I know that in my State, current law absolves the police of any liability for a mistake. I find that incredible, but according to my attorney it's true. I had a relative get arrested for an expired driver's license (turns out it was valid. The State she used to live in incorrectly passed on information saying she'd had a speeding ticket, when it was someone else.) So she got arrested, verbally abused by several officers (one female) and threatened with imprisonment. One of the female officers made remarks about "keeping the darkies out" and on the radio my relative heard another cop talking about how several of them were going to "beat the crap" out of another one's ex-husband. The fact that they'd say all this right in front of someone they just arrested demonstrated a remarkable degree of arrogance.
It took a lawyer to get these assholes to see reason (cops are still afraid of attorneys, to some degree.) When it was all squared away (a nice person at the DMV told them there'd been a mistake and to release her) there wasn't so much as an apology. I wanted to sue the bastards for their abusive treatment, but in this case they were immune from prosecution due to false arrest. Not much accountability here, let me tell you.
You certainly have a small mind. If I were you, I'd open it up a little and look at the damage the media companies and their lawyers are doing to individuals and legal systems around the world. In the case of the United States alone, they're helping to destroy an economy that employs hundreds of millions of people, and ruining the chances of all of us having a decent standard of living in the future. I'll not shed a tear for the demise of the current entertainment industry... it deserves no respect.
So you're right... it's time those responsible got dealt with. It's just not the people that you seem to think it is.
Oh yeah, they are just "indexing" the material not actually doing anything like making it available or anything. Right.
Yes, exactly right. That is all they are doing: they don't host the offending files. If you want to control what they are indexing, well, now you're talking censorship to one degree or another. In some countries that would be fine, in others it will run into trouble. Google is an index, and it points to a lot of content that many would find objectionable: at what point do you decide to tell Google, "Sorry, you can't index this stuff." That's already happening in places like China, and frankly I don't want to see it happen here.
You decide which is worse: copyright infringement or the loss of the greatest medium for communication ever invented. Because that's where this is going.
If I have 2 cores at my disposal, I'm going to be even more inclined to let the OS do some extra stuff on one of them.
Yes, but you paid for those cores, the OS vendor did not. The problem is this: what is that extra stuff, and why should your operating system be doing anything that isn't of benefit to you?
Take Vista for example. It is a resource hog. Some of that piggishness is the user interface, but there's a lot of other "extra stuff" in Vista that has no right to be there. Hopefully, someone will figure a way to strip most of it out at some point: maybe then it will be actually usable. Until then, I'm personally going to stick with XP and Linux. There's less extra stuff.
Yes, but is that because more people are going to church and listening to what they're being told and are becoming more "moral" as a result, or is it simply (as you say) that they're afraid of catching a resistant strain of syphilis (or AIDS, for that matter)? The answer to that is less obvious, but in either case their behavior is motivated by a fear of consequences. The former is fear of God, the latter is fear of a pathogen. Personally, given what's going on in this country today, I'm betting on the pathogen.
It is not self-evident to me why the former position is more reasonable than the latter nor why adherents to the first position are so against the promoters of the latter position.
The way I see it, the "safe sex" crowd is basically trying acknowledge reality without addressing the morality (or lack of morality) behind the need for such protection, since that's really the purview of religious instruction and good parenting. The Catholic Church is trying to address the morality without addressing the reality that many people are ignorant on the subject of sex and are going to have it regardless of anyone's opinion on the subject. Both positions are valid perspectives on the problem... but the former has the advantage of being pragmatic, while the latter is more and more falling into the category of "wishful thinking".
We can argue about the nature of human intelligence all night, but I'll tell you this: truly smart people don't make the same mistakes year after year, decade after decade. You can maybe catch them off-guard once: after that it's a lot harder because they learn from their errors in judgment. The RIAA and its member organizations have not, and are pursuing the same bull-headed tactics regardless of their ongoing failure. To my way of thinking, that makes them stupid.
Of course, if the music people had advanced their business methods the way the automobile makers improved their ignition systems, they wouldn't need a distributor.
It was a machine tool made by a subsidiary of Toshiba (Toshiba Machine Co.) and a Norwegian numerical controller that were sold to Russia. This page has a good writeup. The sale was made in direct contravention to Japanese export controls with full knowledge of the people running the company. If the numbers are to be believed, Toshiba Machine's 17 million dollar sale cost the U.S. thirty billion in lost military superiority. This technology is important, actually.
What you're saying may be true, back when the industry was modeled after selling shiny plastic discs. Nowadays, the distribution cost to them is effectively zero, so there's no reason to continue to price their products as if they still had significant manufacturing and distribution costs associated with them. Well, no reason other a desire to continue making vast quantities of cash they didn't really earn.
A number of artists have come forward and stated that their industry handlers would base an album on a "good" track and then request several tracks of the artist's seconds to round out the album. No tinfoil hats needed, you just have to have bought CDs and realized how many of the tracks are garbage.
According the owner of my local liquor store, who sells tens of thousands of dollars a day during these holidays... we're not home resting, we're home drinking. Which just makes your point: he's working and we're not.
P2P is the entire candy store, not just a selection of tracks that somebody who knows nothing about me thinks I would like because several million other people bought it. Download a Gnutella client and you'll find stuff that hasn't been commercially available for decades, because someone somewhere dug out a disc (or digitized an LP or a 45) and put it online. Rare music that you can't buy because it's just not available. People with eclectic tastes (or who just prefer older or non-mainstream stuff) often have nowhere else to go, assuming they even know how.
Here's ScrewMaster's Plan for Resurrecting the Music Industry. If the studios really want to substantially reduce illicit downloading and make money hand-over-fist, here's what they do. Create a download service comparable to iTunes but with every track ever published available, and I mean all of them. If they can't find an album in their archives, offer a reward to anyone who has a copy they can "borrow" to put online. NO DRM, but support every compression format known to Man (MP3, Ogg, you name it.) Maybe make the customer pay an extra nickel a track for archival quality. Most people won't care, but those that want the extra quality and can afford the storage can obtain it. Hell, make 16-bit PCM (raw CD format) available as well, in case we want to burn original-quality CDs.
Develop client platforms for Windows, Linux and the Mac that seamlessly handle purchase and transfer of music to portable devices, and not just the iPod. Design your desktop application with a plugin-based interface architecture, and release the specs to the hardware vendors. Let them support their product lines for you... believe me, they will. Make it possible for a portable device with an Internet connection to buy music directly and download to itself: that could be a "killer app" in its own right.
Keep prices at no more than a buck a track for new stuff (seems like a good impulse-buy price point) and maybe half a buck for older songs. Put the ancient recordings that aren't even copyrighted up for free: it will bring in people and they might buy other stuff. Offer quantity discounts to individuals who purchase lots of your music. Offer monthly plans like Netflix and Blockbuster (100 songs for $25/month!) Oh, and fire your lawyers... you won't be needing them. Then sit back and watch the money just roll in.
People want music, and I believe the majority of us are more than willing to pay for it. We just want the studios to do what every other competitive business has to do: listen to us, their customers. That means giving us what we want (lower prices, better quality, and more variety) and in the process finding a way to turn a profit. Oh, and pay your suppliers: we'll respect you more (this "protecting the artists" thing is wearing a bit thin.) With the extra money you'll be making you can afford to. This is not rocket science folks, it's just a matter of good business. Something they know very little about, unfortunately.
Look, with their resources, this is something they could do very easily (hell, Apple already did it, so there's no innovation or vision required! They just need to improve upon Apple's model.) We have a bunch of old-guard corporate types unable to grasp that they are completely out of touch and not in the driver's seat anymore anyway. They could get it back. But they'll have to accommodate us to a much greater degree than they're willing to now.
Couldn't agree more. I stopped buying music (well, stopped buying new music) decades ago, once I realized who I was dealing with. I have no problem buying used discs (I used to buy used LPs, back before the CD came out) because someone else already paid the studios their cut. I don't want to give them anything if I can help it.
The music and motion picture industries have always tried to maintain the status quo. If that involves going to the Supreme Court and attempting to get specific technologies outlawed... so be it. That's why they're so dangerous: they are willing to go to any extreme to protect what they already have, and need to have new opportunity shoved up their collective asses before they recognize it. Look at the motion picture people and the VCR... fought it bitterly until they realized they could make even more money by selling us prerecorded tapes! If the Supremes had ruled in their favor and made the VCR a contraband device they'd have lost billions! Yet they couldn't see that until well after the fact: I'd say we're not dealing with particularly intelligent people here.
The music companies are no different, and are still thinking in terms of eliminating the competition (or, in Apple's case, a middleman they never really wanted in the first place.) They have no vision, no real awareness of the possibilities, no ability to take measured risks. I believe that if there were a magic button that, when pushed, would make the Internet, data compression technology and all audio/video recordable media instantly vanish from the face of the Earth... those bastards would trample each other trying to be the first one to press it.
I like that. "Smugginess". Dictionary.com doesn't list it, but I think they should. You should suggest it to them.
But yeah, everybody is smug about whatever they happen to have, I'll agree, I guess because it's an ego blow to admit you didn't buy the "best". That's not limited to computers and operating systems either: people get just as weird about cars, and girlfriends for that matter.
It's just that given how most personal computers nowadays can run, well, pretty much every PC operating system out there (hell, Macs can even run Windows) it's just stupid to say "my OS is better than your OS" because what is "better" to a large degree depends upon what you do with it.
Yes, I remember reading a couple of articles about that here on Slashdot. I hadn't realized that Koreans are sufficiently upset about it that they're taking on their own government. Hopefully that will result in some positive changes.
I perceive Indian tech workers as competing in the same job market that I do, and if they deliberately choose to use second-rate development tools that's fine by me. Not picking on Indians per se: it's just that I'm always happy to see my competition make potentially poor decisions.
Personally, I couldn't care less what operating system you, or anyone else for that matter, chooses to run. I also don't care if you wear pink polka-dotted underwear. In either case it's of zero consequence to me and none of my business anyway. However, if you were to ask me for a recommendation, I'd give you an answer based upon my perception of your needs. That might mean Windows, a Mac, some Unix variant, or whatever else I honestly believe would float your boat. I'm not interested in proselytizing and I don't believe that any single OS can accommodate everyone. Probably that's why I run different ones at different times, depending upon what I'm trying to accomplish.
So I'm only speaking from my own experience, much as you are. You've had overbearing Linux users try to convert you, whereas I've received the same treatment from several Mac users over the years. In both cases people who have an emotional investment in a particular way of doing things want you to think the way they do, and sometimes they get a little pushy about it. Oh, I agree, there are many Linux types that express that attitude, but I have news for you: Mac fanboys are just as likely to exhibit that kind of irritating behavior. Me, I see all operating systems for what they are: tools, and as with any tool set, I try to pick the right one for the job.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I'd sooner see the Internet destroyed than under the control of the copyright mafia.
No difference.
I know that in my State, current law absolves the police of any liability for a mistake. I find that incredible, but according to my attorney it's true. I had a relative get arrested for an expired driver's license (turns out it was valid. The State she used to live in incorrectly passed on information saying she'd had a speeding ticket, when it was someone else.) So she got arrested, verbally abused by several officers (one female) and threatened with imprisonment. One of the female officers made remarks about "keeping the darkies out" and on the radio my relative heard another cop talking about how several of them were going to "beat the crap" out of another one's ex-husband. The fact that they'd say all this right in front of someone they just arrested demonstrated a remarkable degree of arrogance.
It took a lawyer to get these assholes to see reason (cops are still afraid of attorneys, to some degree.) When it was all squared away (a nice person at the DMV told them there'd been a mistake and to release her) there wasn't so much as an apology. I wanted to sue the bastards for their abusive treatment, but in this case they were immune from prosecution due to false arrest. Not much accountability here, let me tell you.
Nope. That's very much a part of the popular lexicon, just like "blondes have more fun." You're stuck with it.
You certainly have a small mind. If I were you, I'd open it up a little and look at the damage the media companies and their lawyers are doing to individuals and legal systems around the world. In the case of the United States alone, they're helping to destroy an economy that employs hundreds of millions of people, and ruining the chances of all of us having a decent standard of living in the future. I'll not shed a tear for the demise of the current entertainment industry ... it deserves no respect.
... it's time those responsible got dealt with. It's just not the people that you seem to think it is.
So you're right
Oh yeah, they are just "indexing" the material not actually doing anything like making it available or anything. Right.
Yes, exactly right. That is all they are doing: they don't host the offending files. If you want to control what they are indexing, well, now you're talking censorship to one degree or another. In some countries that would be fine, in others it will run into trouble. Google is an index, and it points to a lot of content that many would find objectionable: at what point do you decide to tell Google, "Sorry, you can't index this stuff." That's already happening in places like China, and frankly I don't want to see it happen here.
You decide which is worse: copyright infringement or the loss of the greatest medium for communication ever invented. Because that's where this is going.
If I have 2 cores at my disposal, I'm going to be even more inclined to let the OS do some extra stuff on one of them.
Yes, but you paid for those cores, the OS vendor did not. The problem is this: what is that extra stuff, and why should your operating system be doing anything that isn't of benefit to you?
Take Vista for example. It is a resource hog. Some of that piggishness is the user interface, but there's a lot of other "extra stuff" in Vista that has no right to be there. Hopefully, someone will figure a way to strip most of it out at some point: maybe then it will be actually usable. Until then, I'm personally going to stick with XP and Linux. There's less extra stuff.
Yes, but is that because more people are going to church and listening to what they're being told and are becoming more "moral" as a result, or is it simply (as you say) that they're afraid of catching a resistant strain of syphilis (or AIDS, for that matter)? The answer to that is less obvious, but in either case their behavior is motivated by a fear of consequences. The former is fear of God, the latter is fear of a pathogen. Personally, given what's going on in this country today, I'm betting on the pathogen.
It is not self-evident to me why the former position is more reasonable than the latter nor why adherents to the first position are so against the promoters of the latter position.
... but the former has the advantage of being pragmatic, while the latter is more and more falling into the category of "wishful thinking".
The way I see it, the "safe sex" crowd is basically trying acknowledge reality without addressing the morality (or lack of morality) behind the need for such protection, since that's really the purview of religious instruction and good parenting. The Catholic Church is trying to address the morality without addressing the reality that many people are ignorant on the subject of sex and are going to have it regardless of anyone's opinion on the subject. Both positions are valid perspectives on the problem
We can argue about the nature of human intelligence all night, but I'll tell you this: truly smart people don't make the same mistakes year after year, decade after decade. You can maybe catch them off-guard once: after that it's a lot harder because they learn from their errors in judgment. The RIAA and its member organizations have not, and are pursuing the same bull-headed tactics regardless of their ongoing failure. To my way of thinking, that makes them stupid.
Of course, if the music people had advanced their business methods the way the automobile makers improved their ignition systems, they wouldn't need a distributor.
So, what you're saying is that you're better off with a partial Eclipse rather than the full download.
It was a machine tool made by a subsidiary of Toshiba (Toshiba Machine Co.) and a Norwegian numerical controller that were sold to Russia. This page has a good writeup. The sale was made in direct contravention to Japanese export controls with full knowledge of the people running the company. If the numbers are to be believed, Toshiba Machine's 17 million dollar sale cost the U.S. thirty billion in lost military superiority. This technology is important, actually.
What you're saying may be true, back when the industry was modeled after selling shiny plastic discs. Nowadays, the distribution cost to them is effectively zero, so there's no reason to continue to price their products as if they still had significant manufacturing and distribution costs associated with them. Well, no reason other a desire to continue making vast quantities of cash they didn't really earn.
A number of artists have come forward and stated that their industry handlers would base an album on a "good" track and then request several tracks of the artist's seconds to round out the album. No tinfoil hats needed, you just have to have bought CDs and realized how many of the tracks are garbage.
Now Fyodor, the author of nmap. There's a hacker.
Yeah. Seriously.
Google de-indexes the Pope.
According the owner of my local liquor store, who sells tens of thousands of dollars a day during these holidays ... we're not home resting, we're home drinking. Which just makes your point: he's working and we're not.
... I need another beer.
Which reminds me
P2P is the entire candy store, not just a selection of tracks that somebody who knows nothing about me thinks I would like because several million other people bought it. Download a Gnutella client and you'll find stuff that hasn't been commercially available for decades, because someone somewhere dug out a disc (or digitized an LP or a 45) and put it online. Rare music that you can't buy because it's just not available. People with eclectic tastes (or who just prefer older or non-mainstream stuff) often have nowhere else to go, assuming they even know how.
... believe me, they will. Make it possible for a portable device with an Internet connection to buy music directly and download to itself: that could be a "killer app" in its own right.
... you won't be needing them. Then sit back and watch the money just roll in.
Here's ScrewMaster's Plan for Resurrecting the Music Industry. If the studios really want to substantially reduce illicit downloading and make money hand-over-fist, here's what they do. Create a download service comparable to iTunes but with every track ever published available, and I mean all of them. If they can't find an album in their archives, offer a reward to anyone who has a copy they can "borrow" to put online. NO DRM, but support every compression format known to Man (MP3, Ogg, you name it.) Maybe make the customer pay an extra nickel a track for archival quality. Most people won't care, but those that want the extra quality and can afford the storage can obtain it. Hell, make 16-bit PCM (raw CD format) available as well, in case we want to burn original-quality CDs.
Develop client platforms for Windows, Linux and the Mac that seamlessly handle purchase and transfer of music to portable devices, and not just the iPod. Design your desktop application with a plugin-based interface architecture, and release the specs to the hardware vendors. Let them support their product lines for you
Keep prices at no more than a buck a track for new stuff (seems like a good impulse-buy price point) and maybe half a buck for older songs. Put the ancient recordings that aren't even copyrighted up for free: it will bring in people and they might buy other stuff. Offer quantity discounts to individuals who purchase lots of your music. Offer monthly plans like Netflix and Blockbuster (100 songs for $25/month!) Oh, and fire your lawyers
People want music, and I believe the majority of us are more than willing to pay for it. We just want the studios to do what every other competitive business has to do: listen to us, their customers. That means giving us what we want (lower prices, better quality, and more variety) and in the process finding a way to turn a profit. Oh, and pay your suppliers: we'll respect you more (this "protecting the artists" thing is wearing a bit thin.) With the extra money you'll be making you can afford to. This is not rocket science folks, it's just a matter of good business. Something they know very little about, unfortunately.
Look, with their resources, this is something they could do very easily (hell, Apple already did it, so there's no innovation or vision required! They just need to improve upon Apple's model.) We have a bunch of old-guard corporate types unable to grasp that they are completely out of touch and not in the driver's seat anymore anyway. They could get it back. But they'll have to accommodate us to a much greater degree than they're willing to now.
Period.
Couldn't agree more. I stopped buying music (well, stopped buying new music) decades ago, once I realized who I was dealing with. I have no problem buying used discs (I used to buy used LPs, back before the CD came out) because someone else already paid the studios their cut. I don't want to give them anything if I can help it.
The music and motion picture industries have always tried to maintain the status quo. If that involves going to the Supreme Court and attempting to get specific technologies outlawed ... so be it. That's why they're so dangerous: they are willing to go to any extreme to protect what they already have, and need to have new opportunity shoved up their collective asses before they recognize it. Look at the motion picture people and the VCR ... fought it bitterly until they realized they could make even more money by selling us prerecorded tapes! If the Supremes had ruled in their favor and made the VCR a contraband device they'd have lost billions! Yet they couldn't see that until well after the fact: I'd say we're not dealing with particularly intelligent people here.
... those bastards would trample each other trying to be the first one to press it.
The music companies are no different, and are still thinking in terms of eliminating the competition (or, in Apple's case, a middleman they never really wanted in the first place.) They have no vision, no real awareness of the possibilities, no ability to take measured risks. I believe that if there were a magic button that, when pushed, would make the Internet, data compression technology and all audio/video recordable media instantly vanish from the face of the Earth
Dangerous parasites, all of them.
That's because this is America in the 21st century ... and nobody has any. Property, that is.
I like that. "Smugginess". Dictionary.com doesn't list it, but I think they should. You should suggest it to them.
But yeah, everybody is smug about whatever they happen to have, I'll agree, I guess because it's an ego blow to admit you didn't buy the "best". That's not limited to computers and operating systems either: people get just as weird about cars, and girlfriends for that matter.
It's just that given how most personal computers nowadays can run, well, pretty much every PC operating system out there (hell, Macs can even run Windows) it's just stupid to say "my OS is better than your OS" because what is "better" to a large degree depends upon what you do with it.
Yes, I remember reading a couple of articles about that here on Slashdot. I hadn't realized that Koreans are sufficiently upset about it that they're taking on their own government. Hopefully that will result in some positive changes.
I perceive Indian tech workers as competing in the same job market that I do, and if they deliberately choose to use second-rate development tools that's fine by me. Not picking on Indians per se: it's just that I'm always happy to see my competition make potentially poor decisions.
Personally, I couldn't care less what operating system you, or anyone else for that matter, chooses to run. I also don't care if you wear pink polka-dotted underwear. In either case it's of zero consequence to me and none of my business anyway. However, if you were to ask me for a recommendation, I'd give you an answer based upon my perception of your needs. That might mean Windows, a Mac, some Unix variant, or whatever else I honestly believe would float your boat. I'm not interested in proselytizing and I don't believe that any single OS can accommodate everyone. Probably that's why I run different ones at different times, depending upon what I'm trying to accomplish.
So I'm only speaking from my own experience, much as you are. You've had overbearing Linux users try to convert you, whereas I've received the same treatment from several Mac users over the years. In both cases people who have an emotional investment in a particular way of doing things want you to think the way they do, and sometimes they get a little pushy about it. Oh, I agree, there are many Linux types that express that attitude, but I have news for you: Mac fanboys are just as likely to exhibit that kind of irritating behavior. Me, I see all operating systems for what they are: tools, and as with any tool set, I try to pick the right one for the job.