As shown where? By whom? Any example? Not an opinion because you disagreed with what they said, a real example of them reporting something that can factually be proven to be a lie?
Isn't the original post whining about fox news and their not towing the mainstream liberal media line? Why then should I stop whining? Although I don't feel that requesting and/or expecting equal treatment as whining.
I've had plenty of moderator points recently and have not used any to quell dissenting opinion. Are my words truly harming anyone? My original post was just to express my disgust at the raw hatred wrought on Fox News over the years, but seeing as that is not enough, I'll be more thorough.
First of all let me say, I've posted this here before but I'll post it again:
I HATE DOUBLE STANDARDS
.
Why is it okay to slam Fox, but say anything about a liberal and the world comes crashing down.
I'll at least post two reasons why I have my opinion, I wonder if Mr. Arse could post and example of me doing acrobatics while my head is up my arse. And btw, using ARSE instead of ASS doesn't make you intelligent.
During Clinton's Lewinsky scandal (I refuse to use 'Gate' as in MonicaGate or LewinskyGate, Nixon's mess was about the Watergate Hotel and had nothing to do with a 'gate' as the idiot press so loves to stick 'gate' at the end of every scandal, but I digress), I watched as every mainstream news outlet gave Mr. Clinton a pass on his "...it depends on what your meaning of is is" while at the same time berated Kenneth Starr for following through on.......wait for it.....not sex with Lewinsky....., but LYING UNDER OATH TO AVOID PROSECUTION IN A CRIMINAL SEXUAL HARASSMENT CASE". Does anybody even realize this? The only place I heard about it was on Fox. Everybody jokes about the stained dress, but what about the stained soul of Clinton's real victim? You won't hear about that on XXX Nightly News.
During the 2000 election, I watched every news outlet that was available on DirectTV at the time. Even every OTA station had the usual suspects (Brokaw, Donaldson, et al) spewing a lot of derisive anti-Bush comments, editorializing on the merits of challenging Bush's votes (although nowhere on the screen were the words 'editorial' or 'commentary'), and interviewing only those people who furthered their agenda, primarily liberal dems. Nothing about the cherry-picking that Mr. Al 'Climate-Change' Gore was trying to do in Florida (in case you don't remember, he wanted to only recount certain counties that he knew were in his favor and not those counties that might show more Bush votes despite a STATE LAW requiring ALL votes to be recounted or none and he CHOSE none) nor his attempts at disenfranchising the overseas military personal at the time by claiming their votes were somehow invalid. At one point NBC had Jesse Jackson stating emphatically that Bush stole the election and that people should 'stay out the Bushes'. Brokaw's response was a) question jackson as to his proof regarding his claims? b) allow a counterpoint opinion from a conservative? c) Go to commercial.........hint: it wasn't A or B.
Fox, on the other hand, presented both democrats presenting their arguments and conservatives presenting theirs. Sometimes quite heatedly from both sides, but from BOTH sides. The reason they're not considered fair-and-balanced is that the liberals are not use to having their reasoning questioned by 'the brain box' in their living rooms nor having to think for themselves. Why is it so wrong to allow Newt Gingrich or Pat Buchannon the same air time as allowed to the likes of Gore, Clinton and Pelosi? What is so wrong about allowing people to think for themselves?
I'd like to see wikileaks release emails between the news and entertainment staff at some Not Boring Channel and see how many 'entertainers' were given directives to spew jokes promoting the party line.
IMHO, Fox is very fair-and-balanced for anyone who actually watches the channel rather than listening to out of context sound bites on another Classic News Network or Not Boring Channel or (god help us) El Centro de Comedy.
Now modded down to troll?
Read my other posts. I post with a real handle, never anonymously and feel that the OP was flame bait. I am not a troll and don't have the time to wast with this childish nonsense.
I won't be wasting my time on slashdot anymore.
from the wrath of Lou Dobbs and Fox News and others to whom the children's book-turned-Disney film is little more than liberal propaganda....
How is my comment rated a '0'. It was directly related to the OP as noted above. Lumping all of Fox News "and others" together was just a slam at Fox News and has nothing to do with real news, especially on SlashDot. Even worse was the comment about having my head in my 'arse', karmic points or not should have been modded down for being the flame-bait that it is.
If you don't like Fox News, fine. Being someone who appreciates complete stories rather than sound bites to help me form my opinions, I rather like Fox News and have never heard the entire network slam "The Lorax" and felt the generalizing of the OP was unfair and warranted a critical comment to that effect.
The 'mod' points, as I understand them, are not supposed to be applied based on whether you agree or disagree with the poster but rather the relevance to the topic at hand.
First off, IMHO, Santorum is a moron. That being said, I have to agree with some of the complaints about the search engines and the "SEO" experts gaming the engines. If the site in question is truly in the top due to popularity then too bad for Santorum. Forcing the search engines to 'demote' negative rhetoric would do more for censorship then SOPA, PIPA & ACTA combined and is probably a bad idea.
I do however feel that the search engines have become bastion's of crap as of late. For example: I recently needed a replacement fan for my laptop, an ASUS X71VN. My first move is always Amazon. Not finding anything there, I proceeded to ASUS' store, part no longer available. Finally I proceeded to search for: "ASUS" "X71VN" "fan" (quotes included so that google will 'AND' my keywords rather than 'OR'ing them). I was greeted with tons of results, most of which didn't have all of the keywords visible in their content, did not sell fans but laptop power supplies and the multiple sites that returned were pretty much the same vendor with at last count had 25 domain names, all with slightly different presentation, but basically the same vendor. Other usual suspects of useless drivel: fixya.com, driver download spam and one of the latest fucktards yogi.com. It would have taken less time to drive to Fry's with a small screw driver, open one of their display laptops and remove the fan than I spent trying to purchase this ubiquitous item.
I can see having a complaint against this type of Search Engine Gaming (SEG). Google/Yahoo/Bing/Et al and their algorithms are clearly responsible for this kind of garbage floating to the top. The people hurt most by SEG are people trying to use the search engine to find information, not advertising and SPAM.
Let's face it, the search engines are free and they can do what they please. However, we don't have to use them if we don't like them. Mr. Santorum should try and find an SEG expert to out-SEG the "negative" site.
Lastly, a twist on an oldie but goodie:
What is the best platform for discussing politics?
Creativity spurs different ways to approach engineering. Or if a new scientific breakthrough occurs, we know what engineering applications it could hold.
I hope the folks at CERN are not using Brannon Braga and his over user of EPS (manifolds,junctions,conduits,power,levels,generators) as inspiration for the truly great work they are doing.
Your fail is the same as most people who watched and not read Frankenstein. The title of the book is the doctor not the monster. The monster is not named Frankenstein and the story is not about the monster nor the creation of the monster. For me, the book is about the doctor and is commentary on the medical profession of the time and their belief that their minuscule knowledge and accidental discoveries, about how we human beings function, gives them the power of God and what happens when they try to be God. It's too bad that most medical universities don't make this required reading prior to receiving a diploma. I'd also force them to watch "The Doctor" with William Hurt, although I realize it was not a sci-fi movie.
The best sci-fi IMHO can best be described as morality plays mostly about 6 out of the 7 deadly sins (don't remember too many stories about killing being wrong in the sci-fi genre). That's what most of sci-fi stories from the 50's/60's were including: Twilight Zone, Outer Limits and Star Trek. Even Next-Gen stories followed that formula, until Berman, Braga & Taylor turned the entire Star Trek universe into a touchy-feely soap opera.
And it's not unethical for a big money lobby to draft legislation behind closed doors and only spring it on the public once their paid puppets have passed it?
I agree with most of your post but I would hate for folks to lose sight of the point of my post which was not so much about the law firm nonsense, though they did perjure themselves when they claimed they could not access their data.
The point was about the same government who traveled to the other side of the world to capture someone who was "hurting" Hollywood ( though I haven't seen any Hollywood exec needing foodstamps) and yet literally laughed at me about the exact same type of theft with a perpetrator who was within walking distance of their downtown Chicago computer crime division.
What I hate....more than any other injustice is the double standard. We're all supposed to be afforded equal protection under the law. I could have even understood had there been an investigation and a "sorry, not enough evidence to prosecute" response. However, my complaint was held in the same regard as if I walked into their offices wearing an aluminum hat and complained of being followed by aliens. Adding insult to injury, it was specifically a 5th amendment issue:
nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Had the headlines read: HOLLYWOOD TRIES TO TRACK DOWN OWNERS OF MEGAUPLOAD TO SERVE THEM A SUBPOENA, US GOVT SILENT, I would at least have the comfort that the Constitution is protecting us all the same.
Anyway, I could rant on and on. All I would really like to see is a change to copyright law saying that if you publish your works, you have exclusivity for 5,10 or 20 years or maybe only days-to-weeks for more volatile material and then said works enter the public domain with no residuals for platform changes.
I hate to pick on Aerosmith as they're one of my favorite bands (and one of the first to release music digitally for those old enough to remember), but: In 1972 I bought a copy of "Toys in the Attic" on vinyl. When I got my first car with a cassette player, I bought "Toys in the Attic" to have a quality version for the car. When CD's came out I bought "Toys in the Attic" to have a crystal clear version. I've already paid my licensing fees twice more than I should have, however the RIAA wants me to buy "Toys in the Attic" again in MP3 format so I can listen on my iPod/iPhone. When is enough....enough? I even have a Foreigner CD that has a disclaimer about the sound quality not being what one would expect on a CD because it was made from the original unclean-able studio masters. So basically they ripped the album and charged me again for the same quality I could have gotten if I ripped my vinyl copy myself.
Just once I would like to hear from genuine copyright holders on slashdot who both make a living from their creative works *AND* support un-regulated torrenting and file sharing
Sir or Madam,
I apologize for the length and I know some will feel this is irrelevant, but I feel the background is important to the point.
I am 100% behind the free sharing of all content and for searching out alternative methods of payment.
The most blatant and egregious circumstance that has helped form my opinions are my own experience with copyrighted works and infringement of said works.
In 2006 my company did extensive work for a law firm. The firm had a service agreement in place (since 1996) with my company, under which they purchased time at an hourly rate & licensed our proprietary technologies for which they paid a monthly fee. They purchased a new server for about $15,000.00 and requested our expertise to configure the new server, and their network of about 80 workstations, in order to replace their current 5 or 6 varied-platform servers with this huge AIX-based server. What they forgot is that $15,000.00 was the price of the server & Informix software. When they received a bill for $65,000.00 for time, they proceeded in typical lawyer fashion to sue my company and myself personally for incompetence and a slew of other trumped charges (which were eventually dismissed) in order to avoid payment. For 10 years we provided outstanding performance and overnight became incompetent?
After installation, my company maintained the 'admin' passwords and continued to provide support for the new configurations. During this time there were a few issues which were resolved and their systems were otherwise working flawlessly with 100% access to their data. After three months of non-payment from them, their workstations began displaying a simple non-repeating license non-compliance message upon reboot. They perpetrated a fraud on the courts and acted like their data was inaccessible due to our maintaining the admin passwords. I could really go on, but the main point that I wanted to make is in regards to the proprietary email/firewall extensions, custom Samba Active-Directory extensions & custom tools which were all protected by the admin passwords and the subsequent handing over of said works. The lawyers proceeded to bring us into court under a mandatory restraining order and the judge compelled my company to turn over the admin passwords and in turn all of our protected works. They then proceeded to give that admin password to one of our competitors, in turn giving that competitor access to all of our protected configuration & administration tools including sources & binaries.
My next move was to hire a copyright attorney in pu
Interesting to bring up Wikipedia. Would it be right if I wanted to view the Wikipedia pages of Adolf Eichmann & Josef Mengele at the Library of Skokie and was asked to view those pages on a separate more non-conspicuous computer? How about viewing the pages about Martin Luther King Jr at the library of Birmingham, AL? What if I went to the library in Harlem and started viewing the Wikipedia pages about the KKK and David Duke while wearing a "David Duke for President" T-Shirt?
All of this information is available from Wikipedia
While the guy may have been a jerk-off (pun-intended), he was well within his constitutionally protected rights.
Someone else said, "your rights end when it infringes on mine". That is correct. If I showed up at your house and sat on your porch watching porn on my laptop, I'm infringing on your rights. When I'm in public and you choose to enter that public area, you choose to abide by the rules that all of us have chosen to live under which includes listening to and seeing things that you find objectionable. Or you have the option to step back into your protected home, close your eyes, or watch Sesame Street at the secluded corner cubicle.
As for the slipper slope argument all I can say is TSA. I mean did anyone seriously believe that we would have to be x-rayed and take off our shoes to travel back in 1999? Recently a friends wife who has a green card went to the airport to pick up a friend arriving with valid legal documents. When she went to TSA to find out why the friend was being detained, they then asked for her "papers" and detained her as well as questioned her about all of the residents of her home. But No, there is no slippery-slope.
What is really scary to me is how many people actually feel it's a good idea to censor anything given the current climate in this country regarding personal liberties.
Erm, except no one seems to have pointed out any problems other than (1) the version numbers are higher and (2) some people don't like updating their software often, so they're going to give up on Firefox and switch to Chrome.
My company is developing a product which is highly dependent on javascript speed. When we started coding the project in early 2010, FF was our targeted browser because of JS speed. Throughout 2010 and 2011, FF's javascript engine seemed to take a huge performance hit that exponentially decreased as the version numbers increased. The only issue that matters to us at the moment is that even with the supposed rewritten JIT engine, Chrome spins circles around FF. Safari's engine is even faster. As a matter of fact, Safari running under wine on Ubuntu is faster than either Chrome or FF. For anyone who cares, our test platforms include Windows, Linux & MacOS on equivalent Quad-Core 2.4Ghz systems with 8G memory. Every test invariably comes up Safari, Chrome, Opera, Firefox. We stopped wasting our time with IE at version 6 because the JS code required too many "IF BROWSER==IE" exceptions.
Three suggestions:
1) Nobody really cares about the version numbers if the software is 100% functional for the intended task.
2) Spend more time making sure the engine works than on the fancy coat of paint with flames on the hood. I've never fired up someone's browser and said, "Wow what a great theme!".
3) From a user standpoint, 3 seconds is an eternity when waiting for the UI to respond
Withholding contributions is perfectly legal. Giving contributions for a favorable ruling is a bit grey but probably still legal or at the very least unprovable. Threatening to withhold contributions unless you vote my way is the equivalent of "Vote my way and I'll give you piles of money" and is quid-pro-quo bordering on extortion.
This Dodd clown supposedly came right out and said:
Candidly, those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.
I would caution people don’t make the assumption that because the quote ‘Hollywood community’ has been historically supportive of Democrats, which they have, don’t make the false assumptions this year that because we did it in years past, we will do it this year. These issues before us — this is the only issue that goes right to the heart of this industry.
Agreed! So many teachers feel that their position in a classroom with a captive audience gives them the right to stand on the soapbox and fill our children's heads with whatever their drivel of the day. Give kids the tools and they will invariably figure out the the truth. The smart kids at least, the others will go on to be politicians, actors and lawyers.
I'll bet if we took blood samples we could confirm chemically that somebody's been smoking the ganj. Exactly how in the hell do they know that these rocks that fell from the sky were specifically from Mars? Why not the moon? Venus? Saturn? Shoe-Levy? Oh so sick of these people with their pronouncement of speculation as science fact. I think I should start smoking the ganj.
Imagine the entire populous of the US suing the government for not resolving the job situation? Or how about the copyright laws themselves? Maybe even suing for giving such a huge bailout to Wall Street and their ilk? It'll be pretty interesting to see what comes of this.
Slashdot Mirror
As shown where? By whom? Any example? Not an opinion because you disagreed with what they said, a real example of them reporting something that can factually be proven to be a lie?
And BTW I'd run that 'you are a liar' comment that you publicly posted past your legal team while I go ahead and run it past mine.
Intelligencia...........where are you?
I beg just for one example of 'they lie'. Just one. Preferably a coherent one but just one example. Anybody?
Isn't the original post whining about fox news and their not towing the mainstream liberal media line? Why then should I stop whining? Although I don't feel that requesting and/or expecting equal treatment as whining.
I've had plenty of moderator points recently and have not used any to quell dissenting opinion. Are my words truly harming anyone? My original post was just to express my disgust at the raw hatred wrought on Fox News over the years, but seeing as that is not enough, I'll be more thorough.
First of all let me say, I've posted this here before but I'll post it again:
I HATE DOUBLE STANDARDS
.
Why is it okay to slam Fox, but say anything about a liberal and the world comes crashing down.
I'll at least post two reasons why I have my opinion, I wonder if Mr. Arse could post and example of me doing acrobatics while my head is up my arse. And btw, using ARSE instead of ASS doesn't make you intelligent.
During Clinton's Lewinsky scandal (I refuse to use 'Gate' as in MonicaGate or LewinskyGate, Nixon's mess was about the Watergate Hotel and had nothing to do with a 'gate' as the idiot press so loves to stick 'gate' at the end of every scandal, but I digress), I watched as every mainstream news outlet gave Mr. Clinton a pass on his "...it depends on what your meaning of is is" while at the same time berated Kenneth Starr for following through on.......wait for it.....not sex with Lewinsky....., but LYING UNDER OATH TO AVOID PROSECUTION IN A CRIMINAL SEXUAL HARASSMENT CASE". Does anybody even realize this? The only place I heard about it was on Fox. Everybody jokes about the stained dress, but what about the stained soul of Clinton's real victim? You won't hear about that on XXX Nightly News.
During the 2000 election, I watched every news outlet that was available on DirectTV at the time. Even every OTA station had the usual suspects (Brokaw, Donaldson, et al) spewing a lot of derisive anti-Bush comments, editorializing on the merits of challenging Bush's votes (although nowhere on the screen were the words 'editorial' or 'commentary'), and interviewing only those people who furthered their agenda, primarily liberal dems. Nothing about the cherry-picking that Mr. Al 'Climate-Change' Gore was trying to do in Florida (in case you don't remember, he wanted to only recount certain counties that he knew were in his favor and not those counties that might show more Bush votes despite a STATE LAW requiring ALL votes to be recounted or none and he CHOSE none) nor his attempts at disenfranchising the overseas military personal at the time by claiming their votes were somehow invalid. At one point NBC had Jesse Jackson stating emphatically that Bush stole the election and that people should 'stay out the Bushes'. Brokaw's response was a) question jackson as to his proof regarding his claims? b) allow a counterpoint opinion from a conservative? c) Go to commercial.........hint: it wasn't A or B.
Fox, on the other hand, presented both democrats presenting their arguments and conservatives presenting theirs. Sometimes quite heatedly from both sides, but from BOTH sides. The reason they're not considered fair-and-balanced is that the liberals are not use to having their reasoning questioned by 'the brain box' in their living rooms nor having to think for themselves. Why is it so wrong to allow Newt Gingrich or Pat Buchannon the same air time as allowed to the likes of Gore, Clinton and Pelosi? What is so wrong about allowing people to think for themselves?
I'd like to see wikileaks release emails between the news and entertainment staff at some Not Boring Channel and see how many 'entertainers' were given directives to spew jokes promoting the party line.
IMHO, Fox is very fair-and-balanced for anyone who actually watches the channel rather than listening to out of context sound bites on another Classic News Network or Not Boring Channel or (god help us) El Centro de Comedy.
Now modded down to troll? Read my other posts. I post with a real handle, never anonymously and feel that the OP was flame bait. I am not a troll and don't have the time to wast with this childish nonsense. I won't be wasting my time on slashdot anymore.
from the wrath of Lou Dobbs and Fox News and others to whom the children's book-turned-Disney film is little more than liberal propaganda. ...
How is my comment rated a '0'. It was directly related to the OP as noted above. Lumping all of Fox News "and others" together was just a slam at Fox News and has nothing to do with real news, especially on SlashDot. Even worse was the comment about having my head in my 'arse', karmic points or not should have been modded down for being the flame-bait that it is.
If you don't like Fox News, fine. Being someone who appreciates complete stories rather than sound bites to help me form my opinions, I rather like Fox News and have never heard the entire network slam "The Lorax" and felt the generalizing of the OP was unfair and warranted a critical comment to that effect.
The 'mod' points, as I understand them, are not supposed to be applied based on whether you agree or disagree with the poster but rather the relevance to the topic at hand.
Pretty typical liberal baloney,
Can't defend your position......
resort to personal attacks
more personal attacks=karma points
Now I understand the rules
Thanks for nothing
The fact that my post was demoted to '0' and yours was modded a '2' does more to prove my original point than any words. Have a nice day.
Soooo sick of you liberals getting angry at Fox for presenting reality as opposed to what you see through your PINKo colored glasses.
Please get some intelligence and go FOX yourself.
First off, IMHO, Santorum is a moron. That being said, I have to agree with some of the complaints about the search engines and the "SEO" experts gaming the engines. If the site in question is truly in the top due to popularity then too bad for Santorum. Forcing the search engines to 'demote' negative rhetoric would do more for censorship then SOPA, PIPA & ACTA combined and is probably a bad idea.
I do however feel that the search engines have become bastion's of crap as of late. For example: I recently needed a replacement fan for my laptop, an ASUS X71VN. My first move is always Amazon. Not finding anything there, I proceeded to ASUS' store, part no longer available. Finally I proceeded to search for: "ASUS" "X71VN" "fan" (quotes included so that google will 'AND' my keywords rather than 'OR'ing them). I was greeted with tons of results, most of which didn't have all of the keywords visible in their content, did not sell fans but laptop power supplies and the multiple sites that returned were pretty much the same vendor with at last count had 25 domain names, all with slightly different presentation, but basically the same vendor. Other usual suspects of useless drivel: fixya.com, driver download spam and one of the latest fucktards yogi.com. It would have taken less time to drive to Fry's with a small screw driver, open one of their display laptops and remove the fan than I spent trying to purchase this ubiquitous item.
I can see having a complaint against this type of Search Engine Gaming (SEG). Google/Yahoo/Bing/Et al and their algorithms are clearly responsible for this kind of garbage floating to the top. The people hurt most by SEG are people trying to use the search engine to find information, not advertising and SPAM.
Let's face it, the search engines are free and they can do what they please. However, we don't have to use them if we don't like them. Mr. Santorum should try and find an SEG expert to out-SEG the "negative" site.
Lastly, a twist on an oldie but goodie:
What is the best platform for discussing politics?
MS-DOS, since you often have to 'C'-Colon-Enter.
Creativity spurs different ways to approach engineering. Or if a new scientific breakthrough occurs, we know what engineering applications it could hold.
I hope the folks at CERN are not using Brannon Braga and his over user of EPS (manifolds,junctions,conduits,power,levels,generators) as inspiration for the truly great work they are doing.
I'll second that. I've been ranting about my flying car for years.
Star Wars. Classic good versus evil opera set in space.
Your fail is the same as most people who watched and not read Frankenstein. The title of the book is the doctor not the monster. The monster is not named Frankenstein and the story is not about the monster nor the creation of the monster. For me, the book is about the doctor and is commentary on the medical profession of the time and their belief that their minuscule knowledge and accidental discoveries, about how we human beings function, gives them the power of God and what happens when they try to be God. It's too bad that most medical universities don't make this required reading prior to receiving a diploma. I'd also force them to watch "The Doctor" with William Hurt, although I realize it was not a sci-fi movie.
The best sci-fi IMHO can best be described as morality plays mostly about 6 out of the 7 deadly sins (don't remember too many stories about killing being wrong in the sci-fi genre). That's what most of sci-fi stories from the 50's/60's were including: Twilight Zone, Outer Limits and Star Trek. Even Next-Gen stories followed that formula, until Berman, Braga & Taylor turned the entire Star Trek universe into a touchy-feely soap opera.
And it's not unethical for a big money lobby to draft legislation behind closed doors and only spring it on the public once their paid puppets have passed it?
I agree with most of your post but I would hate for folks to lose sight of the point of my post which was not so much about the law firm nonsense, though they did perjure themselves when they claimed they could not access their data.
The point was about the same government who traveled to the other side of the world to capture someone who was "hurting" Hollywood ( though I haven't seen any Hollywood exec needing foodstamps) and yet literally laughed at me about the exact same type of theft with a perpetrator who was within walking distance of their downtown Chicago computer crime division.
What I hate....more than any other injustice is the double standard. We're all supposed to be afforded equal protection under the law. I could have even understood had there been an investigation and a "sorry, not enough evidence to prosecute" response. However, my complaint was held in the same regard as if I walked into their offices wearing an aluminum hat and complained of being followed by aliens. Adding insult to injury, it was specifically a 5th amendment issue:
nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Had the headlines read: HOLLYWOOD TRIES TO TRACK DOWN OWNERS OF MEGAUPLOAD TO SERVE THEM A SUBPOENA, US GOVT SILENT, I would at least have the comfort that the Constitution is protecting us all the same.
Anyway, I could rant on and on. All I would really like to see is a change to copyright law saying that if you publish your works, you have exclusivity for 5,10 or 20 years or maybe only days-to-weeks for more volatile material and then said works enter the public domain with no residuals for platform changes.
I hate to pick on Aerosmith as they're one of my favorite bands (and one of the first to release music digitally for those old enough to remember), but: In 1972 I bought a copy of "Toys in the Attic" on vinyl. When I got my first car with a cassette player, I bought "Toys in the Attic" to have a quality version for the car. When CD's came out I bought "Toys in the Attic" to have a crystal clear version. I've already paid my licensing fees twice more than I should have, however the RIAA wants me to buy "Toys in the Attic" again in MP3 format so I can listen on my iPod/iPhone. When is enough....enough? I even have a Foreigner CD that has a disclaimer about the sound quality not being what one would expect on a CD because it was made from the original unclean-able studio masters. So basically they ripped the album and charged me again for the same quality I could have gotten if I ripped my vinyl copy myself.
Just once I would like to hear from genuine copyright holders on slashdot who both make a living from their creative works *AND* support un-regulated torrenting and file sharing
Sir or Madam,
I apologize for the length and I know some will feel this is irrelevant, but I feel the background is important to the point.
I am a professional software engineer of 25 years ( AST-Cons @ http://www.sco.com/support/docs/openserver/506/rnotes/ipxrnC.install_configure.html & many other non-published works) and a semi-professional musician of 30 years ( http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v1=7&ti=1,7&SAB1=Chuck%20Fletcher&BOOL1=all%20of%20these&FLD1=Keyword%20Anywhere%20(GKEY)%20(GKEY)&GRP1=OR%20with%20next%20set&SAB2=&BOOL2=as%20a%20phrase&FLD2=Keyword%20Anywhere%20(GKEY)%20(GKEY)&CNT=25&PID=wKzqQlM4-haqA4MgAO7ElXsllTO36&SEQ=20120206023617&SID=1 , http://www.soundclick.com/ChuckFletcher & http://www.musicpreview.com/ )
I am 100% behind the free sharing of all content and for searching out alternative methods of payment.
The most blatant and egregious circumstance that has helped form my opinions are my own experience with copyrighted works and infringement of said works.
In 2006 my company did extensive work for a law firm. The firm had a service agreement in place (since 1996) with my company, under which they purchased time at an hourly rate & licensed our proprietary technologies for which they paid a monthly fee. They purchased a new server for about $15,000.00 and requested our expertise to configure the new server, and their network of about 80 workstations, in order to replace their current 5 or 6 varied-platform servers with this huge AIX-based server. What they forgot is that $15,000.00 was the price of the server & Informix software. When they received a bill for $65,000.00 for time, they proceeded in typical lawyer fashion to sue my company and myself personally for incompetence and a slew of other trumped charges (which were eventually dismissed) in order to avoid payment. For 10 years we provided outstanding performance and overnight became incompetent?
After installation, my company maintained the 'admin' passwords and continued to provide support for the new configurations. During this time there were a few issues which were resolved and their systems were otherwise working flawlessly with 100% access to their data. After three months of non-payment from them, their workstations began displaying a simple non-repeating license non-compliance message upon reboot. They perpetrated a fraud on the courts and acted like their data was inaccessible due to our maintaining the admin passwords. I could really go on, but the main point that I wanted to make is in regards to the proprietary email/firewall extensions, custom Samba Active-Directory extensions & custom tools which were all protected by the admin passwords and the subsequent handing over of said works. The lawyers proceeded to bring us into court under a mandatory restraining order and the judge compelled my company to turn over the admin passwords and in turn all of our protected works. They then proceeded to give that admin password to one of our competitors, in turn giving that competitor access to all of our protected configuration & administration tools including sources & binaries.
My next move was to hire a copyright attorney in pu
Interesting to bring up Wikipedia. Would it be right if I wanted to view the Wikipedia pages of Adolf Eichmann & Josef Mengele at the Library of Skokie and was asked to view those pages on a separate more non-conspicuous computer? How about viewing the pages about Martin Luther King Jr at the library of Birmingham, AL? What if I went to the library in Harlem and started viewing the Wikipedia pages about the KKK and David Duke while wearing a "David Duke for President" T-Shirt?
All of this information is available from Wikipedia
As is the Peter North (pornographer) page which contains a link to http://www.vippeternorth.com/pages/biography.html which contains? That's right, porn.
While the guy may have been a jerk-off (pun-intended), he was well within his constitutionally protected rights.
Someone else said, "your rights end when it infringes on mine". That is correct. If I showed up at your house and sat on your porch watching porn on my laptop, I'm infringing on your rights. When I'm in public and you choose to enter that public area, you choose to abide by the rules that all of us have chosen to live under which includes listening to and seeing things that you find objectionable. Or you have the option to step back into your protected home, close your eyes, or watch Sesame Street at the secluded corner cubicle.
As for the slipper slope argument all I can say is TSA. I mean did anyone seriously believe that we would have to be x-rayed and take off our shoes to travel back in 1999? Recently a friends wife who has a green card went to the airport to pick up a friend arriving with valid legal documents. When she went to TSA to find out why the friend was being detained, they then asked for her "papers" and detained her as well as questioned her about all of the residents of her home. But No, there is no slippery-slope.
What is really scary to me is how many people actually feel it's a good idea to censor anything given the current climate in this country regarding personal liberties.
Erm, except no one seems to have pointed out any problems other than (1) the version numbers are higher and (2) some people don't like updating their software often, so they're going to give up on Firefox and switch to Chrome.
My company is developing a product which is highly dependent on javascript speed. When we started coding the project in early 2010, FF was our targeted browser because of JS speed. Throughout 2010 and 2011, FF's javascript engine seemed to take a huge performance hit that exponentially decreased as the version numbers increased. The only issue that matters to us at the moment is that even with the supposed rewritten JIT engine, Chrome spins circles around FF. Safari's engine is even faster. As a matter of fact, Safari running under wine on Ubuntu is faster than either Chrome or FF. For anyone who cares, our test platforms include Windows, Linux & MacOS on equivalent Quad-Core 2.4Ghz systems with 8G memory. Every test invariably comes up Safari, Chrome, Opera, Firefox. We stopped wasting our time with IE at version 6 because the JS code required too many "IF BROWSER==IE" exceptions.
Three suggestions:
1) Nobody really cares about the version numbers if the software is 100% functional for the intended task.
2) Spend more time making sure the engine works than on the fancy coat of paint with flames on the hood. I've never fired up someone's browser and said, "Wow what a great theme!".
3) From a user standpoint, 3 seconds is an eternity when waiting for the UI to respond
This Dodd clown supposedly came right out and said:
Candidly, those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.
I would caution people don’t make the assumption that because the quote ‘Hollywood community’ has been historically supportive of Democrats, which they have, don’t make the false assumptions this year that because we did it in years past, we will do it this year. These issues before us — this is the only issue that goes right to the heart of this industry.
Sounds like extortion to me :)
Agreed! So many teachers feel that their position in a classroom with a captive audience gives them the right to stand on the soapbox and fill our children's heads with whatever their drivel of the day. Give kids the tools and they will invariably figure out the the truth. The smart kids at least, the others will go on to be politicians, actors and lawyers.
I'll bet if we took blood samples we could confirm chemically that somebody's been smoking the ganj. Exactly how in the hell do they know that these rocks that fell from the sky were specifically from Mars? Why not the moon? Venus? Saturn? Shoe-Levy? Oh so sick of these people with their pronouncement of speculation as science fact. I think I should start smoking the ganj.
Imagine the entire populous of the US suing the government for not resolving the job situation? Or how about the copyright laws themselves? Maybe even suing for giving such a huge bailout to Wall Street and their ilk? It'll be pretty interesting to see what comes of this.
Being part Irish, I find that comment rude, boorish and..... Impossible to deny.............LOL
Does anyone know under what venue the summons was filed? Just wondering for my own information.