I've often wondered about that. A lot of people will argue that "conspiracy to commit" == "thoughtcrime", but the fact is you can think about it all you want, it's when you start planning to bomb a building, abduct a politician, kill your boss or whatever that it becomes conspiracy.
In many cases I believe the consequences of "conspiracy" are much the same as committing the actual act. It's not just for nailing those that are plotting act X ahead of time, but for those that were involved with the plot after-the-fact. Can somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that conspiracy is in fact a crime as well, it's just that "conspiracy" is a different form of the crime.
However, it's still a moot point. To my knowledge it's still not (yet) an actual violation of the criminal code to copy music. The only thing that I know of that's a crime at the moment are things like camcording in a theater in Canada (thanks to US lobbiests literally sleeping with Canadian politicians). I wonder if a bunch of kids planning a way to record a movie from a theater would thus guilty of conspiracy. Notwithstanding that camcording a movie is a dumb thing to do anyways, it's kinda sad to see that such a thing can now hold a jail term, and I can guarantee you that the theaters and movie companies are very happy to advertise things like "You won't be able to record a movie when you're in jail" up here in Canada.
Companies are already looking at scavenging raw materials out of recycled industrial (or even consumer) waste. As we are able to extract less through mining, we may look more at extracting (what may be in the future) semi-precious metals through various forms of recycling. Already a lot of companies are springing up around this concept, and some are even making decent bucks. As availability through mining starts to fall short, I'd expect to see an increase in price followed by availability picking up again to some extent through re-use.
This may be a pretty damn cool use for bio-science too, as I seem to remember articles about modified plants that could be placed about areas such as garbage dumps etc and absorb various metallic minerals from the ground. Maybe one day we'll see people growing trees of copper and aluminum over previous landfills, leeching bits of once-discarded waste metals from the ground.
I wouldn't say that the lack of raw materials shouldn't be a concern, but in the perhaps it will actually force society to view such things as less "disposable" and further the science and industry of re-use in the future.
Extracting it from the atmosphere is not cost-effective
Not now, but as the availability goes down and focus turns to finding ways to extract helium more efficiently, along with a sharp price rise, then the incipient profit involved in extraction will likely create a market for atmospheric or some other method of extraction... or perhaps lead to the future ability to synthesise helium.
My question: can any science-types here list some important uses of helium? I'm sure that there are some, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.
One thing I wonder though... if the fraud occurs because somebody stole your bank details, then that's one thing and perhaps the bank should cover it. Now if somebody sets up a withdrawal because you idiotically and deliberately provided the world with your bank info, I personally would see no reason the bank should cover this.
The idea that Comcast should provide the features of a truck for the cost of a small car is ridiculous. If you need the features of a truck, you should expect to pay for them.
Except in this case, Comcast advertised many of the features of a truck, but then had a limited supply of trucks which they had oversold, so started giving out compact cars to customers instead...
I'm not sure if you can blame MS in this case though. If your machine is interfacing with the device through a plextor driver, which similarly allows the firmware update (as a non-privileged user), I'd say the weakness is Plextor's. Drivers need to be able to do their thing, and I'm not really sure that the OS could easily differentiate between a driver reading/writing a DVD or writing firmware. So if this were the case, MS wouldn't really be to blame unless it was actually their driver, or perhaps if the Plextor driver passed MS Certification.
Where I used to work, we had programs we still ran in DOS mode, that were originally created in the 80's (though changed since). The company still existed and had a support division for the product, though you did have to pay a yearly fee to get support.
It makes about as much sense as banning somebody who "drugged" a date from ever entering an store that has a pharmacy.
Still, it is a lot better than nailing all those who were incarcerated for public urination, etc. I do what kind of stupid things people get nailed for online that would be equivilent, and overall it's still a very bad law (just a little less dumb for the specificacy that was pointed out).
I don't think there *were* C7 processors out then, and not at that Mhz.
What you've probably got there is a Via Ezra or a Nehemiah predecessor, maybe an early C-3. They weren't very useful for much more than things that required low-power-consumption.
Once things got the Nehemiah (C3 1Ghz-1.2Ghz) they weren't too bad. I've used one as low-power video+game (MAME) unit. The C7's are better and newer than those now too.
I'd say that, IMHO, in many places the case is that people of various visible minorities make up the majority of those who can't afford the lawyers to fight criminal charges...
Perhaps a certain area of town is more prone to crime by a particular race, but that's also often because they're the majority in that section of town...
Does this apply to exports, or in-country use only? Would it mean that an Antiguan company could sell mp3's online to customers in Europe/Canada/USA/Australia? I'm guessing that in the USA you'd be arrested for buying from Antigua, if not due to existing laws then due to something coming in the near future, but how about other countries?
That's fine for many home users, but not all. I know that Wal*Mart and many other companies will in some cases refuse to develop a picture if it "looks too professional." It's to prevent the unauthorized duplication of a professional photo, but it's a real hassle to get around if it's just a really good picture, or you happen to own the copyright.
Further to that, there are some pictures you don't want to develop in a commercial environment. Private pictures of you and your buds doing something fun and dumb, nude pictures of yourself or girlfriend, and many others, photos around the holidays (development takes a lot longer), special projects (calendars etc), or perhaps you just live somewhere that Wal*Mart or another photo-developer isn't conveniently accessible..
No, these aren't all that common, but they're not terribly uncommon either, and the fact is that you shouldn't have to be screwed by the printer companies for ink because you've decided you print things yourself as opposed to having it done at at a store.
A lot of this depends on the district, and the infrastructure. I used to work as a school district tech in a mid-sized city in Western Canada. Pay was decent, and while many teachers were old-fashioned, lazy, or just plain not very bright, a good number of them were still in-touch enough to go by with more recent software/hardware. Did they complain when we switched browsers to firefox, well not so much. Did they complain about openoffice, quite a lot (until the kids figured the software out for them). Did they complain when we moved to a linux-based model... hell yes, but generally before the switch even occurred. Once things actually happened and their POS Pentium-1 Win98 boxes were sent away, there is definitely a noticeable amount of complaining but it was mixed with something of a resigned acceptance on the part of many, and for some there was even a promising interest in something new. In terms of web-based tools usage was definitely superior though, with teachers getting into all sorts of neat thigns.
Now that I've moved to more central-Eastern Canada, I don't work in education anymore. I have been to some of the local schools and I'd say that the state of IT here is very, very sad compared to where I came from. Hopefully by the time I have kids in school things will have improved, or perhaps I'll move back to my hometown. It does seem that larger cities actually have lesser budgets for IT in education, and in general the quality of teaching staff and pay-rate is comparably lesser.
(a) A person who is not licensed under this chapter, who does not have a license application pending, and who violates this chapter may be assessed a civil penalty to be paid to the state not to exceed $10,000 for each violation.
Now, assuming that they got something like on average have the max, say about $5000. If they're using the same (unlicensed) investigators to sue about 5000 people...
5000 x 5000 = $25,000,000
And I doubt that the state would have a big problem with charging and collection on this... since it is: a civil penalty to be paid to the state
Well, let the counter-lawsuits begin. Hell, the states should be the ones charging them for easy cash!
Around here, we have NSF (Non-sufficient-funds) fees, which basically say that if you write a bad cheque etc that gets rejected due to lack'o'cash, you get hit with an extra penalty. In this case, the transaction was perfectly legit on behave of the party requesting money, but the money just wasn't there to pay them.
The same does not apply to debits that have been rejected due to the requesting party having insufficient authority to make a withdrawal.
Sex crimes are the only crimes we continue to punish people after they've "paid their debt to society". We restrict their movement, restrict where they can live, and in many cases ensure through force of law that they never lead a normal life again.
Actually, pretty much anything that involves a criminal record is going to screw you over in many cases. In the majority of jobs, criminal record = not hired. No job = no cash. No cash = shit existence.
Throw into that the limited ability to travel and many others, and that person will likely be paying for his/her long after being released from prison.
Yes, some people break this cycle, and some jobs do hire people with records, but the fact is that in most places even McDonalds has the "have you ever been convicted of a crime" section.
I'm not saying that having a record is 100% a bad idea... you don't really want to hire a guy with a rape (against female) records to teach a female athletics class, or somebody with a history of fraud/embezzlement to work in a bank, but the system could definitely use some reform in terms of how long records hang around, what sentences gain one a record (and for how long), and many other issues.
To my knowledge, there isn't really much in the way of legal avenues to re-sell a digital music file.
They are much easier to distribute illegally, but when it comes to legal ways to do so... no so easy unless perhaps it's legit to load up an iPod and then sell it with the songs or whatever.
Really, if they cured their acute case of "Cranial Rectal Inversion," they'd realize that mp3 is actually a cash-cow in this sense, since there's not really a physical medium in which to sell a second-hand/used mp3... which means that all actual mp3 sales are new sales, which means more cash for them.
The Human Genome Project to sequence *ONE* complete set of DNA for a single human took us 13 years and 3 billion dollars
Yes, but it also did start with technology that existed 13 years ago. That's not to say that doing so nowadays wouldn't take work or money, but that it likely be assisted by modern technology to achieve faster/cheaper results.
Despite some pretty abysmal/buggy online performance last time I played (after 3-4 weeks ago), the rating system for C&C3 was pretty cool. It allowed you to rate opponents skill, sportsmanship (teamkilling I assume would be low) etc. I never really tested to see if you could filter out those who were jerks, but it would be a useful feature. EA had some good ideas there... now if they could only make the thing playable.
That coyotes are smarter than humans? This might appear valid in the wild but the fact is that many humans seem to behave more like lemmings that coyotes. The cautionary aspect is overruled by a "it would never happen to me" or "I'll never get caught" mentality in many cases.
Technology routinely renders old business models obsolete and doesn't necessarily replace them
One thing that people seem to not pay attention to is also this: technology may cost them money in R&D, because their old distribution methods are dying, but it's saving them a shitload of money in production. Equipment for digitally editing music (or movies) is increasingly powerful and lower in cost. Equipment for duplicating (not just by the pirates, but the corps themselves) is increasingly faster and lower in cost.
These companies really do want to have their cake and eat it too. They are in many cases saving massive amounts of cash through the use of modern technology, yet aren't willing to switch the rest of their business model over to embracing it for fear of lessening their *control*
And how useful that is depends on how you use it. Maybe you have 160GB of music. You might not listen to every song straight through, but you'd like to have various music for different occasions. Maybe you have all your NiN albums, and all your Elton John stuff. Sometimes you're in the mood for one, sometimes the other.
Or you could be into jogging. Sure you won't listen to 24/7 30 days straight, but you can crank on random playlists each jog for unique music a year 'round. Heck, for people like me, I often have music on while I work - it makes the day go faster - so that's still 8h of the day 5 days a week. Personally I prefer just uploading new songs every now and then, but some people like to have it all there at their fingertips.
Hmmm, between the amount of actual albums I own and have ripped (I think it's about 30+, not a huge amount), the tunes which I have legally downloaded online (the late mp3.com, garageband), and music I have bought online I have filled several DVD's. At 4.3GB of music per DVD, and 3-5 DVD's that about 13-22GB of music. I know people with *much* more in terms of albums than me. Not necessarily $5000 worth, but plenty.
I believe the newer iPods do video too, which would likely fill them up much faster. 160GB isn't really that unreasonable.
One also has to consider those that consider bigger=better, and iPod size is a status symbol. Even if the wankers only use 2GB of music, they'll brag about their fancy 160GB toy.
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I've often wondered about that. A lot of people will argue that "conspiracy to commit" == "thoughtcrime", but the fact is you can think about it all you want, it's when you start planning to bomb a building, abduct a politician, kill your boss or whatever that it becomes conspiracy.
In many cases I believe the consequences of "conspiracy" are much the same as committing the actual act. It's not just for nailing those that are plotting act X ahead of time, but for those that were involved with the plot after-the-fact. Can somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that conspiracy is in fact a crime as well, it's just that "conspiracy" is a different form of the crime.
However, it's still a moot point. To my knowledge it's still not (yet) an actual violation of the criminal code to copy music. The only thing that I know of that's a crime at the moment are things like camcording in a theater in Canada (thanks to US lobbiests literally sleeping with Canadian politicians). I wonder if a bunch of kids planning a way to record a movie from a theater would thus guilty of conspiracy. Notwithstanding that camcording a movie is a dumb thing to do anyways, it's kinda sad to see that such a thing can now hold a jail term, and I can guarantee you that the theaters and movie companies are very happy to advertise things like "You won't be able to record a movie when you're in jail" up here in Canada.
Companies are already looking at scavenging raw materials out of recycled industrial (or even consumer) waste. As we are able to extract less through mining, we may look more at extracting (what may be in the future) semi-precious metals through various forms of recycling. Already a lot of companies are springing up around this concept, and some are even making decent bucks. As availability through mining starts to fall short, I'd expect to see an increase in price followed by availability picking up again to some extent through re-use.
This may be a pretty damn cool use for bio-science too, as I seem to remember articles about modified plants that could be placed about areas such as garbage dumps etc and absorb various metallic minerals from the ground. Maybe one day we'll see people growing trees of copper and aluminum over previous landfills, leeching bits of once-discarded waste metals from the ground.
I wouldn't say that the lack of raw materials shouldn't be a concern, but in the perhaps it will actually force society to view such things as less "disposable" and further the science and industry of re-use in the future.
Extracting it from the atmosphere is not cost-effective
Not now, but as the availability goes down and focus turns to finding ways to extract helium more efficiently, along with a sharp price rise, then the incipient profit involved in extraction will likely create a market for atmospheric or some other method of extraction... or perhaps lead to the future ability to synthesise helium.
My question: can any science-types here list some important uses of helium? I'm sure that there are some, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.
One thing I wonder though... if the fraud occurs because somebody stole your bank details, then that's one thing and perhaps the bank should cover it. Now if somebody sets up a withdrawal because you idiotically and deliberately provided the world with your bank info, I personally would see no reason the bank should cover this.
The idea that Comcast should provide the features of a truck for the cost of a small car is ridiculous. If you need the features of a truck, you should expect to pay for them.
Except in this case, Comcast advertised many of the features of a truck, but then had a limited supply of trucks which they had oversold, so started giving out compact cars to customers instead...
I'm not sure if you can blame MS in this case though. If your machine is interfacing with the device through a plextor driver, which similarly allows the firmware update (as a non-privileged user), I'd say the weakness is Plextor's. Drivers need to be able to do their thing, and I'm not really sure that the OS could easily differentiate between a driver reading/writing a DVD or writing firmware. So if this were the case, MS wouldn't really be to blame unless it was actually their driver, or perhaps if the Plextor driver passed MS Certification.
Where I used to work, we had programs we still ran in DOS mode, that were originally created in the 80's (though changed since). The company still existed and had a support division for the product, though you did have to pay a yearly fee to get support.
It makes about as much sense as banning somebody who "drugged" a date from ever entering an store that has a pharmacy.
Still, it is a lot better than nailing all those who were incarcerated for public urination, etc. I do what kind of stupid things people get nailed for online that would be equivilent, and overall it's still a very bad law (just a little less dumb for the specificacy that was pointed out).
I don't think there *were* C7 processors out then, and not at that Mhz.
What you've probably got there is a Via Ezra or a Nehemiah predecessor, maybe an early C-3. They weren't very useful for much more than things that required low-power-consumption.
Once things got the Nehemiah (C3 1Ghz-1.2Ghz) they weren't too bad. I've used one as low-power video+game (MAME) unit. The C7's are better and newer than those now too.
I'd say that, IMHO, in many places the case is that people of various visible minorities make up the majority of those who can't afford the lawyers to fight criminal charges...
Perhaps a certain area of town is more prone to crime by a particular race, but that's also often because they're the majority in that section of town...
Does this apply to exports, or in-country use only? Would it mean that an Antiguan company could sell mp3's online to customers in Europe/Canada/USA/Australia? I'm guessing that in the USA you'd be arrested for buying from Antigua, if not due to existing laws then due to something coming in the near future, but how about other countries?
That's fine for many home users, but not all. I know that Wal*Mart and many other companies will in some cases refuse to develop a picture if it "looks too professional." It's to prevent the unauthorized duplication of a professional photo, but it's a real hassle to get around if it's just a really good picture, or you happen to own the copyright.
Further to that, there are some pictures you don't want to develop in a commercial environment. Private pictures of you and your buds doing something fun and dumb, nude pictures of yourself or girlfriend, and many others, photos around the holidays (development takes a lot longer), special projects (calendars etc), or perhaps you just live somewhere that Wal*Mart or another photo-developer isn't conveniently accessible..
No, these aren't all that common, but they're not terribly uncommon either, and the fact is that you shouldn't have to be screwed by the printer companies for ink because you've decided you print things yourself as opposed to having it done at at a store.
A lot of this depends on the district, and the infrastructure. I used to work as a school district tech in a mid-sized city in Western Canada. Pay was decent, and while many teachers were old-fashioned, lazy, or just plain not very bright, a good number of them were still in-touch enough to go by with more recent software/hardware. Did they complain when we switched browsers to firefox, well not so much. Did they complain about openoffice, quite a lot (until the kids figured the software out for them). Did they complain when we moved to a linux-based model... hell yes, but generally before the switch even occurred. Once things actually happened and their POS Pentium-1 Win98 boxes were sent away, there is definitely a noticeable amount of complaining but it was mixed with something of a resigned acceptance on the part of many, and for some there was even a promising interest in something new. In terms of web-based tools usage was definitely superior though, with teachers getting into all sorts of neat thigns.
Now that I've moved to more central-Eastern Canada, I don't work in education anymore. I have been to some of the local schools and I'd say that the state of IT here is very, very sad compared to where I came from. Hopefully by the time I have kids in school things will have improved, or perhaps I'll move back to my hometown. It does seem that larger cities actually have lesser budgets for IT in education, and in general the quality of teaching staff and pay-rate is comparably lesser.
I like this part...
(a) A person who is not licensed under this chapter, who does not have a license application pending, and who violates this chapter may be assessed a civil penalty to be paid to the state not to exceed $10,000 for each violation.
Now, assuming that they got something like on average have the max, say about $5000. If they're using the same (unlicensed) investigators to sue about 5000 people... 5000 x 5000 = $25,000,000
And I doubt that the state would have a big problem with charging and collection on this... since it is: a civil penalty to be paid to the state
Well, let the counter-lawsuits begin. Hell, the states should be the ones charging them for easy cash!
Around here, we have NSF (Non-sufficient-funds) fees, which basically say that if you write a bad cheque etc that gets rejected due to lack'o'cash, you get hit with an extra penalty. In this case, the transaction was perfectly legit on behave of the party requesting money, but the money just wasn't there to pay them.
The same does not apply to debits that have been rejected due to the requesting party having insufficient authority to make a withdrawal.
Sex crimes are the only crimes we continue to punish people after they've "paid their debt to society". We restrict their movement, restrict where they can live, and in many cases ensure through force of law that they never lead a normal life again.
Actually, pretty much anything that involves a criminal record is going to screw you over in many cases. In the majority of jobs, criminal record = not hired. No job = no cash. No cash = shit existence.
Throw into that the limited ability to travel and many others, and that person will likely be paying for his/her long after being released from prison.
Yes, some people break this cycle, and some jobs do hire people with records, but the fact is that in most places even McDonalds has the "have you ever been convicted of a crime" section.
I'm not saying that having a record is 100% a bad idea... you don't really want to hire a guy with a rape (against female) records to teach a female athletics class, or somebody with a history of fraud/embezzlement to work in a bank, but the system could definitely use some reform in terms of how long records hang around, what sentences gain one a record (and for how long), and many other issues.
To my knowledge, there isn't really much in the way of legal avenues to re-sell a digital music file.
They are much easier to distribute illegally, but when it comes to legal ways to do so... no so easy unless perhaps it's legit to load up an iPod and then sell it with the songs or whatever.
Really, if they cured their acute case of "Cranial Rectal Inversion," they'd realize that mp3 is actually a cash-cow in this sense, since there's not really a physical medium in which to sell a second-hand/used mp3... which means that all actual mp3 sales are new sales, which means more cash for them.
The Human Genome Project to sequence *ONE* complete set of DNA for a single human took us 13 years and 3 billion dollars
Yes, but it also did start with technology that existed 13 years ago. That's not to say that doing so nowadays wouldn't take work or money, but that it likely be assisted by modern technology to achieve faster/cheaper results.
Despite some pretty abysmal/buggy online performance last time I played (after 3-4 weeks ago), the rating system for C&C3 was pretty cool. It allowed you to rate opponents skill, sportsmanship (teamkilling I assume would be low) etc. I never really tested to see if you could filter out those who were jerks, but it would be a useful feature. EA had some good ideas there... now if they could only make the thing playable.
That coyotes are smarter than humans? This might appear valid in the wild but the fact is that many humans seem to behave more like lemmings that coyotes. The cautionary aspect is overruled by a "it would never happen to me" or "I'll never get caught" mentality in many cases.
There are a growing number of "whistleblower" that follow political corruption, though many are just wikis. Do any of those allow for video uploads?
Well, if you really don't want the free one, feel free to ship it to my address COD :-)
Technology routinely renders old business models obsolete and doesn't necessarily replace them
One thing that people seem to not pay attention to is also this: technology may cost them money in R&D, because their old distribution methods are dying, but it's saving them a shitload of money in production. Equipment for digitally editing music (or movies) is increasingly powerful and lower in cost. Equipment for duplicating (not just by the pirates, but the corps themselves) is increasingly faster and lower in cost.
These companies really do want to have their cake and eat it too. They are in many cases saving massive amounts of cash through the use of modern technology, yet aren't willing to switch the rest of their business model over to embracing it for fear of lessening their *control*
And how useful that is depends on how you use it. Maybe you have 160GB of music. You might not listen to every song straight through, but you'd like to have various music for different occasions. Maybe you have all your NiN albums, and all your Elton John stuff. Sometimes you're in the mood for one, sometimes the other.
Or you could be into jogging. Sure you won't listen to 24/7 30 days straight, but you can crank on random playlists each jog for unique music a year 'round. Heck, for people like me, I often have music on while I work - it makes the day go faster - so that's still 8h of the day 5 days a week. Personally I prefer just uploading new songs every now and then, but some people like to have it all there at their fingertips.
Hmmm, between the amount of actual albums I own and have ripped (I think it's about 30+, not a huge amount), the tunes which I have legally downloaded online (the late mp3.com, garageband), and music I have bought online I have filled several DVD's. At 4.3GB of music per DVD, and 3-5 DVD's that about 13-22GB of music. I know people with *much* more in terms of albums than me. Not necessarily $5000 worth, but plenty.
I believe the newer iPods do video too, which would likely fill them up much faster. 160GB isn't really that unreasonable.
One also has to consider those that consider bigger=better, and iPod size is a status symbol. Even if the wankers only use 2GB of music, they'll brag about their fancy 160GB toy.