Any competent sales manager would teach his sales droids how to use this interaction to sell the customer a more expensive USB backup HDD....which is much easier and less hassle to use. You know what's ironic though? I have a hunch the employee would get marked down for that, because he's not moving enough value adds.:)
This may not be the first Google service to shut down, but is it the first paid service?
From the perspective of customers that don't know any better, Google is planning to forcibly take back the videos customers purchased on a permanent basis, then compensate them with a gift certificate. Sounds like a great way to advertise their payment service which hasn't overtaken PayPal like they thought it would - and Google still makes money on the transaction fees.
At the moment, it's 5.9. 6.0 and up is undefined and reserved for future hardware changes. (P.S., this is the first result for the query "vista experience scale" on Google.)
It always pisses me off that some web services say in their very long agreement that they have the right to change the terms at any time. I refuse to do business with those people. SourceForge reserves the right, at SourceForge's sole discretion, to change, modify, add or remove portions of these Terms periodically. Such modifications shall be effective immediately upon posting of the modified agreement to the website unless provided otherwise (e.g., when implementing major, substantive changes, SourceForge intends to provide users with up to fourteen days of advance notice). Your continued use of the SourceForge Sites following the posting of changes to these Terms will mean that you accept those changes. -- Slashdot Terms of Service (http://web.sourceforge.com/terms.php)
That's no justification in the real world, but unfortunately that is a perfectly logical reason to move to electronic balloting for most people.
Re:I'm buying.. Friday.
on
All Things iPhone
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Some of the iPhone's features (such as visual voicemail) require fairly significant architectural changes at the carrier, so whatever carrier Apple went with would have some hefty demands to ensure the investment paid off. I'm sure the 5-year deal was one of AT&T's terms.
Keep in mind that Apple did approach Verizon first; Verizon turned it down.
I don't think there's any way to start out at +3 without any moderation. Slashdot staff (or is it just CmdrTaco?) start at +3, but they post rarely, so I'm not sure that's what the parent saw.
I appreciate the sentiment, but I have to disagree with the solution. The short names have a very important purpose - they're memorable for detractors and propagandists alike. I doubt very much people would know that Sensenbrenner was the person who introduced the bill "to deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes," but everybody knows what the PATRIOT Act is.
I think the reason's pretty simple: companies like Google have been abusing the "beta" moniker lately. The betas I've seen from Apple (including Safari and earlier, Quicktime 7) have been more consistent with what I would consider a beta: they mostly work and are useful for testing, but still have significant problems.
Perhaps what they might have done is require an Apple Developer Connection account to download instead of making it available through general release.
This seems completely reasonable to me. I'm willing to trade watermarking for DRM, and am happily downloading my first iTunes purchase ever as we speak.
I do have one concern: if somebody does a legitimate transfer of their music (deleting all of the copies they own in the process), what happens if the new owner decides to put the stuff on a P2P network?
Excuse me for asking a weird question, but how long does it take to change channels? Digital cable for me takes around 1.5 seconds - it's long enough to be noticeable and annoying.
Synopses are about as fair a use as you can get. They generally have little to none of the original content, are commentaries by nature, and often benefit the market. They are the prototypical fair use.
As for the 32 kbps MP3, if the "original" is CD audio, then the amount of information cut out is far greater than 4-8 times. Keep in mind that the point I was trying to make (unsuccessfully, and I apologize for that) is that altering the means of encoding does not necessarily make a fair use.
I would agree that Google's use of thumbnails is fair, but not for the reason that the grandparent argues.
I thought fair use was for allowing derivative work.
Not quite. Copyright law specifically reserves the right to prepare derivative works (17 U.S.C. 106(2)).
You're basically stating that if I were to use a small fraction of a media format, it's not under fair use - when it clearly is.
Not necessarily. Fair use has four tests defined by 17 U.S.C 107(1-4):
The purpose and character of the use;
The nature of the copyrighted work;
The amount of the work used in relation to a whole;
The effect on the market.
Just because only a portion of the image is used (a fact I will dispute shortly) doesn't mean that you're off the hook, because you must consider the other three tests.
A thumbnail is *not* the whole image.
Your argument below this - that it's not the same image but merely a grid averaging the pixels of the original image - is somewhat compelling, but ultimately I would disagree with you here. If you stand by your argument, then surely it should also be legal to publish full-length MP3s of every song sold by the U.S. recording industry, as long as they're downsampled to 32 kbps?
Of course, these are all images that are publicly displayed - and as such, fall smack into the fair use category.
Just because something is publically displayed doesn't make it "fall smack into the fair use category." If it did, then I'd be able to hand out CDs on street corners, provided I recorded the music from the radio.
By the by: if you have an artist paint in the missing detail in a clean-room setting (ie: the artist has never seen the orignial), the new work belongs to the artist.
True, but that doesn't apply here. The painter is Google, and it has seen the original.
In other news, witnesses reported a spontaneous cheer coming from the corporate headquarters of the Recording Industry Association of America.
Re:How long must a number be to be copyrightable?
on
Censoring a Number
·
· Score: 1
As much as I wish that were so, it's not. The MPAA isn't claiming copyright on the key; they're claiming that it's an anti-circumvention measure. That's covered by a different part of the DMCA.
Oh, and the peer-to-peer dimension of this box is merely a marketing and implementation detail--people equate "P2P" with "free," but the average movie lover could care less that the Vudu does P2P, unless their broadband is metered and they get a nasty surprise at the end of the month.
Vudu seems to be a copy of Apple TV. It has a similar-sized box with a similar aesthetic, and an equally sparse remote. What it adds over the Apple TV seems to be direct download without a computer, and a composite video out. There's also no mention of podcast support, which is the real innovation from the Apple TV, in my mind.
Am I missing something? Is this really revolutionary? (Not that the Apple TV is either, but it's probably the best-known set-top box with podcast support.)
Based on this post, it should be noted that if you play any music from a SoundExchange member, you are required to pay royalties on a play of a non-member's music, and that non-member cannot claim those royalties without giving up the right to work outside of SoundExchange. Quite a racket the RIAA has there.
Also I get the feeling those "satellite TV" feeds are just pre-recorded-and-played-back videos.
No, it's actually live on many JetBlue flights. See LiveTV, their subsidiary, which provides the service.
The people here smart enough to know the technical limitations to cell phone useage on airplanes are probably also smart enough to realize it would be better for them if nobody knew there were problems.
Agreed. There's absolutely nothing a passenger can do about technical problems in the air; the best solution is to let the crew do their jobs and not give people a reason to panic.
Balancing the rights of journalists and the need for information by the legal system is extremely tricky, and to be honest, I'm not sure where the balance should lie in this case. My gut instinct is that the blogger should turn over the video, but part of me is yelling "slippery slope" inside.
The most obvious standard for turning over material would be "criminal activity only," but that isn't liberal enough -- what happens when the alleged act shouldn't be a crime to begin with? (See, for example, the PATRIOT Act and DMCA, in many cases.)
It all may be a bit irrelevant when Mac OS X 10.5 comes out...
This was just modded Flamebait, but I'm going to respond anyway. I have my doubts that we're going to see Compiz-style effects in Leopard. I'm a Mac fanboy, but I think I'm a rational one. Quartz Extreme is already technically capable of doing everything that Compiz does. However, just because one can do something doesn't mean one should do something.
Take Compiz's springy windows. It's cute when you play with it, and I thought it'd go great with the whole concept of water that Apple loves. However, when I showed it to a few friends that are not as technically inclined, they said the effect was "distracting." Mind you, these are college students, not grandmothers.
I think eye candy adds to the overall appeal of an operating system, but only if it's tasteful. Take virtual desktop switching—it's great to have a cube rotate, because it establishes what you're doing in spatial terms; however, I don't think anybody who actually wants to use their computer wants to waste time manipulating a cube themselves. I feel that many of the effects in Compiz are too much eye candy with too little usability.
Personally, my biggest concern about the proposed agenda is discussions about proxy registrations. I hold proxy registrations on three domains, and I feel it's important to me -- important enough that I would seriously consider dropping my domains if they were done away with.
Proxy registrations are necessary because of what I consider a flaw with domain name registration as it exists today. You should NOT require personal domain owners to broadcast their street address, home phone number, and e-mail address to the world via WHOIS. It's an extreme privacy breach.
Instead, I would suggest that individuals (not businesses) be permitted to hide their registrations but remain the legal owners. This would be analogous to the way PO boxes are rented - businesses must consent to the release of their street address when renting, while individuals need not.
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't have to be cool content. It merely needs to be required content.
The RIAA is not bringing the suits. When was the last time you saw a suit captioned Recording Industry Association of America, Inc. v. John Doe?
This may not be the first Google service to shut down, but is it the first paid service?
From the perspective of customers that don't know any better, Google is planning to forcibly take back the videos customers purchased on a permanent basis, then compensate them with a gift certificate. Sounds like a great way to advertise their payment service which hasn't overtaken PayPal like they thought it would - and Google still makes money on the transaction fees.
At the moment, it's 5.9. 6.0 and up is undefined and reserved for future hardware changes. (P.S., this is the first result for the query "vista experience scale" on Google.)
Paper is too slow.
That's no justification in the real world, but unfortunately that is a perfectly logical reason to move to electronic balloting for most people.
Some of the iPhone's features (such as visual voicemail) require fairly significant architectural changes at the carrier, so whatever carrier Apple went with would have some hefty demands to ensure the investment paid off. I'm sure the 5-year deal was one of AT&T's terms.
Keep in mind that Apple did approach Verizon first; Verizon turned it down.
I appreciate the sentiment, but I have to disagree with the solution. The short names have a very important purpose - they're memorable for detractors and propagandists alike. I doubt very much people would know that Sensenbrenner was the person who introduced the bill "to deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes," but everybody knows what the PATRIOT Act is.
I think the reason's pretty simple: companies like Google have been abusing the "beta" moniker lately. The betas I've seen from Apple (including Safari and earlier, Quicktime 7) have been more consistent with what I would consider a beta: they mostly work and are useful for testing, but still have significant problems.
Perhaps what they might have done is require an Apple Developer Connection account to download instead of making it available through general release.
This seems completely reasonable to me. I'm willing to trade watermarking for DRM, and am happily downloading my first iTunes purchase ever as we speak.
I do have one concern: if somebody does a legitimate transfer of their music (deleting all of the copies they own in the process), what happens if the new owner decides to put the stuff on a P2P network?
Excuse me for asking a weird question, but how long does it take to change channels? Digital cable for me takes around 1.5 seconds - it's long enough to be noticeable and annoying.
Synopses are about as fair a use as you can get. They generally have little to none of the original content, are commentaries by nature, and often benefit the market. They are the prototypical fair use.
As for the 32 kbps MP3, if the "original" is CD audio, then the amount of information cut out is far greater than 4-8 times. Keep in mind that the point I was trying to make (unsuccessfully, and I apologize for that) is that altering the means of encoding does not necessarily make a fair use.
I would agree that Google's use of thumbnails is fair, but not for the reason that the grandparent argues.
- The purpose and character of the use;
- The nature of the copyrighted work;
- The amount of the work used in relation to a whole;
- The effect on the market.
Just because only a portion of the image is used (a fact I will dispute shortly) doesn't mean that you're off the hook, because you must consider the other three tests.Your argument below this - that it's not the same image but merely a grid averaging the pixels of the original image - is somewhat compelling, but ultimately I would disagree with you here. If you stand by your argument, then surely it should also be legal to publish full-length MP3s of every song sold by the U.S. recording industry, as long as they're downsampled to 32 kbps?Just because something is publically displayed doesn't make it "fall smack into the fair use category." If it did, then I'd be able to hand out CDs on street corners, provided I recorded the music from the radio.True, but that doesn't apply here. The painter is Google, and it has seen the original.In other news, witnesses reported a spontaneous cheer coming from the corporate headquarters of the Recording Industry Association of America.
As much as I wish that were so, it's not. The MPAA isn't claiming copyright on the key; they're claiming that it's an anti-circumvention measure. That's covered by a different part of the DMCA.
Oh, and the peer-to-peer dimension of this box is merely a marketing and implementation detail--people equate "P2P" with "free," but the average movie lover could care less that the Vudu does P2P, unless their broadband is metered and they get a nasty surprise at the end of the month.
Vudu seems to be a copy of Apple TV. It has a similar-sized box with a similar aesthetic, and an equally sparse remote. What it adds over the Apple TV seems to be direct download without a computer, and a composite video out. There's also no mention of podcast support, which is the real innovation from the Apple TV, in my mind.
Am I missing something? Is this really revolutionary? (Not that the Apple TV is either, but it's probably the best-known set-top box with podcast support.)
Based on this post, it should be noted that if you play any music from a SoundExchange member, you are required to pay royalties on a play of a non-member's music, and that non-member cannot claim those royalties without giving up the right to work outside of SoundExchange. Quite a racket the RIAA has there.
Actually, strangely enough, the deadline was April 17 this year.
Balancing the rights of journalists and the need for information by the legal system is extremely tricky, and to be honest, I'm not sure where the balance should lie in this case. My gut instinct is that the blogger should turn over the video, but part of me is yelling "slippery slope" inside.
The most obvious standard for turning over material would be "criminal activity only," but that isn't liberal enough -- what happens when the alleged act shouldn't be a crime to begin with? (See, for example, the PATRIOT Act and DMCA, in many cases.)
Take Compiz's springy windows. It's cute when you play with it, and I thought it'd go great with the whole concept of water that Apple loves. However, when I showed it to a few friends that are not as technically inclined, they said the effect was "distracting." Mind you, these are college students, not grandmothers.
I think eye candy adds to the overall appeal of an operating system, but only if it's tasteful. Take virtual desktop switching—it's great to have a cube rotate, because it establishes what you're doing in spatial terms; however, I don't think anybody who actually wants to use their computer wants to waste time manipulating a cube themselves. I feel that many of the effects in Compiz are too much eye candy with too little usability.
Personally, my biggest concern about the proposed agenda is discussions about proxy registrations. I hold proxy registrations on three domains, and I feel it's important to me -- important enough that I would seriously consider dropping my domains if they were done away with.
Proxy registrations are necessary because of what I consider a flaw with domain name registration as it exists today. You should NOT require personal domain owners to broadcast their street address, home phone number, and e-mail address to the world via WHOIS. It's an extreme privacy breach.
Instead, I would suggest that individuals (not businesses) be permitted to hide their registrations but remain the legal owners. This would be analogous to the way PO boxes are rented - businesses must consent to the release of their street address when renting, while individuals need not.