As far as the Zune claims go, I don't buy it for a minute, any more than I buy the claim of 40m Vista licenses sold.
I take the el to work in Chicago, and every day I see dozens of people with ipods. I've yet to see a single Zune in the wild, and at retail outlets like Microcenter or Target there always seems to be a crowd of people looking at the ipods on display while the Zune is simply ignored. I don't think I've ever even seen a working Zune on display -- they're always off or broken.
Microsoft's numbers don't mean a thing. The numbers to look at are from retailers: How many Zunes have been sold at Amazon, Best Buy, Circuit City, etc.? It's certainly not as high as Microsoft would have you believe. No matter what color they make it. So because you haven't seen one of a million Zunes sold in the world you don't buy it? Yes, you have seen iPods, because they have sold over 2 orders of magnitude more. They have sold a total of 100 million iPods (according to Apple), so of course you have seen an assload more of them. I have never seen an iPod video outside of a store, but I am willing to accept that they have sold a whole lot of them.
As far as MS only selling a million Zunes in this time, that is exactly what they expected. They realized they were moving into a new market with a dominant force in it (Apple). They are trying to get their foot in the door, get their product known, and slowly increase sales. It is similar to what they did with the original XBox. They knew they wouldn't go in and take over the market. Instead they go in, take their lumps and slowly build a base and a better product.
2. I am absolutely unsure about the way that Groove 2007 is licensed w.r.t. the way it was in Groove 3.x days. In 3.x, your license was for YOU-- you could install it on multiple machines, provided that they were all logged in as you. So, for example, my coworker would have Groove installed on his home machine and his work machine, and they were set up to share folders, etc. That was part of the point.
In Groove 2007, I believe that you have to buy a copy for each computer, and at $250 a pop, that's not cheap! As Groove is now part of Office, you can install it on multiple machines as long as you are not going to be logging into those machine at the same time. The Office license states that you can install it on different machine for the same user (say a work machine, a laptop used when traveling, and a home machine).
IF I were to take porn and alcohol and leave it sitting in a high school every day, would I be arrested for contributing to the delinquency of minors? I don't know who picked up the stuff (if anyone), all I know is I leave it someplace and the next day it is gone. I think I would get busted in a heartbeat for that. So why should this be different. Assuming they are referring to people who make files available on purpose (and this is a big distinction), the intent is clearly to distribute files they don't have the rights to distribute. IF you purposely share something on the internet and allow users access to it, you are trying to distribute it. Just because you picked a crappy file no one wants doesn't mean you weren't distributing it. It just means no one took you up on your distribution. If I try and hand out flyers and no one takes one from me, I am still distributing flyers.
More importantly, they dislike restrictions, as evidenced by their reasonable DRM in iTunes and lack of CD key for OS X. There is no CD key for OSX because they instead tied it directly to their hardware. Apple makes it's money on hardware and OSX will only run on Apple hardware, so there is no really worry about pirating, because if you pirate it, you have already bought Apple hardware, where they make their money. Now compare this to something like Quicktime. You certainly do need a key for that because they make their money from the software for that, not the hardware. So they only dislike restrictions when it mean they have restrictions built in that you can't get around paying them for.
I think the only reason this is even being talked about is that the they don't have to rely on the honor system as much. P2P has been slowly dying for the average person for a while. With music being available to purchase online, and the crap quality of downloads from most P2P services (viruses, fake, files, mislabeled songs, etc) most people have moved away from P2P. BitTorrent is the one exception, but that is still more of a geek tool that the average person has no clue about. P2P certainly isn't dead, but it has become a big enough burden that the average person doesn't mess with it anymore, so labels can consider selling DRM-free files knowing the the average person can't get them easily.
So let me get this straight. A guy designed a special BitTorrent client to make it look like he was downloading copyrighted material and it's news that he got a letter? He was specifically trying to appear as if he was downloading it to everyone. If I make a substance that looks and smells like pot and then smoke it outside the police station, I'll get arrested as well. If you try and convince people you are doing something wrong, why is it news when they then think you are doing something wrong?
While in general I agree, they are suing because of the handling of the issue more than the issue itself. It's not like Nvidia has said "yes there are problems and we are working on them." They are denying problems and deleting posts that say there is a problem. In other words, there is no indication that Nvidia is doing anything at all besides sticking their heads in the sand. If Nvidia wanted to keep their customers happy, they would acknowledge the problem and say they are working on getting it corrected instead of trying to hide the fact that a problem exists.
Personally I believe HD-DVD will win or both formats with coexist because -
1) HD-DVD is cheaper to manufacture 2) Porn has chosen HD-DVD as it's main format 3) Blu-Ray is Sony's format - this makes, some people hate it, period. 4) Much more expensive to manufacture While I agree, I think it is important to point out that the pr0n industry hasn't chosen HD-DVD. Quite a few companies were actually behind Blu-Ray until recently when it came out that companies are not allowed to make XXX Blu-Ray discs. XXX companies have come forward and said they were told that companies were not allowed to make Blu-Ray discs for them because Sony would yank their license to manufacture Blu-Ray discs if they did. Funny enough, this exact thing happened with VHS/Beta with Sony saying no to pr0n on Beta, and we all know how that turned out. So Sony is once again shooting themselves in the foot and ensuring that they lose the format wars.
Um, no, itunes doesn't think that way. I can buy music with the MS Plays for Sure DRM and use it on a whole bunch of devices (nto sure about the new DRM for the Zune). it isn't the RIAA doing it, it is the companies making DRM that is compatible with only 1 device (namely Apple and possibly MS with the new Zune store).
1) Artists build upon other artists. Some of the best pieces of art are composites of other pieces of art (Shakespeare being the classic example). This super-DRM'ed world would contradict that fact and make it much harder for artists to do their work. It would also make it impossible to create such art forms as satire, abbreviation, etc.
DRM in now way stops artists from building upon the ideas of other artists (copyright may stop this with the extreme measures it has been extended to, but not DRM). Shakespeare did not need to be able to make an exact quality of copy of other artists' works to build off of them. Neither did any of the musicians in history need to be able to make an exact copy of something they heard to use it and build off of it. The idea of art building off of arts means that artists hear/see what other artists have done and use it for inspiration, not that they make an exact copy of it. Artists have never needed to be able to make exact duplicates of other's work to find inspiration from other's work in the past anymore than they do now.
I'll give you a different take on the "Smart Phone" limitations. I, for one, haven't bought one because of the size, power requirements, and sheer onconvience of using and carrying one. Along comes Apple, and appears to make this simple, easy to use, intuitive, and, to top it off, good looking. Oh, and need we mention that you can also run your familiar interfaces on it provided you like Macs to begin with? No special "browser" needed. No new learning how to browse the web. A PDA you can actually use. My current LG phone's calendering option is so convulted to setup that I don't use it. The contact list is "locked", or they think it is, so I cannot manage it easily nor sync it with my computer. The iPhone does away with all of that. It will appeal to a large group of people that are carrying both a cell phone and an iPod, if you add PDA and/or pocket PC to that, you'll just add to the attraction. Except the iPhone doesn't address any of your actual concerns. You haven't bought a smart phone because of size, power requirements, and inconvinience of them, yet the iPhone (as far as we know) will be just as big, have the same power requirements, and be just as inconvinient. All the things you list may be good reasons to by an iPhone, but it has nothing to do with the reasons you list for not buying one of the current ones.
He's not astroturfing because that isn't what astroturfing is. Simply defending a corporation is not astroturfing (and you have no evidence that it was anything but that).
But beyond that, Fair Use means you can make backups of your recordings, not buy a copy from elsewhere (whether this is allowed or not is still up in the air though). Second, while allofmp3 may be legal in Russia, it is in no way legal in the US. Something being legal in another country in no way makes it legal in this one, even if it is over the internet. It may be legal to buy pot in Amsterdam, that doesn't make it legal in the US. Unless mrshowtime has moved to Russia since Katrina, it is not a legal way for him to purchase mp3s.
While I think this is bad, the issue is less you lying and more that the proper safeguards aren't in place to actual identify the who the person is. I don't think lying should be illegal in most cases. What they should legislate is that there be proper safeguards to ensure you information only gets given out to the proper people.
Making it illegal to pretext may stop some people from calling and lying to get your info, but anyone who does want to lie still can get your info. Forcing the companies to properly guard your info means even if someone calls and lies, they still won't be able to get your info.
I swear to god I'm going to take a claw hammer to the next person who repeats that myth.
For the thousandth fucking time, that bill only applies to non-citizens! Or anyone who is determined to be an enemy combatant. And the rules for being declared an enemy combatant is that the president says you are. So yes, it DOES apply to every single person, since anyone at any time can be declared an enemy combatant for any reason.
Yes, copyright violations are explicitly forbidden; but not every MP3 represents a copyright violation. The idea of "innocent until proven guilty" (we used to have that in the UK once) should still hold: any copy should be presumed to be permitted under the doctrine of "fair use" unless it can be proved otherwise. And the scope of fair use in the USA is quite broad. If the US courts still work anything like the UK courts on which they were modelled, decisions in one court can set precedents. If enough people claim "fair use" and win, the scope of fair use will be widened. I guess the RIAA would sooner drop a case than continue prosecuting it and risk further expanding fair use. In the best case, a jury could even decide that P2P filesharing constitutes fair use!
You don't seem to understand how fair use works. Fair use basically let's you do something that would otherwise be illegal. It is illegal to copy copyrighted works except for under the terms of fair use. So if you are accused of copying copyrighted works, you have to then prove it falls under fair use. Fair use is basically a loophole. Fair use is a defense you can use. If you are accused of copying copyrighted works, the court will look and say "yep, they were copyrighted". You're denfense is then "this copying falls under fair use", which the court will look at and either confirm or deny.
I know everyone hates analogies, but fair use is similar to saying you killed someone in self defense. It does not say you didn't break the law, but tries to say why you broke the law and why it is allowed.
Because there would never be a crime that was successfully prosecuted. Transfer this theory to RL theft. You come home and your house is empty. They find me in possession of everything missing from your house. I say " I stopped by his house and he gave it to me, I didn't steal it". Why isn't my word good enough? Prove that he didn't tell me I could take it all. Because there is another person with a different opinion whose opinion is just as valid (until one of you is proven correct).
While you are assumed innocent until proven guilty, there is already evidence against you if you make it to court. It is nearly impossible to prove a negative such as "prove I didn't buy a cd and rip this track off of it".
And you won't be locked in on the MS player either. you will be able to use those same songs.
Now, if the nit-picking is done, you certainly will be locked into iTunes if you want to buy any music from the RIAA (legally), which is by far the majority of music and the most popular music. Yes, there are places you can buy MP3s and these will work on any player, but that is not what most people want. With an iPod, you are locked into the ITMS for the majority of music. With the MS player, there are a number of music stores you can choose from (Napster, the new MS store, Rhapsody, WalMart, etc).
... and locking them right back in again in to Micrsoft's vendor lock-in. Brilliant. Yes and no. With the iPod, you are locked into the iTunes music store, but also the iPod itself. With this, you will be locked into the WMA format, but that is availble from a number of different stores. Also, you won't be locked into the MS player, as other players will play WMA files. So while you may be lcoked into the format, you aren't locked into a particular store or player. Seems like a good idea to me.
35% is actually a good deal from TicketBastard. I recently purchased a ticket from them (since I had no other choice) and paid 19.70 for a $12 ticket. I paid over 60% of the face value in fees. And that was with standard mail shipping, which is no extra fee (according to their site, I'm sure the cost is built into their fee). I have actually passed on shows in the past because they cost too much because of the TicketBastard fees. while $10 in fees might not be much when you are paying $100 for a ticket, it is outrageous for cheaper concerts.
While in theory your solutions works, you are forgetting that the user WANTS to run whatever it is they are running. If the default way to run things was to save them and then run them, that is what the user would do. They are being tricked into running something. The onyl way to stop that is to make the user not want to run it. If the IM is changed to where it won't run executables directly, the user will do whatever they need to do to run the file, because that is what they want to do. Changing the default setup of the IM won't change that.
I'm not an international lawyer or anything, but it occurs to me that the law might be different outside the U.S.
WHAT?!?!??! What kind of savages do they have living in the rest of the world? Everyone should be obeying US laws, as we all know that it is the best and fairest laws ever to excist. We need to liberate the citizens of the rest of the world, so they to can follow US law, instead of whatever ungodly, communist laws they have been following. Think of the poor, heathen children!
The problem with getting people to advertise on internet radio is that most advertising it local, and that doesn't work with internet radio. If you pay attention to any of the radio stations that aren't part of a huge corporation, a lot of the ads you here are for smaller, local businesses. Those people have no interest in advertising on the internet, because they have no idea how many people they reach will even be in the right area to care about the ad. If I live in New York and listen to WOXY on the net, I really don't care about an ad for Northside Tavern (a local bar in Cincinnati, where WOXY is based) because I can't possibly go there. The only way advertising on internet radio stations will work is if you convince the huge nationwide corps to do it, because it doesn't matter where the listeners are then. And these are usually the last type of businesses to try a new thing.
I really hope WOXY can make it (I already have my subscription) but realistically, the chances seem pretty long. But if you like good, independent music, check out the station (there is still a free stream to listen to).
But what you then have is 2 uncomparable lists. To compare 2 things, they have to be simple enough to compare them. You can compare total bug counts (not that this article does it well or correctly). You can compare remote vs local exploits. You can compare average times to fix bugs. You can't compare all of those things at once, at least not in any meaningful way. So what does it mean if one OS has 10% less overall bugs, 15% less remote exploitable holes, 26% more time to fix hole and 45% more of the holes were in the kernal vs. another OS? All that does is change the arguement into what is more important between all the imformation listed.
While there may be different ways that the PC could have gotten the files on it without her knowledge (or her children's knowledge, since she is responsible for them), the question is, did any of them happen? Did she have an open FTP server on her system? Was her system a zombie? Did any of these things actually happen? So far, the answer seems to be no. The only defense I've seen is she thinks maybe a neighbor kid might have done it. That's her defense. She acknowledges the files were there. She basically acknowledges that they were downloaded to her PC. And all she can say is "maybe a neighbor kid did it" (and I like how it had to be a neighbor kid and not one of her kids)? Sorry, but a reasonable case has been made by the RIAA.
Simply denying knowledge of something doesn't mean you didn't do it. All evidence points to her (or her kids) downloading the music. It's like if the cops find something illegal in your car. You can say it isn't yours, but unless there is good evidence it isn't, it's considered yours. While I'm not a fan of the RIAA, her excuse is pretty flimsy.
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As far as the Zune claims go, I don't buy it for a minute, any more than I buy the claim of 40m Vista licenses sold.
I take the el to work in Chicago, and every day I see dozens of people with ipods. I've yet to see a single Zune in the wild, and at retail outlets like Microcenter or Target there always seems to be a crowd of people looking at the ipods on display while the Zune is simply ignored. I don't think I've ever even seen a working Zune on display -- they're always off or broken.
Microsoft's numbers don't mean a thing. The numbers to look at are from retailers: How many Zunes have been sold at Amazon, Best Buy, Circuit City, etc.? It's certainly not as high as Microsoft would have you believe. No matter what color they make it.
So because you haven't seen one of a million Zunes sold in the world you don't buy it? Yes, you have seen iPods, because they have sold over 2 orders of magnitude more. They have sold a total of 100 million iPods (according to Apple), so of course you have seen an assload more of them. I have never seen an iPod video outside of a store, but I am willing to accept that they have sold a whole lot of them.
As far as MS only selling a million Zunes in this time, that is exactly what they expected. They realized they were moving into a new market with a dominant force in it (Apple). They are trying to get their foot in the door, get their product known, and slowly increase sales. It is similar to what they did with the original XBox. They knew they wouldn't go in and take over the market. Instead they go in, take their lumps and slowly build a base and a better product.
I died a little on the inside when I read this. :(
Don't worry, you'll respawn in Mrs. Crabapple's classroom for round 2.
2. I am absolutely unsure about the way that Groove 2007 is licensed w.r.t. the way it was in Groove 3.x days. In 3.x, your license was for YOU-- you could install it on multiple machines, provided that they were all logged in as you. So, for example, my coworker would have Groove installed on his home machine and his work machine, and they were set up to share folders, etc. That was part of the point.
In Groove 2007, I believe that you have to buy a copy for each computer, and at $250 a pop, that's not cheap!
As Groove is now part of Office, you can install it on multiple machines as long as you are not going to be logging into those machine at the same time. The Office license states that you can install it on different machine for the same user (say a work machine, a laptop used when traveling, and a home machine).
IF I were to take porn and alcohol and leave it sitting in a high school every day, would I be arrested for contributing to the delinquency of minors? I don't know who picked up the stuff (if anyone), all I know is I leave it someplace and the next day it is gone. I think I would get busted in a heartbeat for that. So why should this be different. Assuming they are referring to people who make files available on purpose (and this is a big distinction), the intent is clearly to distribute files they don't have the rights to distribute. IF you purposely share something on the internet and allow users access to it, you are trying to distribute it. Just because you picked a crappy file no one wants doesn't mean you weren't distributing it. It just means no one took you up on your distribution. If I try and hand out flyers and no one takes one from me, I am still distributing flyers.
More importantly, they dislike restrictions, as evidenced by their reasonable DRM in iTunes and lack of CD key for OS X.
There is no CD key for OSX because they instead tied it directly to their hardware. Apple makes it's money on hardware and OSX will only run on Apple hardware, so there is no really worry about pirating, because if you pirate it, you have already bought Apple hardware, where they make their money. Now compare this to something like Quicktime. You certainly do need a key for that because they make their money from the software for that, not the hardware. So they only dislike restrictions when it mean they have restrictions built in that you can't get around paying them for.
I think the only reason this is even being talked about is that the they don't have to rely on the honor system as much. P2P has been slowly dying for the average person for a while. With music being available to purchase online, and the crap quality of downloads from most P2P services (viruses, fake, files, mislabeled songs, etc) most people have moved away from P2P. BitTorrent is the one exception, but that is still more of a geek tool that the average person has no clue about. P2P certainly isn't dead, but it has become a big enough burden that the average person doesn't mess with it anymore, so labels can consider selling DRM-free files knowing the the average person can't get them easily.
So let me get this straight. A guy designed a special BitTorrent client to make it look like he was downloading copyrighted material and it's news that he got a letter? He was specifically trying to appear as if he was downloading it to everyone. If I make a substance that looks and smells like pot and then smoke it outside the police station, I'll get arrested as well. If you try and convince people you are doing something wrong, why is it news when they then think you are doing something wrong?
While in general I agree, they are suing because of the handling of the issue more than the issue itself. It's not like Nvidia has said "yes there are problems and we are working on them." They are denying problems and deleting posts that say there is a problem. In other words, there is no indication that Nvidia is doing anything at all besides sticking their heads in the sand. If Nvidia wanted to keep their customers happy, they would acknowledge the problem and say they are working on getting it corrected instead of trying to hide the fact that a problem exists.
Personally I believe HD-DVD will win or both formats with coexist because -
1) HD-DVD is cheaper to manufacture
2) Porn has chosen HD-DVD as it's main format
3) Blu-Ray is Sony's format - this makes, some people hate it, period.
4) Much more expensive to manufacture
While I agree, I think it is important to point out that the pr0n industry hasn't chosen HD-DVD. Quite a few companies were actually behind Blu-Ray until recently when it came out that companies are not allowed to make XXX Blu-Ray discs. XXX companies have come forward and said they were told that companies were not allowed to make Blu-Ray discs for them because Sony would yank their license to manufacture Blu-Ray discs if they did. Funny enough, this exact thing happened with VHS/Beta with Sony saying no to pr0n on Beta, and we all know how that turned out. So Sony is once again shooting themselves in the foot and ensuring that they lose the format wars.
Um, no, itunes doesn't think that way. I can buy music with the MS Plays for Sure DRM and use it on a whole bunch of devices (nto sure about the new DRM for the Zune). it isn't the RIAA doing it, it is the companies making DRM that is compatible with only 1 device (namely Apple and possibly MS with the new Zune store).
1) Artists build upon other artists. Some of the best pieces of art are composites of other pieces of art (Shakespeare being the classic example). This super-DRM'ed world would contradict that fact and make it much harder for artists to do their work. It would also make it impossible to create such art forms as satire, abbreviation, etc.
DRM in now way stops artists from building upon the ideas of other artists (copyright may stop this with the extreme measures it has been extended to, but not DRM). Shakespeare did not need to be able to make an exact quality of copy of other artists' works to build off of them. Neither did any of the musicians in history need to be able to make an exact copy of something they heard to use it and build off of it. The idea of art building off of arts means that artists hear/see what other artists have done and use it for inspiration, not that they make an exact copy of it. Artists have never needed to be able to make exact duplicates of other's work to find inspiration from other's work in the past anymore than they do now.
I'll give you a different take on the "Smart Phone" limitations. I, for one, haven't bought one because of the size, power requirements, and sheer onconvience of using and carrying one. Along comes Apple, and appears to make this simple, easy to use, intuitive, and, to top it off, good looking. Oh, and need we mention that you can also run your familiar interfaces on it provided you like Macs to begin with? No special "browser" needed. No new learning how to browse the web. A PDA you can actually use. My current LG phone's calendering option is so convulted to setup that I don't use it. The contact list is "locked", or they think it is, so I cannot manage it easily nor sync it with my computer. The iPhone does away with all of that. It will appeal to a large group of people that are carrying both a cell phone and an iPod, if you add PDA and/or pocket PC to that, you'll just add to the attraction.
Except the iPhone doesn't address any of your actual concerns. You haven't bought a smart phone because of size, power requirements, and inconvinience of them, yet the iPhone (as far as we know) will be just as big, have the same power requirements, and be just as inconvinient. All the things you list may be good reasons to by an iPhone, but it has nothing to do with the reasons you list for not buying one of the current ones.
He's not astroturfing because that isn't what astroturfing is. Simply defending a corporation is not astroturfing (and you have no evidence that it was anything but that).
But beyond that, Fair Use means you can make backups of your recordings, not buy a copy from elsewhere (whether this is allowed or not is still up in the air though). Second, while allofmp3 may be legal in Russia, it is in no way legal in the US. Something being legal in another country in no way makes it legal in this one, even if it is over the internet. It may be legal to buy pot in Amsterdam, that doesn't make it legal in the US. Unless mrshowtime has moved to Russia since Katrina, it is not a legal way for him to purchase mp3s.
While I think this is bad, the issue is less you lying and more that the proper safeguards aren't in place to actual identify the who the person is. I don't think lying should be illegal in most cases. What they should legislate is that there be proper safeguards to ensure you information only gets given out to the proper people.
Making it illegal to pretext may stop some people from calling and lying to get your info, but anyone who does want to lie still can get your info. Forcing the companies to properly guard your info means even if someone calls and lies, they still won't be able to get your info.
I swear to god I'm going to take a claw hammer to the next person who repeats that myth.
For the thousandth fucking time, that bill only applies to non-citizens!
Or anyone who is determined to be an enemy combatant. And the rules for being declared an enemy combatant is that the president says you are. So yes, it DOES apply to every single person, since anyone at any time can be declared an enemy combatant for any reason.
Yes, copyright violations are explicitly forbidden; but not every MP3 represents a copyright violation. The idea of "innocent until proven guilty" (we used to have that in the UK once) should still hold: any copy should be presumed to be permitted under the doctrine of "fair use" unless it can be proved otherwise. And the scope of fair use in the USA is quite broad.
If the US courts still work anything like the UK courts on which they were modelled, decisions in one court can set precedents. If enough people claim "fair use" and win, the scope of fair use will be widened. I guess the RIAA would sooner drop a case than continue prosecuting it and risk further expanding fair use. In the best case, a jury could even decide that P2P filesharing constitutes fair use!
You don't seem to understand how fair use works. Fair use basically let's you do something that would otherwise be illegal. It is illegal to copy copyrighted works except for under the terms of fair use. So if you are accused of copying copyrighted works, you have to then prove it falls under fair use. Fair use is basically a loophole. Fair use is a defense you can use. If you are accused of copying copyrighted works, the court will look and say "yep, they were copyrighted". You're denfense is then "this copying falls under fair use", which the court will look at and either confirm or deny.
I know everyone hates analogies, but fair use is similar to saying you killed someone in self defense. It does not say you didn't break the law, but tries to say why you broke the law and why it is allowed.
Because there would never be a crime that was successfully prosecuted. Transfer this theory to RL theft. You come home and your house is empty. They find me in possession of everything missing from your house. I say " I stopped by his house and he gave it to me, I didn't steal it". Why isn't my word good enough? Prove that he didn't tell me I could take it all. Because there is another person with a different opinion whose opinion is just as valid (until one of you is proven correct).
While you are assumed innocent until proven guilty, there is already evidence against you if you make it to court. It is nearly impossible to prove a negative such as "prove I didn't buy a cd and rip this track off of it".
And you won't be locked in on the MS player either. you will be able to use those same songs.
Now, if the nit-picking is done, you certainly will be locked into iTunes if you want to buy any music from the RIAA (legally), which is by far the majority of music and the most popular music. Yes, there are places you can buy MP3s and these will work on any player, but that is not what most people want. With an iPod, you are locked into the ITMS for the majority of music. With the MS player, there are a number of music stores you can choose from (Napster, the new MS store, Rhapsody, WalMart, etc).
... and locking them right back in again in to Micrsoft's vendor lock-in. Brilliant.
Yes and no. With the iPod, you are locked into the iTunes music store, but also the iPod itself. With this, you will be locked into the WMA format, but that is availble from a number of different stores. Also, you won't be locked into the MS player, as other players will play WMA files. So while you may be lcoked into the format, you aren't locked into a particular store or player. Seems like a good idea to me.
35% is actually a good deal from TicketBastard. I recently purchased a ticket from them (since I had no other choice) and paid 19.70 for a $12 ticket. I paid over 60% of the face value in fees. And that was with standard mail shipping, which is no extra fee (according to their site, I'm sure the cost is built into their fee). I have actually passed on shows in the past because they cost too much because of the TicketBastard fees. while $10 in fees might not be much when you are paying $100 for a ticket, it is outrageous for cheaper concerts.
While in theory your solutions works, you are forgetting that the user WANTS to run whatever it is they are running. If the default way to run things was to save them and then run them, that is what the user would do. They are being tricked into running something. The onyl way to stop that is to make the user not want to run it. If the IM is changed to where it won't run executables directly, the user will do whatever they need to do to run the file, because that is what they want to do. Changing the default setup of the IM won't change that.
I'm not an international lawyer or anything, but it occurs to me that the law might be different outside the U.S.
WHAT?!?!??! What kind of savages do they have living in the rest of the world? Everyone should be obeying US laws, as we all know that it is the best and fairest laws ever to excist. We need to liberate the citizens of the rest of the world, so they to can follow US law, instead of whatever ungodly, communist laws they have been following. Think of the poor, heathen children!
The problem with getting people to advertise on internet radio is that most advertising it local, and that doesn't work with internet radio. If you pay attention to any of the radio stations that aren't part of a huge corporation, a lot of the ads you here are for smaller, local businesses. Those people have no interest in advertising on the internet, because they have no idea how many people they reach will even be in the right area to care about the ad. If I live in New York and listen to WOXY on the net, I really don't care about an ad for Northside Tavern (a local bar in Cincinnati, where WOXY is based) because I can't possibly go there. The only way advertising on internet radio stations will work is if you convince the huge nationwide corps to do it, because it doesn't matter where the listeners are then. And these are usually the last type of businesses to try a new thing.
I really hope WOXY can make it (I already have my subscription) but realistically, the chances seem pretty long. But if you like good, independent music, check out the station (there is still a free stream to listen to).
But what you then have is 2 uncomparable lists. To compare 2 things, they have to be simple enough to compare them. You can compare total bug counts (not that this article does it well or correctly). You can compare remote vs local exploits. You can compare average times to fix bugs. You can't compare all of those things at once, at least not in any meaningful way. So what does it mean if one OS has 10% less overall bugs, 15% less remote exploitable holes, 26% more time to fix hole and 45% more of the holes were in the kernal vs. another OS? All that does is change the arguement into what is more important between all the imformation listed.
While there may be different ways that the PC could have gotten the files on it without her knowledge (or her children's knowledge, since she is responsible for them), the question is, did any of them happen? Did she have an open FTP server on her system? Was her system a zombie? Did any of these things actually happen? So far, the answer seems to be no. The only defense I've seen is she thinks maybe a neighbor kid might have done it. That's her defense. She acknowledges the files were there. She basically acknowledges that they were downloaded to her PC. And all she can say is "maybe a neighbor kid did it" (and I like how it had to be a neighbor kid and not one of her kids)? Sorry, but a reasonable case has been made by the RIAA.
Simply denying knowledge of something doesn't mean you didn't do it. All evidence points to her (or her kids) downloading the music. It's like if the cops find something illegal in your car. You can say it isn't yours, but unless there is good evidence it isn't, it's considered yours. While I'm not a fan of the RIAA, her excuse is pretty flimsy.