Why don't they just bill every infringer for the actual current cost of the item in question? Rather than all the expense (not to mention bad publicity) of suing hundreds of thousands of people. And if they don't pay, send them to collections.
I bet a lot of those people would probably just pay the $20 and be done with it, especially after hearing about all the lawsuits. How many of those people probably actually don't know they shouldn't be downloading movies? How many are kids and their parents would gladly pay the money and then ground their kids for a week.
Seriously, nobody is thinking about this in a reasonable, practical way. Both sides are wrong. The content owners are being dicks for suing everyone in sight, but the people downloading stuff are also being dicks because they don't have the right to just take stuff.
Everybody needs to stop being a dick and just settle this reasonably.
The article brings up a much more important issue:
"Forcing a restaurant to stop using salt is the equivalent of telling a carpenter to stop using nails or a barber to not use scissors."
If you think salt is bad (and it is! Ban it!) imagine how bad nails and scissors are! Not only are they sharp and able to puncture and cut, but you can also get tetanus from the rust that may be on them. And any child can get access to these uncontrolled items, in almost any household!
Think about how many accidents occur because of nails and scissors. And what about the expense of having everybody given tetanus shots? Its a needless burden on our already overtaxed medical system.
Salt is the least of our worries. We need the government to get control of these serious risks to our health, because lord knows we cant do it ourselves..
Funny, after a couple short odd web design jobs I couldn't get anything going, so I worked in a used bookstore for a while. Well, not used, but highly discounted.
Now, on the weekends, I had money to enjoy all the boozin' and drugs I cared to partake of.
Since then I've slowly climbed back up and beyond, started a family, and stopped enjoying my weekends..:)
Yeah it was good times. I was making more money than I had ever made, we had catered lunches in the office every day, and we got to go to events at the beach (it was an "extreme sports" website).
And then come monday we are told not to even report to work and that we'd be turned away if we did. Nice! Guess they thought we would loot the office or something. I wouldn't have minded taking one of those $500 Aeron chairs home...
Lets slap a layer of solar collecting material onto this and grab some more power too.
One thing that occurs to me though. What happens if you get in an accident and the material is compromised? Would there be a potential electrocution issue?
Maybe you could also build security into this.. if you break in, the body zaps you..
I still find that when working out ideas, nothing beats graph paper. Believe me, I have tried using the computer. Once the ideas are solidified, sure, use the computer to make a pretty version. But when taking notes, working things out, etc, you can't beat paper and pencil.
While it may be true that in some ways a person may bring upon themselves these acts of violence and oppression, it seems to me the much more important and useful study (and, then, the more important and useful target of attempts to correct the behavior) would be:
Why do some people react to others behaviors by bullying them or committing acts of violence or oppression, instead of something more constructive (helping them, ignoring it, etc).
"Is it just me or does Google have this disgusting sense of righteousness that makes them think they should have the right to deliver their product to whoever wants it. "
There, fixed that for you..
Or more accurately, the converse statement:
"Is it just me or does Apple have this disgusting sense of righteousness that makes them think they can dictate what their customers are allowed to do with their own devices after they've paid for them?"
Now that we have the ability to keep using old and even long dead actor's likenesses, all we need now is some kind of advanced technology for recycling the plots of old movies. Then we wont have to come up anything new at all.
It actually wasnt really possible to do threading. Every task in AmigaOS is a full blown, independent process, switched out pre-emptively and given the same size time slice as every other task in the system. I remember at time wanting to be able to split my process into a number of lightweight threads but it really wasn't possible.
You certainly don't need memory protection or virtual memory etc to do "real multitasking". It's nice to have, of course. And it would have been hard to add in after the fact..
Whats next, is somebody going to sue an IT guy for installing Vista on their PCs because it cost them millions in extra power used by the fancy graphics in the Aero GUI and increased memory usage?
At best this should be an error in judgement. Maybe grounds for dismissal, but sueing?
I think most nerds are interested in a lot of topics beyond computers, sci-fi and anime. Thats the only reason needed. News for Nerds, stuff that matters... thats potentially everything, but with a nerd bias.
In other words, intelligent news.
If you want news about a cute doggy that's adopted a litter of kitty cats, then watch TV. If you want news about a study of inter-species social interactions, read slashdot.
"Scientology has harassed and annoyed them with Millions of phone calls, millions of mailed brochures, censoring websites or any thing else they see that doesn't make them money, acts of vandalism against, threats, and death threats against former Church members and non members."
I think I'll setup a website where people can register their belief of when they think the end will come and what the signs will be, and then people can vote on which ones they agree with (or just find.. interesting). And maybe the top one will be shown on the home page with a countdown...
There's always going to be some date in the future that some group of people think is going to be the end of time. When that date passes, they will find some way to reconcile it and come up with a new date. Or they will just be vague about it and claim "well we are in the end times now, thats why all these bad things are happening in the world".
I just wish the end would come now, suddenly, on a date of no importance or significance to anyone, and in a way completely unlike any prophesied before; I wish it would happen so completely unambiguously unlike anything ever imagined that it would put to end every stupid belief surrounding every one of those doomsday scenarios.
Thats the only true end of times: the one that proves everybody wrong.
as an old Amiga fanatic forced to be a PC guy for years and just recently got his first ever Mac, to some extent, I agree.
But I wont be happy until they port Directory Opus to the Mac, probably the thing I miss the most (from Windows, and Amiga before). Wouldn't mind seeing Deluxe Paint either... I've never been able to get used to any other paint program since.
PS it was great reading words from Dave Haynie again, you are one of my heroes.
a) do nothing, and when you register your vehicle each year, you pay an extra tax (we already pay taxes on registration anyway) based on your mileage and car type.
b) get a GPS and pay less (or more) based on a complicated schedule that takes into account the roads you travel on, etc. But this would probably be as complicated to understand as doing your taxes and people would probably think they'd save money and wouldnt. Having the GPS could probably reduce your insurance too, if you drive slow and limited mileage. But make it an optional thing.
And again, I don't think there's a bunch of politicians or cops sitting sitting around a big table in a darkly lit smoke filled room cackling evily about how they're going to track all of us etc etc..
But I do think it will be used as a tool, in good faith (initialy), to track certain "people of interest". At first that may be a crime in process (stolen car? kidnapping?). Then later it may be suspected criminals. Then maybe its anybody on a list of known trouble makers. Who knows. Its the very fact that its NOT a conspiracy or any kind of organized nefariousness that scares me.
And the gas tax also perhaps unfairly taxes people using lawnmowers or burning their house down.
Small price to pay for such an easy to implement system. If it were really an issue, there could be exemptions for people living on huge properties..
I honestly don't think, in general, that the government wants to spy on everyone. But guaran-dam-tee you that law enforcement would love it. And for reasons that may seem reasonable. Just like it seems reasonable to wiretap suspected "terrorists" for a good cause. But its a slippery slope and where does it end, for a good cause? Good intentions can be easily eroded by a powerful tool...
I just wanted to say, thanks for making me laugh so hard. I don't know why but I really find over the top profanity hilarious, used in the right place at the right time. And this is it.
And a GPS can't be removed and left at home? Slightly harder but come on. Anybody with the wherewithal to change the odometer can probably find out a way to remove the GPS or something too.
Yeah, if all they really cared about was tracking mileage to tax us appropriately (which on the surface I dont think most people would mind) then they could come up with a harder to tamper with odometer that would probably be way cheaper than a GPS.
But lets face it. If they force GPS on us, well, that's great news for GPS makers. And auto makers (markup, installs on older cars, etc). And insurance companies. And law enforcement. Hell its great for everybody, except the people driving the cars.
Slashdot Mirror
Why don't they just bill every infringer for the actual current cost of the item in question? Rather than all the expense (not to mention bad publicity) of suing hundreds of thousands of people. And if they don't pay, send them to collections.
I bet a lot of those people would probably just pay the $20 and be done with it, especially after hearing about all the lawsuits. How many of those people probably actually don't know they shouldn't be downloading movies? How many are kids and their parents would gladly pay the money and then ground their kids for a week.
Seriously, nobody is thinking about this in a reasonable, practical way. Both sides are wrong. The content owners are being dicks for suing everyone in sight, but the people downloading stuff are also being dicks because they don't have the right to just take stuff.
Everybody needs to stop being a dick and just settle this reasonably.
Yeah, right..
The article brings up a much more important issue:
"Forcing a restaurant to stop using salt is the equivalent of telling a carpenter to stop using nails or a barber to not use scissors."
If you think salt is bad (and it is! Ban it!) imagine how bad nails and scissors are! Not only are they sharp and able to puncture and cut, but you can also get tetanus from the rust that may be on them. And any child can get access to these uncontrolled items, in almost any household!
Think about how many accidents occur because of nails and scissors. And what about the expense of having everybody given tetanus shots? Its a needless burden on our already overtaxed medical system.
Salt is the least of our worries. We need the government to get control of these serious risks to our health, because lord knows we cant do it ourselves..
Funny, after a couple short odd web design jobs I couldn't get anything going, so I worked in a used bookstore for a while. Well, not used, but highly discounted.
Now, on the weekends, I had money to enjoy all the boozin' and drugs I cared to partake of.
Since then I've slowly climbed back up and beyond, started a family, and stopped enjoying my weekends.. :)
Pretty sure?
Must have been some good sh!t...
Yeah it was good times. I was making more money than I had ever made, we had catered lunches in the office every day, and we got to go to events at the beach (it was an "extreme sports" website).
And then come monday we are told not to even report to work and that we'd be turned away if we did. Nice! Guess they thought we would loot the office or something. I wouldn't have minded taking one of those $500 Aeron chairs home...
Lets slap a layer of solar collecting material onto this and grab some more power too.
One thing that occurs to me though. What happens if you get in an accident and the material is compromised? Would there be a potential electrocution issue?
Maybe you could also build security into this.. if you break in, the body zaps you..
I still find that when working out ideas, nothing beats graph paper. Believe me, I have tried using the computer. Once the ideas are solidified, sure, use the computer to make a pretty version. But when taking notes, working things out, etc, you can't beat paper and pencil.
While it may be true that in some ways a person may bring upon themselves these acts of violence and oppression, it seems to me the much more important and useful study (and, then, the more important and useful target of attempts to correct the behavior) would be:
Why do some people react to others behaviors by bullying them or committing acts of violence or oppression, instead of something more constructive (helping them, ignoring it, etc).
"Is it just me or does Google have this disgusting sense of righteousness that makes them think they should have the right to deliver their product to whoever wants it. "
There, fixed that for you..
Or more accurately, the converse statement:
"Is it just me or does Apple have this disgusting sense of righteousness that makes them think they can dictate what their customers are allowed to do with their own devices after they've paid for them?"
Now that we have the ability to keep using old and even long dead actor's likenesses, all we need now is some kind of advanced technology for recycling the plots of old movies. Then we wont have to come up anything new at all.
Oh, wait...
It actually wasnt really possible to do threading. Every task in AmigaOS is a full blown, independent process, switched out pre-emptively and given the same size time slice as every other task in the system. I remember at time wanting to be able to split my process into a number of lightweight threads but it really wasn't possible.
You certainly don't need memory protection or virtual memory etc to do "real multitasking". It's nice to have, of course. And it would have been hard to add in after the fact..
Whats next, is somebody going to sue an IT guy for installing Vista on their PCs because it cost them millions in extra power used by the fancy graphics in the Aero GUI and increased memory usage?
At best this should be an error in judgement. Maybe grounds for dismissal, but sueing?
I think most nerds are interested in a lot of topics beyond computers, sci-fi and anime. Thats the only reason needed. News for Nerds, stuff that matters... thats potentially everything, but with a nerd bias.
In other words, intelligent news.
If you want news about a cute doggy that's adopted a litter of kitty cats, then watch TV. If you want news about a study of inter-species social interactions, read slashdot.
"Scientology has harassed and annoyed them with Millions of phone calls, millions of mailed brochures, censoring websites or any thing else they see that doesn't make them money, acts of vandalism against, threats, and death threats against former Church members and non members."
There, fixed that for you.
Hamachi is great. Only problem is that they don't support MacOS anymore..
I bow my head in shame at having missed that obvious meme opportunity. I shoul#@>.!.
NO CARRIER
I think I'll setup a website where people can register their belief of when they think the end will come and what the signs will be, and then people can vote on which ones they agree with (or just find.. interesting). And maybe the top one will be shown on the home page with a countdown...
There's always going to be some date in the future that some group of people think is going to be the end of time. When that date passes, they will find some way to reconcile it and come up with a new date. Or they will just be vague about it and claim "well we are in the end times now, thats why all these bad things are happening in the world".
I just wish the end would come now, suddenly, on a date of no importance or significance to anyone, and in a way completely unlike any prophesied before; I wish it would happen so completely unambiguously unlike anything ever imagined that it would put to end every stupid belief surrounding every one of those doomsday scenarios.
Thats the only true end of times: the one that proves everybody wrong.
It should happen right about.. now... *
..its called "Save the planet, Eat your neighbor".
Do you have idea what the carbon footprint of a human is?
as an old Amiga fanatic forced to be a PC guy for years and just recently got his first ever Mac, to some extent, I agree.
But I wont be happy until they port Directory Opus to the Mac, probably the thing I miss the most (from Windows, and Amiga before). Wouldn't mind seeing Deluxe Paint either... I've never been able to get used to any other paint program since.
PS it was great reading words from Dave Haynie again, you are one of my heroes.
well, you could make it an option.
a) do nothing, and when you register your vehicle each year, you pay an extra tax (we already pay taxes on registration anyway) based on your mileage and car type.
b) get a GPS and pay less (or more) based on a complicated schedule that takes into account the roads you travel on, etc. But this would probably be as complicated to understand as doing your taxes and people would probably think they'd save money and wouldnt. Having the GPS could probably reduce your insurance too, if you drive slow and limited mileage. But make it an optional thing.
Of course.
And again, I don't think there's a bunch of politicians or cops sitting sitting around a big table in a darkly lit smoke filled room cackling evily about how they're going to track all of us etc etc..
But I do think it will be used as a tool, in good faith (initialy), to track certain "people of interest". At first that may be a crime in process (stolen car? kidnapping?). Then later it may be suspected criminals. Then maybe its anybody on a list of known trouble makers. Who knows. Its the very fact that its NOT a conspiracy or any kind of organized nefariousness that scares me.
And the gas tax also perhaps unfairly taxes people using lawnmowers or burning their house down.
Small price to pay for such an easy to implement system. If it were really an issue, there could be exemptions for people living on huge properties..
I honestly don't think, in general, that the government wants to spy on everyone. But guaran-dam-tee you that law enforcement would love it. And for reasons that may seem reasonable. Just like it seems reasonable to wiretap suspected "terrorists" for a good cause. But its a slippery slope and where does it end, for a good cause? Good intentions can be easily eroded by a powerful tool...
I just wanted to say, thanks for making me laugh so hard. I don't know why but I really find over the top profanity hilarious, used in the right place at the right time. And this is it.
And a GPS can't be removed and left at home? Slightly harder but come on. Anybody with the wherewithal to change the odometer can probably find out a way to remove the GPS or something too.
Yeah, if all they really cared about was tracking mileage to tax us appropriately (which on the surface I dont think most people would mind) then they could come up with a harder to tamper with odometer that would probably be way cheaper than a GPS.
But lets face it. If they force GPS on us, well, that's great news for GPS makers. And auto makers (markup, installs on older cars, etc). And insurance companies. And law enforcement. Hell its great for everybody, except the people driving the cars.