While I understand the frustration most/.ers have with the MPAA, I have to say I have slightly more sympathy for their cause than for the RIAA.
Where the music industry creates a problem rather cheaply, cheats artists, and generally dilutes culture with generic crap most of the time, the movie industry is engaged in a high-stakes game of chance where there are literally billions of dollars being used every year to produce movies. A lot of these movies fail to turn a profit. A flawed market strategy, one my argue, but until they have Hari Seldon-like abilities to predict the movie-watching tendencies of the masses, it's pretty much the best they can do.
Content for content, a $25 DVD is a much better entertainment value than a $10 CD.
Also, it would be interesting to see the MPAA spent 5% or so of their annual lobbying budget on overseas relief efforts... that's a whole hell of a lot of cash. Even sacrifice a high-budget movie with Keanu Reeves in it: nobody's really going to care.
With the flaws of modern operating systems in mind (more complex and more exploitable bugs than ever), I've always wondered about the incredibly complex systems presented in movies based in the future.
Star Trek, for instance: I'd love to see an episode where someone had to access the source code of the beam-down-thingy, recompile it, and test it on hamsters because some expendable crewman opened up an email from Earth called "REALLY COOL SCREENSAVER LOL"
But then, maybe that's a bit to close to real life, except for the mysteriously disappearing and re-appearing part.
I've wanted a Mac for a long time, but could never -- and I know this rubs more than a few Mac evangelists the wrong way -- justify the cost with the benefits.
But for this price, sure I'd buy one, and like the parent post, use it with a KVM switch. My girlfriend's father uses a Mac (he's in graphics), and I've had a while to toy around with the interface. And I like it. It's like a classic martini joint compared to the sports bar that is WinXP.
And who knows: by the time that China and India do become world superpowers, maybe they'll be running an operating system that won't be so easily turned into a zombie for the Axis of Spam Evil. Like, oh say, Linux?
Quality control becomes a problem as soon as you have a mass awareness. Most of the people that write articles and such for Wikipedia are benevolent, for whatever reason, be it that they're open source-minded people or that they just like what's going on at Wikipedia.
On the other hand, was Wikipedia more in the public mindshare than it is now, these sorts of incidents would occur with more alarming frequency.
Sidenote: Wikipedia has its own infoculture as well, considering how many topics there are (understandably) on arcane technical and computer-related topics. Try submitting something arcane on, oh say religion. See how fast it gets dumped into the Votes for Deletion que.
People are dumb, but in a different way that you're thinking -- people are dumb because they don't really know what they want until you give it to them.
Microsoft itself, for instance, became a success by giving people what they didn't know they needed, or by filling a void that no one realised was there.
The fact that they're now playing the "our customers don't want it" card is proof how much their corporate culture has stagnated: people don't want things like tabbed browsing, because they don't know they can have them.
I just find it strange that almost every person I've ever introduced tabbed browsing to has loved the feature, even those that still prefer to us IE.
We have VoIP for our office networks, which is just happy, considering that we run gigabit networks with QoS, so that's not a problem.
The sound quality is of course limited by crappy phones (which pretty much all phones are), and we still have to dial out on conventional landlines. Or at least that's the way we've chosen to do it for now.
Yes, so say the word "life" is pretty simple thing to do. On the other hand, life itself is one of the most complex things you can get your hands on. Even the most "primordial" organisms are incredible. So if you want to satify the Razor with a simple explaination, perhaps you might look elsewhere.
It'll be kind of fun to see the first Linux viruses (I think I just started a grammar war) come out. I understand that both Windows and Linux have vulnerabilities (granted, I tend to think Windows has a whole lot more), but as it is, I don't run virus scanners per se on my Linux boxen.
Well in the grand scheme of things, it's really not an important mystery to be solved; at least the cost-benefit ration is skewed. On the other hand, I didn't say it was insignificant.
I just find it suspect that every discovery coming from the surface of Mars is treated in light of the assumption that life exists/existed there. Talk about trying to prove your own presuppositions. It makes me wonder that if, in the rush to find evidence for life, we might be ignoring other data.
I found it more interesting that the article writer assumed that the nuclear family would be history by 2250AD. I don't understand the reasoning; it's survived some 8,000 years of recorded history, and it's not about to go away any time soon.
It's actually really awsome to notice how scientist's rabid speculation and extrapolation from insignificant data can be called "news".
I mean, really. What is this but saying that they think it is possible (again) that there could be or have been life on Mars at one time? Is life on Mars possible? Sure. Probable? Not really.
What about it? Unless they stole the CDs to get those rips, it costs no one a penny except the guy who bought the hard drive and the bandwidth.
Then what we're really arguing about here is whether or not a loss of potential a sale (that is to say a sale that was never made due to the fact that you never bought the album that you downloaded) is equal to a real physical loss. Is it? I don't know. If it were, a lot of things could be considered "loss" by that definition. In any case, it's an interesting ethical question.
Re:Files they've just taken and not bought or dele
on
The File Sharing Report
·
· Score: 0, Troll
Because the punk ethos is summed up by flaming people annonymously on Slashdot. What do you do for an encore? Trash your mom's fridge?
Software patents should be eliminated or at least the laws severely re-written. Overall, patent laws should be re-examined; it's still a good thing to have the individual inventor's rights protected.
Perhaps we might start revising this law by re-examining the right of a corporation to hold a patent.
I hope they someday find a cure for that sort of hopeless optimism.
Look at the record of history: the more we know about disease, the more diseases we discover. The more illnesses we cure, the more develop. Even things that we thought were just part of the aging process are now classified as disease.
I'm just hoping they don't continue naming their products with alliterative names, or I'm afraid we might be looking at the upcoming release of Thunderthighs.
Slashdot Mirror
And all this time I thought "using my BOINC platform" was just another euphemism for watching pr0n. Sigh.
Well I for one welcome our transparent electronic overlords...
While I understand the frustration most /.ers have with the MPAA, I have to say I have slightly more sympathy for their cause than for the RIAA.
Where the music industry creates a problem rather cheaply, cheats artists, and generally dilutes culture with generic crap most of the time, the movie industry is engaged in a high-stakes game of chance where there are literally billions of dollars being used every year to produce movies. A lot of these movies fail to turn a profit. A flawed market strategy, one my argue, but until they have Hari Seldon-like abilities to predict the movie-watching tendencies of the masses, it's pretty much the best they can do.
Content for content, a $25 DVD is a much better entertainment value than a $10 CD.
Also, it would be interesting to see the MPAA spent 5% or so of their annual lobbying budget on overseas relief efforts... that's a whole hell of a lot of cash. Even sacrifice a high-budget movie with Keanu Reeves in it: nobody's really going to care.
With the flaws of modern operating systems in mind (more complex and more exploitable bugs than ever), I've always wondered about the incredibly complex systems presented in movies based in the future.
Star Trek, for instance: I'd love to see an episode where someone had to access the source code of the beam-down-thingy, recompile it, and test it on hamsters because some expendable crewman opened up an email from Earth called "REALLY COOL SCREENSAVER LOL"
But then, maybe that's a bit to close to real life, except for the mysteriously disappearing and re-appearing part.
I've wanted a Mac for a long time, but could never -- and I know this rubs more than a few Mac evangelists the wrong way -- justify the cost with the benefits.
But for this price, sure I'd buy one, and like the parent post, use it with a KVM switch. My girlfriend's father uses a Mac (he's in graphics), and I've had a while to toy around with the interface. And I like it. It's like a classic martini joint compared to the sports bar that is WinXP.
Cue explaination of sarcasm.
Wow, I've gotten everything I wanted for Christmas now, except maybe a home invasion, or rape or something.
And who knows: by the time that China and India do become world superpowers, maybe they'll be running an operating system that won't be so easily turned into a zombie for the Axis of Spam Evil. Like, oh say, Linux?
Quality control becomes a problem as soon as you have a mass awareness. Most of the people that write articles and such for Wikipedia are benevolent, for whatever reason, be it that they're open source-minded people or that they just like what's going on at Wikipedia.
On the other hand, was Wikipedia more in the public mindshare than it is now, these sorts of incidents would occur with more alarming frequency.
Sidenote: Wikipedia has its own infoculture as well, considering how many topics there are (understandably) on arcane technical and computer-related topics. Try submitting something arcane on, oh say religion. See how fast it gets dumped into the Votes for Deletion que.
Quite wrong.
Try searching for "csi filetype:torrent" sometime. They do directly link to torrent files, from CSI episodes to TeleSyncs of new movies.
However, search engines are protected from things like __AA by US law, I believe.
People are dumb, but in a different way that you're thinking -- people are dumb because they don't really know what they want until you give it to them.
Microsoft itself, for instance, became a success by giving people what they didn't know they needed, or by filling a void that no one realised was there.
The fact that they're now playing the "our customers don't want it" card is proof how much their corporate culture has stagnated: people don't want things like tabbed browsing, because they don't know they can have them.
I just find it strange that almost every person I've ever introduced tabbed browsing to has loved the feature, even those that still prefer to us IE.
We have VoIP for our office networks, which is just happy, considering that we run gigabit networks with QoS, so that's not a problem.
The sound quality is of course limited by crappy phones (which pretty much all phones are), and we still have to dial out on conventional landlines. Or at least that's the way we've chosen to do it for now.
Yes, so say the word "life" is pretty simple thing to do. On the other hand, life itself is one of the most complex things you can get your hands on. Even the most "primordial" organisms are incredible. So if you want to satify the Razor with a simple explaination, perhaps you might look elsewhere.
It'll be kind of fun to see the first Linux viruses (I think I just started a grammar war) come out. I understand that both Windows and Linux have vulnerabilities (granted, I tend to think Windows has a whole lot more), but as it is, I don't run virus scanners per se on my Linux boxen.
I dunno, my life's been pretty cool. On the other hand, if you're an example of a rough life, I'd say yes.
I looked at the surface the other day. I didn't use a calculator, but it looked pretty rough on any life that might be around.
Well in the grand scheme of things, it's really not an important mystery to be solved; at least the cost-benefit ration is skewed. On the other hand, I didn't say it was insignificant.
I just find it suspect that every discovery coming from the surface of Mars is treated in light of the assumption that life exists/existed there. Talk about trying to prove your own presuppositions. It makes me wonder that if, in the rush to find evidence for life, we might be ignoring other data.
I found it more interesting that the article writer assumed that the nuclear family would be history by 2250AD. I don't understand the reasoning; it's survived some 8,000 years of recorded history, and it's not about to go away any time soon.
It's actually really awsome to notice how scientist's rabid speculation and extrapolation from insignificant data can be called "news".
I mean, really. What is this but saying that they think it is possible (again) that there could be or have been life on Mars at one time? Is life on Mars possible? Sure. Probable? Not really.
What about it? Unless they stole the CDs to get those rips, it costs no one a penny except the guy who bought the hard drive and the bandwidth.
Then what we're really arguing about here is whether or not a loss of potential a sale (that is to say a sale that was never made due to the fact that you never bought the album that you downloaded) is equal to a real physical loss. Is it? I don't know. If it were, a lot of things could be considered "loss" by that definition. In any case, it's an interesting ethical question.
Because the punk ethos is summed up by flaming people annonymously on Slashdot. What do you do for an encore? Trash your mom's fridge?
Software patents should be eliminated or at least the laws severely re-written. Overall, patent laws should be re-examined; it's still a good thing to have the individual inventor's rights protected.
Perhaps we might start revising this law by re-examining the right of a corporation to hold a patent.
And thankfull that stuff will survive armageddon, so the armies of the undead will have a tasty snack.
I hope they someday find a cure for that sort of hopeless optimism.
Look at the record of history: the more we know about disease, the more diseases we discover. The more illnesses we cure, the more develop. Even things that we thought were just part of the aging process are now classified as disease.
I'm just hoping they don't continue naming their products with alliterative names, or I'm afraid we might be looking at the upcoming release of Thunderthighs.