I'm not going to invest the time or the money in finding a local provider and negotiating a contract for the dozen or so personal emails I handle daily. It's just not going to happen.
And here I thought all along we were talking about -business- email. And business documents. You know stuff where it might actually be important to you.
But even then, two weeks' notice is insufficient, IMO -- there's still potential for evil within the fact that the contract still can be changed without any discussion, and that through inaction a user will be bound by the new terms.
That's the nature of the beast. You claim you -want- a service where you never have to talk to anybody, that provides generic self-service.
Then if they want to modify a term of the contract they've got to hold the whole thing up while they suddenly contact and "discuss" the change with you and every other customer they have? Its NOT going to happen.
Either you get personalized service, or you get anonymous generic service. And if you opt for anonymous generic service, you're not going to be in a position to negotiate terms that are in your interest. To get a contract with terms that are actually favorable to YOU, where they can't change it on you at their whim, you'll need to be more involved with your service than 'click here to agree'. The best your going to get is 30 days notice by email. Its just that simple.
You also spoke about how you'd like to live in a world where products had card readers so you can buy from them... but in the same sentence you spoke about negotiating away the salesreps comission...same thing... you can only do that when your actually given a salesrep. And don't tell me the card reader is going to always be selling at the best possible price. Because it won't be.
Its the salesrep who will price match a competitor a particular item. Its the sales rep who'll bend more if your buying multiple items.
But at least, there's finally some hope for your argument. "ync.net" == something other than hand-waving. That wasn't so hard, now was it?
This is/. I -really- shouldn't have to use google for you.
Google also looks like a friendly enough company today, and if that ever changes, it will only take me a few minutes to switch the domain over to my Dreamhost account while I find it a more permanent home.
Yes. I realize that. However, you don't get to pull your data off their servers. That's theirs do with as they please... whether its harvest it, sell it, or turn it over to the government...except you say...
Meanwhile, Google's own ToS says very plainly that my stuff will remain my stuff
Which is worthless because they can change it at any time without notice. Its -your- responsibility to keep checking it to find out if anything has changed. Does it still say that? Better go check...
I use google services too, for throwaway stuff, and as a backup, in case for whatever reason someone is unable to email me due to a downed router on the net or im in that 0.0001% where my service is down and I -need- to get something through... I also use their search, and I've even used 'docs' once when I needed to whip up a word doc on the road... but I wouldn't become dependant on it.
Except that if they are unauthorized copies they can be presumed illegal, because the onus is on the defendant to successfully argue fair use before they aren't. (Fair Use is a -defense- against a charge of infringement... and to use it infringement has to occur first.)
The RIAA is essentially free to assert unauthorized copies are illegal... its up to the defendant to prove they aren't.
That doesn't violate the presumption of innocence... because of course the defendant himself is presumed innocent of wrongdoing until actually convicted of something.
Sort like its perfectly sensible to talk about the 'stolen goods found in the defendants possession' before the defendant has been convicted of stealing them.
Everyone keeps saying that. I've asked for specifics two times now, and all I get in return is this sort of postulate hand-waving. So I guess it doesn't exist.
Don't be an idiot. Maybe, just maybe, these sorts of companies aren't self-serve, sign yourself up over the internet, agree to the terms hosted on our website, and interact with our automated systems. We hope we never speak to you, like google. So when you want to 'prove to some annoying slashdotter they exist, its hard, because you can't point them to their terms of service, because they don't have one on the web...because its all in the SLA you agree to when you contract with them.
Then again, even 'pure web based companies' like ync.net provide a promise of two-weeks notice prior to any changes to their terms, and a privacy policy that asserts essentially that your data is your data.
I guess these companies don't exist, though.
But nevermind that: If the they can always change the terms whenever they want, then what fucking difference does it make what the they are today?
Its predominatly the ToS for anonymous automated web based systems, but its hardly the general rule. No "real" contract would EVER have language like that.
They ARE unauthorized copies. There really has NEVER been any debate about that. The label didn't specifically authorize them therefore they are unauthorized. ITS THAT SIMPLE.
That said, the ENTIRE POINT of fair use is to legalize 'unauthorized copies' in limited 'fair use' circumstances. Fair use, by definition, operates on unauthorized copies. You have to make an unauthorized copy in order for fair use to apply. If the copy was authorized you wouldn't need fair use -- because you've got explicit authorization directly from the rights holder.
The RIAA calling these cd rips unauthorized is about as salient as when they 'over' identify the defendant... if they mention that Jane Doe is a 35 year old woman who works as a bookkeeper, they are not suggesting that being 35 years old, a woman, or a bookkeeper are issues in the case, they are merely identifying the defendant.
Similiarly identifying the unauthorized songs ripped from CD by the defendant merely identifies the songs in question. The fact that they are 'unauthorized' vs 'authorized' is as irrelevant as the fact they were ripped from CD instead of Sirius/XM-Radio.
The judge certainly knows this. The lawyers certainly all know this. Maybe the defendant isn't aware, but that's why he should have a lawyer.
Knee-jerk reactions by bloggers who seize on irrelevant facts without knowing or understanding how copyright works is the real issue here. I propose we have another front page article... "prominent journalists and bloggers somehow don't know making a copy without explicit authorization results in an unauthorized copy, DUH!"
Well... yes, but you're never going to get around that\
I wasn't trying to get around it.:)
I think its a good solution, because its a win-win for all parties. You get to see the stuff you might want to buy in an ideal environment. And you can buy it for the best price you can find (online).
You didn't have to leech off a boutique... in fact, because you bought a ticket, you effectively paid directly for the priviledge of "shopping".
(And -that- is another way the boutique might go to stay competitive... match prices with the discount online store, but charge admittance to the "showroom" to cover the cost of providing one.)
Of course people are accumstomed to walking into the showrooms for free, and would probably argue loudly that if they weren't allowed to go into the store without paying admittance they'll shop elsewhere... but I think that could change... you already paid a ticket to go to a trade show, people buy memberships to costco....
False. The price is still set by the seller, who is under no obligation to sell/give away -- however saturated the market may be.
If that were actually true then the market wouldn't be saturated with product that could be taken for free.
The barrier to entry to the 'music replication and redistribution industry' have dropped to 'bored child with computer, internet access, and 5 minutes of spare time'.
The only issue left is IP rights which the p2p group don't have... and while society generally feels they owe something to the artists who created it... they don't feel an obligation to protect an industry that is so obsolete its entire business model is threatened by the aforementioned children with internet access.
I base my purchasing choice on 'value added'. If I walk into a shop...
That right there is a value add. You got to see the product, up close in person, touch it, feel its weight, get a sense of how flimsy or solid it is, how it feels, how it fits.
Even if the salesrep is a clueless monkey who thinks comuter mice are a rodent infestation in your PC you still got your value add....then I will happily pay 10-15% on top of the best online price
I see a lot of people pay lip service to this, but few really follow through, especially on bigger ticket items where that 10% is more than pocket change.
I went to the Stuff Show a couple...
Yeah. This seems to be the solution... the manufacturers themselves take on the task of giving buyers a chance to see and touch stuff, and it essentially comes out of their advertising budget which is ultimately reflected in the unit price -- even if you buy it online.
That said, places like the sony store are pretty much already doing this... the goal of the Sony store isn't "to be successful retail" its a permanent sony ad, where they can show off the sony product line, engage customers, and let them kick the tires... even if the majority of the people that walk in end up buying the item across the street at best buy for 10-15% less its still a success for sony.
Why would I shop with either the big boxes or the service boutiques when I get better prices and service at Newegg, anyway?
Its hard to decide from looking at newegg screenshots whether you want a glossy or matte screen on your next monitor, or whether the mouse you're eyeing is going to actually fit in your hand comfortably, or how that funky ergonomic keyboard feels, etc, etc, etc.
Tech savvy people shop at the boutiques/big boxes but buy at the online discounter. If that proves successful enough, and the boutiques and big boxes disappear... where are you going to shop? Are the online discounters going to open up boutiques so you can see and feel the stuff before you buy it? And if so... will you pay the markup they're going to have to charge to cover it... or will you shop at the newegg boutique but buy at 'hole-in-the-wall-online-discounter'?
Pure online works for products you've previously worked with, or where the specs alone are all that matter... like CPU's, or hard drives. But when choosing an HDTV, are you really going to be satisfied with buying it before SEEING it? When buying shoes are you going to be satisfied with buying it before trying it on? A good return policy helps... but you usually have to suck up the shipping costs, which can add up fast...
I find people who heavily advocate online dealers like newegg are usually leeching shopping touch it/see it services from local boutiques. Being able to see and touch a product before buying it has value... and its an issue newegg and the like haven't really addressed. While shopping at boutiques and buying online isn't sustainable - if everyone did it, boutiques would disappear.
Programs like QTFairUse are excellent, but they are no substitute for actually buying only DRM free music in the first place, and refusing to buy DRM encumbered tracks, period. Nothing sends a message to the music industry better.
In other words, being able to break DRM (today) is no reason to buy DRM encumbered music.
It's not our fault or problem that nobody has bothered to setup online horse racing in your country. As long as any horse racing business from these nations is treated the same as a domestic outfit I really fail to see what the problem is.
Nobody made you join the WTO either. Nobody made you agree to the definition of categories of industry. If you'd had the foresight to separate horse racing from online gambling as separate categories this would not be a problem. But these are the rules you agreed to and know you have to play by them if you want to keep playing.
And you DO want to keep playing because the WTO is the force that's preventing Canada from creating a nationalized daycare system. (would prevent american companies from competing in the daycare industry), is forcing Canada to sync copyprotection laws for America's RIAA/Hollywood interests, is preventing Canada from selling subsidized electricity to its own residents because FreeTrade/WTO rules force us to export electricy at the same rates we use it internally, despite that a lot of the energy infrastructure was built by the taxpayer.
And that's just Canada... the US is wielding the WTA/FreeTrade agreements around the globe for its benefit. It benefits far more from them than it loses. For every Antigua there are 30 Canada's. Antigua is just interesting because they've scored a symbolic blow to the US, and in a very public high profile way.
If there is a substantially less-evil provider (and, no, the local mom-n-pops don't count) out there, whose agreement includes NO language stating that the terms are subject to change at any time, then I'm still waiting to hear about it.
You'll pay for it of course, but you can have a personalized contract with set SLA levels, stating the terms, with pretty much any decent provider, even most of the big ones.
And its not that hard to find a reasonable service that will at least agree to not ever use your data except to deliver / host it for you, and to give you written notice 30 days prior to a change in the terms of service.
Uh, yeah. That lets you take your new inbound mail somewhere else, which is a definite plus. It doesn't get anything they've already got off of their servers though. This was always the bigger issue.
Have you read and agreed to these terms of service...? Because you've already violated them:
**Customer may not publicly disclose the existence of this agreement or its contents without prior written approval from google.**
Some of the other terms are fun too...
Google on the other hand may tell any one it wants, publish it in lists, show screenshots of it, incorporate the customers brand marks in presentations, etc.
Google can change the agreement any time it wants by updating this document. Customer is responsible for reading it regularly to keep abreast of any changes...
Google shall own all rights, title, and interest, without limitation all IP rights... including but not limited to all technology, information, CONTENT....[caps mine]
Google can remove any content it deems objectionable.
Google will provide 'commercially reasonable efforts' to provide access to the service. -and- Google shall have the right to change, suspend or discontinue any aspect of the Service at any time, including hours of operation and availability of any Service feature, without notice and without liability.
Which is to say, google will provide access to the service as long as it wants to and finds it profitable. If, one day, google changes its mind, the servers can go dark without any notice, and any data stored on the servers is google's, and we hope you made your own backups of anything you might want to keep because we have no obligation to give you any copies.
So what happens when your house burns down, or your hard drive crashes? Sure, you've got (off-site) backups (right?), but even in the best scenario you'll still have half a day in fucking with finding/buying/assembling hardware, configuring a kernel for the new motherboard, restoring backups, and bootstrapping the system after the fire.
Why make extra work for yourself?
So what happens when google gets bought out by/ merges with... whomever... sony, time-warner, at&t... and suddenly the rules all start changing and the service starts getting worse?
You can't move your @gmail address somewhere else. You can't get your email archves away from them. (Sure you can download a copy for you to use, but you can't take away their copies... so when they harvest it for marketing data to sell, or any of a 1000 other uses you are screwed.
I can see contracting out your email management/storage/infrastructure to a 3rd party. I let my ISP provide me mail transport services too, after all. But its a reasonably decent contract -- with gmail the 'contract' amounts to "all your base are belong to us"... but you can use it for free (provided you look at our ads)... until we change our minds... well.. what kind of idiot agrees to -that- kind of contract to host and manage their personal documents and communications records?
People who don't value their privacy at all evidently, and somehow trust a mega-corporation to take care of them, when at the end of the day, google views gmail users the way a shepherd views sheep. You have to feed them to get their wool. But if they can get the same wool with cheaper feed they'll do it... if they can figure out a way to get the sheep to keep giving wool, and pay for their own feed by working in the salt mines in their free time, they'll do that too. Enjoy being a sheep. Baaaa...;)
Imagine the smartest person you know, but with essentially unlimited memory, constantly increasing processing capability (with newer/faster processors) and the ability to live forever without a decline in function. That's better than a real human brain for sure.
Except when I imagine someone with any of those characteristics, never mind -all- of them, I imagine someone insane, if not worse. The faster and smarter it gets, the slower and duller we appear.
How long would such a machine take before it saw 'regular humans' as little more than retarded children? Primates? Rats?
I have an automatic Jetta CL as a 2ndary/family/its snowing/ car.
I didn't buy a sports car take up a parking spot and give me something to wash on weekends. I bought it to drive, and I like driving it. I don't like getting stuck in traffic jams, and I generally avoid driving in them... but some are unavoidable -- like the trip from Vancouver to Whistler (BC, Canada) is a joy to drive in summer, but there's pretty good odds I'll get stuck in heavy traffic especially coming back into the city on the way home, and if there is an accident or construction or a problem on the bridges...a brutal traffic jam.
Like anything, you take the good with the bad, but that doesn't mean you aren't allowed to complain about the bad.
No thanks. My Porsche is properly tuned the way it is.
Seriously, there is an entire class of traffic jams where people in automatics put it in drive which gives it some forward momentum, even without giving it any gas... and even that is too much. And then they ride the brakes to slow it down even further.
That is a PITA in any manual transmission, and brutal in sports cars.
Horse poopies. 1680x1050 in a 17" laptop screen and ClearType still looks out of focus with wierd color fringes on the text. First thing I turn off.
So maybe you need 3560x2100 on a 17" screen. Or 7000x4200. Give it few more years. We'll get there.
The point is that the eye has limits on what it can see, all eyes, even yours. When the dot pitch gets low enough, you'll stop seeing them. And we've got a LONG way to go. An inexpensive laserjet will do 1200dpi. That's roughly the same number of dots in a horizontal inch as most people have on the full width of their 17" and 19" monitors. So screen pixels are some 20x wider than than printer dots. And 20x taller too... meaning they are 400x the area.
Also, another poster rightly pointed out that it makes a BIG difference whether the LCD color stripes are RGB or BGR, as cleartype would effectively be lighting up the wrong subpixel positions if the stripe order is wrong, and that would lead to very obvious color fringes, because instead of lighting up the subpixel next to the letter, it would be lighting the subpixel a row or even two rows over.
ClearType creates difficulties for some people whose eyes can discern colour in more "resolution" than other people (ie it penalises people who have better eyes).
That's not a problem with ClearType its a problem with using a screen with large pixels. Get a screen with small enough pixels and the 'difficulty' goes away.
After all, your complaining about clear type because you can apparently see the colored subpixels in use at the edges of letters. But you don't appear to complain about the white background used in so many windows... so you don't apparently see that as stripes of red-green-blue. So I suspect if the dot pitch were just a bit lower, you'd be fine with cleartype.
e.g. a 19" screen with native resolution of 1280x1024 might have issues for you, while a 19" panel with a native resolution of 1600x1200 might be just fine.
(And it goes without saying tha a 1600x1200 panel running at 1280x1024 will look terrible, and even 'regular' people can see the visual artifacts that result from that.)
DLP HDTV with a spinning color wheel had the same issue, of 'rainbows' as a fair number of people could actually see the screen go red-green-blue-red-green-blue, especially on 'worst case scenes' like a white spot moving across a black screen at a decet speed'. But they solved it by adding more segments to the color wheel (effectively doubling the transition rate) and spinning it faster so that now almost nobody can see the rainbows anymore, because the transition rate is much higher than it used to be.
The alternative solution was to use 3-DLP chips and then you don't need the color wheel. But these were more expensive (3 dlp chips instead of 1), and also suffer from the same sort of picture convergence issues you got with old CRT projection TVs. (with one chip and a color wheel there are no convergence issues because the picture is being projected from one source and we just rapidly change which color we are projecting, while with 3 chips there is no flickering/rainbows because 3 pictures are continously projected one in each colour -- but they have to be aligned, and may come out of alignment over time, requiring re-alignment)
One can only hope. Because then it won't be worth watching, and maybe just maybe it will stop getting airplay on major networks and overriding shows I'd actually like to see.
Its not a misnomer, but its exactly the opposite problem that filesystems have. With filesystems, as files get added, and then removed or resized 'holes' are created between them. With filesystems, what happens is that the next allocation will use up all the holes and the file will be fragmented, slowing access time.
With memory its the opposite. Blocks are ALWAYS allocated in complete chunks. So the smallest holes never get filled. -Free Memory- gets fragmented instead of data, and because small bits of memory are useless the end result being that more and more space is used.
Well, it appears we agree he was a step below Stallone and Schwarzenegger, and I readily concede your point about Norris. Dolph is the lame duck in the Pantheon, because he was in a lot of "A" level blockbuster action movies...he rarely starred in anything memorable so his star status is more like "...and Dolph was in it too".
But I'd definitely put Van Damme on the same level as Seagal. Seagal had a solid resume of action movies from around the same time that probably peaked with Under Siege. Which was definitely an "A" blockbuster action movie, and it did considerably better at the box office than even Timecop. (156 million vs 104 million).
And Kurt Russel...I hear what you are saying... but if you look at his filmography... he's done an awful lot of action hero work; he's just managed to largely avoid getting the name recognition of the others. I'm not really sure why. Maybe because for the most part, Russel isn't a caricature of himself the way the other action heroes are.
His characters aren't all just "Kurt Russel" with a new name in the same way Van Damme's or Schwarzenegger's are in most of their action movies.
Van Damme used to be one of the "big 3 superstars" in the early nineties. It was Schwarzenegegger, Stallone, and Van Damme.
I don't think he was ever on quite the same action hero level as Schwarzenegger's [Terminator/Predator/...] or Stallone's Rambo/Rocky. He was always one step down, same level as Steven Seagal, Chuck Norris, Kurt Russel, and maybe Dolph Lundgren... a star, but not a superstar.
A game where it's possible to play as, say, a diplomat _or_ a gunner, tends to cover the tastes of more people than a game where you have to be a diplomat _and_ a gunner.
True. And to follow up: A union is an INCLUSIVE OR or not an EXCLUSIVE OR. Nothing is more annoying than games where its possible to play as X or Y, but utterly confound anyone who wants to play as X and Y.
Put simply, it is not worth the cost of upgrading for all of the new features.
Neither was XP. And when Windows 2000 came out I didn't see people leaping from NT4 like ants to a sugarbowl either.
Other than Windows 95/NT4 which was an amazing upgrade from Win3/NT3, no Windows release has been terribly exciting. Win98 from Win95? No big deal. Windows XP Pro from 2000 Pro? No big deal. Windows ME from 98...nothing could be less compelling. Windows XP Home from Win98? A boost in stability to be sure, but 'worth the cost of upgrading' for the new features? Hah!
The only real issue with Vista is that its just an evolutionary step. All the Vista hype was monsterously out of proportion to the actual product. Some of that is Microsofts fault... and some is just the internet doing what the internet does.
Hell, even in the Mac world... really, other than MacOS6 to MacOS7 in the early ninties and MacOS9 to OSX 10.0 each release hasn't been a wondrous new dawn upon the world. (Although in Apple's defense the OS 10.x revisions have come out more rapidly than the revisions to Windows. But then again...even Vista Ultimate at full retail is a fraction of what it would have cost to upgrade to each 10.x revision. (Although to Apples credit the family pack pricing is an excellent idea I'd like to see from Microsoft.)
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I'm not going to invest the time or the money in finding a local provider and negotiating a contract for the dozen or so personal emails I handle daily. It's just not going to happen.
/. I -really- shouldn't have to use google for you.
And here I thought all along we were talking about -business- email. And business documents. You know stuff where it might actually be important to you.
But even then, two weeks' notice is insufficient, IMO -- there's still potential for evil within the fact that the contract still can be changed without any discussion, and that through inaction a user will be bound by the new terms.
That's the nature of the beast. You claim you -want- a service where you never have to talk to anybody, that provides generic self-service.
Then if they want to modify a term of the contract they've got to hold the whole thing up while they suddenly contact and "discuss" the change with you and every other customer they have? Its NOT going to happen.
Either you get personalized service, or you get anonymous generic service. And if you opt for anonymous generic service, you're not going to be in a position to negotiate terms that are in your interest. To get a contract with terms that are actually favorable to YOU, where they can't change it on you at their whim, you'll need to be more involved with your service than 'click here to agree'. The best your going to get is 30 days notice by email. Its just that simple.
You also spoke about how you'd like to live in a world where products had card readers so you can buy from them... but in the same sentence you spoke about negotiating away the salesreps comission...same thing... you can only do that when your actually given a salesrep. And don't tell me the card reader is going to always be selling at the best possible price. Because it won't be.
Its the salesrep who will price match a competitor a particular item. Its the sales rep who'll bend more if your buying multiple items.
But at least, there's finally some hope for your argument. "ync.net" == something other than hand-waving. That wasn't so hard, now was it?
This is
Google also looks like a friendly enough company today, and if that ever changes, it will only take me a few minutes to switch the domain over to my Dreamhost account while I find it a more permanent home.
Yes. I realize that. However, you don't get to pull your data off their servers. That's theirs do with as they please... whether its harvest it, sell it, or turn it over to the government...except you say...
Meanwhile, Google's own ToS says very plainly that my stuff will remain my stuff
Which is worthless because they can change it at any time without notice. Its -your- responsibility to keep checking it to find out if anything has changed. Does it still say that? Better go check...
I use google services too, for throwaway stuff, and as a backup, in case for whatever reason someone is unable to email me due to a downed router on the net or im in that 0.0001% where my service is down and I -need- to get something through... I also use their search, and I've even used 'docs' once when I needed to whip up a word doc on the road... but I wouldn't become dependant on it.
Except that if they are unauthorized copies they can be presumed illegal, because the onus is on the defendant to successfully argue fair use before they aren't. (Fair Use is a -defense- against a charge of infringement... and to use it infringement has to occur first.)
The RIAA is essentially free to assert unauthorized copies are illegal... its up to the defendant to prove they aren't.
That doesn't violate the presumption of innocence... because of course the defendant himself is presumed innocent of wrongdoing until actually convicted of something.
Sort like its perfectly sensible to talk about the 'stolen goods found in the defendants possession' before the defendant has been convicted of stealing them.
Everyone keeps saying that. I've asked for specifics two times now, and all I get in return is this sort of postulate hand-waving. So I guess it doesn't exist.
Don't be an idiot. Maybe, just maybe, these sorts of companies aren't self-serve, sign yourself up over the internet, agree to the terms hosted on our website, and interact with our automated systems. We hope we never speak to you, like google. So when you want to 'prove to some annoying slashdotter they exist, its hard, because you can't point them to their terms of service, because they don't have one on the web...because its all in the SLA you agree to when you contract with them.
Then again, even 'pure web based companies' like ync.net provide a promise of two-weeks notice prior to any changes to their terms, and a privacy policy that asserts essentially that your data is your data.
I guess these companies don't exist, though.
But nevermind that: If the they can always change the terms whenever they want, then what fucking difference does it make what the they are today?
Its predominatly the ToS for anonymous automated web based systems, but its hardly the general rule. No "real" contract would EVER have language like that.
This is a stupid article.
They ARE unauthorized copies. There really has NEVER been any debate about that. The label didn't specifically authorize them therefore they are unauthorized. ITS THAT SIMPLE.
That said, the ENTIRE POINT of fair use is to legalize 'unauthorized copies' in limited 'fair use' circumstances. Fair use, by definition, operates on unauthorized copies. You have to make an unauthorized copy in order for fair use to apply. If the copy was authorized you wouldn't need fair use -- because you've got explicit authorization directly from the rights holder.
The RIAA calling these cd rips unauthorized is about as salient as when they 'over' identify the defendant... if they mention that Jane Doe is a 35 year old woman who works as a bookkeeper, they are not suggesting that being 35 years old, a woman, or a bookkeeper are issues in the case, they are merely identifying the defendant.
Similiarly identifying the unauthorized songs ripped from CD by the defendant merely identifies the songs in question. The fact that they are 'unauthorized' vs 'authorized' is as irrelevant as the fact they were ripped from CD instead of Sirius/XM-Radio.
The judge certainly knows this. The lawyers certainly all know this. Maybe the defendant isn't aware, but that's why he should have a lawyer.
Knee-jerk reactions by bloggers who seize on irrelevant facts without knowing or understanding how copyright works is the real issue here. I propose we have another front page article... "prominent journalists and bloggers somehow don't know making a copy without explicit authorization results in an unauthorized copy, DUH!"
Well... yes, but you're never going to get around that\
I wasn't trying to get around it.
I think its a good solution, because its a win-win for all parties. You get to see the stuff you might want to buy in an ideal environment. And you can buy it for the best price you can find (online).
You didn't have to leech off a boutique... in fact, because you bought a ticket, you effectively paid directly for the priviledge of "shopping".
(And -that- is another way the boutique might go to stay competitive... match prices with the discount online store, but charge admittance to the "showroom" to cover the cost of providing one.)
Of course people are accumstomed to walking into the showrooms for free, and would probably argue loudly that if they weren't allowed to go into the store without paying admittance they'll shop elsewhere... but I think that could change... you already paid a ticket to go to a trade show, people buy memberships to costco....
False. The price is still set by the seller, who is under no obligation to sell/give away -- however saturated the market may be.
If that were actually true then the market wouldn't be saturated with product that could be taken for free.
The barrier to entry to the 'music replication and redistribution industry' have dropped to 'bored child with computer, internet access, and 5 minutes of spare time'.
The only issue left is IP rights which the p2p group don't have... and while society generally feels they owe something to the artists who created it... they don't feel an obligation to protect an industry that is so obsolete its entire business model is threatened by the aforementioned children with internet access.
I base my purchasing choice on 'value added'. If I walk into a shop...
...then I will happily pay 10-15% on top of the best online price
That right there is a value add. You got to see the product, up close in person, touch it, feel its weight, get a sense of how flimsy or solid it is, how it feels, how it fits.
Even if the salesrep is a clueless monkey who thinks comuter mice are a rodent infestation in your PC you still got your value add.
I see a lot of people pay lip service to this, but few really follow through, especially on bigger ticket items where that 10% is more than pocket change.
I went to the Stuff Show a couple...
Yeah. This seems to be the solution... the manufacturers themselves take on the task of giving buyers a chance to see and touch stuff, and it essentially comes out of their advertising budget which is ultimately reflected in the unit price -- even if you buy it online.
That said, places like the sony store are pretty much already doing this... the goal of the Sony store isn't "to be successful retail" its a permanent sony ad, where they can show off the sony product line, engage customers, and let them kick the tires... even if the majority of the people that walk in end up buying the item across the street at best buy for 10-15% less its still a success for sony.
Why would I shop with either the big boxes or the service boutiques when I get better prices and service at Newegg, anyway?
Its hard to decide from looking at newegg screenshots whether you want a glossy or matte screen on your next monitor, or whether the mouse you're eyeing is going to actually fit in your hand comfortably, or how that funky ergonomic keyboard feels, etc, etc, etc.
Tech savvy people shop at the boutiques/big boxes but buy at the online discounter. If that proves successful enough, and the boutiques and big boxes disappear... where are you going to shop? Are the online discounters going to open up boutiques so you can see and feel the stuff before you buy it? And if so... will you pay the markup they're going to have to charge to cover it... or will you shop at the newegg boutique but buy at 'hole-in-the-wall-online-discounter'?
Pure online works for products you've previously worked with, or where the specs alone are all that matter... like CPU's, or hard drives. But when choosing an HDTV, are you really going to be satisfied with buying it before SEEING it? When buying shoes are you going to be satisfied with buying it before trying it on? A good return policy helps... but you usually have to suck up the shipping costs, which can add up fast...
I find people who heavily advocate online dealers like newegg are usually leeching shopping touch it/see it services from local boutiques. Being able to see and touch a product before buying it has value... and its an issue newegg and the like haven't really addressed. While shopping at boutiques and buying online isn't sustainable - if everyone did it, boutiques would disappear.
Programs like QTFairUse are excellent, but they are no substitute for actually buying only DRM free music in the first place, and refusing to buy DRM encumbered tracks, period. Nothing sends a message to the music industry better.
In other words, being able to break DRM (today) is no reason to buy DRM encumbered music.
It's not our fault or problem that nobody has bothered to setup online horse racing in your country. As long as any horse racing business from these nations is treated the same as a domestic outfit I really fail to see what the problem is.
Nobody made you join the WTO either. Nobody made you agree to the definition of categories of industry. If you'd had the foresight to separate horse racing from online gambling as separate categories this would not be a problem. But these are the rules you agreed to and know you have to play by them if you want to keep playing.
And you DO want to keep playing because the WTO is the force that's preventing Canada from creating a nationalized daycare system. (would prevent american companies from competing in the daycare industry), is forcing Canada to sync copyprotection laws for America's RIAA/Hollywood interests, is preventing Canada from selling subsidized electricity to its own residents because FreeTrade/WTO rules force us to export electricy at the same rates we use it internally, despite that a lot of the energy infrastructure was built by the taxpayer.
And that's just Canada... the US is wielding the WTA/FreeTrade agreements around the globe for its benefit. It benefits far more from them than it loses. For every Antigua there are 30 Canada's. Antigua is just interesting because they've scored a symbolic blow to the US, and in a very public high profile way.
If there is a substantially less-evil provider (and, no, the local mom-n-pops don't count) out there, whose agreement includes NO language stating that the terms are subject to change at any time, then I'm still waiting to hear about it.
You'll pay for it of course, but you can have a personalized contract with set SLA levels, stating the terms, with pretty much any decent provider, even most of the big ones.
And its not that hard to find a reasonable service that will at least agree to not ever use your data except to deliver / host it for you, and to give you written notice 30 days prior to a change in the terms of service.
Uh, yeah. That lets you take your new inbound mail somewhere else, which is a definite plus. It doesn't get anything they've already got off of their servers though. This was always the bigger issue.
Have you read and agreed to these terms of service...? Because you've already violated them:
**Customer may not publicly disclose the existence of this agreement or its contents without prior written approval from google.**
Some of the other terms are fun too...
Google on the other hand may tell any one it wants, publish it in lists, show screenshots of it, incorporate the customers brand marks in presentations, etc.
Google can change the agreement any time it wants by updating this document. Customer is responsible for reading it regularly to keep abreast of any changes...
Google shall own all rights, title, and interest, without limitation all IP rights... including but not limited to all technology, information, CONTENT....[caps mine]
Google can remove any content it deems objectionable.
Google will provide 'commercially reasonable efforts' to provide access to the service. -and-
Google shall have the right to change, suspend or discontinue any aspect of the Service at any time, including hours of operation and availability of any Service feature, without notice and without liability.
Which is to say, google will provide access to the service as long as it wants to and finds it profitable. If, one day, google changes its mind, the servers can go dark without any notice, and any data stored on the servers is google's, and we hope you made your own backups of anything you might want to keep because we have no obligation to give you any copies.
So what happens when your house burns down, or your hard drive crashes? Sure, you've got (off-site) backups (right?), but even in the best scenario you'll still have half a day in fucking with finding/buying/assembling hardware, configuring a kernel for the new motherboard, restoring backups, and bootstrapping the system after the fire.
... whomever... sony, time-warner, at&t... and suddenly the rules all start changing and the service starts getting worse?
... until we change our minds... well.. what kind of idiot agrees to -that- kind of contract to host and manage their personal documents and communications records?
;)
Why make extra work for yourself?
So what happens when google gets bought out by/ merges with
You can't move your @gmail address somewhere else. You can't get your email archves away from them. (Sure you can download a copy for you to use, but you can't take away their copies... so when they harvest it for marketing data to sell, or any of a 1000 other uses you are screwed.
I can see contracting out your email management/storage/infrastructure to a 3rd party. I let my ISP provide me mail transport services too, after all. But its a reasonably decent contract -- with gmail the 'contract' amounts to "all your base are belong to us"... but you can use it for free (provided you look at our ads)
People who don't value their privacy at all evidently, and somehow trust a mega-corporation to take care of them, when at the end of the day, google views gmail users the way a shepherd views sheep. You have to feed them to get their wool. But if they can get the same wool with cheaper feed they'll do it... if they can figure out a way to get the sheep to keep giving wool, and pay for their own feed by working in the salt mines in their free time, they'll do that too. Enjoy being a sheep. Baaaa...
Imagine the smartest person you know, but with essentially unlimited memory, constantly increasing processing capability (with newer/faster processors) and the ability to live forever without a decline in function. That's better than a real human brain for sure.
Except when I imagine someone with any of those characteristics, never mind -all- of them, I imagine someone insane, if not worse. The faster and smarter it gets, the slower and duller we appear.
How long would such a machine take before it saw 'regular humans' as little more than retarded children? Primates? Rats?
Get a useful car and leave the toy at home.
I have an automatic Jetta CL as a 2ndary/family/its snowing/ car.
I didn't buy a sports car take up a parking spot and give me something to wash on weekends. I bought it to drive, and I like driving it. I don't like getting stuck in traffic jams, and I generally avoid driving in them... but some are unavoidable -- like the trip from Vancouver to Whistler (BC, Canada) is a joy to drive in summer, but there's pretty good odds I'll get stuck in heavy traffic especially coming back into the city on the way home, and if there is an accident or construction or a problem on the bridges...a brutal traffic jam.
Like anything, you take the good with the bad, but that doesn't mean you aren't allowed to complain about the bad.
No thanks. My Porsche is properly tuned the way it is.
Seriously, there is an entire class of traffic jams where people in automatics put it in drive which gives it some forward momentum, even without giving it any gas... and even that is too much. And then they ride the brakes to slow it down even further.
That is a PITA in any manual transmission, and brutal in sports cars.
Horse poopies. 1680x1050 in a 17" laptop screen and ClearType still looks out of focus with wierd color fringes on the text. First thing I turn off.
So maybe you need 3560x2100 on a 17" screen. Or 7000x4200. Give it few more years. We'll get there.
The point is that the eye has limits on what it can see, all eyes, even yours. When the dot pitch gets low enough, you'll stop seeing them. And we've got a LONG way to go. An inexpensive laserjet will do 1200dpi. That's roughly the same number of dots in a horizontal inch as most people have on the full width of their 17" and 19" monitors. So screen pixels are some 20x wider than than printer dots. And 20x taller too... meaning they are 400x the area.
Also, another poster rightly pointed out that it makes a BIG difference whether the LCD color stripes are RGB or BGR, as cleartype would effectively be lighting up the wrong subpixel positions if the stripe order is wrong, and that would lead to very obvious color fringes, because instead of lighting up the subpixel next to the letter, it would be lighting the subpixel a row or even two rows over.
ClearType creates difficulties for some people whose eyes can discern colour in more "resolution" than other people (ie it penalises people who have better eyes).
That's not a problem with ClearType its a problem with using a screen with large pixels. Get a screen with small enough pixels and the 'difficulty' goes away.
After all, your complaining about clear type because you can apparently see the colored subpixels in use at the edges of letters. But you don't appear to complain about the white background used in so many windows... so you don't apparently see that as stripes of red-green-blue. So I suspect if the dot pitch were just a bit lower, you'd be fine with cleartype.
e.g. a 19" screen with native resolution of 1280x1024 might have issues for you, while a 19" panel with a native resolution of 1600x1200 might be just fine.
(And it goes without saying tha a 1600x1200 panel running at 1280x1024 will look terrible, and even 'regular' people can see the visual artifacts that result from that.)
DLP HDTV with a spinning color wheel had the same issue, of 'rainbows' as a fair number of people could actually see the screen go red-green-blue-red-green-blue, especially on 'worst case scenes' like a white spot moving across a black screen at a decet speed'. But they solved it by adding more segments to the color wheel (effectively doubling the transition rate) and spinning it faster so that now almost nobody can see the rainbows anymore, because the transition rate is much higher than it used to be.
The alternative solution was to use 3-DLP chips and then you don't need the color wheel. But these were more expensive (3 dlp chips instead of 1), and also suffer from the same sort of picture convergence issues you got with old CRT projection TVs. (with one chip and a color wheel there are no convergence issues because the picture is being projected from one source and we just rapidly change which color we are projecting, while with 3 chips there is no flickering/rainbows because 3 pictures are continously projected one in each colour -- but they have to be aligned, and may come out of alignment over time, requiring re-alignment)
DRM is a separate issue from merely being a digital copy.
Plus you can't easily do full text searches on things made from dead trees, nor carry 10,000 of them in your pocket. Both have advantages.
One can only hope. Because then it won't be worth watching, and maybe just maybe it will stop getting airplay on major networks and overriding shows I'd actually like to see.
Its not a misnomer, but its exactly the opposite problem that filesystems have. With filesystems, as files get added, and then removed or resized 'holes' are created between them. With filesystems, what happens is that the next allocation will use up all the holes and the file will be fragmented, slowing access time.
With memory its the opposite. Blocks are ALWAYS allocated in complete chunks. So the smallest holes never get filled. -Free Memory- gets fragmented instead of data, and because small bits of memory are useless the end result being that more and more space is used.
Well, it appears we agree he was a step below Stallone and Schwarzenegger, and I readily concede your point about Norris. Dolph is the lame duck in the Pantheon, because he was in a lot of "A" level blockbuster action movies...he rarely starred in anything memorable so his star status is more like "...and Dolph was in it too".
But I'd definitely put Van Damme on the same level as Seagal. Seagal had a solid resume of action movies from around the same time that probably peaked with Under Siege. Which was definitely an "A" blockbuster action movie, and it did considerably better at the box office than even Timecop. (156 million vs 104 million).
And Kurt Russel...I hear what you are saying... but if you look at his filmography... he's done an awful lot of action hero work; he's just managed to largely avoid getting the name recognition of the others. I'm not really sure why. Maybe because for the most part, Russel isn't a caricature of himself the way the other action heroes are.
His characters aren't all just "Kurt Russel" with a new name in the same way Van Damme's or Schwarzenegger's are in most of their action movies.
Van Damme used to be one of the "big 3 superstars" in the early nineties. It was Schwarzenegegger, Stallone, and Van Damme.
I don't think he was ever on quite the same action hero level as Schwarzenegger's [Terminator/Predator/...] or Stallone's Rambo/Rocky. He was always one step down, same level as Steven Seagal, Chuck Norris, Kurt Russel, and maybe Dolph Lundgren... a star, but not a superstar.
A game where it's possible to play as, say, a diplomat _or_ a gunner, tends to cover the tastes of more people than a game where you have to be a diplomat _and_ a gunner.
True. And to follow up: A union is an INCLUSIVE OR or not an EXCLUSIVE OR. Nothing is more annoying than games where its possible to play as X or Y, but utterly confound anyone who wants to play as X and Y.
Put simply, it is not worth the cost of upgrading for all of the new features.
Neither was XP. And when Windows 2000 came out I didn't see people leaping from NT4 like ants to a sugarbowl either.
Other than Windows 95/NT4 which was an amazing upgrade from Win3/NT3, no Windows release has been terribly exciting. Win98 from Win95? No big deal. Windows XP Pro from 2000 Pro? No big deal. Windows ME from 98...nothing could be less compelling. Windows XP Home from Win98? A boost in stability to be sure, but 'worth the cost of upgrading' for the new features? Hah!
The only real issue with Vista is that its just an evolutionary step. All the Vista hype was monsterously out of proportion to the actual product. Some of that is Microsofts fault... and some is just the internet doing what the internet does.
Hell, even in the Mac world... really, other than MacOS6 to MacOS7 in the early ninties and MacOS9 to OSX 10.0 each release hasn't been a wondrous new dawn upon the world. (Although in Apple's defense the OS 10.x revisions have come out more rapidly than the revisions to Windows. But then again...even Vista Ultimate at full retail is a fraction of what it would have cost to upgrade to each 10.x revision. (Although to Apples credit the family pack pricing is an excellent idea I'd like to see from Microsoft.)