BTW, is there anyone who would be interested in forwarding this to Linus or posting it on the LKML? I'd love to know what they think of this response, but I'm, uh, too shy - believe it or not - to intrude on their territory without an introduction.
My website is powered by a wiki, so go to the articles section and post it on my website. Failing that, send me aplaintext copy of it and I'll post it. When it's up, I'll spend a few minutes setting up FormMail to email copies to Darl or something, as other posters have suggested. It's not *that* hard.
Shame about the word 'fucking' even if it did drive the point home.
You don't like fucking? What's wrong with fucking? I thought fucking was America's favorite pasttime. I think you're a fucking loon for not liking fucking.
And I think Apple and others know this... ultimately, it will be all about service... not "songs".
You will pay someone because they provide you the music you want, when you want.. and that is that. It will be so convenient to let htem do this, you won't bother hoarding a collection.
I've gotta say that one thing I really like about the direction society's going today is that it's becoming more and more focussed on service rather than product. We're not going to be consumers for much longer, it looks like. We'll be customers and clients again. It's no longer going to be about which albums sell the most, it's going to be about ticket sales, which require a good show to be consistent. It's not going to be about software off the shelf, or downloaded. It's going to be about who provides the service to help you get the most ROI (ROI applies to non-commercial home users as much as it applies to businesses).
The new digital era really makes the publishers -- the middlemen -- mreo and more marginal. It becomes possible for the artist/author to distribute their work without the publisher.
First, I will grant you that it is a helluva lot easier to copy and distribute shit with computers over the internet. However,
HARD DRIVE SPACE AIN'T FREE.
It is cheap. However, I needed to spend $120 to get a 60GB hard drive (a year ago or so) to store my movies on my computer so that I could put the DVDs away from the kids. For music, hard drive space is really cheap. It's going about $1/GB last time I checked, and 1 GB will hold 204.8 5MB files (mp3s or oggs). That's about 20 albums worth of space, for $1. I'll bet that's close to what CDs cost wholesale, or on large print runs. You can buy blank CDRs at about $1/10, at Costco (probably other places, Costco isn't cheapest on computer stuff). Now I'm burning the.avi files off onto CDRs because I don't have enough room on the hard drive, and the kids have learned that if they play with the CDs, they will destroy the movies (lost two already like that).
The main reason digital books haven't taken off more is because there is no decent digital display as good as a book. PDA screens are too small. PCs & PDAs are too fragile, too heavy and too expensive. Most people don't want to sit in front of a monitor to read a book. Once a decent device for this is created, the publishers are going to really start their death screams...
I have to disagree with this. I think there are many contributing factors to digital books not taking off. One of them is that when you have a digital book, you expect to be able to read it on ay computer you own. This is not so, however. You give the publisher a unique identifier and they use it to generate a key to unlock your copy, and that's the end of the transaction. Also, digital book formats are not standardized, there are several. I've had 3 separate programs on my Clie just to read books. Buying an eBook is not a simple process. If they really want to make money, they'd make it as simple as buying a book. Give someone $5, take home a book, read it anywhere. But software developers have to all agree on a file format that the publishers like, and support it. How about plain text?:)
Finally, Baen is one publisher that is doing its job to lead the publishing industry into the next generation, and I fully intend to purchase more books from them, as soon as I've read the free library to filter out the good authors from the rest. I look forward to other publishers following Baen's example, or dying. HOpefully Del Rey won't die, last I checked they were still one of the best sci-fi publishers.
The statistics that you quoted indicate that (absent further details) sales should be up. More people said that they were spending more than said that they were spending less.
But sales are down.
Now, how does that support the position that because more file sharers said that they were spending more, that sales to file sharers should be up?
You're avoiding a certain fact. The surveys I provided were all old, for the most part. One was from 2000, one was even earlier, iirc. Only one or two were recent. Several of the articles used more empirical data than "studies" (I question studies a fair amount myself, thing is, RIAA haven't showed "studies" that I know of, they've only shown gross sales and ignored the other factors that influence that number).
Yes, record sales are down this year. They're down even sharper than last year. They've been continuing on a downward trend that started right before the stock market crash of '01, right about when the stock market itself starting to turn around and head back down. The RIAA is as much a victim of the economy as the rest of us, moreso since they refuse to treat their customers with respect and service. IBM came close to running into the mud, partly because of how they treated their customers. We're seeing Microsoft doing the same (Of course, there's only one place for them to go anyway). The RIAA is going down as well.
Fact is, you can't point to one thing as the sole source of the RIAA's problems. There are many factors. Look at the variety of music they've produced the last couple of years, eh? Pulp, mostly. Mostly a bunch of chicks'n'dudes meant to replace Britney Spears and 'N Sync. Listen to the radio. Classic Rock stations are on the rise these days, because people are sick of Britney Spears and her copies, and her being a copy. In our economy where a person can reasonably expect to only be able to buy one or two CDs a month, they have to choose very carefully. Indy labels are thriving more than ever before. If piracy was so rampant, would there be so many indies out there? Wouldn't they be dropping like flies? (Well, they might be, businesses in general are dropping like flies right now)
I answered your questions. If you want to be in denial and take your moral stance, that's fine. I'm through talking, though. It's time for you to use your own mind, look for the information I've told you is out there (I already did your research once for you). Hear the other sides of the stories. Don't take what's given! I certainly don't do that. Of course 3 studies and numerous analysis, and that's all I turned up in 5 minutes of googling. Put an hour into it, and I'm sure you'll collect a LOT more useful information than I've given. Don't take the FUD from the RIAA, but don't take the FUD from me, either. Make up your own mind on it, but do it with real information. All that I've proven is that the information is out there, for anybody who really cares to find out what's going on.
In the meantime, don't bring your high horse over to me.
Uhm.... WHAT??? While that would certainly be a nice thing, if it were true, there doesn't exist a single shred of evidence to support your ridiculous claim. Actually, there's a pile of (admitedly empirical) evidence suggesting the exact opposite.
I thought I had replied to this already, but I don't see the post. Read my other reply to another poster asking for cites for a LONG list of stuff I found in 5 minutes' worth of Googling.
I mention this because I can't help but notice that among non-leechers, 19% say they spend more, and 10% say less, but, fuck me with a haddock, CD sales are down.
Now, you explain how this can be so. I mean, you have actual statistics!
Several things. I do not have handy links, but I found the others through googling, so I'll let you do this one.:) (I assure you I've read this stuff in so-called reputable internet publications, so it is available if you look for it)
The RIAA labels have produced less CDs, and it is a continuing trend.
The RIAA labels have produced less "artists".
Another "alternative music" trend is growing (due to crap from the labels, again)
The economy's in a slump
Many people are angry and are boycotting RIAA labels. (While you're googling for some of this, google for the article that Kurt Cobain's old girlfriend wrote in Salon, I forget her name, is it courtney love? The article's called "Courtney Love (or whatever her name is) does the math")
Face it, people don't like being called thieves, and the RIAA have way over-extended themselves, and in turn the labels they "protect" by going waaaaaay out of their way to label all music-buyers as thieves, and pretty much anybody connected to the internet. Personally, I'm boycotting them, and I sincerely hope others join me. They'll keep yelling about piracy, and we'll keep yelling "Quit treating us like criminals, and we might consider doing business with you again." Sooner or later, we'll be heard, and the RIAA won't be able to claim piracy much longer. It'll be obvious to everyone what's happening to them.
If you look around even harder than I did, you'll turn up reports that show that during Napster's heyday, RIAA-protected labels' music sales was actually peaking at the highest levels they've ever hit. I've read so many articles about this subject, so they should be readily available on Google. You might also try the internet archive, who just got keyword searching.
Actually, IBM was booming along with the rest, although at a slower pace (as you'd expect from a blue chip). You're right about the "either that or die", but that was a few years before the boom; IBM had recovered and was growing nicely by the time the boom hit.
Actually, it was during the boom that IBM had to lay off a bunch of people, and cut pension plans and benefits and so forth. My mother-in-law works there, and she was upset at what IBM was doing to her. Of course, she didn't have any idea that they were doing what they needed to survive at that point, and she's damn lucky to still have a job with them, considering she doesn't produce anything. She's a tech writer.
It seems to me that corporations have a right to know a great deal about their employees' private lives after investing all that money in them.
Um, no. All a company has to worry about is whether or not the person can do the job in a manner that meets company standards, and whether they'll be able to continue doing it for the long-term. You see, I agree that a company has a certain stake in their employees being criminals, but only because that means the employee may not be around long. He might instead be in prison. Yeah, you want to hire honest people, not thieves, typically. But just because I've spent a ton of money on someone I just hired does not give me the right to pry/meddle into his life.
I think it is reasonable for the work place to relize you have a life outside of work, and sometimes the to cross.
That's a huge gay area. I mean, grey area. You see, the problem is that some people use their out-of-work activities to bomb federal buildings, hijack airplanes, and so forth. Others just do unimportant things like smoke CRACK. Heh. Some of us do harmless things, but look like we're criminals (i'm a family man, really!).
Anyway, if IBM failed to identify one of their workers as being a terrorist, and then that worker blew up the building he worked in, IBM would be out a big chunk of change. They'd have a lot of dead employees on their hands, and a BIG PR disaster. But the trick is: How do you identify someone's a *insert unacceptable social behavior here*? More importantly, if someone is gay does it really impact the company all that much?
Sorry about the gay comments, I've been watching a bit of Python lately....
Remember when IBM was The Man? Not as in "You The Man", but as in "You've sold out to The Man, man!" The Evil Empire? Big, corporate, bad guys? Now, they love Linux, they don't snoop on employees, they fight SCO-style crap, and so on? When did they get all nice-nice?
It was either that or die, as I recall. They didn't have the greatest of times in the dot-boom.
In this, we add 3 steps. I'm not positive that this is a safer way to do it. The finding and capturing cargo portion of the second process is rather dangerous, or has the potential to be.
Specifically, in order to launch the shuttle with both humans and cargo, and have the thing be re-usable, you wind up with, well, the space shuttle. There are numerous engineering problems with this solution that can easily be solved by splitting up the two tasks. Splitting them up means that now you are dealing with well-defined and well-experimented areas, that of launching cargo, and that of launching people, as two separate problems. Simplify, then solve.
In exchange for this, you now have the added problem of rendezvousing with cargo in space. But you also have some added range, since you're not trying to pack both cargo and crew onto one rocket. Now you can actually throw the two separate beasts a lot higher (I think, I am not a rocket scientist).
The question is this: Is it a simpler problem to solve, that of rendezvousing with cargo, than the greater problem of having an all-purpose space shuttle? As a short-term measure, I think we'll actually see reliability increase with this sort of solution. In the long-term, I think that we will eventually build something that does work as an all-purpose shuttle. I don't think we had quite enough experience in the 70s when the shuttles were designed and built to fully solve the problem. Now we've learned from the shuttles, but I suspect there's still quite a bit left to learn.
That's a good idea, but first you will have to explain how to get a monosyllabic word out of "voip."
No problem. Use the French (er--Freedom) word "voi" with a p tacked on the end. Only problem there, it sounds too much like a violent phrase. "Don't voip me, I'll voip you."
Too mee it looks like many people don't have any faith in our judicial system any more, which is pretty sad when you think about how important these things are.
Sadder still are the people who are willing to ignore the problems in the judicial system rather than try to fix them. Faith will only blind you to the truth.
Now here's an interesting point - for firms that compete in the music biz, they generally want overall interest in music to increase, while not allowing their competitors to make more money than them. So what's to prevent someone outside the US, who has some stake in one of the firms (say as a shareholder) from scooping up material from the competitors, and making it available for download via P2P? There's an incentive there to freely distribute the competition's material, if you can get away with it...
Actually, considering how much file-sharing increases the number of people buying CDs and the number of CDs they buy, it makes good business sense to put your own mp3s on the networks and try to fake your competitors' CDs, or leave them alone. Music sharing specifically makes the RIAA the money they use to continue their campaign. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
there's been so many bad sci-fi shows on TV that maybe the audience in general feels sci-fi has little to offer. If you look at the latest crop of Sci-fi shows on TV, most of them suck. There was one good show on Showtime called Odyssey 5, but showtime cancelled the show. It might be a chicken and the egg problem, but there does seem to be a pattern.
The anonymous coward is right. TV is to blame for all of science fiction's woes. Ask why reality TV is so much more popular than the old sit-coms and fantasy land stories. The answer's the same. TV SUCKS. TV is the tree that grows off the root of all evil.
There are only so many ways you can go back and forth between the realm of flesh and the realm of magic and hump elven chicks(Though I must say elven chicks might use their magic to make positions impossible due to gravity possible;))
who wants to screw an elf, anyway? What's the point? Might as well go hump a tree. Worthless fucking elves. What good have they ever done for us? More importantly, what have they done that nobody else did with them? Smelfs, they are. Death to them all!
If religion did come into this (and I don't think it will), I think it would work against SCO big time. Why? Because the trial will certainly expose the jurors to all of SCO's myriad lies and self contradictions, and the notion that this is an elaborate pump-n-dump scheme will have to come up as well. If the jurors are LDS (keep in mind that if they're drawn from Salt Lake City, only about 30% of the population is LDS, and less than that are "active") and if they find out that McBride and the other SCO execs are LDS, they'll be even more intolerant of all of these shenanigans. Mormons are generally prepared to grant non-Mormons a fair amount of moral "latitude", but tend to get very angry in the face of blatant hypocrisy committed by one of their own.
Admiral Kirk: I think he did a little too much LDS.
Slashdot Mirror
BTW, is there anyone who would be interested in forwarding this to Linus or posting it on the LKML? I'd love to know what they think of this response, but I'm, uh, too shy - believe it or not - to intrude on their territory without an introduction.
My website is powered by a wiki, so go to the articles section and post it on my website. Failing that, send me aplaintext copy of it and I'll post it. When it's up, I'll spend a few minutes setting up FormMail to email copies to Darl or something, as other posters have suggested. It's not *that* hard.
Shame about the word 'fucking' even if it did drive the point home.
You don't like fucking? What's wrong with fucking? I thought fucking was America's favorite pasttime. I think you're a fucking loon for not liking fucking.
And I think Apple and others know this... ultimately, it will be all about service... not "songs". You will pay someone because they provide you the music you want, when you want.. and that is that. It will be so convenient to let htem do this, you won't bother hoarding a collection.
I've gotta say that one thing I really like about the direction society's going today is that it's becoming more and more focussed on service rather than product. We're not going to be consumers for much longer, it looks like. We'll be customers and clients again. It's no longer going to be about which albums sell the most, it's going to be about ticket sales, which require a good show to be consistent. It's not going to be about software off the shelf, or downloaded. It's going to be about who provides the service to help you get the most ROI (ROI applies to non-commercial home users as much as it applies to businesses).
About as happy as the women when they got their 'pythons' home as well...
I guarantee you those women were happier with pythons than they ever would have been with perls.
The new digital era really makes the publishers -- the middlemen -- mreo and more marginal. It becomes possible for the artist/author to distribute their work without the publisher.
First, I will grant you that it is a helluva lot easier to copy and distribute shit with computers over the internet. However,
HARD DRIVE SPACE AIN'T FREE.
It is cheap. However, I needed to spend $120 to get a 60GB hard drive (a year ago or so) to store my movies on my computer so that I could put the DVDs away from the kids. For music, hard drive space is really cheap. It's going about $1/GB last time I checked, and 1 GB will hold 204.8 5MB files (mp3s or oggs). That's about 20 albums worth of space, for $1. I'll bet that's close to what CDs cost wholesale, or on large print runs. You can buy blank CDRs at about $1/10, at Costco (probably other places, Costco isn't cheapest on computer stuff). Now I'm burning the .avi files off onto CDRs because I don't have enough room on the hard drive, and the kids have learned that if they play with the CDs, they will destroy the movies (lost two already like that).
The main reason digital books haven't taken off more is because there is no decent digital display as good as a book. PDA screens are too small. PCs & PDAs are too fragile, too heavy and too expensive. Most people don't want to sit in front of a monitor to read a book. Once a decent device for this is created, the publishers are going to really start their death screams...
I have to disagree with this. I think there are many contributing factors to digital books not taking off. One of them is that when you have a digital book, you expect to be able to read it on ay computer you own. This is not so, however. You give the publisher a unique identifier and they use it to generate a key to unlock your copy, and that's the end of the transaction. Also, digital book formats are not standardized, there are several. I've had 3 separate programs on my Clie just to read books. Buying an eBook is not a simple process. If they really want to make money, they'd make it as simple as buying a book. Give someone $5, take home a book, read it anywhere. But software developers have to all agree on a file format that the publishers like, and support it. How about plain text? :)
Finally, Baen is one publisher that is doing its job to lead the publishing industry into the next generation, and I fully intend to purchase more books from them, as soon as I've read the free library to filter out the good authors from the rest. I look forward to other publishers following Baen's example, or dying. HOpefully Del Rey won't die, last I checked they were still one of the best sci-fi publishers.
The statistics that you quoted indicate that (absent further details) sales should be up. More people said that they were spending more than said that they were spending less.
But sales are down.
Now, how does that support the position that because more file sharers said that they were spending more, that sales to file sharers should be up?
You're avoiding a certain fact. The surveys I provided were all old, for the most part. One was from 2000, one was even earlier, iirc. Only one or two were recent. Several of the articles used more empirical data than "studies" (I question studies a fair amount myself, thing is, RIAA haven't showed "studies" that I know of, they've only shown gross sales and ignored the other factors that influence that number).
Yes, record sales are down this year. They're down even sharper than last year. They've been continuing on a downward trend that started right before the stock market crash of '01, right about when the stock market itself starting to turn around and head back down. The RIAA is as much a victim of the economy as the rest of us, moreso since they refuse to treat their customers with respect and service. IBM came close to running into the mud, partly because of how they treated their customers. We're seeing Microsoft doing the same (Of course, there's only one place for them to go anyway). The RIAA is going down as well.
Fact is, you can't point to one thing as the sole source of the RIAA's problems. There are many factors. Look at the variety of music they've produced the last couple of years, eh? Pulp, mostly. Mostly a bunch of chicks'n'dudes meant to replace Britney Spears and 'N Sync. Listen to the radio. Classic Rock stations are on the rise these days, because people are sick of Britney Spears and her copies, and her being a copy. In our economy where a person can reasonably expect to only be able to buy one or two CDs a month, they have to choose very carefully. Indy labels are thriving more than ever before. If piracy was so rampant, would there be so many indies out there? Wouldn't they be dropping like flies? (Well, they might be, businesses in general are dropping like flies right now)
I answered your questions. If you want to be in denial and take your moral stance, that's fine. I'm through talking, though. It's time for you to use your own mind, look for the information I've told you is out there (I already did your research once for you). Hear the other sides of the stories. Don't take what's given! I certainly don't do that. Of course 3 studies and numerous analysis, and that's all I turned up in 5 minutes of googling. Put an hour into it, and I'm sure you'll collect a LOT more useful information than I've given. Don't take the FUD from the RIAA, but don't take the FUD from me, either. Make up your own mind on it, but do it with real information. All that I've proven is that the information is out there, for anybody who really cares to find out what's going on.
In the meantime, don't bring your high horse over to me.
Uhm.... WHAT??? While that would certainly be a nice thing, if it were true, there doesn't exist a single shred of evidence to support your ridiculous claim. Actually, there's a pile of (admitedly empirical) evidence suggesting the exact opposite.
I thought I had replied to this already, but I don't see the post. Read my other reply to another poster asking for cites for a LONG list of stuff I found in 5 minutes' worth of Googling.
I mention this because I can't help but notice that among non-leechers, 19% say they spend more, and 10% say less, but, fuck me with a haddock, CD sales are down.
Now, you explain how this can be so. I mean, you have actual statistics!
Several things. I do not have handy links, but I found the others through googling, so I'll let you do this one. :) (I assure you I've read this stuff in so-called reputable internet publications, so it is available if you look for it)
Face it, people don't like being called thieves, and the RIAA have way over-extended themselves, and in turn the labels they "protect" by going waaaaaay out of their way to label all music-buyers as thieves, and pretty much anybody connected to the internet. Personally, I'm boycotting them, and I sincerely hope others join me. They'll keep yelling about piracy, and we'll keep yelling "Quit treating us like criminals, and we might consider doing business with you again." Sooner or later, we'll be heard, and the RIAA won't be able to claim piracy much longer. It'll be obvious to everyone what's happening to them.
If you look around even harder than I did, you'll turn up reports that show that during Napster's heyday, RIAA-protected labels' music sales was actually peaking at the highest levels they've ever hit. I've read so many articles about this subject, so they should be readily available on Google. You might also try the internet archive, who just got keyword searching.
When a heavy metal band makes up a name, umlauts are allowed to be added to normally unaccented words
Actually, that's just cheesy hair bands, like Queensryche, Motley Crue, and Motorhead.
No, BSD has too many daemons...
IN my house, with all the kids there and all, BSD stands for Big Shitty Diaper.
Actually, IBM was booming along with the rest, although at a slower pace (as you'd expect from a blue chip). You're right about the "either that or die", but that was a few years before the boom; IBM had recovered and was growing nicely by the time the boom hit.
Actually, it was during the boom that IBM had to lay off a bunch of people, and cut pension plans and benefits and so forth. My mother-in-law works there, and she was upset at what IBM was doing to her. Of course, she didn't have any idea that they were doing what they needed to survive at that point, and she's damn lucky to still have a job with them, considering she doesn't produce anything. She's a tech writer.
It seems to me that corporations have a right to know a great deal about their employees' private lives after investing all that money in them.
Um, no. All a company has to worry about is whether or not the person can do the job in a manner that meets company standards, and whether they'll be able to continue doing it for the long-term. You see, I agree that a company has a certain stake in their employees being criminals, but only because that means the employee may not be around long. He might instead be in prison. Yeah, you want to hire honest people, not thieves, typically. But just because I've spent a ton of money on someone I just hired does not give me the right to pry/meddle into his life.
I think it is reasonable for the work place to relize you have a life outside of work, and sometimes the to cross.
That's a huge gay area. I mean, grey area. You see, the problem is that some people use their out-of-work activities to bomb federal buildings, hijack airplanes, and so forth. Others just do unimportant things like smoke CRACK. Heh. Some of us do harmless things, but look like we're criminals (i'm a family man, really!).
Anyway, if IBM failed to identify one of their workers as being a terrorist, and then that worker blew up the building he worked in, IBM would be out a big chunk of change. They'd have a lot of dead employees on their hands, and a BIG PR disaster. But the trick is: How do you identify someone's a *insert unacceptable social behavior here*? More importantly, if someone is gay does it really impact the company all that much?
Sorry about the gay comments, I've been watching a bit of Python lately....
Remember when IBM was The Man? Not as in "You The Man", but as in "You've sold out to The Man, man!" The Evil Empire? Big, corporate, bad guys? Now, they love Linux, they don't snoop on employees, they fight SCO-style crap, and so on? When did they get all nice-nice?
It was either that or die, as I recall. They didn't have the greatest of times in the dot-boom.
Could you provide links to substantiate your claims of increased music sales linked to P2P piracy? Thanks.
Here's a start
More on the Ipso-Reid study covered here. The original study isn't available through their website, unless you look a lot harder than I did.
Here's more on the Jupiter study
Still more
Liebowitz writes about it, but his only purpose was to conclude that filesharing doesn't hurt the music business.
ZDNet reports on what is probably the same Jupiter study
This article sits right in the middle of the issue, but certainly hints at an Odyssey study supporting my point.
Here's a study about studies
This came out during the height of the Metallica fight against Napster
You can google for more if you're not satisfied with these. :)
In this, we add 3 steps. I'm not positive that this is a safer way to do it. The finding and capturing cargo portion of the second process is rather dangerous, or has the potential to be.
Specifically, in order to launch the shuttle with both humans and cargo, and have the thing be re-usable, you wind up with, well, the space shuttle. There are numerous engineering problems with this solution that can easily be solved by splitting up the two tasks. Splitting them up means that now you are dealing with well-defined and well-experimented areas, that of launching cargo, and that of launching people, as two separate problems. Simplify, then solve.
In exchange for this, you now have the added problem of rendezvousing with cargo in space. But you also have some added range, since you're not trying to pack both cargo and crew onto one rocket. Now you can actually throw the two separate beasts a lot higher (I think, I am not a rocket scientist).
The question is this: Is it a simpler problem to solve, that of rendezvousing with cargo, than the greater problem of having an all-purpose space shuttle? As a short-term measure, I think we'll actually see reliability increase with this sort of solution. In the long-term, I think that we will eventually build something that does work as an all-purpose shuttle. I don't think we had quite enough experience in the 70s when the shuttles were designed and built to fully solve the problem. Now we've learned from the shuttles, but I suspect there's still quite a bit left to learn.
That's a good idea, but first you will have to explain how to get a monosyllabic word out of "voip."
No problem. Use the French (er--Freedom) word "voi" with a p tacked on the end. Only problem there, it sounds too much like a violent phrase. "Don't voip me, I'll voip you."
Too mee it looks like many people don't have any faith in our judicial system any more, which is pretty sad when you think about how important these things are.
Sadder still are the people who are willing to ignore the problems in the judicial system rather than try to fix them. Faith will only blind you to the truth.
Now here's an interesting point - for firms that compete in the music biz, they generally want overall interest in music to increase, while not allowing their competitors to make more money than them. So what's to prevent someone outside the US, who has some stake in one of the firms (say as a shareholder) from scooping up material from the competitors, and making it available for download via P2P? There's an incentive there to freely distribute the competition's material, if you can get away with it...
Actually, considering how much file-sharing increases the number of people buying CDs and the number of CDs they buy, it makes good business sense to put your own mp3s on the networks and try to fake your competitors' CDs, or leave them alone. Music sharing specifically makes the RIAA the money they use to continue their campaign. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
there's been so many bad sci-fi shows on TV that maybe the audience in general feels sci-fi has little to offer. If you look at the latest crop of Sci-fi shows on TV, most of them suck. There was one good show on Showtime called Odyssey 5, but showtime cancelled the show. It might be a chicken and the egg problem, but there does seem to be a pattern.
The anonymous coward is right. TV is to blame for all of science fiction's woes. Ask why reality TV is so much more popular than the old sit-coms and fantasy land stories. The answer's the same. TV SUCKS. TV is the tree that grows off the root of all evil.
Did you watch "the matrix"?
No, the question is, did you watch the matrix?
In soviet russia, Matrix watches YOU.
There are only so many ways you can go back and forth between the realm of flesh and the realm of magic and hump elven chicks(Though I must say elven chicks might use their magic to make positions impossible due to gravity possible ;))
who wants to screw an elf, anyway? What's the point? Might as well go hump a tree. Worthless fucking elves. What good have they ever done for us? More importantly, what have they done that nobody else did with them? Smelfs, they are. Death to them all!
If religion did come into this (and I don't think it will), I think it would work against SCO big time. Why? Because the trial will certainly expose the jurors to all of SCO's myriad lies and self contradictions, and the notion that this is an elaborate pump-n-dump scheme will have to come up as well. If the jurors are LDS (keep in mind that if they're drawn from Salt Lake City, only about 30% of the population is LDS, and less than that are "active") and if they find out that McBride and the other SCO execs are LDS, they'll be even more intolerant of all of these shenanigans. Mormons are generally prepared to grant non-Mormons a fair amount of moral "latitude", but tend to get very angry in the face of blatant hypocrisy committed by one of their own.
Admiral Kirk: I think he did a little too much LDS.
When you see roadkill on the road, don't you feel tempted to poke it with a pointy stick?
NO!!!! That is revolting!
I roast it up for dinner. Shouldn't go wastin' good meat by pokin' at it...
Dude, you're sick. Roadkill meat is nasty. OTOH, everyone knows that the safest possible sex is sex with roadkill.
Melinda French Gates
Dontcha mean Melinda Freedom Gates?