Of course, once the RIAA discovers that it has nailed a Federal judge's kid, they'd drop the case like a hot potato.
A cynical, lazy and dangerous assumption that is all too typically geek.
Spend some time talking to a kid whose father is a pastor, a policeman, a federal prosecutor or a strict "law and order" judge. It will help clear your head of such nonsense.
Actually I've spoken to lawyers about it, and given the nature of the RIAA's operation, it's a very reasonable assumption, cynical or otherwise. They cherry-pick their cases. Spend some time reading about the RIAA's lawsuit mill: that will help clear your head of some obvious misunderstandings. Start with Ray Beckerman's blog, go from there.
If you're learning stuff about science from Discovery then you probably don't know much about science.
It appears that it was his father he was trying to interest in science, and if it takes the Discovery Channel to do it... well, that's better than nothing at all.
but I'm getting ready to drop it anyway after many, many nights of "500 channels and nothing I want to watch.
And that's the thing, isn't it. Now, what really does help there is having a decent DVR. There are always shows and movies on that you would like to watch, they're just not on when you want to watch them. Having a DVR changes the TV watching experience completely. For me, it's like having the ScrewMaster Channel... all my favorites, all the time!
What I find very shortsighted on the part of a number of programming providers (yeah, HBO, I'm looking at you) is that they disallow recording! I have AT&T U-Verse, and while the WIN CE-based DVR is adequate, I've noticed a growing trend among channels to remotely disable recording ("Channel xxx Doesn't Allow Recording.") Hysterical... the ONE reason that I still pay for TV and you're taking it away from me. Well, I canceled all the so-called "premium" channels, and that was one of the reasons why. I mean, if you scroll through the guide on any of them: HBO, Showtime, Starz, etc, you'll see the same damn movies over and over, with an occasional gem on at three in the morning. If I can't time shift the few items that I really want to see, then I can't get any benefit from your offerings. Idiots.
One In Eight To Cut Cable and Satellite TV In 2010
I currently have AT&T U-Verse (having had Dish Network... awesome service but I can't get it where I am now) and Comcast (blecch!) My current bill (not counting taxes, fees, etc.) is about $160/month. I dropped all the stupid movie channels (there's a vast wasteland for you) and went down to the mid-level tier on Internet speed (12 mbit/sec). I have one phone line, and two cable boxes (one is AT&T's DVR) and I pay the extra ten bucks for the high-definition channels (now that's a rip, so far as I'm concerned.) All in all, it's not a bad deal but all I really want is Internet and phone service. Unfortunately AT&T doesn't sell naked VDSL where I live, so I'm forced to buy the TV service. Comcast will sell just an Internet connection, but I don't want to go back to that schlock outfit. Ever.
Frankly, most of the movies we watch we get from Netflix. $16.95/month, never had a problem. in fact they actually lowered our fee a couple of times. I may just see if I can get basic DSL from SBC, along with a phone line, and survive on Netflix and broadcast TV. That would probably run me about $60-$70 per month, which would be a substantial savings. I could put the money towards a new motherboard.
and the US has nearly 5 times more active issues than Russia
Presumably because we have more connectivity. As soon as other countries start building out more fiber, you're gonna see their stats rise. Spam is, unfortunately, profitable.
Fuck the RIAA, and fuck any federal court asshole judge that would force ISPs to become snitches..
Incrementalism. There are a lot of people in government that admire the way the East Germans went about matters, and would like the U.S. to work along similar lines. They can't do it all at once, of course, but they can lay the groundwork.
That judge better keep track of what his (or her, I didn't RTFA yet) kids are doing online. This is the kind of ruling that can come back to haunt them. Of course, once the RIAA discovers that it has nailed a Federal judge's kid, they'd drop the case like a hot potato.
The likes of Franklin and others, who were producing Apple ][ clones fairly early on did make improvements that Apple did not. I'm talking the years before the//e and the//c came out. I was doing business and industrial apps at the time, and the lack of a decent keyboard (or a real-time clock) was something that Apple should have dealt with much sooner than they did. Bell and Howell doesn't count simply because they were strictly sold to the educational market: very hard to get hold of one of their black units otherwise.
Yes, they did try to kill of their competition (Apple clones, I'm talking about) because they were making the ][ look bad. The copyrighted Monitor ROM was one of their favorite tools: Frankly was always releasing new ROMs in order to maintain compatibility and evade a lawsuit. My point is that Jobs & Co. are not doing anything different now, than they did then... the same asshole is running the show. The technology has improved, sure, but his mindset hasn't.
I agree. I think Apple hasn't had the opportunity to be nearly as evil as Microsoft yet. But the ways things are going, I have no doubt they'll take the opportunity as soon as it presents itself.
And, while I half expected this, I'm still angry about it.
Are you kidding me? I still have an original Apple ][ Standard (Integer ROM) somewhere in a box around here.Spent some years coding for the thing, only to have Apple refuse to improve even basic aspects of the design (the keyboard for one) and do it's damnedest to kill off any competition. They they dropped it like a hot potato, refused to provide any support, and when you called up to, say, order a spare disk controller PROM the answer was "we've never made any such product, sir, we recommend you purchase a Macintosh." I'd been a loyal customer up to that point, sold a LOT of systems. Consequently, it was the last Apple product I ever owned (other than an iPod Nano that I got as a gift, so I don't count it.) I'll tell you this: Jobs is a dick. He's always been a dick, will always be a dick. That may be news to a lot of people (those who only got on board with Apple in recent years) but the reality is this: Jobs is nothing more than a hopped up used-car salesman who hitched a ride on Wozniak's genius. To anyone who honestly believed that he's any different under the hood than Gates or Ballmer: you've been fooling yourself. I hope this opens a few eyes.
I disagree. I thought it captured the essence of both Jobs and his followers rather well. Now, if you happen to be one of those followers, you probably found the post much less entertaining.
The only trial I was a juror on, we had some people convinced of guilt, even though a few key points did not seem to be proven. They were amazed that the rest of us did not feel the same way. At point one juror said "this guy is an idiot, even if he's not technically guilty of this he's guilty of something!"
All I know is, if I'm ever on trial, I'm not likely to be judged by a jury of my peers. That applies to most of us here on Slashdot.
This would be cheaper than prison, by a LONG way, be far more likely to be effective, AND would be more likely to increase his value to society (whereas prison rots skills and therefore decreases value).
Besides, taking someone with technical skills who, by the sound of it, has strong ethics and unfairly convicting him of a felony computer crime isn't particularly smart. When he gets out, he's not going to have much respect left for government, and as an ex-con probably won't be able to get legitimate work in his chosen field. Great way to turn an otherwise honest guy into a white-collar criminal.
What baffles me is how these were the choices. It should have been a choice between handing over passwords or facing a lawsuit. Is it only because this particular employer has a team of criminal attorneys on staff that they decided to use this option? Can you imagine a generic corporation in a first world nation being able to convince law enforcement to jail an ex-employee who has stolen nothing? If there are monetary damages then you sue to recover them. If there is stolen property then you get the police involved.
Ultimately, this comes down to misguided lawmakers wanting to look "tough on computer crime" to their drain-bamaged PEBKAC constituents. They've gone so far overboard that it's now possible to earn time in a Federal prison for doing one's job.
Apparently it cost the city 200,000 dollars they wouldn't have had to spend. He caused a trial that cost more money. I'd say he did quite a lot of damage to the city and I call that detrimental.
Yes a city works slightly differently that a corp. Not much at his level.
Yes, but did he cause that, or did people looking for a scapegoat do that. They wanted him to break their rules... had he broken them, he'd have been crucified. He didn't break them, and he still got crucified.
But even if I agree with all your points that counterfeiting is bad and sharing is not, the LAW MAKES NO DISTINCTION.
Yes it does.
87 people shipping a warehouse of sugar pills branded as Lipitor? GO TO JAIL. 1 kid sharing a song with a friend? GO TO JAIL.
No-one has been jailed for file-sharing. It's not (yet) a criminal offense. The RIAA's lawsuits were all filed in civil court.
So stuff your justification, because we know that the amount of random filesharer abuse will FAR EXCEED the number of counterfeiting operations shut down.
for somebody with such a low user number, I'd have expected at least some concept of what a "corporation" is. Hint: corporations aren't owned by "a [person]"
No... but if Brin said, "This is the way I want it", believe me, that's the way it would be.
What do you expect? It's "open source" so while that means it is terrible half baked crap to those of us with half a brain who use commercial software, to the freetards who inhabit slashdot it means it must be great no matter how many holes you poke in their pathetic arguments. You see the same thing with Linux, GIMP, etc. Every single piece of open source software is absolute garbage next to the closed source stuff it purportedly "competes" with, and yet if you went by what folks on slashdot say, you'd think open source programmers shat gold. Unfortunately for those of us who have to deal with it (usually by un-installing as fast as possible), open source developers only shit out crap code.
Do you have any idea what you're talking about? Considering the untold millions of systems in this world that are running open source software, and running it more efficiently, cost-effectively and functionally than their "closed-source counterparts", you are either completely ignorant of the subject, or have an agenda of some sort. I'm betting on the former, actually... you really sound like an idiot. In any event, if you're going to make sweeping statements like that, you need to either a. back them up or b. shut the fuck up. Take your pick.
I wish we could all vote to IP ban certain people.
Slashdot Mirror
"There's only room for one Steve in this here company."
Yes, but he's crazy awesome, or something like that.
The Net is great at slinging BS.
So is Jobs, so in the end I guess we're all Even Steven.
Of course, once the RIAA discovers that it has nailed a Federal judge's kid, they'd drop the case like a hot potato.
A cynical, lazy and dangerous assumption that is all too typically geek.
Spend some time talking to a kid whose father is a pastor, a policeman, a federal prosecutor or a strict "law and order" judge. It will help clear your head of such nonsense.
Actually I've spoken to lawyers about it, and given the nature of the RIAA's operation, it's a very reasonable assumption, cynical or otherwise. They cherry-pick their cases. Spend some time reading about the RIAA's lawsuit mill: that will help clear your head of some obvious misunderstandings. Start with Ray Beckerman's blog, go from there.
If you're learning stuff about science from Discovery then you probably don't know much about science.
It appears that it was his father he was trying to interest in science, and if it takes the Discovery Channel to do it ... well, that's better than nothing at all.
but I'm getting ready to drop it anyway after many, many nights of "500 channels and nothing I want to watch.
And that's the thing, isn't it. Now, what really does help there is having a decent DVR. There are always shows and movies on that you would like to watch, they're just not on when you want to watch them. Having a DVR changes the TV watching experience completely. For me, it's like having the ScrewMaster Channel ... all my favorites, all the time!
... the ONE reason that I still pay for TV and you're taking it away from me. Well, I canceled all the so-called "premium" channels, and that was one of the reasons why. I mean, if you scroll through the guide on any of them: HBO, Showtime, Starz, etc, you'll see the same damn movies over and over, with an occasional gem on at three in the morning. If I can't time shift the few items that I really want to see, then I can't get any benefit from your offerings. Idiots.
What I find very shortsighted on the part of a number of programming providers (yeah, HBO, I'm looking at you) is that they disallow recording! I have AT&T U-Verse, and while the WIN CE-based DVR is adequate, I've noticed a growing trend among channels to remotely disable recording ("Channel xxx Doesn't Allow Recording.") Hysterical
One In Eight To Cut Cable and Satellite TV In 2010
I currently have AT&T U-Verse (having had Dish Network ... awesome service but I can't get it where I am now) and Comcast (blecch!) My current bill (not counting taxes, fees, etc.) is about $160/month. I dropped all the stupid movie channels (there's a vast wasteland for you) and went down to the mid-level tier on Internet speed (12 mbit/sec). I have one phone line, and two cable boxes (one is AT&T's DVR) and I pay the extra ten bucks for the high-definition channels (now that's a rip, so far as I'm concerned.) All in all, it's not a bad deal but all I really want is Internet and phone service. Unfortunately AT&T doesn't sell naked VDSL where I live, so I'm forced to buy the TV service. Comcast will sell just an Internet connection, but I don't want to go back to that schlock outfit. Ever.
Frankly, most of the movies we watch we get from Netflix. $16.95/month, never had a problem. in fact they actually lowered our fee a couple of times. I may just see if I can get basic DSL from SBC, along with a phone line, and survive on Netflix and broadcast TV. That would probably run me about $60-$70 per month, which would be a substantial savings. I could put the money towards a new motherboard.
and the US has nearly 5 times more active issues than Russia
Presumably because we have more connectivity. As soon as other countries start building out more fiber, you're gonna see their stats rise. Spam is, unfortunately, profitable.
Fuck the RIAA, and fuck any federal court asshole judge that would force ISPs to become snitches..
Incrementalism. There are a lot of people in government that admire the way the East Germans went about matters, and would like the U.S. to work along similar lines. They can't do it all at once, of course, but they can lay the groundwork.
That judge better keep track of what his (or her, I didn't RTFA yet) kids are doing online. This is the kind of ruling that can come back to haunt them. Of course, once the RIAA discovers that it has nailed a Federal judge's kid, they'd drop the case like a hot potato.
The likes of Franklin and others, who were producing Apple ][ clones fairly early on did make improvements that Apple did not. I'm talking the years before the //e and the //c came out. I was doing business and industrial apps at the time, and the lack of a decent keyboard (or a real-time clock) was something that Apple should have dealt with much sooner than they did. Bell and Howell doesn't count simply because they were strictly sold to the educational market: very hard to get hold of one of their black units otherwise.
... the same asshole is running the show. The technology has improved, sure, but his mindset hasn't.
Yes, they did try to kill of their competition (Apple clones, I'm talking about) because they were making the ][ look bad. The copyrighted Monitor ROM was one of their favorite tools: Frankly was always releasing new ROMs in order to maintain compatibility and evade a lawsuit. My point is that Jobs & Co. are not doing anything different now, than they did then
Facts and reality need not apply.
True. Which is no doubt why Jobs invented the reality distortion field. Facts don't much seem to apply to anything he says either.
I agree. I think Apple hasn't had the opportunity to be nearly as evil as Microsoft yet. But the ways things are going, I have no doubt they'll take the opportunity as soon as it presents itself.
And, while I half expected this, I'm still angry about it.
Are you kidding me? I still have an original Apple ][ Standard (Integer ROM) somewhere in a box around here.Spent some years coding for the thing, only to have Apple refuse to improve even basic aspects of the design (the keyboard for one) and do it's damnedest to kill off any competition. They they dropped it like a hot potato, refused to provide any support, and when you called up to, say, order a spare disk controller PROM the answer was "we've never made any such product, sir, we recommend you purchase a Macintosh." I'd been a loyal customer up to that point, sold a LOT of systems. Consequently, it was the last Apple product I ever owned (other than an iPod Nano that I got as a gift, so I don't count it.) I'll tell you this: Jobs is a dick. He's always been a dick, will always be a dick. That may be news to a lot of people (those who only got on board with Apple in recent years) but the reality is this: Jobs is nothing more than a hopped up used-car salesman who hitched a ride on Wozniak's genius. To anyone who honestly believed that he's any different under the hood than Gates or Ballmer: you've been fooling yourself. I hope this opens a few eyes.
Dude you forgot to include the joke as well.
I disagree. I thought it captured the essence of both Jobs and his followers rather well. Now, if you happen to be one of those followers, you probably found the post much less entertaining.
The only trial I was a juror on, we had some people convinced of guilt, even though a few key points did not seem to be proven. They were amazed that the rest of us did not feel the same way. At point one juror said "this guy is an idiot, even if he's not technically guilty of this he's guilty of something!"
All I know is, if I'm ever on trial, I'm not likely to be judged by a jury of my peers. That applies to most of us here on Slashdot.
This would be cheaper than prison, by a LONG way, be far more likely to be effective, AND would be more likely to increase his value to society (whereas prison rots skills and therefore decreases value).
Besides, taking someone with technical skills who, by the sound of it, has strong ethics and unfairly convicting him of a felony computer crime isn't particularly smart. When he gets out, he's not going to have much respect left for government, and as an ex-con probably won't be able to get legitimate work in his chosen field. Great way to turn an otherwise honest guy into a white-collar criminal.
Brilliant. Just brilliant.
What baffles me is how these were the choices. It should have been a choice between handing over passwords or facing a lawsuit. Is it only because this particular employer has a team of criminal attorneys on staff that they decided to use this option? Can you imagine a generic corporation in a first world nation being able to convince law enforcement to jail an ex-employee who has stolen nothing? If there are monetary damages then you sue to recover them. If there is stolen property then you get the police involved.
Ultimately, this comes down to misguided lawmakers wanting to look "tough on computer crime" to their drain-bamaged PEBKAC constituents. They've gone so far overboard that it's now possible to earn time in a Federal prison for doing one's job.
Apparently it cost the city 200,000 dollars they wouldn't have had to spend. He caused a trial that cost more money. I'd say he did quite a lot of damage to the city and I call that detrimental. Yes a city works slightly differently that a corp. Not much at his level.
Yes, but did he cause that, or did people looking for a scapegoat do that. They wanted him to break their rules ... had he broken them, he'd have been crucified. He didn't break them, and he still got crucified.
Ultimately, the law is going to need to realize these distinctions.
It already does. It's the recording industry that doesn't.
Get sued, I trust you really meant? Since it doesn't rise to the level of a criminal offense....
He sounds like an RIAA shill, frankly.
But even if I agree with all your points that counterfeiting is bad and sharing is not, the LAW MAKES NO DISTINCTION.
Yes it does.
87 people shipping a warehouse of sugar pills branded as Lipitor? GO TO JAIL. 1 kid sharing a song with a friend? GO TO JAIL.
No-one has been jailed for file-sharing. It's not (yet) a criminal offense. The RIAA's lawsuits were all filed in civil court.
So stuff your justification, because we know that the amount of random filesharer abuse will FAR EXCEED the number of counterfeiting operations shut down.
Do you have any idea what you're talking about?
for somebody with such a low user number, I'd have expected at least some concept of what a "corporation" is. Hint: corporations aren't owned by "a [person]"
No ... but if Brin said, "This is the way I want it", believe me, that's the way it would be.
Uh, retard -- he didn't attack the person he attacked the written work.
Probably he didn't read the definition.
What do you expect? It's "open source" so while that means it is terrible half baked crap to those of us with half a brain who use commercial software, to the freetards who inhabit slashdot it means it must be great no matter how many holes you poke in their pathetic arguments. You see the same thing with Linux, GIMP, etc. Every single piece of open source software is absolute garbage next to the closed source stuff it purportedly "competes" with, and yet if you went by what folks on slashdot say, you'd think open source programmers shat gold. Unfortunately for those of us who have to deal with it (usually by un-installing as fast as possible), open source developers only shit out crap code.
Do you have any idea what you're talking about? Considering the untold millions of systems in this world that are running open source software, and running it more efficiently, cost-effectively and functionally than their "closed-source counterparts", you are either completely ignorant of the subject, or have an agenda of some sort. I'm betting on the former, actually... you really sound like an idiot. In any event, if you're going to make sweeping statements like that, you need to either a. back them up or b. shut the fuck up. Take your pick.
I wish we could all vote to IP ban certain people.
So the engines are a good detector for ash clouds you say
Sure ... but it only works once.
It's hard to keep track of who to hate each week!
I hate them all as a matter of principle. But for most things, I find Google more useful.