But, to continue the car analogy, one could say Windows is like the Model T of operating systems. Not the best, but the first one that started making it feasible to get one in everybody's house.
Not the best analogy, I know, but it is closer to what the article is trying to say.
True, there are some tracks in the UK, for instance, that are not available in the US. In that case, they are losing potential revenue and it has nothing to do with price-fixing. However, if they made the entire UK iTMS available to those in the US so that we could have access to those exclusive tracks, then they would lose the price-fixing advantage on the songs that are available in both markets. In that case, they stand to lose more than they would gain.
There is certainly some way that they could create a system to open up only those tracks that are currently exclusive to the UK, but implementing new systems costs money, cutting out of the potential profit from making those tracks available.
I checked where I used to live in Austin and where I now live in Houston, and on MSN maps, the map and sattelite images deviate by as much two whole blocks! And not just by an offset, either. In some cases, the two roads (map and sattelite) were prefectly on top of each other for a few blocks, and then they went seperate ways. Google maps, on the other hand, has done a superb job of seamlessly overlaying their map and sattelite images.
The problem with the sciences is that people aren't even assured a good chance of making a decent wage, which is why people don't get interested.
No, the problem with the sciences is that they are difficult subjects. The average starting salary for someone with just a B.S. in some science or engineering field is much better than the average starting salary for someone with a B.A. in something like history or English.
People don't get interested in science because "the math is too hard" or because the concepts are too abstract. Or because it's nerdy, and no one wants to be nerdy...
There is no law against putting up a bulliten board. There is no law against putting up a bulliten board containing some contact information. There isn't even necessarily a law against that contact information being from people who might also be drug dealers. But if your bulliten board is called "Todayz Drug Dealz" and the contact information on your site is for drug dealers, and especially if drug deals are proven to have resulted from information on your site, then yes, there is a legitmate way for the law to get you on that. You have openly served as an accomplice and have aided drug deals.
This guy's website had a title that indicated that you could get mp3's for free, and the link in question was the confirmation of that title.
I had a keyboard with a broken shift key for a little while, but at least I fixed it. And capitalization lends the least to our comprehension of what is written - well after grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
I did not write run-on sentences, either. They were perfectly constructed complex sentences. You sure are putting a lot of effort into telling me how wrong and stupid I am. Do you have a personal vendetta against people who insist that English should be written correctly?
Ok, maybe I'm making over-generalized statements, so let me clarify.
An overwhelming number of people these days do not use correct spelling, grammar, or punctuation. They have either stopped doing so or they don't know how. Some of these people may have valid learning disabilities or other such excuses. However, most people do not. They have at least an average capacity for learning do speak and write correctly, and if they chose not to learn, then I get to call them lazy. Or maybe immature or irresponsible. And if being called lazy bothersthem enough, maybe that will make them learn to speak correctly.
I unfortunately did not entirely get my point across. That was my fault.
I did mostly mean that he was lazy for not writing a better sentence. But to address your analogy, picture a world in which everyone writes code in some way. In that world, there is no excuse for being a novice programmer - if you haven't learned yet, then you're lazy. Someone who primarily speaks English is not the equivalent of "a non-programmer with maybe a CS 101 class", so they should not write paragraphs with so many errors. Unless they're lazy.
He said his learning disability applied primarily to spelling. He said that this sometimes gets in the way of grammar. However, someone around the age of 20 (since he said he was in school in the mid 80's) should know how to use punctuation and conjunctions to prevent run-on sentences - that is not complicated grammar for someone with a spelling disability.
The rewrite that you did of my sentence is certainly more coherent. I thank you, but there is a difference between my sentence and those of his that I was commenting on. Mine was a complex sentence, whereas his were merely strung out compund sentences.
I admit to getting angry when people correct my spelling and grammar [right here] it is not that they care correcting me that gets me angry it is that they will...
You may have trouble spelling, but, in general, you just appear to be lazy. This is such a blatant run on sentence; do you not care?
Writing is not entirely linear, though you do view it that way, and it's evident in your sentences that run on and on, concatenated with series of and's. Well constructed, detailed thoughts can be put on paper in an almost nested fashion, with all sorts of subordinate clauses (such as your parentheses) adding layers to the writing.
Sure, programming and writing may be fairly different skills, but the fact reamins that proficiency in both requires attention to detail. If one takes pride in writing good code, one should also take pride in writing proper English. And since when could people only be good at one thing? Coding skill does not preclude writing skill.
Anyway, when I eventually have children, I fully intend to back up all of my games and only keep the backups out for use. At 50 a pop, a 60 dollar mod chip and some hard drive space is well worth the investment.
When I have kids, they won't touch my video games. Can't you take care of your own stuff? When I was a kid, I don't ever recall destroying a VHS tape, and maybe once I destroyed a casette tape. Keep things put away and let the kids know what kind of punishment is in store if they ruin something, i.e. discipline them!
a "no strings attached" license for the content for a buck or two more??
but that's what it's supposed to be in the first place. unless purchased specifically for non-personal, for-profit use, isn't the purchase supposed to give you that sort of permission as the end-user?
the real advancement in intellectual property law and consumer rights will be when we remember that there are only two distinctions: business use, which allows you to do whatever you want so long as you pay for it, and personal use, which permits you to do whatever you want, so long as its for personal use and no one profits.
i'm not paying more money so that i can have reasonable use of what i have purchased. how about charging clear channel more money for royalties to those songs they air over and over again? no, wait, that's the music we don't want them to make any more money from.
If that's the purpose, it seems to me that it would be easier to limit it to "one per person" at the store. Sure, you could come in later and buy another one, but again, buying 20 would be rather inconvenient, especially if it was a short sale.
laugh out loud argument?
most people will not claim that file-sharing is advertising - you're right, that is laughable. instead, the point being made is that an argument against file sharing is that it ABSOLUTELY hurts sales, no question about it. the point about advertising is giving out free samples can encourage sales of a product. it is not necessary to then necessary to immediately assume that file-sharing is the cause of the declining sales. there is no question that sales have declined - that is a fact - but the cause of the decline is questionable. before file-sharing is blamed across the board, other possible causes must be examined, such as:
-the "crappy quality" of most RIAA music out there. yes, there is "interesting" stuff being produced on the indie labels, but that is not what you find at best buy, nor is it what you hear on Clear Channel stations. it is generally accepted (at least among my family, among my friends, and in the opinions i have heard and read) that there is declining variety and innovation in mainstream music today.
-the price of cd's. i refuse to pay $14.99 for any cd. i consider the RIAA and its record labels to be price-gouging the consumers. i know the RIAA has gotten in trouble before for price fixing. i do not believe that the prices of cd's are not artificially inflated.
taken together, these two factors would lead you to believe that people are less willing to shell out as much money as the RIAA wants them to for crappy music. also, ove rhte past several years there has been all this talk about the economy going down the shitter - wouldn't this also just make people more reluctant to pay that much for a cd? and while file-sharing in this situation is probably only aiding these people by giving them a way out - i can still get this music even when i don't want to pay that much for it - consider another situation:
consider a healthy economy and cheaper cd prices. so there's a cd for $10.99 that i think i want. i download a few of the songs, and i enjoy them, so i go buy the cd because it's only $10.99 and i'm making good money. if there's no file-sharing, then i'll probably go buy the cd anyway, because it's only $10.99 and i'm making good money.
but there's also a case where file-sharing helps in a bad economy with high cd prices (like now). there's a cd i think i want, and it's $14.99. so i download a few of the songs to see if i like them. if they are total crap, then i've just saved myself $14.99 - and that's $14.99 that i can go spend on another cd instead, should i find one i want. if the downloaded songs turn out to be good, then personally, i will go out and buy the album. maybe too many people won't do this. but a few years ago dave matthews band released "busted stuff" which was little more than an official release of "the lillywhite sessions" which had been only available through file-sharing before that. if everything the RIAA tells you is true, then that release should have flopped. but instead it debuted at number 1. file-sharing can help.
my last point is that too many people hate the RIAA and refuse to buy cd's to spite them. some people make the argument that if you don't buy a cd, you're hurting the artist. but the truth is, artists don't make as much money as they should off each indivual album - they make pennies. there needs to be massive reform in the entire recording industry, and we need to see greater rights for the artists at the expense of recording studies. actors have a union to protect against the movie studios, why can't musicians have the same sort of thing?
Slashdot Mirror
I, for one, welcome our chair-throwing icon overlord.
Ah... like a giant space-Katamari!
But, to continue the car analogy, one could say Windows is like the Model T of operating systems. Not the best, but the first one that started making it feasible to get one in everybody's house.
Not the best analogy, I know, but it is closer to what the article is trying to say.
True, there are some tracks in the UK, for instance, that are not available in the US. In that case, they are losing potential revenue and it has nothing to do with price-fixing. However, if they made the entire UK iTMS available to those in the US so that we could have access to those exclusive tracks, then they would lose the price-fixing advantage on the songs that are available in both markets. In that case, they stand to lose more than they would gain.
There is certainly some way that they could create a system to open up only those tracks that are currently exclusive to the UK, but implementing new systems costs money, cutting out of the potential profit from making those tracks available.
I checked where I used to live in Austin and where I now live in Houston, and on MSN maps, the map and sattelite images deviate by as much two whole blocks! And not just by an offset, either. In some cases, the two roads (map and sattelite) were prefectly on top of each other for a few blocks, and then they went seperate ways. Google maps, on the other hand, has done a superb job of seamlessly overlaying their map and sattelite images.
The problem with the sciences is that people aren't even assured a good chance of making a decent wage, which is why people don't get interested.
No, the problem with the sciences is that they are difficult subjects. The average starting salary for someone with just a B.S. in some science or engineering field is much better than the average starting salary for someone with a B.A. in something like history or English.
People don't get interested in science because "the math is too hard" or because the concepts are too abstract. Or because it's nerdy, and no one wants to be nerdy...
There is no law against putting up a bulliten board. There is no law against putting up a bulliten board containing some contact information. There isn't even necessarily a law against that contact information being from people who might also be drug dealers. But if your bulliten board is called "Todayz Drug Dealz" and the contact information on your site is for drug dealers, and especially if drug deals are proven to have resulted from information on your site, then yes, there is a legitmate way for the law to get you on that. You have openly served as an accomplice and have aided drug deals.
This guy's website had a title that indicated that you could get mp3's for free, and the link in question was the confirmation of that title.
I had a keyboard with a broken shift key for a little while, but at least I fixed it. And capitalization lends the least to our comprehension of what is written - well after grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
I did not write run-on sentences, either. They were perfectly constructed complex sentences. You sure are putting a lot of effort into telling me how wrong and stupid I am. Do you have a personal vendetta against people who insist that English should be written correctly?
Ok, maybe I'm making over-generalized statements, so let me clarify.
An overwhelming number of people these days do not use correct spelling, grammar, or punctuation. They have either stopped doing so or they don't know how. Some of these people may have valid learning disabilities or other such excuses. However, most people do not. They have at least an average capacity for learning do speak and write correctly, and if they chose not to learn, then I get to call them lazy. Or maybe immature or irresponsible. And if being called lazy bothersthem enough, maybe that will make them learn to speak correctly.
I unfortunately did not entirely get my point across. That was my fault. I did mostly mean that he was lazy for not writing a better sentence. But to address your analogy, picture a world in which everyone writes code in some way. In that world, there is no excuse for being a novice programmer - if you haven't learned yet, then you're lazy. Someone who primarily speaks English is not the equivalent of "a non-programmer with maybe a CS 101 class", so they should not write paragraphs with so many errors. Unless they're lazy.
He said his learning disability applied primarily to spelling. He said that this sometimes gets in the way of grammar. However, someone around the age of 20 (since he said he was in school in the mid 80's) should know how to use punctuation and conjunctions to prevent run-on sentences - that is not complicated grammar for someone with a spelling disability.
The rewrite that you did of my sentence is certainly more coherent. I thank you, but there is a difference between my sentence and those of his that I was commenting on. Mine was a complex sentence, whereas his were merely strung out compund sentences.
I admit to getting angry when people correct my spelling and grammar [right here] it is not that they care correcting me that gets me angry it is that they will...
You may have trouble spelling, but, in general, you just appear to be lazy. This is such a blatant run on sentence; do you not care?
Writing is not entirely linear, though you do view it that way, and it's evident in your sentences that run on and on, concatenated with series of and's. Well constructed, detailed thoughts can be put on paper in an almost nested fashion, with all sorts of subordinate clauses (such as your parentheses) adding layers to the writing.
Sure, programming and writing may be fairly different skills, but the fact reamins that proficiency in both requires attention to detail. If one takes pride in writing good code, one should also take pride in writing proper English. And since when could people only be good at one thing? Coding skill does not preclude writing skill.
Anyway, when I eventually have children, I fully intend to back up all of my games and only keep the backups out for use. At 50 a pop, a 60 dollar mod chip and some hard drive space is well worth the investment.
When I have kids, they won't touch my video games. Can't you take care of your own stuff? When I was a kid, I don't ever recall destroying a VHS tape, and maybe once I destroyed a casette tape. Keep things put away and let the kids know what kind of punishment is in store if they ruin something, i.e. discipline them!
a "no strings attached" license for the content for a buck or two more??
but that's what it's supposed to be in the first place. unless purchased specifically for non-personal, for-profit use, isn't the purchase supposed to give you that sort of permission as the end-user?
the real advancement in intellectual property law and consumer rights will be when we remember that there are only two distinctions: business use, which allows you to do whatever you want so long as you pay for it, and personal use, which permits you to do whatever you want, so long as its for personal use and no one profits.
i'm not paying more money so that i can have reasonable use of what i have purchased. how about charging clear channel more money for royalties to those songs they air over and over again? no, wait, that's the music we don't want them to make any more money from.
If that's the purpose, it seems to me that it would be easier to limit it to "one per person" at the store. Sure, you could come in later and buy another one, but again, buying 20 would be rather inconvenient, especially if it was a short sale.
laugh out loud argument? most people will not claim that file-sharing is advertising - you're right, that is laughable. instead, the point being made is that an argument against file sharing is that it ABSOLUTELY hurts sales, no question about it. the point about advertising is giving out free samples can encourage sales of a product. it is not necessary to then necessary to immediately assume that file-sharing is the cause of the declining sales. there is no question that sales have declined - that is a fact - but the cause of the decline is questionable. before file-sharing is blamed across the board, other possible causes must be examined, such as: -the "crappy quality" of most RIAA music out there. yes, there is "interesting" stuff being produced on the indie labels, but that is not what you find at best buy, nor is it what you hear on Clear Channel stations. it is generally accepted (at least among my family, among my friends, and in the opinions i have heard and read) that there is declining variety and innovation in mainstream music today. -the price of cd's. i refuse to pay $14.99 for any cd. i consider the RIAA and its record labels to be price-gouging the consumers. i know the RIAA has gotten in trouble before for price fixing. i do not believe that the prices of cd's are not artificially inflated. taken together, these two factors would lead you to believe that people are less willing to shell out as much money as the RIAA wants them to for crappy music. also, ove rhte past several years there has been all this talk about the economy going down the shitter - wouldn't this also just make people more reluctant to pay that much for a cd? and while file-sharing in this situation is probably only aiding these people by giving them a way out - i can still get this music even when i don't want to pay that much for it - consider another situation: consider a healthy economy and cheaper cd prices. so there's a cd for $10.99 that i think i want. i download a few of the songs, and i enjoy them, so i go buy the cd because it's only $10.99 and i'm making good money. if there's no file-sharing, then i'll probably go buy the cd anyway, because it's only $10.99 and i'm making good money. but there's also a case where file-sharing helps in a bad economy with high cd prices (like now). there's a cd i think i want, and it's $14.99. so i download a few of the songs to see if i like them. if they are total crap, then i've just saved myself $14.99 - and that's $14.99 that i can go spend on another cd instead, should i find one i want. if the downloaded songs turn out to be good, then personally, i will go out and buy the album. maybe too many people won't do this. but a few years ago dave matthews band released "busted stuff" which was little more than an official release of "the lillywhite sessions" which had been only available through file-sharing before that. if everything the RIAA tells you is true, then that release should have flopped. but instead it debuted at number 1. file-sharing can help. my last point is that too many people hate the RIAA and refuse to buy cd's to spite them. some people make the argument that if you don't buy a cd, you're hurting the artist. but the truth is, artists don't make as much money as they should off each indivual album - they make pennies. there needs to be massive reform in the entire recording industry, and we need to see greater rights for the artists at the expense of recording studies. actors have a union to protect against the movie studios, why can't musicians have the same sort of thing?