GAME MOVIES are a subset of MOVIES
on
Why Game Movies Stink
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· Score: 2, Insightful
And movies in general suck. Seriously. I see movie previews and they're just god-awful. The only stuff I like to see any more are kid's movies, they have the most mature and sophisticated humor of almost anything that's out there. You find more clever wit in a 90 minute animated Pixar film than every action movie or romantic comedy of the last 5 years combined.
So, take the same vapid cadre of writers who produce the piles of drek and schlock out there and sick them on material that's already (in general) not good (game plots), and why is anybody shocked that they make crappy movies out of it?
For a lot of people, computer science is a dead-end career where you hit an effectively salary ceiling within 3-5 years, and the only way to make more money is to not do the same job anymore. My office is full of COBOL guys in their 50s who are miserable trudging from meeting to meeting, managing products and projects and schedules and all they want to do is sit down and write some code. I've worked with manager after manager, all of whom were great programmers, and who hit the salary ceiling and were unable to make any more money unless they got into management of some sort.
There are rare exceptions. Most of my employers have had an 'expert' career track where you become a highly specialized crack coder that can be quickly offloaded to a high-priority project. But if you're goign to do that, you may as well contract.
There's other factors. First, about 75-80% of new job posting (in my area, anyway) are for contract work. Guys with wives and kids and mortgages tend to be less interested in temporary employment, and once you live from contract to contract with no group health coverage for a few years, you get sick of it and bail.
The industry changes rapidly, so you spend a lot of time either keeping up with new technology or you languish and become a relic who is stuck maintaining legacy code rather than doing new development. Again, if you've got a wife and kids you may not be all that interested in spending your evenings in classes or learning some new language. Few employers will pay you to learn a new skill that you only need so you can find a new job somewhere else.
We teach "computer science" classes that are really about "software engineering," but we have a bunch of theorists and scientists teaching an engineering discipline. The result is a bunch of really shitty engineers who don't know how to build anything. Computer science needs to be a scientific examination of computing, and it's a degree that maybe 2% of programmers actually need or would use. The bulk of the curriculum can be learned from books with minor guidance by most students. Comp sci should be renamed to Software Engineering and should be moved into engineering and taught as engineering discipline, both in terms of software construction and UI ergonomics. Most engineering deparmtments have at least some kind of ergonomics group, and software ought to be a part of that. Some schools have already moved in this direction.
Programming jobs are readily outsources, and easy to cut when the budget tightens. The aisles of grocery stores and the counters of GameStops across the nation are manned by guys in their mid twenties with $50,000 of college debt and a 4-year degree in a science.
You can hire one great programmer for $90,000/year, or two entry-level programmers for $45,000. Sadly, the guy making $90,000 doesn't do twice as much work. He may produce less buggy code, and do it faster, but businesses like warm bodies. And most compaines have hired enough "experts" at $90k who busted out and didn't produce much of anything that they'll roll the dice on the guy with 2-3 years of experienc who they can slightly underpay. If he doesn't wise up and leave after 3 years of a 1.8% raise, they'll have a guy with 5 years of experience who is SEVERELY underpaid. It's a win-win situation for HR.
It's not a lifestyle for everybody. Granted, I'm generalizing a LOT here, and there's a good deal of variance depending upon what industry you're in. I've worked in finance, medicine, telecommunications, marketing, customer relationship management, administration, all kinds of fields. The career is just not for me, and I was a lifelong programmer. Started when I was about 11 years old using GW-BASIC on an XT clone running DOS 3.3.
This is not a slight against those of you who are still in comp sci careers and love it, but most of the people I know who are very intelligent and very talented have moved out of the field. They've found a way to make more money doing less work and wit
There's such a thing as an "implicit" contract, and there are statutes that govern them. When buy a meal, there is a law called the Unified Commercial Code that governs the transaction. Neither you nor the restaurant sign anything, but you both are agreed to have consented to the contract through the act of purchasing the meal. This implied warranty or contract governs things such as the quality of the food. In fact, whenever you buy something without an explicit contract, the transaction is covered under the Implied Contract of Merchantability (also known as an Implied Warranty of Merchantability) which basically states that the good, as delivered, must be fit for its intended use.
For things like web services, where you're not paying, I'm not sure if the UCC applies. It's possible that the TOS for the site turn ownership of that content over to LJ. Anyway, I'd be interested to see what, if any, timetable laws apply to situations like these. Just because you're not paying doesn't mean there's no implied contract, but the situation is murkier.
The PS3 will retail for $299. And if it doesn't at release, it will within 6 months. They'll gouge the bleeding-edge turds and drop the price once those sales slacken. And they'll slacken as quickly as their production facilities can meet demand. Once that demand drops, the price drops. $300. Been saying this for a year. Will be proven correct.
Copy protection is not the same thing as DRM. It's a form of it, and there's nothing wrong with a company voluntarily implementing copy protection on its content. We as the consumers can then decide whether or not we want to purchase copy-protected products and we retain the ability to make choices in a liberalized economy.
That's completely different from federally-mandated DRM, which gives us no choice in what we buy, and forces upon us the business whims of the content cartels. That is not a characteristic of a free market, nor of a liberal democracy. I understand the need of the business to protect itself from people whose illegal activities threaten their botton line. I seriously do completely understand that. But I do not think that enacting federal laws that impact all customers negatively in the effort to mitigate the behavior of a minority of customers is asinine.
I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Dell last fall and he mentioned several times that gaming is a major motivation for PC purchases. He said something like, "I think we've sold more World of Warcraft machines in the last year than anything else," in reference to residential sales. He struck me as very savvy, very aware of his market and his products, and how to stay ahead of the pace. I was unsurprised when Dell acquired Alienware.
I had no idea. I was just playing SMB2 on my original NES last night. There's a PS2 and an XBox in my house, and I'll take my old NES over either of them 9 times out of 10. I'd never heard of this about SMB2. But then, I'm not really a geek. I just enjoy a good video game here and there.
...and the other problems that WoW is still experiencing after a year and a half of operation aren't typical of the MMO genre. At least, they haven't been since the early days of EQ1, UO, and Asheron's Call.
I think they're very typical. But not for a game in its 18th month of operation, working on an expansion pack, and managed by a company that, until recently, had a spotless reputation for quality. I expected more from Blizzard and gave them the benefit of the doubt for a few months. But I'm tired of it. Add to that the fact that their new content is almost universally oriented towards more stupid rep grinds, and I'm having a tough time justifying the time investment. You also left Anarchy Online off your list of disasterous MMORPG technology.
So, in short, Blizzard has no clue how to run an MMO. Otherwise they'd, you know, actually get their servers working instead of coming up with elaborate April Fool's jokes and rooting out goldfarmers whose only crime is violating a questionably-legal EULA.
The EULA is perfectly legal, it's just unenforceable. I bought gold and I'd buy it again. It makes more sense to take the $75 that it took me two hours to earn and buy an amount of gold that would require a month of grinding. If they don't like it, stop introducing stupid grinds.
I buy gold off them and I'd do it again. It's stupid to spend 4 weeks farming gold or whatever when I buy that same amount of gold for $100, an amount of money I make in about 2 hours of work. For 4 weeks of mindless drudgery I could at least be getting paid about eight grand. Boycott nothing. If the game producers don't like people circumventing the grind, stop adding stupid grinds to games.
I've been a tireless defender of Blizzard but I finally ran out of patience. They've hopelessly crippled the PvP system with mindless battlegrounds grinds, where you farm rep and CP instead of XP and items. Boring. And now that my server crashes 2-3 times a night and is totally unplayable most weekends, and BWL is so lagged that Vael is impossible... well I hit a wall. I can't justify $15/mo for a game that I can't even play. I hung it up and signed up for EVE.
Contrary to popular belief, people who shop at Wal*Mart are sometimes seen shopping at other places, too. Plenty of insanely violent, graphic, and clearly un-Wal*Mart-sanctioned games are out there. This is a stupid straw man.
reduced air pollution and increased water evaporation appears to be adding to man-made global warming. Burn fossil fuels, you make things worse. Clean up your act, and you make things worse.
If both polluting and not polluting are correlated to global warming, is it not sensible to investigate whether or not NEITHER is causing global warming, and the correlation is indeed a false correlation? I mean, if A -> B and !A - > B, then one is tempted to conclude that B happens regardless of whether A happens or does not happen. And if that's the case, B is going to happen no matter what A does, which further means that B isn't influenced by A's behavior.
Now, I'm not so naive as to think that it's really this simple. I've long held that enacting crippling policies to "combat global warming" at this point is silly, and that more research and data collection is necessary before we can even set realistic and helpful goals. When research like this comes out, I feel that it bolsters that stand. But research like this also bears further investigation before we accept it at face value.
No. I've had jobs I wasn't thrilled about either, but they paid well and gave me valuable experience. I refuse to judge this man, his impact on public policy, or any other aspect of this based on Slashdot groupthink about the BSA.
No. I fully expect all presidential administrations to keep a tight leash on what gets reported as "official" government science.
Bush has had a policy of denying global warming is a result of humans
It can reasonably be disputed based on our current evidence. We have established correlation, but not causation.
the fact he is giving the NOAA extra money for research rather than prevention is quite interesting
Yes, it means he's doing exactly what he said he was going to do - fund more research and gather more data. You can disagree that this is necessary (I don't happen to - more data is always good).
global warming is something that is happening.
I don't recall the White House denying this.
I remember years ago when the offical stance was there is no such thing as global warming
Under which President? Bush has never as President (to my recollection) insisted that global warming does not exist at all.
this has evolved to, there is no proof of global warming
Well, there wasn't any proof for quite some time. Just speculation and incomplete data.
to okay it exists but it isn't our fault
Again, this isn't the official White House line. The official line is, "we don't know for sure and I want to be sure before I sign economically crippling policies to screw up everybody's lifestyle." That seems sensible to me.
somehow I get the feeling the intention now is to attempt to prove it isn't caused by the biggest donators to the Bush administration.
Such as? Bush isn't running for election again, even if the Democrats are still running against him. Why would he still pander to lobbyists?
When the whitehouse and the pentagon started to open up and declassify documents all those years ago, it was a good thing it felt like finally they are opening up
Well, a war can tighten up the flow of information.
now things are going back to feeling more like the cold war, a policy of secrecy, spying (although internally now rather than on a foreign element)
Spying internally? So wiretapping people who are suspected of having conversations with foreign Al Qaeda operatives is NOT spying on a foreign element?
lies
Such as?
and gagging the people with important information.
This does bug me, but since this administration can't seem to keep a lid on its leaks, it doesn't seem to be a real problem.
So as you feel your skin cancer forming and watch the ice caps come washing over us, just remember it isn't because of mankind, President Bush says so.
He could end up being right. He probably won't. We'll find out eventually!
By an 8-to-23 margin, the committee members rejected a Democratic-backed "Net neutrality" amendment to a current piece of telecommunications legislation. The amendment had attracted support from companies including Amazon.com, eBay, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, and their chief executives wrote a last-minute letter to the committee on Wednesday saying such a change to the legislation was "critical."
What the hell is going on in Congress? The REPUBLICANS are voting down a measure that the Democrats and Big Business are in favor of?
I don't know about that. Poking around on NRO, it's not especially married to the Republican party. More than a few of their editors show strong libertarian leanings, and there's always Rod Dreher.
National Review is basically a conservative think-tank. It's amazing what people steeped in theory come up with when there's no voters to satisfy. Only readers. And people who read think tanks are (typically) more interested in ideas and debate than demagoguery (although, admittedly, not always). Look at what a conservative publication says - "family values, shmamly values, no more government interference, it's not necessary." How do you think Republicans in Congress would vote on this, though? 100% pro-Family Values pro-regulation, 100% voter pandering.
It gets harder and harder to defend these people every year as they shift away from free market economics and individual self-determination and towards more big-government nanny-state big brotherism. If only the Democrats had the guts to step in and fill the void instead of likewise pandering to its base...
The article specifically and explicitely states that Microsoft will not come calling on customers who bought naked systems.
I wouldn't put it past them, but this looks like a straw man that we have predictably knocked over. Congratulations, Slashdot, for another brilliant victory.
I'm no lawyer, but anyone with common sense (and one who sits infront of a judge hopes the judge will have some, if any) would realize that dropping out of college is a non-logical choice.
You would be surprised and a little outraged to know how arbitrary a judge's decision can be, as well as damage awards. Especially in the second tier courts. Whether or not you have to drop out of college is your own choice. If you have been tried by a court of this land and found guilty, you may be liable for damages, and in that case, you must pay them. That's how the law works. That you might have to sacrifice something very important to you is your own problem, and you should have thought of that before you broke the law. That's theory, anyway. In practice, it's hard to justify abandoning an Ivy-league education because you illegally copied some CDs, I agree. TFA says, "The Recording Industry of America would rather see America's youth deprived of higher education, forever marring their ability to contribute personally and financially to society -- including the arts -- so that they may crucify us as examples to our peers." No, they'd rather have you not pirating their shit in the first place. If you've done no wrong, don't settle. If you have done wrong, what are you bitching about?
It will diminuish your chances of having a safe financial future, which makes you even less likely to be able to pay that fine. Having students dropping out of college or switching over to community college should NOT be considered as a valid option.
But it is a valid option. It's a crappy one, but if you broke the law and don't think you can get out of it in court, then this is called a consequence. I know consequences are all but unknown in the current crop of college students, but they do occur. I agree with the general sentiment here this is shitty and that the RIAA is utterly unsympathetic and over the top, but at the root of all of this are individual people who made the decision to engage in illegal activity. They got caught and now they have to pay the piper. As much as I think the RIAA is being a bag of dicks about this, I have little sympathy for the people who put themselves in this situation.
It's a tough issue. I despise the RIAA and the insanely stupid and short-sighted approach they take to their business, but I still can't get past the fact that we're rising up to defend people who unquestionable and admittedly and knowingly broke a law and are now pissed that there are consequences for it. Sorry. Zero sympathy.
I haven't ever really understood what the RIAA hopes to achieve from all their lawsuits and extortion rackets, I mean all they are doing is alienating their core market the way they have been going recently I can't wait for someone to make a stand against them in court.
They're protecting their intellectual property. Poorly, but that's what they're doing. I'd much rather see them pursue remedies to the piracy problem through the existing laws on copyright infringement than try to mandate their business model by lobbying Congress for mandatory DRM in playback devices. We have current laws that make copyright infringement illegal. If people do it anyway, they can be caught and sued for it. That's how the legal system works. I haven't ever really understood Slashdot's collective indignation that the RIAA is suing people who are breaking the law. I think it's bad PR on their part, and that there are other (better) solutions, but this is better than MORE legislation. The piracy problem cannot be solved by more laws, or even the existing ones. But when they have a lead on somebody, I'd expect them to pursue it. I certainly would.
I download music from the internet quite frequently, if I like the song I have downloaded I will usually buy the album if I don't like it I delete it, does this mean I am commiting a crime?
Maybe. Depending on how much you download, it is most likely not a criminal offense, so you're not commiting a crime. Copyright infringement is a criminal offense when you do it for personal financial gain, or accrue what would be $1000 or more in damages in a 6-month period. It's unlikely that you're doing this. If you've downloaded $1000 worth of music in the last 180 days, then yes, you're commiting a crime.
In my case p2p has caused my to buy more cds than I usually would have if I hadn't of been exposed to certain artists and songs. Is this common I really don't know perhaps other people don't purchase cds by artists they like personally I like to support musicians I like.
It's fairly common for people who are out of school and have jobs. Personally I don't listen to CDs much, so if I had the digital copy I'd just burn a CD for my car and be done with it, I wouldn't bother to go buy a CD for music I already have. But I also find most P2P networks to be a mess of poor-quality copies, so I mostly get my music through the ITMS.
I think it's less common to "try and buy" among teenagers and college students. They tend to just "try" and then "not buy" because they don't have much money. Especially college kids. It is a common fallacy of Slashdot to abstract our behavioral "try and buy" pattern to the world's population in general. It's odd, that we take such pride in NOT being like everybody else, but we think everybody else is like us when it comes to music downloading behavior.
This story is entirely about the jury. A jury can decide a case any which way they like, no matter what the law says (see jury nullification [umkc.edu])
This is true, but judges will specifically tell juries not to do this. They specifically instruct juries to decide the case on the merits of the evidence and NOT on the merit of the law. Lawyers are often forbidden to tell juries of their nullification power. Potential jurors who know about those rights will be removed from the jury. The court goes to great lengths to prevent juries from doing this, and even if the jury DOES do this, the case just ends up in the appeals court, where you need ANOTHER jury to nullify, and that's not likely.
Slashdot Mirror
So, take the same vapid cadre of writers who produce the piles of drek and schlock out there and sick them on material that's already (in general) not good (game plots), and why is anybody shocked that they make crappy movies out of it?
There are rare exceptions. Most of my employers have had an 'expert' career track where you become a highly specialized crack coder that can be quickly offloaded to a high-priority project. But if you're goign to do that, you may as well contract.
There's other factors. First, about 75-80% of new job posting (in my area, anyway) are for contract work. Guys with wives and kids and mortgages tend to be less interested in temporary employment, and once you live from contract to contract with no group health coverage for a few years, you get sick of it and bail.
The industry changes rapidly, so you spend a lot of time either keeping up with new technology or you languish and become a relic who is stuck maintaining legacy code rather than doing new development. Again, if you've got a wife and kids you may not be all that interested in spending your evenings in classes or learning some new language. Few employers will pay you to learn a new skill that you only need so you can find a new job somewhere else.
We teach "computer science" classes that are really about "software engineering," but we have a bunch of theorists and scientists teaching an engineering discipline. The result is a bunch of really shitty engineers who don't know how to build anything. Computer science needs to be a scientific examination of computing, and it's a degree that maybe 2% of programmers actually need or would use. The bulk of the curriculum can be learned from books with minor guidance by most students. Comp sci should be renamed to Software Engineering and should be moved into engineering and taught as engineering discipline, both in terms of software construction and UI ergonomics. Most engineering deparmtments have at least some kind of ergonomics group, and software ought to be a part of that. Some schools have already moved in this direction.
Programming jobs are readily outsources, and easy to cut when the budget tightens. The aisles of grocery stores and the counters of GameStops across the nation are manned by guys in their mid twenties with $50,000 of college debt and a 4-year degree in a science.
You can hire one great programmer for $90,000/year, or two entry-level programmers for $45,000. Sadly, the guy making $90,000 doesn't do twice as much work. He may produce less buggy code, and do it faster, but businesses like warm bodies. And most compaines have hired enough "experts" at $90k who busted out and didn't produce much of anything that they'll roll the dice on the guy with 2-3 years of experienc who they can slightly underpay. If he doesn't wise up and leave after 3 years of a 1.8% raise, they'll have a guy with 5 years of experience who is SEVERELY underpaid. It's a win-win situation for HR.
It's not a lifestyle for everybody. Granted, I'm generalizing a LOT here, and there's a good deal of variance depending upon what industry you're in. I've worked in finance, medicine, telecommunications, marketing, customer relationship management, administration, all kinds of fields. The career is just not for me, and I was a lifelong programmer. Started when I was about 11 years old using GW-BASIC on an XT clone running DOS 3.3.
This is not a slight against those of you who are still in comp sci careers and love it, but most of the people I know who are very intelligent and very talented have moved out of the field. They've found a way to make more money doing less work and wit
This guy is obviously an idiot, but there's a really easy way to completely bypass this bill - stop pirating shit.
There's such a thing as an "implicit" contract, and there are statutes that govern them. When buy a meal, there is a law called the Unified Commercial Code that governs the transaction. Neither you nor the restaurant sign anything, but you both are agreed to have consented to the contract through the act of purchasing the meal. This implied warranty or contract governs things such as the quality of the food. In fact, whenever you buy something without an explicit contract, the transaction is covered under the Implied Contract of Merchantability (also known as an Implied Warranty of Merchantability) which basically states that the good, as delivered, must be fit for its intended use. For things like web services, where you're not paying, I'm not sure if the UCC applies. It's possible that the TOS for the site turn ownership of that content over to LJ. Anyway, I'd be interested to see what, if any, timetable laws apply to situations like these. Just because you're not paying doesn't mean there's no implied contract, but the situation is murkier.
The PS3 will retail for $299. And if it doesn't at release, it will within 6 months. They'll gouge the bleeding-edge turds and drop the price once those sales slacken. And they'll slacken as quickly as their production facilities can meet demand. Once that demand drops, the price drops. $300. Been saying this for a year. Will be proven correct.
That's completely different from federally-mandated DRM, which gives us no choice in what we buy, and forces upon us the business whims of the content cartels. That is not a characteristic of a free market, nor of a liberal democracy. I understand the need of the business to protect itself from people whose illegal activities threaten their botton line. I seriously do completely understand that. But I do not think that enacting federal laws that impact all customers negatively in the effort to mitigate the behavior of a minority of customers is asinine.
I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Dell last fall and he mentioned several times that gaming is a major motivation for PC purchases. He said something like, "I think we've sold more World of Warcraft machines in the last year than anything else," in reference to residential sales. He struck me as very savvy, very aware of his market and his products, and how to stay ahead of the pace. I was unsurprised when Dell acquired Alienware.
I had no idea. I was just playing SMB2 on my original NES last night. There's a PS2 and an XBox in my house, and I'll take my old NES over either of them 9 times out of 10. I'd never heard of this about SMB2. But then, I'm not really a geek. I just enjoy a good video game here and there.
I think they're very typical. But not for a game in its 18th month of operation, working on an expansion pack, and managed by a company that, until recently, had a spotless reputation for quality. I expected more from Blizzard and gave them the benefit of the doubt for a few months. But I'm tired of it. Add to that the fact that their new content is almost universally oriented towards more stupid rep grinds, and I'm having a tough time justifying the time investment. You also left Anarchy Online off your list of disasterous MMORPG technology.
So, in short, Blizzard has no clue how to run an MMO. Otherwise they'd, you know, actually get their servers working instead of coming up with elaborate April Fool's jokes and rooting out goldfarmers whose only crime is violating a questionably-legal EULA.
The EULA is perfectly legal, it's just unenforceable. I bought gold and I'd buy it again. It makes more sense to take the $75 that it took me two hours to earn and buy an amount of gold that would require a month of grinding. If they don't like it, stop introducing stupid grinds.
I buy gold off them and I'd do it again. It's stupid to spend 4 weeks farming gold or whatever when I buy that same amount of gold for $100, an amount of money I make in about 2 hours of work. For 4 weeks of mindless drudgery I could at least be getting paid about eight grand. Boycott nothing. If the game producers don't like people circumventing the grind, stop adding stupid grinds to games.
I've been a tireless defender of Blizzard but I finally ran out of patience. They've hopelessly crippled the PvP system with mindless battlegrounds grinds, where you farm rep and CP instead of XP and items. Boring. And now that my server crashes 2-3 times a night and is totally unplayable most weekends, and BWL is so lagged that Vael is impossible ... well I hit a wall. I can't justify $15/mo for a game that I can't even play. I hung it up and signed up for EVE.
Contrary to popular belief, people who shop at Wal*Mart are sometimes seen shopping at other places, too. Plenty of insanely violent, graphic, and clearly un-Wal*Mart-sanctioned games are out there. This is a stupid straw man.
If both polluting and not polluting are correlated to global warming, is it not sensible to investigate whether or not NEITHER is causing global warming, and the correlation is indeed a false correlation? I mean, if A -> B and !A - > B, then one is tempted to conclude that B happens regardless of whether A happens or does not happen. And if that's the case, B is going to happen no matter what A does, which further means that B isn't influenced by A's behavior.
Now, I'm not so naive as to think that it's really this simple. I've long held that enacting crippling policies to "combat global warming" at this point is silly, and that more research and data collection is necessary before we can even set realistic and helpful goals. When research like this comes out, I feel that it bolsters that stand. But research like this also bears further investigation before we accept it at face value.
No. I've had jobs I wasn't thrilled about either, but they paid well and gave me valuable experience. I refuse to judge this man, his impact on public policy, or any other aspect of this based on Slashdot groupthink about the BSA.
No. I fully expect all presidential administrations to keep a tight leash on what gets reported as "official" government science.
Bush has had a policy of denying global warming is a result of humans
It can reasonably be disputed based on our current evidence. We have established correlation, but not causation.
the fact he is giving the NOAA extra money for research rather than prevention is quite interesting
Yes, it means he's doing exactly what he said he was going to do - fund more research and gather more data. You can disagree that this is necessary (I don't happen to - more data is always good).
global warming is something that is happening.
I don't recall the White House denying this.
I remember years ago when the offical stance was there is no such thing as global warming
Under which President? Bush has never as President (to my recollection) insisted that global warming does not exist at all.
this has evolved to, there is no proof of global warming
Well, there wasn't any proof for quite some time. Just speculation and incomplete data.
to okay it exists but it isn't our fault
Again, this isn't the official White House line. The official line is, "we don't know for sure and I want to be sure before I sign economically crippling policies to screw up everybody's lifestyle." That seems sensible to me.
somehow I get the feeling the intention now is to attempt to prove it isn't caused by the biggest donators to the Bush administration.
Such as? Bush isn't running for election again, even if the Democrats are still running against him. Why would he still pander to lobbyists?
When the whitehouse and the pentagon started to open up and declassify documents all those years ago, it was a good thing it felt like finally they are opening up
Well, a war can tighten up the flow of information.
now things are going back to feeling more like the cold war, a policy of secrecy, spying (although internally now rather than on a foreign element)
Spying internally? So wiretapping people who are suspected of having conversations with foreign Al Qaeda operatives is NOT spying on a foreign element?
lies
Such as?
and gagging the people with important information.
This does bug me, but since this administration can't seem to keep a lid on its leaks, it doesn't seem to be a real problem.
So as you feel your skin cancer forming and watch the ice caps come washing over us, just remember it isn't because of mankind, President Bush says so.
He could end up being right. He probably won't. We'll find out eventually!
George W. Bush, probably. He kicks puppies, punches babies, and spits in your food.
What the hell is going on in Congress? The REPUBLICANS are voting down a measure that the Democrats and Big Business are in favor of?
I don't know about that. Poking around on NRO, it's not especially married to the Republican party. More than a few of their editors show strong libertarian leanings, and there's always Rod Dreher.
It gets harder and harder to defend these people every year as they shift away from free market economics and individual self-determination and towards more big-government nanny-state big brotherism. If only the Democrats had the guts to step in and fill the void instead of likewise pandering to its base...
I submitted this link a few days ago and it got declined. Bummer. Glad Zonk found it, though! It's a good article.
I wouldn't put it past them, but this looks like a straw man that we have predictably knocked over. Congratulations, Slashdot, for another brilliant victory.
You would be surprised and a little outraged to know how arbitrary a judge's decision can be, as well as damage awards. Especially in the second tier courts. Whether or not you have to drop out of college is your own choice. If you have been tried by a court of this land and found guilty, you may be liable for damages, and in that case, you must pay them. That's how the law works. That you might have to sacrifice something very important to you is your own problem, and you should have thought of that before you broke the law. That's theory, anyway. In practice, it's hard to justify abandoning an Ivy-league education because you illegally copied some CDs, I agree. TFA says, "The Recording Industry of America would rather see America's youth deprived of higher education, forever marring their ability to contribute personally and financially to society -- including the arts -- so that they may crucify us as examples to our peers." No, they'd rather have you not pirating their shit in the first place. If you've done no wrong, don't settle. If you have done wrong, what are you bitching about?
It will diminuish your chances of having a safe financial future, which makes you even less likely to be able to pay that fine. Having students dropping out of college or switching over to community college should NOT be considered as a valid option.
But it is a valid option. It's a crappy one, but if you broke the law and don't think you can get out of it in court, then this is called a consequence. I know consequences are all but unknown in the current crop of college students, but they do occur. I agree with the general sentiment here this is shitty and that the RIAA is utterly unsympathetic and over the top, but at the root of all of this are individual people who made the decision to engage in illegal activity. They got caught and now they have to pay the piper. As much as I think the RIAA is being a bag of dicks about this, I have little sympathy for the people who put themselves in this situation.
It's a tough issue. I despise the RIAA and the insanely stupid and short-sighted approach they take to their business, but I still can't get past the fact that we're rising up to defend people who unquestionable and admittedly and knowingly broke a law and are now pissed that there are consequences for it. Sorry. Zero sympathy.
There's another option. Fork over the $15 for the goddam CD in the first place and avoid the entire mess.
They're protecting their intellectual property. Poorly, but that's what they're doing. I'd much rather see them pursue remedies to the piracy problem through the existing laws on copyright infringement than try to mandate their business model by lobbying Congress for mandatory DRM in playback devices. We have current laws that make copyright infringement illegal. If people do it anyway, they can be caught and sued for it. That's how the legal system works. I haven't ever really understood Slashdot's collective indignation that the RIAA is suing people who are breaking the law. I think it's bad PR on their part, and that there are other (better) solutions, but this is better than MORE legislation. The piracy problem cannot be solved by more laws, or even the existing ones. But when they have a lead on somebody, I'd expect them to pursue it. I certainly would.
I download music from the internet quite frequently, if I like the song I have downloaded I will usually buy the album if I don't like it I delete it, does this mean I am commiting a crime?
Maybe. Depending on how much you download, it is most likely not a criminal offense, so you're not commiting a crime. Copyright infringement is a criminal offense when you do it for personal financial gain, or accrue what would be $1000 or more in damages in a 6-month period. It's unlikely that you're doing this. If you've downloaded $1000 worth of music in the last 180 days, then yes, you're commiting a crime.
In my case p2p has caused my to buy more cds than I usually would have if I hadn't of been exposed to certain artists and songs. Is this common I really don't know perhaps other people don't purchase cds by artists they like personally I like to support musicians I like.
It's fairly common for people who are out of school and have jobs. Personally I don't listen to CDs much, so if I had the digital copy I'd just burn a CD for my car and be done with it, I wouldn't bother to go buy a CD for music I already have. But I also find most P2P networks to be a mess of poor-quality copies, so I mostly get my music through the ITMS.
I think it's less common to "try and buy" among teenagers and college students. They tend to just "try" and then "not buy" because they don't have much money. Especially college kids. It is a common fallacy of Slashdot to abstract our behavioral "try and buy" pattern to the world's population in general. It's odd, that we take such pride in NOT being like everybody else, but we think everybody else is like us when it comes to music downloading behavior.
This is true, but judges will specifically tell juries not to do this. They specifically instruct juries to decide the case on the merits of the evidence and NOT on the merit of the law. Lawyers are often forbidden to tell juries of their nullification power. Potential jurors who know about those rights will be removed from the jury. The court goes to great lengths to prevent juries from doing this, and even if the jury DOES do this, the case just ends up in the appeals court, where you need ANOTHER jury to nullify, and that's not likely.