Wouldn't the EU be better employed taking Microsoft to task over the poor security in Windows/Outlook allowing yet another worm/virus to cause system outages and lost revenue to myriads of companies and individuals? Rather than worrying about a bloated MP3 player???
A lot of people would *welcome* this, I think you'll find...
Sure, some people want to stick an installation CD in their PC and when it's finished, have a nice working OS with all the apps they need ready to go... that's no different whether you use Windows or SuSE/Mandrake/Red Hat/etc. Linux.
At the same time, a lot of people don't want the bloat of extra apps that they never use - this is why the Linux "Roll Your Own Distro" community is equally as big as the prebuilt distro users.
This is all about the user maintaining his/her rights to choose, nothing more...
Yes, but as a consumer, I can go buy a take-away burger in Macdonalds or Burger King and go eat it with a bottle of Coke or Pepsi...
If I have a garage at home, as a consumer, I can go buy a Mercedes, BMW, Ford, etc. to park in it...
Sure, Microsoft has competition from Linux and Apple (to some degree) but does Joe Public get to *choose* alternatives to Microsoft? No, because Microsoft insist that when you buy a new pre-assembled PC, you have to buy Windows also...
Imagine buying your car and being told you could only fill it with petrol/gas from Esso/Exxon stations?
Yes, but the issue here is not *just* about applications.
Microsoft (and many other commercial software entities) want to enforce the "service" model on you and make you *rent* your software, rather than pay for it outright - this means they get a nice little monthly payment going from your bank account to theirs...
Okay, maybe you'll be happy doing that but what happens when the rental model gets extended into the data those applications use? Are you going to be happy downloading MP3s that last for 10 plays or so, or a movie you can only keep for, say, 6 months?
This isn't specifically an applications argument and there are probably a helluva lot of Linux users (like me) that make use of the applications that come bundled in a SuSE or Red Hat distribution in the same way that Windows users do with WMP.
This is (I think) more about open standards that can be used by everyone.
Bear in mind that most web sites run on Apache web server that conforms to the HTML standard. Imagine how you'd feel as an IE user not being able to get to certain sites because Apache enforced some changes to the HTML standard that stopped IE working?
Okay, this article isn't about web standards but it is about proprietary closed standards which, if enforced on a global status, allow the vendor to enforce charges on you to continue using them.
As an EU residing, mostly Linux & reluctant Windows user, I'm not sure that I see much in this story...
I can fully appreciate that Microsoft's general monopolistic attitude needs to be curtailed, no doubting that.
I can also see that had the US/EU laws against monopolistic practices been brought down five or six years ago, then IE might not have been the dominant browser and we might now be accessing web sites that are far less browser dependant.
I can appreciate that restricting the bundling of WMP with Windows might mean that Microsoft's DRM methods will not be dominant technology in the whole rights management argument.
But, to me, DRM is *STILL* a technology that restricts my rights to do what I like with music and media that I legitimately own and whether Microsoft's or A. N. Other's DRM technology is used is neither here nor there. Surely it's DRM that is at the centre of this argument, not WMP?
Where an application forces changes in an open standard (like HTML), then there is a good case to limit the impact of that application but there are enough multimedia formats that I can download or buy any number of non-Microsoft media players to play what I like on whatever OS I like without resorting to WMP.
And although I might not like the impact DRM has or will have with Open Source software, I'll simply take the stance of not buying DRM'ed hardware & media that curtails my rights as a user.
My guess is that there'll be an encryption change (coupled with DRM) when the next major format change occurs.
I doubt very much that the populace as a whole will bother too much about changing to another "silver disc" format from CD and DVD (after all, Mini-Disc is popular for music but only from a portability point of view, it would never have dislodged CD format) but when music and video starts getting distributed on memory cards (when they're cheap enough), that's when all the new security and anti-copying stuff will appear.
Okay, I accept the differende between "plagiarise" and "paraphrase" although I could levy criticism at yourself for not using capital letters at the beginning of sentences.:-)
Yes, gullible British public indeed but please remember there is now "American Idol", "German Idol" and at least about 8 others so there are a lot of stupid gullible people all over the place, not just Britain.
The British Music Industry does not con me because I refuse to pay HMV / Virgin / High Street prices for any CD and I don't buy copy protected CDs so please stop making these global statements.
I chew gum, window shop at Virgin, buy at Play247 or Amazon, drink water and coffee, eat good home-cooked food prepared from raw ingredients... and can write original comments without a need to plagiarise (the late and great) Bill Hicks.
Don't tar us all with the same brush - their are mindless consumers in every country in the Western World...
Hmmm... so there's just "black & white" with nothing in between, is there? "Star Trek fans" and "intelligent sci-fi fans" in your book no doubt...
Star Trek, Babylon 5, Blade Runner, 2001, etc., etc., are *ALL* just about entertainment, nothing more...
The fact that some people like varying degrees of mental stimulation in their entertainment is what makes the world an interesting place.
You seem to forget that Star Trek fans have always felt that they had some input into the shows and the films - the argument here is that Enterprise has died because of ignoring what the fans wanted.
I personally do not give a damn about there being no "homeless" or "organized" criminals in a TV show because I watch it to *ESCAPE* the real world, not to see a forecast of a possible future.
As far as I am concerned, there are far *TOO* many intellectual types with some image to project to the rest of the world that actually have their heads so far up their own backsides that they miss out on good entertainment because they consider it "beneath" their intellectual level.
For your information, I am a Star Trek / Babylon 5 / Star Wars / Contact / 2001 / Iain Banks / Greg Bear / Robert Heinlein / Gerry Anderson / etc. etc. fan and thoroughly enjoy all manner of sci-fi entertainment.
Oh, and by the way, "Solaris" is a boring, bland movie, both in its original and remake versions - give me "Dark Star", "Blade Runner" or an episode of Trek (not Enterprise) any day of the week.
It just *REALLY* annoys me that there has been an absolute wealth of material that could have been used to create some *GREAT* Star Trek material.
I've mentioned some of the good novels in a previous post but there were also the myriads of excellent ship designs that came out of FASA when they produced the Star Trek Role Playing Game - not to mention the other books of ships and deck-plans produced by third parties.
Plus the fans themselves - there are thousands of Trek fans who could have written high quality Trek material that would have been handed over for Paramount to use virtually free of charge, just for the love of it.
There is *NO* excuse for poor quality Trek programming - Berman & Braga sold out our deep passions for Trek purely as a money-making exercise, nothing more...
What *really* annoyed me was that there were some truly excellent stories written in book form that would have made some great stories for the series (although there were a lot of trashy novels also).
"Spock's World" was a superb tale about Vulcan's secession from the Federation that was a great character story with Dr McCoy addressing the Vulcan population...
"Dyson Sphere" was a TNG novel that was a follow-up to the Scotty episode that detailed a lot more about the history of the Dyson Sphere on which is ship had crashed...
Why weren't some of the good novelists like Peter David & Michael Jan Friedman invited to write more of the screenplays for the episodes?
Much has been said about the control that Gene Roddenberry had over the Star Trek franchise & many have criticised the power he had over it.
However, under Roddenberry, we were at least guaranteed a cohesive Star Trek universe.
"Enterprise", I'm told at least, did not fit into the pre-Kirk Trek universe and deliberately did not do so. The lame excuse that Rick Berman/Brannon Braga gave for this was that events in "First Contact" caused the timeline to be changed.
Berman & Braga have made a complete hash of Trek since they got their grubby paws on the franchise that has seen it deteriorate more and more since Roddenberry's passing - TNG was, on the whole, excellent, DS9 had a poorish start but improved as things went on, Voyager had a handful of good stories and Enterprise was a complete waste of time.
I watched the first series, hoping to see an improvement and then gave up with it. Recently, I tuned into a repeat episode (possibly 2nd series) to see a plot stolen straight out of "Enemy Mine" (human and alien stranded together on a planet) & was shocked at how unoriginal the plots had become.
The only good thing about Trek recently is that my lack of enthusiasm for it has caused me to go buy the Babylon 5 DVDs (I missed all but a hndful of episodes when it was shown on TV) and to restore my faith in good, well-made science fiction TV series.
Braga & Berman can go sit on the scrapheap - I'll not lose any sleep over it...
American mentality at it's best (I'm a Brit also).
Whilst many Americans seem to feel they have no reason to look beyond the shores of their own country, they seem to naturally assume those of us outside of the US spend all our lives watching what they do and taking it all in.
I had no idea where the Supreme Court website was and probably never cared up until this point - so thanks for supplying the link.
Games are for entertainment, nothing more. Whether a game is about blasting aliens that are coming down a screen or being involved in a huge on-line MMORPG, it is still *JUST* a game that *JUST* provides mental stimulation and a way to escape modern life for a few minutes.
People that waste their time discussing "virtual worlds" to this level of anal detail probably need to get personalities and sort out their real lives before worrying about what their "avatars" cana nd cannot do.
I'm a huge games fan and gaming occupies a great portion of my leisure time - but it is *JUST* a hobby, nothing more.
1) Get rid of the price-fixing of CDs that occurs across the handful of music giants and their associated retailers. CDs do *NOT* cost 10-20 dollars/pounds/Euros each to produce, it's that simple. Retailers and record companies are making *huge* profits because of price-fixing.
2) Make the quality of the output higher. Give people good artists that take the time to produce an entire album of high quality music rather than just the 1 or 2 tracks that most people want. Otherwise, give people the ability to download those tracks they want at a fair price.
3) Stop penalising those of us that legitimately buy CDs. I will *NOT* knowingly buy a protected CD by any artist and I *WILL* return any such as faulty to the vendor that sold it me. I will *NOT* give up my right to use something I have legitimately bought in the way I want to use it and the way I have previously leant and borrowed from) people CDs, LPs, tapes, etc.
4) Accept that part of living in a society is the sharing of thoughts and experiences. That includes sharing music, whether it's sitting in a room with a group of people listening to an album, lending somebody a CD / tape. etc. Music *ALWAYS* has been about culturally shared experiences and people will always share music as a result.
I personally do not agree with MP3 sharing as a mechanism to build up huge music collections free of charge - that denies an artist somewhere a livelihood.
However, sharing is a valid mechanism to overcome the hype and advertisement lies of record comapnies that try to sell CDs based purely on the way some artists look, not by the quality of the music they create. Therefore, downloading and listening to MP3s means that people can either buy the CD afterwards because they like the MP3s or delete them because they're not even worth backing up to a CD or wasting hard disk space on - at least people stop getting ripped off as a result.
People have no qualms or guilt about MP3 sharing because the record companies currently have no regard for them in expecting them to pay over-inflated prices for frequently sub-standard product.
When the RIAA gets it into its thick skull that this is purely and simply about *GIVING THE CUSTOMER VALUE FOR MONEY*, then MP3 sharing will reduce. There will always be pirates but this has never stopped the music and software industry in the past and is unlikely to in the future.
This is simply about making the customer feel valued, nothing more...
Fine, they've done it through a lack of morality and through financial greed but even that is a step above doing it merely based on a person's skin colour.
Racism is wrong whether white people are giving it or receiving it, end of story.
If you've half a mind to join to be a racist, that's all you need...
I would suggest that before you turn Carly into your personal..., you sell some of your Microsoft stock first, go buy a pair of spectacles and take a look at Carly's photo again on hp.com...
She'd probably make an interesting personal novelty umbrella stand for the hallway but I can't think of much I'd kick out of bed to make way for her...:-)
Although I live in the UK, I work for an American company.
You are more than welcome to come and visit my office or any of the other offices in Europe and the States that I've visited. You will see for yourself a rich multiracial environment due to the fact that my company (like most European and US companies) employs people based on their abilities to do a job, not on their skin colour.
I am sure that when IT jobs are moved to India, people there are also employed on their skills and abilities because itt would be heartbreaking to learn that they employed anti-white bigots like you...
Governments globally should look at the profits each one of these companies makes in their country...
Then they look at the number of their country's citizens that company employs...
Then they do a simple sum and apply a business tax on those profits based simply on how much that company takes out of a country (profits) versus how much that company puts into the country (jobs).
Nothing to do with race, creed or colour - just simply a reminder to these companies that they are only as good and as profitable as their employees and that they have an obligation to put some of their wealth back into the countries where people have generated those profits.
>>Were you entertained by the video that you saw? No. Would you have bought it? No.
Fine. Take it back from where you bought it as "not fit for purpose" just like I have done with *every* protected CD I have ever bought. And if the store doesn't take it back, write to the music / film company. Kick up a stink...
>>It's more of your own personal screening of a video than anything else.
What is it with file-sharers always *justifying* what they do? It's about greed and kudos, nothing more...
>>Is it illegal? Yes. I should be able to buy a movie, watch it, and return it in 30 days if I don't like it as well, but I can't.
And have you tried it? Have you stood in a store and raised your voice at the salesperson, insisting to speak to a manager? Have you emailed the record company or film distributor?
>>I'm just showing that the overpriced hollywood mine-field is no more fair than average piracy.
You're right, it isn't. The music, film and software industry is plagued by unscrupulous companies that want to rip you off. So when they *do* rip you off, you complain, you tell your friends, you email them, post criticisms on bulletin boards, etc., etc.
>>You won't stop them with any manner of DRM.
Piracy creates an excuse for DRM to get used - this is my entire argument... Pirates give record companies, films distributors and software publishers the reasons to take away *everyone's* right to fair use of a product. Pirates are helping the very thing they claim to fight against...
In the case of CDs, most of the music I listen to is 1970s - 1980s rock music that I can easily find for under $10 / 6.00 in local record stores and Internet sellers. Yet I still see those same CDs copied as MP3s on the Internet. How cheap do they need to be before people stop copying them?
If you copy movies and CDs, that's your decision but please admit that you do so because you don't want to spend *any* money on them or for personal kudos.
The only way these items will become cheaper is by *direct positive action* - don't pay the prices that are being asked for them...
Slashdot Mirror
Wouldn't the EU be better employed taking Microsoft to task over the poor security in Windows/Outlook allowing yet another worm/virus to cause system outages and lost revenue to myriads of companies and individuals? Rather than worrying about a bloated MP3 player???
A lot of people would *welcome* this, I think you'll find...
Sure, some people want to stick an installation CD in their PC and when it's finished, have a nice working OS with all the apps they need ready to go... that's no different whether you use Windows or SuSE/Mandrake/Red Hat/etc. Linux.
At the same time, a lot of people don't want the bloat of extra apps that they never use - this is why the Linux "Roll Your Own Distro" community is equally as big as the prebuilt distro users.
This is all about the user maintaining his/her rights to choose, nothing more...
Yes, but as a consumer, I can go buy a take-away burger in Macdonalds or Burger King and go eat it with a bottle of Coke or Pepsi...
If I have a garage at home, as a consumer, I can go buy a Mercedes, BMW, Ford, etc. to park in it...
Sure, Microsoft has competition from Linux and Apple (to some degree) but does Joe Public get to *choose* alternatives to Microsoft? No, because Microsoft insist that when you buy a new pre-assembled PC, you have to buy Windows also...
Imagine buying your car and being told you could only fill it with petrol/gas from Esso/Exxon stations?
Same difference...
Yes, but the issue here is not *just* about applications.
Microsoft (and many other commercial software entities) want to enforce the "service" model on you and make you *rent* your software, rather than pay for it outright - this means they get a nice little monthly payment going from your bank account to theirs...
Okay, maybe you'll be happy doing that but what happens when the rental model gets extended into the data those applications use? Are you going to be happy downloading MP3s that last for 10 plays or so, or a movie you can only keep for, say, 6 months?
This isn't specifically an applications argument and there are probably a helluva lot of Linux users (like me) that make use of the applications that come bundled in a SuSE or Red Hat distribution in the same way that Windows users do with WMP.
This is (I think) more about open standards that can be used by everyone.
Bear in mind that most web sites run on Apache web server that conforms to the HTML standard. Imagine how you'd feel as an IE user not being able to get to certain sites because Apache enforced some changes to the HTML standard that stopped IE working?
Okay, this article isn't about web standards but it is about proprietary closed standards which, if enforced on a global status, allow the vendor to enforce charges on you to continue using them.
Think about it...
As an EU residing, mostly Linux & reluctant Windows user, I'm not sure that I see much in this story...
I can fully appreciate that Microsoft's general monopolistic attitude needs to be curtailed, no doubting that.
I can also see that had the US/EU laws against monopolistic practices been brought down five or six years ago, then IE might not have been the dominant browser and we might now be accessing web sites that are far less browser dependant.
I can appreciate that restricting the bundling of WMP with Windows might mean that Microsoft's DRM methods will not be dominant technology in the whole rights management argument.
But, to me, DRM is *STILL* a technology that restricts my rights to do what I like with music and media that I legitimately own and whether Microsoft's or A. N. Other's DRM technology is used is neither here nor there. Surely it's DRM that is at the centre of this argument, not WMP?
Where an application forces changes in an open standard (like HTML), then there is a good case to limit the impact of that application but there are enough multimedia formats that I can download or buy any number of non-Microsoft media players to play what I like on whatever OS I like without resorting to WMP.
And although I might not like the impact DRM has or will have with Open Source software, I'll simply take the stance of not buying DRM'ed hardware & media that curtails my rights as a user.
Am I missing something here?
My guess is that there'll be an encryption change (coupled with DRM) when the next major format change occurs.
I doubt very much that the populace as a whole will bother too much about changing to another "silver disc" format from CD and DVD (after all, Mini-Disc is popular for music but only from a portability point of view, it would never have dislodged CD format) but when music and video starts getting distributed on memory cards (when they're cheap enough), that's when all the new security and anti-copying stuff will appear.
Okay, I accept the differende between "plagiarise" and "paraphrase" although I could levy criticism at yourself for not using capital letters at the beginning of sentences. :-)
Yes, gullible British public indeed but please remember there is now "American Idol", "German Idol" and at least about 8 others so there are a lot of stupid gullible people all over the place, not just Britain.
The British Music Industry does not con me because I refuse to pay HMV / Virgin / High Street prices for any CD and I don't buy copy protected CDs so please stop making these global statements.
I chew gum, window shop at Virgin, buy at Play247 or Amazon, drink water and coffee, eat good home-cooked food prepared from raw ingredients... and can write original comments without a need to plagiarise (the late and great) Bill Hicks.
Don't tar us all with the same brush - their are mindless consumers in every country in the Western World...
Hmmm... so there's just "black & white" with nothing in between, is there? "Star Trek fans" and "intelligent sci-fi fans" in your book no doubt...
Star Trek, Babylon 5, Blade Runner, 2001, etc., etc., are *ALL* just about entertainment, nothing more...
The fact that some people like varying degrees of mental stimulation in their entertainment is what makes the world an interesting place.
You seem to forget that Star Trek fans have always felt that they had some input into the shows and the films - the argument here is that Enterprise has died because of ignoring what the fans wanted.
I personally do not give a damn about there being no "homeless" or "organized" criminals in a TV show because I watch it to *ESCAPE* the real world, not to see a forecast of a possible future.
As far as I am concerned, there are far *TOO* many intellectual types with some image to project to the rest of the world that actually have their heads so far up their own backsides that they miss out on good entertainment because they consider it "beneath" their intellectual level.
For your information, I am a Star Trek / Babylon 5 / Star Wars / Contact / 2001 / Iain Banks / Greg Bear / Robert Heinlein / Gerry Anderson / etc. etc. fan and thoroughly enjoy all manner of sci-fi entertainment.
Oh, and by the way, "Solaris" is a boring, bland movie, both in its original and remake versions - give me "Dark Star", "Blade Runner" or an episode of Trek (not Enterprise) any day of the week.
It just *REALLY* annoys me that there has been an absolute wealth of material that could have been used to create some *GREAT* Star Trek material.
I've mentioned some of the good novels in a previous post but there were also the myriads of excellent ship designs that came out of FASA when they produced the Star Trek Role Playing Game - not to mention the other books of ships and deck-plans produced by third parties.
Plus the fans themselves - there are thousands of Trek fans who could have written high quality Trek material that would have been handed over for Paramount to use virtually free of charge, just for the love of it.
There is *NO* excuse for poor quality Trek programming - Berman & Braga sold out our deep passions for Trek purely as a money-making exercise, nothing more...
What *really* annoyed me was that there were some truly excellent stories written in book form that would have made some great stories for the series (although there were a lot of trashy novels also).
"Spock's World" was a superb tale about Vulcan's secession from the Federation that was a great character story with Dr McCoy addressing the Vulcan population...
"Dyson Sphere" was a TNG novel that was a follow-up to the Scotty episode that detailed a lot more about the history of the Dyson Sphere on which is ship had crashed...
Why weren't some of the good novelists like Peter David & Michael Jan Friedman invited to write more of the screenplays for the episodes?
Much has been said about the control that Gene Roddenberry had over the Star Trek franchise & many have criticised the power he had over it.
However, under Roddenberry, we were at least guaranteed a cohesive Star Trek universe.
"Enterprise", I'm told at least, did not fit into the pre-Kirk Trek universe and deliberately did not do so. The lame excuse that Rick Berman/Brannon Braga gave for this was that events in "First Contact" caused the timeline to be changed.
Berman & Braga have made a complete hash of Trek since they got their grubby paws on the franchise that has seen it deteriorate more and more since Roddenberry's passing - TNG was, on the whole, excellent, DS9 had a poorish start but improved as things went on, Voyager had a handful of good stories and Enterprise was a complete waste of time.
I watched the first series, hoping to see an improvement and then gave up with it. Recently, I tuned into a repeat episode (possibly 2nd series) to see a plot stolen straight out of "Enemy Mine" (human and alien stranded together on a planet) & was shocked at how unoriginal the plots had become.
The only good thing about Trek recently is that my lack of enthusiasm for it has caused me to go buy the Babylon 5 DVDs (I missed all but a hndful of episodes when it was shown on TV) and to restore my faith in good, well-made science fiction TV series.
Braga & Berman can go sit on the scrapheap - I'll not lose any sleep over it...
...and see how long it takes Steve Ballmer to come after your domain name.
American mentality at it's best (I'm a Brit also).
Whilst many Americans seem to feel they have no reason to look beyond the shores of their own country, they seem to naturally assume those of us outside of the US spend all our lives watching what they do and taking it all in.
I had no idea where the Supreme Court website was and probably never cared up until this point - so thanks for supplying the link.
Games are for entertainment, nothing more. Whether a game is about blasting aliens that are coming down a screen or being involved in a huge on-line MMORPG, it is still *JUST* a game that *JUST* provides mental stimulation and a way to escape modern life for a few minutes.
People that waste their time discussing "virtual worlds" to this level of anal detail probably need to get personalities and sort out their real lives before worrying about what their "avatars" cana nd cannot do.
I'm a huge games fan and gaming occupies a great portion of my leisure time - but it is *JUST* a hobby, nothing more.
...Here's how to reduce (not stop) file sharing:
1) Get rid of the price-fixing of CDs that occurs across the handful of music giants and their associated retailers. CDs do *NOT* cost 10-20 dollars/pounds/Euros each to produce, it's that simple. Retailers and record companies are making *huge* profits because of price-fixing.
2) Make the quality of the output higher. Give people good artists that take the time to produce an entire album of high quality music rather than just the 1 or 2 tracks that most people want. Otherwise, give people the ability to download those tracks they want at a fair price.
3) Stop penalising those of us that legitimately buy CDs. I will *NOT* knowingly buy a protected CD by any artist and I *WILL* return any such as faulty to the vendor that sold it me. I will *NOT* give up my right to use something I have legitimately bought in the way I want to use it and the way I have previously leant and borrowed from) people CDs, LPs, tapes, etc.
4) Accept that part of living in a society is the sharing of thoughts and experiences. That includes sharing music, whether it's sitting in a room with a group of people listening to an album, lending somebody a CD / tape. etc. Music *ALWAYS* has been about culturally shared experiences and people will always share music as a result.
I personally do not agree with MP3 sharing as a mechanism to build up huge music collections free of charge - that denies an artist somewhere a livelihood.
However, sharing is a valid mechanism to overcome the hype and advertisement lies of record comapnies that try to sell CDs based purely on the way some artists look, not by the quality of the music they create. Therefore, downloading and listening to MP3s means that people can either buy the CD afterwards because they like the MP3s or delete them because they're not even worth backing up to a CD or wasting hard disk space on - at least people stop getting ripped off as a result.
People have no qualms or guilt about MP3 sharing because the record companies currently have no regard for them in expecting them to pay over-inflated prices for frequently sub-standard product.
When the RIAA gets it into its thick skull that this is purely and simply about *GIVING THE CUSTOMER VALUE FOR MONEY*, then MP3 sharing will reduce. There will always be pirates but this has never stopped the music and software industry in the past and is unlikely to in the future.
This is simply about making the customer feel valued, nothing more...
Okay. so tell us *why* Linux is "not ready" for the desktop yet then?
The people that repeatedly make this statement never seem to qualify the reasons why...
Fine, they've done it through a lack of morality and through financial greed but even that is a step above doing it merely based on a person's skin colour.
Racism is wrong whether white people are giving it or receiving it, end of story.
If you've half a mind to join to be a racist, that's all you need...
I would suggest that before you turn Carly into your personal ..., you sell some of your Microsoft stock first, go buy a pair of spectacles and take a look at Carly's photo again on hp.com...
:-)
She'd probably make an interesting personal novelty umbrella stand for the hallway but I can't think of much I'd kick out of bed to make way for her...
Although I live in the UK, I work for an American company.
You are more than welcome to come and visit my office or any of the other offices in Europe and the States that I've visited. You will see for yourself a rich multiracial environment due to the fact that my company (like most European and US companies) employs people based on their abilities to do a job, not on their skin colour.
I am sure that when IT jobs are moved to India, people there are also employed on their skills and abilities because itt would be heartbreaking to learn that they employed anti-white bigots like you...
Please tell me the name of your company - just so as I don't give you any of my money.
BTW, does your mother know she gave birth to a blood-sucking vampire?
Governments globally should look at the profits each one of these companies makes in their country...
Then they look at the number of their country's citizens that company employs...
Then they do a simple sum and apply a business tax on those profits based simply on how much that company takes out of a country (profits) versus how much that company puts into the country (jobs).
Nothing to do with race, creed or colour - just simply a reminder to these companies that they are only as good and as profitable as their employees and that they have an obligation to put some of their wealth back into the countries where people have generated those profits.
>>Were you entertained by the video that you saw? No. Would you have bought it? No.
Fine. Take it back from where you bought it as "not fit for purpose" just like I have done with *every* protected CD I have ever bought. And if the store doesn't take it back, write to the music / film company. Kick up a stink...
>>It's more of your own personal screening of a video than anything else.
What is it with file-sharers always *justifying* what they do? It's about greed and kudos, nothing more...
>>Is it illegal? Yes. I should be able to buy a movie, watch it, and return it in 30 days if I don't like it as well, but I can't.
And have you tried it? Have you stood in a store and raised your voice at the salesperson, insisting to speak to a manager? Have you emailed the record company or film distributor?
>>I'm just showing that the overpriced hollywood mine-field is no more fair than average piracy.
You're right, it isn't. The music, film and software industry is plagued by unscrupulous companies that want to rip you off. So when they *do* rip you off, you complain, you tell your friends, you email them, post criticisms on bulletin boards, etc., etc.
>>You won't stop them with any manner of DRM.
Piracy creates an excuse for DRM to get used - this is my entire argument... Pirates give record companies, films distributors and software publishers the reasons to take away *everyone's* right to fair use of a product. Pirates are helping the very thing they claim to fight against...
Define "reasonable price"...
In the case of CDs, most of the music I listen to is 1970s - 1980s rock music that I can easily find for under $10 / 6.00 in local record stores and Internet sellers. Yet I still see those same CDs copied as MP3s on the Internet. How cheap do they need to be before people stop copying them?
If you copy movies and CDs, that's your decision but please admit that you do so because you don't want to spend *any* money on them or for personal kudos.
The only way these items will become cheaper is by *direct positive action* - don't pay the prices that are being asked for them...
Yes, but it's *STILL* a higher score than you've got...