"After talking to a lot of people, this is my conclusion: A young artist gets signed, and he or she gets a big advance -- a million dollars, or more."
A million, eh, Mr. Jobs? Too bad I didn't read the article backwards--then I could've stopped at this absurd exaggeration and not had to read his other comments about 'stealing' and 'theft' and 'moral decay' which might as well be translated as: "Hey, I've worked my ass off to get this service going. I'm not about to piss off any of those labels anymore."
I suppose the fact that the RIAA must sustain a bloated infrastructure has nothing to do with expenses? I suppose the fact that the artist ALWAYS pays for everything they do while with a record label has nothing to do with the labels losing money?
He's a smart guy, but really, this is disappointing.
The fact that those girls were 12 and 15 is, I feel, vitally important. The mistake I think you make is assuming that the emotional response is meant to be an end in and of itself. Instead, it is a means to a more clearly presented argument against or for laws, because of the special effect legal minors may have on how we interpret laws to be just or unjust. Obviously these are civil and not criminal charges, but the disparity is best exemplified if, say, you were appalled that media was making an issue of a 14 year old being tried as an adult for some crime. No matter what you think of the single-case guilt or innocence, there is a valid issue as to whether or not a minor can sustain full adult charges not just before enjoying the full adult spectrum of societys benefits and responsibilities.
Additionally, when confronted with a cases against minors, the amount of sympathy or lack thereof largely depends on the crime or civil charge accused. For example, a 14 year old accused murderer will generate much less sympathy than say for the 12 year old filesharer. The reason is not just because the age issue serves as an emotional device, but that that device also is a means to another end-- to magnify our perspectives on the law, and how just or unjust we think a law is when applied to the most sympathetic subject. This does not mean that the emotional sympathy should guide a decision of whether that particular case is just or unjust, but rather emotional sympathy allows us to take seriously the implications of the absurd power the RIAA is wielding here, and thus take our sympathy to a general case represented by that 12-year old and apply it to a general interpretation of whether a law is just or unjust.
Of course you don't sit and monitor every mouse click--that's what ICARUS is for. You don't see the privacy implications? If it were an admin, there's the possibility for human error and abuse. If it were a machine, there's a possibility for machine error and human (programmed) abuse. If you're denying that the machine monitors every packet being sent to the computer, you misunderstand the technology. If you're denying that you, as an admin, would have a part in this because you "don't sit and watch every mouse click," you're disingenuously denying responsibility for what is indeed your responsibility as an admin.
Additionally, colleges get away with various restrictions because they have a captive market (college students, fresh out of high school and quite often all-too-comfortable being treated without full adult dignity), but remember that colleges are ISPs. The students are not receiving free connections tied in big red bows, but rather are indeed paying for them, and no private ISP in the country would get away with these kinds of restrictions. Remember that students use connections for personal as well as education uses, and are not so simply defined-- Simply being a.edu ISP does not mean that the lame "they're using our network, it's our rules" defense is justifies invasive monitoring.
Again, compare to if a consumer ISP said that in defense of an ICARUS-like system. They'd lose half their subscribers in a month. The reason for this is simple: nobody should be forced to agree to private terms which will remove rights that are constitutionally protected in a public life, and such terms should indeed very very seldom be included in any contract. This applies to college ISP agreements just as it does to normal ISP agreements.
There is no written right to 'privacy' in the constitution, but there are a bundle of rights that rely on the concept we call 'privacy' to exist.
I don't mean to be trite, I don't assume anything about your background in making this comment, but I assume that you are referring to the nowadays-popular method of demanding "where are the words, where is the guarantee, where is the act of congress?" when someone mentions constitutional privacy and other meaningfully compelling results of interpretation of the constitution. My answer is that this is just not a very convincing argument. Start here:
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
What does 'liberty' mean to you? Have you read Isaiah Berlin, who's 'negative liberty' explain liberty in a sense that understands the need for privacy to so much as exist? Have you studied this clause at all? If you don't like it, you can argue with the Supreme Court and these Due Process and Equal Protection clauses yourself--There are more Supreme Court decisions than I can count which rely on a 'privacy' interpretation of these, so read some SC opinions before you give me spopular but fatally vacuous literalist constitutional interpretation.
Is it just me, or did anyone else picture this line:
"The legal stone is clearly coming from David. He used to be with Cravath. It is an epic battle. The guy at Cravath supporting IBM used to work for David. [He's] Evan Chessler. So now you've got that sub-plot of the Grasshopper and Master thing."
as being enacted out by Darl with little whooosh sounds and toy figurines?
I think you might still be missing the point. The best way to get your kids to act like adults is to treat them like adults. That includes giving them the benefit of the doubt for their conduct, as such treatment is a fundamental staple of adult-to-adult respect.
Yeah, its tough. No parent who loves their child will easily let go of the control that producing that child seems to give them (which borders on ownership in many cases). Your kids are going to do things you don't want them to. But that is the price of being a parent, and you should remember that for kids to become adults, they can't be fed double standards about responsibility, which require them to be responsible for obligations and actions but not allow them the benefits of true recognition and reasonable deference to individuality.
That is certainly how a Constitutional privacy exists, but to suggest that it 'must be earned' is to get the cart before the horse, as true adults are assumed to have privacy implicitly and it must be proven that they have potentially done wrong to violate that. And to deny your children that through nosy and intrusive snooping, whatever euphamism you use, is to demean your children in the face of their own development and to counteract your own goal of producing a responsible adult individual.
Certainly, if a child is violating a set of rules of moral conduct, it may be reasonable to place limits on their internet. But that should not be looked for, as though the child was a potential criminal. If, however, a child is violating a set of arbitrary rules in place to make the parent feel 'in control', I'm much less sympathetic to the parent. Kids may not 'be' adults, but I fail to see how denying them accepted adult human rights is going to help them become adults.
"a completely braindead law that makes it a crime to exercise what was once accepted as 'inalienable rights'."
That's just the thing. Unlike, say, the Bill of Rights, copyright for both the public and the holder, is a very narrow grant of power implicitly to further 'science and the useful arts.' I'm completely on your side, in so far as I believe in corollary rights, such as a right to one's culture, and a 'right' in a Hohfeldian sense in that copyright is a bargain and generates rights that are not being honored, but a substantive constitutional negative liberty right it is not.
In fact, by framing it in terms of 'inalienable rights,' you're actually helping the other side, because the key point of disinformation coming out of the MPAA and RIAA lobbying groups is always phrasing their assertion of power as being morally right insofar as it's against 'theft of intellectual property.' This terminology taken from physical property is vitally important, because that you can't be deprived of physical property is an inalienable right under the constitution.
So the MPAA and RIAA are basically reframing copyright in such a way that they can reasonably demand stronger control over the things they publish, such as we've seen in the debate about (and subsequent S. Court decision in favor of, in essence,) perpetual terms, as well as the great expansion of copyright's scope (Girl Scouts singing campfire songs anyone?). Although they wouldn't publicly phrase it that way, that is the necessary and logical conclusion of their use of physical property issue-framing. By asserting that you have inalienable rights, you're supporting, however inadvertantly, a stronger constitutional test that is, right now, the strongest threat to the public's stake in copyright.
"So here's a product, that allows your customers to go ahead and run the competitor's software too, and all without you losing a cent in OS or Software revenue... Why not let it continue to work?"
Why not? Because when users have more opportunity to run Linux, regardless of the current circumstances, Linux software can gain more support in the future. The problem with Linux so far is that its a very specialized operating system compared to the breadth and abundance of software for Windows. The developers, I should think, hardly care which operating system they develope for, except that it wouldn't be good business sense to develope for a user base a fraction of the size of Windows' user base. However, if Linux gains support, developers may be attracted, whose software will in turn will attract more users, who will attract more developers, and so on until Linux has a breadth and quality of software that makes it a viable migration route for average consumers. Obviously MS has an interest in impeding that progression.
Its good of you to clarify it all for us- Yes, it is very easy to understand! Lawyers are basically bad, with very few exceptions being good! Lawyers as a whole only want what's best for themselves, and only care about their own bottom line! Lawyers confuse issues for normal people to cement their own power!
I mean, did you say anything that isn't a blatant, completely refutable stereotype? Do you get all your opinions just by looking for the popular sentiment on issues? Its just as likely that there 99% of the lawyers are ethically good people and the 1% that get the most public attention are also the most sensationalist and base. We're both quoting NO facts, and yet whereas you don't have a defensible position, I do--because all I'm urging people to do is not implicitly hate someone because of their job. A non-positive, not a negative. That's a position that I find very hard to argue against, since I'm not actually stating that all lawyers are good, just that they deserve the benefit of the doubt before outright, irrational and unjust condemnation.
Well, I'm thinking of becoming a copyright lawyer since copyright law is so screwed up, but so many people have so much sheer hatred and disgust for lawyers, thanks to organizations like the RIAA, that I'm actually a little afraid about the flak I'll get once I do it.
I don't think it'll stop me, but hey people-- there are good lawyers who actually are fighting for good moral causes (Lessig comes to mind), and then there are the lawyers that get all the press defending OJ and suing 12-year olds. I know, actually, that lawyers have been detested ever since the Greek Republic (can anyone say "sophist?"), but really--plenty of lawyers are doing good, even if the bad ones get all the press.
"They know what they are getting into... no one is forcing retailers to purchase music... No one ever forced you to buy a CD"
I think you entirely missed that guy's point. The concept of a monopoly precludes choice. Granted a monopoly in music is not so pressing a social issue as a monopoly in, say, oil or steel, but come on--think about what a monopoly means, and understand that those who deal with a monopoly have 'a choice' but they don't have 'choice' if they want to participate in whatever general category the monopoly controls. Assuming music presumably is in a category of things that 'belong' to everyone, then an unfair monopoly, i.e. one that perpetuates unfair practices as well as their own control of power, in that category is indeed unjust.
As I see it, your only hope here is to suggest that the RIAA is not a monopoly. If you disagree that there is a monopoly, then that's a different issue; one you didn't address in your reply. However, if you think that 'choice' is some sort of absolute property that, when it exists must exist to its fullest and most complete extent, then you're frankly nuts. A person in chains has the choice to bite off his tongue and die, so do we say he is free to choose? 'Choice' in the way that the RIAA allows an artist, retailer, or consumer to have choice is in fact not a choice--its a formality driven by a foregone conclusion, that if one wants music, either to buy or make, for most people this is the only game in town.
People are always saying that, as long as you can listen to and watch a film you can copy it. I guess the MPAA really does understand what "plugging the analog" hole entails.
I really don't even understand how they can respond to criticism by saying they're calling the accused filesharers up first and offering to settle. I mean, hasn't it been pretty clearly established that the RIAA absolutely wants every sued person to settle anyways?
Filing the lawsuit itself changes very little--They are still using the threat of a big and costly lawsuit to extract a comparably insignificant but still sizable amount of money from people. That the RIAA did this (the call-first policy) in response to the Senate hearings is a riot. "No, Mr. Coleman, we aren't using our harsher-than-Patriot Act powers to intimidate people with bankrupcy-inducing lawsuits into settling for $3-4,000! We're calling them and threatening with the prospect of filing the lawsuit!" I don't really see how the RIAA calling and saying "We're gonna sue you unless you hand over $3,000" is any different from "We're gonna proceed with our suit unless you so hand over $3,000"
I mean, if every one of those sued file sharers challenged the RIAA, then it would quickly run out of resources. But since the lawsuits are cheaper to settle and unaffordable any other way, we have the prisoner's dilemma--everyone pleads guilty to the 3 year sentence in order to avoid the 20 year sentence, because nobody knows what their peers are going to do. I can't imagine the RIAA reasoned it any other way either.
Exactly what I use most of the time. I've been using Fruityloops for over 5 years, and its a great program for the holistic-minded musician. You have more control over your work from conception, i.e. assembling beats and melodies that actually sound how you want from scratch, than any other program I've seen. It has an interface that doesn't try to be a piece of hardware (like Reason) but instead offers the same and more features in a much better designed-for-PC package.
It really depends on what kind of musician you are though. Reason may be better for some people, just as I rationally have to say that Cubase and Logic and other sequencers (please, not ProTools!) are where its at for physical hardware control and recording live musicians.
However, as a sort of offtopic, or meta-ontopic, aside (famous last words)--do we really need more of these "Whoa, you can make music on your PC!" articles? I laughed at the one that appeared a while ago in Rolling Stone, but I mean, this is Slashdot-- let's post updates on innovation, but the studio-in-a-box computer music software angle has been covered to death. My suggestion: Let's move beyond this and just post articles when there's a substantial news item about specific software.
I found a convenient explanation (if anyone's interested) of trademark law, and you're indeed right.
So-- the criteria to bypass trademark infringement seems to be the separation between descriptive and proper-name style usage. (The link uses "All Bran" as a protected trademark, but "all bran" as a description is not infringing.) It certainly doesn't satisfy the 'generic' provision, because you don't call systems of organization "Dewey Decimal Systems" in the same way you call jeans "Levis."
However! If indeed the name is the only trademarked problem here, why not simply use the same system and call it "The Louie Decimal System"?
Now hold on--The article itself states that
"Melvil Dewey created the most widely used library classification system in 1873."
Anything from before the 1920s should be in the public domain, even if nothing after that will ever go into the public domain. I mean, was there indeed some perpetual copyright clause slipped into some bill or another? How could anybody otherwise still own the rights to this?
Yeah, I agree about FF having sequels. But also, realize that FFX was the most teen-centric, mainstream FF to date. Its obviously the biggest candidate for serialization thanks to that characteristic (thanks, PS2).
I mean, PS2's dominance of the game market isn't necessarily a bad thing, but earlier FF games were interesting because they didn't railroad you along a story with the same sort of annoying intensity that FFX did. In FF7 you could spend hours (and usually did spend hours) at the Golden Saucer, and work on perfecting the Materia system. In FF8, you could just fly around and kill time, beating up on Cactuar in the desert, and actually playing a FUN card game before going to fight Ultimecia, along with plenty of other diversions like the again new and interesting spell system.
In FFX, you couldn't even freely fly around the map. The upgrade paths were just that--linear systems where you could make certain choices, but for the most part just followed where you were supposed to go. Blitzball was a joke. The card game was a pathetic afterthought. And the characters were straight out of a rejected Dawson's Creek episode. True, more people played it and more people thought it was so much better than any other FF...but how many of those were around for the earlier FFs?
I for one am ready to skip FFX-2 and go straight to FFXII which looks more promising...
People have been predicting Googles IPO for years now. They haven't had an IPO for the simple reason that they don't care to. LawMeme assumes that because Google is a business, because P2P search results may have a large market value, and because they can (we may assume) do a P2P search well, then it must be something they're interested in.
The problem with this is: Would Google evem be interested in P2P search results, even if it makes them more money? I mean, it sounds like a stupid question, but Google's philosophy has been simple: to not crowd their search engine with extra features that not everyone wants. This has often meant doing what will net them less money, at least on the surface of things (sponsored links separate from search results, no pop up ads, keeping search engine and refraining from becoming a Yahoo-style portal). However, they understand that this simplicity is their primary advantage.
"and they represent just about the best mass-produced conventional cars can do without becoming a "Toyota Echo" or "Geo Metro"
I cringed when I read that.
I own a Toyota Echo, and let me tell you...A Geo Metro is a terrible comparison. I'm not really sure if you'll believe me (since, be honest, I know how an Echo looks from outside), but it seats 5 in relative comfort (enough leg room) and it honestly has as much trunk space as a Corolla. It already gets almost 40 MPG and its so light that it accelerates WAY better than not only a Metro, but a Ford Focus as well (which has more HP but is heavier and feels more sluggish). You can get most safety features as well, but I've spent enough time on a sales pitch.
No offense-- if you've driven it and what not, then that's your opinion. But really--a Metro is not worth anyone's money. Its slow, dangerous, and has no space. An Echo is none of these things in my experience.
The best part of the article was the end, where the reviewer sternly chastises Nokia like a little boy who isn't taking care of that puppy he got for his birthday:
"Nokia needs to think very hard about whether it's really committed to the games industry, and whether the people who planned this device really understood what they were undertaking to do in the first place."
Slashdot Mirror
A million, eh, Mr. Jobs? Too bad I didn't read the article backwards--then I could've stopped at this absurd exaggeration and not had to read his other comments about 'stealing' and 'theft' and 'moral decay' which might as well be translated as: "Hey, I've worked my ass off to get this service going. I'm not about to piss off any of those labels anymore."
I suppose the fact that the RIAA must sustain a bloated infrastructure has nothing to do with expenses? I suppose the fact that the artist ALWAYS pays for everything they do while with a record label has nothing to do with the labels losing money?
He's a smart guy, but really, this is disappointing.
Additionally, when confronted with a cases against minors, the amount of sympathy or lack thereof largely depends on the crime or civil charge accused. For example, a 14 year old accused murderer will generate much less sympathy than say for the 12 year old filesharer. The reason is not just because the age issue serves as an emotional device, but that that device also is a means to another end-- to magnify our perspectives on the law, and how just or unjust we think a law is when applied to the most sympathetic subject. This does not mean that the emotional sympathy should guide a decision of whether that particular case is just or unjust, but rather emotional sympathy allows us to take seriously the implications of the absurd power the RIAA is wielding here, and thus take our sympathy to a general case represented by that 12-year old and apply it to a general interpretation of whether a law is just or unjust.
Additionally, colleges get away with various restrictions because they have a captive market (college students, fresh out of high school and quite often all-too-comfortable being treated without full adult dignity), but remember that colleges are ISPs. The students are not receiving free connections tied in big red bows, but rather are indeed paying for them, and no private ISP in the country would get away with these kinds of restrictions. Remember that students use connections for personal as well as education uses, and are not so simply defined-- Simply being a .edu ISP does not mean that the lame "they're using our network, it's our rules" defense is justifies invasive monitoring.
Again, compare to if a consumer ISP said that in defense of an ICARUS-like system. They'd lose half their subscribers in a month. The reason for this is simple: nobody should be forced to agree to private terms which will remove rights that are constitutionally protected in a public life, and such terms should indeed very very seldom be included in any contract. This applies to college ISP agreements just as it does to normal ISP agreements.
Listen to this one. The Amazing Grace and the middle sample from the press release site are ok, but the one I linked to is rather amazing.
Close, but not quite 9.4 GB. Here's a press release for Dual Layer DVD+Rs, for what its worth. 2004, they say.
I don't mean to be trite, I don't assume anything about your background in making this comment, but I assume that you are referring to the nowadays-popular method of demanding "where are the words, where is the guarantee, where is the act of congress?" when someone mentions constitutional privacy and other meaningfully compelling results of interpretation of the constitution. My answer is that this is just not a very convincing argument. Start here:
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
What does 'liberty' mean to you? Have you read Isaiah Berlin, who's 'negative liberty' explain liberty in a sense that understands the need for privacy to so much as exist? Have you studied this clause at all? If you don't like it, you can argue with the Supreme Court and these Due Process and Equal Protection clauses yourself--There are more Supreme Court decisions than I can count which rely on a 'privacy' interpretation of these, so read some SC opinions before you give me spopular but fatally vacuous literalist constitutional interpretation.
"The legal stone is clearly coming from David. He used to be with Cravath. It is an epic battle. The guy at Cravath supporting IBM used to work for David. [He's] Evan Chessler. So now you've got that sub-plot of the Grasshopper and Master thing."
as being enacted out by Darl with little whooosh sounds and toy figurines?
Right, just like how they've been challenged in the US?
Yeah, its tough. No parent who loves their child will easily let go of the control that producing that child seems to give them (which borders on ownership in many cases). Your kids are going to do things you don't want them to. But that is the price of being a parent, and you should remember that for kids to become adults, they can't be fed double standards about responsibility, which require them to be responsible for obligations and actions but not allow them the benefits of true recognition and reasonable deference to individuality.
That is certainly how a Constitutional privacy exists, but to suggest that it 'must be earned' is to get the cart before the horse, as true adults are assumed to have privacy implicitly and it must be proven that they have potentially done wrong to violate that. And to deny your children that through nosy and intrusive snooping, whatever euphamism you use, is to demean your children in the face of their own development and to counteract your own goal of producing a responsible adult individual.
Certainly, if a child is violating a set of rules of moral conduct, it may be reasonable to place limits on their internet. But that should not be looked for, as though the child was a potential criminal. If, however, a child is violating a set of arbitrary rules in place to make the parent feel 'in control', I'm much less sympathetic to the parent. Kids may not 'be' adults, but I fail to see how denying them accepted adult human rights is going to help them become adults.
That's just the thing. Unlike, say, the Bill of Rights, copyright for both the public and the holder, is a very narrow grant of power implicitly to further 'science and the useful arts.' I'm completely on your side, in so far as I believe in corollary rights, such as a right to one's culture, and a 'right' in a Hohfeldian sense in that copyright is a bargain and generates rights that are not being honored, but a substantive constitutional negative liberty right it is not.
In fact, by framing it in terms of 'inalienable rights,' you're actually helping the other side, because the key point of disinformation coming out of the MPAA and RIAA lobbying groups is always phrasing their assertion of power as being morally right insofar as it's against 'theft of intellectual property.' This terminology taken from physical property is vitally important, because that you can't be deprived of physical property is an inalienable right under the constitution.
So the MPAA and RIAA are basically reframing copyright in such a way that they can reasonably demand stronger control over the things they publish, such as we've seen in the debate about (and subsequent S. Court decision in favor of, in essence,) perpetual terms, as well as the great expansion of copyright's scope (Girl Scouts singing campfire songs anyone?). Although they wouldn't publicly phrase it that way, that is the necessary and logical conclusion of their use of physical property issue-framing. By asserting that you have inalienable rights, you're supporting, however inadvertantly, a stronger constitutional test that is, right now, the strongest threat to the public's stake in copyright.
Why not? Because when users have more opportunity to run Linux, regardless of the current circumstances, Linux software can gain more support in the future. The problem with Linux so far is that its a very specialized operating system compared to the breadth and abundance of software for Windows. The developers, I should think, hardly care which operating system they develope for, except that it wouldn't be good business sense to develope for a user base a fraction of the size of Windows' user base. However, if Linux gains support, developers may be attracted, whose software will in turn will attract more users, who will attract more developers, and so on until Linux has a breadth and quality of software that makes it a viable migration route for average consumers. Obviously MS has an interest in impeding that progression.
I mean, did you say anything that isn't a blatant, completely refutable stereotype? Do you get all your opinions just by looking for the popular sentiment on issues? Its just as likely that there 99% of the lawyers are ethically good people and the 1% that get the most public attention are also the most sensationalist and base. We're both quoting NO facts, and yet whereas you don't have a defensible position, I do--because all I'm urging people to do is not implicitly hate someone because of their job. A non-positive, not a negative. That's a position that I find very hard to argue against, since I'm not actually stating that all lawyers are good, just that they deserve the benefit of the doubt before outright, irrational and unjust condemnation.
I don't think it'll stop me, but hey people-- there are good lawyers who actually are fighting for good moral causes (Lessig comes to mind), and then there are the lawyers that get all the press defending OJ and suing 12-year olds. I know, actually, that lawyers have been detested ever since the Greek Republic (can anyone say "sophist?"), but really--plenty of lawyers are doing good, even if the bad ones get all the press.
GameSpot
IGN.com
FYI, both reviews seem to think its a lot better than 'evolutionary.'
I think you entirely missed that guy's point. The concept of a monopoly precludes choice. Granted a monopoly in music is not so pressing a social issue as a monopoly in, say, oil or steel, but come on--think about what a monopoly means, and understand that those who deal with a monopoly have 'a choice' but they don't have 'choice' if they want to participate in whatever general category the monopoly controls. Assuming music presumably is in a category of things that 'belong' to everyone, then an unfair monopoly, i.e. one that perpetuates unfair practices as well as their own control of power, in that category is indeed unjust.
As I see it, your only hope here is to suggest that the RIAA is not a monopoly. If you disagree that there is a monopoly, then that's a different issue; one you didn't address in your reply. However, if you think that 'choice' is some sort of absolute property that, when it exists must exist to its fullest and most complete extent, then you're frankly nuts. A person in chains has the choice to bite off his tongue and die, so do we say he is free to choose? 'Choice' in the way that the RIAA allows an artist, retailer, or consumer to have choice is in fact not a choice--its a formality driven by a foregone conclusion, that if one wants music, either to buy or make, for most people this is the only game in town.
People are always saying that, as long as you can listen to and watch a film you can copy it. I guess the MPAA really does understand what "plugging the analog" hole entails.
Actually, the whole issue here is that they don't have to file a lawsuit to get the information. Scary, huh?
Filing the lawsuit itself changes very little--They are still using the threat of a big and costly lawsuit to extract a comparably insignificant but still sizable amount of money from people. That the RIAA did this (the call-first policy) in response to the Senate hearings is a riot. "No, Mr. Coleman, we aren't using our harsher-than-Patriot Act powers to intimidate people with bankrupcy-inducing lawsuits into settling for $3-4,000! We're calling them and threatening with the prospect of filing the lawsuit!" I don't really see how the RIAA calling and saying "We're gonna sue you unless you hand over $3,000" is any different from "We're gonna proceed with our suit unless you so hand over $3,000"
I mean, if every one of those sued file sharers challenged the RIAA, then it would quickly run out of resources. But since the lawsuits are cheaper to settle and unaffordable any other way, we have the prisoner's dilemma--everyone pleads guilty to the 3 year sentence in order to avoid the 20 year sentence, because nobody knows what their peers are going to do. I can't imagine the RIAA reasoned it any other way either.
It really depends on what kind of musician you are though. Reason may be better for some people, just as I rationally have to say that Cubase and Logic and other sequencers (please, not ProTools!) are where its at for physical hardware control and recording live musicians.
However, as a sort of offtopic, or meta-ontopic, aside (famous last words)--do we really need more of these "Whoa, you can make music on your PC!" articles? I laughed at the one that appeared a while ago in Rolling Stone, but I mean, this is Slashdot-- let's post updates on innovation, but the studio-in-a-box computer music software angle has been covered to death. My suggestion: Let's move beyond this and just post articles when there's a substantial news item about specific software.
I found a convenient explanation (if anyone's interested) of trademark law, and you're indeed right.
So-- the criteria to bypass trademark infringement seems to be the separation between descriptive and proper-name style usage. (The link uses "All Bran" as a protected trademark, but "all bran" as a description is not infringing.) It certainly doesn't satisfy the 'generic' provision, because you don't call systems of organization "Dewey Decimal Systems" in the same way you call jeans "Levis."
However! If indeed the name is the only trademarked problem here, why not simply use the same system and call it "The Louie Decimal System"?
Anything from before the 1920s should be in the public domain, even if nothing after that will ever go into the public domain. I mean, was there indeed some perpetual copyright clause slipped into some bill or another? How could anybody otherwise still own the rights to this?
I mean, PS2's dominance of the game market isn't necessarily a bad thing, but earlier FF games were interesting because they didn't railroad you along a story with the same sort of annoying intensity that FFX did. In FF7 you could spend hours (and usually did spend hours) at the Golden Saucer, and work on perfecting the Materia system. In FF8, you could just fly around and kill time, beating up on Cactuar in the desert, and actually playing a FUN card game before going to fight Ultimecia, along with plenty of other diversions like the again new and interesting spell system.
In FFX, you couldn't even freely fly around the map. The upgrade paths were just that--linear systems where you could make certain choices, but for the most part just followed where you were supposed to go. Blitzball was a joke. The card game was a pathetic afterthought. And the characters were straight out of a rejected Dawson's Creek episode. True, more people played it and more people thought it was so much better than any other FF...but how many of those were around for the earlier FFs?
I for one am ready to skip FFX-2 and go straight to FFXII which looks more promising...
People have been predicting Googles IPO for years now. They haven't had an IPO for the simple reason that they don't care to. LawMeme assumes that because Google is a business, because P2P search results may have a large market value, and because they can (we may assume) do a P2P search well, then it must be something they're interested in.
The problem with this is: Would Google evem be interested in P2P search results, even if it makes them more money? I mean, it sounds like a stupid question, but Google's philosophy has been simple: to not crowd their search engine with extra features that not everyone wants. This has often meant doing what will net them less money, at least on the surface of things (sponsored links separate from search results, no pop up ads, keeping search engine and refraining from becoming a Yahoo-style portal). However, they understand that this simplicity is their primary advantage.
I cringed when I read that.
I own a Toyota Echo, and let me tell you...A Geo Metro is a terrible comparison. I'm not really sure if you'll believe me (since, be honest, I know how an Echo looks from outside), but it seats 5 in relative comfort (enough leg room) and it honestly has as much trunk space as a Corolla. It already gets almost 40 MPG and its so light that it accelerates WAY better than not only a Metro, but a Ford Focus as well (which has more HP but is heavier and feels more sluggish). You can get most safety features as well, but I've spent enough time on a sales pitch.
No offense-- if you've driven it and what not, then that's your opinion. But really--a Metro is not worth anyone's money. Its slow, dangerous, and has no space. An Echo is none of these things in my experience.
"Nokia needs to think very hard about whether it's really committed to the games industry, and whether the people who planned this device really understood what they were undertaking to do in the first place."
Shame on you, Nokia, shame!