Things were bound to heat up sooner or later. I'm still waiting for a legit, not a.RU, one to offer mainstream MP3s w/o DRM. Even though the odds are pretty slim, maybe Walmart given it's sheer size ($250B rev in 2002 vs. $28B rev for MS), can strong arm some DRM-less tunes?
Maybe so but they will be no doubt edited, "family-friendly" songs.
You know you say that but how much do you actually know about cnet's plans for mp3.com? You may know about cnet's sites in general but there is not enough information to make a judgement on this.
Slashdot users are too eager to bash something they no nothing about.
- Choice of online store: CRAP. This is the weakest point of the article. I love his line that he doesn't "like being hemmed in". Yeah, the freedom of "secure" WMA files has all the liberation of a gulag... Since the death of EMusic, there hasn't been an online music store worth paying for, and I'm not going to base my choice of player on the current landscape. In fact, I've found that popular CDs are coming down in price. There have been CDs I've seen at $12 and $13 CDN (this is under $10 USD) in popular record stores around Toronto. It's only a few select new releases, but it's a step. Another year or two of competition from online music stores, I may find myself going back to CDs.
This is getting way offtopic but you cannot say taht the iPod has a better selection of online stores to choose from just because you don't like wma or on-line musci stores in general. The price of cds isn't even relevent here. It boils down to this. There are many stores that sell wma files. One that sells AAC files. iPod users have one choice of ONE online music store. Thus, iPod users have less of a choice to purchase music online.
That is a theory. There are a couple of others though. One is that the moon was actually an asteroid passing by Earth that collided with an second body. It happen to hit just right so that the moon was captured by the Earth's gravitational field.
There's another theory that it was formed at the same time as earth but there are problems wit that oune.
A third theory which I believe is the most accepted is that the asteroid was very large but it didn't actually collide with earth. It merely got close enough that it's gravity pulled part of the earth's crust into orbit. From what we understnad, the moon is mostly the same composition of Earth's outer crust.
Oddly enought I was just thinking of who actually owned Antartica yesterday. I was under the impression that it was devided into territories. I was fairly certain that GB had part of it.
Then when Red Hat gets 95% of users, people start developing exploits for it. Then not only would Red Hat would then have to pay people for their "warrenty" (however that works) but the same kind of suit w ould be brought against them as the on ethat took MS down. Then Red Hat goes down.
The user friendliness if 98% of these things is very bad. Good only for people, who have fun finding out how things work. NOT for professionals who need to use programs to do their work.
I Agree with that statement 100%. I have never had a problem with GIMP's image quality though. The default isn't great quality but you can change that. I'm sure you are awaer of that though. I think the gimp is one of if not the best and most complete opensource alternative to expensive profissional software.
I always thought the whole conservative/liberal difference was in how much control the governemnt should have on the lives of the citizens. Republicans traditionally favored government at the state level while democrats have favored governemt at the federal level. I could be wrong, but that's the way I have always understood it.
On a side note, if I am interpreting this corectly, it's a bit ironic that the republicans are pushing the patriot act. I guess in these times it's not so clear cut. I personally believe we need two new, clearly defined parties.
Yeah you tell that to the 4th generation farmer that depends on subsidies to buy his children school supplies in hopes that they can somehow get a scholarship and go to college.
The market is simply very small. In order to have a local movie industry at all, some countries decide to sponsor movies makers. Do you really think that is market obstruction? Do you think that is censorship?
I do think it is market obsruction. You have the governemnt giving preference to one movie company making that company have higher chance to succeed. If this movie company becomes successful, it is largely do to the government. Even if the government did not out right say "I'll support you if you don't show anti-government films or if you place this propeganda in you movies," the companies are still going to be hesitant to bite the hand that feeds them, so to speak.
Unlike most of these countries where censorship is in question, the US media is not owned by the government. The government cannot control what the media can broadcast (like intelligence leaks) nor penalize the media for reporting.
Private censorship is different from state sponsored censorship. Thus, your response is completely unrelevent to the quote of, "I find it very difficult to have respect for governments who think they need to control the information their populous sees."
I don't know that the UN had anything to do with this. I guess it comes down to why WWI and WWII were considered "World Wars." I always assumed that it was because if was fought in virtually the whole world. This was possible because of colonialization. Most countries involved in WWII (if not every) had either their homeland or a territory attacked and thus were forced to defend theirselves.
From my old history classes, what caused the worls to become involved in WWI was all the treaties that were in place. Some guy is assasinated, they take it as being an attack on their country, and all the treaties bring the rest of the world into the war. This could happen with NATO today as we saw on 9/11/2001: terrorist attack interpreted as an attack on country, treaties in NATO bring troops from NATO states to Afghanistan.
I think NATO has more power then the UN simply because of the treaties. I don't think that the treaties are necessarly good but they do provide a deterrent to attack the NATO countries. I believe that now that russia is in, NATO contains most of the worlds millitary powers (except China and N.Korea.) If N.Korea were to up and Nuke LA, I'm sure the UN would step in but NATO would be required to.
I think the biggest threat is a division that splits NATO and divides the most powerful military countries to the point of near confilict. Then if NK or China actually wanted to attack the US or Tiawan or Japan they might take the opportunity in hopes that half the countries either wouldn't defend the attacked country or would flat out join that attacking country.
Anyway, I have rambled on and on and I don't know if I Am coherent or not. Most of this is purely speculation and stuff I remembered from a Western Civ class that I had 4 years ago so don't take too much count in it.
My concern is that any nation putting this sort of system into place risks misalignment of the beams and having a solar laser of incredible power strafing across the landscape.
The problem with this is that intelligence can be wrong. We saw the US bomb several places thinking that Saddam or is cronies were there. They weren't. If we just start zapping people out of the sky, innocent people are going to get zapped from false intelligence.
Slashdot Mirror
Things were bound to heat up sooner or later. I'm still waiting for a legit, not a .RU, one to offer mainstream MP3s w/o DRM. Even though the odds are pretty slim, maybe Walmart given it's sheer size ($250B rev in 2002 vs. $28B rev for MS), can strong arm some DRM-less tunes?
Maybe so but they will be no doubt edited, "family-friendly" songs.
You know you say that but how much do you actually know about cnet's plans for mp3.com? You may know about cnet's sites in general but there is not enough information to make a judgement on this.
Slashdot users are too eager to bash something they no nothing about.
- Choice of online store: CRAP. This is the weakest point of the article. I love his line that he doesn't "like being hemmed in". Yeah, the freedom of "secure" WMA files has all the liberation of a gulag... Since the death of EMusic, there hasn't been an online music store worth paying for, and I'm not going to base my choice of player on the current landscape. In fact, I've found that popular CDs are coming down in price. There have been CDs I've seen at $12 and $13 CDN (this is under $10 USD) in popular record stores around Toronto. It's only a few select new releases, but it's a step. Another year or two of competition from online music stores, I may find myself going back to CDs.
This is getting way offtopic but you cannot say taht the iPod has a better selection of online stores to choose from just because you don't like wma or on-line musci stores in general. The price of cds isn't even relevent here. It boils down to this. There are many stores that sell wma files. One that sells AAC files. iPod users have one choice of ONE online music store. Thus, iPod users have less of a choice to purchase music online.
That is a theory. There are a couple of others though. One is that the moon was actually an asteroid passing by Earth that collided with an second body. It happen to hit just right so that the moon was captured by the Earth's gravitational field.
There's another theory that it was formed at the same time as earth but there are problems wit that oune.
A third theory which I believe is the most accepted is that the asteroid was very large but it didn't actually collide with earth. It merely got close enough that it's gravity pulled part of the earth's crust into orbit. From what we understnad, the moon is mostly the same composition of Earth's outer crust.
Anyway, I thought it was intersting.
Yes we do. They have already said he is the guy from Kung Fu.
Oddly enought I was just thinking of who actually owned Antartica yesterday. I was under the impression that it was devided into territories. I was fairly certain that GB had part of it.
It's probably because people don't RTFA.
Then when Red Hat gets 95% of users, people start developing exploits for it. Then not only would Red Hat would then have to pay people for their "warrenty" (however that works) but the same kind of suit w ould be brought against them as the on ethat took MS down. Then Red Hat goes down.
It never fails. No matter what the topic is and no matter how unreleated, someone has to make an comparison to the RIAA.
Uh-huh... Right... This is exactly what the RIAA is donig.
Really? Cool. I wish they'd hook up with Microsoft and sell G5's preloaded with XP. How cool would that be?
Seriously. It's a waste of mod points.
The user friendliness if 98% of these things is very bad. Good only for people, who have fun finding out how things work. NOT for professionals who need to use programs to do their work.
I Agree with that statement 100%. I have never had a problem with GIMP's image quality though. The default isn't great quality but you can change that. I'm sure you are awaer of that though. I think the gimp is one of if not the best and most complete opensource alternative to expensive profissional software.
Maybe it's a texas thing or something. We don't have camels and deserts in these parts.
From my experience System Restore works pretty well too.
-- /me W@|\|t5 $$$$ F0r @|\| Ub5r 3l33t G@M1|\|G r1G
...dork
I always thought the whole conservative/liberal difference was in how much control the governemnt should have on the lives of the citizens. Republicans traditionally favored government at the state level while democrats have favored governemt at the federal level. I could be wrong, but that's the way I have always understood it.
On a side note, if I am interpreting this corectly, it's a bit ironic that the republicans are pushing the patriot act. I guess in these times it's not so clear cut. I personally believe we need two new, clearly defined parties.
Skewing information...lies...on slashdot? I dont believe it.
Yeah you tell that to the 4th generation farmer that depends on subsidies to buy his children school supplies in hopes that they can somehow get a scholarship and go to college.
The market is simply very small. In order to have a local movie industry at all, some countries decide to sponsor movies makers. Do you really think that is market obstruction? Do you think that is censorship?
I do think it is market obsruction. You have the governemnt giving preference to one movie company making that company have higher chance to succeed. If this movie company becomes successful, it is largely do to the government. Even if the government did not out right say "I'll support you if you don't show anti-government films or if you place this propeganda in you movies," the companies are still going to be hesitant to bite the hand that feeds them, so to speak.
So basically, it would be treated the same way other free speech is in the US. I agree. Isn't that the way it is now though?
Unlike most of these countries where censorship is in question, the US media is not owned by the government. The government cannot control what the media can broadcast (like intelligence leaks) nor penalize the media for reporting.
Private censorship is different from state sponsored censorship. Thus, your response is completely unrelevent to the quote of, "I find it very difficult to have respect for governments who think they need to control the information their populous sees."
No world wars in 50+ years
I don't know that the UN had anything to do with this. I guess it comes down to why WWI and WWII were considered "World Wars." I always assumed that it was because if was fought in virtually the whole world. This was possible because of colonialization. Most countries involved in WWII (if not every) had either their homeland or a territory attacked and thus were forced to defend theirselves.
From my old history classes, what caused the worls to become involved in WWI was all the treaties that were in place. Some guy is assasinated, they take it as being an attack on their country, and all the treaties bring the rest of the world into the war. This could happen with NATO today as we saw on 9/11/2001: terrorist attack interpreted as an attack on country, treaties in NATO bring troops from NATO states to Afghanistan.
I think NATO has more power then the UN simply because of the treaties. I don't think that the treaties are necessarly good but they do provide a deterrent to attack the NATO countries. I believe that now that russia is in, NATO contains most of the worlds millitary powers (except China and N.Korea.) If N.Korea were to up and Nuke LA, I'm sure the UN would step in but NATO would be required to.
I think the biggest threat is a division that splits NATO and divides the most powerful military countries to the point of near confilict. Then if NK or China actually wanted to attack the US or Tiawan or Japan they might take the opportunity in hopes that half the countries either wouldn't defend the attacked country or would flat out join that attacking country.
Anyway, I have rambled on and on and I don't know if I Am coherent or not. Most of this is purely speculation and stuff I remembered from a Western Civ class that I had 4 years ago so don't take too much count in it.
This is a common troll. Why even dignify it with a rubuttal?
My concern is that any nation putting this sort of system into place risks misalignment of the beams and having a solar laser of incredible power strafing across the landscape.
i.e. Command & Conquer: Generals
The problem with this is that intelligence can be wrong. We saw the US bomb several places thinking that Saddam or is cronies were there. They weren't. If we just start zapping people out of the sky, innocent people are going to get zapped from false intelligence.