I believe that this is the Anti-Virus/Security lobby that really are talking about this. As noted, there are no names mentioned. Why would someone want to even apply if they were that draconian.
If they think that doing this will increase productivity, they have another thing coming. I personally spend MORE time at the computer and within reach of my phone because of the internet. Sure, I always have a web page open but I usually stick to computer related sites or am using it to plan my business trips.
If one thing that really surprises me about people and porn at work is that they have not learned from example after example on the news. In my town, we have had firefighters dismissed, teachers arrested (kiddie porn) and other things that continually prove, to me, that you have to be stupid as hell to view that stuff at work.
Viruses can be virtually eliminated by adding a network scanner (which you should have anyway since you probably use windows and maybe outlook), and using a client and server other then outlook and exchange. There's just TOO many holes to be patched and you can use Notes or Groupwise for e-mail. Plus, other then maybe the online calendaring features that maybe 10-20 percent of the users actually use (Groupwise has some pretty amazing stuff, but we never use it), most users would be served well by a plan old POP server and SMTP. Just cuz you use Office doesn't mean you need to use Outlook. At work we never install it. This doesn't totally solve the virii problem, but all you have to do is filter the extensions and scan those you do let thru.
That cures probably the biggest thing that causes wasted time. This and user education. All you have to do is threaten the users that they may have to take such a measure and most will curtail their web use. The policy at work is that if you use too much and it starts to affect the company's mission (education since we are a college), then it will be cut off. So far, we've done well. We didn't upgrade because of our users using it for warez and other things. We use it because of the teleconfrences we do and things like that. Things that DO eat badwidth for our mission. One other way they also hvae cut down is by using small hard drives too. I am not sure what drive they are ordering as the standard disk, but when we ordered my computer, 12-20 gig was the norm and they ordered a 6 gig drive. I don't have ROOM to do work and download crap at work. Anyway, any company who does this is just doing it because that's the only way they know how to deal with it. Users who are educated about it will curtail their use voluntarily. It works well for us. YMMV.
I don't think it would ever say that it was done because they used insecure passwords. They'd say it was those EVIL HACKERS that did it nevermind that the user was stupid.
Yes but if you are trying to run something with those files that are stuck in a database and have to do database style requests to get that file, the overhead can kill ya! Databases are hoggish things. You need lots of memory to run decent sized databases. It's not unheard of to have 1 GB - 5 GB or MORE memory. Some databases reccomend you have at least as much memory as your database is big to cut down on disk swapping(all of the database would be in ram instead of hitting the disk for queries). This would mean you'd need 100 GB PLUS of memory and that ain't happening!
Granted alot of things are wrong with it but NTFS,in general, works. This DB file system just makes me wonder. With fast hard drives becoming the norm, it doesn't take that long to scan a disk. Linux has locate and other file indexers to assist in searching the hard drive. I mean I HOPE there better be some other reason to do this because it doesn't make sense. To me, it seems that this DB would add overhead to the whole thing and of course require more CPU, Memory and disk space. How about just fix the bad stuff in NTFS Microsoft. Also, those who have a clue don't really need to do file searches because we usually know where all of the important stuff is. That's not saying I don't want that feature, it's just that adding that soley for increasing search speeds seems like over kill to me. Again there may be other benefits to this OFS, but they had better be more substantial then just faster file searches.
Contrary to popular belief among the people who shop at best buy, THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE in the so called MUSIC CD-R's and a regular CD-R. Can I take a regular CD-R and record a CD that will work in any CD player? Yep! All excpet the oldest ones. Can I take one of those so called MUSIC CD's and burn data on it? Probably. Data is data and all a audio CD has on it is a digitized audio stream and nothing more. For all intents and purposes, the audio stream IS data. I will probably be modded down for saying this, but the post I am replying to should be modded down.
I work with a couple very nice Muslims. Be careful using the word all or always. It can be your undoing. If ou say all Muslims hate the US, then someday, it may come true. Most muslims I know are veyr nice and consider Osama and his bunch as bad as some Christians view Pat Robertson. Osama and the Taliban are part of the religious right of the Muslim world. Some muslims think they are right, other muslims don't. Same goes with the religious right here in america. It's just that Pat Robertson and Falwell never hurt anyone (excpet maybe mentally).
I have to agree. I have NO interest in seeing the footage they showed. If someone shows it and I see it come on again, I will CHANGE THE CHANNEL! I am already pissed off/depressed enough about the whole thing (I always wanted to see the WTC, but never got to). Watching it would make me feel like crap all over again.
Taking guns away will do nothing. Only criminals and the police will have guns then. Most murders by a gun are done with guns that are ALREADY illegal! Do you think a 3 time felon goes and buys a gun at a gun store? No! He picks it up from the guy selling them off the back of his chevy.
Also, statistics show (I am too lazy to search for it now, but what I am saying is true) that in states with a conceal/carry law allowing you to carry a concealed weapon, that crime goes DOWN and not UP!
If a person wanted to kill you without a gun, there are many ways to do it. Stopping a knife attack is possible, but I doubt most people would be able to do it. Everheard of a crossbow or a bow and arrow? Both are capable of killing a man just as fast as a gun. Everyone who uses this taking guns away thing will reduce crime just does not have any common sense especially since it won't have an effect on those who commit these crimes anyway. They don't care. That's why they are shooting at ya. They will kill you, then themselves. And no gun law will stop it.
Who said Dr. Spock and all of these "experts" are right???
That's the first thing...the second is these kids had the stuff right under the parent's noses. How in the WORLD did these parents miss this? They must have been two busy holding down two jobs so they can pay for there $200,000 dollar house when a $100,000 dollar one would be fine and one parent can stay home. Right now we are going thru this. Right now, we have yet to make the transition to only using my income. My wife has been fortunate enough to find a job that let's her work out of the home. She will be able to meet my son at the bus when he comes home from school. She only has to go drop off and pick up work for the next day. Still not an ideal situation, but better then our son being a latchkey kid.
You got it buddy! People kill people....guns don't, video games don't, sports don't (unless you abuse steroids or don't have a good ref), prescribed drugs don't, caffiene doesn't (unless you eat a whole tin of penguins in less then a minute), food doesn't (unless you eat yourself to death), scooter's don't, cars don't.....that's just the short list!:)
OUr CS department is kind of weird. We have not yet given up teaching COBOL and mainframe assembler, but yet we have almost no UNIX. It's MENTIONED in the OS classes, but no where have I seen a faculty member either use or talk about Linux. They are all Vis Studio stuff when they talk about PC stuff. They have nothing on PERL, Tcl/Tk or anything else. My hope is that will soon change as we are part way thru a conversion to AIX and ORACLE for the RDBMS(yeah not Linux, but at least it isn't Microsoft and SQL server.) Our first live module will go online in July and April 29th is when I start my training on AIX System Administration. Being we still have the mainframe, I am going to try to talk them into doing something with Linux on it. My imagination is we could make it possible to host student web servers (with full root access possible...if yer server get's rooted, then we pull the account or control it with VM!:) ). I dunno. Seems to me we can do something with that box since we do own it (so long as IBM service agreement does not go up alot). Anyway, what scares me is that I don't really want to reccomend our program as of yet because I am not sure in what direction it is going.
According to someone who posted earlier, all that's missing it some icons and bitmaps. It is not surprising to not have those as DOOM is also GPL now, except the art isn't available unless you have the retail/registered version. Art is different then code. It, in my opinion, can't be covered by the GPL. If you the programmer want to keep your art for your program under your control, then that's your right. Different bitmaps and icons won't change the function of the program in any manner.
EVERYTIME I see some company do something like this, everyone freaks out. OMG THEY'RE VIOLATING THE GPL!!!! This is getting old people!! How about WAITING an hout or so or INVESTIGATING it further before posting a freakout story. SHEESH!
"Did you know that all icons displayed in your car are standardized?"
They are? I have driven many cars in my life and EACH car had a different icon for somethings. Somethings were even in different places. One car had the gearshift on the steering wheel column, one had it on the floor. One had a perf switch for the transmisson, one didn't (same manufacturer!). You must have only driven one car eh?
Boring huh? We have the Columbus Blue Jacket's in the NHL, The Bengals and Browns in the NFL (Hey never said they were good), the Indian's and Red's in baseball, Cedar Point (coaster capital of the us if not the world), Paramount's Kings Island, Six Flags, Lake Erie(home to many cool islands), Cleveland home of the ROCK AND ROLL hall of fame....boring Ohio is NOT! Just because we DON'T have nice ocean land, lot's of place to gamble(there are some in Cincy area), or a WHOLE LOT OF Tourist Traps like Florida doesn't mean it's boring! Our quarter is being minted now and their are 4 quarter's on the shuttle now two of which will be on display at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. Oh and I almost forgot NASA's John Glenn Space Center where if your above 18, you can go stand in a wind tunnel. Ohio is only BORING if all you do is sit on your ass in a hotel room. Sure, we probably aren't all that well known in the world picture, but I don't believe we are boring.
Columbus, where I live, is a great place for this. We have a decent bus system, lots of shopping places, and lot's of office space. There are alot of call centers here and lots of 18-20 year old's because of Ohio State, Franklin University, DeVry, Keller Graduate School, Capital, Otterbien and Mount Vernon Nazerene College are here also. Columbus is also one of Ohio's most wired cities with a decent penetration of broadband (available almost city wide I believe.). Rent's for workers can range from cheap to exhorbitant. You can, if you can afford it, even buy a condo downtown in Miranova (starting aroun $300,000). Miranova is for that executive who doesn't like to put a lot of miles on thier Beamer (right downtown). In any case, Ohio in general is a good place for high tech (at least that's my feeling anyway!).
I think 20 for no ad's whatsoever is a little much. Especially since most folks who pay that seem to be the ones who actually post and stuff. I am also starting to wonder...one day I was checking out Slashdot and I saw an ad for Windows XP. Kind of funny seeing that here. Oh well.
Personally, I think VA should sell the websites to someone like.....IBM. Think about it. IBM supports Linux A LOT. IBM could setup Source Forge, Slashdot and all of VA's sites on 1 zSeries machine. The cost for IBM to run it would be minimal (in IBM's budget anyway!;))and the sites could stay ad free (with exception of the words an IBM supported community site on every page). I think IBM likes Linux enough that I could imagine them doing just this thing. Come on IBM make VA an offer they can't refuse.
In any case, as much as I would like Slashdot to succeed, I realize (and I hope Taco and Hemos knows this as well) that this is not going to work. I will not pay right now. If the ad's get real obnoxious, I will then consider it. Knowing Slashdot's audience and favorite Distro (Debian), it seems, to me that many won't pay. They'll just leave.
They really can't do anything of what they ask. Not if they really want to be elected next year. If congress passes some stupid law like this, then the voters will strike back. Even my mom wants to make copies of video's in case something does go bad. Here's what they should do:
1. Price DVD's and CD's fairly. Hollywood, you already made money on the movie when we watched it in the theater. It stands that you should make money selling DVD's as well. As it stand now, DVD's, even the cheap ones are over priced for what they are. And oh well, someone who bought the right to write program to decrypt dvd's screwed up (Xing) making it possible to crack. If DVD's and CD's cost, say, 5 bucks, then it would not be worth the time to decrypt and make a copy of it at home....if you screw your copy up, just go to the store. Oh and RIAA, your profits did not go down BECAUSE of napster, they went down because you are cranking out vapid, bubblegum crap that noone wants to here anymore. Nothing has been original about any of the new stuff lately. How many boy bands do we have to hear before a good band releases something?? And how many years have they been selling CD's? YOU CAN'T change CD's now because if you do, older player's WILL have problems. Not might, WILL. This is why the Charlie Pride case was settled the way it was.
2. Charge a decent price for the movie. More people would see movies if you reduce he price. I have only seen one movie in the past year because I can't afford a trip to the movies. I'll wait til it comes out on DVD.
3. I want to record TV when I see something. I promise I won't sell it. Any movie shown on TV is so sanitized that it sometimes only looks like the original. Why buy a crappy TV version when the original is better. On and why is ASS a bad word?? Anyone see American Pie when it was aired on FOX? I'd be kind of interested to see how much it differ from the original considering it was a pretty raunchy movie. Also, local news and stuff is things I'd like to record sometimes. My mom and dad have a video of my Grandpa when a human intrest story was done on him by a local TV station about amateur radio. It's my best memory of my grandpa because it was before his stroke that put him in the hospital for good. I can look at this video and see my grandpa as I remember him. It is the best kind of thing to have.
These things (mostly the price one) are things that sound fair to me. There will always be pirates. No matter what "COPY" protection their is in a device, we humans are resourceful. We will always have a way to break it. Even if we have to crack open our devices and figure out where to tap into the device to pick up an unencrypted copy. If you would just come out with good stuff, and not this vapid crap AND charge a decent price, we'll buy it. Next thing you know, we'll have to ban pencils, pens and phtocopiers or put Rights Management stuff on them. What's next? Rights Management on our brains??
Or one other alternative is to actually have some other thing support your site. An example is that Think Geek can help support Slashdot by selling Slashdot T-shirts and stuff. Think geek is owned by VA also. Let's face it, this is a goood way to do it. Most web content, while nice, people can do without it. Most web server's don't need to be expensive. Most webserver's don't do as much traffic as Slashdot either. For a great majority of the web, well other things or having other non web stuff supporting the web presence will help.
But another thing that some companies have done is pay too much for a site or right's to do a site in the first place. One example is NASCAR.com. Turner Interactive bought the rights to do the site for 100 million dollars. Everyone scratched their heads....why would anyone do this and last year as well (the contract is 5 years). This was too much money, but yet it's a drop in the bucket for both NASCAR and Turner. But this year, they decided to go subscription for racecast and almost all of the crappy realvideo you want to see. They used to charge nothing for this and the delays and stuff was just taken (heck we get it for free who the heck cared if it was 2 laps behind). This year they started to charge for what was esentially the same thign they used to offer for free but now at 4.95 per month. Now people were pissed. Now I don;t see them doing it much longer without a class action suit (they advertised real time....2 laps bhind is not real time!). Anyway, websites should be careful. If you are going to offer something sub standard then charge for it, well you better raise it's standard...:)
Slashdot Mirror
I believe that this is the Anti-Virus/Security lobby that really are talking about this. As noted, there are no names mentioned. Why would someone want to even apply if they were that draconian.
If they think that doing this will increase productivity, they have another thing coming. I personally spend MORE time at the computer and within reach of my phone because of the internet. Sure, I always have a web page open but I usually stick to computer related sites or am using it to plan my business trips.
If one thing that really surprises me about people and porn at work is that they have not learned from example after example on the news. In my town, we have had firefighters dismissed, teachers arrested (kiddie porn) and other things that continually prove, to me, that you have to be stupid as hell to view that stuff at work.
Viruses can be virtually eliminated by adding a network scanner (which you should have anyway since you probably use windows and maybe outlook), and using a client and server other then outlook and exchange. There's just TOO many holes to be patched and you can use Notes or Groupwise for e-mail. Plus, other then maybe the online calendaring features that maybe 10-20 percent of the users actually use (Groupwise has some pretty amazing stuff, but we never use it), most users would be served well by a plan old POP server and SMTP. Just cuz you use Office doesn't mean you need to use Outlook. At work we never install it. This doesn't totally solve the virii problem, but all you have to do is filter the extensions and scan those you do let thru.
That cures probably the biggest thing that causes wasted time. This and user education. All you have to do is threaten the users that they may have to take such a measure and most will curtail their web use. The policy at work is that if you use too much and it starts to affect the company's mission (education since we are a college), then it will be cut off. So far, we've done well. We didn't upgrade because of our users using it for warez and other things. We use it because of the teleconfrences we do and things like that. Things that DO eat badwidth for our mission. One other way they also hvae cut down is by using small hard drives too. I am not sure what drive they are ordering as the standard disk, but when we ordered my computer, 12-20 gig was the norm and they ordered a 6 gig drive. I don't have ROOM to do work and download crap at work. Anyway, any company who does this is just doing it because that's the only way they know how to deal with it. Users who are educated about it will curtail their use voluntarily. It works well for us. YMMV.
I don't think it would ever say that it was done because they used insecure passwords. They'd say it was those EVIL HACKERS that did it nevermind that the user was stupid.
Yes but if you are trying to run something with those files that are stuck in a database and have to do database style requests to get that file, the overhead can kill ya! Databases are hoggish things. You need lots of memory to run decent sized databases. It's not unheard of to have 1 GB - 5 GB or MORE memory. Some databases reccomend you have at least as much memory as your database is big to cut down on disk swapping(all of the database would be in ram instead of hitting the disk for queries). This would mean you'd need 100 GB PLUS of memory and that ain't happening!
Granted alot of things are wrong with it but NTFS,in general, works. This DB file system just makes me wonder. With fast hard drives becoming the norm, it doesn't take that long to scan a disk. Linux has locate and other file indexers to assist in searching the hard drive. I mean I HOPE there better be some other reason to do this because it doesn't make sense. To me, it seems that this DB would add overhead to the whole thing and of course require more CPU, Memory and disk space. How about just fix the bad stuff in NTFS Microsoft. Also, those who have a clue don't really need to do file searches because we usually know where all of the important stuff is. That's not saying I don't want that feature, it's just that adding that soley for increasing search speeds seems like over kill to me. Again there may be other benefits to this OFS, but they had better be more substantial then just faster file searches.
Contrary to popular belief among the people who shop at best buy, THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE in the so called MUSIC CD-R's and a regular CD-R. Can I take a regular CD-R and record a CD that will work in any CD player? Yep! All excpet the oldest ones. Can I take one of those so called MUSIC CD's and burn data on it? Probably. Data is data and all a audio CD has on it is a digitized audio stream and nothing more. For all intents and purposes, the audio stream IS data. I will probably be modded down for saying this, but the post I am replying to should be modded down.
I work with a couple very nice Muslims. Be careful using the word all or always. It can be your undoing. If ou say all Muslims hate the US, then someday, it may come true. Most muslims I know are veyr nice and consider Osama and his bunch as bad as some Christians view Pat Robertson. Osama and the Taliban are part of the religious right of the Muslim world. Some muslims think they are right, other muslims don't. Same goes with the religious right here in america. It's just that Pat Robertson and Falwell never hurt anyone (excpet maybe mentally).
I have to agree. I have NO interest in seeing the footage they showed. If someone shows it and I see it come on again, I will CHANGE THE CHANNEL! I am already pissed off/depressed enough about the whole thing (I always wanted to see the WTC, but never got to). Watching it would make me feel like crap all over again.
Yeah but how would you play with those trooper gloves on? :)
Taking guns away will do nothing. Only criminals and the police will have guns then. Most murders by a gun are done with guns that are ALREADY illegal! Do you think a 3 time felon goes and buys a gun at a gun store? No! He picks it up from the guy selling them off the back of his chevy.
Also, statistics show (I am too lazy to search for it now, but what I am saying is true) that in states with a conceal/carry law allowing you to carry a concealed weapon, that crime goes DOWN and not UP!
If a person wanted to kill you without a gun, there are many ways to do it. Stopping a knife attack is possible, but I doubt most people would be able to do it. Everheard of a crossbow or a bow and arrow? Both are capable of killing a man just as fast as a gun. Everyone who uses this taking guns away thing will reduce crime just does not have any common sense especially since it won't have an effect on those who commit these crimes anyway. They don't care. That's why they are shooting at ya. They will kill you, then themselves. And no gun law will stop it.
I figured it out. I think he means ACPI support is always enabled and can't be disabled. That makes sense.
One guy said APM took over from ACPI and that's just the other way around....ACPI is the new standard.
Who said Dr. Spock and all of these "experts" are right???
That's the first thing...the second is these kids had the stuff right under the parent's noses. How in the WORLD did these parents miss this? They must have been two busy holding down two jobs so they can pay for there $200,000 dollar house when a $100,000 dollar one would be fine and one parent can stay home. Right now we are going thru this. Right now, we have yet to make the transition to only using my income. My wife has been fortunate enough to find a job that let's her work out of the home. She will be able to meet my son at the bus when he comes home from school. She only has to go drop off and pick up work for the next day. Still not an ideal situation, but better then our son being a latchkey kid.
You got it buddy! People kill people....guns don't, video games don't, sports don't (unless you abuse steroids or don't have a good ref), prescribed drugs don't, caffiene doesn't (unless you eat a whole tin of penguins in less then a minute), food doesn't (unless you eat yourself to death), scooter's don't, cars don't.....that's just the short list! :)
Someone finally has sense in a court.
Yes but there's always a library! :) Our library has CD's you can checkout....granted, it's almost always older stuff, but you can check it out anyway.
Of course it's BS, but what do we know??
OUr CS department is kind of weird. We have not yet given up teaching COBOL and mainframe assembler, but yet we have almost no UNIX. It's MENTIONED in the OS classes, but no where have I seen a faculty member either use or talk about Linux. They are all Vis Studio stuff when they talk about PC stuff. They have nothing on PERL, Tcl/Tk or anything else. My hope is that will soon change as we are part way thru a conversion to AIX and ORACLE for the RDBMS(yeah not Linux, but at least it isn't Microsoft and SQL server.) Our first live module will go online in July and April 29th is when I start my training on AIX System Administration. Being we still have the mainframe, I am going to try to talk them into doing something with Linux on it. My imagination is we could make it possible to host student web servers (with full root access possible...if yer server get's rooted, then we pull the account or control it with VM! :) ). I dunno. Seems to me we can do something with that box since we do own it (so long as IBM service agreement does not go up alot). Anyway, what scares me is that I don't really want to reccomend our program as of yet because I am not sure in what direction it is going.
According to someone who posted earlier, all that's missing it some icons and bitmaps. It is not surprising to not have those as DOOM is also GPL now, except the art isn't available unless you have the retail/registered version. Art is different then code. It, in my opinion, can't be covered by the GPL. If you the programmer want to keep your art for your program under your control, then that's your right. Different bitmaps and icons won't change the function of the program in any manner.
EVERYTIME I see some company do something like this, everyone freaks out. OMG THEY'RE VIOLATING THE GPL!!!! This is getting old people!! How about WAITING an hout or so or INVESTIGATING it further before posting a freakout story. SHEESH!
You Said:
"Did you know that all icons displayed in your car are standardized?"
They are? I have driven many cars in my life and EACH car had a different icon for somethings. Somethings were even in different places. One car had the gearshift on the steering wheel column, one had it on the floor. One had a perf switch for the transmisson, one didn't (same manufacturer!). You must have only driven one car eh?
Boring huh? We have the Columbus Blue Jacket's in the NHL, The Bengals and Browns in the NFL (Hey never said they were good), the Indian's and Red's in baseball, Cedar Point (coaster capital of the us if not the world), Paramount's Kings Island, Six Flags, Lake Erie(home to many cool islands), Cleveland home of the ROCK AND ROLL hall of fame....boring Ohio is NOT! Just because we DON'T have nice ocean land, lot's of place to gamble(there are some in Cincy area), or a WHOLE LOT OF Tourist Traps like Florida doesn't mean it's boring! Our quarter is being minted now and their are 4 quarter's on the shuttle now two of which will be on display at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. Oh and I almost forgot NASA's John Glenn Space Center where if your above 18, you can go stand in a wind tunnel. Ohio is only BORING if all you do is sit on your ass in a hotel room. Sure, we probably aren't all that well known in the world picture, but I don't believe we are boring.
Columbus, where I live, is a great place for this. We have a decent bus system, lots of shopping places, and lot's of office space. There are alot of call centers here and lots of 18-20 year old's because of Ohio State, Franklin University, DeVry, Keller Graduate School, Capital, Otterbien and Mount Vernon Nazerene College are here also. Columbus is also one of Ohio's most wired cities with a decent penetration of broadband (available almost city wide I believe.). Rent's for workers can range from cheap to exhorbitant. You can, if you can afford it, even buy a condo downtown in Miranova (starting aroun $300,000). Miranova is for that executive who doesn't like to put a lot of miles on thier Beamer (right downtown). In any case, Ohio in general is a good place for high tech (at least that's my feeling anyway!).
I think 20 for no ad's whatsoever is a little much. Especially since most folks who pay that seem to be the ones who actually post and stuff. I am also starting to wonder...one day I was checking out Slashdot and I saw an ad for Windows XP. Kind of funny seeing that here. Oh well.
;))and the sites could stay ad free (with exception of the words an IBM supported community site on every page). I think IBM likes Linux enough that I could imagine them doing just this thing. Come on IBM make VA an offer they can't refuse.
Personally, I think VA should sell the websites to someone like.....IBM. Think about it. IBM supports Linux A LOT. IBM could setup Source Forge, Slashdot and all of VA's sites on 1 zSeries machine. The cost for IBM to run it would be minimal (in IBM's budget anyway!
In any case, as much as I would like Slashdot to succeed, I realize (and I hope Taco and Hemos knows this as well) that this is not going to work. I will not pay right now. If the ad's get real obnoxious, I will then consider it. Knowing Slashdot's audience and favorite Distro (Debian), it seems, to me that many won't pay. They'll just leave.
They really can't do anything of what they ask. Not if they really want to be elected next year. If congress passes some stupid law like this, then the voters will strike back. Even my mom wants to make copies of video's in case something does go bad. Here's what they should do:
1. Price DVD's and CD's fairly. Hollywood, you already made money on the movie when we watched it in the theater. It stands that you should make money selling DVD's as well. As it stand now, DVD's, even the cheap ones are over priced for what they are. And oh well, someone who bought the right to write program to decrypt dvd's screwed up (Xing) making it possible to crack. If DVD's and CD's cost, say, 5 bucks, then it would not be worth the time to decrypt and make a copy of it at home....if you screw your copy up, just go to the store. Oh and RIAA, your profits did not go down BECAUSE of napster, they went down because you are cranking out vapid, bubblegum crap that noone wants to here anymore. Nothing has been original about any of the new stuff lately. How many boy bands do we have to hear before a good band releases something?? And how many years have they been selling CD's? YOU CAN'T change CD's now because if you do, older player's WILL have problems. Not might, WILL. This is why the Charlie Pride case was settled the way it was.
2. Charge a decent price for the movie. More people would see movies if you reduce he price. I have only seen one movie in the past year because I can't afford a trip to the movies. I'll wait til it comes out on DVD.
3. I want to record TV when I see something. I promise I won't sell it. Any movie shown on TV is so sanitized that it sometimes only looks like the original. Why buy a crappy TV version when the original is better. On and why is ASS a bad word?? Anyone see American Pie when it was aired on FOX? I'd be kind of interested to see how much it differ from the original considering it was a pretty raunchy movie. Also, local news and stuff is things I'd like to record sometimes. My mom and dad have a video of my Grandpa when a human intrest story was done on him by a local TV station about amateur radio. It's my best memory of my grandpa because it was before his stroke that put him in the hospital for good. I can look at this video and see my grandpa as I remember him. It is the best kind of thing to have.
These things (mostly the price one) are things that sound fair to me. There will always be pirates. No matter what "COPY" protection their is in a device, we humans are resourceful. We will always have a way to break it. Even if we have to crack open our devices and figure out where to tap into the device to pick up an unencrypted copy. If you would just come out with good stuff, and not this vapid crap AND charge a decent price, we'll buy it. Next thing you know, we'll have to ban pencils, pens and phtocopiers or put Rights Management stuff on them. What's next? Rights Management on our brains??
Is the redux DVD better then the original DVD?
Out of all of my DVD's, the Matrix is still one of
the best!
Or one other alternative is to actually have some other thing support your site. An example is that Think Geek can help support Slashdot by selling Slashdot T-shirts and stuff. Think geek is owned by VA also. Let's face it, this is a goood way to do it. Most web content, while nice, people can do without it. Most web server's don't need to be expensive. Most webserver's don't do as much traffic as Slashdot either. For a great majority of the web, well other things or having other non web stuff supporting the web presence will help.
:)
But another thing that some companies have done is pay too much for a site or right's to do a site in the first place. One example is NASCAR.com. Turner Interactive bought the rights to do the site for 100 million dollars. Everyone scratched their heads....why would anyone do this and last year as well (the contract is 5 years). This was too much money, but yet it's a drop in the bucket for both NASCAR and Turner. But this year, they decided to go subscription for racecast and almost all of the crappy realvideo you want to see. They used to charge nothing for this and the delays and stuff was just taken (heck we get it for free who the heck cared if it was 2 laps behind). This year they started to charge for what was esentially the same thign they used to offer for free but now at 4.95 per month. Now people were pissed. Now I don;t see them doing it much longer without a class action suit (they advertised real time....2 laps bhind is not real time!). Anyway, websites should be careful. If you are going to offer something sub standard then charge for it, well you better raise it's standard...
Is this the REAL name of the Stinger phone or have they gave up on Stinger???
Debian is close to releasing and they are talking about a unified Linux desktop theme. Hell most have frozen over or this is a sign of the apocalypse!