There's no mechanism for physiological addiction. In most cases, I'd say the tech doesn't even create the same brain opiate rush that activities like gambling do. What, should products come with a warning that they're too fun?
Problem isn't the stuff, it's the people with obsessive personality issues.
The GIMP might be very powerful and feature packed, but the learning curve to get into it is cliff shaped. That makes for a vey significant barrier for newbies.
Most people don't want to do hugely complex photoshopping, just remove red eye from phots and a few other simple effects.
GIMP isn't a program designed for people who want to just remove some red eye from photos. For that matter, Photoshop would be exceptionally overpriced and overly complicated for that as well. Photoshop is a tool designed for professionals and highly skilled amateurs, and the GIMP replicates many of those features.
People who want to mess with simple stuff can get Picasa for free, from Google.
I personally think that the GIMP's major problem is that it's interface is different from Photoshop, which is a problem given its target audience is Photoshop users. I would claim that it's not more complicated than Photoshop, just different. I learned GIMP first and found Photoshop awkward to use.
They didn't agree to host them, they requested that the missiles be moved there.
Uh huh, says Pravda. Probably had nothing to do with massive Soviet assistance that drove the Cuban economy for decades.
1) The Ag-lobby isn't particularly strong (certainly not, when compared to, say, the French Ag lobby).
It's pretty strong in the US compared to the pro-Cuba lobby, which is the only comparison that matters.
2) The problem is cheap sugar, not cheap rice.
It's cheap everything, really. The role that sugar plays varies, and now it would certainly be on the upswing since it could be made into ethanol more easily than corn. Expect the ag lobby to push to further the current policy of *selling* food to Cuba, but buying nothing.
Under treaty, so long as we have trade relations with them, they get subidized access into the US market.
What treaty would that be? Right now, they get NO access into the US market. I'm sure that any agreement resulting in renormalization of trade would make any trade agreement dating from the early 1900s null.
This is one of those treaties, like the one that gives us basing rights in Gitmo, that both sides must agree to drop for either to escape.
The Castro regime doesn't generally recognize any agreements created by their predecessors. Particularly property of capitalist nations on Cuba, considering they nationalized the assets of many a US corporation. The reason we still have Gitmo, I think, is that trying to capture it would have legitimized the full-scale invasion that many in the Pentagon (among others) were itching to start. And as I recall, the Soviets weren't interested in a full-scale war with the US over Cuba, so hostile action on the part of Cuba was something they weren't willing to back up - the same approach both Russia and China took with North Korea years earlier. They were willing to help defend, but not suport an attack. So in other words, the reason we have Gitmo today without firing a shot is due to stalemate, not any agreement.
Remind me again... why is the U.S. mad at them? France has pulled worse shitball stunts against you than Cuba has.
Well, agreeing to host Soviet missiles around 1960 would qualify as a seriously shitball stunt. Still, that was 40-some years ago. You want the real reason? It all started when Castro pissed off the mob who ran the casinos in Havana, who just happened to be Kennedy's buddies. Lately, there's a certain amount of face-saving that prevents normalization of relations with Castro, as well as the exceptionally strong agriculture lobby in the US which really doesn't want to see a flood of cheap rice on the US market.
Nevermind France, how the shit have we gotten more friendly with *Qaddafi* in Libya? (replace with spelling of your choice).
I'm skeptical about these statistics: 500 tumour patients and 1300 control subjects can't really support a probability of 0.003% and 0.0045% for each outcome, can they? I reckon that these numbers are less likely than the false-positive error for their data set.
Nevermind the lack of a compelling mechanism for DNA damage via low power non-ionizing radiation.
The problem is that med school types take just enough chemistry to pass the MCAT. The stuff they need to realize the inanity of these studies comes in the upper level courses.
And I think the ISPs would be very happy to do that, too--after all, if the Phonographers have no internet connection, they can't go searching for people to cut the connections of--and if they can't find anyone to cut off, the ISP can't be sued if the Phonographers are wrong.
Now that's funny. You know, there's always the possibility that you call up there and get a BOFH that's just *really* pissed at his client at that particular time.;)
I'd love to read a "BOFH works at the record company's ISP" entry.
Find out what ISP the Phonographic Institute uses, and file a complaint that they're violating my copyright. According to that logic, the ISP must then disconnect them.
Not quite. The ability to disconnect is still up to the discretion of the ISP. However, the ISP rightly fears that the record companies won't be doing a whole lot of due diligence in eliminating false alarms, and that with the crapflood of requests the ISP won't be able to either. But I don't think you'll have success in calling the Phono group's ISP and getting them disconnected, as satisfying as it may be.
The ISPs' request is a fair one. Basicaly, they're saying that if you want us to do your dirty work, you better indemnify us against the results. Otherwise, you assholes can get a court order before we do anything.
Today's games require dual analog controllers and about 27 buttons. A decent joystick set that has all that functionality does exist - but it's primarily relegated to the flight sim community.
To have dual analog controllers in a large form factor, you'd have to have the joysticks mounted on something sturdy. Recall that back in Atari days, you used your weak hand to stabilize the thing while controlling it with your dominant hand. With two sticks, you'd need a base. And that would be big and not very mobile. And you'd still have to have some design where you could easily press all the buttons without moving your hands. Again, like a flight sim system, but those are very expensive.
So basically, the joystick got shrunk and put on a handheld controller.
If you have to relocate to international waters, and you have a choice of tropical paradise or freezing your ass off somewhere in tbe North Atlantic, that's not a really tough call.
Also, from a practical standpoint, there's just a ton of countries bordering on the Gulf/Caribbean and finding one sympathetic to your plight (or more likely, one who will take some of your money in exchange for looking the other way) shouldn't be hard. On the other hand, in the North Atlantic or in the Pacific offshore of the US all you've got is Canadia and Mexico, our good NAFTA buddies who wouldn't foster such shenanigans. At least, not for the relatively paltry sums that spammers have at their disposal (compared to, say, oil companies).
That's not always true in a great many cases. Much research is sponsored by companies or private institutions. And if you think publically funded equates to free public access in this country, go try to stay a night in the White House.
The reviewers work for free. They add literally no value besides their name.
That's true, but it editing and production costs aren't free. Additionally, many, many of the journals published by professional societies (nonprofit groups) are used to make money for use in education. So a great many charitable programs will be hit by this, which is something most people who ignorantly weigh in on this don't know.
And in science what really matters is the quality of your research, not the name attached to it.
Christ, is that naive. I'll trust you aren't a scientist.
and everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves. I'll be glad to see them go the way of the buggy whip makers.
They won't. Harvard will lose this one if they try to press it.
I think what this deal represents is much more than that. Organized labor has managed to mount an effective protest against executive management and work out a deal that favors both parties. That's the first time that's happened in awhile.
Not what I saw. Seems to me the writers decided to draw their line in the sand, went on strike, let the studios cancel a lot of unfavorable (to the studios) production deals. Then, the writers withdrew their important demands, and accepted a me-too settlement similar to what the Directors' Guild accomplished with no strike.
The writers' leadership was a mess for the early part of the strike, and they didn't consider the fact that blowing up a lot of deals was really in the studios' best interest. As far as I can tell, they didn't pry anything from the studios that they didn't expect to give up anyway.
So all in all, I see this as a big defeat for the writers. Internet distribution wasn't the big deal in this negotiation; both sides knew that would need to be addressed. The big deal is that reality TV and voice-over animation didn't come under the WGA tent. That was the big deal, because it would have given the studios nothing to fall back on for programming during future strikes. By giving up on that issue, they've killed their bargaining power for future strikes. Just like they had little in this strike, because the studios were only too happy to throw out a parade of reality shows.
I think their theory is that journals that don't allow this will have to change their policy, as they wouldn't want to lose out on publishing articles from Harvard profs.
Ah, good old fashioned Harvard arrogance. Let's see how long this lasts. In my field, the number of decent journals I can think of that allow open access and reproduction could be counted on the fingers of one hand. After playing with a live hand grenade.
Meanwhile, the movies mentioned in the article all come with a "blu-ray disc" logo on them, despite there being two distinctly different formats involved. That's misleading advertising, and I hope he wins his case. You can't create a so-called standard and then say "whoops, need to change a few things here, sucks to be you if you were an early adopter!" I understand that the bleeding edge sometimes cuts, but that's usually a result of bugs in the players or the manufacturing process, not because some idiot changed the specs of the format!
If that's the case, then I await with glee for whenever they try to close the "analog hole" in HDMI-equipped TVs with DRM-crippled signals, as has been reported.
A 15 year old going with a 13 year old is not paedophilia. At that a 50 year old going with a mature 13 year old is not paedophilia. While in our culture it is not right, lots of cultures it is more normal.
Yes, in repressive cultures in which it is legal to own women, it's common to see 50-year-old men with 13 year old women. In societies in which women have the right to vote and aren't treated as property, not so much.
A 50 year old hitting on a 13 year old is definitely a dirtbag.
A 13 year old going with a 10 year old is paedophilia, just as much as 50 year old going with a 10 year old.
While still pretty gross, that's not even in the same ballpark.
What I care about was that when I tried to install it on my desktop, the video went into about 1000 tiny vertical green bars.
Go back and read the end of my post, I fully acknowledge that for Linux to win, it has to be sold OEM on new machines. If my argument is that people won't even install off-the-shelf software anymore, they sure as shit aren't installing a new OS. So forget that.
And yes, this was Unbutu 7.10. They desperately need a better name btw.
Apparently they've changed it "Ubuntu."
Linux doesn't 'Just work' out of the box and I can't use any of my applications on it. I'm too lazy to spend my time screwing around with that crap. Just let me play my Orange Box damnit. Till Linux can do that, it'll stay off any PC I actually ever use.
That's fine. The target market for the Linux desktop is, paradoxically, people who are more lazy than you, and less lazy than you. You're in that no-man's-land of people who can buy and install software but can't be bothered to troubleshoot. Increasingly though, people don't buy software. They use web apps (work fine on Linux) or use what comes on their computer.
So rework your argument for people who buy a PC pre-loaded with Linux and don't bother installing shrinkwrap software. There are college kids who have gotten sick of fixing their parents' computers, installed a linux distro that looks just like Windows...and their parents never even noticed. Point is, if people don't actually have to install Linux, the user experience is pretty much what you'd expect from Windows, as long as you don't install software. And most people dont.
One way they are posting all the content for the world to see, the other they are blocking content from many so that a repressive government can keep their people ignorant.
Yeah, except that's wrong. That first way would have gotten Google completely blocked in China, which you should recall unless you've been living in a cave. So the balance is actually "one way the Chinese people get 0% of Google, the other way the Chinese people get 99% of Google." See how that's not as simple as you want it to be anymore?
And you compare this to the washing of hands of Pilate?
You're quick.
Are you personally sending information about the Tiananmen square massacre to every citizen in China?
I have, in fact, personally shared information about the Tiananmen massacre with a Chinese citizen who was unaware of its existence. Have you? Next question.
If not, you are just as 'guilty' of hiding information from them as Yahoo would be for posting content to the world while, knowing it might get blocked by the Chinese government's firewall.
That doesn't even make sense as an analogy, let alone make sense as a reasonable comparison. Here's two problems with it: 1) They didn't block the information to the entire world, just China, so no one else is worse for lacking the information. 2) under either scenario, Chinese people aren't finding information about the massacre. At least now they get access to some other information. Under your 'plan', you'd take the moral high ground, wash your hands just like Pontus Pilate, and in the end the Chinese people get no access to any information at all.
The question is which has more value - information about topics other than the Tiananmen square massacre, or your moral high horse? As a matter of net benefit, some Google is better than no Google, and from the Chinese people's perspective I'd have to imagine that benefit far outweighs your principles.
This particular topic is a perfect kool-aid test that separates pragmatists from naive idealists.
...if the Chinese government has to support this case under the law, who do they fine?
Not sure what you mean. The Chinese government's not involved. Suit is in the US.
Mr Guo said that he could not sue Google or Yahoo! in China since they have no formal legal identity, but he would press his lawsuits against the parent companies in the United States.
If China blocks your engine, the Chinese government is the one doing the evil. You aren't.
When you filter content to keep secret anything a corrupt government doesn't want their citizens to see, in order to pacify the government and make money from the countries business, you are doing evil.
It's real simple.
It's just that subtle distinction that would make Pontus Pilate proud. Screw what's actually best for the people, as long as *you* didn't do anything directly wrong, you can sleep at night.
The world's nowhere near as simple as you'd like it to be.
I shout this from the rooftops everytime this comes up: PEOPLE USE APPLICATIONS, NOT OPERATING SYSTEMS.
The other side of that is that while people use applications, the operating system can break that experience. I think more people are starting to get sick of the spyware and virus slowdowns, and your average person doesn't know how to fix that so they buy a new computer when it 'gets slow'.
Also...most of those applications are web browsers, document editors, and the like. Good versions of these exist for Linux. So at the point where the applications are pretty much the same, even a non-technical user can see value in going with the system that's not going to crap out on them.
People don't to figure anything out, they just want to buy a damn box and load it on.
That was true 10 years ago. Now people don't want to buy the box. They want their computer to come with all the useful stuff they want. That's why Mac adoption rates are skyrocketing. And Linux distros are getting far better about including stuff people want to use, with native apps that are, in most cases, better than what ships with Windows.
See, that's the funny part now - people are getting so lazy and expect so much from the computer that software compatibility is becoming less and less of an issue. So there really is a significant opportunity for Linux to be used by 'regular people.' Only caveat is it needs to come pre-installed on their computer.
They would have to create one corp for each bogus-patent in case they lose!
Don't think so. Until they try to market the thing, nobody could claim damages against them, so I don't see a legal reason the same company couldn't make a bunch of the.
And if they loose, they would then have to prove that that loosing corp is not the EFF itself.
Nothing to prove. It would be a separate company that so happens to have a lot of the same members. Hell, a lot of nonprofits do the same.
I think what is really eating at me here is that my usage patterns are being blamed for Time Warner's crummy business model.
Oh yeah, that argument sucks. And why? Because all their competitors have the same problems. So either they're making up a bogeyman, or the entire ISP business is going down the tubes. Which I doubt. Unless their real issue is they're using their cable presence to defend their media side. Which would be a really dumb idea. So buck up, assholes!
And I do agree with your general point - the internet will continue to be used more. Not less. And increasingly by "legal" traffic. If you do right and keep increasing capacity, and make a service people WANT TO USE, you can do really well in the market. Shouldn't you be able to make more money by catering to the real bandwidth hogs? Especially the young twenty- and thirty-somethings with good jobs who are tech-savvy.
On the other hand, they're happy to sell me internet service using the same pipes, but when I watch all the Netflix I want, that's suddenly a problem, and I'm spoiling it for everyone else - that's really the crux of my ill will toward TWC in all this.
I'm not seeing the blame angle at all, because nobody's a bad person for legally using their connection however they want. Even if you ignore the pirates, legal bandwidth usage will eventually outstrip capacity. They just need to build enough infrastructure to handle the traffic. Now the question is who pays for that...and naturally I argue that it should be the bandwidth hogs necessitating the infrastructure. I think the providers getting a lot of pushback from people who just don't want to pay more to get more. Sorry for lumping you in with that crowd, because you've made better arguments than that against TWC. But in making that argument of tiered pricing, they need to keep it fair. If they do, I think most consumers will respond well.
You make a good point that TV sucks up that bandwidth too, but I don't think they're using their TV service as a loss leader. If anything, it should be the reverse since they have even less competition in the TV market than ISP. So I do have to imagine that they'll pass on necessary costs to their TV customers too. The other side is whether their TV customers end up A) having to eat cost increases borne by necessary infrastructure driven by internet, and B) whether the picture quality goes down as they jack up the compression. I can say for sure, I notice a whole lot more compression on the cheap-o channels like Home and Garden, compared to ESPN among others. I hadn't thought about the link between that and internet usage until now.
If they'd just fess up and admit that they want to make money off the pipes AND get a cut of everything that travels through it
Well, now that's another issue, that of traffic shaping or network neutrality. Tiered pricing for consumers should be a pure per-bit and/or bit/second charge. If they want to cripple certain sites that don't play ball with them when I'm paying for the connection, I'm really not OK with that. Unless they do it to give me free internet. So that one's actually my hot button issue - I'm buying the pipe, those assholes better keep their grubby hands off of what's in it.
As it is now, my first reaction to their crocodile tears is to tell them to cram their Scientific Atlanta cable boxes where the sun don't shine, and find a business model that works in the 21st century.
Please, you're making me twitch as I watch my glitchy as hell, crash five times a day Scientific Atlanta DVR. Man, those guys make crap.
Thanks for bearing with my under-caffeinated posts this morning.
Not at all, I'm pretty rough before I get my caffeine too. In fact, that was probably part of the problem, two cranky assholes on caffeine withdrawal! I understand a little better that your attack on TWC is more an indictment on their behavior in totality, and I couldn't agree more. I cried a bit when I realized that my new house had a big stand of trees facing south. No more DirecTV. Hello ComCrap!
If you just wait a year, then sue everyone, no one will be able to challange the patent. You could even say for the first year it is free, so no one can claim financial damage. After that, no one can challange the patent.
I think you're reading it wrong. For the first year, anyone can claim harm. After that, only those financially harmed (ie, sued, or otherwise prevented from competing) could claim harm. So it's bad, just not quite that bad.
Still, how does one prevent the EFF folks from starting a sister corporation who creates a prototype of a potentially infringing device and claiming 'harm' since they can't sell it? They could make a cheap-o prototype that intentionally infringes on each patent they want to kill, then file suit.
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There's no mechanism for physiological addiction. In most cases, I'd say the tech doesn't even create the same brain opiate rush that activities like gambling do. What, should products come with a warning that they're too fun?
Problem isn't the stuff, it's the people with obsessive personality issues.
The GIMP might be very powerful and feature packed, but the learning curve to get into it is cliff shaped. That makes for a vey significant barrier for newbies. Most people don't want to do hugely complex photoshopping, just remove red eye from phots and a few other simple effects.
GIMP isn't a program designed for people who want to just remove some red eye from photos. For that matter, Photoshop would be exceptionally overpriced and overly complicated for that as well. Photoshop is a tool designed for professionals and highly skilled amateurs, and the GIMP replicates many of those features.
People who want to mess with simple stuff can get Picasa for free, from Google.
I personally think that the GIMP's major problem is that it's interface is different from Photoshop, which is a problem given its target audience is Photoshop users. I would claim that it's not more complicated than Photoshop, just different. I learned GIMP first and found Photoshop awkward to use.
You can get an even better effect by not going to class.
They didn't agree to host them, they requested that the missiles be moved there.
Uh huh, says Pravda. Probably had nothing to do with massive Soviet assistance that drove the Cuban economy for decades.
1) The Ag-lobby isn't particularly strong (certainly not, when compared to, say, the French Ag lobby).
It's pretty strong in the US compared to the pro-Cuba lobby, which is the only comparison that matters.
2) The problem is cheap sugar, not cheap rice.
It's cheap everything, really. The role that sugar plays varies, and now it would certainly be on the upswing since it could be made into ethanol more easily than corn. Expect the ag lobby to push to further the current policy of *selling* food to Cuba, but buying nothing.
Under treaty, so long as we have trade relations with them, they get subidized access into the US market.
What treaty would that be? Right now, they get NO access into the US market. I'm sure that any agreement resulting in renormalization of trade would make any trade agreement dating from the early 1900s null.
This is one of those treaties, like the one that gives us basing rights in Gitmo, that both sides must agree to drop for either to escape.
The Castro regime doesn't generally recognize any agreements created by their predecessors. Particularly property of capitalist nations on Cuba, considering they nationalized the assets of many a US corporation. The reason we still have Gitmo, I think, is that trying to capture it would have legitimized the full-scale invasion that many in the Pentagon (among others) were itching to start. And as I recall, the Soviets weren't interested in a full-scale war with the US over Cuba, so hostile action on the part of Cuba was something they weren't willing to back up - the same approach both Russia and China took with North Korea years earlier. They were willing to help defend, but not suport an attack. So in other words, the reason we have Gitmo today without firing a shot is due to stalemate, not any agreement.
Remind me again... why is the U.S. mad at them? France has pulled worse shitball stunts against you than Cuba has.
Well, agreeing to host Soviet missiles around 1960 would qualify as a seriously shitball stunt. Still, that was 40-some years ago. You want the real reason? It all started when Castro pissed off the mob who ran the casinos in Havana, who just happened to be Kennedy's buddies. Lately, there's a certain amount of face-saving that prevents normalization of relations with Castro, as well as the exceptionally strong agriculture lobby in the US which really doesn't want to see a flood of cheap rice on the US market.
Nevermind France, how the shit have we gotten more friendly with *Qaddafi* in Libya? (replace with spelling of your choice).
I'm skeptical about these statistics: 500 tumour patients and 1300 control subjects can't really support a probability of 0.003% and 0.0045% for each outcome, can they? I reckon that these numbers are less likely than the false-positive error for their data set.
Nevermind the lack of a compelling mechanism for DNA damage via low power non-ionizing radiation.
The problem is that med school types take just enough chemistry to pass the MCAT. The stuff they need to realize the inanity of these studies comes in the upper level courses.
And I think the ISPs would be very happy to do that, too--after all, if the Phonographers have no internet connection, they can't go searching for people to cut the connections of--and if they can't find anyone to cut off, the ISP can't be sued if the Phonographers are wrong.
Now that's funny. You know, there's always the possibility that you call up there and get a BOFH that's just *really* pissed at his client at that particular time. ;)
I'd love to read a "BOFH works at the record company's ISP" entry.
Find out what ISP the Phonographic Institute uses, and file a complaint that they're violating my copyright. According to that logic, the ISP must then disconnect them.
Not quite. The ability to disconnect is still up to the discretion of the ISP. However, the ISP rightly fears that the record companies won't be doing a whole lot of due diligence in eliminating false alarms, and that with the crapflood of requests the ISP won't be able to either. But I don't think you'll have success in calling the Phono group's ISP and getting them disconnected, as satisfying as it may be.
The ISPs' request is a fair one. Basicaly, they're saying that if you want us to do your dirty work, you better indemnify us against the results. Otherwise, you assholes can get a court order before we do anything.
I hereby copyright Trolling. Nobody is allowed to troll without my permission. License fees start at 100 BILLION dollars.
Sorry punk. You can only copyright your own troll posts. Provided the act of trolling weren't patented, which it is, by me.
My lawyers will be in touch.
Sincerely,
Mr. Underbridge
Resident Troll
Today's games require dual analog controllers and about 27 buttons. A decent joystick set that has all that functionality does exist - but it's primarily relegated to the flight sim community.
To have dual analog controllers in a large form factor, you'd have to have the joysticks mounted on something sturdy. Recall that back in Atari days, you used your weak hand to stabilize the thing while controlling it with your dominant hand. With two sticks, you'd need a base. And that would be big and not very mobile. And you'd still have to have some design where you could easily press all the buttons without moving your hands. Again, like a flight sim system, but those are very expensive.
So basically, the joystick got shrunk and put on a handheld controller.
What is it about spammers and tropical areas?
If you have to relocate to international waters, and you have a choice of tropical paradise or freezing your ass off somewhere in tbe North Atlantic, that's not a really tough call.
Also, from a practical standpoint, there's just a ton of countries bordering on the Gulf/Caribbean and finding one sympathetic to your plight (or more likely, one who will take some of your money in exchange for looking the other way) shouldn't be hard. On the other hand, in the North Atlantic or in the Pacific offshore of the US all you've got is Canadia and Mexico, our good NAFTA buddies who wouldn't foster such shenanigans. At least, not for the relatively paltry sums that spammers have at their disposal (compared to, say, oil companies).
The research is paid for by tax payer dollars.
That's not always true in a great many cases. Much research is sponsored by companies or private institutions. And if you think publically funded equates to free public access in this country, go try to stay a night in the White House.
The reviewers work for free. They add literally no value besides their name.
That's true, but it editing and production costs aren't free. Additionally, many, many of the journals published by professional societies (nonprofit groups) are used to make money for use in education. So a great many charitable programs will be hit by this, which is something most people who ignorantly weigh in on this don't know.
And in science what really matters is the quality of your research, not the name attached to it.
Christ, is that naive. I'll trust you aren't a scientist.
and everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves. I'll be glad to see them go the way of the buggy whip makers.
They won't. Harvard will lose this one if they try to press it.
I think what this deal represents is much more than that. Organized labor has managed to mount an effective protest against executive management and work out a deal that favors both parties. That's the first time that's happened in awhile.
Not what I saw. Seems to me the writers decided to draw their line in the sand, went on strike, let the studios cancel a lot of unfavorable (to the studios) production deals. Then, the writers withdrew their important demands, and accepted a me-too settlement similar to what the Directors' Guild accomplished with no strike.
The writers' leadership was a mess for the early part of the strike, and they didn't consider the fact that blowing up a lot of deals was really in the studios' best interest. As far as I can tell, they didn't pry anything from the studios that they didn't expect to give up anyway.
So all in all, I see this as a big defeat for the writers. Internet distribution wasn't the big deal in this negotiation; both sides knew that would need to be addressed. The big deal is that reality TV and voice-over animation didn't come under the WGA tent. That was the big deal, because it would have given the studios nothing to fall back on for programming during future strikes. By giving up on that issue, they've killed their bargaining power for future strikes. Just like they had little in this strike, because the studios were only too happy to throw out a parade of reality shows.
I think their theory is that journals that don't allow this will have to change their policy, as they wouldn't want to lose out on publishing articles from Harvard profs.
Ah, good old fashioned Harvard arrogance. Let's see how long this lasts. In my field, the number of decent journals I can think of that allow open access and reproduction could be counted on the fingers of one hand. After playing with a live hand grenade.
Meanwhile, the movies mentioned in the article all come with a "blu-ray disc" logo on them, despite there being two distinctly different formats involved. That's misleading advertising, and I hope he wins his case. You can't create a so-called standard and then say "whoops, need to change a few things here, sucks to be you if you were an early adopter!" I understand that the bleeding edge sometimes cuts, but that's usually a result of bugs in the players or the manufacturing process, not because some idiot changed the specs of the format!
If that's the case, then I await with glee for whenever they try to close the "analog hole" in HDMI-equipped TVs with DRM-crippled signals, as has been reported.
A 15 year old going with a 13 year old is not paedophilia. At that a 50 year old going with a mature 13 year old is not paedophilia. While in our culture it is not right, lots of cultures it is more normal.
Yes, in repressive cultures in which it is legal to own women, it's common to see 50-year-old men with 13 year old women. In societies in which women have the right to vote and aren't treated as property, not so much.
A 50 year old hitting on a 13 year old is definitely a dirtbag.
A 13 year old going with a 10 year old is paedophilia, just as much as 50 year old going with a 10 year old.
While still pretty gross, that's not even in the same ballpark.
What I care about was that when I tried to install it on my desktop, the video went into about 1000 tiny vertical green bars.
Go back and read the end of my post, I fully acknowledge that for Linux to win, it has to be sold OEM on new machines. If my argument is that people won't even install off-the-shelf software anymore, they sure as shit aren't installing a new OS. So forget that.
And yes, this was Unbutu 7.10. They desperately need a better name btw.
Apparently they've changed it "Ubuntu."
Linux doesn't 'Just work' out of the box and I can't use any of my applications on it. I'm too lazy to spend my time screwing around with that crap. Just let me play my Orange Box damnit. Till Linux can do that, it'll stay off any PC I actually ever use.
That's fine. The target market for the Linux desktop is, paradoxically, people who are more lazy than you, and less lazy than you. You're in that no-man's-land of people who can buy and install software but can't be bothered to troubleshoot. Increasingly though, people don't buy software. They use web apps (work fine on Linux) or use what comes on their computer.
So rework your argument for people who buy a PC pre-loaded with Linux and don't bother installing shrinkwrap software. There are college kids who have gotten sick of fixing their parents' computers, installed a linux distro that looks just like Windows...and their parents never even noticed. Point is, if people don't actually have to install Linux, the user experience is pretty much what you'd expect from Windows, as long as you don't install software. And most people dont.
One way they are posting all the content for the world to see, the other they are blocking content from many so that a repressive government can keep their people ignorant.
Yeah, except that's wrong. That first way would have gotten Google completely blocked in China, which you should recall unless you've been living in a cave. So the balance is actually "one way the Chinese people get 0% of Google, the other way the Chinese people get 99% of Google." See how that's not as simple as you want it to be anymore?
And you compare this to the washing of hands of Pilate?
You're quick.
Are you personally sending information about the Tiananmen square massacre to every citizen in China?
I have, in fact, personally shared information about the Tiananmen massacre with a Chinese citizen who was unaware of its existence. Have you? Next question.
If not, you are just as 'guilty' of hiding information from them as Yahoo would be for posting content to the world while, knowing it might get blocked by the Chinese government's firewall.
That doesn't even make sense as an analogy, let alone make sense as a reasonable comparison. Here's two problems with it: 1) They didn't block the information to the entire world, just China, so no one else is worse for lacking the information. 2) under either scenario, Chinese people aren't finding information about the massacre. At least now they get access to some other information. Under your 'plan', you'd take the moral high ground, wash your hands just like Pontus Pilate, and in the end the Chinese people get no access to any information at all.
The question is which has more value - information about topics other than the Tiananmen square massacre, or your moral high horse? As a matter of net benefit, some Google is better than no Google, and from the Chinese people's perspective I'd have to imagine that benefit far outweighs your principles.
This particular topic is a perfect kool-aid test that separates pragmatists from naive idealists.
Not sure what you mean. The Chinese government's not involved. Suit is in the US.
If China blocks your engine, the Chinese government is the one doing the evil. You aren't. When you filter content to keep secret anything a corrupt government doesn't want their citizens to see, in order to pacify the government and make money from the countries business, you are doing evil. It's real simple.
It's just that subtle distinction that would make Pontus Pilate proud. Screw what's actually best for the people, as long as *you* didn't do anything directly wrong, you can sleep at night.
The world's nowhere near as simple as you'd like it to be.
I shout this from the rooftops everytime this comes up: PEOPLE USE APPLICATIONS, NOT OPERATING SYSTEMS.
The other side of that is that while people use applications, the operating system can break that experience. I think more people are starting to get sick of the spyware and virus slowdowns, and your average person doesn't know how to fix that so they buy a new computer when it 'gets slow'.
Also...most of those applications are web browsers, document editors, and the like. Good versions of these exist for Linux. So at the point where the applications are pretty much the same, even a non-technical user can see value in going with the system that's not going to crap out on them.
People don't to figure anything out, they just want to buy a damn box and load it on.
That was true 10 years ago. Now people don't want to buy the box. They want their computer to come with all the useful stuff they want. That's why Mac adoption rates are skyrocketing. And Linux distros are getting far better about including stuff people want to use, with native apps that are, in most cases, better than what ships with Windows.
See, that's the funny part now - people are getting so lazy and expect so much from the computer that software compatibility is becoming less and less of an issue. So there really is a significant opportunity for Linux to be used by 'regular people.' Only caveat is it needs to come pre-installed on their computer.
RTFA.
They would have to create one corp for each bogus-patent in case they lose!
Don't think so. Until they try to market the thing, nobody could claim damages against them, so I don't see a legal reason the same company couldn't make a bunch of the.
And if they loose, they would then have to prove that that loosing corp is not the EFF itself.
Nothing to prove. It would be a separate company that so happens to have a lot of the same members. Hell, a lot of nonprofits do the same.
I think what is really eating at me here is that my usage patterns are being blamed for Time Warner's crummy business model.
Oh yeah, that argument sucks. And why? Because all their competitors have the same problems. So either they're making up a bogeyman, or the entire ISP business is going down the tubes. Which I doubt. Unless their real issue is they're using their cable presence to defend their media side. Which would be a really dumb idea. So buck up, assholes!
And I do agree with your general point - the internet will continue to be used more. Not less. And increasingly by "legal" traffic. If you do right and keep increasing capacity, and make a service people WANT TO USE, you can do really well in the market. Shouldn't you be able to make more money by catering to the real bandwidth hogs? Especially the young twenty- and thirty-somethings with good jobs who are tech-savvy.
On the other hand, they're happy to sell me internet service using the same pipes, but when I watch all the Netflix I want, that's suddenly a problem, and I'm spoiling it for everyone else - that's really the crux of my ill will toward TWC in all this.
I'm not seeing the blame angle at all, because nobody's a bad person for legally using their connection however they want. Even if you ignore the pirates, legal bandwidth usage will eventually outstrip capacity. They just need to build enough infrastructure to handle the traffic. Now the question is who pays for that...and naturally I argue that it should be the bandwidth hogs necessitating the infrastructure. I think the providers getting a lot of pushback from people who just don't want to pay more to get more. Sorry for lumping you in with that crowd, because you've made better arguments than that against TWC. But in making that argument of tiered pricing, they need to keep it fair. If they do, I think most consumers will respond well.
You make a good point that TV sucks up that bandwidth too, but I don't think they're using their TV service as a loss leader. If anything, it should be the reverse since they have even less competition in the TV market than ISP. So I do have to imagine that they'll pass on necessary costs to their TV customers too. The other side is whether their TV customers end up A) having to eat cost increases borne by necessary infrastructure driven by internet, and B) whether the picture quality goes down as they jack up the compression. I can say for sure, I notice a whole lot more compression on the cheap-o channels like Home and Garden, compared to ESPN among others. I hadn't thought about the link between that and internet usage until now.
If they'd just fess up and admit that they want to make money off the pipes AND get a cut of everything that travels through it
Well, now that's another issue, that of traffic shaping or network neutrality. Tiered pricing for consumers should be a pure per-bit and/or bit/second charge. If they want to cripple certain sites that don't play ball with them when I'm paying for the connection, I'm really not OK with that. Unless they do it to give me free internet. So that one's actually my hot button issue - I'm buying the pipe, those assholes better keep their grubby hands off of what's in it.
As it is now, my first reaction to their crocodile tears is to tell them to cram their Scientific Atlanta cable boxes where the sun don't shine, and find a business model that works in the 21st century.
Please, you're making me twitch as I watch my glitchy as hell, crash five times a day Scientific Atlanta DVR. Man, those guys make crap.
Thanks for bearing with my under-caffeinated posts this morning.
Not at all, I'm pretty rough before I get my caffeine too. In fact, that was probably part of the problem, two cranky assholes on caffeine withdrawal! I understand a little better that your attack on TWC is more an indictment on their behavior in totality, and I couldn't agree more. I cried a bit when I realized that my new house had a big stand of trees facing south. No more DirecTV. Hello ComCrap!
If you just wait a year, then sue everyone, no one will be able to challange the patent. You could even say for the first year it is free, so no one can claim financial damage. After that, no one can challange the patent.
I think you're reading it wrong. For the first year, anyone can claim harm. After that, only those financially harmed (ie, sued, or otherwise prevented from competing) could claim harm. So it's bad, just not quite that bad.
Still, how does one prevent the EFF folks from starting a sister corporation who creates a prototype of a potentially infringing device and claiming 'harm' since they can't sell it? They could make a cheap-o prototype that intentionally infringes on each patent they want to kill, then file suit.
Let's make loopholes work for us!