When the analog signals get switched off, is there any plan to improve the digital signals? I have a digital tuner but I can only get two channels on it. Digital signals seem to be harder to pick up, and tend to be all-or-nothing. (They jump from a black screen to a perfect picture, and then back to black.)
It seems lame that by "improving" the broadcast signals they'll be effectively cutting people off from some channels which only come through in analog.
I'd love to see a realistic picture of how such a revolution might take place. A violent overthrow of the government seems both inappropriate and unlikely, so we'd have to work within the system.
The candidates of both political parties have not made the copyright debate a major issue, and the big media companies have support from both parties. Thus, simply supporting one side or another is not helpful.
A third party is a nice idea, but it's only a symbolic gesture so long as we are stuck in a two party system. (Changing to a voting system such as Ranked Pairs would be a big help, but how do we make such a change?)
The only realistic path to change I can see is to wait for the current generation of file sharing, open minded youth to grow up and replace the current regime. Not only does that involve a 30 year wait, but by the time they reach that position, too many of them may have been convinced or purchased by the big media machine.
I don't want to be a cynic, so I'm asking honestly: how is this going to change?
Also, if there is a large installed base of Linux machines, then more application developers will write Linux or cross-platform applications. And the more that happens, the more Microsoft's monopoly (and reason for existing) is damaged.
Not to be insensitive, but... this guy had skydived 1000 times, but couldn't figure out what to do when he found himself wearing a parachute in a plane that was going down?
Oh man, that is so funny! Chuck Norris made so many tough guy movies and shows, and he is a real life martial artist. I can see where it would be fun to just exaggerate his abilities beyond what's realistic, to the point of comic absurdity.
Gosh, we need to get on this. Maybe create some big lists of overstatements about Chuck Norris' superhuman abilities and amazing feats. We could post them all over the web. I think this might really catch on!
I have to try this. Let's see here... Chuck Norris is so strong, he could pick up a car with his little finger. Chuck Norris can eat just one. Chuck Norris once belched, and he caused like an earthquake or something. Chuck Norris doesn't use milk on his cereal, he uses raw meat.
Ok, those aren't the best, but you get the idea. They should be funny and absurd, and definitely should feature Chuck Norris doing things he couldn't do in real life. (Except Chuck Norris can do things in real life that Chuck Norris can't do in real life... get it?) LOL
I can't wait to see where this new form of comedy takes us!
Over the network as a whole, uploading and downloading remains equal, even as the network size changes.
However, If you join the network as it is growing, it's likely that you will download more than you upload, as you will be one of many competing for a smaller number of sources. If you stick around and the network grows around you, it's likely you will upload more, as you will have resources in high demand. Still, it's going to be pretty hard for the RIAA to demonstrate that a person should be liable for more than 1-2 uploads per file shared.
Given how the law seems to work, they won't have to demonstrate any of this, but they should.
Perhaps stealing CDs isn't legally considered copyright infringement. But like illegal downloading, you're obtaining a copy of the music you're not supposed to have. And unlike illegal downloading, you're stealing a physical object. So it still seems absurd that stealing a physical CD would not be the worse offense.
If copyright infringement is the worse offense, then it would be worse to sneak into Best Buy and copy a CD than it would be to take that CD. After copying the CD, if you destroy Best Buy's original, you've turned your action into a lesser crime, because now you've got the only copy. Was there some virtue in the act of destroying the original? I can't overstate just how absurd this really is.
Yes, it could be. But it's up to the RIAA to prove it. They can't just assume that you uploaded something hundreds of times just because it's theoretically possible.
Within a P2P network, the total amount of uploading and downloading is the same. For every packet downloaded by someone, that packet was uploaded by someone. Therefore, the average user found to be sharing songs should be liable for two copies of that song: the copy they downloaded, and the copy they (probably) uploaded. Unless it can be shown that they did more than an average amount of uploading, this is the most reasonable assumption to be made.
The defendant was convicted for 24 songs. If we count each song as two infractions, this would be like stealing 4 CDs and giving 2 of those away. (Except that stealing the CDs would be worse, because it would be both retail theft AND copyright infringement.) What's the penalty for stealing 4 CDs? IANAL, but I'm pretty sure it's less than 1% of the penalty she received.
Any rational person would have to call this penalty absurd, unless they had ulterior motives to pretend otherwise.
Sure, of course they do. Kerosene got to be too pricey, so they switched to standard diesel fuel. It increases the launch weight by 20%, but still gets the job done. They can still launch most satellites if they're not too heavy. Sometimes they'll pull out a couple of the seats and add a nitro tank to get a little extra boost.
I'm glad I could get you up to speed on Russian space tech.
Alright, in that case you like the outcome. What about an officer in a "Don't ask, don't tell" military who rents gay movies? What about an employee who rents an informational DVD about how to change careers, and posts a review which they believed was anonymous, in which they reveal their plans to leave their job?
The issue isn't really about movie reviews. It's about the expectation of privacy at any website. If a site is offering privacy and anonymity, they need to be responsible with whatever information is entrusted to them, no matter how unimportant that information may seem. We're discovering that even anonymizing data before releasing it isn't adequate.
Google chose to announce this on a Friday to piss off Robert Cringely, who now has to wait an entire week to write wild speculations about Google's plans.
Well, it's already possible to set up class autoloading. For example, if I use the class Zend_Db_Abstract, the autoloader will go out and include the file Zend/Db/Abstract.php, with no include or require statement needed.
It will still be possible to set up autoloading with modules, but I have yet to see how it will be any better. Hopefully the usefulness will become apparent in time.
Namespaces are expected in PHP 5.3, due in Spring 08. Unfortunately, the way they are designed is more like a package than a namespace. They don't seem to accomplish much that you can't do by naming your classes with a prefix.
For example, say that you have a code library named Robert, which contains a class named Dole. Traditionally you'd define it like this:
class Robert_Dole() { }
With namespaces you'd do this:
namespace Robert; class Dole() { }
And you'd use the class like this:
use Robert as Bob;
$myBob = new Bob::Dole();
Unfortunately, you can't do this:
use Robert;
$myBob = new Dole();
Perhaps they'll be useful, but to me they're looking like a half-assed effort just so we can say, "yes we have namespaces!"
Exactly. The fact that they've sold tens of millions of copies of Vista, which has been widely derided and which few people really want, says it all.
I was at Best Buy recently and asked them about laptops which didn't come with Vista. They didn't have any! Even their low end, low memory models which would struggle with Vista's requirements did not offer an XP option. (Given, XP is still Microsoft - but the way Vista is pushed demonstrates Microsoft's monopoly power.)
For most people, it wouldn't be a serious breach of privacy. However, you can imagine a scenario where it would be.
Imagine a pastor who uses a recognizable username for many sites, including both IMDB and his church's web forums. He uses Netflix as a way to feed his secret love of movies with sexual content which his church would publicly denounce. Now these researchers could link his username to ratings for all these movies, and post the information online.
All it would take then is for a curious church member to google the pastor's username, and his previously secret habit would now be public knowledge. He could lose his reputation and his career.
In k3b, you can also drag files into the window and click Burn. Yes, there are other options if you click around, but the defaults are just fine. What, did you think you had to look through each screen and thoroughly evaluate each possible option? The advanced options are there if you need them, and can be ignored if you don't. That is exactly how it should be.
It just blows my mind that you had such a bad experience with k3b. It's pretty much perfect from my perspective. When phones switched from rotary to dial pads, did that throw you for a loop too?
A fairly thorough and cheap solution is to use external USB drives. This plan protects you against pretty much every conceivable failure, including theft, fire, accidental deletions, and double hard drive failures. It would take extraordinarily bad luck to lose data. The weakness is that it requires regular human intervention, but the required work is very easy once it is set up.
For every drive in your computer, buy two external drives of the same capacity.
Label one set of external drives "A" and the other "B".
Give the drives from A and B the same names so that when they are plugged in, they will mount to the same location. (Assuming you have automounting turned on, like Ubuntu does by default.)
Write a script to backup your internal drives to one set of external drives.
Run the script with set A plugged in, then with set B.
Move set B to a convenient remote location, perhaps your office if your employer allows.
Every week or so, backup your files to the external drives currently at home. Then take those drives to your remote location, swap the sets, and bring the other set back home.
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When the analog signals get switched off, is there any plan to improve the digital signals? I have a digital tuner but I can only get two channels on it. Digital signals seem to be harder to pick up, and tend to be all-or-nothing. (They jump from a black screen to a perfect picture, and then back to black.)
It seems lame that by "improving" the broadcast signals they'll be effectively cutting people off from some channels which only come through in analog.
Looks great, but I hear that the current model only walks in place. They can't seem to get him to move forward.
I'd love to see a realistic picture of how such a revolution might take place. A violent overthrow of the government seems both inappropriate and unlikely, so we'd have to work within the system.
The candidates of both political parties have not made the copyright debate a major issue, and the big media companies have support from both parties. Thus, simply supporting one side or another is not helpful.
A third party is a nice idea, but it's only a symbolic gesture so long as we are stuck in a two party system. (Changing to a voting system such as Ranked Pairs would be a big help, but how do we make such a change?)
The only realistic path to change I can see is to wait for the current generation of file sharing, open minded youth to grow up and replace the current regime. Not only does that involve a 30 year wait, but by the time they reach that position, too many of them may have been convinced or purchased by the big media machine.
I don't want to be a cynic, so I'm asking honestly: how is this going to change?
Also, if there is a large installed base of Linux machines, then more application developers will write Linux or cross-platform applications. And the more that happens, the more Microsoft's monopoly (and reason for existing) is damaged.
Not to be insensitive, but... this guy had skydived 1000 times, but couldn't figure out what to do when he found himself wearing a parachute in a plane that was going down?
Oh man, that is so funny! Chuck Norris made so many tough guy movies and shows, and he is a real life martial artist. I can see where it would be fun to just exaggerate his abilities beyond what's realistic, to the point of comic absurdity.
Gosh, we need to get on this. Maybe create some big lists of overstatements about Chuck Norris' superhuman abilities and amazing feats. We could post them all over the web. I think this might really catch on!
I have to try this. Let's see here... Chuck Norris is so strong, he could pick up a car with his little finger. Chuck Norris can eat just one. Chuck Norris once belched, and he caused like an earthquake or something. Chuck Norris doesn't use milk on his cereal, he uses raw meat.
Ok, those aren't the best, but you get the idea. They should be funny and absurd, and definitely should feature Chuck Norris doing things he couldn't do in real life. (Except Chuck Norris can do things in real life that Chuck Norris can't do in real life... get it?) LOL
I can't wait to see where this new form of comedy takes us!
Over the network as a whole, uploading and downloading remains equal, even as the network size changes.
However, If you join the network as it is growing, it's likely that you will download more than you upload, as you will be one of many competing for a smaller number of sources. If you stick around and the network grows around you, it's likely you will upload more, as you will have resources in high demand. Still, it's going to be pretty hard for the RIAA to demonstrate that a person should be liable for more than 1-2 uploads per file shared.
Given how the law seems to work, they won't have to demonstrate any of this, but they should.
Perhaps stealing CDs isn't legally considered copyright infringement. But like illegal downloading, you're obtaining a copy of the music you're not supposed to have. And unlike illegal downloading, you're stealing a physical object. So it still seems absurd that stealing a physical CD would not be the worse offense.
If copyright infringement is the worse offense, then it would be worse to sneak into Best Buy and copy a CD than it would be to take that CD. After copying the CD, if you destroy Best Buy's original, you've turned your action into a lesser crime, because now you've got the only copy. Was there some virtue in the act of destroying the original? I can't overstate just how absurd this really is.
Yes, it could be. But it's up to the RIAA to prove it. They can't just assume that you uploaded something hundreds of times just because it's theoretically possible.
Within a P2P network, the total amount of uploading and downloading is the same. For every packet downloaded by someone, that packet was uploaded by someone. Therefore, the average user found to be sharing songs should be liable for two copies of that song: the copy they downloaded, and the copy they (probably) uploaded. Unless it can be shown that they did more than an average amount of uploading, this is the most reasonable assumption to be made.
The defendant was convicted for 24 songs. If we count each song as two infractions, this would be like stealing 4 CDs and giving 2 of those away. (Except that stealing the CDs would be worse, because it would be both retail theft AND copyright infringement.) What's the penalty for stealing 4 CDs? IANAL, but I'm pretty sure it's less than 1% of the penalty she received.
Any rational person would have to call this penalty absurd, unless they had ulterior motives to pretend otherwise.
(See also my post on why the RIAA thinks they are owed 83 trillion dollars.)
Sure, of course they do. Kerosene got to be too pricey, so they switched to standard diesel fuel. It increases the launch weight by 20%, but still gets the job done. They can still launch most satellites if they're not too heavy. Sometimes they'll pull out a couple of the seats and add a nitro tank to get a little extra boost.
I'm glad I could get you up to speed on Russian space tech.
Alright, in that case you like the outcome. What about an officer in a "Don't ask, don't tell" military who rents gay movies? What about an employee who rents an informational DVD about how to change careers, and posts a review which they believed was anonymous, in which they reveal their plans to leave their job?
The issue isn't really about movie reviews. It's about the expectation of privacy at any website. If a site is offering privacy and anonymity, they need to be responsible with whatever information is entrusted to them, no matter how unimportant that information may seem. We're discovering that even anonymizing data before releasing it isn't adequate.
Google chose to announce this on a Friday to piss off Robert Cringely, who now has to wait an entire week to write wild speculations about Google's plans.
So I could start a company that cleans up dog shit and call it Microsoft Scoopers?
Well, it's already possible to set up class autoloading. For example, if I use the class Zend_Db_Abstract, the autoloader will go out and include the file Zend/Db/Abstract.php, with no include or require statement needed.
It will still be possible to set up autoloading with modules, but I have yet to see how it will be any better. Hopefully the usefulness will become apparent in time.
Are they suing because they have a patent on flaming batteries? They'll have to go after Sony too.
Also https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/636
Namespaces are expected in PHP 5.3, due in Spring 08. Unfortunately, the way they are designed is more like a package than a namespace. They don't seem to accomplish much that you can't do by naming your classes with a prefix.
For example, say that you have a code library named Robert, which contains a class named Dole. Traditionally you'd define it like this:
class Robert_Dole() { }
With namespaces you'd do this:
namespace Robert;
class Dole() { }
And you'd use the class like this:
use Robert as Bob;
$myBob = new Bob::Dole();
Unfortunately, you can't do this:
use Robert;
$myBob = new Dole();
Perhaps they'll be useful, but to me they're looking like a half-assed effort just so we can say, "yes we have namespaces!"
Exactly. The fact that they've sold tens of millions of copies of Vista, which has been widely derided and which few people really want, says it all.
I was at Best Buy recently and asked them about laptops which didn't come with Vista. They didn't have any! Even their low end, low memory models which would struggle with Vista's requirements did not offer an XP option. (Given, XP is still Microsoft - but the way Vista is pushed demonstrates Microsoft's monopoly power.)
For most people, it wouldn't be a serious breach of privacy. However, you can imagine a scenario where it would be.
Imagine a pastor who uses a recognizable username for many sites, including both IMDB and his church's web forums. He uses Netflix as a way to feed his secret love of movies with sexual content which his church would publicly denounce. Now these researchers could link his username to ratings for all these movies, and post the information online.
All it would take then is for a curious church member to google the pastor's username, and his previously secret habit would now be public knowledge. He could lose his reputation and his career.
It's true that it's needs its ', but its' ' isn't its, because it's it's '.
In k3b, you can also drag files into the window and click Burn. Yes, there are other options if you click around, but the defaults are just fine. What, did you think you had to look through each screen and thoroughly evaluate each possible option? The advanced options are there if you need them, and can be ignored if you don't. That is exactly how it should be.
It just blows my mind that you had such a bad experience with k3b. It's pretty much perfect from my perspective. When phones switched from rotary to dial pads, did that throw you for a loop too?