I agree that breaking copyright is wrong, but I object to the tactics to the point where I think they are more morally wrong than the infringement.
If I were selling ice creams and a 14 year old stole one, I wouldn't start issuing a million dollar lawsuit. I'd probably want him to tell his parents and get him back on the straight and narrow. If they didn't straighten him out, I'd take him to the police.
Issuing such cases against children is just inhuman IMO.
I could have sworn the biggest issue is that artists are getting ripped off. Why does, in EVERY SINGLE ARTICLE on this issue, Slashdot completely ignores the artist? It's always the RIAA. You think the artists want you to be taking their music without paying for it? You think those millions of p2p users are "sampling" those RAR files of albums and promos and cover art?
Trust me, the groups attacking piracy aren't doing it to protect the artists. They are doing it to protect the labels. Who pays for the RIAA? The artists or the labels?
Looks what's happening to the PC games industry--it's dying. Sales are dying. People are going to consoles because it's safer, it's harder to pirate, and easier to control. Everyone is going to pirate the shit out of Doom 3, and it's going to have an effect--nobody's "sampling" Doom 3. It's the same with music albums, which people grab in archives now and not individual mp3s.
I'll tell you two reasons it's dying... lack of originality and price. What's coming out that's really exciting, and why do people charge me 35UKP for it (that's 2-3 DVDs).
Yes, it's call violating copyright. Slashdotters and pirates don't have the right to dictated to companies how they distribute their works. This is such a given I can't believe it escapes everybody.
The point made by the post you replied to isn't about the issue of copyright, I think it might be suggesting that the real reason for getting P2P networks shut down is to try and keep the bulk of music distribution in the hands of the majors, so even if you wanted to share your own music that you had copyright for around the net, you couldn't so easily.
The future holds online music labels. Not p2p networks where nobody gets paid for anything. Please explain how Kazaa and eMule are going to get artists and labels paid. The only one you can offer is "free advertising," which, barring the fact that distributing their copyrighted material is illegal anyway, is also a dubious argument with no basis other than "well this one time I found a couple of mp3s and went out and bought the CD because I was on dialup and didn't want to finish the rest."
You know what the all-time biggest selling DVD in the UK is? Series 2 of The Office. A DVD of a TV comedy series that was available on BBC2, an unencrypted free-to-air station in the UK. In other words, everyone with a TV and an aerial could have watched it. They could easily have set their VCRs and taped it. But instead, they went and bought the DVD. I'd say that that had something to do with people loving the series AND being familiar with it.
The CD model has traditionally been more of an 'obscurity model' where 2 or 3 singles have been sold, and you don't know what the rest of it is going to be like. Often, it's designed to give fans a raw deal - that there are 3 excellent tracks and 7 fillers. A lot of artists like the idea of internet download, but then, they don't generally aim for the filler approach to their albums.
All the good sport has moved to satellite, and I can't be bothered to watch it. No-one makes stuff that I call "fun sport" like Gladiators or It's a Knockout.
There are loads of house moving, home improvement, soaps, hospital dramas, reality TV and pop idol. All I'm left with is history and some late night comedy. Between about 7 and 9, there's nothing.
Is there some research that says that women own the handset and men will just follow, or are men working longer hours or what?
I think this about getting people to think that an upgrade is worth it. They've run out of things to put into Windows and Office, so the next thing is "hey, get some speech/handwriting recognition".
I know a lot of people with speech software, and NONE of them use it. It's great for people who have no choice, but most people think it's more reliable and just as quick to type.
20 years ago, speech and handwriting recognition would have sold and been used - lots of people weren't used to typewriters. Now, everyone uses a keyboard, so it's pointless.
Actually, there's no reason why you can't model processes in something that businesses understand and then get the tool to generate code (in fact, the model should be the code).
In the late 1980s, people were working towards getting rid of programming with CASE tools and 4GLs, so the representation of the computer system would be closer to the business system.
There were three problems - primarily, the code generated was often inefficient, and required tweaking, secondly, they often produced ugly screens, and thirdly the PC grew and people moved further back to coding for machine performance.
We're now pretty wrapped up in garbage on PCs - people trying to get a cool OCX or new HTML feature into systems that the fundamentals of business systems are frequently missed.
He talks about "visually writing code" but the answer isn't "visually writing code", it's about visually definining the business. So that means defining business rules, events based on those rules - that sort of thing.
People should be able to say "when a fault has been raised and not acknowledged with within 36 hours, pass it to the supervisor", and then attach that rule to the fault entity, rather than writing a program that looks at the entity. The development tool should be close to how an analyst thinks about the problem.
I think that software (particularly some MS Software like Office) has reached a plateau point, like cars are at now.
I notice that a lot of car companies sell cars with new or improved features, but people don't switch as often - for example, cars get a few percent more efficient each year in terms of MPG, but of course, you have to spend many thousands to get that extra MPG, which you are unlikely to recoup. Other than that, gimmicks like cup holders. I own a 7 year old car, and really, the difference between that and this years car is marginal.
Who needs anything that's been added to the last two versions of Office?
Quite frankly ridiculous. I hope the bar owners win and this club lose millions on lawyers.
Anyway, I'm curious to know who was there first. Were the bars there at the time that Wrigley field was built? or after. ISTM that if the bars were there first, then tough luck.
The nearest thing I have to 'evidence' is the DVD of the 2nd series of "The Office", a BBC comedy series.
This series was shown on BBC TV at least once, including repeats on BBC3. It would have been difficult to have missed it. The whole of the UK can see it.
Guess what? It's the biggest selling DVD ever in the UK. So people were willing to pay for something they have seen for free.
People aren't buying it because they are "checking it out". They've already seen it and are paying again for it.
Yeah, but the thing they try and make big noise about is how singles sales are being hit (without mentioning that a lot of bands make very little on singles, and that they are used for promoting the albums.
I used to work on ICL mainframes, and we always viewed IBM as the big bad guys and that they produced inferior products (a bit like Linux users with M$).
I actually remember at one time there was a documentary about Gates being a bad boy and hidden API calls, and I still backed Microsoft because "at least they are better than IBM".
(Ask anyone who worked on both ICL mainframes and IBMs which were better, and they always backed ICL).
I agree. A lot of companies use it for small apps, and it's one thing that Linux doesn't have.
What's really needed is something that can be used to build simple table based solutions based on MySQL and PHP. It would then be shared, accessible through a web interface (including the management) and have a built in security model. You'd actually deliver more than Access then.
People could just have it running on their PC with Apache running, but could scale up when they wanted to.
I find it interesting that you are suggesting this, because I can see a time in the not too distant future when MS will be seriously playing catch up with OOo (OK it already doesn't have a few things).
I'm thinking about how IE is now behind Mozilla, and getting further and further behind.
The one issue I had with OOo was with paragraph numbering, where a paragraph without numbering ended up with one. The paragraph in question was, however of a heading style, so in some ways, I'd say that the fault was really with the document author, not the software!
Anyway, to me these glitches are just small hurdles. For many people, the conversion will take some doing, but mostly it's a one-off investment.
partly because it offers benefits, partly because they don't know about the alternatives and partly because they feel they have to have Microsoft to interoperate with everyone else. Office is a good suite, and as at Office 97 was the best IMO.
However, I've converted people to Mozilla Firefox - once they see the popup blocking, tabbed browsing and the nice search engine selector. The problem is that lots of people don't see these things. There's no-one much in the mainstream media suggesting alternatives to users, so they keep on using IE/Office/WMP.
And that's crucial. The tech press can wow about Linux, OpenOffice and Mozilla all it likes. A lot of small businesses don't read the tech press, so keep on using the MS products.
Are these licenses for the SCO "IP" in the Linux kernel?
That would be what? The SCO code that may or may not be in BSD but which they haven't shown? The SCO libraries that SCO think are being copied into Linux in order for a certain auto company to have made their leap fast enough? The System V code that isn't in Linux? The System V code that isn't in Linux over which there's dubious copyright? The code that SCO hasn't shown? The code that SCO has shown that was shown to be obfuscated public domain code (or was it GPL?)? The code that SCO has happily put into the GPL? The code that IBM have added to AIX that was already in OS2?
I know, it's the last possible case - the code that IBM have added to AIX (and IBM own) over which SCO may or may have contract rights (pretty unlikely) in terms of trade secrets. That would be code that can AFAIK be legally put into Linux, where the claim is a contract claim only.
That's right, it's US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with a "madman of the highest order".
You might also want to have a look at: this. My favourite part is the bit about "Bilateral relations were sharply set back by our March 5 condemnation of Iraq for CW use". One guess what CW stands for.
Reagan and Rumsfeld both knew what Saddam Hussein was up to in 1984, and did nothing. In fact, they offered plenty of financial and intelligence support to him.
Slashdot Mirror
Given the choice, I'd go for 2-3 years. I don't earn 300-500K per annum.
Since when did anyone use The Sun as a reliable news source?
Next story - girl with big tits uses the iPod.
If I were selling ice creams and a 14 year old stole one, I wouldn't start issuing a million dollar lawsuit. I'd probably want him to tell his parents and get him back on the straight and narrow. If they didn't straighten him out, I'd take him to the police.
Issuing such cases against children is just inhuman IMO.
Trust me, the groups attacking piracy aren't doing it to protect the artists. They are doing it to protect the labels. Who pays for the RIAA? The artists or the labels?
Looks what's happening to the PC games industry--it's dying. Sales are dying. People are going to consoles because it's safer, it's harder to pirate, and easier to control. Everyone is going to pirate the shit out of Doom 3, and it's going to have an effect--nobody's "sampling" Doom 3. It's the same with music albums, which people grab in archives now and not individual mp3s.
I'll tell you two reasons it's dying... lack of originality and price. What's coming out that's really exciting, and why do people charge me 35UKP for it (that's 2-3 DVDs).
Yes, it's call violating copyright. Slashdotters and pirates don't have the right to dictated to companies how they distribute their works. This is such a given I can't believe it escapes everybody.
The point made by the post you replied to isn't about the issue of copyright, I think it might be suggesting that the real reason for getting P2P networks shut down is to try and keep the bulk of music distribution in the hands of the majors, so even if you wanted to share your own music that you had copyright for around the net, you couldn't so easily.
The future holds online music labels. Not p2p networks where nobody gets paid for anything. Please explain how Kazaa and eMule are going to get artists and labels paid. The only one you can offer is "free advertising," which, barring the fact that distributing their copyrighted material is illegal anyway, is also a dubious argument with no basis other than "well this one time I found a couple of mp3s and went out and bought the CD because I was on dialup and didn't want to finish the rest."
You know what the all-time biggest selling DVD in the UK is? Series 2 of The Office. A DVD of a TV comedy series that was available on BBC2, an unencrypted free-to-air station in the UK. In other words, everyone with a TV and an aerial could have watched it. They could easily have set their VCRs and taped it. But instead, they went and bought the DVD. I'd say that that had something to do with people loving the series AND being familiar with it.
The CD model has traditionally been more of an 'obscurity model' where 2 or 3 singles have been sold, and you don't know what the rest of it is going to be like. Often, it's designed to give fans a raw deal - that there are 3 excellent tracks and 7 fillers. A lot of artists like the idea of internet download, but then, they don't generally aim for the filler approach to their albums.
All the good sport has moved to satellite, and I can't be bothered to watch it. No-one makes stuff that I call "fun sport" like Gladiators or It's a Knockout.
There are loads of house moving, home improvement, soaps, hospital dramas, reality TV and pop idol. All I'm left with is history and some late night comedy. Between about 7 and 9, there's nothing.
Is there some research that says that women own the handset and men will just follow, or are men working longer hours or what?
I think this about getting people to think that an upgrade is worth it. They've run out of things to put into Windows and Office, so the next thing is "hey, get some speech/handwriting recognition".
I know a lot of people with speech software, and NONE of them use it. It's great for people who have no choice, but most people think it's more reliable and just as quick to type.
20 years ago, speech and handwriting recognition would have sold and been used - lots of people weren't used to typewriters. Now, everyone uses a keyboard, so it's pointless.
In the late 1980s, people were working towards getting rid of programming with CASE tools and 4GLs, so the representation of the computer system would be closer to the business system.
There were three problems - primarily, the code generated was often inefficient, and required tweaking, secondly, they often produced ugly screens, and thirdly the PC grew and people moved further back to coding for machine performance.
We're now pretty wrapped up in garbage on PCs - people trying to get a cool OCX or new HTML feature into systems that the fundamentals of business systems are frequently missed.
People should be able to say "when a fault has been raised and not acknowledged with within 36 hours, pass it to the supervisor", and then attach that rule to the fault entity, rather than writing a program that looks at the entity. The development tool should be close to how an analyst thinks about the problem.
I can produce a book of my assorted rants, and put it up for sale for $1000 (the paper costing less than $1). I could also sell it for $1.
In fact, the only part of the book equation that must be paid for is the paper, because it requires physical resources.
I notice that a lot of car companies sell cars with new or improved features, but people don't switch as often - for example, cars get a few percent more efficient each year in terms of MPG, but of course, you have to spend many thousands to get that extra MPG, which you are unlikely to recoup. Other than that, gimmicks like cup holders. I own a 7 year old car, and really, the difference between that and this years car is marginal.
Who needs anything that's been added to the last two versions of Office?
That's a lovely little device for the money.
Anyway, I'm curious to know who was there first. Were the bars there at the time that Wrigley field was built? or after. ISTM that if the bars were there first, then tough luck.
This series was shown on BBC TV at least once, including repeats on BBC3. It would have been difficult to have missed it. The whole of the UK can see it.
Guess what? It's the biggest selling DVD ever in the UK. So people were willing to pay for something they have seen for free.
People aren't buying it because they are "checking it out". They've already seen it and are paying again for it.
Yeah, but the thing they try and make big noise about is how singles sales are being hit (without mentioning that a lot of bands make very little on singles, and that they are used for promoting the albums.
I actually remember at one time there was a documentary about Gates being a bad boy and hidden API calls, and I still backed Microsoft because "at least they are better than IBM".
(Ask anyone who worked on both ICL mainframes and IBMs which were better, and they always backed ICL).
The first one is here.
What's really needed is something that can be used to build simple table based solutions based on MySQL and PHP. It would then be shared, accessible through a web interface (including the management) and have a built in security model. You'd actually deliver more than Access then.
People could just have it running on their PC with Apache running, but could scale up when they wanted to.
I'm thinking about how IE is now behind Mozilla, and getting further and further behind.
He was telling me that back in the mainframe days, if you raised quite a serious fault, it would get patched within a few weeks.
(In this case the competitive suite is MS Office, and 'Office' refers to Open Office. (Or do Microsoft have a trademark on the word 'Office'?
Anyway, to me these glitches are just small hurdles. For many people, the conversion will take some doing, but mostly it's a one-off investment.
However, I've converted people to Mozilla Firefox - once they see the popup blocking, tabbed browsing and the nice search engine selector. The problem is that lots of people don't see these things. There's no-one much in the mainstream media suggesting alternatives to users, so they keep on using IE/Office/WMP.
And that's crucial. The tech press can wow about Linux, OpenOffice and Mozilla all it likes. A lot of small businesses don't read the tech press, so keep on using the MS products.
One of the most misunderstood legal cases around. The woman who sued McDonalds got third degree burns from the cup of coffee.
That would be what? The SCO code that may or may not be in BSD but which they haven't shown? The SCO libraries that SCO think are being copied into Linux in order for a certain auto company to have made their leap fast enough? The System V code that isn't in Linux? The System V code that isn't in Linux over which there's dubious copyright? The code that SCO hasn't shown? The code that SCO has shown that was shown to be obfuscated public domain code (or was it GPL?)? The code that SCO has happily put into the GPL? The code that IBM have added to AIX that was already in OS2?
I know, it's the last possible case - the code that IBM have added to AIX (and IBM own) over which SCO may or may have contract rights (pretty unlikely) in terms of trade secrets. That would be code that can AFAIK be legally put into Linux, where the claim is a contract claim only.
That's right, it's US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with a "madman of the highest order".
You might also want to have a look at: this. My favourite part is the bit about "Bilateral relations were sharply set back by our March 5 condemnation of Iraq for CW use". One guess what CW stands for.
Reagan and Rumsfeld both knew what Saddam Hussein was up to in 1984, and did nothing. In fact, they offered plenty of financial and intelligence support to him.