So the plan is, you pay NBC for the download, still have to watch the commercials, presumably can't burn a DVD so you don't have to sit at your computer, are still paying the cable bill to get NBC in the first place, and are paying the internet bill to get the download. Plus you can only avail yourself of this high privilege if you use windows. Do I look like the tooth fairy, NBC?
Thank gods for VCRs.
What a load. How did somebody else trying to resell the info harm Zaptoit? Why would that motivate them to stop the service? Why didn't they protect their "property" by going to court instead of throwing it away? This is a pathetic excuse for the hapless Tribune Co. to jettison luxuries it can no longer afford and try to win some whining points.
I can only assume you're one of those people who sincerely believed that McDonald's did it all for you.
Who'da thought? These are people whose purpose is to corral taxpayer-funded projects and hold them in order to extort money from the public that paid for them in the first place. These are the same people who send mercenaries into other people's homes to seize their property based on "laws" obtained through bribery, and then harass and intimidate them with their lawyer-mercenaries. Oh, and then they manage to popularize the meme that their victims are the "pirates". So this story is basically like reporting that a squirrel ate a walnut.
I was wondering about the Ami connection. Of course in a civilized country any outfit that fucked up its Amiga holdings as grotesquely as Gateway should not be allowed to keep them. Patents are supposed to be for innovation, not destruction.
Anyway, somehow it's hard to imagine that Acer will have any interest in the Amiga stuff, and there's not much visible commercial value to the patents. Maybe Ami will get open-sourced at last, only a few decades too late.
PS -- how does the parent deserve a troll rating? Dump this mod.
This has to be a Microsoft ploy. It makes absolutely no sense that a business too dumb to figure out what apps are on its machines will be able to use yet another app to figure it out for them. The only possible use for this "technology" is to propagandize that open-source = virus. Time to scan this company's account books for a check from Redmond.
A "tax" of this kind could be a way around spam, but the Hotmail/Goodmail way has one fatal flaw: it's used as a profit center for the mail carrier. If the tax went to recipients of the spam, who are after all the real victims here, there could be an argument for initiating it.
As it stands though, this is just another service-provider scam, a kind of subset of the hierarchical Internet.
"the agreement equipment vendors must abide by"? Why "must" they? Why don't they just tell the content peddlers to shove it? When did private monopolies get police powers?
If they want people to watch their shows they have to let people know what's on. Simple as that. If They think anybody's going to go to scifi.com and then nbc.com through all 99 or 155 channels, they're nuts. Pretty much every program guide in print, on tv, or on the Net seems to depend on Zap2It except maybe Yahoo. The cable companies are going to have a hell of a time selling their DVRs and digital packages if there's no way to know what's on.
But the "entertainment" industry is run by folks who run about as dumb as it gets, so maybe they will destroy the TV business as we know it. Not such a bad idea.
Around here, AT&T and Comcast, among others, have been pushing cheap "broadband" that turns out to be in the 600kbps range. If the hapless FCC is forced to adopt realistic definitions, so much the better for consumers and for the communications industry in the long run. I have yet to find a downside explained in all the lazy cynical-posing comments.
They don't say how much these roving idiots are costing US taxpayers, or what in hell their severe intelligence disorders are supposed to be good for. I guess we should just be glad Bush didn't decide to do a shock and awe on Toronto.
We keep hearing about "emboldening the terrorists". My guess is that the terrorists got a whole lot bolder when they heard about this latest embarrassment to the US. "I mean, they thought the Canadians were making spy coins that they marked with big red flowers in the middle! We can get abway with just about anything!"
It's a never-ending source of wonder and despair to watch as pols and other ruling-classers struggle to adjust to 21st Century basic reality. The Tokyo government's stand is like saying no political speeches should be printed because somebody might read one and not the rest. YouTube, unlike broadcast, is a medium of choice: you actively seek what you want to see/hear instead of soaking up what the providers decide you should see. The reason for fairness provisions in broadcasting is that there's the option for broadcasters to eliminate some voices from being accessible. That option does no exist on YouTube or the Net in general. Unlike TV/radio, nobody can subtract candidate's speeches: they can only add them, so there's no issue of thought control (unless Net neutrality loses out, perhaps).
Is that distinction really so hard to get? Is it scary as hell that the world's "leaders" are pretty much uniformly incapable of doing so?
If justice is the goal, courts have to assess the RIAA and the rest of the pirates heavy damage awards for harassment, defamation, stalking, and whatever else comes to mind when thinking about their random assault-by-shyster. Followed, of course, by appropriate criminal charges on similar grounds.
Nonsense. What do you think the Interstate highway system, the broadcast spectrum, telephones, cities, farming, politics, and so on and so on and so on are, if not engineering societies? Car culture is no less social engineering than public transportation. Badly designed cities are no less social engineering than cities designed to be more efficient and accessible.
Thanks to the bribe-induced ability in the US to lock cellphones to one provider, the choice of one of the lowest rated carriers makes the iphone a risky investment. If it could sell at this price with no carrier lock, maybe. This whole sham of fake lower hardware prices that are paid for by high connection costs will probably bite Apple in the ass as a prime illustration of the consequences of that corrupt marketing plan. Hopefully that will sting the US into finally catching up with the advanced countries and dumping the lock.
Tiger Direct and a whole bunch of other vendors have been selling barebones systems for years. Worrying about Dell's opinions on Linux is like worrying about what Fernando Llamas likes for breakfast.
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So the plan is, you pay NBC for the download, still have to watch the commercials, presumably can't burn a DVD so you don't have to sit at your computer, are still paying the cable bill to get NBC in the first place, and are paying the internet bill to get the download. Plus you can only avail yourself of this high privilege if you use windows. Do I look like the tooth fairy, NBC? Thank gods for VCRs.
What a load. How did somebody else trying to resell the info harm Zaptoit? Why would that motivate them to stop the service? Why didn't they protect their "property" by going to court instead of throwing it away? This is a pathetic excuse for the hapless Tribune Co. to jettison luxuries it can no longer afford and try to win some whining points. I can only assume you're one of those people who sincerely believed that McDonald's did it all for you.
If you're referring to the life of Circuit City, that's a very short-term punishment.
Who'da thought? These are people whose purpose is to corral taxpayer-funded projects and hold them in order to extort money from the public that paid for them in the first place. These are the same people who send mercenaries into other people's homes to seize their property based on "laws" obtained through bribery, and then harass and intimidate them with their lawyer-mercenaries. Oh, and then they manage to popularize the meme that their victims are the "pirates". So this story is basically like reporting that a squirrel ate a walnut.
I was wondering about the Ami connection. Of course in a civilized country any outfit that fucked up its Amiga holdings as grotesquely as Gateway should not be allowed to keep them. Patents are supposed to be for innovation, not destruction. Anyway, somehow it's hard to imagine that Acer will have any interest in the Amiga stuff, and there's not much visible commercial value to the patents. Maybe Ami will get open-sourced at last, only a few decades too late. PS -- how does the parent deserve a troll rating? Dump this mod.
This is a Republican administration. We don't want no damn regulations tying up commerce, remember? Let the market decide.
This has to be a Microsoft ploy. It makes absolutely no sense that a business too dumb to figure out what apps are on its machines will be able to use yet another app to figure it out for them. The only possible use for this "technology" is to propagandize that open-source = virus. Time to scan this company's account books for a check from Redmond.
A "tax" of this kind could be a way around spam, but the Hotmail/Goodmail way has one fatal flaw: it's used as a profit center for the mail carrier. If the tax went to recipients of the spam, who are after all the real victims here, there could be an argument for initiating it. As it stands though, this is just another service-provider scam, a kind of subset of the hierarchical Internet.
It's always good to be reminded that Americans aren't the only ones on the planet who have attained criminal idiocy.
So you tell 'em to shove their license and let them distribute their crap on a Victrola.
"the agreement equipment vendors must abide by"? Why "must" they? Why don't they just tell the content peddlers to shove it? When did private monopolies get police powers?
If they want people to watch their shows they have to let people know what's on. Simple as that. If They think anybody's going to go to scifi.com and then nbc.com through all 99 or 155 channels, they're nuts. Pretty much every program guide in print, on tv, or on the Net seems to depend on Zap2It except maybe Yahoo. The cable companies are going to have a hell of a time selling their DVRs and digital packages if there's no way to know what's on. But the "entertainment" industry is run by folks who run about as dumb as it gets, so maybe they will destroy the TV business as we know it. Not such a bad idea.
does that all the time.
Now the muggers can steal my newspaper, too. Progress is a wonderful thing.
Around here, AT&T and Comcast, among others, have been pushing cheap "broadband" that turns out to be in the 600kbps range. If the hapless FCC is forced to adopt realistic definitions, so much the better for consumers and for the communications industry in the long run. I have yet to find a downside explained in all the lazy cynical-posing comments.
presidents? Most of the frauds and hoaxes lately have been coming straight from the White House.
They don't say how much these roving idiots are costing US taxpayers, or what in hell their severe intelligence disorders are supposed to be good for. I guess we should just be glad Bush didn't decide to do a shock and awe on Toronto. We keep hearing about "emboldening the terrorists". My guess is that the terrorists got a whole lot bolder when they heard about this latest embarrassment to the US. "I mean, they thought the Canadians were making spy coins that they marked with big red flowers in the middle! We can get abway with just about anything!"
One small step for security, one giant step for American Fascism. AKA Bush's legacy.
AmeriTrade works just fine with Firefox. etrade sounds too dumb to be trusted with other peoples' money.
It's a never-ending source of wonder and despair to watch as pols and other ruling-classers struggle to adjust to 21st Century basic reality. The Tokyo government's stand is like saying no political speeches should be printed because somebody might read one and not the rest. YouTube, unlike broadcast, is a medium of choice: you actively seek what you want to see/hear instead of soaking up what the providers decide you should see. The reason for fairness provisions in broadcasting is that there's the option for broadcasters to eliminate some voices from being accessible. That option does no exist on YouTube or the Net in general. Unlike TV/radio, nobody can subtract candidate's speeches: they can only add them, so there's no issue of thought control (unless Net neutrality loses out, perhaps).
Is that distinction really so hard to get? Is it scary as hell that the world's "leaders" are pretty much uniformly incapable of doing so?
If justice is the goal, courts have to assess the RIAA and the rest of the pirates heavy damage awards for harassment, defamation, stalking, and whatever else comes to mind when thinking about their random assault-by-shyster. Followed, of course, by appropriate criminal charges on similar grounds.
Nonsense. What do you think the Interstate highway system, the broadcast spectrum, telephones, cities, farming, politics, and so on and so on and so on are, if not engineering societies? Car culture is no less social engineering than public transportation. Badly designed cities are no less social engineering than cities designed to be more efficient and accessible.
Thanks to the bribe-induced ability in the US to lock cellphones to one provider, the choice of one of the lowest rated carriers makes the iphone a risky investment. If it could sell at this price with no carrier lock, maybe. This whole sham of fake lower hardware prices that are paid for by high connection costs will probably bite Apple in the ass as a prime illustration of the consequences of that corrupt marketing plan. Hopefully that will sting the US into finally catching up with the advanced countries and dumping the lock.
I'll be installing IE just as soon as I finish putting that old Ford Pinto engine in my Ferrari.
Tiger Direct and a whole bunch of other vendors have been selling barebones systems for years. Worrying about Dell's opinions on Linux is like worrying about what Fernando Llamas likes for breakfast.