The "middle tier" are the problem, and the only real problem, and I believe that adding more law is not a solution, in fact we need to repeal a lot of damaging copyright revisions put in place at the behest of big media.
Face it, the "compensating the artists" mantra is just a smokescreen put out by big media, and we shouldn't even be discussing it as an argument against downloading. As long as there is a middleman (or in this case, multiple layers of middlemen) pigging all the copyrights and picking off the bulk of the proceeds for themselves there will be no question of the artists ever being fairly compensated. That's also why the RIAA's plaintive cries of "we're only defending the rights of the artists!" and "downloading is stealing!" largely fall on deaf ears. I mean, once it got out that the music studios were grabbing the lion's share the profits, it became impossible to convince anyone with a broadband connection that they were taking food from the mouths of the artists. At best they were taking Lamborghinis from the garages of the executives.
The big studios are crooks, all of them, who have been stealing from their own suppliers (the musicians themselves) for over a century. It's about time something better replaced them entirely. Once your middle tier is out of the picture, artists will get compensated because they'll own the rights to their own music and will be back squarely in the driver's seat. Believe me, once I know that my hard-earned money isn't lining the pockets of people who contribute nothing to the music, I'll be more than willing to pay.
Yes, and on top of that Video killed the Radio Star. I suppose the RIAA's logic would say that by posting that link I just facilitated copyright infringement.
What kills me is that the music labels are still searching for the magic formula.
What they're searching for is a magic button that will restore their iron-fisted control of content distribution. What's taking so long is for them to realize that the button doesn't exist because there's no such thing as magic.
--- The time to legalize marijuana in California is at hand ---
What that has to do with the RIAA and the Howell case? Dude, if you want to spam Slashdot do it in some forum that at least has some relevance to your topic. Otherwise you're just irritating people and you'll get modded to oblivion anyway.
Besides, the way things are going, Californians will be able to legally smoke pot, but they'll be in the dark because they won't have any electricity.
Still, china's space administration will learn fast the first time one of their trillion-dollar launches gets perforated. Sure, people talk about "leveling the playing field", along with the rest of the unjustified anti-American rhetoric floating around Slashdot like so many pieces of space junk. That doesn't change the fact that China's actions in this regard were irrational and self-defeating, and an example of brinksmanship worthy of the old Soviet Union. Nobody that has a near-space presence is at all happy with their stupidity. This little game of theirs is going to cost a lot of people a lot of money, if nothing else because extra maneuvering uses fuel and shortens operating lifetimes.
If China wants a level playing field (of course, they have no intention of settling for that, they want superiority, period) let them put more satellites into orbit, let them utilize near-space rather than make it more dangerous for everyone including themselves.
In the modern world, there's always going to be at least one Superpower, at least one nation that will divert a substantial portion of its industrial output to its military. Germany did that. The United States too. Then Russia. China is doing it as we speak. And all the fools who think the "giant American military" (which, I might add, suffered substantial reductions from the Cold War days and is nowhere near as big and powerful as it once was) is such an imminent threat to everyone, need to ask themselves the following questions:
Who do you want to have that power? Who is mostly likely to hurt other countries and peoples when they have it? Who has a history of true imperialism?
These are not trivial questions, they deserve careful consideration, and anyone who automatically answers "The United States" is an uninformed idiot.
California's problem is much like the problem we're having with high crude prices: profiteering on the part of U.S. speculators. In both cases, the rest of us are being screwed over so a relatively few people can make out like bandits (because that's what they are.)
The truth is our government no longer believes it is required to justify anything it does to We the People. That's the root of the problem... it doesn't matter what we think or want, because they're going to do whatever the Hell they want anyway. How that differs from, say, the Russian government is not clear to me at this point.
The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
Before the world got so small, groups that were disenchanted with their societies (or disenfranchised by them) could go Elsewhere, usually on a colony ship. Nowadays, our options are much more limited.
Where I live, they go green in the direction of the emergency vehicle's travel. In fact, on one of our major roads there are lights every few blocks, with police cams on them. A few nights ago I saw an ambulance coming up from behind and pulled over onto the shoulder: I saw the lights go green ahead all in a row, and I watched the white monitor lights above the police cameras go on in sequence as the ambulance went through. Kinda cool to watch, actually.
For one thing, you cannot maintain a large codebase (current main project is about 1/4 million lines) without it being appropriately documented.
That is truly the most intelligent comment I've heard on Slashdot about programming. I'm in the same boat you're in (roughly a quarter million lines of code for which I'm responsible) and good docs are the only reason I've been able to maintain and improve that codebase over the past eight years. In fact, when I took over the project, it stood at about 30,000 lines of disorganized and largely undocumented code. I spent about a month auditing it and cleaning it up as best I could: eventually I blackboxed most of the critical functionality from the original program (there's some complicated stuff in there that I don't touch unless I have to) and continued development in a much more organized fashion. Any process that could be efficiently scripted or otherwise automated has been, from builds to creating installation sets. The point is, all of that was possible because of proper documentation... there are parts of the program that I rarely go into, but when I do it's usually important, and the docs make it possible to modify or fix them without making more problems.
Those that I consider "decent" may not proclaim their virtues, but they are quick to be personally offended when their code is challenged.
I'm not too sure that I agree that good programmers are personally offended in such circumstance, generally it's the hypersensitive ego-ridden types that take offense. They may or may not be good but they can be a pain to deal with regularly. Furthermore, I think that someone who knows he's done a good job is likely to just brush off those who make uninformed and unwanted critiques. However, a good programmer will seek out constructive criticism, because it is often beneficial to look at one's work through someone else's eyes. If you're not capable of doing that, odds are you'll never be a great programmer.
I dunno... do you really believe that over 300 million rapes occur every year in the United States? Yes, I feel confident I can dismiss those numbers out of hand as complete fabrications. Furthermore, that would imply that there are untold millions of actual rapists in this country: I have difficulty accepting that as well. If those "statistics" (and I'm using the term loosely, "outright lies" would be more appropriate) were anywhere near correct, you, I and everyone we know would have been raped multiple times by now. Frankly, I think I would remember something like that.
MADD has most certainly gotten out of hand. Their founder, Candy Leightner, has stated as much on numerous occasions. The group has been cooped by prohibitionists.
I absolutely hate groups that invent statistics to frighten people into accepting their demands. If the numbers show that you're full of shit, find something else to do with your life. There's plenty of real things wrong with our society right now: we don't need people inventing problems just so they can look good finding a solution. That applies to a whole range of would-be do-gooders, from MADD to the gun control lobby. I used to think that, well, they're misguided but at least their hearts are in the right place... but now I know that most of them not only don't have a heart but are just out for themselves.
I was watching some movie on cable with my father some years ago (it was about some woman who got raped... I wasn't paying much attention at the time.) At the end of the film, the narrator stated authoritatively that some specific number of women were raped every second in the United States alone. My father blinked at that, and said, "Well, according to these idiots the entire population of the U.S., men, women and children, is raped every year."
I guess basic arithmetic is beneath some people. The scary thing is, these assholes say this stuff with a straight face, knowing full well that only a fraction of the American population would know how to catch them out, and only a few of those would even bother.
The GP is one of those (unfortunately numerous) people who see nothing wrong with cracking down hard on other people for activities and behaviors they find offensive, so long as that crackdown doesn't affect them personally. It's tempting to feel morally superior in such cases, and think that, well, if they were a fine, upstanding model citizen such as myself they wouldn't be in trouble. The problem with the GP's mindset (besides the fact that it's goes decidedly against American social mores and traditional freedoms) is that, sooner or later, some lawmaker will go after something important to him. Heavy-handed government tends not to discriminate: eventually everyone becomes a victim. It's as inevitable as tomorrow's sunrise, and mark my words he'll be the first one bitching and moaning about how horribly intrusive our government has become. It's nothing but hypocrisy, and I can't stand it.
Live and let live, I say... it's the only way a free society stays that way.
Good point. People talk about about the rise of corporatism and undue influence upon our lawmakers, e.g. the DMCA, copyright extensions, corn and ethanol subsidies, and any number of more egregious abuses. However, if you look at the history of big business in the United States, such examples of overt corruption are nothing new. It's been going on for as long as there has been a Congress.
Well, evidently you're not American or you'd understand where I'm coming from, and in any event you've succeeded in demonstrating the validity of my comment.
Slashdot Mirror
The "middle tier" are the problem, and the only real problem, and I believe that adding more law is not a solution, in fact we need to repeal a lot of damaging copyright revisions put in place at the behest of big media.
Face it, the "compensating the artists" mantra is just a smokescreen put out by big media, and we shouldn't even be discussing it as an argument against downloading. As long as there is a middleman (or in this case, multiple layers of middlemen) pigging all the copyrights and picking off the bulk of the proceeds for themselves there will be no question of the artists ever being fairly compensated. That's also why the RIAA's plaintive cries of "we're only defending the rights of the artists!" and "downloading is stealing!" largely fall on deaf ears. I mean, once it got out that the music studios were grabbing the lion's share the profits, it became impossible to convince anyone with a broadband connection that they were taking food from the mouths of the artists. At best they were taking Lamborghinis from the garages of the executives.
The big studios are crooks, all of them, who have been stealing from their own suppliers (the musicians themselves) for over a century. It's about time something better replaced them entirely. Once your middle tier is out of the picture, artists will get compensated because they'll own the rights to their own music and will be back squarely in the driver's seat. Believe me, once I know that my hard-earned money isn't lining the pockets of people who contribute nothing to the music, I'll be more than willing to pay.
I refer you to October 13, 1985.
Okay, so then when one nation does something that is arguably stupid, we can't say that it's just as stupid for another nation to do it?
I refer you to basic logic.
OK, the internet killed the record store.
Yes, and on top of that Video killed the Radio Star. I suppose the RIAA's logic would say that by posting that link I just facilitated copyright infringement.
What kills me is that the music labels are still searching for the magic formula.
What they're searching for is a magic button that will restore their iron-fisted control of content distribution. What's taking so long is for them to realize that the button doesn't exist because there's no such thing as magic.
--- The time to legalize marijuana in California is at hand ---
What that has to do with the RIAA and the Howell case? Dude, if you want to spam Slashdot do it in some forum that at least has some relevance to your topic. Otherwise you're just irritating people and you'll get modded to oblivion anyway.
Besides, the way things are going, Californians will be able to legally smoke pot, but they'll be in the dark because they won't have any electricity.
"An anonymous reader noted"
"Just more reasons to never believe anything on-line, including me I guess."
Maybe especially you, I guess.
Couldn't agree more.
Still, china's space administration will learn fast the first time one of their trillion-dollar launches gets perforated. Sure, people talk about "leveling the playing field", along with the rest of the unjustified anti-American rhetoric floating around Slashdot like so many pieces of space junk. That doesn't change the fact that China's actions in this regard were irrational and self-defeating, and an example of brinksmanship worthy of the old Soviet Union. Nobody that has a near-space presence is at all happy with their stupidity. This little game of theirs is going to cost a lot of people a lot of money, if nothing else because extra maneuvering uses fuel and shortens operating lifetimes.
If China wants a level playing field (of course, they have no intention of settling for that, they want superiority, period) let them put more satellites into orbit, let them utilize near-space rather than make it more dangerous for everyone including themselves.
In the modern world, there's always going to be at least one Superpower, at least one nation that will divert a substantial portion of its industrial output to its military. Germany did that. The United States too. Then Russia. China is doing it as we speak. And all the fools who think the "giant American military" (which, I might add, suffered substantial reductions from the Cold War days and is nowhere near as big and powerful as it once was) is such an imminent threat to everyone, need to ask themselves the following questions:
Who do you want to have that power? Who is mostly likely to hurt other countries and peoples when they have it? Who has a history of true imperialism?
These are not trivial questions, they deserve careful consideration, and anyone who automatically answers "The United States" is an uninformed idiot.
California's problem is much like the problem we're having with high crude prices: profiteering on the part of U.S. speculators. In both cases, the rest of us are being screwed over so a relatively few people can make out like bandits (because that's what they are.)
The truth is our government no longer believes it is required to justify anything it does to We the People. That's the root of the problem ... it doesn't matter what we think or want, because they're going to do whatever the Hell they want anyway. How that differs from, say, the Russian government is not clear to me at this point.
You forgot the rest of it:
The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
Before the world got so small, groups that were disenchanted with their societies (or disenfranchised by them) could go Elsewhere, usually on a colony ship. Nowadays, our options are much more limited.
Where I live, they go green in the direction of the emergency vehicle's travel. In fact, on one of our major roads there are lights every few blocks, with police cams on them. A few nights ago I saw an ambulance coming up from behind and pulled over onto the shoulder: I saw the lights go green ahead all in a row, and I watched the white monitor lights above the police cameras go on in sequence as the ambulance went through. Kinda cool to watch, actually.
For one thing, you cannot maintain a large codebase (current main project is about 1/4 million lines) without it being appropriately documented.
... there are parts of the program that I rarely go into, but when I do it's usually important, and the docs make it possible to modify or fix them without making more problems.
That is truly the most intelligent comment I've heard on Slashdot about programming. I'm in the same boat you're in (roughly a quarter million lines of code for which I'm responsible) and good docs are the only reason I've been able to maintain and improve that codebase over the past eight years. In fact, when I took over the project, it stood at about 30,000 lines of disorganized and largely undocumented code. I spent about a month auditing it and cleaning it up as best I could: eventually I blackboxed most of the critical functionality from the original program (there's some complicated stuff in there that I don't touch unless I have to) and continued development in a much more organized fashion. Any process that could be efficiently scripted or otherwise automated has been, from builds to creating installation sets. The point is, all of that was possible because of proper documentation
Those that I consider "decent" may not proclaim their virtues, but they are quick to be personally offended when their code is challenged.
I'm not too sure that I agree that good programmers are personally offended in such circumstance, generally it's the hypersensitive ego-ridden types that take offense. They may or may not be good but they can be a pain to deal with regularly. Furthermore, I think that someone who knows he's done a good job is likely to just brush off those who make uninformed and unwanted critiques. However, a good programmer will seek out constructive criticism, because it is often beneficial to look at one's work through someone else's eyes. If you're not capable of doing that, odds are you'll never be a great programmer.
I dunno ... do you really believe that over 300 million rapes occur every year in the United States? Yes, I feel confident I can dismiss those numbers out of hand as complete fabrications. Furthermore, that would imply that there are untold millions of actual rapists in this country: I have difficulty accepting that as well. If those "statistics" (and I'm using the term loosely, "outright lies" would be more appropriate) were anywhere near correct, you, I and everyone we know would have been raped multiple times by now. Frankly, I think I would remember something like that.
They'd have been better off with Windows 2000.
It means "that does not follow". So far as I'm concerned, a high quality experience does not follow installation of Microsoft Windows.
At the rate things are going, will Sun still be around in 2015?
Sun New Delhi will be going strong, I'm sure.
Sun's plan reflects the shift to utility computing discussed in Nicholas Carr's new book
... good luck with that.
Yes, well
... a high-quality Windows experience ...
MADD has most certainly gotten out of hand. Their founder, Candy Leightner, has stated as much on numerous occasions. The group has been cooped by prohibitionists.
... but now I know that most of them not only don't have a heart but are just out for themselves.
... I wasn't paying much attention at the time.) At the end of the film, the narrator stated authoritatively that some specific number of women were raped every second in the United States alone. My father blinked at that, and said, "Well, according to these idiots the entire population of the U.S., men, women and children, is raped every year."
I absolutely hate groups that invent statistics to frighten people into accepting their demands. If the numbers show that you're full of shit, find something else to do with your life. There's plenty of real things wrong with our society right now: we don't need people inventing problems just so they can look good finding a solution. That applies to a whole range of would-be do-gooders, from MADD to the gun control lobby. I used to think that, well, they're misguided but at least their hearts are in the right place
I was watching some movie on cable with my father some years ago (it was about some woman who got raped
I guess basic arithmetic is beneath some people. The scary thing is, these assholes say this stuff with a straight face, knowing full well that only a fraction of the American population would know how to catch them out, and only a few of those would even bother.
The GP is one of those (unfortunately numerous) people who see nothing wrong with cracking down hard on other people for activities and behaviors they find offensive, so long as that crackdown doesn't affect them personally. It's tempting to feel morally superior in such cases, and think that, well, if they were a fine, upstanding model citizen such as myself they wouldn't be in trouble. The problem with the GP's mindset (besides the fact that it's goes decidedly against American social mores and traditional freedoms) is that, sooner or later, some lawmaker will go after something important to him. Heavy-handed government tends not to discriminate: eventually everyone becomes a victim. It's as inevitable as tomorrow's sunrise, and mark my words he'll be the first one bitching and moaning about how horribly intrusive our government has become. It's nothing but hypocrisy, and I can't stand it.
... it's the only way a free society stays that way.
Live and let live, I say
We'll see.
Good point. People talk about about the rise of corporatism and undue influence upon our lawmakers, e.g. the DMCA, copyright extensions, corn and ethanol subsidies, and any number of more egregious abuses. However, if you look at the history of big business in the United States, such examples of overt corruption are nothing new. It's been going on for as long as there has been a Congress.
I think the school's staff are functioning in loco parentis with regards to the students, but then again I'm not a lawyer.
Well, evidently you're not American or you'd understand where I'm coming from, and in any event you've succeeded in demonstrating the validity of my comment.
Wherever you're from, I hope it's raining.
Well, as it happens I wasn't counting plants.
On the other hand, there aren't many solar processes that really qualify as "efficient" so he doesn't have to work all that hard to double them.