"The RIAA's 'Prince of Darkness,' Washington DC lawyer Matthew Jan Oppenheim..."
How lang has he been Prince of Darkness? I bet not since 1979!
What I would like to see is the RIAA go toe-to-toe with IBM over copyright infringement. Prince of Darkness he may be... but my money would be on the Nazgul.
According to the linked article Slashdot is responsible for the appellation:
This usage appears to have originated in a comment on Slashdot:
"Not long ago, the Black Gate of Armonk swung open. The lights went out, my skin crawled, and dogs began to howl. I asked my neighbor what it was and he said, 'Those are the NazgÃl. Once they were human, now they are IBM's lawyers.'" (IBM is headquartered in Armonk, New York).
I'm not arguing with your comment, but I'd like to point out that the RIAA is not the actual enemy: they're just smoke-and-mirrors, a distraction. Yes, they lobby Congress and sue their customer base, but it is the media companies who foot their bills and give them their marching orders.
Also, the RIAA doesn't hold copyrights: they're just a lobbying organization / lawsuit mill. Oh, and they used to be an audio standards-defining body, once upon a time. In any event, the studios hold the rights to their catalogs (although they've claimed rights over music they don't on more than one occasion) and are, ultimately, the organizations responsible for the current state of affairs. They are the ones who need to be held accountable for the despicable activites of the RIAA, and its sister outfits worldwide.
"Also true if you shot yourself in the head with your gun."
>
I don't.
I don't think I've ever seen a Slashdot thread deteriorate as quickly as this one. Remarkable transition from registrar hacking to suicide. Of course, if I were the individual responsible for domain management at CheckFree I don't suppose there'd be much difference right about now.
So when you sign up, ping the site and bookmark the IP address. Sure, they may change it now and then forcing you to update it... but at least you're minimizing the risk of a DNS redirect.
We have no idea how far away we are. We don't fully get it and are pretty much trying substances at random. We might figure out something that works next year or never. It's not something you can predict with any accuracy.
So, what you're saying is that we're still at the Thomas Edison stage.
"Only drawback is they need to be supercooled, something that may be addressed by improving the materials used." - that last part is a bit of an understatement. We're still decades (centuries?) away from room temperature superconductors.
Which just means that we need a room-temperature semiconducting superconductor! Or, do I mean a room-temperature superconducting semiconductor?
I'm not necessarily arguing with you in principle. But remember: we're talking the music industry here, and the industry-fueled RIAA. There's no possibility whatsoever that this will be administered in anything resembling a fair and equitable manner, and the artists (who, after all, are the class of individuals who are supposedly being protected) will receive nothing. That's the way the music business works, it's the way it has always worked. And even if the RIAA does not end up operating this scheme (or rather, scam) whoever does will end up under music industry control. There's no way around that: they are, after all, the rightsholders. They also have all the money and Congressmen.
In other words, business as usual for these bloodsuckers.
I hate these people. They're already getting a chunk of change from blank disc sales, and now they want Universities to hand over millions of dollars with the (ahem) "promise" that it will be fairly distributed. And it will... amongst various record company executives and their cronies. Oh, and we probably won't sue you, either. But no guarantees.
We need to stop taking them at their word when they say their going to give money to artists. They generally don't (unless the artist had a good lawyer, I suppose.) Actually, we need to stop taking them at their word.
Where do you get that sort of service? I'm being serious, I live in a big city, but the closest cell phone tower for AT&T to where I live is several miles away. They seem content to only have 2 per the northern half of the city.
T-Mobile by contrast has something like 4 within half that distance.
No, by blowing heavily into a tube to run the generator. This has the added benefit of operating a built-in breathalyzer, to help prevent drunk typing.
Most modern phones are probably much too power hungry to be get enough energy from audio vibrations, even you manage to ramp up the efficiency close to 100%, which is unlikely to ever be practical.
Well, that depends. If the phone network ever goes microcellular (with cell "towers" every city block or less) you might be able to get away with phones that don't require batteries. Probably not truly voice-powered, but possibly using some other biological input... heat, mechanical, footfalls, whatever.
Actually, now that I think about it, they should just run the things from a small bank of thermocouples mounted around the pickup. Then hand them out to all members of Congress.
At least then, we might find a use for all that hot air.
If Americans want public education with any degree of quality then they should be willing to fund it appropriately. Otherwise this whole Cable in the Classroom and No Child Left Behind lameness is just a sneaky way of encouraging privatization and school vouchers.
Saying that we need to throw more good money after bad is neither insightful nor helpful. Nor is privatization inherently evil: at least the private schools don't have to deal with teacher's unions, tenure, and eternal government meddling. The quality of education from a good private school is something that all parents want for their children, and is something that the public school system used to offer. It's also something that the aforementioned parents are already paying through the nose for.
Look at the facts here, folks. We spend an ungodly amount of money on the second-rate education offered in public schools nowadays. More money will absolutely not solve the problem: that's been the school board's mantra for decades... more money = better education. It hasn't worked. What will work are quality teachers, and quality curriculae (with no interference from well-meaning but mentally unsound bureaucrats.) The money is there, but a system to effectively use that money to teach our children well is not. Well, not anymore. We used to have one of the best public education systems in the world, and it's sad to see where politics and corruption have brought us.
The reality is that much of the public money earmarked for education is siphoned off in a number of interesting and amoral ways. I'm not going to go off on a tangent here, but if this topic interests you, research how the endemic (and systematic) malfeasance exhibited by various Boards of Education and school administrations have degraded the quality of our educational system.
I looked at my last real estate tax bill (which is where most of the funding for education in my county comes from) and the amount listed as going to education currently stands at 56% (FIFTY SIX PERCENT) of my taxes. That exceeds ALL OTHER LOCAL GOVERNMENT SERVICES COMBINED. Kinda sucks for me, seeing that I don't have any kids, but I wouldn't mind if I knew that money was being spent in the best interests of our children and our country.
So please, don't tell me that we're not spending enough money. We are spending way more than enough. We're just not spending it wisely, and that's a big difference (as well as a tragedy.)
I mean - if we can get businesses to supplement education funds in any way that is not a rise in taxes, why not?
I think we could put ads on School Buses and more of this type of stuff - sure, have some oversite, but lets get some money where it belongs without forcing businesses and citizens to raise taxes.
Why bother. Just have Google do it. Then all the ethical questions will just disappear.
Slashdot Mirror
Framing an argument this way all but guarantees the desired - Pavlovian - response.
Yep, because the slashdot crowd assuredly has a ton of faith in Satan.
I'm not sure that faith is the right word, exactly.
This has not a few people in the the games industry pissed off beyond the capacity for rational thought.
True, but hey ... I'll bet most leeches get pissed off when you cover them with salt and pull them off their prey before they're finished.
"The RIAA's 'Prince of Darkness,' Washington DC lawyer Matthew Jan Oppenheim..."
How lang has he been Prince of Darkness? I bet not since 1979!
What I would like to see is the RIAA go toe-to-toe with IBM over copyright infringement. Prince of Darkness he may be ... but my money would be on the Nazgul.
According to the linked article Slashdot is responsible for the appellation:
This usage appears to have originated in a comment on Slashdot:
"Not long ago, the Black Gate of Armonk swung open. The lights went out, my skin crawled, and dogs began to howl. I asked my neighbor what it was and he said, 'Those are the NazgÃl. Once they were human, now they are IBM's lawyers.'" (IBM is headquartered in Armonk, New York).
I'm not arguing with your comment, but I'd like to point out that the RIAA is not the actual enemy: they're just smoke-and-mirrors, a distraction. Yes, they lobby Congress and sue their customer base, but it is the media companies who foot their bills and give them their marching orders.
Also, the RIAA doesn't hold copyrights: they're just a lobbying organization / lawsuit mill. Oh, and they used to be an audio standards-defining body, once upon a time. In any event, the studios hold the rights to their catalogs (although they've claimed rights over music they don't on more than one occasion) and are, ultimately, the organizations responsible for the current state of affairs. They are the ones who need to be held accountable for the despicable activites of the RIAA, and its sister outfits worldwide.
"Also true if you shot yourself in the head with your gun." > I don't.
I don't think I've ever seen a Slashdot thread deteriorate as quickly as this one. Remarkable transition from registrar hacking to suicide. Of course, if I were the individual responsible for domain management at CheckFree I don't suppose there'd be much difference right about now.
So when you sign up, ping the site and bookmark the IP address. Sure, they may change it now and then forcing you to update it ... but at least you're minimizing the risk of a DNS redirect.
I suppose if it blows hard enough it might push the electrons faster~
That's what she said...
Yeah, and if she's blowing she's not doing it right.
We have no idea how far away we are. We don't fully get it and are pretty much trying substances at random. We might figure out something that works next year or never. It's not something you can predict with any accuracy.
So, what you're saying is that we're still at the Thomas Edison stage.
I'm not saying such a system would necessarily be feasible or practical, but calling it dangerous seems like a stretch.
The liquid propane tanks we all have for our grills are a hell of a lot more dangerous.
"Only drawback is they need to be supercooled, something that may be addressed by improving the materials used." - that last part is a bit of an understatement. We're still decades (centuries?) away from room temperature superconductors.
Which just means that we need a room-temperature semiconducting superconductor! Or, do I mean a room-temperature superconducting semiconductor?
Ah hell, I don't know what I mean.
I'm not necessarily arguing with you in principle. But remember: we're talking the music industry here, and the industry-fueled RIAA. There's no possibility whatsoever that this will be administered in anything resembling a fair and equitable manner, and the artists (who, after all, are the class of individuals who are supposedly being protected) will receive nothing. That's the way the music business works, it's the way it has always worked. And even if the RIAA does not end up operating this scheme (or rather, scam) whoever does will end up under music industry control. There's no way around that: they are, after all, the rightsholders. They also have all the money and Congressmen.
In other words, business as usual for these bloodsuckers.
I hate these people. They're already getting a chunk of change from blank disc sales, and now they want Universities to hand over millions of dollars with the (ahem) "promise" that it will be fairly distributed. And it will ... amongst various record company executives and their cronies. Oh, and we probably won't sue you, either. But no guarantees.
We need to stop taking them at their word when they say their going to give money to artists. They generally don't (unless the artist had a good lawyer, I suppose.) Actually, we need to stop taking them at their word.
Thank you. That actually was enlightening.
I think that you foreigners don't really have a clear picture of what the mafia is and does in Italy.
So ... enlighten us.
Where do you get that sort of service? I'm being serious, I live in a big city, but the closest cell phone tower for AT&T to where I live is several miles away. They seem content to only have 2 per the northern half of the city.
T-Mobile by contrast has something like 4 within half that distance.
You don't. That's why I said "if".
And what happens when the remote search itself is compromised, and whatever some 3rd party wants is inserted into the data stream??
Bad things, of course. But why should law enforcement care if they're facilitating more crime, so long as they get whatever it is they want?
Ok, if it's police computers searching other police computers, WTF do they need trojans for? :P
Hookers, of course. Hookers, and maybe the occasional undercover policewoman.
Around here we call it "pissing on fires".
Around here we call it "pissing on a sparkplug."
it's still going to need some sort of power source to be running when you're not talking into it.
Depends. If the user is like my girlfriend it will never be on unless her mouth is running anyway.
by typing on it?
No, by blowing heavily into a tube to run the generator. This has the added benefit of operating a built-in breathalyzer, to help prevent drunk typing.
Nah, for that you need a tiny dynamo underneath each button...
Bad girls have that under their zipper.
CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? No, the battery's dead ... he got hit by a truck.
Most modern phones are probably much too power hungry to be get enough energy from audio vibrations, even you manage to ramp up the efficiency close to 100%, which is unlikely to ever be practical.
Well, that depends. If the phone network ever goes microcellular (with cell "towers" every city block or less) you might be able to get away with phones that don't require batteries. Probably not truly voice-powered, but possibly using some other biological input ... heat, mechanical, footfalls, whatever.
Actually, now that I think about it, they should just run the things from a small bank of thermocouples mounted around the pickup. Then hand them out to all members of Congress.
At least then, we might find a use for all that hot air.
If Americans want public education with any degree of quality then they should be willing to fund it appropriately. Otherwise this whole Cable in the Classroom and No Child Left Behind lameness is just a sneaky way of encouraging privatization and school vouchers.
Saying that we need to throw more good money after bad is neither insightful nor helpful. Nor is privatization inherently evil: at least the private schools don't have to deal with teacher's unions, tenure, and eternal government meddling. The quality of education from a good private school is something that all parents want for their children, and is something that the public school system used to offer. It's also something that the aforementioned parents are already paying through the nose for.
... more money = better education. It hasn't worked. What will work are quality teachers, and quality curriculae (with no interference from well-meaning but mentally unsound bureaucrats.) The money is there, but a system to effectively use that money to teach our children well is not. Well, not anymore. We used to have one of the best public education systems in the world, and it's sad to see where politics and corruption have brought us.
Look at the facts here, folks. We spend an ungodly amount of money on the second-rate education offered in public schools nowadays. More money will absolutely not solve the problem: that's been the school board's mantra for decades
The reality is that much of the public money earmarked for education is siphoned off in a number of interesting and amoral ways. I'm not going to go off on a tangent here, but if this topic interests you, research how the endemic (and systematic) malfeasance exhibited by various Boards of Education and school administrations have degraded the quality of our educational system.
I looked at my last real estate tax bill (which is where most of the funding for education in my county comes from) and the amount listed as going to education currently stands at 56% (FIFTY SIX PERCENT) of my taxes. That exceeds ALL OTHER LOCAL GOVERNMENT SERVICES COMBINED. Kinda sucks for me, seeing that I don't have any kids, but I wouldn't mind if I knew that money was being spent in the best interests of our children and our country.
So please, don't tell me that we're not spending enough money. We are spending way more than enough. We're just not spending it wisely, and that's a big difference (as well as a tragedy.)
I mean - if we can get businesses to supplement education funds in any way that is not a rise in taxes, why not?
I think we could put ads on School Buses and more of this type of stuff - sure, have some oversite, but lets get some money where it belongs without forcing businesses and citizens to raise taxes.
Why bother. Just have Google do it. Then all the ethical questions will just disappear.