Didn't Congress just pass a law about this over the summer establishing a 'copyright czar' and Federal assistance in enforcing copyrights, including redefining things to make copyright infringement into a criminal rather than civil offense?
Seriously. They know this isn't going to fly. The Universities and ISPs know it's not going to fly. This whole ridiculous thing looks an awful lot like the sort of gesture you see followed by 'we tried to play nice, but...'
Sounds about right. It's something that a jury would see and say 'well, RIAA tried but the college said 'Up yours', so we have to find for RIAA'.
Of course not. From what I've been understanding, having followed this for a few years now on Slashdot and other sites, is that any winnings RIAA gets are reinvested in new lawsuits to generate more money. Any monies due the artists are lost via the usual methods.
The two classic counterexamples to your curmudgeonly and frankly unbelievable assertion (seriously, who doesn't listen to music?) are:
- Public schools. If you don't have kids, you're paying something for nothing
- Gas tax. If you only gas up your lawnmower and don't own a car, you're paying something for nothing.
Public schools? You're paying to help educate the next generation of doctors, scientists, and other useful people. These are the people who will help save your life, extend your life, make your life more comfortable and pleasant. Of course, you're also helping educate the next generation of politicians, but on the whole, they're a minority. Thank (insert name of invisible friend here).
Gas tax? That's supposed to go into road construction and maintanance. Where it really goes, well, talk to your friendly politicians and maybe they'll tell you where it really goes. Or maybe not. Did you contribute massive sums to their reelection campaign?
What Warner Music is seeing is an untapped 'revenue stream' in the form of college tuitions, and figuring that most college students are so broke they can barely pay attention and thus automatically filesharers, then Warner Music somehow, by some sleight of hand and language refinement, is due a percentage of said tuition fees and other contributions to said colleges. Never mind that college radio already pays a yearly fee in order to play music on their stations. Never mind that commercial radio pays a yearly fee to play music on their station. Somehow, if one student downloads one music track, then all students everywhere download every piece of music in sight, and thus Warner Music must be paid. The alternative is massive lawsuits by RIAA et al until the colleges do bend over and pay. What's next, manditory insurance premiums on college students with a 3rd party as beneficiary?
They could have talked with the CIA about it. If they can smuggle tons of heroin out of Southeast Asia, a mere pound of grass shouldn't be a problem...
How come Abiword isn't a turd then? How come OpenOffice is also slow on Mac and Linux?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. I don't have Abiword installed atm. The apt-get looks like this, though:
The following NEW packages will be installed:
abiword abiword-common abiword-help abiword-plugin-grammar
abiword-plugin-mathview latex-xft-fonts libaiksaurus-1.2-0c2a
libaiksaurus-1.2-data libaiksaurusgtk-1.2-0c2a libgdome2-0
libgdome2-cpp-smart0c2a libgtkmathview0c2a liblink-grammar4 libloudmouth1-0
libots0 libwv-1.2-3 link-grammar-dictionaries-en
0 upgraded, 17 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 7803kB of archives.
After this operation, 25.4MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
IIRC, Abiword was a minimal editor, wasn't WYSIWYG like Office & OO are. Haven't looked at it in ages, so I don't know what all's changed. Looks like it uses LaTex for a back end these days.
As for the 2nd question, OO still uses its own renderer, you can tell that from the sourcecode.
Yeah, I really don't understand why people complain about MS Office when Open Office runs like a turd MS Office does not.
Back in the Stone Age, when Win98 was coming out, M$ decided to sell developer's licenses for $20K per. What you got for that 20K was info on two, count 'em, two system calls, one of which was for the keyboard interrupt, and an admonishment from M$ to not write your apps to the hardware anymore, write them to the OS. Of course, M$ had their inhouse people write to the iron, the undocumented hooks to the OS, and everywhere they could to save some clock cycles. End result, M$ software ran faster, was lighter, etc. At that time, Office used the renderer from Windows Explorer (as did IE, and just about everything else M$ put out with a house brand on it), while Word Perfect had to include its own renderer, print drivers, ad nauseum. If you wanted performance, you hauled out the Ralf Brown interrupt list, and coded some assembly to handle the interrupts directly to the OS & drivers.
Office still writes to undocumented system calls & interrupts, while 3rd party apps don't. And you wonder why OO is a 'turd' while Office isn't?
You do realise how much money the government has at its disposal, don't you? Throw a few hundred billion at the problem, they'll get results. And the contractors will make a killing. What's a couple trillion more dollars worth of deficit at this stage of the game? The US is already so bankrupt now that our great great great grandkids will be in poverty or hyperinflation.
The only ones wanting to limit or decrease the President's power are the neocons, and only if Obama gets elected. Reducing the power of the Presidency is a Not Good Thing for any career politician. If your guy can't do the job, what's the point of pushing him into office? At the end of the day, the Democrats scream "You're one!!", the Republicans scream "You're another!!" and after the close of the session, go off to drink together like the Good Ol' Boys And Girls Club it really is. Why are you expecting anything different?
Funny, from my old civics classes back in the Stone Age, it was the job of the Federal Courts to rein in the government when it got out of hand, and the job of the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of any law in any case brought before them. Of course, now that the SCOTUS is packed with neocon sympathisers...
How can you call us Nazis when Bush accepted every contrary media as part of free speech, and your guys first move is to try and squelch the other side? Let's face it, Obama's "common purpose" is a lot more national socialistic than "ownership society".
Ah, yes, the 'Free Speech Zones', far away from the cameras. Yes, let's get protesters away from the action so we can spin 'no opposition' to anything a politician says.
From what I read in the Constitution, the 'Free Speech Zone' is defined as any place inside the borders of the United States, or its possessions or embassies (embassies are considered as being part of the national soil of the country who runs them). The point of protesting something is to be seen, to remind a politician like they used to do with a Roman they were honoring by a parade. They had a slave in the chariot with him constantly saying "This too is fleeting. This too will pass." Tended to help keep the Roman grounded. We need something to keep our politicians grounded. 'Free Speech Zones' ain't it.
Oh and by the way, re: your original post, the liberals didn't do jack shit to your glorious leader's war. Bush "stayed the course" and refused to "outsource the position of commander in chief", he has personally earned every last bit of glory coming to him for it, no matter how much that fact makes you rage.
Of course he wouldn't outsource the position of Commander In Chief. That would mean he'd have to give up the job, and he wasn't gonna do that without a fight. He wasn't impeached because the opposition didn't have the votes, and if they did come up with them somehow, the Party would have just screamed "This is the Democrats' revenge for Clinton! They're with the terrorists!" or some such nonsense to cloud the issue to where nothing could be done, just like they did to Clinton.
FWIW, Clinton should have been impeached (and he was) for perjury. Who cares what blowjobs he got in the Oval Office? The precident was set that the President is somehow above the law, and we've been living with the repercussions of that for the last 8 years. It's not going to disappear overnight regardless of which meatpuppet 'wins' the election. Clinton was out of line for lying under oath in a court of law, something that me & thee, John Q Citizen, would have done jail time for. Bush was out of line for the wiretapping, the lying to start the Iraq War, and a whole bunch of other things. They're both politicians, therefore they're both suspect. Neither Obama nor McCain is a saint, either. THEY'RE both politicians, too. So are Palin and Biden. See the mess we're in now?
Yes, the lame duck time is the optimal time to reduce White House powers, as a Bush has no political incentive to keep FISA or other acts, and would actually reduce presidential powers if he felt safe about doing so.
Except everything Bush has done for the last 8 years has been to increase the power of the Presidency by executive orders and rubberstamped legislation. It's all about control, and he increased it.
I mean, wiretapping people with no consequences at all for the the White House? All it takes is some stupid low-level intern to listen in to conversations without cause (and with no legal requirements), find something politically important, and report it up the line.
Sure, the stupid intern would be reprimanded, but the illicit information would be out, and would anyone ever know? From there it's a short step to informally encouraging the behaviour, but publically giving token reprimands, just to provide deniability.
Except that 'upstream' is their bosses and party leadership. No way they'd let that info out. And they wouldn't let just any intern work there, they'd select 'em for political reliability, since they're being groomed for Party leadership someday.
And of course, I didn't see Bush tossing muslim americans in camps the way Roosevelt did both the Japanese. For that matter, when did Bush ever try and pack the Supreme Court with extra judges the way Roosevelt did...
Ever hear of Camp X-Ray? Or doesn't that count? And there's no need to pad the court with extra judges when Bush could pack the vacancies to get what he wanted when the Reagan Era judges retired.
Slashdot Mirror
And in related news, Ozzy Osborne has filed suit for copyright infringement against the so-called 'Prince of Darkness'...
I highly recommend wrapping a flag around their heads and do it for Old Glory.
Didn't Congress just pass a law about this over the summer establishing a 'copyright czar' and Federal assistance in enforcing copyrights, including redefining things to make copyright infringement into a criminal rather than civil offense?
Sounds about right. It's something that a jury would see and say 'well, RIAA tried but the college said 'Up yours', so we have to find for RIAA'.
Hmmmmmmmmmmm. Well, you're obviously not part of the solution. Guess you know what that makes you...
Of course not. From what I've been understanding, having followed this for a few years now on Slashdot and other sites, is that any winnings RIAA gets are reinvested in new lawsuits to generate more money. Any monies due the artists are lost via the usual methods.
Public schools? You're paying to help educate the next generation of doctors, scientists, and other useful people. These are the people who will help save your life, extend your life, make your life more comfortable and pleasant. Of course, you're also helping educate the next generation of politicians, but on the whole, they're a minority. Thank (insert name of invisible friend here).
Gas tax? That's supposed to go into road construction and maintanance. Where it really goes, well, talk to your friendly politicians and maybe they'll tell you where it really goes. Or maybe not. Did you contribute massive sums to their reelection campaign?
What Warner Music is seeing is an untapped 'revenue stream' in the form of college tuitions, and figuring that most college students are so broke they can barely pay attention and thus automatically filesharers, then Warner Music somehow, by some sleight of hand and language refinement, is due a percentage of said tuition fees and other contributions to said colleges. Never mind that college radio already pays a yearly fee in order to play music on their stations. Never mind that commercial radio pays a yearly fee to play music on their station. Somehow, if one student downloads one music track, then all students everywhere download every piece of music in sight, and thus Warner Music must be paid. The alternative is massive lawsuits by RIAA et al until the colleges do bend over and pay. What's next, manditory insurance premiums on college students with a 3rd party as beneficiary?
They could have talked with the CIA about it. If they can smuggle tons of heroin out of Southeast Asia, a mere pound of grass shouldn't be a problem...
Yeah, my ex used to tell me 'size doesn't matter' before running off with that surfer dude...
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. I don't have Abiword installed atm. The apt-get looks like this, though:
The following NEW packages will be installed:
abiword abiword-common abiword-help abiword-plugin-grammar
abiword-plugin-mathview latex-xft-fonts libaiksaurus-1.2-0c2a
libaiksaurus-1.2-data libaiksaurusgtk-1.2-0c2a libgdome2-0
libgdome2-cpp-smart0c2a libgtkmathview0c2a liblink-grammar4 libloudmouth1-0
libots0 libwv-1.2-3 link-grammar-dictionaries-en
0 upgraded, 17 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 7803kB of archives.
After this operation, 25.4MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
IIRC, Abiword was a minimal editor, wasn't WYSIWYG like Office & OO are. Haven't looked at it in ages, so I don't know what all's changed. Looks like it uses LaTex for a back end these days.
As for the 2nd question, OO still uses its own renderer, you can tell that from the sourcecode.
Back in the Stone Age, when Win98 was coming out, M$ decided to sell developer's licenses for $20K per. What you got for that 20K was info on two, count 'em, two system calls, one of which was for the keyboard interrupt, and an admonishment from M$ to not write your apps to the hardware anymore, write them to the OS. Of course, M$ had their inhouse people write to the iron, the undocumented hooks to the OS, and everywhere they could to save some clock cycles. End result, M$ software ran faster, was lighter, etc. At that time, Office used the renderer from Windows Explorer (as did IE, and just about everything else M$ put out with a house brand on it), while Word Perfect had to include its own renderer, print drivers, ad nauseum. If you wanted performance, you hauled out the Ralf Brown interrupt list, and coded some assembly to handle the interrupts directly to the OS & drivers.
Office still writes to undocumented system calls & interrupts, while 3rd party apps don't. And you wonder why OO is a 'turd' while Office isn't?
Why you think I use fluxbox? I've got all the Gnome/KDE stuff installed, I just use 'em as needed & keep a nice uncluttered desktop.
Er, I'm torrenting Ubuntu. Yeah, that's the ticket!
You do realise how much money the government has at its disposal, don't you? Throw a few hundred billion at the problem, they'll get results. And the contractors will make a killing. What's a couple trillion more dollars worth of deficit at this stage of the game? The US is already so bankrupt now that our great great great grandkids will be in poverty or hyperinflation.
The only ones wanting to limit or decrease the President's power are the neocons, and only if Obama gets elected. Reducing the power of the Presidency is a Not Good Thing for any career politician. If your guy can't do the job, what's the point of pushing him into office? At the end of the day, the Democrats scream "You're one!!", the Republicans scream "You're another!!" and after the close of the session, go off to drink together like the Good Ol' Boys And Girls Club it really is. Why are you expecting anything different?
Funny, from my old civics classes back in the Stone Age, it was the job of the Federal Courts to rein in the government when it got out of hand, and the job of the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of any law in any case brought before them. Of course, now that the SCOTUS is packed with neocon sympathisers...
Ah, yes, the 'Free Speech Zones', far away from the cameras. Yes, let's get protesters away from the action so we can spin 'no opposition' to anything a politician says.
From what I read in the Constitution, the 'Free Speech Zone' is defined as any place inside the borders of the United States, or its possessions or embassies (embassies are considered as being part of the national soil of the country who runs them). The point of protesting something is to be seen, to remind a politician like they used to do with a Roman they were honoring by a parade. They had a slave in the chariot with him constantly saying "This too is fleeting. This too will pass." Tended to help keep the Roman grounded. We need something to keep our politicians grounded. 'Free Speech Zones' ain't it.
Of course he wouldn't outsource the position of Commander In Chief. That would mean he'd have to give up the job, and he wasn't gonna do that without a fight. He wasn't impeached because the opposition didn't have the votes, and if they did come up with them somehow, the Party would have just screamed "This is the Democrats' revenge for Clinton! They're with the terrorists!" or some such nonsense to cloud the issue to where nothing could be done, just like they did to Clinton.
FWIW, Clinton should have been impeached (and he was) for perjury. Who cares what blowjobs he got in the Oval Office? The precident was set that the President is somehow above the law, and we've been living with the repercussions of that for the last 8 years. It's not going to disappear overnight regardless of which meatpuppet 'wins' the election. Clinton was out of line for lying under oath in a court of law, something that me & thee, John Q Citizen, would have done jail time for. Bush was out of line for the wiretapping, the lying to start the Iraq War, and a whole bunch of other things. They're both politicians, therefore they're both suspect. Neither Obama nor McCain is a saint, either. THEY'RE both politicians, too. So are Palin and Biden. See the mess we're in now?
Oh, wait...
Except everything Bush has done for the last 8 years has been to increase the power of the Presidency by executive orders and rubberstamped legislation. It's all about control, and he increased it.
Except that 'upstream' is their bosses and party leadership. No way they'd let that info out. And they wouldn't let just any intern work there, they'd select 'em for political reliability, since they're being groomed for Party leadership someday.
Ever hear of Camp X-Ray? Or doesn't that count? And there's no need to pad the court with extra judges when Bush could pack the vacancies to get what he wanted when the Reagan Era judges retired.
Yeah, I know. I'm humor-impaired.
We have freedom???? I gotta stop sleeping more than 5 hours a night, they obviously slipped that in on me when I was asleep.
Expect the new judge to buy the bullshit of 'intent to distribute', especially if RIAA contributes to their campaign fund.
Hell, I'd pay 39.95 to see that on Pay Per View. Now THAT'S entertainment!!