Copyright was considered a necessary evil. I make this claim solely because of this reason; if it were considered a true right to own "intellectual property", the founding fathers never would have given this "right" a shelf-life.
The fact is, they did. On the one hand, they recognized the lunacy of giving anyone the sole ownership of publicized thoughts, ideas, and concepts, whether artistic or other. It is one thing to own a physical object. That is core to almost every single society that ever existed on earth (there are exceptions, of course). But the perversity of feeling one can "own" intellectual property is quite ridiculous. It may be "the way things have been" for the last hundred years or so, but the fact of the matter is, it is still wrong.
The founding fathers recognized the fact that entrepreneurial types would see no reason to pay someone to produce new works, both artistic and scientific (or do it themselves) if they could not get any money for it. So they decided on a plan that would essentially subsidize the creation of such information via many small-scale monopolies that were to last for a very short period of time, one monopoly per copyrighted creation.
If this "right" were a true Right, it would not have been limited by time. It would have been perpetual, just as physical ownership of an object is a perpetual right, to you and your heirs, unto the ending of your line (or you forget to pay bills and they take your shit and sell it off). But the fact is, it was a very limited "right", whose sole purpose was to provide a vast amount of intellectual "property" for the masses to consume, remake, reuse, reproduce, and better society as a whole.
Instead, publishers of intellectual content (whether it's the recording industry, the motion picture industry, or literary industry) began to claim that they could not afford to subsidize the creation of such intellectual works - at least not on such a large scale - unless these miniature monopolies were extended far beyond their initial terms. Conveniently forgetting (or, more accurately, ignoring) the true reasons for copyright protection, these content publishers raised a tremendous cry with the United States Congress, which was easily able to ignore those same reasons for copyright protection as campaign contributions steadily flowed into their warchests.
Were these content publishers only able to publish these intellectual works for 17 years, it's true that many wouldn't take a chance at producing works such as Waterworld or Lord of the Rings. The money spent on these productions might take an exceptional amount of time to recoup, much less profit from. So society would lose works such as these, but be able to take pictures such as Star Wars and expand it out well past what Lucas would have wanted. In some ways, this is bad (I don't trust many people would do better than Lucas with any prequels or sequels), but in some ways, it is good (I can certainly imagine there are more than a few people who would do a stellar job expanding on the Star Wars universe).
Back to your comment, which I have not honestly or accurately addressed yet: just because reproduction and distribution of content is easier in the "digital world" than it was previously, it does not imply that others have the right to distribute content. However, to treat copyright as a sacrosanct right, akin to that of the other Rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights, without taking into consideration its initial (noble) intent and its current manifestation is another miscarriage of justice as well. We, as society, have been wronged by the content publishers, the producers, and our elected congressmen and women, all so the above mentioned parties could get more rich, without truly benefiting society in any real tangible way outside of the economic sector. I agree this is an important sector, but it should not be considered the
Well, it *does* cost money to pay the electric bill, and the computer that *makes* the copy (even if it is only digital). The computer is a one-time cost, and the electric bill is a recurring cost; miniscule, agreed, but still a cost.
Basically your point boils down to this: people are unhappy when things go wrong, which was apparently taken from Duh Magazine.
Seriously, it is beta. It is in perpetual beta BECAUSE it is not flawless. If it takes 15 years for it to come out of beta, then that means it obviously has flaws in the mean time. If that concept bothers you that bad, then go to some other provider, where instead of thinking "oh man, this is in beta, it may have problems", you will instead think "man, this thing is perfect!", right before it, too, goes down, and you lose all of your pictures of your grandsons.
Personally, I prefer the Google "perpetual beta" model. At least they don't claim something is finished before it is (see: Windows, any modern PC video game [ especially the ones that need patches BEFORE THE GAME IS EVEN ON THE FUCKING SHELVES ], etc).
I back up every single DVD I own. Actually, that's not correct. I make a copy of every single DVD I own, shove my DVDs on a shelf in a closet, and only watch the burned copy.
If you saw how many stacks of DVDs I go through because I can't take care of ANY optical disc, you'd fucking understand.
I had to get a job when I was 13. I worked on a dairy farm. I started at 3$ an hour. If my parents would have touched so much as a single dime, I would have killed them and threw them in the manure pit.
That right there is being taught about the value of a dollar. I always had money, but I busted my damn ass for it.
After my old University's VLK kicked the bucket and I couldn't get updates, I did what I had to do.
I switched to Ubuntu. I no longer have too much time to fuck around with a computer system, so that's why I picked the hand-holding of Ubuntu. It works well for most of my uses. I still use the crippled version of windows on a small partition to play video games, and I've managed to patch it using the "offline patch" ISO maker some german IT company made to get the latest patches (above and beyond SP2). I still don't trust it in the slightest, so the only thing that gets installed are video games. I don't go to webpages except to download game patches and occasional mods. Otherwise, I stay in Ubuntu.
It went remarkably well. To be totally honest with you, the only thing I want right now is to be able to play Project Reality (BF2 mod), The Hidden and Dystopia (HL2 mods), and NWN1 in Linux. It's probably even possible to do that with Wine or Cedega or something, but they took WAY too much fucking effort the last time I looked into it, and when given a choice between spending 6 hours+ per game, or waiting 2 minutes between a reboot into XP, I'll take the latter.:]
Agreed, I'm not even saying it should be illegal for a parent to give their kid an AO game. That's their decision. I've known some suprisingly mature 15 year olds, and some ridiculously immature 20 year olds. It really kinda does depend.
But removing the retailer's culpability from the picture simplifies it drastically. Either the kid stole the game, got it from another adult who wasn't his parent, or his parents' bought it for him. Or he downloaded it from a bittorrent tracker of some sort. Regardless, the industry itself is much more protected than it was, when it was openly accused of "preying on [our] youth". As a gamer, I care more about the industry than I do about the kid being a crackpot or his parents letting him browbeat them into giving him what he wants. But the PR boon (or, really, the safety from any negative PR) for the industry is huge. If I'm EB, Valve, or EA, I'm super in favor of this law, if only to bypass some of the more ridiculous claims of Jack Thompson, Joseph Lieberman or Hillary Clinton.
Actually, no. Attack the consumers with a vengeance. Which consumers am I referring to? The parents who buy GTA San Andreas for their 10 year old son.
Make it illegal for retailers to provide the game to kids. That way, when the kid gets it from his inept, irresponsible, moronic parents, and actually *does* do something he saw in the game (probability dictates some retarded insane person is going to do it eventually, and you *know* what the media is going to focus on instead of them being retarded and/or insane), then the game companies and the publishers and the retailers can all say "look, the game says Adults Only, but that kids' parents got it for him, so they are obviously to blame." It will all be on mommy and daddy's shoulders then, and they won't have a leg to stand on.
That wont' stop the media from blaming video games entirely, of course, but it still weakens their argument.
Okay, I read it. Trillian? He lost all credibility with me.
I can accept that some people like to use it. Maybe even a lot of people. But if I *had* to use Trillian, I'd say fuck it and go back to writing letters. Considering I have a broken hand, it would be quite difficult, but I'd prefer to feel the bones in my hand grinding together with each painfully written letter than to use Trillian. I have never *seen* a bigger pile of shit, and I've had some doozies.
If he's going to talk about anything, talk about Adium. Now there is a client done right. To those developers, I salute them.
Then that's their own dumbass fault for taking that job. Don't cry about bee stings if your job is to put thousands of bees in your mouth. You're not goinna get a bit of fucking compassion from me.
In all fairness, using JS for client-side validation *as well* as implementing server side validation is okay. After all, it's better for the user if they know they fucked up immediately rather than sending a request to the server and waiting for a response (both for the client (realtime response) and you (slightly lower server load).
But I digress.
Re:Learn who their customers are...
on
AMD's New DRM
·
· Score: 1
I won't be getting an SACD player. I see no point in HD DVD with the DRM available. Honestly, I wouldn't mind it in the slightest if they replaced the disc for cost of production and shipping whenever I scratch it, but that isn't going to happen. I scratch way too many CDs and DVDs to use the originals all the time. I realize he's a character in a movie, and thus doesn't actually exist, but I probably do more damage to optical discs than Edward Fucking Scissorhands. It's true, and quite unfortunate (for me).
That's why I use DVDShrink and Nero to make a copy of every DVD the moment I get it. I don't make copies for anyone else, but I do make them for me. And I'm constantly making new ones, but that's okay. At least the originals stay in relatively good shape.
I'm not going to blame the producers of these discs for my inability to take proper care of them. That's my bad. But to expect me to pay 20$ over and over and over again for what amounts to a license is preposterous. Either I'm buying the disc to own, or I'm licensing the content. Pick one and stick with it.
Regardless, since I won't be able to do this with any of the HD formats, why exactly should I purchase them? Sure, I have the Sony 50" SRXD LCD projection. Yes, I can totally rock it out in true hi-def and cream in my pants. But what's the point in doing that if I have to spend 25$ every 4th or 5th time I put the movie in because I scratched it past recognition?
Thanks, but no thanks. If I can't make backups, or if you won't promise to sell me replacements at cost + shipping, then I'm just flat out not interested, and won't be participating in your reindeer games.
Unfortunately for you, when balanced against the public good (mass quantities of work being introduced into the public domain), we... don't really care. The whole point to copyright was to promote a feed-loop, where many thousands of people could stand on the shoulders of one person, and take the field even farther.
I don't really care about your personal wants in this regard. If you decide not to develop your copyrighted works because you want to have sole control over them for the duration of your life, then that is all of our loss. But I would hazard a guess to say that you are, by far, in the minority, and the relative gains to be made with a shorter term would by far outweigh whatever contributions you or your ilk may provide.
I realize that came off as rude and condescending, but that was not my primary intent. I surely didn't go out of my way to sugar coat things, but I'll add some caveats now: I find it unfortunate that you feel you are the sole arbiter of what can or should go into your work. On the one hand, I see a certain pride in your work, and a desire to keep it out of the hands of riff-raff like myself (and I mean that sincerely, because whether it is the written word or music, I would not do any work justice), but I also see an arrogance in you that says "I alone am capable of doing right by my works". Only in exceptionally rare cases can this be said, and only them for a finite period of time. Eventually, somebody will be capable of undertaking this task and possibly completing or adding to it more admirably than you (or anyone before you) ever could. And so it goes, onward through history.
As for those works that take longer and more expense to produce; that's just unfortunate. But, after all, it may take me more than 20 years to recoup the costs on a particular R&D project, which renders a patent nearly useless. But just owning the rights to a work or process does not give me the right to print money, even if it's just to "recoup the cost". After all, only a fool would advocate lengthening the terms of copyright so that this particular post of mine recouped the costs of development (and since I value my free time, I'll put the price at 10$). Even with a copyright term exceeding 1000 years, I could hardly hope to make a single penny off this post over that entire length. That's unfortunate for me, but so be it. Life is not always fair.
a) Because the plaintiff complained that the defendant's billing hours weren't reasonable. Apparently when you are suing for attorney's fees, if the other side claims they are not reasonable, it is apparently allowable to take the defendent's billing hours and hold them up against the plaintiff's billing hours to see if they are reasonable. If the plaintiff spent 3 hours on a case, but the defendent spent 3000, then that would probably be considered "unreasonable". But if the plaintiff spent 3000 hours and the defendent 4000, it would probably be considered reasonable.
Basically, the RIAA lawyers sued a lady and was rejected (or whatever) with prejudice. She then sued them for attorney's fees (since it was thrown out with prejudice, this is allowable). The RIAA then claimed the attorney's fees were unreasonable. It is apparently common practice for the courts to judge the reasonableness of a defense by the amount of hours the (former)plaintiffs had put in, so the judge ordered the billing records turned over.
b) Because either the plaintiff DID spend 3 hours on the case, making it look like they weren't doing due diligence, or they spent 3000, which makes them look crazy (and not like a fox). So they probably don't want this getting out - and it will, becoming part of the public record. Which means their anti-RIAA foes will have a field day with their spending on these law suits.
- - - - -
Keep in mind, most of this I gathered from *seemingly* respectible slashdot posts. On the one hand, it could all be right. On the other, it could all just sound right, but be horribly, horribly wrong. So take it with a grain of salt. Or an entire salt shaker.
a) Because the plaintiff complained that the defendant's billing hours weren't reasonable. Apparently when you are suing for attorney's fees, if the other side claims they are not reasonable, it is apparently allowable to take the defendent's billing hours and hold them up against the plaintiff's billing hours to see if they are reasonable. If the plaintiff spent 3 hours on a case, but the defendent spent 3000, then that would probably be considered "unreasonable". But if the plaintiff spent 3000 hours and the defendent 4000, it would probably be considered reasonable.
Basically, the RIAA lawyers sued a lady and was rejected (or whatever) with prejudice. She then sued them for attorney's fees (since it was thrown out with prejudice, this is allowable). The RIAA then claimed the attorney's fees were unreasonable. It is apparently common practice for the courts to judge the reasonableness of a defense by the amount of hours the (former)plaintiffs had put in, so the judge ordered the billing records turned over.
b) Because either the plaintiff DID spend 3 hours on the case, making it look like they weren't doing due diligence, or they spent 3000, which makes them look crazy (and not like a fox). So they probably don't want this getting out - and it will, becoming part of the public record. Which means their anti-RIAA foes will have a field day with their spending on these law suits.
- - - - -
Keep in mind, most of this I gathered from *seemingly* respectible slashdot posts. On the one hand, it could all be right. On the other, it could all just sound right, but be horribly, horribly wrong. So take it with a grain of salt. Or an entire salt shaker.
Only when the NHL makes the deals with TV stations do you get boned (see: Versus, NBC (and yes, I get both)). Still, I live close enough to Pittsburgh that Fox Sports Network (FSN) Pittsburgh is carried by the cable company. Bob Steigerwald may not be nearly as cool as Mike Lange, but everyone loves Bob Errey, and the FSN presentation is about 156223508926509285609185 times better than Versus or NBC could ever even hope to be. Seriously, I find it better than 95% of all NFL telecasts, as well. Sometimes ESPN fucks up and gets some knowledgeable play-by-play and color analysts on the air who don't ramble off on some non-football-related-tangent, or show ridiculous puff piece after ridiculous puff piece, but they've made it clear that THAT is just an accident and won't be happening often. Other than that, we just get boned, game after game after game after game. Blah.
I don't think I've ever seen anything like that in any NHL game. I don't bring this up as a "Hockey is better than Basketball/Baseball/Football" thing, I just think it's interesting that, in the 70 some odd games I've watched since september, I've yet to see a single mention of that. I don't even think Versus or NBC shows it, and that's pretty shocking, since they seem to be the most officious pricks in existence when it comes to producing a game. You'd think one of the "services" they would be offering is the removal of our rights to describe a game we saw.
Then again, they still embrace fighting, so maybe they just realize a spade is a spade and there's no use getting your jock all in a twist over it.
Slashdot Mirror
Why doesn't it give them the right? Seriously.
Copyright was considered a necessary evil. I make this claim solely because of this reason; if it were considered a true right to own "intellectual property", the founding fathers never would have given this "right" a shelf-life.
The fact is, they did. On the one hand, they recognized the lunacy of giving anyone the sole ownership of publicized thoughts, ideas, and concepts, whether artistic or other. It is one thing to own a physical object. That is core to almost every single society that ever existed on earth (there are exceptions, of course). But the perversity of feeling one can "own" intellectual property is quite ridiculous. It may be "the way things have been" for the last hundred years or so, but the fact of the matter is, it is still wrong.
The founding fathers recognized the fact that entrepreneurial types would see no reason to pay someone to produce new works, both artistic and scientific (or do it themselves) if they could not get any money for it. So they decided on a plan that would essentially subsidize the creation of such information via many small-scale monopolies that were to last for a very short period of time, one monopoly per copyrighted creation.
If this "right" were a true Right, it would not have been limited by time. It would have been perpetual, just as physical ownership of an object is a perpetual right, to you and your heirs, unto the ending of your line (or you forget to pay bills and they take your shit and sell it off). But the fact is, it was a very limited "right", whose sole purpose was to provide a vast amount of intellectual "property" for the masses to consume, remake, reuse, reproduce, and better society as a whole.
Instead, publishers of intellectual content (whether it's the recording industry, the motion picture industry, or literary industry) began to claim that they could not afford to subsidize the creation of such intellectual works - at least not on such a large scale - unless these miniature monopolies were extended far beyond their initial terms. Conveniently forgetting (or, more accurately, ignoring) the true reasons for copyright protection, these content publishers raised a tremendous cry with the United States Congress, which was easily able to ignore those same reasons for copyright protection as campaign contributions steadily flowed into their warchests.
Were these content publishers only able to publish these intellectual works for 17 years, it's true that many wouldn't take a chance at producing works such as Waterworld or Lord of the Rings. The money spent on these productions might take an exceptional amount of time to recoup, much less profit from. So society would lose works such as these, but be able to take pictures such as Star Wars and expand it out well past what Lucas would have wanted. In some ways, this is bad (I don't trust many people would do better than Lucas with any prequels or sequels), but in some ways, it is good (I can certainly imagine there are more than a few people who would do a stellar job expanding on the Star Wars universe).
Back to your comment, which I have not honestly or accurately addressed yet: just because reproduction and distribution of content is easier in the "digital world" than it was previously, it does not imply that others have the right to distribute content. However, to treat copyright as a sacrosanct right, akin to that of the other Rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights, without taking into consideration its initial (noble) intent and its current manifestation is another miscarriage of justice as well. We, as society, have been wronged by the content publishers, the producers, and our elected congressmen and women, all so the above mentioned parties could get more rich, without truly benefiting society in any real tangible way outside of the economic sector. I agree this is an important sector, but it should not be considered the
Exactly. Failsafes never fail. Ever. Especially not when you're an evil mastermind.
Well, it *does* cost money to pay the electric bill, and the computer that *makes* the copy (even if it is only digital). The computer is a one-time cost, and the electric bill is a recurring cost; miniscule, agreed, but still a cost.
Basically your point boils down to this: people are unhappy when things go wrong, which was apparently taken from Duh Magazine.
Seriously, it is beta. It is in perpetual beta BECAUSE it is not flawless. If it takes 15 years for it to come out of beta, then that means it obviously has flaws in the mean time. If that concept bothers you that bad, then go to some other provider, where instead of thinking "oh man, this is in beta, it may have problems", you will instead think "man, this thing is perfect!", right before it, too, goes down, and you lose all of your pictures of your grandsons.
Personally, I prefer the Google "perpetual beta" model. At least they don't claim something is finished before it is (see: Windows, any modern PC video game [ especially the ones that need patches BEFORE THE GAME IS EVEN ON THE FUCKING SHELVES ], etc).
I back up every single DVD I own. Actually, that's not correct. I make a copy of every single DVD I own, shove my DVDs on a shelf in a closet, and only watch the burned copy.
:P)
If you saw how many stacks of DVDs I go through because I can't take care of ANY optical disc, you'd fucking understand.
(You asked, I told you.
Possible security reasons? It's about the only thing I can think of.
Well, I have 2 400gb drives and a 74gb raptor. both 400gb drives are for linux, and 74gb is for windows. relatively speaking, that is small. :]
I had to get a job when I was 13. I worked on a dairy farm. I started at 3$ an hour. If my parents would have touched so much as a single dime, I would have killed them and threw them in the manure pit.
That right there is being taught about the value of a dollar. I always had money, but I busted my damn ass for it.
After my old University's VLK kicked the bucket and I couldn't get updates, I did what I had to do.
:]
I switched to Ubuntu. I no longer have too much time to fuck around with a computer system, so that's why I picked the hand-holding of Ubuntu. It works well for most of my uses. I still use the crippled version of windows on a small partition to play video games, and I've managed to patch it using the "offline patch" ISO maker some german IT company made to get the latest patches (above and beyond SP2). I still don't trust it in the slightest, so the only thing that gets installed are video games. I don't go to webpages except to download game patches and occasional mods. Otherwise, I stay in Ubuntu.
It went remarkably well. To be totally honest with you, the only thing I want right now is to be able to play Project Reality (BF2 mod), The Hidden and Dystopia (HL2 mods), and NWN1 in Linux. It's probably even possible to do that with Wine or Cedega or something, but they took WAY too much fucking effort the last time I looked into it, and when given a choice between spending 6 hours+ per game, or waiting 2 minutes between a reboot into XP, I'll take the latter.
Agreed, I'm not even saying it should be illegal for a parent to give their kid an AO game. That's their decision. I've known some suprisingly mature 15 year olds, and some ridiculously immature 20 year olds. It really kinda does depend.
But removing the retailer's culpability from the picture simplifies it drastically. Either the kid stole the game, got it from another adult who wasn't his parent, or his parents' bought it for him. Or he downloaded it from a bittorrent tracker of some sort. Regardless, the industry itself is much more protected than it was, when it was openly accused of "preying on [our] youth". As a gamer, I care more about the industry than I do about the kid being a crackpot or his parents letting him browbeat them into giving him what he wants. But the PR boon (or, really, the safety from any negative PR) for the industry is huge. If I'm EB, Valve, or EA, I'm super in favor of this law, if only to bypass some of the more ridiculous claims of Jack Thompson, Joseph Lieberman or Hillary Clinton.
Actually, no. Attack the consumers with a vengeance. Which consumers am I referring to? The parents who buy GTA San Andreas for their 10 year old son.
Make it illegal for retailers to provide the game to kids. That way, when the kid gets it from his inept, irresponsible, moronic parents, and actually *does* do something he saw in the game (probability dictates some retarded insane person is going to do it eventually, and you *know* what the media is going to focus on instead of them being retarded and/or insane), then the game companies and the publishers and the retailers can all say "look, the game says Adults Only, but that kids' parents got it for him, so they are obviously to blame." It will all be on mommy and daddy's shoulders then, and they won't have a leg to stand on.
That wont' stop the media from blaming video games entirely, of course, but it still weakens their argument.
Okay, I read it. Trillian? He lost all credibility with me.
I can accept that some people like to use it. Maybe even a lot of people. But if I *had* to use Trillian, I'd say fuck it and go back to writing letters. Considering I have a broken hand, it would be quite difficult, but I'd prefer to feel the bones in my hand grinding together with each painfully written letter than to use Trillian. I have never *seen* a bigger pile of shit, and I've had some doozies.
If he's going to talk about anything, talk about Adium. Now there is a client done right. To those developers, I salute them.
Then that's their own dumbass fault for taking that job. Don't cry about bee stings if your job is to put thousands of bees in your mouth. You're not goinna get a bit of fucking compassion from me.
In all fairness, using JS for client-side validation *as well* as implementing server side validation is okay. After all, it's better for the user if they know they fucked up immediately rather than sending a request to the server and waiting for a response (both for the client (realtime response) and you (slightly lower server load).
But I digress.
I won't be getting an SACD player. I see no point in HD DVD with the DRM available. Honestly, I wouldn't mind it in the slightest if they replaced the disc for cost of production and shipping whenever I scratch it, but that isn't going to happen. I scratch way too many CDs and DVDs to use the originals all the time. I realize he's a character in a movie, and thus doesn't actually exist, but I probably do more damage to optical discs than Edward Fucking Scissorhands. It's true, and quite unfortunate (for me). That's why I use DVDShrink and Nero to make a copy of every DVD the moment I get it. I don't make copies for anyone else, but I do make them for me. And I'm constantly making new ones, but that's okay. At least the originals stay in relatively good shape. I'm not going to blame the producers of these discs for my inability to take proper care of them. That's my bad. But to expect me to pay 20$ over and over and over again for what amounts to a license is preposterous. Either I'm buying the disc to own, or I'm licensing the content. Pick one and stick with it. Regardless, since I won't be able to do this with any of the HD formats, why exactly should I purchase them? Sure, I have the Sony 50" SRXD LCD projection. Yes, I can totally rock it out in true hi-def and cream in my pants. But what's the point in doing that if I have to spend 25$ every 4th or 5th time I put the movie in because I scratched it past recognition? Thanks, but no thanks. If I can't make backups, or if you won't promise to sell me replacements at cost + shipping, then I'm just flat out not interested, and won't be participating in your reindeer games.
Unfortunately for you, when balanced against the public good (mass quantities of work being introduced into the public domain), we... don't really care. The whole point to copyright was to promote a feed-loop, where many thousands of people could stand on the shoulders of one person, and take the field even farther.
I don't really care about your personal wants in this regard. If you decide not to develop your copyrighted works because you want to have sole control over them for the duration of your life, then that is all of our loss. But I would hazard a guess to say that you are, by far, in the minority, and the relative gains to be made with a shorter term would by far outweigh whatever contributions you or your ilk may provide.
I realize that came off as rude and condescending, but that was not my primary intent. I surely didn't go out of my way to sugar coat things, but I'll add some caveats now: I find it unfortunate that you feel you are the sole arbiter of what can or should go into your work. On the one hand, I see a certain pride in your work, and a desire to keep it out of the hands of riff-raff like myself (and I mean that sincerely, because whether it is the written word or music, I would not do any work justice), but I also see an arrogance in you that says "I alone am capable of doing right by my works". Only in exceptionally rare cases can this be said, and only them for a finite period of time. Eventually, somebody will be capable of undertaking this task and possibly completing or adding to it more admirably than you (or anyone before you) ever could. And so it goes, onward through history.
As for those works that take longer and more expense to produce; that's just unfortunate. But, after all, it may take me more than 20 years to recoup the costs on a particular R&D project, which renders a patent nearly useless. But just owning the rights to a work or process does not give me the right to print money, even if it's just to "recoup the cost". After all, only a fool would advocate lengthening the terms of copyright so that this particular post of mine recouped the costs of development (and since I value my free time, I'll put the price at 10$). Even with a copyright term exceeding 1000 years, I could hardly hope to make a single penny off this post over that entire length. That's unfortunate for me, but so be it. Life is not always fair.
Excellent, now we'll have old people driving their houseboats to the Kountry Kitchen Buffet, instead of taking their cars.
They stole a prototype laser in one of the episodes. Saffron got pwnt and left in a dumpster. Good times.
Good times.
Go back into your bios and disable the onboard raid controller. It's in there, turn it off, you won't get that check or that message. \m/
Err... there's discussion. In fact, it's some of the worst discussion anywhere, ever, but it's still discussion...
If Dio wasn't enough of a deterrent, nothing could be.
Ever.
a) Because the plaintiff complained that the defendant's billing hours weren't reasonable. Apparently when you are suing for attorney's fees, if the other side claims they are not reasonable, it is apparently allowable to take the defendent's billing hours and hold them up against the plaintiff's billing hours to see if they are reasonable. If the plaintiff spent 3 hours on a case, but the defendent spent 3000, then that would probably be considered "unreasonable". But if the plaintiff spent 3000 hours and the defendent 4000, it would probably be considered reasonable.
Basically, the RIAA lawyers sued a lady and was rejected (or whatever) with prejudice. She then sued them for attorney's fees (since it was thrown out with prejudice, this is allowable). The RIAA then claimed the attorney's fees were unreasonable. It is apparently common practice for the courts to judge the reasonableness of a defense by the amount of hours the (former)plaintiffs had put in, so the judge ordered the billing records turned over.
b) Because either the plaintiff DID spend 3 hours on the case, making it look like they weren't doing due diligence, or they spent 3000, which makes them look crazy (and not like a fox). So they probably don't want this getting out - and it will, becoming part of the public record. Which means their anti-RIAA foes will have a field day with their spending on these law suits.
- - - - -
Keep in mind, most of this I gathered from *seemingly* respectible slashdot posts. On the one hand, it could all be right. On the other, it could all just sound right, but be horribly, horribly wrong. So take it with a grain of salt. Or an entire salt shaker.
a) Because the plaintiff complained that the defendant's billing hours weren't reasonable. Apparently when you are suing for attorney's fees, if the other side claims they are not reasonable, it is apparently allowable to take the defendent's billing hours and hold them up against the plaintiff's billing hours to see if they are reasonable. If the plaintiff spent 3 hours on a case, but the defendent spent 3000, then that would probably be considered "unreasonable". But if the plaintiff spent 3000 hours and the defendent 4000, it would probably be considered reasonable. Basically, the RIAA lawyers sued a lady and was rejected (or whatever) with prejudice. She then sued them for attorney's fees (since it was thrown out with prejudice, this is allowable). The RIAA then claimed the attorney's fees were unreasonable. It is apparently common practice for the courts to judge the reasonableness of a defense by the amount of hours the (former)plaintiffs had put in, so the judge ordered the billing records turned over. b) Because either the plaintiff DID spend 3 hours on the case, making it look like they weren't doing due diligence, or they spent 3000, which makes them look crazy (and not like a fox). So they probably don't want this getting out - and it will, becoming part of the public record. Which means their anti-RIAA foes will have a field day with their spending on these law suits. - - - - - Keep in mind, most of this I gathered from *seemingly* respectible slashdot posts. On the one hand, it could all be right. On the other, it could all just sound right, but be horribly, horribly wrong. So take it with a grain of salt. Or an entire salt shaker.
Only when the NHL makes the deals with TV stations do you get boned (see: Versus, NBC (and yes, I get both)). Still, I live close enough to Pittsburgh that Fox Sports Network (FSN) Pittsburgh is carried by the cable company. Bob Steigerwald may not be nearly as cool as Mike Lange, but everyone loves Bob Errey, and the FSN presentation is about 156223508926509285609185 times better than Versus or NBC could ever even hope to be. Seriously, I find it better than 95% of all NFL telecasts, as well. Sometimes ESPN fucks up and gets some knowledgeable play-by-play and color analysts on the air who don't ramble off on some non-football-related-tangent, or show ridiculous puff piece after ridiculous puff piece, but they've made it clear that THAT is just an accident and won't be happening often. Other than that, we just get boned, game after game after game after game. Blah.
I don't think I've ever seen anything like that in any NHL game. I don't bring this up as a "Hockey is better than Basketball/Baseball/Football" thing, I just think it's interesting that, in the 70 some odd games I've watched since september, I've yet to see a single mention of that. I don't even think Versus or NBC shows it, and that's pretty shocking, since they seem to be the most officious pricks in existence when it comes to producing a game. You'd think one of the "services" they would be offering is the removal of our rights to describe a game we saw.
Then again, they still embrace fighting, so maybe they just realize a spade is a spade and there's no use getting your jock all in a twist over it.