that, good sir, is what we call Capitalism. happy?
short term profit is better than long term happiness for the most. it makes money, so it's not a pain in the ass. these people have a right to make money.
that is what the american dream boils down to in the year 2005.
PDF's are a nuisance when viewed within a browser, mostly because it takes my computer (athlon 3K+, come ON!) a LONG time to open the viewer plugin, all the while freezing the entire FF app so I can't even look at any of the other tabs.
Luckily, someone made this, a freeware app that speeds up the acrobat startup because it strips a lot of libraries from it (second down on the page). What remains is a fully functional and very quick PDF viewer. Highly recommended.
These PC's are supplied for low to middle income Brazilians. Nothing bad about the Brazilians, but where I'm from that usualy means people with less education, who will be less likely to try something else.
Remember that the only reason why IE is so popular isn't because there is no better alternative, but because it's pre-installed and easy and one-click-away (TM).
a couple of years ago i saw this in an electronic art fair. they had pictures of people who played it too long, hands with sores etc. etc. it's basically pong, with added pain when you lose a ball. they have pain from heat, a sort of whip and shock. as the game progresses, the pain gets worse. i did not try it out. you may call me a whimp, but i do not enjoy pain so much...
I'm not saying all filesharers aren't hypocrits (altough I could come op with a lot of examples of hypocricy that are 'worse', in my opinion), so I don't disagree with your post as such.
One point I would like to make is this. The music industry is a monopoly. The top 5 labels own 80% of the music that you hear. Why? Because they control the distribution as well. There are a bazillion small labels. Sign with them and never get heard, doesn't matter how good you are. Sign with a major and get heard by millions, no matter how much you suck (insert obvious examples here). Remember that most new and upcoming bands are a couple of young unexperienced guys with guitars who would do anything for a bit of recognition. They only go Wilco after years, if ever.
There are also labels that sell cd's for less. http://www.cdbaby.com/ The general public doesn't know about their existence because they don't get distributed like the majors do.
It's a classic example of a monopoly.
Required reading: http://www.negativland.com/albini.html The Problem With Music by Steve Albini
(Steve Albini is an independent and corporate rock record producer most widely known for having produced Nirvana's "In Utero")
Aren't record companies in business to make money? It's well and good for us to tell the record companies that they should instead be concentrating more on unprofitable bands, but it is they, not we, who are responsible to their employees.
As much as this is true, it's a sad fact for music. You rightfully conclude that the music industry (yes, industry) is all about money and not about music. With this statement, you validate their monopoly and say that it is their right to control what we hear, what we see, what we do. Although it is wrong to break the law and the law is being broken, I cannot agree with these practices.
I wonder if this falls under the protection of the service provider.
Same as with regular computers (hahaha) sending out viruses and emails. The responsibility is NOT with the provider. The vulnerability is with the OS, not with the provider of the service that makes the phones or computers talk to eachother.
Before you start making the provider responsible for the content of the sent messages, think of what repurcussions that will have on privacy and freedom of speech.
You know. Websites getting pulled because the provider thinks the content is not mature enough or it will get them in trouble. Same with phones.
I say: make the OS secure. (Am I preaching to the choir here at all?:)
What really makes this a modern issue is that it's the era of instant credit by terribly incompetent banks. With even the slightest amount of concern for actually running a solid, intelligent operation, both banks and credit agencies would have eliminated this problem long ago... yet the banks couldn't bother would the most rudimentary of checks when handing out easy credit.
The banks are not incompetent. They can hire the best IT personel, get the best encrypters and backuppers and whatnot.
Why they won't do it? Because the bank isn't there for you or me, it's not there for service or loans or good advice or a friendly smile, it's there to make profit. If the shareholders agree that the most profit could be made by mailing you dogshit to your door, prepare for a stink.
The shareholders need to be convinced of good business practice. This is hard because any good practice involves doing work, which costs money. Involves hiring the right people, teaching them new tricks, having these bothersome backupservers... Short-term profit is what they want.
And don't think that something like this will change any of that. Stock gets sold, stock gets bought, you get a whole new can of nitwits.
In Holland, this is NOT illegal. I know of people who go to the DVD-theque with their laptop, rent a disc, copy it onto the harddrive, and turn it in again immediately.
I think it's called time-delay or some such, and it's legal because it is in the field of fair use. One of them is a college professor, so he should know. As long as you delete the movie the next day (assuming that would be how long you would have been able to keep the physical disc), there is nothing illegal or unethical. It's a plus even for the DVD-rental place, because they can rent out the disc twice in one night, and the people who would not delete the copy are making 'backups' at home anyway.
Now I don't know about Netflix, so it might be different. There are probably a million agreements you have to sign to become a member, keeping you from any right you may or may not have had. I don't know!/side note
When you think about it, all this restricting customers by way of not letting us make backups and creating dvd-regions and the like, isn't that restricting the free market? The same free market these corps advocate?
But today, if an anime has any substantial appeal to Americans, it'll certainly get an international DVD release inside of two years.
How do you think the American public knows of these anime? Do you think the fansubs help? Do you think that that's the exact same reason the distributors have let them go so far?
For now I will stop shooting holes in your story. Have a nice day!
NeoSkandranon claimed it was "hard to argue". I produced a cogent argument in less than 8 seconds of effort, which demonstrates conclusively that it's easy to argue.
I assume all crows are black.
I have never seen a white crow.
When I do see a white one, all of a sudden all crows are white.
I have the exact same problem. The weird thing is, since Google doesn't look at the words on the site itself but rather at the words in the links to this site, the review+graphics+cards search should NOT return sites without any reviews, because who would link to a site with the word review in the anchor while there aren't any reviews?
not to mention the pain when your new cd won't play on your computer thanks to copy control...
there ARE workarounds, but it's way easier to just pop it in the cd player.
i agree, this looks nice. it's good to be in control. it's great that it runs on linux. my question is:
why bother? there's nothing on anyway.
the handfull of shows that are worthwhile (for me only the simpsons, really) you'll get on dvd anyway... all without the ads! no timeshifting or anything, you OWN the thing!
i haven't had a tv in years, and the only thing i miss is the news.
since it's a patent, it doesn't matter who invented it first. even if you can prove you had such a program back whenever, if someone jumps you to the patent office, you're out of luck.
only for things so obvious that it's common knowledge (the wheel, except not in australia) a patent should not be granted.
the xtraceroute people have a copyright on their implementation of this idea. i don't know how that measures up to the patent though. i guess, these days, they're doomed indeed.
Too bad a mac is still a pc.
Or do you practice "Impersonal Computing" on that Macintosh of yours?
This does raise another question, though. When and how will the tax be applied to other copmuter manufacturers?
Wait a minute.... If enough hotmail members claim they own the (c) to Linux and have the sites taken down, who is going to benefit?
Is this a ploy of MS to counter L?;-)
Slashdot Mirror
link to article debunking the myth of Linux Hobby Coders posted on this site less than one week ago.
have a nice day!
Ford's Hybrid SUV
Say what? Defeats the purpose, right? Contradictio in terminis? Looks like it, when you compare it's mpg to the others'.
that, good sir, is what we call Capitalism. happy? short term profit is better than long term happiness for the most. it makes money, so it's not a pain in the ass. these people have a right to make money. that is what the american dream boils down to in the year 2005.
You mean I can fork the US? What's the CVS password?
PDF's are a nuisance when viewed within a browser, mostly because it takes my computer (athlon 3K+, come ON!) a LONG time to open the viewer plugin, all the while freezing the entire FF app so I can't even look at any of the other tabs.
Luckily, someone made this, a freeware app that speeds up the acrobat startup because it strips a lot of libraries from it (second down on the page). What remains is a fully functional and very quick PDF viewer. Highly recommended.
These PC's are supplied for low to middle income Brazilians. Nothing bad about the Brazilians, but where I'm from that usualy means people with less education, who will be less likely to try something else. Remember that the only reason why IE is so popular isn't because there is no better alternative, but because it's pre-installed and easy and one-click-away (TM).
a couple of years ago i saw this in an electronic art fair. they had pictures of people who played it too long, hands with sores etc. etc.
it's basically pong, with added pain when you lose a ball. they have pain from heat, a sort of whip and shock. as the game progresses, the pain gets worse.
i did not try it out. you may call me a whimp, but i do not enjoy pain so much...
looks like they have a version 2 out!
painstation
phat!
;-)
the new powerbooks come with motion detection, people are designing games for it and stuff.. so it can be done, but notusing cheap hardware
I'm not saying all filesharers aren't hypocrits (altough I could come op with a lot of examples of hypocricy that are 'worse', in my opinion), so I don't disagree with your post as such.
One point I would like to make is this. The music industry is a monopoly. The top 5 labels own 80% of the music that you hear. Why? Because they control the distribution as well. There are a bazillion small labels. Sign with them and never get heard, doesn't matter how good you are. Sign with a major and get heard by millions, no matter how much you suck (insert obvious examples here). Remember that most new and upcoming bands are a couple of young unexperienced guys with guitars who would do anything for a bit of recognition. They only go Wilco after years, if ever.
There are also labels that sell cd's for less. http://www.cdbaby.com/ The general public doesn't know about their existence because they don't get distributed like the majors do.
It's a classic example of a monopoly.
Required reading: http://www.negativland.com/albini.html The Problem With Music by Steve Albini
(Steve Albini is an independent and corporate rock record producer most widely known for having produced Nirvana's "In Utero")
Aren't record companies in business to make money? It's well and good for us to tell the record companies that they should instead be concentrating more on unprofitable bands, but it is they, not we, who are responsible to their employees.
As much as this is true, it's a sad fact for music. You rightfully conclude that the music industry (yes, industry) is all about money and not about music. With this statement, you validate their monopoly and say that it is their right to control what we hear, what we see, what we do. Although it is wrong to break the law and the law is being broken, I cannot agree with these practices.
I wonder if this falls under the protection of the service provider.
:)
Same as with regular computers (hahaha) sending out viruses and emails. The responsibility is NOT with the provider. The vulnerability is with the OS, not with the provider of the service that makes the phones or computers talk to eachother.
Before you start making the provider responsible for the content of the sent messages, think of what repurcussions that will have on privacy and freedom of speech.
You know. Websites getting pulled because the provider thinks the content is not mature enough or it will get them in trouble. Same with phones.
I say: make the OS secure. (Am I preaching to the choir here at all?
What really makes this a modern issue is that it's the era of instant credit by terribly incompetent banks. With even the slightest amount of concern for actually running a solid, intelligent operation, both banks and credit agencies would have eliminated this problem long ago... yet the banks couldn't bother would the most rudimentary of checks when handing out easy credit.
The banks are not incompetent. They can hire the best IT personel, get the best encrypters and backuppers and whatnot.
Why they won't do it? Because the bank isn't there for you or me, it's not there for service or loans or good advice or a friendly smile, it's there to make profit. If the shareholders agree that the most profit could be made by mailing you dogshit to your door, prepare for a stink.
The shareholders need to be convinced of good business practice. This is hard because any good practice involves doing work, which costs money. Involves hiring the right people, teaching them new tricks, having these bothersome backupservers... Short-term profit is what they want.
And don't think that something like this will change any of that. Stock gets sold, stock gets bought, you get a whole new can of nitwits.
Advanced capitalism 101.
In Holland, this is NOT illegal. I know of people who go to the DVD-theque with their laptop, rent a disc, copy it onto the harddrive, and turn it in again immediately. I think it's called time-delay or some such, and it's legal because it is in the field of fair use. One of them is a college professor, so he should know. As long as you delete the movie the next day (assuming that would be how long you would have been able to keep the physical disc), there is nothing illegal or unethical. It's a plus even for the DVD-rental place, because they can rent out the disc twice in one night, and the people who would not delete the copy are making 'backups' at home anyway. Now I don't know about Netflix, so it might be different. There are probably a million agreements you have to sign to become a member, keeping you from any right you may or may not have had. I don't know! /side note
When you think about it, all this restricting customers by way of not letting us make backups and creating dvd-regions and the like, isn't that restricting the free market? The same free market these corps advocate?
But today, if an anime has any substantial appeal to Americans, it'll certainly get an international DVD release inside of two years.
How do you think the American public knows of these anime? Do you think the fansubs help? Do you think that that's the exact same reason the distributors have let them go so far?
For now I will stop shooting holes in your story.
Have a nice day!
NeoSkandranon claimed it was "hard to argue". I produced a cogent argument in less than 8 seconds of effort, which demonstrates conclusively that it's easy to argue.
I assume all crows are black.
I have never seen a white crow.
When I do see a white one, all of a sudden all crows are white.
Clippy.
I have the exact same problem. The weird thing is, since Google doesn't look at the words on the site itself but rather at the words in the links to this site, the review+graphics+cards search should NOT return sites without any reviews, because who would link to a site with the word review in the anchor while there aren't any reviews?
... the partner's site, that's who.
not to mention the pain when your new cd won't play on your computer thanks to copy control... there ARE workarounds, but it's way easier to just pop it in the cd player.
i agree, this looks nice. it's good to be in control. it's great that it runs on linux. my question is: why bother? there's nothing on anyway. the handfull of shows that are worthwhile (for me only the simpsons, really) you'll get on dvd anyway... all without the ads! no timeshifting or anything, you OWN the thing! i haven't had a tv in years, and the only thing i miss is the news.
since it's a patent, it doesn't matter who invented it first. even if you can prove you had such a program back whenever, if someone jumps you to the patent office, you're out of luck.
only for things so obvious that it's common knowledge (the wheel, except not in australia) a patent should not be granted.
the xtraceroute people have a copyright on their implementation of this idea. i don't know how that measures up to the patent though. i guess, these days, they're doomed indeed.
... user?
Too bad a mac is still a pc. Or do you practice "Impersonal Computing" on that Macintosh of yours? This does raise another question, though. When and how will the tax be applied to other copmuter manufacturers?
As opposed to USA's Microsoft Windows and extremely obese women? ;-)
Wait a minute.... If enough hotmail members claim they own the (c) to Linux and have the sites taken down, who is going to benefit? Is this a ploy of MS to counter L? ;-)