Yes, I do have issues -- let's call them "concerns" -- about the world around me. And I won't apologize that I'm not an apathetic jellyfish mindlessly following what the entertainment companies and Daddy Government tell me. If I think there are problems, I will speak out about them, and the weakening of the US public -- which is related to the loss of liberty through government-encouraged lack of individual responsibility -- is one such problem.
I used to be in the Navy and the stress I've encountered in (one particular) office job I held since was far worse than anything I encountered in the service.
Perhaps, but unless that particular office job was fairly similar to what this person described as his "stressful" job, then how is that at all relevant? I can certainly think of "office jobs" that would be extremely stressful, but what he described isn't really on that list.
When your kid comes home from school upset because of something that got said or a bit of fisticuffs the appropriate response isn't to say "shut up, you've never been under enemy fire". As a child in their world something awful has happened.
Quite so -- but we're not talking about a child coming home from school, we're talking about an adult in the workplace. My very point was that he needed to grow up and act/think like a responsible adult.
It annoys me when I say (sic) people like yourself taking a cavalier attitude the problem and using the military as a reference point.
Well, you'll just have to be annoyed, because a person like myself is someone who has been in the military and has been in a job like the one in question, so I'm not going to apologize for comparing the two based on my own experiences.
I'm not so worried about The Gimp, since I typically use Photoshop.
Eh? Whether you're using Photoshop or The Gimp, you're using something potentially affected by this issue. (Photoshop is published by Adobe; Adobe is one of the companies being sued by Forgent.) But as a Photoshop user, you're more likely to pay real dollars from your wallet as a result (if Adobe has to pay licensing fees and passes those costs to users, thus potentially increasing the cost of your next upgrade). I guess your statement might make sense from a "will the product [or feature in the product] continue to exist" perspective -- but in that case, an Open Source project that is already heavily distributed isn't exactly going to disappear overnight, nor is the code for that particular feature. It might "go underground" but I'd be mighty surprised if it suddenly became unavailable -- thus the beauty (or trouble, depending on one's perspective) of Open Source.
Likewise, with GIF support in GD, it might have been removed but you could always decide to take whatever legal risk might exist and put it back in your copy -- who would notice? But anyway, you should just be creating PNGs anyway.:-)
As many others have commented, it sounds like you need to wise up and grow up. Your question sounds like "how can I play and have my needs taken care of for me" -- appropriate, perhaps, for a 4 year old. You grossly overestimate the stress and responsibility of your position. Maybe a stint in the military would teach you about stress. Maybe becoming a surgeon would teach you about responsibility. If your sample of writing here is any indication of how you perform at work, you obviously aren't even held responsible for correct spelling. (Pointing out that there's no spell checker on these posts would amount to just more whining.)
Thank you for helping prove that our society now is completely incompatible with personal liberty as a result of the wholesale junking of personal responsibility. I hope you never protest the violation of any Constitutional rights, since the hypocrisy of it would make me vomit.
If someone doesn't listen to all of their music the way I listen to my music, it's because they're brain-damaged.
Yeah, that's a really credible statement. As others have already opined, it depends on the music -- some is clearly meant to be played in order (Moody Blues: Days of Future Passed comes to mind), but I believe the majority of music -- commercial or independent or hobby -- is not sequence-specific or even mildly sequence-sensitive. And even some music that can be sequence-sensitive, such as live albums (or, for a Free music example, I would consider the ML EP published by Loca Records to be moderately sequence-sensitive) can be removed from its sequence without really "breaking" anything. This is even true for sequence-specific music, as popular radio airplay of various isolated tracks from the aforementioned Moody Blues album helps demonstrate.
"Those kids these days..." Yeah, whatever. I'm sure that not listening to albums from start to finish is a new thing and doesn't have any historical precedent in radio...:-/
The subject of this post is the title of a book I've wanted to read for some time (you can find it at Powell's), which this "rant" about blue LEDs brought back to mind. Some design decisions are made for the wrong reason and some things are designed very poorly -- this goes for physical products as well as software. [I was tempted to insert "Microsoft" in there, but there are plenty of others to blame for poorly designed software -- not me, of course.;-)]
I agree, the survey was terribly designed. I gave up even earlier, I didn't even get to question 6. Who owns the code I write? -- well, which code?! Code I developed during work hours on my work computer at the office? Code I developed at home on my own time and hardware? (I made sure when I started the job that there was no fine print that would allow them to claim my after-hours development work, because I was running a small business on the side at the time and didn't want to have any code ownership conflicts.)
There are so many "it depends" type of answers, and the survey was obviously not designed to handle those. All they needed to do was add a "depends on situation" response to the questions to make it more useful (although better questions and options would be preferred). Otherwise, the assumptions of those taking the survey won't necessarily match the assumptions of those who designed it, making the results meaningless. As you said, making a survey isn't trivial, and this one was clearly thrown together trivially.
And, there's apparently nothing preventing me from answering the survey multiple times, perhaps in an automated way, to throw off the results. And even without intentional tampering, their self-selected survey population isn't going to provide any results worth extrapolating to a broader population.
The worst part is when the worthless "statistics" from the survey are then used to try to prove some point, convince people of something, etc. I'd be surprised if this wasn't just a ruse to give them some so-called evidence of a trend, and those receiving their misguided results won't know that their methodology was a joke.
Moderating a post as "-1 Troll" isn't always a sign of ignorance, but clearly it was in this case. Someone in apparent ignorance of Creative Commons decided to punish you -- and the/. reader community in general -- by using their moderation power to flaunt their ignorance. Another red letter day for Slashdot's moderation system.
As you accurately and Informatively pointed out, CC is a set of licenses, not one license. The person who submitted the story is apparently just as ignorant about that as the person behind the mod down of your message.
Unfortunately, when you go to the site, there's no indication of any CC license (at least none that I can see, if one applies they're certainly not making it obvious.)
This isn't open source software, but copyleft applied to music... The Open Music Registry is an interactive database of music that is licensed under copyleft-style licenses, including the Open Audio License, one of the Creative Commons licenses, and more. Follow the link in my signature to check it out.
(Not that anybody will probably see this now... not sure what's up with this story and its lack of visibility...)
You *still* have to visit the original web page in order to acess the actual content/information. Headlines and summaries are neither content, nor information.
Headlines and summaries are information. Yes, you have to go to the site if you want detailed information but this is not always necessary. It's like skimming through a newspaper by reading headlines and first paragraphs (the latter of which should give you the core details, if the journalist is writing appropriately). You don't have to read the entire newspaper front to back; you skim through and can get the gist of what's going on, without delving into details. And if something does strike your eye, you take the time to [read the article|view the Web site].
A perfect example is how I "read" eWeek via the Zinio digital reader. I look through the table of contents, which includes very short snippets (less than what many RSS feeds offer) that describe the article. Sometimes that's all I do -- if nothing catches my interest, or I don't have time, then at least I have a bare minimum knowledge of things going on in the industry. If I have more time, or if something very interesting is listed, then I click over and read the article.
An RSS feed works the same way. It provides minimal information, from which you can make the decision about whether or not you want to obtain detailed information.
Or, using the example of the RSS feeds provided by the Open Music Registry, the feed lets you know when new music is listed, but there's no need to listen to every new title -- just those that catch your interest. Even if you don't listen to them, you still are aware -- i.e., you've gained the information -- that new music is available. (There's also a site news RSS feed, and each news item is often small enough to fit into the RSS summary, in which case you get all of the content via that feed.)
Before a content site decides to put up any kind of barrier to getting the content, they'd better make sure the value will drive people past the barrier.
An example comes to mind in the local news scene... I used to visit one of the Web sites for a local TV station as a way to keep informed about local events. Their content was "pretty good" -- better, as I saw it then, than their competitors. Then they started requiring registration... it was free, but they wanted your personal info. I turned away and haven't gone back -- the value of their content was not sufficient to push me past the privacy barrier.
One of the reasons I've been hesitant to use any revenue-related barriers in the Open Music Registry is because I don't think the value would support it, for the site as it is now. So, until I have the time to build in features that people might pay for (if that ever happens), I have to hope for donations and ad click-throughs.
Everything sucks eventually...
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Singularity Sky
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· Score: 1
...you just have to pay attention long enough. My fiction is no exception -- the only thing that doesn't suck about it, after paying attention long enough, is that it's not only free as in beer but free as in speech.
... it is a start in making such an underground force...
An important step forward, yes. The "start," no. (There can only be one "start" -- anything after the first is not a start but a continuation. Thus, "a start" can only logically be read as "the start.")
Even the EFF's Open Audio License (for which they've apparently dropped support, in order to support the Creative Commons effort), which was the basis for the Open Music Registry, which itself predated Creative Commons, was not the "start" of building an "underground" force for marketing independent music.
I suppose this will be considered "nit-picking" because the main point of your post was to underscore the value of the CC licensing system, but I think it's worthwhile to point out that just because something is worthwhile doesn't mean it's not built on the works of others, either directly or conceptually.
Blah, blah, blah... Try reading for comprehension next time. My point (since you so obviously missed it the first time) is that you put forth a load of bunk based on invalid assumptions. Or, considering that I derisively pointed out your absurd assumptions, maybe you got my point but can't figure a way to argue to support them, so you just repeat them with more fervor.
Try this on for size: I've never done anything illegal with music. Hmm, kinda destroys your invalid assumptions (in both of your long-winded, asinine rants), eh? What a loser.
Amazing that this nonsense is being moderated as Insightful. Where's the insight? I can't find it amongst the ridiculous assumptions, like how we're "all" "unlawfully copying music to our hard drives" and how radio stations would "reduce the ad content" (it's always so likely that a business will decline a revenue source!) if we contribute more directly to the RIAA's coffers, and that I have "contributed to the sources of [radio's] problems." What a load of bunk.
Coming from someone who has profited greatly, and will continue profiting greatly, from the imbalance in copyright laws, a long string of "moral" claims about providing a "legal alternative" (gee, I wonder which one he means...) to "stealing" rings hollow, to use his words.
Get off the "cult of personality" wagon. Just because someone whose name you recognize says something doesn't mean it's newsworthy.
I'm not sure how well it'd work but the experiment itself would be interesting.
Yeah, the last couple of years have been pretty interesting. One of the most interesting aspects has been how difficult it is to get attention for something like this, even in Slashdot. Every Registry-related story I've submitted has been rejected.
...but maybe they just don't know enough. I mean, at their young ages (11 and under), they don't "know" what a "desktop-ready" OS is "supposed" to do. They have Win98 on their own machine, but they keep coming back to use GNU/Linux on mine on a regular basis. And asking to have it on theirs. And no, this isn't a make-believe story (and I'm going to have a chance to give them what they've been asking for this weekend).
Now, admittedly, they're not doing business work on it, but that wasn't the point anyway, we're talking about home users. I'm pretty sure my kids qualify as such, whether they're playing games or doing homework. (Oh, FWIW, they/I use GNOME on Slackware, not RH.) Could the environment stand a lot of improvement? Absolutely.
But GNU/Linux isn't alone in needing improvement to be "ready" for home users. Windows needs it too -- it needs less of a push toward DRM, less corporate/publisher control, etc. And the fixes that GNU/Linux needs (usability) are within scope, whereas many of the "fixes" in Windows (freedom for the user) run counter to the goals of its publisher, and will never be addressed. (Forget an uprising of customers, the apathy of the public is obvious.)
RH wants to focus on servers for enterprise customers -- great, go for it. No problem with that. But to push home users toward Windows is self-serving and short-sighted, no matter what "justifications" are brought up for it.
Downloads of commercial music for a fee with specific licensing and DRM restrictions is just a subset of legal music downloads. Last I checked, the Open Music Registry (and Narcopop, and Common Content) were all "legal music sites" that Aussies can use just like anyone else in the world.
Don't buy into and/or support the notion that commercialized music is the only music available. When you see this sort of nonsense in the media, at least take time to write to the publisher to comment on it. I have.
What does this have to do with TaxCut (as you mention in your subject), or tax preparation software in general (other than that using software would prevent people from paying the "typically $60 to $300" commercial preparer fee)? And are we supposed to feel sorry that people have to pay for their impatience and/or willful ignorance (aka, foolishness)?
What the consumer receives in hand is the refund minus the loan fee, the tax preparation fee, and the electronic filing fee.
So clearly they understand that they're paying for the convenience of having (some of) their money right away. A fool and his money are soon parted -- is it necessary to hold every fool's hand to protect his wallet?
OK, I'm biased (see site ref in sig), and I suppose this is a minor nit to pick, but their idea of "Open Music" is obviously with a limited sense of Open. If they took out the NonCommercial aspect of their CC license choice, then it would be fully Open.
The music is Creative Commons licensed, which is the brainchild of the eminent Lawrence Lessig.
Oh, puh-leeze.
brainchild - n. An original idea or plan attributed to a person or group.
Note the word "original" -- let's see...
original - adj. Preceding all others in time; first. a) Not derived from something else... b) Showing a marked departure from previous practice...
(Both definitions courtesy of The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition) Some interesting quotes from the Creative CommonsFAQ include:
Cyberlaw and intellectual property experts James Boyle, Michael Carroll, and Lawrence Lessig, MIT computer science professor Hal Abelson, lawyer-turned-documentary filmmaker-turned-cyberlaw expert Eric Saltzman, and public domain Web publisher Eric Eldred founded Creative Commons in 2001.
(note that it doesn't just refer to Lessig)
...and...
We take
inspiration from other folks interested in promoting the sharing of creative works.... We want to complement, rather than compete with, these existing efforts to ease online sharing and collaboration. (emphasis added)
There goes the idea of it being an "original" concept of one person, eh? In fact, that same FAQ would seem to give originality credit to Richard Stallman, if anyone, given the statement: "Foremost among these [folks interested in promoting the sharing of creative works] is Richard Stallman, founder of The Free Software Foundation and author of the General Public License, or the GNU GPL."
I don't mean to discredit what Lessig and Creative Commons are doing. Indeed, I see a lot of value in the CC approach. But does "hero worship" advance anything other than egos and, for followers, an emotional sense of belonging to a community? No. It's vastly more important to understand the issues at hand, support all who agree with your ideals, and work toward changes wherever you see fit and where you can have some influence. Finding one or two leaders to follow, rewriting history, etc., will do more harm in the long run, and it will certainly impede progress in the short run.
I was amused to see "fish counter" in the list, because I was asked just a week or so ago if I'd like to volunteer for that one. It, uh, didn't match my schedule...
Isn't money a great thing to mix with music?
on
Beatles Bite Apple
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· Score: 1
This sure makes me feel a whole lot better about commercialized entertainment. Yeah, where would we be if we didn't have the influence of money in music? Where, indeed...
Of course, on the face of it, it sounds to me like Apple Computer made a very poor, short-sighted, and possibly hasty decision when trouble first arose. Without knowing what Apple Records has in terms of trademark but with a reasonable (but non-lawyer) understanding of trademark law, I suspect Apple Computer might have been able to avoid any agreement at all regarding the trademark, rather than opening the door to breach-of-contract settlements. I have a hard time believing that any trademark class could include both what Apple Computer was doing at the time and what Apple Records was doing at the time, so trademark infringement should have been a non-issue at that time, rather than a leverage point against Apple Computer. Too late now, of course.
Forget it? I don't even expect them to understand it. The girl won't hold any grudge against musicians, she's convinced she did something wrong (and, according to our imbalanced laws, she did). There won't be any backlash by youngsters "stung" by this sort of thing, the only thing that will hurt the RIAA is to steal their market by promoting Free alternatives. Kinda tough to do on limited budgets, but worth working on anyway. As for this girl, the only way she might have any ill feelings toward the RIAA -- i.e., something to mitigate her feelings of guilt -- would be to explain to her what copyright is supposed to be versus what it has become. Not an easy concept for someone that young, especially growing up in an age when "intellectual property" is an accepted term instead of being dismissed as an illogical and vulgar notion of greedy fools.
Slashdot Mirror
You would what PNGs? Last I checked, "PNGs" wasn't a verb.
I'm sure Microsoft will appreciate your support, loyalty, and obedience... anyway.
Woah. You, sir, have issues.
Yes, I do have issues -- let's call them "concerns" -- about the world around me. And I won't apologize that I'm not an apathetic jellyfish mindlessly following what the entertainment companies and Daddy Government tell me. If I think there are problems, I will speak out about them, and the weakening of the US public -- which is related to the loss of liberty through government-encouraged lack of individual responsibility -- is one such problem.
I used to be in the Navy and the stress I've encountered in (one particular) office job I held since was far worse than anything I encountered in the service.
Perhaps, but unless that particular office job was fairly similar to what this person described as his "stressful" job, then how is that at all relevant? I can certainly think of "office jobs" that would be extremely stressful, but what he described isn't really on that list.
When your kid comes home from school upset because of something that got said or a bit of fisticuffs the appropriate response isn't to say "shut up, you've never been under enemy fire". As a child in their world something awful has happened.
Quite so -- but we're not talking about a child coming home from school, we're talking about an adult in the workplace. My very point was that he needed to grow up and act/think like a responsible adult.
It annoys me when I say (sic) people like yourself taking a cavalier attitude the problem and using the military as a reference point.
Well, you'll just have to be annoyed, because a person like myself is someone who has been in the military and has been in a job like the one in question, so I'm not going to apologize for comparing the two based on my own experiences.
I'm not so worried about The Gimp, since I typically use Photoshop.
Eh? Whether you're using Photoshop or The Gimp, you're using something potentially affected by this issue. (Photoshop is published by Adobe; Adobe is one of the companies being sued by Forgent.) But as a Photoshop user, you're more likely to pay real dollars from your wallet as a result (if Adobe has to pay licensing fees and passes those costs to users, thus potentially increasing the cost of your next upgrade). I guess your statement might make sense from a "will the product [or feature in the product] continue to exist" perspective -- but in that case, an Open Source project that is already heavily distributed isn't exactly going to disappear overnight, nor is the code for that particular feature. It might "go underground" but I'd be mighty surprised if it suddenly became unavailable -- thus the beauty (or trouble, depending on one's perspective) of Open Source.
Likewise, with GIF support in GD, it might have been removed but you could always decide to take whatever legal risk might exist and put it back in your copy -- who would notice? But anyway, you should just be creating PNGs anyway. :-)
As many others have commented, it sounds like you need to wise up and grow up. Your question sounds like "how can I play and have my needs taken care of for me" -- appropriate, perhaps, for a 4 year old. You grossly overestimate the stress and responsibility of your position. Maybe a stint in the military would teach you about stress. Maybe becoming a surgeon would teach you about responsibility. If your sample of writing here is any indication of how you perform at work, you obviously aren't even held responsible for correct spelling. (Pointing out that there's no spell checker on these posts would amount to just more whining.)
Thank you for helping prove that our society now is completely incompatible with personal liberty as a result of the wholesale junking of personal responsibility. I hope you never protest the violation of any Constitutional rights, since the hypocrisy of it would make me vomit.
If someone doesn't listen to all of their music the way I listen to my music, it's because they're brain-damaged.
Yeah, that's a really credible statement. As others have already opined, it depends on the music -- some is clearly meant to be played in order (Moody Blues: Days of Future Passed comes to mind), but I believe the majority of music -- commercial or independent or hobby -- is not sequence-specific or even mildly sequence-sensitive. And even some music that can be sequence-sensitive, such as live albums (or, for a Free music example, I would consider the ML EP published by Loca Records to be moderately sequence-sensitive) can be removed from its sequence without really "breaking" anything. This is even true for sequence-specific music, as popular radio airplay of various isolated tracks from the aforementioned Moody Blues album helps demonstrate.
"Those kids these days..." Yeah, whatever. I'm sure that not listening to albums from start to finish is a new thing and doesn't have any historical precedent in radio... :-/
The subject of this post is the title of a book I've wanted to read for some time (you can find it at Powell's), which this "rant" about blue LEDs brought back to mind. Some design decisions are made for the wrong reason and some things are designed very poorly -- this goes for physical products as well as software. [I was tempted to insert "Microsoft" in there, but there are plenty of others to blame for poorly designed software -- not me, of course. ;-)]
I agree, the survey was terribly designed. I gave up even earlier, I didn't even get to question 6. Who owns the code I write? -- well, which code?! Code I developed during work hours on my work computer at the office? Code I developed at home on my own time and hardware? (I made sure when I started the job that there was no fine print that would allow them to claim my after-hours development work, because I was running a small business on the side at the time and didn't want to have any code ownership conflicts.)
There are so many "it depends" type of answers, and the survey was obviously not designed to handle those. All they needed to do was add a "depends on situation" response to the questions to make it more useful (although better questions and options would be preferred). Otherwise, the assumptions of those taking the survey won't necessarily match the assumptions of those who designed it, making the results meaningless. As you said, making a survey isn't trivial, and this one was clearly thrown together trivially.
And, there's apparently nothing preventing me from answering the survey multiple times, perhaps in an automated way, to throw off the results. And even without intentional tampering, their self-selected survey population isn't going to provide any results worth extrapolating to a broader population.
The worst part is when the worthless "statistics" from the survey are then used to try to prove some point, convince people of something, etc. I'd be surprised if this wasn't just a ruse to give them some so-called evidence of a trend, and those receiving their misguided results won't know that their methodology was a joke.
Moderating a post as "-1 Troll" isn't always a sign of ignorance, but clearly it was in this case. Someone in apparent ignorance of Creative Commons decided to punish you -- and the /. reader community in general -- by using their moderation power to flaunt their ignorance. Another red letter day for Slashdot's moderation system.
As you accurately and Informatively pointed out, CC is a set of licenses, not one license. The person who submitted the story is apparently just as ignorant about that as the person behind the mod down of your message.
Unfortunately, when you go to the site, there's no indication of any CC license (at least none that I can see, if one applies they're certainly not making it obvious.)
This isn't open source software, but copyleft applied to music... The Open Music Registry is an interactive database of music that is licensed under copyleft-style licenses, including the Open Audio License, one of the Creative Commons licenses, and more. Follow the link in my signature to check it out.
(Not that anybody will probably see this now... not sure what's up with this story and its lack of visibility...)
You *still* have to visit the original web page in order to acess the actual content/information. Headlines and summaries are neither content, nor information.
Headlines and summaries are information. Yes, you have to go to the site if you want detailed information but this is not always necessary. It's like skimming through a newspaper by reading headlines and first paragraphs (the latter of which should give you the core details, if the journalist is writing appropriately). You don't have to read the entire newspaper front to back; you skim through and can get the gist of what's going on, without delving into details. And if something does strike your eye, you take the time to [read the article|view the Web site].
A perfect example is how I "read" eWeek via the Zinio digital reader. I look through the table of contents, which includes very short snippets (less than what many RSS feeds offer) that describe the article. Sometimes that's all I do -- if nothing catches my interest, or I don't have time, then at least I have a bare minimum knowledge of things going on in the industry. If I have more time, or if something very interesting is listed, then I click over and read the article.
An RSS feed works the same way. It provides minimal information, from which you can make the decision about whether or not you want to obtain detailed information.
Or, using the example of the RSS feeds provided by the Open Music Registry, the feed lets you know when new music is listed, but there's no need to listen to every new title -- just those that catch your interest. Even if you don't listen to them, you still are aware -- i.e., you've gained the information -- that new music is available. (There's also a site news RSS feed, and each news item is often small enough to fit into the RSS summary, in which case you get all of the content via that feed.)
Before a content site decides to put up any kind of barrier to getting the content, they'd better make sure the value will drive people past the barrier.
An example comes to mind in the local news scene... I used to visit one of the Web sites for a local TV station as a way to keep informed about local events. Their content was "pretty good" -- better, as I saw it then, than their competitors. Then they started requiring registration... it was free, but they wanted your personal info. I turned away and haven't gone back -- the value of their content was not sufficient to push me past the privacy barrier.
One of the reasons I've been hesitant to use any revenue-related barriers in the Open Music Registry is because I don't think the value would support it, for the site as it is now. So, until I have the time to build in features that people might pay for (if that ever happens), I have to hope for donations and ad click-throughs.
...you just have to pay attention long enough. My fiction is no exception -- the only thing that doesn't suck about it, after paying attention long enough, is that it's not only free as in beer but free as in speech.
An important step forward, yes. The "start," no. (There can only be one "start" -- anything after the first is not a start but a continuation. Thus, "a start" can only logically be read as "the start.")
Even the EFF's Open Audio License (for which they've apparently dropped support, in order to support the Creative Commons effort), which was the basis for the Open Music Registry, which itself predated Creative Commons, was not the "start" of building an "underground" force for marketing independent music.
I suppose this will be considered "nit-picking" because the main point of your post was to underscore the value of the CC licensing system, but I think it's worthwhile to point out that just because something is worthwhile doesn't mean it's not built on the works of others, either directly or conceptually.
Blah, blah, blah... Try reading for comprehension next time. My point (since you so obviously missed it the first time) is that you put forth a load of bunk based on invalid assumptions. Or, considering that I derisively pointed out your absurd assumptions, maybe you got my point but can't figure a way to argue to support them, so you just repeat them with more fervor.
Try this on for size: I've never done anything illegal with music. Hmm, kinda destroys your invalid assumptions (in both of your long-winded, asinine rants), eh? What a loser.
Amazing that this nonsense is being moderated as Insightful. Where's the insight? I can't find it amongst the ridiculous assumptions, like how we're "all" "unlawfully copying music to our hard drives" and how radio stations would "reduce the ad content" (it's always so likely that a business will decline a revenue source!) if we contribute more directly to the RIAA's coffers, and that I have "contributed to the sources of [radio's] problems." What a load of bunk.
Coming from someone who has profited greatly, and will continue profiting greatly, from the imbalance in copyright laws, a long string of "moral" claims about providing a "legal alternative" (gee, I wonder which one he means...) to "stealing" rings hollow, to use his words.
Get off the "cult of personality" wagon. Just because someone whose name you recognize says something doesn't mean it's newsworthy.
Why not create a sort of OpenMusic directory...
You mean like the Open Music Registry? :-)
I'm not sure how well it'd work but the experiment itself would be interesting.
Yeah, the last couple of years have been pretty interesting. One of the most interesting aspects has been how difficult it is to get attention for something like this, even in Slashdot. Every Registry-related story I've submitted has been rejected.
...but maybe they just don't know enough. I mean, at their young ages (11 and under), they don't "know" what a "desktop-ready" OS is "supposed" to do. They have Win98 on their own machine, but they keep coming back to use GNU/Linux on mine on a regular basis. And asking to have it on theirs. And no, this isn't a make-believe story (and I'm going to have a chance to give them what they've been asking for this weekend).
Now, admittedly, they're not doing business work on it, but that wasn't the point anyway, we're talking about home users. I'm pretty sure my kids qualify as such, whether they're playing games or doing homework. (Oh, FWIW, they/I use GNOME on Slackware, not RH.) Could the environment stand a lot of improvement? Absolutely.
But GNU/Linux isn't alone in needing improvement to be "ready" for home users. Windows needs it too -- it needs less of a push toward DRM, less corporate/publisher control, etc. And the fixes that GNU/Linux needs (usability) are within scope, whereas many of the "fixes" in Windows (freedom for the user) run counter to the goals of its publisher, and will never be addressed. (Forget an uprising of customers, the apathy of the public is obvious.)
RH wants to focus on servers for enterprise customers -- great, go for it. No problem with that. But to push home users toward Windows is self-serving and short-sighted, no matter what "justifications" are brought up for it.
Downloads of commercial music for a fee with specific licensing and DRM restrictions is just a subset of legal music downloads. Last I checked, the Open Music Registry (and Narcopop, and Common Content) were all "legal music sites" that Aussies can use just like anyone else in the world.
Don't buy into and/or support the notion that commercialized music is the only music available. When you see this sort of nonsense in the media, at least take time to write to the publisher to comment on it. I have.
What does this have to do with TaxCut (as you mention in your subject), or tax preparation software in general (other than that using software would prevent people from paying the "typically $60 to $300" commercial preparer fee)? And are we supposed to feel sorry that people have to pay for their impatience and/or willful ignorance (aka, foolishness)?
What the consumer receives in hand is the refund minus the loan fee, the tax preparation fee, and the electronic filing fee.
So clearly they understand that they're paying for the convenience of having (some of) their money right away. A fool and his money are soon parted -- is it necessary to hold every fool's hand to protect his wallet?
OK, I'm biased (see site ref in sig), and I suppose this is a minor nit to pick, but their idea of "Open Music" is obviously with a limited sense of Open. If they took out the NonCommercial aspect of their CC license choice, then it would be fully Open.
The music is Creative Commons licensed, which is the brainchild of the eminent Lawrence Lessig.
Oh, puh-leeze.
Note the word "original" -- let's see...
(Both definitions courtesy of The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition) Some interesting quotes from the Creative Commons FAQ include:
...and...
There goes the idea of it being an "original" concept of one person, eh? In fact, that same FAQ would seem to give originality credit to Richard Stallman, if anyone, given the statement: "Foremost among these [folks interested in promoting the sharing of creative works] is Richard Stallman, founder of The Free Software Foundation and author of the General Public License, or the GNU GPL."
I don't mean to discredit what Lessig and Creative Commons are doing. Indeed, I see a lot of value in the CC approach. But does "hero worship" advance anything other than egos and, for followers, an emotional sense of belonging to a community? No. It's vastly more important to understand the issues at hand, support all who agree with your ideals, and work toward changes wherever you see fit and where you can have some influence. Finding one or two leaders to follow, rewriting history, etc., will do more harm in the long run, and it will certainly impede progress in the short run.
I was amused to see "fish counter" in the list, because I was asked just a week or so ago if I'd like to volunteer for that one. It, uh, didn't match my schedule...
This sure makes me feel a whole lot better about commercialized entertainment. Yeah, where would we be if we didn't have the influence of money in music? Where, indeed...
Of course, on the face of it, it sounds to me like Apple Computer made a very poor, short-sighted, and possibly hasty decision when trouble first arose. Without knowing what Apple Records has in terms of trademark but with a reasonable (but non-lawyer) understanding of trademark law, I suspect Apple Computer might have been able to avoid any agreement at all regarding the trademark, rather than opening the door to breach-of-contract settlements. I have a hard time believing that any trademark class could include both what Apple Computer was doing at the time and what Apple Records was doing at the time, so trademark infringement should have been a non-issue at that time, rather than a leverage point against Apple Computer. Too late now, of course.
Don't expect them to forget it.
Forget it? I don't even expect them to understand it. The girl won't hold any grudge against musicians, she's convinced she did something wrong (and, according to our imbalanced laws, she did). There won't be any backlash by youngsters "stung" by this sort of thing, the only thing that will hurt the RIAA is to steal their market by promoting Free alternatives. Kinda tough to do on limited budgets, but worth working on anyway. As for this girl, the only way she might have any ill feelings toward the RIAA -- i.e., something to mitigate her feelings of guilt -- would be to explain to her what copyright is supposed to be versus what it has become. Not an easy concept for someone that young, especially growing up in an age when "intellectual property" is an accepted term instead of being dismissed as an illogical and vulgar notion of greedy fools.