The situation you have now where people are not willing to pay for content is merely a reaction to the greed and short-sighted bloody mindedness of big media.
If they had offered a reasonable paid download service BEFORE napster (when people were still used to paying for content) then not only would they not be suffering from wide spread piracy, but they wouldn't be sharing so much of their profit with Apple.
It was the refusal of these companies to do this that has directly led to the predicament they are in today. The 90's was an exciting new digital media world where consumers were FORCED to pirate to get their fix, and once you go down that road there is no going back.
People often talk about the big media dinosaurs, but if they had just come to the party when they were invited they could still be titans.
Unjustly persecuting your would-be customers does not exactly engender a whole lot of respect either - but it was already too late to put the genie back in the bottle by then.
But if only one nation has space based weapons (US) it would be a huge threat to the national security of every other nation (the world). Sounds like bullying to me.
I know there will be weapons in space one day, but we just don't need them. They won't make ANYBODY safer.
Maybe we should stop paying for Chinese goods? Because obviously some factory boss in China is getting rich off of his exploited workers.
You do realize that the factory boss is exploited too? Thats the problem with Free Trade Zones and the like- the only people who make money out of it are the megacorps. Its not like they pay the manufacturer a fair price and then make a modest profit when selling it on - thats just not how globalization is supposed to work!
I don't have a problem with the creators deciding how abundant or scarce their SALES will be through pricing either:P
Seriously though, AutoCAD is valuable because it is a tool for making expensive products. Its value is in no way reduced by students making copies, just as its value is in no way increased by charging more for it.
AutoCAD is actually a really good example of how software can have the same value regardless piracy. The company has more than enough customers who are happy to pay whatever they ask, and nobody who rips it off was ever going to buy it anyway.
If anything piracy provides the marginal benefit of getting the next batch of draftsman and engineers and what-have-you's hooked on AutoCAD so they insist that it is the only tool they will work with.
There have always been holy wars, but I seem to remember that back in the late 90's the community talked a lot about Linux advocacy and even had a code of conduct
It basically went that abuse and trolling is counter productive, if we want people to start adopting Linux we need to approach them with respect, point out the advantages, and allow them to arrive at it in their own time.
Even on Slashdot, fanboys (who had been using Linux for perhaps 6 weeks) were frequently bitch slapped for being an ass and giving the community a bad name.
I wonder what happened? As the movement has gained momentum this seems to have been left by the wayside.
I've done maintenance work on these antenna's, and the safety warnings are no joke. Worksafe regulations forbid you from hanging in front of the drum unless the powersource has been isolated. A couple of people are killed every year because they didn't follow guidelines and had their internal organs cooked.
Having said that, wifi (radio frequency radiation) has nothing to do with this kind of high power directed microwave radiation and is completely harmless - just don't get them confused.
Well no, not really. The assumption is that people may either be working or slacking off when their computer is on, but if the computer is turned off there is zero chance they are being productive. Which would you rather pay for?
Do you have to draw the line somewhere? Does the government actually have to step in and say, it's all right to put these substances in your body, but not those?
I agree with what you are saying, but just to play the devils advocate I will say that the government SHOULD draw the line when it comes to externalities that negatively affect the community at large.
You should be free to do what ever you like (even if it hurts you) but ONLY as long as you don't harm anyone else.
Like the article says, in case of marijuana the damage done by prohibition is worse than the damage done by the drug, but I don't think that can realistically be claimed about ALL drugs.
Sometimes I hear a piece of news that I never really recover from. They can be little things, but they make me feel older and sadder and forever makes life less worth living.
I am generally optimistic about what we can achieve as a human society, but stories like this...
It makes me want to scream FUCK YOU at somebody very badly, but I feel too sick to figure out who.
This point was not lost on me, but IS missed by many of Apple's paying customers who own iPods
They just want an iPod, not iPod+iTunes. They expect to just copy music to the iPod with a file-browser like Windows Explorer, and then listen to it on the train. Thats it. Like I said, these people would have been better off with a simple Mass Storage Device mp3 player, but they are victims of Apple's rather successful marketing that tells them if you want mobile mp3, you NEED an iPod
I know that this is not how Apple wants people using iPods, and I know some of the reasons why it is not implemented (*cough* DRM *cough*), but perfectly reasonable people want to do this perfectly reasonable thing with a device they paid money for, and for some reason they ask ME why they can't.
I don't own an iPod, but these limitations are artificial so they piss me off. Bring on Amarok and more freedom I say.
Hmm, looking into it some more, it seems that I might wrong as far as the US is concerned. Don't know if its a federal thing or state-by-state though. Seems really backwards in this day and age - Should have been an election issue.;)
Still seems to come down to the definition of "Prostitution" though, and I'm not sure Craigslist ads would cover it.
Prostitution is NOT illegal, not in most western countries anyway.
Street walking is illegal, and brothels are often illegal in many areas, but this is ostensibly a safety issue (for the girls and the community respectively). There are no laws I have ever heard of that prohibit sex for money. It falls under the common "two consenting adults" umbrella.
Advertising for private services is in most cases perfectly legal. It is fully taxable too - though working girls probably don't claim their full taxable income, but thats the same with most trades that work predominantly for cash.
Regulating morality does NOT work.
This hasn't stopped them from trying in the past of course, but in this case common sense prevails.
The year of the linux desktop will never come until "making everything work" for 80% of the population requires precisely zero command line interactions, and precisely zero edits of obscure text files
*yawn* "Year of the linux desktop" is just hyperbole, people use it now and like it. Anyway your out-of-the-ass 80% of users do not require any command line interactions right now (2008).
And that most google searches for help... must also use precisely zero command line interactions
Why? Its the easiest and clearest way to help them. Often there is a GUI method to do exactly the same thing, but explaining how to use it would require writing a small manual. Remember that this is free help from volunteers.
I shudder at the idea of talking someone like my father through it.
I talked my father through a command line fix yesterday - on Windows!
When it comes to supporting clueless users over the phone, I find talking someone through complex gui manipulations is WAY harder than telling someone what to type at the command line. YMMV
With both Microsoft and Apple platforms there are limitations in place that serve the interests of the corporation that developed it, at the expense of the user (you). How is that not "ideas which are pushed down my throat no matter what if I want them or not."?
The only limitations in Ubuntu are either legal or technical in nature.
I don't think of this as a basic feature... essentially you are asking for automated library updates whenever new files are added to the system
I'll agree its not basic. You have to admit that its useful though, why wouldn't you want this feature if you could?
I know the current trend is to abstract away the file system whenever possible, but if you are old fashioned enough to manage your file system manually (most linux users i would guess) its a killer feature.
iTunes lets you sync YOUR ipod only. If you try to sync somebody else's ipod DRM kicks in and wipes the collection. Amarok doesn't care who's iPod you attach, and will happily copy music to and from it with ease. In my book this is a killer feature.
Here is why: I know people who own iPods, but not a computer (it's TRUE!). Their primary music storage is on the music device itself. When they have borrowed a computer with itunes to rip their latest CD - boom! - years of music collection lost. This experience has been enough for several of them to swear off Apple products for life. One frustrated user went as far as to smash his ipod in a fit of rage!
Not being a mac user, there may be a workaround for this that I haven't heard of. But the point is that this is the default (and very destructive) behaviour.
I can't believe nobody else here has noticed this major problem. With the number of people buying iPods, I get called about it a couple of times a month. Now, if you were being critical, you would tell them they had no business buying an iPod without owning a laptop/PC in the first place - Apple never intended for them to use it that way. Instead they should have gotten a mass storage device based mp3 player. But apple does not really explain this limitation (or the difference) anywhere. It would likely cost them sales if they did.
Anyway, once Amarok is available on Mac and Windows, I'll be able to recommend a solution to these poor, misguided iPodders. I've been looking forward to it since KDE 4 was first announced.
I'd be very surprised if any organization would do what you suggested for reasons other than being extremely stingy.
It's fairly common practice, physical security firms often recommend it. For most casual thieves/vandals an empty enclosure is as much as a deterrent as one with a camera. If you are more concerned with preventing crime then punishment after the fact (a very reasonable position - its much cheaper that way) it makes a lot of sense.
Even law enforcement does it. In my city red light camera and fixed speed camera enclosures are often empty. They move the cameras they do have around from time to time to keep drivers guessing, but most drivers will behave themselves if they see the enclosure, empty or no.
eeePC sales were already in the millions and clones were popping up at all the major computer expos before Microsoft noticed that it was a market that they were missing out on. THEN they offered XP for netbooks. Before that time they were trying to push Vista for everything.
I can confirm it only happens when I'm cutting and pasting.
Makes sense that source material may be using a non-standard character. Guess I'll have to manually swap them if I want my post to look right in future. I didn't think of doing that before as they look just fine when I copy them in.
Well, that was pointed out quite nicely in the article, but I suppose nobody read it did they?
Of course Hellgate: Londonâ(TM)s story is a little different to Fury in that the game can still be played offline, but the heart of Hellgate was always the online play and grouping with other players, so mentioning the offline component as a boon is akin to claiming itâ(TM)s okay that your Bugatti Veyron 16.4 got torched because the CD player still works fine
BTW, what is it with/. and the rendering of apostrophes? Is it just me, or Firefox, or what?
Slashdot Mirror
The situation you have now where people are not willing to pay for content is merely a reaction to the greed and short-sighted bloody mindedness of big media.
If they had offered a reasonable paid download service BEFORE napster (when people were still used to paying for content) then not only would they not be suffering from wide spread piracy, but they wouldn't be sharing so much of their profit with Apple.
It was the refusal of these companies to do this that has directly led to the predicament they are in today. The 90's was an exciting new digital media world where consumers were FORCED to pirate to get their fix, and once you go down that road there is no going back.
People often talk about the big media dinosaurs, but if they had just come to the party when they were invited they could still be titans.
Unjustly persecuting your would-be customers does not exactly engender a whole lot of respect either - but it was already too late to put the genie back in the bottle by then.
A reminder that you can defend yourself against attack is not a threat.
Sure it is. Absolutely it is. Even when it's the right thing to do, a threat is a threat.
But if only one nation has space based weapons (US) it would be a huge threat to the national security of every other nation (the world). Sounds like bullying to me.
I know there will be weapons in space one day, but we just don't need them. They won't make ANYBODY safer.
Maybe we should stop paying for Chinese goods? Because obviously some factory boss in China is getting rich off of his exploited workers.
You do realize that the factory boss is exploited too? Thats the problem with Free Trade Zones and the like- the only people who make money out of it are the megacorps. Its not like they pay the manufacturer a fair price and then make a modest profit when selling it on - thats just not how globalization is supposed to work!
I don't have a problem with the creators deciding how abundant or scarce their SALES will be through pricing either :P
Seriously though, AutoCAD is valuable because it is a tool for making expensive products. Its value is in no way reduced by students making copies, just as its value is in no way increased by charging more for it.
AutoCAD is actually a really good example of how software can have the same value regardless piracy. The company has more than enough customers who are happy to pay whatever they ask, and nobody who rips it off was ever going to buy it anyway.
If anything piracy provides the marginal benefit of getting the next batch of draftsman and engineers and what-have-you's hooked on AutoCAD so they insist that it is the only tool they will work with.
There have always been holy wars, but I seem to remember that back in the late 90's the community talked a lot about Linux advocacy and even had a code of conduct
It basically went that abuse and trolling is counter productive, if we want people to start adopting Linux we need to approach them with respect, point out the advantages, and allow them to arrive at it in their own time.
Even on Slashdot, fanboys (who had been using Linux for perhaps 6 weeks) were frequently bitch slapped for being an ass and giving the community a bad name.
I wonder what happened? As the movement has gained momentum this seems to have been left by the wayside.
Woah, GET OF MY LAWN! or what?
I've done maintenance work on these antenna's, and the safety warnings are no joke. Worksafe regulations forbid you from hanging in front of the drum unless the powersource has been isolated. A couple of people are killed every year because they didn't follow guidelines and had their internal organs cooked.
Having said that, wifi (radio frequency radiation) has nothing to do with this kind of high power directed microwave radiation and is completely harmless - just don't get them confused.
Well no, not really. The assumption is that people may either be working or slacking off when their computer is on, but if the computer is turned off there is zero chance they are being productive. Which would you rather pay for?
Do you have to draw the line somewhere? Does the government actually have to step in and say, it's all right to put these substances in your body, but not those?
I agree with what you are saying, but just to play the devils advocate I will say that the government SHOULD draw the line when it comes to externalities that negatively affect the community at large.
You should be free to do what ever you like (even if it hurts you) but ONLY as long as you don't harm anyone else.
Like the article says, in case of marijuana the damage done by prohibition is worse than the damage done by the drug, but I don't think that can realistically be claimed about ALL drugs.
Lets just call it thirty-something. I don't want to give away to much, this is the internet after all.
Sometimes I hear a piece of news that I never really recover from. They can be little things, but they make me feel older and sadder and forever makes life less worth living.
I am generally optimistic about what we can achieve as a human society, but stories like this...
It makes me want to scream FUCK YOU at somebody very badly, but I feel too sick to figure out who.
Shit.
Indeed. If this keeps up we'll need a whole new Stupid Tricks section.
I can see it now -
Useful (Stupid) Things to Say on a Internet Forum!
This point was not lost on me, but IS missed by many of Apple's paying customers who own iPods
They just want an iPod, not iPod+iTunes. They expect to just copy music to the iPod with a file-browser like Windows Explorer, and then listen to it on the train. Thats it. Like I said, these people would have been better off with a simple Mass Storage Device mp3 player, but they are victims of Apple's rather successful marketing that tells them if you want mobile mp3, you NEED an iPod
I know that this is not how Apple wants people using iPods, and I know some of the reasons why it is not implemented (*cough* DRM *cough*), but perfectly reasonable people want to do this perfectly reasonable thing with a device they paid money for, and for some reason they ask ME why they can't.
I don't own an iPod, but these limitations are artificial so they piss me off. Bring on Amarok and more freedom I say.
What you can't do is easily use iTunes to add a single track to a single iPod safely.
Talk about missing basic functionality! It should have been the very first thing implemented!
Hmm, looking into it some more, it seems that I might wrong as far as the US is concerned. Don't know if its a federal thing or state-by-state though. Seems really backwards in this day and age - Should have been an election issue. ;)
Still seems to come down to the definition of "Prostitution" though, and I'm not sure Craigslist ads would cover it.
Prostitution is NOT illegal, not in most western countries anyway.
Street walking is illegal, and brothels are often illegal in many areas, but this is ostensibly a safety issue (for the girls and the community respectively). There are no laws I have ever heard of that prohibit sex for money. It falls under the common "two consenting adults" umbrella.
Advertising for private services is in most cases perfectly legal. It is fully taxable too - though working girls probably don't claim their full taxable income, but thats the same with most trades that work predominantly for cash.
Regulating morality does NOT work.
This hasn't stopped them from trying in the past of course, but in this case common sense prevails.
The year of the linux desktop will never come until "making everything work" for 80% of the population requires precisely zero command line interactions, and precisely zero edits of obscure text files
*yawn* "Year of the linux desktop" is just hyperbole, people use it now and like it. Anyway your out-of-the-ass 80% of users do not require any command line interactions right now (2008).
And that most google searches for help... must also use precisely zero command line interactions
Why? Its the easiest and clearest way to help them. Often there is a GUI method to do exactly the same thing, but explaining how to use it would require writing a small manual. Remember that this is free help from volunteers.
I shudder at the idea of talking someone like my father through it.
I talked my father through a command line fix yesterday - on Windows!
When it comes to supporting clueless users over the phone, I find talking someone through complex gui manipulations is WAY harder than telling someone what to type at the command line. YMMV
With both Microsoft and Apple platforms there are limitations in place that serve the interests of the corporation that developed it, at the expense of the user (you). How is that not "ideas which are pushed down my throat no matter what if I want them or not."?
The only limitations in Ubuntu are either legal or technical in nature.
I don't think of this as a basic feature... essentially you are asking for automated library updates whenever new files are added to the system
I'll agree its not basic. You have to admit that its useful though, why wouldn't you want this feature if you could?
I know the current trend is to abstract away the file system whenever possible, but if you are old fashioned enough to manage your file system manually (most linux users i would guess) its a killer feature.
iTunes lets you sync YOUR ipod only. If you try to sync somebody else's ipod DRM kicks in and wipes the collection. Amarok doesn't care who's iPod you attach, and will happily copy music to and from it with ease. In my book this is a killer feature.
Here is why: I know people who own iPods, but not a computer (it's TRUE!). Their primary music storage is on the music device itself. When they have borrowed a computer with itunes to rip their latest CD - boom! - years of music collection lost. This experience has been enough for several of them to swear off Apple products for life. One frustrated user went as far as to smash his ipod in a fit of rage!
Not being a mac user, there may be a workaround for this that I haven't heard of. But the point is that this is the default (and very destructive) behaviour.
I can't believe nobody else here has noticed this major problem. With the number of people buying iPods, I get called about it a couple of times a month. Now, if you were being critical, you would tell them they had no business buying an iPod without owning a laptop/PC in the first place - Apple never intended for them to use it that way. Instead they should have gotten a mass storage device based mp3 player. But apple does not really explain this limitation (or the difference) anywhere. It would likely cost them sales if they did.
Anyway, once Amarok is available on Mac and Windows, I'll be able to recommend a solution to these poor, misguided iPodders. I've been looking forward to it since KDE 4 was first announced.
I'd be very surprised if any organization would do what you suggested for reasons other than being extremely stingy.
It's fairly common practice, physical security firms often recommend it. For most casual thieves/vandals an empty enclosure is as much as a deterrent as one with a camera. If you are more concerned with preventing crime then punishment after the fact (a very reasonable position - its much cheaper that way) it makes a lot of sense.
Even law enforcement does it. In my city red light camera and fixed speed camera enclosures are often empty. They move the cameras they do have around from time to time to keep drivers guessing, but most drivers will behave themselves if they see the enclosure, empty or no.
eeePC sales were already in the millions and clones were popping up at all the major computer expos before Microsoft noticed that it was a market that they were missing out on. THEN they offered XP for netbooks. Before that time they were trying to push Vista for everything.
I can confirm it only happens when I'm cutting and pasting.
Makes sense that source material may be using a non-standard character. Guess I'll have to manually swap them if I want my post to look right in future. I didn't think of doing that before as they look just fine when I copy them in.
Its been bothering me for a while. Cheers.
Of course Hellgate: Londonâ(TM)s story is a little different to Fury in that the game can still be played offline, but the heart of Hellgate was always the online play and grouping with other players, so mentioning the offline component as a boon is akin to claiming itâ(TM)s okay that your Bugatti Veyron 16.4 got torched because the CD player still works fine
BTW, what is it with /. and the rendering of apostrophes? Is it just me, or Firefox, or what?