From the article: Recent research determined that 695,000 consumers owned either a Blu-ray or HD DVD player, but most of those are tied to a console--400,000 of the 425,000 Blu-ray players sold by the end of 2007 were PlayStation 3s and 150,000 of the 270,000 HD DVD players were Xbox 360 add-ons.
25,000 people bought standalone BluRay players. 120,000 people bought standalone HD-DVD players.
I think the peeps have spoken and shown that if Sony wasn't bundling BluRay in with PS3s that almost nobody would be getting one.
Keep in mind too that all 150,000 people who bought add on HD-DVD players made an optional decision to buy that drive. 400,000 people who bought PS3s got a BluRay drive because you can't get a PS3 without one.
HD-DVD is winning the "format war" and it's only the PS3 that is so far making BluRay appear to even be in the race. I'd love to see disc sale comparisons because that will give a truer indication of who is in the lead than player numbers. It's a reasonable assumption that everyone who has an HD-DVD player is buying discs for it because the decision to buy that player was 100% optional and it's also a reasonable assumption that many people own the PS3 and don't have a single BluRay disc.
I know of another legal way to buy Japanese music. You can buy Japanese CDs in an English web page at http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/ I have no financial interest in this company. I am merely an occasional customer. Of course, if you are under, say, 25 years old, the idea of actually buying a CD will be anathema to you as you'll have to wait for it to arrive by mail and you'd rather slit your emo wrists than do anything that doesn't lead to instant gratification. And if you want to just buy individual tracks, this isn't the answer you were looking for either. However, if you are over 30 years old and not afflicted with ADD, this might be an option for you should want to purchase that CD that is only available in Japan. Sometimes Japanese CDs come with bonus tracks not released in other markets (usually this means the US), so hardcore fans of various Western singers/groups might be interested in Japanese CDs for that reason too.
You said: I own music that I bought from iTunes. and: I paid for that music, it's mine
Actually, one of the problems with DRMed media is that the record and movie companies don't view that you have bought anything. They view it that you have rented it for play on one specific device, which means that if you want an iTunes purchase to play on, say, Zune, you need to buy it again for Zune.
Sigh. NOBODY seems to have read the NYT article. He wasn't arrested for "creating mix tapes". 81,000 - yes - EIGHTY ONE THOUSAND - CDs were confiscated. He is a bootlegger. If he had simply creted mixes and given them away on his website this wouldn't have happened. I suspect that he sold the CDs and since he did not have permission for the samples he used, he was, in the eyes of the RIAA, a bootlegger. I'm no fan of the RIAA, but they cracked down on a dude making serious money from potentially illegal activity. That's for the courts to decide. The RIAA has always cracked down on bootleggers.
I really don't like commenting a day later, but I didn't have time yesterday to followup on this and nobody seems to have bothered to read the article. I shouldn't be surprised. This is Slashdot after all.
I note that China has invaded fewer countries in the last 50 years than the USA has... so what is the answer to the question ?
I see you're from the UK. It figures. In the last 50 years, the US has invaded Grenada - don't see anyone but Cuba and some Grenadian commies sorry about that one Kuwait and Iraq in Gulf War I - nobody sorry about that one either except some now dead or imprisoned Iraqi government officials Iraq in Gulf War II - well, nobody seems happy with that, so I understand complaints here. South Korea and Vietnam don't count as it's really a stretch to call those "invasions".
China invaded Tibet. I think a whole lot of Tibetan people aren't real happy with how that one turned out. I think a whole lot of people in Taiwan are hoping that they aren't next on the list.
Yes Gulf War II was a big disaster. However, if the situation ever stabilizes the Iraqis will have a chance to guide their own lives. China's policy in Tibet is to weaken the local populice by flooding the area with Han Chinese immigrants. I suspect that most Tibetans would like to control their own future if possible but at this point they'd be glad to just not watch as their culture is destroyed in front of their eyes. I don't see that kind of cultural assassination going on in Iraq.
And I hope that they release them this time in Europe at the same time as in the USA. Otherwise I'll just download them and let them complain about poor sales.
Don't worry, that will happen. Every major American studio film gets released in Europe at the same time as in the USA or at most 2 weeks later for exactly this reason.
The only tracker that was released was on a private website that as of yesterday closed itself to outsiders. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the trackers make it out to the rest of the world. Another poster said another HD-DVD film is already on Usenet.
Better get used to watching Serenity over and over because you're not likely to see any more movies released with PowerDVD keys. That takes care of software players for HDDVD and there will definitely be no software players for Blu-Ray.
There already are BluRay software players. Both PowerDVD and WinDVD have versions that support BluRay. Guess that's what happens when you talk off the top of your head with no facts or research to back things up.
Libertarians (at least, your traditional anarchocapitalist) also have their problems, often including a rather large blind spot towards the abuse of private power and some seriously inconsistent views regarding the trustworthiness thereof and the strength of the profit incentive.
At last, someone who understands. At a former job, I had several Libertarian co-workers who explained to me in detail what they believed. Libertarianism sounds good at first, especially if you are a conservative Republican. They say a lot of things that conservatives want to hear about getting the government out of people's lives and so on. The problem is that Libertarianism will never work because it requires everybody to be smart and to work in the best interests of society rather than themselves. All it takes is one self-centered guy or one dumb guy and the Libertarian house of cards comes falling down. I know of some smart people who are Libertarians and I am amazed at how they don't realize how their political philosophy just won't work in the real world.
At current exchange rates, they would need very close to 1 billion dollars to buy Sealand at a price of a little more than 500 million pounds. That would mean that 1 million people would need to donate 1000 dollars each to get the money. I'm not sure they could raise enough cash if all they needed was 1 million to buy it.
Some expert is always trumpeting the fact that "Johnny can't program," to which many of us roll our eyes and go back to coding. But could this be a sign that the quality of the help NASA is hiring is such that these kinds of mistakes are now rampant? I mean, this could have been avoided if the code had been tested out on a full-scale mock-up of the machine, to verify that it did what it was supposed to do, before ever sending the commands to the actual machine. If anything, it's a QA failure.
I used to work for the US government on a job I thankfully left a long time ago. I can't speak for NASA in particular as I worked for the Department of Defense. Keep in mind that things might be different at NASA. Typically, working for Uncle Sam is not as lucrative as working in private industry. There are compensating benefits though. It's just about impossible to get fired. Uncle Sam gives better vacation benefits than most American employers. Early retirement is very realistic opportunity when working for Uncle Sam. At least where I worked, we tended to attract people who wanted to live in a small town (government salaries go further there) and people who were not very motivated for the most part. You get what you pay for. We would get the guys who graduated at the very bottom of their engineering classes because the guys above them wouldn't work for government salaries.
To be fair, NASA has cut an awful lot of corners in recent years and had some really bad management make a lot of really bad decisions. I'm still unconvinced that NASA management knows what it is doing. When I worked for the DoD, QA was a joke. It was up to the programmers to test their own code. QA is significantly better in private industry than when I worked for the DoD. It could also be that the programmer's code did exactly what he wanted it to do, but he misunderstood what he was supposed to do.
Analog Devices - Career fair during year of dot com bust. Had a booth but told everyone who came by they weren't hiring at all. Feedback from students - why bother showing up at all?
I also used to wonder why companies would go to job fairs when they weren't hiring. Then someone explained to me that they go simply to keep up appearances and make their competitors think that they hiring, which implies that things are going well when in fact they aren't. Word does get around quickly and the last thing any company wants is for people to think they won't be around for very long because once that happens, they really won't be around for very long because no one will buy from them.
I just checked the stock ticker and SCOX has actually risen in price today! It started at about $1.15 a share and it's at $1.22 now, so while they may be in a world of trouble, Wall Street still amazingly thinks the stock has some value. I am amazed that this stock is still selling for over a dollar a share, but far be it from me to suggest that the stock market makes any sense.
This list is missing: Frank Sinatra (all of his classic 50's output was for Capitol, an American label owned by EMI) The Beach Boys and the group that many think was the best of all time: The Beatles
I'm saying that we should be focusing on actual security improvements rather than the "Security Theatre" that you're supporting.
Talk is cheap. I see no "improvements" in your post. One of my friends says the same thing you do. He bitches all the time about how "incompetent" TSA is. He says pretty much what you do, except his big thing is the typical Republican mantra of "Privitize it! Privitize it!" which ignores the fact that airport security was privitized prior to 9/11 at some of the airports used by the terrorists, notably Boston. I do have a question - when is the last time you flew? You see, my friend who likes to bitch about this hasn't been on an airplane since before 9/11. I find that the people who complain the most are the ones who travel the least.
I went to the web page and see that, as reported by Scuttle Monkey, the author says he might continue working on it or make it open source with some funding. What does funding have to do with making it opern source? He could make it open source today if he really wanted to. It just seems to me that he's yet another guy who's pissed off that he can't make a living off the internet, so he's holding his source code hostage. I have to admit I know nothing about his program, but I fail to see the connection between open source and him getting paid.
It appears that Spocko had clips that ran as long as five minutes. That's beyond fair use in most circumstances. Those are probably what gives Disney a leg to stand on. His short clips (5-15 seconds) were within the bounds of fair use, though.
Agreed. Also, Spocko could have sent his information anonymously to the sponsors. Maybe it wouldn't carry as much weight that way, but it might have worked. However, Spocko decided "I'm personally going to cause these shows to lose advertisers and be a hero to my log readin' buddies!" I can't say I'm surprised that a Really Big Corporation wasn't happy that he was messing with their money and came down on him.
The long view is traditional (ignore the Welsh CEO they have) in Japanese business culture. If you think they get bad press in the English speaking world, wait until you read what the Taiwanese, Chinese, and other Asian (read ASEAN) press skewer them with.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I have for a while wondered if part of the problem was that the Japanese don't run Sony anymore and basically Americans (or their European white bread counterparts) do. American businesses have a "Drive up the stock price today! Screw tomorrow!" mentality that I think leads to a lot of these decisions, such as the root kit.
I used to buy a lot of Sony stuff for me and my family members. The name used to mean something. Now I think of Samsung the way I used to think of Sony. Everything I've bought from Samsung has worked exactly as promised and worked well. I have a good opinion of LG too. In fact, I'm starting to think that if it comes from South Korea, it's probably good. I won't touch anything by Sony any more. Too many bad mistakes. Too much cluelessness. Too much "Do it our way and screw everyone else".
Every sale of a Total-HD disc or Dual-Format drive prevents the industry as a whole from choosing one format as their standard.
You're conveniently overlooking the fact that the industry failed choose either DVD-R or DVD+R, yet somehow we have managed to survive into 2007 without civilization collapsing and with both formats still available. Forgive the hyperbole, but my point is so what if both formats survive?
I don't understand why Universal (and to some extent WB) continue to make these HD DVD/DVD combo discs. For the uninitiated, these are dual-sided discs, with the DVD on one side and the HD DVD on the other. Dual-sided discs are always more complicated and expensive to manufacture and they're really not a value-add to consumers. Most big releases on DVD go with multiple discs rather than multiple sides. So, it makes it a crappier product and on top of that, they charge a premium, anywhere from $10 to $20 (MSRP) for our "benefit"! Note: expect this to play out in this new/twin/hybrid Blu-Ray and HD DVD format. Why pay $25 for one movie when you can pay $40 for both, one of which is unnecessary?
Remember, you do have a choice. It's not like anyone is forcing you to buy an HD-DVD/DVD combo disc because all of these "flipper" discs are also available as normal DVD only releases. Why buy one? Well, I've bought two. I bought them because one day probably later this year or maybe next year, I intend to get an HD-DVD player. I like being able to see the movie now in DVD format and knowing that down the road I have a disc that will also enable me to watch the film in high definition and not have to re-buy it. Just because you don't see the use in this option doesn't mean that no one else does. Remember, no one is taking away your choice to just buy the DVD, so why complain?
I'm not a big fan of the RIAA, but I'm also not a big fan of AllofMP3. Yes, it's legal in Russia (through a loophole in radio licensing they're trying to close), but not here in the US.
Um, exactly how is it illegal in the US? Did Congress pass a law making it illegal? Did your state or local government? I'm not aware of any such laws. No, it's illegal because you, my friend, have sadly bought into the RIAA's position that it is illegal. Such a position may or may not hold up in court. As I have said before, care to guess why the RIAA has not sued American's for buying from AllOfMP3? It might just be because they don't want to try it out in court and have a precedent set that makes it legal to buy from AllOfMP3. The RIAA doesn't have to have the law on their side when people like you believe every word they say.
That's ridiculous. If you have a legal right to a file in another country, and posession of it in this country is not otherwise illegal (e.g., it's not kiddie porn or something), there's no sane reason you can't copy it across the (virtual, and therefore nonexistant) border.
Let's use an analogy: imagine you're on vacation in Europe, and you buy a CD, burn it, put it on your iPod, and bring it back home with you. Is that illegal? Of course not, that would be absurd!
Next, imagine you do the same thing, but you put it on a computer you happen to own, that you leave in Europe. You then transfer it to yourself after you get back home. Is that illegal? Of course not, that would be absurd!
Now, finally, imagine exactly the same thing, except that AllOfMP3.com just happens to be storing the file for you instead of you doing it for yourself (note: it's still your file, because you bought it). How is that any different? It's not, therefore it would still be absurd for it to be illegal!
In your example about buying a CD in Europe, court cases in the 1980s firmly established the right of Americans to buy CDs and movies (at that time it would be VHS tapes, but now expanded to include DVDs and VCDs) for personal use , which in practice means one copy of each title is OK. It's a very long story, but the cases mostly involved royalty payments and yes, the RIAA and their friends tried their best to make it illegal to import records, CDs, etc. and lost that battle, while they won the royalty payments part of their argument.
I find it interesting that to date no US customers of AllOfMP3 have been sued. I think this is deliberate because the RIAA doesn't know that they will win that fight. Your arguments are sound and the RIAA knows this and the last thing they want is a legal precedent set where it is legal to buy songs from AllOfMP3. People here can say all they want that it's "illegal" but in fact nobody knows whether it's legal or not. The RIAA says it isn't legal to buy from AllOfMP3, but the US courts haven't had one case on it.
The suing of AllOfMP3 in New York happened because the RIAA knows that AllOfMP3 won't defend themselves in a US court and they'll most likely win by default unless a smart judge rules that the RIAA has no standing to sue a foreign company in US courts for actions that take place outside the USA. I don't think that will happen though. The RIAA will use its buddies in the Bush administration to try to get Russia to stop AllOfMP3, but Putin doesn't take orders from us, so who knows what will ultimately happen? The US hasn't been real successful in the past in getting the Russian legal system to come down hard on people like hackers or marriage broker scammers, so I wouldn't hold my breath here.
n 2005 a controversial paper in The Lancet introduced a theory that BSE might have originated in British cattle when they ate imported animal feed that included infected human remains from Hindu funeral ceremonies in India.
This is true but somewhat misleading. If people follow your link (thanks for that), they'll see that the Wikipedia article politely calls this "conjecture" and says that it needs follow up research. I'd say there's a heavy emphasis on the word might here.
Halliburton Data Security is unfortunately among the companies competing for this contract.
It's to not too . To is a preposition. Too means "also".
You didn't pay attention in class when they went over possessives, did you? That "s" at the end of Halliburtons is supposed to be 's. At least you don't (apparently) think that all English plurals are made by sticking 's at the end.
You might also want to stick an "e" at the end of "Sid" in your title.
Please oh please tell me that English is not your native language or at least that you didn't go to school in the USA. I don't think you need to worry about encryption, dude. You've pretty much got that covered naturally by the way you spell and use grammar.
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From the article:
Recent research determined that 695,000 consumers owned either a Blu-ray or HD DVD player, but most of those are tied to a console--400,000 of the 425,000 Blu-ray players sold by the end of 2007 were PlayStation 3s and 150,000 of the 270,000 HD DVD players were Xbox 360 add-ons.
25,000 people bought standalone BluRay players.
120,000 people bought standalone HD-DVD players.
I think the peeps have spoken and shown that if Sony wasn't bundling BluRay in with PS3s that almost nobody would be getting one.
Keep in mind too that all 150,000 people who bought add on HD-DVD players made an optional decision to buy that drive. 400,000 people who bought PS3s got a BluRay drive because you can't get a PS3 without one.
HD-DVD is winning the "format war" and it's only the PS3 that is so far making BluRay appear to even be in the race. I'd love to see disc sale comparisons because that will give a truer indication of who is in the lead than player numbers. It's a reasonable assumption that everyone who has an HD-DVD player is buying discs for it because the decision to buy that player was 100% optional and it's also a reasonable assumption that many people own the PS3 and don't have a single BluRay disc.
I know of another legal way to buy Japanese music. You can buy Japanese CDs in an English web page at
http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/
I have no financial interest in this company. I am merely an occasional customer. Of course, if you are under, say, 25 years old, the idea of actually buying a CD will be anathema to you as you'll have to wait for it to arrive by mail and you'd rather slit your emo wrists than do anything that doesn't lead to instant gratification. And if you want to just buy individual tracks, this isn't the answer you were looking for either. However, if you are over 30 years old and not afflicted with ADD, this might be an option for you should want to purchase that CD that is only available in Japan. Sometimes Japanese CDs come with bonus tracks not released in other markets (usually this means the US), so hardcore fans of various Western singers/groups might be interested in Japanese CDs for that reason too.
You said:
I own music that I bought from iTunes.
and:
I paid for that music, it's mine
Actually, one of the problems with DRMed media is that the record and movie companies don't view that you have bought anything. They view it that you have rented it for play on one specific device, which means that if you want an iTunes purchase to play on, say, Zune, you need to buy it again for Zune.
Sigh. NOBODY seems to have read the NYT article. He wasn't arrested for "creating mix tapes". 81,000 - yes - EIGHTY ONE THOUSAND - CDs were confiscated. He is a bootlegger. If he had simply creted mixes and given them away on his website this wouldn't have happened. I suspect that he sold the CDs and since he did not have permission for the samples he used, he was, in the eyes of the RIAA, a bootlegger. I'm no fan of the RIAA, but they cracked down on a dude making serious money from potentially illegal activity. That's for the courts to decide. The RIAA has always cracked down on bootleggers.
I really don't like commenting a day later, but I didn't have time yesterday to followup on this and nobody seems to have bothered to read the article. I shouldn't be surprised. This is Slashdot after all.
I note that China has invaded fewer countries in the last 50 years than the USA has ... so what is the answer to the question ?
I see you're from the UK. It figures. In the last 50 years, the US has invaded
Grenada - don't see anyone but Cuba and some Grenadian commies sorry about that one
Kuwait and Iraq in Gulf War I - nobody sorry about that one either except some now dead or imprisoned Iraqi government officials
Iraq in Gulf War II - well, nobody seems happy with that, so I understand complaints here.
South Korea and Vietnam don't count as it's really a stretch to call those "invasions".
China invaded Tibet. I think a whole lot of Tibetan people aren't real happy with how that one turned out. I think a whole lot of people in Taiwan are hoping that they aren't next on the list.
Yes Gulf War II was a big disaster. However, if the situation ever stabilizes the Iraqis will have a chance to guide their own lives. China's policy in Tibet is to weaken the local populice by flooding the area with Han Chinese immigrants. I suspect that most Tibetans would like to control their own future if possible but at this point they'd be glad to just not watch as their culture is destroyed in front of their eyes. I don't see that kind of cultural assassination going on in Iraq.
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
I've worked with men in IT for whom the answer to this check would be a resounding no .
And I hope that they release them this time in Europe at the same time as in the USA. Otherwise I'll just download them and let them complain about poor sales.
Don't worry, that will happen. Every major American studio film gets released in Europe at the same time as in the USA or at most 2 weeks later for exactly this reason.
The only tracker that was released was on a private website that as of yesterday closed itself to outsiders. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the trackers make it out to the rest of the world. Another poster said another HD-DVD film is already on Usenet.
Better get used to watching Serenity over and over because you're not likely to see any more movies released with PowerDVD keys. That takes care of software players for HDDVD and there will definitely be no software players for Blu-Ray.
There already are BluRay software players. Both PowerDVD and WinDVD have versions that support BluRay. Guess that's what happens when you talk off the top of your head with no facts or research to back things up.
Libertarians (at least, your traditional anarchocapitalist) also have their problems, often including a rather large blind spot towards the abuse of private power and some seriously inconsistent views regarding the trustworthiness thereof and the strength of the profit incentive.
At last, someone who understands. At a former job, I had several Libertarian co-workers who explained to me in detail what they believed. Libertarianism sounds good at first, especially if you are a conservative Republican. They say a lot of things that conservatives want to hear about getting the government out of people's lives and so on. The problem is that Libertarianism will never work because it requires everybody to be smart and to work in the best interests of society rather than themselves. All it takes is one self-centered guy or one dumb guy and the Libertarian house of cards comes falling down. I know of some smart people who are Libertarians and I am amazed at how they don't realize how their political philosophy just won't work in the real world.
At current exchange rates, they would need very close to 1 billion dollars to buy Sealand at a price of a little more than 500 million pounds. That would mean that 1 million people would need to donate 1000 dollars each to get the money. I'm not sure they could raise enough cash if all they needed was 1 million to buy it.
Some expert is always trumpeting the fact that "Johnny can't program," to which many of us roll our eyes and go back to coding. But could this be a sign that the quality of the help NASA is hiring is such that these kinds of mistakes are now rampant? I mean, this could have been avoided if the code had been tested out on a full-scale mock-up of the machine, to verify that it did what it was supposed to do, before ever sending the commands to the actual machine. If anything, it's a QA failure.
I used to work for the US government on a job I thankfully left a long time ago. I can't speak for NASA in particular as I worked for the Department of Defense. Keep in mind that things might be different at NASA. Typically, working for Uncle Sam is not as lucrative as working in private industry. There are compensating benefits though. It's just about impossible to get fired. Uncle Sam gives better vacation benefits than most American employers. Early retirement is very realistic opportunity when working for Uncle Sam. At least where I worked, we tended to attract people who wanted to live in a small town (government salaries go further there) and people who were not very motivated for the most part. You get what you pay for. We would get the guys who graduated at the very bottom of their engineering classes because the guys above them wouldn't work for government salaries.
To be fair, NASA has cut an awful lot of corners in recent years and had some really bad management make a lot of really bad decisions. I'm still unconvinced that NASA management knows what it is doing. When I worked for the DoD, QA was a joke. It was up to the programmers to test their own code. QA is significantly better in private industry than when I worked for the DoD. It could also be that the programmer's code did exactly what he wanted it to do, but he misunderstood what he was supposed to do.
Analog Devices - Career fair during year of dot com bust. Had a booth but told everyone who came by they weren't hiring at all. Feedback from students - why bother showing up at all?
I also used to wonder why companies would go to job fairs when they weren't hiring. Then someone explained to me that they go simply to keep up appearances and make their competitors think that they hiring, which implies that things are going well when in fact they aren't. Word does get around quickly and the last thing any company wants is for people to think they won't be around for very long because once that happens, they really won't be around for very long because no one will buy from them.
I just checked the stock ticker and SCOX has actually risen in price today! It started at about $1.15 a share and it's at $1.22 now, so while they may be in a world of trouble, Wall Street still amazingly thinks the stock has some value. I am amazed that this stock is still selling for over a dollar a share, but far be it from me to suggest that the stock market makes any sense.
This list is missing:
Frank Sinatra (all of his classic 50's output was for Capitol, an American label owned by EMI)
The Beach Boys
and the group that many think was the best of all time:
The Beatles
I'm saying that we should be focusing on actual security improvements rather than the "Security Theatre" that you're supporting.
Talk is cheap. I see no "improvements" in your post. One of my friends says the same thing you do. He bitches all the time about how "incompetent" TSA is. He says pretty much what you do, except his big thing is the typical Republican mantra of "Privitize it! Privitize it!" which ignores the fact that airport security was privitized prior to 9/11 at some of the airports used by the terrorists, notably Boston. I do have a question - when is the last time you flew? You see, my friend who likes to bitch about this hasn't been on an airplane since before 9/11. I find that the people who complain the most are the ones who travel the least.
I went to the web page and see that, as reported by Scuttle Monkey, the author says he might continue working on it or make it open source with some funding. What does funding have to do with making it opern source? He could make it open source today if he really wanted to. It just seems to me that he's yet another guy who's pissed off that he can't make a living off the internet, so he's holding his source code hostage. I have to admit I know nothing about his program, but I fail to see the connection between open source and him getting paid.
It appears that Spocko had clips that ran as long as five minutes. That's beyond fair use in most circumstances. Those are probably what gives Disney a leg to stand on. His short clips (5-15 seconds) were within the bounds of fair use, though.
Agreed. Also, Spocko could have sent his information anonymously to the sponsors. Maybe it wouldn't carry as much weight that way, but it might have worked. However, Spocko decided "I'm personally going to cause these shows to lose advertisers and be a hero to my log readin' buddies!" I can't say I'm surprised that a Really Big Corporation wasn't happy that he was messing with their money and came down on him.
The long view is traditional (ignore the Welsh CEO they have) in Japanese business culture. If you think they get bad press in the English speaking world, wait until you read what the Taiwanese, Chinese, and other Asian (read ASEAN) press skewer them with.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I have for a while wondered if part of the problem was that the Japanese don't run Sony anymore and basically Americans (or their European white bread counterparts) do. American businesses have a "Drive up the stock price today! Screw tomorrow!" mentality that I think leads to a lot of these decisions, such as the root kit.
I used to buy a lot of Sony stuff for me and my family members. The name used to mean something. Now I think of Samsung the way I used to think of Sony. Everything I've bought from Samsung has worked exactly as promised and worked well. I have a good opinion of LG too. In fact, I'm starting to think that if it comes from South Korea, it's probably good. I won't touch anything by Sony any more. Too many bad mistakes. Too much cluelessness. Too much "Do it our way and screw everyone else".
Every sale of a Total-HD disc or Dual-Format drive prevents the industry as a whole from choosing one format as their standard.
You're conveniently overlooking the fact that the industry failed choose either DVD-R or DVD+R, yet somehow we have managed to survive into 2007 without civilization collapsing and with both formats still available. Forgive the hyperbole, but my point is so what if both formats survive?
I don't understand why Universal (and to some extent WB) continue to make these HD DVD/DVD combo discs. For the uninitiated, these are dual-sided discs, with the DVD on one side and the HD DVD on the other. Dual-sided discs are always more complicated and expensive to manufacture and they're really not a value-add to consumers. Most big releases on DVD go with multiple discs rather than multiple sides. So, it makes it a crappier product and on top of that, they charge a premium, anywhere from $10 to $20 (MSRP) for our "benefit"! Note: expect this to play out in this new/twin/hybrid Blu-Ray and HD DVD format. Why pay $25 for one movie when you can pay $40 for both, one of which is unnecessary?
Remember, you do have a choice. It's not like anyone is forcing you to buy an HD-DVD/DVD combo disc because all of these "flipper" discs are also available as normal DVD only releases. Why buy one? Well, I've bought two. I bought them because one day probably later this year or maybe next year, I intend to get an HD-DVD player. I like being able to see the movie now in DVD format and knowing that down the road I have a disc that will also enable me to watch the film in high definition and not have to re-buy it. Just because you don't see the use in this option doesn't mean that no one else does. Remember, no one is taking away your choice to just buy the DVD, so why complain?
I'm not a big fan of the RIAA, but I'm also not a big fan of AllofMP3. Yes, it's legal in Russia (through a loophole in radio licensing they're trying to close), but not here in the US.
Um, exactly how is it illegal in the US? Did Congress pass a law making it illegal? Did your state or local government? I'm not aware of any such laws. No, it's illegal because you, my friend, have sadly bought into the RIAA's position that it is illegal. Such a position may or may not hold up in court. As I have said before, care to guess why the RIAA has not sued American's for buying from AllOfMP3? It might just be because they don't want to try it out in court and have a precedent set that makes it legal to buy from AllOfMP3. The RIAA doesn't have to have the law on their side when people like you believe every word they say.
That's ridiculous. If you have a legal right to a file in another country, and posession of it in this country is not otherwise illegal (e.g., it's not kiddie porn or something), there's no sane reason you can't copy it across the (virtual, and therefore nonexistant) border.
Let's use an analogy: imagine you're on vacation in Europe, and you buy a CD, burn it, put it on your iPod, and bring it back home with you. Is that illegal? Of course not, that would be absurd!
Next, imagine you do the same thing, but you put it on a computer you happen to own, that you leave in Europe. You then transfer it to yourself after you get back home. Is that illegal? Of course not, that would be absurd!
Now, finally, imagine exactly the same thing, except that AllOfMP3.com just happens to be storing the file for you instead of you doing it for yourself (note: it's still your file, because you bought it). How is that any different? It's not, therefore it would still be absurd for it to be illegal!
In your example about buying a CD in Europe, court cases in the 1980s firmly established the right of Americans to buy CDs and movies (at that time it would be VHS tapes, but now expanded to include DVDs and VCDs) for personal use , which in practice means one copy of each title is OK. It's a very long story, but the cases mostly involved royalty payments and yes, the RIAA and their friends tried their best to make it illegal to import records, CDs, etc. and lost that battle, while they won the royalty payments part of their argument.
I find it interesting that to date no US customers of AllOfMP3 have been sued. I think this is deliberate because the RIAA doesn't know that they will win that fight. Your arguments are sound and the RIAA knows this and the last thing they want is a legal precedent set where it is legal to buy songs from AllOfMP3. People here can say all they want that it's "illegal" but in fact nobody knows whether it's legal or not. The RIAA says it isn't legal to buy from AllOfMP3, but the US courts haven't had one case on it.
The suing of AllOfMP3 in New York happened because the RIAA knows that AllOfMP3 won't defend themselves in a US court and they'll most likely win by default unless a smart judge rules that the RIAA has no standing to sue a foreign company in US courts for actions that take place outside the USA. I don't think that will happen though. The RIAA will use its buddies in the Bush administration to try to get Russia to stop AllOfMP3, but Putin doesn't take orders from us, so who knows what will ultimately happen? The US hasn't been real successful in the past in getting the Russian legal system to come down hard on people like hackers or marriage broker scammers, so I wouldn't hold my breath here.
n 2005 a controversial paper in The Lancet introduced a theory that BSE might have originated in British cattle when they ate imported animal feed that included infected human remains from Hindu funeral ceremonies in India.
This is true but somewhat misleading. If people follow your link (thanks for that), they'll see that the Wikipedia article politely calls this "conjecture" and says that it needs follow up research. I'd say there's a heavy emphasis on the word might here.
Let me guess. The contract goes too....
Halliburtons new encryption subsidary.
Halliburton Data Security is unfortunately among the companies competing for this contract.
It's to not too . To is a preposition. Too means "also".
You didn't pay attention in class when they went over possessives, did you? That "s" at the end of Halliburtons is supposed to be 's. At least you don't (apparently) think that all English plurals are made by sticking 's at the end.
You might also want to stick an "e" at the end of "Sid" in your title.
Please oh please tell me that English is not your native language or at least that you didn't go to school in the USA. I don't think you need to worry about encryption, dude. You've pretty much got that covered naturally by the way you spell and use grammar.