Here in Europe (except for England and France?), the votes are usually counted in the whole country (usually with a threshold of a few percent). Most countries therefore have a mix of parties (green, labour, liberal, christian,...) which represents the general opinion more closely.
Yes, then those wonderfully diverse parties assume office and, in order to get anything done, must form coalitions with OTHER random parties, trading away all but the smallest shred of their platform in the process. You haven't ended compromise in politics (go figure), you have simply moved it upstream, away from the voters and into political backrooms. I think America's system works just fine.
And why on Earth would we want to divorce money from politics? A man should be able to spend every last one of his pennies advocating whatever political cause he sees fit. And, not being a rich man, I am only going to be able to speak if I can accept pennies from others.
True, except for when there's a new CD coming out that many people are going to consider buying because it's from an established artist. In that case, it would still make sense to print a reviewing trashing the CD, to save people time and money. This is why Greil Marcus took the time to write in Rolling Stone, of Dylan's Street Legal, "he's never sounded so utterly fake." ('Changing of the Guard' wasn't too bad though.)
Likewise, it would make sense for Slashdot to tackle books it knows readers will be curious about, like new editions of the Camel and so forth, even if they do not warrant glowing recommenations.
It might be invalid, but not because of this line in the article =)
If you start with among the lowest adoption of broadband in the world, it's not hard to create a very high one-year rate; ie go from 300 homes to 30000 and oh my god it's growing 100x per year. I'm not saying that's the case, but I couldn't tell from the article. Also, "equal to Germany's"?? I didn't know Germany was the benchmark for wired-ness, nor that being more wired than France and Italy meant anything.
Anyway, as I said in my post, I have no idea what the broadband adoption rate in Japan is, and the excerpt you provided doesn't tell me that. Still, based on other posts here, they might have plenty of home Internet.
Of course, there was a question mark in my subject line =)
Some say that many Japanese have turned to wireless phones because a residential phone line costs $700 to install. While that explains the quick adoption of mobile phones for voice calls, it doesn't explain the embrace of data services.
Umm, except that in most countries people get online and access "data services" through the telephone network. If it is prohibitively expensive to access the Internet from home, due to setup and/or per-minute/per-month charges, it makes sense that people spend more time sending e-mail and accessing information from their phones rather than from home PCs. I don't know if this is the case, but I would like to have seen it addressed in the article.
I know at $700 I would not be ready to add a second phone line for the Net and I don't know how far along the broadband rollout is over there.
Egon - Vinz, you said before you were waiting for a sign. What sign are you waiting for?
Louis - Gozer the Traveler! He will come in one of the pre-chosen forms. During the Rectification of the Vuldronaii, the Traveler came as a large and moving Torb! Then, during the Third Reconciliation of the Last of the Meketrex Supplicants, they chose a new form for him, that of a giant Sloar! Many Shubs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of a Sloar that day, I can tell you!
Do make very clear your e-mail storage quota, and establish a mechanism for notifying them when they approach that quota (probably just an email message). If possible, have two quotas, one that's an absolute limit and one they get a few days warning on.
Sorry, I know this isn't really a software issue, but it can be a major pain to try and swap important files like PDF documents with people and all of a sudden you are not receiving the messages and, in many cases, the ISP is not even bothering to bounce them back at the sender. It's one of those detail issues you never think of when you start using an ISP (unless you're grizzled) but ends up becoming very important.
Bill started to figure out where they were starting to go with their line of questioning and he told them that we would not help them with any spamming activities. Bill then referred C&S to the AUP document they signed when they joined they service and they left our offices.
So if a> you were already on the lookout for spam and b>there was already an anti-spam clause in your contract boilerplate, why is this guy being held up as some kind of spam pioneer/pariah? Spam must have already been out there-- people were already either doing this or thinking about it. I don't understand what's special about these guys, I must be missing some information.
You can't make money selling a metered resource at a flat rate. Hence, the dot-com crash.
Ya, that's hy AOL never turned a profit and went out of business... remember them?
Seriously, wasn't the problem more like "you can't make money giving away a resource for free?" Or, "you can't make money selling something no one wants to buy."
Do you really think AOL would be around right now if they had stuck with per-minute pricing? Also, note that Consumer Reports and WSJ both make money online with flat-rate pricing.
Re:Yeah, with chewing gum
on
iWarez
·
· Score: 1, Troll
It's already done. I saw the I/O ports on some computers at Fry's Electronic blocked with chewing gum. Obviously, Fry's is more clued than CompUSA.
Yeah, obviously. Ruining a $500+ CPU to save the installed software from piracy. Those Fry's people are real geniuses.
Here, alternative points of view are limited to the rants of kooks on/.--and nobody really listens to them.
What would be cool would be if we could conjure up an interconnected network of "sites" like Slashdot. Anyone could deploy a Slashdot-like publication on this global, cybernetic network--we could give all the publication software away for free maybe--and then anyone with the appropriately-configured PC could "read" one of these cyber-publications. Then anyone who could aford the marginal cost of connecting to the Cyber-net -- I'm hoping the cost would be around 20, 40 bucks per month -- could make their viewpoint known.
It's too bad the technology for that is not available, not to mention the social infrastructure to sort and categorize the publications. That's because, of course, greedy American capitalists would never invest in such an open, egalitarian "inter-network."
For now, we'll just have to accept that Slashdot is it as far as opinion and discussion through computers. Too bad no one reads Slashdot. I bet most large greedy corporations don't even notice when they are the subjected of a Slashdot "story".
Linux is ready for the desktop, and has been for years. Are migrating desktop users willing to learn how to use Linux on the desktop? Not yet.
Oh I see, it's the users' fault.
As soon as they stop acting so st00pid Linux will take over on the desktop.
People don't want to learn a new environment unless there's a concrete benefit to doing so. Not supporting "Right click/Properties" just to be different or for the convenience of developers makes Linux a little bit harder to learn. Add up a bunch of these subtle interface incongruities and your users will feel furstrated, upset and angry.
Linux brings more to the table than a re-arranged GUI with different colors and fonts. So why not try to match the familiar (Windows) interface on commodity OS elements (copy/cut/paste keystrokes, file property menu location and other common right-click behavior, basic File menu commands and Edit menu commands, even task bar/dock and start/apple menu) in as many cases as possible while adding subtle, unobtrusive improvements to interface components where Linux can excel (paticularly software upgrades, since most apps upgrade for free under linux and can almost always do so online, and doo dads like a graphical uptime monitor that highlight Linux' strengths).
I never said the unit should be illegal, and I specifically said I was not making a statement about legality. I was addressing the statement was little different from a VCR when it comes to timeshifting and sharing.
I must admit, I am amazed at how long it takes to move a show; it is easy to forget than on the PC you can mess with resolution and color depth and refresh rate to a greater extent. I am pretty lucky in that my DSL line can pull down 50KB/s (that's kilobytes) pretty reliably, and I've had it up to 100 KB/s even though i only pay for 384kbps, which probably works out to about 40 KB/s, so if I could find an equally capable peer I could theoretically get a show in 5 hours. In reality I'm guessing it would take at least a day =)
So speed is obviously a big limiting factor with Replay, and so I can see where this makes it less like Napster. But for many people it is likely easier to have a video just stream into the box rather than have to go travel physically to pick one upor package some snail mail. Myself, I would go nuts having my bandwidth hogged by Replay that whole time and just ask for a tape (or buy one on eBay or Target in the case of HBO). I always suspected the commercial feature would have glitches, and I'm sure the broadcasters aren't cooperating with fixing that.
I think what MPAA is afraid of is the march of commercial progress -- SonicBlue looks like it is (gasp) actually giving customers what they want, and if they continue to do so (extra compression, simult downloads) many of the complaints will become less of an issue. re: hdtv, i think a company like sonicblue will likely offer the old grainy compressed resolution for a long time to come unless the bandwidth situation changes dramatically. assuming they remain in business.
Napster traded what was known copyrighted material, bought by home users and illegally copied and sent to others.
First of all, the Napster trial is ongoing, so the legality or illegality of that network is still up in the air, as is the legality or illegality of the actions of its users. Judge Patel's rulings thus far have concerned the preliminary injunction that was, after much wrangling in the federal appeals court, finally put in place. She reached some initial conclusions that may or may not point to the final outcome of the trial, but the legality of the service is not established. Further, the company (last time I checked) offers as one of its key arguments the notion that sharing among users is protected by both the Audio Home Recording Act (1992?) as interpreted in the Diamond v MPAA (?) case and fair use doctrine of the overall copyright code. Someone please correct me if this legal stance has changed, I haven't followed the case closely since the injunction came down.
Second, Napster also used a time-shifting argument in fighting the preliminary injunction. It became clear in both the district and appeals courtrooms (I was there) that the judges found this a bit ridiculous, as the focus and technical structure of Napster was not oriented toward, say, sharing a file at home and downloading it at work, but rather distributing it to others.
Most importantly, is it reasonable to call the Replay 4000's sharing and especially timeshifting functions "no different than using a standard VCR?" I doubt even Sonicblue's own marketing department would agree to that bland assesment of their product, and I suspect that in an Amazon or epinions review you might disagree with yourself here. In terms of timeshifting, you have a device that is capable of skipping over commercials with a new degree of automation and of capturing a massive volume of shows and of doing so with, again, a new degree of automation.
As for sharing, it is quite different to be able to beam something to someone rather than to haul a tape to them physically. What's more, what you are beaming is much more easily placed onto a computer hard disk and shared at large, albeit by circumventing controls in the Replay unit. Either one of the traits taken by itself widely expands the circle of "friends" you are able to share with, and it is the line between friendly or scholarly sharing and mass distribution that is at the heart of the Napster case. The line is only a little bit more clear, IMHO, with Replay.
I am not agreeing or disagreeing with your legalargument, but you seem a bit quick to dismiss the paradigm-shifting capabilities of Replay, similarities (if only superficial) to Napster (and IIRC the article in question was talking not just about Replay but about how others use/abuse its files) and those who finance the production of free television shows (setting legal issues aside, I like the fact that while I'd have to pay ~$20 a month for Sopranos I get West Wing and 60 Minutes for free, and the chance society at large might watch just somewhat fewer commercials could harm the free programming model). I think it is possible to make a much stronger case for the machine if you attempt to grapple with these issues.
From
http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1998-10/ lw -10-slashdot.html
Oct. 1998, By Rob Malda:
A few years ago I decided that I needed a hobby.
I wanted to spend lots of time inside, getting very little exercise, drinking beer, and eating junk food. Since I was a much better programmer than bowler, I decided to start a Web site. It was vastly superior to bowling in many ways: less physical activity, more spam, and besides, you never hear about supermodels marrying bowlers.
well, if you'd kept reading, you'd see i immediately posted a reply to myself, including an article which showed i was wrong. i just couldnt help checking myself =)
ermm, eh, hehe hehe... what i meant by 'idiots' was enlightened beings... or something... OK i was being an idiot =)
check it out (and note in many cases it was simply that the locks had never been used):
NEWS
Ah, finally, Denny's has a lock on Christmas off
Zay N. Smith
12/23/1988
Chicago Sun-Times
FIVE STAR SPORTS FINAL
21
(Copyright 1988)
It sounded so simple.
It started when the people at TW Services, which franchises 1,221 Denny's Restaurants across the country, discovered they were in a holiday mood.
But what to give their 52,300 employees?
Then they got the idea.
Denny's Restaurants have been open every single hour of every single day since the chain was founded 35 years ago.
"So we thought we'd give them all Christmas Day off for the first time ever - even if it is our busiest day of the year," said Robert Ochsner, speaking from the chain's headquarters in La Mirada, Calif.
And what could be simpler?
Except for one thing.
"Since we hadn't ever closed the doors, we discovered we hadn't ever put any locks on most of these doors," Ochsner said.
"We discovered, in fact, that more than 1,000 of our restaurants had no locks at all. And we discovered that each store's new locks would cost about $300."
It has taken two months to get the locksmithing done.
"And it turned out to be a lot harder than everybody thought," agreed Nancy Diaz, manager of the Oak Park Denny's.
"Even the Denny's Restaurants that already had locks needed new locks because people had never used the locks, so the locks didn't work anymore or somebody lost the key after all these years."
But finally, two months later, the people at TW Services are ready to say Merry Christmas to all Denny's employees, to wit:
Denny's Restaurants will be closed from 7 Christmas Eve until 6 a.m. Monday.
The closings will affect all 35 Denny's Restaurants in the Chicago area.
The doors will be - locked.
And don't think the employees aren't grateful.
Except for one thing.
"The fact is, Christmas is about the biggest tip day of the whole year," said Dwight Quinn of the Palatine Denny's. "So you'll find some employees who are less than pleased."
Well. Merry Christmas, anyway. And while you're enjoying your Grand Slam Breakfast, keep in mind that most government offices, public schools and banks will be closed Monday.
City Hall offices as well as state, county and federal offices will be closed, with the exception of emergency services. There will be no mail delivery.
However, parking meter regulations will be in effect.
Chicago public shools will be closed, and most colleges and public libraries will be closed.
The CTA and Metra will operate on a holiday schedule.
For the convenience of commuters who will be leaving work early today, the CTA will begin operating express buses No. 120 and No. 121 from lower Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive to North Western and Union stations at 30-minute intervals, starting at 2 p.m.
A San Diego locksmith installs one of the thousands of locks being added to entrances at Denny's Restaurants nationwide. The "always open" restaurant chain will close for the first time in 35 years to give its employees a Christmas; holiday.; Credit: United Press Inter
Apparently, Denny's had intended to be a 24x365 operation, never closing its doors. Therefore, when they built the restaurants, they didn't bother putting locks on the doors.
this is so obviously bullshit, it is amazing no one has called you on it.
1. you think Denny's builds most of their own locations?
2. if they do build their own locations, do you think they open the store the EXACT day the last nail is pounded and the last tile laid, before, say, health inspectors have had a chance to review the establishmnet, or fire inspectors, or building inspectors? and if they don't, how do they secure the building in the meantime?
3. what about when someone holds up the place, or someone gets shot inside? do you think they just expected to keep on operating during such emergency situations?
Right. Yahoo, the company run by the former head of Warner Bros.? Not that I have anything against the guy or the company, but if you're so upset over copyright protection, you should remember Semel, who left WB in 1999, is still considered "a Hollywood guy".
if some of these figures seem $5-10 too high, remember that AOL is able to charge a hefty premium in the world of dial-up and will be able to do so for high speed Internet access.
$20 local phone
$55 extended digital cable
$20 long distance (flat rate?)
$60 broadband access + broadband AOL
$10 service/channel guide for TiVO-style box
$25 monthly digital music subscription (they can dream, ok)
$25 couple of premium channels (HBO alone is $20 right now in my area)
$15 three streaming, on-demand movies @ $5 eachj
-----------
$230
Perhaps in the future people will start paying for "free" software. That day, my friends, will be a glorious day.
the next time i need to point out some of the failures of the free software model, i will use a link to your post. you have at once argued that people should not expect free software to be of the same quality as commercial software and that software development is better off when people pay for it.
and you were modded up to '5' for this by your peers in the open source community.
you have made Microsoft's points far better than Craig Mundie or anyone else at the company could have.
They wanted to have every TLD for themselves, including all the country codes and.edu and such. It took forever to convince them that that wasn't possible in many cases.
erm, could you pls elaborate on the cases in which it *was* possible? thx.
Thanks. Would only that the author of the original post had seen fit to credit, with a simple link or even simpler "lifted from Red Herring" attribution, the original work by Deborah Claymon.
Not that the post author was trying to pass off the article as his own -- the line (For more on Mr. Barlow,see "What Does John Perry Barlow Do?,"March 1998) would surely have been deleted were that the case -- but it would be nice to show some appreciation for the person who researched this piece and for the site that provides it completely free of charge.
Targets (you guess the cost): "suspected chemical weapons plant in Khartoum, Sudan, and a terrorist training complex in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border. "
-
Dirty deeds done dirt cheap:
Cost of full-fare airline ticket purchased by one of the hijackers (this is from memory): $2,499
Implied rough maximum cost for 18 hijackers: $44,982
Death toll: more than 6,000
Cost per casualty (apologies): less than $7.50
Estimated cost to U.S. economy, according to Economy.com: about $70 billion
-
They just need to get us to keep firing cruise missiles ($1m), dropping JDAM smart bombs (~$17k - src: WSJ last Fri.) and firing Maverick air to surface missiles (~$120K, ibid).
Slashdot Mirror
Here in Europe (except for England and France?), the votes are usually counted in the whole country (usually with a threshold of a few percent). Most countries therefore have a mix of parties (green, labour, liberal, christian, ...) which represents the general opinion more closely.
Yes, then those wonderfully diverse parties assume office and, in order to get anything done, must form coalitions with OTHER random parties, trading away all but the smallest shred of their platform in the process. You haven't ended compromise in politics (go figure), you have simply moved it upstream, away from the voters and into political backrooms. I think America's system works just fine.
And why on Earth would we want to divorce money from politics? A man should be able to spend every last one of his pennies advocating whatever political cause he sees fit. And, not being a rich man, I am only going to be able to speak if I can accept pennies from others.
True, except for when there's a new CD coming out that many people are going to consider buying because it's from an established artist. In that case, it would still make sense to print a reviewing trashing the CD, to save people time and money. This is why Greil Marcus took the time to write in Rolling Stone, of Dylan's Street Legal, "he's never sounded so utterly fake." ('Changing of the Guard' wasn't too bad though.)
Likewise, it would make sense for Slashdot to tackle books it knows readers will be curious about, like new editions of the Camel and so forth, even if they do not warrant glowing recommenations.
So your argument is invalid.
It might be invalid, but not because of this line in the article =)
If you start with among the lowest adoption of broadband in the world, it's not hard to create a very high one-year rate; ie go from 300 homes to 30000 and oh my god it's growing 100x per year. I'm not saying that's the case, but I couldn't tell from the article. Also, "equal to Germany's"?? I didn't know Germany was the benchmark for wired-ness, nor that being more wired than France and Italy meant anything.
Anyway, as I said in my post, I have no idea what the broadband adoption rate in Japan is, and the excerpt you provided doesn't tell me that. Still, based on other posts here, they might have plenty of home Internet.
Of course, there was a question mark in my subject line =)
Some say that many Japanese have turned to wireless phones because a residential phone line costs $700 to install. While that explains the quick adoption of mobile phones for voice calls, it doesn't explain the embrace of data services.
Umm, except that in most countries people get online and access "data services" through the telephone network. If it is prohibitively expensive to access the Internet from home, due to setup and/or per-minute/per-month charges, it makes sense that people spend more time sending e-mail and accessing information from their phones rather than from home PCs. I don't know if this is the case, but I would like to have seen it addressed in the article.
I know at $700 I would not be ready to add a second phone line for the Net and I don't know how far along the broadband rollout is over there.
Egon - Vinz, you said before you were waiting for a sign. What sign are you waiting for?
Louis - Gozer the Traveler! He will come in one of the pre-chosen forms. During the Rectification of the Vuldronaii, the Traveler came as a large and moving Torb! Then, during the Third Reconciliation of the Last of the Meketrex Supplicants, they chose a new form for him, that of a giant Sloar! Many Shubs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of a Sloar that day, I can tell you!
Do make very clear your e-mail storage quota, and establish a mechanism for notifying them when they approach that quota (probably just an email message). If possible, have two quotas, one that's an absolute limit and one they get a few days warning on.
Sorry, I know this isn't really a software issue, but it can be a major pain to try and swap important files like PDF documents with people and all of a sudden you are not receiving the messages and, in many cases, the ISP is not even bothering to bounce them back at the sender. It's one of those detail issues you never think of when you start using an ISP (unless you're grizzled) but ends up becoming very important.
Bill started to figure out where they were starting to go with their line of questioning and he told them that we would not help them with any spamming activities. Bill then referred C&S to the AUP document they signed when they joined they service and they left our offices.
So if a> you were already on the lookout for spam and b>there was already an anti-spam clause in your contract boilerplate, why is this guy being held up as some kind of spam pioneer/pariah? Spam must have already been out there-- people were already either doing this or thinking about it. I don't understand what's special about these guys, I must be missing some information.
You can't make money selling a metered resource at a flat rate. Hence, the dot-com crash.
... remember them?
Ya, that's hy AOL never turned a profit and went out of business
Seriously, wasn't the problem more like "you can't make money giving away a resource for free?" Or, "you can't make money selling something no one wants to buy."
Do you really think AOL would be around right now if they had stuck with per-minute pricing? Also, note that Consumer Reports and WSJ both make money online with flat-rate pricing.
It's already done. I saw the I/O ports on some computers at Fry's Electronic blocked with chewing gum. Obviously, Fry's is more clued than CompUSA.
Yeah, obviously. Ruining a $500+ CPU to save the installed software from piracy. Those Fry's people are real geniuses.
Here, alternative points of view are limited to the rants of kooks on /.--and nobody really listens to them.
What would be cool would be if we could conjure up an interconnected network of "sites" like Slashdot. Anyone could deploy a Slashdot-like publication on this global, cybernetic network--we could give all the publication software away for free maybe--and then anyone with the appropriately-configured PC could "read" one of these cyber-publications. Then anyone who could aford the marginal cost of connecting to the Cyber-net -- I'm hoping the cost would be around 20, 40 bucks per month -- could make their viewpoint known.
It's too bad the technology for that is not available, not to mention the social infrastructure to sort and categorize the publications. That's because, of course, greedy American capitalists would never invest in such an open, egalitarian "inter-network."
For now, we'll just have to accept that Slashdot is it as far as opinion and discussion through computers. Too bad no one reads Slashdot. I bet most large greedy corporations don't even notice when they are the subjected of a Slashdot "story".
Cheers
R
Linux is ready for the desktop, and has been for years. Are migrating desktop users willing to learn how to use Linux on the desktop? Not yet.
Oh I see, it's the users' fault.
As soon as they stop acting so st00pid Linux will take over on the desktop.
People don't want to learn a new environment unless there's a concrete benefit to doing so. Not supporting "Right click/Properties" just to be different or for the convenience of developers makes Linux a little bit harder to learn. Add up a bunch of these subtle interface incongruities and your users will feel furstrated, upset and angry.
Linux brings more to the table than a re-arranged GUI with different colors and fonts. So why not try to match the familiar (Windows) interface on commodity OS elements (copy/cut/paste keystrokes, file property menu location and other common right-click behavior, basic File menu commands and Edit menu commands, even task bar/dock and start/apple menu) in as many cases as possible while adding subtle, unobtrusive improvements to interface components where Linux can excel (paticularly software upgrades, since most apps upgrade for free under linux and can almost always do so online, and doo dads like a graphical uptime monitor that highlight Linux' strengths).
I never said the unit should be illegal, and I specifically said I was not making a statement about legality. I was addressing the statement was little different from a VCR when it comes to timeshifting and sharing.
I must admit, I am amazed at how long it takes to move a show; it is easy to forget than on the PC you can mess with resolution and color depth and refresh rate to a greater extent. I am pretty lucky in that my DSL line can pull down 50KB/s (that's kilobytes) pretty reliably, and I've had it up to 100 KB/s even though i only pay for 384kbps, which probably works out to about 40 KB/s, so if I could find an equally capable peer I could theoretically get a show in 5 hours. In reality I'm guessing it would take at least a day =)
So speed is obviously a big limiting factor with Replay, and so I can see where this makes it less like Napster. But for many people it is likely easier to have a video just stream into the box rather than have to go travel physically to pick one upor package some snail mail. Myself, I would go nuts having my bandwidth hogged by Replay that whole time and just ask for a tape (or buy one on eBay or Target in the case of HBO).
I always suspected the commercial feature would have glitches, and I'm sure the broadcasters aren't cooperating with fixing that.
I think what MPAA is afraid of is the march of commercial progress -- SonicBlue looks like it is (gasp) actually giving customers what they want, and if they continue to do so (extra compression, simult downloads) many of the complaints will become less of an issue. re: hdtv, i think a company like sonicblue will likely offer the old grainy compressed resolution for a long time to come unless the bandwidth situation changes dramatically. assuming they remain in business.
overall good points
cheers
r
Napster traded what was known copyrighted material, bought by home users and illegally copied and sent to others.
First of all, the Napster trial is ongoing, so the legality or illegality of that network is still up in the air, as is the legality or illegality of the actions of its users. Judge Patel's rulings thus far have concerned the preliminary injunction that was, after much wrangling in the federal appeals court, finally put in place. She reached some initial conclusions that may or may not point to the final outcome of the trial, but the legality of the service is not established. Further, the company (last time I checked) offers as one of its key arguments the notion that sharing among users is protected by both the Audio Home Recording Act (1992?) as interpreted in the Diamond v MPAA (?) case and fair use doctrine of the overall copyright code. Someone please correct me if this legal stance has changed, I haven't followed the case closely since the injunction came down.
Second, Napster also used a time-shifting argument in fighting the preliminary injunction. It became clear in both the district and appeals courtrooms (I was there) that the judges found this a bit ridiculous, as the focus and technical structure of Napster was not oriented toward, say, sharing a file at home and downloading it at work, but rather distributing it to others.
Most importantly, is it reasonable to call the Replay 4000's sharing and especially timeshifting functions "no different than using a standard VCR?" I doubt even Sonicblue's own marketing department would agree to that bland assesment of their product, and I suspect that in an Amazon or epinions review you might disagree with yourself here. In terms of timeshifting, you have a device that is capable of skipping over commercials with a new degree of automation and of capturing a massive volume of shows and of doing so with, again, a new degree of automation.
As for sharing, it is quite different to be able to beam something to someone rather than to haul a tape to them physically. What's more, what you are beaming is much more easily placed onto a computer hard disk and shared at large, albeit by circumventing controls in the Replay unit. Either one of the traits taken by itself widely expands the circle of "friends" you are able to share with, and it is the line between friendly or scholarly sharing and mass distribution that is at the heart of the Napster case. The line is only a little bit more clear, IMHO, with Replay.
I am not agreeing or disagreeing with your legalargument, but you seem a bit quick to dismiss the paradigm-shifting capabilities of Replay, similarities (if only superficial) to Napster (and IIRC the article in question was talking not just about Replay but about how others use/abuse its files) and those who finance the production of free television shows (setting legal issues aside, I like the fact that while I'd have to pay ~$20 a month for Sopranos I get West Wing and 60 Minutes for free, and the chance society at large might watch just somewhat fewer commercials could harm the free programming model). I think it is possible to make a much stronger case for the machine if you attempt to grapple with these issues.
Cheers
R
From/ lw -10-slashdot.html
http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1998-10
Oct. 1998, By Rob Malda:
A few years ago I decided that I needed a hobby.
I wanted to spend lots of time inside, getting very little exercise, drinking beer, and eating junk food. Since I was a much better programmer than bowler, I decided to start a Web site. It was vastly superior to bowling in many ways: less physical activity, more spam, and besides, you never hear about supermodels marrying bowlers.
=)
Congratulations!!
considering i called the proverbial everyone an 'idiot' -- when i was wrong no less -- i think i should accept =)
r
well, if you'd kept reading, you'd see i immediately posted a reply to myself, including an article which showed i was wrong. i just couldnt help checking myself =)
;->
but you're right, i was being a weenie
cheers
r
how can you all be such idiots?
... what i meant by 'idiots' was enlightened beings ... or something ... OK i was being an idiot =)
ermm, eh, hehe hehe
check it out (and note in many cases it was simply that the locks had never been used):
NEWS
Ah, finally, Denny's has a lock on Christmas off
Zay N. Smith
12/23/1988
Chicago Sun-Times
FIVE STAR SPORTS FINAL
21
(Copyright 1988)
It sounded so simple.
It started when the people at TW Services, which franchises 1,221 Denny's Restaurants across the country, discovered they were in a holiday mood.
But what to give their 52,300 employees?
Then they got the idea.
Denny's Restaurants have been open every single hour of every single day since the chain was founded 35 years ago.
"So we thought we'd give them all Christmas Day off for the first time ever - even if it is our busiest day of the year," said Robert Ochsner, speaking from the chain's headquarters in La Mirada, Calif.
And what could be simpler?
Except for one thing.
"Since we hadn't ever closed the doors, we discovered we hadn't ever put any locks on most of these doors," Ochsner said.
"We discovered, in fact, that more than 1,000 of our restaurants had no locks at all. And we discovered that each store's new locks would cost about $300."
It has taken two months to get the locksmithing done.
"And it turned out to be a lot harder than everybody thought," agreed Nancy Diaz, manager of the Oak Park Denny's.
"Even the Denny's Restaurants that already had locks needed new locks because people had never used the locks, so the locks didn't work anymore or somebody lost the key after all these years."
But finally, two months later, the people at TW Services are ready to say Merry Christmas to all Denny's employees, to wit:
Denny's Restaurants will be closed from 7 Christmas Eve until 6 a.m. Monday.
The closings will affect all 35 Denny's Restaurants in the Chicago area.
The doors will be - locked.
And don't think the employees aren't grateful.
Except for one thing.
"The fact is, Christmas is about the biggest tip day of the whole year," said Dwight Quinn of the Palatine Denny's. "So you'll find some employees who are less than pleased."
Well. Merry Christmas, anyway. And while you're enjoying your Grand Slam Breakfast, keep in mind that most government offices, public schools and banks will be closed Monday.
City Hall offices as well as state, county and federal offices will be closed, with the exception of emergency services. There will be no mail delivery.
However, parking meter regulations will be in effect.
Chicago public shools will be closed, and most colleges and public libraries will be closed.
The CTA and Metra will operate on a holiday schedule.
For the convenience of commuters who will be leaving work early today, the CTA will begin operating express buses No. 120 and No. 121 from lower Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive to North Western and Union stations at 30-minute intervals, starting at 2 p.m.
A San Diego locksmith installs one of the thousands of locks being added to entrances at Denny's Restaurants nationwide. The "always open" restaurant chain will close for the first time in 35 years to give its employees a Christmas; holiday.; Credit: United Press Inter
Apparently, Denny's had intended to be a 24x365 operation, never closing its doors. Therefore, when they built the restaurants, they didn't bother putting locks on the doors.
this is so obviously bullshit, it is amazing no one has called you on it.
1. you think Denny's builds most of their own locations?
2. if they do build their own locations, do you think they open the store the EXACT day the last nail is pounded and the last tile laid, before, say, health inspectors have had a chance to review the establishmnet, or fire inspectors, or building inspectors? and if they don't, how do they secure the building in the meantime?
3. what about when someone holds up the place, or someone gets shot inside? do you think they just expected to keep on operating during such emergency situations?
how can you all be such idiots?
Can we axe them both, and start over with Yahoo!?
Right. Yahoo, the company run by the former head of Warner Bros.? Not that I have anything against the guy or the company, but if you're so upset over copyright protection, you should remember Semel, who left WB in 1999, is still considered "a Hollywood guy".
if some of these figures seem $5-10 too high, remember that AOL is able to charge a hefty premium in the world of dial-up and will be able to do so for high speed Internet access.
$20 local phone
$55 extended digital cable
$20 long distance (flat rate?)
$60 broadband access + broadband AOL
$10 service/channel guide for TiVO-style box
$25 monthly digital music subscription (they can dream, ok)
$25 couple of premium channels (HBO alone is $20 right now in my area)
$15 three streaming, on-demand movies @ $5 eachj
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$230
Perhaps in the future people will start paying for "free" software. That day, my friends, will be a glorious day.
the next time i need to point out some of the failures of the free software model, i will use a link to your post. you have at once argued that people should not expect free software to be of the same quality as commercial software and that software development is better off when people pay for it.
and you were modded up to '5' for this by your peers in the open source community.
you have made Microsoft's points far better than Craig Mundie or anyone else at the company could have.
They wanted to have every TLD for themselves, including all the country codes and .edu and such. It took forever to convince them that that wasn't possible in many cases.
erm, could you pls elaborate on the cases in which it *was* possible? thx.
Thanks. Would only that the author of the original post had seen fit to credit, with a simple link or even simpler "lifted from Red Herring" attribution, the original work by Deborah Claymon.
Not that the post author was trying to pass off the article as his own -- the line (For more on Mr. Barlow,see "What Does John Perry Barlow Do?,"March 1998) would surely have been deleted were that the case -- but it would be nice to show some appreciation for the person who researched this piece and for the site that provides it completely free of charge.
Cost of about 75 cruise missiles fired on two targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998: ~$75 million
Death toll: about 21 (source, source, source)
Cost per casualty (apologies): $3.6 million
Targets (you guess the cost): "suspected chemical weapons plant in Khartoum, Sudan, and a terrorist training complex in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border. "
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Dirty deeds done dirt cheap:
Cost of full-fare airline ticket purchased by one of the hijackers (this is from memory): $2,499
Implied rough maximum cost for 18 hijackers: $44,982
Death toll: more than 6,000
Cost per casualty (apologies): less than $7.50
Estimated cost to U.S. economy, according to Economy.com: about $70 billion
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They just need to get us to keep firing cruise missiles ($1m), dropping JDAM smart bombs (~$17k - src: WSJ last Fri.) and firing Maverick air to surface missiles (~$120K, ibid).