, duffels, then it's in context and no problem. Lurking around a closed grocery at 5am with a baseball bat is a different story. Most women wearing the jacket aren't going to be a problem, like most guys and girls on sunny sunday afternoons with baseball bats. However the guy with this jacket baled in his hands is just like the thug with a bat. Out of context. And there are already laws for that type of thing.
Re:Cruel Intentions...
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Shocking Clothing
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Where the f' are tasers or mace illegal???
Mace and tasers are illegal in New York. Carrying pepper spray is still legal IIRC, but you can't buy it in NY. Carrying a steak knife concealed is illegal as well.
I think the jacket is a good idea. $1000 seems high... guess it depends on how much you value your safety. It'd probably be better if it were an two-part jacket; the shock generating core and different shells with different styles with conducting patches in the right places so they'd have a variety of jackets for different days.
Re:Cruel Intentions...
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Shocking Clothing
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· Score: 4, Insightful
This is a lawsuit waiting to happen. I can see it now. You're in a crowded subway, and you accidentally bump into a woman wearing this. You get the shock of your life. What if you have a weak heart? What if you have a pace maker? How will this jacket effect it?
Well, if you'd read the article, you would have noticed that the jacket is not powered on 24/7. The intent is to power it up (where it actually generates sparks and makes noise) if you feel threatened by someone, or in a situation where you feel unsafe like walking to your car alone in a dark parking lot. You wouldn't have it charged entering a crowded subway. If you did, then yeah, a lawsuit is in order for using force without RCTB you were in physical danger.
Re:Why do people do this?
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I, Spammer
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· Score: 1
Are you going to snailmail him on your dime? Otherwise, you're stealing from magazines, companies with catalogs, etc. Oh sure, it's just pennies here and there, but that's the same logic the spammer uses.
But I know he wants hundreds of magazine subscriptions, I'm sure of it! He's making so much money that he's sure to buy something from all those catalogs... we're helping the companies, not hurting them!
Slashdot Mirror
If we assume that only an extreme situation will persist in the end--anarchy or totalitarianism, then the appropriate action is to pick a position and push it farther to the edge. But the inevetability of extremes is not generally supportable.
How about copyrights? It's been extended yet again due to lobbying by Disney to protect Mickey Mouse (or really Steamboat Willie) from going into the public domain. For the sake of Disney's cash cow, thousands of works are also languishing which could have been reprinted and redistributed. Do you see Disney not lobbying an extension when the current term expires? Do you see Disney ever letting any of its characters lapse into public domain? There you go, one solid example of an extreme right before your eyes. And there are many more.
The world will not erupt into anarchy because a 5-year old steals a candy bar.
According to chaos theory, it could.
In most instances, it is possible for an agreeable compromise between competing desires to be reached.
I'm guessing you know nothing about the RIAA? There will be no compromise, there can't be a compromise. Yes, the RIAA has/will settle out of court, but they are settling cases; they are not compromising their stance, there's nothing in the settlement that allows the defendant to share music.
Admittedly, there are sociapaths on either side of this issue that would prefer absolute anarchy or absolute regulation. But sociopaths are generally not as effective as social participants in defining society.
No, Hitler's actions had no lasting effects. Martin Luthor did nothing for protestant christians, not to mention the wasted efforts of Jesus. Gandhi isn't even worth mentioning. Look at history; major changes in the world are brought about by "sociopaths" for good or for bad. Or brought around by capitalists looking to make a buck; Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford, Gates.
Social participants are sheep. Governments know this, the primary job of the government is to herd these sheep and to protect these sheep against sociopaths and corporations; otherwise there's no need for government. Social participants are the least effective in defining society- an excellent example is the 2000 Presidential elections; how many people didn't vote because they didn't care? How many people voted along party lines because they couldn't be bothered to find out what the issues were?
Much more effective than the social participants are companies with large amounts of cash. That can buy lobbyists, influence government and legislative decisions. That can convince the masses that yes, DRM is good for them and they should just accept it. That is what is happening here.
For you to concede to either camp at this point is throwing in the towel way too early.
And how do you know that person isn't a major player in the RIAA/kazaa battle? How do you know they don't have an inside view of it. Just because you personally don't see the writing on the wall doesn't mean it isn't there, or that other people don't see it.
So, long and short of it, I think we can rule out time travel as a possible saviour for this particular problem, so we'll have to concentrate on the here and now.
I think this actually proves time travel does exist, and that it was (or will be) invented by IBM. Really, I can't imagine why IBM hasn't squashed SCO yet, and I have to assume it's because an IBM lawyer has travelled back from the future and told the IBM honchos "Nah, don't do anything just yet. Sit back, enjoy the show, it really gets funny from here on..."
I can see the army of lawyers in blue suits gearing up for battle right now.
Hmm... I can see the next project at IBM being a supercomputer capable of playing an intricate game that requires thinking ahead many moves to counter opponent's moves... it'll be called "Deep Tort".
The National Weather Service is using AIX for some of their weather modeling. What do they do, just cease operations for a few months while they port their software...
They could stick their heads out the window and say "it looks like rain, better bring your umbrella"
What's with the doors? Why not just the one big door, why have all the consecutively smaller doors as you go up? Just curious...
How many people are going to get that reference?
Man, I hated those things. Terrible idea. The speaker sat right next to dad's ear, so of course he'd turn down the volume to a point the rest of us couldn't hear a thing. Much better when they started broadcasting the audio track on the radio(back in the 80's?)
Ah, the memories of drive-ins with my high school sweetheart... we'd back into the spot, fold down the rear seats, be nice and comfy with pillows and blankets... and halfway through the show we'd get around to popping the back hatch to watch the movie.
And I don't like bumming rides from my parents
Heh heh... yeah, I got a car when I started dating, really embarrassing to have your parents shuttle you around. Not to mention more difficult to have sex in the back seat with the folks in the front.
No, you use some sort of GRID routing algorithm. Google for "GRID routing ad-hoc" and you'll get hits including a PPT overview from MIT titled "Grid: Scalable Ad Hoc Networking"
The problem with GRID is that it doesn't scale, which was my point; it works for small communities but to scale it up to a metro area you need something else, a geographic indicator; i said zip+4 and huge routing tables... I think it's easier to implement that in software upgrades than it would be to get people to buy a GPS receiver or pay more for equipment upgrades that include one.
Your ad-hoc networks would be OK for MAN's (Metropolitan Area Networks), but are simply unusable for anykind of backbone.
Heh heh... data would take about 300 hops to get from my apartment in Brooklyn to a server in NYC going wireless to wireless. Where's the routing info going to come from in such a flat space? A huge 200GB routing table on each WAP? Some new border protocol that takes up 99% of the available bandwidth keeping itself current? A new IP addressing scheme based on location (like zip+4+IPv6)?
What if I want to reach a server in Cali? I can see a string of single houses running through South Dakota through which all the east/west data has to pass. All choked down to 802.11b speeds. And suppose one of those guys gets fed up with the traffic and shuts down his WAP? Pony Express was more reliable.
I know this was a joke, but some people may think this is true. FreeBSD (and Net and OpenBSD) are indemnified against UNIX claims from SCO or anyone else. They've already gone through their hell (daemon mascot pun intended) and came out legally unscathed, though pushed back in mindshare that they still haven't recovered from.
And this will stop SCO from sending cease & desist letters or filing lawsuits? You don't know much about the legal system, do you? They can send as many letters as they want, until someone files a restraining order against them. They can file any lawsuit they want, it doesn't matter if it has no merit if they're expecting it never to go to trial. That's exactly what the RIAA did with the RPI student. If you threaten enough you might just make some money in the process. As long as you don't let the case get to court and be thrown out...
I realize this is probably a joke, but bootable ISOs have been available for FreeBSD since the dawn of CDROM time
Ultra portables don't come with CD's either. Mine won't boot off an external (USB) CD drive... but hey, I paid the extra $100 to get an external USB floppy, which is bootable and loads via FTP just fine.
You miss the fact that it's RPI? We're talking $26K a year tuition. It's not a community college with a bunch of starving students. $12K fine is less than half a year's tuition. Worn-out jeans are a fashion statement, PIIs are used in beowulf clusters, and old bikes are all in the machine shop being turned into fighting robots.
Yeah, it sucks, RIAA bully tactics amount to no less than extortion. Hopefully he'll keep his nose down, study hard, graduate and get that $120k a year job, and then turn his talents, money, and pent up frustrations to completely fucking the RIAA.
Hmm... I've never seen them used as monitors and I'm wondering how the SXGA or UXGA digital scaling works on Plasmas, are they blurry, look awkward, seem slower?
We have 42" plasma displays in most of our conference rooms (about a hundred of them). They're used mostly for video conferencing (low resolution) and Powerpoint presentations (again low res). The system uses a switch box that's pretty cool; it as Coax cable, analog video, RGB, and SVGA inputs. Ours has a dish satellite feed and a VCR hooked up as well, although it gets the most use when we plug a laptop in and watch DVDs on it. Once in a while someone brings in a PS2 or Xbox, looks fantastic!
As a monitor, it's blurry and a bit squashed, I wouldn't want to use it as a monitor. The problem with such a wide monitor is that as you look from the center of the screen to the edges, the distance between your eyes and the screen gets longer so your eyes are constantly forced to refocus, which is a real headache.
...that can filter my inbox. That's real art, man.
My filters work just fine for that... I'd rather have a pornbot that goes through and downloads high quality porn... I mean art, and filters out all that low resolution junk.
Sure they'll probably have to develop some new technologies, but nothing we couldn't duplicate or steal.
We probably already have the technology. The problem is we won't sell that technology to China.
There's no better way to test out long range missle technology than by building a space program around it.
Don't we cover this once every three months?
The Longest Journey 2 just reported here yesterday too... probably no guns there. The original TLJ was a fresh break from your typical FPS.
Syberia came out a while back- decent game play, too easy for veterans, crashed on most FMV sequences, but interesting story. At least small shops are trying to put out different games.
It's just FPS and PvP sells, sells really big; can't blame stores for putting big selling games in prime shelf locations. Those of us who want *different*, *innovative* games are used to looking around on the bottom shelf and in the back corners for them.
I'm guessing there's some creative making-up-of-numbers going on. If 'they' (the anti-internet people) had their way, the breakdown would be as follows:
60%: p2p traffic
30%: Spam
20%: Kiddie porn
_________________
110% evil.
You forgot- 10%: terrorists planning attacks using stenographically hidden, pgp encrypted messages, for a total 120% evil.
This is probably why its 'losing' weight. Perhaps it had some fingerprints or other smudges on it that have eventually evaporated away.
Nah, it's those sneaky scientists trying to make an easy buck. Keep an eye out, I'm sure someone will spot the missing molecules being sold on ebay.
Why buy a Mac G4 when a cheap PC at 1/3rd the price can do everything it does plus play the latest games? Spoken like a true guy-who's-never-owned-a-Mac.
I loved my SE. Loved my Classic. Loved my PB140. Hated the Performa. Things went downhill from there.
Wrong. Most people are happy to pay a fair price for what they perceive to be good value. It's only a tiny slice of the population who are willing to steal music rather than paying for it.
Which is why teaching is the highest paid profession and schools are so well funded, right?
Did you miss out on the Commodore 64 years, when 100 kids in your school had a copy of a program but nobody knew who had the original? Ditto the Amiga days? Ditto the early PC days? Yeah, Mac too.
Yes, there are many who would be willing to pay a fair price. Of course, the big question is what is a fair price? Big artist making millions, record execs making millions, person struggling to eat... zero seems like a fair price.
Either most people will steal as long as they can and we have to get rid of "P2P," or most people will choose legal options when they're available and "P2P" can continue to exist. Choose.
I doubt option 2 will ever happen voluntarily. Thanks to the DMCA making copyright voliations federal offense, greater powers of surveilence granted by the USAPA to authorities, pressure from the RIAA and MPAA, Windows DRM, I think we'll see an end to P2P music sharing in a matter of a few years. Unless there's a huge backlash (as with Inuit and the use of c-dilla) by the masses when their (percieved) rights to freely copy music is trampled. Which may put it off a few years, but technology will ensure all music is paid for, at a price set by music execs, not the market or what people think is "fair".
Not necessarily, where do you gt your evidence? Perhaps the popularity of Kazaa has much more to do with the wholly unreasonable licensing restrictions and prices placed on legal music nowadays
Evidence? Well, the RIAA has some numbers about piracy levels, which we all assume to be BS, but are there any numbers to counter it? How many of the people using P2P understand the licensing restrictions? How many times do I hear "hey, can I get a copy of that?" Quite a bit. How many times do I hear "no, it's illegal to do that?" Rare that anyone ever says that.
Since the 70s and personal cassette tape recorders, people have been making copies of music for themselves, to share with others. For 30 years people have been freely sharing music someone purchased, without thinking about licensing or any legal ramifications of it. The medium was the cassette tape, the means was handing a copied tape to a friend. Today, the medium is the computer, the means p2p. Kazaa hasn't changed anything, it's just made it easier for people to copy and share music. If attitudes have changed, it's made it worse. It's much easier to find and download music off P2P, it's higher quality than cassettes, and there's the backlash against the music industry for gouging consumers as well. People don't think of it as stealing as much as they think it's a freedom to copy music. They might intrinsically think it's wrong, like exceeding the speed limit on the highway is wrong. But they'll do it anyway, what are the chances of getting caught and punished?
I think that's a ridiculous assertion. Why wouldn't pay-per-download catch on with the masses? Subscription sucks, but ownership doesn't.
You don't own the songs, any more than you own songs you download from p2p illegally. What you do own is the right to have those songs on your system. So when the RIAA sues everyone who has a portable music player, you'll be able to whip out the receipt and say "I've got a legal right to have these copies of these songs on my system, here's the receipt for each song and a copy of the contract from Apple that says I have a right to have these songs." That's what you're buying, you're not buying the song.
Maybe I'm being overly cynical, but I don't think people will be willing to pay for it.
'As long as some form of black market exists, people will never pay more legally for a computer game'. That's not true... so why should this be?
But it is true. The only reason it doesn't seem that way is because of copyright protection built into the games. I haven't looked at *all* the games, but the most popular require the CD to be in the system to play. The CDs themselves have some sort of copy protection. The latest online games come with unique serial numbers required to connect to the gaming servers. PS2 games are on dual-layered DVDs which can't be copied. Mod this to oblivion if you want, but there are more people out there who'd rather copy a game than buy it. Otherwise, what's the point of copy protection? To prevent people making personal backups?
Yes, indeed. And they did it with a platform that only has 2 to 4% of the market (depending on who you believe). AND they've announced that they're porting iTunes to Windows. Imagine how many songs they would've sold if their store was available for the other 90% of the market.
I gotta disagree, it's not gonna have much impact at all on the PC user market. Why? Well, first ask yourself why it did so well in the Mac market?
Mac users are used to paying extra money for quality/convenience/glamour/glitz. Why buy a Mac G4 when a cheap PC at 1/3rd the price can do everything it does plus play the latest games? Why pay so much for a PB Ti when you can spend a lot less on a Dell laptop? The service was well tailored for the Mac user market, Jobs knew what he was doing there. But has he ever understood what the masses want?
Even with a Windows client, the service will remain a niche player. The masses want things free. If there's a free option, people will choose that over any subscription service. We've seen it online with websites that tried or considered charging for access... how many of those are still around? How many sites today are making you sit through a full page ad before you see the content, because people refuse to pay for the content and will go elsewhere if the site makes it exclusive.
As long as some form of P2P exists, subscription or pay-per-download will never catch on with the masses.
Though parent might not have R'dTFA, his analogy is still sound - there's a reason stun guns aren't legal. Now if we can only get real guns out of the hands of morons...
Yes, stun guns are illegal because there is no distinction in their use; they can be used just as effectively as an offensive weapon as they can as a defensive weapon. Ditto with handguns. A jacket, however, designed to be worn, designed to be powered on and used only when worn, designed too small to be worn by (more aggressive as implied by the article) men. It's not the same as either a handgun or stun gun in that the design has clearly defensive in nature.
Could it be used as an offensive weapon? Yes, sure. Baseball bats can be used as offensive weapons. So can tire irons. Neither are illegal to carry... in context. If you have a baseball bat over your shoulder- on a sunday afternoon with a bunch of other guys carrying helmets, dusty uniforms, duffels, then it's in context and no problem. Lurking around a closed grocery at 5am with a baseball bat is a different story. Most women wearing the jacket aren't going to be a problem, like most guys and girls on sunny sunday afternoons with baseball bats. However the guy with this jacket baled in his hands is just like the thug with a bat. Out of context. And there are already laws for that type of thing.
Where the f' are tasers or mace illegal???
Mace and tasers are illegal in New York. Carrying pepper spray is still legal IIRC, but you can't buy it in NY. Carrying a steak knife concealed is illegal as well.
I think the jacket is a good idea. $1000 seems high... guess it depends on how much you value your safety. It'd probably be better if it were an two-part jacket; the shock generating core and different shells with different styles with conducting patches in the right places so they'd have a variety of jackets for different days.
This is a lawsuit waiting to happen. I can see it now. You're in a crowded subway, and you accidentally bump into a woman wearing this. You get the shock of your life. What if you have a weak heart? What if you have a pace maker? How will this jacket effect it?
Well, if you'd read the article, you would have noticed that the jacket is not powered on 24/7. The intent is to power it up (where it actually generates sparks and makes noise) if you feel threatened by someone, or in a situation where you feel unsafe like walking to your car alone in a dark parking lot. You wouldn't have it charged entering a crowded subway. If you did, then yeah, a lawsuit is in order for using force without RCTB you were in physical danger.
Are you going to snailmail him on your dime? Otherwise, you're stealing from magazines, companies with catalogs, etc. Oh sure, it's just pennies here and there, but that's the same logic the spammer uses.
But I know he wants hundreds of magazine subscriptions, I'm sure of it! He's making so much money that he's sure to buy something from all those catalogs... we're helping the companies, not hurting them!
Revenge is sweet...