Online piracy -- while it is definitely illegal and immoral -- is, as a practical problem, nothing more than (at most) a nuisance.
Losses any author suffers from piracy are almost certainly offset by the additional publicity which, in practice, any kind of free copies of a book usually engender.
Any cure which relies on tighter regulation of the market is far worse than the disease.
And he puts his money where his mouth is. He has 3 complete novels online, along with 15 other authors.
Well, I don't know about you, but I think that the pilots of experimental aircraft would not agree with the "if you don't lose at least one during testing, you aren't pushing hard enough." comment.
I would respectfully disagree. You don't sign-up to be a test pilot for experimental aircraft if you want a safe and secure job. Obviously the designers do everything they can to make it safe, but every test pilot knows their next flight could be their last. Crazy, maybe, but if you want safe, you sign-up as a designer, not the pilot.
I can't imagine this will fly with paid-for ISP's though...imagine the Post Office opening up your snailmail and placing post-it notes on your letter from grandma, or, stamping hotmail-esque ads on the envelope itself. Just not gunna happen (but it does, you can bet there's a huge demand for countermeasures.)
I thought about this analogy, but there is a fundamental difference between email and snailmail. Tampering with snailmail is a federal offense, tampering with email is not.
I do wonder though if ISP's that tamper with email could be sued under an implied warranty of privacy or some such lawyer speak. That is, unless specifically stated in an ISP's TOS, one could argue that tampering with customers email messages violates their privacy, it would be similar to the phone company adding commercials to your telephone calls or voicemail messages.
There was one of the Star Trek books where the command crew/senior officers of the Enterprise were stranded in a shuttle craft waiting to be rescued and each one related their experience with that simulation.
Who cares fact. Scottie was originally in command school, took the Kobiashi Maru test, and came very close to succeeding (in fact, the book doesn't cover exactly how he failed, but he must have). But of course, Scottie is a miracle worker.:-)
IANAL, but I fail to see how Thomson (or anyone else) could have any legal basis for charging royalties for streaming MP3 (or MPEG audio of any form).
#include disclaimer.h// IANAL
I suppose they could have two licenses. One for streaming useage and one for non-streaming useage. The streaming license could be based on a percentage of revenue.
I don't see why they should HAVE to run any ad if they don't want to.
I think it's a matter of degree. In a competitive environment with several roughly equal competitors, yeah, you're right, everything else being equal, they shouldn't have to.
I think the problem is that AOL/Time-Warner is getting so big that if AOL/Time-Warner refuses to run their competitors ads, their competitors are out of business.
In theory, IMO, IANAL, this is where anti-trust laws start to kick in.
Why I've never been a huge fan of DEATH OF MICE ..
on
Thief of Time
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· Score: 1
Personally, I've never been a huge fan of DEATH OF MICE,...
because DEATH of RATS never gets the good squeeking parts. *ahem*
As others have pointed out, LN2 (liquid nitrogen) is very cheap, but that's not the issue. It merely has to be cheaper than doing it the conventional way.
Actually, the reason that the hack worked was because all (or at least the vast majority) of manufactured 5 1/4" were actually double-sided.
Well, *cough*, initially 5-1/4" disks and drives were only single-sided. It was only after a year or so that double-sided drives started appearing (for more money of course), and then it took a while for the manufactuers to replace all their single-sided diskette production lines with double-sided equipment and for the quality to reach a point where you could reasonably expect that trick to work. But yeah, it was cool.
I think the trick is going to be how Nokia markets the unit. The Slashdot article implies it's a game system that, by the way, is also a digital set-top box. In that case, the spec's are very middle of the road and Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are going to kill them in the market.
On the other hand, my impression from the F-T article is that Nokia is going to market it as a digital set-top box that, by the way, also plays video games. In that case, video gaming is merely an extra and the spec's are more than adequate. Just don't expect a PS2 or Xbox killer system.
I am at least partially wrong. In addition to being a video game system, it's also a "MP3 digital music player, internet web browser, digital TV recorder and digital TV set-top box."
If anyone is able to make money mass-producing a piece of consumer electronics targetted at the mass market, Nokia would be it:)
I have no doubt about Nokia's technical competence, but I still think if they go head-to-head with Sony and Microsoft, they're going to get their head handed to them on a platter, because traditionally game systems have sold at a loss. On the other hand, if they market it as a "MP3 digital music player, internet web browser, digital TV recorder and digital TV set-top box," that also plays video games, they just might be able to sell it at a profit and carve-out a niche market. Tricky though.
First, nobody makes money selling systems. Sony, Sega, etc. lose money every time they sell a system. Of course they more than make up for it by licensing/selling games, which is the only reason anybody makes console systems. So who in their right mind is going to sell a system at a loss if they can't recoup their losses from licensing/selling games?
Second, this year is a very bad year for releasing a console system from a company new to the console market. Sony Playstation 2 is huge, Microsoft Xbox looks very strong, even Nintendo has a strong following (though Gamecube looks rather weak). And Nokia plans to release a game system this year against that competition? Good luck.
I've noticed that usually when I can't sleep, it's because I'm thinking about what happened today or what I have to do tomorrow. This usually causes my muscles to tense-up also. I've found 10 to 20 minutes of meditation to quiet my mind and relax my muscles usually lets me go to sleep fairly quickly.
Not if challenging the patent is more expensive than licensing it.
I don't consider a IP holding company (i.e.; companies whose primary existence is to license patented technology like TechSearch, Rambus, etc.) to be very intelligent (money-hungry scum-suckers is more like it), but that's just my opinion.
Except this seems to be a link to something called an "Ultimate TV", not WebTV (which is what I was talking about). But I'm impressed they've sold a million units already.
But if you are awarded a patent on something that has prior art (or known use in the industry) don't companies usually NOT say that there may be prior art?
One would think an intelligent company would avoid trying to patent something with obvious prior-art, simply because it could be challenged and overturned fairly easily (conspiracy theorists aside). It would be a waste of valuable time and money.
One would think a competent patent attorney would at least caution their client in a situation like this.
Wrong. Microsoft and others (AOL) are already well on their way to putting together this device minus DVD ripping (cough. MPAA. cough.).
Ummm, wrong? Shrug, they can "talk" about putting something like this together all they want, but the WebTVs I've seen for sale are just for web surfing.
WebTV never "had" anything, since it's still in more than a million households, and is the most successful "convergence" platform ever.
Ummm, so what? It still can't do anything mentioned in CmdrTaco's fantasy.
Aside from some links to some cool technology that will never see the light of day (sorry, that's just my opinion), I'm not sure what your point is.
I would also think it best to wait till we have non-volatile no-moving parts storage. The current harddisk is really only safe for transient data.
The only problem is that every time SSD (solid state disk) technology gets within spitting distance of hard-drive technology, the hard-drive double or triple their capacity and keep ahead.
I would not want to have to reload all the stuff I load into this because some brat knocked it over and crashed the heads on the drive.
It's quite simple really. Open source emulators for NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, Playstation, Dreamcast, Playstation 2, and XBox.;-)
Oh sure, they'd have an army of lawyers banging on their doors the day after they shipped their first units, but seriously, wouldn't you pay $300 or more for a console that emulate all those systems? Out of the box?
At the cost of increasing your required fuel mass by a factor of about four.
Why? Your ship's almost empty when you're landing (most of your ship's mass is fuel, and you burn almost all of that up during launch), and you really only need to bring the engines up to anywhere near full power in the last few seconds before landing.
The DC-X was designed to test concepts for a reuseable SSTO vehicle. Considering the impact velocity of a parachute landing, I doubt anything left would be reuseable.
If a rocket powered landing bothers you, how do you feel about the ill-fated Rotory Rocket's idea of using helicopter blades to slow down for landing? It looks odd, but the blades act sort of like a parachute, and it potentially gives you much more control and a much softer landing.
Slashdot Mirror
- Online piracy -- while it is definitely illegal and immoral -- is, as a practical problem, nothing more than (at most) a nuisance.
- Losses any author suffers from piracy are almost certainly offset by the additional publicity which, in practice, any kind of free copies of a book usually engender.
- Any cure which relies on tighter regulation of the market is far worse than the disease.
And he puts his money where his mouth is. He has 3 complete novels online, along with 15 other authors.I would respectfully disagree. You don't sign-up to be a test pilot for experimental aircraft if you want a safe and secure job. Obviously the designers do everything they can to make it safe, but every test pilot knows their next flight could be their last. Crazy, maybe, but if you want safe, you sign-up as a designer, not the pilot.
I thought about this analogy, but there is a fundamental difference between email and snailmail. Tampering with snailmail is a federal offense, tampering with email is not.
I do wonder though if ISP's that tamper with email could be sued under an implied warranty of privacy or some such lawyer speak. That is, unless specifically stated in an ISP's TOS, one could argue that tampering with customers email messages violates their privacy, it would be similar to the phone company adding commercials to your telephone calls or voicemail messages.
Who cares fact. Scottie was originally in command school, took the Kobiashi Maru test, and came very close to succeeding (in fact, the book doesn't cover exactly how he failed, but he must have). But of course, Scottie is a miracle worker. :-)
A USB adapter might be more useful, though not as fast.
#include disclaimer.h // IANAL
I suppose they could have two licenses. One for streaming useage and one for non-streaming useage. The streaming license could be based on a percentage of revenue.
I think it's a matter of degree. In a competitive environment with several roughly equal competitors, yeah, you're right, everything else being equal, they shouldn't have to.
I think the problem is that AOL/Time-Warner is getting so big that if AOL/Time-Warner refuses to run their competitors ads, their competitors are out of business.
In theory, IMO, IANAL, this is where anti-trust laws start to kick in.
because DEATH of RATS never gets the good squeeking parts. *ahem*
As others have pointed out, LN2 (liquid nitrogen) is very cheap, but that's not the issue. It merely has to be cheaper than doing it the conventional way.
Well, *cough*, initially 5-1/4" disks and drives were only single-sided. It was only after a year or so that double-sided drives started appearing (for more money of course), and then it took a while for the manufactuers to replace all their single-sided diskette production lines with double-sided equipment and for the quality to reach a point where you could reasonably expect that trick to work. But yeah, it was cool.
On the other hand, my impression from the F-T article is that Nokia is going to market it as a digital set-top box that, by the way, also plays video games. In that case, video gaming is merely an extra and the spec's are more than adequate. Just don't expect a PS2 or Xbox killer system.
If anyone is able to make money mass-producing a piece of consumer electronics targetted at the mass market, Nokia would be it :)
I have no doubt about Nokia's technical competence, but I still think if they go head-to-head with Sony and Microsoft, they're going to get their head handed to them on a platter, because traditionally game systems have sold at a loss. On the other hand, if they market it as a "MP3 digital music player, internet web browser, digital TV recorder and digital TV set-top box," that also plays video games, they just might be able to sell it at a profit and carve-out a niche market. Tricky though.
Second, this year is a very bad year for releasing a console system from a company new to the console market. Sony Playstation 2 is huge, Microsoft Xbox looks very strong, even Nintendo has a strong following (though Gamecube looks rather weak). And Nokia plans to release a game system this year against that competition? Good luck.
I've noticed that usually when I can't sleep, it's because I'm thinking about what happened today or what I have to do tomorrow. This usually causes my muscles to tense-up also. I've found 10 to 20 minutes of meditation to quiet my mind and relax my muscles usually lets me go to sleep fairly quickly.
I'll settle for an unmanned lawn mower.
I don't consider a IP holding company (i.e.; companies whose primary existence is to license patented technology like TechSearch, Rambus, etc.) to be very intelligent (money-hungry scum-suckers is more like it), but that's just my opinion.
Ok, ok, calm down, you're right, I'm wrong.
Except this seems to be a link to something called an "Ultimate TV", not WebTV (which is what I was talking about). But I'm impressed they've sold a million units already.
Like this (admittedly in development)?
One would think an intelligent company would avoid trying to patent something with obvious prior-art, simply because it could be challenged and overturned fairly easily (conspiracy theorists aside). It would be a waste of valuable time and money.
One would think a competent patent attorney would at least caution their client in a situation like this.
Ummm, wrong? Shrug, they can "talk" about putting something like this together all they want, but the WebTVs I've seen for sale are just for web surfing.
WebTV never "had" anything, since it's still in more than a million households, and is the most successful "convergence" platform ever.
Ummm, so what? It still can't do anything mentioned in CmdrTaco's fantasy.
Aside from some links to some cool technology that will never see the light of day (sorry, that's just my opinion), I'm not sure what your point is.
It's not duron but... like this?
ATI TV-Wonder PCI Tuner
and this?
Think lusty thoughts about a wireless USB hub
and this and this?
Like xtal suggested. Time-shift DVD rentals, rent a DVD movie during the week, rip it to disk, and watch it on the weekend. :-)
The device is way overfeatured for its job. We've seen this sort of thing before, it was called WebTV.
Ummm, WebTV had about 1/100 of these features. And the principle feature of WebTV (surfing the web), isn't even mentioned in CmdrTaco's fantasy.
The only problem is that every time SSD (solid state disk) technology gets within spitting distance of hard-drive technology, the hard-drive double or triple their capacity and keep ahead.
I would not want to have to reload all the stuff I load into this because some brat knocked it over and crashed the heads on the drive.
That's why they make RAID controllers. :-)
Oh sure, they'd have an army of lawyers banging on their doors the day after they shipped their first units, but seriously, wouldn't you pay $300 or more for a console that emulate all those systems? Out of the box?
Why? Your ship's almost empty when you're landing (most of your ship's mass is fuel, and you burn almost all of that up during launch), and you really only need to bring the engines up to anywhere near full power in the last few seconds before landing.
The DC-X was designed to test concepts for a reuseable SSTO vehicle. Considering the impact velocity of a parachute landing, I doubt anything left would be reuseable.
If a rocket powered landing bothers you, how do you feel about the ill-fated Rotory Rocket's idea of using helicopter blades to slow down for landing? It looks odd, but the blades act sort of like a parachute, and it potentially gives you much more control and a much softer landing.