While I agree with a lot of this, the issue is that with ad-blockers even sites that don't use these advertising methods get caught. I know many sites that I just couldn't visit without ad-blocking because they are so bad. SO you install and ad-blocker and it blocks every ad from every site. So when you visit Ars, you never get the chance to see that they do basic no-frills ads and not the flashing, noisy, deceptive ads that everyone hates.
I would much prefer an ad-blocker that would allow you to turn it on per site (instead of off per site). When you first go to a site, it should load the site and ask if you want to block ads on the site. That way you can see what the site is like before you choose to block the ads. Instead, everything is blocked by default and people don't even consider unblocking sites. At the very least it would be nice to have any option to download the ads but not display them (which I swear used to be an option but I can't find it anymore). Then places like Ars could get the credit for the ads that pay per view (yes, there are much fewer than them, but it is better than nothing).
While this is true to some extent, does your phone have Android 2.1? Unless you hacked it, the answer is no. So it does small incremental upgrades, but there hasn't been a major version upgrade pushed this way, which is what this article is talking about. There are phones currently being sold with at least 3 version of android (1.6, 2.0. and 2.1), with no current upgrade path to get to the next major version.
This is the big problem with WinMobile phones, and will be a huge issue for Android phones unless they get an upgrade path out there. If the phone can take it, there is no reason not to allow them to upgrade to the newest version of the OS.
I never understood the "don't speak ill of the dead" idea. Yes, you should never stand around and cheer people's deaths, but if they were stupid, why should I not say so just because they are dead? Imagine you heard about someone who almost drowned trying to save their moped from a flooded creek. Most people's first reaction would be "what a moron". Why should that change just because the person died? Did they become smarter in death?
Being open source in now way means a program is bug free, or even does what it claims. Sure, chances are someone else has already found if there is something horribly wrong, but the whole point of it being open source is so you can audit it yourself. If you don't bother to actually look at the code, it might as well be closed source, since you aren't looking at the code anyway.
The only issues with your thought is that piracy is still increasing, including for music. Everyone always claimed that they pirated because it was so hard to get the music in digital format, but now that there is an easy cheap way to buy it in digital format, people are still pirating music. If your idea was corret, music piracy would be going down as the people who just wanted an easy way to get it stop pirating the music and start buying it from iTunes, Amazon, LaLa, etc.
Even if this is the case, they are probably at least getting some of the information. For example, they still see/hear the first part of the first ad as they get up. Depending on how far they go, they also still here the ad as they get their drink and then return in time to see at least part of the last ad before the show restarts. With skipping over, you don't hear anything at all, if they play the ads, they may at least hear part of the ads.
This article pretty much covers why medical pot is having such a hard time. The cause has been co-opted by people trying to use it as a backdoor to get pot legalized. California is having a lot of problems and people are turning against medical pot because it is being abused so much. A lot of the prescriptions are handed out without an real medical exam for generic things like "chronic pain". Chronic pain is a real condition, but it is being used as an excuse for people to legally get pot.
I'm all for medical pot, but it should be handled like any other medicine. It should be prescribed by a doctor for a legit condition and filled by a pharmacy, not by guys growing it in their back yard. If a doctor is prescribing it needless, he should be prosecuted the same as if he was handing out Ritalin or some other drug to people who don't need it. Unfortunately, many people are more interested in getting high than actually helping people who actually need ti for medicinal purposes.
I don't think anyone is going to say that texting while driving is a good idea, but it is already against the law. There are laws against reckless driving, and these would include things like texting while driving. Why do we need more rules against something that is already against the rules? If someone is doing this, use the existing rules. Since this is specifically pointed out, does that mean eating lunch while driving is okay, since there isn't a rule specifically against it? What about reading a book? Or changing clothes?
The whole idea behind rules and laws is to make them broad enough to cover various situations, which the current rules are. Once you get into specifically naming things that are not allowed, you get into the argument that "well, it doesn't specifically say that it isn't allowed" because some things are specially outlawed and some aren't. You can't list every situation that is covered by a law, so it's better to not list any and just apply the law.
It doesn't say they want advertisements in general, it says they think they wanted targeted advertisements. I think most people would say they want zero ads, but given a choice between random ads that don't apply to them (ads for diaper and tampons for young males for example) and ads that are targeted so that the majority of them will be for classes of items they buy (video games and porn sites for young males), most people would take the targeted ads.
People want to complain about ads, but give them a choice between a cheaper product with ads in it and a more expensive product without ads, and 95% will take the cheaper one with ads. I know I would rather have no ads (but not so much that I want a price increase to get rid of ads), so I would take ads that are targeted more toward me so maybe they are of at least some use to me.
The app store itself is a good idea other companies should imitate. The issue is that with Apple, it is the only way to get your app on the iPhone (yes, I know that people can jailbreak their iPhone and then visit other stores and install other apps, but that is a fairly small number of users and can be undone at any time Apple wants to). I have a WinMobile phone and would love to have a good app store for it, as it would make finding things easier. What I don't want is for that to be the only way to install something on the phone, as then they have complete control over what I can install on my phone. We have all heard the nightmares from developers about the random apps that Apple doesn't approve, as well as the apps they won't approve because it may compete with their products (and god forbid someone be able to choose to use something other than the app Apple has designed).
If we were just looking at the stats of the 360 by itself, you would be entirely correct. No one denies they should have a much lower failure rate than they do. But when you are comparing them to other systems, then how much they are used does become a factor. If I say my computer has a lower failure rate than you computer, it is a major factor if my computer is powered on once a month for 10 minutes and your is powered on daily for 5 hours at a time. Obviously, the one that is more used is more prone to failure.
Third, because consumers can easily purchase BSA's members products, those who copy without paying are simply scofflaws. 'I think the fact that the public does not object to BSA's campaign proves my point [that]... people do not want things for free; they are willing to pay for them,' writes Patry. 'It should not be surprising that when consumers are not treated with respect, they react negatively.
Who wrote this load of crap? It is difficult to purchase music and that is why people pirate it? Really, how hard is it to go to iTunes (or Amazon, or Lala, or eMusic, or whatever other online shop you want to go to) and purchase an MP3 of the hot new song? It is easier in most cases than going to one of the torrent sites (or whatever Napster replacement is popular currently) and finding the song and downloading it. Sure, there may be some older, out of print songs that you can't get anymore, but 99% of the time those are not the ones being downloaded and there is also old software which can't be bought anymore as well.
the idea that people are pirating music because it is too hard to purchase may have held water 10 years ago, but now it is actually easier to purchase it than download it.
There very well may have been other examples that were sent to the developer. That doesn't change the fact that those standard swear words were sent to him as at minimum part of the reason it was being rejected. These words are not objectionable in the other dictionary applications, so why were they sent to the developer as examples of objectionable content?
I wish it worked like this. With Outlook, it automatically puts the internal server name in. Even if you put in the IP or the external address (which we have in our internal DNS) it recognizes the internal server name and puts it in there.
As for using external DNS, that only works if they never come in-house. Once they do, and they want to connect to a network share for example, they can't because they are hard coded to an external DNS.
Which seems like a good idea until they come in house. While they are at home and pointing to a RFC-compliant DNS server, it's great, but when they come in-house, they then can't see any of the internal servers because they are still looking at the external DNS server instead of the internal ones given by DHCP. It really is a no win situation.
To use an example from my company, we have many users with laptops. We have set up MS Outlook on these systems to use Outlook Anywhere. The way Outlook Anywhere works is that is first tries to connect to the internal mail server (mail.company.inside) and if it can't connect to that then tries the external mail sever for an Outlook Anywhere connection (mail.company.com). With a properly set up and unmunged DNS, when they are at home it tries to connect to the internal server and gets a DNS not found response and then tries the external server. With this new bothced DNS setup, it tries the internal server and gets an IP address response, so it tries to connect to that server to retrieve it's email. Unfortunately, the DNS sends the IP address of the web server that serves up it's ad page, so Outlook sits and times out waiting for a response, meaning these people can't get their email from home.
Yes, this could be worked around by host files, but we are 1000 person company. Why would we want to try setting up local host files on these systems that then have to be updated whenever we change servers just because an ISP doesn't want to set up DNS based on the proper specs?
It also breaks functionality of if basic programs. For example we have a lot of people that use Outlook Anywhere, and it will be broken by this. By default, it checks for the internal server first, and when it can't find it, it then jumps to Outlook Anywhere. Except now it gets a response for the internal server, and then waits forever for a timeout. So now we'll have even more people calling us asking why they can't get their email when they could before. We already have a list of 10 or so ISPs that we tell our users not to use for this very reason.
So what you are saying is that in an anonymous survey, you believe those that responded to it lied in the section about downloading, but then were completely honest everywhere else? You can assume the responders were truthful for the entire survey or lied for the entire survey, but it is just silly to assume they were truthful for all of the survey except for the portion you don't agree with. Either the entire thing is legit or throw the whole thing out because you think the results are false, don't try to ignore the portions you disagree with while still tauting the other parts.
Driving while distracted is (and always has been) dangerous, there's no questioning that. But my question is if cell phone usage is as huge a deal as everyone makes it out to be. There hasn't been a huge increase in car crashes since cell phone came into common usage. In fact, the number of deaths from auto accidents has actually gone down as a percentage of the population according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year). So the number of deaths from car accidents hasn't increased with the introduction of this huge danger.
I think the issue is that cell phones are something easy and visible for people to blame. Where before an accident was caused by someone playing with the radio, or changing the CD, or eating or whatever, that was easily ignored or missed, now everyone sees that the person was on their cell phone and they KNOW that was the cause. Even when someone cuts them off in traffic, it must be the cell phone, when it is probably the person is either just an asshole or a bad driver. But because they were on the phone, it must be the phone.
If they want to do studies, why not do them on cell phones as well as other common things people do while driving? What effect does playing the radio, changing the CD, programming and following your GPS, eating and drinking, or anything else have on your driving?
Which has nothing to do with distributing songs, but playing them in a radio style. SoundExchange royalties are for playing a song that people can listen to but not keep (ala radio) not for giving away MP3 downloadable version of the song. It is a completely different beast.
I get tired of saying this, but the penalty for distributing a CD should have nothing to do with the cost of buying a CD or MP3. This would be appropriate if she was accused of downloading one copy, but she is accused of uploading. The issue is she assuming the right to distribute a CD or MP3, so the penalty should be based upon what the RIAA would charge to gain the rights to distribute the songs.
The penalty should be based on what it would cost me to gain the rights to distribute those 24 songs to anyone I wanted from my web site (and whatever penalty they court feel is warranted above that). So if I called the RIAA (at the time it happened) and said "I'm interested in putting these 24 songs on my web site for anyone who visits to download, what would that cost me?", whatever the answer would be would be a fair basis for the judgment. Obviously, the price they quote for the trial would have to backed up by facts (what have they actually charged for these or similar songs for instance) so they aren't able to just make up ridiculous amounts. Will it be a lot? Yes, it most likely will if they were popular songs (I'm sure 24 covers of Achy Breaky Heart wouldn't cost that much though), but it would be a fair way to estimate what the actual damage was.
I get tired of saying this, but the penalty for distributing a CD should have nothing to do with the cost of buying a CD or MP3. This would be appropriate if she was accused of downloading one copy, but she is accused of uploading. The issue is she assuming the right to distribute a CD or MP3, so the penalty should be based upon what the RIAA would charge to gain the rights to distribute the songs. I have no idea what songs were distributed, so I can't say whether the award is excessive (my gut feeling is yes, but if it was 24 of the most popular songs at the time, maybe not).
The penalty should be based on what it would cost me to gain the rights to distribute those 24 songs to anyone I wanted from my web site. So if I called the RIAA (at the time it happened) and said "I'm interested in putting these 24 songs on my web site for anyone who visits to download, what would that cost me?", whatever the answer would be would be a fair basis for the judgment. Obviously, the price they quote for the trial would have to backed up by facts (what have they actually charged for these or similar songs for instance) so they aren't able to just make up ridiculous amounts. Will it be a lot? Yes, it most likely will if they were popular songs (I;m sure 24 covers of Achy Breaky Heart wouldn't cost that much though), but it would be a fair way to estimate what the actual damage was.
So games and DVD sales are hurting music sales? If you take away the fact that people can pirate music, what happens then? Do people take some of the money they have been putting into games and DVDs and put it back into buying music? They obviously think music is worthwhile, otherwise they wouldn't even be bothering to download it.
You can't just say "well, other things are up, so I think it's those things" without factoring in that music can be had for free easily and that may be a factor in why games and DVDs are doing so well in sales (those can be pirated, but the size alone makes it more difficult to pirate than music). It's not as easy as "pirating is the one thing that is killing the music industry" but you have to at least factor it in because it is there.
Save as PDF was supposed to be a feature in Office from the beginning, but Adobe objected (legally) and forced them to pull it, so MS offered it as a separate download. I wonder why Adobe decided to drop their objection to MS putting this is Office.
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While I agree with a lot of this, the issue is that with ad-blockers even sites that don't use these advertising methods get caught. I know many sites that I just couldn't visit without ad-blocking because they are so bad. SO you install and ad-blocker and it blocks every ad from every site. So when you visit Ars, you never get the chance to see that they do basic no-frills ads and not the flashing, noisy, deceptive ads that everyone hates.
I would much prefer an ad-blocker that would allow you to turn it on per site (instead of off per site). When you first go to a site, it should load the site and ask if you want to block ads on the site. That way you can see what the site is like before you choose to block the ads. Instead, everything is blocked by default and people don't even consider unblocking sites. At the very least it would be nice to have any option to download the ads but not display them (which I swear used to be an option but I can't find it anymore). Then places like Ars could get the credit for the ads that pay per view (yes, there are much fewer than them, but it is better than nothing).
While this is true to some extent, does your phone have Android 2.1? Unless you hacked it, the answer is no. So it does small incremental upgrades, but there hasn't been a major version upgrade pushed this way, which is what this article is talking about. There are phones currently being sold with at least 3 version of android (1.6, 2.0. and 2.1), with no current upgrade path to get to the next major version.
This is the big problem with WinMobile phones, and will be a huge issue for Android phones unless they get an upgrade path out there. If the phone can take it, there is no reason not to allow them to upgrade to the newest version of the OS.
I never understood the "don't speak ill of the dead" idea. Yes, you should never stand around and cheer people's deaths, but if they were stupid, why should I not say so just because they are dead? Imagine you heard about someone who almost drowned trying to save their moped from a flooded creek. Most people's first reaction would be "what a moron". Why should that change just because the person died? Did they become smarter in death?
Being open source in now way means a program is bug free, or even does what it claims. Sure, chances are someone else has already found if there is something horribly wrong, but the whole point of it being open source is so you can audit it yourself. If you don't bother to actually look at the code, it might as well be closed source, since you aren't looking at the code anyway.
Well, if you are on Verizon FiOS, then your internet will get cut because it's off-topic!
The only issues with your thought is that piracy is still increasing, including for music. Everyone always claimed that they pirated because it was so hard to get the music in digital format, but now that there is an easy cheap way to buy it in digital format, people are still pirating music. If your idea was corret, music piracy would be going down as the people who just wanted an easy way to get it stop pirating the music and start buying it from iTunes, Amazon, LaLa, etc.
Even if this is the case, they are probably at least getting some of the information. For example, they still see/hear the first part of the first ad as they get up. Depending on how far they go, they also still here the ad as they get their drink and then return in time to see at least part of the last ad before the show restarts. With skipping over, you don't hear anything at all, if they play the ads, they may at least hear part of the ads.
This article pretty much covers why medical pot is having such a hard time. The cause has been co-opted by people trying to use it as a backdoor to get pot legalized. California is having a lot of problems and people are turning against medical pot because it is being abused so much. A lot of the prescriptions are handed out without an real medical exam for generic things like "chronic pain". Chronic pain is a real condition, but it is being used as an excuse for people to legally get pot.
I'm all for medical pot, but it should be handled like any other medicine. It should be prescribed by a doctor for a legit condition and filled by a pharmacy, not by guys growing it in their back yard. If a doctor is prescribing it needless, he should be prosecuted the same as if he was handing out Ritalin or some other drug to people who don't need it. Unfortunately, many people are more interested in getting high than actually helping people who actually need ti for medicinal purposes.
I don't think anyone is going to say that texting while driving is a good idea, but it is already against the law. There are laws against reckless driving, and these would include things like texting while driving. Why do we need more rules against something that is already against the rules? If someone is doing this, use the existing rules. Since this is specifically pointed out, does that mean eating lunch while driving is okay, since there isn't a rule specifically against it? What about reading a book? Or changing clothes?
The whole idea behind rules and laws is to make them broad enough to cover various situations, which the current rules are. Once you get into specifically naming things that are not allowed, you get into the argument that "well, it doesn't specifically say that it isn't allowed" because some things are specially outlawed and some aren't. You can't list every situation that is covered by a law, so it's better to not list any and just apply the law.
It doesn't say they want advertisements in general, it says they think they wanted targeted advertisements. I think most people would say they want zero ads, but given a choice between random ads that don't apply to them (ads for diaper and tampons for young males for example) and ads that are targeted so that the majority of them will be for classes of items they buy (video games and porn sites for young males), most people would take the targeted ads.
People want to complain about ads, but give them a choice between a cheaper product with ads in it and a more expensive product without ads, and 95% will take the cheaper one with ads. I know I would rather have no ads (but not so much that I want a price increase to get rid of ads), so I would take ads that are targeted more toward me so maybe they are of at least some use to me.
The app store itself is a good idea other companies should imitate. The issue is that with Apple, it is the only way to get your app on the iPhone (yes, I know that people can jailbreak their iPhone and then visit other stores and install other apps, but that is a fairly small number of users and can be undone at any time Apple wants to). I have a WinMobile phone and would love to have a good app store for it, as it would make finding things easier. What I don't want is for that to be the only way to install something on the phone, as then they have complete control over what I can install on my phone. We have all heard the nightmares from developers about the random apps that Apple doesn't approve, as well as the apps they won't approve because it may compete with their products (and god forbid someone be able to choose to use something other than the app Apple has designed).
If we were just looking at the stats of the 360 by itself, you would be entirely correct. No one denies they should have a much lower failure rate than they do. But when you are comparing them to other systems, then how much they are used does become a factor. If I say my computer has a lower failure rate than you computer, it is a major factor if my computer is powered on once a month for 10 minutes and your is powered on daily for 5 hours at a time. Obviously, the one that is more used is more prone to failure.
Third, because consumers can easily purchase BSA's members products, those who copy without paying are simply scofflaws. 'I think the fact that the public does not object to BSA's campaign proves my point [that]... people do not want things for free; they are willing to pay for them,' writes Patry. 'It should not be surprising that when consumers are not treated with respect, they react negatively.
Who wrote this load of crap? It is difficult to purchase music and that is why people pirate it? Really, how hard is it to go to iTunes (or Amazon, or Lala, or eMusic, or whatever other online shop you want to go to) and purchase an MP3 of the hot new song? It is easier in most cases than going to one of the torrent sites (or whatever Napster replacement is popular currently) and finding the song and downloading it. Sure, there may be some older, out of print songs that you can't get anymore, but 99% of the time those are not the ones being downloaded and there is also old software which can't be bought anymore as well.
the idea that people are pirating music because it is too hard to purchase may have held water 10 years ago, but now it is actually easier to purchase it than download it.
There very well may have been other examples that were sent to the developer. That doesn't change the fact that those standard swear words were sent to him as at minimum part of the reason it was being rejected. These words are not objectionable in the other dictionary applications, so why were they sent to the developer as examples of objectionable content?
I wish it worked like this. With Outlook, it automatically puts the internal server name in. Even if you put in the IP or the external address (which we have in our internal DNS) it recognizes the internal server name and puts it in there.
As for using external DNS, that only works if they never come in-house. Once they do, and they want to connect to a network share for example, they can't because they are hard coded to an external DNS.
Which seems like a good idea until they come in house. While they are at home and pointing to a RFC-compliant DNS server, it's great, but when they come in-house, they then can't see any of the internal servers because they are still looking at the external DNS server instead of the internal ones given by DHCP. It really is a no win situation.
To use an example from my company, we have many users with laptops. We have set up MS Outlook on these systems to use Outlook Anywhere. The way Outlook Anywhere works is that is first tries to connect to the internal mail server (mail.company.inside) and if it can't connect to that then tries the external mail sever for an Outlook Anywhere connection (mail.company.com). With a properly set up and unmunged DNS, when they are at home it tries to connect to the internal server and gets a DNS not found response and then tries the external server. With this new bothced DNS setup, it tries the internal server and gets an IP address response, so it tries to connect to that server to retrieve it's email. Unfortunately, the DNS sends the IP address of the web server that serves up it's ad page, so Outlook sits and times out waiting for a response, meaning these people can't get their email from home.
Yes, this could be worked around by host files, but we are 1000 person company. Why would we want to try setting up local host files on these systems that then have to be updated whenever we change servers just because an ISP doesn't want to set up DNS based on the proper specs?
It also breaks functionality of if basic programs. For example we have a lot of people that use Outlook Anywhere, and it will be broken by this. By default, it checks for the internal server first, and when it can't find it, it then jumps to Outlook Anywhere. Except now it gets a response for the internal server, and then waits forever for a timeout. So now we'll have even more people calling us asking why they can't get their email when they could before. We already have a list of 10 or so ISPs that we tell our users not to use for this very reason.
So what you are saying is that in an anonymous survey, you believe those that responded to it lied in the section about downloading, but then were completely honest everywhere else? You can assume the responders were truthful for the entire survey or lied for the entire survey, but it is just silly to assume they were truthful for all of the survey except for the portion you don't agree with. Either the entire thing is legit or throw the whole thing out because you think the results are false, don't try to ignore the portions you disagree with while still tauting the other parts.
Driving while distracted is (and always has been) dangerous, there's no questioning that. But my question is if cell phone usage is as huge a deal as everyone makes it out to be. There hasn't been a huge increase in car crashes since cell phone came into common usage. In fact, the number of deaths from auto accidents has actually gone down as a percentage of the population according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year). So the number of deaths from car accidents hasn't increased with the introduction of this huge danger.
I think the issue is that cell phones are something easy and visible for people to blame. Where before an accident was caused by someone playing with the radio, or changing the CD, or eating or whatever, that was easily ignored or missed, now everyone sees that the person was on their cell phone and they KNOW that was the cause. Even when someone cuts them off in traffic, it must be the cell phone, when it is probably the person is either just an asshole or a bad driver. But because they were on the phone, it must be the phone.
If they want to do studies, why not do them on cell phones as well as other common things people do while driving? What effect does playing the radio, changing the CD, programming and following your GPS, eating and drinking, or anything else have on your driving?
Which has nothing to do with distributing songs, but playing them in a radio style. SoundExchange royalties are for playing a song that people can listen to but not keep (ala radio) not for giving away MP3 downloadable version of the song. It is a completely different beast.
I get tired of saying this, but the penalty for distributing a CD should have nothing to do with the cost of buying a CD or MP3. This would be appropriate if she was accused of downloading one copy, but she is accused of uploading. The issue is she assuming the right to distribute a CD or MP3, so the penalty should be based upon what the RIAA would charge to gain the rights to distribute the songs.
The penalty should be based on what it would cost me to gain the rights to distribute those 24 songs to anyone I wanted from my web site (and whatever penalty they court feel is warranted above that). So if I called the RIAA (at the time it happened) and said "I'm interested in putting these 24 songs on my web site for anyone who visits to download, what would that cost me?", whatever the answer would be would be a fair basis for the judgment. Obviously, the price they quote for the trial would have to backed up by facts (what have they actually charged for these or similar songs for instance) so they aren't able to just make up ridiculous amounts. Will it be a lot? Yes, it most likely will if they were popular songs (I'm sure 24 covers of Achy Breaky Heart wouldn't cost that much though), but it would be a fair way to estimate what the actual damage was.
I get tired of saying this, but the penalty for distributing a CD should have nothing to do with the cost of buying a CD or MP3. This would be appropriate if she was accused of downloading one copy, but she is accused of uploading. The issue is she assuming the right to distribute a CD or MP3, so the penalty should be based upon what the RIAA would charge to gain the rights to distribute the songs. I have no idea what songs were distributed, so I can't say whether the award is excessive (my gut feeling is yes, but if it was 24 of the most popular songs at the time, maybe not).
The penalty should be based on what it would cost me to gain the rights to distribute those 24 songs to anyone I wanted from my web site. So if I called the RIAA (at the time it happened) and said "I'm interested in putting these 24 songs on my web site for anyone who visits to download, what would that cost me?", whatever the answer would be would be a fair basis for the judgment. Obviously, the price they quote for the trial would have to backed up by facts (what have they actually charged for these or similar songs for instance) so they aren't able to just make up ridiculous amounts. Will it be a lot? Yes, it most likely will if they were popular songs (I;m sure 24 covers of Achy Breaky Heart wouldn't cost that much though), but it would be a fair way to estimate what the actual damage was.
So games and DVD sales are hurting music sales? If you take away the fact that people can pirate music, what happens then? Do people take some of the money they have been putting into games and DVDs and put it back into buying music? They obviously think music is worthwhile, otherwise they wouldn't even be bothering to download it.
You can't just say "well, other things are up, so I think it's those things" without factoring in that music can be had for free easily and that may be a factor in why games and DVDs are doing so well in sales (those can be pirated, but the size alone makes it more difficult to pirate than music). It's not as easy as "pirating is the one thing that is killing the music industry" but you have to at least factor it in because it is there.
Save as PDF was supposed to be a feature in Office from the beginning, but Adobe objected (legally) and forced them to pull it, so MS offered it as a separate download. I wonder why Adobe decided to drop their objection to MS putting this is Office.