I think you missed the point....Kazaa and Verizon want to get a lobby to MAKE music a licensed work. As in, work for hire, artists retain rights to their music and license it out to whomever wishes to publish or use it. Much the same as authors license their works to publishers.
I applaud them for their efforts, but given the reputations involved, I'm dubious that they REALLY have the artists best interests even remotely in mind...they're just looking to cash in a big money industry.
But, there is always the viewpoint that they're fulfilling a demand...allowing people to download music at a low or negligible cost. Barring any gross abuse of applied fees like the article talks about, it COULD be a good thing.
That's a great plan except for the fact that copyright violation is a civil, not criminal, infringement. In other words, you can't go to jail, you can only be sued into oblivion.
I get the gist of your post though, in that you shouldn't ban fair use and assume that everyone is stealing from you and pass the made up "costs" on to legitimate customers, and I agree with you wholeheartedly. I just want to make it clear that software/music pirates aren't criminals in the eyes of the law, only in the eyes of the corporate machine.
You may not own a TV or stereo, preferring to watch movies and listen to music on your PC, but the vast, vast majority of people would prefer to watch television on a decent sized screen and listen to music on a decent set of speakers. Being someone who owns a nice stereo system and a fairly good TV, I have to say that entertainment media like DVDs and CDs on the PC don't even compare. Especially when we have guests over or are having a party....ever try to cram 10 people around a computer to watch a movie?
I'm not agreeing with their flagrant abuse of standards, mind you, I'm just letting you know that there's no dark conspiracy against you....people really do buy TVs and stereos because they prefer them to computerized entertainment.
[offtopic]Re:But is it better than Cryptonomicon?
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Enigma
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I had Willem Dafoe cast as Shaftoe in the mental casting of this book that I invariably perform on books that I read. This is way before Spiderman was even announced...I just pictured the character in my head as looking and acting like Dafoe's character in Platoon.
That's kind of like saying "This car will work fine as long as you don't drive it over 30 mph, have any passengers in the car, or try to engage the lock or alarm systems.
All flipness aside, I think Windows can be proven beyond all reasonable doubt to be unreliable should lemon laws ever apply to software. (which I am wholeheartedly against)
(until a major physicist can explain to me how a roadrunner can run into a tunnel painted on a solid rock wall, and a coyote shortly thereafter slams into said painting, you should be willing to suspend belief and logic)...
Not to be a nay-sayer, but I've heard there's a medical explanation for the perception of deja vu, in that the hemispheres of your brain get slightly out of sync for a moment and you perceive a certain reality state twice in rapid succession, giving the second perception the illusion that it's happened before.
I don't remember where I read this or when, so take that for what it's worth....for all I know, it was in Weekly World News or something.
even in severely depressed times in the tech industry security guys can get sh*t loads more money in the private sector.
That's true, if there are jobs available. In Denver, in the last, oh, 4 months or so, there have been MAYBE 6 or 7 security jobs posted on monster.com.
After I got laid off and before I went back to school, (about 8 months ago) the last full time job I applied for had over 300 reasonably qualified resumes. In some markets, it's nearly impossible to find a job in IT (let alone security) unless you're willing to preclude your talents to Windows. As annoying as the.com boom was, damn there were some sweet jobs and plenty of them.
Work in the corporate sector just blows now, it's back to the olden days of kissing your boss's ass to make sure you keep your job because now, even if you're quite talented, you're very expendable.
I'd argue that if any company, no matter how loved they are in/. culture, tried to pull a trivial and pointless lawsuit like this, the general outcry here would be exactly what it is now for Intel... "what a bunch of cock-suckers."
I realize Intel's just saying they need to defend their trademark, but their trademark is "Intel Inside." That's it. Verbatim. (well, the bunnymen and 3 note jingle aside) Changing the words makes it no longer a trademark violation, especially considering the commonality of the word "inside."
Energizer's latest batch of commercials featuring the infamous "Energizer Bunny" had them touting a new catchphrase, "Do you have the bunny inside?" I wonder if they're getting sued next, and if not, how come?
Glad to see someone else looked at the specs. Look closer though....PURE copper runs 350-400 W/m-K...pure copper isn't usually used, an alloy is. The more common alloys are listed and the foam was better than most of them. Aluminum was definately a better thermal conductor but only by about 15-25%, depending on alloy. Considering the weight tradeoff, you could use a bit more of this stuff to get more surface area or even add something to increase external air flow, and still have overall lighter weight.
What was weird to me was the rather large variation in density. 12-37 lb/cubic ft. I would imagine that this is due to variations in the amount of air bubbles of the foam, but that's an order of magnitude of up to 3 times more dense. Can't they control the porosity better than that? It doesn't seem to match with the 73-82% figure they give.
I'm guessing that the more porous variations would be better conductors, since it's largely surface area that affects thermal conductivity...which is a pretty good idea that I'm surprised no one has thought of sooner. I'm wondering how the bubbles in the middle would account for surface area though if the entire structure wasnt completely air permeable.
Anyway, I'm not an engineer or anything, just a lowly college student, so I might be talking out of my ass.
I can't remember the last time I got a "make money fast" "buy anabolic steroids" or "see hot lolitas take it in the ass from horny german shepards" advertisement in my snail mail box.
The vast majority of bulk snail mail is from local companies with legitimate services to offer, and often the coupons have real value. I LIKE getting pizza coupons for my favorite local pizzeria. I LIKE getting menus from the chinese takeout place up the street. I LIKE getting the newletter from my neighborhood association letting me know what's going on with local ordinances that might affect me or my property. I DON'T LIKE getting ads from dubious companies that may or may not even have a real product to sell me. There's a reason that the ads you get in your snail mail box are legit....the US Postal Service regulates the SHIT out of what is allowed to be sent out.
Not to mention it costs a pretty penny to send bulk snail mail, as opposed to the next-to-nothing it costs spammers to send a couple hundred thousand emails.
While I agree with you that the waste of paper is appalling considering most of the junk mail hits the waste basket, it makes me feel better to know that I can locate the person who sends bulk mail to complain about it. (I believe the post office will remove you from bulk lists if you request, anyway. try asking them next time you're there)
If the sender's address was faked, like you said, then how can you even know the Korean ISP was responsible for anything other than having an open mail relay? Chances are it was some money grubbing spammer right here in the US that is bouncing mail off of their server. You'll never know unless the Korean ISP checks their logs (if they have any) on their mail server to see where the buttloads of SMTP connections are coming from.
I've said it before and I'll say it again....instead of going after the open relays or ever the people sending out the bulk email, go after the places that are actually advertising by these means.
Every spam has one of two things in it....a phone number or a website. These are both eaily traced back to physical locations in which the company or person running them is paying a telco or ISP for bandwidth/phone-lines. These are the people to go after...once people realize they're going to get shut down or at least fined if they advertise with spammers, then they will quit paying said spammers to solicit their services or products. Unpaid spammers will then move on to the next shady occupation and our email boxes stay free of their detritus.
It's quite an over-exaggerated analogy, but think of it as the gov't letting trigger men for organized crime off the hook in order to go after the people who are paying them. Take away the demand and there's no one to pay for the supply.
Funny you say that to a person who did middle school in the ghetto long enough to speak Ebonics as a native language.
That was kind of a bash, my apologies, I'm a bit sensitive to the influx of materialistic suburban zombies that have moved into Denver over the last several years.
So, where'd you get the money for the computer in the first place, if finances are really that tight?
Well, to begin with, a computer is something that has no free alternative, short of hand-me-downs or stealing. There ARE free software solutions. But I think you started to to see where I was going with that line of commenting as you later backed down from the "if you're poor don't buy anything" modality.
Basically, I agree with your position that software should be considered by it's productivity and time saving value. In the business, that is. In the home, where free and cheaper alternatives to expensive software are more commonly used, the value's just not there...especially to lower income families. I used to make big bucks in the tech biz. Then the ass fell out of the market last year and I'm back in school to finish my degree live on student loans for a while. So, now, I have to watch what I spend, and forking out the cost of my computer (used for papers, research, communication, and sanity) yet again for the OS and an Office Suite just isn't good sense.
If you're a student, there are great academic pricing packages
Honestly, though there are good deals to be had, I just can't make myself give Microsoft any money. Maybe I'm brainwashed after all these years of slashdot and linux use. Maybe paying large amounts of money for insecure, unreliable software sickens me. Maybe I'm a hypocrite. Maybe I just have personal moral problems with gigantic corporations and sucking their dicks for 7 years only to see how they treat loyal employees when the almighty buck is on the line. Maybe a lot of things...but I do know THIS for sure, even when I'm back into the working game again, I'll never pay for software that has free or low-cost alternatives.
Given the fact 99% of the fucking spammers are from right here, the gun loving US of A
It's really funny to me that people criticize a populace that enjoys the right to arm itself but yet has a distinct lack of snide comments about countries that still use firearms on demonstrators and students as general practice.
Seriously though, I would LOVE to see legislation barring the advertising of ANYTHING via email. Don't hold the spammers responsible, hold the bastards that PAID THEM TO SEND OUT THE SPAM repsonsible. Fine them amounts far greater than the few thousand bucks they'll drum up blasting out a million emails. Spammers can be hard to find. Following the advertised link and then tracing it back to an ISP is pretty damn easy.
Eventually, once foolish advertisers learn their lessons, no one will be paying spammers to spam and spam will cease to be spammed.
Also the UIS doesnt really have a serious sports riot problem, as opposed to some european countries.
Depends on where you are...for some reason, Denver has a couple riots a year, generally when one of the sports teams wins something major...last riot was something of the magnitude of 80,000 people in a 3 block by 3 block area of Lower Downtown.
Boulder has a crap-load of riots, too, but those are usually just stupid college kids with nothing better to do than knock over street signs and garbage cans. I'd love to see them hose down "the hill" with this stuff....kids'll start lugeing dumpsters and shit at the cops.
Life's too short to worry about cost for products like Windows and Office
Maybe living in suburbia has dulled your awareness to the "Real World" you seem so fond of mentioning, but some people cannot afford to pay $300 for Windows and $600 for Office. That $900 is my rent and car payment for the month. I'm glad there are free alternatives.
In the business world, sure, the cost may be trivial. But not to those of us who are either in school or laid off by companies that spend too much money for their software.
You said it, man. Not to mention the millions of reilgious believers' whose whole theological structures are based on the fact that man is the divine creation of God's image. If the life we met with was not man-like in appearance, I think a lot of bible-thumpers would be screaming "They're demons, they're the work of Satan."
No, it's definately not common for civil suits to notify witnesses or defendants by mail. Most states have a law stating that they or someone in their household over 18 (15 in some states) must be served directly. Even in cases where they are to respond via snail mail, they're still to be served directly. IANAL but IAAPS. (I Am A Process Server)
Denver has enough of California's rejects. Tell them to go somewhere else that isn't already over-inflated and over-crowded. They're turning this city into a crazy left-wing Republik just like they did the entire state of Kalifornia.
Go somewhere like Texas where it's so right-wing that the two will even out into a reasonably sane place to live.
Too bad Buffalo is ugly, depressed, and uncultured. At least the bars are open until 4:00am so you can drown your feelings of utter dispair about living there.
250k will get you a long comfortable life in a country where the currency is worth a lot less than the US Dollar and average income is low. India or Mexico for instance. You can live the rest of your life quite comfortably in either place there. Toss an immigration official $5000 and *bang* you're a citizen.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you missed the point....Kazaa and Verizon want to get a lobby to MAKE music a licensed work. As in, work for hire, artists retain rights to their music and license it out to whomever wishes to publish or use it. Much the same as authors license their works to publishers.
I applaud them for their efforts, but given the reputations involved, I'm dubious that they REALLY have the artists best interests even remotely in mind...they're just looking to cash in a big money industry.
But, there is always the viewpoint that they're fulfilling a demand...allowing people to download music at a low or negligible cost. Barring any gross abuse of applied fees like the article talks about, it COULD be a good thing.
That's a great plan except for the fact that copyright violation is a civil, not criminal, infringement. In other words, you can't go to jail, you can only be sued into oblivion.
I get the gist of your post though, in that you shouldn't ban fair use and assume that everyone is stealing from you and pass the made up "costs" on to legitimate customers, and I agree with you wholeheartedly. I just want to make it clear that software/music pirates aren't criminals in the eyes of the law, only in the eyes of the corporate machine.
I never said that the component stuff was portable. And you're video-outing to what...lemme guess, a tv?
And when you're on the way home, it's plugged into a car audio system....a far cry from PC speakers.
And your average TV and home theater setup prolly costs less than a really good laptop, unless you're buying top of the line.
PC multimedia has its place....I like MP3s and downloaded eps of Family Guy and all, but I wouldn't trade my home setup for anything.
You may not own a TV or stereo, preferring to watch movies and listen to music on your PC, but the vast, vast majority of people would prefer to watch television on a decent sized screen and listen to music on a decent set of speakers. Being someone who owns a nice stereo system and a fairly good TV, I have to say that entertainment media like DVDs and CDs on the PC don't even compare. Especially when we have guests over or are having a party....ever try to cram 10 people around a computer to watch a movie?
I'm not agreeing with their flagrant abuse of standards, mind you, I'm just letting you know that there's no dark conspiracy against you....people really do buy TVs and stereos because they prefer them to computerized entertainment.
I had Willem Dafoe cast as Shaftoe in the mental casting of this book that I invariably perform on books that I read. This is way before Spiderman was even announced...I just pictured the character in my head as looking and acting like Dafoe's character in Platoon.
Windows, by itself, is actually quite stable.
That's kind of like saying "This car will work fine as long as you don't drive it over 30 mph, have any passengers in the car, or try to engage the lock or alarm systems.
All flipness aside, I think Windows can be proven beyond all reasonable doubt to be unreliable should lemon laws ever apply to software. (which I am wholeheartedly against)
(until a major physicist can explain to me how a roadrunner can run into a tunnel painted on a solid rock wall, and a coyote shortly thereafter slams into said painting, you should be willing to suspend belief and logic)...
Here you are. Law Number VII specifically.
I'd buy every major league baseball team and make them all wear dresses.
I'd buy all the pants in the world and burn them. No more pants.
These quotes directly stolen from comedian Louis CK.
Not to be a nay-sayer, but I've heard there's a medical explanation for the perception of deja vu, in that the hemispheres of your brain get slightly out of sync for a moment and you perceive a certain reality state twice in rapid succession, giving the second perception the illusion that it's happened before.
I don't remember where I read this or when, so take that for what it's worth....for all I know, it was in Weekly World News or something.
physical disability != learning disability
The guy can barely move any muscles but his brain is just dandy.
even in severely depressed times in the tech industry security guys can get sh*t loads more money in the private sector.
.com boom was, damn there were some sweet jobs and plenty of them.
That's true, if there are jobs available. In Denver, in the last, oh, 4 months or so, there have been MAYBE 6 or 7 security jobs posted on monster.com.
After I got laid off and before I went back to school, (about 8 months ago) the last full time job I applied for had over 300 reasonably qualified resumes. In some markets, it's nearly impossible to find a job in IT (let alone security) unless you're willing to preclude your talents to Windows. As annoying as the
Work in the corporate sector just blows now, it's back to the olden days of kissing your boss's ass to make sure you keep your job because now, even if you're quite talented, you're very expendable.
I'd argue that if any company, no matter how loved they are in /. culture, tried to pull a trivial and pointless lawsuit like this, the general outcry here would be exactly what it is now for Intel... "what a bunch of cock-suckers."
I realize Intel's just saying they need to defend their trademark, but their trademark is "Intel Inside." That's it. Verbatim. (well, the bunnymen and 3 note jingle aside) Changing the words makes it no longer a trademark violation, especially considering the commonality of the word "inside."
Energizer's latest batch of commercials featuring the infamous "Energizer Bunny" had them touting a new catchphrase, "Do you have the bunny inside?" I wonder if they're getting sued next, and if not, how come?
Glad to see someone else looked at the specs. Look closer though....PURE copper runs 350-400 W/m-K...pure copper isn't usually used, an alloy is. The more common alloys are listed and the foam was better than most of them. Aluminum was definately a better thermal conductor but only by about 15-25%, depending on alloy. Considering the weight tradeoff, you could use a bit more of this stuff to get more surface area or even add something to increase external air flow, and still have overall lighter weight.
What was weird to me was the rather large variation in density. 12-37 lb/cubic ft. I would imagine that this is due to variations in the amount of air bubbles of the foam, but that's an order of magnitude of up to 3 times more dense. Can't they control the porosity better than that? It doesn't seem to match with the 73-82% figure they give.
I'm guessing that the more porous variations would be better conductors, since it's largely surface area that affects thermal conductivity...which is a pretty good idea that I'm surprised no one has thought of sooner. I'm wondering how the bubbles in the middle would account for surface area though if the entire structure wasnt completely air permeable.
Anyway, I'm not an engineer or anything, just a lowly college student, so I might be talking out of my ass.
I can't remember the last time I got a "make money fast" "buy anabolic steroids" or "see hot lolitas take it in the ass from horny german shepards" advertisement in my snail mail box.
The vast majority of bulk snail mail is from local companies with legitimate services to offer, and often the coupons have real value. I LIKE getting pizza coupons for my favorite local pizzeria. I LIKE getting menus from the chinese takeout place up the street. I LIKE getting the newletter from my neighborhood association letting me know what's going on with local ordinances that might affect me or my property. I DON'T LIKE getting ads from dubious companies that may or may not even have a real product to sell me. There's a reason that the ads you get in your snail mail box are legit....the US Postal Service regulates the SHIT out of what is allowed to be sent out.
Not to mention it costs a pretty penny to send bulk snail mail, as opposed to the next-to-nothing it costs spammers to send a couple hundred thousand emails.
While I agree with you that the waste of paper is appalling considering most of the junk mail hits the waste basket, it makes me feel better to know that I can locate the person who sends bulk mail to complain about it. (I believe the post office will remove you from bulk lists if you request, anyway. try asking them next time you're there)
If the sender's address was faked, like you said, then how can you even know the Korean ISP was responsible for anything other than having an open mail relay? Chances are it was some money grubbing spammer right here in the US that is bouncing mail off of their server. You'll never know unless the Korean ISP checks their logs (if they have any) on their mail server to see where the buttloads of SMTP connections are coming from.
I've said it before and I'll say it again....instead of going after the open relays or ever the people sending out the bulk email, go after the places that are actually advertising by these means.
Every spam has one of two things in it....a phone number or a website. These are both eaily traced back to physical locations in which the company or person running them is paying a telco or ISP for bandwidth/phone-lines. These are the people to go after...once people realize they're going to get shut down or at least fined if they advertise with spammers, then they will quit paying said spammers to solicit their services or products. Unpaid spammers will then move on to the next shady occupation and our email boxes stay free of their detritus.
It's quite an over-exaggerated analogy, but think of it as the gov't letting trigger men for organized crime off the hook in order to go after the people who are paying them. Take away the demand and there's no one to pay for the supply.
Funny you say that to a person who did middle school in the ghetto long enough to speak Ebonics as a native language.
That was kind of a bash, my apologies, I'm a bit sensitive to the influx of materialistic suburban zombies that have moved into Denver over the last several years.
So, where'd you get the money for the computer in the first place, if finances are really that tight?
Well, to begin with, a computer is something that has no free alternative, short of hand-me-downs or stealing. There ARE free software solutions. But I think you started to to see where I was going with that line of commenting as you later backed down from the "if you're poor don't buy anything" modality.
Basically, I agree with your position that software should be considered by it's productivity and time saving value. In the business, that is. In the home, where free and cheaper alternatives to expensive software are more commonly used, the value's just not there...especially to lower income families. I used to make big bucks in the tech biz. Then the ass fell out of the market last year and I'm back in school to finish my degree live on student loans for a while. So, now, I have to watch what I spend, and forking out the cost of my computer (used for papers, research, communication, and sanity) yet again for the OS and an Office Suite just isn't good sense.
If you're a student, there are great academic pricing packages
Honestly, though there are good deals to be had, I just can't make myself give Microsoft any money. Maybe I'm brainwashed after all these years of slashdot and linux use. Maybe paying large amounts of money for insecure, unreliable software sickens me. Maybe I'm a hypocrite. Maybe I just have personal moral problems with gigantic corporations and sucking their dicks for 7 years only to see how they treat loyal employees when the almighty buck is on the line. Maybe a lot of things...but I do know THIS for sure, even when I'm back into the working game again, I'll never pay for software that has free or low-cost alternatives.
Given the fact 99% of the fucking spammers are from right here, the gun loving US of A
It's really funny to me that people criticize a populace that enjoys the right to arm itself but yet has a distinct lack of snide comments about countries that still use firearms on demonstrators and students as general practice.
Seriously though, I would LOVE to see legislation barring the advertising of ANYTHING via email. Don't hold the spammers responsible, hold the bastards that PAID THEM TO SEND OUT THE SPAM repsonsible. Fine them amounts far greater than the few thousand bucks they'll drum up blasting out a million emails. Spammers can be hard to find. Following the advertised link and then tracing it back to an ISP is pretty damn easy.
Eventually, once foolish advertisers learn their lessons, no one will be paying spammers to spam and spam will cease to be spammed.
Also the UIS doesnt really have a serious sports riot problem, as opposed to some european countries.
Depends on where you are...for some reason, Denver has a couple riots a year, generally when one of the sports teams wins something major...last riot was something of the magnitude of 80,000 people in a 3 block by 3 block area of Lower Downtown.
Boulder has a crap-load of riots, too, but those are usually just stupid college kids with nothing better to do than knock over street signs and garbage cans. I'd love to see them hose down "the hill" with this stuff....kids'll start lugeing dumpsters and shit at the cops.
Life's too short to worry about cost for products like Windows and Office
Maybe living in suburbia has dulled your awareness to the "Real World" you seem so fond of mentioning, but some people cannot afford to pay $300 for Windows and $600 for Office. That $900 is my rent and car payment for the month. I'm glad there are free alternatives.
In the business world, sure, the cost may be trivial. But not to those of us who are either in school or laid off by companies that spend too much money for their software.
You said it, man. Not to mention the millions of reilgious believers' whose whole theological structures are based on the fact that man is the divine creation of God's image. If the life we met with was not man-like in appearance, I think a lot of bible-thumpers would be screaming "They're demons, they're the work of Satan."
No, it's definately not common for civil suits to notify witnesses or defendants by mail. Most states have a law stating that they or someone in their household over 18 (15 in some states) must be served directly. Even in cases where they are to respond via snail mail, they're still to be served directly. IANAL but IAAPS. (I Am A Process Server)
Denver has enough of California's rejects. Tell them to go somewhere else that isn't already over-inflated and over-crowded. They're turning this city into a crazy left-wing Republik just like they did the entire state of Kalifornia.
Go somewhere like Texas where it's so right-wing that the two will even out into a reasonably sane place to live.
Too bad Buffalo is ugly, depressed, and uncultured. At least the bars are open until 4:00am so you can drown your feelings of utter dispair about living there.
250k will get you a long comfortable life in a country where the currency is worth a lot less than the US Dollar and average income is low. India or Mexico for instance. You can live the rest of your life quite comfortably in either place there. Toss an immigration official $5000 and *bang* you're a citizen.