Well, a lot of teenagers actually have jobs, and the money is theirs to spend as they see fit. Sure, they're wasting it on crappy music, but it's their hard-earned cash that they're spending.
Personally, I feel that it is perfectly cool to transcribe a piece of music (either with your ear or via some sort of software) and pass it around amongst your friends for free. I feel that you're crossing the line when you take that same song and start making money from it, whether it's performing it on stage at a paying gig without paying royalties, or posting it to a website that generates revenue for you via advertising. The sites in question are presumably making money from posting somebody else's creative work.
Same thing goes in my mind for P2P sharing. If you are making a huge amount of money by facilitating file sharing like Napster was, I think you're in the wrong.
Of course, copyright law as it stands says otherwise (at least in the USA), but Law has a mixed record in aligning itself with what is "right" in my mind.
More like what happens when your buddy, who you burned a CD for, puts those files up on the p2p services? How do you prove that he put them up, not you?
I went and poked around ratevtteachers.com, and found that most of the reviews were quite positive. If anything, the negative comments made the poster look more like a fool than the prof. The one from the kid who griped about his best friend (no longer!) recommending a prof who sucked was my favorite.
I think the editor should be given a pat on the back! Here's why:
1. Idiot author writes inflammatory article 2. Said article is posted on Slashdot 3. Said article is no longer available for viewing by _anyone_ due to being Slashdotted
Why the heck would I drop $14.99 for a CD now if I can just grab the one or two tracks that I like for a fraction of that price? Sure, I may not discover deep tracks that do not enjoy radio play, but this still does sound like a major advantage to me. How many of us have CDs that seem like a collection of marginal tracks surrounding the one or two that we actually like?
I know what you mean, but maybe you should look into different musicians. The vast majority of CDs that I own (mostly Indy music) are a collection of tracks that I actually like surrounding one or two marginal tracks. It would be a bummer to miss them by buying only one track.
Um.... reality check here. Linux has about 1% of the desktop market. Hardly what you'd call success. Don't get me wrong, I love Linux, and am part of the 1% of the desktop users out there, but I know of a lot of small businesses that would be quite happy switching, except that there is no decent business-level accounting software out there. Yeah, Kmymoney works fine for home use, but it ain't Quickbooks.
I personally would be very happy to see Linux capture 20-25% of the desktop market. No, we don't need to do everything, but accounting software is a basic tool that any desktop computer should be able to run.
For every album released in a given year, a marketing strategy was developed to make that album stand out among the other releases that hit the market that year. Art must be designed for the CD box, and promotional materials (posters, store displays and music videos) developed and produced. For many artists, a costly concert tour is essential to promote their recordings.
How about you all agree to stop marketing the CDs and just let the people choose what they think is good, rather than trying to tell them? We'd all save millions.
My understanding of "wiping" or "reformatting" of a hard drive is that not all the information is lost from it. Reformatting simply removes the hooks to the files. Using forensic software, it's possible to get the files back. Even if you reinstalled windows. Think of all the "undelete" software out there. To truly erase a hard drive, you need to overwrite every piece of binary code on the drive. Preferably do it several times.
Yeah, windows gets reinstalled all the time, since it's often the fastest way to fix a horked system. It doesn't (to my understanding) necessarily erase a given file until it's actual 1s and 0s get overwritten.
... is that if your 13 year old gets some nasty malware and wipes out his home directory (/home/pimplykid), it won't wipe out _yours_ (/home/sysadmindad) because malware running as "pimplykid" doesn't have permission to write to/home/sysadmindad. Yeah, his homework gets horked, but your personal files are safe until that malware gets root access.
...is that if Diebold can make secure ATMs, why can't they make secure voting machines? Especially given their resources and experience. Sounds fishy to me.
Echoing another comment about Gentoo, I personally have found that Gentoo has the best AMD64 support of the distros that I've tried. (I've also tried Fedora Core 5 and Kubuntu all on the same machine) Best meaning that is has the greatest number of easily installed packages, it's WAY more stable, and there is definitely a noticeable performance gain. It really is snappier than FC5 or Kubuntu on the same exact machine. I was suprised at the difference.
The downside to Gentoo, of course, is that you aren't a qualified Linux tech, you're going to have the occasional problem. For example, I almost always break something when I compile a new kernel version. Then, I have to recompile with the fixes. The upgrade to Xorg 7 was a nightmare, which led to me trying out FC5 and Kubuntu. Getting frustrated with then next 2 distros led me to reinstall Gentoo. Fresh install did the trick. I'm sticking with Gentoo and I mostly love it, but it's only fair to acknowledge the irritations.
complaining that there are so many different desktop environments in Linux.
The idea that GNOME apps would appear automatically in KDE menus is a great one, and a good thing. Some commonalities are a good idea too.
On the other hand, Linux's big strength, in my mind anyway, it that there are all sorts of different users. Hand holding types of interfaces for grandmas, and a glorified CLI for minimalist geeks. The rest of us are probably distributed across the spectrum. The point is that there is something just right for everyone.
Let's not be blinded to what makes Linux a great OS by the "beating Windoze by imitating them, but doing it better" mentality.
The problem is that the average congresscritter has absolutely NO clue what a 100% playthrough would cost. Obviously, they've never played through any of the Final Fantasy games, and from what I'm seeing, they're small potatoes compared to some of the newer games.
What about games like World of Warcraft, where the content is constantly being updated? How about Unreal Tournament? Sure, the package doesn't ship with content containing nudity, but nothing is stopping 3rd party mapmakers from making a map set in a bordello.
While I agree that some playing time would be a good idea, it can't be so onerous that it's cost prohibitive.
Quite frankly, most of the ratings I've seen are fairly accurate. What really needs to happen is for parents to get up off their asses and take some control of the situation. If you don't want your kids playing a game where the "hero" boinks whores to gain health points, for god's sake, don't let them play it! We all know which games contain this sort of content, so stay away from it if you're not into that sort of thing. Hasn't anyone heard of gamerdad? Guess what folks? Parenting is hard work.
Having grown up as an atheist, I can definitely say that:
Atheistic views are certainly transferred from parent to child just like "whacko" Christian ideas.
Atheists have equal capacity to Christians (or other religions) to be bigots.
Your own potential for bigotry has nothing to do with your world view, and everything to do with the natural human impulse to view yourself or your group in a favorable way by pushing down another person or group.
On the other hand, a bigger piece of market share would force hardware manufacturers to pay attention to Linux when they develop new hardware. It's a major pain that the majority of wireless cards down at the office supply store don't have a linux driver. Ideally, you should be able to go to your store of choice and be able to buy anything computer related and have it work. This is usually the case with Windoze, not so with Linux.
Otherwise, who cares if Linux achieves "world domination"? Personally, I think that having the proprietary software companies always yapping at the Linux developers' heels would keep them honest.
Could you explain the differences between how a criminal case is tried, and a civil case is tried. It's my understanding that it is a crime to "steal" music via the internet, but all of these cases are being tried in civil court. Are the protections or the defendant weaker in civil court? I'm recalling how OJ Simpson was acquitted in criminal court, but "held liable" in civil court. Similar dynamic here?
Not likely. Linux users are a bunch of immoral hippies/commies/pirates who are trying to bring down the moral majority establishment. Why would they ever want to release it for Linux?
How many of you have a second computer? Go out to Radio Shack or some similar store, get yourself a cord with a mini stereo phone jack on either end. Play the music on Computer #1 and record it on Computer #2 with Audacity.
Presto! DRM free music.
Two worries about this plan:
In what kind of quality will these downloads be available? If it's all in 32kbps quality mp3, thanks but no thanks. On the other hand, if they're in FLAC we're in business. (Right, one can dream)
What happens when the RIAA and US courts decide that Audacity is "Primarily used for music piracy" and have the three founders sued into oblivion
The problem with the "freedom is the most important thing" concept as it stands is this:
Time is money. People in the business world are not in business just to pass the time. They're in business to make money. If your free program doesn't work as well or as quickly as it's proprietary equivalent, your free program won't be used. Simple as that. Granted, some companies can afford to use purely free software, but that only goes so far.
My personal example is in photography. I regularly shoot over 1600 photographs at one wedding, and I have about a week to get all of those photos looked at, edited, color balanced, etc. I can do it in 3 relaxed days with a combination of RawShooter Essentials 2005 and Photoshop 7, or in about 5-6 long days with GIMP. I run all of the above programs on my Gentoo Linux desktop. The two proprietary programs are Windows binaries run under WINE. Obviously, it takes WAY less time to process all those photos with the proprietary programs. As a busy photographer, what would you do? Only take on half the work? Work almost twice as long and never see my wife or friends? I'd love to use only the GIMP, but right now, it doesn't do the job. Hopefully, it will one day do as good a job with photoediting as Linux does with running a desktop computer.
Free software will be adopted into the mainstream when it can do the job. Not a minute sooner, and not a minute later. The reason that Google runs it's business with Linux servers is that Linux does the best job given their setup.
I hope that any other company/school system will do the same. There are simply too many resources (monetary or otherwise) being put into a school computing system or a large business to do otherwise.
Yes, wireless works fine if you have the right card. On the other hand, I can see why someone would balk when the built-in card in their laptop doesn't work when running Linux.
My own experience with mp3 players has been more or less the same. No problems at all.
Camera support has been fine for me too. My Nikon d70s works both in Mass Storage and PTP modes. Personally, I recommend a card reader anyway, since they usually have a faster transfer rate than from the camera. At least that's how it is for the d70s anyway.
Now, for photo editing at the professional level: Sorry guys, the FOSS solutions just don't cut it. I think GIMP is great for web design and it has a few tools that I like better than Photoshop, but when faced with 3300 photos from a weekend of shooting, GIMP is pretty pathetic. It can't open photos as fast as Photoshop (I'm preprocessing the.nef files with Pixmantec's RawShooter Essentials under WINE, and editing the resulting TIFF files using Photoshop 7 under WINE) and the interface isn't as fast. It takes about half again as long (to be generous) to process photos with GIMP. GIMP is also lacking CMYK support, color profiling, and 16 bit support, although I hear that 16 bit support and color profiling at least will be taken care of soon. I'd love to use GIMP, but time is money, as they say.
"And, frankly, personally I really don't care about Linus's opinion anyway; the only part Linus provides for the "Linux" operating system is the kernel. If the Linux kernel project fell apart for whatever reason, the impact on Ubuntu, RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, etc. would be small since the Linux kernel would be replaced fairly quickly."
Yeah! Anyhow! After all, we have HURD!........oh.....wait.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, a lot of teenagers actually have jobs, and the money is theirs to spend as they see fit. Sure, they're wasting it on crappy music, but it's their hard-earned cash that they're spending.
Personally, I feel that it is perfectly cool to transcribe a piece of music (either with your ear or via some sort of software) and pass it around amongst your friends for free. I feel that you're crossing the line when you take that same song and start making money from it, whether it's performing it on stage at a paying gig without paying royalties, or posting it to a website that generates revenue for you via advertising. The sites in question are presumably making money from posting somebody else's creative work.
Same thing goes in my mind for P2P sharing. If you are making a huge amount of money by facilitating file sharing like Napster was, I think you're in the wrong.
Of course, copyright law as it stands says otherwise (at least in the USA), but Law has a mixed record in aligning itself with what is "right" in my mind.
More like what happens when your buddy, who you burned a CD for, puts those files up on the p2p services? How do you prove that he put them up, not you?
I went and poked around ratevtteachers.com, and found that most of the reviews were quite positive. If anything, the negative comments made the poster look more like a fool than the prof. The one from the kid who griped about his best friend (no longer!) recommending a prof who sucked was my favorite.
I think the editor should be given a pat on the back! Here's why:
1. Idiot author writes inflammatory article
2. Said article is posted on Slashdot
3. Said article is no longer available for viewing by _anyone_ due to being Slashdotted
Why the heck would I drop $14.99 for a CD now if I can just grab the one or two tracks that I like for a fraction of that price? Sure, I may not discover deep tracks that do not enjoy radio play, but this still does sound like a major advantage to me. How many of us have CDs that seem like a collection of marginal tracks surrounding the one or two that we actually like?
I know what you mean, but maybe you should look into different musicians. The vast majority of CDs that I own (mostly Indy music) are a collection of tracks that I actually like surrounding one or two marginal tracks. It would be a bummer to miss them by buying only one track.
I personally would be very happy to see Linux capture 20-25% of the desktop market. No, we don't need to do everything, but accounting software is a basic tool that any desktop computer should be able to run.
FTFA:
For every album released in a given year, a marketing strategy was developed to make that album stand out among the other releases that hit the market that year. Art must be designed for the CD box, and promotional materials (posters, store displays and music videos) developed and produced. For many artists, a costly concert tour is essential to promote their recordings.How about you all agree to stop marketing the CDs and just let the people choose what they think is good, rather than trying to tell them? We'd all save millions.
Especially since people have been recording radio broadcasts for decades!
My understanding of "wiping" or "reformatting" of a hard drive is that not all the information is lost from it. Reformatting simply removes the hooks to the files. Using forensic software, it's possible to get the files back. Even if you reinstalled windows. Think of all the "undelete" software out there. To truly erase a hard drive, you need to overwrite every piece of binary code on the drive. Preferably do it several times.
Yeah, windows gets reinstalled all the time, since it's often the fastest way to fix a horked system. It doesn't (to my understanding) necessarily erase a given file until it's actual 1s and 0s get overwritten.
... is that if your 13 year old gets some nasty malware and wipes out his home directory (/home/pimplykid), it won't wipe out _yours_ (/home/sysadmindad) because malware running as "pimplykid" doesn't have permission to write to /home/sysadmindad. Yeah, his homework gets horked, but your personal files are safe until that malware gets root access.
...is that if Diebold can make secure ATMs, why can't they make secure voting machines? Especially given their resources and experience. Sounds fishy to me.
The downside to Gentoo, of course, is that you aren't a qualified Linux tech, you're going to have the occasional problem. For example, I almost always break something when I compile a new kernel version. Then, I have to recompile with the fixes. The upgrade to Xorg 7 was a nightmare, which led to me trying out FC5 and Kubuntu. Getting frustrated with then next 2 distros led me to reinstall Gentoo. Fresh install did the trick. I'm sticking with Gentoo and I mostly love it, but it's only fair to acknowledge the irritations.
The idea that GNOME apps would appear automatically in KDE menus is a great one, and a good thing. Some commonalities are a good idea too.
On the other hand, Linux's big strength, in my mind anyway, it that there are all sorts of different users. Hand holding types of interfaces for grandmas, and a glorified CLI for minimalist geeks. The rest of us are probably distributed across the spectrum. The point is that there is something just right for everyone.
Let's not be blinded to what makes Linux a great OS by the "beating Windoze by imitating them, but doing it better" mentality.
The problem is that the average congresscritter has absolutely NO clue what a 100% playthrough would cost. Obviously, they've never played through any of the Final Fantasy games, and from what I'm seeing, they're small potatoes compared to some of the newer games.
What about games like World of Warcraft, where the content is constantly being updated? How about Unreal Tournament? Sure, the package doesn't ship with content containing nudity, but nothing is stopping 3rd party mapmakers from making a map set in a bordello.
While I agree that some playing time would be a good idea, it can't be so onerous that it's cost prohibitive.
Quite frankly, most of the ratings I've seen are fairly accurate. What really needs to happen is for parents to get up off their asses and take some control of the situation. If you don't want your kids playing a game where the "hero" boinks whores to gain health points, for god's sake, don't let them play it! We all know which games contain this sort of content, so stay away from it if you're not into that sort of thing. Hasn't anyone heard of gamerdad? Guess what folks? Parenting is hard work.
...because Microsoft, who makes both Windows and WMP, has made us wonder in what other ways we're going to be told to get bent.
It boils down to trust, and Microsoft has repeatedly broken it.
Your own potential for bigotry has nothing to do with your world view, and everything to do with the natural human impulse to view yourself or your group in a favorable way by pushing down another person or group.
Otherwise, who cares if Linux achieves "world domination"? Personally, I think that having the proprietary software companies always yapping at the Linux developers' heels would keep them honest.
Could you explain the differences between how a criminal case is tried, and a civil case is tried. It's my understanding that it is a crime to "steal" music via the internet, but all of these cases are being tried in civil court. Are the protections or the defendant weaker in civil court? I'm recalling how OJ Simpson was acquitted in criminal court, but "held liable" in civil court. Similar dynamic here?
Heh, remember the little old lady who got sued even though she never owned a computer? [slashdot.org]
Not likely. Linux users are a bunch of immoral hippies/commies/pirates who are trying to bring down the moral majority establishment. Why would they ever want to release it for Linux?
</tongue firmly in cheek>
How many of you have a second computer? Go out to Radio Shack or some similar store, get yourself a cord with a mini stereo phone jack on either end. Play the music on Computer #1 and record it on Computer #2 with Audacity.
Presto! DRM free music.
Two worries about this plan:
Time is money. People in the business world are not in business just to pass the time. They're in business to make money. If your free program doesn't work as well or as quickly as it's proprietary equivalent, your free program won't be used. Simple as that. Granted, some companies can afford to use purely free software, but that only goes so far.
My personal example is in photography. I regularly shoot over 1600 photographs at one wedding, and I have about a week to get all of those photos looked at, edited, color balanced, etc. I can do it in 3 relaxed days with a combination of RawShooter Essentials 2005 and Photoshop 7, or in about 5-6 long days with GIMP. I run all of the above programs on my Gentoo Linux desktop. The two proprietary programs are Windows binaries run under WINE. Obviously, it takes WAY less time to process all those photos with the proprietary programs. As a busy photographer, what would you do? Only take on half the work? Work almost twice as long and never see my wife or friends? I'd love to use only the GIMP, but right now, it doesn't do the job. Hopefully, it will one day do as good a job with photoediting as Linux does with running a desktop computer.
Free software will be adopted into the mainstream when it can do the job. Not a minute sooner, and not a minute later. The reason that Google runs it's business with Linux servers is that Linux does the best job given their setup.
I hope that any other company/school system will do the same. There are simply too many resources (monetary or otherwise) being put into a school computing system or a large business to do otherwise.
Yes, wireless works fine if you have the right card. On the other hand, I can see why someone would balk when the built-in card in their laptop doesn't work when running Linux.
My own experience with mp3 players has been more or less the same. No problems at all.
Camera support has been fine for me too. My Nikon d70s works both in Mass Storage and PTP modes. Personally, I recommend a card reader anyway, since they usually have a faster transfer rate than from the camera. At least that's how it is for the d70s anyway.
Now, for photo editing at the professional level: Sorry guys, the FOSS solutions just don't cut it. I think GIMP is great for web design and it has a few tools that I like better than Photoshop, but when faced with 3300 photos from a weekend of shooting, GIMP is pretty pathetic. It can't open photos as fast as Photoshop (I'm preprocessing the .nef files with Pixmantec's RawShooter Essentials under WINE, and editing the resulting TIFF files using Photoshop 7 under WINE) and the interface isn't as fast. It takes about half again as long (to be generous) to process photos with GIMP. GIMP is also lacking CMYK support, color profiling, and 16 bit support, although I hear that 16 bit support and color profiling at least will be taken care of soon. I'd love to use GIMP, but time is money, as they say.
"And, frankly, personally I really don't care about Linus's opinion anyway; the only part Linus provides for the "Linux" operating system is the kernel. If the Linux kernel project fell apart for whatever reason, the impact on Ubuntu, RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, etc. would be small since the Linux kernel would be replaced fairly quickly."
Yeah! Anyhow! After all, we have HURD!........oh.....wait.