With the advent of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, you should be able go out and buy a "boxed set" of the complete recordings of The Beatles, complete with album art, videos, extras, and features, all on one disk.
It's a nice idea but it will never happen due to two things - customer perceptions & record company greed.
Think about it - let's say you suddenly decide you like The Beatles and start collecting their recordings. You'll probably end up collecting, say, 20+ albums by them - that's $200/£200/200 the record company gets out of you in total. If you buy the albums on CD, you don't notice you're spending that money because you buy, say, 1 CD a week as you can afford them. And when you have them all, you can look at the nice row of 20 Beatles albums on your bookshelf and feel that the money you spent was worth it because you have a nice big fat row of CDs in front of you.
But there's no way you're going to spend $200/£200/200 on a single Blu-Ray disc. It's a psychological thing - you pick up the case in the shop and it doesn't *feel* like it's worth $200; so you don't buy it.
Look at DVD - in theory, we should be all playing audio DVDs now because for the same size of disc, you get anything up to 10x the data storage on a DVD than a CD. But if record companies released audio DVDs that were just straight conversions of existing CD albums (without, say, 5.1 enhancements to the music) everyone would feel cheated because they'd know you could get so much more on each DVD disc - so they wouldn't buy them.
I'm pretty much the same with my Gameboy Advance, Gamecube and PC games. I've bought very few GBA games because when I look at the size of the box (which is oversized anyway for the size of cartridge inside), it doesn't *feel* like it's worth $50/£35/50. I'm more likely to spend the same money on a Gamecube or PC game because psychologically I feel like I'm getting more for my money.
From a storage & technical perspective, it would be great to cram my racks of CDs into a space about 1/100th of the size but from selling actual products, this is as much about selling products as it is about technological advancement.
DVD is the classic example. I now own no VHS videos because I've replaced everything now with DVD. I've therefore bought a lot of movies at least twice in my lifetime (perhaps even more times when I've bought the standard edition DVD, then The Directors' Cut later on). One issue that's convinced me to do that are all the "extras" I get like commentaries, documentaries, deleted scenes, etc. yet, in reality, I probably watch all of those on about 1/4 of the DVDs I actually buy.
Yes, I admit it. I've fallen for the marketing of DVD hook, line and sinker...
On British cable/satellite TV, all channels in any basic package that you buy contain adverts. Some of the movie channels do not contain adverts but these are usually rented at a much larger additional cost. Plus I've been to the US quite a few times and I can never recall ever seeing a TV channel which did not have adverts on it - if anything, I found US TV pretty much unwatchable due to the sheer number of adverts that pop up without warning (especially those that appear straight after the prequel and main theme tune of several popular TV series).
I have absolutely no problem with the *concept* of having something for free with advertising included in it (I just probably won't use it) but I definitely will NOT pay for something that has advertising included - for this reason I don't have cable TV, I've complained about some movies I've seen at the cinema where product placement has been too excessive & I buy no designer clothing that has a corporate logo on it.
Advertising is NOT our culture, it's about directing and manipulating our culture for the pure reason of making money. When they can survey a few hundred kids & have all of them recognise an image of Ronald McDonald but a far lesser percentage recognise an image of Jesus Christ, I think that illustrates exactly where our "culture" is actually going. And no, I'm not Christian or religious either - if marketing and ad men are the most dangerous threat to society, then those people who need ten commandments that can be summed up in the phrase "Just be nice to everyone" come a close second...
What you're describing increase transaction costs so much that it wouldn't be worth it to consumers.
Explain?
I care about being allowed to release materials I produce myself,
What stops you releasing an unencrypted or Region 0 DVD for material that you own?
I also believe that a certain amount of what is presently illegal copying is to the benefit of everybody
Well, whether it's a benefit or not depends on the honesty of the individual. I don't personally download movies or video content, I download some MP3s from Usenet and if I like what I downloaded, I buy it; otherwise, I delete it. No different to 30 years ago when I could go into a record shop in the UK and listen to part of an album before deciding to buy it.
the last year I think it's about three CDs, buying about 10 - down from about 100 the year I copied 50.
Same for me now I know what I am buying beforehand. It means I'm happier with what I buy and therefore have no objections to the record company making money from my purchase.
This is were you loose. People are just NOT discerning, otherwise marketing people wouldn't be needed:
Well piracy has been going on for 20+ years now and that's achieved nothing apart from restricting the freedoms of honest consumers.
Short version : Pokemon
That's simply down to clever corporations capitalising on parents' guilt at not buying little Johnny the latest over-hyped gimmick when all his friends might have one. Blame parents for that.
So what you are saying is that if there was no piracy, the corporations wouldn't be able to justify producing low quality products and selling them for high prices?
No, I'm saying piracy achieves nothing apart from fulfilling a personal desire to get something for nothing & giving the corporations someone to blame for the fact that their profits aren't as big as they think they should be.
This in turn makes life more difficult for people like me who are happy to pay fair prices for good quality products because the corporations can always blame piracy & loss of revenue for selling second-rate products.
I was just going to point out that you were fucking deluded,
You're entitled to your opinion but your argument is lessened by the fact that you need to resort to insults to get your point across.
And can you also please explain to me why on some DVDs I have legitimately bought (like CSI and The Simpsons), I have to sit through the whole of a "Piracy is a crime" advertisement when any pirate who copied those DVDs would probably strip that advert out anyway? Things like that detract from MY legitimate enjoyment of the product & the blame for that falls equally on the creator of those DVDs and the pirates who create the need for the advert in the first place.
To which I would have to point out that no-one has ever pirated a WinModem but they are still produced.
A TOTALLY irrelevant comparison. Piracy assumes easy and cheap access to a duplicating mechanism - most people have CD/DVD burners, very few I know have machines in their garage to create component-filled circuit boards.
I find it very difficult to justify within myself paying money for something that isn't tangible.
I'm in my 40s, I've been into computing for over 20 years now but I still find it very difficult to pay money for something that isn't tangible. Aside from a handful of Windows utilities that I have registered correctly, I cannot bring myself to pay for a music or movie download - I need a nice shiny disk & a case, I'm afraid!:-)
On Usenet, occasionally, I download the MP3s of a CD I'm interested in buying. If I like what I've downloaded, I buy the CD because I like sleeve notes and a disk; if not, I delete the MP3s because there's no point wasting disk space. Because I live in the UK and listen to some obscure rock music, I never get to hear those same CDs on the radio so as a result "previewing" the MP3s, I've save myself a lot of money because I now I just buy stuff I know is good as opposed to just "taking a chance" and being disappointed. Then I buy all my CDs on eBay or other online sellers, I get a price I'm satisfied with and everyone is happy. I'm happy, the seller is happy & the record company is happy.
I buy DVD movies the same way except that I don't mind waiting a year or two for price drops & special offers.
So downloading is not for me although I can appreciate why others like the convenience of it. And whether you download or buy disks, it still comes down to not parting with your money until you are *sure* what you are buying is worth it.
Who are the people who are so poor they can't afford music and so addicted that they must have it?
People tend to "justify" piracy in the mistaken belief that they're outlaws, fighting the cause of the common man against the evils of the mega-corporations. In reality, all they are doing is giving those same corporations justification for not actually fixing the core problems which are hype, over-marketing, inflated prices & poor quality products.
If everyone was more discerning, read reviews of products before buying and treated their money with a little more respect, nothing would force those corporations to clean up their act more than seeing their profits dwindle because people simply don't believe what they produce to be worth the money.
... why would a web site trying to avoid being shut down by the MPAA/RIAA/etc. give itself a name called "The PIRATE Bay"??? Isn't this just a case of "Waving a red flag at the bull"?
I personally don't want Linux to get all "dumbed down" because somebody like Novell deems there to be some kind of "Linux vs. Windows" war going on out there.
I'd rather people used Linux because they're interested enough in computers & software to invest some time learning a bit more about how both of them work. Those of us with good shell scripting/PERL/PHP/Python/etc. knowledge already know that you can automate just about any task you want to on a UNIX/Linux system so the time and pain you invest when starting out pays off in great time-savings later on.
But in a corporate environment where most users probably work with Office, Outlook, a browser and one or two other apps, why would they or their IT department want to be using/supporting Linux?
I love Open Source, I spend 80% of my computing hours working in Linux & I'm lucky enough to know a lot about Windows also. This means I have the choice of either OS when it comes to chosing the right software for me to get a job done as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
It's not technically impossible to remove the DRM from iTunes songs and recode; it's just illegal.
So why create hassle for yourself from the outset by buying into a product that makes it difficult for what you deem to be your fair usage? The only reason you'd do this is because you're so taken in by Apple's marketing and the "cool" factor of the iPod, you've totally lost sight of what you wanted the product for in the first place.
Sure, many people love the iPod and iTunes and good luck to them - but in my case, I always buy a product because it does what I need it to do rather than because it's a pretty colour or because all my buddies have one.
At a recent media briefing in Singapore, David Lowe, senior product manager, Windows Server, Microsoft, cited interoperability with Unix as one of the key features of Windows Server 2003 R2.
So how come Jeremy Allinson and the other SAMBA guys have such a problem getting technical details out of Microsoft about the inner workings of SMB for their product that allows "Windows interoperability with Unix"???
Here's your clue re social engineering: Social Engineering Fundamentals, Part I: Hacker Tactics
No thanks. I have a dictionary with a definition of the word "fraudster" in it - that will do for me.
Mitnick may have suffered an excessively hard punishment for what he did compared to someone who injures/kills another human being but the guy is still a criminal - get used to it & stop elevating him as some kind of hero.
Well, not strictly true - if I buy an iPod I still have to use iTunes software which is not available for one of the operating systems I use, namely Linux.
As well as this, since I am totally unable to grasp the concept of paying for a music download, iTunes is useless to me. In my mind, I'd rather buy the CD and rip it myself at whatever bitrate I see fit. Again, that's my reasons but if people are happy paying for downloaded music, then let them have it that way - I just don't understand the appeal.
And finally, I'm the sort of person that actively resists marketing, brand names and over-hyping of products anyway. Apple have been very clever to capitalise on the "cool" factor of the iPod, specifically with the younger generation but I actively try not to buy any product where it's name has been constantly bombarded at me from advertisements & billboards.
I always take the attitude that a good product sells itself by word of mouth without the need for a huge marketing budget.
I hate DRM as much as the music/movie/MP3 lover but I don't think it's up to any government to legislate on this.
If people want iPods and their DRM'ed music format, then I say good luck to all parties concerned - Apple have identified a marketplace for such products & customers are prepared to pay for them.
Personally, although I use an MP3 player quite regularly, I won't buy an iPod because I won't be locked into using a proprietary music format using proprietary software on Windows only - I'd much rather have a less-featured MP3/OGG player that I can mount as a new drive in either Windows or Linux and copy across the tracks I rip from my music CDs.
The point I'm trying to make is that this is entirely a consumer decision, not legislative. It's up to the potential customer to keep him/herself informed before making any purchases and if you don't like certain aspects of a product, then don't buy it - it's that simple.
At this moment in time, I can rip any DVD or CD I currently own to play on whatever device I like and I'm therefore perfectly happy with the "fair use" I get from my movies & CDs - if what I am doing is against the law by circumventing DRM then so be it; if & when I'm caught doing it, I'll happily fight my case but my personal feeling is that it would never stand up in court where I own a legal copy of the original media.
By allowing governments to take control of this kind of issue leaves them open, at a later stage, to corporate lobbying & bribery. Plus I don't want the "Nanny State" removing me of even more of my own decision-making process as a well-informed, intelligent citizen.
You seem to have missed my point entirely so I'd suggest I'm not the idiot here.
"Social engineering" is a phrase that is designed to make what Mitnick did seem more acceptable when ultimately he is a criminal. I suggest that the people who should be elevated as heroes are those who are capable of commiting similar activities but also know enough about "right and wrong" and personal restraint not to actually go and commit them.
Tens of thousands of years ago, a scruffy bloke with long hair who smelt of rabbit skins & said "Ugh!" rather a lot, was sat in his cave pondering a particular problem - how to move a very heavy rock from point A on the Earth's surface to point B. Although this bloke wasn't to know it at the time, he had to find a way of overcoming the friction that the rock exerted on the Earth's surface due to it's mass and surface area.
Perhaps more by luck than chance, he found that if he could lever up the rock and place cylindrical logs under it, he could move it...
Some time later, another bloke less pre-disposed to living in a cave, decided to create circular discs, probably of wood, that could be placed in each corner of a heavy object by connecting them in order to move it easier - and so it was that "the wheel" was born...
And as we leap forward through the millenia to our present day, we see that the concept of the wheel remains fundamentally unchanged - it's still circular, probably has an axle and is best used in numbers of four or more.
The wheel, and numerous other technological developments over the centuries, serve to demonstrate that some inventions can be pretty much designed correctly from the time of their inception without the "need" to replace it completely purely for the purposes of technical advancement.
Besides, as the owner of "The Sun" newspaper in Britain, a journal aimed specifically at those modern-day individuals who are pre-disposed to cavemanhood & writing with crayons, can I suggest that you, sir, are a complete and utter gobshite who is totally out of his depth and has far too much money for his own good.
In summary, therefore, may I suggest that you continue publishing stories about "Lesbian Vicars" for those knucklescrapers who continue to find amusement for their unicellular brains in your newspaper & leave those of us who are more pre-disposed to understanding technology to make decisions about whether we still want paper newspapers or not.
I was written up recently for sending personal e-mail "all day, every day", which was actually 11 e-mails in 3 months. 9 of those e-mails were related to my work schedule. Even though the "electronic use policy" allows limited personal e-mails, that was obviously too many.
That does sound pretty draconian, I must admit.
But my employer is more than welcome to monitor my "private" activity on their network because if they choose to do so they'll just see the occasional boring email between me and my wife discussing what we're having for dinner that evening or maybe an email related to an eBay transaction for a CD or DVD I've just bought - it might be "embarassing" for me for my employer to know I hate fish, am a pasta nut, have a penchant for 70s progressive rock and love Man From U.N.C.L.E. movies & classic British comedy shows but, what the hell, I'll live with it...
And if they do choose to scrutinize me that closely and use what they see against me, I will insist they also check their logs of my network login activity - where they will clearly see the number of additional hours I've worked where I've been entitled to claim overtime but haven't which will far outweigh the amount of worktime I've spent on personal emails.
Is this story just belated hype for the movie Firewall starring Harrison Ford?
Cool... another Hollywood computer movie where all the computer screens have huge fonts and 20 characters per line... and where IP addresses starting with *345.* whizz past on the screen! (Yes, look carefully at "The Net" starring Sandra Bullock if you don't believe me...)
There's been one Hollywood computer movie that seems to have been *relatively* well researched & that's "Anti-Trust" (at least they used 10.*.*.* IP addresses for the satellites!)... but then I always laugh at the bit where Tim Robbins mentions Bill Gates to make sure the audience knows he's not supposed to be Bill Gates even though he looks a lot like Bill Gates & lives in a similar house to Bill Gates.
As a SysAdmin I'm much less worried about the activities of a person I can just walk over to and beat the living crap out of.
Yeah, well in my book that makes you the sort of Sysadmin who makes the normal employees resentful & less likely to take anything you say or do seriously - yes, buddy, you're part of the problem...
Good sysadmining is about creating automation tools that take a lot of difficult decision making away from employees & about taking the time to educate them and assist them when they need it.
If I worked for your company and you treated me like that, I'd just put the phone down on you and make sure I had a baseball bat under my desk in case you came calling on me...
As far as I am concerned, anything I spend almost a third of my life doing has to pay me enough to live comfortably *and* has to stimulate me as a job. In other words, I don't care how much my employer pays me, if they treat me like dirt and/or give me a boring job to do, then it's up to me to withdraw my services & go find another employer that can give me an interesting jonb.
Fortunately, my job does stimulate me (it's not perfect but it's more good than bad) & allows me to live comfortably within the law. I'm treated pretty well, fairly autonomous in what I do & I have no interest in screwing over my employer - I don't care what money I was offered for "trade secrets", I wouldn't do it; my integrity is far more important to me.
The point I'm trying to make is that in my experience, most people are like me rather than potential criminals - it's just a shame that anyone who works for an American company at the moment (like me) constantly has Sarbanes Oxley rammed down their throats & endless training about "work ethics" purely because a few corrupt CEOs in other companies have decided not to work ethically.
At the end of it all, it is *just* a job and most people are inventive enough to find other sources of legal income if they choose to resign and walk out the door. If I chose to walk out the door, my employer can take their laptop back & any backups of my data - I'm just not interested in keeping it/
Sure, there are internal security threats in any organisation but mostly it's due to employee stupidity rather than criminal activities - and in my view, no company spends enough on training employees to be less stupid; it's far easier to close down a few more ports on the firewall and put a few more banned sites in the web proxies than educate people about the dangers of webmail.
And I am *STILL TRULY AMAZED* at the number of Windows users around me who do NOT change that STUPID default setting of "Hide extensions of known file types" - the BIGGEST security threat of all... believe me, turn that setting off and tell people not to open.BAT,.EXE and Office documents from sources they do not 100% trust & your security problems will dramatically reduce overnight.
Oh, I see this very clearly now... in other words, as Europeans we're supposed to bow down before the might of the great American Empire are we?
Let's put some facts around this argument:
1. The European Community combined is a bigger marketplace than the United States. Sure, the EU is bogged down in a lot of bureaucracy but from what I see of American politics and economics from this side of the Atlantic, there's a hell of a lot of bureaucracy in the USA also.
2. Why is it okay for Americans to constantly whine on about the destruction of the US car industry by the Japanese auto-manufacturers but not for Europeans to complain about the monopolisation of the software industry by Microsoft?
3. Consider Boeing and Airbus and what *healthy* competition in the airliner manufacturing industry has done for air travel in terms of lowering costs, safety, fuel economy, etc.
4. Why do you pro-Microsoft types always bring up this *incorrect* "Microsoft must open their source" argument? This is *NOT* what the EU has requested, at least not from a complete operating system perspective. What the EU does want is the opening up of Microsoft APIs where competing products can be allowed to interoperate with Windows at a much fairer level and to allow users to decide for themselves whether or not they want to run Microsoft or third party *applications* on Windows - yes, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, etc. are *applications* not part of the operating system.
5. It's a big leap of faith to assume that all those who want Microsoft to open up their APIs also believe that there should not be any more closed source software. In my opinion, having Open Source alternatives to closed source software is great for the consumer - it means that those people who want to make money from software can do so whilst those who don't want to, or can't afford to, can use Open Source software. In our modern world, where the PC & the Internet are now part of our daily lives, it is right that as few people as possible are excluded from being able to connect to the Internet. You seem to forget that in some parts of the world, a copu of Windows XP costs more than some people earn in a month.
We have a linux system here that crashes completely everytime we try to update it.
I'm not denying this might well be the case with your Linux server but restoring the backup image each time it crashes is hardly investigating the reason as to *why* the server is crashing, is it? If you're saying that no-one within your organisation has the Linux skills to investigate the crash problem correctly, then that is a different issue.
Besides, the chances are that there will be an error in a log file somewhere on the system which, if you pump it into Google, will no doubt reveal someone somewhere else has experienced a similar problem.
Sorry, but I'll happily sit here and not argue with anyone from, say, a Windows-based organisation who says that they find Linux difficult to maintain in comparison. But please don't expect me to sit back and keep quiet when someone blames lack of knowledge on the operating system.
...since we're constantly hearing from Mac owners how wonderful OS X is, then why would they give a damn about this?
This isn't a sarcastic comment - I've never personally used a Mac or OS X (just never had the need to) so I just don't understand why this issue has even made it to a Slashdot article.
Besides, it should come as no great shock that Microsoft do not tolerate dual booting systems anyway - look at how easily Windows wipes over the boot block when you reinstall it on a PC where you're booting Linux also.
It took the developers of Lilo and GRUB to make dual-booting possible with Windows & Linux, not Microsoft.
If you're a musician or band who is not prepared to take yourself out on the road and perform in front of a live audience in a real concert venue, then I don't consider you to be passionate enough about your music in the first place which in turn means I probably won't enjoy your music anyway so I won't buy it. Quid pro quo.
A live concert is about travelling to a venue with a few friends, having a beer or two and enjoying the music and the ambience in the concert hall. It's about believing that when you shout "More" at the end of the concert, the artiste(s) come back out for an encore or two based on how loud everyone shouts.
So by all means go ahead and plant yourself in front of a webcam in a little sterile room somewhere that's completely isolated from the people who buy your music and pay your wages - just don' expect me to pay for it, or even to watch it...
Slashdot Mirror
It's a nice idea but it will never happen due to two things - customer perceptions & record company greed.
Think about it - let's say you suddenly decide you like The Beatles and start collecting their recordings. You'll probably end up collecting, say, 20+ albums by them - that's $200/£200/200 the record company gets out of you in total. If you buy the albums on CD, you don't notice you're spending that money because you buy, say, 1 CD a week as you can afford them. And when you have them all, you can look at the nice row of 20 Beatles albums on your bookshelf and feel that the money you spent was worth it because you have a nice big fat row of CDs in front of you.
But there's no way you're going to spend $200/£200/200 on a single Blu-Ray disc. It's a psychological thing - you pick up the case in the shop and it doesn't *feel* like it's worth $200; so you don't buy it.
Look at DVD - in theory, we should be all playing audio DVDs now because for the same size of disc, you get anything up to 10x the data storage on a DVD than a CD. But if record companies released audio DVDs that were just straight conversions of existing CD albums (without, say, 5.1 enhancements to the music) everyone would feel cheated because they'd know you could get so much more on each DVD disc - so they wouldn't buy them.
I'm pretty much the same with my Gameboy Advance, Gamecube and PC games. I've bought very few GBA games because when I look at the size of the box (which is oversized anyway for the size of cartridge inside), it doesn't *feel* like it's worth $50/£35/50. I'm more likely to spend the same money on a Gamecube or PC game because psychologically I feel like I'm getting more for my money.
From a storage & technical perspective, it would be great to cram my racks of CDs into a space about 1/100th of the size but from selling actual products, this is as much about selling products as it is about technological advancement.
DVD is the classic example. I now own no VHS videos because I've replaced everything now with DVD. I've therefore bought a lot of movies at least twice in my lifetime (perhaps even more times when I've bought the standard edition DVD, then The Directors' Cut later on). One issue that's convinced me to do that are all the "extras" I get like commentaries, documentaries, deleted scenes, etc. yet, in reality, I probably watch all of those on about 1/4 of the DVDs I actually buy.
Yes, I admit it. I've fallen for the marketing of DVD hook, line and sinker...
I have absolutely no problem with the *concept* of having something for free with advertising included in it (I just probably won't use it) but I definitely will NOT pay for something that has advertising included - for this reason I don't have cable TV, I've complained about some movies I've seen at the cinema where product placement has been too excessive & I buy no designer clothing that has a corporate logo on it.
Advertising is NOT our culture, it's about directing and manipulating our culture for the pure reason of making money. When they can survey a few hundred kids & have all of them recognise an image of Ronald McDonald but a far lesser percentage recognise an image of Jesus Christ, I think that illustrates exactly where our "culture" is actually going. And no, I'm not Christian or religious either - if marketing and ad men are the most dangerous threat to society, then those people who need ten commandments that can be summed up in the phrase "Just be nice to everyone" come a close second...
Explain?
I care about being allowed to release materials I produce myself,
What stops you releasing an unencrypted or Region 0 DVD for material that you own?
I also believe that a certain amount of what is presently illegal copying is to the benefit of everybody
Well, whether it's a benefit or not depends on the honesty of the individual. I don't personally download movies or video content, I download some MP3s from Usenet and if I like what I downloaded, I buy it; otherwise, I delete it. No different to 30 years ago when I could go into a record shop in the UK and listen to part of an album before deciding to buy it.
the last year I think it's about three CDs, buying about 10 - down from about 100 the year I copied 50.
Same for me now I know what I am buying beforehand. It means I'm happier with what I buy and therefore have no objections to the record company making money from my purchase.
Well piracy has been going on for 20+ years now and that's achieved nothing apart from restricting the freedoms of honest consumers.
Short version : Pokemon
That's simply down to clever corporations capitalising on parents' guilt at not buying little Johnny the latest over-hyped gimmick when all his friends might have one. Blame parents for that.
This in turn makes life more difficult for people like me who are happy to pay fair prices for good quality products because the corporations can always blame piracy & loss of revenue for selling second-rate products.
I was just going to point out that you were fucking deluded,
You're entitled to your opinion but your argument is lessened by the fact that you need to resort to insults to get your point across. And can you also please explain to me why on some DVDs I have legitimately bought (like CSI and The Simpsons), I have to sit through the whole of a "Piracy is a crime" advertisement when any pirate who copied those DVDs would probably strip that advert out anyway? Things like that detract from MY legitimate enjoyment of the product & the blame for that falls equally on the creator of those DVDs and the pirates who create the need for the advert in the first place.
To which I would have to point out that no-one has ever pirated a WinModem but they are still produced.
A TOTALLY irrelevant comparison. Piracy assumes easy and cheap access to a duplicating mechanism - most people have CD/DVD burners, very few I know have machines in their garage to create component-filled circuit boards.
I'm in my 40s, I've been into computing for over 20 years now but I still find it very difficult to pay money for something that isn't tangible. Aside from a handful of Windows utilities that I have registered correctly, I cannot bring myself to pay for a music or movie download - I need a nice shiny disk & a case, I'm afraid! :-)
On Usenet, occasionally, I download the MP3s of a CD I'm interested in buying. If I like what I've downloaded, I buy the CD because I like sleeve notes and a disk; if not, I delete the MP3s because there's no point wasting disk space. Because I live in the UK and listen to some obscure rock music, I never get to hear those same CDs on the radio so as a result "previewing" the MP3s, I've save myself a lot of money because I now I just buy stuff I know is good as opposed to just "taking a chance" and being disappointed. Then I buy all my CDs on eBay or other online sellers, I get a price I'm satisfied with and everyone is happy. I'm happy, the seller is happy & the record company is happy.
I buy DVD movies the same way except that I don't mind waiting a year or two for price drops & special offers.
So downloading is not for me although I can appreciate why others like the convenience of it. And whether you download or buy disks, it still comes down to not parting with your money until you are *sure* what you are buying is worth it.
People tend to "justify" piracy in the mistaken belief that they're outlaws, fighting the cause of the common man against the evils of the mega-corporations. In reality, all they are doing is giving those same corporations justification for not actually fixing the core problems which are hype, over-marketing, inflated prices & poor quality products.
If everyone was more discerning, read reviews of products before buying and treated their money with a little more respect, nothing would force those corporations to clean up their act more than seeing their profits dwindle because people simply don't believe what they produce to be worth the money.
... why would a web site trying to avoid being shut down by the MPAA/RIAA/etc. give itself a name called "The PIRATE Bay"??? Isn't this just a case of "Waving a red flag at the bull"?
I'd rather people used Linux because they're interested enough in computers & software to invest some time learning a bit more about how both of them work. Those of us with good shell scripting/PERL/PHP/Python/etc. knowledge already know that you can automate just about any task you want to on a UNIX/Linux system so the time and pain you invest when starting out pays off in great time-savings later on.
But in a corporate environment where most users probably work with Office, Outlook, a browser and one or two other apps, why would they or their IT department want to be using/supporting Linux?
I love Open Source, I spend 80% of my computing hours working in Linux & I'm lucky enough to know a lot about Windows also. This means I have the choice of either OS when it comes to chosing the right software for me to get a job done as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
So why create hassle for yourself from the outset by buying into a product that makes it difficult for what you deem to be your fair usage? The only reason you'd do this is because you're so taken in by Apple's marketing and the "cool" factor of the iPod, you've totally lost sight of what you wanted the product for in the first place.
Sure, many people love the iPod and iTunes and good luck to them - but in my case, I always buy a product because it does what I need it to do rather than because it's a pretty colour or because all my buddies have one.
So how come Jeremy Allinson and the other SAMBA guys have such a problem getting technical details out of Microsoft about the inner workings of SMB for their product that allows "Windows interoperability with Unix"???
No thanks. I have a dictionary with a definition of the word "fraudster" in it - that will do for me.
Mitnick may have suffered an excessively hard punishment for what he did compared to someone who injures/kills another human being but the guy is still a criminal - get used to it & stop elevating him as some kind of hero.
Well, not strictly true - if I buy an iPod I still have to use iTunes software which is not available for one of the operating systems I use, namely Linux.
As well as this, since I am totally unable to grasp the concept of paying for a music download, iTunes is useless to me. In my mind, I'd rather buy the CD and rip it myself at whatever bitrate I see fit. Again, that's my reasons but if people are happy paying for downloaded music, then let them have it that way - I just don't understand the appeal.
And finally, I'm the sort of person that actively resists marketing, brand names and over-hyping of products anyway. Apple have been very clever to capitalise on the "cool" factor of the iPod, specifically with the younger generation but I actively try not to buy any product where it's name has been constantly bombarded at me from advertisements & billboards.
I always take the attitude that a good product sells itself by word of mouth without the need for a huge marketing budget.
If people want iPods and their DRM'ed music format, then I say good luck to all parties concerned - Apple have identified a marketplace for such products & customers are prepared to pay for them.
Personally, although I use an MP3 player quite regularly, I won't buy an iPod because I won't be locked into using a proprietary music format using proprietary software on Windows only - I'd much rather have a less-featured MP3/OGG player that I can mount as a new drive in either Windows or Linux and copy across the tracks I rip from my music CDs.
The point I'm trying to make is that this is entirely a consumer decision, not legislative. It's up to the potential customer to keep him/herself informed before making any purchases and if you don't like certain aspects of a product, then don't buy it - it's that simple.
At this moment in time, I can rip any DVD or CD I currently own to play on whatever device I like and I'm therefore perfectly happy with the "fair use" I get from my movies & CDs - if what I am doing is against the law by circumventing DRM then so be it; if & when I'm caught doing it, I'll happily fight my case but my personal feeling is that it would never stand up in court where I own a legal copy of the original media.
By allowing governments to take control of this kind of issue leaves them open, at a later stage, to corporate lobbying & bribery. Plus I don't want the "Nanny State" removing me of even more of my own decision-making process as a well-informed, intelligent citizen.
Illegal = criminal activity.
You seem to have missed my point entirely so I'd suggest I'm not the idiot here.
"Social engineering" is a phrase that is designed to make what Mitnick did seem more acceptable when ultimately he is a criminal. I suggest that the people who should be elevated as heroes are those who are capable of commiting similar activities but also know enough about "right and wrong" and personal restraint not to actually go and commit them.
Perhaps more by luck than chance, he found that if he could lever up the rock and place cylindrical logs under it, he could move it...
Some time later, another bloke less pre-disposed to living in a cave, decided to create circular discs, probably of wood, that could be placed in each corner of a heavy object by connecting them in order to move it easier - and so it was that "the wheel" was born...
And as we leap forward through the millenia to our present day, we see that the concept of the wheel remains fundamentally unchanged - it's still circular, probably has an axle and is best used in numbers of four or more.
The wheel, and numerous other technological developments over the centuries, serve to demonstrate that some inventions can be pretty much designed correctly from the time of their inception without the "need" to replace it completely purely for the purposes of technical advancement.
Besides, as the owner of "The Sun" newspaper in Britain, a journal aimed specifically at those modern-day individuals who are pre-disposed to cavemanhood & writing with crayons, can I suggest that you, sir, are a complete and utter gobshite who is totally out of his depth and has far too much money for his own good.
In summary, therefore, may I suggest that you continue publishing stories about "Lesbian Vicars" for those knucklescrapers who continue to find amusement for their unicellular brains in your newspaper & leave those of us who are more pre-disposed to understanding technology to make decisions about whether we still want paper newspapers or not.
That does sound pretty draconian, I must admit.
But my employer is more than welcome to monitor my "private" activity on their network because if they choose to do so they'll just see the occasional boring email between me and my wife discussing what we're having for dinner that evening or maybe an email related to an eBay transaction for a CD or DVD I've just bought - it might be "embarassing" for me for my employer to know I hate fish, am a pasta nut, have a penchant for 70s progressive rock and love Man From U.N.C.L.E. movies & classic British comedy shows but, what the hell, I'll live with it...
And if they do choose to scrutinize me that closely and use what they see against me, I will insist they also check their logs of my network login activity - where they will clearly see the number of additional hours I've worked where I've been entitled to claim overtime but haven't which will far outweigh the amount of worktime I've spent on personal emails.
Cool... another Hollywood computer movie where all the computer screens have huge fonts and 20 characters per line... and where IP addresses starting with *345.* whizz past on the screen! (Yes, look carefully at "The Net" starring Sandra Bullock if you don't believe me...)
There's been one Hollywood computer movie that seems to have been *relatively* well researched & that's "Anti-Trust" (at least they used 10.*.*.* IP addresses for the satellites!)... but then I always laugh at the bit where Tim Robbins mentions Bill Gates to make sure the audience knows he's not supposed to be Bill Gates even though he looks a lot like Bill Gates & lives in a similar house to Bill Gates.
Yeah, well in my book that makes you the sort of Sysadmin who makes the normal employees resentful & less likely to take anything you say or do seriously - yes, buddy, you're part of the problem...
Good sysadmining is about creating automation tools that take a lot of difficult decision making away from employees & about taking the time to educate them and assist them when they need it.
If I worked for your company and you treated me like that, I'd just put the phone down on you and make sure I had a baseball bat under my desk in case you came calling on me...
Please get your facts straight - Mitnick is a *convicted criminal*, not a *social engineer*.
And that puts him quite a few rungs down the social ladder from we 99.9% of honest people.
Fortunately, my job does stimulate me (it's not perfect but it's more good than bad) & allows me to live comfortably within the law. I'm treated pretty well, fairly autonomous in what I do & I have no interest in screwing over my employer - I don't care what money I was offered for "trade secrets", I wouldn't do it; my integrity is far more important to me.
The point I'm trying to make is that in my experience, most people are like me rather than potential criminals - it's just a shame that anyone who works for an American company at the moment (like me) constantly has Sarbanes Oxley rammed down their throats & endless training about "work ethics" purely because a few corrupt CEOs in other companies have decided not to work ethically.
At the end of it all, it is *just* a job and most people are inventive enough to find other sources of legal income if they choose to resign and walk out the door. If I chose to walk out the door, my employer can take their laptop back & any backups of my data - I'm just not interested in keeping it/
Sure, there are internal security threats in any organisation but mostly it's due to employee stupidity rather than criminal activities - and in my view, no company spends enough on training employees to be less stupid; it's far easier to close down a few more ports on the firewall and put a few more banned sites in the web proxies than educate people about the dangers of webmail.
And I am *STILL TRULY AMAZED* at the number of Windows users around me who do NOT change that STUPID default setting of "Hide extensions of known file types" - the BIGGEST security threat of all... believe me, turn that setting off and tell people not to open .BAT, .EXE and Office documents from sources they do not 100% trust & your security problems will dramatically reduce overnight.
Let's put some facts around this argument:
1. The European Community combined is a bigger marketplace than the United States. Sure, the EU is bogged down in a lot of bureaucracy but from what I see of American politics and economics from this side of the Atlantic, there's a hell of a lot of bureaucracy in the USA also.
2. Why is it okay for Americans to constantly whine on about the destruction of the US car industry by the Japanese auto-manufacturers but not for Europeans to complain about the monopolisation of the software industry by Microsoft?
3. Consider Boeing and Airbus and what *healthy* competition in the airliner manufacturing industry has done for air travel in terms of lowering costs, safety, fuel economy, etc.
4. Why do you pro-Microsoft types always bring up this *incorrect* "Microsoft must open their source" argument? This is *NOT* what the EU has requested, at least not from a complete operating system perspective. What the EU does want is the opening up of Microsoft APIs where competing products can be allowed to interoperate with Windows at a much fairer level and to allow users to decide for themselves whether or not they want to run Microsoft or third party *applications* on Windows - yes, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, etc. are *applications* not part of the operating system.
5. It's a big leap of faith to assume that all those who want Microsoft to open up their APIs also believe that there should not be any more closed source software. In my opinion, having Open Source alternatives to closed source software is great for the consumer - it means that those people who want to make money from software can do so whilst those who don't want to, or can't afford to, can use Open Source software. In our modern world, where the PC & the Internet are now part of our daily lives, it is right that as few people as possible are excluded from being able to connect to the Internet. You seem to forget that in some parts of the world, a copu of Windows XP costs more than some people earn in a month.
I'm not denying this might well be the case with your Linux server but restoring the backup image each time it crashes is hardly investigating the reason as to *why* the server is crashing, is it? If you're saying that no-one within your organisation has the Linux skills to investigate the crash problem correctly, then that is a different issue.
Besides, the chances are that there will be an error in a log file somewhere on the system which, if you pump it into Google, will no doubt reveal someone somewhere else has experienced a similar problem.
Sorry, but I'll happily sit here and not argue with anyone from, say, a Windows-based organisation who says that they find Linux difficult to maintain in comparison. But please don't expect me to sit back and keep quiet when someone blames lack of knowledge on the operating system.
This isn't a sarcastic comment - I've never personally used a Mac or OS X (just never had the need to) so I just don't understand why this issue has even made it to a Slashdot article.
Besides, it should come as no great shock that Microsoft do not tolerate dual booting systems anyway - look at how easily Windows wipes over the boot block when you reinstall it on a PC where you're booting Linux also.
It took the developers of Lilo and GRUB to make dual-booting possible with Windows & Linux, not Microsoft.
A live concert is about travelling to a venue with a few friends, having a beer or two and enjoying the music and the ambience in the concert hall. It's about believing that when you shout "More" at the end of the concert, the artiste(s) come back out for an encore or two based on how loud everyone shouts.
So by all means go ahead and plant yourself in front of a webcam in a little sterile room somewhere that's completely isolated from the people who buy your music and pay your wages - just don' expect me to pay for it, or even to watch it...