Re:The advertisers are the thieves
on
Calling Out TiVo
·
· Score: 2
They pay for something that is necessary because of competition (the competitor advertises too, creating an advertising "arms race") but that essentially is a waste of time and money; advertisement doesn't produce anything useful, it doesn't add value or information (at least by far not as much as an objective product review).
Well, you're half right here. Advertising certainly is pure waste. It seldom conveys useful information to consumers and could be replaced with something cheaper (like some sort of universal pricewatch.com). But advertising isn't a sign of competitiveness. In fact, most advertising is designed to reduce competition by (a) creating a barrier to entry and (b) creating some spurrious sense of "brand loyalty" among consumers. If advertisers' markets were truly competitive, they wouldn't be able to pay for advertising.
In a way, having a TiVo or other recording device indicates your preferences to advertisers. If large numbers of people start buying these, it will finally prove to them that we hate the 5 minutes of ads we see. Then they'll probably start buying more product placements in shows and movies (like the prominently featured Nokia phones in the Matrix or that horrible McDonalds shower in Josie & the Pussycats...Ugh!) I'd like to see a set-top box that filters out all corporate logos and product placements...not that would be useful!
Actually, I believe (and please correct me if I'm wrong) writing your own software would be OK under US patent law, provided you don't sell it. But then, doing so might be more expensive than paying the crappy subscription fee.
Of course, the only ones who won't be affected by a move to subscription models are the big customers who get special deals (i.e. non-rented copies)...
I guess that's what America gets for entrusting its prosperity to corporations...
I'm a (now former) Northpoint customer....up until two weeks ago I had heard nothing about my ISP switching all their accounts to Telocity. All of a sudden I get an email that says "...we have written you several times regarding the termination of your DSL service..." Do I called Telocity to migrate my service, and they can't find my data. The migration rep then pushed me over to new orders, and they couldn't find my information. After 6 phone calls (each about an hour long), I still don't have my gateway, and as far as I can tell I'll be without DSL for several weeks...UGH! I think I'll just stop paying!
Government imposes mandatory rating system. All video games must have a Tipper sticker with one of a number of labels like "O" for occult, "S" for sex, and "V" for violence.
A viscious right wing faction gets "elected" and appoints rabid conservative Cristians to the censorship board that decides which games get which labels. Now any video game that goes contrary to the beliefs of the bigoted Christians gets the scarlet letter.
The government pressures retailers into not carrying any video games with the scarlet letter. Note that this wouldn't take legislation, just the threat of legislation.
All of a sudden, we have censorship! You can no longer buy controversial or non-Christian video games!
Now, I know this may sound far-fetched to some, but guess what; it's already happened! That's right, the US has a scarlet letter system for records, although it's not mandated by law. But it still has a chilling effect on record production. The two largest music retailers here (K-Mart and Wal-Mart) refuse to carry any album with a Tipper sticker, so kids in places where those two retailers are the only places to buy music are only exposed to drivel like N'Sync and the Backstreet Boys.
Then there's the unofficial censorship that goes on behind the scenes. Many bands are forced by their label to change or eliminate songs to avoid getting a Tipper sticker. This distorts the message of controversial bands, and will do the same for video games.
Don't let the PMRC-types ruin the creativity of the video game industry. Parents need to take more responsibility for their children instead of abdicating said responsibility in favor of limits on freedom.
IANAL, but I know that in California any invention you produce on your own time without using your employer's facilities is yours. Unfortunately, not all states are uniform. My guess is that Texas probably lets employers claim your first born if it makes them money, while northern and western states are more restrictive on Nazi IP agreements.
Call it a win for big corporate media, I guess. Notice that the court said that the Metallica-style censoring of files is perfectly legit, and that Napster can be held liable if they don't act upon such requests. This is extremely bad, because it gives the RIAA a way to deplete Napster's funds.
Just imagine: the record companies can afford to hire an army of trained monkeys to scour Napster looking for their copyrighted songs. They can then flood Napster with requests to block those particular users/files. Napster will have to spend obscene amounts of money doing this, and documenting their actions to defend themselves in the inevitable court cases that arise from such "infringements". This will deplete their funds rather quickly, and we can say goodbye to music swapping in any centralized format.
Napster's only recourse is to continue fighting this. We can only hope that they get more reasonable justices as they go up the appeals ladder, instead of the corporatists that sit on the 9th circuit.
I don't know if they can reasonably apply this decision to Gnutella...I sure hope not.
How many of you seriously think the Micro$oft suit will continue past Shrub's inauguration? The Justice Department, under the corporatist John Ashcroft's direction, will most likely quietly drop the case. Some states may choose to continue their cases, but any breakup remedy will be dead in the water.
If ever there were a case for a corporate death penalty, this is it. We all know they've murdered enough innocent technologies and companies...
I know this is probably troll bait, but the US was never really the best place to go if you wanted to be free. We pay a lot of lip service to personal freedoms, but have never really practiced what we preach. We held on to slavery long after most countries had abolished it. We had Jim Crow (and still do, in practice) until the 1960s. We still have a small propertied class that controls more than 90% of the wealth in the country. Yet Americans refuse to think in terms of class distinctions. We've been fed that bulls&*t line about America being a classless society for so long that we believe it.
Maybe I'm just bitter, but when the Supreme Court gets to select a president, it does a lot to disenchant you. Hell, if we really believed in freedom and democracy, we would have direct election of our presidents, and probably wouldn't have a drug war...
Now that Dubya won, er stole the election, the federal portion of the M$ case is a good as dead. They will quietly drop their appeal, and it will be up to the states to pursue it. In the meantime, many so-called experts (read: the punditocracy) are saying that the market has magically become more competitive, and a remedy of divestiture is not needed. It's total BS, as any economist worth his salt will tell you, but the public believes USA Today over economists any day...
I wouldn't be surprised if the case just goes away. If, by some divine act, it eventually ends up before the Supreme Kangaroo Court, I can just imagine what the current corporatist justices would do to it...especially if Shrub gets to appoint a few more Clarence Thomas or Scalia types...
Have you been reading the news? We keep having power shortages here in CA, largely due to deregulation. It's a bit funny that deregulation was supposed to increase the supply of available power, thereby reducing prices. Since no new plants have been build in CA is like 15 years, we keep having to buy power from expensive out of state companies...
This is America! You aren't going to be persecuted for harboring seditious ideas.
Lazarus, you obviously haven't heard of a little FBI program in the late '60s and early '70s by the name of COINTELPRO. J. Edgar Hoover authorized the program for the purposes of spying on, infiltrating, and disrupting groups associated with the New Left like SDS, SCLC, SNCC, FOI, AIM, and the Black Panthers among others. FBI agents routinely attempted to cause infighting among these groups by several underhanded means (like snitch jackets), prompted several murders, and collaborated with local police to frame suspected leaders of these groups.
I guess some people still believe what their school textbooks tell them about living in the land of the free. The truth is, people are persecuted for their political beliefs in the US. Our friendly government just finds more innovative ways of doing it.
I don't think this fight is about royalties. Sure, it's incredibly corrupt and wrong for RIAA to collect 50% of all royalties. Sure I think it's evil and wrong to infringe on what amounts to fair use (personal copying of works and re-distributing them freely to friends). But then, there's a larger issue here: the RIAA's maniacal control over the "talent" pipeline.
Think about it: who controls which artists are available for purchase, which artists show up on the radio and MTV? RIAA does. They have the power to dictate tastes and preferences to a very large sector of music consumers. Under non-digital distribution channels, it takes a huge amount of money (for lawyers, packaging, marketing, pay-ola, etc) to promote and distribute a work of art. Digital music distribution, especially Napster, threatens that control because artists now have affordable self-promotion tools at their disposal. That is the reason RIAA wants to either destroy or control Napster, mp3.com, and any other digital music distribution channel.
Ask yourself: if you were an artist, would you trust the organization that so readily caved in to the Tipper Gore/PMRC censorship demands (see the Frank Zappa PMRC Hearing testimony for an interesting take on this) to represent your interests?
I suspect these politically-powerful forces you speak of want to move to Outlook because it offers groupware (calendar, todo lists, discussion groups) as well as messaging. That's really the only legitimate reason they might have to want to standardize on Exchange. Otherwise, Sendmail is a better (and less costly) option.
You might take the "UNIX has better uptime" approach. The thought of having to pay you to come in and reboot an NT server every x days or so might cause them to think twice. You might also try the "sendmail is a proven standard" approach: why replace a reliable, fast, secure, *free* mail server with an unreliable, slow, and *costly* one?
If it comes down to the wire, tell them you'll quit if they force you to support Exchange...
This whole situation stinks of the PMRC witch hunt of the 1980s. The sad part is that *most* domain resellers will eventually be pressured into censoring domain names. And there's nothing we as citizens can do about it, short of changing the law.
As it turns out, register.com censors domain names too. But they won't even tell you you're being censored; they just give you the standard "this domain is not available" message...it took me 5 phone calls to get them to admit that they censor domain names.
Just like those damn underpants gnomes.....that was way funny! A classic! Now I've got that song stuck in my head.
OK, now a serious comment. I don't know if Napster even has a business model. I think Sean just wrote a killer app (possibly the killer app), then decided or was convinced to form a company, business model be damned. Then, after they started getting sued, the CEO kind of formed a business model out of the circumstances.
I believe the quote you're looking for can be found in Frank's testimony to congress during the PMRC music hearings in 1986. Read it here. It's really funny stuff. The reference to having his children exposed to all types of experiences is later in the testimony.
The censorware companies simply block all pages that come from free sites. It's just a lot easier to block all content from a site than it is to weed out the pr0n and sadism. Most of these candidates host their sites on these free services, so they are blocked. It really has nothing to do with their views (well, maybe it does: they can't or won't spend exorbitant amounts of money on a pay site, so Mattel deems them unworthy of being viewed...).
That's what you get for trusting the Tipper Gores of the world...serves them right!
It's the quintissential dilemma of the election: vote strategically or vote your conscience? I say vote your conscience because if you don't, you're validating the current duopoly system. By throwing your support behind Gore because you're afraid of splitting the party, you're saying that it's OK for democrats to abandon the progressive wing of their constituency in favor of corporations and the middle class. Think about it: you don't want to split up the "left", but that's what the Democrats have already done! If you go and vote for them now, you're simply endorsing that.
Also, as much as I hate to get into this fray, what if the Republicans did eventually get a real whacko elected (say, B-1 Bob Dornan or Dacid Duke). How long do you think that would last? Dubya is already pushing the margins of acceptability for the Republicans. If they make the mistake of pushing a demagogue on the American People, they will lose big time. I can't think of anything better to unite the left wing with the progressive forces of this country...
Funny you should say that. As I rode my bicycle to work this morning (I voted absentee), I saw that the local polling place was in a union hall...talk about playing into the Republicans' hands...
But seriously; I live in a union town (San Francisco) and it won't be noticed here.
Good to see the man back in action. Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables changed my life in the '80s. I've been emailing Jello for a couple of years, telling him to get into the open source/mp3/technology fray. Glad to see others have been doing the same.
One point; the Declaration of Independence is *not* law. I respect your opinion on abortion, but please keep in mind that the Declaration is orthogonal to this debate. Sure, you may take its words as gospel, but Supreme Court justices do not.
Actually, Roe v. Wade declared that all state laws banning abortion were unconstitutional, since they violated a woman's right to an abortion. Legalizing abortions doesn't take a congressional act. Making them illegal would require
A reversal of Roe v. Wade and
An act of state legislatures in each state (unless, of course, the Feds could somehow prove that abortion falls under their constitutional powers, interstate commerce etc).
In general, something isn't illegal unless a statute or regulation says it's illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
They pay for something that is necessary because of competition (the competitor advertises too, creating an advertising "arms race") but that essentially is a waste of time and money; advertisement doesn't produce anything useful, it doesn't add value or information (at least by far not as much as an objective product review).
Well, you're half right here. Advertising certainly is pure waste. It seldom conveys useful information to consumers and could be replaced with something cheaper (like some sort of universal pricewatch.com). But advertising isn't a sign of competitiveness. In fact, most advertising is designed to reduce competition by (a) creating a barrier to entry and (b) creating some spurrious sense of "brand loyalty" among consumers. If advertisers' markets were truly competitive, they wouldn't be able to pay for advertising.
In a way, having a TiVo or other recording device indicates your preferences to advertisers. If large numbers of people start buying these, it will finally prove to them that we hate the 5 minutes of ads we see. Then they'll probably start buying more product placements in shows and movies (like the prominently featured Nokia phones in the Matrix or that horrible McDonalds shower in Josie & the Pussycats...Ugh!) I'd like to see a set-top box that filters out all corporate logos and product placements...not that would be useful!
Actually, I believe (and please correct me if I'm wrong) writing your own software would be OK under US patent law, provided you don't sell it. But then, doing so might be more expensive than paying the crappy subscription fee.
Of course, the only ones who won't be affected by a move to subscription models are the big customers who get special deals (i.e. non-rented copies)...
I guess that's what America gets for entrusting its prosperity to corporations...
I'm a (now former) Northpoint customer....up until two weeks ago I had heard nothing about my ISP switching all their accounts to Telocity. All of a sudden I get an email that says "...we have written you several times regarding the termination of your DSL service..." Do I called Telocity to migrate my service, and they can't find my data. The migration rep then pushed me over to new orders, and they couldn't find my information. After 6 phone calls (each about an hour long), I still don't have my gateway, and as far as I can tell I'll be without DSL for several weeks...UGH! I think I'll just stop paying!
Major League Baseball was granted an exemption from antitrust laws by congress.
Imagine this scenario:
- Government imposes mandatory rating system. All video games must have a Tipper sticker with one of a number of labels like "O" for occult, "S" for sex, and "V" for violence.
- A viscious right wing faction gets "elected" and appoints rabid conservative Cristians to the censorship board that decides which games get which labels. Now any video game that goes contrary to the beliefs of the bigoted Christians gets the scarlet letter.
- The government pressures retailers into not carrying any video games with the scarlet letter. Note that this wouldn't take legislation, just the threat of legislation.
- All of a sudden, we have censorship! You can no longer buy controversial or non-Christian video games!
Now, I know this may sound far-fetched to some, but guess what; it's already happened! That's right, the US has a scarlet letter system for records, although it's not mandated by law. But it still has a chilling effect on record production. The two largest music retailers here (K-Mart and Wal-Mart) refuse to carry any album with a Tipper sticker, so kids in places where those two retailers are the only places to buy music are only exposed to drivel like N'Sync and the Backstreet Boys.Then there's the unofficial censorship that goes on behind the scenes. Many bands are forced by their label to change or eliminate songs to avoid getting a Tipper sticker. This distorts the message of controversial bands, and will do the same for video games.
Don't let the PMRC-types ruin the creativity of the video game industry. Parents need to take more responsibility for their children instead of abdicating said responsibility in favor of limits on freedom.
IANAL, but I know that in California any invention you produce on your own time without using your employer's facilities is yours. Unfortunately, not all states are uniform. My guess is that Texas probably lets employers claim your first born if it makes them money, while northern and western states are more restrictive on Nazi IP agreements.
Call it a win for big corporate media, I guess. Notice that the court said that the Metallica-style censoring of files is perfectly legit, and that Napster can be held liable if they don't act upon such requests. This is extremely bad, because it gives the RIAA a way to deplete Napster's funds.
Just imagine: the record companies can afford to hire an army of trained monkeys to scour Napster looking for their copyrighted songs. They can then flood Napster with requests to block those particular users/files. Napster will have to spend obscene amounts of money doing this, and documenting their actions to defend themselves in the inevitable court cases that arise from such "infringements". This will deplete their funds rather quickly, and we can say goodbye to music swapping in any centralized format.
Napster's only recourse is to continue fighting this. We can only hope that they get more reasonable justices as they go up the appeals ladder, instead of the corporatists that sit on the 9th circuit.
I don't know if they can reasonably apply this decision to Gnutella...I sure hope not.
How many of you seriously think the Micro$oft suit will continue past Shrub's inauguration? The Justice Department, under the corporatist John Ashcroft's direction, will most likely quietly drop the case. Some states may choose to continue their cases, but any breakup remedy will be dead in the water.
If ever there were a case for a corporate death penalty, this is it. We all know they've murdered enough innocent technologies and companies...
I know this is probably troll bait, but the US was never really the best place to go if you wanted to be free. We pay a lot of lip service to personal freedoms, but have never really practiced what we preach. We held on to slavery long after most countries had abolished it. We had Jim Crow (and still do, in practice) until the 1960s. We still have a small propertied class that controls more than 90% of the wealth in the country. Yet Americans refuse to think in terms of class distinctions. We've been fed that bulls&*t line about America being a classless society for so long that we believe it.
Maybe I'm just bitter, but when the Supreme Court gets to select a president, it does a lot to disenchant you. Hell, if we really believed in freedom and democracy, we would have direct election of our presidents, and probably wouldn't have a drug war...
Now that Dubya won, er stole the election, the federal portion of the M$ case is a good as dead. They will quietly drop their appeal, and it will be up to the states to pursue it. In the meantime, many so-called experts (read: the punditocracy) are saying that the market has magically become more competitive, and a remedy of divestiture is not needed. It's total BS, as any economist worth his salt will tell you, but the public believes USA Today over economists any day...
I wouldn't be surprised if the case just goes away. If, by some divine act, it eventually ends up before the Supreme Kangaroo Court, I can just imagine what the current corporatist justices would do to it...especially if Shrub gets to appoint a few more Clarence Thomas or Scalia types...
Have you been reading the news? We keep having power shortages here in CA, largely due to deregulation. It's a bit funny that deregulation was supposed to increase the supply of available power, thereby reducing prices. Since no new plants have been build in CA is like 15 years, we keep having to buy power from expensive out of state companies...
noahbagels? I once worked at a noah's bagels...for 3 long years!
Joe
This is America! You aren't going to be persecuted for harboring seditious ideas.
Lazarus, you obviously haven't heard of a little FBI program in the late '60s and early '70s by the name of COINTELPRO. J. Edgar Hoover authorized the program for the purposes of spying on, infiltrating, and disrupting groups associated with the New Left like SDS, SCLC, SNCC, FOI, AIM, and the Black Panthers among others. FBI agents routinely attempted to cause infighting among these groups by several underhanded means (like snitch jackets), prompted several murders, and collaborated with local police to frame suspected leaders of these groups.
I guess some people still believe what their school textbooks tell them about living in the land of the free. The truth is, people are persecuted for their political beliefs in the US. Our friendly government just finds more innovative ways of doing it.
I don't think this fight is about royalties. Sure, it's incredibly corrupt and wrong for RIAA to collect 50% of all royalties. Sure I think it's evil and wrong to infringe on what amounts to fair use (personal copying of works and re-distributing them freely to friends). But then, there's a larger issue here: the RIAA's maniacal control over the "talent" pipeline.
Think about it: who controls which artists are available for purchase, which artists show up on the radio and MTV? RIAA does. They have the power to dictate tastes and preferences to a very large sector of music consumers. Under non-digital distribution channels, it takes a huge amount of money (for lawyers, packaging, marketing, pay-ola, etc) to promote and distribute a work of art. Digital music distribution, especially Napster, threatens that control because artists now have affordable self-promotion tools at their disposal. That is the reason RIAA wants to either destroy or control Napster, mp3.com, and any other digital music distribution channel.
Ask yourself: if you were an artist, would you trust the organization that so readily caved in to the Tipper Gore/PMRC censorship demands (see the Frank Zappa PMRC Hearing testimony for an interesting take on this) to represent your interests?
I suspect these politically-powerful forces you speak of want to move to Outlook because it offers groupware (calendar, todo lists, discussion groups) as well as messaging. That's really the only legitimate reason they might have to want to standardize on Exchange. Otherwise, Sendmail is a better (and less costly) option.
You might take the "UNIX has better uptime" approach. The thought of having to pay you to come in and reboot an NT server every x days or so might cause them to think twice. You might also try the "sendmail is a proven standard" approach: why replace a reliable, fast, secure, *free* mail server with an unreliable, slow, and *costly* one?
If it comes down to the wire, tell them you'll quit if they force you to support Exchange...
However, Judge Lydia Kirkland found McGuckin guilty of disorderly conduct and obstructing a highway.
I was under the impression that we have jury trials, even for misdemeanor cases? At least we do in California. What gives in PA?
This whole situation stinks of the PMRC witch hunt of the 1980s. The sad part is that *most* domain resellers will eventually be pressured into censoring domain names. And there's nothing we as citizens can do about it, short of changing the law.
As it turns out, register.com censors domain names too. But they won't even tell you you're being censored; they just give you the standard "this domain is not available" message...it took me 5 phone calls to get them to admit that they censor domain names.
Just like those damn underpants gnomes.....that was way funny! A classic! Now I've got that song stuck in my head.
OK, now a serious comment. I don't know if Napster even has a business model. I think Sean just wrote a killer app (possibly the killer app), then decided or was convinced to form a company, business model be damned. Then, after they started getting sued, the CEO kind of formed a business model out of the circumstances.
I believe the quote you're looking for can be found in Frank's testimony to congress during the PMRC music hearings in 1986. Read it here. It's really funny stuff. The reference to having his children exposed to all types of experiences is later in the testimony.
The censorware companies simply block all pages that come from free sites. It's just a lot easier to block all content from a site than it is to weed out the pr0n and sadism. Most of these candidates host their sites on these free services, so they are blocked. It really has nothing to do with their views (well, maybe it does: they can't or won't spend exorbitant amounts of money on a pay site, so Mattel deems them unworthy of being viewed...).
That's what you get for trusting the Tipper Gores of the world...serves them right!
It's the quintissential dilemma of the election: vote strategically or vote your conscience? I say vote your conscience because if you don't, you're validating the current duopoly system. By throwing your support behind Gore because you're afraid of splitting the party, you're saying that it's OK for democrats to abandon the progressive wing of their constituency in favor of corporations and the middle class. Think about it: you don't want to split up the "left", but that's what the Democrats have already done! If you go and vote for them now, you're simply endorsing that.
Also, as much as I hate to get into this fray, what if the Republicans did eventually get a real whacko elected (say, B-1 Bob Dornan or Dacid Duke). How long do you think that would last? Dubya is already pushing the margins of acceptability for the Republicans. If they make the mistake of pushing a demagogue on the American People, they will lose big time. I can't think of anything better to unite the left wing with the progressive forces of this country...
Funny you should say that. As I rode my bicycle to work this morning (I voted absentee), I saw that the local polling place was in a union hall...talk about playing into the Republicans' hands...
But seriously; I live in a union town (San Francisco) and it won't be noticed here.
Good to see the man back in action. Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables changed my life in the '80s. I've been emailing Jello for a couple of years, telling him to get into the open source/mp3/technology fray. Glad to see others have been doing the same.
One point; the Declaration of Independence is *not* law. I respect your opinion on abortion, but please keep in mind that the Declaration is orthogonal to this debate. Sure, you may take its words as gospel, but Supreme Court justices do not.
Actually, Roe v. Wade declared that all state laws banning abortion were unconstitutional, since they violated a woman's right to an abortion. Legalizing abortions doesn't take a congressional act. Making them illegal would require
In general, something isn't illegal unless a statute or regulation says it's illegal.