is why after the trial they didn't just cut their losses and go home. Not to be defeatist, but Napster was dead as soon as they finally lost the judgement. Even though trying to stay open was a decent gesture of "screw you, RIAA, you didn't kill us", but it reminded me of the desperate flailing of a dying man covered in napalm.
Personally, my opinion on the length of IP is more along the lines of patents. Patents are visibly for a defined, finite amount of time. Anything which is not capable of expiring in the lifetime of the author is not a "limited time" as provided in the Constitution. Patents are clearly shorter than copyrights, and which provides more contribution to the useful arts and sciences? There is no reason for a novel to last longer than a patent on file formats, and conversely, there's no reason for a patent to last longer than it does, or even as long as it does. Ten to fourteen years even seems ridiculous in this day and age. By the time a computer patent or copyright ends, of what scientific or artful value will it be? I know I'm certainly looking forward to installing that legal, public domain copy of MS-DOS version 1 when it finally loses copyright protection a thousand years from now...
Suse hasn't had available recent ISOs on their site for a while now...can't say I didn't figure on something like this out of them at some point. Wonder what the German parliament will think of it...
Suse, vendor of the "free" linux system, gets the Bundestag to proclaim linux ready for the desktop, and then starts charging for it...go figure.
What about peer-to-peer, you ask? Peer-to-peer networks rely on the uneconomical nature of high-speed Internet. This market is beginning to correct itself as the ISPs cap the bandwith of bandwidth hogs. Eventually, the peer-to-peer networks will be the proverbial victims of their own success. People will stop using them when the ISP bill runs into the triple digits.
The most damage this is doing is not to these mislabled "pirates" but to the Free Software community, if you ask me. not saying this is intentional, but capping monthly downloads before a price increase certainly doesn't hurt jimmy moviedownloader as much as it will jimmy debian user, trying to download the multiple gigabytes of Woody and several other distributions to try...
They're hitting us on all fronts, whether they want to or not...Lawmakers need to consider what other repercussions such things will have while creating poorly written and ill-appropriate legislature.
The problem isn't that they're charging more for it...the problem is that there arent more practical alternatives. The cap at 56k means that something better needed to come along. That's one thing that has yet to be adressed. DSL and Cable internet are one thing, but it's tough for Joe ISP to get on the broadbandwagon, whereas to get on the dialup scene all you need are a fistful of IPs and a T line. Granted i've oversimplified it, but without making it more easily available and making competition a practical thing, everyone's going to get screwed in the end.
I thought the whole point of the second amendment was to avoid enforcing one man's morals on another.
i admit that there is need to allow the creator distribution/profit rights for a limited amount of time, but arguing that a man is immoral for sharing music is incorrect. it may be unlawful, but morals are an individual choice.
the thing is, the radio industry and the record industry both work on outmoded business models. More and more people get sick of the same crap being played all the time and the same lack of variety and originality being played over and over again every day. As much as I hate to admit that the Internet changes all the rules, it does. 20 years ago, how do you get a band from San Francisco exposure in Frankfurt, Germany and Ontario? Either you sent a friend there a record, or you got in a van and went there. Now you put it on the internet and if you can find a way to get people to listen, you may spread via word of mouth. The difference is that eventually the concept that success in music equals fame and fortune needs to die, not be shored up by government law and evil legislation like the DMCA and it's ilk. The fact is, Radio's days are waning, and one can only hope that from the ashes (if people wise up and make CC and such die) will rise small college-like stations in their place that actually listen to what the people want...
In my day I had to walk fifteen miles to and from college, barefoot, in the snow, uphill both ways...
there are merits to having things and not having things which are related to the classes themselves, but decompression time is important. If I spent every waking moment of my time concentrating on schoolwork i'd burn out faster than anything. Personally, as far as fun/useful toys for college, I suggest a full-size spare tire if her car doesn't already have one (those little spare donut things don't cut it), AAA membership (Both of these are if she has a car), and car or not, if I were headed off to college, i'd be after a printer that didn't suck. mine was so unreliable I often spent as much time getting it to work as actually working on what I was printing. These may not be fun toys, but they'll certainly save time and worry.
the biggest problem with Exchange is that it runs on M$....anything that isn't run on a native TCP/IP OS (read: *nix) isn't suitable if you ask me. It's not blind M$ hate...its a reliability and customizability factor.
Art and slick interfaces may help, but it's by far less important to some people than fun gameplay. Then again, if I were of a similar mindset to yours, I wouldn't have replaced my dying 8-bit nintendo with a refurbished one and I wouldn't still enjoy playing Pac-Man and Pitfall. While I agree better graphics would be a definite plus, if it's fun to play, graphics won't stop me.
i remember going into a ford dealer once while I was deciding whether a Police Interceptor was too long of a car for my tastes, so i went in and feigned interest in a civilian Crown Victoria to test drive it. When I asked the salesman what the difference between that and a Police Interceptor was, he told me that it was just a little bit more utilitarian. I rattled off a list a mile long of what was different between the two and he knew he was caught trying to pull one over on me. Sometimes salespeople try to pull crap like that just to judge their prey. Then I flew to Texas and bought a Police Interceptor and never talked to him or his dealership again.
In my (limited) experience with my recent install of Opera, it defaulted to identifying itself as MSIE5...I've since corrected this to be true and say that it's Opera, but perhaps this may be a problem by possibly misidentifying the OS at the same time if it is so set, since there is certainly no MSIE version for Linux...
The problem with Fur Hat Linux is that it makes your CPU overheat when you use it in places where the local temperature above -20 degrees farenheit. However, this problem wasn't discovered until the Siberian hackers who developed it sent it to a more temperate part of Russia to put it into widespread government use...still, looking at the bright side, they are however looking forward to becoming the world's largest operating system provider in walk-in freezers everywhere.
Perhaps the similar acronyms are a sign of the quality of the training that they'll be giving out...MRE's suck, but don't require training, whereas this training will smell more like real MRE's by having nasty smells pumped into the room, perhaps? Though I've had the fortune to avoid any burnt charcoal MRE's in my limited experience...
Way ahead of you...I don't watch TV anymore. All I do is let it run in the background sometimes if I want to hear the news while I do other things, which could easily be done with a radio...
However, thats beside the point. What it boils down to in the end is that TV is an expensive industry. There are a number of reasons for this. For one, equipment overhead is expensive. That I can't deny. I've shelled out hundreds of dollars on computer equipment, which I can use to develop products of my own, and thats just for an environment on which one person can work, not a whole crew like they have.
However, being such big studios, they should have this equipment already, right? maybe. But let's face it. That's not where most of the money goes. When you look at it, film and lights are a really small portion of the money that is put into television shows. Why do so many actors and actresses drive such flashy cars and have such huge homes that they've paid for in full? because actors make too much money. For something they love. And for something that is hardly an arduous task for a sitcom actor/actress, or other such television programming. I can understand why someone who takes a lot of risk in the filming could justify making lots of money, like a lot of Hong Kong film stars who do their own stunts and such. But for a sitcom or soap opera or whatnot, there is no reason to make millions of dollars per season.
Plus, comm sats are expensive too. That I can't deny. But that's also part of the equipment overhead for a television network.
We pay for cable or satellite TV, and most of it sucks and most people hate/don't watch most of it. But what it boils down to is that costs that shouldn't be so high, like that of actors and actresses (fame shouldn't automatically equal money) who are on the shows, and I don't know about the writers and directors and others, but I do know there's a lot of people in the world who hate their jobs and get paid hardly a thing, while actors and actresses get insane amounts for what they love. This seems really screwed up to me as a concept.
But anyway, IMHO, what this boils down to is a misallocation of monetary resource. I'm not saying that commercials have to be eliminated, I'm just saying that the majority of what annoys me about it is how inefficiently the money generated by them is handled, and how many more commercials per show this leads to that wouldn't be needed if the money was being handled responsibly. Though with the inflation of prices in the entertainment industry for so-called "talented" actors/actresses, I don't see it coming down to reasonable levels anytime soon...
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is why after the trial they didn't just cut their losses and go home. Not to be defeatist, but Napster was dead as soon as they finally lost the judgement. Even though trying to stay open was a decent gesture of "screw you, RIAA, you didn't kill us", but it reminded me of the desperate flailing of a dying man covered in napalm.
Personally, my opinion on the length of IP is more along the lines of patents. Patents are visibly for a defined, finite amount of time. Anything which is not capable of expiring in the lifetime of the author is not a "limited time" as provided in the Constitution. Patents are clearly shorter than copyrights, and which provides more contribution to the useful arts and sciences? There is no reason for a novel to last longer than a patent on file formats, and conversely, there's no reason for a patent to last longer than it does, or even as long as it does. Ten to fourteen years even seems ridiculous in this day and age. By the time a computer patent or copyright ends, of what scientific or artful value will it be? I know I'm certainly looking forward to installing that legal, public domain copy of MS-DOS version 1 when it finally loses copyright protection a thousand years from now...
Suse hasn't had available recent ISOs on their site for a while now...can't say I didn't figure on something like this out of them at some point. Wonder what the German parliament will think of it... Suse, vendor of the "free" linux system, gets the Bundestag to proclaim linux ready for the desktop, and then starts charging for it...go figure.
What about peer-to-peer, you ask? Peer-to-peer networks rely on the uneconomical nature of high-speed Internet. This market is beginning to correct itself as the ISPs cap the bandwith of bandwidth hogs. Eventually, the peer-to-peer networks will be the proverbial victims of their own success. People will stop using them when the ISP bill runs into the triple digits. The most damage this is doing is not to these mislabled "pirates" but to the Free Software community, if you ask me. not saying this is intentional, but capping monthly downloads before a price increase certainly doesn't hurt jimmy moviedownloader as much as it will jimmy debian user, trying to download the multiple gigabytes of Woody and several other distributions to try... They're hitting us on all fronts, whether they want to or not...Lawmakers need to consider what other repercussions such things will have while creating poorly written and ill-appropriate legislature.
crap...i'd better pay for these debian disks before they find me
The problem isn't that they're charging more for it...the problem is that there arent more practical alternatives. The cap at 56k means that something better needed to come along. That's one thing that has yet to be adressed. DSL and Cable internet are one thing, but it's tough for Joe ISP to get on the broadbandwagon, whereas to get on the dialup scene all you need are a fistful of IPs and a T line. Granted i've oversimplified it, but without making it more easily available and making competition a practical thing, everyone's going to get screwed in the end.
I thought the whole point of the second amendment was to avoid enforcing one man's morals on another. i admit that there is need to allow the creator distribution/profit rights for a limited amount of time, but arguing that a man is immoral for sharing music is incorrect. it may be unlawful, but morals are an individual choice.
the thing is, the radio industry and the record industry both work on outmoded business models. More and more people get sick of the same crap being played all the time and the same lack of variety and originality being played over and over again every day. As much as I hate to admit that the Internet changes all the rules, it does. 20 years ago, how do you get a band from San Francisco exposure in Frankfurt, Germany and Ontario? Either you sent a friend there a record, or you got in a van and went there. Now you put it on the internet and if you can find a way to get people to listen, you may spread via word of mouth. The difference is that eventually the concept that success in music equals fame and fortune needs to die, not be shored up by government law and evil legislation like the DMCA and it's ilk. The fact is, Radio's days are waning, and one can only hope that from the ashes (if people wise up and make CC and such die) will rise small college-like stations in their place that actually listen to what the people want...
In my day I had to walk fifteen miles to and from college, barefoot, in the snow, uphill both ways... there are merits to having things and not having things which are related to the classes themselves, but decompression time is important. If I spent every waking moment of my time concentrating on schoolwork i'd burn out faster than anything. Personally, as far as fun/useful toys for college, I suggest a full-size spare tire if her car doesn't already have one (those little spare donut things don't cut it), AAA membership (Both of these are if she has a car), and car or not, if I were headed off to college, i'd be after a printer that didn't suck. mine was so unreliable I often spent as much time getting it to work as actually working on what I was printing. These may not be fun toys, but they'll certainly save time and worry.
Now there's a pair i didn't expect to see playing together...
the biggest problem with Exchange is that it runs on M$....anything that isn't run on a native TCP/IP OS (read: *nix) isn't suitable if you ask me. It's not blind M$ hate...its a reliability and customizability factor.
Art and slick interfaces may help, but it's by far less important to some people than fun gameplay. Then again, if I were of a similar mindset to yours, I wouldn't have replaced my dying 8-bit nintendo with a refurbished one and I wouldn't still enjoy playing Pac-Man and Pitfall. While I agree better graphics would be a definite plus, if it's fun to play, graphics won't stop me.
i remember going into a ford dealer once while I was deciding whether a Police Interceptor was too long of a car for my tastes, so i went in and feigned interest in a civilian Crown Victoria to test drive it. When I asked the salesman what the difference between that and a Police Interceptor was, he told me that it was just a little bit more utilitarian. I rattled off a list a mile long of what was different between the two and he knew he was caught trying to pull one over on me. Sometimes salespeople try to pull crap like that just to judge their prey. Then I flew to Texas and bought a Police Interceptor and never talked to him or his dealership again.
In my (limited) experience with my recent install of Opera, it defaulted to identifying itself as MSIE5...I've since corrected this to be true and say that it's Opera, but perhaps this may be a problem by possibly misidentifying the OS at the same time if it is so set, since there is certainly no MSIE version for Linux...
The problem with Fur Hat Linux is that it makes your CPU overheat when you use it in places where the local temperature above -20 degrees farenheit. However, this problem wasn't discovered until the Siberian hackers who developed it sent it to a more temperate part of Russia to put it into widespread government use...still, looking at the bright side, they are however looking forward to becoming the world's largest operating system provider in walk-in freezers everywhere.
Perhaps the similar acronyms are a sign of the quality of the training that they'll be giving out...MRE's suck, but don't require training, whereas this training will smell more like real MRE's by having nasty smells pumped into the room, perhaps? Though I've had the fortune to avoid any burnt charcoal MRE's in my limited experience...
Way ahead of you...I don't watch TV anymore. All I do is let it run in the background sometimes if I want to hear the news while I do other things, which could easily be done with a radio...
However, thats beside the point. What it boils down to in the end is that TV is an expensive industry. There are a number of reasons for this. For one, equipment overhead is expensive. That I can't deny. I've shelled out hundreds of dollars on computer equipment, which I can use to develop products of my own, and thats just for an environment on which one person can work, not a whole crew like they have.
However, being such big studios, they should have this equipment already, right? maybe. But let's face it. That's not where most of the money goes. When you look at it, film and lights are a really small portion of the money that is put into television shows. Why do so many actors and actresses drive such flashy cars and have such huge homes that they've paid for in full? because actors make too much money. For something they love. And for something that is hardly an arduous task for a sitcom actor/actress, or other such television programming. I can understand why someone who takes a lot of risk in the filming could justify making lots of money, like a lot of Hong Kong film stars who do their own stunts and such. But for a sitcom or soap opera or whatnot, there is no reason to make millions of dollars per season.
Plus, comm sats are expensive too. That I can't deny. But that's also part of the equipment overhead for a television network.
We pay for cable or satellite TV, and most of it sucks and most people hate/don't watch most of it. But what it boils down to is that costs that shouldn't be so high, like that of actors and actresses (fame shouldn't automatically equal money) who are on the shows, and I don't know about the writers and directors and others, but I do know there's a lot of people in the world who hate their jobs and get paid hardly a thing, while actors and actresses get insane amounts for what they love. This seems really screwed up to me as a concept.
But anyway, IMHO, what this boils down to is a misallocation of monetary resource. I'm not saying that commercials have to be eliminated, I'm just saying that the majority of what annoys me about it is how inefficiently the money generated by them is handled, and how many more commercials per show this leads to that wouldn't be needed if the money was being handled responsibly. Though with the inflation of prices in the entertainment industry for so-called "talented" actors/actresses, I don't see it coming down to reasonable levels anytime soon...