"Please be aware that Miramax Film Corp. is the exclusive licensee of the right to distribute Hero on all home video formats, as well as through other forms of exploitation in, among other territories, the United States and Canada. Your actions in this regard are completely unauthorized and violate valuable rights held by Miramax."
What Miramax is talking about here, is purely a private deal between Miramax and the makers of the film. It is not in any way related to copyright law or the social contract to which all citizens are bound. You are not a party to this contract and not in the slightest bit bound by it.
It is 100% legal for a US Citizen to purchase the film from an importer (or by importing it themselves) without going through Miramax. If Miramax doesn't like the fact that they don't really have exclusive control of the market, then they should sue the makers of the film for selling copies in the far east without somehow guaranteeing that none of those copies will get to America. This is ridiculously impossible to do, of course, but that's the just the nature of how impractical an exclusive distribution contract is. There's no such thing as geographical exclusive control anymore; this is a global economy.
Miramax's argument is deception, and the person to whom they wrote the C&D, was not violating their rights.
It's disappointing that this dude caved in. I can understand it; I might cave into bullies too, instead of paying a lot of money for defense. But there's no way he would have lost, had it gone to court.
The Content Reference Forum is hoping to create a kind of
intelligent file that can be distributed through file-sharing networks
like Kazaa, Web pages, e-mail or almost anywhere else online.
Instead of containing a song or movie itself, the file would set up a
process that automatically delivers files in the right format and potentially
triggers an automatic payment system that could be changed moment to moment
by the content distributor.
Anyone else get the impression that "intelligent file" is newspeak for
"dangerously executable"?
Wow, people are going to download executable code from kazaa and execute it.
It ain't hard to guess what the follow-up news stories are going to be like.
(Dammit, why haven't I bought stock in the anti-virus companies yet?!)
The remedy is to stop paying advances. The remedy is to go to a gross-revenues deal and tell an artist, "We'll give you twenty cents on every dollar we get, but we're not gonna give you an advance."
That's fair and swell, but without the advance, what does the artist need the record company for? If he has to self-finance the production, then the artist might as well do everything. He could just deal directly with internet distributors (such as Apple iTunes Music Store), buy some ads, etc.
Ha ha, you missed one of the big ones. It turns out that if you used your slashdot credit card to get one of the free Cuecats, you still got karma points for the retail value of the Cuecat, even though you didn't have to pay anything. It was a great hack; I got like 100 Cuecats and karma up the wazoo!
If someone, somewhere in the world, uses NTFS to store some of their own copyrighted material, and they rely on Windows' permissions to restrict access to it, then NTFS is a technological measure that effectively limits access to a copyrighted work.
Distributing software that allow people to access the filesystem without duplicating all the security functionality, could be interpreted as trafficking in a circumvention device.
If your computer has a "sex synthesizer" (either something as crude as a FU-FME or direct neural interface ala Larry Niven's "wireheads") that it uses to render the x-neural/orgasm MIME type, who the hell is going to wait around for a kind email? Just write up a little script to play it in a loop, and drop out of society.
And assuming you eventually get all you want from the aforementioned script and stop it, then you're probably not going to be in the mood to execute x-neural/orgasm email attachments at arbitrary times.
Slashdot thanks you for the straight line. Speaking of lines, where is the one where I go stand in, so that I can make the joke that you've so kindly set up for us?
George: Hey, Elaine, you're a woman. Do women know about shrinkage? Elain: What, you mean like, with laundry? Jerry: Semiconductors. You know, when a man designs chips, year after year. Elaine: They shrink? George: Like a frightened turtle. Elaine: I don't know how you guys compute with those.
Because without rock and roll, sex and drugs are empty and useless. I'll have a little more faith in Linus when he gives a release a name like King Crimson or Led Zeppelin.
..after an onslaught of complaints from dissatisfied customers who couldn't cope with the differing accents and scripted responses.
Scripted responses aren't an India-vs-US issue. Either the employees are trained to think or they're not. Either the US call center is going to have the exact same problem, or the India center could be trained to not have the problem. This isn't a US advantage.
Accents can eventually be overcome.
This is not the start of a trend. It's an anomaly. Having call centers for common, commodity knowledge (such as elementary Windows and Dell hardware troubleshooting) is still a good idea that makes sense from a performance/expense perspective.
Saying Linux is a clone of Unix, is like saying Windows XP is a clone of MS DOS 2.1. Yes, Linux and XP have those older projects as part of their conceptual heritage, but they don't really have any code in common, and their capabilities are a huge superset.
Show me where, in Unix, there is: Linux4Video, software RAID, EVMS, kernel preemption, finegrained locking for good SMP performance, NUMA architecture support, USB drivers, loadable kernel modules, or anything resembling ReiserFS.
If you think Linux is a Unix clone instead of innovative, then you either have been away from Unix for so long that you don't remember it very well, or you're using Linux 0.91.
WTF goes through somebody's head when they decide to use MS Windows for an embedded project?!
Windows' strength, pretty much its only strength, is legacy compatability. But an ATM doesn't need to run Excel or some 8-year-old custom Visual Basic application that an irresponsible manager got the company locked into. Really, it's ok to use decent software for embedded projects, nothing should hold you back.
Using Windows in an ATM, sounds like a classic application of the saying: "When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."
assuming that "intelligent ink" really exists, couldn't you just seran wrap your scanner?
Excuse me, but if they can make ink intelligent, then don't you think they'll make it smart enough to be able to work around such a simple trick as that?
Windows is all they're going to use in their lives. Why would schools put forth all that time, money, and effort into switching over to Linux if all that will happen is the students would be less prepared for the real world?
Because the environment isn't just something imposed upon us: it's also sometihng we create and bend to our will.
If students grow up using Linux, then some of them will use Linux, in the real world -- as a result.
Businesses don't want to because of the loss of productivity (while people relearn everything) involved combined with the lack of people in the workforce who know the programs they use.
Businesses won't want to, but they don't have any choice. Even if they stick to Microsoft products exclusively, they lose a lot of productivity due to the upgrade cycle. Have you tried using Windows XP? Do you have any idea what Longhorn is going to be like? Try replacing a "dumb user"'s Win95 machine with a XP machine and watch the fireworks.
Every couple of years, the business is screwed. Learning Linux plus whatever desktop software the dist bundles with it, isn't any more expensive than what they're going to go through anyway.
Also, you seem to see the world as just a bunch of huge megacorps of offices full of hundreds of cubicles all with a Wintel box on one big network, where everyone is all sending Powerpoint files back and forth, in some parody of Dilbert. Get out of the concrete canyons and go see the real world, where there are small businesses. I know these people, because they're who I work with. They consist of an office with one PC, and only one lady uses it, and that's only part of her job. She uses it to get the customers billed, or something. I guarantee you that when she was hired, the boss (who isn't a computer guy) didn't ask her if she knew how to use Excel; he might not even know what Excel is. Whatever she knows how to do, is what she's going to do, in order to get the job done. If Linux and Gnumeric are her tools of choice, then there's a good chance that is what the company is going to use. (Of course, those aren't her tools of choice, because our schools didn't teach her right.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
It is 100% legal for a US Citizen to purchase the film from an importer (or by importing it themselves) without going through Miramax. If Miramax doesn't like the fact that they don't really have exclusive control of the market, then they should sue the makers of the film for selling copies in the far east without somehow guaranteeing that none of those copies will get to America. This is ridiculously impossible to do, of course, but that's the just the nature of how impractical an exclusive distribution contract is. There's no such thing as geographical exclusive control anymore; this is a global economy.
Miramax's argument is deception, and the person to whom they wrote the C&D, was not violating their rights.
It's disappointing that this dude caved in. I can understand it; I might cave into bullies too, instead of paying a lot of money for defense. But there's no way he would have lost, had it gone to court.
There's no market for such a law. Who would buy it?
I don't see what's so threatening about looking like Marlon Brando.
They needed "40 seconds" to evacuate some compartments. What the frack is that supposed to mean? How many microns is that?
Wireless, schmireless -- I love the aerial photos!
Wow, people are going to download executable code from kazaa and execute it. It ain't hard to guess what the follow-up news stories are going to be like. (Dammit, why haven't I bought stock in the anti-virus companies yet?!)
At least the pubes are blurred out, in order to prevent the image from being obscene.
If you don't get cruise missiles, the King of England could come in here and start pushing you around. Do you want that? Do you?
Nothing is better than sex.
Masterbation is better than nothing.
Therefore: masterbation is better than sex.
Ha ha, you missed one of the big ones. It turns out that if you used your slashdot credit card to get one of the free Cuecats, you still got karma points for the retail value of the Cuecat, even though you didn't have to pay anything. It was a great hack; I got like 100 Cuecats and karma up the wazoo!
Distributing software that allow people to access the filesystem without duplicating all the security functionality, could be interpreted as trafficking in a circumvention device.
And assuming you eventually get all you want from the aforementioned script and stop it, then you're probably not going to be in the mood to execute x-neural/orgasm email attachments at arbitrary times.
George: Hey, Elaine, you're a woman. Do women know about shrinkage?
Elain: What, you mean like, with laundry?
Jerry: Semiconductors. You know, when a man designs chips, year after year.
Elaine: They shrink?
George: Like a frightened turtle.
Elaine: I don't know how you guys compute with those.
There's nothing sexy about a woman who can't figure out how to use Tivo.
Because without rock and roll, sex and drugs are empty and useless. I'll have a little more faith in Linus when he gives a release a name like King Crimson or Led Zeppelin.
Don't ever leave out rock and roll.
Aww, it doesn't say how to add CSS protection.
Accents can eventually be overcome.
This is not the start of a trend. It's an anomaly. Having call centers for common, commodity knowledge (such as elementary Windows and Dell hardware troubleshooting) is still a good idea that makes sense from a performance/expense perspective.
Show me where, in Unix, there is: Linux4Video, software RAID, EVMS, kernel preemption, finegrained locking for good SMP performance, NUMA architecture support, USB drivers, loadable kernel modules, or anything resembling ReiserFS.
If you think Linux is a Unix clone instead of innovative, then you either have been away from Unix for so long that you don't remember it very well, or you're using Linux 0.91.
Windows' strength, pretty much its only strength, is legacy compatability. But an ATM doesn't need to run Excel or some 8-year-old custom Visual Basic application that an irresponsible manager got the company locked into. Really, it's ok to use decent software for embedded projects, nothing should hold you back.
Using Windows in an ATM, sounds like a classic application of the saying: "When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."
If students grow up using Linux, then some of them will use Linux, in the real world -- as a result.
Businesses won't want to, but they don't have any choice. Even if they stick to Microsoft products exclusively, they lose a lot of productivity due to the upgrade cycle. Have you tried using Windows XP? Do you have any idea what Longhorn is going to be like? Try replacing a "dumb user"'s Win95 machine with a XP machine and watch the fireworks.Every couple of years, the business is screwed. Learning Linux plus whatever desktop software the dist bundles with it, isn't any more expensive than what they're going to go through anyway.
Also, you seem to see the world as just a bunch of huge megacorps of offices full of hundreds of cubicles all with a Wintel box on one big network, where everyone is all sending Powerpoint files back and forth, in some parody of Dilbert. Get out of the concrete canyons and go see the real world, where there are small businesses. I know these people, because they're who I work with. They consist of an office with one PC, and only one lady uses it, and that's only part of her job. She uses it to get the customers billed, or something. I guarantee you that when she was hired, the boss (who isn't a computer guy) didn't ask her if she knew how to use Excel; he might not even know what Excel is. Whatever she knows how to do, is what she's going to do, in order to get the job done. If Linux and Gnumeric are her tools of choice, then there's a good chance that is what the company is going to use. (Of course, those aren't her tools of choice, because our schools didn't teach her right. ;-)