I've always used support@whateverdomainimsigningupat. support@real.com for realplayer, support@apple.com for quicktime, that sorta thing. Doesn't always work, but if you mix up the account name enough, you can usually make sure that all your spam is sent to the people trying to spam you.
You can write (or, probably more likely, snag someone else's writing off google, you pirate) as long of a diatribe as you wish, but this:
(3) I believe that piracy is driven by "overpriced CDs" even though CDs have dropped in price over the years.
invalidates every point you try to make. CDs used to be $12 a pop. Then they were $15 a pop. Now they're $18 to $20 a pop unless they're the current top-ten and you get 'em at Best Buy.
They have NOT been dropping in price over the years. A $12 -> $20 increase is not a drop, and I'm willing to bet it's not a drop even if you include inflation.
This guy is stating 32-33mpg city in his hybrid. I have a 2000 Celica GT-S that gets somewhere around 29mph city, so that really isn't that much of a difference, and believe me when I say I don't take it particularly easy on the gas pedal in my car. It's good that it's better, but I would really expect more in that situation...
Heh, I'm guessing you can't give me any hints about why MI:4 won't run on my machine at home. I've been re-visiting all those old games in anticipation for Sam & Max 2, but I can't get MI:4 to run for the life of me.
Kidding, of course, I just needed a good reason to add another positive comment for the MI games. Now, to find a talkie version of Sam & Max somewhere....
Probably exceedingly easy. The control schemes on Sam & Max, Monkey Island, Full Throttle, etc were all very simplistic, and easily ported over to a console. Especially the newer ones that rely on a few keyboard movements rather than the mouse.
That being said, I don't think Escape from Monkey Island did too well in the console market. It wasn't advertised very heavily, and almost everyone who remembered the old Monkey Island games still owns a computer, and would prefer to play it on a computer. I bought my copy for the PC, and despite how much I want to support the franchise, I didn't buy a second copy for my console.
(I did recently buy it *again* for the PC though, if only to get the Mega Monkey bundle that comes with Monkey Island 1-4).
I used to pull the heads off my sister's Barbies(tm). I have no desire to decapitate all nearby blondes.
I already enjoyed my fantasy playworld with such depravity. The only difference now is that I have a digital medium over a plastic medium. I used to grind the heads off my little green army guys with the wheel of my bike, I used to crash my Hot Wheels cars, I used to attach firecrackers to my Estes rockets. Despite that, I've never punched anyone, I've never kicked a puppy, and I've never eaten a baby.
Were GTA3 to not exist, many young men would do the same thing with their sister's Barbie, Ken, and their associate Corvette toys.
Except that most people are stealing games that you can play anywhere and movies that you can find in Blockbuster. And I notice you didn't include music in that statement.
Two responses:
1) I don't know what most poeple are doing, as I'm not involved in the modern game warez community. I do know that sometimes I want to revive games that I loved as a kid and want to play again. I downloaded Super Dodge Ball, River City Ransom, and Bubble Bobble because I didn't know where else to get 'em. Admittedly, I played them for about 15 minutes, but it was great to play them again.
2) We're not talking about music. That's why it wasn't mentioned.
The preservation argument only gets you so far, and it doesn't address the concept that the game's owners might and should have control over how their stuff is "preserved." Nintendo certainly speaks loudly on this issue, since they "preserve" all their old games by continually re-releasing them. If a game company declares that Game X is public domain, then by all means, preserve away. Until that time, it's still stealing.
So we have to sit here and *hope* that some company will release an old game? I know people that have been waiting for either a re-release or a faithful update of Kid Icarus for many years now, but there are no signs of that happening. Your theory ONLY works if the publishers will work with the community, which they haven't done so far. They don't decide which games they think they can re-release in a collection and make money, then release the rest as freeware. Instead, they hold onto everything they've ever created, even if there are a grand total of 5 fans out there on the intarweb, and only release the ones that are the most popular. The tyranny of the majority and all that.
I don't think this would be a question if the smaller games were released as freeware. If Nintendo would go through their rom library, identify all those that they think they can make money off of, then designate the others are freely distributable as roms, there would be no discussion. In the current situtation, there's nothing that makes this any more than a few fans who would like to relive an old memory vs. a company that doesn't stand to make any money. It's a no-win situation, one that could easily be rectified by releasing the game, a win-win situation in which the old fans get to relive their memories, and they, in turn, now like and will support the publisher.
I have been hunting high and low for Sabotage from the Apple II. I understand it's on the iPod as "Parachute" or something similar, but I'd love to find a copy of the original. I played that game for maybe 4 years before my Apple died...I want to see it again!!
During the last days of eToys, we had some chairs that were probably similarly priced to Aerons, but were some other type. I wish I could remember what they were, as they were far superior, IMHO.
We have Aerons at my company now, and they also gave them to all employees who stuck around 6 months or so after the last round of layoffs, so I have one at home as well. They are comfortable, but both my office one and my home one have developed the same problem with the armrests. Eventually, they get loosened up, so when the adjustment screw is tightened up, they can wiggle back and forth and relatively easily slide back down to their lowest position.
Given that I rarely put any pressure on the arm rests and almost never actually have my arms on them, it seems odd that they'd both get that problem.
This is true to a point, but Project Gotham 2 on the Xbox has already lasted since November, which in the gaming world is quite a while. I still find many, many players on there.
I'm sure that this has more to do with it being probably the single best racing sim on the console market (at least you can lock the brakes, you can't do that in Gran Turismo), but nonetheless, the excellent matching system it's got definitely helps the situation.
I don't know about the demolishing, but I'm shocked he even got it back. My roommate in college had his truck broken into, and a neighbor saw this while it was happening and called the police. The police came and actually caught the guys doing it while they were trying to run off with the stereo.
They took it in as evidence and told him he'd get his stereo back pretty quickly. That was about 6 years ago, and I don't think he ever got it back. Funny how catching the theives in the act didn't actually prevent it from getting stolen...
What happened is that I'm willing to bet, and I think most others here are as well, that the guy selling those CDs is not the one who is copying them, printing up the covers for them, packaging them, and distributing them. I almost see these guys as your standard Herbalife salesmen who, while dumb as hell, assume they're doing something legal.
While I realize that most everyone will say "How can you be so stupid as to not realize that you're selling stolen/pirated goods?", I also realize that most people on Slashdot consider a good 90% or so of the world's population to be dumber than a bag of hammers, so try to balance those two things out.
I think the biggest problem with this is, again, they're not going after the big "organised crime". It's similar to the war on drugs, there are a lot of users that get busted, but the people who organise everything, the big cartel owners, get away scot free.
Just from reading the article (which, knowing the LA Weekly, has a leftist slant), I get the impression that they're busting a bunch of guys who found this good gig selling CDs in local parking lots and make a bit of cash doing so. They get the CDs from some distributor, and, knowing how things are here in Santa Monica, they probably assume they're legit. Now, you're busting some guy who's trying to make a living selling CDs instead of going the other route and selling drugs, while the actual music pirate who is distributing the CDs to him is unaffected. I can guarantee you he can find another down-on-his-luck immigrant to sell CDs for him in the same parking lot within a few days. Nothing happens to him though....
Finally, from the article: "A large percentage [of the vendors] are of a Hispanic nature," Langley said. "Today he's Jose Rodriguez, tomorrow he's Raul something or other, and tomorrow after that he's something else. These people change their identity all the time. A picture's worth a thousand words."
I almost get the assumption that this guy is the same kind of person who would claim that those hispanic guys "all look the same." As is, a picture may be worth a thousand words, but they're only talking about taking height and weight measurements, not pictures. So now, we've got a bunch of RIAA enforcers wanderin around looking for a 5'6" hispanic man of medium build. Kinda gives them license to hassle 50-60% of the street vendors in Santa Monica and on Sunset, dontcha think?
Good lord, tell me about the advertisements. I guess they want to drown out people in our office park who like to blast $DIETY knows what music in their cars, but the drive-up ATMs here are at full blast screaming things about free checking and the like. It does look awfully lot like a WMP video panel in amongst a custom B of A skin. At least the fact that I'm always using a non B of A card on it makes it interrupt the ad halfway through to tell me it's going to charge me more. Who knew I'd find an advantage to being charged $1.50 to use the ATM?
Sorta off topic, but you do realize that each state only sends two senators to congress, not hundreds. There are only a hundred total as is.
If you mean Representatives, then there are hundreds total, but no state sends over 100 to the House.
/pedantic
I do agree they didn't do their job, and have contacted my state's political representatives to let them know they have lost my vote next time they're up for election and can only win it back by re-examining and changing the PATRIOT act.
I was just thinking, while reading that, that we've got our own, new, post-September 11th Godwin's law. The second you equate people like "Linux Zealots" to a group of people who rammed airplanes into 3 buildings, killing just under 3,000 people, is the second your argument becomes invalid.
What I want to know is, what kinds of protections are there for when information *should* be free, especially if legal matters are involved.
Say a boss sends a sexually harassing e-mail to an employee, a message set to self-destruct in a short amount of time. Poof, there goes any proof that the employee had of the harassment going on.
Say another Enron pops up, only this time, there's no evidence of illegal accounting practices because there's no e-mail trail any longer.
Or, to play George W., what about any terrorists who are using e-mail to communicate? I'm sure that any e-mail communication currently going on is encrypted, but with enough time that encryption could be cracked. It can't if the e-mail just suddenly disappears.
It seems to me that, like most measures of this ilk, this feature is subject to all sorts of abuse. Nonetheless, like others have said, all you really have to do is retype the e-mail if you really want to duplicate it, or take a digital photo of the screen.
Finally, as far as my "right" to share things that were never mine to share in te first place, how does this, in any way, prevent me from *talking* about something I read in an e-mail?
In the end, I philosophically agree with this. Anything that improves privacy is something that I'm all for. The only issue is, I don't think this really does anything at all to improve privacy other than making it slightly more of a pain in the arse to violate it, and frankly, I don't trust Microsoft with my privacy.
From the report on the software, the student in question claims that it presents you with an EULA that you can choose to deny (at which point, the software ejects the CD) before installing itself.
He also said that he refused to accept the EULA, so he refrained from commenting on how things worked on his machine after installation.
It's not the pricing I think that most people are negatively reacting to, it's the pricing structure. You don't have any option to go over 40 tracks a month given the current plan.
Just imagine how much fun it is, after downloading 35 tracks, finding an album you want on there. It's got 10 tracks. You can get 5 of them now, then wait til next month to get the rest of the CD. Yaay!
Charge per track, or charge one fee and make it unlimited/limited to an amount that seems reasonable to the average user. Anyone who buys more than a CD a week would find this unreasonable, unless they buy 4 song EPs all the time.
Remember though (and why can't I find this on story on Slashdot's search?) that they started capping said unlimited downloads. It was a very high number (something like 2,000 CDs @ month), but they did have a limit on how much you could download per month. That was obviously an attempt to stem the tide when broadband became more common, so they already had a defense against that.
Would we be having the same negative reaction/cancellations if they said that unlimited downloads were gone, but now you could get 100 albums per month for the same subscription price?
Probably not. Sure, some people would cancel on general principle, but I imagine that most people are similar to me in this one. I wouldn't cancel for that, but I am cancelling with their new plan.
I think the original poster is actually outside the norm on this.
I've been subscribing to eMusic ever since they did the They Might Be Giants promo, at least a couple of years (I think somewhere around 3 years). I would go 3-4 months without downloading a single CD, then one month, I'd download 100-200 CDs. I'd find a lot of stuff that I liked, listen to it until I started wanting something new again, then go on another binge.
Because it was easy to find new things, I never really minded that I couldn't find a lot of my favorite bands on there. That was kinda the point to me: I wasn't there to get a cheap copy of some CD from one of my favorite bands, I was there to get lots of CDs from bands I didn't really know or was on the fence about. That's no longer possible with the new setup.
If it were $0.25 @ song, that might make sense, but given that you can't go over 40 songs a month (unless you have more than one subscription), and you pay that $0.25 @ song for 40 songs even if you don't ever download them, it just doesn't work out well any more.
Even better, make it $9.99 a month for 10 albums. Don't do it by tracks, because some albums have 20-25 tracks on them. They don't cost any more at your local music retailer, but they technically do here. It's still way cheap ($1 a CD!), but it would still help to keep *some* of the experimentation that eMusic helped so much with before.
Slashdot Mirror
I've always used support@whateverdomainimsigningupat. support@real.com for realplayer, support@apple.com for quicktime, that sorta thing. Doesn't always work, but if you mix up the account name enough, you can usually make sure that all your spam is sent to the people trying to spam you.
Your argument makes no sense anyway. If today's music is so crap, why do so many people pirate it?
Because it ain't worth paying for?
You can write (or, probably more likely, snag someone else's writing off google, you pirate) as long of a diatribe as you wish, but this:
(3) I believe that piracy is driven by "overpriced CDs" even though CDs have dropped in price over the years.
invalidates every point you try to make. CDs used to be $12 a pop. Then they were $15 a pop. Now they're $18 to $20 a pop unless they're the current top-ten and you get 'em at Best Buy.
They have NOT been dropping in price over the years. A $12 -> $20 increase is not a drop, and I'm willing to bet it's not a drop even if you include inflation.
This guy is stating 32-33mpg city in his hybrid. I have a 2000 Celica GT-S that gets somewhere around 29mph city, so that really isn't that much of a difference, and believe me when I say I don't take it particularly easy on the gas pedal in my car. It's good that it's better, but I would really expect more in that situation...
Actually, I do believe Space Ghost invented the cotton gin.
"The touch, the feel of cotton. THAT'S ALL MINE!!"
Heh, I'm guessing you can't give me any hints about why MI:4 won't run on my machine at home. I've been re-visiting all those old games in anticipation for Sam & Max 2, but I can't get MI:4 to run for the life of me.
Kidding, of course, I just needed a good reason to add another positive comment for the MI games. Now, to find a talkie version of Sam & Max somewhere....
Probably exceedingly easy. The control schemes on Sam & Max, Monkey Island, Full Throttle, etc were all very simplistic, and easily ported over to a console. Especially the newer ones that rely on a few keyboard movements rather than the mouse.
That being said, I don't think Escape from Monkey Island did too well in the console market. It wasn't advertised very heavily, and almost everyone who remembered the old Monkey Island games still owns a computer, and would prefer to play it on a computer. I bought my copy for the PC, and despite how much I want to support the franchise, I didn't buy a second copy for my console.
(I did recently buy it *again* for the PC though, if only to get the Mega Monkey bundle that comes with Monkey Island 1-4).
Eeep! Guess I'd better get to it, then! ;)
I used to pull the heads off my sister's Barbies(tm). I have no desire to decapitate all nearby blondes.
I already enjoyed my fantasy playworld with such depravity. The only difference now is that I have a digital medium over a plastic medium. I used to grind the heads off my little green army guys with the wheel of my bike, I used to crash my Hot Wheels cars, I used to attach firecrackers to my Estes rockets. Despite that, I've never punched anyone, I've never kicked a puppy, and I've never eaten a baby.
Were GTA3 to not exist, many young men would do the same thing with their sister's Barbie, Ken, and their associate Corvette toys.
Except that most people are stealing games that you can play anywhere and movies that you can find in Blockbuster. And I notice you didn't include music in that statement.
Two responses:
1) I don't know what most poeple are doing, as I'm not involved in the modern game warez community. I do know that sometimes I want to revive games that I loved as a kid and want to play again. I downloaded Super Dodge Ball, River City Ransom, and Bubble Bobble because I didn't know where else to get 'em. Admittedly, I played them for about 15 minutes, but it was great to play them again.
2) We're not talking about music. That's why it wasn't mentioned.
The preservation argument only gets you so far, and it doesn't address the concept that the game's owners might and should have control over how their stuff is "preserved." Nintendo certainly speaks loudly on this issue, since they "preserve" all their old games by continually re-releasing them. If a game company declares that Game X is public domain, then by all means, preserve away. Until that time, it's still stealing.
So we have to sit here and *hope* that some company will release an old game? I know people that have been waiting for either a re-release or a faithful update of Kid Icarus for many years now, but there are no signs of that happening. Your theory ONLY works if the publishers will work with the community, which they haven't done so far. They don't decide which games they think they can re-release in a collection and make money, then release the rest as freeware. Instead, they hold onto everything they've ever created, even if there are a grand total of 5 fans out there on the intarweb, and only release the ones that are the most popular. The tyranny of the majority and all that.
I don't think this would be a question if the smaller games were released as freeware. If Nintendo would go through their rom library, identify all those that they think they can make money off of, then designate the others are freely distributable as roms, there would be no discussion. In the current situtation, there's nothing that makes this any more than a few fans who would like to relive an old memory vs. a company that doesn't stand to make any money. It's a no-win situation, one that could easily be rectified by releasing the game, a win-win situation in which the old fans get to relive their memories, and they, in turn, now like and will support the publisher.
I have been hunting high and low for Sabotage from the Apple II. I understand it's on the iPod as "Parachute" or something similar, but I'd love to find a copy of the original. I played that game for maybe 4 years before my Apple died...I want to see it again!!
And back on topic from that subject, Odyssey!
During the last days of eToys, we had some chairs that were probably similarly priced to Aerons, but were some other type. I wish I could remember what they were, as they were far superior, IMHO.
We have Aerons at my company now, and they also gave them to all employees who stuck around 6 months or so after the last round of layoffs, so I have one at home as well. They are comfortable, but both my office one and my home one have developed the same problem with the armrests. Eventually, they get loosened up, so when the adjustment screw is tightened up, they can wiggle back and forth and relatively easily slide back down to their lowest position.
Given that I rarely put any pressure on the arm rests and almost never actually have my arms on them, it seems odd that they'd both get that problem.
This is true to a point, but Project Gotham 2 on the Xbox has already lasted since November, which in the gaming world is quite a while. I still find many, many players on there.
I'm sure that this has more to do with it being probably the single best racing sim on the console market (at least you can lock the brakes, you can't do that in Gran Turismo), but nonetheless, the excellent matching system it's got definitely helps the situation.
I don't know about the demolishing, but I'm shocked he even got it back. My roommate in college had his truck broken into, and a neighbor saw this while it was happening and called the police. The police came and actually caught the guys doing it while they were trying to run off with the stereo.
They took it in as evidence and told him he'd get his stereo back pretty quickly. That was about 6 years ago, and I don't think he ever got it back. Funny how catching the theives in the act didn't actually prevent it from getting stolen...
What happened is that I'm willing to bet, and I think most others here are as well, that the guy selling those CDs is not the one who is copying them, printing up the covers for them, packaging them, and distributing them. I almost see these guys as your standard Herbalife salesmen who, while dumb as hell, assume they're doing something legal.
While I realize that most everyone will say "How can you be so stupid as to not realize that you're selling stolen/pirated goods?", I also realize that most people on Slashdot consider a good 90% or so of the world's population to be dumber than a bag of hammers, so try to balance those two things out.
I think the biggest problem with this is, again, they're not going after the big "organised crime". It's similar to the war on drugs, there are a lot of users that get busted, but the people who organise everything, the big cartel owners, get away scot free.
Just from reading the article (which, knowing the LA Weekly, has a leftist slant), I get the impression that they're busting a bunch of guys who found this good gig selling CDs in local parking lots and make a bit of cash doing so. They get the CDs from some distributor, and, knowing how things are here in Santa Monica, they probably assume they're legit. Now, you're busting some guy who's trying to make a living selling CDs instead of going the other route and selling drugs, while the actual music pirate who is distributing the CDs to him is unaffected. I can guarantee you he can find another down-on-his-luck immigrant to sell CDs for him in the same parking lot within a few days. Nothing happens to him though....
Finally, from the article: "A large percentage [of the vendors] are of a Hispanic nature," Langley said. "Today he's Jose Rodriguez, tomorrow he's Raul something or other, and tomorrow after that he's something else. These people change their identity all the time. A picture's worth a thousand words."
I almost get the assumption that this guy is the same kind of person who would claim that those hispanic guys "all look the same." As is, a picture may be worth a thousand words, but they're only talking about taking height and weight measurements, not pictures. So now, we've got a bunch of RIAA enforcers wanderin around looking for a 5'6" hispanic man of medium build. Kinda gives them license to hassle 50-60% of the street vendors in Santa Monica and on Sunset, dontcha think?
Good lord, tell me about the advertisements. I guess they want to drown out people in our office park who like to blast $DIETY knows what music in their cars, but the drive-up ATMs here are at full blast screaming things about free checking and the like. It does look awfully lot like a WMP video panel in amongst a custom B of A skin. At least the fact that I'm always using a non B of A card on it makes it interrupt the ad halfway through to tell me it's going to charge me more. Who knew I'd find an advantage to being charged $1.50 to use the ATM?
If you mean Representatives, then there are hundreds total, but no state sends over 100 to the House.
I do agree they didn't do their job, and have contacted my state's political representatives to let them know they have lost my vote next time they're up for election and can only win it back by re-examining and changing the PATRIOT act.
And that'll teach me to read the entirety of your comment so I don't post almost the exact same thing.
I apologize, 8:45AM is early for me. That also, by the way, excuses me when it comes to replying to my own post.
I was just thinking, while reading that, that we've got our own, new, post-September 11th Godwin's law. The second you equate people like "Linux Zealots" to a group of people who rammed airplanes into 3 buildings, killing just under 3,000 people, is the second your argument becomes invalid.
What I want to know is, what kinds of protections are there for when information *should* be free, especially if legal matters are involved.
Say a boss sends a sexually harassing e-mail to an employee, a message set to self-destruct in a short amount of time. Poof, there goes any proof that the employee had of the harassment going on.
Say another Enron pops up, only this time, there's no evidence of illegal accounting practices because there's no e-mail trail any longer.
Or, to play George W., what about any terrorists who are using e-mail to communicate? I'm sure that any e-mail communication currently going on is encrypted, but with enough time that encryption could be cracked. It can't if the e-mail just suddenly disappears.
It seems to me that, like most measures of this ilk, this feature is subject to all sorts of abuse. Nonetheless, like others have said, all you really have to do is retype the e-mail if you really want to duplicate it, or take a digital photo of the screen.
Finally, as far as my "right" to share things that were never mine to share in te first place, how does this, in any way, prevent me from *talking* about something I read in an e-mail?
In the end, I philosophically agree with this. Anything that improves privacy is something that I'm all for. The only issue is, I don't think this really does anything at all to improve privacy other than making it slightly more of a pain in the arse to violate it, and frankly, I don't trust Microsoft with my privacy.
From the report on the software, the student in question claims that it presents you with an EULA that you can choose to deny (at which point, the software ejects the CD) before installing itself.
He also said that he refused to accept the EULA, so he refrained from commenting on how things worked on his machine after installation.
That's great...charge $5 a CD. I'd pay it.
It's not the pricing I think that most people are negatively reacting to, it's the pricing structure. You don't have any option to go over 40 tracks a month given the current plan.
Just imagine how much fun it is, after downloading 35 tracks, finding an album you want on there. It's got 10 tracks. You can get 5 of them now, then wait til next month to get the rest of the CD. Yaay!
Charge per track, or charge one fee and make it unlimited/limited to an amount that seems reasonable to the average user. Anyone who buys more than a CD a week would find this unreasonable, unless they buy 4 song EPs all the time.
Remember though (and why can't I find this on story on Slashdot's search?) that they started capping said unlimited downloads. It was a very high number (something like 2,000 CDs @ month), but they did have a limit on how much you could download per month. That was obviously an attempt to stem the tide when broadband became more common, so they already had a defense against that.
Would we be having the same negative reaction/cancellations if they said that unlimited downloads were gone, but now you could get 100 albums per month for the same subscription price?
Probably not. Sure, some people would cancel on general principle, but I imagine that most people are similar to me in this one. I wouldn't cancel for that, but I am cancelling with their new plan.
I think the original poster is actually outside the norm on this.
I've been subscribing to eMusic ever since they did the They Might Be Giants promo, at least a couple of years (I think somewhere around 3 years). I would go 3-4 months without downloading a single CD, then one month, I'd download 100-200 CDs. I'd find a lot of stuff that I liked, listen to it until I started wanting something new again, then go on another binge.
Because it was easy to find new things, I never really minded that I couldn't find a lot of my favorite bands on there. That was kinda the point to me: I wasn't there to get a cheap copy of some CD from one of my favorite bands, I was there to get lots of CDs from bands I didn't really know or was on the fence about. That's no longer possible with the new setup.
If it were $0.25 @ song, that might make sense, but given that you can't go over 40 songs a month (unless you have more than one subscription), and you pay that $0.25 @ song for 40 songs even if you don't ever download them, it just doesn't work out well any more.
Even better, make it $9.99 a month for 10 albums. Don't do it by tracks, because some albums have 20-25 tracks on them. They don't cost any more at your local music retailer, but they technically do here. It's still way cheap ($1 a CD!), but it would still help to keep *some* of the experimentation that eMusic helped so much with before.