Yeah, but if I'm caught shopplifting from Blockbuster, the clerk wouldn't be able to just send a letter to the DMV who would then suspend my license so I wouldn't be able to drive the car anymore that I used to get to Blockbuster in the first place.
I don't understand why people like to gripe about CEO's salaries. If you don't want a company to have the money to pay its executives crazy amounts of money, then don't purchase products/services from that company. If you're a shareholder, sell. Or get together with other shareholders to make your gripe known.
I feel the same way about people who whine that sports superstarts get paid too much. It doesn't bother me, because I don't watch sports or attend sporting events, so they're not taking my money. (although the partly tax-payer funded stadium built here in Cleveland taking up useful water front space to be used 10 times a year does tend to piss me off....)
Same goes with rock/pop stars or movie/TV stars. If you don't want them to get paid that much, don't give them your money.
The only salaries that get to me are those of government workers because they're paid with my taxes which I have a pay even if I don't want to.
Like all technology, the price of digital projectors will go down. In a couple years, repairing your analog projector may cost more than repairing your digital, just like it costs more to fix a reel-to-reel audio machine than it does to fix (or buy a new) digital audio editing station.
I think the problem with studies like this is that they consider every pirated copy they run across a lost sale.
Let's say Little Johnny Pirate is a freshman in high school, has no job, and has $5000 worth of pirated software on his PC. If there was some magical way to stop piracy, would Little Johnny Pirate go out and buy every single software title that he previously had for free? No! He'd never be able to afford it. He'd just have to be content with what his parents bought him for his birthday or Christmas.
If the pirated music/software out there is easy to access for free, people will probably illegally download it for free, just cuz. I might download an Eminem MP3, but I'd never go buy one of his CDs. I wouldn't even buy the song for a buck if I could. If I couldn't get it for free, I'd just move on with my life.
If you take the retail price of every illegal piece of software out there and add it all together and it equals $54 billion dollars, that doesn't mean that the industry has lost $54 billion dollars. Sure, they're loosing money, but not THAT much.
I never disinfect my computer area and I only get sick about once a year. So BFD.
I get annoyed with these stories that talk about germs being in all sorts of places we never knew about before. If it's not making me sick, why should I care if there's germs on my mouse? Or the lip of my pop can? Or on the bathroom's door handle? Etc....
I miss the days when a simple banner ads could cover the bills.
When was that?
I think banner ads mostly helped defray the costs or gave the illusion to investors that some day this business model may make money, but I think they rarely covered the bills.
I've thought about this idea before. The key is that it must be quick and easy. A simple pop-up dialogue box is good. You click the link, the box pops open almost instantaneously, you read how much it will cost, you say yes or no, and move on.
You shouldn't have to sign up for 50 different sites, either. A lot of people might want to read the review for a game they're considering getting and would pay 10 cents for it, but they don't want to pay $4 a month (or whatever it is) to access a lot of reviews they don't care about.
I mean, isn't that one of the great things about the Internet? You could have a system where you only pay for what you want. I wish cable was like that. I could pay a fee each time I want to watch The Daily Show instead of a monthly fee for 10 sports stations I never watch.
One of the scariest parts about the bill is that it would force sites that contain porn or "other material deemed harmful to minors" to move to new domains...
Who decides what's harmful to minors? Nudity/pornography is a little easier to define, but I don't like the idea of Congress or whoever deciding what speech is "hateful" and what isn't.
Wiggywack, you just don't want to hear a logical argument.... That means there may be less demand for real child porn if virtual child porn is available.
I'd LOVE to hear a logical arguement, but that definately is not one.
There is no factual basis for your comment! Virtual porn will mean less "real" child porn? How does that make sense?
So the more cartoon and anime porn that's out there will decrease the need or desire for humans being photographed in sexually compromising positions? No, it won't. So why is it different for child porn?
You seem to think getting a little "taste" of something that titilates the senses will somehow calm the cravings forever, but in fact the opposite will happen. Or else cartoon porn would replace real porn. Or softcore would replace hardcore. Or regular topless strip shows would replace live sex shows. Or having a committed relationship with one woman would be enough and there'd be no desire for guys to cheat or go to prostitutes. Heck, just have sex with a blow up doll! That should be close enough!
So regardless of who I think is "evil and of the devil", saying virtual child porn will create less demand for real child porn is just plain wrong. It will actually have the opposite effect. Because we always want just a little more...
I can't believe people actually gave you mod points for that baseless spew you typed.
[P]edophilia is no different from heterosexuality or homosexuality, except that heteros and homos can enjoy healthy sex lives and pedos can't. That's unfortunate, and sometimes, in the case of people with low self-control, leads to the horrible crime of child molestation.
What a lame excuse. So why do hetrosexuals males rape women? According to your logic, there shouldn't be any heterosexual (or homosexual) rapes, because they can "get some" without it being considered a crime.
Get horny, watch virtual porn, jerk off, no more horniness.
Yeah, that works great with people that don't have some type of psychological problem. But for those that do, porn can lead to something worse. Take someone that might have homosexual tendencies. First he watches some gay porn online. But after awhile, that's not enough, and he begins to look for more. Real sex. Bathhouses, parks, video booths, whatever...
Look at kids who kill animals as children and grow up to be serial killers. Killing the defenseless animal might be okay for a while, but soon that person needs more and it turns into something ugly.
I may be in the mood to have a beer, so I'll drink one, and then be done with it. But take someone like an alcoholic. That one beer soon becomes not enough.
Or take married heterosexuals. Maybe a guy starts looking at porn online. For a lot of men, that can lead to "cheating" online, virtual sex, phone sex, and finally meeting up with a stranger in a hotel room.
It's never wise to feed the sinful desires or say "Well, if I just take this little taste, the urge will be gone and everything will be okay again."
The world has to stop thinking that just because a group of people, even if it's a large group, have a desire to do something, that doesn't make it right. Even if they feel they were "born that way". We're born greedy and self-centered. We look out for ourselves. That's why kids quickly learn the words "Mine" and "No". We're predisposed to do the wrong thing. That's why there has to be laws....
And even Jeffrey Dalmer said he just had to eat people. He couldn't stop. It was part of him. He was "born that way".
The picture in the c|net article is of the Gateway Profile 3 which has already been out for a while.
The article itself talks about the Gateway Profile 4 which is coming out this summer. THAT is the one that's supposed to be the "first" PC imitation of the new iMac. It's not out, so there's no picture of it yet.
Yeah, I think c|net putting that picture there made it confusing for people. It obviously confused CmdrTaco.:)
Why would you want Disney to buy Pixar? Pixar should go independent. They needed Disney in the beginning for the Disney name and their distribution. But now, after Pixar's unbelieveable successes with their movies, they don't need Disney.
Normally, I'm all for the little guy, but in this case, seems like the poster was a troll, not an "outspoken critic of corporate America."
Oh, gimme a break. Trolls are protected more by the law than outspoken critics. If you're gonna be sued for slander or libel or whatever, one of the qualifying things the people suing you have to prove is that people listening to you or reading your comment would take it seriously. Therefore, if I say "Bill Gates blow goats" I have much less of a chance of being sued than if I talk about the inside business practices of Microsoft in a way that sounds all professional and like I know what I'm talking about. Why? Because no reasonable person is really gonna think I have some sort of inside information or proof on Bill Gates performing fellacio on a goat and that I'm trying to pass that off as fact as opposed to just making fun of him.
And "liar" is a very generic term. You can call someone a liar and if they sue you, they're not gonna win, unless you were REALLY specific about what they allegedly lied about and were trying to hurt them by passing off that lie as fact. Suing someone because they called you a liar won't stand in court anymore than suing someone because they called you "ugly" or said you had a "fat ass" would.
If courts, other businesses, and government start listening to this guy's crap, he could become the most powerful man in the world over the next 10 years. Scary.
What if people hacked into their cars and disabled the tracking? Or would everyone be forced to have a GPS sending out their car's location 24/7? That would be kinda scary...
Only government officials would be able to turn it off. Like in Orwell's 1984....
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but if I'm caught shopplifting from Blockbuster, the clerk wouldn't be able to just send a letter to the DMV who would then suspend my license so I wouldn't be able to drive the car anymore that I used to get to Blockbuster in the first place.
And don't forget Apple's gonna make their next laptop out of it!
I didn't think USB 2.0 was that popular with PCs yet, either.
He should use some of that $1 million to buy a new webserver.
I don't understand why people like to gripe about CEO's salaries. If you don't want a company to have the money to pay its executives crazy amounts of money, then don't purchase products/services from that company. If you're a shareholder, sell. Or get together with other shareholders to make your gripe known.
I feel the same way about people who whine that sports superstarts get paid too much. It doesn't bother me, because I don't watch sports or attend sporting events, so they're not taking my money. (although the partly tax-payer funded stadium built here in Cleveland taking up useful water front space to be used 10 times a year does tend to piss me off....)
Same goes with rock/pop stars or movie/TV stars. If you don't want them to get paid that much, don't give them your money.
The only salaries that get to me are those of government workers because they're paid with my taxes which I have a pay even if I don't want to.
Heh. I was looking to download Mozilla with IE when IE crashed... Ah, sweet irony. :)
Like all technology, the price of digital projectors will go down. In a couple years, repairing your analog projector may cost more than repairing your digital, just like it costs more to fix a reel-to-reel audio machine than it does to fix (or buy a new) digital audio editing station.
In a counter survey, 92% of those administering the piracy survey admitted to speeding.
TO JAIL WITH ALL OF YOU!
I think the problem with studies like this is that they consider every pirated copy they run across a lost sale.
Let's say Little Johnny Pirate is a freshman in high school, has no job, and has $5000 worth of pirated software on his PC. If there was some magical way to stop piracy, would Little Johnny Pirate go out and buy every single software title that he previously had for free? No! He'd never be able to afford it. He'd just have to be content with what his parents bought him for his birthday or Christmas.
If the pirated music/software out there is easy to access for free, people will probably illegally download it for free, just cuz. I might download an Eminem MP3, but I'd never go buy one of his CDs. I wouldn't even buy the song for a buck if I could. If I couldn't get it for free, I'd just move on with my life.
If you take the retail price of every illegal piece of software out there and add it all together and it equals $54 billion dollars, that doesn't mean that the industry has lost $54 billion dollars. Sure, they're loosing money, but not THAT much.
I heard the Xbox has a proprietary DVD player that spins backwards. Sooo.... won't that be a problem in making an Xbox of your very own?
I never disinfect my computer area and I only get sick about once a year. So BFD.
I get annoyed with these stories that talk about germs being in all sorts of places we never knew about before. If it's not making me sick, why should I care if there's germs on my mouse? Or the lip of my pop can? Or on the bathroom's door handle? Etc....
That's because Microsoft is a monopoly with 95% of the market. Apple isn't and only has about 4% of the market.
There IS a difference. If you're a monopoly, you're held to a different legal standard and can't get away with certain things.
When was that?
I think banner ads mostly helped defray the costs or gave the illusion to investors that some day this business model may make money, but I think they rarely covered the bills.
I've thought about this idea before. The key is that it must be quick and easy. A simple pop-up dialogue box is good. You click the link, the box pops open almost instantaneously, you read how much it will cost, you say yes or no, and move on.
You shouldn't have to sign up for 50 different sites, either. A lot of people might want to read the review for a game they're considering getting and would pay 10 cents for it, but they don't want to pay $4 a month (or whatever it is) to access a lot of reviews they don't care about.
I mean, isn't that one of the great things about the Internet? You could have a system where you only pay for what you want. I wish cable was like that. I could pay a fee each time I want to watch The Daily Show instead of a monthly fee for 10 sports stations I never watch.
The article seems to have just disappeared. (about 3:45pm EDT)
One of the scariest parts about the bill is that it would force sites that contain porn or "other material deemed harmful to minors" to move to new domains...
Who decides what's harmful to minors? Nudity/pornography is a little easier to define, but I don't like the idea of Congress or whoever deciding what speech is "hateful" and what isn't.
That means there may be less demand for real child porn if virtual child porn is available.
I'd LOVE to hear a logical arguement, but that definately is not one.
There is no factual basis for your comment! Virtual porn will mean less "real" child porn? How does that make sense?
So the more cartoon and anime porn that's out there will decrease the need or desire for humans being photographed in sexually compromising positions? No, it won't. So why is it different for child porn?
You seem to think getting a little "taste" of something that titilates the senses will somehow calm the cravings forever, but in fact the opposite will happen. Or else cartoon porn would replace real porn. Or softcore would replace hardcore. Or regular topless strip shows would replace live sex shows. Or having a committed relationship with one woman would be enough and there'd be no desire for guys to cheat or go to prostitutes. Heck, just have sex with a blow up doll! That should be close enough!
So regardless of who I think is "evil and of the devil", saying virtual child porn will create less demand for real child porn is just plain wrong. It will actually have the opposite effect. Because we always want just a little more...
[P]edophilia is no different from heterosexuality or homosexuality, except that heteros and homos can enjoy healthy sex lives and pedos can't. That's unfortunate, and sometimes, in the case of people with low self-control, leads to the horrible crime of child molestation.
What a lame excuse. So why do hetrosexuals males rape women? According to your logic, there shouldn't be any heterosexual (or homosexual) rapes, because they can "get some" without it being considered a crime.
Get horny, watch virtual porn, jerk off, no more horniness.
Yeah, that works great with people that don't have some type of psychological problem. But for those that do, porn can lead to something worse. Take someone that might have homosexual tendencies. First he watches some gay porn online. But after awhile, that's not enough, and he begins to look for more. Real sex. Bathhouses, parks, video booths, whatever...
Look at kids who kill animals as children and grow up to be serial killers. Killing the defenseless animal might be okay for a while, but soon that person needs more and it turns into something ugly.
I may be in the mood to have a beer, so I'll drink one, and then be done with it. But take someone like an alcoholic. That one beer soon becomes not enough.
Or take married heterosexuals. Maybe a guy starts looking at porn online. For a lot of men, that can lead to "cheating" online, virtual sex, phone sex, and finally meeting up with a stranger in a hotel room.
It's never wise to feed the sinful desires or say "Well, if I just take this little taste, the urge will be gone and everything will be okay again."
The world has to stop thinking that just because a group of people, even if it's a large group, have a desire to do something, that doesn't make it right. Even if they feel they were "born that way". We're born greedy and self-centered. We look out for ourselves. That's why kids quickly learn the words "Mine" and "No". We're predisposed to do the wrong thing. That's why there has to be laws....
And even Jeffrey Dalmer said he just had to eat people. He couldn't stop. It was part of him. He was "born that way".
So, this copy protection is supposed to get people to STOP downloading music illegally and buy the CD instead???
Yeah, right. I'll never buy a copy protected CD.
Why doesn't Ponderosa make their restaurants look like Morton's Steak House? Or why doesn't Kia have sleek designs like Porsche?
Cost. Dell is the Kmart of the computer industry. And Compaq... They're just trying to stay alive.
The picture in the c|net article is of the Gateway Profile 3 which has already been out for a while.
:)
The article itself talks about the Gateway Profile 4 which is coming out this summer. THAT is the one that's supposed to be the "first" PC imitation of the new iMac. It's not out, so there's no picture of it yet.
Yeah, I think c|net putting that picture there made it confusing for people. It obviously confused CmdrTaco.
Why would you want Disney to buy Pixar? Pixar should go independent. They needed Disney in the beginning for the Disney name and their distribution. But now, after Pixar's unbelieveable successes with their movies, they don't need Disney.
Oh, gimme a break. Trolls are protected more by the law than outspoken critics. If you're gonna be sued for slander or libel or whatever, one of the qualifying things the people suing you have to prove is that people listening to you or reading your comment would take it seriously. Therefore, if I say "Bill Gates blow goats" I have much less of a chance of being sued than if I talk about the inside business practices of Microsoft in a way that sounds all professional and like I know what I'm talking about. Why? Because no reasonable person is really gonna think I have some sort of inside information or proof on Bill Gates performing fellacio on a goat and that I'm trying to pass that off as fact as opposed to just making fun of him.
And "liar" is a very generic term. You can call someone a liar and if they sue you, they're not gonna win, unless you were REALLY specific about what they allegedly lied about and were trying to hurt them by passing off that lie as fact. Suing someone because they called you a liar won't stand in court anymore than suing someone because they called you "ugly" or said you had a "fat ass" would.
If courts, other businesses, and government start listening to this guy's crap, he could become the most powerful man in the world over the next 10 years. Scary.
What if people hacked into their cars and disabled the tracking? Or would everyone be forced to have a GPS sending out their car's location 24/7? That would be kinda scary...
Only government officials would be able to turn it off. Like in Orwell's 1984....