The assumption that people will suddenly switch to a proprietary format is rather insane, if you ask me. I've heard countless times "Format YXZ will be super secure and stop trading of MP3s"
OK, let's assume for a moment that there is a format out there that won't be cracked within 4 minutes of its introduction. The RIAA and others seem to feel we will all dump MP3s and switch over automatically.
The MP3 genie is already out of the bottle. No one is going to switch to these new formats by choice, and there is no way you can force people to, either. And even if everybody switched, they would go back the second they realized the limitations being placed on them by the new format.
The strategy being put forth by all these groups is simple.
(1) New, secure music format introduced.
(2) Everyone switches over from MP3.
(3) Piracy stops.
This is worse than a dot-com business model. Their stupidity will be their undoing.
For some odd reason, it is now "cool" to put a useless black band at the bottom of the screen at all times. And we're not talking letterboxing here, but just a useless black band that tells you the name of the show you are watching!
I refuse to watch TNN or any other network that butchers the picture with such filth. It is utterly useless and wastes valuble screen realestate.
Oh, someone might think "Hey, we need to remind people what channel they are watching".
OK, that makes sense, but there are other ways to do that!
This only reminds me what channel I should avoid at all costs from now on.
I was such a TNG addict back in the day
on
Star Trek TNG DVDs
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
But somehow, watching them years later, especially after going through the entire run of B5 and being a bit older, I find that many of the episodes really, really suck badly.
They simply don't hold up well at all.
And while the first season of most shows usually pretty weak, I find it took a long time for TNG to really get anywhere. The early episodes of the first season are especially painful and I find them completely unwatchable.
I'll just pass on the DVDs and remember TNG for how I saw it then and avoid any reruns. Let the pleasent memories remain.
The error message when you start it the first time
on
I Want My MTV... PC?
·
· Score: 1
"ERROR: An error has occured. Reinstall Windows, or even Linux, man, WTF is this "MTV-Specific" shit? Get it off my hard drive platter any way you can! Please?"
In practice, the Domino Theory had more to do with the beleif that nations who demonstrated independance from Washington's spehere of influence (even if they didn't become Communist or pose a threat to the U.S in any way) were a danger because they would serve as a good example for their neighbors who would be less open to exploitation by foreign governments and businesses. It's detailed in government documents from the Cold War. Noam Chomsky's supremly excellent What Uncle Sam Really Wants examines them in detail.
Most of our covert and not-so-covert operations were directed at those who posed a danger of not submitting. This lead to some of the worst atrocities of the century.
Over the past few years I've seen countless websites fall victim to corprate lawyers for one thing or another. Sites that have done nothing more than parody a company's product have fallen victim to the threats of lawsuits.
And that's where the problem lies. The threat.
Corporations know if they sue you in some district court in California, odds are you aren't going to even be able to show up to represent yourself, much less hire legal counsel to do it for you and fight a protracted battle against highly-paid corprate lawyers.
So, a letter to a website or software project leader can be as effective as a trial, because the assumption is, you are too poor to shell out tens of thousands of dollars in expenses to fight to protect your freedom of speech. Because 99.999% of the time, it is obvious to anyone that the company in question has virtually no basis for their allegiations and the potential lawsuit would be totally frivilous, yet they hold this enormous power over people with few financial resources to fight a court battle that they shouldn't even be dragged into in the first place.
Corporations use this as a weapon against all who oppose them. Piss them off....and a letter from their legal department will follow. It costs them a few dollars to have their guys fill out a form letter and post it and it protects their precious company image from all of those who wish to exercise their rights as human beings to present crticism, satire and counterpoint to the multibillion dollar PR juggernauts these companies run.
It's sick, it's sad, but there is little you can do.
But one thing you can try, is to pick out any errors in their threats. Run it by someone who knows about legal procedure. Do they say you are barred from revealing the contents of the legal threat to anyone else? (to protect their image, no doubt). Well, fuck them. Unless they have a court order, there is no way they can impose such terms on you. Did you sign an agreement with them? No? Then let people know what they are doing. Write a letter to their state bar assoication's ethics department. Do this every single time for any **valid** reason you can scrounge up. Eventually, the complaints might just pile up.
Why in the world do they have to give you an non-upgradeable GeForce2 MX?
My bet is that they will still be using it in 2005, just like the pathetic Rage 128 that they kept in the machines from 1999 until today. While the PC world moves ahead and Mac users struggle to play new PC ports on their ancient video cards.
Why is it when Microsoft wants to say how often users upgrade their machine...it is a crime against humanity.
But when Apple wants to do that, plus dictate the entire user experience (create a theme creation app, get sued), silence their critics (Apple Parody sites threatened with lawsuits) and control every single appliance in your house...it is some how "freedom"?
My faith in the intellect of fellow net users was challenged by the finding that 6,200 people couldn't figure out what CNN's URL was on September 11th.
Though, I like to think the fact their servers ground to a halt (along with every other news agencies) had something to do with it. Maybe people assumed they got the address wrong when nothing came up.
Remember when some users got together and tried to make a theme creation app for the Mac?
They were threatened with a lawsuit from Apple.
Remember when Apple didn't want to let their users upgrade their machine?
They were sent a firmware update that "accidentally" blocked upgrades.
Remember when some people made Apple parody sites?
They were threatend with lawsuits.
What happens if you want to upgrade your video card?
Ask Apple. They're trying to make all video card production in-house. $250 for a Geeforce 2 MX. Yeah....whatever.
What did Apple do when iMac analog video boards started to fail en masse?
Nothing.
Apple has some nice products, just don't for a moment think you're saying goodbye to having your computing experience dictated from some corprate office on the West Coast.
While it is out of print, I would strongly suggest picking up a copy of The Best Of Byte by Jay Ranade and Alan Nash.
It includes tons of Byte magazine articles from the '80s and early '90s. Year-by-year timeline of developments, many of which have been utterly forgotten over time. Old ads from companies long gone, extremly rare interviews with legends of the industry.....highly reccomended.
Campbell, CA (December 4, 2001)ZiLOG,® Inc., the Extreme Connectivity(TM) Company, today announced....
They started using one of those shitty dot-com like expressions as their company sub-name ("The Extreme Connectivity Company") and therefore, financial ruin was sure to follow. Naming your company something like that is just asking for the money to dissappear.
Well, there goes one excuse......
on
Electronic Paper
·
· Score: 1
How about makers of MMORPGs come up with something remotely new and inventive? Stop dragging out the Dungeons and Dragons license for the 50,000th time. You know, there are some rather interesting things you could come up with.
Slashdot Mirror
The assumption that people will suddenly switch to a proprietary format is rather insane, if you ask me. I've heard countless times "Format YXZ will be super secure and stop trading of MP3s"
OK, let's assume for a moment that there is a format out there that won't be cracked within 4 minutes of its introduction. The RIAA and others seem to feel we will all dump MP3s and switch over automatically.
The MP3 genie is already out of the bottle. No one is going to switch to these new formats by choice, and there is no way you can force people to, either. And even if everybody switched, they would go back the second they realized the limitations being placed on them by the new format.
The strategy being put forth by all these groups is simple.
(1) New, secure music format introduced.
(2) Everyone switches over from MP3.
(3) Piracy stops.
This is worse than a dot-com business model. Their stupidity will be their undoing.
".....Argentine officals hope to discover new black holes, dimensions and other phenomena, and find new ways to send their debt there."
And, I might add, the Oxygen network's?
For some odd reason, it is now "cool" to put a useless black band at the bottom of the screen at all times. And we're not talking letterboxing here, but just a useless black band that tells you the name of the show you are watching!
I refuse to watch TNN or any other network that butchers the picture with such filth. It is utterly useless and wastes valuble screen realestate.
Oh, someone might think "Hey, we need to remind people what channel they are watching".
OK, that makes sense, but there are other ways to do that!
This only reminds me what channel I should avoid at all costs from now on.
But somehow, watching them years later, especially after going through the entire run of B5 and being a bit older, I find that many of the episodes really, really suck badly.
They simply don't hold up well at all.
And while the first season of most shows usually pretty weak, I find it took a long time for TNG to really get anywhere. The early episodes of the first season are especially painful and I find them completely unwatchable.
I'll just pass on the DVDs and remember TNG for how I saw it then and avoid any reruns. Let the pleasent memories remain.
"ERROR: An error has occured. Reinstall Windows, or even Linux, man, WTF is this "MTV-Specific" shit? Get it off my hard drive platter any way you can! Please?"
In practice, the Domino Theory had more to do with the beleif that nations who demonstrated independance from Washington's spehere of influence (even if they didn't become Communist or pose a threat to the U.S in any way) were a danger because they would serve as a good example for their neighbors who would be less open to exploitation by foreign governments and businesses. It's detailed in government documents from the Cold War. Noam Chomsky's supremly excellent What Uncle Sam Really Wants examines them in detail.
Most of our covert and not-so-covert operations were directed at those who posed a danger of not submitting. This lead to some of the worst atrocities of the century.
Over the past few years I've seen countless websites fall victim to corprate lawyers for one thing or another. Sites that have done nothing more than parody a company's product have fallen victim to the threats of lawsuits.
And that's where the problem lies. The threat.
Corporations know if they sue you in some district court in California, odds are you aren't going to even be able to show up to represent yourself, much less hire legal counsel to do it for you and fight a protracted battle against highly-paid corprate lawyers.
So, a letter to a website or software project leader can be as effective as a trial, because the assumption is, you are too poor to shell out tens of thousands of dollars in expenses to fight to protect your freedom of speech. Because 99.999% of the time, it is obvious to anyone that the company in question has virtually no basis for their allegiations and the potential lawsuit would be totally frivilous, yet they hold this enormous power over people with few financial resources to fight a court battle that they shouldn't even be dragged into in the first place.
Corporations use this as a weapon against all who oppose them. Piss them off....and a letter from their legal department will follow. It costs them a few dollars to have their guys fill out a form letter and post it and it protects their precious company image from all of those who wish to exercise their rights as human beings to present crticism, satire and counterpoint to the multibillion dollar PR juggernauts these companies run.
It's sick, it's sad, but there is little you can do.
But one thing you can try, is to pick out any errors in their threats. Run it by someone who knows about legal procedure. Do they say you are barred from revealing the contents of the legal threat to anyone else? (to protect their image, no doubt). Well, fuck them. Unless they have a court order, there is no way they can impose such terms on you. Did you sign an agreement with them? No? Then let people know what they are doing. Write a letter to their state bar assoication's ethics department. Do this every single time for any **valid** reason you can scrounge up. Eventually, the complaints might just pile up.
It's our only hope against these tyrants.
Sad, but true.
Why in the world do they have to give you an non-upgradeable GeForce2 MX?
My bet is that they will still be using it in 2005, just like the pathetic Rage 128 that they kept in the machines from 1999 until today. While the PC world moves ahead and Mac users struggle to play new PC ports on their ancient video cards.
Why is it when Microsoft wants to say how often users upgrade their machine...it is a crime against humanity.
But when Apple wants to do that, plus dictate the entire user experience (create a theme creation app, get sued), silence their critics (Apple Parody sites threatened with lawsuits) and control every single appliance in your house...it is some how "freedom"?
My faith in the intellect of fellow net users was challenged by the finding that 6,200 people couldn't figure out what CNN's URL was on September 11th.
Though, I like to think the fact their servers ground to a halt (along with every other news agencies) had something to do with it. Maybe people assumed they got the address wrong when nothing came up.
Or so I hope.
Remember when some users got together and tried to make a theme creation app for the Mac?
They were threatened with a lawsuit from Apple.
Remember when Apple didn't want to let their users upgrade their machine?
They were sent a firmware update that "accidentally" blocked upgrades.
Remember when some people made Apple parody sites?
They were threatend with lawsuits.
What happens if you want to upgrade your video card?
Ask Apple. They're trying to make all video card production in-house. $250 for a Geeforce 2 MX. Yeah....whatever.
What did Apple do when iMac analog video boards started to fail en masse?
Nothing.
Apple has some nice products, just don't for a moment think you're saying goodbye to having your computing experience dictated from some corprate office on the West Coast.
While it is out of print, I would strongly suggest picking up a copy of The Best Of Byte by Jay Ranade and Alan Nash.
It includes tons of Byte magazine articles from the '80s and early '90s. Year-by-year timeline of developments, many of which have been utterly forgotten over time. Old ads from companies long gone, extremly rare interviews with legends of the industry.....highly reccomended.
They started using one of those shitty dot-com like expressions as their company sub-name ("The Extreme Connectivity Company") and therefore, financial ruin was sure to follow. Naming your company something like that is just asking for the money to dissappear.
Kid: "My dog ate my homework!
Teacher: "Let me see the grave"
How about makers of MMORPGs come up with something remotely new and inventive? Stop dragging out the Dungeons and Dragons license for the 50,000th time. You know, there are some rather interesting things you could come up with.