I don't buy it. John Doe is more likely to think that the PC and the OS can't be seperated.
It would be more correct to say that Joe doesn't want them separated.
I am a Geek. Joe is not a Geek. I am not Joe. Joe is not a Geek. Repeat this mantra often enough and maybe someday it will sink in.
Joe has been buying the system bundle - the PC as a plug and play home appliance and office machine - for damn near thirty years. He is not about to change what works best for him.
Rockstar defines "adult content" as the psycho killing spree which is Manhunt 2. Torture porn as video game entertainment.
While the intense, visually splendid, and morally ambiguous Bioshock - an adult game by any reasonable definition - is released to rave reviews and sells 1.5 million copies with scarcely a hint of moral outrage from anyone.
What you're seeing is Capitalism at its most uninterrupted... do you like it, Ms. Rand?
If by "capitalism" you mean "the console manufacturers that don't want and don't need the grief that comes with being identified with a game like Manhunt 2," then she likes it just fine.
their platform, their choice.
if you don't like it, you can pick up your marbles and play elsewhere.
I keep hearing this "not many people have installed an operating system" but the reality is I know LOTS of people who have done so - most of them bootleg windows installs.
The plural of anecdote is not data.
It doesn't matter how many people you know. It doesn't matter whether you are working out of a small shop or garage. What does matter is that pretty much everyone you don't know buys a PC as a home appliance or office machine.
They do not "think geek."
There is not one surviving system builder here that can afford a listing in the local phone book. Not one that can afford to advertise in the throw-away shopping papers.
If less than 10% of the world's computers had been replaced last year, Vista's alleged market share would look good. It is next to impossible for the average person to get any kind of computer with anything but Vista on it, so the market share should at least be lock step with new sales. A decade ago, people would also go out and buy boxed versions of M$ OS. If M$ had a product people wanted, it would still be that way.
1 Vista didn't enter the home market until the end of January.
2 Sales in the home market favor OEM Vista Premium and Ultimate.
Buyers who go this route are looking at OEM system with fairly high end specs. Systems that - inevitably - are going to be priced a lot more attractively in November that the were in February.
The entry level Vista Premium laptop at Walmart.com - HP or Toshiba - has a dual core CPU, 2 GB RAM, a 200 GB HDD and currently sells for around $850-$900.
3 Ten years ago the desktop was dominant and an upgrade to Win 95 was straight-forward. I ran Win 95 on a Packard Bell with a 75 MHz Pentium CPU, 16 MB of RAM and a 545 MB HDD. But those days are gone forever.
"Market share" only counts MONEY, not "free" installs. If I download ubuntu and install it on my laptop, how do they know? They don't - and they don't care, because there are no beans for the bean counters to count.
The problem here is that the DIY system install is a Geek thing.
The overwhelming majority of users have never installed an OS from scratch and never will.
I have not yet had a single person seriously inquire about "upgrading" to vista.
Well, of course, you haven't.
If you want the stainless-steel look for your kitchen you look to Viking for the name or Sears for the price. You don't track down the appliance-geek who sells a zero-clearance range out of the back of his garage.
moment we can only speculate as to what legal authorities they cited to the judge in Duluth, Minnesota, to get him to instruct the jurors that just 'making available' was good enough.
In our federal system, when is a trial judge in Minnesota bound by an decision in New York?
If he is a federal judge, he looks first to appellate decisions within his own Circuit - the Eighth. U.S. Courts If he is a state judge, he looks first to appellate decisions within his own state.
But he is free to roll his own, subject only to the risk of reversal on appeal.
It is within bounds for a trial judge in Duluth to decide that the opinion of a trial judge in New York was correctly reasoned and that the opinion of the appellate court in New York was not.
The sate appellate courts of Minnesota can disagree with the state appellate courts of New York.
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis can - respectfully - disagree with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.
It is the responsibility of the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve such conflicts - if it believes that they are needlessly disruptive and of Constitutional significance.
But the Supremes take on only 100-200 cases a year.
I kind of get a kick of seeing how the copyright system is thrown in favor of those who are responsible for most of the "content" that is put out there for your consumption. I can't wait for the pendulum to swing back hard.
Don't hold your breath.
In ten years J K Rowling went from being a welfare mother to being richer than the Queen of England.
Give it a few years and movies are where songs are today.
The tech is cheaper and more accessible - at entry level.
But $25 will buy you a paint set. That doesn't make you a Renoir, a Monet, a Picasso, or a Wyeth.
Consider last week's premier of Pushing Daises on ABC. Disney. The premise alone is worthy of Tim Burton: "First touch, life. Second touch, death, forever."
Consider the magical realism in the design of the sets, the use of color. The scripting, the acting, the pitch-perfect narration of Jim Dale.
This isn't amateur night. It is the work of pros at every level.
If a law is deemed working properly when it can destroy someones life for the sake of a few MP3's, I would say that what we have here is fascism.
We had a neighbor once who worked for the railroad and began handing out - gratis - all the goodies that had "fallen off a train." The story got spread around, of course, and the party ended.
This case wasn't about "a few mp3s."
It was about a missing hard drive and the 2,000 tracks in her shared Kazaa folder. Each priced at about $1-$2 each when purchased through a licensed distributer like iTunes.
The first lesson in trial practice is that the jury is the Sheriff of Nottingham and not Robin Hood.
You are sitting on the jury for Rosa Parks. Technically she broke the law. Do you find her guilty? You are sitting on the jury for a runaway slave. Technically he also broke the law. What if you were on the jury for the Scopes Trial? Hmm, jury nullification is starting to sound better now, isn't it?
It is 1955 in Mississippi.
A black man is on trial for rape of a white woman. The evidence against him is feeble. A white man - a Klansman - is on trial for the murder of a black man. The evidence against him is overwhelming.
Which man walks free and which will be hanged on the capital charge?
Dayton, Tennessee, was rural, small town America. For thirty years Bryan been their spokesman on the national stage. The jurors were conservative mainstream or evangelical Protestants. The TVA is ten year in the future, The population of Rhea County is only 28,000 today and Bible lessons were still being taught in its public schools as late as 2004. Where do you find your nullifers in 1925?
As a side note, Clarence Darrow and the rest of the defense team, who were supposed to defend their client from a law that forbade the teaching of evolution, coached the John Scopes' students to perjure themselves by saying they were taught evolution in the classroom, when in fact they weren't.Clarence Darrow
It's like getting a year in jail for a speeding ticket, or a $1000 fine for eating a grape in the supermarket produce section.
You aren't being sued for eating one grape.
You are being sued for giving away a train load of grapes you don't own.
When you upload to the P2P nets you are re-distributing your music to an unlimited number of downloaders. Tracks that sell for $1 to $2 each elsewhere, with or without DRM.
I wonder if that 200,000 dollars will make up for all the people alienated by the action?
For all the blather spouted here about jury nullification, sympathy for the little guy, the RIAA won this case - big time.
Many folks here would disagree and our opinions are equally valid.
It isn't a question of opinion. It is a question of law. Polygamy may be sanctioned by your fellow belivers. But that won't stop you from being convicted as an accessory to the rape of a fourteen year old girl.
Don't worry, this will win on appeal. When the technical details come out, the truth will prevail.
The court of appeal does not re-try the facts.
The court of appeal is not interested in facts. It is interested in process - how the judge and jury came to their decision.
The appellant must make a clear and convincing legal argument that the trial judge made a fatal error. In the admission of evidence. In his instructions to the jury. Something of that sort.
It is called jury nullification and Jury veto.
I am a big proponent of it. unfortunately, talking about it gets my excluded form jury duty.
It's time for the geek let go the fantasy of jury nullification. The jury is not always wise but it is often faithful to its oath. The lawyer in this case pleaded sentiment - the little guy against the big - and lost.
For some reason I see those jurors as characters from "Idiocracy". I simply can't imagine them being normal human beings.
And that is why you fail.
Juries draw on the ordinary people who are willing to take on a job that makes significant demands and offers few obvious rewards - which may help to explain why they do not share the geek's sense of entitlement to the work of others.
There is a case that challenges the constitutionality of such high fines
Criminal courts fine defendants as punishment for their criminal misconduct. The money goes to the state.
Civil courts award damages. The money goes to the plaintiff as compensation for his injuries. To set a limits on damages is essentially a policy decision - something for the legislature to decide.
So it pays to remember that the fines for physically stealing copyrighted works are much less than infringing on them.
Well, duh.
You have been caught uploading the files to ten million of your closest friends on Kazaa. You should expect to pay some significant fraction of the wholesale value of the distribution.
She will still end up paying $50k in legal fees, even if she wins an appeal. Just another reason to never do business with any RIAA entity ever again.
Her lawyer took a case into court that was dead on arrival. That he should never have chanced taking to a verdict. If she had been "doing business" with the major labels - buying or renting content - she wouldn't be in this mess.
Since its a civil trial, she can just go bankrupt (the jury award isn't a fine resulting from a criminal trial - fines for criminal convictions aren't generally dischargeable in a bankruptcy).
Don't automatically assume that a civil judgment will be discharged in bankruptcy. Filing for bankruptcy has become more difficult and the consequences more far-reaching. It is not an easy way out.
This is what you get when you have a jury of "your peers" - something that in the United States means "people not smart enough to get out of jury duty."
Those willing to serve - those who want to serve - get to make the decisions - which in a democracy is as at it should be.
The jury is most likely to be middle class, middle aged, small-C conservatives, with a strong sense of civic obligation. The same men and women who take their right to vote seriously.
The successful trial attorney does not romanticize the jury. But neither does he bring into court the adolescent assumption, so prevalent on Slashdot, that he is dealing with a bunch of morons.
And then there is the $220,000 in "damages".
Damages in cases like these are usually framed in terms of some statutory or judicial formula.
The jury doesn't make the rules. It applies the rules.
Consider this: downloads from a service like iTunes have a generally recognized retail value of $1-$2 a track. Implying that the 2,000 tracks in your shared Kazaa folder are worth serious money. To the rights owners and their licensed - legitimate - distributors.
Slashdot Mirror
It would be more correct to say that Joe doesn't want them separated.
I am a Geek. Joe is not a Geek. I am not Joe. Joe is not a Geek. Repeat this mantra often enough and maybe someday it will sink in.
Joe has been buying the system bundle - the PC as a plug and play home appliance and office machine - for damn near thirty years. He is not about to change what works best for him.
- - - they will vote their existing investment in hardware and software, an investment that is measured in both time and money.
But if you are into HD home theater won't you be upscaling through your HDTV or AV receiver anyway?
Rockstar defines "adult content" as the psycho killing spree which is Manhunt 2. Torture porn as video game entertainment. While the intense, visually splendid, and morally ambiguous Bioshock - an adult game by any reasonable definition - is released to rave reviews and sells 1.5 million copies with scarcely a hint of moral outrage from anyone.
If by "capitalism" you mean "the console manufacturers that don't want and don't need the grief that comes with being identified with a game like Manhunt 2," then she likes it just fine.
their platform, their choice.
if you don't like it, you can pick up your marbles and play elsewhere.
The plural of anecdote is not data.
It doesn't matter how many people you know. It doesn't matter whether you are working out of a small shop or garage. What does matter is that pretty much everyone you don't know buys a PC as a home appliance or office machine.
They do not "think geek."
There is not one surviving system builder here that can afford a listing in the local phone book. Not one that can afford to advertise in the throw-away shopping papers.
1 Vista didn't enter the home market until the end of January.
2 Sales in the home market favor OEM Vista Premium and Ultimate.
Buyers who go this route are looking at OEM system with fairly high end specs. Systems that - inevitably - are going to be priced a lot more attractively in November that the were in February.
The entry level Vista Premium laptop at Walmart.com - HP or Toshiba - has a dual core CPU, 2 GB RAM, a 200 GB HDD and currently sells for around $850-$900.
3 Ten years ago the desktop was dominant and an upgrade to Win 95 was straight-forward. I ran Win 95 on a Packard Bell with a 75 MHz Pentium CPU, 16 MB of RAM and a 545 MB HDD. But those days are gone forever.
The gamer's PC doesn't have to cost $2000.
You aren't limited to the games that will play natively or in emulation on the XBox 360.
The problem here is that the DIY system install is a Geek thing.
The overwhelming majority of users have never installed an OS from scratch and never will.
I have not yet had a single person seriously inquire about "upgrading" to vista.
Well, of course, you haven't.
If you want the stainless-steel look for your kitchen you look to Viking for the name or Sears for the price. You don't track down the appliance-geek who sells a zero-clearance range out of the back of his garage.
In our federal system, when is a trial judge in Minnesota bound by an decision in New York?
If he is a federal judge, he looks first to appellate decisions within his own Circuit - the Eighth. U.S. Courts If he is a state judge, he looks first to appellate decisions within his own state.
But he is free to roll his own, subject only to the risk of reversal on appeal.
It is within bounds for a trial judge in Duluth to decide that the opinion of a trial judge in New York was correctly reasoned and that the opinion of the appellate court in New York was not.
The sate appellate courts of Minnesota can disagree with the state appellate courts of New York.
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis can - respectfully - disagree with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.
It is the responsibility of the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve such conflicts - if it believes that they are needlessly disruptive and of Constitutional significance.
But the Supremes take on only 100-200 cases a year.
Don't hold your breath.
In ten years J K Rowling went from being a welfare mother to being richer than the Queen of England.
Star Wars is fantasy. Lucasfilm is reality.
The tech is cheaper and more accessible - at entry level.
But $25 will buy you a paint set. That doesn't make you a Renoir, a Monet, a Picasso, or a Wyeth.
Consider last week's premier of Pushing Daises on ABC. Disney. The premise alone is worthy of Tim Burton: "First touch, life. Second touch, death, forever."
Consider the magical realism in the design of the sets, the use of color. The scripting, the acting, the pitch-perfect narration of Jim Dale.
This isn't amateur night. It is the work of pros at every level.
We had a neighbor once who worked for the railroad and began handing out - gratis - all the goodies that had "fallen off a train." The story got spread around, of course, and the party ended.
This case wasn't about "a few mp3s."
It was about a missing hard drive and the 2,000 tracks in her shared Kazaa folder. Each priced at about $1-$2 each when purchased through a licensed distributer like iTunes.
The first lesson in trial practice is that the jury is the Sheriff of Nottingham and not Robin Hood.
You are sitting on the jury for a runaway slave. Technically he also broke the law. What if you were on the jury for the Scopes Trial?
Hmm, jury nullification is starting to sound better now, isn't it?
It is 1955 in Mississippi.
A black man is on trial for rape of a white woman. The evidence against him is feeble. A white man - a Klansman - is on trial for the murder of a black man. The evidence against him is overwhelming.
Which man walks free and which will be hanged on the capital charge?
Dayton, Tennessee, was rural, small town America. For thirty years Bryan been their spokesman on the national stage. The jurors were conservative mainstream or evangelical Protestants. The TVA is ten year in the future, The population of Rhea County is only 28,000 today and Bible lessons were still being taught in its public schools as late as 2004. Where do you find your nullifers in 1925?
As a side note, Clarence Darrow and the rest of the defense team, who were supposed to defend their client from a law that forbade the teaching of evolution, coached the John Scopes' students to perjure themselves by saying they were taught evolution in the classroom, when in fact they weren't. Clarence Darrow
You aren't being sued for eating one grape.
You are being sued for giving away a train load of grapes you don't own.
When you upload to the P2P nets you are re-distributing your music to an unlimited number of downloaders. Tracks that sell for $1 to $2 each elsewhere, with or without DRM.
I wonder if that 200,000 dollars will make up for all the people alienated by the action?
For all the blather spouted here about jury nullification, sympathy for the little guy, the RIAA won this case - big time.
It isn't a question of opinion. It is a question of law. Polygamy may be sanctioned by your fellow belivers. But that won't stop you from being convicted as an accessory to the rape of a fourteen year old girl.
The court of appeal does not re-try the facts.
The court of appeal is not interested in facts. It is interested in process - how the judge and jury came to their decision.
The appellant must make a clear and convincing legal argument that the trial judge made a fatal error. In the admission of evidence. In his instructions to the jury. Something of that sort.
The incompetents took their case to a jury and won.
I am a big proponent of it. unfortunately, talking about it gets my excluded form jury duty.
It's time for the geek let go the fantasy of jury nullification. The jury is not always wise but it is often faithful to its oath. The lawyer in this case pleaded sentiment - the little guy against the big - and lost.
And that is why you fail.
Juries draw on the ordinary people who are willing to take on a job that makes significant demands and offers few obvious rewards - which may help to explain why they do not share the geek's sense of entitlement to the work of others.
Criminal courts fine defendants as punishment for their criminal misconduct. The money goes to the state.
Civil courts award damages. The money goes to the plaintiff as compensation for his injuries. To set a limits on damages is essentially a policy decision - something for the legislature to decide.
So it pays to remember that the fines for physically stealing copyrighted works are much less than infringing on them.
Well, duh.
You have been caught uploading the files to ten million of your closest friends on Kazaa. You should expect to pay some significant fraction of the wholesale value of the distribution.
Her lawyer took a case into court that was dead on arrival. That he should never have chanced taking to a verdict. If she had been "doing business" with the major labels - buying or renting content - she wouldn't be in this mess.
Don't automatically assume that a civil judgment will be discharged in bankruptcy. Filing for bankruptcy has become more difficult and the consequences more far-reaching. It is not an easy way out.
Those willing to serve - those who want to serve - get to make the decisions - which in a democracy is as at it should be.
The jury is most likely to be middle class, middle aged, small-C conservatives, with a strong sense of civic obligation. The same men and women who take their right to vote seriously.
The successful trial attorney does not romanticize the jury. But neither does he bring into court the adolescent assumption, so prevalent on Slashdot, that he is dealing with a bunch of morons.
And then there is the $220,000 in "damages".
Damages in cases like these are usually framed in terms of some statutory or judicial formula.
The jury doesn't make the rules. It applies the rules.
Consider this: downloads from a service like iTunes have a generally recognized retail value of $1-$2 a track. Implying that the 2,000 tracks in your shared Kazaa folder are worth serious money. To the rights owners and their licensed - legitimate - distributors.