Also, why use personal names anyways. Why not simply call them Hurricane 2005_21 or 2005_145. Is this really a problem?
Wow, you are a nerd reading the news! Surely, though, binary would be better?
"All everybody - we recommend you fill up a couple of old milk jugs with some tap water, buy a bag full of snack bars, and get on the bus, becuse Hurricane 01010010011010010111010001100001 is on the way!"
Nah, I think it's easier to look back on certain storms, for comparison's sake, with easier to remember names. "This one will be just about as bad as Camille" immediately resonates with people who were there, whereas "This will be a right proper 1969_03, this will!" just doesn't have the same cultural staying power.
Why is this news?
Because with a news summary like that, more poeple can Freak Out(tm) about how my SUV is causing us to run out of storm names.
Can anyone explain to me why P2P companies / applications have such silly names?
Because despite the uber-nerd population of slashdot that sees things through their own particularly technical/net-savvy lens, the vast majority of the people who pumped up the usage of Napster, for example, were your basic teenage pop music fans that wanted for free what they used to have to spend their lawn mowing and baby sitting money on (that is, CDs). You can read up on Napster history, but it doesn't take much familiarity with the wildly unoriginal nature of many geek types to see why they embraced the "ster" suffix to evoke the original underground-ish atmosphere of the original.
Mostly, though, the whole notion of trafficking in commercial products outside of the channels through which the producers of those products are selling them presents an air of edginess and secret-societyness. The services/protocols/clients that are created to try slipping, once again, around copyrights, simply won't take with their deliberate users unless they convey a hipper-than-thou feeling that includes a sort of synthetic cyber-branding coolness to it. Basically, if a company like that has a name that would in anyway interest, appeal to, or convey credibility the parents of most of the users, it will flop. Hence, only in total irony will we ever hear of "National Bank Of Music" or "Home Music Depot" or some other normal-consumer-oriented name. That the creators of some of these systems feel an urge to sound exotic, or slightly dangerous says a lot about the packaging they feel they need. In most cases, though, I think it's the equivalent of wearing Xtremely Baggy Pants, even to the point of not being able to walk up and down stairs, just so a certain audience will feel an immediate clannishness about it. Or, for other users, the odd name makes them feel like they're headed into some mysterious land of free riches, as long as they know the secret word.
No doubt many such names are based on particular inside jokes, obscure acronyms, or other things that can't translate to a wider audience without either explanation or guesswork.
Of course you might have once said the same thing about "Amazon" or "eBay," in a very luke-warm sort of way. "Amazon" at least conveys a sense of adventure (in reading, orginally), while millions of readers would no doubt be stumped trying to explain the derivation of "eBay" (fwiw, it was orginally "AuctionWeb" and was part of a site owned by Echo Bay Technology... and the rest is history). At least frameworks like BitTorrent are actually labeled something related to what they are, not that that's necessary, but labeling something deliberately to make you have to guess what it is, or need to be part of the secret club, suggests a certain adolescent sensibility... oh, wait.
idea that legions of predatory lawyers are going to come to her aid merely because she claims she's innocent is laughable.
Well, my mistake, then. I thought, based on the other comments, that their innocence in this case was a foregone, demonstrable conclusion. That's certainly how everyone's talking, so I fell for it.
ignoring your misunderstanding of the notorious McDonald's coffee case
Thanks. With so many others to choose from, I'll have no need to refer to that one!
The women are being sued. The chance that they will be awarded damages is zero. How many lawyers are going to come running to some woman's defense simply because she denies downloading music? Zero. Nobody is going to help her because there isn't any money, and lawyers that work pro bono have their plates full with more important matters.
I've been operating on the assumption that the women in question did nothing wrong, and that the RIAA is suing them completely without merit. I suppose I should read more, but the tone of most of the comments here suggests that the two women have not in fact been infringing, etc., and that there is no basis for their being sued. That being said, I would imagine that there are, in fact, plenty of lawyers that would like 30% or so of the proceeds from counter-suing the RIAA, on behalf of the two women, looking for punitive damages because they brough a baseless, life-sucking suit against them.
Or, is it that they (the RIAA) actually have a clear-cut case, here, that no lawyer would bother to step in on those grounds?
The Australian government has already begun passing draconian laws of its own, following the cue of Bush, and I have no doubt that more will follow.
Not a big student of the way legislation works in the US, are you? Since you're not being specific, we'll have to assume you're not talking about any of the legislation that was passed in large majorities by both Bush's party and that party's political opponents. There aren't many of consequence that don't fit that profile. "Draconian?" Nice FUD, minus any details.
They are more powerful than you because they have more money than you, and that's all that matters in the United States in 2005
Which is why you can get a $20-million settlement for spilling your hot coffee in your lap while driving, or $250-million from a pharmaceutical company whose product had nothing to do with the death of your already cardio-dying husband.
The seemingly-crazy imbalance in the courts is scarcely all going one direction.
I'd be a lot happier, of course, if people who clearly did not deserve an incoming suit (say, because some single mom's wireless net connection was being hijacked by the 13-year-old next door who WAS too cheap to pay for his entertainment) could, with no real resources of their own, countersue to recover their legal expenses and the loss of their time and energy. On the other hand, nobody's got a decent reason, at this point, for pretending shock if they get a wake-up letter from anyone that holds a copyright when they're caught red handed abusing it.
Or, you could err on the side of assuming that my observation (about silly people thinking that their electric cars have no energy impact, or that assume that hydrogen is somehow going to be magic without an enormous change to the country's infrastructure and willingness to use nuclear energy) is, well... based on considered, thinking awareness of how people read (and fail to think about) shallowly reported news.
The GP's use of a story about a Canadian company's highly dubious $7,500-per-car product to get in a baseless, just plain silly, gratuitous stab at the administration (which has put considerably more dough into alternative energy research than any before it) was a trolling little bit o' flamebait, and of course one shouldn't bother.
Mainly because said rubes, marks and/or suckers will immediately associate this with President Bush's much-vaunted "hydrogen economy" and assume that it's already here.
Is that really the best you can do? For there to even be a butt of that joke, you have to assume that at least a lot of people are very stupid about hydrogen. Where's all the fun you should be having with the people that think that hydrogen-powered cars aren't all going to be powered by existing forms of energy anyway? It's the people that hate Bush the most that are the most deluded about "green" hydrogen cars. "It will be great! I'll just get some clean hydrogen from seawater, thus lowering ocean levels currently being raised by evil SUV drivers, or I'll just plug in my rechargable battery car at home and use no hydrocarbons!"
There's a lot more humor to be had from the witless Greens in, say, Hollywood, than there is in the people you're making up.
Because I don't find selling an OS on a machine to be illegal. The fact that I can walk into Walmart and buy a machine running Linux shouldn't be illegal, and likewise with XP or OS X.
Computer vendors want to sell computers. They want to be competitive doing so. They know that most users are nothing at all like you or most other tach savvy people. So they want to install an OS that people already use, because it's easier to support, and because people won't bitch at them when they realize that their grandkid can't install a simple game on it. How does a vendor make the most of that situation? For many of them, they strike a deal with the company that makes the product most other people use.
But for some bumbling on their part, Apple would have been the fortunate ones (timing-wise). So might have Next, or IBM with OS/2.
To quote Balmer...
Know anyone, personally, that's worked with, say, Steve Jobs? Do you really think that Balmer is the only one who spouts off while in a pissy mood? Jobs is sometimes off the scale, that way. So is Scott McNealy sometimes. So is Larry Ellison. And I do believe we've even heard Linus quoted as being in a bad mood sometimes. Certainly Stallman has said any number of completely over-the-top things.
That's how they operate, and it's illegal and amoral.
So, right now, with every state and federal government agency continually breathing down their necks, your take on it is that Microsoft is actually writing "illegal" contracts? And no one but people who don't like them are noticing? It's funny, because when I buy servers from places like Dell, they're certainly happy to include, or not, the OS of my choice. Well, I can't get Novell anymore, or OS/2, but you get my point.
Maybe visit here, and notice that you can load up that server with various MS products, or with SUSE, or Red Hat, or nothing at all if that's what you want. Shockingly illegal, no doubt!
I don't want to be excessively rude, but many people really need to get their heads out of thier arses on this matter. From your post, it appears that your head may only be partially inserted.
Come on now. If you're following the thread, you know that I responded to the notion that only those who sell fuel are profiting from our releasing greenhouse gasses, etc. My point isn't that they don't, and I sure as hell wasn't talking about how efficiently we use hydrocarbons (though you'll note my express encouragement that we use more nukes and other non-oil energies)... no, my point is that huge swaths of other human activities (certainly in their current scope, and involving the sheer number of people now seen) wouldn't happen without energy use. To the extent that we're using a lot of oil as part of that energy, well, there you have it. But you can't suggest that someone who produces crops of wheat for a living (and makes a family/business-sustaining profit doing so) would be doing it as well, or would be feeding as many people, without his internal combustion heavy equipment.
Not to say there aren't other ways to move 20 tons of grain across a field in 10 minutes, but using 50 mules and a team of handlers, and farming even more and to feed the mules... well, that's not very efficient either.
Let me take the liberty of taking your comments slightly out of order...
Crappy math & science in schools can only lead to our countries loss of power, wealth, and leadership of the world. That means fewer good employees available and fewer customers. Not a good thing for IBM (or the US) so it makes sense to keep their revenue stream fertilized. Their throw aways today can be money in their pocket tomorrow if handled right.
Yup.
this is really altrustic
Well, not really! You just described healthy, self-interested investment. And like most investment, the investors are doing what works for them, but the vehicles for that investment (jobs, customers, suppliers, infrastructure, and so on) mean that other people also benefit. Now, if everyone would look out for themselves with as much carefully applied creativity, we'd all be way ahead of the game. I think people confuse "altruism" with "participating in the economy."
Would you want your child to become a Paris Hilton or even a Peter Jackson?
Do you really think that Peter Jackson is anything like Paris Hilton? The guy just produced a monumental masterpiece in the form of three films brilliantly adapting a literary masterpiece. A cast and crew of literally thousands, and a relatively unknown cast (by modern celebrity standards). It could never have been made without a lot of cash to pay all of those people. That you can't make the distinction between work like that, and some silly strumpet like Paris Hilton doesn't much help with your credibility on the economics of the thing.
Not only does it help the industry, in the very long term it can come back to help IBM.
Which makes it a shrewd investment, not altruism. Not to take the warm-and-fuzzy off of it, or anything... but that's exactly what I would expect and hope a company of that size to be keeping in mind. They need a prosperous, educated, technically savvy population for their business model to succeed, so they're taking steps to help shape that future. That other people will benefit in terms of their own quality of life is exactly how capitalism is supposed to work - mutually beneficial participation. If IBM wants a certain type of future customer or employee to be available, they can act (or pay other people to act) to make that happen.
This seems like fantastic foresight on IBM's part
Yup, but let's not confuse it with "altruism," which is a dead end street. And, of course, it's a fair bet they're also prepping the way out the door for at least some of the people they'd otherwise be having to let go anyway, as they change to a strictly service structure.
So whether you think lack of availability is justification for piracy or not, it is not legitimate to dismiss it as a solved problem.
A little context, then, please. The "I pirate because my local store doesn't sell it" guy didn't come across as a big fan of obscure, hard-to-obtain (under any circumstances) South African protest music. Never the less, that material is out there, and as you point out, for sale. I'm not suggesting that performance of every high school piano recital, local glee club barbershop quartet, or even studio recording of truly first-rate jazz band, symphony, or speed metal act is going to be a few easy mouse clicks and a micropayment away (yet). But being frustrated about that, while the people with rights to sell that material learn that there is not only an interest, but a paying market for it online, doesn't mean that it's right to throw up your hands and make P2P the main (let alone only) means by which you get your entertainment - especially that entertainment that a musician (whom it would appear one respects enough to want their music) is asking you to pay for.
Ridley Scott's 1492 comes to mind as one of the tens of thousands of such movies unavailable in the USA.
Then Ridley Scott (whom I greatly respect) has made a very poor business decision in the way that he's letting a studio handle the distribution of his work. That will change, as this stuff becomes more workable for the big chunks of data that a high-def "1492" would require.
None of this was possible a few short years ago. Letting the entertainment industry catch up with restless technophiles is part of the deal (since those are the companies that the artists have chosen to represent them). It sure as hell isn't a reason to cultivate a culture full of I'm-pissy-so-I'll-steal-it kids that will some day grow up to have kids... maybe some of which will wonder why they can no longer aspire to be the next Peter Jackson since no one will risk hundreds of millions of dollars to make something that only the "chumps" will pay to see.
I hear that firearms and automobiles are abused too; even employed in the commission of much more serious crimes than copyright infringement. But I don't hear the RIAA calling for bans on them.
Of course, firearm and automobile manufactrers don't encourage people to shoot innocent bystanders or drive drunk, either. In fact, they fall all overthemselves to lecture people about the appropriate use of their products.
And in this case, the RIAA is only sending letters to those entities that, like Grokster, are still doing the old nudge-nudge-wink-wink about spreading around copyrighted material, or even actively promoting their protocols/clients as the means by which to do such. They're not talking about "banning" P2P - they're talking about the people who produce and promote tools expressly with pirating in mind. That's not everyone in the P2P world, but it is some of them, and they got the letters. You'd think, seeing what happened to Grokster when they were being jackasses about it, there wouldn't be anyone producing such tools without trying, at least on the face of it, to discourage stupid behavior.
Did you actually read the damn article? The P2P people receiving the letters (not BitTorrent, for example - though mentioned in the article as a P2P entity, they DID NOT RECEIVE THE LETTER) were chosen because, just like Grokster, their actions and message to their users deliberately supports copyright infringement, and encourages people to use their systems in order to lay hands on copyrighted material without paying the asked-for price. BitTorrent and others did not get the letter, because they're not acting that way.
It's not the availibility of P2P that makes me download music. It's the fact that I CANNOT find good music in ANY store around here.
So... this is really about you not having a credit card? Because every recording imaginable is available to buy online.
MAKE Music not SHIT
So... it's not about what's in your stores, but about what's being made? Which is it? If you're out pirating copies of music you want because you can't buy it in your local stores, that sort of implies that there is music you want, doesn't it? And if there isn't any music you want, anywhere, what are you downloading? Crap you don't really like, just to teach "them" a lesson?
Come on, man, you're contradicting yourself all over the place, here. If you really are willing to buy music, just go online and buy it. You can find free shipping, immediately delivery - and every kind of music recorded, both from larger labels and indy artists/studios. You must know what sort of music you like, and which artists you respect enough to pay what they're asking for their work, and since you're posting here, we can assume you know how to use Google... go buy it online! Put the got-no-taste local record shops out of business if they can't see that you're standing there, money in hand, wanting to buy something they don't feel like carrying. Someone else carries it - someone * 1000, and they'll be thrilled to have you as a customer.
If you read the article, you would see that a source was cited for that statement
I suppose my gripe, then, would be about citing Wikipedia, rather than citing the actual source. It just serves to bolster the point being discussed, rather than to bolster the notion of Wikipedia as an authoritative entity in and of itself.
How many eyes cross a Britannica article before being published? I don't know either...
Nope, me neither. But I wasn't thinking of them (though they are easy to point to, and somewhat accountable, and can tell you who their editors are). No, I was thinking more in terms of established journals with rigorous, transparent peer review practices and a history of refining the larger body of research as more is conducted. That's not to say that nothing of that caliber makes it onto Wikipedia - it's that it's hard to tell which is which. I could post a completely ridiculous entry there, and then make a somewhat intelligent-sounding post here, referencing that Wiki article... and many, many people would take what is thus argued as gospel (less so here on slashdot, but very much so in many other venues, like twit-blogs). That's what bothers me. Of course it's somewhat self-correcting over the long haul, but not before lots of FUD or sugarcoating gets passed around.
you and your organization are so short sighted and plan so badly that the only way your systems attract your attention at all is to crash
Where, in what I wrote, did you see me even suggesting it was "my" organization? I'm a consultant. I was there, with no prior exposure to their systems, to help them out of an unrelated emergency problem. I noticed the newly ailing Novell box while trying to understand what was on that side of a firewall chewing up bandwidth. That particular server was something none of them even knew to worry about.
Further, if you actually think about what I said, it's not the failure I found interesting as I read this morning's news, it's Novell's increasing obscurity to the markets that it not so long ago essentially owned. That, considering the fact that the server had been chugging along all that time anyway, was the poetic part (vis a vis the 400 engineers still laboring away Novell today - well, so far, anyway).
Wow. I'm not sure what it is about my original comment that seems to make people want to insert facts other than, or beyond those I mentioned. Oh well.
Would this really be ANY sort of issue at all if it weren't so darned profitable for some people that we emit a bunch of greenhouse gases?
When you say "some people," you mean, of course "pretty much everyone that's currently alive." Right?
Because everything from refrigeration of antibiotics to high-yield/acre farming and the treatment of potable water involves energy consumption. More nukes, etc., would certainly be a good (and less hazy) thing, so I'm all for that and whatever other little nudges we can make here and there with solar, etc. But to suggest that the only beneficiaries (thus, those that profit) of our energy use are the people that extract/sell it... well, that's completely ignorning the benefits/profits of every family, farmer, business, etc. that uses energy as part of their daily lives.
Is it just me, or does anyone else get a small case of the hives when that's how a comment starts? Of course, people who say that hopefully mean, "According to a person who posted something on Wikipedia, and the persistent people who agree with him..." - but it's looking more and more as though people are treating that overgrown blog like a credibly peer-reviewed, scientific-method-powered, authoritative entity that has collected The Truth And Facts on... everything.
Of course, there's no reason not to trust a web site that also profiles porn stars, fishing lures, bad sitcoms, acne, beer brewing, and the history of toenail clippers as an indisputable source of climatalogical analysis. Oh wait, yes there is.
If only President Clinton had ratified the Kyoto Protocol, this would never have happened.
That isn't flamebait. It's subtle (or, not so subtle) semi-satire. There's nothing like the getting the Stick Of Truth stuck in your eye. Kyoto wouldn't have done doodly along these lines. It would have been the first step towards bankrupting and throwing into long-term chaos the very economies (with the slowest-growing populations) that are in the best position to develop less impactful energy sources and uses. To the extent that it even matters, apparently. When those same treaty-urges include China, India, etc., we'll talk.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, why use personal names anyways. Why not simply call them Hurricane 2005_21 or 2005_145. Is this really a problem?
Wow, you are a nerd reading the news! Surely, though, binary would be better?
"All everybody - we recommend you fill up a couple of old milk jugs with some tap water, buy a bag full of snack bars, and get on the bus, becuse Hurricane 01010010011010010111010001100001 is on the way!"
Nah, I think it's easier to look back on certain storms, for comparison's sake, with easier to remember names. "This one will be just about as bad as Camille" immediately resonates with people who were there, whereas "This will be a right proper 1969_03, this will!" just doesn't have the same cultural staying power.
Why is this news?
Because with a news summary like that, more poeple can Freak Out(tm) about how my SUV is causing us to run out of storm names.
Can anyone explain to me why P2P companies / applications have such silly names?
Because despite the uber-nerd population of slashdot that sees things through their own particularly technical/net-savvy lens, the vast majority of the people who pumped up the usage of Napster, for example, were your basic teenage pop music fans that wanted for free what they used to have to spend their lawn mowing and baby sitting money on (that is, CDs). You can read up on Napster history, but it doesn't take much familiarity with the wildly unoriginal nature of many geek types to see why they embraced the "ster" suffix to evoke the original underground-ish atmosphere of the original.
Mostly, though, the whole notion of trafficking in commercial products outside of the channels through which the producers of those products are selling them presents an air of edginess and secret-societyness. The services/protocols/clients that are created to try slipping, once again, around copyrights, simply won't take with their deliberate users unless they convey a hipper-than-thou feeling that includes a sort of synthetic cyber-branding coolness to it. Basically, if a company like that has a name that would in anyway interest, appeal to, or convey credibility the parents of most of the users, it will flop. Hence, only in total irony will we ever hear of "National Bank Of Music" or "Home Music Depot" or some other normal-consumer-oriented name. That the creators of some of these systems feel an urge to sound exotic, or slightly dangerous says a lot about the packaging they feel they need. In most cases, though, I think it's the equivalent of wearing Xtremely Baggy Pants, even to the point of not being able to walk up and down stairs, just so a certain audience will feel an immediate clannishness about it. Or, for other users, the odd name makes them feel like they're headed into some mysterious land of free riches, as long as they know the secret word.
No doubt many such names are based on particular inside jokes, obscure acronyms, or other things that can't translate to a wider audience without either explanation or guesswork.
Of course you might have once said the same thing about "Amazon" or "eBay," in a very luke-warm sort of way. "Amazon" at least conveys a sense of adventure (in reading, orginally), while millions of readers would no doubt be stumped trying to explain the derivation of "eBay" (fwiw, it was orginally "AuctionWeb" and was part of a site owned by Echo Bay Technology... and the rest is history). At least frameworks like BitTorrent are actually labeled something related to what they are, not that that's necessary, but labeling something deliberately to make you have to guess what it is, or need to be part of the secret club, suggests a certain adolescent sensibility... oh, wait.
idea that legions of predatory lawyers are going to come to her aid merely because she claims she's innocent is laughable.
Well, my mistake, then. I thought, based on the other comments, that their innocence in this case was a foregone, demonstrable conclusion. That's certainly how everyone's talking, so I fell for it.
ignoring your misunderstanding of the notorious McDonald's coffee case
Thanks. With so many others to choose from, I'll have no need to refer to that one!
The women are being sued. The chance that they will be awarded damages is zero. How many lawyers are going to come running to some woman's defense simply because she denies downloading music? Zero. Nobody is going to help her because there isn't any money, and lawyers that work pro bono have their plates full with more important matters.
I've been operating on the assumption that the women in question did nothing wrong, and that the RIAA is suing them completely without merit. I suppose I should read more, but the tone of most of the comments here suggests that the two women have not in fact been infringing, etc., and that there is no basis for their being sued. That being said, I would imagine that there are, in fact, plenty of lawyers that would like 30% or so of the proceeds from counter-suing the RIAA, on behalf of the two women, looking for punitive damages because they brough a baseless, life-sucking suit against them.
Or, is it that they (the RIAA) actually have a clear-cut case, here, that no lawyer would bother to step in on those grounds?
The Australian government has already begun passing draconian laws of its own, following the cue of Bush, and I have no doubt that more will follow.
Not a big student of the way legislation works in the US, are you? Since you're not being specific, we'll have to assume you're not talking about any of the legislation that was passed in large majorities by both Bush's party and that party's political opponents. There aren't many of consequence that don't fit that profile. "Draconian?" Nice FUD, minus any details.
They are more powerful than you because they have more money than you, and that's all that matters in the United States in 2005
Which is why you can get a $20-million settlement for spilling your hot coffee in your lap while driving, or $250-million from a pharmaceutical company whose product had nothing to do with the death of your already cardio-dying husband.
The seemingly-crazy imbalance in the courts is scarcely all going one direction.
I'd be a lot happier, of course, if people who clearly did not deserve an incoming suit (say, because some single mom's wireless net connection was being hijacked by the 13-year-old next door who WAS too cheap to pay for his entertainment) could, with no real resources of their own, countersue to recover their legal expenses and the loss of their time and energy. On the other hand, nobody's got a decent reason, at this point, for pretending shock if they get a wake-up letter from anyone that holds a copyright when they're caught red handed abusing it.
That's right. Don't think. Just counterattack!
You mean, like you just did to me?
Or, you could err on the side of assuming that my observation (about silly people thinking that their electric cars have no energy impact, or that assume that hydrogen is somehow going to be magic without an enormous change to the country's infrastructure and willingness to use nuclear energy) is, well... based on considered, thinking awareness of how people read (and fail to think about) shallowly reported news.
The GP's use of a story about a Canadian company's highly dubious $7,500-per-car product to get in a baseless, just plain silly, gratuitous stab at the administration (which has put considerably more dough into alternative energy research than any before it) was a trolling little bit o' flamebait, and of course one shouldn't bother.
Mainly because said rubes, marks and/or suckers will immediately associate this with President Bush's much-vaunted "hydrogen economy" and assume that it's already here.
Is that really the best you can do? For there to even be a butt of that joke, you have to assume that at least a lot of people are very stupid about hydrogen. Where's all the fun you should be having with the people that think that hydrogen-powered cars aren't all going to be powered by existing forms of energy anyway? It's the people that hate Bush the most that are the most deluded about "green" hydrogen cars. "It will be great! I'll just get some clean hydrogen from seawater, thus lowering ocean levels currently being raised by evil SUV drivers, or I'll just plug in my rechargable battery car at home and use no hydrocarbons!"
There's a lot more humor to be had from the witless Greens in, say, Hollywood, than there is in the people you're making up.
Thank you. That was lucid and interesting.
Why do you defend
Because I don't find selling an OS on a machine to be illegal. The fact that I can walk into Walmart and buy a machine running Linux shouldn't be illegal, and likewise with XP or OS X.
Computer vendors want to sell computers. They want to be competitive doing so. They know that most users are nothing at all like you or most other tach savvy people. So they want to install an OS that people already use, because it's easier to support, and because people won't bitch at them when they realize that their grandkid can't install a simple game on it. How does a vendor make the most of that situation? For many of them, they strike a deal with the company that makes the product most other people use.
But for some bumbling on their part, Apple would have been the fortunate ones (timing-wise). So might have Next, or IBM with OS/2.
To quote Balmer...
Know anyone, personally, that's worked with, say, Steve Jobs? Do you really think that Balmer is the only one who spouts off while in a pissy mood? Jobs is sometimes off the scale, that way. So is Scott McNealy sometimes. So is Larry Ellison. And I do believe we've even heard Linus quoted as being in a bad mood sometimes. Certainly Stallman has said any number of completely over-the-top things.
That's how they operate, and it's illegal and amoral.
So, right now, with every state and federal government agency continually breathing down their necks, your take on it is that Microsoft is actually writing "illegal" contracts? And no one but people who don't like them are noticing? It's funny, because when I buy servers from places like Dell, they're certainly happy to include, or not, the OS of my choice. Well, I can't get Novell anymore, or OS/2, but you get my point.
Maybe visit here, and notice that you can load up that server with various MS products, or with SUSE, or Red Hat, or nothing at all if that's what you want. Shockingly illegal, no doubt!
I don't want to be excessively rude, but many people really need to get their heads out of thier arses on this matter. From your post, it appears that your head may only be partially inserted.
Come on now. If you're following the thread, you know that I responded to the notion that only those who sell fuel are profiting from our releasing greenhouse gasses, etc. My point isn't that they don't, and I sure as hell wasn't talking about how efficiently we use hydrocarbons (though you'll note my express encouragement that we use more nukes and other non-oil energies)... no, my point is that huge swaths of other human activities (certainly in their current scope, and involving the sheer number of people now seen) wouldn't happen without energy use. To the extent that we're using a lot of oil as part of that energy, well, there you have it. But you can't suggest that someone who produces crops of wheat for a living (and makes a family/business-sustaining profit doing so) would be doing it as well, or would be feeding as many people, without his internal combustion heavy equipment.
Not to say there aren't other ways to move 20 tons of grain across a field in 10 minutes, but using 50 mules and a team of handlers, and farming even more and to feed the mules... well, that's not very efficient either.
I don't want to be excessively rude
Nah, I think you do, actually.
Let me take the liberty of taking your comments slightly out of order...
Crappy math & science in schools can only lead to our countries loss of power, wealth, and leadership of the world. That means fewer good employees available and fewer customers. Not a good thing for IBM (or the US) so it makes sense to keep their revenue stream fertilized. Their throw aways today can be money in their pocket tomorrow if handled right.
Yup.
this is really altrustic
Well, not really! You just described healthy, self-interested investment. And like most investment, the investors are doing what works for them, but the vehicles for that investment (jobs, customers, suppliers, infrastructure, and so on) mean that other people also benefit. Now, if everyone would look out for themselves with as much carefully applied creativity, we'd all be way ahead of the game. I think people confuse "altruism" with "participating in the economy."
Would you want your child to become a Paris Hilton or even a Peter Jackson?
Do you really think that Peter Jackson is anything like Paris Hilton? The guy just produced a monumental masterpiece in the form of three films brilliantly adapting a literary masterpiece. A cast and crew of literally thousands, and a relatively unknown cast (by modern celebrity standards). It could never have been made without a lot of cash to pay all of those people. That you can't make the distinction between work like that, and some silly strumpet like Paris Hilton doesn't much help with your credibility on the economics of the thing.
Not only does it help the industry, in the very long term it can come back to help IBM.
Which makes it a shrewd investment, not altruism. Not to take the warm-and-fuzzy off of it, or anything... but that's exactly what I would expect and hope a company of that size to be keeping in mind. They need a prosperous, educated, technically savvy population for their business model to succeed, so they're taking steps to help shape that future. That other people will benefit in terms of their own quality of life is exactly how capitalism is supposed to work - mutually beneficial participation. If IBM wants a certain type of future customer or employee to be available, they can act (or pay other people to act) to make that happen.
This seems like fantastic foresight on IBM's part
Yup, but let's not confuse it with "altruism," which is a dead end street. And, of course, it's a fair bet they're also prepping the way out the door for at least some of the people they'd otherwise be having to let go anyway, as they change to a strictly service structure.
So whether you think lack of availability is justification for piracy or not, it is not legitimate to dismiss it as a solved problem.
A little context, then, please. The "I pirate because my local store doesn't sell it" guy didn't come across as a big fan of obscure, hard-to-obtain (under any circumstances) South African protest music. Never the less, that material is out there, and as you point out, for sale. I'm not suggesting that performance of every high school piano recital, local glee club barbershop quartet, or even studio recording of truly first-rate jazz band, symphony, or speed metal act is going to be a few easy mouse clicks and a micropayment away (yet). But being frustrated about that, while the people with rights to sell that material learn that there is not only an interest, but a paying market for it online, doesn't mean that it's right to throw up your hands and make P2P the main (let alone only) means by which you get your entertainment - especially that entertainment that a musician (whom it would appear one respects enough to want their music) is asking you to pay for.
Ridley Scott's 1492 comes to mind as one of the tens of thousands of such movies unavailable in the USA.
Then Ridley Scott (whom I greatly respect) has made a very poor business decision in the way that he's letting a studio handle the distribution of his work. That will change, as this stuff becomes more workable for the big chunks of data that a high-def "1492" would require.
None of this was possible a few short years ago. Letting the entertainment industry catch up with restless technophiles is part of the deal (since those are the companies that the artists have chosen to represent them). It sure as hell isn't a reason to cultivate a culture full of I'm-pissy-so-I'll-steal-it kids that will some day grow up to have kids... maybe some of which will wonder why they can no longer aspire to be the next Peter Jackson since no one will risk hundreds of millions of dollars to make something that only the "chumps" will pay to see.
I hear that firearms and automobiles are abused too; even employed in the commission of much more serious crimes than copyright infringement. But I don't hear the RIAA calling for bans on them.
Of course, firearm and automobile manufactrers don't encourage people to shoot innocent bystanders or drive drunk, either. In fact, they fall all overthemselves to lecture people about the appropriate use of their products.
And in this case, the RIAA is only sending letters to those entities that, like Grokster, are still doing the old nudge-nudge-wink-wink about spreading around copyrighted material, or even actively promoting their protocols/clients as the means by which to do such. They're not talking about "banning" P2P - they're talking about the people who produce and promote tools expressly with pirating in mind. That's not everyone in the P2P world, but it is some of them, and they got the letters. You'd think, seeing what happened to Grokster when they were being jackasses about it, there wouldn't be anyone producing such tools without trying, at least on the face of it, to discourage stupid behavior.
Did you actually read the damn article? The P2P people receiving the letters (not BitTorrent, for example - though mentioned in the article as a P2P entity, they DID NOT RECEIVE THE LETTER) were chosen because, just like Grokster, their actions and message to their users deliberately supports copyright infringement, and encourages people to use their systems in order to lay hands on copyrighted material without paying the asked-for price. BitTorrent and others did not get the letter, because they're not acting that way.
It's not the availibility of P2P that makes me download music. It's the fact that I CANNOT find good music in ANY store around here.
So... this is really about you not having a credit card? Because every recording imaginable is available to buy online.
MAKE Music not SHIT
So... it's not about what's in your stores, but about what's being made? Which is it? If you're out pirating copies of music you want because you can't buy it in your local stores, that sort of implies that there is music you want, doesn't it? And if there isn't any music you want, anywhere, what are you downloading? Crap you don't really like, just to teach "them" a lesson?
Come on, man, you're contradicting yourself all over the place, here. If you really are willing to buy music, just go online and buy it. You can find free shipping, immediately delivery - and every kind of music recorded, both from larger labels and indy artists/studios. You must know what sort of music you like, and which artists you respect enough to pay what they're asking for their work, and since you're posting here, we can assume you know how to use Google... go buy it online! Put the got-no-taste local record shops out of business if they can't see that you're standing there, money in hand, wanting to buy something they don't feel like carrying. Someone else carries it - someone * 1000, and they'll be thrilled to have you as a customer.
If you read the article, you would see that a source was cited for that statement
I suppose my gripe, then, would be about citing Wikipedia, rather than citing the actual source. It just serves to bolster the point being discussed, rather than to bolster the notion of Wikipedia as an authoritative entity in and of itself.
How many eyes cross a Britannica article before being published? I don't know either...
Nope, me neither. But I wasn't thinking of them (though they are easy to point to, and somewhat accountable, and can tell you who their editors are). No, I was thinking more in terms of established journals with rigorous, transparent peer review practices and a history of refining the larger body of research as more is conducted. That's not to say that nothing of that caliber makes it onto Wikipedia - it's that it's hard to tell which is which. I could post a completely ridiculous entry there, and then make a somewhat intelligent-sounding post here, referencing that Wiki article... and many, many people would take what is thus argued as gospel (less so here on slashdot, but very much so in many other venues, like twit-blogs). That's what bothers me. Of course it's somewhat self-correcting over the long haul, but not before lots of FUD or sugarcoating gets passed around.
you and your organization are so short sighted and plan so badly that the only way your systems attract your attention at all is to crash
Where, in what I wrote, did you see me even suggesting it was "my" organization? I'm a consultant. I was there, with no prior exposure to their systems, to help them out of an unrelated emergency problem. I noticed the newly ailing Novell box while trying to understand what was on that side of a firewall chewing up bandwidth. That particular server was something none of them even knew to worry about.
Further, if you actually think about what I said, it's not the failure I found interesting as I read this morning's news, it's Novell's increasing obscurity to the markets that it not so long ago essentially owned. That, considering the fact that the server had been chugging along all that time anyway, was the poetic part (vis a vis the 400 engineers still laboring away Novell today - well, so far, anyway).
Wow. I'm not sure what it is about my original comment that seems to make people want to insert facts other than, or beyond those I mentioned. Oh well.
Are the facts they are quoting wrong?
Sometimes, or are questionable when the article is full highly politicized references or links to idealogical sites.
Do you have some corrections?
Sometimes.
don't just try and attack the source
You'll notice I didn't. I was expressing concern over how readily people are starting to, without any caveats, refer to Wikipedia as authoritative.
Would this really be ANY sort of issue at all if it weren't so darned profitable for some people that we emit a bunch of greenhouse gases?
When you say "some people," you mean, of course "pretty much everyone that's currently alive." Right?
Because everything from refrigeration of antibiotics to high-yield/acre farming and the treatment of potable water involves energy consumption. More nukes, etc., would certainly be a good (and less hazy) thing, so I'm all for that and whatever other little nudges we can make here and there with solar, etc. But to suggest that the only beneficiaries (thus, those that profit) of our energy use are the people that extract/sell it... well, that's completely ignorning the benefits/profits of every family, farmer, business, etc. that uses energy as part of their daily lives.
According to wikipedia...
Is it just me, or does anyone else get a small case of the hives when that's how a comment starts? Of course, people who say that hopefully mean, "According to a person who posted something on Wikipedia, and the persistent people who agree with him..." - but it's looking more and more as though people are treating that overgrown blog like a credibly peer-reviewed, scientific-method-powered, authoritative entity that has collected The Truth And Facts on... everything.
Of course, there's no reason not to trust a web site that also profiles porn stars, fishing lures, bad sitcoms, acne, beer brewing, and the history of toenail clippers as an indisputable source of climatalogical analysis. Oh wait, yes there is.
If only President Clinton had ratified the Kyoto Protocol, this would never have happened.
That isn't flamebait. It's subtle (or, not so subtle) semi-satire. There's nothing like the getting the Stick Of Truth stuck in your eye. Kyoto wouldn't have done doodly along these lines. It would have been the first step towards bankrupting and throwing into long-term chaos the very economies (with the slowest-growing populations) that are in the best position to develop less impactful energy sources and uses. To the extent that it even matters, apparently. When those same treaty-urges include China, India, etc., we'll talk.