This guy is trolling, he purposefully misreads the license and tries to introduce the old troll that GPL software means that what is produced with that software must be GPL'ed as well. This is offcourse complete and utter nonsense, but it is a regular troll that usually gets modded down pretty quickly.
He just tries a new angle with the AGPL. To make it clear for those who don't understand the license. Slashdot is run on custom code, lets say that it is released under the GPL, you can now take that code, install it on your own server (scream a bit as you release what you have just done) and run your own site with it (although it never will be quite like slashdot unless you hire a finite number of monkeys as your editors). So far so good. Now you modify this code. To hide your shame you don't actually distribute the code in question, just run it on your own server. A GPL license in this case would NOT force you to release these modifications, the GPL only triggers when you distribute the code/program to others. Google for instance uses a modified GPL code, but because they don't distribute are under no obligation to distribute the modified code (they do distribute some of it although they don't have too).
IF however the slash code was released under the AGPL you would be forced to distribute your modifications.
BUT at no point would the END result of the code/program fall under any license other then that which you choose. In this case, the HTML pages created would OFFCOURSE not fall under the AGPL or GPL or ANY license unless you choose one yourselve. (does machine created content fall under basic copyright?)
This is very clear from the license text and only a deliberate misreading by someone wishing to troll could result in any other explenation.
The GPL/AGPL are about the program/code, NOT about the results of the program/code. Anyone who tries to claim something else is an idiot.
It says a lot about slashdot moderation that this tired old troll was modded up. He tries to disguise himself by saying that he is happy to be corrected but before without trying to link Stallman to communism (the gpl is far closer to the true idea of a free market) and without having spouted a lot of outright crap first.
Now if you excuse me, I have to use windows for an hour as punishement for feeding the troll.
I write a web based application, say forum software, and publish that under the regular GPL.
That means you can take the source code for my software and modify it and use it. BUT because you never distribute that modified code (you only run it on your own server) you don't have to honor the GPL and disclose your modifications.
This is extremely common lots of websites use GPL software but never contribute back their own changes.
IF I write my forum software under the AGPL and you modify it for your own use, you now have to distribute those changes. Roughly the same as if you had modified a client program.
HOWEVER your question is slightly odd, if you release a web service under AGPL then you are the original author. As the original author (as long as no others contribute code to you) you can do what you please. Just because version 1 of your software was under X license doesn't mean version 2 has to be.
What I think you meant to ask was "If I build a webservice with software that is licensed under the AGPL, do I have to distribute changes I make to that software".
The answer to that is YES.
Although I presume they will allow you to modify the config file and keep it private, bit of a security nightmare if you have to distribute the bit that contains your passwords ^_^
Basically this is the GPL for software where the end-user only gets the end-result, not the actuall program.
It is an intresting idea, the GPL works because it en-forces users to be contributors as well. There is a reason MS and Apple love BSD and IBM loves the GPL. Why should software like forum software be different?
As a web developer I like the idea. When I release a web-app and you modify it, you now have to give that code back. Seems only fair, why should web-apps be different?
If you don't like the idea, well then don't use AGPL licensed software. Write your own or use software under a different license.
Did I deny it happens? I seen that site before, it is hardly new.
What I am saying it that this kinda thing happens in other countries as well. Racism is on the increase or perhaps it just never has gone away.
I an Israeli born dutch national in Holland, I often worked in the past with immigrants and foreigners and racism is rampant. Simple example, perfectly nice cafeteria I used to go to, until one day a black co-worked joined me. It sure changed my opinion of the place. They had magazines for the customers to read, he was told that they were for not to be taken outside. Nobody had ever told me that. In fact I often read them outside on their terras when it was summer.
Go out to some clubs and see how people with the wrong skintone (this guy was greek) are stopped and asked for their membership card. I had been there before, nobody ever asked me.
Years ago I was told at a new job that they were glad the temp agency had sent a white guy. Other time someone went into a long rant of how he didn't like to work with some races/religions, had some fun pointing out my place of birth (I am not religious but if I have to be noted down, put down jew).
So perhaps Japan is a little more open about. In holland such signs would be trouble, so they come up with different ways to exclude those they don't want.
Note how the article that has this white guy going around japanese clubs asking them for their policy says that a club HAS TO HAVE A BOUNCER. I think it is amazing that a club doesn't have to have one. It kinda makes clear WHY racism happens. Would you want a race in your club that thinks you NEED bouncers?
The simple fact is that in holland a lot of the times there are problems, it is from people who are non-white. If a club owner has to throw out ten people and all ten are immigrants, then perhaps it would save time to just not allow them in in the first place.
Racist? Abso-fucking-lutely. Perhaps if trouble makers were dealt with more severely, if the club owner didn't feel he had to be the police to protect his other customers, perhaps then there wouldn't be a problem.
I am not saying the situation in Japan is correct, I am asking you to see how the same happens in your own country, just because you happen to the majority race (let me take a wild guess, you are a caucasian in the west) and don't experience it yourselve, doesn't mean it ain't there.
Dress up as a cowboy and go into a black club. Dress up as a jew and go into a muslim hangout. Go and see racism. Sometimes you see these kinda tests, people dress up as another religion/sex/race/sexuality and go and see just what the truth is about hatred, they never come away disappointed. Start commenting on Japan ONLY when you are certain that your own country isn't just as racist.
Does the US fingerprint foreigners? Why yes it does.
Remember that story from a while back, with a chinese diesel-electric sub surfacing right besides a US carrier? A clear signal by the chinese that the US is a lot more vulnerable then previously thought. It was believed that with its carriers the US could project its military power pretty much anywhere, with little fear of counter-attack. (There is a flaw in this, but I will get to that)
IF China were to flex its military muscles it would want to pull a SUCCESFULL Pearl Harbour. That is, it wouldn't want to knock out the US or get dragged into a long war with the US, it would want to knock down US military capacity quickly, so it can move freely and then from a new position of strength try for peace. The idea of an ALLOUT US/China war is silly, neither side wants that and neither side has the capacity to fight such a war right now. China can't invade the US and the US can't invade China.
With this submarine, China showed the US that its military power on the oceans is not as absolute as it might think. I have no idea how much of this move was due to sloppy training and the taskforce in question being on peace duty, but in theory, if the chinese had wanted it, they could have knocked out the US carriers fleets and drastically reduced the US capabilities to interfere in Chinese operations.
This is more then just a signal to the US, it also tells countries like South-Korea, Japan, Taiwan that its US ally is not nearly as invincible as previously thought. The question these countries have to ask now is, if we offend China too much, can we count on the US to be able to protect us in time before the Chinese have overrun us? With the carriers destroyed, does the US have the capacity to stop an invasion?
Don't underestimate just how much of US military strategy in that area of the world is based on the carriers.
Offcourse, the question now becomes,why did the sub surface. It didn't have too. If China wanted to actually start a war, it would hardly want to give away the fact that it has subs this capable.
No, this was all just a loud bark. China really has no interest in invading China, just like it hasn't clamped down too much on Hong Kong (became part of China recently but is still allowed a lot of freedom compared to mainland China). It just also doesn't want to appear weak. Basically the message was,"today I let you life, tomorrow who knows". A threath, to stop Taiwan from becoming too independent, South-Korea from becoming too cocky and Japan from thinking it can become a military power again. And last but not least, to stop people in China from thinking China is weak. They seen what happened to the Soviet Union. They don't want it too happen to them.
The entire idea that China wants to invade Taiwan is flawed. It would gain nothing but a lot of trouble for it. BUT that does not mean China wants to appear weak. In a way that is part of the reason for the Iraq/Afghan war the US is in. What else could it do? Had the US not invaded it would have been a huge sign of weakness. For all the bad press the US has gotten, the message is still clear, piss them off and you will pay the price.
But you are right, the chinese don't seem to want a war, what would they gain with it? But part of not wanting a war is making sure the rest of the world knows that they are going to get an ass kicking if they start a war with you.
That is what most people forget, if you want peace, make sure the other guy knows that war is not an option because they would loose.
Didn't happen to me, I was just a witness. I was at a police station to sign a statement regarding an attempted burglary the night before, they asked me to wait as they had to deal with a woman who was a bit upset. Privacy? Not when you are so loud you are overpowering my iPod.
Her story? Money had been withdrawn from her debit account (Postbank for dutch readers) and she wanted to report it, she had already contacted the bank and been told the money had been widthdrawn from spain, this was in the summer and spain is a popular destination, and she was told she had to report it to start the process.
The real problem? The cop made the mistake of informing her that while she would most likely get her money back, it would take weeks to sort it out, she didn't have weeks, that money was the money she had to pay the bills with and buy food. It was the only money she had.
If only the bank had looked at the transaction a little more closely, a person on a low income suddenly going to spain and withdrawing all their money. If that is not suspicious, what the hell is.
Just ask yourselve what your reaction would have been if it had been a thief who made that transaction. Would you then have been glad the bank blocked it OR would you have enjoyed trying to prove that it wasn't you.
Passive cards are nothing new and you can get them with regular desktop GPU's. Just shop around a bit. I got one, granted I keep it extra cool by having a very large (but slow moving) fan installed on the case that blows on it, but that is just to be safe, it has enough metal strapped to it to cool it with normal airflow in your case.
Wanting a laptop GPU in your desktop is just silly, unless you want to consume less power. Passive cooling has been around for a long time and exists for the CPU as well. Just make sure you buy spacious hardware, those things are HUGE.
Yes there are trolls that put that in everytime MS screws up, but those tags originate from stories where it was the DRM part that introduced problems. This is just sloppy coding, it happens all the time, only because this is opensource it will be fixed or has already. Unlike MS who has a story just a bit down how they won't fix a major error in one of their own products because they don't want you to use it anymore and damn you if you still need it.
That is why MS sucks, not because they produce buggy software, but because they have a lousy history of fixing them and keep introducing new unwanted crud that just piles on the bugs.
You might say the same for KPN or O2, never heard of them? They are the former goverment monopolies in the netherlands and great britain respectivly. (KPN uses both its normal name and Hi as a mobilephone brand, O2 was the mobile phone brand of BT till it split off) Now I give you one guess as to the name of the german mobile phone company that was the former goverment monopoly.
Feeling a bit stupid now? You should. Next time you start claiming you know anything about a company, try to find out where it came from.
What next, you claim the BBC is a tiny unimportant station because it is somewhere on station 199 in the US of A? McDonalds is just a tiny chain because they got only one shop in russia? (might be more now offcourse)
Geez, oh and it is not about being a monopoly, it is about unfair trade practices. It is a EU thing. A US citizen wouldn't be able to understand. Basically the Apple/AT&T deal is not legal in the EU or for that matter most of the world. Different cultures I guess. You like being buggered up the ass by giant companies, we prefer the state to do it, at least we can vote them out if they don't use enough lube.
First off, in normal business you SELL your product for a price, it ain't a bloody auction. The entire idea is that the process has to be fair. If you want to sell something in europe you have to play by the rules. If Apple can't play by the rules, they are welcome to take their stuff home and shove it up the US consumers ass who are used to assuming the position.
You might be suprised to know this, but in europe all these exclusive deals and crippled phones are NOT legal and don't happen. When you got to buy a phone you can easily do that from a third party shop that simply displays the phones with a list of providers next to it.
The EU unlike the US puts the customer first and if you don't want to do business that way, then don't. Nobody put a gun to Apples head and forced them to start selling here. Oh but wait, I see you are busy, Steve Jobs has woken up and has a woody, bent over and prepare to squeel little piggy.
Thanks for providing the full background, I thought they were just expensive blingbling. Not one of those "add X to your sound installation for improved sound quality by (insert mumbojumbo)".
Amazing. I should get some for my iPod. Are they touchsensitive?
This guy has posted before on slashdot. He is a regular and in general well liked if considered a bit weird, but on slashdot, that just proves you fit in.
He uses anti-spam laws introduced in recent years to sue those who sent him spam in court. He does this himself, in small claims court and represents himself. He has mixed results in this and publices this from time to time. Sometimes it gets dismissed by a judge who doesn't think anti-spam rules should exist, or a judge doesn't think people should be allowed to sue, or in the more hilarious cases a judge shows a mental grasp of the issue that would land a regular person in the looney bin. This case is one of them. If a normal person spouted the nonsense this bitch did she would be wearing a straight jacket.
Basically, the poster received a spam, that used some "personal" details. Apparently the judge is unaware that spam can be personalized. It gets a bit complicated (it always does when you try to figure out the resoaning of the insane) but apparently the fact that the email was signed with a name was part of why it could not have been spam.
The poster then makes a link himself, because the email was personal, that means the reference to him owning slashdot must be right, therefore slashdot belongs to him.
It is a bit of a leap, but makes for a nice headline.
But basically this is just an other episode of "The spammers I sue and the idiotic braindead judges that rule on them".
There really should be a system where judges are tested and if they fail a test case they should be fired and every case they judged re-evaluated.
If you wonder why the legal system is so screwed up, judges like this are the answer. The various lower courts rule so absurdly that they are pointless, you must appeal since if you lost it is most likely that it was a dumb idiotic decission. At least the higher court judges tend to be selected from the ones who weren't complete failures earlier in their career.
This is after all about snake-oil, not overpriced rubish. The other 9 don't do what they claim to do, the article doesn't mention that the knobs claim to do anything except that they are made of wood and can be used as a volume knob. I see no reason why they cannot be used as such.
Might as well put diamonds there as well then, overpriced when cut glass can be made to sparkle just as pretty.
Unless these knobs make some idiotic claim, they are just overpriced toys.
The AMD's are less powerfull then the Intel in this race. Okay, no harm done, but why on earth does AMD then price them at the same dollar for performance ratio as intel? Lets say intel charges 100 bucks for 100 performance points, AMD now says, well we can't give you those same 100 performance points, instead we can only give 80, but aren't we nice, we only charge 80 bucks for it.
Sounds nice in theory, but if I am buying a new cpu at the top of its range (and therefore paying a premium) I want to either have the highest speed OR a far better deal. Computer components often are priced on a curve, the slower, the cheaper, usually leading to a sweet spot where you get the best price for performance. Is it smart of AMD to make straighten this curve into a line? For 13% more power, intel just charges 13% more? No wonder they are losing once again, they used to be the company that was the best value for money. Perhaps they need a reality check AMD YOU ARE NO LONGER EQUAL TO INTEL, the days that your CPU's were better are over so you can't charge as much anymore.
a performance of 80 for a price of 50, now that would be a sweet, I could then reason that, well I get less power, but I save a lot of money. At this rate, I might as well buy an older intel and get a far far better deal.
It seems a pity AMD is once again second, the deals were so much better when intel and AMD where constantly at each others throat.
Every country has such places, remember just because a white american can visit most places in white holland, that doesn't mean a black american could. Racism is still very active and it is more accepted in areas were racial diversity is low.
But lets turn this around, are whites accepted in all black or muslim places in the west?
One amazing piece of racist behaviour was done here in holland a while back. People called employers and pretended to be muslims trying for a job interview. They claimed that they encountered racism when some of the people were refused, while if they tried with person who didn't sound like a muslim, they did get invited for a futher interview.
The most amazing racism however was NOT by the employers but by the people doing the experiment, it didn't even occur to them to call muslim employers and pretend to be gay or jewish and see if they would get invited. Racism is often very easy to ignore if you don't want to see it.
There are no such things as bars in japan that are legally for japanese only. They just got clubs that just don't give memberships to foreigners, or where a foreigner is treated so coldly that you wouldn't want to visit. Is it racism if the heavies in a club stand so close you just leave? Yes it is, but that happens in all kinds of places. People are racist.
For instance, the western religions have been under some pressure to allow women priests. Why is there no such pressure on female imans to be allowed? Because the people fighting sexism are racist?
Note that this measure of fingerprinting is NOT racist. It is NOT based on race, a japanese person who lost citizenship would also be subjected to it, despite being of the same race. Wake up, most of the world has different rules for foreigners then nationals.
Truly if you believe that there is one single country in the world that doesn't have places where foreigners are not welcome, you have lived a very sheltered life.
First there are two laws at work here. The first is obvious, anime/manga is subject to copyright just like any other creative work. Just because it comes from japan (or anywhere else) does not change that.
Second is the issue that it is NOT legal to make a translation of something without permission from the original creator. If I translate your post, that could land me in legal trouble. The law is a bit idiotic as it is broken the moment a reader translates something in his own mind to his native tongue. It also conflicts with most countries own laws on accesibility, translating for instance for the hearing impaired into sign language or in braille for the sight impaired.
Nonetheless, providing a translation of a copyrighted work is by itself illegal.
Now for the position of 'some' anime/manga producers from japan on the subject of foreigners distributing their work with subtitels. They ignore it. Some individual authors have expressed themselves more clearly, but as far as I know no company has ever uttered a statement on the subject OTHER then that they were against it. Any official statement that says otherwise would have the lawyers shitting themselves.
Why? It would mean they would also have to tolerate domestic redistribution of their work by fans. No japanese court would accept a claim by a anime/manga company against japanese filesharers if they given an official statement that it is okay for the rest of the world.
This is in fact the problem, the fansub community has become so big, so reliable and so good that the japanese themselves now use them as their source for 'illegal' downloads. This obviously upsets some companies, and is changing the attitude to fansubs, it is no longer just a few otaku's who share homemade vhs tapes. Some of the subs are in fact of better quality then the commercial release because fansubs are not restricted to the horrible subtitle system of DVD's and can use all kinds of fancy tricks like overlays and color and multiple subs to truly translate and explain what is going on. Plus, well, most commericial subs just plain suck as they get even simple things wrong such as the first name, last name order and use the wrong one in the subs even if the correct name is an essential part of the plot.
Speed is another issue, fansubs are done in days, at times hours. By the time the offical release ever happens, the fan community will have moved on. The idea that you watch the first few eps fansubbed and get the rest on DVD just ain't real anymore, by the time the official western version is out, the fans will have fixed the few errors in the subs, rereleased it with the japanese DVD's as the source including promo's and tv specials and you would have to be very dedicated to buy it on dvd. With bad subs, and always the threat of censoring.
So how come japanese companies still haven't openly attacked this? Well some have, and send out copyright notices immidiatly regardless of wether it has been licensed in the west.
But there is a part of it that goes against japanese culture.
This is turning into a long rant but the first is relatively simple, japanese anime and manga is often far more directly produced by the creators then in the west. They want to produce their work, and don't care about all the legal crap. Just like not all music artist in the west care about filesharing, they are too busy with their art to worry about it. This however is changing as the nature of fansubbing has changed and become far more proffesional. Most material can't be licensed anyway, because it deals with subjects you could never broadcast on western television (well US television anyway) or because it just too specific to japan (Card Captor Sakura was carefully editited in its western release to remove all traces of the series actually being set in japan). In short when you got a small business to run, that is constant on the edge of bankruptcy you got other things to do about then worry what some foreigners are up to.
I see some people come up with the logical question, why still use comcast. Because we have no choice people reply. But aren't you americans, the country of the free market that should ensure plenty of competition? How come I as a socialist live in a country with multiple ISP's whose competition is mandated by the goverment, creating a free market and ensuring that any ISP that tried to pull this will be out of business very soon (it is very hard here to even find an ISP who still uses traffic limits other then the speed of your connection)
Shut up the reply then usually is.
Americans seem to be brainwashed when it comes to the free market, they been told that goverment regulation is bad and will scream about it at every opportunity but are totally unable to regonize the results of it.
If comcast is truly the only alternative in some areas, then that is clear evidence the free market does not work. WIth current tech there should be at least two options, cable and adsl, in all areas, using the cable and phone network that any reasonable goverment should have mandated should be available to all homes.
With both networks it is also trivial to mandate open access so that there is a difference between the company operating the cable and the actual ISP.
Is there truly no alternative to comcast (an ISP that charges tripple for a better service DOES count as an alternative, quality costs money) and if so, why are americans so utterly incapable of spotting that this is wrong and needs to be fixed, by the state, because IF it is true it is clear evidence that the free market doesn't work.
I can predict right now that this post will be modded down by an american who just cannot accept that the free market don't work, and get comments spouting why goverment interference is bad without actually ever touching the end result, that in goverment regulated areas people got choice and freedom, and in free areas people have restricitons and are at the whim of their ISP.
That is what he is talking about, NOT urls you get from verbal sources, presumably the verbol source for a shortened url would make sure that that url is valid when it is broadcast.
He is talking about links that are on the web itself, where there is ZERO need to make a url short. Your browser doesn't care how long the url is in the link you click on and for the poster there is an extra step involved in creating the short url so why bother?
tinyurl is a tool but some tend to use tools to fix problems that don't need fixing. If you build your website out of tinyurl links you got issues. It is not how the net is supposed to work.
Take slashdot, why on earth should the links in a story go via tinyurl? It creates extra data, it stops people from inspecting the url at a glance and for what?
The web already breaks down because so many sites keep changing the way their pages are organised so that old links don't work anymore. Try finding stuff that is a couple of years old, you start running headlong into the dead link mess. Not because the site itself is gone, but the site no longer can handle the requested url.
Why add another layer of complexity?
Use shortened urls when you got to give them verbally, but if the url is distruted across the net in the first place, what on earth is the point of shortening it?
Remember, if everyone uses tinyurl, all that needs to happen is that these servers go down for some reason and BOOM, there goes the internet.
Very smart people went out of their way to make DNS truly robuust and host multiple servers around the world to make sure the internet works, and then some idiots think that they should add another unneeded layer on top run by a tiny company?
Oh and another thing, most radio shows simply tell people to go to their own site and then click on the second story to get a url out there. What is an easier url Myradio.com read the second story OR tinyurl.com/3yaodz The myradio url will have been broadcasted countless times already as parts of the promo, in the case of webradio it is how you found the bloody radio in the first place.
With tinyurl you have to introduce a completly new url followed by a meaningless string. Yup, that is much easier.
No, the tool has its uses, but just because you got a hammer does not mean everything becomes a nail.
The author has a niece, she won't talk to him, his conclusion, a difference in tech.
My conclusion? His niece doesn't want to talk to him.
The proof? Note how the article carefully avoids the logical test, him using IM and then magically sparking up a relation with this niece who before wouldn't give him the time of day.
I try chat up lines in dutch, I get rejected. Conclusion, dutch is not the language to chat up girls with. Now it must be english. I carefully don't try to then use chat up lines in english and instead carefully ignore my original point and go off on a completly new rant.
The reason offcourse my chat up lines don't work has nothing to do with the language, I could be sending them in morse, it has to do with ME.
frankly I don't even believe the original author, if he was so desperate to communicate with his niece why did he not simply talk to her in person, he must have else how did he know she was using IM?
I smell an author who made something up to make a nonsense story seem real.
The nonsense? The idea that IM is something new. Geez gods man, that stuff is older then the "internet". As soon as computers started to have more then 1 user (either mainframe or networked) people came up with tools to communicate with each other. IM for when the other person is on at the same time and a mail system for when they are not.
The entire, made up, story is nothing more then the younger generation doesn't talk to the older generation. Well, duh. I am sure you can find similar brilliant stories when clay tablets were replaced by parchement.
Paper books have to be printed, they have to be printed before you buy them and this costs lots of money. The publisher has to take a gamble on how many books can be sold, he will then put in an order for that amount at a printer, who wants his money NOW thank you very much. He will then have to stock those books before sending them to the various retailers. Those retailers will have to stock the books as well, until the customer hopefully end up buying them, eventually. In the meantime a lot of the books will get damaged and be less desirable to buy.
It is a huge complex operation that EATS money. It is why books are still so damned expensive.
Go digital and you loose an awfull lots of costs. First, with digital distribution you can always create EXACTLY the right number of copies. You will never have to take unsold copies back or have to turn a customer down. Never again will the last copy be in some bookstore in a remote place devoid of human life, like New Jersey.
The cost of "printing" is insanely low and in this case for a large part already paid for by the consumer. The consumer PAYS for the download through his internet connection and PAY for the "paper" through the ebook reader. Would you pay the same for beef at the butchers if you had to bring your own cow? The cost of distribution also plummets, what do you rather send, a paper book or a megabyte (and text books are well under that) of data? Could you even express the cost of transmitting that amount of data in whole cents anymore?
Then there is the fact that the costs remain the same no matter where the ebook is send, that there are no losses or damages in transportation and that there is no wait time for delivery.
The costs of stocking disappear as well, you only need to stock one "copy" of the book and then can sell it through the magic of the computer a million times over. The ebook doesn't get old, can't be stolen from inventory, doesn't get eaten by rats. It just sits there, pristine, ready to be sold anytime there is a buyer. For a company like amazon that stores a great many books going to ebooks would mean a fortune saved in warehouse space.
The cost savings of going to ebooks are gigantic.
Yet we still got a price of $9.99 for an ebook when all that is really left is to pay the author, a bit of hardware and software and electricity?
Anyone want to make a bet that an ebook means a profit margin for amazone that would make Apple blush? I am no economists, but I think you can express amazon's angle as "Cazhiiing", or eyeballs spinning and being replaced by dollar signs.
Do you also want to make bets that authors won't all of a sudden find that they get a huge increase on their income?
I can see Amazon's reasons for keeping theprice high, amazing profits is one, not wanting to canabalize paper sales (anyone could setup an ebook store, no need for huge investments Amazon had to make to setup its paper book distribution system) but I also fear it will kill the idea.
Why is it so hard for these types of companies to understand that the less you sell something for, the more you sell. Rather then trying to squeeze a limited audience for all you can, squeeze them less and find yourselve with a bigger audience.
It is depressing that business just doesn't seem to get that with the costs of selling digital content being so low, you could expand your market to truly epic proportions.
Imagine for instance if comics (or manga or strips) were no longer sold JUST on their original continent, but were distrubuted worldwide at a fraction of the costs. I find it very hard to believe that this would not massively increase the sales and profits of the publishers. Yet they keep insisting on distrubting their works in the most expensive way possible that limits the exposure to potential customers.
Truly amazing. $9.99 for a megabyte of data, that requires me to pay for delivery AND the tech to read it. Yeah, why not.
If business had been charge of the internet, email would cost 0.50 euro cents to send. Because hey, that is what regular mail costs so why should we pass the savings by going digital on to the customer?
Not for the details involved but for the slashdot reaction. a lot seem to be in support of the naming and shaming.
That is nice, would they be just as supportive when the RIAA deciced to publish their names for illegal filesharing and they get expelled from their schools, told to leave their jobs, asked to resign from their clubs?
There is a reason we put the law into the hands of the legal system and have deciced that lynchings are wrong. The simple problem is that of where does it end.
Say that this woman's daughter now commits suicide, is it then right for her family to publish the bloggers personal details? Publicly try them on the internet?
Innocent until proven guilty, presumption of innocence, trial by jury. My how quickly these ideals seem to be forgotten when blogging is involved. Note that when it is the other way around and some blogger gets exposed "slashdot" has shown an almost fanatical support for the sancitiy of privacy.
A few months ago slashdot had a story about internet driven vigilantism in South-Korea where this kind of naming and shaming is claimed to be far more common, the odd thing was that then the general attitude seemed to be that this was an extremely bad idea.
So how come that some slashdotters now support it? Is it the magic of the word blog? The idea that the MAN was outwitted, freedom by all means and damn the consequences?
Should the dutch teens who stole items from an online game be named and shamed? Should the blogger who published this info have every part of his private life put on the web for all to see?
Since this is a suicide where the whole community failed, why aren't they all being named and shamed. Why not print a list of all the people involved, everyone that could have talked to the girl, made friends with her, and publish them under the headline, "where were you!".
Some people seem to think that blogs are a magical something, they are not. They used to exist before, they were called pamphlets and people with enough motivation would write them and print and distribute them and say in them what they wanted in the name of "The truth".
They were back then the perfect tool to incite the mob. It is on paper, therefore it must be true, lets lynch them.
A few years ago in england a woman's house was attacked because the mob thought she was a pedofile. The evidence was clear as day, she had a sign on her door that said so "Pediatrician".
Consider this, if this woman is guilty of the suicide, then is any suicide that follows the publishing by the blogger the guilt of the blogger? What if the blogger is outed and kills himself? Where does it end?
The community taking the law in their own hand, it sounds tempting and sometimes seems to be the only solution but it never works. The law often fails us, but we should then change the law, not simply ignore it.
But think of this, do you really want there to be law that puts people to blaim if they said the wrong thing to a person who commits suicide? Better not mod me down, it might make me commit suicide.
Should society decide who needs to be punished? I would dearly love to name and shame every drunk driver out there, everyone who ever hurt someone in an "accident" that could easily have been avoided.
Before you support naming and shaming, ask yourselve wether someone else might not have you on their list.
My my, you sure seem eager to convict and sentence this woman, and not just the woman but her entire family.
Odd that if the RIAA wants to publish the names of people downloading, naming and shaming, people are against it, but in this case naming and shaming is a good thing. Why not bring out the tar and feathers. Hell why even bother with police at all, I got a rope right here and that tree looks sturdy enough.
This woman is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Mob mentality is a serious issue, say this womans daughter now commits suicide, and come after YOU. Do you want all your personal info out there, to be judged by the mob?
The reason the police and the press don't always publish everything is bloody simple.
First off, it is to keep a bad situation from becoming even worse.
But even more important, it is to keep information from becoming common knowledge to aid the investigation. The less details of the case are known to the general public the more likely a suspect can be pinned down on having knowledge they couldn't have unless they were involved.
By publishing for instance what was said right before the suicide, the woman in question can no longer be indentified as the person who sent it if she shows knowledge of what had been said. Before she could only have known what was in the messages if she had seen them, when they were sent. Now, she can just claim she read it somewhere.
But the most important thing here is, innocent until proven guilty. It is frightening how soon this is forgotten on slashdot just because this is a story about bloggers. IF a blogger was similarly convicted by the mob slashdot would be in a uproar.
A business setup not for the sake of the shareholders but for the benefit of the people. Controlled by the state to see that it encourages innovation and equality.
Why you could even use the profits to fund goverment, call it a state run industry.
You communist, and no pointing out that the original US postal system worked like this and that this is what allowed the US goverment to have low taxes since it had other sources of income.
Say funeral arrangements. People do indeed provide that service, and we pay them for it. Now say that a medical breakthrough happens and dying becomes a thing of the past. No more dead, no more need for burials. Should YOU then be legally forced to die, just so funeral directors can continue making a living supplying that service?
What I am saying is that if musicians can't make a living making music, they should stop doing that. Demand and supply, this does NOT mean, as you seem to think, that if you supply that you are entitled to a demand.
Times change. Monks were once able to support their monestary by handcopying books. With the invention of the printing press, that job vanished. Should society be forced to stand still just so a handfull can enjoy the living they once did.
Get this straight, I am not saying music should be free. I am saying that if people don't want to pay for your music, don't make it.
Perhaps I spend too much time around performance artists. This is a group of people that feel they deserve tax money for their art. They need the tax money because nobody is willing to pay for it.
I am going to introduce a law, and you must follow it, when ever you come across a street performer you MUST donate 10 dollars. You saw it, you gonna pay for it.
Offcourse that is silly, as silly as people thinking they have a right to make a living in any job they feel like. I would LOVE to make a living as a gigolo for beautifull young ladies. Ain't going to happen and if the world isn't willing to bend over backwards for my needs then I sure as hell am not going to give a shit about some kid who wants to become rich making music in world that doesn't want to pay for music. Find another job, do it for free. I had to do that, I am forced to just do my amazing love making as a hobby with no more compensation that a "job well done".
Slashdot Mirror
This guy is trolling, he purposefully misreads the license and tries to introduce the old troll that GPL software means that what is produced with that software must be GPL'ed as well. This is offcourse complete and utter nonsense, but it is a regular troll that usually gets modded down pretty quickly.
He just tries a new angle with the AGPL. To make it clear for those who don't understand the license. Slashdot is run on custom code, lets say that it is released under the GPL, you can now take that code, install it on your own server (scream a bit as you release what you have just done) and run your own site with it (although it never will be quite like slashdot unless you hire a finite number of monkeys as your editors). So far so good. Now you modify this code. To hide your shame you don't actually distribute the code in question, just run it on your own server. A GPL license in this case would NOT force you to release these modifications, the GPL only triggers when you distribute the code/program to others. Google for instance uses a modified GPL code, but because they don't distribute are under no obligation to distribute the modified code (they do distribute some of it although they don't have too).
IF however the slash code was released under the AGPL you would be forced to distribute your modifications.
BUT at no point would the END result of the code/program fall under any license other then that which you choose. In this case, the HTML pages created would OFFCOURSE not fall under the AGPL or GPL or ANY license unless you choose one yourselve. (does machine created content fall under basic copyright?)
This is very clear from the license text and only a deliberate misreading by someone wishing to troll could result in any other explenation.
The GPL/AGPL are about the program/code, NOT about the results of the program/code. Anyone who tries to claim something else is an idiot.
It says a lot about slashdot moderation that this tired old troll was modded up. He tries to disguise himself by saying that he is happy to be corrected but before without trying to link Stallman to communism (the gpl is far closer to the true idea of a free market) and without having spouted a lot of outright crap first.
Now if you excuse me, I have to use windows for an hour as punishement for feeding the troll.
I write a web based application, say forum software, and publish that under the regular GPL.
That means you can take the source code for my software and modify it and use it. BUT because you never distribute that modified code (you only run it on your own server) you don't have to honor the GPL and disclose your modifications.
This is extremely common lots of websites use GPL software but never contribute back their own changes.
IF I write my forum software under the AGPL and you modify it for your own use, you now have to distribute those changes. Roughly the same as if you had modified a client program.
HOWEVER your question is slightly odd, if you release a web service under AGPL then you are the original author. As the original author (as long as no others contribute code to you) you can do what you please. Just because version 1 of your software was under X license doesn't mean version 2 has to be.
What I think you meant to ask was "If I build a webservice with software that is licensed under the AGPL, do I have to distribute changes I make to that software".
The answer to that is YES.
Although I presume they will allow you to modify the config file and keep it private, bit of a security nightmare if you have to distribute the bit that contains your passwords ^_^
Basically this is the GPL for software where the end-user only gets the end-result, not the actuall program.
It is an intresting idea, the GPL works because it en-forces users to be contributors as well. There is a reason MS and Apple love BSD and IBM loves the GPL. Why should software like forum software be different?
As a web developer I like the idea. When I release a web-app and you modify it, you now have to give that code back. Seems only fair, why should web-apps be different?
If you don't like the idea, well then don't use AGPL licensed software. Write your own or use software under a different license.
What I am saying it that this kinda thing happens in other countries as well. Racism is on the increase or perhaps it just never has gone away.
I an Israeli born dutch national in Holland, I often worked in the past with immigrants and foreigners and racism is rampant. Simple example, perfectly nice cafeteria I used to go to, until one day a black co-worked joined me. It sure changed my opinion of the place. They had magazines for the customers to read, he was told that they were for not to be taken outside. Nobody had ever told me that. In fact I often read them outside on their terras when it was summer.
Go out to some clubs and see how people with the wrong skintone (this guy was greek) are stopped and asked for their membership card. I had been there before, nobody ever asked me.
Years ago I was told at a new job that they were glad the temp agency had sent a white guy. Other time someone went into a long rant of how he didn't like to work with some races/religions, had some fun pointing out my place of birth (I am not religious but if I have to be noted down, put down jew).
So perhaps Japan is a little more open about. In holland such signs would be trouble, so they come up with different ways to exclude those they don't want.
Note how the article that has this white guy going around japanese clubs asking them for their policy says that a club HAS TO HAVE A BOUNCER. I think it is amazing that a club doesn't have to have one. It kinda makes clear WHY racism happens. Would you want a race in your club that thinks you NEED bouncers?
The simple fact is that in holland a lot of the times there are problems, it is from people who are non-white. If a club owner has to throw out ten people and all ten are immigrants, then perhaps it would save time to just not allow them in in the first place.
Racist? Abso-fucking-lutely. Perhaps if trouble makers were dealt with more severely, if the club owner didn't feel he had to be the police to protect his other customers, perhaps then there wouldn't be a problem.
I am not saying the situation in Japan is correct, I am asking you to see how the same happens in your own country, just because you happen to the majority race (let me take a wild guess, you are a caucasian in the west) and don't experience it yourselve, doesn't mean it ain't there.
Dress up as a cowboy and go into a black club. Dress up as a jew and go into a muslim hangout. Go and see racism. Sometimes you see these kinda tests, people dress up as another religion/sex/race/sexuality and go and see just what the truth is about hatred, they never come away disappointed. Start commenting on Japan ONLY when you are certain that your own country isn't just as racist.
Does the US fingerprint foreigners? Why yes it does.
Remember that story from a while back, with a chinese diesel-electric sub surfacing right besides a US carrier? A clear signal by the chinese that the US is a lot more vulnerable then previously thought. It was believed that with its carriers the US could project its military power pretty much anywhere, with little fear of counter-attack. (There is a flaw in this, but I will get to that)
IF China were to flex its military muscles it would want to pull a SUCCESFULL Pearl Harbour. That is, it wouldn't want to knock out the US or get dragged into a long war with the US, it would want to knock down US military capacity quickly, so it can move freely and then from a new position of strength try for peace. The idea of an ALLOUT US/China war is silly, neither side wants that and neither side has the capacity to fight such a war right now. China can't invade the US and the US can't invade China.
With this submarine, China showed the US that its military power on the oceans is not as absolute as it might think. I have no idea how much of this move was due to sloppy training and the taskforce in question being on peace duty, but in theory, if the chinese had wanted it, they could have knocked out the US carriers fleets and drastically reduced the US capabilities to interfere in Chinese operations.
This is more then just a signal to the US, it also tells countries like South-Korea, Japan, Taiwan that its US ally is not nearly as invincible as previously thought. The question these countries have to ask now is, if we offend China too much, can we count on the US to be able to protect us in time before the Chinese have overrun us? With the carriers destroyed, does the US have the capacity to stop an invasion?
Don't underestimate just how much of US military strategy in that area of the world is based on the carriers.
Offcourse, the question now becomes,why did the sub surface. It didn't have too. If China wanted to actually start a war, it would hardly want to give away the fact that it has subs this capable.
No, this was all just a loud bark. China really has no interest in invading China, just like it hasn't clamped down too much on Hong Kong (became part of China recently but is still allowed a lot of freedom compared to mainland China). It just also doesn't want to appear weak. Basically the message was,"today I let you life, tomorrow who knows". A threath, to stop Taiwan from becoming too independent, South-Korea from becoming too cocky and Japan from thinking it can become a military power again. And last but not least, to stop people in China from thinking China is weak. They seen what happened to the Soviet Union. They don't want it too happen to them.
The entire idea that China wants to invade Taiwan is flawed. It would gain nothing but a lot of trouble for it. BUT that does not mean China wants to appear weak. In a way that is part of the reason for the Iraq/Afghan war the US is in. What else could it do? Had the US not invaded it would have been a huge sign of weakness. For all the bad press the US has gotten, the message is still clear, piss them off and you will pay the price.
But you are right, the chinese don't seem to want a war, what would they gain with it? But part of not wanting a war is making sure the rest of the world knows that they are going to get an ass kicking if they start a war with you.
That is what most people forget, if you want peace, make sure the other guy knows that war is not an option because they would loose.
Didn't happen to me, I was just a witness. I was at a police station to sign a statement regarding an attempted burglary the night before, they asked me to wait as they had to deal with a woman who was a bit upset. Privacy? Not when you are so loud you are overpowering my iPod.
Her story? Money had been withdrawn from her debit account (Postbank for dutch readers) and she wanted to report it, she had already contacted the bank and been told the money had been widthdrawn from spain, this was in the summer and spain is a popular destination, and she was told she had to report it to start the process.
The real problem? The cop made the mistake of informing her that while she would most likely get her money back, it would take weeks to sort it out, she didn't have weeks, that money was the money she had to pay the bills with and buy food. It was the only money she had.
If only the bank had looked at the transaction a little more closely, a person on a low income suddenly going to spain and withdrawing all their money. If that is not suspicious, what the hell is.
Just ask yourselve what your reaction would have been if it had been a thief who made that transaction. Would you then have been glad the bank blocked it OR would you have enjoyed trying to prove that it wasn't you.
Passive cards are nothing new and you can get them with regular desktop GPU's. Just shop around a bit. I got one, granted I keep it extra cool by having a very large (but slow moving) fan installed on the case that blows on it, but that is just to be safe, it has enough metal strapped to it to cool it with normal airflow in your case.
Wanting a laptop GPU in your desktop is just silly, unless you want to consume less power. Passive cooling has been around for a long time and exists for the CPU as well. Just make sure you buy spacious hardware, those things are HUGE.
Yes there are trolls that put that in everytime MS screws up, but those tags originate from stories where it was the DRM part that introduced problems. This is just sloppy coding, it happens all the time, only because this is opensource it will be fixed or has already. Unlike MS who has a story just a bit down how they won't fix a major error in one of their own products because they don't want you to use it anymore and damn you if you still need it.
That is why MS sucks, not because they produce buggy software, but because they have a lousy history of fixing them and keep introducing new unwanted crud that just piles on the bugs.
If opensource starts doing that, let me know.
You might say the same for KPN or O2, never heard of them? They are the former goverment monopolies in the netherlands and great britain respectivly. (KPN uses both its normal name and Hi as a mobilephone brand, O2 was the mobile phone brand of BT till it split off) Now I give you one guess as to the name of the german mobile phone company that was the former goverment monopoly.
Feeling a bit stupid now? You should. Next time you start claiming you know anything about a company, try to find out where it came from.
What next, you claim the BBC is a tiny unimportant station because it is somewhere on station 199 in the US of A? McDonalds is just a tiny chain because they got only one shop in russia? (might be more now offcourse)
Geez, oh and it is not about being a monopoly, it is about unfair trade practices. It is a EU thing. A US citizen wouldn't be able to understand. Basically the Apple/AT&T deal is not legal in the EU or for that matter most of the world. Different cultures I guess. You like being buggered up the ass by giant companies, we prefer the state to do it, at least we can vote them out if they don't use enough lube.
First off, in normal business you SELL your product for a price, it ain't a bloody auction. The entire idea is that the process has to be fair. If you want to sell something in europe you have to play by the rules. If Apple can't play by the rules, they are welcome to take their stuff home and shove it up the US consumers ass who are used to assuming the position.
You might be suprised to know this, but in europe all these exclusive deals and crippled phones are NOT legal and don't happen. When you got to buy a phone you can easily do that from a third party shop that simply displays the phones with a list of providers next to it.
The EU unlike the US puts the customer first and if you don't want to do business that way, then don't. Nobody put a gun to Apples head and forced them to start selling here. Oh but wait, I see you are busy, Steve Jobs has woken up and has a woody, bent over and prepare to squeel little piggy.
Thanks for providing the full background, I thought they were just expensive blingbling. Not one of those "add X to your sound installation for improved sound quality by (insert mumbojumbo)".
Amazing. I should get some for my iPod. Are they touchsensitive?
This guy has posted before on slashdot. He is a regular and in general well liked if considered a bit weird, but on slashdot, that just proves you fit in.
He uses anti-spam laws introduced in recent years to sue those who sent him spam in court. He does this himself, in small claims court and represents himself. He has mixed results in this and publices this from time to time. Sometimes it gets dismissed by a judge who doesn't think anti-spam rules should exist, or a judge doesn't think people should be allowed to sue, or in the more hilarious cases a judge shows a mental grasp of the issue that would land a regular person in the looney bin. This case is one of them. If a normal person spouted the nonsense this bitch did she would be wearing a straight jacket.
Basically, the poster received a spam, that used some "personal" details. Apparently the judge is unaware that spam can be personalized. It gets a bit complicated (it always does when you try to figure out the resoaning of the insane) but apparently the fact that the email was signed with a name was part of why it could not have been spam.
The poster then makes a link himself, because the email was personal, that means the reference to him owning slashdot must be right, therefore slashdot belongs to him.
It is a bit of a leap, but makes for a nice headline.
But basically this is just an other episode of "The spammers I sue and the idiotic braindead judges that rule on them".
There really should be a system where judges are tested and if they fail a test case they should be fired and every case they judged re-evaluated.
If you wonder why the legal system is so screwed up, judges like this are the answer. The various lower courts rule so absurdly that they are pointless, you must appeal since if you lost it is most likely that it was a dumb idiotic decission. At least the higher court judges tend to be selected from the ones who weren't complete failures earlier in their career.
This is after all about snake-oil, not overpriced rubish. The other 9 don't do what they claim to do, the article doesn't mention that the knobs claim to do anything except that they are made of wood and can be used as a volume knob. I see no reason why they cannot be used as such.
Might as well put diamonds there as well then, overpriced when cut glass can be made to sparkle just as pretty.
Unless these knobs make some idiotic claim, they are just overpriced toys.
The AMD's are less powerfull then the Intel in this race. Okay, no harm done, but why on earth does AMD then price them at the same dollar for performance ratio as intel? Lets say intel charges 100 bucks for 100 performance points, AMD now says, well we can't give you those same 100 performance points, instead we can only give 80, but aren't we nice, we only charge 80 bucks for it.
Sounds nice in theory, but if I am buying a new cpu at the top of its range (and therefore paying a premium) I want to either have the highest speed OR a far better deal. Computer components often are priced on a curve, the slower, the cheaper, usually leading to a sweet spot where you get the best price for performance. Is it smart of AMD to make straighten this curve into a line? For 13% more power, intel just charges 13% more? No wonder they are losing once again, they used to be the company that was the best value for money. Perhaps they need a reality check AMD YOU ARE NO LONGER EQUAL TO INTEL, the days that your CPU's were better are over so you can't charge as much anymore.
a performance of 80 for a price of 50, now that would be a sweet, I could then reason that, well I get less power, but I save a lot of money. At this rate, I might as well buy an older intel and get a far far better deal.
It seems a pity AMD is once again second, the deals were so much better when intel and AMD where constantly at each others throat.
That a story about an online newspaper dropping subscriptions is on an online newspaper that requires a subscription?
Oh well, we get a free newspaper but in exchange it means yet more of the media being owned by the same guy.
Every country has such places, remember just because a white american can visit most places in white holland, that doesn't mean a black american could. Racism is still very active and it is more accepted in areas were racial diversity is low.
But lets turn this around, are whites accepted in all black or muslim places in the west?
One amazing piece of racist behaviour was done here in holland a while back. People called employers and pretended to be muslims trying for a job interview. They claimed that they encountered racism when some of the people were refused, while if they tried with person who didn't sound like a muslim, they did get invited for a futher interview.
The most amazing racism however was NOT by the employers but by the people doing the experiment, it didn't even occur to them to call muslim employers and pretend to be gay or jewish and see if they would get invited. Racism is often very easy to ignore if you don't want to see it.
There are no such things as bars in japan that are legally for japanese only. They just got clubs that just don't give memberships to foreigners, or where a foreigner is treated so coldly that you wouldn't want to visit. Is it racism if the heavies in a club stand so close you just leave? Yes it is, but that happens in all kinds of places. People are racist.
For instance, the western religions have been under some pressure to allow women priests. Why is there no such pressure on female imans to be allowed? Because the people fighting sexism are racist?
Note that this measure of fingerprinting is NOT racist. It is NOT based on race, a japanese person who lost citizenship would also be subjected to it, despite being of the same race. Wake up, most of the world has different rules for foreigners then nationals.
Truly if you believe that there is one single country in the world that doesn't have places where foreigners are not welcome, you have lived a very sheltered life.
First there are two laws at work here. The first is obvious, anime/manga is subject to copyright just like any other creative work. Just because it comes from japan (or anywhere else) does not change that.
Second is the issue that it is NOT legal to make a translation of something without permission from the original creator. If I translate your post, that could land me in legal trouble. The law is a bit idiotic as it is broken the moment a reader translates something in his own mind to his native tongue. It also conflicts with most countries own laws on accesibility, translating for instance for the hearing impaired into sign language or in braille for the sight impaired.
Nonetheless, providing a translation of a copyrighted work is by itself illegal.
Now for the position of 'some' anime/manga producers from japan on the subject of foreigners distributing their work with subtitels. They ignore it. Some individual authors have expressed themselves more clearly, but as far as I know no company has ever uttered a statement on the subject OTHER then that they were against it. Any official statement that says otherwise would have the lawyers shitting themselves.
Why? It would mean they would also have to tolerate domestic redistribution of their work by fans. No japanese court would accept a claim by a anime/manga company against japanese filesharers if they given an official statement that it is okay for the rest of the world.
This is in fact the problem, the fansub community has become so big, so reliable and so good that the japanese themselves now use them as their source for 'illegal' downloads. This obviously upsets some companies, and is changing the attitude to fansubs, it is no longer just a few otaku's who share homemade vhs tapes. Some of the subs are in fact of better quality then the commercial release because fansubs are not restricted to the horrible subtitle system of DVD's and can use all kinds of fancy tricks like overlays and color and multiple subs to truly translate and explain what is going on. Plus, well, most commericial subs just plain suck as they get even simple things wrong such as the first name, last name order and use the wrong one in the subs even if the correct name is an essential part of the plot.
Speed is another issue, fansubs are done in days, at times hours. By the time the offical release ever happens, the fan community will have moved on. The idea that you watch the first few eps fansubbed and get the rest on DVD just ain't real anymore, by the time the official western version is out, the fans will have fixed the few errors in the subs, rereleased it with the japanese DVD's as the source including promo's and tv specials and you would have to be very dedicated to buy it on dvd. With bad subs, and always the threat of censoring.
So how come japanese companies still haven't openly attacked this? Well some have, and send out copyright notices immidiatly regardless of wether it has been licensed in the west.
But there is a part of it that goes against japanese culture.
This is turning into a long rant but the first is relatively simple, japanese anime and manga is often far more directly produced by the creators then in the west. They want to produce their work, and don't care about all the legal crap. Just like not all music artist in the west care about filesharing, they are too busy with their art to worry about it. This however is changing as the nature of fansubbing has changed and become far more proffesional. Most material can't be licensed anyway, because it deals with subjects you could never broadcast on western television (well US television anyway) or because it just too specific to japan (Card Captor Sakura was carefully editited in its western release to remove all traces of the series actually being set in japan). In short when you got a small business to run, that is constant on the edge of bankruptcy you got other things to do about then worry what some foreigners are up to.
That neatly leads to the
I see some people come up with the logical question, why still use comcast. Because we have no choice people reply. But aren't you americans, the country of the free market that should ensure plenty of competition? How come I as a socialist live in a country with multiple ISP's whose competition is mandated by the goverment, creating a free market and ensuring that any ISP that tried to pull this will be out of business very soon (it is very hard here to even find an ISP who still uses traffic limits other then the speed of your connection)
Shut up the reply then usually is.
Americans seem to be brainwashed when it comes to the free market, they been told that goverment regulation is bad and will scream about it at every opportunity but are totally unable to regonize the results of it.
If comcast is truly the only alternative in some areas, then that is clear evidence the free market does not work. WIth current tech there should be at least two options, cable and adsl, in all areas, using the cable and phone network that any reasonable goverment should have mandated should be available to all homes.
With both networks it is also trivial to mandate open access so that there is a difference between the company operating the cable and the actual ISP.
Is there truly no alternative to comcast (an ISP that charges tripple for a better service DOES count as an alternative, quality costs money) and if so, why are americans so utterly incapable of spotting that this is wrong and needs to be fixed, by the state, because IF it is true it is clear evidence that the free market doesn't work.
I can predict right now that this post will be modded down by an american who just cannot accept that the free market don't work, and get comments spouting why goverment interference is bad without actually ever touching the end result, that in goverment regulated areas people got choice and freedom, and in free areas people have restricitons and are at the whim of their ISP.
That is what he is talking about, NOT urls you get from verbal sources, presumably the verbol source for a shortened url would make sure that that url is valid when it is broadcast.
He is talking about links that are on the web itself, where there is ZERO need to make a url short. Your browser doesn't care how long the url is in the link you click on and for the poster there is an extra step involved in creating the short url so why bother?
tinyurl is a tool but some tend to use tools to fix problems that don't need fixing. If you build your website out of tinyurl links you got issues. It is not how the net is supposed to work.
Take slashdot, why on earth should the links in a story go via tinyurl? It creates extra data, it stops people from inspecting the url at a glance and for what?
The web already breaks down because so many sites keep changing the way their pages are organised so that old links don't work anymore. Try finding stuff that is a couple of years old, you start running headlong into the dead link mess. Not because the site itself is gone, but the site no longer can handle the requested url.
Why add another layer of complexity?
Use shortened urls when you got to give them verbally, but if the url is distruted across the net in the first place, what on earth is the point of shortening it?
Remember, if everyone uses tinyurl, all that needs to happen is that these servers go down for some reason and BOOM, there goes the internet.
Very smart people went out of their way to make DNS truly robuust and host multiple servers around the world to make sure the internet works, and then some idiots think that they should add another unneeded layer on top run by a tiny company?
Oh and another thing, most radio shows simply tell people to go to their own site and then click on the second story to get a url out there. What is an easier url Myradio.com read the second story OR tinyurl.com/3yaodz The myradio url will have been broadcasted countless times already as parts of the promo, in the case of webradio it is how you found the bloody radio in the first place.
With tinyurl you have to introduce a completly new url followed by a meaningless string. Yup, that is much easier.
No, the tool has its uses, but just because you got a hammer does not mean everything becomes a nail.
The author has a niece, she won't talk to him, his conclusion, a difference in tech.
My conclusion? His niece doesn't want to talk to him.
The proof? Note how the article carefully avoids the logical test, him using IM and then magically sparking up a relation with this niece who before wouldn't give him the time of day.
I try chat up lines in dutch, I get rejected. Conclusion, dutch is not the language to chat up girls with. Now it must be english. I carefully don't try to then use chat up lines in english and instead carefully ignore my original point and go off on a completly new rant.
The reason offcourse my chat up lines don't work has nothing to do with the language, I could be sending them in morse, it has to do with ME.
frankly I don't even believe the original author, if he was so desperate to communicate with his niece why did he not simply talk to her in person, he must have else how did he know she was using IM?
I smell an author who made something up to make a nonsense story seem real.
The nonsense? The idea that IM is something new. Geez gods man, that stuff is older then the "internet". As soon as computers started to have more then 1 user (either mainframe or networked) people came up with tools to communicate with each other. IM for when the other person is on at the same time and a mail system for when they are not.
The entire, made up, story is nothing more then the younger generation doesn't talk to the older generation. Well, duh. I am sure you can find similar brilliant stories when clay tablets were replaced by parchement.
Paper books have to be printed, they have to be printed before you buy them and this costs lots of money. The publisher has to take a gamble on how many books can be sold, he will then put in an order for that amount at a printer, who wants his money NOW thank you very much. He will then have to stock those books before sending them to the various retailers. Those retailers will have to stock the books as well, until the customer hopefully end up buying them, eventually. In the meantime a lot of the books will get damaged and be less desirable to buy.
It is a huge complex operation that EATS money. It is why books are still so damned expensive.
Go digital and you loose an awfull lots of costs. First, with digital distribution you can always create EXACTLY the right number of copies. You will never have to take unsold copies back or have to turn a customer down. Never again will the last copy be in some bookstore in a remote place devoid of human life, like New Jersey.
The cost of "printing" is insanely low and in this case for a large part already paid for by the consumer. The consumer PAYS for the download through his internet connection and PAY for the "paper" through the ebook reader. Would you pay the same for beef at the butchers if you had to bring your own cow? The cost of distribution also plummets, what do you rather send, a paper book or a megabyte (and text books are well under that) of data? Could you even express the cost of transmitting that amount of data in whole cents anymore?
Then there is the fact that the costs remain the same no matter where the ebook is send, that there are no losses or damages in transportation and that there is no wait time for delivery.
The costs of stocking disappear as well, you only need to stock one "copy" of the book and then can sell it through the magic of the computer a million times over. The ebook doesn't get old, can't be stolen from inventory, doesn't get eaten by rats. It just sits there, pristine, ready to be sold anytime there is a buyer. For a company like amazon that stores a great many books going to ebooks would mean a fortune saved in warehouse space.
The cost savings of going to ebooks are gigantic.
Yet we still got a price of $9.99 for an ebook when all that is really left is to pay the author, a bit of hardware and software and electricity?
Anyone want to make a bet that an ebook means a profit margin for amazone that would make Apple blush? I am no economists, but I think you can express amazon's angle as "Cazhiiing", or eyeballs spinning and being replaced by dollar signs.
Do you also want to make bets that authors won't all of a sudden find that they get a huge increase on their income?
I can see Amazon's reasons for keeping theprice high, amazing profits is one, not wanting to canabalize paper sales (anyone could setup an ebook store, no need for huge investments Amazon had to make to setup its paper book distribution system) but I also fear it will kill the idea.
Why is it so hard for these types of companies to understand that the less you sell something for, the more you sell. Rather then trying to squeeze a limited audience for all you can, squeeze them less and find yourselve with a bigger audience.
It is depressing that business just doesn't seem to get that with the costs of selling digital content being so low, you could expand your market to truly epic proportions.
Imagine for instance if comics (or manga or strips) were no longer sold JUST on their original continent, but were distrubuted worldwide at a fraction of the costs. I find it very hard to believe that this would not massively increase the sales and profits of the publishers. Yet they keep insisting on distrubting their works in the most expensive way possible that limits the exposure to potential customers.
Truly amazing. $9.99 for a megabyte of data, that requires me to pay for delivery AND the tech to read it. Yeah, why not.
If business had been charge of the internet, email would cost 0.50 euro cents to send. Because hey, that is what regular mail costs so why should we pass the savings by going digital on to the customer?
Not for the details involved but for the slashdot reaction. a lot seem to be in support of the naming and shaming.
That is nice, would they be just as supportive when the RIAA deciced to publish their names for illegal filesharing and they get expelled from their schools, told to leave their jobs, asked to resign from their clubs?
There is a reason we put the law into the hands of the legal system and have deciced that lynchings are wrong. The simple problem is that of where does it end.
Say that this woman's daughter now commits suicide, is it then right for her family to publish the bloggers personal details? Publicly try them on the internet?
Innocent until proven guilty, presumption of innocence, trial by jury. My how quickly these ideals seem to be forgotten when blogging is involved. Note that when it is the other way around and some blogger gets exposed "slashdot" has shown an almost fanatical support for the sancitiy of privacy.
A few months ago slashdot had a story about internet driven vigilantism in South-Korea where this kind of naming and shaming is claimed to be far more common, the odd thing was that then the general attitude seemed to be that this was an extremely bad idea.
So how come that some slashdotters now support it? Is it the magic of the word blog? The idea that the MAN was outwitted, freedom by all means and damn the consequences?
Should the dutch teens who stole items from an online game be named and shamed? Should the blogger who published this info have every part of his private life put on the web for all to see?
Since this is a suicide where the whole community failed, why aren't they all being named and shamed. Why not print a list of all the people involved, everyone that could have talked to the girl, made friends with her, and publish them under the headline, "where were you!".
Some people seem to think that blogs are a magical something, they are not. They used to exist before, they were called pamphlets and people with enough motivation would write them and print and distribute them and say in them what they wanted in the name of "The truth".
They were back then the perfect tool to incite the mob. It is on paper, therefore it must be true, lets lynch them.
A few years ago in england a woman's house was attacked because the mob thought she was a pedofile. The evidence was clear as day, she had a sign on her door that said so "Pediatrician".
Consider this, if this woman is guilty of the suicide, then is any suicide that follows the publishing by the blogger the guilt of the blogger? What if the blogger is outed and kills himself? Where does it end?
The community taking the law in their own hand, it sounds tempting and sometimes seems to be the only solution but it never works. The law often fails us, but we should then change the law, not simply ignore it.
But think of this, do you really want there to be law that puts people to blaim if they said the wrong thing to a person who commits suicide? Better not mod me down, it might make me commit suicide.
Should society decide who needs to be punished? I would dearly love to name and shame every drunk driver out there, everyone who ever hurt someone in an "accident" that could easily have been avoided.
Before you support naming and shaming, ask yourselve wether someone else might not have you on their list.
My my, you sure seem eager to convict and sentence this woman, and not just the woman but her entire family.
Odd that if the RIAA wants to publish the names of people downloading, naming and shaming, people are against it, but in this case naming and shaming is a good thing. Why not bring out the tar and feathers. Hell why even bother with police at all, I got a rope right here and that tree looks sturdy enough.
This woman is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Mob mentality is a serious issue, say this womans daughter now commits suicide, and come after YOU. Do you want all your personal info out there, to be judged by the mob?
The reason the police and the press don't always publish everything is bloody simple.
First off, it is to keep a bad situation from becoming even worse.
But even more important, it is to keep information from becoming common knowledge to aid the investigation. The less details of the case are known to the general public the more likely a suspect can be pinned down on having knowledge they couldn't have unless they were involved.
By publishing for instance what was said right before the suicide, the woman in question can no longer be indentified as the person who sent it if she shows knowledge of what had been said. Before she could only have known what was in the messages if she had seen them, when they were sent. Now, she can just claim she read it somewhere.
But the most important thing here is, innocent until proven guilty. It is frightening how soon this is forgotten on slashdot just because this is a story about bloggers. IF a blogger was similarly convicted by the mob slashdot would be in a uproar.
Cows are rather well known for expelling large amounts of gas. They fart. Often.
A business setup not for the sake of the shareholders but for the benefit of the people. Controlled by the state to see that it encourages innovation and equality.
Why you could even use the profits to fund goverment, call it a state run industry.
You communist, and no pointing out that the original US postal system worked like this and that this is what allowed the US goverment to have low taxes since it had other sources of income.
Say funeral arrangements. People do indeed provide that service, and we pay them for it. Now say that a medical breakthrough happens and dying becomes a thing of the past. No more dead, no more need for burials. Should YOU then be legally forced to die, just so funeral directors can continue making a living supplying that service?
What I am saying is that if musicians can't make a living making music, they should stop doing that. Demand and supply, this does NOT mean, as you seem to think, that if you supply that you are entitled to a demand.
Times change. Monks were once able to support their monestary by handcopying books. With the invention of the printing press, that job vanished. Should society be forced to stand still just so a handfull can enjoy the living they once did.
Get this straight, I am not saying music should be free. I am saying that if people don't want to pay for your music, don't make it.
Perhaps I spend too much time around performance artists. This is a group of people that feel they deserve tax money for their art. They need the tax money because nobody is willing to pay for it.
I am going to introduce a law, and you must follow it, when ever you come across a street performer you MUST donate 10 dollars. You saw it, you gonna pay for it.
Offcourse that is silly, as silly as people thinking they have a right to make a living in any job they feel like. I would LOVE to make a living as a gigolo for beautifull young ladies. Ain't going to happen and if the world isn't willing to bend over backwards for my needs then I sure as hell am not going to give a shit about some kid who wants to become rich making music in world that doesn't want to pay for music. Find another job, do it for free. I had to do that, I am forced to just do my amazing love making as a hobby with no more compensation that a "job well done".