You wonder if these will start getting banned in all types of public areas
This is already the case around here (Ottawa, Canada). Many fitness clubs in the area prohibit bringing cell phones with cameras into the locker rooms.
Karma whore. Everyone's already seen that site already. If you're going to whore, you should include an obligatory fragment of especially witty Simpson's/Futurama dialog, or perhaps a clever limerick/haiku, preferably involving "SCO." That'll get you "+1:Funny" mods for sure.
What the hell? How is trading copies of broadcast television shows illegal? Since when is it piracy to copy and share copies of tv shows THAT ARE ON TV? I pay my dues in cable bills, so how the hell is it illegal? Recording shows to VHS has been done plenty of times - and you'd think they'd want you to watch the shows again and again....I don't see the logic or the losses involved here.
In a word, it's ad-revenue. When you download the shows, presumeably they're commercial-free, and thus, no one is making any money at all off of you, yet you're enjoying their content for free. That's the problem.
Either way you end up seeing the show
They don't make money when you watch the show. They make money when you watch the ads.
For the curious, the "5 or 6 channels I watch" are TLC, Discovery, FOX (I gotta have my COPS), CNN Headline News (morning fast-food serving of news), Global (a Canadian NBC/CBS affiliate that broadcasts the most popular shows from both those networks [eg. Joey, Survivor, Apprentice]), CityTV (my wife watches Smallville and Enterprise), and CBC (which doesn't count because it's the publicly-funded channel in Canada, and would be free anyway).
And maybe HGTV and Comedy Network. Every other channel on the dial could go away, and I wouldn't care (if I even noticed).
Because otherwise you would have to pay $99 a month for your cable..
Only if the current "bundling" model is preserved, and I'm forced to keep the same 200 channels. I currently pay about $80 a month for cable ($25 of that is PVR rental), and I don't even know how many channels I get. One day, I was up, flipping around in the 600's, and I was surprised to find a bunch of the same channels in the low 100's, just timeshifted. I didn't even know I got those channels!
If TV stations would let us pick which channels we want, I would gladly pay $5, even $10 per channel, if they were commercial-free, because there are really maybe only 5 channels I ever watch. Yes, yes, I know all about the CRTC Canadian Content rules, and why the cable companies are not allowed to offer the exact thing I just suggested. I'm saying it would be nice. Sure, all those niche networks would disappear, but such is capitalism, isn't it? Why are we propping up obscure channels anyway, when the market should be deciding if those channels deserve to exist?
Re:TV is actually worse than movies...
on
TV Piracy is Next
·
· Score: 1
Squeeze your fingers into a fist. Slowly move a middle finger upwards. Repeat with the next corporation. It's called "fighting for your rights".
But then what do you do when the corporation that signs your paychecks decides they don't like being flipped off, and fires you?
Work for yourself, freelance, start your own business.
But then, if you're successful, you'll grow, and become one of those very corporations you hate! That's exactly how all of the existing corporations came into being. Then, would I have to give myself the finger? Then, in response, would I have to fire myself? Ack, I'm so confused! What do I do? How should I pay for food/housing in your world!?!
The industry SHOULD and COULD adapt to this by offering their own high quality copies of TV episodes via BitTorrent.
They'd still have to include ads. How long do you think before someone hacked out the ads and re-offered the same content for free, ad-free (as is currently available now)? How would that be any different from the current situation, except that a few of the users on the network, offering the TV torrents, would be the studios themselves (still not making any money off of it)?
Then, of course, people like you would just come back and tell them they should shut up, stop complaining and "adapt" or "innovate" some more.
I think managers love black-hole employees. That is people who suck up projects continuously. They never finish it, and if it's done... it's done totally half assed.
That's completely absurd. Why would any manager love an employee that generates such results?
ESRB did what it was meant to do. It gave parents a way to figure out what types of content are to be found in a given game title.
What next? Is Congress going to hold hearings on hentai next?
Uhm, I think what they're asking for is for the ESRB ratings to actually be enforced, a la movie theatres and adult magazines. Seems like a very logical request to me.
In other news the movie industry and book industry just keep putting out their usual mature content crap.
Movie theatres are much, much more diligent about enforcing their age restrictions. Of course there are some that are lax, and kids get through, but it simply can't be compared to the "anything goes" attitude of video game retail sales.
Adult books/magazines are on the top shelf of the racks, often with their covers hidden, and even if a 12 year old could reach them, the stores typically will refuse to sell it to them.
Also, last year the average age of "video gamers" was 27. Not sure what the source was, but I remember it being reputable.
Was this the average age, or median age? Slashdot has made me alert to the magic of statistical manipulation, and when you said this, I instantly envisioned a legion hall full of septogenarians fragging each other in a 30-player game of Unreal on nights when there's no Bingo. That'd drive up the average age in a hurry.:)
When are people going to start taking responsibility for the things they and their children do, rather than blaming it upon "outside influences."
It's not exactly an "either-or" situation. You see, society/culture will exerts a lot of influence on kids. The parents can work to direct this influence, by controlling the amounts of influences they deem positive/negative, but if society shifts, and begins offering grossly disproportionate amounts of "good" vs. "bad" influences (as measured by typically acceptable cultural standards), then the parent will understandably complain, as their job is being made harder. It's not a matter of saying simply they're either doing their job or they're not, but rather how much the media and society is acting with the parents' values, or against them, acting as either an enabler more than a hazard, or vice-versa.
Crazy things happen when bounds aren't kept within check.
Equally crazy things happen when we fail to learn from history. Funny you should mention prohibition, as it is back with a vengeance. Only this time, the culprit is marijuana instead of alcohol. Two remarkably comparable drugs, with identical consequences under prohibition (that is, the police are overworked, and drug lords profit from the monopoly they have on distribution).
Ever notice how when people say stuff like that, it almost always means, "More people should be like me."?
I can't tell you how many times I've run a Java program and gotten a traceback which mentions a "null pointer exception".
Those tracebacks are a Godsend compared to C/C++'s completely unhelpful "Segmentation fault." It makes it much easier to find the bug. But why are you blaming the language for a poorly-written programs? Should I mention how many times I've seen an "Illegal Instruction" exception on Windows, and tell you how much C++ much therefore suck?
RTFA. The photos Google is linking to are on "rogue" foreign sites, not the adult site in question. Other people stole (sorry, "infringed" them) and are sharing them for free. Google's just linking to them, as it blindly goes around the 'net, indexing stuff.
* In Canada my downloading isn't illegal due to the levies I pay on my media.
Wrong. The levy (note: singular) does not make downloading music legal. It makes it legal to borrow a CD from a friend, and copy it. It must be a music CD (not comedy, sound effects, books-on-CD, or anything like that). You must do the copying yourself - you cannot have your friend copy his own CD for you. You cannot give away or sell your copy of the CD.
All these details are spelled out very clearly in the amendment to the Copyright Act that was part of the deal of the levy. However, those amendments didn't say anything at all about downloading. Don't believe me? read it for yourself. It's Section 8 of the Canada Copyright Act.
I think what you were referring to was the ambiguous legal status of downloading in Canada do to some conflicting rulings by federal supreme court judges. Presently, downloading is interpreted to be legal based on these favourable (to pirates) rulings, but it has nothing to do with the levy. The Levy and Section 8 of the copyright act go hand-in-hand. The legal status of downloading is merely based on precedence set by some rulings.
it is about the right of network owners not having to waste their resources turning their own equipment into snitches for the MPAA
No, you don't get it. If you own the network, then you have an obligation to perform due diligence in investigating illegal uses of that network. Let me put it to you this way: if I rent a car from Hertz, then use it as the getaway car in a bank robbery, and the police show up at Hertz and ask for the records of who had rented that car during the period in question, would Hertz be perfectly justified in telling the police, "Get bent, we don't have time to waste looking up that info just so you can catch your bank robber."?
If you think that's not the case, well, there are pilot-less planes already
Small nit-pick, but those "pilot-less planes" are do not carry any weapons. They're prohibited from doing so, under the Geneva Convention. Actually, all "remote killing" machines are illegal under the Geneva Conventions, and the use of such machines would constitute a war crime. Killing must be done person-to-person. It's in the rules.
They'll start on employees next, move it up to registered drivers, you'll see.
What the hell are you talking about? "Drivers" are already tracked! Are you nutcase zealots oblivous to the giant steal plates affixed to the front/rear of your vehicles, broadcasting a unique ID to every mugger, thief, rapist and cop within visual range? "No special readers needed!"
Why don't you privacy nutcases ever complain about license plates? If I'm stalking a woman, and no nothing else about other than what she looks like, I can follow her to her car, note her license plate, then look up all the personal info I need on her on the state/provincial registry (usually for a nominal fee of $10 or so). How does THAT not infuriate you zealots? You drive around, and everyone within eyesight can look you up and learn your name, your birthday, your address, and a bunch of other stuff.
And yet, I don't hear anyone - not one single person - arguing for the abolition of visible license plates on vehicles.
mega-conglomerates who sue their customers despite record sales!
If music pirates are RIAA "customers," then car thieves are Ford "customers."
Someone who takes the product without paying is by definition not a "customer." Customers pay.
And what the heck did you mean by "despite record sales?" That doesn't even make sense. Perhaps you mean "despite RISING record sales?" That still wouldn't make sense, because it could easily be argued that the sales are rising because of a successful legal campaigns against the freeloading pirates. Had you meant the opposite, "despite DECLINING record sales," it still wouldn't make sense, because you would appear to be suggesting that the record companies simply do nothing to try and combat the obvious impact the pirates are having on sales figures.
Any way you look at it, your post doesn't make any sense at all. I think you were just seeking to justify your freeloading music/movie leech ways. Why don't you go sneak into a concert without paying, or hop a turnstile at the subway station without paying... it's all the same thing.
Re:Disconnect and motivation
on
The Music Man
·
· Score: 1
You are confused. In Canada, it is perfectly legal for you to loan a CD to a friend, and for him to make his own personal copy of it. What is illegal would be for you to do the copying for him. That is, it is illegal to copy a CD and give away/sell the copy.
I'm using tags now that work 150 feet from the transmitter.
Please re-read my post. I deliberately bolded the word passive for a reason. The RFID tags discussed in the article are passive. There is no such thing as a passive RFID tag that can be read over distanced larger than a few feet, let alone through walls.
Most of the Oxycotin addicts I know are rich housewives.
Rich housewives who will burglarize a home for a small bottle of Prozac or painkillers? Not likely. Breaking and entering takes a special kind of person. And housewives ain't it.
1. RTFA. The RFIDs are on the bulk packaging received at the pharmacy, they are not on the small containers doled out to the customers.
2. Why would a junkie, desperate for his next hit, be driving around in a vehicle, with expensive remote-RFID sensing equipment, looking for prescription drugs? Why wouldn't he just sell the laptop/van and buy the heroin he wants?
3. Where would this highly-sophisticated, highly-educated, well-equipped drug addict get a copy of the confidential RFID tag database that he would need in order to make the connection that ID # 8736704385748932 is Penicillin? And if he is capable of hacking (oops, sorry, I mean "cracking") into Pfizer's mainframe and stealing databases, why wouldn't he instead just steal a credit card database?
4. When did anyone invent an RFID reader capable of reading passive RFID tags at a range greater than 3 yards, let alone the 75 feet from the street to your medicine cabinet?
5. Why wouldn't the junkie just skulk around a rich neighborhood, pick a big, dark house that looks empty, with no security alarm stickers in the window, break in, steal the jewelry, and pawn it for drugs? Why go through all the trouble/hassle of war-driving, reading a bunch of RFID tags for foot cremes, when the cheap, classic, time-tested methods still work just fine?
In what world do drug addicts have the intelligence, financial means, and patience to do the ridiculous things you suggest?
Context. The guy was talking about keeping his kids from using "drugs." Obviously, he was referring to the common usage (if not the strict definition) of "drugs." That is, the obvious "hard" illicit narcotics, and soft drugs. Basically, the illegal ones. I'm sure he didn't mean he sought to prevent his daughter from consuming sugar.
Slashdot Mirror
You wonder if these will start getting banned in all types of public areas
This is already the case around here (Ottawa, Canada). Many fitness clubs in the area prohibit bringing cell phones with cameras into the locker rooms.
You should just get a P-P-P-Powerbook instead.
Karma whore. Everyone's already seen that site already. If you're going to whore, you should include an obligatory fragment of especially witty Simpson's/Futurama dialog, or perhaps a clever limerick/haiku, preferably involving "SCO." That'll get you "+1:Funny" mods for sure.
Better luck next time!
What the hell? How is trading copies of broadcast television shows illegal? Since when is it piracy to copy and share copies of tv shows THAT ARE ON TV? I pay my dues in cable bills, so how the hell is it illegal? Recording shows to VHS has been done plenty of times - and you'd think they'd want you to watch the shows again and again....I don't see the logic or the losses involved here.
In a word, it's ad-revenue. When you download the shows, presumeably they're commercial-free, and thus, no one is making any money at all off of you, yet you're enjoying their content for free. That's the problem.
Either way you end up seeing the show
They don't make money when you watch the show. They make money when you watch the ads.
Nice rant, otherwise.
For the curious, the "5 or 6 channels I watch" are TLC, Discovery, FOX (I gotta have my COPS), CNN Headline News (morning fast-food serving of news), Global (a Canadian NBC/CBS affiliate that broadcasts the most popular shows from both those networks [eg. Joey, Survivor, Apprentice]), CityTV (my wife watches Smallville and Enterprise), and CBC (which doesn't count because it's the publicly-funded channel in Canada, and would be free anyway).
And maybe HGTV and Comedy Network. Every other channel on the dial could go away, and I wouldn't care (if I even noticed).
Because otherwise you would have to pay $99 a month for your cable..
Only if the current "bundling" model is preserved, and I'm forced to keep the same 200 channels. I currently pay about $80 a month for cable ($25 of that is PVR rental), and I don't even know how many channels I get. One day, I was up, flipping around in the 600's, and I was surprised to find a bunch of the same channels in the low 100's, just timeshifted. I didn't even know I got those channels!
If TV stations would let us pick which channels we want, I would gladly pay $5, even $10 per channel, if they were commercial-free, because there are really maybe only 5 channels I ever watch. Yes, yes, I know all about the CRTC Canadian Content rules, and why the cable companies are not allowed to offer the exact thing I just suggested. I'm saying it would be nice. Sure, all those niche networks would disappear, but such is capitalism, isn't it? Why are we propping up obscure channels anyway, when the market should be deciding if those channels deserve to exist?
Squeeze your fingers into a fist. Slowly move a middle finger upwards. Repeat with the next corporation. It's called "fighting for your rights".
But then what do you do when the corporation that signs your paychecks decides they don't like being flipped off, and fires you?
Work for yourself, freelance, start your own business.
But then, if you're successful, you'll grow, and become one of those very corporations you hate! That's exactly how all of the existing corporations came into being. Then, would I have to give myself the finger? Then, in response, would I have to fire myself? Ack, I'm so confused! What do I do? How should I pay for food/housing in your world!?!
The industry SHOULD and COULD adapt to this by offering their own high quality copies of TV episodes via BitTorrent.
They'd still have to include ads. How long do you think before someone hacked out the ads and re-offered the same content for free, ad-free (as is currently available now)? How would that be any different from the current situation, except that a few of the users on the network, offering the TV torrents, would be the studios themselves (still not making any money off of it)?
Then, of course, people like you would just come back and tell them they should shut up, stop complaining and "adapt" or "innovate" some more.
I think managers love black-hole employees. That is people who suck up projects continuously. They never finish it, and if it's done... it's done totally half assed.
That's completely absurd. Why would any manager love an employee that generates such results?
ESRB did what it was meant to do. It gave parents a way to figure out what types of content are to be found in a given game title.
What next? Is Congress going to hold hearings on hentai next?
Uhm, I think what they're asking for is for the ESRB ratings to actually be enforced, a la movie theatres and adult magazines. Seems like a very logical request to me.
In other news the movie industry and book industry just keep putting out their usual mature content crap.
Movie theatres are much, much more diligent about enforcing their age restrictions. Of course there are some that are lax, and kids get through, but it simply can't be compared to the "anything goes" attitude of video game retail sales.
Adult books/magazines are on the top shelf of the racks, often with their covers hidden, and even if a 12 year old could reach them, the stores typically will refuse to sell it to them.
Also, last year the average age of "video gamers" was 27. Not sure what the source was, but I remember it being reputable.
:)
Was this the average age, or median age? Slashdot has made me alert to the magic of statistical manipulation, and when you said this, I instantly envisioned a legion hall full of septogenarians fragging each other in a 30-player game of Unreal on nights when there's no Bingo. That'd drive up the average age in a hurry.
When are people going to start taking responsibility for the things they and their children do, rather than blaming it upon "outside influences."
It's not exactly an "either-or" situation. You see, society/culture will exerts a lot of influence on kids. The parents can work to direct this influence, by controlling the amounts of influences they deem positive/negative, but if society shifts, and begins offering grossly disproportionate amounts of "good" vs. "bad" influences (as measured by typically acceptable cultural standards), then the parent will understandably complain, as their job is being made harder. It's not a matter of saying simply they're either doing their job or they're not, but rather how much the media and society is acting with the parents' values, or against them, acting as either an enabler more than a hazard, or vice-versa.
Crazy things happen when bounds aren't kept within check.
Equally crazy things happen when we fail to learn from history. Funny you should mention prohibition, as it is back with a vengeance. Only this time, the culprit is marijuana instead of alcohol. Two remarkably comparable drugs, with identical consequences under prohibition (that is, the police are overworked, and drug lords profit from the monopoly they have on distribution).
My browser has _no_ plugins running by default.
Ever notice how when people say stuff like that, it almost always means, "More people should be like me."?
I can't tell you how many times I've run a Java program and gotten a traceback which mentions a "null pointer exception".
Those tracebacks are a Godsend compared to C/C++'s completely unhelpful "Segmentation fault." It makes it much easier to find the bug. But why are you blaming the language for a poorly-written programs? Should I mention how many times I've seen an "Illegal Instruction" exception on Windows, and tell you how much C++ much therefore suck?
RTFA. The photos Google is linking to are on "rogue" foreign sites, not the adult site in question. Other people stole (sorry, "infringed" them) and are sharing them for free. Google's just linking to them, as it blindly goes around the 'net, indexing stuff.
* In Canada my downloading isn't illegal due to the levies I pay on my media.
Wrong. The levy (note: singular) does not make downloading music legal. It makes it legal to borrow a CD from a friend, and copy it. It must be a music CD (not comedy, sound effects, books-on-CD, or anything like that). You must do the copying yourself - you cannot have your friend copy his own CD for you. You cannot give away or sell your copy of the CD.
All these details are spelled out very clearly in the amendment to the Copyright Act that was part of the deal of the levy. However, those amendments didn't say anything at all about downloading. Don't believe me? read it for yourself. It's Section 8 of the Canada Copyright Act.
I think what you were referring to was the ambiguous legal status of downloading in Canada do to some conflicting rulings by federal supreme court judges. Presently, downloading is interpreted to be legal based on these favourable (to pirates) rulings, but it has nothing to do with the levy. The Levy and Section 8 of the copyright act go hand-in-hand. The legal status of downloading is merely based on precedence set by some rulings.
it is about the right of network owners not having to waste their resources turning their own equipment into snitches for the MPAA
No, you don't get it. If you own the network, then you have an obligation to perform due diligence in investigating illegal uses of that network. Let me put it to you this way: if I rent a car from Hertz, then use it as the getaway car in a bank robbery, and the police show up at Hertz and ask for the records of who had rented that car during the period in question, would Hertz be perfectly justified in telling the police, "Get bent, we don't have time to waste looking up that info just so you can catch your bank robber."?
It's the same thing.
If you think that's not the case, well, there are pilot-less planes already
Small nit-pick, but those "pilot-less planes" are do not carry any weapons. They're prohibited from doing so, under the Geneva Convention. Actually, all "remote killing" machines are illegal under the Geneva Conventions, and the use of such machines would constitute a war crime. Killing must be done person-to-person. It's in the rules.
I've been boycotting the RIAA for over one year now. I was hoping I wouldn't have to boycott the MPAA too -- oh well, I guess I have to.
I will not give them ANY MORE of my money.
Why? Because they're trying to stop people from stealing their products? How dare they! Those bastards!
They'll start on employees next, move it up to registered drivers, you'll see.
What the hell are you talking about? "Drivers" are already tracked! Are you nutcase zealots oblivous to the giant steal plates affixed to the front/rear of your vehicles, broadcasting a unique ID to every mugger, thief, rapist and cop within visual range? "No special readers needed!"
Why don't you privacy nutcases ever complain about license plates? If I'm stalking a woman, and no nothing else about other than what she looks like, I can follow her to her car, note her license plate, then look up all the personal info I need on her on the state/provincial registry (usually for a nominal fee of $10 or so). How does THAT not infuriate you zealots? You drive around, and everyone within eyesight can look you up and learn your name, your birthday, your address, and a bunch of other stuff.
And yet, I don't hear anyone - not one single person - arguing for the abolition of visible license plates on vehicles.
Odd.
mega-conglomerates who sue their customers despite record sales!
If music pirates are RIAA "customers," then car thieves are Ford "customers."
Someone who takes the product without paying is by definition not a "customer." Customers pay.
And what the heck did you mean by "despite record sales?" That doesn't even make sense. Perhaps you mean "despite RISING record sales?" That still wouldn't make sense, because it could easily be argued that the sales are rising because of a successful legal campaigns against the freeloading pirates. Had you meant the opposite, "despite DECLINING record sales," it still wouldn't make sense, because you would appear to be suggesting that the record companies simply do nothing to try and combat the obvious impact the pirates are having on sales figures.
Any way you look at it, your post doesn't make any sense at all. I think you were just seeking to justify your freeloading music/movie leech ways. Why don't you go sneak into a concert without paying, or hop a turnstile at the subway station without paying... it's all the same thing.
You are confused. In Canada, it is perfectly legal for you to loan a CD to a friend, and for him to make his own personal copy of it. What is illegal would be for you to do the copying for him. That is, it is illegal to copy a CD and give away/sell the copy.
I'm using tags now that work 150 feet from the transmitter.
Please re-read my post. I deliberately bolded the word passive for a reason. The RFID tags discussed in the article are passive. There is no such thing as a passive RFID tag that can be read over distanced larger than a few feet, let alone through walls.
Most of the Oxycotin addicts I know are rich housewives.
Rich housewives who will burglarize a home for a small bottle of Prozac or painkillers? Not likely. Breaking and entering takes a special kind of person. And housewives ain't it.
Nice troll. What the heck, I'll bite.
1. RTFA. The RFIDs are on the bulk packaging received at the pharmacy, they are not on the small containers doled out to the customers.
2. Why would a junkie, desperate for his next hit, be driving around in a vehicle, with expensive remote-RFID sensing equipment, looking for prescription drugs? Why wouldn't he just sell the laptop/van and buy the heroin he wants?
3. Where would this highly-sophisticated, highly-educated, well-equipped drug addict get a copy of the confidential RFID tag database that he would need in order to make the connection that ID # 8736704385748932 is Penicillin? And if he is capable of hacking (oops, sorry, I mean "cracking") into Pfizer's mainframe and stealing databases, why wouldn't he instead just steal a credit card database?
4. When did anyone invent an RFID reader capable of reading passive RFID tags at a range greater than 3 yards, let alone the 75 feet from the street to your medicine cabinet?
5. Why wouldn't the junkie just skulk around a rich neighborhood, pick a big, dark house that looks empty, with no security alarm stickers in the window, break in, steal the jewelry, and pawn it for drugs? Why go through all the trouble/hassle of war-driving, reading a bunch of RFID tags for foot cremes, when the cheap, classic, time-tested methods still work just fine?
In what world do drug addicts have the intelligence, financial means, and patience to do the ridiculous things you suggest?
Context. The guy was talking about keeping his kids from using "drugs." Obviously, he was referring to the common usage (if not the strict definition) of "drugs." That is, the obvious "hard" illicit narcotics, and soft drugs. Basically, the illegal ones. I'm sure he didn't mean he sought to prevent his daughter from consuming sugar.