If you want to feel like Galileo before The Inquisition, try scoffing about man-made global warming while working in the entertainment industry in NYC.
I'm just sayin'..
Only things the peeps in the check out line at Whole Foods in SoHo are missing to complete the scene are hooded robes and torches...
"DigiShaman," eh? Maybe you need to upgrade your runes...
OBVIOUSLY Pandora is collecting information about you and selling it to advertisers. They provide a free internet service, and have insanely high licensing costs; how did you think they were being funded, the Committee for Public Broadcasting?
Now, check your digi-Ouija board and tell us why Google provides people with free e-mail service and gigs upon gigs of free storage...
I never understand why they required to pay extra again by some people.
You mean, the Nanny-state hipsters?
It's a psychological tic. Used to be called "sanctimoniousness" before religion became out of fashion. Now, absent any strong central religious authority through which to channel it, it expresses itself as sin taxes, including (especially) "carbon credits," which are the New Church's version of medieval indulgences.
I've been here long enough to remember when there were a few clever bits thrown in amongst the snark here on April 1.
But this... this... vatican porn... WTF? Tasteless AND Tedious, nice job. And a new low.
Taco, you guys make enough money on this site now, howzaboutmaybe you consider hiring some professional comedy writers once a year to script this site on April 1. Consider it a little give-back.
As it stands now, you're just driving readers away in hordes...
Somebody's worried about US companies selling censor software to countries to whom we also sell bombs and warplanes. Talk about the Skewed Geek Perspective!
Free Speech is not a global " human right." If you live in a country where it is respected, be thankful. If you live in a country where it is not, and it is meaningful to you, move.
Why not stop textile manufacturers from selling cloth to Sharia-governed countries? We all know that they'll just use it to make those evil burqhas...
Give us sensible copyright laws first and then focus on punishing those who break them.
No.
Law enforcement cannot adequately police the torrents now. Songs are merely a dollar on iTunes -- less other places -- yet the latest pop music album is but a two-minute download via Vuze or some other client within a few days of its release. How will diminishing the copyright term -- which at least assures the artist of some revenue from reputable distributors and honest consumers -- increases the technical efficacy of the forces policing copyright?
Demonstrate how the consumer genie can be placed back in the bottle and then we can have a discussion about attenuating the creators' term of copyright.
...but then the government needs to police and prosecute like friggin' Elliot Ness on steroids the torrent seeders and other violators. Root 'em out and hang 'em up to dry. Every kid, every grandma, every wise-ass college nerd pleading poverty: shut 'em down and cleanse their hard drives clean of any content they did not pay for that is not in the public domain. Everyone needs to understand that they have three choices for possessing entertainment content:
1. Pay Now and Get It Now 2. Wait 10 years and Get It For Free 3. Take it before 10 years and suffer a steep fine
Google wants to provide you with books, because they want to know what you read. With Search, because they want to know where you "go" online. With free e-mail, to track what you are discussing. And now with music, so they can parse your psycho-demographic profile even more minutely.
They do this in order to sell *you* to the highest bidder, and/or the NSA. They are not a "tech" company, they are an Advertising Company that uses highly invasive technology. Technology which an entire dribbling, drooling, consumerist generation has plugged into their frontal lobes like bit players in a bad PKDick movie. Except that it's not Soylent Green anymore. It's Soylent Shiny.
I keep waiting for our Charleton Heston Moment, but I fear it may never come.
...kids who make their parents buy them expensive electric guitars that are now gathering dust in their rooms because they lack the discipline to practice, and would rather play video games instead.
My children 10, 10, and 13 spend hours a day, several days a week, in one of our four local libraries. They browse the magazines and encyclopedic references, read the graphic novels and manga that are too expensive to buy, try out books that are "above their level" that their schools don't make readily available, and generally just read the hell out of everything they find. The local libraries are part of an even ginormously larger library system with shared resources searchable and order-able through a really well-designed online database, and I've taught my kids how to use the "recommendations" feature on Amazon and follow through with an order to the library system instead. In short, my kids are probably the most voracious readers in their classes, and I haven't bought a book for them in years, save birthdays, at which time the books become a treasured "You mean this is mine... to keep?!" item.
Weekends at the library are already out-of-control with concerts, crafts instruction, readings, plays, chess leagues, and education programs for every age level.
Fine for now, but what about the "digital future?" I just downloaded my first digital library book last night to my wife's Nook. Yeah, sure, I stripped the DRM from it as soon as I got it, just to see if I could (it's a geek thing...) but in principle I really have no problem with DRM on a library e-book: you wouldn't *own* the paper version, and you'd have to return it or pay a late fee after a time for it. For library loaners, DRM actually makes sense.
In my day Data Centers were at the top of snow mountains which you had to climb barefooted or be turned away. We built them to keep the machinery happy, not the people, whom we preferred behaved like machinery.
We liked our Data Centers the way we liked our women: Bright, White, Antiseptic, and Bitterly Cold.
No, slashdot users are supposed to be geeks and nerds, which is to say, obsessed with certain pop culture fetishes (Buffy, Star Wars, Monty Python, et. al.) and typically over-educated.
There's nothing inherently "smart" about geekiness or nerd-dom -- particularly with the devaluation of both terms in the past ten years ("Movie Nerd"? "Sports Geek"?).
This premise, like your "Back to the Future" reference, is over twenty years out of date.
During that time, Hollywood (re?)discovered kids and families; some of the biggest blockbusters distributed recently have been rated G and PG, while the number of R-Rated movies being produced is a fraction of what it was back in the "Back to the Future" days.
If I leave a hundred dollars on my desk and you take it, I may be careless but you're still a thief.
And if I'm the most powerful woman in the Right Wing of the United States and I leave a hundred dollars on my desk and you take it, you're a thief and a friggin' idiot with a death wish.
Just because a book exists does not bind a bookseller to stock it, any more than iTunes is under any obligation to sell music from your favorite bar band. If Amazon wants to "make a statement" by not selling gay pedophiliac titles, or even books with the word "Red" in the title, that's their call. Maybe Barnes & Noble will step up to fill the void, and grab all the gay pedophiliac (and sympathetic geek) patronage that Amazon will lose.
Yeah, I can just imagine THAT marketing campaign...
Slashdot Mirror
...turning your friends into business opportunities, the same socially damaging outcome to hit every pyramid marketing scheme and cult member.
This is Google's sweet spot. Surprised they haven't hit on this earlier.
If you want to feel like Galileo before The Inquisition, try scoffing about man-made global warming while working in the entertainment industry in NYC.
I'm just sayin'..
Only things the peeps in the check out line at Whole Foods in SoHo are missing to complete the scene are hooded robes and torches...
"DigiShaman," eh? Maybe you need to upgrade your runes...
OBVIOUSLY Pandora is collecting information about you and selling it to advertisers. They provide a free internet service, and have insanely high licensing costs; how did you think they were being funded, the Committee for Public Broadcasting?
Now, check your digi-Ouija board and tell us why Google provides people with free e-mail service and gigs upon gigs of free storage...
I never understand why they required to pay extra again by some people.
You mean, the Nanny-state hipsters?
It's a psychological tic. Used to be called "sanctimoniousness" before religion became out of fashion. Now, absent any strong central religious authority through which to channel it, it expresses itself as sin taxes, including (especially) "carbon credits," which are the New Church's version of medieval indulgences.
I've been here long enough to remember when there were a few clever bits thrown in amongst the snark here on April 1.
But this... this... vatican porn... WTF? Tasteless AND Tedious, nice job. And a new low.
Taco, you guys make enough money on this site now, howzaboutmaybe you consider hiring some professional comedy writers once a year to script this site on April 1. Consider it a little give-back.
As it stands now, you're just driving readers away in hordes...
...when you've sold your immortal soul to Mephistopheles.
Somebody's worried about US companies selling censor software to countries to whom we also sell bombs and warplanes. Talk about the Skewed Geek Perspective!
Free Speech is not a global " human right." If you live in a country where it is respected, be thankful. If you live in a country where it is not, and it is meaningful to you, move.
Why not stop textile manufacturers from selling cloth to Sharia-governed countries? We all know that they'll just use it to make those evil burqhas...
Give us sensible copyright laws first and then focus on punishing those who break them.
No.
Law enforcement cannot adequately police the torrents now. Songs are merely a dollar on iTunes -- less other places -- yet the latest pop music album is but a two-minute download via Vuze or some other client within a few days of its release. How will diminishing the copyright term -- which at least assures the artist of some revenue from reputable distributors and honest consumers -- increases the technical efficacy of the forces policing copyright?
Demonstrate how the consumer genie can be placed back in the bottle and then we can have a discussion about attenuating the creators' term of copyright.
...but then the government needs to police and prosecute like friggin' Elliot Ness on steroids the torrent seeders and other violators. Root 'em out and hang 'em up to dry. Every kid, every grandma, every wise-ass college nerd pleading poverty: shut 'em down and cleanse their hard drives clean of any content they did not pay for that is not in the public domain. Everyone needs to understand that they have three choices for possessing entertainment content:
1. Pay Now and Get It Now
2. Wait 10 years and Get It For Free
3. Take it before 10 years and suffer a steep fine
Then the abbreviated copyright term works.
So... call me when y'all got that set up...
Google wants to provide you with books, because they want to know what you read. With Search, because they want to know where you "go" online. With free e-mail, to track what you are discussing. And now with music, so they can parse your psycho-demographic profile even more minutely.
They do this in order to sell *you* to the highest bidder, and/or the NSA. They are not a "tech" company, they are an Advertising Company that uses highly invasive technology. Technology which an entire dribbling, drooling, consumerist generation has plugged into their frontal lobes like bit players in a bad PKDick movie. Except that it's not Soylent Green anymore. It's Soylent Shiny.
I keep waiting for our Charleton Heston Moment, but I fear it may never come.
...kids who make their parents buy them expensive electric guitars that are now gathering dust in their rooms because they lack the discipline to practice, and would rather play video games instead.
It's really a brilliant marketing ploy.
...that the guys most paranoid about people listening in on their conversations are the ones with the least interesting things to say...?
My children 10, 10, and 13 spend hours a day, several days a week, in one of our four local libraries. They browse the magazines and encyclopedic references, read the graphic novels and manga that are too expensive to buy, try out books that are "above their level" that their schools don't make readily available, and generally just read the hell out of everything they find. The local libraries are part of an even ginormously larger library system with shared resources searchable and order-able through a really well-designed online database, and I've taught my kids how to use the "recommendations" feature on Amazon and follow through with an order to the library system instead. In short, my kids are probably the most voracious readers in their classes, and I haven't bought a book for them in years, save birthdays, at which time the books become a treasured "You mean this is mine... to keep?!" item.
Weekends at the library are already out-of-control with concerts, crafts instruction, readings, plays, chess leagues, and education programs for every age level.
Fine for now, but what about the "digital future?" I just downloaded my first digital library book last night to my wife's Nook. Yeah, sure, I stripped the DRM from it as soon as I got it, just to see if I could (it's a geek thing...) but in principle I really have no problem with DRM on a library e-book: you wouldn't *own* the paper version, and you'd have to return it or pay a late fee after a time for it. For library loaners, DRM actually makes sense.
Libraries are here for the long term.
In my day Data Centers were at the top of snow mountains which you had to climb barefooted or be turned away. We built them to keep the machinery happy, not the people, whom we preferred behaved like machinery.
We liked our Data Centers the way we liked our women: Bright, White, Antiseptic, and Bitterly Cold.
Slashdot users are supposed to be smart
No, slashdot users are supposed to be geeks and nerds, which is to say, obsessed with certain pop culture fetishes (Buffy, Star Wars, Monty Python, et. al.) and typically over-educated.
There's nothing inherently "smart" about geekiness or nerd-dom -- particularly with the devaluation of both terms in the past ten years ("Movie Nerd"? "Sports Geek"?).
...will stop buying those infuriating astroturf placements here on Slashdot designed to bump up their SEO...?
I think the only economy this would stimulate would be the one involving IT Consultants.
Not that there's anything wrong with that...
...has just been given more padding and legitimacy?
What's next, someone invents a way to post on Facebook with crayons?
...the more I look to hire high school drop-outs and illegal immigrants.
Seriously, don't Kids These Days want to put in a full day's work and pay some dues any more?
a G or PG rating is the kiss of death.
This premise, like your "Back to the Future" reference, is over twenty years out of date.
During that time, Hollywood (re?)discovered kids and families; some of the biggest blockbusters distributed recently have been rated G and PG, while the number of R-Rated movies being produced is a fraction of what it was back in the "Back to the Future" days.
If I leave a hundred dollars on my desk and you take it, I may be careless but you're still a thief.
And if I'm the most powerful woman in the Right Wing of the United States and I leave a hundred dollars on my desk and you take it, you're a thief and a friggin' idiot with a death wish.
People still know where he is...
I wonder what percentage of techies are like that?
Growing steadily smaller even as I write this. MS, it has turned out, has become less arrogant than Apple and less evil than Google. Who'd a thought?
What do you do for a living?
Oh, get off your high horse, ferchrissake.
Just because a book exists does not bind a bookseller to stock it, any more than iTunes is under any obligation to sell music from your favorite bar band. If Amazon wants to "make a statement" by not selling gay pedophiliac titles, or even books with the word "Red" in the title, that's their call. Maybe Barnes & Noble will step up to fill the void, and grab all the gay pedophiliac (and sympathetic geek) patronage that Amazon will lose.
Yeah, I can just imagine THAT marketing campaign...