The only business model a lot of people here seemed to support was AllofMP3, but honestly 10 cent non-DRMed songs really isn't a viable business model, as much as everyone wants it to be. Maybe they should cut costs on the production end. Instead of using expensive equipment to process and polish and pitch-correct the voices of their current "talent" pool they should focus on hiring artists with actual, natural talent.
If the aliens were preparing the Earth for their arrival, then you have to wonder why they haven't already arrived and settled in Imagine we discover a habitable planet out in space, we need to leave our world, but we don't have FTL travel. We reason that by the time we get there, its indigenous species may become dominant and be a barrier to our colonization. Perhaps it is dominated by a specials, maybe not intelligent or technological, but would prove a hindrance to our form of life achieving dominance.
Assume also that we have the ability to send inert matter faster than our organic forms can tolerate. So we send an advance meteor barrage to wipe out any competitors hostile to our arrival. Catastrophe for them, extinction level for most of their major species, but not nearly enough time for them to re-evolve to a stage that could challenge our survival. We arrive in our generational ship some thousands of years later, settle in, and make the world our own.
We name it Earth.
We make up religious tales to explain our existence to our children, confident that we have millions of years in which to advance technologically again and leap to the next world when that time comes. After all, we'd done it at least once before.
Maybe the company just doesn't want their internal telecommuting communications to be subject to the federal wiretapping they are performing, keeping it all in-house on their LAN.
I was attempting to clear up the use of the terms upload/download/push/pull from a technical perspective.
And you're wrong. Upload and download do not describe two perspectives on a single transfer. They are two different transfers, describing the direction of the transfer only relative to the place that initiated it--the client--and the place that fulfilled it--the server. They are used to describe transfers between a client and a server.
To upload is to push a file to a server, like FTP's command "put" or Z-modem's send. To download is to pull a file from a server, like FTP's "get" or Z-modem's receive. There is always a passive machine involved (a server) that transfers no information until directed by a client. ("Push" and "pull" have also been used as terms of delivery methods, but still they correspond to downloading and uploading.)
Usage of these terms has become sloppy over time. It started when people thought that the stature of the machines involved (mainframe high vs. desktop low) determined it, or the relative distance between the machines (mainframes being distant vs. desktops being local), or even to communications between a desktop and its perhiperals (desktop high vs. peripheral device low) and that transfers were like flowing water, generally going down unless made to go up. All of those misconceptions were due to that generally a desktop could not be a server, always assuming the greater machine was always the server. It also ignored that one could control a remote client to communicate with a local server. (They even continue to be cited as sole definitions in dictionaries.)
To talk about perception of direction for a transfer, you can say you have incoming and outgoing data on a particular machine. Those terms talk about the motion of the data without speaking of the client-server relationship, even on a machine that is not an end point of the transfer. The terms upload and download always convey where the action originated, and it can't originate from two places at once. Upload and download always refer to communications between a client and server.
Now, the exception is space communication where the direction is always relative to gravity: communication to space is "up" and to ground is "down" regardless of where the command is issued (though it is more appropriate to use the suffix -link than -load).
The sci-fi usage of transfer of consciousness into a computer also gets it exactly wrong: unless you're telepathic, the brain has no facility to push its data into a computer, so it can't be uploaded(*); consciousness has to be downloaded, even if the source brain has to control the outside device to initiate the transfer. Like using a remote client to pull (download) data from a server running on your desktop, the telepresence allows you to operate a client to pull from a server.
Those that seek to legislate avoid the terms upload and download altogether and go with more verbose terminology that clearly outlines who is performing the (usually infringing) act. They know P2P users that share their local libraries aren't actively causing transfers to occur, so they don't call it uploading. They call it "making available", and only in the Jammie case did they manage to make it stick, dropping it from all other arguments. "Making available" is operating a server; it isn't uploading.
When talking instead about streaming radio, it gets more iffy. Technically the stream is already being emitted; you're only tuning into the continuous stream. You aren't controlling what you receive, only whether you receive or don't. Though you're equivalently FTP-"get"ting from/dev/microphone and receiving it at/dev/speaker, I would hesitate calling it either an download or upload. I guess it depends on whether you think an usurpation of control occurs when receiving a stream vs. a real file. I still wouldn't grant upload/download as ever being both applicable to the same transfer.
*Why do they keep talking about "illegal downloads" when it's UPLOADING that is illegal? Maybe because no one uploads in P2P. There is no push (upload); there is only pull (download). Serving and uploading are not the same thing.
The person making the copy is the one doing something illegal. Someone who downloads from a server is making the copy. If someone else was uploading to a server, that would be making a copy.
Something which is legal to possess isn't made illegal by making its location accessible to the public. It's a pie cooling on a windowsill.
Having something on a server makes no copies absent the actions of another, yet they claim this is "making available" (absent any proof that anything actually was available[*]) and call it a violation of exclusive distribution (copy)rights, and also manage to get it established in a judge's instructions to a jury rather than a matter for the jury to decide for itself.
[*] In civil court, to paraphrase "A Few Good Men": it doesn't matter what you can prove; it only matters what you can convincingly allege.
It took him 5 years between "inadvertently" starting this "war against consumers" and admitting it was a bad decision. Did they ever find those devices of mass duplication? Or those mobile infringement platforms? The suppliers of the aluminum CD spindles? The yellow cake-boxes of digital material from Verbatim?
Then how come you're still shooting at us? It isn't easy being a copyright cop.
I don't go around gratuitously suing people and then brag about it in seedy IP lawyers' bars. I go around gratuitously suing people, and then I agonize about it afterwards to my children.
And I write legislation. Though I haven't anything new passed through Congress yet, so I better warn ya, I'm in a mean mood.
Hey I like the white album too, but I can only listen to it so many times before I crave something new. Oh, and art tends to evolve, and it is interesting to see how old bands influence new bands. I think the only Beatles I have is the Let It Be album on CD. If I want to hear something new, I can turn on the radio, TV, or see a movie. I don't replay what I have very often. What new stuff I do get I'll play half a dozen or so times through then retire it (so I tend to memorize track order as well). Of my last four CD purchases, three were soundtracks (Electric Dreams, Battlestar Galactica 3, and Dethklok), and one a remix CD (ULLAdubULLA II).
I have an iPod Shuffle. I use it mostly to listen to podcasts (and get annoyed that some in AAC I downloaded from iTunes still won't play). A lot of the other stuff are things that I find quotable but not Googleable (like The Adventures of Ruby). I have yet to buy anything from iTunes.
There was one new song I heard on a TV show that I thought was interesting enough for me to check out other stuff by the artist. Then I heard two other shows use the same song in the same week. That turned me off. I couldn't even tell you its name or artist now, only that the singer's voice was modulated to sound like an organ.
let's not get started on the TV show dvd boxset con (which you could have recorded for free without functional recourse) No, let's!
If you were on the ball early enough to start recording them from the start of the season, never missing one, at the best quality you could achieve, including the 5.1 digital sound, with minimal glitches from the transmission, and you don't mind the on-screen bugs and lower-third advertisements and editing out the other ads yourself, sure you could get by without purchasing the box sets.
However, some shows are shot with DVD release in mind, like Stargate SG-1 where the ends of acts were set up so that hard cuts could be used instead of fades on the DVD, and no cuts to the same scene without any time passing. Even musical cues are edited to be seamless between acts on DVD.
After taping a lot of television as a kid, I find that I prefer my collections to be legal. Still, I am more hesitant in buying the most recent complete season of 24 after having done a Firewire capture and mastered my own anamorphic DVD set (including an episode each from South Park and The Simpsons), including menus and trailers, because I could. I may yet try my hand at a 3x DVD or HD Rec set. But I will definitely buy if it is released in an HD format. I want to be honest.
I generally only archive what's on TV if I consider that it will become unobtainium later. Of three new series I picked this year, one was picked up for 22 episodes and another will be short an episode due to the writer's strike (wasn't as good as I'd hoped anyway, and I missed two, so I may just toss them all out if reruns won't fill).
Still, some DVDs have noticeably less content than originally aired. The War of the Worlds TV series is missing the opening hand-over-Earth sequence in each and every episode and Odyssey 5 is missing every episode recap, the cut causing an audio glitch on one episode.
The sheeple have moved onto a new drug... ipod, itunes, zune, etc... online shops.
The really smart ones have been pirating the music all along, and maybe buying merchandise from the actual concerts. How would you categorize those that have not been buying CDs long before anyone even suggested boycotting music?
Modern media is already supersaturated with music. I feel no compelling reason to possess any of it for its own sake.
I'm sure they'd risk a mass exodus from their game because they could make a couple more bucks on the side selling information. You assume they'd be offered compensation. Compensation is only offered to those who are willing to betray and set their price (Comcast); those who aren't willing to betray their customers' trust will be forced to comply without compensation.
Grow up, nincompoop. Come on, don't you know ha-ha-only-serious when you see it? Though true they wouldn't want to risk alienating their customer base with such actions (your bald sarcasm was well taken), I wouldn't put it past some members of this government to coerce them into doing it anyway, or use them as a model to require other on-line service providers to do the same in order to provide appropriate tools required to intercept and obstruct terrorism, to unite and strengthen America. It's spelled out right there in the actronym.
BTW, quoting lame science fiction != solidly prepared argument. That's just speaking the the audience (tech savvy, sci-fi aware), capping the article with a little shared-culture entertainment, and I'd think more effective with this audience than I've seen others attempt with Bible quotes. If I were a thumper, I'd have used, "Though I hear 30 pieces of silver is the going rate," when talking about compensation, but as G'Kar said, "Do not thump the Book of G'Quon; it is disrespectful."
Angel: This is Angel. Angel: This is Angel. Angel & Angel: We are the Android Sisters. What is your question? Caller: All of reality exists in our minds. Is that true? Angel: What is your intelligence rating? Caller: I'm classified as a 5.5555. Angel: You understand we only speak to you on the level you can comprehend. Caller: I appreciate that. Angel: For those of you watching out there, adjust your I-T rating to... Angel & Angel: 5.5555. What is your question? Caller: I already asked it. Angel: What is your question? Caller: I said, I already asked it. Angel & Angel: What is your question? [beat] Angel & Angel: What is your question? Caller: All right, I want to know if reality is in my mind or is it out there? I mean, what if it's all in my mind? I mean, change my mind I could change reality: right; wrong; what? I'm confused. Angel & Angel: Dear Confused. Angel: Briefly, reality is merely what everyone agrees is real. Angel: What everyone agrees is not real does not exist. Caller: Who programmed you? Angel & Angel: Who programmed you? Caller: How should I know? Everyone. I don't know. I'm still confused. Angel & Angel: Dear Still Confused. Angel: You are confusing the symbol for reality. ["Reality"] Angel: Money is a good example. ["Money"] Caller: What about money? I like money. ["Money money"] Angel: I will use two pieces of paper as an example. Angel: Can you see this? Caller: I see one piece of paper. The other is money. Angel & Angel: Two pieces of paper! Caller: What? Angel: Here are two pieces of paper. Angel: Both the same size. Angel: Both just paper. ["Paper"] Angel: Humans are obsessed with money. ["Money money money money"] Caller: Not all humans, just some of us. Most of us. Angel: One piece of paper is worth 500 Solar Credits. Angel: The other is worthless. Not even worth a Solar Centavo. Angel: Do you know why? Caller: Sure. One is a piece of money, the other is a piece of paper. Angel & Angel: They are both paper. Caller: Yeah. Right. Angel: One has been... Angel & Angel:...Blessed... Angel:...by the Treasury Wizards. Angel: The other has not. Caller: That's it? ["That's it."] Angel: The symbol is controlling your mind. Caller: Mmm. I see. Angel: Oh, our time is up. Angel: This is Angel. Angel: This is Angel. Angel: We are the Android Sisters. Until next time.
They could also be enlisted to scan customers' archived mail and browser caches for certain communications and websites so as to put them on watch lists and deny them interstate travel by aircraft or target them for rendition.
It's potentially a massively multiplayer online data mine.
Jenna: Do you believe what they told us? About themselves, I mean. Blake: With that much power why bother to lie? Jenna: That's one way to become a hunted man: trust the powerful.
On the topic of "Ghost Calls", from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams, from chapters 9 and 21:
The stereo was still playing light orchestral music into the telephone, which had been lying on the passenger seat listening patiently all this time. [Gordon] stared at it and realised with a growing fever of excitement that he was still connected to Susan's telephone-answering machine. It was the type that would simply run and run until he hung up. He was still in contact with the world.
He tried desperately to pick up the receiver, fumbled, let it slip, and was in the end reduced to bending himself down over its mouthpiece.
[It was a hollow, terrified, bewildered voice, no more than an insubstantial whisper, but it was there, audible, on the telephone-answering machine tape.]
"Susan!" he cried into it, his voice a hoarse and distant wail on the wind. "Susan, help me! Help me for God's sake. Susan, I'm dead-" [...]
Dirk whirled round and stopped the tape.
"I'm sorry," he said under his breath, "but I have the welfare of my client to consider."
He wound the tape back a very short distance, to just before where the voice began, twisted the Record Level knob to zero and pressed Record. He left the tape to run, wiping off the voice and anything that might follow it. If the tape was going to establish the time of Gordon Way's death, then Dirk didn't want any embarrassing examples of Gordon speaking to turn up on the tape after that point, even if it was only to confirm that he was, in fact, dead.
SSD's have a short life span due to cell memory The larger the drive, the more spread out the wear, the longer it will ast. By my calculations, a 1 GiB NAND Flash as a TiVo's video drive rerecording the same data every 30 minutes would last 570 years.
If I've made a mistake in those calculations, I'd appreciate a correction before I feel compelled to cite them again.
Re:Worthless without a cooling fan...
on
Lap Desks
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· Score: 1
You need an air-hockey table. Then get a laptop with accessible accelerometers in it and replace the hard drive with a solid state drive....
And those who look far younger than they are. I recall an embarrassing gaffe where a friend of a friend offered to drive us to some store. He nipped into the house and emerged with the keys, started the car and away we went. I asked if his mom knew he drove her car. Ooops. He was 18 and it was his car, though he looked for the world like he was 13. So the gaffe was... that you insulted his choice of car as effeminate?
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Assume also that we have the ability to send inert matter faster than our organic forms can tolerate. So we send an advance meteor barrage to wipe out any competitors hostile to our arrival. Catastrophe for them, extinction level for most of their major species, but not nearly enough time for them to re-evolve to a stage that could challenge our survival. We arrive in our generational ship some thousands of years later, settle in, and make the world our own.
We name it Earth.
We make up religious tales to explain our existence to our children, confident that we have millions of years in which to advance technologically again and leap to the next world when that time comes. After all, we'd done it at least once before.
Where was that site in 2002 when people were trying to hack the new TiVo backdoor code?
Maybe the company just doesn't want their internal telecommuting communications to be subject to the federal wiretapping they are performing, keeping it all in-house on their LAN.
[checks his Amazon Wishlist]
Damn, it would appear that I misread the PS2 version as being the PC version... or they reassigned the PC SKU to the PS2.
Well, I know I'll be disappointed if it doesn't come out as an unrated PC download.
I was attempting to clear up the use of the terms upload/download/push/pull from a technical perspective.
And you're wrong. Upload and download do not describe two perspectives on a single transfer. They are two different transfers, describing the direction of the transfer only relative to the place that initiated it--the client--and the place that fulfilled it--the server. They are used to describe transfers between a client and a server.
/dev/microphone and receiving it at /dev/speaker, I would hesitate calling it either an download or upload. I guess it depends on whether you think an usurpation of control occurs when receiving a stream vs. a real file. I still wouldn't grant upload/download as ever being both applicable to the same transfer.
To upload is to push a file to a server, like FTP's command "put" or Z-modem's send. To download is to pull a file from a server, like FTP's "get" or Z-modem's receive. There is always a passive machine involved (a server) that transfers no information until directed by a client. ("Push" and "pull" have also been used as terms of delivery methods, but still they correspond to downloading and uploading.)
Usage of these terms has become sloppy over time. It started when people thought that the stature of the machines involved (mainframe high vs. desktop low) determined it, or the relative distance between the machines (mainframes being distant vs. desktops being local), or even to communications between a desktop and its perhiperals (desktop high vs. peripheral device low) and that transfers were like flowing water, generally going down unless made to go up. All of those misconceptions were due to that generally a desktop could not be a server, always assuming the greater machine was always the server. It also ignored that one could control a remote client to communicate with a local server. (They even continue to be cited as sole definitions in dictionaries.)
To talk about perception of direction for a transfer, you can say you have incoming and outgoing data on a particular machine. Those terms talk about the motion of the data without speaking of the client-server relationship, even on a machine that is not an end point of the transfer. The terms upload and download always convey where the action originated, and it can't originate from two places at once. Upload and download always refer to communications between a client and server.
Now, the exception is space communication where the direction is always relative to gravity: communication to space is "up" and to ground is "down" regardless of where the command is issued (though it is more appropriate to use the suffix -link than -load).
The sci-fi usage of transfer of consciousness into a computer also gets it exactly wrong: unless you're telepathic, the brain has no facility to push its data into a computer, so it can't be uploaded(*); consciousness has to be downloaded, even if the source brain has to control the outside device to initiate the transfer. Like using a remote client to pull (download) data from a server running on your desktop, the telepresence allows you to operate a client to pull from a server.
Those that seek to legislate avoid the terms upload and download altogether and go with more verbose terminology that clearly outlines who is performing the (usually infringing) act. They know P2P users that share their local libraries aren't actively causing transfers to occur, so they don't call it uploading. They call it "making available", and only in the Jammie case did they manage to make it stick, dropping it from all other arguments. "Making available" is operating a server; it isn't uploading.
When talking instead about streaming radio, it gets more iffy. Technically the stream is already being emitted; you're only tuning into the continuous stream. You aren't controlling what you receive, only whether you receive or don't. Though you're equivalently FTP-"get"ting from
(*) At
The person making the copy is the one doing something illegal. Someone who downloads from a server is making the copy. If someone else was uploading to a server, that would be making a copy.
Something which is legal to possess isn't made illegal by making its location accessible to the public. It's a pie cooling on a windowsill.
Having something on a server makes no copies absent the actions of another, yet they claim this is "making available" (absent any proof that anything actually was available[*]) and call it a violation of exclusive distribution (copy)rights, and also manage to get it established in a judge's instructions to a jury rather than a matter for the jury to decide for itself.
[*] In civil court, to paraphrase "A Few Good Men": it doesn't matter what you can prove; it only matters what you can convincingly allege.
I are not a lawyer.
This be not legal advice.
It's a sad day on Slashdot when a Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide paraphrase gets modded Troll.
What do they use in Washington? Wind power.
I don't go around gratuitously suing people and then brag about it in seedy IP lawyers' bars. I go around gratuitously suing people, and then I agonize about it afterwards to my children.
And I write legislation. Though I haven't anything new passed through Congress yet, so I better warn ya, I'm in a mean mood.
I have an iPod Shuffle. I use it mostly to listen to podcasts (and get annoyed that some in AAC I downloaded from iTunes still won't play). A lot of the other stuff are things that I find quotable but not Googleable (like The Adventures of Ruby). I have yet to buy anything from iTunes.
There was one new song I heard on a TV show that I thought was interesting enough for me to check out other stuff by the artist. Then I heard two other shows use the same song in the same week. That turned me off. I couldn't even tell you its name or artist now, only that the singer's voice was modulated to sound like an organ.
If you were on the ball early enough to start recording them from the start of the season, never missing one, at the best quality you could achieve, including the 5.1 digital sound, with minimal glitches from the transmission, and you don't mind the on-screen bugs and lower-third advertisements and editing out the other ads yourself, sure you could get by without purchasing the box sets.
However, some shows are shot with DVD release in mind, like Stargate SG-1 where the ends of acts were set up so that hard cuts could be used instead of fades on the DVD, and no cuts to the same scene without any time passing. Even musical cues are edited to be seamless between acts on DVD.
After taping a lot of television as a kid, I find that I prefer my collections to be legal. Still, I am more hesitant in buying the most recent complete season of 24 after having done a Firewire capture and mastered my own anamorphic DVD set (including an episode each from South Park and The Simpsons), including menus and trailers, because I could. I may yet try my hand at a 3x DVD or HD Rec set. But I will definitely buy if it is released in an HD format. I want to be honest.
I generally only archive what's on TV if I consider that it will become unobtainium later. Of three new series I picked this year, one was picked up for 22 episodes and another will be short an episode due to the writer's strike (wasn't as good as I'd hoped anyway, and I missed two, so I may just toss them all out if reruns won't fill).
Still, some DVDs have noticeably less content than originally aired. The War of the Worlds TV series is missing the opening hand-over-Earth sequence in each and every episode and Odyssey 5 is missing every episode recap, the cut causing an audio glitch on one episode.
The really smart ones have been pirating the music all along, and maybe buying merchandise from the actual concerts. How would you categorize those that have not been buying CDs long before anyone even suggested boycotting music?
Modern media is already supersaturated with music. I feel no compelling reason to possess any of it for its own sake.
Angel: This is Angel. ...Blessed... ...by the Treasury Wizards.
Angel: This is Angel.
Angel & Angel: We are the Android Sisters. What is your question?
Caller: All of reality exists in our minds. Is that true?
Angel: What is your intelligence rating?
Caller: I'm classified as a 5.5555.
Angel: You understand we only speak to you on the level you can comprehend.
Caller: I appreciate that.
Angel: For those of you watching out there, adjust your I-T rating to...
Angel & Angel: 5.5555. What is your question?
Caller: I already asked it.
Angel: What is your question?
Caller: I said, I already asked it.
Angel & Angel: What is your question?
[beat]
Angel & Angel: What is your question?
Caller: All right, I want to know if reality is in my mind or is it out there? I mean, what if it's all in my mind? I mean, change my mind I could change reality: right; wrong; what? I'm confused.
Angel & Angel: Dear Confused.
Angel: Briefly, reality is merely what everyone agrees is real.
Angel: What everyone agrees is not real does not exist.
Caller: Who programmed you?
Angel & Angel: Who programmed you?
Caller: How should I know? Everyone. I don't know. I'm still confused.
Angel & Angel: Dear Still Confused.
Angel: You are confusing the symbol for reality.
["Reality"]
Angel: Money is a good example.
["Money"]
Caller: What about money? I like money.
["Money money"]
Angel: I will use two pieces of paper as an example.
Angel: Can you see this?
Caller: I see one piece of paper. The other is money.
Angel & Angel: Two pieces of paper!
Caller: What?
Angel: Here are two pieces of paper.
Angel: Both the same size.
Angel: Both just paper.
["Paper"]
Angel: Humans are obsessed with money.
["Money money money money"]
Caller: Not all humans, just some of us. Most of us.
Angel: One piece of paper is worth 500 Solar Credits.
Angel: The other is worthless. Not even worth a Solar Centavo.
Angel: Do you know why?
Caller: Sure. One is a piece of money, the other is a piece of paper.
Angel & Angel: They are both paper.
Caller: Yeah. Right.
Angel: One has been...
Angel & Angel:
Angel:
Angel: The other has not.
Caller: That's it?
["That's it."]
Angel: The symbol is controlling your mind.
Caller: Mmm. I see.
Angel: Oh, our time is up.
Angel: This is Angel.
Angel: This is Angel.
Angel: We are the Android Sisters. Until next time.
They could also be enlisted to scan customers' archived mail and browser caches for certain communications and websites so as to put them on watch lists and deny them interstate travel by aircraft or target them for rendition.
It's potentially a massively multiplayer online data mine.
Jenna: Do you believe what they told us? About themselves, I mean.
Blake: With that much power why bother to lie?
Jenna: That's one way to become a hunted man: trust the powerful.
My source for 1,000,000 writes before failure was Wikipedia, contemporaneous with the posting.
If I've made a mistake in those calculations, I'd appreciate a correction before I feel compelled to cite them again.
"They called the Enterprise a garbage scow! Sir."