You are free to whine all you want about viruses or programs that exploit flaws in IE, but those are in the end red herrings. The issue involving this bill is that it also makes it illegal for a software developer and consumer to enter into a voluntary contract which involves 'adware' or 'spyware'.
"Myers Motors will begin selling an upgraded version this summer..."
Doesn't the phrase "begin selling" require someone to actually buy one of these things?
It could be a decent idea if they sold it for a few hundred bucks, but 14 grand? I could buy a real car for that amount. And don't give me any crap about how these things are better than cars, the fact remains there are numerous uses for cars which these are not suitable for such as transporting passangers, carrying other items (such as groceries, etc), driving on highways, etc.
What if you use the console to launch X to launch terminals? Does that mean xterm is a conole application or an X application?
Sorry for wasting bandwidth posting this.
SETI is a waste of energy compared to the 3D maze screen saver.
Even if ET exists, the chance of SETI finding them is incalculable. I might as well start digging for buried treasure in my back yard. And even if we do find aliens, what do we gain? We get to hear AM radio traffic reports from an alien race that has probably gone extinct that used to live millions of light years away? What does society gain from that?
Man, you must have gotten a bad grade in your high school government class.
"Congress can, however, bitch-smack them by passing an amendment."
Absolutely not. It takes a lot more than just Congress to pass an amendment to the Constitution. Either it has to be approved by both a super majority in both halves of Congress and then ratified by two thirds of the states, or it can be passed through a Constitutional Convention (the latter approach has never been taken). Its very difficult to do, and in the over 200 years of the United States it has only been done 27 times. Whats more 10.5 of those were done when the constitution was first written (the Bill of Rights and the 27th Amendment got halfway there) and 3 were done right after the Civil War when half the nation was not represented in Washington.
"When they ruled for it, it basically was, yes. But they reversed that ruling long ago through a Constitutional amendment and with the 1954 help of the courts."
Really? I did not know that. Which amendment was it that reversed the Plessy case? The only ones that fit that time period are 16-22, which one was it? Prohibition? Term limits? Woman's suffrage? I'm really curious.
For those of you interested in real history, it was overruled by the Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Edu, not a constitutional amendment.
"But then again the record companies formed the RIAA, and set precident. "
Set precident? Whats that supposed to mean?
Bottom line, the RIAA is a trade group, nothing more. If you have a problem with a campaign the RIAA does in the name of the record companies, fine, blame the RIAA. If on the other hand you have a problem with something done by a record label, a music store, a radio station, or an artist, blame the correct group. Throwing out insults and blaming the RIAA for everything from payola to screwy contracts does nothing to help your argument and only shows your ignorance.
"Granted you can find the CD for less (ebay, online sites, etc...) but then you've got shipping and handling and all that other crap that adds up anyway."
I was actually thinking about stores like Best Buy, but thats right, you can also get them online for even less.
"I support the artists, not the conglomorites that screw them. "
Now you are thinking about the record labels. Yes, I know many of them have crappy contracts, but many others have quite nice ones (not all artists are dirt poor, remember). I know for a fact that this is the case with both major record labels and indies. And I'm sure not all of the blame goes to the labels but to the artists who sign away their souls without reading the contract. Not sure what the trade group representing them all has to do with this though.
Point being, if you have a complaint with someone in the music business, make sure you send it to the correct party.
No, its not. Everything is listed in the agreement that you agree to when you click "I Agree". The reason he didn't know about it was not because it was illegally hidden from him, it was because he stopped reading after the first sentence. Thats not the software company's fault anymore than it would be my landlord's fault if I only read the first page of the 10 page lease.
No unlisted software, no carbon paper, no nothing.
Once again, learn to manage your own life and stop demanding the government walk you through it.
So if I only read the first line of my lease that means I didn't consent to the rest of it, meaning I can keep pets, trash the place, and refuse to pay my rent on time? Sorry, ignorance is not an excuse. The fact that you are lazy does not mean we need Uncle Sam (or the Utah state legislature) to tell us what or what not to install on our personal computers.
You know as well as anyone else that virus infections are not what we are talking about. We are talking about adware that is voluntarily installed which the Utah law makes illegal.
No, it is interpreted to be in the Constitution (sort of, the SC still only ruled that you have limited rights to privacy in certain situations). There is a big difference. In one case, it would take a constitutional amendment to change it, in the other all it would take would be one or two judges changing their minds.
They also ruled for segregation, was that in the Constitution?
You have a right to voluntarily enter in a contract with someone in which you advertise goods in exchange for giving them a product or service they desire.
A controversial and disputed opinion by the Supreme Court recognizing privacy rights beyond what the 4th amendment says in certain conditions is different from a "right to privacy" in the Constitution itself.
Forced upon you? You were forced to click "I Agree"? Fine print? Normally those statements are in fairly large print. You failing to read it because it is too long is no different from Joe failing to read the term of his lease that says he is not allowed to have pets in his apartment because his lease was too long.
What if having the adware would make me happy? What if I want the software and don't care if they give me advertisements? By making the software illegal you are infringing on my right to pursue Happiness.
You are free not to install the software that informs you that it is installing spyware/adware.
Oh wait, I'm sorry, personal responsibility is not the American way anymore. Nowadays we need the government to make all our decisions for us. What food we eat, what medicine we take, and what software to install on our computers.
At the risk of getting another -1: Defending an Unpopular Group mod...
That was not one of the options, mostly due to the fact that the RIAA does not charge $15-$18 a CD. Your local record store does. In fact the RIAA doesn't even charge a dime for a CD because they don't sell CDs (they are a trade group, not a record store or record company). If you learn to comparison shop, you will find it is easy to save on CDs, I can easily find you them for $10 or less. In the meantime, expensive CDs only justifies finding an alternative forms of entertainment not finding illegal alternative ways to get the music (and don't give me any bull about how you need that CD or you won't be popular in school).
"I no longer use IE/OE for browsing and e-mail, I use firebird/thunderbird, but the reasons I switched have nothing to do with the length of time between releases."
Ok, I'll bite. Why did you switch?
Most people I know who switched did so because IE lacks certain features that firefox has in part because MS hasn't updated it in 3 years now. If MS had continued to update their browser and embraced new features such as tab browsing, many people who currently use firefox likely would still be using IE today.
"And I certainly don't think there's any reason to switch OSes because a new version doesn't come out fast enough."
If you don't mind using old technology, then good for you. However, other people have different opinions and prefer an OS that takes advantage of new features.
"Obviously a lot of people didn't care that much that WinXP came out, because Microsoft had to extend support of Win98."
Obviously a lot more did care because XP is now the most popular operating system of the bunch.
Yes, a lot of people kept '98, but they are irrelevant to the discussion. If they are using an OS that went out of date 4 years ago, that means that at no point in the last 4 years were they in the market for a new OS.
Whats more, the fact that any given group of people are still using Windows is irrelevant to the discussion. I did not say MS lost all its users to alternatives, I clearly said a lot. Discussing whether or not some others stayed with MS is completely irrelevant and a waste of bandwidth.
"but it sounds like it is still the case that some SRM'ed CD's do not work."
Did you RTFP (I love making up new acronyms). Not only did he not claim this CD in question used the new MediaMax protection scheme, but with the statement
I'm not sure that this tactic would work on the CDs that play fine but just can't be copied (because that's not defective)
it is obvious that this probably wouldn't work with this scheme.
"The argument stemmed from your ignorance of contract law i.e., "there is no legal basis for them giving you a refund.""
Jesus Christ, is that what you have been arguing against? Congratulations, I am nominating you for the slashdot strawman of the year award (which says a lot considering some of the arguments I have read).
What I had actually said was that there is a legal basis for a retail store to refuse a refund for a CD just because it has this particular DRM scheme included blocking users from making unlimited copies.
"Game. Point. Match. "
I take it you have never played tennis. Its Game, Set, Match, dumbass. If you feel the need to include Point, it would have to be before Game.
With all due respect to your in-laws, they don't really matter too much to MS. No MS hasn't lost them as customers, but as they haven't bought a new OS since Win98 came out, MS hasn't really gained anything from them. The two main targets are people willing to upgrade an old system (which includes much of the crows that adopted Linux) and those who recently bought new machines (which includes much of the crowd that moved over to the Macs).
"Does a CD fit in an iPod?"
Many people still wrongly expect them to capable of being ripped to an iPod, hence the controversy.
"But a CD's purpose is to be used in a CD player."
And these CDs do play in CD players, unless there is something wrong with the CD player. In which case the fault is not with the CD so you can't demand a refund.
It should also be noted that these CDs do contain stickers saying "This CD is protected against unauthorized duplication. It is designed to play on standard playback devices and an appropriately configured computer (see system requirements on back). If you have questions or concerns visit www.sunncomm.com/support/bmg". So if your CD player is not a "standard playback device" or "appropriately configured computer" meeting their system requirements, you have no basis to complain.
"I mean playing as a normal CD does, in a CD player, which is what some of these DRM'ed CD do not. "
If by "some of these DRM'ed CD" you mean "early attempts at Digital Rights Management that met with failure and thus have been replaced by new technologies such as SunnComm's MediaMax which is used in the Velvet Revolver CD". But that has no real relevance to the topic at hand, does it? Of course since we know you must have RTFA before posting, you already knew that.
Besides, I believe those protected CDs contained warnings that they could not be played on CD-ROMs, so the argument that their purpose is to be played in any CD player again does not apply.
"If the customer did not have sufficient notice as the non-compliance..."
So a sticker on the front of the CD does not count as sufficient notice? What do you want them to do, glue a big neon sign to the case?
So now you are talking about rights? That contradicts your last post when you said "No, my rights were not what we were talking about at all." You said you were worried about oversight of the system to prevent cops from slacking off and abusing it instead of working instead. Now you are saying you feel tracking is a violation of rights?
I can't debate you if you can't be at least somewhat consistent in your arguments. Either you have no clue what you are talking about or you have a serious case of multiple personality disorder.
Slashdot Mirror
You are free to whine all you want about viruses or programs that exploit flaws in IE, but those are in the end red herrings. The issue involving this bill is that it also makes it illegal for a software developer and consumer to enter into a voluntary contract which involves 'adware' or 'spyware'.
Doesn't the phrase "begin selling" require someone to actually buy one of these things?
It could be a decent idea if they sold it for a few hundred bucks, but 14 grand? I could buy a real car for that amount. And don't give me any crap about how these things are better than cars, the fact remains there are numerous uses for cars which these are not suitable for such as transporting passangers, carrying other items (such as groceries, etc), driving on highways, etc.
What if you use the console to launch X to launch terminals? Does that mean xterm is a conole application or an X application? Sorry for wasting bandwidth posting this.
Even if ET exists, the chance of SETI finding them is incalculable. I might as well start digging for buried treasure in my back yard. And even if we do find aliens, what do we gain? We get to hear AM radio traffic reports from an alien race that has probably gone extinct that used to live millions of light years away? What does society gain from that?
"Congress can, however, bitch-smack them by passing an amendment."
Absolutely not. It takes a lot more than just Congress to pass an amendment to the Constitution. Either it has to be approved by both a super majority in both halves of Congress and then ratified by two thirds of the states, or it can be passed through a Constitutional Convention (the latter approach has never been taken). Its very difficult to do, and in the over 200 years of the United States it has only been done 27 times. Whats more 10.5 of those were done when the constitution was first written (the Bill of Rights and the 27th Amendment got halfway there) and 3 were done right after the Civil War when half the nation was not represented in Washington.
"When they ruled for it, it basically was, yes. But they reversed that ruling long ago through a Constitutional amendment and with the 1954 help of the courts."
Really? I did not know that. Which amendment was it that reversed the Plessy case? The only ones that fit that time period are 16-22, which one was it? Prohibition? Term limits? Woman's suffrage? I'm really curious.
For those of you interested in real history, it was overruled by the Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Edu, not a constitutional amendment.
Set precident? Whats that supposed to mean?
Bottom line, the RIAA is a trade group, nothing more. If you have a problem with a campaign the RIAA does in the name of the record companies, fine, blame the RIAA. If on the other hand you have a problem with something done by a record label, a music store, a radio station, or an artist, blame the correct group. Throwing out insults and blaming the RIAA for everything from payola to screwy contracts does nothing to help your argument and only shows your ignorance.
"Granted you can find the CD for less (ebay, online sites, etc...) but then you've got shipping and handling and all that other crap that adds up anyway."
I was actually thinking about stores like Best Buy, but thats right, you can also get them online for even less.
"I support the artists, not the conglomorites that screw them. "
Now you are thinking about the record labels. Yes, I know many of them have crappy contracts, but many others have quite nice ones (not all artists are dirt poor, remember). I know for a fact that this is the case with both major record labels and indies. And I'm sure not all of the blame goes to the labels but to the artists who sign away their souls without reading the contract. Not sure what the trade group representing them all has to do with this though.
Point being, if you have a complaint with someone in the music business, make sure you send it to the correct party.
No unlisted software, no carbon paper, no nothing.
Once again, learn to manage your own life and stop demanding the government walk you through it.
So if I only read the first line of my lease that means I didn't consent to the rest of it, meaning I can keep pets, trash the place, and refuse to pay my rent on time? Sorry, ignorance is not an excuse. The fact that you are lazy does not mean we need Uncle Sam (or the Utah state legislature) to tell us what or what not to install on our personal computers.
You know as well as anyone else that virus infections are not what we are talking about. We are talking about adware that is voluntarily installed which the Utah law makes illegal.
They also ruled for segregation, was that in the Constitution?
I'm still waiting...
You have a right to voluntarily enter in a contract with someone in which you advertise goods in exchange for giving them a product or service they desire.
A controversial and disputed opinion by the Supreme Court recognizing privacy rights beyond what the 4th amendment says in certain conditions is different from a "right to privacy" in the Constitution itself.
What if having the adware would make me happy? What if I want the software and don't care if they give me advertisements? By making the software illegal you are infringing on my right to pursue Happiness.
Oh wait, I'm sorry, personal responsibility is not the American way anymore. Nowadays we need the government to make all our decisions for us. What food we eat, what medicine we take, and what software to install on our computers.
That was not one of the options, mostly due to the fact that the RIAA does not charge $15-$18 a CD. Your local record store does. In fact the RIAA doesn't even charge a dime for a CD because they don't sell CDs (they are a trade group, not a record store or record company). If you learn to comparison shop, you will find it is easy to save on CDs, I can easily find you them for $10 or less. In the meantime, expensive CDs only justifies finding an alternative forms of entertainment not finding illegal alternative ways to get the music (and don't give me any bull about how you need that CD or you won't be popular in school).
The RIAA suing users who are distributing clearly illegal copies of music, or the RIAA suing p2p services which could be used for legitimate purposes?
Ok, I'll bite. Why did you switch?
Most people I know who switched did so because IE lacks certain features that firefox has in part because MS hasn't updated it in 3 years now. If MS had continued to update their browser and embraced new features such as tab browsing, many people who currently use firefox likely would still be using IE today.
"And I certainly don't think there's any reason to switch OSes because a new version doesn't come out fast enough."
If you don't mind using old technology, then good for you. However, other people have different opinions and prefer an OS that takes advantage of new features.
"Obviously a lot of people didn't care that much that WinXP came out, because Microsoft had to extend support of Win98."
Obviously a lot more did care because XP is now the most popular operating system of the bunch.
Yes, a lot of people kept '98, but they are irrelevant to the discussion. If they are using an OS that went out of date 4 years ago, that means that at no point in the last 4 years were they in the market for a new OS.
Whats more, the fact that any given group of people are still using Windows is irrelevant to the discussion. I did not say MS lost all its users to alternatives, I clearly said a lot. Discussing whether or not some others stayed with MS is completely irrelevant and a waste of bandwidth.
What is this story doing in the science section? I hate to be the one to break it to you guys, but Star Trek isn't real.
Did you RTFP (I love making up new acronyms). Not only did he not claim this CD in question used the new MediaMax protection scheme, but with the statement it is obvious that this probably wouldn't work with this scheme.
"The argument stemmed from your ignorance of contract law i.e., "there is no legal basis for them giving you a refund.""
Jesus Christ, is that what you have been arguing against? Congratulations, I am nominating you for the slashdot strawman of the year award (which says a lot considering some of the arguments I have read).
What I had actually said was that there is a legal basis for a retail store to refuse a refund for a CD just because it has this particular DRM scheme included blocking users from making unlimited copies.
"Game. Point. Match. "
I take it you have never played tennis. Its Game, Set, Match, dumbass. If you feel the need to include Point, it would have to be before Game.
With all due respect to your in-laws, they don't really matter too much to MS. No MS hasn't lost them as customers, but as they haven't bought a new OS since Win98 came out, MS hasn't really gained anything from them. The two main targets are people willing to upgrade an old system (which includes much of the crows that adopted Linux) and those who recently bought new machines (which includes much of the crowd that moved over to the Macs).
Many people still wrongly expect them to capable of being ripped to an iPod, hence the controversy.
"But a CD's purpose is to be used in a CD player."
And these CDs do play in CD players, unless there is something wrong with the CD player. In which case the fault is not with the CD so you can't demand a refund.
It should also be noted that these CDs do contain stickers saying "This CD is protected against unauthorized duplication. It is designed to play on standard playback devices and an appropriately configured computer (see system requirements on back). If you have questions or concerns visit www.sunncomm.com/support/bmg". So if your CD player is not a "standard playback device" or "appropriately configured computer" meeting their system requirements, you have no basis to complain.
"I mean playing as a normal CD does, in a CD player, which is what some of these DRM'ed CD do not. "
If by "some of these DRM'ed CD" you mean "early attempts at Digital Rights Management that met with failure and thus have been replaced by new technologies such as SunnComm's MediaMax which is used in the Velvet Revolver CD". But that has no real relevance to the topic at hand, does it? Of course since we know you must have RTFA before posting, you already knew that.
Besides, I believe those protected CDs contained warnings that they could not be played on CD-ROMs, so the argument that their purpose is to be played in any CD player again does not apply.
"If the customer did not have sufficient notice as the non-compliance..."
So a sticker on the front of the CD does not count as sufficient notice? What do you want them to do, glue a big neon sign to the case?
Just as the Velvet Revolver CD's purpose is not to be played in an iPod.
I can't debate you if you can't be at least somewhat consistent in your arguments. Either you have no clue what you are talking about or you have a serious case of multiple personality disorder.
Besides, Yahoo doesn't block invites to its Yahoo Groups service.