I love Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I also hate broadway.
OK, I'm intrigued. How does one "hate Broadway?" It's like "hating books" or "hating films." Now, I can understand hating musicals, or hating musical comedies, or hating certain types of dramas, even hating certain theaters, but "hating Broadway?" Did some stage manager drop a sandbag on you at an early age? Help me out on this one...
Which is undoubtedly why MS bought Visio Corp., the guys who created it, circa mid-late '90s.
But I agree with you. MS makes some great products, and it's juvenile to overlook them simply beacuse "M$ is Evil, d00D!!!" Frankly, if for nothing else, MS should be given props for inventing the stuff (Office suite integration, e.g.) that the other guys inevitably come along and re-create less expensively, more securely, whatever.
Seriously, the barn door's been open and the horse halfway to Topeka on this one for a while. Who needs an iPod? I've been carrying around virtually my entire business on one of these things for over a year. Sure, take away my music player, phone, key chain, watch, whatever, I'm a big boy and you pay me enough to play along, but at what point short of a strip search and replacing the pink-haired receptionist with a Brinks guard to watch over the stash does this policy become a smidge unwieldy?
(However, I do throw my whole-hearted support behind any policy which confiscates iPods (or sunglasses, for that matter) from any too-cool-for-the-room tool who doesn't stow them shortly after he enters the building...)
I don't really find this funny. I mean it's funny, but in the back of my mind I just know that this is the tip of a big scary iceberg
Yeah, but on a semi-holiday slow-news day at Slashdot, it's a frickin' bonanza, no?
Ya got yer US military, Orwellian eavesdrop issues, Big Silly American Corporate Marketing Angle, and -- wait for it -- the grand prize for the promotion is an SUV! I mean, what's not to belittle/complain about/be otherwise snarky regarding? If this story didn't come over the wires, we'd have to write it ourselves...
I know it'll be impossible to go back to MY glory dys of radio
Glory Days? You want Glory Days?
Mid-Seventies, NY Metro Area. Top 40 on AM with people like Dan Ingram and Cousin Brucie. Totally free-form jock-plays-whatever-suits-him with people like Scott Muni, Vin Scelsa, and Alison Steele. WPIX!!! ("From Elvis to Elvis") WQIV broadcasting in quadrophonic! Jazz up the yin-yang, from non-commercial through commercial stations, from Basie through Miles and up through Euro-Synth and Su Ra. All-Disco stations. All-Punk overnights. Live remotes nightly (or so it seemed) from CBGB's, the Bottom Line, Max's, uptown dinner-clubs and Irish pubs.
It was amazing. Intoxicating. And we didn't know it could ever be any other way.
Of course, in those medieval times, we actually bought records, with real money, in a record store. Music on the radio was diverse and good, and it was free, and if we wanted to own some of it we paid for it. Now, music on the radio is all the same crap, and the RIAA complains that nobody is paying for what they own.
There's a chicken-and-egg scenario here someplace, but I leave that to clearer heads to dope out...
What's the bet that when it does return, it's a shadow of itsformer self?
It needs to be a shadow of its former self. The damn show had become un-navigable, sinking beneath its own bloat. Was it a consumer show? A B2B show? There just wasn't enough common ground to bridge everything it tried to be.
Once upon a time, computer use in our lives was fairly niche-ified, and the geek in each company was sort of the tech-ombudsman across the board for all his enterprise's needs. Having a "Computer Show" these days, with tech so pervasively intertwined into every aspect of life, is like having an "Oxygen Show." It all stopped making sense about five years ago...
The ideas of the Director of MIT's Media Laboratory somehow have a little more credibility than millions of Anonymous Cowards
Yeah, but not by much. This guy Negroponte practically defines the phrase "pompous ass." He's the Ivory-Tower-Intellectual's Ivory-Tower-Intellectual, made all the more painfully wretched by the notion that he's supposed to be "one of us geeks."
And besides, what's he doing showing up here, now? I thought his fifteen minutes of fame ended circa the time Wired stopped using neon pink-on-green typefaces and touting 'push' technology...
Jeez, Louise, Negroponte back on his soapbox, Clinton back in the headlines... it's like 1994, 'cept without any of the Hope and Wonder. Thanks, boys, but I think I'll sit this one out...
It's no where near the set-and-forgetting of MS ActiveSynch, requires a raft of odd dependencies, but worth a try. Has conduits for the Outlook-esque Evolution as well.
If the satellite TV players were not eating Cable's lunch, we might have seen some latitude in the broadband price offerings ("Subscribe NOW to HBO and Showtime for 2 years and get half-price Broadband!!"). But... since the only services cable offers which are not technologically trumped by Dish and DirecTV are broadband access and VOD, there is little chance IMO the wire guys will ease prices in either of those areas soon. They will, however, continue to use a "price break" in their broadband ratecard for households who get their TV over their cable to try and stem the churn out to Satellite. It makes for good leverage there.
The Cable Network does not want to sell you their programs a la carte sans branding. It is terrifying, especially to a lesser network, that one or more of their sleeper hits (say, "Queer Eye" on Bravo) will take on a life of its own without carrying along the mother network's name for the ride. When you watch that "one show" on Bravo or Home & Garden or E! or whatever that's broken away from the pack, you can be sure that the network is using every available promo slot to better itself in highly thought-out ways. (Not to mention, of course, the loss of the ad revenue in the national avails.) If delivery-by-Tivo were to exist as a supplement to the regular cable and dish delivery, and the latter subscriber numbers continue to rise, that's one thing, but if Tivo-only distribution were to cannibalize the "traditional" delivery, network execs would be throwing themselves from windows.
Chances are if they can operate any of the number applications that will allow them to do this now they aren't going to be interested in an expensive set top box and subscription to do it either.
Dude, I can do this now. I can also build a MythTV box to handle the Tivo part.
But, like so many people who both can and cannot do the tech themselves, I'm happy to pay for an elegant, out-of-the-box solution.
When I was younger, sure, I was Mr. DIY. Now, with family and other grown-up obligations (as well as all that dough saved from being Mr. DIY 20 years ago...), I'll take the convenience, thanks.
Time and Money: They're the same things, and quite frequently the more you have of one the less you have of the other.
Well, you're right, of course, but ultimately harmless if you understand the context.
Bruce Sterling, Neil Gaiman, Neal Stephenson, Lawrence Lessig, and some others can all post their grocery lists on the Net and at least one slashdot editor will find a way to work it onto the front page here. It's a fan thing. It's the editor of the highschool newspaper concoting a reason to interview the pretty cheerleader and running the story on page one.
Considering that Columbia J-School-trained editors at places like the New York Times attempt daily to massage national and global politics to fit their own worldview, the frequently juvenile panderings to the circa 1998 cyber-idols we see here barely register on my media-bias radar anymore.
Even given the swampy little circle within which slashdot slushes around, it could still be worse: Jon Katz could still be here.
Then why do we have secret balloting at all of our elections?
If balloting were over the Internet, that would be a good question.
Election balloting should be secret for obvious reasons; unencrypted communication on the Net is not private, because it was never designed to be. I do not advocate Internet balloting; the potential for abuse is too great.
Want to find out what the Left is all about? I am not talking about the Democratic party of the USA, by the way. I am talking about L-E-F-T-I-S-M. I am talking about the "Third Way" and Social Democracies. Want to find out about what Social Democracies are all about? Are you ready to fight for your Welfare State? Go here to find out about social democracies and welfare states, such as are common forms of government in Europe.
You too can raise good Christian girls like Jenna and Barbara Bush!"
Um, thanks, Cryofan, but I think I'll pass. It's only a guess, mind you, cuz I'm really loathe to judge people I've never met, but I'm thinking any further conversation on this topic with you would be a waste of both our time.
Good luck in school, keep an open mind, and try to stay out of trouble.
The laws re tampering with the US mail are well-established. No such regs exist re e-mail or IM, to my knowledge. Perhaps there _should_ be, but my point in this discussion is that too many people carry on as though their expectations for e-mail and IM _now_ are the same as for the postal service. That's naive, and, depending upon what you are writing in your emails and IM's, can be embarrassing and/or dangerous.
It is in the interest of those who want to limit free speech to remove the expectation of privacy from communications over the Internet.
I've been posting on the Net since '90. I never had any expectation of privacy. I've also never felt my free speech hindered. (I also think the Founding Fathers did not draft the Bill of Rights to protect either the Anonymous or the Cowards, but I digress...)
But I guess conformists/authority-lovers (like you) fail to grasp such distinctions. And I feel quite comfortable airing my sentiments online like this, whereas a bumper sticker would afford people like you the opportunity to vandalize my car.
Incorrect, sir. People "like me" (you really felt it neccessary to introduce ad hominems to this discussion, did you?) typically have a far higher respect for your property than, well, "other people."
I thought it was pretty common knowledge that posting as AC while still being logged into/. as your username was a pretty transparent beard to the editors. Also, one of the editors mentioned in IRC once that every comment was trackable by IP records in their logs, but no gov't agency had (as yet) cause to request them.
Which brings us to this Reality Check: There is no anonymity on the Net, period, full stop, end of story.
Was there ever supposed to be? (Did I miss a meeting?) Is there some constitutional sub-text granting us anonymity on privately-owned Internet bulletin boards/communities? I don't believe there is... Should there be? Maybe, maybe not, but that's a topic for a different thread.
If you wanna be happy for the rest of the your life (to paraphrase the old song), never post anything "anonymously" on the Net that you would be uncomfortable scribing on your T-Shirt or your bumper sticker. Obviously, the owners of the boards you frequent don't stress the traceability of their membership's rants because they are in the business of _attracting_ posters, not scaring them away.
I see this less as an Evil, "They're Taking Our Rights Away, Big Brother is the SuXXor!" thing as I do a testimony to the naivete of so many people raised on the Internet thinking it is some kind of Magic Utopian Prometheus-Provided Happy Cyber-Town Forum and not the built-by-the-military and run-by-businss entity it really is.
Re:Expanded who's who --was Re:A who's who - comme
on
Sneak Peek of SF Museum
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Arthur C. Clarke had nothing to do with "City...", but is rather a SF visionary in his own right (The "Rama" books, et. al.) In fact, the "Clarke Belt" -- the distance above the earth through which satellites travel yet retain their relative geo-stationary locations -- was first prognosticated by and later named after him. However, if you _do_ like "City...", you might be interested in knowing that it was penned by Harlan Ellison, for whom apparently you have little use.
Once the public gets used to cellphone "dead zones", people will start using jammers in other areas for other reasons. How about at a movie theatre or concert? A fancy restaurant?
Great. Sign me up.
Seriously, I'd be happy to pay a premium if the movie or restaurant I was thinking of going to advertised itself as using jamming gear, perhaps, with a little marketing pizazz, they might tout that a "Self-Absorbed Idiot Free-Area" was available.
Doctors and firefighters, of course, would be wise to avoid these venues.
Television, schmelivision. It's the blue M&M's I crave.
Why can't I buy a bag of just the blue M&M's? For far too long have the mighty blues been carrying the lackluster greens and yellows. I feel ripped off, and I'm not gonna stand for it anymore. I think I'll write my congresman and demand more robust regulation of the candy industry.
(Sure, I'm a loon, but I have the same rights as you, and my vote's worth just as much.)
Next on the Agenda: Yuh-Gi-Oh Cards! Oh yes, yes...!!
Maybe leet hackerz insist on calling them virii instead of viruses, but so does anyone who actually knows where the word comes from
Huh?
D00d, there is no such word as "virii" in either Latin _or_ English. The Latin "virus" is a collective noun, like the English "butter." No special plural form whatsoever. "Crackers" open safes, go great with cheese, or live down South with narrow-minded views on race relations; "hackers" play golf poorly, or break, often illegally, into computer systems.
Oh, sure, sure, I know, there is an insular community of computer hobbyists who want to call themselves "hackers" and have the "black hats" be referred to as "crackers," but fuggedaboudit, that battle, like the one to keep "piracy" a nautical term, has been lost. A slang term does not become language because we think it's really cool; writers, media, and other people outside the cabal have to think it makes sense as well.
Please don't use the same word to refer to robbery and murder on the high seas, and copyright violation. It's not just inaccurate, it's stupid.
Meh. Less inaccurate and stupid by the month. The phrase "pirating" meaning "to copy and/or distribute digital media without the consent of the copyright holder" is pervasive throughout all the media and academia. It's way past acceptance in the popular vernacular as well (L337 H4XXorzz who insist upon using "cracker" in lieu of "hacker," or "virii" instead of "viruses" are, happily, not consulted by the popular vernacularists). I'd say that the peg-legged fellers with the parrots on their shoulders will "officially" become joined at the llinguistic hip with their warez-dealing juvenile offender cousins in the OED imminently.
We may not like it, we may even view it as a victory by the "Evil Corporate PR Suit Machine," but language evolves, and no amount if kicking, screaming, or name-calling changes that.
Slashdot Mirror
I love Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I also hate broadway.
OK, I'm intrigued. How does one "hate Broadway?" It's like "hating books" or "hating films." Now, I can understand hating musicals, or hating musical comedies, or hating certain types of dramas, even hating certain theaters, but "hating Broadway?" Did some stage manager drop a sandbag on you at an early age? Help me out on this one...
it's hard to beat Visio.
Which is undoubtedly why MS bought Visio Corp., the guys who created it, circa mid-late '90s.
But I agree with you. MS makes some great products, and it's juvenile to overlook them simply beacuse "M$ is Evil, d00D!!!" Frankly, if for nothing else, MS should be given props for inventing the stuff (Office suite integration, e.g.) that the other guys inevitably come along and re-create less expensively, more securely, whatever.
Congrats; you've successfully identified yourself as a style-hating, youth-jealous, stodgy old man.
Where've you been? I established that here years ago.
You self-absorbed kids need to pay better attention...
...or are you just glad to see me?
Seriously, the barn door's been open and the horse halfway to Topeka on this one for a while. Who needs an iPod? I've been carrying around virtually my entire business on one of these things for over a year. Sure, take away my music player, phone, key chain, watch, whatever, I'm a big boy and you pay me enough to play along, but at what point short of a strip search and replacing the pink-haired receptionist with a Brinks guard to watch over the stash does this policy become a smidge unwieldy?
(However, I do throw my whole-hearted support behind any policy which confiscates iPods (or sunglasses, for that matter) from any too-cool-for-the-room tool who doesn't stow them shortly after he enters the building...)
I don't really find this funny. I mean it's funny, but in the back of my mind
I just know that this is the tip of a big scary iceberg
Yeah, but on a semi-holiday slow-news day at Slashdot, it's a frickin' bonanza, no?
Ya got yer US military, Orwellian eavesdrop issues, Big Silly American Corporate Marketing Angle, and -- wait for it -- the grand prize for the promotion is an SUV! I mean, what's not to belittle/complain about/be otherwise snarky regarding? If this story didn't come over the wires, we'd have to write it ourselves...
I know it'll be impossible to go back to MY glory dys of radio
Glory Days? You want Glory Days?
Mid-Seventies, NY Metro Area. Top 40 on AM with people like Dan Ingram and Cousin Brucie. Totally free-form jock-plays-whatever-suits-him with people like Scott Muni, Vin Scelsa, and Alison Steele. WPIX!!! ("From Elvis to Elvis") WQIV broadcasting in quadrophonic! Jazz up the yin-yang, from non-commercial through commercial stations, from Basie through Miles and up through Euro-Synth and Su Ra. All-Disco stations. All-Punk overnights. Live remotes nightly (or so it seemed) from CBGB's, the Bottom Line, Max's, uptown dinner-clubs and Irish pubs.
It was amazing. Intoxicating. And we didn't know it could ever be any other way.
Of course, in those medieval times, we actually bought records, with real money, in a record store. Music on the radio was diverse and good, and it was free, and if we wanted to own some of it we paid for it. Now, music on the radio is all the same crap, and the RIAA complains that nobody is paying for what they own.
There's a chicken-and-egg scenario here someplace, but I leave that to clearer heads to dope out...
What's the bet that when it does return, it's a shadow of itsformer self?
It needs to be a shadow of its former self. The damn show had become un-navigable, sinking beneath its own bloat. Was it a consumer show? A B2B show? There just wasn't enough common ground to bridge everything it tried to be.
Once upon a time, computer use in our lives was fairly niche-ified, and the geek in each company was sort of the tech-ombudsman across the board for all his enterprise's needs. Having a "Computer Show" these days, with tech so pervasively intertwined into every aspect of life, is like having an "Oxygen Show." It all stopped making sense about five years ago...
Has anyone heard about whether or not the AVN awards will follow suit!?
You're confusing Comdex with January's CES, which is always the week leading up to the Adult Video News (Porn's Oscars) in Vegas.
(It frightens me that I know this...)
The ideas of the Director of MIT's Media Laboratory somehow have a little more credibility than millions of Anonymous Cowards
Yeah, but not by much. This guy Negroponte practically defines the phrase "pompous ass." He's the Ivory-Tower-Intellectual's Ivory-Tower-Intellectual, made all the more painfully wretched by the notion that he's supposed to be "one of us geeks."
And besides, what's he doing showing up here, now? I thought his fifteen minutes of fame ended circa the time Wired stopped using neon pink-on-green typefaces and touting 'push' technology...
Jeez, Louise, Negroponte back on his soapbox, Clinton back in the headlines... it's like 1994, 'cept without any of the Hope and Wonder. Thanks, boys, but I think I'll sit this one out...
If Linux had a sync option with iPaq PDAs i wold go with Linux.
Only one that I know of: SynCE. Here ya go.
It's no where near the set-and-forgetting of MS ActiveSynch, requires a raft of odd dependencies, but worth a try. Has conduits for the Outlook-esque Evolution as well.
If the satellite TV players were not eating Cable's lunch, we might have seen some latitude in the broadband price offerings ("Subscribe NOW to HBO and Showtime for 2 years and get half-price Broadband!!"). But... since the only services cable offers which are not technologically trumped by Dish and DirecTV are broadband access and VOD, there is little chance IMO the wire guys will ease prices in either of those areas soon. They will, however, continue to use a "price break" in their broadband ratecard for households who get their TV over their cable to try and stem the churn out to Satellite. It makes for good leverage there.
The Cable Network does not want to sell you their programs a la carte sans branding. It is terrifying, especially to a lesser network, that one or more of their sleeper hits (say, "Queer Eye" on Bravo) will take on a life of its own without carrying along the mother network's name for the ride. When you watch that "one show" on Bravo or Home & Garden or E! or whatever that's broken away from the pack, you can be sure that the network is using every available promo slot to better itself in highly thought-out ways. (Not to mention, of course, the loss of the ad revenue in the national avails.) If delivery-by-Tivo were to exist as a supplement to the regular cable and dish delivery, and the latter subscriber numbers continue to rise, that's one thing, but if Tivo-only distribution were to cannibalize the "traditional" delivery, network execs would be throwing themselves from windows.
Chances are if they can operate any of the number applications that will allow them to do this now they aren't going to be interested in an expensive set top box and subscription to do it either.
Dude, I can do this now. I can also build a MythTV box to handle the Tivo part.
But, like so many people who both can and cannot do the tech themselves, I'm happy to pay for an elegant, out-of-the-box solution.
When I was younger, sure, I was Mr. DIY. Now, with family and other grown-up obligations (as well as all that dough saved from being Mr. DIY 20 years ago...), I'll take the convenience, thanks.
Time and Money: They're the same things, and quite frequently the more you have of one the less you have of the other.
Well, you're right, of course, but ultimately harmless if you understand the context.
Bruce Sterling, Neil Gaiman, Neal Stephenson, Lawrence Lessig, and some others can all post their grocery lists on the Net and at least one slashdot editor will find a way to work it onto the front page here. It's a fan thing. It's the editor of the highschool newspaper concoting a reason to interview the pretty cheerleader and running the story on page one.
Considering that Columbia J-School-trained editors at places like the New York Times attempt daily to massage national and global politics to fit their own worldview, the frequently juvenile panderings to the circa 1998 cyber-idols we see here barely register on my media-bias radar anymore.
Even given the swampy little circle within which slashdot slushes around, it could still be worse: Jon Katz could still be here.
Then why do we have secret balloting at all of our elections?
If balloting were over the Internet, that would be a good question.
Election balloting should be secret for obvious reasons; unencrypted communication on the Net is not private, because it was never designed to be. I do not advocate Internet balloting; the potential for abuse is too great.
Um, thanks, Cryofan, but I think I'll pass. It's only a guess, mind you, cuz I'm really loathe to judge people I've never met, but I'm thinking any further conversation on this topic with you would be a waste of both our time.
Good luck in school, keep an open mind, and try to stay out of trouble.
The laws re tampering with the US mail are well-established. No such regs exist re e-mail or IM, to my knowledge. Perhaps there _should_ be, but my point in this discussion is that too many people carry on as though their expectations for e-mail and IM _now_ are the same as for the postal service. That's naive, and, depending upon what you are writing in your emails and IM's, can be embarrassing and/or dangerous.
It is in the interest of those who want to limit free speech to remove the expectation of privacy from communications over the Internet.
I've been posting on the Net since '90. I never had any expectation of privacy. I've also never felt my free speech hindered. (I also think the Founding Fathers did not draft the Bill of Rights to protect either the Anonymous or the Cowards, but I digress...)
But I guess conformists/authority-lovers (like you) fail to grasp such distinctions. And I feel quite comfortable airing my sentiments online like this, whereas a bumper sticker would afford people like you the opportunity to vandalize my car.
Incorrect, sir. People "like me" (you really felt it neccessary to introduce ad hominems to this discussion, did you?) typically have a far higher respect for your property than, well, "other people."
I thought it was pretty common knowledge that posting as AC while still being logged into /. as your username was a pretty transparent beard to the editors. Also, one of the editors mentioned in IRC once that every comment was trackable by IP records in their logs, but no gov't agency had (as yet) cause to request them.
Which brings us to this Reality Check: There is no anonymity on the Net, period, full stop, end of story.
Was there ever supposed to be? (Did I miss a meeting?) Is there some constitutional sub-text granting us anonymity on privately-owned Internet bulletin boards/communities? I don't believe there is... Should there be? Maybe, maybe not, but that's a topic for a different thread.
If you wanna be happy for the rest of the your life (to paraphrase the old song), never post anything "anonymously" on the Net that you would be uncomfortable scribing on your T-Shirt or your bumper sticker. Obviously, the owners of the boards you frequent don't stress the traceability of their membership's rants because they are in the business of _attracting_ posters, not scaring them away.
I see this less as an Evil, "They're Taking Our Rights Away, Big Brother is the SuXXor!" thing as I do a testimony to the naivete of so many people raised on the Internet thinking it is some kind of Magic Utopian Prometheus-Provided Happy Cyber-Town Forum and not the built-by-the-military and run-by-businss entity it really is.
Arthur C. Clarke had nothing to do with "City...", but is rather a SF visionary in his own right (The "Rama" books, et. al.) In fact, the "Clarke Belt" -- the distance above the earth through which satellites travel yet retain their relative geo-stationary locations -- was first prognosticated by and later named after him. However, if you _do_ like "City...", you might be interested in knowing that it was penned by Harlan Ellison, for whom apparently you have little use.
Life is funny like that sometimes.
Once the public gets used to cellphone "dead zones", people will start using jammers in other areas for other reasons. How about at a movie theatre or concert? A fancy restaurant?
Great. Sign me up.
Seriously, I'd be happy to pay a premium if the movie or restaurant I was thinking of going to advertised itself as using jamming gear, perhaps, with a little marketing pizazz, they might tout that a "Self-Absorbed Idiot Free-Area" was available.
Doctors and firefighters, of course, would be wise to avoid these venues.
Television, schmelivision. It's the blue M&M's I crave.
Why can't I buy a bag of just the blue M&M's? For far too long have the mighty blues been carrying the lackluster greens and yellows. I feel ripped off, and I'm not gonna stand for it anymore. I think I'll write my congresman and demand more robust regulation of the candy industry.
(Sure, I'm a loon, but I have the same rights as you, and my vote's worth just as much.)
Next on the Agenda: Yuh-Gi-Oh Cards! Oh yes, yes...!!
Huh?
D00d, there is no such word as "virii" in either Latin _or_ English. The Latin "virus" is a collective noun, like the English "butter." No special plural form whatsoever. "Crackers" open safes, go great with cheese, or live down South with narrow-minded views on race relations; "hackers" play golf poorly, or break, often illegally, into computer systems.
Oh, sure, sure, I know, there is an insular community of computer hobbyists who want to call themselves "hackers" and have the "black hats" be referred to as "crackers," but fuggedaboudit, that battle, like the one to keep "piracy" a nautical term, has been lost. A slang term does not become language because we think it's really cool; writers, media, and other people outside the cabal have to think it makes sense as well.
Please don't use the same word to refer to robbery and murder on the high seas, and copyright violation. It's not just inaccurate, it's stupid.
Meh. Less inaccurate and stupid by the month. The phrase "pirating" meaning "to copy and/or distribute digital media without the consent of the copyright holder" is pervasive throughout all the media and academia. It's way past acceptance in the popular vernacular as well (L337 H4XXorzz who insist upon using "cracker" in lieu of "hacker," or "virii" instead of "viruses" are, happily, not consulted by the popular vernacularists). I'd say that the peg-legged fellers with the parrots on their shoulders will "officially" become joined at the llinguistic hip with their warez-dealing juvenile offender cousins in the OED imminently.
We may not like it, we may even view it as a victory by the "Evil Corporate PR Suit Machine," but language evolves, and no amount if kicking, screaming, or name-calling changes that.