*Ahem*, I kind of got off-track of my original point to commenting -- I feel that before, it was just not economical for a "casual" gamer to play games. Throw down $300 for a Playstation to play the 1 or 2 games that appealed to you? No way, Jose! Now you can get a DS Lite for less than $150, it comes with EVERYTHING you need (you have to hook a playstation/xbox/whatever up to a T.V. and plug in a controller, etc...), you just throw a game in, turn it on and you are enjoying yourself. It can be taken anywhere, which is important because the "casual" gamer doesn't usally devote time to play games sitting in front of the t.v. (they're silly and have too much interest in this "real life" thing) so pocket gaming is a good way to lull them in. Once they have the system, it's easy for them to say "Well, I normally wouldn't play [hardcore gamer game here], but it looks neat and I do already have the system, so why not".
I liked several of the games on the DS and saw its promise (my roommate has one) but decided the oddly shaped and tough to pocket system was not for me... the DS Lite, however, is a different matter. Before, the games may have appealed to someone but the system proved to be a bit of a turn-off -- now the DS Lite opens doors to give the good games a good platform and it all equals a good opportunity for Nintendo. Now... as soon as they release a black one in the US, I will buy it.
Envy? No, I'm glad I'm not a stupid (what's the average SAT/ACT score of the average baseball/basketball player?), drug-enhanced, overpaid dolt. Bitterness? Yes, because I think it's stupid that entire populations (not just America, the whole world [think of all the crazy World Cup stories, locking spouses in closet so you can watch a game or running into a burning house so you can grab your t.v. to finish watching the rest of a match is STUPID]) are so amazed by sports that they don't see a problem in paying millions to people who contribute nothing to the world (they play a fucking GAME -- kids play games for FUN!) while people that are intelligent and pour their lives into their profession (teachers, social workers, doctors, etc) are paid poorly (well, maybe not doctors).
P.S. unless your ISP charges per data bit or per minute then all it cost you was a smile:}
and sometimes I wonder if I have too much time on my hands. Really though, I find this an interesting crossover of media forms -- like little kids holding their own home run derby in the backyard... except replace "little kids" with "30 year olds living in their parents' basement" and replace "the backyard" with "the internet which requires no physical effort". I guess I just don't understand it -- I know I'm a nerd, and I have a large disliking for professional sports ("Oh yay mr. baseball, you hit a ball with a wooden bat... here's your multi-million dollar paycheck. oh, what's that mr. coder, you worked 60 hours this week so you could implement your program before the server freeze?... well, we outsourced your job to India, clean out your desk") so I don't understand why all these second lifers are putting on their own little derby.
But like... the manufacturers have told us how good their consoles will be... I mean are. Sony says the ps3 is going to be $600 which means that it's like... $600 of awesome. The Wii will obviously be horrible because it's not the most powerful system on the market -- I mean, come on, they're trying to tell us that it has innovative games... I don't buy a console so I can play games, I buy a console so I can use it to calculate scientific theories or so I can watch the best-rendered cut-scenes. Is it just me or does the Wii-mote + analog stick look like a sex toy? (Hmm, I still need to rip on the 360...) The Xbox? more like... stupidbox.
I agree with the parent -- save the fight until AFTER the consoles are out. Going off of speculation and theories is... oh wait... I forgot -- this is the internet:]
So you still don't accept the facts that Ken Lay did not "build Enron from nothing"? Well I guess your ignorance wins. We should inform everyone else how wrong they are.
Oh look, reference.com thinks Northern Natural Gas, one of the two companies that merged to form Enron, was formed in the 1930's... well, maybe Ken Lay had that "time travel" thing down http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Enron_Corpora tion
Oh? Well whether wikipedia says it or not, the FUCKING FACTS are that Enron was not "created by Lay from nothing" as the parent article said. Check his own fucking autobiography, ask his friends, the facts are there! (I only cited wikipedia because it's bookmarked on my browser). Lay was not a magical happy man who pissed mountain dew and shat cotton candy -- he was a businessman who managed to make some good deals and merged two powerful companies into a superpowerful company and then fucked thousands or loyal employees over so he could make a quick buck. Good riddance, the world has enough assholes as it is.
YOU'RE A LIAR! You are either too blinded by your hatred for Microsoft or too stupid to know any better but Microsoft has DEFINITELY invented stuff -- it's called Clippy, the happy Office helper!
He did not grow Enron from nothing, it was simply a merger of two large energy corporations:
"Lay worked in the early '70s as a federal energy regulator. He then became undersecretary for the Department of the Interior before he returned to the business world as an executive at Florida Gas. By the Reagan administration, when energy was deregulated, Lay was already an energy company executive and he took advantage of the new climate by merging Houston Natural Gas Co. with Nebraska-based Inter-North to form Enron in 1985." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Lay
Please provide links if you're going to use large numbers of "facts". I'm no Gates fanboy, I like Microsoft about as much as I like yams -- not very much. My point was not that Windows was more/less/just-as secure as Mac OS X, it was that the article was pointless for saying "Hey, the top X number of malware things are for Windows!". If anything, your "statistics" backup my logic -- MORE PEOPLE USE WINDOWS SO IT IS A MORE PREFERRED TARGET. If, as you say, 5% of users are using Mac OS X (oh look, they DO have real viruses http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/analyses/osxleapa. html) and 90% use Windows, let's say we have a group of 100 people (5 mac users, 90 pc users). You are a l33t h4x0r with amazing skills so it's no problem for you to break into either Windows or Mac OS or even a propriety operating system that runs on crack (Crack OS): what are you going to dedicate your time to attack; the 5 mac users or the 90 windows users. Furthermore, let's say you have created a virus for both and you release it into the wild and infect one mac user and one pc user. Now, let's say it's an IM virus -- each infected computer then sends the link to 5 other computers to try and infect them -- you may not be a math major but you can still see that the probability of the mac user infecting (and therefore spreading) another mac is not very high... especially when you compare it to the near certainty that the infected windows machine will infect another windows machine. "Windows is more insecure than Mac OS X, by whole sodding leagues. Anyone trying to deny this or FUD it is living in a bill-gates'-acid-trip fueled loud cuckoo land." Oh? Show me proof. If one was more secure by "whole sodding leagues" as you say, EVERY business with private and protected information would switch. Obviously you are on a Steve Jobs crack trip (inspired by Crack OS? maybe) if you can't see this. I have a Windows PC I use for gaming and have had zero (that's right zero) security problems [I just use a basic firewall, I don't even have an anti-virus (I scan online every few months just to be safe)].
At least his network cable fit in his cd-rom drive. Working for a university helpdesk, we had a delightful time when we found out a father wanted to impress his little princess daughter with his marvelous technicial skills by hooking her computer up to our network... unfortunately the computer had a modem not a network card... fortunately for the story, he had a hammer. No, no, sadly the modem did not work with the network cable inserted.
And on the subject of things fitting into cd-rom drives... another technician job I led me to be baffled that a woman (a secretary type person who had been using computers for a long time and, I thought, knew what she was doing) inserted 4 cd's into her tray-load cd-rom drive... one of which was a critical cd full of precious data that was not stored anywhere else. Thankfully I was able to take the drive apart and find the cd she needed unscratched. People never cease to amaze me.
The games for the PS3 will cost $80 -- the 360 just can't handle games that cost that much. I hear they're working on a new version of pong for the PS3 to take advantage of the advanced hardware -- rumor has it that the paddles will move in 4 dimensions (standard 3 spatial dimensions and the 4th dimension of TIME ITSELF!), the ball will have a real-life physics engine, the game will read your mind to play the song you're thinking of in 7.1 surround sound just to you (supports up to 4 different songs simultaneously)... and while it does all this it will also communicate with a satellite to scratch your ass from space.
At least Google built their monopoly by being the best and satisfying the customer -- I can't think of one thing Google's done to piss me off. No flashy banner ads, no sign-ups that fill my inbox with spam, nothing! Furthermore, they don't conduct unethical business practices to drive competitors out of business and then turn around to screw the customer. The telecoms are only a monopoly (okay, an oligopoly) because they were put in place as such by the government and were empowered with the taxpayers' hard-earned money. There is nothing wrong with monopolies -- only ill-gotten dastardly monopolies (such as the teleocoms). Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Google power corrupts... with googley eyes?
Windows is more used than OS X (90% marketshare) and Microsoft is more hated than Apple -- of course Windows is going to be "more vulnerable"... because more people are going to target it! (Analogies: start your engines!) That's like saying "You're more likely to get shot in Chicago than SmalltownUSA" Well duh, because there are more people and more guns in Chicago than SmalltownUSA (Apple is SmalltownUSA if you couldn't figure that out). Apple's operating system has its flaws, Windows has its flaw, Linux has flaws -- security flaws will probably always exist (until the robots write our code for us... IN OUR OWN BLOOD) and as long as they are around, people will always try to exploit them. It's not wonder the top 10 malware pieces are for Windows considering Windows' HUGE marketshare (Analogy remix: wouldn't it be smart to pick out a particular bank to rob if it has 90% of the world's money?).
I call FUD! The "statistics" they use are baloney. Google has one-quarter the number of people that MSN and Yahoo do?...maybe one quarter the addresses, but I disagree on the "people" part -- why, I myself have 4 Yahoo email accounts (and just one gmail account) so if everyone was like me than an equal amount of people use gmail and Yahoo. I realize not everyone is like me (oh, trust me, I definitely realize this), but I still have a hard time accepting their "statistics" that gmail has 1/4 the users of hotmail and yahoo mail. Hotmail and Yahoomail have been around for over 12 years (I think I got my first yahoomail account in 95), gmail has been around for 2 (a lot of that time it was locked up and you could only get in through invites). How many of those hotmail and yahoomail accounts are unused? If these questions were answered and backed up with numbers then maybe I would believe the article... until then, I repeat my original statement: FUD!!!
"Though I'm passed one hundred thousand miles, I'm feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go,
tell my wife I love her very much she knows
Ground control to Major Tom:
Your circuit's dead, there's something wong.
Can you hear me Major Tom?
Can you hear me Major Tom?
Can you hear me Major Tom? Can you...
Here am I floating round my tin can, far above the moon
Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do"
If only they had this back then... then Major Tom could be safe and David Bowie would have one less hit... shameless David Bowie, making songs about dead made-up astronauts.
"It's like some people get so emotionally attached to their computer that if they see one flaw with it they have to write an article about it."
My computer is my girlfriend and I am VERY emotionally attached to her -- anyone who really loves their computer will learn to embrace any flaws as just what makes their computer special. Like my computer's sex... I mean floppy drive is all sticky inside for some reason, but it doesn't make me love my computer any less.
You MUST work for the RIAA if you're comparing downloading music to stealing candy. Candy is tangible, it costs money to produce, store, and sell EACH one -- mp3's are just bits of information stored in 1's and 0's -- "stealing" an mp3 doesn't hurt anyone's profits IF YOU WEREN'T GOING TO BUY IT IN THE FIRST PLACE. I'm not saying that it's right or wrong to "steal" music by filesharing, but I am saying that the RIAA is ridiculous for prosecuting a 12 year old for doing so.
She's 12 -- no 12 year old I know has money & transportation to go to the store and buy a CD, so by her downloading it's not like it caused her to not buy the cd and therefore hurt any record company's profits (in fact, maybe her parents would hear the music she downloaded and go out and buy her similar artists, therefore helping increase record companys' profits [CD sales actually increased in recent years http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,35848,00 .html]).
You say it's like stealing candy -- WRONG. Every 12 year old I know has been informed by their parents that stealing is wrong -- they've also been taught that "stealing" involves tangible goods. I don't know any 12 year olds who have been taught (by parents OR by schools) that filesharing is wrong -- it doesn't say "the activity you are about to participate in is illegal" when you download unauthorized files in bittorrent or any another p2p program. A 12 year old KNOWS not to steal a candy bar because it is wrong, a 12 year old does NOT KNOW that they're doing anything wrong when they click on a button to download the song they heard on the radio.
What is the point of the RIAA suing this 12 year old? To gain back lost profits? Again -- I point you to the fact that she is a fucking 12 year old and not a trust-fund baby. No job, no money, nothing to be had from suing her (maybe they wanted her Barbie[tm]s). The amount of money they must have spent on legal fees (with their evil lawyers direct from LawyerMart [LawyerMart is a copyright of Hell Enterprises]) alone would have been more than enough to give a "File-sharing is wrong and hurts people and kills puppies" presentation for THE ENTIRE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL the 12 year-old attended.
If the point is to persuade people not to file-share, the lawsuit is moot -- just because a 12 year old downloaded 1 song and you sue her does not mean anyone is going to say "hey, maybe I shouldn't do this", the only result will be people saying "The RIAA is full of tools!"
Remember, this is not a network of teens/adults swapping thousands/millions of songs or burning pirated cds and selling them; it's a single 12 year old girl. If she was the only person in the world to commit the horrible act of downloading some bits of information that are considered protected by "intellectual property right" laws then by all means -- sue her little tutu off... but while there are huge fish to fry yet the RIAA targets a 12 year old, I say "bullshit!".
I guess you are either flamebaiting or you must work for the RIAA -- anyone who pays attention to the world knows that the RIAA is a pile of garbage. Just look into some of the crap that they've done (hint: the article summary had 3 cases where the RIAA was playing the role of a tool).
Going after 12 year olds for "violating" intellectual property rights is bullshit -- when was the last time you asked a 12 year old about intellectual property rights and got any answer other than a headscratch and a "huh?".
Telling a 15 year old she has to lie in court otherwise she will be tried for perjury is not only unethical but brutal. If you're religious, placing your hand on the bible and swearing to go that you're telling the truth and then having to lie because the RIAA told you to is "just protecting intellectual copyright"?
Suing a woman who has never used a computer in her life... doesn't that just scream "I'm the RIAA and I don't look into things before I try to ruin peoples' lives by suing them into the poorhouse"?
They're NOT protecting the artists that they suppossedly represent (via the record companies that they represent): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riaa
"In 1999, Stanley M. Glazier, a Congressional staff attorney, inserted, without public notice or comment, substantive language into the final markup of a "technical corrections" section of copyright legislation, classifying many music recordings as "works made for hire," thereby stripping artists of their copyright interests and transferring those interests to their record labels. Shortly afterwards, Glazier was hired as Senior Vice President of Government Relations and Legislative Counsel for the RIAA, which vigorously defended the change when it came to light. The battle over the disputed provision led to the formation of the Recording Artists' Coalition, which successfully lobbied for repeal of the change."
"In 2006, the RIAA claimed that ripping CDs and backing them up does not constitute fair use, because tracks from ripped CDs do not maintain the controversial DRM to protect the music file from copyright infringement. They argue that, there is no evidence that any of the relevant media are "unusually subject to damage" and that "even if CDs do become damaged, replacements are readily available at affordable prices.""
That's right, they want you to buy a new CD when yours breaks... after all, they're "unusually subject to damage", right? Those thing pieces of plastic scratch more easily than my ass! Ripping the CD to my computer (and not sharing it) is not fair use? They don't want me putting it on my mp3 player so I can take my 800+ CD collection wherever I want without hiring a personal music assistant? Damn, well I guess I could employ one of the people the RIAA sued into the ground for pretty cheap. By the way, about 20 of those cds no longer work due to scratches, thankfully I have all my music ripped to my computer so I was able to burn myself a backed up copy -- I store all my cds in the cases they come in or in proteced and padded cd booklets so it's not like I'm mishandling them.
The RIAA is not in the interest of protecting rights of the artist or the consumer -- they're in the interest of making themselves rich and powerful.
We could use this to take pictures of women and associate the women with their locations - a kind of new-age black book!...now, if only us/.ers could get women.
Slashdot Mirror
*Ahem*, I kind of got off-track of my original point to commenting -- I feel that before, it was just not economical for a "casual" gamer to play games. Throw down $300 for a Playstation to play the 1 or 2 games that appealed to you? No way, Jose! Now you can get a DS Lite for less than $150, it comes with EVERYTHING you need (you have to hook a playstation/xbox/whatever up to a T.V. and plug in a controller, etc...), you just throw a game in, turn it on and you are enjoying yourself. It can be taken anywhere, which is important because the "casual" gamer doesn't usally devote time to play games sitting in front of the t.v. (they're silly and have too much interest in this "real life" thing) so pocket gaming is a good way to lull them in. Once they have the system, it's easy for them to say "Well, I normally wouldn't play [hardcore gamer game here], but it looks neat and I do already have the system, so why not".
I liked several of the games on the DS and saw its promise (my roommate has one) but decided the oddly shaped and tough to pocket system was not for me... the DS Lite, however, is a different matter. Before, the games may have appealed to someone but the system proved to be a bit of a turn-off -- now the DS Lite opens doors to give the good games a good platform and it all equals a good opportunity for Nintendo. Now... as soon as they release a black one in the US, I will buy it.
Envy? No, I'm glad I'm not a stupid (what's the average SAT/ACT score of the average baseball/basketball player?), drug-enhanced, overpaid dolt. Bitterness? Yes, because I think it's stupid that entire populations (not just America, the whole world [think of all the crazy World Cup stories, locking spouses in closet so you can watch a game or running into a burning house so you can grab your t.v. to finish watching the rest of a match is STUPID]) are so amazed by sports that they don't see a problem in paying millions to people who contribute nothing to the world (they play a fucking GAME -- kids play games for FUN!) while people that are intelligent and pour their lives into their profession (teachers, social workers, doctors, etc) are paid poorly (well, maybe not doctors). :}
P.S. unless your ISP charges per data bit or per minute then all it cost you was a smile
and sometimes I wonder if I have too much time on my hands. Really though, I find this an interesting crossover of media forms -- like little kids holding their own home run derby in the backyard... except replace "little kids" with "30 year olds living in their parents' basement" and replace "the backyard" with "the internet which requires no physical effort". I guess I just don't understand it -- I know I'm a nerd, and I have a large disliking for professional sports ("Oh yay mr. baseball, you hit a ball with a wooden bat... here's your multi-million dollar paycheck. oh, what's that mr. coder, you worked 60 hours this week so you could implement your program before the server freeze?... well, we outsourced your job to India, clean out your desk") so I don't understand why all these second lifers are putting on their own little derby.
But like... the manufacturers have told us how good their consoles will be... I mean are. Sony says the ps3 is going to be $600 which means that it's like... $600 of awesome. The Wii will obviously be horrible because it's not the most powerful system on the market -- I mean, come on, they're trying to tell us that it has innovative games... I don't buy a console so I can play games, I buy a console so I can use it to calculate scientific theories or so I can watch the best-rendered cut-scenes. Is it just me or does the Wii-mote + analog stick look like a sex toy? (Hmm, I still need to rip on the 360...) The Xbox? more like... stupidbox.
:]
I agree with the parent -- save the fight until AFTER the consoles are out. Going off of speculation and theories is... oh wait... I forgot -- this is the internet
All your spam are belong to porn!
So you still don't accept the facts that Ken Lay did not "build Enron from nothing"? Well I guess your ignorance wins. We should inform everyone else how wrong they are.
a tion
e r/enron_time.html
n ron-chronology.htm
Oh look, reference.com thinks Northern Natural Gas, one of the two companies that merged to form Enron, was formed in the 1930's... well, maybe Ken Lay had that "time travel" thing down http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Enron_Corpor
They think he became CEO the year after Enron was formed http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/infrastructure/pow
Man, maybe I would expect it from some "reference.com" place and from the hippie PBS, but not from you USA Today... you've changed http://www.usatoday.com/money/energy/2001-11-28-e
Answers.com has always been b.s. so it's no wonder they're in on the lies too http://www.answers.com/topic/kenneth-lay
Oh? Well whether wikipedia says it or not, the FUCKING FACTS are that Enron was not "created by Lay from nothing" as the parent article said. Check his own fucking autobiography, ask his friends, the facts are there! (I only cited wikipedia because it's bookmarked on my browser). Lay was not a magical happy man who pissed mountain dew and shat cotton candy -- he was a businessman who managed to make some good deals and merged two powerful companies into a superpowerful company and then fucked thousands or loyal employees over so he could make a quick buck. Good riddance, the world has enough assholes as it is.
YOU'RE A LIAR! You are either too blinded by your hatred for Microsoft or too stupid to know any better but Microsoft has DEFINITELY invented stuff -- it's called Clippy, the happy Office helper!
He did not grow Enron from nothing, it was simply a merger of two large energy corporations:
"Lay worked in the early '70s as a federal energy regulator. He then became undersecretary for the Department of the Interior before he returned to the business world as an executive at Florida Gas. By the Reagan administration, when energy was deregulated, Lay was already an energy company executive and he took advantage of the new climate by merging Houston Natural Gas Co. with Nebraska-based Inter-North to form Enron in 1985."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Lay
Please provide links if you're going to use large numbers of "facts". I'm no Gates fanboy, I like Microsoft about as much as I like yams -- not very much. My point was not that Windows was more/less/just-as secure as Mac OS X, it was that the article was pointless for saying "Hey, the top X number of malware things are for Windows!". If anything, your "statistics" backup my logic -- MORE PEOPLE USE WINDOWS SO IT IS A MORE PREFERRED TARGET. If, as you say, 5% of users are using Mac OS X (oh look, they DO have real viruses http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/analyses/osxleapa. html) and 90% use Windows, let's say we have a group of 100 people (5 mac users, 90 pc users). You are a l33t h4x0r with amazing skills so it's no problem for you to break into either Windows or Mac OS or even a propriety operating system that runs on crack (Crack OS): what are you going to dedicate your time to attack; the 5 mac users or the 90 windows users. Furthermore, let's say you have created a virus for both and you release it into the wild and infect one mac user and one pc user. Now, let's say it's an IM virus -- each infected computer then sends the link to 5 other computers to try and infect them -- you may not be a math major but you can still see that the probability of the mac user infecting (and therefore spreading) another mac is not very high... especially when you compare it to the near certainty that the infected windows machine will infect another windows machine. "Windows is more insecure than Mac OS X, by whole sodding leagues. Anyone trying to deny this or FUD it is living in a bill-gates'-acid-trip fueled loud cuckoo land." Oh? Show me proof. If one was more secure by "whole sodding leagues" as you say, EVERY business with private and protected information would switch. Obviously you are on a Steve Jobs crack trip (inspired by Crack OS? maybe) if you can't see this. I have a Windows PC I use for gaming and have had zero (that's right zero) security problems [I just use a basic firewall, I don't even have an anti-virus (I scan online every few months just to be safe)].
At least his network cable fit in his cd-rom drive. Working for a university helpdesk, we had a delightful time when we found out a father wanted to impress his little princess daughter with his marvelous technicial skills by hooking her computer up to our network... unfortunately the computer had a modem not a network card... fortunately for the story, he had a hammer. No, no, sadly the modem did not work with the network cable inserted.
And on the subject of things fitting into cd-rom drives... another technician job I led me to be baffled that a woman (a secretary type person who had been using computers for a long time and, I thought, knew what she was doing) inserted 4 cd's into her tray-load cd-rom drive... one of which was a critical cd full of precious data that was not stored anywhere else. Thankfully I was able to take the drive apart and find the cd she needed unscratched. People never cease to amaze me.
The games for the PS3 will cost $80 -- the 360 just can't handle games that cost that much. I hear they're working on a new version of pong for the PS3 to take advantage of the advanced hardware -- rumor has it that the paddles will move in 4 dimensions (standard 3 spatial dimensions and the 4th dimension of TIME ITSELF!), the ball will have a real-life physics engine, the game will read your mind to play the song you're thinking of in 7.1 surround sound just to you (supports up to 4 different songs simultaneously)... and while it does all this it will also communicate with a satellite to scratch your ass from space.
At least Google built their monopoly by being the best and satisfying the customer -- I can't think of one thing Google's done to piss me off. No flashy banner ads, no sign-ups that fill my inbox with spam, nothing! Furthermore, they don't conduct unethical business practices to drive competitors out of business and then turn around to screw the customer. The telecoms are only a monopoly (okay, an oligopoly) because they were put in place as such by the government and were empowered with the taxpayers' hard-earned money. There is nothing wrong with monopolies -- only ill-gotten dastardly monopolies (such as the teleocoms). Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Google power corrupts... with googley eyes?
Windows is more used than OS X (90% marketshare) and Microsoft is more hated than Apple -- of course Windows is going to be "more vulnerable"... because more people are going to target it! (Analogies: start your engines!) That's like saying "You're more likely to get shot in Chicago than SmalltownUSA" Well duh, because there are more people and more guns in Chicago than SmalltownUSA (Apple is SmalltownUSA if you couldn't figure that out). Apple's operating system has its flaws, Windows has its flaw, Linux has flaws -- security flaws will probably always exist (until the robots write our code for us... IN OUR OWN BLOOD) and as long as they are around, people will always try to exploit them. It's not wonder the top 10 malware pieces are for Windows considering Windows' HUGE marketshare (Analogy remix: wouldn't it be smart to pick out a particular bank to rob if it has 90% of the world's money?).
I call FUD! The "statistics" they use are baloney. Google has one-quarter the number of people that MSN and Yahoo do? ...maybe one quarter the addresses, but I disagree on the "people" part -- why, I myself have 4 Yahoo email accounts (and just one gmail account) so if everyone was like me than an equal amount of people use gmail and Yahoo. I realize not everyone is like me (oh, trust me, I definitely realize this), but I still have a hard time accepting their "statistics" that gmail has 1/4 the users of hotmail and yahoo mail. Hotmail and Yahoomail have been around for over 12 years (I think I got my first yahoomail account in 95), gmail has been around for 2 (a lot of that time it was locked up and you could only get in through invites). How many of those hotmail and yahoomail accounts are unused? If these questions were answered and backed up with numbers then maybe I would believe the article... until then, I repeat my original statement: FUD!!!
"Though I'm passed one hundred thousand miles, I'm feeling very still
...
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go,
tell my wife I love her very much she knows
Ground control to Major Tom:
Your circuit's dead, there's something wong.
Can you hear me Major Tom?
Can you hear me Major Tom?
Can you hear me Major Tom? Can you
Here am I floating round my tin can, far above the moon
Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do"
If only they had this back then... then Major Tom could be safe and David Bowie would have one less hit... shameless David Bowie, making songs about dead made-up astronauts.
"It's like some people get so emotionally attached to their computer that if they see one flaw with it they have to write an article about it."
My computer is my girlfriend and I am VERY emotionally attached to her -- anyone who really loves their computer will learn to embrace any flaws as just what makes their computer special. Like my computer's sex... I mean floppy drive is all sticky inside for some reason, but it doesn't make me love my computer any less.
"wireless cameras -- helping nerds see boobies since 2001."
Hey, at least the Sony rootkit comes with music!... this thing comes with worse: Windows!
Maybe it should be called Office 2008?
You MUST work for the RIAA if you're comparing downloading music to stealing candy. Candy is tangible, it costs money to produce, store, and sell EACH one -- mp3's are just bits of information stored in 1's and 0's -- "stealing" an mp3 doesn't hurt anyone's profits IF YOU WEREN'T GOING TO BUY IT IN THE FIRST PLACE. I'm not saying that it's right or wrong to "steal" music by filesharing, but I am saying that the RIAA is ridiculous for prosecuting a 12 year old for doing so.0 .html]).
She's 12 -- no 12 year old I know has money & transportation to go to the store and buy a CD, so by her downloading it's not like it caused her to not buy the cd and therefore hurt any record company's profits (in fact, maybe her parents would hear the music she downloaded and go out and buy her similar artists, therefore helping increase record companys' profits [CD sales actually increased in recent years http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,35848,0
You say it's like stealing candy -- WRONG. Every 12 year old I know has been informed by their parents that stealing is wrong -- they've also been taught that "stealing" involves tangible goods. I don't know any 12 year olds who have been taught (by parents OR by schools) that filesharing is wrong -- it doesn't say "the activity you are about to participate in is illegal" when you download unauthorized files in bittorrent or any another p2p program. A 12 year old KNOWS not to steal a candy bar because it is wrong, a 12 year old does NOT KNOW that they're doing anything wrong when they click on a button to download the song they heard on the radio.
What is the point of the RIAA suing this 12 year old? To gain back lost profits? Again -- I point you to the fact that she is a fucking 12 year old and not a trust-fund baby. No job, no money, nothing to be had from suing her (maybe they wanted her Barbie[tm]s). The amount of money they must have spent on legal fees (with their evil lawyers direct from LawyerMart [LawyerMart is a copyright of Hell Enterprises]) alone would have been more than enough to give a "File-sharing is wrong and hurts people and kills puppies" presentation for THE ENTIRE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL the 12 year-old attended.
If the point is to persuade people not to file-share, the lawsuit is moot -- just because a 12 year old downloaded 1 song and you sue her does not mean anyone is going to say "hey, maybe I shouldn't do this", the only result will be people saying "The RIAA is full of tools!"
Remember, this is not a network of teens/adults swapping thousands/millions of songs or burning pirated cds and selling them; it's a single 12 year old girl. If she was the only person in the world to commit the horrible act of downloading some bits of information that are considered protected by "intellectual property right" laws then by all means -- sue her little tutu off... but while there are huge fish to fry yet the RIAA targets a 12 year old, I say "bullshit!".
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/30/20 57243&tid=123
I guess you are either flamebaiting or you must work for the RIAA -- anyone who pays attention to the world knows that the RIAA is a pile of garbage. Just look into some of the crap that they've done (hint: the article summary had 3 cases where the RIAA was playing the role of a tool).
Going after 12 year olds for "violating" intellectual property rights is bullshit -- when was the last time you asked a 12 year old about intellectual property rights and got any answer other than a headscratch and a "huh?".
Telling a 15 year old she has to lie in court otherwise she will be tried for perjury is not only unethical but brutal. If you're religious, placing your hand on the bible and swearing to go that you're telling the truth and then having to lie because the RIAA told you to is "just protecting intellectual copyright"?
Suing a woman who has never used a computer in her life... doesn't that just scream "I'm the RIAA and I don't look into things before I try to ruin peoples' lives by suing them into the poorhouse"?
They're NOT protecting the artists that they suppossedly represent (via the record companies that they represent):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riaa
"In 1999, Stanley M. Glazier, a Congressional staff attorney, inserted, without public notice or comment, substantive language into the final markup of a "technical corrections" section of copyright legislation, classifying many music recordings as "works made for hire," thereby stripping artists of their copyright interests and transferring those interests to their record labels. Shortly afterwards, Glazier was hired as Senior Vice President of Government Relations and Legislative Counsel for the RIAA, which vigorously defended the change when it came to light. The battle over the disputed provision led to the formation of the Recording Artists' Coalition, which successfully lobbied for repeal of the change."
"In 2006, the RIAA claimed that ripping CDs and backing them up does not constitute fair use, because tracks from ripped CDs do not maintain the controversial DRM to protect the music file from copyright infringement. They argue that, there is no evidence that any of the relevant media are "unusually subject to damage" and that "even if CDs do become damaged, replacements are readily available at affordable prices.""
That's right, they want you to buy a new CD when yours breaks... after all, they're "unusually subject to damage", right? Those thing pieces of plastic scratch more easily than my ass! Ripping the CD to my computer (and not sharing it) is not fair use? They don't want me putting it on my mp3 player so I can take my 800+ CD collection wherever I want without hiring a personal music assistant? Damn, well I guess I could employ one of the people the RIAA sued into the ground for pretty cheap. By the way, about 20 of those cds no longer work due to scratches, thankfully I have all my music ripped to my computer so I was able to burn myself a backed up copy -- I store all my cds in the cases they come in or in proteced and padded cd booklets so it's not like I'm mishandling them.
The RIAA is not in the interest of protecting rights of the artist or the consumer -- they're in the interest of making themselves rich and powerful.
We could use this to take pictures of women and associate the women with their locations - a kind of new-age black book! ...now, if only us /.ers could get women.