A) refers to the failed Mars Explorer mission, where a lot of money and effort was wasted because someone forgot to check that the units in the design were written in English units rather than in metric (or vice versa). It wasn't exactly the high point in American space exploration (although it isn't the low point either). I think it happened in 1998.
and I'm guessing you all know enough not to confuse metric and English units... Our space program hasn't exactly had a lot of success lately, so perhaps people get a little rowdy when something actually does go right - either that or someone's been reading too many articles about the righteousness of our foreign policy in Neocon Weekly.
Considering the failure rate of space missions and the difficulty of correcting mistakes, I'm suprised that anyone actually goes into space.
Reducing CI would help reduce advertising on radio by reducing its external justification (thus fostering pressure on stations to decrease advertising). It might also reduce the need for labels to push songs at radio (they would make enough money on their primary sellers to allow whatever they release to get airplay) thus reducing some of the bad effects of consolidation (radio monotony, endless advertising). The RIAA's labels, however, have worked significantly to control their supply chains, and I don't know if they will relinquish some control of them under any circumstances other than survival.
I don't want to justify CI - it is wrong, either as a way to get stuff or as a way to fight against the diminishing rights of individuals over the works they license from copyright holders. Reducing CI is probably necessary, but not sufficient, to reduce advertising on radio. I guess I have to much contempt and too little trust for the music labels and radio to believe that they would do the right thing if CI diminished sufficiently. But that's just me (it isn't a rational reason not to try to reduce CI).
stations have the ads because they can - because the consolidation in media companies has driven out potential competitors. Larger stations (I think) are more likely to get free records, appearances, etc. than smaller stations - this (along with the rules the RIAA enforces on radio stations to play records of its component labels) would implicate the RIAA in part in the lack of competition in radio. Add the RIAA's desire to control their supply chain and its seems less likely that copyright infringement plays a significant role in the amount of commercials on commercial radio.
If CI were a revenue sink for radio, there is another problem. A potential analogy to this situation might be the persistence of toll roads in the US - the only one I've heard of that went from toll to free is the CT Turnpike. Even though toll roads such as the NJ and PA Turnpikes have been long paid for, they don't decrease or abolish tolls (mostly they increase). (Maintenance is in there, but that also is required for non-toll roads as well.) Hotels haven't rescinded the "energy surcharges" they instituted during the gas price spikes. What makes you think that the record companies and the radio stations would behave differently?
If copyright infringement disappeared, what would make the amount of commercials decrease? The radio stations depend on the income, and there isn't anyplace else to go (also thanks to the RIAA and the charges for Internet radio). This doesn't seem to imply any change if copyright infringement goes away. CI may have been a justification, but not a real cause.
the point of DRM isn't that your rights need management - it's that the people who hold the copyrights on the music/movies/software/data you use want your (legal) rights. DRM is about taking those rights by stealth - once they've taken them, they need to have them "managed" so that you can't take them back. Thieves need really good locks, after all, to protect them from their victims. DRM reverses the "theft" analogy - copyright infringers using music, etc. they haven't gotten permission to use are thieves but those who take the rights given by copyright law and who profit from the theft (who essentially stripmine public property and then sell both the products made from the land and the use of the land back to you) are just and righteous people.
This is probably the point you were making - I simply concurred with the spirit of your sig.
at least I can buy a Powerball ticket for $1, and the odds are known (although the payoff is not). SCO stock is at least ten times that, and the probability of winning is less well known, let alone the actual monetary value to an individual stockholder (which is probably less than $200 - 10-20:1 return).
Doesn't that imply that the easiest (or an easy) way to increase stock valuation is by overstating the potential benefits of a case (by claiming more damages than they can reasonably justify)? If the probability of winning is ignored, than simply increasing the potential benefit of a case should be sufficient to push stock prices up.
It seems as if the probability of SCO winning their contract case (and the implied infringement) AND the probability that they receive a significant award from the case (since they have been unwilling to disclose the nature of the specific contract breach, they haven't tried to mitigate their own damages) is being ignored or pushed off to the side. This probablility is hard to evaluate, and key to the calculation. With a lottery ticket I can at least estimate reasonably my cost-benefit ratio; with the SCO case that seems harder to do. The main benefit to SCO by winning would be the Linux user licence fees; one catch, though - these fees (charged to users who purchased and legitimately use Linux rather than infringers) would require an extraordinary interpretation of copyright law. It seems unlikely that the value derived from those fees will ever be paid, and thus a major part of the lottery winnings people who purchase SCO stock are counting on disappears.
It seems as if the odds of the lottery ticket is precisely what Wall Street doesn't know - the high potential outcome if SCO wins their case is what is seen and what drives the decision that it may be worth a lot of risk to buy a ticket. Since SCO's case seems weak (or at least it isn't emphasizing the facts of the case), SCO hasn't tried to limit its own damages, and a large part of damages (the licence fees) are not likely to ever see the insides of SCO's coffers, this seems like a bad judgement on Wall Street's part. This brings up the initial question : What are we missing here? What do SCO investors see that we don't see (and, presumably, that IBM doesn't see, either)?
...to screw you over and take away your rights and freedoms in ways that give dictators wet dreams. TC wants to control what people see, whether they can print or save it, listen to it or watch it, and where they can do so.
Science is built (at least in part) on the concept of reproducibility - people can generate results and ideas previously seen by others and thus verify their truthfulness. This filters into how a free society works - people gather information, and others attempt to verify it and act on that which is verified. With TC, and the differential permissions it allows, one cannot necessarily verify information collected by others, thus disabling individuals from distinguishing between truthful information and lies. (By disabling the ability to transmit content, it isolates those who have the information and judgement to distinguish fact from lie from others while allowing them to be found.)
TC will likely be difficult to hack. If it can be hacked, it dies. If it can't be hacked, it gives a lot of power to people in high places who have already shown that they can't be trusted. Giving a lot of power to the untrustworthy (and even if they could be trusted, with that kind of power, they won't be trustworthy for long) so that I can pay to watch movies and play music on my computer (or pay for whatever else someone wants to sell me) doesn't seem like a good deal to me, but I guess the TC people are big believers in Barnum.
All your rights are belong to us. And you even get to pay for the privilege.
As someone else put it before, TC says "We don't trust you. You have no choice but to trust us."
one vote for Jumpman, please...
on
First Computers
·
· Score: 1
the graphics were decent, and it held my interest for a long time, even more so than LodeRunner. Of course, I think that Jumpman is responsible for the deaths of multiple atari-style joysticks at my house.
They recently installed these at the Kroger supermarket near where I work - replaced five lines with two and 4 self-checkout machines. They didn't lower their prices, and if you have a reasonable number of items the machines suck. If you want an actual person, you now get to wait five times as long. Meanwhile, one of our other supermarkets went bankrupt - the execs who engineered the bankruptcy got off with large (> $1M) bonuses while their employees (who didn't cause the bankruptcy in the first place) got...screwed. I see no compelling reason to go to a store to be charged prices as high or higher than others while doing work myself that other stores do for me, particularly when it only serves to screw their workers and me for the benefit of their inept executives.
It's like self-serve gas - it doesn't lower prices (at least not in OH - NJ is full-serve only with lower gas prices) but only guarantees more work and less convenience for me. I don't see any reason to screw people making not much to my detriment, particularly when I know that the execs that did it to them will do it to me if they ever get the chance.
...and it read like oatmeal strained to remove any element of flavor. It also seemed like a document written more for political reasons than to actually tell a story. I probably overgeneralized from that experience. Sorry.
if I want to be shouted down by useless morons who can't tell the difference between the truth and a lie, I could work at Fox News - since I don't enjoy being sucked into arguments with morons (they bring you down to their level and beat you with experience) I don't see the point in it.
Besides, if I knew stocks (or could fake knowing them), conjecture would get me a lot of places...like Darl McBride's speed dial.
it's probably an example of the "I'm going to run for President so I need to appear intellectual by writing a book" thing. It probably was focus-grouped before publication - that way she doesn't have anything in writing to embarrass her later. Since the books written by future/current Presidential candidates seem to have had anything interesting strained out of them to avoid conflicts with future political positions, they're probably best avoided anyway. For politics, there are probably better places to go for informed commentary on their plans, and as personal background it probably isn't very useful.
The more interesting version of her book should come out about thirty years from now.
of having to lend my entire e-book library to someone if I want to lend them a book to read, as opposed to the traditional method of lending a single book from my library to someone and then never getting it back. Lending an e-book and 1) potentially losing a $200 reader and 2) not being able to read any other e-books in the interim (unless I have another reader) is a major disincentive to buying and using e-books.
Oh, and they don't have very many features that regular books don't have, other than restrictive DRM.
I thought the only real rule for gun caliber was "Use enough gun."
Considering the topic of the thread, that might not be as offtopic as it seems - IBM seems to have no difficulty doing so, while SCO seems to have entered a gunfight with a slingshot and ice pellets.
when you're on top, you can do whatever you want, but if you screw your customers hard enough, eventually they'll find a way to take it out on you. Lots of mp3's would be trading hands no matter what the RIAA's labels had done, but they'd probably be selling more and more easily controlling distribution, and copying would be an annoyance rather than a threat to business, if they hadn't screwed both their artists and their customers. Instead, enough people are pissed and tired of paying the prices asked for CDs that they are willing to sift through lots of crap to screw the RIAA. Not nailing your customers helps to insure that only a few people are likely to try to hurt you when they have the chance.
There's a phrase that seems relevant: When you have a tiger by the tail, you best not let go. Ellison has the tiger by the tail. But he won't forever, and if he's been spending his time beating the hell out of the tiger, things will get bad for him.
please tell me, what did he do to jump start Apple? He got $24M to pay off his previous retirement benefits, $5M in pay, and at least $3M in severance for 500 days of putting Apple in the toilet. Oh, and he got to write a book about how none of it was his fault.
GA got lots of money for doing none of the things that in theory allow a CEO to earn extraordinary pay. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem atypical.
problem is without a union you're always outnumbered - lots of management vs. you. Employers can afford to be arbitrary, and it's their word against yours. Guess who's going to lose?
Where I live (Columbus, OH) there are lots of banks - they all have similar variants of medium to high fees, cross-charges on ATMs, etc. When one of my friends complained about the lack of service/bad service at his bank, he was told "It doesn't matter - everyone else does the same thing." Now imagine that with your job. Unions have a lot of bad qualities, but in a business with arbitrary employers they're a lot better than nothing.
Radio stations attract listeners and advertising partly by giving away product. Much of the product the station I listen to gives away is free CDs, and merchandise sponsored at least in part by labels. I don't know if a quid-pro-quo exists between radio play of certain songs/bands and freebies to the station from their label, but it would not suprise me. It seems a lot like payola, except instead of DJs getting cash to play songs, the station gets gear and appearances for doing so.
This also would factor in to the reduction of distribution channels - few radio stations and big labels competiting with money for airplay leaves little role on commercial stations for independents. This sets up a feedback loop - it's hard to get airplay unless you get signed to a major label that has the money to get it for you. Thus only bands acceptable to the studios have the marketing muscle to get on the air - the population on the radio (and this listening population as well) evolves towards what the labels put out and push actively. While the monopoly of radio ownership is a major factor, it is a useful tool in the hands of the RIAA component labels to control their supply chain (compel usury^H^H^H^H^Hcompetitive artist contracts, get airplay for the most profitable bands, sell their albums),
...in the same way that the Patriot Act is accurate. The PA wants you to be a patriot by destroying the purpose of your patriotism (to exercise freedom). DRM wants you to use your digital "rights" by giving them all to big business and government (who will have the money to implement them) and letting them tell you when you can exercise them...for a fee, of course. Thus your "rights" aren't yours but privileges granted by others that can be taken without recourse, and you "preserve" your digital rights by destroying your capability to exercise them.
at this point, decoding the purpose of a policy or law is easy - look at the name, figure out what the policy claims to preserve or defend, and assume that the policy's real purpose is to destroy it. The more glowing or discreet the code phrase used as a title, the more likely the law is to negate the values it claims to uphold.
the only purpose of DRM (or at least the only purpose that is likely to work) to restrict the rights of users over the works they "purchase" and the machines they "own". Professional-grade copiers will crack DRMd works and sell them - preventing that from occurring is likely impossible. DRM is here to take users' fair use rights and give them (mostly) back to them, charging them for the privilege. That way, companies can make money while providing less of a product - the dream of corrupt, evil industries or regimes everywhere. No wonder they keep pushing it.
1) the "right" to rent a work, etc. under your terms is not a physical or inherent right as is property (which is explicitly given such status in the US Constitution) - it is a licence, more analogous to software under EULA than land or physical property. Thus your legal position is incorrect. (see other posts on this thread).
2) the fact that you don't like something or feel that it should be more disliked that it currently is does not justify intentional obfuscation. Copyright infringement is not theft, both in the eyes of the law (previous SC decisions and the Constitution) and morally. It is wrong and prosecutable, but nonequivalent. (considering the ransom the RIAA is attempting to extract for copyright infringement versus the potential civil and criminal penalties for the theft of physical CDs, the RIAA doesn't view theft and copyright infringement them as identical, either.)
I could call copyright infringement "mass murder" but that commits two sins at once. One, a word with a precise legal meaning is intentionally confused with another - thus if repeated, neither word means what it did before. Speakers can't be sure what either term means, and so both terms lose the ability to express ideas that is their purpose. Two, the moral implications of mass murder are diluted by conflating it with copyright infringement; legitimate uses of the term lose their moral force in speech where they should possess such force.
Eggs are not chickens, no matter what I call them. Theft and copyright infringement are legal terms with independent legal realities, like a chicken and an egg. Choosing to call one the other doesn't prove that they are the same, only that the speaker either doesn't know or doesn't care about the law. The fact that copyright infringement is wrong and that the potential consequences are bad and likely harmful does not change its legal status.
3) copyright entitles both the users (via rights codified in law or requiring specific denial in law) and the providers. If I purchase a DRM CD, the rights given to me by copyright law are infringed - the terms of the copyrights are violated. In both cases, the users and the artist are deprived of the license to use a work as they see fit, rights in both cases given by law. Respect for copyrights requires that the people whose use them for profit should start by respecting them themselves. Linguisitic legerdemain or name-calling will not change reality - when the industries dispect their customers and the law that protects them while emphasizing and demonizing violations of the law by others and aggrandizing its defense of their actions, people will return the dispect in kind.
Copyright infringement is neither good in and of itself nor a good way of achieving the respect of copyright owners for the rights of their users, but according a moral status (theft) to it which the people who use copyrights are unwilling to accord it themselves (by altering copyright limitations with DRM and other schemes to limit legally given rights to use) is intellectually dishonest and ultimately counterproductive to the rights you hope to preserve.
...but it's hard to keep from foaming at the mouth when I hear MS and "Trusted Computing" (or when I hear TC alone), DRM, or Longhorn in the same sentence.
...while the interpretation of the Constitution by the judicial system (the Supreme Court) has shifted over time, the Constitution itself is not very dynamic. The Constitution is governed by a specific process to alter its content, and one that is nontrivial to engage - I think it requires 3/4 of both houses of Congress and 3/4 of the state legislatures or the convening of a Constitutional Convention. Since these methods have been successful 25? times in 200 years (and one of which was to repeal a previous amendment), I wouldn't say the Constitution is dynamic or at least in the manner of being instantly responsive to public opinion.
That being said, a public debate could be useful - the rules governing copyrights are made by law, and so are much easier to pass than constitutional amendments. Of course, as long as Congress can get away with putting misleading titles on bills (in many cases, the titles are the negation of the actual consequences of the bill) to garner public support, a public debate and subsequent laws won't do much good.
...so that when the next widespread virus for MS hits, you can ask them to backup your databases with their copy? Maybe they'll even offer you business opportunities sponsored by rival hospitals and a new even more Draconian EULA...
But hey, MS's new DRM will keep you secure from everything except viruses and worms and security flaws caused by badly written and hurried software. If your goal is to keep your computer secure for Microsoft and secure from you and your users, MS Longhorn is the way to go.
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A) refers to the failed Mars Explorer mission, where a lot of money and effort was wasted because someone forgot to check that the units in the design were written in English units rather than in metric (or vice versa). It wasn't exactly the high point in American space exploration (although it isn't the low point either). I think it happened in 1998.
and I'm guessing you all know enough not to confuse metric and English units... Our space program hasn't exactly had a lot of success lately, so perhaps people get a little rowdy when something actually does go right - either that or someone's been reading too many articles about the righteousness of our foreign policy in Neocon Weekly.
Considering the failure rate of space missions and the difficulty of correcting mistakes, I'm suprised that anyone actually goes into space.
Reducing CI would help reduce advertising on radio by reducing its external justification (thus fostering pressure on stations to decrease advertising). It might also reduce the need for labels to push songs at radio (they would make enough money on their primary sellers to allow whatever they release to get airplay) thus reducing some of the bad effects of consolidation (radio monotony, endless advertising). The RIAA's labels, however, have worked significantly to control their supply chains, and I don't know if they will relinquish some control of them under any circumstances other than survival.
I don't want to justify CI - it is wrong, either as a way to get stuff or as a way to fight against the diminishing rights of individuals over the works they license from copyright holders. Reducing CI is probably necessary, but not sufficient, to reduce advertising on radio. I guess I have to much contempt and too little trust for the music labels and radio to believe that they would do the right thing if CI diminished sufficiently. But that's just me (it isn't a rational reason not to try to reduce CI).
stations have the ads because they can - because the consolidation in media companies has driven out potential competitors. Larger stations (I think) are more likely to get free records, appearances, etc. than smaller stations - this (along with the rules the RIAA enforces on radio stations to play records of its component labels) would implicate the RIAA in part in the lack of competition in radio. Add the RIAA's desire to control their supply chain and its seems less likely that copyright infringement plays a significant role in the amount of commercials on commercial radio.
If CI were a revenue sink for radio, there is another problem. A potential analogy to this situation might be the persistence of toll roads in the US - the only one I've heard of that went from toll to free is the CT Turnpike. Even though toll roads such as the NJ and PA Turnpikes have been long paid for, they don't decrease or abolish tolls (mostly they increase). (Maintenance is in there, but that also is required for non-toll roads as well.) Hotels haven't rescinded the "energy surcharges" they instituted during the gas price spikes. What makes you think that the record companies and the radio stations would behave differently?
If copyright infringement disappeared, what would make the amount of commercials decrease? The radio stations depend on the income, and there isn't anyplace else to go (also thanks to the RIAA and the charges for Internet radio). This doesn't seem to imply any change if copyright infringement goes away. CI may have been a justification, but not a real cause.
the point of DRM isn't that your rights need management - it's that the people who hold the copyrights on the music/movies/software/data you use want your (legal) rights. DRM is about taking those rights by stealth - once they've taken them, they need to have them "managed" so that you can't take them back. Thieves need really good locks, after all, to protect them from their victims. DRM reverses the "theft" analogy - copyright infringers using music, etc. they haven't gotten permission to use are thieves but those who take the rights given by copyright law and who profit from the theft (who essentially stripmine public property and then sell both the products made from the land and the use of the land back to you) are just and righteous people.
This is probably the point you were making - I simply concurred with the spirit of your sig.
at least I can buy a Powerball ticket for $1, and the odds are known (although the payoff is not). SCO stock is at least ten times that, and the probability of winning is less well known, let alone the actual monetary value to an individual stockholder (which is probably less than $200 - 10-20:1 return).
Doesn't that imply that the easiest (or an easy) way to increase stock valuation is by overstating the potential benefits of a case (by claiming more damages than they can reasonably justify)? If the probability of winning is ignored, than simply increasing the potential benefit of a case should be sufficient to push stock prices up.
It seems as if the probability of SCO winning their contract case (and the implied infringement) AND the probability that they receive a significant award from the case (since they have been unwilling to disclose the nature of the specific contract breach, they haven't tried to mitigate their own damages) is being ignored or pushed off to the side. This probablility is hard to evaluate, and key to the calculation. With a lottery ticket I can at least estimate reasonably my cost-benefit ratio; with the SCO case that seems harder to do. The main benefit to SCO by winning would be the Linux user licence fees; one catch, though - these fees (charged to users who purchased and legitimately use Linux rather than infringers) would require an extraordinary interpretation of copyright law. It seems unlikely that the value derived from those fees will ever be paid, and thus a major part of the lottery winnings people who purchase SCO stock are counting on disappears.
It seems as if the odds of the lottery ticket is precisely what Wall Street doesn't know - the high potential outcome if SCO wins their case is what is seen and what drives the decision that it may be worth a lot of risk to buy a ticket. Since SCO's case seems weak (or at least it isn't emphasizing the facts of the case), SCO hasn't tried to limit its own damages, and a large part of damages (the licence fees) are not likely to ever see the insides of SCO's coffers, this seems like a bad judgement on Wall Street's part. This brings up the initial question : What are we missing here? What do SCO investors see that we don't see (and, presumably, that IBM doesn't see, either)?
...to screw you over and take away your rights and freedoms in ways that give dictators wet dreams. TC wants to control what people see, whether they can print or save it, listen to it or watch it, and where they can do so.
Science is built (at least in part) on the concept of reproducibility - people can generate results and ideas previously seen by others and thus verify their truthfulness. This filters into how a free society works - people gather information, and others attempt to verify it and act on that which is verified. With TC, and the differential permissions it allows, one cannot necessarily verify information collected by others, thus disabling individuals from distinguishing between truthful information and lies. (By disabling the ability to transmit content, it isolates those who have the information and judgement to distinguish fact from lie from others while allowing them to be found.)
TC will likely be difficult to hack. If it can be hacked, it dies. If it can't be hacked, it gives a lot of power to people in high places who have already shown that they can't be trusted. Giving a lot of power to the untrustworthy (and even if they could be trusted, with that kind of power, they won't be trustworthy for long) so that I can pay to watch movies and play music on my computer (or pay for whatever else someone wants to sell me) doesn't seem like a good deal to me, but I guess the TC people are big believers in Barnum.
All your rights are belong to us. And you even get to pay for the privilege.
As someone else put it before, TC says "We don't trust you. You have no choice but to trust us."
the graphics were decent, and it held my interest for a long time, even more so than LodeRunner. Of course, I think that Jumpman is responsible for the deaths of multiple atari-style joysticks at my house.
They recently installed these at the Kroger supermarket near where I work - replaced five lines with two and 4 self-checkout machines. They didn't lower their prices, and if you have a reasonable number of items the machines suck. If you want an actual person, you now get to wait five times as long. Meanwhile, one of our other supermarkets went bankrupt - the execs who engineered the bankruptcy got off with large (> $1M) bonuses while their employees (who didn't cause the bankruptcy in the first place) got...screwed. I see no compelling reason to go to a store to be charged prices as high or higher than others while doing work myself that other stores do for me, particularly when it only serves to screw their workers and me for the benefit of their inept executives.
It's like self-serve gas - it doesn't lower prices (at least not in OH - NJ is full-serve only with lower gas prices) but only guarantees more work and less convenience for me. I don't see any reason to screw people making not much to my detriment, particularly when I know that the execs that did it to them will do it to me if they ever get the chance.
...and it read like oatmeal strained to remove any element of flavor. It also seemed like a document written more for political reasons than to actually tell a story. I probably overgeneralized from that experience. Sorry.
if I want to be shouted down by useless morons who can't tell the difference between the truth and a lie, I could work at Fox News - since I don't enjoy being sucked into arguments with morons (they bring you down to their level and beat you with experience) I don't see the point in it.
Besides, if I knew stocks (or could fake knowing them), conjecture would get me a lot of places...like Darl McBride's speed dial.
it's probably an example of the "I'm going to run for President so I need to appear intellectual by writing a book" thing. It probably was focus-grouped before publication - that way she doesn't have anything in writing to embarrass her later. Since the books written by future/current Presidential candidates seem to have had anything interesting strained out of them to avoid conflicts with future political positions, they're probably best avoided anyway. For politics, there are probably better places to go for informed commentary on their plans, and as personal background it probably isn't very useful.
The more interesting version of her book should come out about thirty years from now.
of having to lend my entire e-book library to someone if I want to lend them a book to read, as opposed to the traditional method of lending a single book from my library to someone and then never getting it back. Lending an e-book and 1) potentially losing a $200 reader and 2) not being able to read any other e-books in the interim (unless I have another reader) is a major disincentive to buying and using e-books.
Oh, and they don't have very many features that regular books don't have, other than restrictive DRM.
Thanks but no thanks.
I thought the only real rule for gun caliber was "Use enough gun."
Considering the topic of the thread, that might not be as offtopic as it seems - IBM seems to have no difficulty doing so, while SCO seems to have entered a gunfight with a slingshot and ice pellets.
when you're on top, you can do whatever you want, but if you screw your customers hard enough, eventually they'll find a way to take it out on you. Lots of mp3's would be trading hands no matter what the RIAA's labels had done, but they'd probably be selling more and more easily controlling distribution, and copying would be an annoyance rather than a threat to business, if they hadn't screwed both their artists and their customers. Instead, enough people are pissed and tired of paying the prices asked for CDs that they are willing to sift through lots of crap to screw the RIAA. Not nailing your customers helps to insure that only a few people are likely to try to hurt you when they have the chance.
There's a phrase that seems relevant: When you have a tiger by the tail, you best not let go. Ellison has the tiger by the tail. But he won't forever, and if he's been spending his time beating the hell out of the tiger, things will get bad for him.
please tell me, what did he do to jump start Apple? He got $24M to pay off his previous retirement benefits, $5M in pay, and at least $3M in severance for 500 days of putting Apple in the toilet. Oh, and he got to write a book about how none of it was his fault.
GA got lots of money for doing none of the things that in theory allow a CEO to earn extraordinary pay. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem atypical.
problem is without a union you're always outnumbered - lots of management vs. you. Employers can afford to be arbitrary, and it's their word against yours. Guess who's going to lose?
Where I live (Columbus, OH) there are lots of banks - they all have similar variants of medium to high fees, cross-charges on ATMs, etc. When one of my friends complained about the lack of service/bad service at his bank, he was told "It doesn't matter - everyone else does the same thing." Now imagine that with your job. Unions have a lot of bad qualities, but in a business with arbitrary employers they're a lot better than nothing.
Radio stations attract listeners and advertising partly by giving away product. Much of the product the station I listen to gives away is free CDs, and merchandise sponsored at least in part by labels. I don't know if a quid-pro-quo exists between radio play of certain songs/bands and freebies to the station from their label, but it would not suprise me. It seems a lot like payola, except instead of DJs getting cash to play songs, the station gets gear and appearances for doing so.
This also would factor in to the reduction of distribution channels - few radio stations and big labels competiting with money for airplay leaves little role on commercial stations for independents. This sets up a feedback loop - it's hard to get airplay unless you get signed to a major label that has the money to get it for you. Thus only bands acceptable to the studios have the marketing muscle to get on the air - the population on the radio (and this listening population as well) evolves towards what the labels put out and push actively. While the monopoly of radio ownership is a major factor, it is a useful tool in the hands of the RIAA component labels to control their supply chain (compel usury^H^H^H^H^Hcompetitive artist contracts, get airplay for the most profitable bands, sell their albums),
...in the same way that the Patriot Act is accurate. The PA wants you to be a patriot by destroying the purpose of your patriotism (to exercise freedom). DRM wants you to use your digital "rights" by giving them all to big business and government (who will have the money to implement them) and letting them tell you when you can exercise them...for a fee, of course. Thus your "rights" aren't yours but privileges granted by others that can be taken without recourse, and you "preserve" your digital rights by destroying your capability to exercise them.
at this point, decoding the purpose of a policy or law is easy - look at the name, figure out what the policy claims to preserve or defend, and assume that the policy's real purpose is to destroy it. The more glowing or discreet the code phrase used as a title, the more likely the law is to negate the values it claims to uphold.
the only purpose of DRM (or at least the only purpose that is likely to work) to restrict the rights of users over the works they "purchase" and the machines they "own". Professional-grade copiers will crack DRMd works and sell them - preventing that from occurring is likely impossible. DRM is here to take users' fair use rights and give them (mostly) back to them, charging them for the privilege. That way, companies can make money while providing less of a product - the dream of corrupt, evil industries or regimes everywhere. No wonder they keep pushing it.
1) the "right" to rent a work, etc. under your terms is not a physical or inherent right as is property (which is explicitly given such status in the US Constitution) - it is a licence, more analogous to software under EULA than land or physical property. Thus your legal position is incorrect. (see other posts on this thread).
2) the fact that you don't like something or feel that it should be more disliked that it currently is does not justify intentional obfuscation. Copyright infringement is not theft, both in the eyes of the law (previous SC decisions and the Constitution) and morally. It is wrong and prosecutable, but nonequivalent. (considering the ransom the RIAA is attempting to extract for copyright infringement versus the potential civil and criminal penalties for the theft of physical CDs, the RIAA doesn't view theft and copyright infringement them as identical, either.)
I could call copyright infringement "mass murder" but that commits two sins at once. One, a word with a precise legal meaning is intentionally confused with another - thus if repeated, neither word means what it did before. Speakers can't be sure what either term means, and so both terms lose the ability to express ideas that is their purpose. Two, the moral implications of mass murder are diluted by conflating it with copyright infringement; legitimate uses of the term lose their moral force in speech where they should possess such force.
Eggs are not chickens, no matter what I call them. Theft and copyright infringement are legal terms with independent legal realities, like a chicken and an egg. Choosing to call one the other doesn't prove that they are the same, only that the speaker either doesn't know or doesn't care about the law. The fact that copyright infringement is wrong and that the potential consequences are bad and likely harmful does not change its legal status.
3) copyright entitles both the users (via rights codified in law or requiring specific denial in law) and the providers. If I purchase a DRM CD, the rights given to me by copyright law are infringed - the terms of the copyrights are violated. In both cases, the users and the artist are deprived of the license to use a work as they see fit, rights in both cases given by law. Respect for copyrights requires that the people whose use them for profit should start by respecting them themselves. Linguisitic legerdemain or name-calling will not change reality - when the industries dispect their customers and the law that protects them while emphasizing and demonizing violations of the law by others and aggrandizing its defense of their actions, people will return the dispect in kind.
Copyright infringement is neither good in and of itself nor a good way of achieving the respect of copyright owners for the rights of their users, but according a moral status (theft) to it which the people who use copyrights are unwilling to accord it themselves (by altering copyright limitations with DRM and other schemes to limit legally given rights to use) is intellectually dishonest and ultimately counterproductive to the rights you hope to preserve.
...but it's hard to keep from foaming at the mouth when I hear MS and "Trusted Computing" (or when I hear TC alone), DRM, or Longhorn in the same sentence.
...while the interpretation of the Constitution by the judicial system (the Supreme Court) has shifted over time, the Constitution itself is not very dynamic. The Constitution is governed by a specific process to alter its content, and one that is nontrivial to engage - I think it requires 3/4 of both houses of Congress and 3/4 of the state legislatures or the convening of a Constitutional Convention. Since these methods have been successful 25? times in 200 years (and one of which was to repeal a previous amendment), I wouldn't say the Constitution is dynamic or at least in the manner of being instantly responsive to public opinion.
That being said, a public debate could be useful - the rules governing copyrights are made by law, and so are much easier to pass than constitutional amendments. Of course, as long as Congress can get away with putting misleading titles on bills (in many cases, the titles are the negation of the actual consequences of the bill) to garner public support, a public debate and subsequent laws won't do much good.
...so that when the next widespread virus for MS hits, you can ask them to backup your databases with their copy? Maybe they'll even offer you business opportunities sponsored by rival hospitals and a new even more Draconian EULA...
But hey, MS's new DRM will keep you secure from everything except viruses and worms and security flaws caused by badly written and hurried software. If your goal is to keep your computer secure for Microsoft and secure from you and your users, MS Longhorn is the way to go.