But see, your child doesn't get paid because you washed dishes. Your child gets paid because you save money and give it to them. Same can be said of writing books.
Copyright isn't supposed to protect the publishers, it's supposed to protect the artists. If you happen to die of a car accident...well, that sucks, but you don't need the money, and I doubt the publisher does either. It'd just be an additional risk of business. Though honestly I don't think copyright should expire when the artist dies - it just shouldn't last so long that it's virtually guaranteed that the artist will die long before the copyright expires. Perhaps 10 years? Long enough the publisher and artist will most likely get the same amount of money.
See, here's my problem: After Tom Clancy dies, he no longer benefits from sales. So why should it be illegal for some hack to copy and republish his book? As copyright stands today, if you live slightly longer than average, anything you write after you're 8 years old will be copyright until after you're dead. That's bullshit. Why should some company that didn't even _do_ anything continue to profit from someone else's work for so long? It should be illegal to copy and resell someone's work until they have had enough time to produce a new work. That's it. Most of the sales come in the first year or two anyway, so what the hell is the difference between a 10 year copyright and a 70 year copyright? And why the _hell_ should it be possible for my children or even _grandchildren_ to still be getting royalties off of something _I_ did?
Well, they could put it on Google Video, which already hosts a lot of government videos and which allows downloading in MP4 format. Now, I'm not entirely sure how open MP4 is, but it's a hell of a lot better than flash. I mean, at least I can view it without a plugin - for the first several months after installing an OS I generally don't have flash installed. It takes me that long to find a decent reason to install the damn thing. Usually I just prefer not having it, and not dealing with the annoying ads and occasional browser crashes. But anyway, back to my point, I just wish they'd put them somewhere they could be downloaded in a fairly open format.
My god! I thought you were _kidding_ when you mentioned the Java Virtual Machine written in Java. But the damned thing _exists_! What has this world come to???
No, because the content providers already pay. They already pay quite a bit actually. What the issue is is an attempt to charge them again - many, many times. They pay for their connection already. Why should they now have to pay extra so that they can actually use it? Why should they have to pay every ISP separately to carry their content?
Exactly. Where I live, my choices are Comcast, or satellite. And we all know how bad satellite is. It would probably be cheaper to rent out a tiny house somewhere where I could get un-filtered access, and then buy Comcast and route everything through a VPN to there or something. Seriously. Satellite costs twice as much as Comcast and the service is _horrible_. I actually know people that have switched _back to dial-up_ because satellite was so bad.
I generally get one spam message every 20 minutes on my gmail account, almost exactly, like clockwork (and about one every month is mis-filtered - always a spam getting into my inbox, never a real message getting sent to spam - love gmail), but today they're coming every few hours. I've gotten 6 so far, and it's already noon. That's one every 120 minutes. Hell of a difference.
I've had a lot of trouble with the earlier games in the Command and Conquer series - the original, Red Alert, and I seem to recall even having trouble with Tiberium Sun, though I'm not sure about that one. Other than those though, yea, they're mostly DOS games, which worked fine on every version of Windows until then. You'd think they would have at least included their own DOS emulator when they removed it. I mean, how hard could that be?
Yea, unless you like playing games. There are just as many games that worked on ME that don't work on XP as games that worked on XP and don't on Vista. I _still_ have a PC with 98 installed, and I _still_ have VirtualBox Windows 98 images because that's the only way I can get a lot of the games I like to run. Some of them will run on Wine too, but a lot of them tend to lock up randomly.
I have the most expensive iPod touch (or at least it was...do they have a 32 gig ones yet?) and I can't fit all the music I'd like to on it. Not sure what bitrate my music's encoded at - there's quite a mix. As low as 128, as high as 320. Point is, yea, MP3 players store a lot more than they used to, but they still can't store even a moderately sized collection. When I go somewhere, I don't know what music I'm going to want to listen to - so I want to have all of it with me. Which is why I never used a flash MP3 player before the touch - I used hard drive iPods, and before that CD/MP3 players with several CDs. Anyway, the size of your MP3s may not matter if they're on your computer (although in my case they do - I already have to store mine on a USB drive), but it still does for the player.
When the _cheapest_ iPod hits 16 gigs and the cheapest laptops have 200 gigs, then we won't need to worry about the size of our MP3s. We're not there yet. A couple more years and we'll be good.
experts-exchange (there's a hyphen in that) is actually rather useful. Because they want their solutions to be found by google. So if your referrer says you are coming from a google search page or something, you can view the answers - just scroll down to the bottom of the page. If you find one from their main site you want to view, simply go to google and search for that URL, then scroll down to the answers.
Eh, I'd just rather read a transcript. I can never pay attention to an audio stream for that long. Video is a bit better - I used to like Hak.5 and some others whose names I can't recall, but even those are a bit much. Why watch for an hour when I could read, along with a few pictures, for ten minutes?
Just curious - for what? I've never *needed* to touch the console in Mandriva - at least not for anything a casual user would want. I usually use it instead of the GUI tools, because I find it easier to just open the console and type 'urpmi xxx' than opening mcc and going to the package manager and doing a search for the package I want and hitting the accept button and all that crap. But I can't remember ever *needing* the console.
Let's see: Ginus playslists? Amarok has had 'smart playlists' for a while now. Video podcasts? That one I'm not sure about. Personally I hate podcasts of all types. Seamlessly manage iPod/iPhone? Amarok can. Music sharing/Streaming? Amarok has been able to do that for a couple years at least. Integrated with a music store? Amarok has one of those too.
Now to the things iTunes doesn't have: Extensions? Amarok has it. Themes? Amarok has it. Automatically update your library? Amarok does it.
Bush wasn't unlucky that 9/11 happened while he was in office. He knew it was coming. Hell, _Clinton_ knew it was coming. And yet, what was one of Bush's first acts when he took office? He drastically reduced our anti-terrorism forces. He didn't just ignore the warnings - he actively worked to ensure it would happen.
Just FYI, there are democrats in the NRA as well. In fact, there are even democrats that believe that the voting machines are rigged in favor of the republicans in the NRA. I would be among them, but I just can't bring myself to donate to the NRA until after the election - can't give any money to someone who might give it to McCain.
So we should ignore everything that we don't think they'll actually have the balls to do? Sorry, but that logic makes no sense to me. The entire reason it won't get done is because people will get so outraged over it. If nobody says anything, they'll figure nobody cares and do it.
Yes, nobody argued when we went to war because Bush _lied to us_. They knew Saddam had nothing to do with it. In fact, if you go back and look at their speeches and documents, they were _extremely_ careful to never specifically say that Saddam was responsible - they just implied it. Something like 80% of the soldiers in Iraq _still_ think they're there because Saddam was behind 9/11.
And speaking of Clinton, Bush knew 9/11 was coming. Clinton's administration warned him and his administration about it. So what was one of the first things he did when he got in office? Severely downsized our counter-terrorism forces. He knew it was coming, and he actively worked to make it easier for them to do it. And then, when it happened, he lied to the American people and to Congress to get them to approve what he wanted. Bush never pushed for diplomacy, Bush used the attacks to get what he wanted - and he still is. He pushed for diplomacy and intel? Really? He booted the UN out! How is that pushing for diplomacy and intel? He did just enough that he could say he tried. He did just enough so that people like you would be able to say he did something.
And yes, Clinton did some bad things too. I'm not a huge fan of him either. But nothing he did even begins to compare to Bush.
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Hey, that's still the same speed I'm payin $60 a month for through cable.
But see, your child doesn't get paid because you washed dishes. Your child gets paid because you save money and give it to them. Same can be said of writing books.
Copyright isn't supposed to protect the publishers, it's supposed to protect the artists. If you happen to die of a car accident...well, that sucks, but you don't need the money, and I doubt the publisher does either. It'd just be an additional risk of business. Though honestly I don't think copyright should expire when the artist dies - it just shouldn't last so long that it's virtually guaranteed that the artist will die long before the copyright expires. Perhaps 10 years? Long enough the publisher and artist will most likely get the same amount of money.
See, here's my problem: After Tom Clancy dies, he no longer benefits from sales. So why should it be illegal for some hack to copy and republish his book? As copyright stands today, if you live slightly longer than average, anything you write after you're 8 years old will be copyright until after you're dead. That's bullshit. Why should some company that didn't even _do_ anything continue to profit from someone else's work for so long? It should be illegal to copy and resell someone's work until they have had enough time to produce a new work. That's it. Most of the sales come in the first year or two anyway, so what the hell is the difference between a 10 year copyright and a 70 year copyright? And why the _hell_ should it be possible for my children or even _grandchildren_ to still be getting royalties off of something _I_ did?
Well, they could put it on Google Video, which already hosts a lot of government videos and which allows downloading in MP4 format. Now, I'm not entirely sure how open MP4 is, but it's a hell of a lot better than flash. I mean, at least I can view it without a plugin - for the first several months after installing an OS I generally don't have flash installed. It takes me that long to find a decent reason to install the damn thing. Usually I just prefer not having it, and not dealing with the annoying ads and occasional browser crashes. But anyway, back to my point, I just wish they'd put them somewhere they could be downloaded in a fairly open format.
Uh, can you build _any_ cell phone from parts you purchase yourself? It's as open as it can be...
Well, of course, but isn't it a bit different with Java? I mean, most programming languages aren't virtualized.
I'm a computer science major by the way. Freshman though, so I guess I have some to learn still. ;)
But wouldn't the Java JVM have to run on a JVM? Thus introducing yet another layer of inefficiency?
Wow. Even worse. Apparently there's more than one, because if you notice my previous comment...well, that wasn't the one I found.
http://joeq.sourceforge.net/
My god! I thought you were _kidding_ when you mentioned the Java Virtual Machine written in Java. But the damned thing _exists_! What has this world come to???
No, because the content providers already pay. They already pay quite a bit actually. What the issue is is an attempt to charge them again - many, many times. They pay for their connection already. Why should they now have to pay extra so that they can actually use it? Why should they have to pay every ISP separately to carry their content?
Exactly. Where I live, my choices are Comcast, or satellite. And we all know how bad satellite is. It would probably be cheaper to rent out a tiny house somewhere where I could get un-filtered access, and then buy Comcast and route everything through a VPN to there or something. Seriously. Satellite costs twice as much as Comcast and the service is _horrible_. I actually know people that have switched _back to dial-up_ because satellite was so bad.
Are there any outside-the-Beltway experts who _aren't_ harsh critics of the Bush administration's telecom policies?
I generally get one spam message every 20 minutes on my gmail account, almost exactly, like clockwork (and about one every month is mis-filtered - always a spam getting into my inbox, never a real message getting sent to spam - love gmail), but today they're coming every few hours. I've gotten 6 so far, and it's already noon. That's one every 120 minutes. Hell of a difference.
I've had a lot of trouble with the earlier games in the Command and Conquer series - the original, Red Alert, and I seem to recall even having trouble with Tiberium Sun, though I'm not sure about that one. Other than those though, yea, they're mostly DOS games, which worked fine on every version of Windows until then. You'd think they would have at least included their own DOS emulator when they removed it. I mean, how hard could that be?
Yea, unless you like playing games. There are just as many games that worked on ME that don't work on XP as games that worked on XP and don't on Vista. I _still_ have a PC with 98 installed, and I _still_ have VirtualBox Windows 98 images because that's the only way I can get a lot of the games I like to run. Some of them will run on Wine too, but a lot of them tend to lock up randomly.
I have the most expensive iPod touch (or at least it was...do they have a 32 gig ones yet?) and I can't fit all the music I'd like to on it. Not sure what bitrate my music's encoded at - there's quite a mix. As low as 128, as high as 320. Point is, yea, MP3 players store a lot more than they used to, but they still can't store even a moderately sized collection. When I go somewhere, I don't know what music I'm going to want to listen to - so I want to have all of it with me. Which is why I never used a flash MP3 player before the touch - I used hard drive iPods, and before that CD/MP3 players with several CDs. Anyway, the size of your MP3s may not matter if they're on your computer (although in my case they do - I already have to store mine on a USB drive), but it still does for the player.
When the _cheapest_ iPod hits 16 gigs and the cheapest laptops have 200 gigs, then we won't need to worry about the size of our MP3s. We're not there yet. A couple more years and we'll be good.
experts-exchange (there's a hyphen in that) is actually rather useful. Because they want their solutions to be found by google. So if your referrer says you are coming from a google search page or something, you can view the answers - just scroll down to the bottom of the page. If you find one from their main site you want to view, simply go to google and search for that URL, then scroll down to the answers.
Eh, I'd just rather read a transcript. I can never pay attention to an audio stream for that long. Video is a bit better - I used to like Hak.5 and some others whose names I can't recall, but even those are a bit much. Why watch for an hour when I could read, along with a few pictures, for ten minutes?
Just curious - for what? I've never *needed* to touch the console in Mandriva - at least not for anything a casual user would want. I usually use it instead of the GUI tools, because I find it easier to just open the console and type 'urpmi xxx' than opening mcc and going to the package manager and doing a search for the package I want and hitting the accept button and all that crap. But I can't remember ever *needing* the console.
Let's see:
Ginus playslists? Amarok has had 'smart playlists' for a while now.
Video podcasts? That one I'm not sure about. Personally I hate podcasts of all types.
Seamlessly manage iPod/iPhone? Amarok can.
Music sharing/Streaming? Amarok has been able to do that for a couple years at least.
Integrated with a music store? Amarok has one of those too.
Now to the things iTunes doesn't have:
Extensions? Amarok has it.
Themes? Amarok has it.
Automatically update your library? Amarok does it.
Uh, AT&T doesn't have much 3G coverage either...
Bush wasn't unlucky that 9/11 happened while he was in office. He knew it was coming. Hell, _Clinton_ knew it was coming. And yet, what was one of Bush's first acts when he took office? He drastically reduced our anti-terrorism forces. He didn't just ignore the warnings - he actively worked to ensure it would happen.
Just FYI, there are democrats in the NRA as well. In fact, there are even democrats that believe that the voting machines are rigged in favor of the republicans in the NRA. I would be among them, but I just can't bring myself to donate to the NRA until after the election - can't give any money to someone who might give it to McCain.
So we should ignore everything that we don't think they'll actually have the balls to do? Sorry, but that logic makes no sense to me. The entire reason it won't get done is because people will get so outraged over it. If nobody says anything, they'll figure nobody cares and do it.
Yes, nobody argued when we went to war because Bush _lied to us_. They knew Saddam had nothing to do with it. In fact, if you go back and look at their speeches and documents, they were _extremely_ careful to never specifically say that Saddam was responsible - they just implied it. Something like 80% of the soldiers in Iraq _still_ think they're there because Saddam was behind 9/11.
And speaking of Clinton, Bush knew 9/11 was coming. Clinton's administration warned him and his administration about it. So what was one of the first things he did when he got in office? Severely downsized our counter-terrorism forces. He knew it was coming, and he actively worked to make it easier for them to do it. And then, when it happened, he lied to the American people and to Congress to get them to approve what he wanted. Bush never pushed for diplomacy, Bush used the attacks to get what he wanted - and he still is. He pushed for diplomacy and intel? Really? He booted the UN out! How is that pushing for diplomacy and intel? He did just enough that he could say he tried. He did just enough so that people like you would be able to say he did something.
And yes, Clinton did some bad things too. I'm not a huge fan of him either. But nothing he did even begins to compare to Bush.