"Fascinating. Can we see the evidence you base this opinion on?"
Consider the likely explanation:
Recently installed skype, have never used this particular CC online, the CC# suddenly starts getting billed *for* SKYPE, i.e. skype is getting paid by someone else using my CC for skype calls from another country.
The only conclusion one could possibly come to given the relationship between the two is that skype has been hacked and is being used to infiltrate other computers.
Try a little occam's razor, and I said it was my best guess given the evidence and the simplicity of the explanation.
No doubt but hence that is why I said that is my best guess, I'm not certain that is what occured. Hence my disclaimer that is 'my best guess', since it is one of the simplest explanations for why my CC was billed from another country and billed using skype (something I frequently had opened and used).
There are many ways to get credit card numbers now-a-days, it COULD have been skype, or it could be the criminals got a list of CC's from somewhere else.
Not only that you'd have to know what you were looking for, I didn't name the text file CC.txt
.. In my opinion skype is being hacked enormously. If you have a skype client open it is also a gateway to your computer. I had never put my credit card # in skype's billing database, but I DID have it on my computer in a text file, my best guess is that Skype is being massively hacked and be weary of using the skype client on your computer if you value your security.
... of products people buy after a certain number of years.
One nasty thing about commercial software is that you can't pay other people to fix it because you DON'T have the source. This means many software programs become forcibly obsoleted by autocratic corporate institutions instead of being able to be released into the public domain.
I think the problem with planning everything too much is that you can't hold all the details in your mind at once, and sometimes your planned approach is not as good as one you come up with later given some time to stew on it (doing nothing).
I think programming is a very iterative process because it is symbolic and non-visual (i.e. not like building something with structures that are easily and intuitively able to grasp their structural and interconnected relationsihps)
"Most of what governments are passing these days would piss people off."
That should read: "What most private sector corporations are doing these days would piss people off" after all they are the ones funding these bullshit laws through their lobbying efforts and buying off politicians.
Obama is just a tool of the monied classes, give me a break. I can't believe americans are so self deluded to believe obama is going to change anything. Elections are mostly fake, which one of these stooges of the oligarchy will you elect, since both they own both.
... If anything it is the OLD TIMERS in the game industry making games, Chris Taylor, will Wright, etc... hardcore gamers grow up and get jobs in the gaming industry. The so called "young gamers" will get old one day too.
This stupid idea that all older gamers are a homogenous group vs younger gamers is stupid, there are lots of young gamers that prefer games that the older generation does because they are at HEART gamers. They aren't in gaming for the fads, they are in it for the fun.
There is discontent among older gamers about what they best games were newer vs older, we are not a homogenous group so lets not pretend that somehow young gamers will not like anything older gamers like and vice versa.
... I think even most capitalists can agree that for profit news only perpetuates those who have money to buy and pay people off and threaten peoples jobs so we never hear about all the corruption. We've seen more real news out of Wikileaks then all commercial news sites combined, you will see shit on wikileaks you will never find on commercial and government owned (really just another avenue of threat for private sector, since private men own the government anyway - the revolving door).
Commercial sites exist to make money, not give us real news. Unforunately the market for real news is rather small, and people with the intellect and skills to weigh truth from falsehood is scarce (lets not forget 50% of america believes in creationism). So people want news tailored to their cultural values and that means "real news" never really gets at truth but only what makes them money and doesn't piss off their viewers.
... truth be told, a lot of good engineering could happen if many of peoples favorite commercial applications could have the souce distributed with them, a lot of old games for instance coudl be updated and maintained.
I think what holds the progress of open source back is interesting projects that exist that people want to work on but are locked away under corporate lock and key.
... those that participated in the war to begin with. I get tired when a minority of vet's say this or that shouldn't be made about the war, who's more at fault, someone who makes a game about war that is harmless, or someone who actually participated in it and killed people?
I really dislike the double standard people have, game's are a medium like movies and any game that can bring the horrors of war to gamers without killing anyone in real life IMHO would be one of the greatest things one could possibly do. No game has AI or graphics really advanced enough to make killing stand out as 'horrible' but one day we'll get their and it will trigger your emotions. In Bioshock they allowed the player to save the little girls or kill them but it really wasn't "real" because it was so obvious it was a gimmick, any game that does that and does not use it as a gimmick will probably get stellar awards one day.
I think a real problem is that many names for trademarks and businesses will be duplicated through sheer probability, I really doubt this case has any legs at all against google. Google gahters the enormous amounts of data from all over the world, it would be like trying to sue someone because they have the same name as you or your business and they are located in another country. It doesn't make any kind of sense.
Personally I think a lot of old laws simply have to be obsoleted or updated to deal with the fact society has changed.
Re:A button for switching main boot hard disk...
on
Phoenix BIOSOS?
·
· Score: 1
"How is that different from a normal Dual Boot?"
Dual booting increases the risk of problems and complications as dual boot must boot from a particular drive, as well as causing a dependence on the main drive. Not to mention it's OVERLY complicated. If you had a switch that that could electronically select which drive to boot from and isolate it from other drives it would keep each drive seperate running an independent OS with it's own boot sector.
I've had dual boot installs flake out when doing hardware changes (motherboard replacement) and it is NOT fun, I'd rather prefer a much simpler method and get rid of boot loaders all together and just have the bios/button at the front of the computer to select which channel (drive) to boot from.
It would like virtually taking out one hard disk and popping in another, but why go through all the trouble of doing that? You could just make a controller that enabled the user to switch between drives electronically from which to boot. It makes MUCH more sense, and also it get's rid of a 100 per cent of dual boot headaches, like partitioning and all that jazz, hard drive's are so cheap it should be a feature now.
A button for switching main boot hard disk...
on
Phoenix BIOSOS?
·
· Score: 1
... would be much better, and a lot safer. I would prefer it of BIOS writers just leave the BIOS as is but allow users to simply choose which drive to boot from so no dual booting is required.
So you are able to disconnect/switch the other disc electronically via some solid state mechanism, rather then having to go into the bios, using jumpers and dinking around with settings, you should just be able to change the channels, and choose which drive to boot from externally, no virtualization software, no dinking with bios settings or master slave issues, no bullshit, no hassle.
As to predictions... Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1841, against the extension of copyright http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Copyright_Law_(Macaulay) [wikisource.org] Only quoting the ending, but the speech as a whole is a very good read
"I am so sensible, Sir, of the kindness with which the House has listened to me, that I will not detain you longer. I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living. If I saw, Sir, any probability that this bill could be so amended in the Committee that my objections might be removed, I would not divide the House in this stage. But I am so fully convinced that no alteration which would not seem insupportable to my honorable and learned friend, could render his measure supportable to me, that I must move, though with regret, that this bill be read a second time this day six months."
I wonder how common daydreaming is in introverts vs extroverts and those with a large associative horizon.
I'd imagine having a good imagination and constantly working it can lead to impressive creativity and novel ways of viewing problems... but it could also lead to not accomplishing a lot at all because it is just so enamoring.
How many sales can you expect from a (quoting summary) "wayner data compression textbook."
Sometimes I wonder if people who write books wonder about what kind of sales they could possibly see from technical books, especially given the nature of the internet and the fact that information is now easy to get. Cookbooks also have the same problem where people go online and get recipes and whatnot for free instead of buying them.
Seriously if you want a job with a steady paycheck you REALLY should be looking at another industry, being a writer is not going to be lucrative for most people despite what seeing prominent writers and authors on TV or advertised on the net.
This stunt on slashdot may get you more sales, you never know.
The worst thing someone can do when writing something is sit in obscurity, any press will get attention for your book. The fact that you got published on slashdot will at least generate SOME interest now.
Re:Play at your friend's house? Sell a game? Nope.
on
Why Bother With DRM?
·
· Score: 1
"Unless you're regularly blowing all of your monthly bandwidth on torrenting "linux isos", you can stomach a Steam game download"
I'm sorry but you don't have a clue at all, ISP's have become extremely tight with bandwidth. Right now the ISP I am with gives you less then 100GB bandwidth per month for FULL price (over $50 a month), steam, demo's, torrents, youtube, etc, would easily eat that all up in a month. Hell I download trailers from gaming sites that are between 100-500MB and I download a LOT of trailers.
... more should be expected more from game companies. Many classic games no longer work and people have to use emulators like DOSBOX, etc. Not to mention a lot of defunct 3D accelerated games that no longer work properly (older 3D accelerated versions of mechwarrior 2 comes to mind).
There is no good reason for software to break down at all given all the talent and interest in saving many classic games. I'd really like it if the industry extended a branch to some of their fanbase of whom many also work in the industry or related industries and if not, are heading in a similar direction via hobby, or looking at it in the future as a professional career.
There should be very little reason why people have to go to www.gog.com to rebuy games they've already long since purchased. I wouldn't mind paying a small fee monthly for maintenance of a catalogue of old games personally that kept them updated and working as hardware evolves and changes.
That might be asking too much, but the quality we get out of the software entertainment industry is pretty crappy these days if one looks past the flashy graphics. Broken AI and unfinished product is the norm rather then the exception.
But that's the point is the query string is not user friendly, have a permanet user friendly feature where you add sites to a list, etc. When doing searches.
I'd like to see the stats on how many people use google commands, probably not that many.
... would be the most important in my opinion of "user sophistication", a lot of times google will pull a lot of sites quite frankly should be able to be punished by users by users beign able to filter them out of their search results.
That might cause google to pause (ad revenue) but personally there's a lot of google manipulation and I'd love it if users could simply FILTER their results but NOT be able to change them and then let google study which sites are blocked or not to get an idea of how clueles (cluefull) their userbase is
"That's why publishers want to control the stuff forever. If copyrights expire, there could come a time where there's more good public domain music and novels than any one person could consume in a lifetime. Why buy the new stuff then?"
You have to be kidding me. If this were true libraries should have killed the publishing industry. Same could have been said about Beta vs VHS.
It's not an argument for extending copyright either. Just because old works exist doesn't mean they would compete with new works, most old works will never be read by people because there is NO advertising whatsoever for older works, especially unknown works that were not heavily advertised.
You could apply the same argument to anything, but IMHO copyright extension should be illegal in the first place, it allows a person to take advantage of monopoly and economies beyond ones lifetime, it should illegal. I don't buy the corporate bullshit, I don't believe in protecting elite money'd classes just so they can suck most of humanity dry.
Imagine if someone did that with all the mathematical advanced in knowledge we'd or language, or privatized the air we breath. I'm really sick of this aggressive american bent to own shit and exploit people for money, how about doing something for nothing and giving back, you know SHARING? When you profit off a work you necessariy distribute risk onto people that pay for your work and reduce what that money could have been spent on instead.
I think for frivilous things like entertainment, etc, copyright needs to be eliminated.
Us buyers need to be co-owners of the works we buy since we INVESTED in these people, there should be a mutual relationship, not a one way authoritarian relationship.
I'm tired that our children can't do stuff like this:
Take their favorite works and expand on them and remake them, just so some corporate asshat can make a buck.
The downside of copyright is we stifle the joy and creativity of our children who couldn't give less of a shit and quite frankly I hope you see the agreeablness of just being easy going and "letting it go".
There's a point beyond where you become an inhuman capitalist who doesn't want to give anything back to the community who enabled his success, doesn't matter how smart or how good you are if you're the only person on teh planet, people participate in you success and enable you to live the lifestyle you have because everyone contributes.
Try doing any research, it takes a lot of time to copy things down from books and whatnot when quoting works or doing references, etc, to other works. Electronic books can make the whole process that much easier.
Slashdot Mirror
"Fascinating. Can we see the evidence you base this opinion on?"
Consider the likely explanation:
Recently installed skype, have never used this particular CC online, the CC# suddenly starts getting billed *for* SKYPE, i.e. skype is getting paid by someone else using my CC for skype calls from another country.
The only conclusion one could possibly come to given the relationship between the two is that skype has been hacked and is being used to infiltrate other computers.
Try a little occam's razor, and I said it was my best guess given the evidence and the simplicity of the explanation.
No doubt but hence that is why I said that is my best guess, I'm not certain that is what occured. Hence my disclaimer that is 'my best guess', since it is one of the simplest explanations for why my CC was billed from another country and billed using skype (something I frequently had opened and used).
There are many ways to get credit card numbers now-a-days, it COULD have been skype, or it could be the criminals got a list of CC's from somewhere else.
Not only that you'd have to know what you were looking for, I didn't name the text file CC.txt
.. In my opinion skype is being hacked enormously. If you have a skype client open it is also a gateway to your computer. I had never put my credit card # in skype's billing database, but I DID have it on my computer in a text file, my best guess is that Skype is being massively hacked and be weary of using the skype client on your computer if you value your security.
... of products people buy after a certain number of years.
One nasty thing about commercial software is that you can't pay other people to fix it because you DON'T have the source. This means many software programs become forcibly obsoleted by autocratic corporate institutions instead of being able to be released into the public domain.
I think the problem with planning everything too much is that you can't hold all the details in your mind at once, and sometimes your planned approach is not as good as one you come up with later given some time to stew on it (doing nothing).
I think programming is a very iterative process because it is symbolic and non-visual (i.e. not like building something with structures that are easily and intuitively able to grasp their structural and interconnected relationsihps)
You mean corporate power, the government is the face of the wealthy - the private commercialist.
"Most of what governments are passing these days would piss people off."
That should read: "What most private sector corporations are doing these days would piss people off" after all they are the ones funding these bullshit laws through their lobbying efforts and buying off politicians.
Obama is just a tool of the monied classes, give me a break. I can't believe americans are so self deluded to believe obama is going to change anything. Elections are mostly fake, which one of these stooges of the oligarchy will you elect, since both they own both.
... If anything it is the OLD TIMERS in the game industry making games, Chris Taylor, will Wright, etc... hardcore gamers grow up and get jobs in the gaming industry. The so called "young gamers" will get old one day too.
This stupid idea that all older gamers are a homogenous group vs younger gamers is stupid, there are lots of young gamers that prefer games that the older generation does because they are at HEART gamers. They aren't in gaming for the fads, they are in it for the fun.
There is discontent among older gamers about what they best games were newer vs older, we are not a homogenous group so lets not pretend that somehow young gamers will not like anything older gamers like and vice versa.
... I think even most capitalists can agree that for profit news only perpetuates those who have money to buy and pay people off and threaten peoples jobs so we never hear about all the corruption. We've seen more real news out of Wikileaks then all commercial news sites combined, you will see shit on wikileaks you will never find on commercial and government owned (really just another avenue of threat for private sector, since private men own the government anyway - the revolving door).
Commercial sites exist to make money, not give us real news. Unforunately the market for real news is rather small, and people with the intellect and skills to weigh truth from falsehood is scarce (lets not forget 50% of america believes in creationism). So people want news tailored to their cultural values and that means "real news" never really gets at truth but only what makes them money and doesn't piss off their viewers.
... truth be told, a lot of good engineering could happen if many of peoples favorite commercial applications could have the souce distributed with them, a lot of old games for instance coudl be updated and maintained.
I think what holds the progress of open source back is interesting projects that exist that people want to work on but are locked away under corporate lock and key.
... those that participated in the war to begin with. I get tired when a minority of vet's say this or that shouldn't be made about the war, who's more at fault, someone who makes a game about war that is harmless, or someone who actually participated in it and killed people?
I really dislike the double standard people have, game's are a medium like movies and any game that can bring the horrors of war to gamers without killing anyone in real life IMHO would be one of the greatest things one could possibly do. No game has AI or graphics really advanced enough to make killing stand out as 'horrible' but one day we'll get their and it will trigger your emotions. In Bioshock they allowed the player to save the little girls or kill them but it really wasn't "real" because it was so obvious it was a gimmick, any game that does that and does not use it as a gimmick will probably get stellar awards one day.
I think a real problem is that many names for trademarks and businesses will be duplicated through sheer probability, I really doubt this case has any legs at all against google. Google gahters the enormous amounts of data from all over the world, it would be like trying to sue someone because they have the same name as you or your business and they are located in another country. It doesn't make any kind of sense.
Personally I think a lot of old laws simply have to be obsoleted or updated to deal with the fact society has changed.
"How is that different from a normal Dual Boot?"
Dual booting increases the risk of problems and complications as dual boot must boot from a particular drive, as well as causing a dependence on the main drive. Not to mention it's OVERLY complicated. If you had a switch that that could electronically select which drive to boot from and isolate it from other drives it would keep each drive seperate running an independent OS with it's own boot sector.
I've had dual boot installs flake out when doing hardware changes (motherboard replacement) and it is NOT fun, I'd rather prefer a much simpler method and get rid of boot loaders all together and just have the bios/button at the front of the computer to select which channel (drive) to boot from.
It would like virtually taking out one hard disk and popping in another, but why go through all the trouble of doing that? You could just make a controller that enabled the user to switch between drives electronically from which to boot. It makes MUCH more sense, and also it get's rid of a 100 per cent of dual boot headaches, like partitioning and all that jazz, hard drive's are so cheap it should be a feature now.
... would be much better, and a lot safer. I would prefer it of BIOS writers just leave the BIOS as is but allow users to simply choose which drive to boot from so no dual booting is required.
So you are able to disconnect/switch the other disc electronically via some solid state mechanism, rather then having to go into the bios, using jumpers and dinking around with settings, you should just be able to change the channels, and choose which drive to boot from externally, no virtualization software, no dinking with bios settings or master slave issues, no bullshit, no hassle.
As to predictions... Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1841, against the extension of copyright http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Copyright_Law_(Macaulay) [wikisource.org] Only quoting the ending, but the speech as a whole is a very good read
"I am so sensible, Sir, of the kindness with which the House has listened to me, that I will not detain you longer. I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living. If I saw, Sir, any probability that this bill could be so amended in the Committee that my objections might be removed, I would not divide the House in this stage. But I am so fully convinced that no alteration which would not seem insupportable to my honorable and learned friend, could render his measure supportable to me, that I must move, though with regret, that this bill be read a second time this day six months."
I wonder how common daydreaming is in introverts vs extroverts and those with a large associative horizon.
I'd imagine having a good imagination and constantly working it can lead to impressive creativity and novel ways of viewing problems... but it could also lead to not accomplishing a lot at all because it is just so enamoring.
How many sales can you expect from a (quoting summary) "wayner data compression textbook."
Sometimes I wonder if people who write books wonder about what kind of sales they could possibly see from technical books, especially given the nature of the internet and the fact that information is now easy to get. Cookbooks also have the same problem where people go online and get recipes and whatnot for free instead of buying them.
Seriously if you want a job with a steady paycheck you REALLY should be looking at another industry, being a writer is not going to be lucrative for most people despite what seeing prominent writers and authors on TV or advertised on the net.
This stunt on slashdot may get you more sales, you never know.
The worst thing someone can do when writing something is sit in obscurity, any press will get attention for your book. The fact that you got published on slashdot will at least generate SOME interest now.
"Maybe "would turn the people who yesterday had no choice other than to be pirates into tomorrow's partners" would have been clearer, but
less snappy"
Examples of such:
http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/
"Unless you're regularly blowing all of your monthly bandwidth on torrenting "linux isos", you can stomach a Steam game download"
I'm sorry but you don't have a clue at all, ISP's have become extremely tight with bandwidth. Right now the ISP I am with gives you less then 100GB bandwidth per month for FULL price (over $50 a month), steam, demo's, torrents, youtube, etc, would easily eat that all up in a month. Hell I download trailers from gaming sites that are between 100-500MB and I download a LOT of trailers.
... more should be expected more from game companies. Many classic games no longer work and people have to use emulators like DOSBOX, etc. Not to mention a lot of defunct 3D accelerated games that no longer work properly (older 3D accelerated versions of mechwarrior 2 comes to mind).
There is no good reason for software to break down at all given all the talent and interest in saving many classic games. I'd really like it if the industry extended a branch to some of their fanbase of whom many also work in the industry or related industries and if not, are heading in a similar direction via hobby, or looking at it in the future as a professional career.
There should be very little reason why people have to go to www.gog.com to rebuy games they've already long since purchased. I wouldn't mind paying a small fee monthly for maintenance of a catalogue of old games personally that kept them updated and working as hardware evolves and changes.
That might be asking too much, but the quality we get out of the software entertainment industry is pretty crappy these days if one looks past the flashy graphics. Broken AI and unfinished product is the norm rather then the exception.
But that's the point is the query string is not user friendly, have a permanet user friendly feature where you add sites to a list, etc. When doing searches.
I'd like to see the stats on how many people use google commands, probably not that many.
... would be the most important in my opinion of "user sophistication", a lot of times google will pull a lot of sites quite frankly should be able to be punished by users by users beign able to filter them out of their search results.
That might cause google to pause (ad revenue) but personally there's a lot of google manipulation and I'd love it if users could simply FILTER their results but NOT be able to change them and then let google study which sites are blocked or not to get an idea of how clueles (cluefull) their userbase is
"That's why publishers want to control the stuff forever. If copyrights expire, there could come a time where there's more good public domain music and novels than any one person could consume in a lifetime. Why buy the new stuff then?"
You have to be kidding me. If this were true libraries should have killed the publishing industry. Same could have been said about Beta vs VHS.
It's not an argument for extending copyright either. Just because old works exist doesn't mean they would compete with new works, most old works will never be read by people because there is NO advertising whatsoever for older works, especially unknown works that were not heavily advertised.
You could apply the same argument to anything, but IMHO copyright extension should be illegal in the first place, it allows a person to take advantage of monopoly and economies beyond ones lifetime, it should illegal. I don't buy the corporate bullshit, I don't believe in protecting elite money'd classes just so they can suck most of humanity dry.
Imagine if someone did that with all the mathematical advanced in knowledge we'd or language, or privatized the air we breath. I'm really sick of this aggressive american bent to own shit and exploit people for money, how about doing something for nothing and giving back, you know SHARING? When you profit off a work you necessariy distribute risk onto people that pay for your work and reduce what that money could have been spent on instead.
I think for frivilous things like entertainment, etc, copyright needs to be eliminated.
Us buyers need to be co-owners of the works we buy since we INVESTED in these people, there should be a mutual relationship, not a one way authoritarian relationship.
I'm tired that our children can't do stuff like this:
http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/
Take their favorite works and expand on them and remake them, just so some corporate asshat can make a buck.
The downside of copyright is we stifle the joy and creativity of our children who couldn't give less of a shit and quite frankly I hope you see the agreeablness of just being easy going and "letting it go".
There's a point beyond where you become an inhuman capitalist who doesn't want to give anything back to the community who enabled his success, doesn't matter how smart or how good you are if you're the only person on teh planet, people participate in you success and enable you to live the lifestyle you have because everyone contributes.
Try doing any research, it takes a lot of time to copy things down from books and whatnot when quoting works or doing references, etc, to other works. Electronic books can make the whole process that much easier.