I have absolutely _no_ sympathy for people who think that because it's just a "little crime" there should be just a "little penalty"
I'm sorry, but that's an asinine statement. A "little crime" should most definitely be punished with a "little penalty". That's called crime appropriate punishment. You're right, copyright infringement is against the law, but no, it's not a big crime, it's a little crime. If I download a song that I could otherwise buy on iTMS for a dollar, yeah, I stole that song, but that song was only worth a dollar so give me a dollar sized punishment.
a software emulator which allows Windows PC users to run Apple's OS on x86 computer architecture
Experience Mac OS X on your PC
Supports OS X
The premise you're trying to invoke is the Betamax ruling, where a company cannot be held liable for infringing uses of their product if there is a signifigant legitimate use for that product. That might be applicable here...if they didn't plaster their website with statements saying that you can use their product to voilate the OS X user agreement, which clearly states that you cannot install or run OS X on non-Apple hardware. If Sony had advertised Betamax as "a great way to copy your movies hand them out to all your freinds", then they would have been shot down quicker than TWA flight 800. Apple has more than a legitimate case here.
You think the artists are getting screwed now? At 5 cents a song, the artists will be lucky to see a full cent, and even that would actually be a doubling of artists current royalties. But ok, the claim is that sales will skyrocket. Lets do the math.
Lets say I write a single and start selling it online. Lets say that single goes Multi-Platinum, which the RIAA currently defines as 400,000 downloads, according to their new digital sales awards guidlines (for reference, there was only one artist who was eligible for that last year, Outkast for "Hey Ya!"). Lets say I had some leverage when signing my contract and get a full cent from each 5 cent download. From this Multi-Platinum album, I'm now entitled to $4000. Not a bad McWage, but not really enough to say, raise a family or own a home, and that's assuming you can write a Multi-Platinum single evry month. Of course, that's also assuming that the recording/promotion costs are being absorbed by the record company...which isn't currently the case, and therefore probably won't be in the future.
Lets say, in a more likely scenario, that I am responsible for paying back the record company for costs incurred. Lets say I manage to record a hit single for $10,000 in recording costs, and maybe another $10,000 for promotion, for a total of $20,000 (which is really, really, realy cheap). With my one cent per album royalties, I'd need to sell 2,000,000 songs before I saw a single dime. Some perspective: evey single person who owns an iPod today would have to purchase my song before I see any royalties.
From the artist standpoint, this would be mega-lame. The market just isn't that big. You'd have to be a super-star just to earn a wage above the poverty line.
People don't fire up a browser to view the browser. People fire up a browser to view a webpage. Get me to the webpage quickly through a simple interface, and stay out of the way.
Simplicity is the key. Google, Firefox, iPod, even television... all amazingly simple things that became wildly successful by doing one thing, and doing it very well, very simply.
As much as generally hate dongles, I actually like the dongle system used to authorize OS X. It's called a Mac, and OS X won't run without it. Best DRM ever.
Between my second and third machine, I decided I'd had enough Apple bullshit and built a PC. I threw Linux on there, and it was great, but the main software I use wasn't available on Linux and there were no viable alternatives, so I had to install Windows
After four days of constantly battling viruses, broken update link on MS's site, automatic shutdowns and the inability to get my soundcard to make a peep, I decided that this was not what I wanted in a computing experience and switched back to Apple. At least with faulty logic boards I can get a few good weeks of uninterupted computing before my machine dies.
Apple had (and may still have) a tiered system for repairing out-of-warranty machines.The standard out of warranty repair for an iBook was only $300 (though it's actually $349) if the repair is for the monitor only. For anything pertaining to the logic board, it was $749.
Before you go calling people liars, make sure you're not a raging dumbass.
There's probably enough reason for a class action for the iBook logic board issues alone. My first iBook's logic board died before the extension pogram was introduced and Apple refused to fix it without $750,so I had to get rid of it. My second iBook, which I still have but don't use often, craps out every six months or so, and my third iBook (and yet I learn nothing) died four times in the first six months I had it. I called them on the third time and told them I wanted a new machine that was outside the defective serial number range, and they said I had to wait for it to die one more time. I figured I could wait a few weeks, and sure enough, two weeks after they fixed it yet again, the logic board failed. I got a brand new g4 model out of it, but that was after a total of three years, as many machines, and a total of 8 logic boards.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a total fanboy, and I want to go down on Steve Jobs just as much as any other fanboy, but after the way Apple has treated large portions of their customer base recently, they deserve whatever it is they've got coming.
It said offering to host Wikepedia, which doesn't even closely resemble ownership or even a say in what happens with Wikipedia. I don't get how people are coming to these scenarios where Google is charging for it or ruining it somehow. They're just hosting it, The good press alone is worth the cost of a few servers, and if things start to get sticky for Wikipedia, there will be nothing stopping them from giving the servers back and moving along.
I dunno, maybe the article says something about this. I'll go read it now that I've posted.
I think a fair solution would be unlimited opt-in. You need to register your copyright to begin with which gets you five or ten years, and then renew your copyright once every five years for a fee of, say, a dollar. You can renew for as long as you like (which would keep Mickey safe and sound) but if your copyright on a work isn't worth a few minutes (we could just have a web based renewal system) and a dollar once every five years, then let the public have at it. I think Lawrence Lessig promoted something similar to this in Free Culture.
An extension to 500,000 years would still be "limited", and thus constitutional
While this statement alone is true, Congress has repeatedly extended copyrights over the past several decades (nine times I think...does someone know the actual numbers?). If Congress has the power to continually extend copyrights, and they do so every time those copyrights are about to expire (as they have been doing, thank you Disney lobbyists), then functionally, copyrights terms are no longer limited and thus are unconstitutional.
You could create a webpage that refreshes itself every couple of minutes or so and displays full size photos chosen at random from a folder on the site. Plenty of prefab scripts out there that can do that. Just set up a laptop in his room and all the orderlies need to do is open Firefox with your photo page set as the default home page. You could also use this to send him message s by just editing the page. he wouldn't need to do anything as long as he has a dedicated phone line that can be online all the time. If he doesn't and can only be on sporadically, then just type up some simple instructions on how to double click the "Internet" button and then double click the "Firefox" button so the orderlies can get him signed on and tape it to the desk where the machine sits.
Wired had a great article on something similar a while back. It was the same principle, involving a small unit on a retainer that would "display" images to the roof of the mouth. As far as I've heard, fighter pilots also have similar systems in the backs of their flight suits allowing them to locate other crafts through tactile input (although wording like that makes it sound like it was recently banned in 11 states).
I also rememeber reading (or watching...Big Thinkers maybe) something about a audible display as well. Something that took really coarse images and "played" them from left to right. The tones produced were determined by the rise and fall of lines in the picture. It was a bit rough sounding (it certainly wasn't being developed by those leading the field in sound design), but they showed a few, and after a while you really could start to determine images based on what you heard. It was pretty cool.
Maybe one of the reasons no other player comes close is this:
XS200
MR 500i
MR100
Micro N200
FL300
Gmini 400
JM-600
m500
PMP 120
Xclef 500
MP-400
PMP1000
NW-S23 S2
NW-E99
NW-E95
Yepp T5V
PMP1004
Rave-MP ARC5.0
HZWS2000S
XDM-S710BT
HAAP3
DX740
SR-M800F
As opposed to an "iPod". I mean christ, the "HZWS2000S"? The "XDM-S710BT"? If you bought one of these and it was great, you couldn't tell your friends about this even if you wanted to.
"Hey man, I got this new mp3 player and it rocks. You should totally get one!"
"Really? Cool, what is it?"
"Um...Ok, hang on, grab a pen."
I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons why they aren't as popular as the iPod, but the current naming scheme on some of these models isn't doing hopefull companies any favors.
...when corporaitions are granted the same constitutional rights as an individual, yet face no signifigant consequences let alone anything equal to the imprisonment of an individual.
We'd live in quite a different world if corporations were held to the same standard of punishment as the individual. Say, the inability to keep their profits for 25 to life. Even better, if the major shareholders faced personal fines or imprisonment for the actions of their companies.
Corporations are the cause of everything wrong in this country. Political coruption, the war machine, polution, ad creep, health care, our health problems, blah blah blah. What we really need is the ability to rescind corporate charters.
Say what you will about flaws in the numbers and his questionable logic. The fact still remains that nothing mankind has ever done will matter one little bit if we're wiped out. Shakespeare, Beethoven, Linux...nothing, gone, like it never existed.
While one can argue that none of it may matter anyway, as long as we're alive, that's not a certainty, but the minute we're wiped out, it is.
Slashdot Mirror
I have absolutely _no_ sympathy for people who think that because it's just a "little crime" there should be just a "little penalty"
I'm sorry, but that's an asinine statement. A "little crime" should most definitely be punished with a "little penalty". That's called crime appropriate punishment. You're right, copyright infringement is against the law, but no, it's not a big crime, it's a little crime. If I download a song that I could otherwise buy on iTMS for a dollar, yeah, I stole that song, but that song was only worth a dollar so give me a dollar sized punishment.
From their website:
The premise you're trying to invoke is the Betamax ruling, where a company cannot be held liable for infringing uses of their product if there is a signifigant legitimate use for that product. That might be applicable here...if they didn't plaster their website with statements saying that you can use their product to voilate the OS X user agreement, which clearly states that you cannot install or run OS X on non-Apple hardware. If Sony had advertised Betamax as "a great way to copy your movies hand them out to all your freinds", then they would have been shot down quicker than TWA flight 800. Apple has more than a legitimate case here.
You think the artists are getting screwed now? At 5 cents a song, the artists will be lucky to see a full cent, and even that would actually be a doubling of artists current royalties. But ok, the claim is that sales will skyrocket. Lets do the math.
Lets say I write a single and start selling it online. Lets say that single goes Multi-Platinum, which the RIAA currently defines as 400,000 downloads, according to their new digital sales awards guidlines (for reference, there was only one artist who was eligible for that last year, Outkast for "Hey Ya!"). Lets say I had some leverage when signing my contract and get a full cent from each 5 cent download. From this Multi-Platinum album, I'm now entitled to $4000. Not a bad McWage, but not really enough to say, raise a family or own a home, and that's assuming you can write a Multi-Platinum single evry month. Of course, that's also assuming that the recording/promotion costs are being absorbed by the record company...which isn't currently the case, and therefore probably won't be in the future.
Lets say, in a more likely scenario, that I am responsible for paying back the record company for costs incurred. Lets say I manage to record a hit single for $10,000 in recording costs, and maybe another $10,000 for promotion, for a total of $20,000 (which is really, really, realy cheap). With my one cent per album royalties, I'd need to sell 2,000,000 songs before I saw a single dime. Some perspective: evey single person who owns an iPod today would have to purchase my song before I see any royalties.
From the artist standpoint, this would be mega-lame. The market just isn't that big. You'd have to be a super-star just to earn a wage above the poverty line.
People don't fire up a browser to view the browser. People fire up a browser to view a webpage. Get me to the webpage quickly through a simple interface, and stay out of the way.
Simplicity is the key. Google, Firefox, iPod, even television... all amazingly simple things that became wildly successful by doing one thing, and doing it very well, very simply.
As much as generally hate dongles, I actually like the dongle system used to authorize OS X. It's called a Mac, and OS X won't run without it. Best DRM ever.
Hell, my UID is so far into the uncool zone, it's popped out the other side into cool again.
Right guys?...Guys?...Hello?...
When you use Skypeout [skypeout.com], the number shows up as wacky. It could just be VoIP calls coming in.
No way, you're completely wrong about that! :P
I totally agree.
Between my second and third machine, I decided I'd had enough Apple bullshit and built a PC. I threw Linux on there, and it was great, but the main software I use wasn't available on Linux and there were no viable alternatives, so I had to install Windows
After four days of constantly battling viruses, broken update link on MS's site, automatic shutdowns and the inability to get my soundcard to make a peep, I decided that this was not what I wanted in a computing experience and switched back to Apple. At least with faulty logic boards I can get a few good weeks of uninterupted computing before my machine dies.
Ok, I exaggerated, it was really $749.
Apple had (and may still have) a tiered system for repairing out-of-warranty machines.The standard out of warranty repair for an iBook was only $300 (though it's actually $349) if the repair is for the monitor only. For anything pertaining to the logic board, it was $749.
Before you go calling people liars, make sure you're not a raging dumbass.
There's probably enough reason for a class action for the iBook logic board issues alone. My first iBook's logic board died before the extension pogram was introduced and Apple refused to fix it without $750 ,so I had to get rid of it. My second iBook, which I still have but don't use often, craps out every six months or so, and my third iBook (and yet I learn nothing) died four times in the first six months I had it. I called them on the third time and told them I wanted a new machine that was outside the defective serial number range, and they said I had to wait for it to die one more time. I figured I could wait a few weeks, and sure enough, two weeks after they fixed it yet again, the logic board failed. I got a brand new g4 model out of it, but that was after a total of three years, as many machines, and a total of 8 logic boards.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a total fanboy, and I want to go down on Steve Jobs just as much as any other fanboy, but after the way Apple has treated large portions of their customer base recently, they deserve whatever it is they've got coming.
When Lucas gets a half-full house on opening night because nobody at Cannes gives a shit.
Ahhh...vinyl...the best DRM you could ever possibly have.
It said offering to host Wikepedia, which doesn't even closely resemble ownership or even a say in what happens with Wikipedia. I don't get how people are coming to these scenarios where Google is charging for it or ruining it somehow. They're just hosting it, The good press alone is worth the cost of a few servers, and if things start to get sticky for Wikipedia, there will be nothing stopping them from giving the servers back and moving along.
I dunno, maybe the article says something about this. I'll go read it now that I've posted.
I imagine the discussion going something like this...
Speakeasy: Hey, can we distribute Firefox to our several hundred thousand subscribers?
Mozilla: Umm..okay.
kNo wireless, less keys than a normal keyboard, lame.
kI think a fair solution would be unlimited opt-in. You need to register your copyright to begin with which gets you five or ten years, and then renew your copyright once every five years for a fee of, say, a dollar. You can renew for as long as you like (which would keep Mickey safe and sound) but if your copyright on a work isn't worth a few minutes (we could just have a web based renewal system) and a dollar once every five years, then let the public have at it. I think Lawrence Lessig promoted something similar to this in Free Culture.
kWhile this statement alone is true, Congress has repeatedly extended copyrights over the past several decades (nine times I think...does someone know the actual numbers?). If Congress has the power to continually extend copyrights, and they do so every time those copyrights are about to expire (as they have been doing, thank you Disney lobbyists), then functionally, copyrights terms are no longer limited and thus are unconstitutional.
kpYou could create a webpage that refreshes itself every couple of minutes or so and displays full size photos chosen at random from a folder on the site. Plenty of prefab scripts out there that can do that. Just set up a laptop in his room and all the orderlies need to do is open Firefox with your photo page set as the default home page. You could also use this to send him message s by just editing the page. he wouldn't need to do anything as long as he has a dedicated phone line that can be online all the time. If he doesn't and can only be on sporadically, then just type up some simple instructions on how to double click the "Internet" button and then double click the "Firefox" button so the orderlies can get him signed on and tape it to the desk where the machine sits.
I dunno...maybe something like that.
k
MIT Making Computer Parts from DNA
Of course they are, it's just another day at MIT.
Wired had a great article on something similar a while back. It was the same principle, involving a small unit on a retainer that would "display" images to the roof of the mouth. As far as I've heard, fighter pilots also have similar systems in the backs of their flight suits allowing them to locate other crafts through tactile input (although wording like that makes it sound like it was recently banned in 11 states).
I also rememeber reading (or watching...Big Thinkers maybe) something about a audible display as well. Something that took really coarse images and "played" them from left to right. The tones produced were determined by the rise and fall of lines in the picture. It was a bit rough sounding (it certainly wasn't being developed by those leading the field in sound design), but they showed a few, and after a while you really could start to determine images based on what you heard. It was pretty cool.
k:p
Maybe one of the reasons no other player comes close is this:
As opposed to an "iPod". I mean christ, the "HZWS2000S"? The "XDM-S710BT"? If you bought one of these and it was great, you couldn't tell your friends about this even if you wanted to.
"Hey man, I got this new mp3 player and it rocks. You should totally get one!"
"Really? Cool, what is it?"
"Um...Ok, hang on, grab a pen."
I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons why they aren't as popular as the iPod, but the current naming scheme on some of these models isn't doing hopefull companies any favors.
k:p
...when corporaitions are granted the same constitutional rights as an individual, yet face no signifigant consequences let alone anything equal to the imprisonment of an individual.
We'd live in quite a different world if corporations were held to the same standard of punishment as the individual. Say, the inability to keep their profits for 25 to life. Even better, if the major shareholders faced personal fines or imprisonment for the actions of their companies.
Corporations are the cause of everything wrong in this country. Political coruption, the war machine, polution, ad creep, health care, our health problems, blah blah blah. What we really need is the ability to rescind corporate charters.
k:pSay what you will about flaws in the numbers and his questionable logic. The fact still remains that nothing mankind has ever done will matter one little bit if we're wiped out. Shakespeare, Beethoven, Linux...nothing, gone, like it never existed.
While one can argue that none of it may matter anyway, as long as we're alive, that's not a certainty, but the minute we're wiped out, it is.
Although my sig...
"...188.5 million Americans and more than 1 billion people globally are online."
And here I thought I was the only one!