I'm using my criteria to demonstrate that he has absolutely no intention of paying. His odds and payout are ludicrous, indicating he is proposing a bogus offer. His odds ARE zero, not nearly zero.
Also, you have to look at what you spend to roll the dice. A single dollar? Why not? A thousand of them? No way. Simple risk analysis.
And you play similar odds looking at the heavens for signals. Don't bother pointing your scope at M33. Too far away. Alpha Centauri or Barnard's star gives better odds.
Again, you play the odds the best you can. And use your brains when you choose.
Right after you post a list of your other winners.
And you might want to adjust your odds. You're not competitive with Mega Millions. The odds of winning your lottery are one in ten^14, or 100,000,000,000,000, for a cost of 1000 dollars.
Mega Millions pays out fifty times your million (currently, the number changes) dollars, costs one dollar to join, and has odds of one in 175,711,536.
Oh, another thing. What you're describing is a variation on a numbers racket. It's illegal for private citizens to do. Unless you're the Prime Minister of Norway or something, of course.
People keep telling me it's a tax on people who are bad at math. But I have a different opinion. By playing, my odds increase dramatically. It was zero and now it's not. And someone does win the thing every so often. Why not me?
So it's near impossible. So what? Let's keep looking. People get lucky all the time. Parachutes fail and people live through it. Separated adopted twins wind up living next door to each other. You hear about unlikely odds all the time.
If this universe can teach you anything, it's that you never play the odds.
Hasn't stopped them from pursuing copyright violations so far.
You must remember these people are completely desperate. Their business model is dead. And it's a model that gave them millions for *nothing*. Sit behind a desk and collect royalties. Who wouldn't want that to continue? And if you happen to have the morals of a shark, why not try something like this? Double dipping would hardly be the least of their sins.
I'd guess the code must be commented out since the service in question doesn't exist. So if this code were to try to connect to it, it would hang. Right?
So it's non-executing code. Which means that maybe it's a leftover from some meeting where they thought they would offer this service but changed their minds since then.
How many times have you been fooled by reading outdated comments?
Believe it when it launches. Inferring Google's direction from reading code comments is clever, but perhaps a bit too clever.
There still is a high percentage of people in the States copying music left and right - who don't give a c**p about copyright. Nor should they. "Piracy" isn't immoral...copyright is.
There is nothing inherently wrong with copyright. It's actually a great idea. Protect the creator of a good with an exclusive right so they can make their money off of it.
What's immoral is what has been done to that original great idea.
Now it's large record companies that hold the copyrights on the works its represented artists have created. They get a percentage which is determined by a cartel. And copyright has been extended by such insane lengths as to create a revenue stream for those companies that will typically last longer than the artist will live.
And they pay the artist pennies on the dollar. IMHO, that's why people pirate music. They know that 99% of that $15 they just plunked down on a CD will wind up in some corporate jackoff's wallet. The artist you actually like will probably get a thin nickel from your cash. So why bother?
What we need is copyright reform. If the artist got a fair percentage of the sale, and these useless bags of skin that sit between me and them were somehow cut out of the picture, I'd start buying music again.
Disclaimer: I don't buy music, but I don't copy it either. I simply do with what I already own until such time as the marketplace will allow me to buy directly from the artists I like without giving a penny to organizations like the RIAA. Soon as they die, I become a customer again.
Well, maybe and maybe not. Is it the place of our public education system to educate children on laws that - let's face it - primarily cater to corporate interests?
I'd say not. Let the corporations spend advertising money to promote their agenda. It's their revenue stream - let them protect it. And let the schools get along with how to do sums. School is short enough as it is, and there are far more important things to learn there.
the answer is presumably because they consider piracy to be wrong, but don't want shell out money for the full version.
Presumably, but if that's the case it's not terribly smart.
In most developing markets you'll find the consumers to be less savvy about high tech IP issues like copyright violation than other developed markets. Far less.
Hell, less than five years ago here you had a significant percentage of the online population in the states copying music left and right with no clue that it was even illegal, much less wonder about the morality of it. You still see that defense come up from time to time, too.
And MS expects some preteen in Singapore to know better? Good luck with that.
Well, you are making the assumption that this arrogance does not exist in the higher ranks. I personally feel that Microsoft is occupied by too many people out of touch with reality.
I just had a two day meeting with a client who represents a large medical company.
A two day meeting to tell me how much of a hurry he's in.
Large companies seem to infect people with this sort of brain rot.
The conservatives you mention. By your definition they haven't had anyone to vote for in the last 100 years or so.
Seriously, if you're a conservative of that stripe...who do you vote for?
And another thing. Conservatives such as the people you describe need to *SPEAK UP* and get represented. Although I usually vote Democrat, I would happily consider people of that mind set. Anything that marginalizes the neocons is good, IMHO.
Nuclear isotopes were treated with quite a degree of reckleness for a good many years.
It's amazing how they treated plutonium like a bag of groceries back then. Best example of that is the Demon Core. A sphere of plutonium that killed two scientists, Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin. In two different critical exposures.
Both times were simply the experimenter being clumsy. Dropping a brick or bumping a screwdriver. The core would go near-critical and make a flash of radiation. Louis Slotin lasted 9 days, and Harry Daghlian made it 21.
Any chance they could sue to get their money back? If the settlement letter they paid off is bogus (and it demonstrably is in this case since the RIAA dropped the discovery and walked away from it, which says they had no intention of following through with prosecution) it seems to me that the RIAA gained the money through something resembling fraud.
I'm not sure if it would be fraud, or extortion, or whatever - but it just seems to me that the RIAA doesn't have a legal claim on the money. "Pay us and we won't take you to court." So someone pays. But they didn't take the non-paying people to court and dropped the case. So the settlement letter is absolutely bogus. Shouldn't be too difficult a point to make in front of a judge. IANAL though, so I might be very wrong, but it seems that way.
Well, I'm not a lawyer but isn't it pretty much the modus operandi of lawyers who are paid insane amounts of money to toe the line in the interest of their clients?
If you ever want to know just how sleazy your "toe the line" lawyers can get, read this. It's an interview with a tobacco lobbyist. He's dying from cancer and decided to come clean on tactics. It's unreal.
So yeah, the RIAA lawyers being creatures of the same stripe, sure. Filing all this crazy stuff is absolutely par for the course. Remember - every single day the laws stay in their favor, that makes them money. If they file these motions and it takes a week or a month to sort through then they've done their job.
When you're dealing with a gigantic industry and millions of dollars every day, even a single five minute phone call to delay makes financial sense. Look at the SCO fiasco for another example. Baystar invested $50M in a dying lawsuit. Why? Delay. Every day there is any legal doubt over Linux is a day where spooked customers will go elsewhere. It was an investment, and one that has paid off many times over. These RIAA guys are just doing the same trick. Delay to keep the gravy train going.
And, I might add, for that exact reason the near-perfect frontman for the Republican party. It is no accident they gave him the spotlight.
"Hey everybody - believe this!"
It's bizarre how many times I've heard someone in some context say they're worried about being in a higher tax bracket. As a kid I always assumed that the tax was applied to the entire net, not the new margin so there were points on the curve of diminishing returns. Once it was explained to me how it actually worked I was shocked at just how positively stupid that statement is. Me, I'd love to be in a higher tax bracket. I'd have *more money*.
It's an ideal way to drive a wedge between the wealthy and the not-wealthy though, isn't it? Plant the idea that there are some intermediate levels of success are not desirable. Insidious, isn't it? The way they're trying to remove all the middle rungs from the ladder?
Also, please don't assume I'm a Democrat from the anti-Republican slant to my post. Democrats are running their own game. It's just as lousy. Just in different ways.
Slashdot Mirror
Is that he's the first one out of however many the RIAA employs that seems to have a vestige of conscience and a care for due process.
Is it really that bad in your profession Ray? A single guy sparks up and says something decent and it's a news item?
You must have been pretty lonely in law school. We slashdotters always knew you were rare. We just didn't know *how* rare.
Not at all.
I'm using my criteria to demonstrate that he has absolutely no intention of paying. His odds and payout are ludicrous, indicating he is proposing a bogus offer. His odds ARE zero, not nearly zero.
Also, you have to look at what you spend to roll the dice. A single dollar? Why not? A thousand of them? No way. Simple risk analysis.
And you play similar odds looking at the heavens for signals. Don't bother pointing your scope at M33. Too far away. Alpha Centauri or Barnard's star gives better odds.
Again, you play the odds the best you can. And use your brains when you choose.
...and give him this guy as a cellmate.
At least they wouldn't run out of stuff to talk about.
Right after you post a list of your other winners.
And you might want to adjust your odds. You're not competitive with Mega Millions. The odds of winning your lottery are one in ten^14, or 100,000,000,000,000, for a cost of 1000 dollars.
Mega Millions pays out fifty times your million (currently, the number changes) dollars, costs one dollar to join, and has odds of one in 175,711,536.
Oh, another thing. What you're describing is a variation on a numbers racket. It's illegal for private citizens to do. Unless you're the Prime Minister of Norway or something, of course.
No kidding.
Seriously, I do. I also play the lottery.
People keep telling me it's a tax on people who are bad at math. But I have a different opinion. By playing, my odds increase dramatically. It was zero and now it's not. And someone does win the thing every so often. Why not me?
So it's near impossible. So what? Let's keep looking. People get lucky all the time. Parachutes fail and people live through it. Separated adopted twins wind up living next door to each other. You hear about unlikely odds all the time.
If this universe can teach you anything, it's that you never play the odds.
Check Google for blank media tax.
Hasn't stopped them from pursuing copyright violations so far.
You must remember these people are completely desperate. Their business model is dead. And it's a model that gave them millions for *nothing*. Sit behind a desk and collect royalties. Who wouldn't want that to continue? And if you happen to have the morals of a shark, why not try something like this? Double dipping would hardly be the least of their sins.
Only debug code.
I'd guess the code must be commented out since the service in question doesn't exist. So if this code were to try to connect to it, it would hang. Right?
So it's non-executing code. Which means that maybe it's a leftover from some meeting where they thought they would offer this service but changed their minds since then.
How many times have you been fooled by reading outdated comments?
Believe it when it launches. Inferring Google's direction from reading code comments is clever, but perhaps a bit too clever.
AMD stock jumped suddenly today.
Yeah, I thought the same thing. I'd bloody well find that 50k to get 2mil.
Retain the lawyers for a percentage of the win. Or fill out a bunch of credit card applications. Second mortgage.
Something. Anything. Anything other than rolling over and taking it up the tailpipe to the tune of two million.
True. But it is far enough away from Redmond to where a kid there would probably say "screw em come get me".
Besides, why should they care in the first place? Demanding that other countries bend to our legal system is egotistical as hell anyways.
There still is a high percentage of people in the States copying music left and right - who don't give a c**p about copyright. Nor should they. "Piracy" isn't immoral...copyright is.
There is nothing inherently wrong with copyright. It's actually a great idea. Protect the creator of a good with an exclusive right so they can make their money off of it.
What's immoral is what has been done to that original great idea.
Now it's large record companies that hold the copyrights on the works its represented artists have created. They get a percentage which is determined by a cartel. And copyright has been extended by such insane lengths as to create a revenue stream for those companies that will typically last longer than the artist will live.
And they pay the artist pennies on the dollar. IMHO, that's why people pirate music. They know that 99% of that $15 they just plunked down on a CD will wind up in some corporate jackoff's wallet. The artist you actually like will probably get a thin nickel from your cash. So why bother?
What we need is copyright reform. If the artist got a fair percentage of the sale, and these useless bags of skin that sit between me and them were somehow cut out of the picture, I'd start buying music again.
Disclaimer: I don't buy music, but I don't copy it either. I simply do with what I already own until such time as the marketplace will allow me to buy directly from the artists I like without giving a penny to organizations like the RIAA. Soon as they die, I become a customer again.
Well, maybe and maybe not. Is it the place of our public education system to educate children on laws that - let's face it - primarily cater to corporate interests?
I'd say not. Let the corporations spend advertising money to promote their agenda. It's their revenue stream - let them protect it. And let the schools get along with how to do sums. School is short enough as it is, and there are far more important things to learn there.
the answer is presumably because they consider piracy to be wrong, but don't want shell out money for the full version.
Presumably, but if that's the case it's not terribly smart.
In most developing markets you'll find the consumers to be less savvy about high tech IP issues like copyright violation than other developed markets. Far less.
Hell, less than five years ago here you had a significant percentage of the online population in the states copying music left and right with no clue that it was even illegal, much less wonder about the morality of it. You still see that defense come up from time to time, too.
And MS expects some preteen in Singapore to know better? Good luck with that.
Who shall watch the watch men?
The mods didn't get the joke, but I did.
Well, you are making the assumption that this arrogance does not exist in the higher ranks. I personally feel that Microsoft is occupied by too many people out of touch with reality.
I just had a two day meeting with a client who represents a large medical company.
A two day meeting to tell me how much of a hurry he's in.
Large companies seem to infect people with this sort of brain rot.
Just wait until you try to play music on it.
The conservatives you mention. By your definition they haven't had anyone to vote for in the last 100 years or so.
Seriously, if you're a conservative of that stripe...who do you vote for?
And another thing. Conservatives such as the people you describe need to *SPEAK UP* and get represented. Although I usually vote Democrat, I would happily consider people of that mind set. Anything that marginalizes the neocons is good, IMHO.
Nuclear isotopes were treated with quite a degree of reckleness for a good many years.
It's amazing how they treated plutonium like a bag of groceries back then. Best example of that is the Demon Core. A sphere of plutonium that killed two scientists, Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin. In two different critical exposures.
Both times were simply the experimenter being clumsy. Dropping a brick or bumping a screwdriver. The core would go near-critical and make a flash of radiation. Louis Slotin lasted 9 days, and Harry Daghlian made it 21.
I would rather you did it as well. I would rather we not leave it up to the government.
It's your job to be a parent to your children, not the government's.
Any chance they could sue to get their money back? If the settlement letter they paid off is bogus (and it demonstrably is in this case since the RIAA dropped the discovery and walked away from it, which says they had no intention of following through with prosecution) it seems to me that the RIAA gained the money through something resembling fraud.
I'm not sure if it would be fraud, or extortion, or whatever - but it just seems to me that the RIAA doesn't have a legal claim on the money. "Pay us and we won't take you to court." So someone pays. But they didn't take the non-paying people to court and dropped the case. So the settlement letter is absolutely bogus. Shouldn't be too difficult a point to make in front of a judge. IANAL though, so I might be very wrong, but it seems that way.
Well, I'm not a lawyer but isn't it pretty much the modus operandi of lawyers who are paid insane amounts of money to toe the line in the interest of their clients?
If you ever want to know just how sleazy your "toe the line" lawyers can get, read this. It's an interview with a tobacco lobbyist. He's dying from cancer and decided to come clean on tactics. It's unreal.
So yeah, the RIAA lawyers being creatures of the same stripe, sure. Filing all this crazy stuff is absolutely par for the course. Remember - every single day the laws stay in their favor, that makes them money. If they file these motions and it takes a week or a month to sort through then they've done their job.
When you're dealing with a gigantic industry and millions of dollars every day, even a single five minute phone call to delay makes financial sense. Look at the SCO fiasco for another example. Baystar invested $50M in a dying lawsuit. Why? Delay. Every day there is any legal doubt over Linux is a day where spooked customers will go elsewhere. It was an investment, and one that has paid off many times over. These RIAA guys are just doing the same trick. Delay to keep the gravy train going.
And, I might add, for that exact reason the near-perfect frontman for the Republican party. It is no accident they gave him the spotlight.
"Hey everybody - believe this!"
It's bizarre how many times I've heard someone in some context say they're worried about being in a higher tax bracket. As a kid I always assumed that the tax was applied to the entire net, not the new margin so there were points on the curve of diminishing returns. Once it was explained to me how it actually worked I was shocked at just how positively stupid that statement is. Me, I'd love to be in a higher tax bracket. I'd have *more money*.
It's an ideal way to drive a wedge between the wealthy and the not-wealthy though, isn't it? Plant the idea that there are some intermediate levels of success are not desirable. Insidious, isn't it? The way they're trying to remove all the middle rungs from the ladder?
Also, please don't assume I'm a Democrat from the anti-Republican slant to my post. Democrats are running their own game. It's just as lousy. Just in different ways.
Psst! Hey...don't tell anyone but you can download a pirated copy here.