I see all these people decrying Apple because you can't remove the battery and replace it. Lol. Never needed to. Six days normal use, 2 days intense use.
Yeah, sure, all the people I know who have to charge their iPhone once a day with normal use are just holding it wrong. Or something.
Face it, if we were talking about a Microsoft phone, everybody would be screaming "paid MA shill!" by now.
Y2k was a boom for technology contractors such as myself. The years leading up to Y2k38 will be good too. Think of all the code that will need to be totally rewritten. I know, there is that faction of people that want to see technology undo itself, and the world end, but for those of us that live in reality... it'll be great. Honestly, I wish we had these kinds of crises more often.
People with your attitude should be exterminated like rats.
Anyway kids, this English teacher with the red ink correction bullshit has never made sense on such a casual site and makes even less sense now that people are posting from phones or iPads that can produce a wide variety of autocomplete or spellcheck weirdness.
If there's one thing more annoying than someone who can't be arsed to be polite, it's someone who blames his lack of manners on a piece of fucking electronic equipment.
If you've got shitty autocomplete, turn it off and stop polluting the internet with your illiterate drivelling.
It would be depressing to think that life in the real world was so closely paralleled to life in the business world...
It's not. The business world is a matter of supreme boredom and indifference to 99% of people. It's only the 1% who want to make it to the top who think it's fascinating and important.
Most people's lives are based around their friends, family, interests, hobbies and so on. Work is just something you have to do to pay the bills. It's why extreme free market evangelists are so ludicrous: business simply isn't very interesting.
IIRC the social networking footprints of suspects in recent mass violence cases were surprisingly low to virtually non-existent.
Indeed, and there were front-page CNN and BBC stories about the "unusual" lack of social media presence. It's just the beginning, but not using Facebook like "normal people" is being looked at a possible predictor of deviant or violent behavior.
Yay, 1984, here we come!
As long as they can't actually convict you just for not having a facebook account, I don't care.
Possible predictors of deviant or violent behaviour don't mean a lot, as it is generally only after the event that people notice them. It's amazing how often someone will be described as creepy, weird, or somehow not normal after they've been convicted.
But for people like me who just store family photos and backups of word documents, it's a great service, and with 50 gigs of space, that's absolutely fantastic.
Yes, but (assuming you're not stupid enough to pay Mr Dotcome any money) you're not really the core of his business model, are you?
You're missing the obvious point, which is that Megaupload was successful because it was easy to use and popular with illegal filesharers whose whole idea of the internet is their web browser, and for whom BitTorrent is too much like hard work.
Kim Dotcom didn't make millions by providing niche FTP alternatives to nerds.
I think massive consumption and sharing of legal content will drive the value of illegal content down to a price people are willing to pay for through legal channels.
I believe you meant:
I think massive consumption and sharing of illegal content will drive the value of legal content down to a price people are willing to pay for through legal channels.
If you don't want to pay the price for something through legal channels, don't fucking buy it. Contrary to what your friends at school may tell you, you are not entitled to anything you want for whatever price you feel like paying.
If movie companies are charging too much for buying a copy of their movies, people should stop buying copies. Simples.
There is no piece of music, film, TV or anything else that it will do you any harm not to consume. There are plenty of other, free, cheap or simply better alternatives to anything that is pushed out by the big copyright holder organisations.
So yes people who disagree and say software repair shouldn't be allowed are in fact stupid.
It's good that there's at least one (essentially trivial, but still...) area of human experience that is completely black and white, and on which everyone can agree.
If we keep this up we'll soon have world peace, an end to hunger and a cure for cancer!
You seem to have forgotten what copyright was meant for. It was the right to copy after giving the content creator the opportunity to earn money from his content.
Copyright means that the content belongs to the author, and he is allowing you to copy it under his terms and conditions, generally involving a payment, but also limiting your ability to change the ending of a book, for example, or palm it off as your own.
Why can't I repair games or get access to source code?
Because they're not yours?
Why don't videogames and their source-code and art assets go into a library (being a cultural work like books)? I could go on and on about all the people who's ability to create and solve problems are constrained by such criminal laws.
Why don't all economic assets go into a library that everyone's allowed to access according to their needs, and contributes to according to their abilities?
Seriously. If you want a free and equal communist society, it should apply to everything, not just digital files. There is nothing special about them, whatever people on slashdot might like to think. A $100m Hollywood movie is not in any sane sense a "free" piece of culture, any more (or less) than a $100m yacht, plane or house.
enabling the piracy that makes his site popular, but trying to evade legal liability
Or maybe it's just that the MAFFIA controls the FBI now and the US has become the World Police, capable of sending agents of foreign countries to do the bidding of its corporations. Why else would he even bother to mention the DMCA when MEGA is deliberately staying well away from any US territory and laws? He should have no reason to respond to any DMCA request because it isn't law in New Zealand or anywhere MEGA operates or has servers, but he is forced to because the US thinks its laws are universal.
Obviously it's nothing to with the fact that a lot of the big copyright holders are US corporations? Or that the vast majority of popular films are made in Hollywood, which is in the US?
So 50 gigs free, and i can finally store stuff without worrying about privacy? How are they going to suffer for users?
It's when you want to share your "private data" with fellow Hollywood film enthusiasts that you'll realise by giving out the encryption key publicly you're still just as liable to be caught by the copyright holders. It's just Kim Dotcom who thinks he's cleverly got round their attentions.
Speaking from experience, I never searched Megaupload. I always attained the links at third party sites.
And for Mega to be any use, people will have to publish the encryption keys too.
It just protects Kim Dotcom, since he can say that Mega don't know the encryption key: it does nothing for the average punter who clicks on a link to download a pirated version of a movie.
4. Sit back and accumulate fame (but not money) for your work
5. Go back to 1 and leverage your newly increased fame to crowd-source more money for more content. Repeat until rich, dead, or you start charging too much for too low quality product and your audience hates you.
A couple of points:
First, if you can only accumulate fame (but not money) (4) how are you ever going to get rich (5)?
Second, unless Kickstarter mug punters are generous enough to fund your living expenses, all you're going to get is the money to pay for materials, equipment, or whatever. The charming idea that all artists should either starve or work full time as waiters to pay the bills is probably not one that you'd want to apply to your own work if you're a professional developer, lawyer or engineer.
Third, what is wrong with getting paid according to how good your current product is, rather than how good your next one may be?
Yeah, just as long as Mr Dotcom makes lots of money, who fucking cares?
Seriously, I'm getting fed up with people on slashdot treating Kim Dotcunt like he's some brave hacker standing up to The Man. He's just another shady twat who thinks that anything is justified as long as you make money from it. He's a Randian fucking wet dream.
What exactly is the difference between a public lockers providing company and what mega is doing?
If the authorities found drugs (or whatever illegal thing you choose) in the lockers 99 times out of 100 they checked them, they would have a very good case for closing down the public lockers providing company.
I've heard the phrase "plausible denial" bandied about by Kim Dotcom. He appears to think this means "as long as there is some not-actually-impossible explanation for something, everyone has to accept it's true". Well, they don't.
If the police raid a house and find hydroponic equipment, special lights wired directly into the mains supply, blacked out windows, scales, bundles of cash and the rest, they are going to work on the assumption that they have found a marijuana farm whose contents have just been shifted. If as the owner of the house your defence is "I was just growing rare orchids, which on a whim I sold yesterday to an eccentric collector on a gram by gram basis, who has now disappeared to North Korea" no one's going to say "oh, all right then". Especially if you've already been convicted of drug dealing.
Slashdot Mirror
I know this is slashdot, but come on...
I see all these people decrying Apple because you can't remove the battery and replace it. Lol. Never needed to. Six days normal use, 2 days intense use.
Yeah, sure, all the people I know who have to charge their iPhone once a day with normal use are just holding it wrong. Or something.
Face it, if we were talking about a Microsoft phone, everybody would be screaming "paid MA shill!" by now.
If we even are alive by then.
Always nice to see one of our junior readers contributing to slashdot. Welcome, son!
I changed something like 20 lines of Pascal code, which took me maybe a week or two
U has mad coding skillz!
Y2k was a boom for technology contractors such as myself. The years leading up to Y2k38 will be good too. Think of all the code that will need to be totally rewritten. I know, there is that faction of people that want to see technology undo itself, and the world end, but for those of us that live in reality... it'll be great. Honestly, I wish we had these kinds of crises more often.
People with your attitude should be exterminated like rats.
It's much easier to blame drugs/gambling/gaming than taking a good look at yourself in the mirror.
A partnership is not some total melding of the two of you into one being.
Since the definition of "ethics" is basically "something that can't be resolved or defined"
Only if you're a psychopath. The rest of us manage OK.
Anyway kids, this English teacher with the red ink correction bullshit has never made sense on such a casual site and makes even less sense now that people are posting from phones or iPads that can produce a wide variety of autocomplete or spellcheck weirdness.
If there's one thing more annoying than someone who can't be arsed to be polite, it's someone who blames his lack of manners on a piece of fucking electronic equipment.
If you've got shitty autocomplete, turn it off and stop polluting the internet with your illiterate drivelling.
If you have one bucket that contains 2 gallons and another bucket that contains 7 gallons, how many buckets do you have?
Dunno, but it sounds like a good start to a party.
It would be depressing to think that life in the real world was so closely paralleled to life in the business world...
It's not. The business world is a matter of supreme boredom and indifference to 99% of people. It's only the 1% who want to make it to the top who think it's fascinating and important.
Most people's lives are based around their friends, family, interests, hobbies and so on. Work is just something you have to do to pay the bills. It's why extreme free market evangelists are so ludicrous: business simply isn't very interesting.
IIRC the social networking footprints of suspects in recent mass violence cases were surprisingly low to virtually non-existent.
Indeed, and there were front-page CNN and BBC stories about the "unusual" lack of social media presence. It's just the beginning, but not using Facebook like "normal people" is being looked at a possible predictor of deviant or violent behavior.
Yay, 1984, here we come!
As long as they can't actually convict you just for not having a facebook account, I don't care.
Possible predictors of deviant or violent behaviour don't mean a lot, as it is generally only after the event that people notice them. It's amazing how often someone will be described as creepy, weird, or somehow not normal after they've been convicted.
Facebook killed my puppy when I was a young child.
But for people like me who just store family photos and backups of word documents, it's a great service, and with 50 gigs of space, that's absolutely fantastic.
Yes, but (assuming you're not stupid enough to pay Mr Dotcome any money) you're not really the core of his business model, are you?
Kim Dotcom didn't make millions by providing niche FTP alternatives to nerds.
I think massive consumption and sharing of legal content will drive the value of illegal content down to a price people are willing to pay for through legal channels.
I believe you meant:
I think massive consumption and sharing of illegal content will drive the value of legal content down to a price people are willing to pay for through legal channels.
If you don't want to pay the price for something through legal channels, don't fucking buy it. Contrary to what your friends at school may tell you, you are not entitled to anything you want for whatever price you feel like paying.
If movie companies are charging too much for buying a copy of their movies, people should stop buying copies. Simples.
There is no piece of music, film, TV or anything else that it will do you any harm not to consume. There are plenty of other, free, cheap or simply better alternatives to anything that is pushed out by the big copyright holder organisations.
So yes people who disagree and say software repair shouldn't be allowed are in fact stupid.
It's good that there's at least one (essentially trivial, but still...) area of human experience that is completely black and white, and on which everyone can agree.
If we keep this up we'll soon have world peace, an end to hunger and a cure for cancer!
You seem to have forgotten what copyright was meant for. It was the right to copy after giving the content creator the opportunity to earn money from his content.
Copyright means that the content belongs to the author, and he is allowing you to copy it under his terms and conditions, generally involving a payment, but also limiting your ability to change the ending of a book, for example, or palm it off as your own.
Why can't I repair games or get access to source code?
Because they're not yours?
Why don't videogames and their source-code and art assets go into a library (being a cultural work like books)? I could go on and on about all the people who's ability to create and solve problems are constrained by such criminal laws.
Why don't all economic assets go into a library that everyone's allowed to access according to their needs, and contributes to according to their abilities?
Seriously. If you want a free and equal communist society, it should apply to everything, not just digital files. There is nothing special about them, whatever people on slashdot might like to think. A $100m Hollywood movie is not in any sane sense a "free" piece of culture, any more (or less) than a $100m yacht, plane or house.
enabling the piracy that makes his site popular, but trying to evade legal liability
Or maybe it's just that the MAFFIA controls the FBI now and the US has become the World Police, capable of sending agents of foreign countries to do the bidding of its corporations. Why else would he even bother to mention the DMCA when MEGA is deliberately staying well away from any US territory and laws? He should have no reason to respond to any DMCA request because it isn't law in New Zealand or anywhere MEGA operates or has servers, but he is forced to because the US thinks its laws are universal.
Obviously it's nothing to with the fact that a lot of the big copyright holders are US corporations? Or that the vast majority of popular films are made in Hollywood, which is in the US?
So 50 gigs free, and i can finally store stuff without worrying about privacy? How are they going to suffer for users?
It's when you want to share your "private data" with fellow Hollywood film enthusiasts that you'll realise by giving out the encryption key publicly you're still just as liable to be caught by the copyright holders. It's just Kim Dotcom who thinks he's cleverly got round their attentions.
Speaking from experience, I never searched Megaupload. I always attained the links at third party sites.
And for Mega to be any use, people will have to publish the encryption keys too.
It just protects Kim Dotcom, since he can say that Mega don't know the encryption key: it does nothing for the average punter who clicks on a link to download a pirated version of a movie.
4. Sit back and accumulate fame (but not money) for your work
5. Go back to 1 and leverage your newly increased fame to crowd-source more money for more content. Repeat until rich, dead, or you start charging too much for too low quality product and your audience hates you.
A couple of points:
First, if you can only accumulate fame (but not money) (4) how are you ever going to get rich (5)?
Second, unless Kickstarter mug punters are generous enough to fund your living expenses, all you're going to get is the money to pay for materials, equipment, or whatever. The charming idea that all artists should either starve or work full time as waiters to pay the bills is probably not one that you'd want to apply to your own work if you're a professional developer, lawyer or engineer.
Third, what is wrong with getting paid according to how good your current product is, rather than how good your next one may be?
The piracy is your problem.
Yeah, just as long as Mr Dotcom makes lots of money, who fucking cares?
Seriously, I'm getting fed up with people on slashdot treating Kim Dotcunt like he's some brave hacker standing up to The Man. He's just another shady twat who thinks that anything is justified as long as you make money from it. He's a Randian fucking wet dream.
What exactly is the difference between a public lockers providing company and what mega is doing?
If the authorities found drugs (or whatever illegal thing you choose) in the lockers 99 times out of 100 they checked them, they would have a very good case for closing down the public lockers providing company.
I've heard the phrase "plausible denial" bandied about by Kim Dotcom. He appears to think this means "as long as there is some not-actually-impossible explanation for something, everyone has to accept it's true". Well, they don't.
If the police raid a house and find hydroponic equipment, special lights wired directly into the mains supply, blacked out windows, scales, bundles of cash and the rest, they are going to work on the assumption that they have found a marijuana farm whose contents have just been shifted. If as the owner of the house your defence is "I was just growing rare orchids, which on a whim I sold yesterday to an eccentric collector on a gram by gram basis, who has now disappeared to North Korea" no one's going to say "oh, all right then". Especially if you've already been convicted of drug dealing.