The time has come for a major tech company to clamp the balls of the movie industry -- and SJ just did the job -- It SHOULD NOT in any way be illegat to transfer DVDs to this new device in the same way one can transfer CDs to an iPod of yesterday...but it is, while we are at it, it shouldnt be illegal to make a backup hardcopies of DVDs...If the law suets fly now, along with this, we may be able to get a few rights back.
I hate "big telco" as much as the next slashdotter, but I think the two year contract is acctually reasonable if you get the phone at a steap discount: Do you think that a RaizorV3 only costs cingular / bestbuy $99???? The answer is HELL NO, it costs much more than that, the companies understand that most people cant afford $250-$700 per family member to get a nice phone, but they want the share plan so mom and dad can always reach billy and jenny, so the contracts help everyone to win, the company gets your business for two years, and over that time, your profitability makes up for the initial freebee, and you the customer win by not having to pay $200 for a really crappy phone and $400+ for a good one.
If you buy the hardware at full price upfront, you should be able to have the same or better pricing, and no contract...I bought a phone at full cost once (long story -- dont ask) and didnt have to sign a contract...May not be true for all cariers but it should be.
Who are these slashdot readers who are getting paid so poorly that they can't afford $299 up-front
That would be those of us still in college, or recently graduated doing the proverbial "grunt work" of the IT world like Helpdesk untill better stuff comes along.
But don't sweat it my man, us poor folk run linux+Myth, have unprotected mpeg2 (or 4) files of everything, and can with a few taps back it up to DVDs, and oh yea, program guides and timeshifting for NO CHARGE EVER - so who is the sucker now?
What else did the box need to do for you
Well, checking email or the web between shows would be good, or being able to play music, movies and such from my other home PCs, and maybe pull down all the latest IPTV via bit torrent would be cool, can TiVO do this? a properly configured myth box may just be able to pull it off.
it shouldn't affect anyone who's thought about this for more than 10-15 seconds.. Paying the $12/month fee is a suckers game
It has become obvious that the real enemy in this battle isnt the preveors of the porno, but in stead, the vendors of kleenex and other tissue-like products, without their aid and help, this could not happen, any friend of the porn is our enemy -- therefor today I declair a War On Kleenex - as phase one, the entire whitehouse staff, as well as the staffs of both houses have been issued pocket hankercheifs, I recomend this approche to all americans if we are to win this war!
I am a consercative who happens to side with the republican party more than the others, but I am so pissed at Bush that I cannot see some times: What happened to freedom? What happened to the first ammendment?
Porn isnt evil, music, movies and games are not evil, the real evil is done by the prudish thought police, How long till the feds go to the beaches of Fla or SoCal and hand out baggy t-shirts to the bathing suit clad women there?
BTW could we find Bil Ladin faster if his nude pics were on the web somewhere?
Sure, a shorter releaese cycle may seem better, but is it really? Correct me if I am wrong, but it is the short release cycle and shareholders constant demands for "more more more" that got MS office to be the bloatware that it is today; honestly, what can anyone do in todays MS office that couldnt be done in Office 2000?
I agree that the OOo guys need to draw a line in the sand soon with 2.0, go gold, if for no othere reason than the current 1.1 is so insainly lacking compared to MS office or OOo2 beta. But just because the number is higher doesnt make it better, want proof, look at Adobe Reader, what can 7 do that 5 can not?
Plenty of offices have janitors, yet I don't see people throwing shit all over the floor and saying "let the janitor worry about it", they use the trash cans/paper recycling containers.
I think the problem isnt complacentcy, it is lack of education -- no one asks the janitor "what is the trash can for?" but all the time the IT guys feild questions at that level of stupidity...and worse -- THEY ACCEPTT IT!!!
I know that many many folks from the bowels if irc to slashdot to warez would gladly pay $200-300 for OSX if it could run on their beige boxen in which they have already sunk ~$3,000!
Apples tower lineup is OK (although it desperartely lacks on the low end and the mac mini is a joke), and assuming the price stays the same upon the intel switch, but who wants to sink $2000 base into a new tower when you already have one...or a bakers dozen...
is the unpatched laptops that are fine while in the cacoon of the company LAN/WAN/VPN, but are all too often connected directly to the net by workers who take them home or road warriors who get on the net the second they hit the hotel room.
These people get the crap and then bring it into the cacoon, thus negating the hundreds of thousands of dollars of security infrastructure
Indianas state colleges are all closed, big univs are on skeleton crew (a dew janitors, security, bare bone dorm and medical support...) wherever you are must suck.
I fthey were encouraging its use for, say, distributing OSS software, that would be fine, and if a few people broke copyright with it, it would be the users problem, BUT when the expressed purpose of a program or device is to break the law, then yes, the manufacturer can me held responsable.
Do the 2 big AV companies have NOTHING better to do than to churn out viruses for EVERYTHING with an IP number??
Honestly, what would a hacker want with a phone, oyu cant spam, spim, or send junk texts nearly as rapidly as an own3d windows XP Pre-sp1 box (and there are still TONS floating arround)
Who else would want to make a virus for phones, phones are too weak to do anything and the script kiddies dont have the resorces to learn/code/hack in any of the moble OSes other than maybe Windows Moble/Smartphone/PocketPC/Embedded so...who else has the resourses and profit motive...
I am not acusing, just asking, who the fuck makes cell viruses and why?
Sysadmins do not listen to students, in my experiance. They assume that students are stupid and know nothing.
example:
My freshman year we were using Windows 95 boxen in typing class. I came in one day and saw that Napster and AOL havd been installed and were running - I didnot hae the permission to kill the app or remove the program - because I would not hack the pathetic security, so I told the teacher and filled her in on what it was. 10 min later the IT person came in and deleted the SHORTCUTS freom the desktop and said "OK, the apps are deleted, thanks for reporting it" I said "but you deleted the shortcut, not the app" he said "I didnt pay my way through college and get my MCSA to be told that I am wrong by a mouthy teen"
I proceeded, in front of the teacher to say to the IT guy "get outa my seat, I just had the teacher call you because it was the right thing to do, it is just a shame that the corp. hires dumbasses like you in stead of real pros."
Example 2:
we moved to Win 2k pro, and found that if ou went into the find->people utility, you could see the students name, acount name and PASSWORD in PLAIN TEXT...the IT guys didnt listen untill my buddy demoed it to the entire electronics class on a 6 foot screen while the IT guy was in the room, watching.
I have MANY MANY more stories like that.if you cant report an isue and have it resolved,,,something is wrong
Right now, 5-10 "baby bells" controll the whole internet, and pretty much price it at cartel-like levels. If Google can have as much bandwidth as an AT&T, SPRINT/UUNet, Quest or Verizon, I say good. Competition is great. and maybe a non-telco owning a huge chunk of bandwidth can intencify the pricing war, and maybe strip out the fake shit, like $19.99 for 2 months and $69.99 thereafter.
Google may also be more geek friendly with their TOSs too. They have a track record of not being dickheads, so you never know.
All I want is 3-5Mb/s down and 1-3Mb/s up...and an ISP where I can say what protocalls/ports get open or blocked and where I can run some basic servers (no, I do not want to run a website from an ADSL, but too damn many things fall under the "Non-permissible server" title as defined by most ISPs.)
I have thought about tossing up a web site I have had many good ideas for content that still is hard to find in a clear consice way on the net, but I fear that any website made after 2004 that belongs to an individual will automaticly be labled a "blog"
It is just like podcasting, anyone who has ever put an audio file on a web site before last fall was a looser/nerd/geek, but the minute Curry gave it a PR-firm-friendly name and a few lines of XML, what many of my pals had been doing (on a really small scale) with their self-produced music, random thoughts, and crazy sound fx since 1994 (FTP and Mosaic baby) is now..."hip"???
The term blogger to me is offencive because most blogs are written by people who, quite frankly, have NOTHING to say, have no design skills, and think that they are 1337 because they can hit a few buttons on blogger.com.
to make companys bend over and grab the ankles for PocketPC AVs, Wouldnt surprise me a bit if the virus development for the various PDA platforms was unofficially sponsored by the big AV companies
Some buddyus and I found a hole in the system at our high school that would allow ANY user, via the find -> people tool, to see any other users password in PLAIN TEXT, sitting right there in the "telephone extention" field....
The worst part is no one would beleive it! the IT guys waqived their MCSEs in our face and essentialy told us to get fucked...so my buddy waited till obne of the lead it guys happened to be in the room durring an electronics/circut programming class and asked the teacher if he could demo the "hack" on the computer connected to the 6 foot projection screen for the IT guys ammusement...he did it, the IT guys jaw dropped...and the teacher stepped in and DEMANDED it be fixed...and that afternoon...no more hole...
These sorts of things dont really bug me so long as the clerk at the market will give me cards when the form sais that I am bBart Simpson from 123 Fake street, Antcity Indiana...No joke...I have that as a card for one of Americas biggest chains, and other greats like George Washington, 1600 Pennsilvenia Ave, Washington, DC.
Slashdot Mirror
The time has come for a major tech company to clamp the balls of the movie industry -- and SJ just did the job -- It SHOULD NOT in any way be illegat to transfer DVDs to this new device in the same way one can transfer CDs to an iPod of yesterday...but it is, while we are at it, it shouldnt be illegal to make a backup hardcopies of DVDs...If the law suets fly now, along with this, we may be able to get a few rights back.
If you buy the hardware at full price upfront, you should be able to have the same or better pricing, and no contract...I bought a phone at full cost once (long story -- dont ask) and didnt have to sign a contract...May not be true for all cariers but it should be.
Gave the caller shit for interupting their newly DLed Metalica CD...
That would be those of us still in college, or recently graduated doing the proverbial "grunt work" of the IT world like Helpdesk untill better stuff comes along.
But don't sweat it my man, us poor folk run linux+Myth, have unprotected mpeg2 (or 4) files of everything, and can with a few taps back it up to DVDs, and oh yea, program guides and timeshifting for NO CHARGE EVER - so who is the sucker now?
What else did the box need to do for you
Well, checking email or the web between shows would be good, or being able to play music, movies and such from my other home PCs, and maybe pull down all the latest IPTV via bit torrent would be cool, can TiVO do this? a properly configured myth box may just be able to pull it off.
it shouldn't affect anyone who's thought about this for more than 10-15 seconds.. Paying the $12/month fee is a suckers game
Couldnt have said it better myself.
what is he selling now: consider the source.
--GWB--
Porn isnt evil, music, movies and games are not evil, the real evil is done by the prudish thought police, How long till the feds go to the beaches of Fla or SoCal and hand out baggy t-shirts to the bathing suit clad women there?
BTW could we find Bil Ladin faster if his nude pics were on the web somewhere?
OSX's gui blows KDE out of the water for all non-power users, and most power users I know would rather use BaSH anyway.
I agree that the OOo guys need to draw a line in the sand soon with 2.0, go gold, if for no othere reason than the current 1.1 is so insainly lacking compared to MS office or OOo2 beta. But just because the number is higher doesnt make it better, want proof, look at Adobe Reader, what can 7 do that 5 can not?
I think the problem isnt complacentcy, it is lack of education -- no one asks the janitor "what is the trash can for?" but all the time the IT guys feild questions at that level of stupidity...and worse -- THEY ACCEPTT IT!!!
I know that many many folks from the bowels if irc to slashdot to warez would gladly pay $200-300 for OSX if it could run on their beige boxen in which they have already sunk ~$3,000! Apples tower lineup is OK (although it desperartely lacks on the low end and the mac mini is a joke), and assuming the price stays the same upon the intel switch, but who wants to sink $2000 base into a new tower when you already have one...or a bakers dozen...
These people get the crap and then bring it into the cacoon, thus negating the hundreds of thousands of dollars of security infrastructure
1) open box and insert DVD into Mac
2)run the installer
3) run software update
4) ???
5) you are profitable ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Secure
Indianas state colleges are all closed, big univs are on skeleton crew (a dew janitors, security, bare bone dorm and medical support...) wherever you are must suck.
We are really a creative nation, we have a day called labor day on which no one acctualy labors! America is so great!
Just wait till the next minor apple movment or MS goof up, that is when the real fun begins!
I fthey were encouraging its use for, say, distributing OSS software, that would be fine, and if a few people broke copyright with it, it would be the users problem, BUT when the expressed purpose of a program or device is to break the law, then yes, the manufacturer can me held responsable.
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
Honestly, what would a hacker want with a phone, oyu cant spam, spim, or send junk texts nearly as rapidly as an own3d windows XP Pre-sp1 box (and there are still TONS floating arround)
Who else would want to make a virus for phones, phones are too weak to do anything and the script kiddies dont have the resorces to learn/code/hack in any of the moble OSes other than maybe Windows Moble/Smartphone/PocketPC/Embedded so...who else has the resourses and profit motive...
I am not acusing, just asking, who the fuck makes cell viruses and why?
example:
My freshman year we were using Windows 95 boxen in typing class. I came in one day and saw that Napster and AOL havd been installed and were running - I didnot hae the permission to kill the app or remove the program - because I would not hack the pathetic security, so I told the teacher and filled her in on what it was. 10 min later the IT person came in and deleted the SHORTCUTS freom the desktop and said "OK, the apps are deleted, thanks for reporting it" I said "but you deleted the shortcut, not the app" he said "I didnt pay my way through college and get my MCSA to be told that I am wrong by a mouthy teen"
I proceeded, in front of the teacher to say to the IT guy "get outa my seat, I just had the teacher call you because it was the right thing to do, it is just a shame that the corp. hires dumbasses like you in stead of real pros."
Example 2:
we moved to Win 2k pro, and found that if ou went into the find->people utility, you could see the students name, acount name and PASSWORD in PLAIN TEXT...the IT guys didnt listen untill my buddy demoed it to the entire electronics class on a 6 foot screen while the IT guy was in the room, watching.
I have MANY MANY more stories like that.if you cant report an isue and have it resolved,,,something is wrong
Google may also be more geek friendly with their TOSs too. They have a track record of not being dickheads, so you never know.
All I want is 3-5Mb/s down and 1-3Mb/s up...and an ISP where I can say what protocalls/ports get open or blocked and where I can run some basic servers (no, I do not want to run a website from an ADSL, but too damn many things fall under the "Non-permissible server" title as defined by most ISPs.)
It is just like podcasting, anyone who has ever put an audio file on a web site before last fall was a looser/nerd/geek, but the minute Curry gave it a PR-firm-friendly name and a few lines of XML, what many of my pals had been doing (on a really small scale) with their self-produced music, random thoughts, and crazy sound fx since 1994 (FTP and Mosaic baby) is now..."hip"???
The term blogger to me is offencive because most blogs are written by people who, quite frankly, have NOTHING to say, have no design skills, and think that they are 1337 because they can hit a few buttons on blogger.com.
to make companys bend over and grab the ankles for PocketPC AVs, Wouldnt surprise me a bit if the virus development for the various PDA platforms was unofficially sponsored by the big AV companies
shal be called fubar...
The worst part is no one would beleive it! the IT guys waqived their MCSEs in our face and essentialy told us to get fucked...so my buddy waited till obne of the lead it guys happened to be in the room durring an electronics/circut programming class and asked the teacher if he could demo the "hack" on the computer connected to the 6 foot projection screen for the IT guys ammusement...he did it, the IT guys jaw dropped...and the teacher stepped in and DEMANDED it be fixed...and that afternoon...no more hole...
accedent? HELL NO, IT IS CALLED ENTRAPMENT!!!
These sorts of things dont really bug me so long as the clerk at the market will give me cards when the form sais that I am bBart Simpson from 123 Fake street, Antcity Indiana...No joke...I have that as a card for one of Americas biggest chains, and other greats like George Washington, 1600 Pennsilvenia Ave, Washington, DC.