What I don't get is, why do the US insist on having electronic voting machines ? I presume the 2000 fiasco prompted some kind of overreaction, but why not simply go to a plain paper system ?
In backwards socialist pro-islamofascist hellholes such as France, elections are 100% paper-based. People walk into the local voting point and (after registering and showing their elector card) are presented with a number of bulletins, each of them bearing the name of a candidate. They take several of them, walk into the booth and put the bulletin of their choice in an envelope. Then they walk to the ballot box and drop the envelope.
The integrity of the vote is ensured by the most primitive (and efficient) method around: after the vote is over, bulletins are counted by officials in each voting point in presence of the public. Bulletins are handpicked from the box, the main official reads the name aloud, and shows the ballot to other officials present and to the public. The names are also written down by two other officials. The total figures are then transmitted to a central office in Paris. On the next morning, people can check in the local newspaper that the vote count reported for their precinct corresponds to whatever was announced at the voting point.
This system is simple, efficient, and reasonably fool-/fraud-proof. Can someone explain me the exact problem with it ?
So he is giving a tiny percentage of the money he made using the most slimy and despicable methods known to mankind
For some reason I have this feeling that you haven't seen much of what "mankind" is capable of when it comes to slimy, despicable methods of making money (Example ?)
Good Laugh. Think of an ocean that is more than 100000 feet deep (~30000M deep).
Out of which we are supposed to extract (according to the article) 95% of our energy needs.
Which is a lot.
Put a large block of ice on a frying pan. Only an infinitesimal part of the block is in contact with the pan. Does it mean that the rest of the block will be unaffected ?
Atmosphere is an extremely unstable system. Are you absolutely certain that extracting enough energy to feed the US will not have any large-scale impact on its dynamics ?
That Natalie Portman stuff was started in the last century (mostly by one obsessive/. troll). Today Natalie Portman is too old for the average/. readership - I mean, dude, she's twenty-three !:)
Let me repeat the operative words here: commercial software, binary only, Intel.
Company A makes (closed) software that only works with Windows.
The Slashmob: "boo, boo, evil greedy bastards, why don't they support free OS as well ?"
Company B tries to make it easier for closed software to work on Linux, therefore making it a (more) viable alternative to Windows for some businesses.
The Slashmob: "boo, boo, evil greedy bastards, they want to exploit OSS for money !"
I simply use "apt" or "yum" and let them sort it out
I quite don't get why people keep invoking apt, yum or urpmi here. The problem seems different to me.
The problem is when you have two versions of the same library (say lib.so.1 and lib.so.2), some old applications depend on lib v1.0 to run and were compiled against "lib.so", but now "lib.so" is symlinked to the newer (and incompatible) lib.so.2, which breaks older programs.
User frustration, swearing and Windows praising ensue (because the novice user has probably never been through DLL hell, which is admittedly much worse).
Boo hoo, why can't I have a phone that just makes calls. I have 20 other devices that I carry on my batman like utility belt that do each_function_separately.
The problem is that these devices often look more practical than they are IRL. I own a (cheap, ebay-acquired) Treo. The small keyboard looks really good until you actually try it. On the bonus side, with that thumb training, I'll probably be able to to pull-ups with my fingers by the end of the month...
Another thing is that these devices are often marketed as what they aren't: ultra-portable computers, allowing you to be productive (as in desktop-like productive) on the go. No way.
To me the ideal device would be an HP 320lx with an upgradable (read: open source) OS and (potential) 802.11b capacity. That, and my old, small, perfect-shaped Motorola v60 as a phone. That's two devices, each of which does what it does near-perfectly. Small loss of pocket real estate, huge gain in efficiency and satisfaction !
Why on earth they ditched the palmtop computers and went for stylus input or thumb keyboard is beyond me. Those machines might be the only possible competition for the oh-so-cute-and-practical but oh-so-damn-pricey 12.1" iBooks that my co-workers keep waving under my nose (grrr). With a palmtop solution, you loose some functionality, but you gain other features (even the amazing portability of small iBooks can't compete with something you can put in the pocket of your jacket - oh, and 8 hours battery life with standard alkaline batteries as a bonus) and you divide the price by 3 (not to mention 2nd hand market!)
Hell, see the prices of 320lx on ebay, how much would it cost to make a new, slightly improved 320lx ? If anyone can provide information about the closest thing there is to a monochrome (battery life !) handheld device that can be extended with 802.11b and an open OS, I'd be very grateful.
Except that from what I know, those Chechnian rebels are also Islamic fundamentalists.
Reality check:
The first war of Chechnya was essentially secular. And the Chechens actually won it. At some point the Russians realised that Grozny was simply not worth dying for, so they gave virtual independence to the Chechens and got back home - although with deep resentment, bitterness, and a deep desire for revenge in some of those who lost friends or relatives in this war.
Then, in the few years of Chechen independence, the Cult of fundamentalists (Al Qaeda and co) essentially invaded whole parts of the country and used it as a base for perpetrating vicious attacks (mostly agaisnt unarmed people) in the region. Their "aim", if it can be said that these people still have enough of a brain to have aims, was to "liberate" all caucasian moslems from Russian rule. Of course, the caucasian moslems had never asked for anything like that - but do you think the Cult would care for this detail ? So they kidnapped and killed as much as they could. The (democratically elected) Chechen government was powerless to stop them, either by weakness or by sheer incompetence or corruption.
This wave of terror implanted by foreign terrorists culminated in the bombing of three buildings in Russia, killing 100. At that point it was almost too easy for Putin to say "look, you see that those Chechens are bandits and murderers, we can't trust them, let's go back there !"
So the Russian soldiers went back to Chechnya, waging the dirtiest war on the European continent since WWII. But this time the local, secular resistance was "complemented" by the fundamentalists, local and foreign. The Russian's brutality pushed many people into the resistance, many of which followed the fundamentalists. And this was the second war of Chechnya, which is still going on right now.
There is a good op-ed about it in today's Herald Tribune.
Now look at what I just wrote. Replace "Putin" by "Bush" and "Caucasus" by "Middle East". And "Russia" with, essentially the whole damn world.
Strictly udner the GPL this should happen, but it would be suicide if someone could just come along, request the source and use it to break the crippleware timer.
Well, that happens to be the whole point of the GPL.
The core of the GPL is this: You are allowed to charge a fee for your software, but you cannot prevent other people who obtained your code from distributing it under the GPL, with any modification and at any price they like - including beer-free.
This ensures that the fee you charge cannot be higher than the estimated cost of the hassle incurred in looking for alternative sources. This cost may be fairly high if there are frequent releases, valuable additions - in a word, if your actions on the code actually provide value.
In this case I don't understand why the guy did not simply go after a model like that. There is a number of people out there would would probably be willing to pay a reasonable price for obtaining up-to-date, certified, "official" X-chat releases. By starting a shareware client based on non-available modifications of the source, he simply infringed on the GPL and made a n00b of himself.
Notice Ike's comment about that "worth fifteen divisions" thing.
You may also not be aware of the fact that Paris was liberated by the French resistance, not by American troops (although the presence of Allied forces in Normandy certainly played a major role in the decision to start the uprising). Not that I blame you, apparently your Defence secretary is just as ignorant as you.
(and later putting up anti-American signs throughout the country following WWII)
The Communist party did. While they were a strong force at that time, they never won any general election and never represented the majority of the people.
The French court is now trying to force them to take it down on their other sites as well
The French court doesn't want Yahoo to "take down" anything.
The French court simply wants Yahoo to block French users from their auction sites, or at least make a credible attempt at that. That's controversial enough, no need to make it look even worse.
Good idea. However forging random data is cumbersome and time consuming. To save your precious time, I graciously offer my name, email address and personal information for you to copy-paste in the info form:)
the next release of linux should have a paragraph saying that any company that makes threats over patent rights is not covered under the standard license.
I.e. : "Hey, IBM, thanks for asking, but no, we don't want you - go away"
using either linear algorithmic models or a parrallel neural network approach.
Mandelbrot is one of the people who demolished the idea of applying linear filters (or just about any predictive method) to stock markets.
In particular he showed two things:
- Market parices are strongly non-gaussian. They do follow a bell curve (approximately as many ups than downs, with a concentratino near the middle) but if you try to calculate the mean and variance of market data and draw a gaussian curve based on it, you'll notice that the real data will have a much lower density around the mean, and much longer, higher tails at each side. This is because market price data have a distribution that favours extremes in comparison to gaussians: there are many more extreme variations (up or down) that would be expected in a gaussian process.
- Market prices have the same behaviour, regardless of the scale. If you look at a given graph of variation, it is impossible to determine wether they cover a week, a month, a year or even a decade.
"Wolfe is using a confusingly similar name in a bad-faith attempt to compete with Google's business, the judge concluded."
I really don't see how Wolfe could be purposefully confusing consumers in bad-faith since he started his business first.
Read the article again. Google claim that the carpenter in question used a name (Froogles) that was deceivingly similar to the *Google* name, not to the (then-unregistered) Froogle name.
In other words, they suspect that he called his business "Froogles" in order to benefit from Google's popularity. The third judge agreed with this. The two others did not.
It's not really clear cut, but the ruling seems reasonable to me.
The drug war started out as a form of government backed opression against Mexicans (who used Marijuana), Asians (who used opium), and Blacks (who used cocaine)
What are you saying here ? Ae you among the conspiracist who say that government encouraged drug use among minorities to prevent them from overcoming their slave status, or those who say that the war on drugs are war against minorities (because, as we all know, white anglo-saxon protestants don't use drugs) ?
The problem with all these conspiracy theories around is that sometimes because they use the same vocabulary, sometimes, it's difficult to understand who says what.
But, the royalty system for music needs to go. The industry's expectation of being paid for every "instance" of their intellectual property is unsustainable. Instead, musicians should be salaried, should make most of their income from actually performing concerts for people, and should release on CD only if they fully expect their music to be copied by others.
People who say "all musicians should make money from concerts" simply do not understand that, unless you are Ythzak Perlman or someone like that, concerts are the most impractical, non-profitable way to perform music.
Instead of concerts being a hook to get people to buy CDs, CDs should be a hook to get people to go to concerts.
Live music and CDs are two entirely different things. You cannot impose a trade-off between going to a concert for a one-time, unique experience, and simply being able to listen to music in the comfort of your home when you want to. It's just different.
BTW, why do you assume that all music should, or even can, be played live ?
CDs exist because they correspond to a demand. Why in the world should this demand be satisfied for free ?
But if an engineer can't find somebody who wants his services, you know what happens? He stands in line at the unemployment office, or finds something else to do. He doesn't whine to the government like the record labels do!
I love half-baked analogies...
An engineer is paid for by patrons (i.e. companies) because the engineer works for them. Not for the rest of the world.
Translated in the music domain, this means that only those who could afford to hire musicians could hear music - which, guess what, has been the case for a long period of time, except for religious music and traditional folksong.
If a patron hires musicians, why on earth would he allow them to play for the general public, unless he can obtain a gain of some form (e.g. advertising) ?
A company re-sells the work of engineers (that's why they hire engineers in the first place). Similarly, a patron could re-sell the music of its musicians. But this supposes thay they could gain money from it, which means that there should be a way to actually sell items of music (with profit). Which drives us back to square one.
(Actually, this form of patronage looks pretty much like the RIAA model right now...)
Same thing with P2P networks. They just didn't realize how very many people are willing to bend or break the law given the chance. What, they thought everyone's basically GOOD at heart? SUCKER! P2P networks are handy. They have legitimate uses. The most valuable one to me is that heretofore unknown artists can make their work available and with just a little word of mouth, garner a lot of attention and notice they wouldn't previously have had.
You seem to be among those who refuse to acknowledge that the proportion of infringing use in Photoshop is negligible compared to what it is in P2P networks such as Kazaa.
A simple criterion: Photoshop would still be a commercially viable product even if infringing use was eliminated. So would VCRs (nowhere in this statement is it even suggested that VCRs should be made illegal). This is not the case with Kazaa and similar products: if you remove infringing use, they simply vanish. Examples: the old Napster (who went bankrupt as soon as they filtered out copyright material). Audiogalaxy also comes to mind. BitTorrent, on the other hand, would be safe from this point of view.
The people who sell Kazaa rely on infringing use to make a profit. By refusing to acknowledge this obvious fact, you make it easy for the RIAA to picture all its opponent as bad-faith kids only interested in getting everything for free (which, incidentally, is not so inaccurate a portrayal for a significant part of the/. mob).
But the point is, they see things getting out of control. They see their precious status-quo shaken.
Please, next time you feel the urge to invoke some conspiracy theories, could simply read what other people actually say ?
RTFA (I know you won't, but maybe some people will)
She doesn't want VCRs to be illegal. She even provides several criteria that allow to distinguish between products that should and should not be allowed (she didn't invent them, they're based on legal decisions):
1) The product has or doesn't have substantial non-infringing use. VCR: check. Napster, Kazaa et al: Look at the traffic, how much is non-infringing ?
2) The product does not depend on infringement to be commercially viable. As she says, in the case of a VCR or of a portable MP3 player, clearly the product would still be commercially viable even if only legit use was possible. If you really believe that Kazaa would survive as a commercial entity if infringing material was removed from it, I give up.
But you don't even need to trust me, because she provides one shrewd example: The "old" Napster. Remember them ? As soon as they filtered out copyrighted material, they went under !
Kazaa and similar services thrive on massive copyright infringement (BitTorrent doesn't, as it is used by several companies to distribute products legally in a practical way). This is fact for anyone with at least vague remnants of sincerity. There may be several answers to this. Legal licensing ? Throwing copyrights away altogether and deciding that "information wants to be free" and that intellectual work should only be financed on a "for hire" basis (after all, if you want to go back to the dark ages, that's your problem) ? This is an interesting debate - too bad the/. crowd chose the "burn the witch !" option.
Instead of us whining on slashdot, we need to inform and mobilize the masses.
Instead of you whining on/., you need to pull your head out of the lower end of your digestive system and at least make an attempt at listening to what people say.
It's clear that being present in Dublin has proved itself to be a device that could be used to illegaly copy music. I propose an immediate Senate bill to ban such technology.
There's a better way: just start a rumour that oil has been found in Dublin...
Two days later on CNN: "Actually, we didn't find any WMD in Iraq because Saddam sent them to evil Ireland, which as I have said is part of an Axis of Evil.... What, you thought I said 'Iran' ? Ha ha, blame it on a bretzel crumb on my tongue..."
Slashdot Mirror
What I don't get is, why do the US insist on having electronic voting machines ? I presume the 2000 fiasco prompted some kind of overreaction, but why not simply go to a plain paper system ?
In backwards socialist pro-islamofascist hellholes such as France, elections are 100% paper-based. People walk into the local voting point and (after registering and showing their elector card) are presented with a number of bulletins, each of them bearing the name of a candidate. They take several of them, walk into the booth and put the bulletin of their choice in an envelope. Then they walk to the ballot box and drop the envelope.
The integrity of the vote is ensured by the most primitive (and efficient) method around: after the vote is over, bulletins are counted by officials in each voting point in presence of the public. Bulletins are handpicked from the box, the main official reads the name aloud, and shows the ballot to other officials present and to the public. The names are also written down by two other officials. The total figures are then transmitted to a central office in Paris. On the next morning, people can check in the local newspaper that the vote count reported for their precinct corresponds to whatever was announced at the voting point.
This system is simple, efficient, and reasonably fool-/fraud-proof. Can someone explain me the exact problem with it ?
Thomas-
So he is giving a tiny percentage of the money he made using the most slimy and despicable methods known to mankind
For some reason I have this feeling that you haven't seen much of what "mankind" is capable of when it comes to slimy, despicable methods of making money (Example ?)
Thomas-
Good Laugh. Think of an ocean that is more than 100000 feet deep (~30000M deep).
Out of which we are supposed to extract (according to the article) 95% of our energy needs.
Which is a lot.
Put a large block of ice on a frying pan. Only an infinitesimal part of the block is in contact with the pan. Does it mean that the rest of the block will be unaffected ?
Atmosphere is an extremely unstable system. Are you absolutely certain that extracting enough energy to feed the US will not have any large-scale impact on its dynamics ?
Thomas-
Natalie Portman is really hot.
/. troll). Today Natalie Portman is too old for the average /. readership - I mean, dude, she's twenty-three ! :)
That Natalie Portman stuff was started in the last century (mostly by one obsessive
Thomas
Let me repeat the operative words here: commercial software, binary only, Intel.
Company A makes (closed) software that only works with Windows.
The Slashmob: "boo, boo, evil greedy bastards, why don't they support free OS as well ?"
Company B tries to make it easier for closed software to work on Linux, therefore making it a (more) viable alternative to Windows for some businesses.
The Slashmob: "boo, boo, evil greedy bastards, they want to exploit OSS for money !"
To hell with it.
Thomas-
I simply use "apt" or "yum" and let them sort it out
I quite don't get why people keep invoking apt, yum or urpmi here. The problem seems different to me.
The problem is when you have two versions of the same library (say lib.so.1 and lib.so.2), some old applications depend on lib v1.0 to run and were compiled against "lib.so", but now "lib.so" is symlinked to the newer (and incompatible) lib.so.2, which breaks older programs.
User frustration, swearing and Windows praising ensue (because the novice user has probably never been through DLL hell, which is admittedly much worse).
How does Linux address such a problem ?
Thomas
Boo hoo, why can't I have a phone that just makes calls. I have 20 other devices that I carry on my batman like utility belt that do each_function_separately.
The problem is that these devices often look more practical than they are IRL. I own a (cheap, ebay-acquired) Treo. The small keyboard looks really good until you actually try it. On the bonus side, with that thumb training, I'll probably be able to to pull-ups with my fingers by the end of the month...
Another thing is that these devices are often marketed as what they aren't: ultra-portable computers, allowing you to be productive (as in desktop-like productive) on the go. No way.
To me the ideal device would be an HP 320lx with an upgradable (read: open source) OS and (potential) 802.11b capacity. That, and my old, small, perfect-shaped Motorola v60 as a phone. That's two devices, each of which does what it does near-perfectly. Small loss of pocket real estate, huge gain in efficiency and satisfaction !
Why on earth they ditched the palmtop computers and went for stylus input or thumb keyboard is beyond me. Those machines might be the only possible competition for the oh-so-cute-and-practical but oh-so-damn-pricey 12.1" iBooks that my co-workers keep waving under my nose (grrr). With a palmtop solution, you loose some functionality, but you gain other features (even the amazing portability of small iBooks can't compete with something you can put in the pocket of your jacket - oh, and 8 hours battery life with standard alkaline batteries as a bonus) and you divide the price by 3 (not to mention 2nd hand market!)
Hell, see the prices of 320lx on ebay, how much would it cost to make a new, slightly improved 320lx ? If anyone can provide information about the closest thing there is to a monochrome (battery life !) handheld device that can be extended with 802.11b and an open OS, I'd be very grateful.
</rant>
Thomas
Except that from what I know, those Chechnian rebels are also Islamic fundamentalists.
Reality check:
The first war of Chechnya was essentially secular. And the Chechens actually won it. At some point the Russians realised that Grozny was simply not worth dying for, so they gave virtual independence to the Chechens and got back home - although with deep resentment, bitterness, and a deep desire for revenge in some of those who lost friends or relatives in this war.
Then, in the few years of Chechen independence, the Cult of fundamentalists (Al Qaeda and co) essentially invaded whole parts of the country and used it as a base for perpetrating vicious attacks (mostly agaisnt unarmed people) in the region. Their "aim", if it can be said that these people still have enough of a brain to have aims, was to "liberate" all caucasian moslems from Russian rule. Of course, the caucasian moslems had never asked for anything like that - but do you think the Cult would care for this detail ? So they kidnapped and killed as much as they could. The (democratically elected) Chechen government was powerless to stop them, either by weakness or by sheer incompetence or corruption.
This wave of terror implanted by foreign terrorists culminated in the bombing of three buildings in Russia, killing 100. At that point it was almost too easy for Putin to say "look, you see that those Chechens are bandits and murderers, we can't trust them, let's go back there !"
So the Russian soldiers went back to Chechnya, waging the dirtiest war on the European continent since WWII. But this time the local, secular resistance was "complemented" by the fundamentalists, local and foreign. The Russian's brutality pushed many people into the resistance, many of which followed the fundamentalists. And this was the second war of Chechnya, which is still going on right now.
There is a good op-ed about it in today's Herald Tribune.
Now look at what I just wrote. Replace "Putin" by "Bush" and "Caucasus" by "Middle East". And "Russia" with, essentially the whole damn world.
See the picture ?
Please, please, get us rid of Bush !
Thomas Miconi
then why not reallocate a public holiday so they don't have to go to work that day?
In France elections are usually held on a Sunday.
This does not prevent high abstention rates (read: people who couldn't be bothered to vote), and side effects...
Thomas Miconi
Strictly udner the GPL this should happen, but it would be suicide if someone could just come along, request the source and use it to break the crippleware timer.
Well, that happens to be the whole point of the GPL.
The core of the GPL is this: You are allowed to charge a fee for your software, but you cannot prevent other people who obtained your code from distributing it under the GPL, with any modification and at any price they like - including beer-free.
This ensures that the fee you charge cannot be higher than the estimated cost of the hassle incurred in looking for alternative sources. This cost may be fairly high if there are frequent releases, valuable additions - in a word, if your actions on the code actually provide value.
In this case I don't understand why the guy did not simply go after a model like that. There is a number of people out there would would probably be willing to pay a reasonable price for obtaining up-to-date, certified, "official" X-chat releases. By starting a shareware client based on non-available modifications of the source, he simply infringed on the GPL and made a n00b of himself.
Thomas Miconi
Perhaps if they'd put up resistance instead of greeting and helping the Nazis
Well, actually, they did.
Notice Ike's comment about that "worth fifteen divisions" thing.
You may also not be aware of the fact that Paris was liberated by the French resistance, not by American troops (although the presence of Allied forces in Normandy certainly played a major role in the decision to start the uprising). Not that I blame you, apparently your Defence secretary is just as ignorant as you.
(and later putting up anti-American signs throughout the country following WWII)
The Communist party did. While they were a strong force at that time, they never won any general election and never represented the majority of the people.
RTF (History) M next time.
Thomas Miconi
The French court is now trying to force them to take it down on their other sites as well
The French court doesn't want Yahoo to "take down" anything.
The French court simply wants Yahoo to block French users from their auction sites, or at least
make a credible attempt at that. That's controversial enough, no need to make it look even worse.
Look here.
Thomas Miconi
And how hard would it be to block any browser that appears to come from France, if they even cared that much about it?
That's exactly what the French judge asked them to do.
Hell, the judge even asked Vinton Cerf for advice !
Thomas Miconi
I usually sign them up with bogus data
:)
Good idea. However forging random data is cumbersome and time consuming. To save your precious time, I graciously offer my name, email address and personal information for you to copy-paste in the info form
You're welcome !
Thomas Miconi
we'll try - Ability to send messages with HTML formatting
God. Please. NO !
Am I the only one out there who thinks HTML emails are a nuisance ?
Thomas Miconi
the next release of linux should have a paragraph saying that any company that makes threats over patent rights is not covered under the standard license.
I.e. : "Hey, IBM, thanks for asking, but no, we don't want you - go away"
For some reason, I can't see that happening.
Thomas Miconi
using either linear algorithmic models or a parrallel neural network approach.
Mandelbrot is one of the people who demolished the idea of applying linear filters (or just about any predictive method) to stock markets.
In particular he showed two things:
- Market parices are strongly non-gaussian. They do follow a bell curve (approximately as many ups than downs, with a concentratino near the middle) but if you try to calculate the mean and variance of market data and draw a gaussian curve based on it, you'll notice that the real data will have a much lower density around the mean, and much longer, higher tails at each side. This is because market price data have a distribution that favours extremes in comparison to gaussians: there are many more extreme variations (up or down) that would be expected in a gaussian process.
- Market prices have the same behaviour, regardless of the scale. If you look at a given graph of variation, it is impossible to determine wether they cover a week, a month, a year or even a decade.
Thomas Miconi
"Wolfe is using a confusingly similar name in a bad-faith attempt to compete with Google's business, the judge concluded."
I really don't see how Wolfe could be purposefully confusing consumers in bad-faith since he started his business first.
Read the article again. Google claim that the carpenter in question used a name (Froogles) that was deceivingly similar to the *Google* name, not to the (then-unregistered) Froogle name.
In other words, they suspect that he called his business "Froogles" in order to benefit from Google's popularity. The third judge agreed with this. The two others did not.
It's not really clear cut, but the ruling seems reasonable to me.
What if suddenly I told one of these anti-drug fanatics that something they enjoy doing is now illegal
They would simply answer: "Are you telling us that crack addicts enjoy being crack addicts ?
And even though you'd lie and weasel your way out of it, that's essentially what you are saying.
The drug war started out as a form of government backed opression against Mexicans (who used Marijuana), Asians (who used opium), and Blacks (who used cocaine)
What are you saying here ? Ae you among the conspiracist who say that government encouraged drug use among minorities to prevent them from overcoming their slave status, or those who say that the war on drugs are war against minorities (because, as we all know, white anglo-saxon protestants don't use drugs) ?
The problem with all these conspiracy theories around is that sometimes because they use the same vocabulary, sometimes, it's difficult to understand who says what.
But, the royalty system for music needs to go. The industry's expectation of being paid for every "instance" of their intellectual property is unsustainable. Instead, musicians should be salaried, should make most of their income from actually performing concerts for people, and should release on CD only if they fully expect their music to be copied by others.
People who say "all musicians should make money from concerts" simply do not understand that, unless you are Ythzak Perlman or someone like that, concerts are the most impractical, non-profitable way to perform music.
Instead of concerts being a hook to get people to buy CDs, CDs should be a hook to get people to go to concerts.
Live music and CDs are two entirely different things. You cannot impose a trade-off between going to a concert for a one-time, unique experience, and simply being able to listen to music in the comfort of your home when you want to. It's just different.
BTW, why do you assume that all music should, or even can, be played live ?
CDs exist because they correspond to a demand. Why in the world should this demand be satisfied for free ?
Thomas Miconi
But if an engineer can't find somebody who wants his services, you know what happens? He stands in line at the unemployment office, or finds something else to do. He doesn't whine to the government like the record labels do!
I love half-baked analogies...
An engineer is paid for by patrons (i.e. companies) because the engineer works for them. Not for the rest of the world.
Translated in the music domain, this means that only those who could afford to hire musicians could hear music - which, guess what, has been the case for a long period of time, except for religious music and traditional folksong.
If a patron hires musicians, why on earth would he allow them to play for the general public, unless he can obtain a gain of some form (e.g. advertising) ?
A company re-sells the work of engineers (that's why they hire engineers in the first place). Similarly, a patron could re-sell the music of its musicians. But this supposes thay they could gain money from it, which means that there should be a way to actually sell items of music (with profit). Which drives us back to square one.
(Actually, this form of patronage looks pretty much like the RIAA model right now...)
Thomas Miconi
Same thing with P2P networks. They just didn't realize how very many people are willing to bend or break the law given the chance. What, they thought everyone's basically GOOD at heart? SUCKER! P2P networks are handy. They have legitimate uses. The most valuable one to me is that heretofore unknown artists can make their work available and with just a little word of mouth, garner a lot of attention and notice they wouldn't previously have had.
/. mob).
You seem to be among those who refuse to acknowledge that the proportion of infringing use in Photoshop is negligible compared to what it is in P2P networks such as Kazaa.
A simple criterion: Photoshop would still be a commercially viable product even if infringing use was eliminated. So would VCRs (nowhere in this statement is it even suggested that VCRs should be made illegal). This is not the case with Kazaa and similar products: if you remove infringing use, they simply vanish. Examples: the old Napster (who went bankrupt as soon as they filtered out copyright material). Audiogalaxy also comes to mind. BitTorrent, on the other hand, would be safe from this point of view.
The people who sell Kazaa rely on infringing use to make a profit. By refusing to acknowledge this obvious fact, you make it easy for the RIAA to picture all its opponent as bad-faith kids only interested in getting everything for free (which, incidentally, is not so inaccurate a portrayal for a significant part of the
But the point is, they see things getting out of control. They see their precious status-quo shaken.
Please, next time you feel the urge to invoke some conspiracy theories, could simply read what other people actually say ?
And karma be damned.
Thomas Miconi
RTFA (I know you won't, but maybe some people will)
/. crowd chose the "burn the witch !" option.
/., you need to pull your head out of the lower end of your digestive system and at least make an attempt at listening to what people say.
She doesn't want VCRs to be illegal. She even provides several criteria that allow to distinguish between products that should and should not be allowed (she didn't invent them, they're based on legal decisions):
1) The product has or doesn't have substantial non-infringing use. VCR: check. Napster, Kazaa et al: Look at the traffic, how much is non-infringing ?
2) The product does not depend on infringement to be commercially viable. As she says, in the case of a VCR or of a portable MP3 player, clearly the product would still be commercially viable even if only legit use was possible. If you really believe that Kazaa would survive as a commercial entity if infringing material was removed from it, I give up.
But you don't even need to trust me, because she provides one shrewd example: The "old" Napster. Remember them ? As soon as they filtered out copyrighted material, they went under !
Kazaa and similar services thrive on massive copyright infringement (BitTorrent doesn't, as it is used by several companies to distribute products legally in a practical way). This is fact for anyone with at least vague remnants of sincerity. There may be several answers to this. Legal licensing ? Throwing copyrights away altogether and deciding that "information wants to be free" and that intellectual work should only be financed on a "for hire" basis (after all, if you want to go back to the dark ages, that's your problem) ? This is an interesting debate - too bad the
Instead of us whining on slashdot, we need to inform and mobilize the masses.
Instead of you whining on
Thomas Miconi
It's clear that being present in Dublin has proved itself to be a device that could be used to illegaly copy music. I propose an immediate Senate bill to ban such technology.
There's a better way: just start a rumour that oil has been found in Dublin...
Two days later on CNN: "Actually, we didn't find any WMD in Iraq because Saddam sent them to evil Ireland, which as I have said is part of an Axis of Evil.... What, you thought I said 'Iran' ? Ha ha, blame it on a bretzel crumb on my tongue..."
Thomas Miconi