Somehow, I think people in the Soviet Union or China would disagree with you there...
Newsflash - the Soviet Union hasn't existed for many, many years.
That aside, even when it did it wasn't Socialist, and neither is China. If you want an example of a socialist state look to Europe - Denmark, Sweden and to a lesser extent the UK, France, Netherlands, etc. They're doing OK.
How doesn't Capitalism work? The US is the most powerful country in the world.
It also has some of the higest rates of crime, violence, poverty, illiteracy and inprisonment in the western world. It's the most powerful country in the world and yet it can't (or won't) even protect it's own citizens against a storm given ample warning. It's the richest country in the world and yet it's people are still dying of malnutrition and lack of medical treatment every day.
Yes the US is rich, yes it's militarily powerful, yes it's full of itself. It's a matter of opinion as to whether that's enough to be considered "succesful".
So I think you're wrong to claim that you're giving up money but not licensing freedom. Any agreement you have with some other author is going to have terms, conditions, and restrictions, and the question is whether the restrictions of the GPL are a good fit for your situation. I agree that every case is different, and I think that's key. But my personal experience seems to be different to yours. Case in point - I needed a java charting package for a project at my work. There are a bunch out there, some GPL, some closed source. The one we liked best for our specific application was closed source, it came close to meeting our requirements but wasn't quite there. The regular licensing deal was "binary only", but it was pretty cheap (couple hundred bucks). We spoke to the author, for $500 he said we could have the source and do what we like with it. That $500 was well worth the weeks of developer time it saved, and even if the source had been available under the GPL we'd still probably have paid for it not to be.
But as I said, every case is different. We also do use a lot of GPL stuff at work, it just keeps the lawyers busier:)
Let's say I have some (free as in beer) component which I want to include in my work. That component, however, needs a little modification to work the way I want. Now, the license of that component is key:
If it's BSD or similar, I can just make the change and I'm done. Easy.
If it's GPL or similar, I can make the change, but if I do so I may then have to license my whole application under the GPL. I wouldn't classify that as "giving up my rights", but it's tradeoff for sure, and one I may not even be in a position to make.
In all cases I can approach the author and offer them money to make the change for me or allow me to make it myself, outside of any existing license. The amount of money here is irrelevent, the important thing is that I have decided to forgoe money instead of licensing freedom. It's still a tradeoff, but for many people/companies it's a more attractive one.
We are not an incorpoated 501(c)3 NPO There's your problem - right there. I also only donate to registered charities, and it's not for the tax deduction it's for the accountability.
1) A lot of their best staff are rich via stock & options. Price falls, brains walk. Not good. 2) Google are not adverse to buying out other companies, this takes cash or stock. Price falls, you have less of one and need more of the other. Not good. 3) Google is investing at a huge rate (e.g. hardware etc). If they need a chunk of cash for a big project a stock or bond issue is a standard way of getting it. If you don't have the banks on your side that's going to be a lot harder to pull off.
The stock price affects the company's health in many ways, and needs to be controlled.
Digital audio data coming from, say, your CD player to your amp is sent as a plain PCM bitstream. There is no ECC, no error detection or correction. If a bit gets flipped you'd get distorted sound (but you'd have to be very be unlucky to get a very noticable burst of static). Couple that with the whole clock issue (as there's no seperate clock line jitter becomes an issue) and you get something which is distinctly not 100% accurate.
I've been to some of those countries (Cuba, Croatia & Israel), and as a non-US citizen they are far more traveller-friendly (as far as immigration policies go) than the US.
Is there a person on the planet that doesn't remember playing a zelda game for the first time
I'm 30 years old, I've been gaming for over 20 of those years, I own every current (xbox360) and previous generation console (NGC, PS2, Xbox) and I've never played a Zelda game. Ever. I'm sure they're great, and lots of people seem to love them, which is nice, but they just don't appeal to me. When I was younger I didn't have a NES or SNES - in fact, Nintendo seemed to have very little penetration in my locale - everyone I knew had Sega Master System, then MegaDrive and then jumped ship to PSX/PS2. Until recently I was more of a computer gamer anyway - through the 8-bits then Atari and finally PC.
The point of all this? Don't over generalise. Your experiences are very unlikely to be shared by even a small percentage of the overall population.
Agreed. I use Amazon all the time, and have done for several years. I love the fact that they're one of the few retailers who will ship to any address, not just your billing address. I can order gifts for overseas relatives from their local Amazon site and get them delivered in a day or two.
In the couple of occasions I've had a problem with them their support has been great. I ordered a camera accessory and the original one was lost in the mail. They sent a new one, overnight (even though I hadn't paid for shipping) and also refunded the order price in full - so I got it free.
Depends where you graduated from, who's making the offer, and how you came over at interview. I made 30k on graduation 7 years ago with a 2:1 from Imperial. Now I'm hiring (at the same company) and it's interesting to understand the criteria that are applied. Your grade is really pretty unimportant (provided you got 2:2 or above).
I tally that with the planned undershipment of xBox360's, as was detailed in the Wall Street Journal, which was used to create a crowd feel, and has worked quite nicely in maximizing profit per unit. You do that for a few weeks to create buzz. You don't keep doing it for months. There's no doubt MS had launch supply problems - they say is was a ram problem. They're losing money on sales right now - you better believe they're making those things as fast as they can. The system isn't in the (non-gaming) press anymore, the launch is over. And yet still, when shipments do arrive they fly off the shelves. There's demand out there, it's still there after 3 months of waiting, I'd say it's real.
As I said, I bought an xBox within 2 months of introduction, so I wouldn't call me a fence sitter, heck I've shelled out $10,000 on a server because I wanted it. And I got it a lot cheaper than people who bought it at release. I just don't see the point in buying a pretty box that doesn't play anything I need yet. When the other consoles come out, I'll decide which one(s) I want - own a GameCube and an xBox and probably five GBAs plus ten computers. But so far no killer games from my view, only cross-platforms, so no real need to buy a 360 yet.
And that's perfectly fair and reasonable. YOU don't see games that YOU want to play. Great. The problem comes when you spin that to mean that NO-ONE sees ANY games that ANYONE would want to play, which is patently false. My problem is not with people who dislike the 360, or the Rev, or any other system. My problem is with people who proclaim their own personal taste as universal. I haven't touched any of my other consoles since I got my 360, I love it, and the games on it, but that's my personal taste. I don't try and make out that I have some amazing insight into the "real" story.
a. an admission that there are no Killer Games that make anyone rush out to buy the xBox 360, and thus a stop-gap until someone can be convinced to do one;
How do you tally that with the fact that 360's are sold out pretty much everywhere? PGR3 is the best racing game ever (IMHO) and I bought mine just for that. Killer app in my opinion, but some people prefer others, and that's fine.
b. an admission that the competing next-gen platforms (PS3,NR) were wise to promote the use of older platform version games, and that this revival of older games for those platforms, but not for xBox360 for the most part, is really hurting MSFT on the revenue side (note: I own MSFT shares, so I want them to make revenue); and
That makes no sense at all. The XBL Arcade has been a heavily promoted part of the 360 "experience" from day 1 and they've always talked about playing classic old games on it as well as new casual games like Bejeweled or Hexic. Nintendo are focussed on back catalogue, which is fine, but I've not heard anything from the PS3 camp regarding downloadble games. Right now we don't even know if it will have storage to put them on, and judging from the PS2 online experience they have a LONG way to go to catch up with XBL.
Additionally, XBL Arcade has been amazingly popular, and I'm sure is far from hurting revenue wise.
c. a desperate attempt to yank back mind share from the other platforms, which haven't even been shipped yet, but which seem to have large numbers of potential xBox360 owners (such as myself who owns an xBox) waiting until the PS3 and NR consoles are released before making a buying decision.
Fence sitters will always be fence sitters. The PS3 won't be out in the US this year (I don't care what Sony say, the writing's on the wall), the Rev maybe by the fall. In the meantime the 360 has plenty of big games coming : GRAW, Gears of War, Oblivion, etc. XML Arcade is great because it allows MS to put out a steady stream of smaller games to keep interest up between the lulls which always appear in a new platform's initial few months. I don't see it as "desperate" though, far from it.
Download & install MAME Find, download & install ROM (and we all know how fun those ROM sites are, particularly for those unfamiliar with them) Play game (hopefully it works!) on PC at desk Hope you don't get sued for copyright infringement (unlikely, but you never know these days)
-or-
Pay $5 Sit on couch & play game
I'm going for the second option, you do as you please.
Just like with your house, while it might not technically be illegal for you to sit on public land and case my house out like you are going to break in to it, you can bet I'll object if you try.
And you'd be quite within your rights to object. That's about all though...
Microsoft will offer a minimum of 10 years of support for Business and Developer products. Mainstream support for Business and Developer products will be provided for 5 years or for 2 years after the successor product (N+1) is released, whichever is longer. Microsoft will also provide Extended support for the 5 years following Mainstream support or for 2 years after the second successor product (N+2) is released, whichever is longer. Finally, most Business and Developer products will receive at least 10 years of online self-help support.
and now SuperFetch is going to suck up even more free memory with programs that I may or may not load, but that my computer thinks I'd like to be able to access quickly What exactly is wrong with using otherwise unneeded ram to precache stuff? Best case - you save some load time. Worst case, no effect.
You make it sound like it won't shrink the cache when it needs the ram for something else. Which is absurd.
With the kernel sucking up all my memory by preloading applications, a brand new networking stack, and all these operations going on in the background to maximize my heap, I'll not be holding my breath. So just because something's new it's bloated? Even when they say the new stack has better performance you say it will be worse? You should tell me where you got your crystal ball because I need a new one.
And I guess I better get that double-500G hard drive option in my new computer so that all my SafeDoc backups don't make all my disk space go the way of my free memory used by SuperFetch. Again, you're assuming that these caching and (extremely useful) version control systems will work in the foreground and make the user keep track of available space. Don't be so blinkered. If OSX put this in their next version you'd be singing it's praises.
And "noobs" who do know just a little better will give themselves administrator accounts so that they can install software whenever they want without changing roles, completely mooting any "default user level access" security changes being made. The same as linux noobs who run as root (Linspire?) - is that Microsoft's fault too?
The amount of misinformed FUD in your post equals anything to ever come out of Microsoft's PR department.
This product is not for people who care about sound quality. This is for people who download 128kbps itunes files and play them back on stock $2 earbuds. For that audience, as I keep being told, visual appeal is very important. And, FWIW I agree, this thing is utterly fugly. There are plenty of ipod speaker docks out there which are better looking, and I'd be surprised if this one is significantly better sounding. But maybe I'm wrong, I haven't heard one.
Depends what you need. iLife is a good deal, no doubt about it, but I don't think it's as many lightyears ahead as you suggest. Picassa is an excellent (free) photo manager. I haven't used iDVD so I can't directly compare, but Nero does a perfectly good job for CD/DVD burning and authoring, and can be found online for a few dollars.
As for music software, there's plenty of good DAW software for around the $100 mark (Cubase SE, Traktor, etc) and some hardware (which you'll need anyway) comes with lite versions of pro level packages like Reason or Ableton. Any of these will give GarageBand a very good run for it's money.
I know of plenty of people who wouldn't have a spare $100 to spend on some flyer, 99% of which will end up littering the streets. What a waste. I can post something on the web and reach millions of people (or just one person), with no litter, no fuss and basically no cost. What's more, because of the way the web works I can be reasonably sure that the people reading my content are actually interested in it. Contrast that to the unpopular guy on the street handing out flyers no-one wants.
And let's say I did have a spare $100, does that make my message any more valuable? Of course not. In fact, seeing as investment is typically driven by potential return, it's more likely to be advertising and less likely to be actually useful information.
I really cannot believe I'm sitting here in 2006, in a supposed free-speech embracing society, arguing the merits of large-scale decentralized information sharing vs. traditional publishing. A free press is one of the cornerstones of democracy, and there's no freer press available today than the web.
You also end up with a lot if interesting, insightful stuff that wouldn't otherwise get produced, because of the high barrier to entry. Do we really want to live in a world where only rich people can afford to speak? That's how things used to be and I'm not keen to go back.
It's not as if you're forced to read any of this stuff.
It is correct and it is enforced. Your example is random. Deceptive advertising is advertising which makes the product being advertised look or behave differently than it really does. So if McDs had an advert where the burger patty was 2" thick but in reality it's just 0.5", that's deceptive (and illegal). Who they choose to be in the commercial has nothing to do with the product being sold.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't need a credit card for Live. Buy a prepaid card from a store (they're probably even available in German stores) and use that.
Somehow, I think people in the Soviet Union or China would disagree with you there...
Newsflash - the Soviet Union hasn't existed for many, many years.
That aside, even when it did it wasn't Socialist, and neither is China. If you want an example of a socialist state look to Europe - Denmark, Sweden and to a lesser extent the UK, France, Netherlands, etc. They're doing OK.
How doesn't Capitalism work? The US is the most powerful country in the world.
It also has some of the higest rates of crime, violence, poverty, illiteracy and inprisonment in the western world. It's the most powerful country in the world and yet it can't (or won't) even protect it's own citizens against a storm given ample warning. It's the richest country in the world and yet it's people are still dying of malnutrition and lack of medical treatment every day.
Yes the US is rich, yes it's militarily powerful, yes it's full of itself. It's a matter of opinion as to whether that's enough to be considered "succesful".
So I think you're wrong to claim that you're giving up money but not licensing freedom. Any agreement you have with some other author is going to have terms, conditions, and restrictions, and the question is whether the restrictions of the GPL are a good fit for your situation.
:)
I agree that every case is different, and I think that's key. But my personal experience seems to be different to yours. Case in point - I needed a java charting package for a project at my work. There are a bunch out there, some GPL, some closed source. The one we liked best for our specific application was closed source, it came close to meeting our requirements but wasn't quite there. The regular licensing deal was "binary only", but it was pretty cheap (couple hundred bucks). We spoke to the author, for $500 he said we could have the source and do what we like with it. That $500 was well worth the weeks of developer time it saved, and even if the source had been available under the GPL we'd still probably have paid for it not to be.
But as I said, every case is different. We also do use a lot of GPL stuff at work, it just keeps the lawyers busier
Let's say I have some (free as in beer) component which I want to include in my work. That component, however, needs a little modification to work the way I want. Now, the license of that component is key:
If it's BSD or similar, I can just make the change and I'm done. Easy.
If it's GPL or similar, I can make the change, but if I do so I may then have to license my whole application under the GPL. I wouldn't classify that as "giving up my rights", but it's tradeoff for sure, and one I may not even be in a position to make.
In all cases I can approach the author and offer them money to make the change for me or allow me to make it myself, outside of any existing license. The amount of money here is irrelevent, the important thing is that I have decided to forgoe money instead of licensing freedom. It's still a tradeoff, but for many people/companies it's a more attractive one.
We are not an incorpoated 501(c)3 NPO
There's your problem - right there. I also only donate to registered charities, and it's not for the tax deduction it's for the accountability.
A few reasons:
1) A lot of their best staff are rich via stock & options. Price falls, brains walk. Not good.
2) Google are not adverse to buying out other companies, this takes cash or stock. Price falls, you have less of one and need more of the other. Not good.
3) Google is investing at a huge rate (e.g. hardware etc). If they need a chunk of cash for a big project a stock or bond issue is a standard way of getting it. If you don't have the banks on your side that's going to be a lot harder to pull off.
The stock price affects the company's health in many ways, and needs to be controlled.
Digital audio data coming from, say, your CD player to your amp is sent as a plain PCM bitstream. There is no ECC, no error detection or correction. If a bit gets flipped you'd get distorted sound (but you'd have to be very be unlucky to get a very noticable burst of static). Couple that with the whole clock issue (as there's no seperate clock line jitter becomes an issue) and you get something which is distinctly not 100% accurate.
I've been to some of those countries (Cuba, Croatia & Israel), and as a non-US citizen they are far more traveller-friendly (as far as immigration policies go) than the US.
Is there a person on the planet that doesn't remember playing a zelda game for the first time
I'm 30 years old, I've been gaming for over 20 of those years, I own every current (xbox360) and previous generation console (NGC, PS2, Xbox) and I've never played a Zelda game. Ever. I'm sure they're great, and lots of people seem to love them, which is nice, but they just don't appeal to me. When I was younger I didn't have a NES or SNES - in fact, Nintendo seemed to have very little penetration in my locale - everyone I knew had Sega Master System, then MegaDrive and then jumped ship to PSX/PS2. Until recently I was more of a computer gamer anyway - through the 8-bits then Atari and finally PC.
The point of all this? Don't over generalise. Your experiences are very unlikely to be shared by even a small percentage of the overall population.
Agreed. I use Amazon all the time, and have done for several years. I love the fact that they're one of the few retailers who will ship to any address, not just your billing address. I can order gifts for overseas relatives from their local Amazon site and get them delivered in a day or two.
In the couple of occasions I've had a problem with them their support has been great. I ordered a camera accessory and the original one was lost in the mail. They sent a new one, overnight (even though I hadn't paid for shipping) and also refunded the order price in full - so I got it free.
Depends where you graduated from, who's making the offer, and how you came over at interview. I made 30k on graduation 7 years ago with a 2:1 from Imperial. Now I'm hiring (at the same company) and it's interesting to understand the criteria that are applied. Your grade is really pretty unimportant (provided you got 2:2 or above).
I tally that with the planned undershipment of xBox360's, as was detailed in the Wall Street Journal, which was used to create a crowd feel, and has worked quite nicely in maximizing profit per unit.
You do that for a few weeks to create buzz. You don't keep doing it for months. There's no doubt MS had launch supply problems - they say is was a ram problem. They're losing money on sales right now - you better believe they're making those things as fast as they can. The system isn't in the (non-gaming) press anymore, the launch is over. And yet still, when shipments do arrive they fly off the shelves. There's demand out there, it's still there after 3 months of waiting, I'd say it's real.
As I said, I bought an xBox within 2 months of introduction, so I wouldn't call me a fence sitter, heck I've shelled out $10,000 on a server because I wanted it. And I got it a lot cheaper than people who bought it at release. I just don't see the point in buying a pretty box that doesn't play anything I need yet. When the other consoles come out, I'll decide which one(s) I want - own a GameCube and an xBox and probably five GBAs plus ten computers. But so far no killer games from my view, only cross-platforms, so no real need to buy a 360 yet.
And that's perfectly fair and reasonable. YOU don't see games that YOU want to play. Great. The problem comes when you spin that to mean that NO-ONE sees ANY games that ANYONE would want to play, which is patently false. My problem is not with people who dislike the 360, or the Rev, or any other system. My problem is with people who proclaim their own personal taste as universal. I haven't touched any of my other consoles since I got my 360, I love it, and the games on it, but that's my personal taste. I don't try and make out that I have some amazing insight into the "real" story.
a. an admission that there are no Killer Games that make anyone rush out to buy the xBox 360, and thus a stop-gap until someone can be convinced to do one;
How do you tally that with the fact that 360's are sold out pretty much everywhere? PGR3 is the best racing game ever (IMHO) and I bought mine just for that. Killer app in my opinion, but some people prefer others, and that's fine.
b. an admission that the competing next-gen platforms (PS3,NR) were wise to promote the use of older platform version games, and that this revival of older games for those platforms, but not for xBox360 for the most part, is really hurting MSFT on the revenue side (note: I own MSFT shares, so I want them to make revenue); and
That makes no sense at all. The XBL Arcade has been a heavily promoted part of the 360 "experience" from day 1 and they've always talked about playing classic old games on it as well as new casual games like Bejeweled or Hexic. Nintendo are focussed on back catalogue, which is fine, but I've not heard anything from the PS3 camp regarding downloadble games. Right now we don't even know if it will have storage to put them on, and judging from the PS2 online experience they have a LONG way to go to catch up with XBL.
Additionally, XBL Arcade has been amazingly popular, and I'm sure is far from hurting revenue wise.
c. a desperate attempt to yank back mind share from the other platforms, which haven't even been shipped yet, but which seem to have large numbers of potential xBox360 owners (such as myself who owns an xBox) waiting until the PS3 and NR consoles are released before making a buying decision.
Fence sitters will always be fence sitters. The PS3 won't be out in the US this year (I don't care what Sony say, the writing's on the wall), the Rev maybe by the fall. In the meantime the 360 has plenty of big games coming : GRAW, Gears of War, Oblivion, etc. XML Arcade is great because it allows MS to put out a steady stream of smaller games to keep interest up between the lulls which always appear in a new platform's initial few months. I don't see it as "desperate" though, far from it.
The choice is:
Download & install MAME
Find, download & install ROM (and we all know how fun those ROM sites are, particularly for those unfamiliar with them)
Play game (hopefully it works!) on PC at desk
Hope you don't get sued for copyright infringement (unlikely, but you never know these days)
-or-
Pay $5
Sit on couch & play game
I'm going for the second option, you do as you please.
Just like with your house, while it might not technically be illegal for you to sit on public land and case my house out like you are going to break in to it, you can bet I'll object if you try.
And you'd be quite within your rights to object. That's about all though...
From their faq on the subject:
Microsoft will offer a minimum of 10 years of support for Business and Developer products. Mainstream support for Business and Developer products will be provided for 5 years or for 2 years after the successor product (N+1) is released, whichever is longer. Microsoft will also provide Extended support for the 5 years following Mainstream support or for 2 years after the second successor product (N+2) is released, whichever is longer. Finally, most Business and Developer products will receive at least 10 years of online self-help support.
and now SuperFetch is going to suck up even more free memory with programs that I may or may not load, but that my computer thinks I'd like to be able to access quickly
What exactly is wrong with using otherwise unneeded ram to precache stuff? Best case - you save some load time. Worst case, no effect.
You make it sound like it won't shrink the cache when it needs the ram for something else. Which is absurd.
With the kernel sucking up all my memory by preloading applications, a brand new networking stack, and all these operations going on in the background to maximize my heap, I'll not be holding my breath.
So just because something's new it's bloated? Even when they say the new stack has better performance you say it will be worse? You should tell me where you got your crystal ball because I need a new one.
And I guess I better get that double-500G hard drive option in my new computer so that all my SafeDoc backups don't make all my disk space go the way of my free memory used by SuperFetch.
Again, you're assuming that these caching and (extremely useful) version control systems will work in the foreground and make the user keep track of available space. Don't be so blinkered. If OSX put this in their next version you'd be singing it's praises.
And "noobs" who do know just a little better will give themselves administrator accounts so that they can install software whenever they want without changing roles, completely mooting any "default user level access" security changes being made.
The same as linux noobs who run as root (Linspire?) - is that Microsoft's fault too?
The amount of misinformed FUD in your post equals anything to ever come out of Microsoft's PR department.
This product is not for people who care about sound quality. This is for people who download 128kbps itunes files and play them back on stock $2 earbuds. For that audience, as I keep being told, visual appeal is very important. And, FWIW I agree, this thing is utterly fugly. There are plenty of ipod speaker docks out there which are better looking, and I'd be surprised if this one is significantly better sounding. But maybe I'm wrong, I haven't heard one.
I think the point here is they both suck. Equally.
Depends what you need. iLife is a good deal, no doubt about it, but I don't think it's as many lightyears ahead as you suggest. Picassa is an excellent (free) photo manager. I haven't used iDVD so I can't directly compare, but Nero does a perfectly good job for CD/DVD burning and authoring, and can be found online for a few dollars.
As for music software, there's plenty of good DAW software for around the $100 mark (Cubase SE, Traktor, etc) and some hardware (which you'll need anyway) comes with lite versions of pro level packages like Reason or Ableton. Any of these will give GarageBand a very good run for it's money.
I know of plenty of people who wouldn't have a spare $100 to spend on some flyer, 99% of which will end up littering the streets. What a waste. I can post something on the web and reach millions of people (or just one person), with no litter, no fuss and basically no cost. What's more, because of the way the web works I can be reasonably sure that the people reading my content are actually interested in it. Contrast that to the unpopular guy on the street handing out flyers no-one wants.
And let's say I did have a spare $100, does that make my message any more valuable? Of course not. In fact, seeing as investment is typically driven by potential return, it's more likely to be advertising and less likely to be actually useful information.
I really cannot believe I'm sitting here in 2006, in a supposed free-speech embracing society, arguing the merits of large-scale decentralized information sharing vs. traditional publishing. A free press is one of the cornerstones of democracy, and there's no freer press available today than the web.
Is there a "-1 Nonsensical" option?
You also end up with a lot if interesting, insightful stuff that wouldn't otherwise get produced, because of the high barrier to entry. Do we really want to live in a world where only rich people can afford to speak? That's how things used to be and I'm not keen to go back.
It's not as if you're forced to read any of this stuff.
It is correct and it is enforced. Your example is random. Deceptive advertising is advertising which makes the product being advertised look or behave differently than it really does. So if McDs had an advert where the burger patty was 2" thick but in reality it's just 0.5", that's deceptive (and illegal). Who they choose to be in the commercial has nothing to do with the product being sold.
So wait, I'm confused - are we for or against the RIAA taking action against individual file sharers this week? Does someone have the rota?