> just wait until you find out that there is only 1 song played over... and over..... and it's the musak version of Aerosmith's "Love in an Elevator"...
> Given the turnover in tech support, even an "assigned" drone will likely be > some random person by the time you need help.
Call centers already assign their employees with fictional names and locations. All they need to do is slap that information in a database for the next representative to use. Unless there's a major difference in accent or sex, it's not like most people would even notice a difference.
Yeah, I'm not saying I agree with what the article is saying. Just the way the OP was interpreting it.
Sony does some pretty dumb things, but I don't think they're quite dumb enough to effectively announce that they're happy to violate the GPL for projects they don't think anyone will sue them.
> Sony wants to not use GPL-licensed code in its proprietary products.
Well, no. If you RTFA, it suggests Sony wants to use GPL-licensed code except for projects the license is actually enforced. They'll use the Linux kernel because the Linux kernel community doesn't bother with GPL enforcement. They don't want to use Busybox because the Busybox developers will sue them for license violations.
Of course, it's a bit of a risky strategy. Just because someone hasn't enforced their copyrights so far doesn't mean they still can't or won't. You'd think their own lawyers would raise a stink about it...
It may just be that the songs they use for this stuff are from "old media" artists who aren't savvy about using their music for a good public shaming. Borrowing a "Heart" song is a heck of a lot less risky than, say, a Dave Carroll song.
> So, you're saying the liberal media conspiracy will try to suppress the > message of the Republicans who are just trying to get out the truth?
Nope, I'm saying that if you're going to try to build goodwill by associating with pop culture, those responsible for creating that pop culture are in an ideal position to turn it against you, and it would be a far more effective and useful approach than a lawsuit. It doesn't matter which party or even which country you're talking about, either. It's just not a smart PR move, and I don't understand how a major political campaign, as obsessive as it is about details like nailing down the perfect "presidential" haircut, wouldn't have done something to mitigate that risk.
In essence, he has the right to create derivative works from the song without getting into a big licensing kerfuffle. At least, he's got way more rights in that respect than anyone else.
He probably can't *stop* Newt Gingrinch for using his song, but he could certainly work to ensure that when people hear the song in the context of Newt Gingrinch, the first thing that comes to mind is "senile old horse fucker".
> How many votes do you think an issue like this will swing? Five?
It's not just an issue, it's an opportunity for someone to build an attack ad using popular and catchy music the candidate has been trying to build an association with.
So, to answer your question,it could swing as many votes as an effective political attack ad. I don't know how many that'd be, but it's obviously not a trivial number given how often political parties use attack advertising in their campaigns..
Why wouldn't a political candidate double check to make sure that the composers/artists/etc responsible for music their using in their campaign is, at worst, neutral towards them?
Because, quite frankly, if I had total legal control over a piece of art that some dickwad I didn't like was appropriating for PR purposes, my first instinct would be to do my own counter-PR version and dump it on whichever public channels I could find.
For instance, a youtube video set to "Eye of the Tiger" which just shows a picture of Gingrinch on a punching bag being pummeled by various disadvantaged types with captions explaining their beefs against him and the Republican party might be an effective way to develop a negative association between him and the song.
Why in the world would a political campaign risk pissing someone off like that?
> It's still possible to buy netbooks without Windows pre-installed.
Sure. It's also possible to bicycle from the east to the west coast. But effectively, bicycles don't exist in the "consumer" long-haul transportation market, just as Linux netbooks no longer really exist in the "consumer" netbook market.
> Don't purchase any of these ARM powered devices which run Windows 8.
Have you tried recently to buy a netbook which doesn't have some flavour of Windows installed?
That's the situation people are worried about. Microsoft flexing its muscles (and presumbly leveraging all those Android patent agreements) and basically pushing everything else out of the ARM tablet market. Granted, Android is entrenched enough that it'll take longer than it did with netbooks, but I have no doubt about their goals.
> I respect Canada for placing *their* needs before that of the US unlike the > New Zealand and Australian governments act of total, complete and utter > capitulation.
Whoah there... don't be too hasty with the respect.
I can assure you that Canada will be more than happy to totally, completely and utterly capitulate to the US as soon as feasible. The only reason we haven't recently is a few years of ineffectual and/or minority governments. We're back to a majority government and I'm quite confident that as soon as our politicians think they can get away with it, they'll bend Canada over and pull down the britches for a good 'ol red-white-and-blue ass pounding.
> Sorry, but with a name like "Unruly Media," wasn't someone keeping an eye on them?
Because they're an advertising company. You have to automatically assume they're lying about everything. If they'd been called "Proper Media" there'd be a Google spy-mobile permanently parked outside the office.
> Google profits from the deal, but at the same time they would want to improve their > own market so they don't need to pay anyone else in future.
$100 million (or $300m, or whatever it is these days) is money well spent to keep Microsoft fighting a two front war in the browser market. Because if they ever get another stranglehold on the browser, Google and pretty much anyone else who depends on a free and open web is seriously fucked.
> It was also written in forth, of all things. So it's like finally figuring out the compression > scheme and decoding the file - only to find out that it is an image of naked lady *martians*.
Er... you do realize this is slashdot, and to an entire generation of nerds who spent most of their post-pubescent lives lusting after Star Trek aliens, both real-live implementations of "forth" and images of "naked lady martians" are considered a good thing to find inside compressed, encrypted binary blobs?
> Either the guy has never bothered to speak on camera, or the regime > was afraid he'd say something stupid.
He was telepathic, obviously. He didn't have to speak to communicate. Did you think he got to be an expert in 10000 areas by reading books?
Incidentally, this nicely explains all the photos of him standing around, staring intently at a vegetable, listening patiently to its concerns and comments about the field or factory it found itself in. Dear Leader cared about all his subjects, even the most humble.
> There used to be a time when we would take part in multinational > initiatives and act as a positive mediator who helped countries reach > consensus. Now we sabotage them.
Not all of them. I'll bet they stand behind ACTA to the bitter end.
Slashdot Mirror
> ...or should we just take them to animal control to be euthanized?
You mean they aren't dead? Who the hell live traps lawyers?!?
> Telling him to go fuck himself is perfectly fine, but inciting people to go
> kill him is clearly over the line.
Fine...
How about a compromise?
Cary Sherman, go fuck yourself to death.
> The only thing surprising to me about this is that the Chinese police actually cares about it.
They care about the stuff they don't get paid to not care about.
> just wait until you find out that there is only 1 song played over ... and over.. ... and it's the musak version of Aerosmith's "Love in an Elevator"...
> Given the turnover in tech support, even an "assigned" drone will likely be
> some random person by the time you need help.
Call centers already assign their employees with fictional names and locations. All they need to do is slap that information in a database for the next representative to use. Unless there's a major difference in accent or sex, it's not like most people would even notice a difference.
The courses you really have to be wary of are the ones without any exam.
> Nothing against the man, but I'd be surprised if he was in *any* spanking
> movie, yet alone a really good one.
Nice try, but I am not googling "Kofi Annan spanking movie".
Yeah, I'm not saying I agree with what the article is saying. Just the way the OP was interpreting it.
Sony does some pretty dumb things, but I don't think they're quite dumb enough to effectively announce that they're happy to violate the GPL for projects they don't think anyone will sue them.
Then again... it's Sony.
> Sony wants to not use GPL-licensed code in its proprietary products.
Well, no. If you RTFA, it suggests Sony wants to use GPL-licensed code except for projects the license is actually enforced. They'll use the Linux kernel because the Linux kernel community doesn't bother with GPL enforcement. They don't want to use Busybox because the Busybox developers will sue them for license violations.
Of course, it's a bit of a risky strategy. Just because someone hasn't enforced their copyrights so far doesn't mean they still can't or won't. You'd think their own lawyers would raise a stink about it...
It may just be that the songs they use for this stuff are from "old media" artists who aren't savvy about using their music for a good public shaming. Borrowing a "Heart" song is a heck of a lot less risky than, say, a Dave Carroll song.
Give it time, I guess.
> So, you're saying the liberal media conspiracy will try to suppress the
> message of the Republicans who are just trying to get out the truth?
Nope, I'm saying that if you're going to try to build goodwill by associating with pop culture, those responsible for creating that pop culture are in an ideal position to turn it against you, and it would be a far more effective and useful approach than a lawsuit. It doesn't matter which party or even which country you're talking about, either. It's just not a smart PR move, and I don't understand how a major political campaign, as obsessive as it is about details like nailing down the perfect "presidential" haircut, wouldn't have done something to mitigate that risk.
> Because he doesn't have total legal control.
Good point. It was bad choice of words.
In essence, he has the right to create derivative works from the song without getting into a big licensing kerfuffle. At least, he's got way more rights in that respect than anyone else.
He probably can't *stop* Newt Gingrinch for using his song, but he could certainly work to ensure that when people hear the song in the context of Newt Gingrinch, the first thing that comes to mind is "senile old horse fucker".
> How many votes do you think an issue like this will swing? Five?
It's not just an issue, it's an opportunity for someone to build an attack ad using popular and catchy music the candidate has been trying to build an association with.
So, to answer your question,it could swing as many votes as an effective political attack ad. I don't know how many that'd be, but it's obviously not a trivial number given how often political parties use attack advertising in their campaigns..
Why wouldn't a political candidate double check to make sure that the composers/artists/etc responsible for music their using in their campaign is, at worst, neutral towards them?
Because, quite frankly, if I had total legal control over a piece of art that some dickwad I didn't like was appropriating for PR purposes, my first instinct would be to do my own counter-PR version and dump it on whichever public channels I could find.
For instance, a youtube video set to "Eye of the Tiger" which just shows a picture of Gingrinch on a punching bag being pummeled by various disadvantaged types with captions explaining their beefs against him and the Republican party might be an effective way to develop a negative association between him and the song.
Why in the world would a political campaign risk pissing someone off like that?
> It's still possible to buy netbooks without Windows pre-installed.
Sure. It's also possible to bicycle from the east to the west coast. But effectively, bicycles don't exist in the "consumer" long-haul transportation market, just as Linux netbooks no longer really exist in the "consumer" netbook market.
> Don't purchase any of these ARM powered devices which run Windows 8.
Have you tried recently to buy a netbook which doesn't have some flavour of Windows installed?
That's the situation people are worried about. Microsoft flexing its muscles (and presumbly leveraging all those Android patent agreements) and basically pushing everything else out of the ARM tablet market. Granted, Android is entrenched enough that it'll take longer than it did with netbooks, but I have no doubt about their goals.
> I respect Canada for placing *their* needs before that of the US unlike the
> New Zealand and Australian governments act of total, complete and utter
> capitulation.
Whoah there... don't be too hasty with the respect.
I can assure you that Canada will be more than happy to totally, completely and utterly capitulate to the US as soon as feasible. The only reason we haven't recently is a few years of ineffectual and/or minority governments. We're back to a majority government and I'm quite confident that as soon as our politicians think they can get away with it, they'll bend Canada over and pull down the britches for a good 'ol red-white-and-blue ass pounding.
> Sorry, but with a name like "Unruly Media," wasn't someone keeping an eye on them?
Because they're an advertising company. You have to automatically assume they're lying about everything. If they'd been called "Proper Media" there'd be a Google spy-mobile permanently parked outside the office.
> Google profits from the deal, but at the same time they would want to improve their
> own market so they don't need to pay anyone else in future.
$100 million (or $300m, or whatever it is these days) is money well spent to keep Microsoft fighting a two front war in the browser market. Because if they ever get another stranglehold on the browser, Google and pretty much anyone else who depends on a free and open web is seriously fucked.
Judging from most slashdot car analogies, I'd say "no". Which, I think, makes it safer ground than programming languages and naked aliens.
> It was also written in forth, of all things. So it's like finally figuring out the compression
> scheme and decoding the file - only to find out that it is an image of naked lady *martians*.
Er... you do realize this is slashdot, and to an entire generation of nerds who spent most of their post-pubescent lives lusting after Star Trek aliens, both real-live implementations of "forth" and images of "naked lady martians" are considered a good thing to find inside compressed, encrypted binary blobs?
Stick with something safe, like car analogies.
> Either the guy has never bothered to speak on camera, or the regime
> was afraid he'd say something stupid.
He was telepathic, obviously. He didn't have to speak to communicate. Did you think he got to be an expert in 10000 areas by reading books?
Incidentally, this nicely explains all the photos of him standing around, staring intently at a vegetable, listening patiently to its concerns and comments about the field or factory it found itself in. Dear Leader cared about all his subjects, even the most humble.
> There used to be a time when we would take part in multinational
> initiatives and act as a positive mediator who helped countries reach
> consensus. Now we sabotage them.
Not all of them. I'll bet they stand behind ACTA to the bitter end.
It was "informative". Perhaps a little too informative, granted, but the slashdot moderation system only had a small set of choices...
Or it's 64 cores with an average usable yield of 50 "good" ones.