I don't know how absentee ballots work in the US, but in Canada when you request an absentee ballot or are voting by special means you have to provide identification in order to receive your ballot - signatures are not checked after the fact but before you receive the ballot. You also have to sign the envelope the ballot is sealed in. I would imagine a fax ballot (apparently not done in Canada) would be similar, but I could be wrong.
This could be done securely via e-mail as well, but we're not talking about someone sending an e-mail to poll@election.com with the subject 'I vote for X'. I'm thinking it would have to be more like an authorized person with the ability to do something like pgp sign the ballot and encrypt it. You would probably have more options for securing the ballot sent by e-mail than you would the fax-in one though.
I've worked in tech support too, and I have very rarely met anyone as incompetent as the people who currently do Dell's tech support. Regardless of the native language the tech speaks, they all seem to be morons.
We had one Dell tech onsite who damn near took out our entire production database when performing an emergency upgrade because he 'forgot' where he unplugged some cables from.
Of course that seemed minor after the fact.. We found out the Dell rep we were dealing with had sent the onsite tech out to install incompatible parts in our Dell server.. Because of this the entire process had to be repeated - during business hours.
We've had plenty of dealings with their offshored phone support too. If you have to call them you had better plan to put a day aside before hand, because it will take you that long to 1) get through and 2) get your point across. After that you get to wait for 3 months for them to never e-mail you back or contact you with a solution. Do not EVER let them off the phone without solving your problem first.
My favorite call to date was when they told us the Dell laptop we purchased with Windows XP, complete with the little 'Built for Windows XP' sticker affixed to it, was 'not compatible with Windows XP'.
I'm sure there are other companies out there with horrible technical support too.. Dell tops my list, though. Watchguard and ATI are tied for second.. Watchguard not so much for their technical support (those guys seem dedicated to helping) as their shitty ass products.
It seems that phrase has little meaning to anyone involved in law enforcement anymore. Does it really matter if you are innocent when you have already been webcast/broadcast on television as 'arrested for the crime of ______'? The media will print the story of the arrest in the headlines or on the front page and the part where you are found innocent in subscript on page 96.
According to this link God Bless America is copyrighted until the year 2033.
The story says the royalties go to the composer's (Irving Berlin) favorite charities, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.
ASCAP still actively collects royalties for the song, as can be witnessed here in a Wall Street Journal article where they threaten to sue none other than... The Boy Scouts, and Girl Scouts.
Perhaps ASCAP is going to take another run at making those bastard criminals, the Scouts, pay - right after they're done with the dentists and those damned homeless buskers.
God Bless America, indeed.. Who are we kidding here though? Lets just be honest and say it's copyrighted until the end of America as we know it.
... does this as well. They just spray paint the outer shell, tack $2000 onto the SRP and viola - a high performance laptop is born!
Of course on the other hand, I would rather deal with Voodoo or Alienware support over the OEM manufacturer of those laptops any day.
Not everyone has computer literate friends to help them out of the porno-pop-up-swamp. Just last week I was tech supporting a lady over the phone with a similar problem, she had no idea where they came from, and may have even thought that it was normal to have all this crap coming at her (no pun intended) on the internet. It was completely beyond my job to help her out with that, but I couldn't stand doing what I was trying to help her do with all that shit popping up.
I think it's time the authorities start acting on these types of programs for what they are. I mean, altering browser security settings, adding trusted zones, installing new versions of themselves and other programs without the consent of the user - sounds an awful lot like a virus to me.
Where's the $250,000 for the author of CoolWebSearch, Bill?? I'd gladly track them down.. I could use the money to buy a machine to run Longhorn on!
I'm in Canada as well. I recently moved across the country and stayed with a friend who had digital cable, for about 3 weeks - TechTV was the only channel I found myself watching on a regular basis. I watched the extreme sports channel a few times, but got sick of them trying to sell me their digital cable channel while I was watching... their digital cable channel.
TechTV was the only reason I would even consider getting digital cable, or a television for that matter.
Actually, there is a benefit for them. Regardless of whether people are running legitimate copies of windows or pirated copies of windows, the more machines infected with this virus the more it increases the perception that Microsoft OSes are prone to this kind of behaviour.
As a side note, it's relatively simple to get around the problem of having a CD key that has been blacklisted. Not that I would ever do such a thing.
I can buy a CD for $13 CDN at future shop. Unless a CD has less than 10 songs on it, at $.99 USD/song it's already more expensive for me to buy music online than to buy an actual CD. I download the music I may be interested in buying, and if I want to buy the CD I wait until I see it for a reasonable price and purchase it. There are some songs that I am interested in purchasing but I have yet to see any music service offer CD quality songs at a decent price.
I personally think it would be a better world if the recording industry as it is today would shrivel up and die. But thats just me.
I would imagine similar tools exist, probably even automated ones, for scanning for such errors in C source code.
This is the same company that releases one of the most popular C/C++ compilers for Windows - if they themselves cannot be trusted to avoid obvious pitfalls of the language or bad coding practices, then what the fuck CAN they be trusted with? Trustworthy
computing indeed.
It's easy to SAY that early explorers went to these places intending to 'discover' them and come back, now hundreds of years after the fact.. If you think about travel with the absence of any kind of modern tracking technology and consider the fact that many of the places being explored were probably not even mapped (hence, exploration) - then it becomes a different matter entirely.
We have more of an advantage in the current day than there ever was in the past.. We have mapped the surfaces of entire planets without even setting foot (human, anyways) on them. If anything in this age, a trip to Mars is half the gamble that a trip across the ocean would have been in the early days of the exploration of this planet.
Just because a trip 'back' is not planned for does not mean that death or failure is inevitable, it means that those who make the trip - have plans on settling at the destination.
Somehow you hoped that people in such a fucked up society that leaves little girls in a burning school as they were not dressed correctly, were different.
Yes, because surely something so heinously stupid would never happen in the
United States of America.
It's not a gene, it's little green men on pieces of little green paper... and some guys in funny hats and robes all vying for your 'faith', which equates to THEIR power. The Saudi's are certainly not the first to do somethingdumb in the name of 'religious beliefs', though.
To decide that since we aren't quite ready to send someone to Mars and then bring them back home we will instead just do what we can at the moment and send someone to die on Mars is idiotic in the extreme.
I may be wrong about this, but isn't that the same way the majority of the planet we currently inhabit was 'discovered'?
There have been plenty of places man has gone that many probably felt they 'weren't ready for', but we went anyways.. And we'll go again in the future. I for one would sign up in an instant, given the chance.. because what -I- think is 'pure, uncut stupidity' is seeing who can hoard the most money before they croak as we suck the life out of this planet.
Maybe offtopic, but.. Driving home in a cab one night we passed a guy who wiped out on his bike, ambulance was just arriving - his left ankle was up beside his ear.. leg was still attached to the body though. No blood that I recall, but man did he look like he was in pain. I've had a pretty strong phobia of motorbikes since then, I think.. But I'm sure that will all change once MS releases their first crotch rocket OS.. BSOD at 100 km/h, bike stops dead - rider keeps going.. Weeee. Can't wait.
The problem is that the recording/music/movie/whatever industries will NEVER be satisfied with what they get from us (the consumers). They will always want MORE money.
With the 'blank media' levy for example they were trying to expand it to include hard disk drives, flash memory, and personal music devices. So if that levy and this proposed levy on ISPs should both happen to go through, you are taxed to buy the blank media, taxed to download the song, taxed to buy a hdd to write it to, taxed to buy a burner to write it to a cd (seperate tax on the media and the burner), then taxed again to play it on your MP3 Player/CD Player. On top of that the same industries are going out of their way to ensure that you CANNOT copy (Copy Control/Copy Protection/SACD/DVD-Audio/DRM) your legitimately purchased music CD to the devices you were taxed on.
I also have to pay those taxes regardless of whether I downloaded the song, or bought the CD. So whats the incentive for me (or any other Canadian) to ever purchase music again? There is none... The industries involved lose more money, and... lobby for MORE levies and taxes.
I don't see how that solves the problem, or makes it go away - but I will concede that it must be 'Very Canadian', if it has to do with paying more taxes.
Were the great classical composers driven by their own greed? No!
And what exactly do you think DID drive these 'great classical composers'? The goodness of their collective hearts? Give me a break.. They made money, had their fame and fortune - just as todays musicians do/don't.
Music can be profitable through advertising during its distribution, but only if it becomes popular.
What a wonderful plan.. Seems someone already thought of it though, it's called RADIO.. And most everyone I know is sick to fucking death of it.
Are you an artist? Do you not like this idea? Too damn bad. More and more people agree with me every day. People think music should be legally free and it shall be one day.
Music IS and always HAS been free. You're free to make your OWN music in whatever fashion you want. You can also then distribute it however you wish, to friends, family.. That doesn't seem to be what you want, though. What you want is for OTHER people's music to be free. You want what others have come up with, free of charge - but I bet in the meantime YOUR job continues to make you money, and put food on your table. What happens when someday someone wants what YOUR job provides, for free?
I wouldn't ever buy hardware from MS. Last hardware product I bought from them they got bored of after Win98 and never supported it on another one of their own OSes. MS cordless phone system. More like MS useless paperweight now.
It has always been my understanding that it is in the best interests of MandrakeSoft to have this software reach as many people as possible, regardless of whether they are 'club' members or not. The more people who use it and like it, the more people who are likely to support the company.
You should maybe keep in mind that just because some people do not want to join a 'club' to be the 'leet kid on the block who has Mandrake two weeks earlier than everyone else, does not mean they are not going to make a donation of some sort after they try it out and like it.
Also keep in mind that the only reason MandrakeSoft exists is because some people somewhere along the way decided to graciously release their software/code under the GPL.
GPL Snippets Follow:
"Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software..."
"We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy,
distribute and/or modify the software."
So if you feel ripped off because other people are able to download for free what you have paid to download, perhaps you should think a bit harder about why you are giving your money to Mandrake - is it to support the company, or is it to be 'leet and impress all the linux chix?
3) Everything imaginable, just, plain, works.
I'll elaborate on point #3. Devices, apps, games etc. You can walk in to any Staples or Best Buy and pick up any piece of software or any printer, digital camera, mp3 player etc. bring it home, plug it in, insert the cd-rom and presto! it just works.
And here I did 3 years of tech support calls for NOTHING, I could have just told them - it just, plain, works!
I'm in Canada and we have a sort of 'do not call' list.. It really doesn't do shit, since charities and non-profit organizations are exempted. I get more calls from them then I ever did from any other telemarketers. I think it's unfortunate that I have to tell all the burn victims and kids with cerebral palsy to fuck off, but so long as they keep calling me at home (multiple times a day) they ain't getting anything more than a whole lot of verbal abuse from me. I would have to agree that it is quite stress relieving though, and the number of calls actually seem to be decreasing.
>>1. Movies are rather difficult to download. Relatively few people have the bandwith.
Obviously you have never experienced usenet. The beauty of it though, is that it's mirrored by MANY ISP's to some capacity. This means downloading at speeds of 200-600k / second for me. And while using a newsreader can be a more than daunting task for the average joe, many usenet providers on the web are providing web interfaces now. EasyNews.com has a particularly interesting web interface for their service in which you can search about 30 days worth posts in some 50,000+ newsgroups.. The end result is, I could have pretty much any recent movie I want at least started downloading within 2 minutes.. and probably finished within a couple of hours. EasyNews is on several backbones, and is capable of dynamic routing through them. When used in conjunction with a relatively inexpensive (shared it is cheaper than dial-up) net connection through the cable company, it's more than enough bandwidth.
>>2. Movies make most of their money from the theaters. P2P is not a threat to that.
P2P may not be a threat to that.. but I think thats rather questionable. Piracy, though - most certainly IS a threat to that. People generally feel the same way about the price of admission to a movie as they do about the price of a music cd. It's out of proportion to the perceived value of the product, and therefore - some people are going to download the product rather than pay what they feel is an unfair price. As the price of the product continues to increase (re: movies) or the perceived value continues to drop (re: Gigli), the gap between the two increases - and the number of people willing to download the product rather than buy it will also increase accordingly.
I think the RIAA and the MPAA both have plenty to worry about. So do all the big television studios. Does anyone else remember reading about how we were going to have 'on-demand' television in the future? It occured to me the other day as I was downloading a couple of television shows to watch, sans commercials - that that particular vision is now here. The RIAA, MPAA, and television studios are all eating the dust of the underground internet crowd. It's the underground that are providing what the people want at this point in time, as major media outfits are still tapping their feet impatiently waiting for DRM solutions. The people don't want DRM, or any other sort of restriction mechanism. As long as these three major groups continue to fail to provide what people want, and the loosely knit underground group continues to deliver - this piracy problem will continue to grow.
>>There is no doubt they are shaking in their boots. However there are two main reasons why they can afford to wait a bit:
Every second they wait, the studios, labels, and networks continue to nullify their importance in the future scheme of things. I personally think they just can't get their heads around the idea that progress does not always equal greater profit. That and they can't seem to bring themselves to give up any sort of control of the objects they wish to sell. iTunes has been a hit. Pressplay/MusicNet have not. One doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out why.
Hmm, I could have swore I saw Phantom Menace opening night on an IMAX screen.. and the first LOTR. I personally prefer the norm 35mm, as I found I couldn't fit the entire IMAX screen into my field of vision, making me look around all the time focusing on other parts of the screen where the action is taking place. Mind you, coulda been something I smoked too..
Slashdot Mirror
You can have a copy of my car for free, just let me fetch my matter replicator..
I don't know how absentee ballots work in the US, but in Canada when you request an absentee ballot or are voting by special means you have to provide identification in order to receive your ballot - signatures are not checked after the fact but before you receive the ballot. You also have to sign the envelope the ballot is sealed in. I would imagine a fax ballot (apparently not done in Canada) would be similar, but I could be wrong.
This could be done securely via e-mail as well, but we're not talking about someone sending an e-mail to poll@election.com with the subject 'I vote for X'. I'm thinking it would have to be more like an authorized person with the ability to do something like pgp sign the ballot and encrypt it. You would probably have more options for securing the ballot sent by e-mail than you would the fax-in one though.
I've worked in tech support too, and I have very rarely met anyone as incompetent as the people who currently do Dell's tech support. Regardless of the native language the tech speaks, they all seem to be morons.
We had one Dell tech onsite who damn near took out our entire production database when performing an emergency upgrade because he 'forgot' where he unplugged some cables from.
Of course that seemed minor after the fact.. We found out the Dell rep we were dealing with had sent the onsite tech out to install incompatible parts in our Dell server.. Because of this the entire process had to be repeated - during business hours.
We've had plenty of dealings with their offshored phone support too. If you have to call them you had better plan to put a day aside before hand, because it will take you that long to 1) get through and 2) get your point across. After that you get to wait for 3 months for them to never e-mail you back or contact you with a solution. Do not EVER let them off the phone without solving your problem first.
My favorite call to date was when they told us the Dell laptop we purchased with Windows XP, complete with the little 'Built for Windows XP' sticker affixed to it, was 'not compatible with Windows XP'.
I'm sure there are other companies out there with horrible technical support too.. Dell tops my list, though. Watchguard and ATI are tied for second.. Watchguard not so much for their technical support (those guys seem dedicated to helping) as their shitty ass products.
It seems that phrase has little meaning to anyone involved in law enforcement anymore. Does it really matter if you are innocent when you have already been webcast/broadcast on television as 'arrested for the crime of ______'? The media will print the story of the arrest in the headlines or on the front page and the part where you are found innocent in subscript on page 96.
... was nice enough to post this on her website:
She can be reached via e-mail at parry@aftab.com and for time sensitive issues or for media on a deadline, at 201-463-8663 (her U.S. cell phone).
So give her a call.. Tell her what you think!
According to this link God Bless America is copyrighted until the year 2033.
... The Boy Scouts, and Girl Scouts.
The story says the royalties go to the composer's (Irving Berlin) favorite charities, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.
ASCAP still actively collects royalties for the song, as can be witnessed here in a Wall Street Journal article where they threaten to sue none other than
Perhaps ASCAP is going to take another run at making those bastard criminals, the Scouts, pay - right after they're done with the dentists and those damned homeless buskers.
God Bless America, indeed.. Who are we kidding here though? Lets just be honest and say it's copyrighted until the end of America as we know it.
... does this as well. They just spray paint the outer shell, tack $2000 onto the SRP and viola - a high performance laptop is born! Of course on the other hand, I would rather deal with Voodoo or Alienware support over the OEM manufacturer of those laptops any day.
Not everyone has computer literate friends to help them out of the porno-pop-up-swamp. Just last week I was tech supporting a lady over the phone with a similar problem, she had no idea where they came from, and may have even thought that it was normal to have all this crap coming at her (no pun intended) on the internet. It was completely beyond my job to help her out with that, but I couldn't stand doing what I was trying to help her do with all that shit popping up.
I think it's time the authorities start acting on these types of programs for what they are. I mean, altering browser security settings, adding trusted zones, installing new versions of themselves and other programs without the consent of the user - sounds an awful lot like a virus to me.
Where's the $250,000 for the author of CoolWebSearch, Bill?? I'd gladly track them down.. I could use the money to buy a machine to run Longhorn on!
I'm in Canada as well. I recently moved across the country and stayed with a friend who had digital cable, for about 3 weeks - TechTV was the only channel I found myself watching on a regular basis. I watched the extreme sports channel a few times, but got sick of them trying to sell me their digital cable channel while I was watching... their digital cable channel.
TechTV was the only reason I would even consider getting digital cable, or a television for that matter.
Actually, there is a benefit for them. Regardless of whether people are running legitimate copies of windows or pirated copies of windows, the more machines infected with this virus the more it increases the perception that Microsoft OSes are prone to this kind of behaviour.
As a side note, it's relatively simple to get around the problem of having a CD key that has been blacklisted. Not that I would ever do such a thing.
I can buy a CD for $13 CDN at future shop. Unless a CD has less than 10 songs on it, at $.99 USD/song it's already more expensive for me to buy music online than to buy an actual CD. I download the music I may be interested in buying, and if I want to buy the CD I wait until I see it for a reasonable price and purchase it. There are some songs that I am interested in purchasing but I have yet to see any music service offer CD quality songs at a decent price.
I personally think it would be a better world if the recording industry as it is today would shrivel up and die. But thats just me.
Here's your brick.
I would imagine similar tools exist, probably even automated ones, for scanning for such errors in C source code.
This is the same company that releases one of the most popular C/C++ compilers for Windows - if they themselves cannot be trusted to avoid obvious pitfalls of the language or bad coding practices, then what the fuck CAN they be trusted with? Trustworthy computing indeed.
It's easy to SAY that early explorers went to these places intending to 'discover' them and come back, now hundreds of years after the fact.. If you think about travel with the absence of any kind of modern tracking technology and consider the fact that many of the places being explored were probably not even mapped (hence, exploration) - then it becomes a different matter entirely.
We have more of an advantage in the current day than there ever was in the past.. We have mapped the surfaces of entire planets without even setting foot (human, anyways) on them. If anything in this age, a trip to Mars is half the gamble that a trip across the ocean would have been in the early days of the exploration of this planet.
Just because a trip 'back' is not planned for does not mean that death or failure is inevitable, it means that those who make the trip - have plans on settling at the destination.
Somehow you hoped that people in such a fucked up society that leaves little girls in a burning school as they were not dressed correctly, were different.
Yes, because surely something so heinously stupid would never happen in the United States of America.
It's not a gene, it's little green men on pieces of little green paper... and some guys in funny hats and robes all vying for your 'faith', which equates to THEIR power. The Saudi's are certainly not the first to do something dumb in the name of 'religious beliefs', though.
To decide that since we aren't quite ready to send someone to Mars and then bring them back home we will instead just do what we can at the moment and send someone to die on Mars is idiotic in the extreme.
I may be wrong about this, but isn't that the same way the majority of the planet we currently inhabit was 'discovered'?
There have been plenty of places man has gone that many probably felt they 'weren't ready for', but we went anyways.. And we'll go again in the future. I for one would sign up in an instant, given the chance.. because what -I- think is 'pure, uncut stupidity' is seeing who can hoard the most money before they croak as we suck the life out of this planet.
But thats just me..
Maybe offtopic, but.. Driving home in a cab one night we passed a guy who wiped out on his bike, ambulance was just arriving - his left ankle was up beside his ear.. leg was still attached to the body though. No blood that I recall, but man did he look like he was in pain. I've had a pretty strong phobia of motorbikes since then, I think.. But I'm sure that will all change once MS releases their first crotch rocket OS.. BSOD at 100 km/h, bike stops dead - rider keeps going.. Weeee. Can't wait.
The problem is that the recording/music/movie/whatever industries will NEVER be satisfied with what they get from us (the consumers). They will always want MORE money.
With the 'blank media' levy for example they were trying to expand it to include hard disk drives, flash memory, and personal music devices. So if that levy and this proposed levy on ISPs should both happen to go through, you are taxed to buy the blank media, taxed to download the song, taxed to buy a hdd to write it to, taxed to buy a burner to write it to a cd (seperate tax on the media and the burner), then taxed again to play it on your MP3 Player/CD Player. On top of that the same industries are going out of their way to ensure that you CANNOT copy (Copy Control/Copy Protection/SACD/DVD-Audio/DRM) your legitimately purchased music CD to the devices you were taxed on.
I also have to pay those taxes regardless of whether I downloaded the song, or bought the CD. So whats the incentive for me (or any other Canadian) to ever purchase music again? There is none... The industries involved lose more money, and... lobby for MORE levies and taxes.
I don't see how that solves the problem, or makes it go away - but I will concede that it must be 'Very Canadian', if it has to do with paying more taxes.
Were the great classical composers driven by their own greed? No!
And what exactly do you think DID drive these 'great classical composers'? The goodness of their collective hearts? Give me a break.. They made money, had their fame and fortune - just as todays musicians do/don't.
Music can be profitable through advertising during its distribution, but only if it becomes popular.
What a wonderful plan.. Seems someone already thought of it though, it's called RADIO.. And most everyone I know is sick to fucking death of it.
Are you an artist? Do you not like this idea? Too damn bad. More and more people agree with me every day. People think music should be legally free and it shall be one day.
Music IS and always HAS been free. You're free to make your OWN music in whatever fashion you want. You can also then distribute it however you wish, to friends, family.. That doesn't seem to be what you want, though. What you want is for OTHER people's music to be free. You want what others have come up with, free of charge - but I bet in the meantime YOUR job continues to make you money, and put food on your table. What happens when someday someone wants what YOUR job provides, for free?
I wouldn't ever buy hardware from MS. Last hardware product I bought from them they got bored of after Win98 and never supported it on another one of their own OSes. MS cordless phone system. More like MS useless paperweight now.
It has always been my understanding that it is in the best interests of MandrakeSoft to have this software reach as many people as possible, regardless of whether they are 'club' members or not. The more people who use it and like it, the more people who are likely to support the company.
You should maybe keep in mind that just because some people do not want to join a 'club' to be the 'leet kid on the block who has Mandrake two weeks earlier than everyone else, does not mean they are not going to make a donation of some sort after they try it out and like it.
Also keep in mind that the only reason MandrakeSoft exists is because some people somewhere along the way decided to graciously release their software/code under the GPL.
GPL Snippets Follow:
"Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software..."
"We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software."
So if you feel ripped off because other people are able to download for free what you have paid to download, perhaps you should think a bit harder about why you are giving your money to Mandrake - is it to support the company, or is it to be 'leet and impress all the linux chix?
3) Everything imaginable, just, plain, works. I'll elaborate on point #3. Devices, apps, games etc. You can walk in to any Staples or Best Buy and pick up any piece of software or any printer, digital camera, mp3 player etc. bring it home, plug it in, insert the cd-rom and presto! it just works.
And here I did 3 years of tech support calls for NOTHING, I could have just told them - it just, plain, works!
I'm in Canada and we have a sort of 'do not call' list.. It really doesn't do shit, since charities and non-profit organizations are exempted. I get more calls from them then I ever did from any other telemarketers. I think it's unfortunate that I have to tell all the burn victims and kids with cerebral palsy to fuck off, but so long as they keep calling me at home (multiple times a day) they ain't getting anything more than a whole lot of verbal abuse from me. I would have to agree that it is quite stress relieving though, and the number of calls actually seem to be decreasing.
>>1. Movies are rather difficult to download. Relatively few people have the bandwith.
Obviously you have never experienced usenet. The beauty of it though, is that it's mirrored by MANY ISP's to some capacity. This means downloading at speeds of 200-600k / second for me. And while using a newsreader can be a more than daunting task for the average joe, many usenet providers on the web are providing web interfaces now. EasyNews.com has a particularly interesting web interface for their service in which you can search about 30 days worth posts in some 50,000+ newsgroups.. The end result is, I could have pretty much any recent movie I want at least started downloading within 2 minutes.. and probably finished within a couple of hours. EasyNews is on several backbones, and is capable of dynamic routing through them. When used in conjunction with a relatively inexpensive (shared it is cheaper than dial-up) net connection through the cable company, it's more than enough bandwidth.
>>2. Movies make most of their money from the theaters. P2P is not a threat to that.
P2P may not be a threat to that.. but I think thats rather questionable. Piracy, though - most certainly IS a threat to that. People generally feel the same way about the price of admission to a movie as they do about the price of a music cd. It's out of proportion to the perceived value of the product, and therefore - some people are going to download the product rather than pay what they feel is an unfair price. As the price of the product continues to increase (re: movies) or the perceived value continues to drop (re: Gigli), the gap between the two increases - and the number of people willing to download the product rather than buy it will also increase accordingly.
I think the RIAA and the MPAA both have plenty to worry about. So do all the big television studios. Does anyone else remember reading about how we were going to have 'on-demand' television in the future? It occured to me the other day as I was downloading a couple of television shows to watch, sans commercials - that that particular vision is now here. The RIAA, MPAA, and television studios are all eating the dust of the underground internet crowd. It's the underground that are providing what the people want at this point in time, as major media outfits are still tapping their feet impatiently waiting for DRM solutions. The people don't want DRM, or any other sort of restriction mechanism. As long as these three major groups continue to fail to provide what people want, and the loosely knit underground group continues to deliver - this piracy problem will continue to grow.
>>There is no doubt they are shaking in their boots. However there are two main reasons why they can afford to wait a bit:
Every second they wait, the studios, labels, and networks continue to nullify their importance in the future scheme of things. I personally think they just can't get their heads around the idea that progress does not always equal greater profit. That and they can't seem to bring themselves to give up any sort of control of the objects they wish to sell. iTunes has been a hit. Pressplay/MusicNet have not. One doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out why.
Hmm, I could have swore I saw Phantom Menace opening night on an IMAX screen.. and the first LOTR. I personally prefer the norm 35mm, as I found I couldn't fit the entire IMAX screen into my field of vision, making me look around all the time focusing on other parts of the screen where the action is taking place. Mind you, coulda been something I smoked too..
whats the one fortune 500 company that previously licensed some of their 'technology' lately?