Thought here on the region free aspect. Could they be doing this to try and remove the most widely stated fair use reason for mod chips? Eliminate the need for a mod chip to play discs from other regions and you've just made a big impact on the perceived legitamacy of mod chips on the whole.
Probably not, they only talk about the PSP being region-free, and that's the Sony's new portable. Portables aren't as easy to mod as a console box. The article on The Register's site doesn't say anything about the PS3 being region-free.
From the article and talking about it linking to the PSX, it doesn't really sound like they're considering the PS3 to be a next-gen console, but something else. Frankly it sounds strange linking it to the PSX which is based on PS2 technology gaming-wise. It should be quite interesting to hear what Sony has in mind for the PS3, but right now it's sounding like they might be about to screw up and give Microsoft and Nintendo a chance to grab more of the console market.
Pretty much, it looks like the rich will stay rich or get richer, and it'll be at the expense of the poor world-wide instead of localized to the rich person's country.
It will be interesting to see how much the world's wealth has spread itself out in say 50 years.
I suspect it won't spread much. Those already rich are also generally powerful politically in their countries. They tend to fight anything that doesn't keep their wealth with themselves. Unless the middle & lower classes can successfully take over government in the coming 50 years, the rich will continue to cater to the rich and leave everyone else fighting for scraps.
While it may be true that CollabNet has to outsource to survive, other companies (Dell comes to mind) DO NOT need to outsource to survive, they outsource because it is cheaper. We can argue all day about the morality of outsourcing, but the bottom line is going to be profit in many cases.
I'll play the devil's advocate here (personally I despise the outsourcing movement). Some companies we think don't need to outsource are forced to because competitors have. Those competitors may have outsourced intially to survive, but once they do their (at least relatively) better-off competitors have to keep up or their labor costs will eat into and destroy their profits.
The whole thing's turning into a nasty slipperly slope, and I wonder where it'll all end.
When will the middle class realize that the upper 2% is screwing us in the ass daily, and actually do something about it???? We are the *majority* afterall...
Never if most of the middle class keep believing politicans who claim tax cuts/etc. are aimed at helping them out. I am shocked at how many educated smart people that believe these claims without even bothering to investigate to make sure they're valid. I don't hold much hope of the majority of middle class voters ever getting a clue on this, so I'm afraid the answer to your question may be "never".
Except for some new handhelds that they rolled out for tracking layaway packages and sending cashier requests to supervisors, which run Pocket PC. Oddly enough, these new units crash frequently, and the layaway handheld is so unreliable that nobody uses it, opting instead to write package locations down in a notebook and enter them into the register manually. Imagine that.
Hehe, that's hilarious.:) Actually I can't say the other handhelds are terribly stable. Learning how to do a reload on them is critcal because they'll freak out so bad they won't work anymore at least once a day. (At least when they get used a lot, basically they freak out when you need them most.)
Still, bet they ditch the Pocket PC ones in the future if they're that bad.
What happens when they get this machine home and want to install the AOL software onto it?
As the other person who replied to you said, Wal-Mart will pressure AOL. There's another option, Wal-Mart offers its own ISP service, and I would be very surprised if they don't have a Linux version available with the launch of these new PCs.
The FBI got really pissed at him when she provided the court documents proving she had custody.
The moral of the story is to document everything that can serve as evidence on your defence.
I'm curious how things turned out for your biological father, given that the FBI reacts quite badly to being lied to AND that it's a federal crime actually, I wouldn't be surprised to hear he ended up jail over this.
What's up with everyone wanting to put their linux stuff in walmart? Does it actually amount to sales? My guess is that having something to sell in Wallmart is more about PR than sales.
Wal-mart appears to not be very pro-windows, their back-end systems all appear to be Unix or a linux/bsd-based variant. In fact the handheld units on the floor run a version of linux (watching them do a reload is entertaining actually). Wal-mart has also been pushing towards this for quite a while, they want things at the lowest price to pass along savings. Right now in low-end PCs the single largest cost factor is the OS when you have Windows. These systems are fairly comparable to the $499 systems they've had from HP & eMachines, but the only real difference is the OS and they're over $200 cheaper each! Business-wise, especially for Wal-mart buy cheap then pass along savings business plan, going with a non-Windows based PC is a no-brainer.
This sounds great at first glance but my gut feeling is that most of these units sold will be reformatted with Windows. That's the ugly truth methinks.
Actually I think you may be wrong. I had the misfortune (ok to be fair at least it was a job and kept me fed) of working at Wal-mart for a year and a half. For much of that time I was in Electronics, and even after I was moved to checkouts the Electronics people were known to call me or bring customers up for me to answer their computer questions. Frankly the vast majority of these people (all your average joe non-techy person) could have cared less what OS they had as long as it WORKED. If the Sun Desktop works well and does the things Average Joe Consumer wants (which are web surfing, E-mail and possibly chat mainly) then the customers likely won't even notice it's not Windows on their computer.
And to be honest (not trying to be mean) most of those Average Joe Consumers couldn't reformat a system and put Windows on it if their lives and the life of their first-born child depended on it. Whatever it comes with will be what it stays with.
Now it will be interesting to see if they pack in restore CDs for them, HP in particular is really bad about forgetting them, even with only a 15 day time-period for in-store returns we took back so many HPs for exchange because of missing restore CDs it wasn't funny. I believe we had more computers stacked in claims than on the sales floor most of the time.
One amusing tidbit I had\ve to mention, wonder how long it'll be before Wal-mart realizes it'll be really easy to take a stylized sun and put their smiley face in the middle.
You joke as if people here do not have that right, but it has already been shown that such free speech is protected here. Not only that, but you can even distribute source code to exploit it.
At one time I would have agreed with you. Having had an encounter with the government over false accusations made against me (not even computer-related), and having seen the results, I have to say that in theory we have freedom of speech, in PRACTICE, the government can quite easily ruin your life over something you say, even if they can't even charge you with anything.
Remember, publicity about something you're accused of is all the court of public opinion needs to convict you. Winning at trial (if you're charged) or having things dropped later on aren't enough to undo that. To use what's probably a bad example, remember the OJ trial? He was found not guilty of murder, but exactly how many people do you know who believe that to be the truth? And how many do you know who'd hire him to work for them, even if it was digging ditches?
Finally don't forget that fighting charges against you can bankrupt you. Even if you end up innocent, you may find your life utterly and totally destroyed thanks to this. Frankly our "justice" system has lost all its justice, and innocent into proven guilty has gotten forgotten somewhere along the way.
If the goal was to cut off supply, then perhaps. But it is in fact quite silly when CDs and DVDs are publicly sold. While the release groups may have ways to be earlier and thus get their "name" on the release, thousands of people could do it once it is in normal retail. Read a doom9.org guide and you'll be making them like the "pros".
Instead, the goal is to act as a deterrent. To scare and intimidate people using P2P, sending the message "You can be caught too". Including kids. Yes, they don't want to seem harsh on kids, but at the same time they don't want to send the message that it's okay either. They want them scared off P2P, not alienated from buying the music.
I suspect this is the first step in trying to cut off supply, since the music industry continues to experiment with copy-protected CDs and legislation to try to defeat even fair-use of the music on CDs your purchase. Unless they're just flailing about on all fronts, I think a coordinated attack is what they're after, and given their resources it's probably what's really going on.
The lawsuits are failing as a deterrant quite a bit. Since they've started I know many people who've started downloading music just out of spite, and these were people who didn't before. A lot of people are feeling that the recording industry has decided all of its customers are criminals and figure if that's the case they might as well commit the crime they've been branded with. Going after kids (and refusing to back down when its discovered) is really hurting them. It's not going to scare kids, especially teenagers (remember, they think they're invincible, going to jail for sharing music certainly isn't going to occur as a "real" possibility to them), but it IS going to upset and royally piss off every parent out there who worries their kid knows more about the computer than they do, and they aren't sure if the kids are sneaking file-sharing behind their backs. Yes, good parents try to keep track of what their kids do (online and off), but it's especially hard for non-tech-oriented parents to control everything their kid does on a computer, and file-sharing programs are fairly easy to hide. They'll nicely minimize to the tray, only showing a small icon that unless you recognize it you may not even notice.
I think it's already too late myself, the massive negative publicity has even reached past the apathy of most people. Announcements of new suits get reactions along the lines of "damn it, won't those bastards ever learn" instead of the normal "ahh, who cares". Remember this has been going on for nearly a year now, people got apathetic about patriotism in less time than that after 9/11 even, and that was a LOT more serious an issue than the RIAA/Etc. music sharing lawsuits.
Come on, don't get too worked up about this, the guy's obviously going for sensationalism, his remark about fitting all the valid users of mod chips in the back of a Cadillac is a huge clue. This just isn't serious journalism. Wait, he'll be blaming all the deaths in Iraq on tactical shooters next week.
Now as far as the mod-chip market existing, the console makers caused that one themselves. It's a lot like the DVD player situation, there are quite a few people who are going to mod them just to remove the regional restrictions. (Which have nothing to do with protecting against backups, that could be done seperately.) Since they decided to make the regional restrictions & anti-backup measures intermingled, of COURSE a mod-chip market will develop. Then those who have less scruples and just want free games will use it as well.
If the regional restrictions were removed it would help a lot, companies might not even risk making a mod-chip since even though making and playing backup copies of the games you buy is legal, it's much shakier ground for a company to try to defend in court.
Getting a Taser to work properly requires that both probes get a good seat in the subject. A common problem is that only one gets in, or that both get in, but one falls out. In the article you sent me the Officer is clearly dressed only in a light, tight, shirt to ensure a good contact by the Taser probes. That's fine for a demo, but that's not how things go on the street. Now imagine him in loose clothing, layered, telling you to give him the fucking iPod right fucking now and tell me you're willing to bet your life on something as fragile as a Taser.
Lets take this as a given (and I believe it is, too many people have chimed up saying they've been tased and it didn't paralyze them for it not to be IMHO). How about we change the game a bit, since the idea was to basically use an iPod as bait for using a taser on a mugger. Let's make a mock-up empty little white box that looks like an iPod, put a real headphone jack in to plug the headphones into. Fix up the inside with components of a taser, a dye-pack, basically something non-lethal. Fix it so that either you can activate it by remote once the mugger's out of your sight (if they're on foot they'd still be within range), or simply set it up so that it goes off once it's a certain distance from a device on your body. You could also rig it so that turning the iPod on activates whatever is inside.
Personally I think the dye pack would be the most fun, especially since when they were noticed and captures by police they'd think they had robbed a bank at first.:) This could be a good method for the police to use undercover in areas with high iPod muggings going on. Even the stupidest of crooks are going to think twice if the iPod the steal might suddenly turn into a weapon or explode with dye on them.
Personally, I've been boycotting the RIAA member companies for years now
you must listen to a lot of music then...
He might listen to quite a bit. I also have been boycotting them, but I enjoy Japanese Pop and Anime Soundtracks so I import those. I listen to music everyday, but none of it came from the US.
I wonder how many sales are being lost because of the negative PR all these lawsuits must bring.
Even if it could be proven the lawsuits are having a larger negative effect than the perceived downloading has on sales, I doubt the RIAA would stop. They ignore studies which show CD sales have not been majorly effected by downloading (we had a post about that yesterday, and the RIAA just tossed it aside claiming all these studies that had shown a direct-link. The only problem is I believe the RIAA or someone in the recording industry funded the research of all the researchers who found that there was a correlation.)
It's not like the RIAA is even trying to hide that it's just sue-happy right now. Even people who haven't heard about the whole downloading bruhaha are starting to notice and think the RIAA is a bunch of idiots. That has to be effecting the industry, but does the RIAA even seem to consider the possibility? If they have, they sure don't act like it.
but does this mean in the entire area they can cover, they only found enough proof to accuse 247 of them? I'm sure more are to come, but why not just file suit against more? also, yes, I thought it said pornographic...
Well realistically they probably can't afford to file suit against all the thousand (perhaps millions) online sharing music at any given time. Even if they could financially (and what am I saying, they probably can), logistically coordinating it would be a nightmare.
In the real world one would expect those 247 sued to be the biggest sharers they could find, but history (RIAA suits last year into this year) have taught us that the recording industry doesn't seem to share our reality. I will not be surprised if the IFPI finds itself in the same quagmire that the RIAA did. It'll be quite amusing if it's worse and over half the sharers are little kids or grandparents whose grandkids put the software on their computer without them knowing. Now that'd be a public relations nightmare! (Not that the IFPI and/or RIAA seem to care what anyone thinks of them anymore though.)
I'd take it to be insult of the court if they went around looking for loopholes as such.
I suspect the court will take it that way too. From what I've read over the years Germany's courts aren't keen to put up with games like this.
besides, if they already have one court decision then getting another can't be that hard(and if they can reasonably prove that sco is behind it, just getting them smacked with another fine).
To be fair it was apparently only a preliminary injunction to SCO to stop, but I agree, with that behind them + the settlement terms should make it quite simple to get the full injunction. Since SCO's played fairly dirty here, I wouldn't be surprised to see this company get a nice chunk of damages awarded too.
Fine SCO every time someone writes another article about them. They're being so damn frivolous that it pains me to hear anything else about them short of their ultimate demise.
They can't the way SCO's doing it, in the article it tells the terms, and they only apply to SCO's German subsidary and employees of that subsidary. IANAL, and not familiar with Germany's legal system, but it looks like SCO managed to sneak this by the company without them realizing the potential it allows for SCO to continue to cause trouble -- just as long as the German subsidary and its employees stay out of it.
The company sounds pretty determined to make SCO stop (I am supposing SCO's claims are hurting their business), and had won a preliminary restraining order last year, and SCO entered into this out-of-court settlement this year instead of continuing to fight against them in court. I doubt the company's going to just take this current stuff lightly, and even though SCO hasn't violated the letter of the settlement, that won't stop the company from suing SCO's US, or whichever branch they use for the FUD of the day. I also doubt the courts will look on SCO Germany entering into an agreement to stop these exact same actions lightly. SCO will have an uphill battle to win that case.
Of course it doesn't seem that SCO really cares if they have a chance in hell of winning a lawsuit, as long as they can spread their FUD about. (Feel free to apply whichever conspiracy theory is current as to why.)
Many artists battle with the record companies on which songs make their records. As an artist, I wouldn't want "market demand" determining the makeup of my album.
On the other hand, "artists" like P. Diddy or Britney Spears might prefer it that way.
I can understand the Artist wanting control of what goes on the album, but consider the marketing advantage you'd have for album sales if all the tracks were chosen because they were quite popular. One of the biggest complaints consumers have with the current system is that you pay nearly $20 for a CD with 1, maybe 2 songs on it you like, and more often than not the rest aren't worth listening to. (Not just bad, beyond bad.) Personally I doubt the artists wanted the CD that way either, unless they really hate their audience and enjoy subjecting them to crap. (Granted a few of those may be songs the artist thinks are really good, but their audience don't. The odds are against 10+ of them being that way though.)
Of course it should be noted that the recording industry killed off the singles market themselves, lusting after the higher profits of a whole CD. Not to mention that from what I hear about "standard" recording contracts, the artist is lucky to break even on CD sales through retail, and it's not unheard of that the recording company's creative accounting will leave the artist OWING money. There's not much incentive for artists to really try to change this since they mostly only make money on concerts and stuff sold at concerts. The recording companies seem to have become so intoxicated with greed that I doubt they'll ever try to change this either.
If iTunes has proven anything it's that a singles market still exists. If the recording industry started selling CD singles of hits, they'd probably be mightily surprised to find people would buy them and they'd make money on it. There's still a LOT of people out there who either have no Internet access (or computer even) but still would love to get a copy of their favorite tracks.
Personally I got so disgusted with the whole thing I stopped listening to/buying/downloading/etc. any US music about 5 years ago.
Re:Like the UN would be any faster...
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ICANN Meets Annan
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If you'd have paid any attention to the UN you'd realize Israel would be more likely to lose its domain than Palestine.
I didn't say Palestine would be likely to lose their domain, just that Israel would start lobbying the UN to have them lose it. Certainly many (if not all) Arab countries would lobby to have Israel lose its domain as well. It was just an example of the kind of madness we'd be inviting if we did turn over DNS oversight to the UN, and there are certainly many more that neither of us has mentioned.
Just imagine the fun of driving by his (assuming it's a he) house in his former Porsche blowing the horn and flagging him a bird -- every morning. Why hell, he's a spammer, make that around 3am every morning, and drop off a printout of your daily spam on his doorstep for good measure.:)
Yes I know it'd probably be at least partially illegal, but it'd be great fun to watch his pop a vein.:)
Re:Like the UN would be any faster...
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ICANN Meets Annan
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And UN is suspectible to political pressue considerably more then ICANN. What a can of worms will open if UN will deside wich country should have wich domain name suffixes, and who shouldn't have suffixes at all. And Taiwan is not an UN member at all. What if UN start removing existing suffixes for political reasons ?
An incredibly good point, I hope someone mods you up. I'm sure that China would start the pressure to have Taiwan removed immediately and I'm sure Israel would start lobbying for Palenstine (.ps IIRC) to lose its domain. Actually the net would probably come to a screeching halt while the UN fought over who deserved a domain or not.
Despite the concerns expressed in the article by critics, the US has taken a fairly non-political oversight role with the Internet and ICANN. True that might not stay that way, but at least as things stand now, ICANN is probably far less political than any UN governed Internet body would ever be.
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Thought here on the region free aspect. Could they be doing this to try and remove the most widely stated fair use reason for mod chips? Eliminate the need for a mod chip to play discs from other regions and you've just made a big impact on the perceived legitamacy of mod chips on the whole.
Probably not, they only talk about the PSP being region-free, and that's the Sony's new portable. Portables aren't as easy to mod as a console box. The article on The Register's site doesn't say anything about the PS3 being region-free.From the article and talking about it linking to the PSX, it doesn't really sound like they're considering the PS3 to be a next-gen console, but something else. Frankly it sounds strange linking it to the PSX which is based on PS2 technology gaming-wise. It should be quite interesting to hear what Sony has in mind for the PS3, but right now it's sounding like they might be about to screw up and give Microsoft and Nintendo a chance to grab more of the console market.
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Or is that what you meant too?
Pretty much, it looks like the rich will stay rich or get richer, and it'll be at the expense of the poor world-wide instead of localized to the rich person's country.-
It will be interesting to see how much the world's wealth has spread itself out in say 50 years.
I suspect it won't spread much. Those already rich are also generally powerful politically in their countries. They tend to fight anything that doesn't keep their wealth with themselves. Unless the middle & lower classes can successfully take over government in the coming 50 years, the rich will continue to cater to the rich and leave everyone else fighting for scraps.-
While it may be true that CollabNet has to outsource to survive, other companies (Dell comes to mind) DO NOT need to outsource to survive, they outsource because it is cheaper. We can argue all day about the morality of outsourcing, but the bottom line is going to be profit in many cases.
I'll play the devil's advocate here (personally I despise the outsourcing movement). Some companies we think don't need to outsource are forced to because competitors have. Those competitors may have outsourced intially to survive, but once they do their (at least relatively) better-off competitors have to keep up or their labor costs will eat into and destroy their profits.The whole thing's turning into a nasty slipperly slope, and I wonder where it'll all end.
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When will the middle class realize that the upper 2% is screwing us in the ass daily, and actually do something about it???? We are the *majority* afterall...
Never if most of the middle class keep believing politicans who claim tax cuts/etc. are aimed at helping them out. I am shocked at how many educated smart people that believe these claims without even bothering to investigate to make sure they're valid. I don't hold much hope of the majority of middle class voters ever getting a clue on this, so I'm afraid the answer to your question may be "never".-
Except for some new handhelds that they rolled out for tracking layaway packages and sending cashier requests to supervisors, which run Pocket PC. Oddly enough, these new units crash frequently, and the layaway handheld is so unreliable that nobody uses it, opting instead to write package locations down in a notebook and enter them into the register manually. Imagine that.
Hehe, that's hilarious.Still, bet they ditch the Pocket PC ones in the future if they're that bad.
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What happens when they get this machine home and want to install the AOL software onto it?
As the other person who replied to you said, Wal-Mart will pressure AOL. There's another option, Wal-Mart offers its own ISP service, and I would be very surprised if they don't have a Linux version available with the launch of these new PCs.-
You sure they didn't come with the CDs?
Pretty sure since there was such a short in-store return period (15 days). Most people don't manage to lose track of a pile of CD-ROMs that quickly.-
The FBI got really pissed at him when she provided the court documents proving she had custody.
I'm curious how things turned out for your biological father, given that the FBI reacts quite badly to being lied to AND that it's a federal crime actually, I wouldn't be surprised to hear he ended up jail over this.The moral of the story is to document everything that can serve as evidence on your defence.
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What's up with everyone wanting to put their linux stuff in walmart? Does it actually amount to sales? My guess is that having something to sell in Wallmart is more about PR than sales.
Wal-mart appears to not be very pro-windows, their back-end systems all appear to be Unix or a linux/bsd-based variant. In fact the handheld units on the floor run a version of linux (watching them do a reload is entertaining actually). Wal-mart has also been pushing towards this for quite a while, they want things at the lowest price to pass along savings. Right now in low-end PCs the single largest cost factor is the OS when you have Windows. These systems are fairly comparable to the $499 systems they've had from HP & eMachines, but the only real difference is the OS and they're over $200 cheaper each! Business-wise, especially for Wal-mart buy cheap then pass along savings business plan, going with a non-Windows based PC is a no-brainer.-
This sounds great at first glance but my gut feeling is that most of these units sold will be reformatted with Windows. That's the ugly truth methinks.
Actually I think you may be wrong. I had the misfortune (ok to be fair at least it was a job and kept me fed) of working at Wal-mart for a year and a half. For much of that time I was in Electronics, and even after I was moved to checkouts the Electronics people were known to call me or bring customers up for me to answer their computer questions. Frankly the vast majority of these people (all your average joe non-techy person) could have cared less what OS they had as long as it WORKED. If the Sun Desktop works well and does the things Average Joe Consumer wants (which are web surfing, E-mail and possibly chat mainly) then the customers likely won't even notice it's not Windows on their computer.And to be honest (not trying to be mean) most of those Average Joe Consumers couldn't reformat a system and put Windows on it if their lives and the life of their first-born child depended on it. Whatever it comes with will be what it stays with.
Now it will be interesting to see if they pack in restore CDs for them, HP in particular is really bad about forgetting them, even with only a 15 day time-period for in-store returns we took back so many HPs for exchange because of missing restore CDs it wasn't funny. I believe we had more computers stacked in claims than on the sales floor most of the time.
One amusing tidbit I had\ve to mention, wonder how long it'll be before Wal-mart realizes it'll be really easy to take a stylized sun and put their smiley face in the middle.
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You joke as if people here do not have that right, but it has already been shown that such free speech is protected here. Not only that, but you can even distribute source code to exploit it.
At one time I would have agreed with you. Having had an encounter with the government over false accusations made against me (not even computer-related), and having seen the results, I have to say that in theory we have freedom of speech, in PRACTICE, the government can quite easily ruin your life over something you say, even if they can't even charge you with anything.Remember, publicity about something you're accused of is all the court of public opinion needs to convict you. Winning at trial (if you're charged) or having things dropped later on aren't enough to undo that. To use what's probably a bad example, remember the OJ trial? He was found not guilty of murder, but exactly how many people do you know who believe that to be the truth? And how many do you know who'd hire him to work for them, even if it was digging ditches?
Finally don't forget that fighting charges against you can bankrupt you. Even if you end up innocent, you may find your life utterly and totally destroyed thanks to this. Frankly our "justice" system has lost all its justice, and innocent into proven guilty has gotten forgotten somewhere along the way.
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If the goal was to cut off supply, then perhaps. But it is in fact quite silly when CDs and DVDs are publicly sold. While the release groups may have ways to be earlier and thus get their "name" on the release, thousands of people could do it once it is in normal retail. Read a doom9.org guide and you'll be making them like the "pros".
I suspect this is the first step in trying to cut off supply, since the music industry continues to experiment with copy-protected CDs and legislation to try to defeat even fair-use of the music on CDs your purchase. Unless they're just flailing about on all fronts, I think a coordinated attack is what they're after, and given their resources it's probably what's really going on.Instead, the goal is to act as a deterrent. To scare and intimidate people using P2P, sending the message "You can be caught too". Including kids. Yes, they don't want to seem harsh on kids, but at the same time they don't want to send the message that it's okay either. They want them scared off P2P, not alienated from buying the music.
The lawsuits are failing as a deterrant quite a bit. Since they've started I know many people who've started downloading music just out of spite, and these were people who didn't before. A lot of people are feeling that the recording industry has decided all of its customers are criminals and figure if that's the case they might as well commit the crime they've been branded with. Going after kids (and refusing to back down when its discovered) is really hurting them. It's not going to scare kids, especially teenagers (remember, they think they're invincible, going to jail for sharing music certainly isn't going to occur as a "real" possibility to them), but it IS going to upset and royally piss off every parent out there who worries their kid knows more about the computer than they do, and they aren't sure if the kids are sneaking file-sharing behind their backs. Yes, good parents try to keep track of what their kids do (online and off), but it's especially hard for non-tech-oriented parents to control everything their kid does on a computer, and file-sharing programs are fairly easy to hide. They'll nicely minimize to the tray, only showing a small icon that unless you recognize it you may not even notice.
I think it's already too late myself, the massive negative publicity has even reached past the apathy of most people. Announcements of new suits get reactions along the lines of "damn it, won't those bastards ever learn" instead of the normal "ahh, who cares". Remember this has been going on for nearly a year now, people got apathetic about patriotism in less time than that after 9/11 even, and that was a LOT more serious an issue than the RIAA/Etc. music sharing lawsuits.
Now as far as the mod-chip market existing, the console makers caused that one themselves. It's a lot like the DVD player situation, there are quite a few people who are going to mod them just to remove the regional restrictions. (Which have nothing to do with protecting against backups, that could be done seperately.) Since they decided to make the regional restrictions & anti-backup measures intermingled, of COURSE a mod-chip market will develop. Then those who have less scruples and just want free games will use it as well.
If the regional restrictions were removed it would help a lot, companies might not even risk making a mod-chip since even though making and playing backup copies of the games you buy is legal, it's much shakier ground for a company to try to defend in court.
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Getting a Taser to work properly requires that both probes get a good seat in the subject. A common problem is that only one gets in, or that both get in, but one falls out. In the article you sent me the Officer is clearly dressed only in a light, tight, shirt to ensure a good contact by the Taser probes. That's fine for a demo, but that's not how things go on the street. Now imagine him in loose clothing, layered, telling you to give him the fucking iPod right fucking now and tell me you're willing to bet your life on something as fragile as a Taser.
Lets take this as a given (and I believe it is, too many people have chimed up saying they've been tased and it didn't paralyze them for it not to be IMHO). How about we change the game a bit, since the idea was to basically use an iPod as bait for using a taser on a mugger. Let's make a mock-up empty little white box that looks like an iPod, put a real headphone jack in to plug the headphones into. Fix up the inside with components of a taser, a dye-pack, basically something non-lethal. Fix it so that either you can activate it by remote once the mugger's out of your sight (if they're on foot they'd still be within range), or simply set it up so that it goes off once it's a certain distance from a device on your body. You could also rig it so that turning the iPod on activates whatever is inside.Personally I think the dye pack would be the most fun, especially since when they were noticed and captures by police they'd think they had robbed a bank at first. :) This could be a good method for the police to use undercover in areas with high iPod muggings going on. Even the stupidest of crooks are going to think twice if the iPod the steal might suddenly turn into a weapon or explode with dye on them.
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Personally, I've been boycotting the RIAA member companies for years now
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you must listen to a lot of music then...
He might listen to quite a bit. I also have been boycotting them, but I enjoy Japanese Pop and Anime Soundtracks so I import those. I listen to music everyday, but none of it came from the US.-
I wonder how many sales are being lost because of the negative PR all these lawsuits must bring.
Even if it could be proven the lawsuits are having a larger negative effect than the perceived downloading has on sales, I doubt the RIAA would stop. They ignore studies which show CD sales have not been majorly effected by downloading (we had a post about that yesterday, and the RIAA just tossed it aside claiming all these studies that had shown a direct-link. The only problem is I believe the RIAA or someone in the recording industry funded the research of all the researchers who found that there was a correlation.)It's not like the RIAA is even trying to hide that it's just sue-happy right now. Even people who haven't heard about the whole downloading bruhaha are starting to notice and think the RIAA is a bunch of idiots. That has to be effecting the industry, but does the RIAA even seem to consider the possibility? If they have, they sure don't act like it.
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but does this mean in the entire area they can cover, they only found enough proof to accuse 247 of them? I'm sure more are to come, but why not just file suit against more? also, yes, I thought it said pornographic...
Well realistically they probably can't afford to file suit against all the thousand (perhaps millions) online sharing music at any given time. Even if they could financially (and what am I saying, they probably can), logistically coordinating it would be a nightmare.In the real world one would expect those 247 sued to be the biggest sharers they could find, but history (RIAA suits last year into this year) have taught us that the recording industry doesn't seem to share our reality. I will not be surprised if the IFPI finds itself in the same quagmire that the RIAA did. It'll be quite amusing if it's worse and over half the sharers are little kids or grandparents whose grandkids put the software on their computer without them knowing. Now that'd be a public relations nightmare! (Not that the IFPI and/or RIAA seem to care what anyone thinks of them anymore though.)
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I'd take it to be insult of the court if they went around looking for loopholes as such.
I suspect the court will take it that way too. From what I've read over the years Germany's courts aren't keen to put up with games like this.-
besides, if they already have one court decision then getting another can't be that hard(and if they can reasonably prove that sco is behind it, just getting them smacked with another fine).
To be fair it was apparently only a preliminary injunction to SCO to stop, but I agree, with that behind them + the settlement terms should make it quite simple to get the full injunction. Since SCO's played fairly dirty here, I wouldn't be surprised to see this company get a nice chunk of damages awarded too.-
Fine SCO every time someone writes another article about them. They're being so damn frivolous that it pains me to hear anything else about them short of their ultimate demise.
They can't the way SCO's doing it, in the article it tells the terms, and they only apply to SCO's German subsidary and employees of that subsidary. IANAL, and not familiar with Germany's legal system, but it looks like SCO managed to sneak this by the company without them realizing the potential it allows for SCO to continue to cause trouble -- just as long as the German subsidary and its employees stay out of it.The company sounds pretty determined to make SCO stop (I am supposing SCO's claims are hurting their business), and had won a preliminary restraining order last year, and SCO entered into this out-of-court settlement this year instead of continuing to fight against them in court. I doubt the company's going to just take this current stuff lightly, and even though SCO hasn't violated the letter of the settlement, that won't stop the company from suing SCO's US, or whichever branch they use for the FUD of the day. I also doubt the courts will look on SCO Germany entering into an agreement to stop these exact same actions lightly. SCO will have an uphill battle to win that case.
Of course it doesn't seem that SCO really cares if they have a chance in hell of winning a lawsuit, as long as they can spread their FUD about. (Feel free to apply whichever conspiracy theory is current as to why.)
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Many artists battle with the record companies on which songs make their records. As an artist, I wouldn't want "market demand" determining the makeup of my album.
I can understand the Artist wanting control of what goes on the album, but consider the marketing advantage you'd have for album sales if all the tracks were chosen because they were quite popular. One of the biggest complaints consumers have with the current system is that you pay nearly $20 for a CD with 1, maybe 2 songs on it you like, and more often than not the rest aren't worth listening to. (Not just bad, beyond bad.) Personally I doubt the artists wanted the CD that way either, unless they really hate their audience and enjoy subjecting them to crap. (Granted a few of those may be songs the artist thinks are really good, but their audience don't. The odds are against 10+ of them being that way though.)On the other hand, "artists" like P. Diddy or Britney Spears might prefer it that way.
Of course it should be noted that the recording industry killed off the singles market themselves, lusting after the higher profits of a whole CD. Not to mention that from what I hear about "standard" recording contracts, the artist is lucky to break even on CD sales through retail, and it's not unheard of that the recording company's creative accounting will leave the artist OWING money. There's not much incentive for artists to really try to change this since they mostly only make money on concerts and stuff sold at concerts. The recording companies seem to have become so intoxicated with greed that I doubt they'll ever try to change this either.
If iTunes has proven anything it's that a singles market still exists. If the recording industry started selling CD singles of hits, they'd probably be mightily surprised to find people would buy them and they'd make money on it. There's still a LOT of people out there who either have no Internet access (or computer even) but still would love to get a copy of their favorite tracks.
Personally I got so disgusted with the whole thing I stopped listening to/buying/downloading/etc. any US music about 5 years ago.
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If you'd have paid any attention to the UN you'd realize Israel would be more likely to lose its domain than Palestine.
I didn't say Palestine would be likely to lose their domain, just that Israel would start lobbying the UN to have them lose it. Certainly many (if not all) Arab countries would lobby to have Israel lose its domain as well. It was just an example of the kind of madness we'd be inviting if we did turn over DNS oversight to the UN, and there are certainly many more that neither of us has mentioned.Yes I know it'd probably be at least partially illegal, but it'd be great fun to watch his pop a vein. :)
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And UN is suspectible to political pressue considerably more then ICANN. What a can of worms will open if UN will deside wich country should have wich domain name suffixes, and who shouldn't have suffixes at all. And Taiwan is not an UN member at all. What if UN start removing existing suffixes for political reasons ?
An incredibly good point, I hope someone mods you up. I'm sure that China would start the pressure to have Taiwan removed immediately and I'm sure Israel would start lobbying for Palenstine (.ps IIRC) to lose its domain. Actually the net would probably come to a screeching halt while the UN fought over who deserved a domain or not.Despite the concerns expressed in the article by critics, the US has taken a fairly non-political oversight role with the Internet and ICANN. True that might not stay that way, but at least as things stand now, ICANN is probably far less political than any UN governed Internet body would ever be.