Law enforcement officials have been found going undercover during protests in attempts to provoke violent outbursts and riots, why would this be any different? Would certainly be a lot easier to pull off.
It's what's available. Sometimes the DVD screener makes rounds, but those are rare. Pirated E-Books and albums are generally copied from legitimate sources. The people responsible quite often buy the legitimate version and crack any copy protection, releasing a near perfect unhindered version. It's not like you've got a guy with a physical copy of the book scanning in each page, or someone holding a recorder up to their stereo speakers.
When a movie is still in the theatre, there's little one can do to get a high-quality copy, unless you have access to the source material (DVD screeners or the file they use for the digital projectors), and those are going to be protected pretty highly. Thus, the camera-in-the-audience version.
There's no way in hell I'm spending $50 to do the same thing I can do with a free extension. In the years I've used it, and the hundreds+ of videos I've downloaded, I've come across maybe 3 sites that I frequent that one of the two addons I use won't download from (and usually if one doesn't the other does).
I also haven't had the same problem as far as cpu-strangling, battery draining performance issues, on either my desktop or my netbook.
Chrome, as far as I've been aware, doesn't have a flash video downloader app. It's pretty much the single most used extension I use in Firefox. I find it odd because Chrome has every other extension I use, and Firefox has a good half-dozen flash downloaders.
Even with it, I wouldn't change over just because it's the thing to do. Firefox would have to change considerably for the worse, or Chrome would have to become das uber-browser.
Yes, because it's ALL his fault, right? The previous guy didn't do ANYTHING wrong and was a perfect saint, a champion of personal freedoms and rights. Voting the other guy isn't going to help, as they end up serving the same masters. You want change, you need to neutralize the power of those masters, and find a way to convince people to vote for someone who won't simply bow to them.
As much as Stephen Harper has been a pain, and how much people may dislike that he was elected, the point is, every election he's lead the Conservatives, they've increased the number of seats they controlled, while Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatief couldn't even get elected in their home ridings. That's the biggest thing about Liberal supporters that irritates me, these days. They're all "Harper's evil and is ruining this country" and "No one wants Harper" and crap like that, while ignoring the fact that he's getting the votes. As far as the election system goes, the people who voice their opinion (in the only way that counts) want Harper.
They go on to complain about the ever decreasing voter turnout, but don't think about how it seems to coincide with the ever decreasing of people voting for the Liberals. They want change, an alternative to Harper, but can't offer any viable candidate. The candidates they did find (the aformentioned Dion and Ignatief) were wooden, subpar speakers (from what I saw in various interviews and debates) and seemed rather airheaded. They reminded me of characters I created in middle and high school (grades 6-12) for "creative writing" assignments in English. Harper, to me, seems to have an actual personality, like you could actually converse with him in a normal fashion if you were two people who just happen to pass each other on the street.
I keep wanting to try Mint, but I can't get my wireless card in my netbook to work. I've read several instructionals (usually from googling the problem with my netbook model and seeing others supposedly working solutions) and nothing. Ubuntu (every version since 8 or something) automatically detected and configured the card during the initial install, I didn't have to do anything, just click on the icon and "Connect to " and I'm online.
I can install the driver in Mint and it says it's installed, but I get no "Available Wireless Networks" list.
ReDigi apparently uses software that is supposed to transmit the file to the buyer while simultaneously deleting the copy on the seller's system.
No, there's no guarantee that you won't have other copies, but you run into the same problem (effectively) with selling a used CD. I can buy a new CD, rip it (say, in FLAC or other lossless format) and sell the physical copy while keeping the digital copy.
Rip to hard drive? Yeah, you need an optical drive to read the disc, but you can use an external setup and leave that at home, or rip it on a desktop and transfer the files to the laptop. Or download them.
Rated R movies inherently have a smaller available audience-base (everyone under 18 is pretty much discounted), which means fewer tickets that can be sold, which means less of a return unless it's so bloody awesome that everyone goes to see it multiple times in theatres.
It's not a matter of the content, considering that they put out 7 "Saw" movies, 2 "Hostel", working on a fourth "Scream" and have done remakes of Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th. It's a matter of potential return on investment. The Saw movies were relatively cheap, and were successful, so they kept being made. Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street are established horror movie franchises and have a much greater potential to make a profit based on the name alone. The same could be said for Scream, to a lesser extent.
Bioshock, despite how potentially awesome it could be, is based on a video game. Those have rarely ever done well (Street Fighter, Super Mario Bros., Double Dragon, Doom, any of the Uwe Boll travesties, etc. as compared to the first Mortal Kombat movie). It would've been a big gamble not considering the "video game movie curse", but you add that in and it was toast before it ever got off the ground.
Then, of course, there's the multiple ending aspect. Do you save all the Little Sisters and take the happy ending or do you slaughter them all and take over the world (or whatever the second ending was, I never killed any of the Little Sisters). Do you do a mishmash and meet them down the middle (you kill one or two before you talk to the doctor lady and end up feeling guilty, staying behind to take care of the remaining ones or some BS like that)?
There were just too many strikes against it to make it worth the financial backers time/money.
I think System Shock would make a better option, IMO. Though it'd probably end up like a mish-mash of Alien and The Matrix.
I don't see a problem with a lack of wifi in schools (with an exception for College/University, and only in designated areas), but not because of any supposed medical reasons.
What reason would any grade-school kid need wifi access for, anyways? What device would a grade school kid have that would even have use for wifi? A laptop? Why would a grade school kid have one? Even if they did, what use would the make of it in school (on a regular enough basis to warrant a wifi network)? A wifi enabled cell phone? You don't need wifi to make a call or send a text, and the phone should be off during class anyways.
They won the election because, despite how crappy of a policy they may have had, and with people complaining about Harper all the time, he/they were still better than ANY OTHER CANDIDATE/PARTY running in either election. Martin lost because he was terrible, Dion couldn't even convince his own party that he was good enough and got booted out (not before trying to force the GG to topple the rightfully elected Conservative government with a coalition farce). I don't know too much about Ignatieff, but what I have seen of his speeches, I wouldn't vote for him.
Also, in the last election, the Conservative party increased the number of seats they controlled in the House, taking them primarily away from the Liberals. If you have a problem with the leading party having less than 25% of overall votes, then howabout we do away with this bajillion-and-a-half party system and work it more like the Americans and their "Two Party" system.
None of the other parties have any possible hope of getting even a minority government in the near future.
So, say whatever you want about the Conservatives, enough voting Canadians think they're the best option to keep them in Minority power.
When you can get a decent laptop for the same price as your average box of crayons, then you can make that comparison. Crayons are cheap, plentiful and easy to replace, laptops and their data are not.
Sharing is not such a simple concept that can be applied to everything. What happens if the person you lent your laptop to checked their email and downloaded a virus or other invasive/destructive file? What happens if they dump their drink on it? What if, after they're done, they get up from their chair and pull the power cord and it dumps the laptop on the ground?
Are they going to pay to have it repaired/replaced? Will they compensate you for any unrecoverable data?
The OP may accept the risk that they may do any of those things, but at least they're in control enough to minimize those risks, and if something does happen, it's their own fault.
Unfortunately, businesses need to change or they will become obsolete. Sears and The Bay used to have a ton of their business come via their catalogues and mail-in shopping, since it wasn't financially viable to have large retail outlets with everything in stock all over North America.
Once populations increased and what once were rural areas became urbanized cities, the companies could afford to open more stores in more places, making it often unnecessary to order out of the catalogue. Now you've got online shopping, making the print-catalogue wasteful, costly and relatively environmentally unfriendly.
The same thing will happen to all print media, eventually. Once the quality and availability of online media hits critical mass (devices like Amazon's Kindle or "smart" phones and their service subscriptions become faster, more reliable and cheaper), print media will be dead except for a few niche markets (like vinyl LPs in music at the moment).
It's rather unusual these days for an album (or anything for that matter) to be released in Canada, but not the US.
Most indie Canadian bands probably don't have a distribution deal that includes the USA.
Anyways, the problem described is one commonly encountered by non-US residents trying to partake in certain services, including networks who put episodes of various TV shows online, Pandora, etc.
"It says that I want the game, but I'm not willing to put up with the drm you put on it."
It doesn't say that to THEM. That may be your reason for doing that, but, unless you specifically go and tell them that you're pirating it for that reason (and if you do that will pretty much just tell them where to sic their lawyers/the police), they WILL chalk it up to you being a cheapskate and not the DRM.
Boycott, tell them why, and try to convince as many people as you can to do the same.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn, I had mod points yesterday. Consider this my unofficial +1 Funny
Law enforcement officials have been found going undercover during protests in attempts to provoke violent outbursts and riots, why would this be any different? Would certainly be a lot easier to pull off.
It's what's available. Sometimes the DVD screener makes rounds, but those are rare. Pirated E-Books and albums are generally copied from legitimate sources. The people responsible quite often buy the legitimate version and crack any copy protection, releasing a near perfect unhindered version. It's not like you've got a guy with a physical copy of the book scanning in each page, or someone holding a recorder up to their stereo speakers.
When a movie is still in the theatre, there's little one can do to get a high-quality copy, unless you have access to the source material (DVD screeners or the file they use for the digital projectors), and those are going to be protected pretty highly. Thus, the camera-in-the-audience version.
There's no way in hell I'm spending $50 to do the same thing I can do with a free extension. In the years I've used it, and the hundreds+ of videos I've downloaded, I've come across maybe 3 sites that I frequent that one of the two addons I use won't download from (and usually if one doesn't the other does).
I also haven't had the same problem as far as cpu-strangling, battery draining performance issues, on either my desktop or my netbook.
Chrome, as far as I've been aware, doesn't have a flash video downloader app. It's pretty much the single most used extension I use in Firefox. I find it odd because Chrome has every other extension I use, and Firefox has a good half-dozen flash downloaders.
Even with it, I wouldn't change over just because it's the thing to do. Firefox would have to change considerably for the worse, or Chrome would have to become das uber-browser.
Yes, because it's ALL his fault, right? The previous guy didn't do ANYTHING wrong and was a perfect saint, a champion of personal freedoms and rights. Voting the other guy isn't going to help, as they end up serving the same masters. You want change, you need to neutralize the power of those masters, and find a way to convince people to vote for someone who won't simply bow to them.
Good luck with that.
Some places request that you send it in that format, and any other format would be ignored.
That's for multi-monitor setups.
As much as Stephen Harper has been a pain, and how much people may dislike that he was elected, the point is, every election he's lead the Conservatives, they've increased the number of seats they controlled, while Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatief couldn't even get elected in their home ridings. That's the biggest thing about Liberal supporters that irritates me, these days. They're all "Harper's evil and is ruining this country" and "No one wants Harper" and crap like that, while ignoring the fact that he's getting the votes. As far as the election system goes, the people who voice their opinion (in the only way that counts) want Harper.
They go on to complain about the ever decreasing voter turnout, but don't think about how it seems to coincide with the ever decreasing of people voting for the Liberals. They want change, an alternative to Harper, but can't offer any viable candidate. The candidates they did find (the aformentioned Dion and Ignatief) were wooden, subpar speakers (from what I saw in various interviews and debates) and seemed rather airheaded. They reminded me of characters I created in middle and high school (grades 6-12) for "creative writing" assignments in English. Harper, to me, seems to have an actual personality, like you could actually converse with him in a normal fashion if you were two people who just happen to pass each other on the street.
I keep wanting to try Mint, but I can't get my wireless card in my netbook to work. I've read several instructionals (usually from googling the problem with my netbook model and seeing others supposedly working solutions) and nothing. Ubuntu (every version since 8 or something) automatically detected and configured the card during the initial install, I didn't have to do anything, just click on the icon and "Connect to " and I'm online.
I can install the driver in Mint and it says it's installed, but I get no "Available Wireless Networks" list.
ReDigi apparently uses software that is supposed to transmit the file to the buyer while simultaneously deleting the copy on the seller's system.
No, there's no guarantee that you won't have other copies, but you run into the same problem (effectively) with selling a used CD. I can buy a new CD, rip it (say, in FLAC or other lossless format) and sell the physical copy while keeping the digital copy.
No, I am G-Prime!
Rip to hard drive? Yeah, you need an optical drive to read the disc, but you can use an external setup and leave that at home, or rip it on a desktop and transfer the files to the laptop. Or download them.
Hey, I'm only 27.
Rated R movies inherently have a smaller available audience-base (everyone under 18 is pretty much discounted), which means fewer tickets that can be sold, which means less of a return unless it's so bloody awesome that everyone goes to see it multiple times in theatres.
It's not a matter of the content, considering that they put out 7 "Saw" movies, 2 "Hostel", working on a fourth "Scream" and have done remakes of Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th. It's a matter of potential return on investment. The Saw movies were relatively cheap, and were successful, so they kept being made. Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street are established horror movie franchises and have a much greater potential to make a profit based on the name alone. The same could be said for Scream, to a lesser extent.
Bioshock, despite how potentially awesome it could be, is based on a video game. Those have rarely ever done well (Street Fighter, Super Mario Bros., Double Dragon, Doom, any of the Uwe Boll travesties, etc. as compared to the first Mortal Kombat movie). It would've been a big gamble not considering the "video game movie curse", but you add that in and it was toast before it ever got off the ground.
Then, of course, there's the multiple ending aspect. Do you save all the Little Sisters and take the happy ending or do you slaughter them all and take over the world (or whatever the second ending was, I never killed any of the Little Sisters). Do you do a mishmash and meet them down the middle (you kill one or two before you talk to the doctor lady and end up feeling guilty, staying behind to take care of the remaining ones or some BS like that)?
There were just too many strikes against it to make it worth the financial backers time/money.
I think System Shock would make a better option, IMO. Though it'd probably end up like a mish-mash of Alien and The Matrix.
We can just say that Orion had an accident while hunting, Lost his arm to Ursa Major or something.
They also cost 3-4 (or more) times the amount per gig of a normal drive.
Hell, I've seen a 2tb normal drive go for the same price as a 64gb SSD.
I don't see a problem with a lack of wifi in schools (with an exception for College/University, and only in designated areas), but not because of any supposed medical reasons.
What reason would any grade-school kid need wifi access for, anyways? What device would a grade school kid have that would even have use for wifi? A laptop? Why would a grade school kid have one? Even if they did, what use would the make of it in school (on a regular enough basis to warrant a wifi network)? A wifi enabled cell phone? You don't need wifi to make a call or send a text, and the phone should be off during class anyways.
They won the election because, despite how crappy of a policy they may have had, and with people complaining about Harper all the time, he/they were still better than ANY OTHER CANDIDATE/PARTY running in either election. Martin lost because he was terrible, Dion couldn't even convince his own party that he was good enough and got booted out (not before trying to force the GG to topple the rightfully elected Conservative government with a coalition farce). I don't know too much about Ignatieff, but what I have seen of his speeches, I wouldn't vote for him.
Also, in the last election, the Conservative party increased the number of seats they controlled in the House, taking them primarily away from the Liberals. If you have a problem with the leading party having less than 25% of overall votes, then howabout we do away with this bajillion-and-a-half party system and work it more like the Americans and their "Two Party" system.
None of the other parties have any possible hope of getting even a minority government in the near future.
So, say whatever you want about the Conservatives, enough voting Canadians think they're the best option to keep them in Minority power.
Everything can be described as a big time and money sucking void, really.
When you can get a decent laptop for the same price as your average box of crayons, then you can make that comparison. Crayons are cheap, plentiful and easy to replace, laptops and their data are not.
Sharing is not such a simple concept that can be applied to everything. What happens if the person you lent your laptop to checked their email and downloaded a virus or other invasive/destructive file? What happens if they dump their drink on it? What if, after they're done, they get up from their chair and pull the power cord and it dumps the laptop on the ground?
Are they going to pay to have it repaired/replaced? Will they compensate you for any unrecoverable data?
The OP may accept the risk that they may do any of those things, but at least they're in control enough to minimize those risks, and if something does happen, it's their own fault.
Unfortunately, businesses need to change or they will become obsolete. Sears and The Bay used to have a ton of their business come via their catalogues and mail-in shopping, since it wasn't financially viable to have large retail outlets with everything in stock all over North America.
Once populations increased and what once were rural areas became urbanized cities, the companies could afford to open more stores in more places, making it often unnecessary to order out of the catalogue. Now you've got online shopping, making the print-catalogue wasteful, costly and relatively environmentally unfriendly.
The same thing will happen to all print media, eventually. Once the quality and availability of online media hits critical mass (devices like Amazon's Kindle or "smart" phones and their service subscriptions become faster, more reliable and cheaper), print media will be dead except for a few niche markets (like vinyl LPs in music at the moment).
It's rather unusual these days for an album (or anything for that matter) to be released in Canada, but not the US.
Most indie Canadian bands probably don't have a distribution deal that includes the USA.
Anyways, the problem described is one commonly encountered by non-US residents trying to partake in certain services, including networks who put episodes of various TV shows online, Pandora, etc.
"It says that I want the game, but I'm not willing to put up with the drm you put on it."
It doesn't say that to THEM. That may be your reason for doing that, but, unless you specifically go and tell them that you're pirating it for that reason (and if you do that will pretty much just tell them where to sic their lawyers/the police), they WILL chalk it up to you being a cheapskate and not the DRM.
Boycott, tell them why, and try to convince as many people as you can to do the same.
Well I nev......
{hangs head in shame}