- anticompetitive business practices (price fixing, etc) that have given potential customers a sour attitude towards music labels
There is some truth in that, but come on. People really stopped buying music because of that?
I did. I spent many thousands of dollars on music in the 80s and 90s. The music industry went from selling $7.99 LPs that cost $1.50 to make, to selling CDs that cost less than 50 cents to make - yet they charged $15. WHY?
Well one exec at the time said the reason why was because "they sound better so its worth it," which was akin to saying "fuck you, we do because we can."
But the REAL reason was because they were illegally price fixing. They were NOT competing companies, they were an illegal cartel, violating anti-trust.
They were found GUILTY of this, and yet the fine for the entire music cartel was less than what they sue one filesharer for.
THAT'S why I swore I'd never give them another damned cent of mine - and I haven't. They were found GUILTY of being essentially organized crime, of ripping off their own customers to the tune of billions of dollars... they got a slap on the wrist and then complain that their CUSTOMERS are the crooks.
And that's after notoriously ripping off most of the musicians whose product they are peddling in the first place.
There MUST be something in law that a confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement cannot compel you to hide crimes or evidence of it... otherwise the mafia is in good shape.
That's strange, I've installed Linux on SEVERAL PCs (mostly laptops) with the live CD. I'm essentially a total Linux newbie, and it just installed with no issues whatsoever.
Handed the CD to my 74 year old dad who had never set eyes on Linux, has never used any operating system on a PC except Windows, and he installed Ubuntu on his new PC without incident and is now a Linux convert.
Actually since copyright law is based on the supposition that anything that becomes public knowledge automatically and naturally becomes public domain (this USED to be common sense), copyright itself DOES take something away from someone who already had it, since it takes away something that was created from the moment the creation was publicized.
Copyright law was merely a TEMPORARY permission for copyright holder to "own" what would normally NOT BE THEIRS, but what would naturally belong to everyone... and they get this temporary artificial property solely in exchange for the incentive to create and release MORE PUBLIC property.
THAT was the basis of copyright law, that naturally any public information is just that - public.
It wasn't until 1979 that that was changed, that they turned common sense, centuries of law, and the entire history of the development of human culture on its head, reversed position and said that from the moment of creation and dissemination into the public, ONE person can own what's in other people's heads.
It would be nice if they nickel and dimed us. Instead they dollar and five-dollar us.
I just got a new phone with a new contract. It has mobile web, and they charge $2.50 per mb. According to their site they estimate that 2mb will be somewhere between 20-50 mobile web pages.
So I go to test this feature. I log onto the mobile web, go to hotmail but don't load any messages. One screen. (Maybe 2-3 if you give them the benefit of the doubt.)
Then I go to the gmail mobile web site, load ONE email, then disconnect.
Checked my bill online last night, that cost me $6.50. Load hotmail but dont read messages, load gmail and read one message - $6.50.
Sorry to repeat myself here but... the deal was that in getting copyright, they are providing society, the public domain, with perpetual access. So the official RIAA position is they are rejecting the purpose of and requirements of copyright law.
OK with me - the RIAA rejects their end of the bargain, I reject my end of it.
Since they are using copyright to sell works which will stop working, doesn't that break copyright?
Copyright was intended to as an incentive to create works which would eventually end up as public domain - it was intended to increase public domain. If you break that, don't you invalidate your copyright?
Some people complain about "piracy" as being theft, but given the original intent of copyright, isn't the entire history of the extensions of copyright AND DRM and the DMCA actually theft from the public? After all, if copyright on existing works is extended, you're taking away from the public what was supposed to become theirs under the original deal when the work was created - and you're NOT increasing the incentive for the corpse of Ub Iwerks to create Mickey Mouse for Walt Disney 70 years previously when you extend the copyright...
So isn't it simply a land grab? Taking something away from others simply because you have the greed and the power to do so?
Can't the same be said for DRM? Taking the benefits of the copyright/public domain bargain while not holding up your end of the bargain?
Exactly! And now that they're cutting manufacturing and finally realizing the huge economic benefit of not having to produce and ship physical product, they're gonna drastically lower the price of downloads to reflect the drastically lower real cost of them! We all win!
This is what pisses me off most about Apple. They manage to convince people that would normally have anti-compulsive-consumption, anti-corporate sympathies and pro-individualism sympathies, to line up in droves to buy every latest overpriced corporate-produced gadget they make, which they then proudly and religiously display en masse as proof of their individualism and anti-compulsive-consumption bona fides.
You think Bill Gates is evil? Well if he's evil, he's a bumbling low-level demon wannabe and Steve Jobs is the fucking devil himself.
Fisher-Price once sold a toy called the Crash Zone. One set had a Ford car in it, and because of a screw-up, F-P didn't have the rights. So they had to destroy all of the toys in the warehouse... they were taken under guard to the crusher. (I rescued some!!!)
Anyway - it was a poor seller, but if there WERE some in people's homes, would F-P had had the right to come into people's houses and confiscate the product they bought?
Of COURSE not. The buyers did nothing wrong, they purchased the item in good faith, and I don't see why its not actually ILLEGAL to take it away from them (this is not stolen goods we're talking about, merely a corporate contractual mixup.)
Amazon should have simply paid the royalties for the copies sold.
...that the ultimate narcissist application (everyone needs to know exactly where I am every second!)......doesn't work on the ultimate narcissists cell phone.
My PC is 5 years old. Iv've never reinstalled the system. I never worry about anti-virus updates, the antivirus takes care of that itself... and without saying too much, I'm about as exposed to viruses as a PC can get.
My PC is still faster than most people's after 5 years, I do HD video editing on it, etc.
I'm not saying Windows doesn't suck in many ways, but part of the way Apple makes sure "it just works" is by limiting the way you can do things. If you like doing things the way Apple wants you to do them, you're fine. My problem is I keep wanting to do things that Apple doesn't want me to, or in ways that Apple doesn't want me to.
That having been said, if Win 7 is anything like Vista, I'll probably try to move to Linux permanently when I can't run XP anymore.
And if my music writing ever gets to the point where I'm doing some serious home recording, I'd probably look into getting a Mac.
One time I was looking at sunspots through my small scope, and a flaming meteor just happened to pass within the view as I was watching... it was so cool.
You said fisher price came up with a way of solving it fairly rapidly. Would FP's response have been different if the product carried the inherent risk and they couldn't fix it, or if the product were their bread and butter?
Yes. The Car Seat was their bread and butter, and there were several recalls on it - some of which required virtually replacing the entire thing (the functional part of it, anyway)
And then there was the stroller - great selling product, then recalled - every last one of them refunded... and then more. Since people dragged the ones that were supposed to be destroyed oput of the trash and then claimed a refund, FP ended up refunding not just for every one of that stroller (their only model at the time) ever made, they literally refunded for about 25% MORE stroller than they had ever made.
That was all before Mattel, however, and the particular situation where I nearly had to become a whistleblower involved the new management's reluctance to deal with another car seat issue, the most serious one until that time.
How did they try to shrug it off? Interestingly the same was as some apple fanbois are here - by blaming it on the users.
Slashdot Mirror
...it's a cesspool of crap.
the other kinds are ok.
I should have made this clearer by saying it SI "for all intents and purposes." The other, "intensive," is an eggcorn...
it IS... "for all intensive purposes" is an eggcorn. Google eggcorn.
I dunno if it's the same. "for all intensive purposes" is clearly an eggcorn. "All of a sudden" may just be a simple malaprop.
- anticompetitive business practices (price fixing, etc) that have given potential customers a sour attitude towards music labels
There is some truth in that, but come on. People really stopped buying music because of that?
I did. I spent many thousands of dollars on music in the 80s and 90s. The music industry went from selling $7.99 LPs that cost $1.50 to make, to selling CDs that cost less than 50 cents to make - yet they charged $15. WHY?
Well one exec at the time said the reason why was because "they sound better so its worth it," which was akin to saying "fuck you, we do because we can."
But the REAL reason was because they were illegally price fixing. They were NOT competing companies, they were an illegal cartel, violating anti-trust.
They were found GUILTY of this, and yet the fine for the entire music cartel was less than what they sue one filesharer for.
THAT'S why I swore I'd never give them another damned cent of mine - and I haven't. They were found GUILTY of being essentially organized crime, of ripping off their own customers to the tune of billions of dollars... they got a slap on the wrist and then complain that their CUSTOMERS are the crooks.
And that's after notoriously ripping off most of the musicians whose product they are peddling in the first place.
There MUST be something in law that a confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement cannot compel you to hide crimes or evidence of it... otherwise the mafia is in good shape.
I've just always wondered just where it is people are getting all this free beer.
That's strange, I've installed Linux on SEVERAL PCs (mostly laptops) with the live CD. I'm essentially a total Linux newbie, and it just installed with no issues whatsoever.
Handed the CD to my 74 year old dad who had never set eyes on Linux, has never used any operating system on a PC except Windows, and he installed Ubuntu on his new PC without incident and is now a Linux convert.
Actually since copyright law is based on the supposition that anything that becomes public knowledge automatically and naturally becomes public domain (this USED to be common sense), copyright itself DOES take something away from someone who already had it, since it takes away something that was created from the moment the creation was publicized.
Copyright law was merely a TEMPORARY permission for copyright holder to "own" what would normally NOT BE THEIRS, but what would naturally belong to everyone... and they get this temporary artificial property solely in exchange for the incentive to create and release MORE PUBLIC property.
THAT was the basis of copyright law, that naturally any public information is just that - public.
It wasn't until 1979 that that was changed, that they turned common sense, centuries of law, and the entire history of the development of human culture on its head, reversed position and said that from the moment of creation and dissemination into the public, ONE person can own what's in other people's heads.
It would be nice if they nickel and dimed us. Instead they dollar and five-dollar us.
I just got a new phone with a new contract. It has mobile web, and they charge $2.50 per mb. According to their site they estimate that 2mb will be somewhere between 20-50 mobile web pages.
So I go to test this feature. I log onto the mobile web, go to hotmail but don't load any messages. One screen. (Maybe 2-3 if you give them the benefit of the doubt.)
Then I go to the gmail mobile web site, load ONE email, then disconnect.
Checked my bill online last night, that cost me $6.50. Load hotmail but dont read messages, load gmail and read one message - $6.50.
huh? Please explain this.
But that's not how I put it, that's how the framers of the constitution put it!
Sorry to repeat myself here but... the deal was that in getting copyright, they are providing society, the public domain, with perpetual access. So the official RIAA position is they are rejecting the purpose of and requirements of copyright law.
OK with me - the RIAA rejects their end of the bargain, I reject my end of it.
Since they are using copyright to sell works which will stop working, doesn't that break copyright?
Copyright was intended to as an incentive to create works which would eventually end up as public domain - it was intended to increase public domain. If you break that, don't you invalidate your copyright?
Some people complain about "piracy" as being theft, but given the original intent of copyright, isn't the entire history of the extensions of copyright AND DRM and the DMCA actually theft from the public? After all, if copyright on existing works is extended, you're taking away from the public what was supposed to become theirs under the original deal when the work was created - and you're NOT increasing the incentive for the corpse of Ub Iwerks to create Mickey Mouse for Walt Disney 70 years previously when you extend the copyright...
So isn't it simply a land grab? Taking something away from others simply because you have the greed and the power to do so?
Can't the same be said for DRM? Taking the benefits of the copyright/public domain bargain while not holding up your end of the bargain?
And can't the same be said of breaking fair use?
Exactly! And now that they're cutting manufacturing and finally realizing the huge economic benefit of not having to produce and ship physical product, they're gonna drastically lower the price of downloads to reflect the drastically lower real cost of them! We all win!
wait.. what? what do you mean no?
This is what pisses me off most about Apple. They manage to convince people that would normally have anti-compulsive-consumption, anti-corporate sympathies and pro-individualism sympathies, to line up in droves to buy every latest overpriced corporate-produced gadget they make, which they then proudly and religiously display en masse as proof of their individualism and anti-compulsive-consumption bona fides.
You think Bill Gates is evil? Well if he's evil, he's a bumbling low-level demon wannabe and Steve Jobs is the fucking devil himself.
Fisher-Price once sold a toy called the Crash Zone. One set had a Ford car in it, and because of a screw-up, F-P didn't have the rights. So they had to destroy all of the toys in the warehouse... they were taken under guard to the crusher. (I rescued some!!!)
Anyway - it was a poor seller, but if there WERE some in people's homes, would F-P had had the right to come into people's houses and confiscate the product they bought?
Of COURSE not. The buyers did nothing wrong, they purchased the item in good faith, and I don't see why its not actually ILLEGAL to take it away from them (this is not stolen goods we're talking about, merely a corporate contractual mixup.)
Amazon should have simply paid the royalties for the copies sold.
...that the ultimate narcissist application (everyone needs to know exactly where I am every second!)... ...doesn't work on the ultimate narcissists cell phone.
My PC is 5 years old. Iv've never reinstalled the system. I never worry about anti-virus updates, the antivirus takes care of that itself... and without saying too much, I'm about as exposed to viruses as a PC can get.
My PC is still faster than most people's after 5 years, I do HD video editing on it, etc.
I'm not saying Windows doesn't suck in many ways, but part of the way Apple makes sure "it just works" is by limiting the way you can do things. If you like doing things the way Apple wants you to do them, you're fine. My problem is I keep wanting to do things that Apple doesn't want me to, or in ways that Apple doesn't want me to.
That having been said, if Win 7 is anything like Vista, I'll probably try to move to Linux permanently when I can't run XP anymore.
And if my music writing ever gets to the point where I'm doing some serious home recording, I'd probably look into getting a Mac.
The READERS think low of the readers, why should the editors be any different?
So if you're a spy, scan it and then spellcheck?
and I find it with all my mod points intact but I don;t get the reference...
They can't sell reprints unless they are public domain. How many people who published works before 1929 are still alive?
One time I was looking at sunspots through my small scope, and a flaming meteor just happened to pass within the view as I was watching... it was so cool.
You said fisher price came up with a way of solving it fairly rapidly. Would FP's response have been different if the product carried the inherent risk and they couldn't fix it, or if the product were their bread and butter?
Yes. The Car Seat was their bread and butter, and there were several recalls on it - some of which required virtually replacing the entire thing (the functional part of it, anyway)
And then there was the stroller - great selling product, then recalled - every last one of them refunded... and then more. Since people dragged the ones that were supposed to be destroyed oput of the trash and then claimed a refund, FP ended up refunding not just for every one of that stroller (their only model at the time) ever made, they literally refunded for about 25% MORE stroller than they had ever made.
That was all before Mattel, however, and the particular situation where I nearly had to become a whistleblower involved the new management's reluctance to deal with another car seat issue, the most serious one until that time.
How did they try to shrug it off? Interestingly the same was as some apple fanbois are here - by blaming it on the users.