...and say: Is it entirely possible that the there is a slump in the top song purchases from last year because this year's music just sucks?! I mean seariously, I think that piracy is too convenient an excuse to blame for declining sales.
But even if it were true, why would people pay for trash if they could just as easily get it for free?
I suggest an experiment, lower the price of tracks by half, (ie an iTunes $0.99 track to $0.49) and see what happens (oh and none of the crap about 'allowing the market to decide the price of each song'--charge a uniform price for all of them). I know that I myself would buy tracks more often.
I'm a graphic designer and in their example the replaced a sans-serf font (calling it garbage) for a serifed, all caps font for a sub heading. No, no, no. They turned it *into* garbage. For headings and subheadings as a general rule of publishing thumb, you should use san serifed fonts because they make them easier to read. *In my opinion* that alone discredited their publishing credibility, aside from the fact that I personally think they have a rediculous idea.
From a web design perspective, you should get away from Flash as much as possible. This is because of varying versions of the plugin across the web, some people don't even have it, and if you're in the slashdot type of crowd you have plugins that selectively block it.
Now that I have company execs lured into thinking that just because the message self destructs it is safe, I can now write my next IM worm to copy their messages into another 'secure' location to be read by myself and my evil black hat henchmen and to be sold to the highest bidder! Mwa ha ha!
The whole issue revolves around cash. Sure, Microsoft has the ability to patch every stinking hole in its OS's, but at a terrible finincial cost. Or, it can patch just the ones that it feels wre most critical and important, yet people still buy their OS or a computer with it. It's all about opportunity costs to the company. If there is an economic reason NOT to patch it, they won't.
I don't think (at least from my cultural background) that there is a concern with transplanting a face--it is just like any other donated organ. However, in many cultures the face has great significance that is deeply meshed into the sociological values and even linguistics of their lives. Many Native American languages, for example use the concept of the face to identify everything. For example the phrase --ru li che'--in the native American language of K'ekchi' literally translates as 'face of the tree', but what it is really talking about is 'fruit'. If you are familiar with someone, you would say --ninau ru-- meaning "I know his face". In such cultures the removal of a face removes identity. In this case you destroy the identity of one, and replace the other--which would have deep psychology implications to these types of cultures.
So I think the problem here is not whether it is right or wrong, legal or illegal, but what is morally reprehensible to society. And since this is an issue that really hasn't been traversed before, I think it only predictable that there be hesitation to undergo such a procedure.
When you're a big player and can afford to loose money, doing this makes perfect sense. Sure you'll make money off of royalties and accessories and subscriptions, etcetera, but that's not the point. The object is not to make money at this point, what they're gunning for is market share.
When the market is crowded and there isn't much room to butt in, you have to sell it at a loss to attract buyers. Nintendo and Sony are already household names and proved their worth decades ago. But this is something relatively new for Microsoft. So, in order to grab a peice of the market share pie and get their name around, they have to make it attractive to purchase.
Take for example the market of DVD players. How many brands are out there? Too many. Everyone wants a peice of that pie so they'll try to lower costs as much as possible and mark their price to get the lowest margins possible. The bet is to flood the market with enough units of your name so that when everyone else who makes DVD players has begun to die off, yours is the one people think of when they go to get a new DVD player.
No, there isn't a conspiracy here, folks, it's just a company willing to take it in the shorts for bit until the have a big enough market share. (It's just with Microsoft that they want 99% of it.)
Gee, I hope that no one was able to see that I store my SS#, CC#, and username/passwords for every site that I use. This could really be bad! The last time I checked, this was Beta software anyway, and if it was a concern, realize that most people weren't concerned when they got google eyed for a 2GB account. Get serious, who in the their right mind would send sensitive information over e-mail anyway???
WOW! I just got my billion dollar idea for a new superhero & supervillian! Genetic material injected into the brains of human beings making their bodies mutate, giving them super power abilities to manipulate the weather, shoot lasers out of thier eyes, have magnetic manipulating powers! The possiblities are endless. A good title you say??? Well, I was going to go with X-Men, but that was already taken...Any suggestions?
Obviously the EU has joined the elusive Axis of Evil and we cannot tolerate nor give into the terrorist demands! The EU are hiding weapons of mass destruction in order to destroy the Internet. And all this time, I thought the real terrorists were in Iraq!
It's only a matter of time before the RIAA implodes. The more they push, the more people are going to be fed up with their scare tactics, extortion, and blatant abuse of those trying to innovate the way music is broadcasted to the world.
The opportunity is widening for a record company to form that gets *good* music together under a banner that benefits primarily the consumer and the artist, without the pimp and whore attitude the RIAA has.
A lawyer's employ is to defend the position of the client. In this case, she was a lawyer for Microsoft. If she had been a lawyer for anyone else, she would have defended their position with equal fervor. Now that she is likely to become a justice of the Supreme Court, her employ is to defend the Constitution of the United States of America, and if she can successfully defend something as silly as MS-DOS 6.0, then she has my support in defending some of the silly things that come before the bench of the highest court in the nation.
This is just another testament of humanity's innate desire and need to be free from oppression.
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
at the Idaho National Laboratory this last summer. They currently have a fully operational 802.16 network supporting their staff. I tell ya, there is nothing more cool than being miles and miles away from the tower and getting a full 54Mb signal in the middle of the desert!
I'm sorry to hear your imagination has been stunted by watching a few movies. How great would a sci-fi movie be if the technology actually did what it was designed to do--aid the human race.
Of course it's important to find fault in 'secure' computing. If the white hats don't uncover it first, someone with malicious intent will discover it to their benefit.
As to your comment about spending time to develope a better algorithm, how do you know it's secure, if you don't try to break it???
Did these people ever stop to think why these species died out 13,000 years ago??? The thing that I find most disturbing about these kinds of movements, is they intend to correct things that have 'gone wrong', only to screw things up in the process.
If elephants, lions, cheetahs, etc. are reintroduced into North America, what will keep the ecosystem balance?
In speaking with wildlife officials in Yellowstone National Park, they are having quite a problem with wolves. They mention that before we as humans started wiping out the wolf populations, there was some semblance of ecosystem balance. However, with the rite of reintroduction of the wolf population, things are out of balance again, because the ecosystem has postured itself to continue without wolves. Now, because of protection, there's nothing stopping the wolf population from getting out of control!
Just imagine having a wild elephant stomping down your house, and not having the ability to take it down 1. because you don't have an adequate gun to do it, and 2. because they'll be just as protected as other 'endangered' species.
Slashdot Mirror
...and say: Is it entirely possible that the there is a slump in the top song purchases from last year because this year's music just sucks?! I mean seariously, I think that piracy is too convenient an excuse to blame for declining sales. But even if it were true, why would people pay for trash if they could just as easily get it for free? I suggest an experiment, lower the price of tracks by half, (ie an iTunes $0.99 track to $0.49) and see what happens (oh and none of the crap about 'allowing the market to decide the price of each song'--charge a uniform price for all of them). I know that I myself would buy tracks more often.
I'm a graphic designer and in their example the replaced a sans-serf font (calling it garbage) for a serifed, all caps font for a sub heading. No, no, no. They turned it *into* garbage. For headings and subheadings as a general rule of publishing thumb, you should use san serifed fonts because they make them easier to read. *In my opinion* that alone discredited their publishing credibility, aside from the fact that I personally think they have a rediculous idea.
From a web design perspective, you should get away from Flash as much as possible. This is because of varying versions of the plugin across the web, some people don't even have it, and if you're in the slashdot type of crowd you have plugins that selectively block it.
Move along, nothing to see here.
Now that I have company execs lured into thinking that just because the message self destructs it is safe, I can now write my next IM worm to copy their messages into another 'secure' location to be read by myself and my evil black hat henchmen and to be sold to the highest bidder! Mwa ha ha!
But nobody throws chairs at Google, unlike management practices used at some other well-known technology companies.
<cough>Microsoft<cough>
Steve Ballmer is quoted as saying that "I'm going to f***ing burry IBM, too!"
The whole issue revolves around cash. Sure, Microsoft has the ability to patch every stinking hole in its OS's, but at a terrible finincial cost. Or, it can patch just the ones that it feels wre most critical and important, yet people still buy their OS or a computer with it. It's all about opportunity costs to the company. If there is an economic reason NOT to patch it, they won't.
I don't think (at least from my cultural background) that there is a concern with transplanting a face--it is just like any other donated organ. However, in many cultures the face has great significance that is deeply meshed into the sociological values and even linguistics of their lives. Many Native American languages, for example use the concept of the face to identify everything. For example the phrase --ru li che'--in the native American language of K'ekchi' literally translates as 'face of the tree', but what it is really talking about is 'fruit'. If you are familiar with someone, you would say --ninau ru-- meaning "I know his face". In such cultures the removal of a face removes identity. In this case you destroy the identity of one, and replace the other--which would have deep psychology implications to these types of cultures.
So I think the problem here is not whether it is right or wrong, legal or illegal, but what is morally reprehensible to society. And since this is an issue that really hasn't been traversed before, I think it only predictable that there be hesitation to undergo such a procedure.
When you're a big player and can afford to loose money, doing this makes perfect sense. Sure you'll make money off of royalties and accessories and subscriptions, etcetera, but that's not the point. The object is not to make money at this point, what they're gunning for is market share.
When the market is crowded and there isn't much room to butt in, you have to sell it at a loss to attract buyers. Nintendo and Sony are already household names and proved their worth decades ago. But this is something relatively new for Microsoft. So, in order to grab a peice of the market share pie and get their name around, they have to make it attractive to purchase.
Take for example the market of DVD players. How many brands are out there? Too many. Everyone wants a peice of that pie so they'll try to lower costs as much as possible and mark their price to get the lowest margins possible. The bet is to flood the market with enough units of your name so that when everyone else who makes DVD players has begun to die off, yours is the one people think of when they go to get a new DVD player.
No, there isn't a conspiracy here, folks, it's just a company willing to take it in the shorts for bit until the have a big enough market share. (It's just with Microsoft that they want 99% of it.)
"...there is nothing unusual about technology being used to protect intellectual property..."
There is also nothing unusual about technology being used to 'steal' it and share it on a P2P network, either.
Gee, I hope that no one was able to see that I store my SS#, CC#, and username/passwords for every site that I use. This could really be bad! The last time I checked, this was Beta software anyway, and if it was a concern, realize that most people weren't concerned when they got google eyed for a 2GB account. Get serious, who in the their right mind would send sensitive information over e-mail anyway???
WOW! I just got my billion dollar idea for a new superhero & supervillian! Genetic material injected into the brains of human beings making their bodies mutate, giving them super power abilities to manipulate the weather, shoot lasers out of thier eyes, have magnetic manipulating powers! The possiblities are endless. A good title you say??? Well, I was going to go with X-Men, but that was already taken...Any suggestions?
I bet we won't have to wait 'til MS Patch Tuesday for it to come out!
Obviously the EU has joined the elusive Axis of Evil and we cannot tolerate nor give into the terrorist demands! The EU are hiding weapons of mass destruction in order to destroy the Internet. And all this time, I thought the real terrorists were in Iraq!
It's only a matter of time before the RIAA implodes. The more they push, the more people are going to be fed up with their scare tactics, extortion, and blatant abuse of those trying to innovate the way music is broadcasted to the world.
The opportunity is widening for a record company to form that gets *good* music together under a banner that benefits primarily the consumer and the artist, without the pimp and whore attitude the RIAA has.
A lawyer's employ is to defend the position of the client. In this case, she was a lawyer for Microsoft. If she had been a lawyer for anyone else, she would have defended their position with equal fervor. Now that she is likely to become a justice of the Supreme Court, her employ is to defend the Constitution of the United States of America, and if she can successfully defend something as silly as MS-DOS 6.0, then she has my support in defending some of the silly things that come before the bench of the highest court in the nation.
This is just another testament of humanity's innate desire and need to be free from oppression.
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
Wouldn't it be ironic if the test actually put the asteroid on a collision course with Earth. That would be great...
It would truly be ironic of the test actually put the asteroid on a collision course for earth. Wouldn't that be great...
at the Idaho National Laboratory this last summer. They currently have a fully operational 802.16 network supporting their staff. I tell ya, there is nothing more cool than being miles and miles away from the tower and getting a full 54Mb signal in the middle of the desert!
I'm sorry to hear your imagination has been stunted by watching a few movies. How great would a sci-fi movie be if the technology actually did what it was designed to do--aid the human race.
AND...it only costs $16.99 for a whole school year. Who would have known that the answer was right under out feet!
Of course it's important to find fault in 'secure' computing. If the white hats don't uncover it first, someone with malicious intent will discover it to their benefit.
As to your comment about spending time to develope a better algorithm, how do you know it's secure, if you don't try to break it???
Did these people ever stop to think why these species died out 13,000 years ago??? The thing that I find most disturbing about these kinds of movements, is they intend to correct things that have 'gone wrong', only to screw things up in the process. If elephants, lions, cheetahs, etc. are reintroduced into North America, what will keep the ecosystem balance? In speaking with wildlife officials in Yellowstone National Park, they are having quite a problem with wolves. They mention that before we as humans started wiping out the wolf populations, there was some semblance of ecosystem balance. However, with the rite of reintroduction of the wolf population, things are out of balance again, because the ecosystem has postured itself to continue without wolves. Now, because of protection, there's nothing stopping the wolf population from getting out of control! Just imagine having a wild elephant stomping down your house, and not having the ability to take it down 1. because you don't have an adequate gun to do it, and 2. because they'll be just as protected as other 'endangered' species.