First, creativity will always exist. If it flounders, an opportunity will emerge. There will always be people for whom the "work" is more akin to "love" and will do it not only cheaper but better than the competition. Linux*cough*linux.
A good case in point would be the turn-based war strategy market. (Using icons on the map and all, no third or first person pretty views.) The big publishers have pretty much completely given up on that market because it isn't big enough. Now a thriving market has grown up that's mainly web-based, war-gaming is actually bigger now than it was in its mainstream heyday!
Sadly though this can't work for all genres, these type of games don't need as fancy graphics and that can considerably cut the needed manpower to make a title. The flight-sim market's almost dead, but nothing similar has happened to it. Perhaps when you can get cheap game engines that will do fantastic graphics this will change.
I am quite certain that in those first three months it would be rare to encounter a second-hand version of a game.
You'd be surprised, you can sometimes find used versions within a week of release. Apparently some gamers buy them, play them nonstop until they beat them, return them for trade-in credit and repeat the process with another game. I picked up.hack//Infection 2 weeks after it was released used for $10 less than the new price.
If the person who paid for that game wants to sell it to plow even more money back into their hobby than I can't see how this hurts the gaming ecosystem.
Looking at it that way those buying used games help the entire gaming economy because they're a willing market for the used games, thus the stores will buy used games and give the 1st run gamers the money to buy more 1st run (non-used) titles.
Hey, you think if they dropped the price for games, then maybe people would start selling used games cheaper so it really wouldn't help their sales that much? No... that's crazy talk. Or gee, maybe they've done a little marketing research that suggests they wouldn't be able to double sales by cutting the price in half. Nah, "business-types" are colossoly stupid as you so aptly put it. They must have just not thought of it because they aren't smart like you.
Have you ever taken part in market research? Most of it takes great advantage of the fact that you can construct questions to illicit the responses you want. Most of the "research" I've been part of was just done to make the conclusions they already had made look legit. So even if they have done market research on what prices would do well, there's no guarantee it was worth the paper the results were printed on.
Besides look at Sony, they've dropped most of their own titles (not third-party) to $39.99 new instead of $49.99. I don't know if there are any numbers on the effects of it, but I can tell you personally I'm much more inclined to pick up those when they come out instead of waiting for a price drop.
Still, at least for me, the biggest reason I end up buying used isn't just the price. By the time I wait for reviews to arrive from the magazines (I've yet to find a website that doesn't seem to rush out reviews before everyone else, so I don't put much stock into their opinions) the market's full of used games. I see no sense in paying extra at that point.
There are some games I'll pay full price for though, for example I'll be buying Xenosaga Ep. II the day it arrives in stores (in the US that is). There aren't many games that I want that badly though.
"Sure," the buyer will say, "I could buy a more expensive computer so I could put Linux on it, but I can get this nifty 10GHz machine for half the price."
It's not whether there is a monopoly amongst the hardware manufacturers that will stop this, but how much in bed the big hardware sellers such as Dell are with the big software manufacturers.
It's going to take one rather huge shift in consumer thinking for this to come about. Consumers have been buying cell phones that are locked in to plans for years, with computers they're used to paying once and owning it (or putting it on a charge card, but in the mind of the consumer that's still paying once.) When companies start trying to charge people for the OS every month/year/etc. people will rebel. To them it'll be a charge for something they already paid for. Even if the hardware's "free", the costs each month are more likely to be considered by the consumer as payments on the hardware, not software. People are used to owning software, no matter what reality the companies try to use with the shrinkwrap licenses.
It's interesting to note that Sun has apparently forgotten history, this is just net computers all over again with a new marketing swing. Net computers failed miserably, companies didn't want to be locked-in to hardware from one vendor. Even if a company goes with MS software now, they can buy their hardware from multiple vendors, and replacement for faulty parts is generally pretty quick and easy. I doubt the replacement for a dead "free" computer will be anywhere near as quick, nor as easy. Since the software would be subsidizing the hardware, the software vendors would try to discourage hardware replacements. Also if the hardware's free, what do you do with parts theft? Maybe this isn't an issue in businesses, but computer labs on university campuses have a big problem with this. If you have to get your hardware from the software vendor with the software, do you just have to toss what's left of the computer parts were stolen from and buy a new software license? Boy won't that go over well!
And on that subject, that software's going to have to cost an awful lot a year to sustain the industry standard 3 year replacement policies. So much so that either software providers will somehow have to convince business to lengthen that cycle, or charge so much it'll cost about the same as buying computers in large lots from Dell or Gateway costs businesses today. And you can bet that Dell and Gateway aren't going to just gently lie down and let the software companies take their business.
I predict an utter, total flop. We'll be comparing this to MS Bob someday.
And what of the ushers themselves. Surely quite a number are in facts students with part-time jobs. The same students that download films on p2p. what's to prevent _them_ from camcording the film ?
Just the dark, they'd need some night vision goggles to see so they didn't trip over audience members. Oh wait....
Bull. Unlike the music industry's widely publicized lawsuit campaign, this anti-piracy measure does not cause any harm or inconvenience to ordinary patrons. Heck, most probably won't even notice it. It only stops folks who shouldn't be doing what they are doing anyway.
Actually I believe the dragging out of a suspected cammer along with the thrashing and cursing to accompany it will rile many the parent with their underage kids there to see the Harry Potter flick.
So perhaps that's not direct harm to the patrons, but ask any parent how they'll feel about their kid witnessing such a scene when they took them to see a wholesome movie and I suspect they'll disagree.
They are following the music industry by removing one of their best forms of publicity - the small-scale, private piracy that ultimately leads to increased sales of their products.
Do you have any statistics to back that up? I'm inclined to disbelieve it.
There is plenty of evidence to back it up in other industries at least. I'm not at home so I don't have my bookmarks handy, but I have read accounts by at least two book authors and 2 musicians that when they released material for free the sales of all their books/albums increased in direct correlation to that release. This was not a one-time event either, one author saw it happen on three different occasions with the release of three different books from his back-catalouge as free e-books. Small-scale piracy like the grandparent mentioned is just another way to expose people to things they might not have considered when a cost was involved, so the principle should apply.
i encourage you to go to south korea, moscow, thailand, kuala lumpur, jakarta, rome, or any other place in the world (basically, anywhere outside of the USA) where it's trivial to get pirated dvds and see what percentage of them say 'screener copy' at the bottom at some point in the film.
And they're not always really screeners, but as the grandparent said they could be rips from the production stream, etc. Saying a release is a screener has a bit of cachet, making the consumer (the sucker buying it) think it's a fairly high-quality version. Many times those will just be hand cam captures, or TS caps from a private showing in reality, but saying "screener copy" on the box, or sticking it in the film somewhere adds to the salability.
Real screeners tend to do more than just say "screener copy" along the bottom at some point, that's too easy to deal with. They'll have a running counter, they'll randomly popup saying it's copyright whatever studio it belongs to, not always along the bottom, sometimes top, sometimes middle. I've seen screeners that had parts of the movie in black and white instead of color, to hopefully deter piracy I suppose. (I doubt it did.)
And truthfully most of the pirated movies you can get in the countries you mentioned are just bit-copies of production DVDs. The vast majority of piracy over there is from copying released products, not from pre-release screeners. (Or handcams, or whatever.)
Anybody that wants to take the time to download and watch a poor quality pirated copy shot in a theatre is a huge fan. That person is also going to go watch the movie themselves, probably more than once.
Warner Brothers is delusional if it actually believes that it's losing money because of theatre copies.
Especially for a movie that's a big cult hit like the Harry Potter ones. On the last one I went and watched it in the theater, downloaded a screener and watched it again, then was quite literally the first in line at my local Wal-mart to buy it on DVD. (It was scratched though, had to take it back, bah.)
The only reason I didn't go watch it in the theater more than once was because I was quite broke. Even so, I paid full price (couldn't get to a matinee) to watch it once because it was worth eating ramen for a few meals to do so. I also bought the DVD on the day it was released, a luxury I still couldn't really afford, but I did.
WB certainly didn't lose any money off of me grabbing a screener on the net of that movie.
China has multitude of sickening human rights abuses and a totalitarian government, but hey, nobody cares about female newborn children being murdered because obviously recieving a few spam e-mails about enlarging your penises is a far more heinous crime than brutal suppression and censorship.
Seeing as the article is about Spamhaus opening a new branch in China, this is a totally specious argument. Spamhaus isn't an organization formed to deal with human rights abuses, but with spam. That they're working with China to help stem the flow of it is great. It'll not only be nice to see less spam flowing through unsecured Chinese servers, it gives us another channel for meaningful dialogue with the Chinese, which might help lead to ending many of those human rights abuses.
In any case your argument is sound only when out of context, in context of the article it's flamebait. I suspect you know this (otherwise why'd you bother posting anonymously.)
It was an old Sentra, apparently it was fairly common with them too. That and the axle boots breaking with such regularity I started suspecting the company designed them to keep mechanics in business. (I took it to a mechanic I trusted so I know they were really breaking every year (yep, yearly!).)
From the rest you said it sounds like some mechanics might be relying on the diagnostics too much, and not using their head or experience when it's needed. That or they were just greedy.:(
I usually support the software and music industry regarding their copyrights but in this case it doesn't make sense. When I purchase a piece of software I'm bound by a licence agreement, a contract on my use of the software that I paid for. With broadcast TV, you have not agreed nor signed to such a contract, therefor, how can DRM be enforceable?
In general (in the US at least) I agree with you. However in this case they may have signed a contract. Every household is supposed to pay for a license for NHK (I believe that's the correct one) in Japan. If you get cable, you're supposed to have paid that license. It's LAW. So it very well might be that the license limits what you can do with NHK (and perhaps others, although that's probably getting iffy) broadcasts.
So in Japan at least, such a contract may exist. If it doesn't, I'm sure the NHK license will be modified to make it so shortly.
In early 2001, after building my mom a computer from scratch, I received her old Gateway 233Mhz system to do with as I pleased. The first thing I did was flash the BIOS. When the system failed to POST after that, the next thing I did was contact Gateway support.
Imagine my joy the day I was told by Gateway I'd HAVE to flash the BIOS on a lab full of Gateway computers so that they would actually boot with a user password in the BIOS. (How that BIOS ever got out of the building on a business model is beyond me.) Thankfully all of them worked.
No they don't. Any Mechanic I've even seen will look at a car for Free and try to tell you what's wrong. If its something which requires hours of diagnosing then yes they will usually charge a fee but its by no means automatic. I've been taking cars to dealers and private mechanics for estimates and second estimateas for years and I've only been charged a few times.
Very true, and some of the nicer ones will tell you if it's something simple you can fix on your own instead of spending a lot. I had a car with one headlight that wouldn't light up all the way. Nothing wrong with the light or anything. A mechanic told me this was a common problem with that model and it was a wiring issue. It'd have been quite expensive to find/fix, but he told me how to fix it myself with a quick workaround. Just wired the good headlight up to the bad one, and taped off the wires on the bad one. Worked great! When I sold the car it was still working just fine. I did a neat job of it, running the wires neatly and taping the bundle all the way to keep them together so I don't think the dealer even noticed. I'll bet it's still working wherever the car is now.:)
So not only did the mechanic look at it and tell me the problem for free, he told me how to fix it myself for free as well. Given the complexity of finding a short in the wiring in a car it very well may have saved me a couple of hundred dollars.
Tech support can work the same way. If a friend has a computer problem I may just tell them how to fix it instead of doing it myself. Granted I'd only charge a meal or a drink for a friend, but it still saves them.:)
He told me to go to dell.com and download a utility to run on it. I said there is no OS, and even when an OS is on it, you're win32 app won't work. He said to right-click My Computer and go to Properties... I said, HEY there's no OS, no Windows, no nothing. He finally got some of the point and asked how could I possibly know that the cdrom didn't work if the computer didn't have an OS. I said that I know. He then said I probably need to update my drivers.
At a previous job I had I always let one of the student workers handle calling Dell's tech support. We always knew what was wrong, just as in your case, but we also knew that they wouldn't be satisfied with us telling them so. The students figured out the routine fast, and found the best way around it -- lying to the support guy to make him escalate it. It was quite amusing to watch, the support person would obviously ask them to try something. They'd say "hold on a sec" put the phone down, browse around the web on another computer for a minute or two, pick the phone up "nope, nothing happened" or whatever was an appropriate answer to the question. It was very effective, the support guys got the answers they needed to actually send the replacement, and we got the parts sent.
So, at least with Dell's support, if you know what the problem is, just tell them what they want to hear until they do what they should in the first place.:)
It's nothing special taste-wise. As someone else pointed out Tuna & Salmon sushi taste much better than Fugu does. I got to try it (was with a friend who ate the first bit, figured since he didn't die I was safe to try a piece:) and was surprised at how bland it was considering the danger involved. Personally I won't ever try it again, it's not a taste worth risking your life for.
Gotta expand expand expand! Gotta do something good with that investor money! They've got shareholders to answer to now. Flash ads and javascript popups are not far behind.
Actually they had shareholders to answer to all along. While Google wasn't public (and isn't YET, the IPO's not gone through) it had private stockholders. A lot of these were employees, but there were the venture capitalists and others who invested in Google.
Pretty much all businesses beyond a small Mom & Pop store have investors to answer to. It may just be the bank wanting their loan repaid, but they're there.
Seeing as this is an expansion of the ads they serve for websites, not the ads for search results I think everyone's overreacting a bit. This is a logical extension of serving up ads, and at least at this point it's opt-in. Some people might prefer graphical ads, and they may pay more than just text ones.
Even though he'd *admitted* to some of those people that he wanted to.
I'm going to comment on this, not to be mean, but because the phrasing is troubling. Admission to wanting to do something illegal is NOT a crime. If he'd admitted to doing it, that would be different. Frankly this wouldn't have helped in court any, as any halfway decent defense attorney would have pointed out that there was no admission of intent.
To put it into a less emtionally charged situation, you might hate your boss and want to strangle him, but unless you tell someone you intend to do so, you've not committed a crime.
Sadly, I think they've poisoned the well so thoroughly that it's unlikely to work properly again. I can't get a genuine pedophile arrested because so many people are primed to beleive that it's a fake accusation, meanwhile innocent people get trashed because they didn't happen to have a good alibi.
I don't know where you're from, and I understand you're probably not going to want to say, but where I'm at the opposite is much more likely to happen. Around here he'd probably be fending off bricks thrown through his window and have to avoid walking on the sidewalk because someone would try to run him down. Frankly neither of these extremes are helping matters any. (I think you'll agree with that.)
[1] One of the people who lied was a psychiatrist who "Doesn't believe in punitive solutions to a social problem."
Assuming the psychiatrist was told about intent or actual acts, this is pathetic and they need to be taken out of practice permanently. I can understand the sentiment (most pedophiles need help, not prison time, the same goes for drug users (not sellers, users)) but LYING? Sheeze. You might want to consult a lawyer and see if you have enough to report him to the AMA. You might be able to get his medical license revoked. (Just using he/him for convenience, no assumptions made.)
Sadly there are more extreme cases of doctors screwing up. We lost my youngest uncle to cancer. His doctor had removed a malignant skin tumor from his back several years prior but never told him it was malignant. If he'd been told and started having regular screenings (standard protocol) he might still be alive today. We tried, but were unable to do anything and the doctor's still in practice today. We just hope and pray he doesn't screw up and cause anyone else to die prematurely.
Richard Jewel, so-called suspect in Atlanta Olympics bombing sued the FBI/Justice Department and the media companies (including CNN) that fingered him as the bomber. He won all his cases.
Oddly enough in the public's mind being accused of bombing the Olympics is less dire than being accused of being a pedophile. Jewel's reputation wasn't tarnished as much because of that. (Although it was tarnished, and I'm glad to see he won his cases!)
Unfortunately in cases involving accused/suspected/made-up/wishful-thinking pedophilia or child pornography the government prefers to avoid actual prosecution. It's simpler to destroy someone's life (the public accussations do that nicely) and harrass them until they admit to something. Then the feds get to add a notch to their belt and claim how they're protecting the children, etc., etc. It's nearly impossible to sue the feds for this type of thing, even when exonerated. You have to have permission from Congress to sue the FBI for instance. Good luck getting it, and if you do, remember you have the challenge of suing a government agency in the government's courts.
You do bring up another good point though, the detaining of people without charging them or releasing names is also very wrong. How do we change it? Hell if I know, the Patriot act might not get renewed, even supporters of Bush in Congress are starting to view it as a political landmine. That would be a good start.
Opt In Real Big claims to be an opt-in only company. However, they operate through third parties with no checks in place to ensure the third parties are using opt-in lists, paying those parties based on how many people click their links. Making it a policy gives them plausible deniability up until people start laying down evidence that they're full of shit.
So let's amp up the return attack to one that will withstand CAN-SPAM and result in legal penalities. Lots of folks on/. have their own E-mail servers so they can create E-mail addresses to do this. For those that don't, use Spam Gourmet for disposable E-mail addresses.
Now taking your throwaway E-mail you created for this, OPT IN to Opt In Real Big's spam. Yep, I said opt into getting spammed. Wait a week or so to make sure you're receiving it, and keep every piece. After you're sure you're opted in follow the opt-out procedure. Note the time, date, etc. of it, and if possible note step-by-step what you did, and which instructions you followed (I'm willing to bet the opt-out instructions change fairly often.)
Keep monitoring the address, anything you receive after opt-out (and a certain amount of leeway time, I believe CAN-SPAM allows no more than 48 hours for the spam to stop) are wonderfully valuable evidence. Ironport can use them against this lawsuit, and even better, you can turn them over to the proper authorities to prosecute under the CAN-SPAM act!
Just be sure the address you use for this is brand new (untainted, so Scott can't claim you were signed up before to his/other spam lists). Even if spam you get is from companies other than Opt In Real Big, the fact the address was brand new, and ONLY used to opt-in with Scott's company will link everything received by it to Scott and company(ies). We all know he's an idiot, and he's not going to make it easy to opt out, or if he does, he'll more than likely sell your address off. So let's prove it. Consider it a DDoS using the law.
The men wisely chose to fight the charges, and both the brother and the husband ultimately were completely exonerated. The husband won custody of the children, and the accuser has lost all credibility.
They were lucky, but I have to wonder, were they really completely exonerated? Legally I'm sure they were, but in the court of public opinion, did everyone hear about the exoneration? Did they believe it? I highly suspect the answer to both will be no.
Playing the pedophilia card has become a weapon for vicious and cynical people; it's easy to horrify juries with graphic descriptions of pedophilia, and children can be coached to say almost anything. Lives have been ruined, careers destroyed, and children traumatized almost as much as if true pedophilia had occurred.
This is very true, and the major problem is that the mere playing of the card is all that's needed to destroy a person's entire life. No proof of guilt needed. The public all hears about it on the news (and the news media LOVES to report these things, very sensational you know) and that's it, the guy's a pedophile and they'll never think differently.
Many people win the legal battle and lose the war big time. They end up having to move, change their name, etc. just to live a normal live -- even though they were never convicted (and in some cases even charged) with a crime.
This is sadly a horrid abuse of our justice system. I keep hoping someone whose life was ruined in a case like this will turn around and sue their accuser and the media for it. I'm not one to normally advocate lawsuits, but these people's lives are ruined by the media sensationalizing things. Since it's not sensational (or even interesting apparently) to report when the charges are dropped, the case is lost, the accuser found to have made it all up, etc. the media almost never reports about the exonerations of acussed pedophiles. Perhaps losing a hefty lawsuit or two would get them to either 1) start reporting the exonerations with as much vigor as the accusations, or 2) stop reporting things before there's at LEAST a charge filed. Either of those would help immensely. Sure there'll be those who hear about the exonerations and not believe them, but if they're regularly reported the harmful affects of the accusations would be mostly negated. (And I suspect a lot of people would be surprised to find out how many acussed of these types of things turn out to be innocent.)
On the bright side, if that happened, the ability to play the pedophile card irresponsibly would probably mostly stop. After all if the ability of it to harm innocents goes away, it's of no use to those that currently abuse it.
How is your inability to be organized Microsoft's fault? Why hasn't your information systems person at work copied the Office CD to a secure location on your network?
You've missed the point, it's not MS's fault I'm unorganized, however why should I have to have my CD to install a security patch in the first place? I'm not trying to install anything new, nothing's configured to run from CD, so why do I even NEED the CD to do a security update? I shouldn't, and that was my point. Microsoft should be ashamed of themselves for that, in my case it's a bit of disorganization, but a lot of people are just going to say "to hell with it, I don't have time" and skip updating Office. Since Outlook is one of the major culprits out there for propogating viruses, this needs to be made simpler and stop requiring the CD.
Thanks for the advice on the MBSA problem, I appreciate it, it'd been a while before I got around to searching down the answer.
If an infected machine becomes such a problem that they're affecting other people, ISP's should simply revoke a users access until they upgrade to the latest patches and remove the virus.
Did you even think this through? How the hell are they supposed to patch their computer, even with a legit version of XP, without Internet access? If you know how to pull off this magic trick, please let us know, I'm sure a lot of people on/. would love to be able to do this!
I think car thefts should request dealer service and free oil change for cars they have stolen too.
And if one stole a TV from a shop, and TV is broken, he should be able to bring it back and request a replacement.
I suspect you meant to be funny, but these are very different than Microsoft supplying security updates for pirated XP. In both the cases you mention the places can play along while calling the cops, then the offender will be arrested and pay for their crime. In the meantime the car won't be able to run over innocent pedestrians, and the TV -- well, it'll still play the same obnoxious crap on cable, but that's hardly it's fault.
If MS wanted to be more fair about fighting piracy while increasing security they would provide the updates. They can log the IPs of those who access Windows Update and try to hunt down the owners of the pirated version. Of course the converse is that no one would trust MS if they started sending enough info along to Windows Update to enforce this. This isn't pirates fault though, MS has sullied its own reputation by doing things in the past to make consumers mistrust sending info to them.
So basically we pay for a license giving us the right to use their software. And that license may change at any time at their discretion. Especially if the product is faulty and needs an update.
If a case ever comes up about this I doubt MS would win. (If the EULA indeed is worded in this way.) I know that contract law strictly forbids a contract where one party can change the contract "At will" without the other party's consent. A EULA is a contract, so this would fall fast if they tried to enforce it. (Which is probably why they haven't.)
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First, creativity will always exist. If it flounders, an opportunity will emerge. There will always be people for whom the "work" is more akin to "love" and will do it not only cheaper but better than the competition. Linux*cough*linux.
A good case in point would be the turn-based war strategy market. (Using icons on the map and all, no third or first person pretty views.) The big publishers have pretty much completely given up on that market because it isn't big enough. Now a thriving market has grown up that's mainly web-based, war-gaming is actually bigger now than it was in its mainstream heyday!Sadly though this can't work for all genres, these type of games don't need as fancy graphics and that can considerably cut the needed manpower to make a title. The flight-sim market's almost dead, but nothing similar has happened to it. Perhaps when you can get cheap game engines that will do fantastic graphics this will change.
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I am quite certain that in those first three months it would be rare to encounter a second-hand version of a game.
You'd be surprised, you can sometimes find used versions within a week of release. Apparently some gamers buy them, play them nonstop until they beat them, return them for trade-in credit and repeat the process with another game. I picked up-
If the person who paid for that game wants to sell it to plow even more money back into their hobby than I can't see how this hurts the gaming ecosystem.
Looking at it that way those buying used games help the entire gaming economy because they're a willing market for the used games, thus the stores will buy used games and give the 1st run gamers the money to buy more 1st run (non-used) titles.It's all interconnected.
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Hey, you think if they dropped the price for games, then maybe people would start selling used games cheaper so it really wouldn't help their sales that much? No... that's crazy talk. Or gee, maybe they've done a little marketing research that suggests they wouldn't be able to double sales by cutting the price in half. Nah, "business-types" are colossoly stupid as you so aptly put it. They must have just not thought of it because they aren't smart like you.
Have you ever taken part in market research? Most of it takes great advantage of the fact that you can construct questions to illicit the responses you want. Most of the "research" I've been part of was just done to make the conclusions they already had made look legit. So even if they have done market research on what prices would do well, there's no guarantee it was worth the paper the results were printed on.Besides look at Sony, they've dropped most of their own titles (not third-party) to $39.99 new instead of $49.99. I don't know if there are any numbers on the effects of it, but I can tell you personally I'm much more inclined to pick up those when they come out instead of waiting for a price drop.
Still, at least for me, the biggest reason I end up buying used isn't just the price. By the time I wait for reviews to arrive from the magazines (I've yet to find a website that doesn't seem to rush out reviews before everyone else, so I don't put much stock into their opinions) the market's full of used games. I see no sense in paying extra at that point.
There are some games I'll pay full price for though, for example I'll be buying Xenosaga Ep. II the day it arrives in stores (in the US that is). There aren't many games that I want that badly though.
- "Sure," the buyer will say, "I could buy a more expensive computer so I could put Linux on it, but I can get this nifty 10GHz machine for half the price."
It's going to take one rather huge shift in consumer thinking for this to come about. Consumers have been buying cell phones that are locked in to plans for years, with computers they're used to paying once and owning it (or putting it on a charge card, but in the mind of the consumer that's still paying once.) When companies start trying to charge people for the OS every month/year/etc. people will rebel. To them it'll be a charge for something they already paid for. Even if the hardware's "free", the costs each month are more likely to be considered by the consumer as payments on the hardware, not software. People are used to owning software, no matter what reality the companies try to use with the shrinkwrap licenses.It's not whether there is a monopoly amongst the hardware manufacturers that will stop this, but how much in bed the big hardware sellers such as Dell are with the big software manufacturers.
It's interesting to note that Sun has apparently forgotten history, this is just net computers all over again with a new marketing swing. Net computers failed miserably, companies didn't want to be locked-in to hardware from one vendor. Even if a company goes with MS software now, they can buy their hardware from multiple vendors, and replacement for faulty parts is generally pretty quick and easy. I doubt the replacement for a dead "free" computer will be anywhere near as quick, nor as easy. Since the software would be subsidizing the hardware, the software vendors would try to discourage hardware replacements. Also if the hardware's free, what do you do with parts theft? Maybe this isn't an issue in businesses, but computer labs on university campuses have a big problem with this. If you have to get your hardware from the software vendor with the software, do you just have to toss what's left of the computer parts were stolen from and buy a new software license? Boy won't that go over well!
And on that subject, that software's going to have to cost an awful lot a year to sustain the industry standard 3 year replacement policies. So much so that either software providers will somehow have to convince business to lengthen that cycle, or charge so much it'll cost about the same as buying computers in large lots from Dell or Gateway costs businesses today. And you can bet that Dell and Gateway aren't going to just gently lie down and let the software companies take their business.
I predict an utter, total flop. We'll be comparing this to MS Bob someday.
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And what of the ushers themselves. Surely quite a number are in facts students with part-time jobs. The same students that download films on p2p. what's to prevent _them_ from camcording the film ?
Just the dark, they'd need some night vision goggles to see so they didn't trip over audience members. Oh wait....-
Bull. Unlike the music industry's widely publicized lawsuit campaign, this anti-piracy measure does not cause any harm or inconvenience to ordinary patrons. Heck, most probably won't even notice it. It only stops folks who shouldn't be doing what they are doing anyway.
Actually I believe the dragging out of a suspected cammer along with the thrashing and cursing to accompany it will rile many the parent with their underage kids there to see the Harry Potter flick.So perhaps that's not direct harm to the patrons, but ask any parent how they'll feel about their kid witnessing such a scene when they took them to see a wholesome movie and I suspect they'll disagree.
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They are following the music industry by removing one of their best forms of publicity - the small-scale, private piracy that ultimately leads to increased sales of their products.
There is plenty of evidence to back it up in other industries at least. I'm not at home so I don't have my bookmarks handy, but I have read accounts by at least two book authors and 2 musicians that when they released material for free the sales of all their books/albums increased in direct correlation to that release. This was not a one-time event either, one author saw it happen on three different occasions with the release of three different books from his back-catalouge as free e-books. Small-scale piracy like the grandparent mentioned is just another way to expose people to things they might not have considered when a cost was involved, so the principle should apply.Do you have any statistics to back that up? I'm inclined to disbelieve it.
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i encourage you to go to south korea, moscow, thailand, kuala lumpur, jakarta, rome, or any other place in the world (basically, anywhere outside of the USA) where it's trivial to get pirated dvds and see what percentage of them say 'screener copy' at the bottom at some point in the film.
And they're not always really screeners, but as the grandparent said they could be rips from the production stream, etc. Saying a release is a screener has a bit of cachet, making the consumer (the sucker buying it) think it's a fairly high-quality version. Many times those will just be hand cam captures, or TS caps from a private showing in reality, but saying "screener copy" on the box, or sticking it in the film somewhere adds to the salability.Real screeners tend to do more than just say "screener copy" along the bottom at some point, that's too easy to deal with. They'll have a running counter, they'll randomly popup saying it's copyright whatever studio it belongs to, not always along the bottom, sometimes top, sometimes middle. I've seen screeners that had parts of the movie in black and white instead of color, to hopefully deter piracy I suppose. (I doubt it did.)
And truthfully most of the pirated movies you can get in the countries you mentioned are just bit-copies of production DVDs. The vast majority of piracy over there is from copying released products, not from pre-release screeners. (Or handcams, or whatever.)
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Anybody that wants to take the time to download and watch a poor quality pirated copy shot in a theatre is a huge fan. That person is also going to go watch the movie themselves, probably more than once.
Warner Brothers is delusional if it actually believes that it's losing money because of theatre copies.
Especially for a movie that's a big cult hit like the Harry Potter ones. On the last one I went and watched it in the theater, downloaded a screener and watched it again, then was quite literally the first in line at my local Wal-mart to buy it on DVD. (It was scratched though, had to take it back, bah.)The only reason I didn't go watch it in the theater more than once was because I was quite broke. Even so, I paid full price (couldn't get to a matinee) to watch it once because it was worth eating ramen for a few meals to do so. I also bought the DVD on the day it was released, a luxury I still couldn't really afford, but I did.
WB certainly didn't lose any money off of me grabbing a screener on the net of that movie.
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China has multitude of sickening human rights abuses and a totalitarian government, but hey, nobody cares about female newborn children being murdered because obviously recieving a few spam e-mails about enlarging your penises is a far more heinous crime than brutal suppression and censorship.
Seeing as the article is about Spamhaus opening a new branch in China, this is a totally specious argument. Spamhaus isn't an organization formed to deal with human rights abuses, but with spam. That they're working with China to help stem the flow of it is great. It'll not only be nice to see less spam flowing through unsecured Chinese servers, it gives us another channel for meaningful dialogue with the Chinese, which might help lead to ending many of those human rights abuses.In any case your argument is sound only when out of context, in context of the article it's flamebait. I suspect you know this (otherwise why'd you bother posting anonymously.)
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Old 300ZX? They ALL did that.
It was an old Sentra, apparently it was fairly common with them too. That and the axle boots breaking with such regularity I started suspecting the company designed them to keep mechanics in business. (I took it to a mechanic I trusted so I know they were really breaking every year (yep, yearly!).)From the rest you said it sounds like some mechanics might be relying on the diagnostics too much, and not using their head or experience when it's needed. That or they were just greedy. :(
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I usually support the software and music industry regarding their copyrights but in this case it doesn't make sense. When I purchase a piece of software I'm bound by a licence agreement, a contract on my use of the software that I paid for. With broadcast TV, you have not agreed nor signed to such a contract, therefor, how can DRM be enforceable?
In general (in the US at least) I agree with you. However in this case they may have signed a contract. Every household is supposed to pay for a license for NHK (I believe that's the correct one) in Japan. If you get cable, you're supposed to have paid that license. It's LAW. So it very well might be that the license limits what you can do with NHK (and perhaps others, although that's probably getting iffy) broadcasts.So in Japan at least, such a contract may exist. If it doesn't, I'm sure the NHK license will be modified to make it so shortly.
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In early 2001, after building my mom a computer from scratch, I received her old Gateway 233Mhz system to do with as I pleased. The first thing I did was flash the BIOS. When the system failed to POST after that, the next thing I did was contact Gateway support.
Imagine my joy the day I was told by Gateway I'd HAVE to flash the BIOS on a lab full of Gateway computers so that they would actually boot with a user password in the BIOS. (How that BIOS ever got out of the building on a business model is beyond me.) Thankfully all of them worked.-
No they don't. Any Mechanic I've even seen will look at a car for Free and try to tell you what's wrong. If its something which requires hours of diagnosing then yes they will usually charge a fee but its by no means automatic. I've been taking cars to dealers and private mechanics for estimates and second estimateas for years and I've only been charged a few times.
Very true, and some of the nicer ones will tell you if it's something simple you can fix on your own instead of spending a lot. I had a car with one headlight that wouldn't light up all the way. Nothing wrong with the light or anything. A mechanic told me this was a common problem with that model and it was a wiring issue. It'd have been quite expensive to find/fix, but he told me how to fix it myself with a quick workaround. Just wired the good headlight up to the bad one, and taped off the wires on the bad one. Worked great! When I sold the car it was still working just fine. I did a neat job of it, running the wires neatly and taping the bundle all the way to keep them together so I don't think the dealer even noticed. I'll bet it's still working wherever the car is now.So not only did the mechanic look at it and tell me the problem for free, he told me how to fix it myself for free as well. Given the complexity of finding a short in the wiring in a car it very well may have saved me a couple of hundred dollars.
Tech support can work the same way. If a friend has a computer problem I may just tell them how to fix it instead of doing it myself. Granted I'd only charge a meal or a drink for a friend, but it still saves them. :)
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He told me to go to dell.com and download a utility to run on it. I said there is no OS, and even when an OS is on it, you're win32 app won't work. He said to right-click My Computer and go to Properties... I said, HEY there's no OS, no Windows, no nothing. He finally got some of the point and asked how could I possibly know that the cdrom didn't work if the computer didn't have an OS. I said that I know. He then said I probably need to update my drivers.
At a previous job I had I always let one of the student workers handle calling Dell's tech support. We always knew what was wrong, just as in your case, but we also knew that they wouldn't be satisfied with us telling them so. The students figured out the routine fast, and found the best way around it -- lying to the support guy to make him escalate it. It was quite amusing to watch, the support person would obviously ask them to try something. They'd say "hold on a sec" put the phone down, browse around the web on another computer for a minute or two, pick the phone up "nope, nothing happened" or whatever was an appropriate answer to the question. It was very effective, the support guys got the answers they needed to actually send the replacement, and we got the parts sent.So, at least with Dell's support, if you know what the problem is, just tell them what they want to hear until they do what they should in the first place. :)
It's nothing special taste-wise. As someone else pointed out Tuna & Salmon sushi taste much better than Fugu does. I got to try it (was with a friend who ate the first bit, figured since he didn't die I was safe to try a piece :) and was surprised at how bland it was considering the danger involved. Personally I won't ever try it again, it's not a taste worth risking your life for.
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Gotta expand expand expand! Gotta do something good with that investor money! They've got shareholders to answer to now. Flash ads and javascript popups are not far behind.
Actually they had shareholders to answer to all along. While Google wasn't public (and isn't YET, the IPO's not gone through) it had private stockholders. A lot of these were employees, but there were the venture capitalists and others who invested in Google.Pretty much all businesses beyond a small Mom & Pop store have investors to answer to. It may just be the bank wanting their loan repaid, but they're there.
Seeing as this is an expansion of the ads they serve for websites, not the ads for search results I think everyone's overreacting a bit. This is a logical extension of serving up ads, and at least at this point it's opt-in. Some people might prefer graphical ads, and they may pay more than just text ones.
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Even though he'd *admitted* to some of those people that he wanted to.
I'm going to comment on this, not to be mean, but because the phrasing is troubling. Admission to wanting to do something illegal is NOT a crime. If he'd admitted to doing it, that would be different. Frankly this wouldn't have helped in court any, as any halfway decent defense attorney would have pointed out that there was no admission of intent.To put it into a less emtionally charged situation, you might hate your boss and want to strangle him, but unless you tell someone you intend to do so, you've not committed a crime.
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Sadly, I think they've poisoned the well so thoroughly that it's unlikely to work properly again. I can't get a genuine pedophile arrested because so many people are primed to beleive that it's a fake accusation, meanwhile innocent people get trashed because they didn't happen to have a good alibi.
I don't know where you're from, and I understand you're probably not going to want to say, but where I'm at the opposite is much more likely to happen. Around here he'd probably be fending off bricks thrown through his window and have to avoid walking on the sidewalk because someone would try to run him down. Frankly neither of these extremes are helping matters any. (I think you'll agree with that.)-
[1] One of the people who lied was a psychiatrist who "Doesn't believe in punitive solutions to a social problem."
Assuming the psychiatrist was told about intent or actual acts, this is pathetic and they need to be taken out of practice permanently. I can understand the sentiment (most pedophiles need help, not prison time, the same goes for drug users (not sellers, users)) but LYING? Sheeze. You might want to consult a lawyer and see if you have enough to report him to the AMA. You might be able to get his medical license revoked. (Just using he/him for convenience, no assumptions made.)Sadly there are more extreme cases of doctors screwing up. We lost my youngest uncle to cancer. His doctor had removed a malignant skin tumor from his back several years prior but never told him it was malignant. If he'd been told and started having regular screenings (standard protocol) he might still be alive today. We tried, but were unable to do anything and the doctor's still in practice today. We just hope and pray he doesn't screw up and cause anyone else to die prematurely.
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Richard Jewel, so-called suspect in Atlanta Olympics bombing sued the FBI/Justice Department and the media companies (including CNN) that fingered him as the bomber. He won all his cases.
Oddly enough in the public's mind being accused of bombing the Olympics is less dire than being accused of being a pedophile. Jewel's reputation wasn't tarnished as much because of that. (Although it was tarnished, and I'm glad to see he won his cases!)Unfortunately in cases involving accused/suspected/made-up/wishful-thinking pedophilia or child pornography the government prefers to avoid actual prosecution. It's simpler to destroy someone's life (the public accussations do that nicely) and harrass them until they admit to something. Then the feds get to add a notch to their belt and claim how they're protecting the children, etc., etc. It's nearly impossible to sue the feds for this type of thing, even when exonerated. You have to have permission from Congress to sue the FBI for instance. Good luck getting it, and if you do, remember you have the challenge of suing a government agency in the government's courts.
You do bring up another good point though, the detaining of people without charging them or releasing names is also very wrong. How do we change it? Hell if I know, the Patriot act might not get renewed, even supporters of Bush in Congress are starting to view it as a political landmine. That would be a good start.
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Opt In Real Big claims to be an opt-in only company. However, they operate through third parties with no checks in place to ensure the third parties are using opt-in lists, paying those parties based on how many people click their links. Making it a policy gives them plausible deniability up until people start laying down evidence that they're full of shit.
So let's amp up the return attack to one that will withstand CAN-SPAM and result in legal penalities. Lots of folks onNow taking your throwaway E-mail you created for this, OPT IN to Opt In Real Big's spam. Yep, I said opt into getting spammed. Wait a week or so to make sure you're receiving it, and keep every piece. After you're sure you're opted in follow the opt-out procedure. Note the time, date, etc. of it, and if possible note step-by-step what you did, and which instructions you followed (I'm willing to bet the opt-out instructions change fairly often.)
Keep monitoring the address, anything you receive after opt-out (and a certain amount of leeway time, I believe CAN-SPAM allows no more than 48 hours for the spam to stop) are wonderfully valuable evidence. Ironport can use them against this lawsuit, and even better, you can turn them over to the proper authorities to prosecute under the CAN-SPAM act!
Just be sure the address you use for this is brand new (untainted, so Scott can't claim you were signed up before to his/other spam lists). Even if spam you get is from companies other than Opt In Real Big, the fact the address was brand new, and ONLY used to opt-in with Scott's company will link everything received by it to Scott and company(ies). We all know he's an idiot, and he's not going to make it easy to opt out, or if he does, he'll more than likely sell your address off. So let's prove it. Consider it a DDoS using the law.
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The men wisely chose to fight the charges, and both the brother and the husband ultimately were completely exonerated. The husband won custody of the children, and the accuser has lost all credibility.
They were lucky, but I have to wonder, were they really completely exonerated? Legally I'm sure they were, but in the court of public opinion, did everyone hear about the exoneration? Did they believe it? I highly suspect the answer to both will be no.-
Playing the pedophilia card has become a weapon for vicious and cynical people; it's easy to horrify juries with graphic descriptions of pedophilia, and children can be coached to say almost anything. Lives have been ruined, careers destroyed, and children traumatized almost as much as if true pedophilia had occurred.
This is very true, and the major problem is that the mere playing of the card is all that's needed to destroy a person's entire life. No proof of guilt needed. The public all hears about it on the news (and the news media LOVES to report these things, very sensational you know) and that's it, the guy's a pedophile and they'll never think differently.Many people win the legal battle and lose the war big time. They end up having to move, change their name, etc. just to live a normal live -- even though they were never convicted (and in some cases even charged) with a crime.
This is sadly a horrid abuse of our justice system. I keep hoping someone whose life was ruined in a case like this will turn around and sue their accuser and the media for it. I'm not one to normally advocate lawsuits, but these people's lives are ruined by the media sensationalizing things. Since it's not sensational (or even interesting apparently) to report when the charges are dropped, the case is lost, the accuser found to have made it all up, etc. the media almost never reports about the exonerations of acussed pedophiles. Perhaps losing a hefty lawsuit or two would get them to either 1) start reporting the exonerations with as much vigor as the accusations, or 2) stop reporting things before there's at LEAST a charge filed. Either of those would help immensely. Sure there'll be those who hear about the exonerations and not believe them, but if they're regularly reported the harmful affects of the accusations would be mostly negated. (And I suspect a lot of people would be surprised to find out how many acussed of these types of things turn out to be innocent.)
On the bright side, if that happened, the ability to play the pedophile card irresponsibly would probably mostly stop. After all if the ability of it to harm innocents goes away, it's of no use to those that currently abuse it.
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How is your inability to be organized Microsoft's fault? Why hasn't your information systems person at work copied the Office CD to a secure location on your network?
You've missed the point, it's not MS's fault I'm unorganized, however why should I have to have my CD to install a security patch in the first place? I'm not trying to install anything new, nothing's configured to run from CD, so why do I even NEED the CD to do a security update? I shouldn't, and that was my point. Microsoft should be ashamed of themselves for that, in my case it's a bit of disorganization, but a lot of people are just going to say "to hell with it, I don't have time" and skip updating Office. Since Outlook is one of the major culprits out there for propogating viruses, this needs to be made simpler and stop requiring the CD.Thanks for the advice on the MBSA problem, I appreciate it, it'd been a while before I got around to searching down the answer.
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If an infected machine becomes such a problem that they're affecting other people, ISP's should simply revoke a users access until they upgrade to the latest patches and remove the virus.
Did you even think this through? How the hell are they supposed to patch their computer, even with a legit version of XP, without Internet access? If you know how to pull off this magic trick, please let us know, I'm sure a lot of people on-
I think car thefts should request dealer service and free oil change for cars they have stolen too.
I suspect you meant to be funny, but these are very different than Microsoft supplying security updates for pirated XP. In both the cases you mention the places can play along while calling the cops, then the offender will be arrested and pay for their crime. In the meantime the car won't be able to run over innocent pedestrians, and the TV -- well, it'll still play the same obnoxious crap on cable, but that's hardly it's fault.And if one stole a TV from a shop, and TV is broken, he should be able to bring it back and request a replacement.
If MS wanted to be more fair about fighting piracy while increasing security they would provide the updates. They can log the IPs of those who access Windows Update and try to hunt down the owners of the pirated version. Of course the converse is that no one would trust MS if they started sending enough info along to Windows Update to enforce this. This isn't pirates fault though, MS has sullied its own reputation by doing things in the past to make consumers mistrust sending info to them.
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So basically we pay for a license giving us the right to use their software. And that license may change at any time at their discretion. Especially if the product is faulty and needs an update.
If a case ever comes up about this I doubt MS would win. (If the EULA indeed is worded in this way.) I know that contract law strictly forbids a contract where one party can change the contract "At will" without the other party's consent. A EULA is a contract, so this would fall fast if they tried to enforce it. (Which is probably why they haven't.)