Apple is making MS look less douchebaggish by comparison.
Microsoft haven't looked douchebaggish for years. They've looked by turns incompetent and lost. If they had ever built up any goodwill with me, I'd feel sorry for them.
Apple are showing the world that competent evil is truly something else.
I had an odd experience on the uTorrent forums recently.
I uploaded my own books to some torrent sites, and posted links to them. From the people on Demonoid, Pirate Bay, ISOHunt, and 4Chan, I got friendly and encouraging replies.
When I finally got around to uploading my Creative Commons licensed book to usenet, and then noted this on a popular usenet index, it was also deleted as spam.
Apparently, this was because it was a dupe. Sure enough I did a search and there it was. The previous poster beat me to it by several weeks. The best part was that the copy that was already uploaded was better than mine. It included additional information and metadata (including a blurb!) that made it more useful to import into ebook libraries.
Fucking pirates, and their continually superior products.
I've been kind of curious about this idea lately: What if we sat in hot tubs at our desks?
Aside from any directly negative effects of long term submersion in water, and aside from the typically poor way in which large amounts of water mix with computer workstations, and aside from the hygeine implications and the hassle of getting in and out for meetings, bathroom visits (see above) and other?
Well, aside from all that I suspect that you would atrophy important balance muscles, and weaken important joints, leading to various chronic pain conditions.
No. The idea of first sale belongs to the world of physical things, and the physical world is slowly learning to adjust to what that means. Stop trying to apply physical laws to information.
When it has finished adjusting, I fully expect to be able to copy as many things as I want as often as I want. And I still expect art to be created, and many artists to make a living wage. All this will take time. Meanwhile, pretending I've bought something when I can hardly even use it, is a farce.
What this means is that, whilst old 'first edition' books will still be collected, they may now be seen as an artefact of a past way of living, much like chamberpots or bedwarmers.
I'm tired of hearing it as well - because other businesses with narrower margins have survived some form of First Sale Doctrine for literally centuries at this point.
Of course, some of them have not. And, crucially, that's a good thing, too.
Well, in this case, it is basically Microsoft defending itself against the FUD from Norton, because the only reason you should need Norton is if Microsoft Windows sucks.
Which is ironic, because Norton sucks like a black hole with daddy issues.
slashdot is pretty much done at this point, right? it always was a site made by its contributors, and the articles always were misleading and sensational.
1) O'Dwyer never went to the US whilst running the site. He visited as a small child, but I don't think he has a stronger connection to the US than this.
2) The servers on which his service were being run were not in the US.
Most sensible people would therefore argue that he hasn't comitted a crime on US soil.
But it gets worse. The existing case law in the UK suggests very strongly that the UK does not consider what O'Dwyer did to be a crime. A similar site (TV links) was accused in similar circumstances and let off the hook, because it was deemed to be a 'mere conduit' (Like a safe harbour defense, rather than that deciding that *linking to things is not a crime*, for example).
Now a UK judge has said that O'Dwyer probably was criminal in this case, because he exerted considerable control over the site, and therefore cannot use the same defense.
But that's smoke and mirrors, frankly. The way we figure out if that is a crime or not is to try him in court, not to push him off to some corrupt nation where it definitely is a crime.
At most I can imagine a heads-up display that is wirelessly linked to the smartphone in your pocket. That would have some use. Beyond that I don't see anything obvious; perhaps future developments give us other hardware that is worth wearing.
Every year or two somebody comes up with something that "could replace the mouse". It never does. I'm not saying never will, but I don't see anything coming. Why? Because the mouse is pretty close to perfect. It allows for fine manipulation from the wrist and/or fingertips without fatigue - in fact the arm is almost at rest. Only the nipple, trackball, and touchpad have ever really come close, and I'd argue that most people consider them to be acceptable compromises.
Kinaesthetic peripherals such as the Kinect, the Wiimote, the Move, Gyroscopic mice, heck, even the Gloves of Love from Minority Report - none of them are never going to become ubiquitious input devices like the mouse, because none of them are better than the mouse for general purpose input, in these really fundamental ways. If you want fine motor movement, you generally don't want to get the whole arm involved.
All novel ways to interact with the world are up against similar issues. They can't all be directly compared to the mouse, but for genuinely novel ways of interacting with the world, consider these three questions: 'is it a hassle to use?', 'can you forget it is there?*', and eventually, 'do you look for it, when it is not there?'.
A lot of wearable computing devices won't even pass the first test - you're right about the batteries being a likely issue. Keeping five or six items charged is going to be a pain. But also consider fatigue, fineness of control, etc.
* under 'can you forget it is there?', consider also 'are you always looking for the thing you know exists, which would be simpler to use'... such as a mouse, or sometimes a keyboard.:)
This is a story about a Filelocker service that has been deemed to be a haven for piracy launching a legitmate service directly in collaberation with the artists themselves. Unlike BandCamp and Spotify what its success would tell you is that many Artists aren't having a problem getting into bed with a so called haven for piracy. And a good number of them may even be choosing it in preference to working with all those 'legitimate' labels.
I would find that very interesting indeed.
And, if megaupload was any indication, both services will be much better than megabox.
Hmm, you could be right. Which streaming music service was MegaUpload worse than?
The US Justice department is infiltrated with agents of Big Media. They don't care what the law is, they know what they want it to be and they have power.
Power without intelligence is like a rocket engine without a nozzle.
How interesting that Kim Dotcom has his assets seized and his business killed just a couple of months after announcing a new service called MegaBox that would have competed directly and legally with record labels.
The content industry does not seem to recognize that society has already given them all sorts of concessions; which limit the rights of others in order to protect them. They have copyright extensions that go well beyond what the Constitution stated the aim of copyright to be...
The point is that the owner of copyright should be free to dictate the terms under which others can access that content. There's no ethical or moral argument that really holds water to contradict that.
Are you joking? The creator of a work should be able to decide whether or not to release a work, and... well, that's about it. Once it is out there, they absolutely should not have any say over how it is used or accessed.
The complete underlying rationale behind copyright is to encourage new works to enter the public domain. The public domain is the space in which shared cultural works are available to everyone and anyone, without restrictions of any form - in case you were in any doubt at all about that.
Allowing content creators to selectively control the process of release and distribution is a workaround to generate more of this free content, longer term. It's not an inalienable right, let alone some kind of good in and of itself. Thinking that we own our ideas sets us down some very dark paths.
Already we've lost the right of first sale on most copyrighted works, which is a right which applies to every other kind of property. Already copyright terms have begun their long journey towards infinite duration.
These are the states of affairs which have 'no ethical or moral argument that really holds water to contradict' them.
The "companies" he is complaining about are not the labels, they are The Pirate Bay and MegaUpload.
And Google. And Apple. What nonsense. It's just the same old 'ohh, it's big technology' argument again.
Even Megaupload is something of a stretch. Or are they really guilty until proven innocent, despite having their assests unlawfully seized, and despite being denied access to defence materials, and despite the fact that due process was not followed in either the seizure or the extradition proceedings?
Megaupload MAY have been profiting from unathorised copies, and there MAY be a criminal element to this. This remains to be seen. But a billion dollar business got killed overnight because the music and movie industries sent government agencies to another country to take them out of the game, and as far as we can tell they're only now looking for evidence to use against Megaupload (whilst denying Megaupload the corresponding opportunity to look for evidence in their defence). They're building a case after the fact, and they've already destroyed the company.
This isn't some one sided thing. Even if it turns out that nobody is clean, you can definitely point out the 'bad guys' right now.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple is making MS look less douchebaggish by comparison.
Microsoft haven't looked douchebaggish for years. They've looked by turns incompetent and lost. If they had ever built up any goodwill with me, I'd feel sorry for them.
Apple are showing the world that competent evil is truly something else.
I had an odd experience on the uTorrent forums recently.
I uploaded my own books to some torrent sites, and posted links to them. From the people on Demonoid, Pirate Bay, ISOHunt, and 4Chan, I got friendly and encouraging replies.
When I finally got around to uploading my Creative Commons licensed book to usenet, and then noted this on a popular usenet index, it was also deleted as spam.
Apparently, this was because it was a dupe. Sure enough I did a search and there it was. The previous poster beat me to it by several weeks. The best part was that the copy that was already uploaded was better than mine. It included additional information and metadata (including a blurb!) that made it more useful to import into ebook libraries.
Fucking pirates, and their continually superior products.
I've been kind of curious about this idea lately: What if we sat in hot tubs at our desks?
Aside from any directly negative effects of long term submersion in water, and aside from the typically poor way in which large amounts of water mix with computer workstations, and aside from the hygeine implications and the hassle of getting in and out for meetings, bathroom visits (see above) and other?
Well, aside from all that I suspect that you would atrophy important balance muscles, and weaken important joints, leading to various chronic pain conditions.
But I'm not a doctor.
Déjà Vista
That is some genuinely world class word play. Kudos.
No. The idea of first sale belongs to the world of physical things, and the physical world is slowly learning to adjust to what that means. Stop trying to apply physical laws to information.
When it has finished adjusting, I fully expect to be able to copy as many things as I want as often as I want. And I still expect art to be created, and many artists to make a living wage. All this will take time. Meanwhile, pretending I've bought something when I can hardly even use it, is a farce.
Another vindication for technological progress, and another steely blow to the right of first sale.
Now an ebook.
What this means is that, whilst old 'first edition' books will still be collected, they may now be seen as an artefact of a past way of living, much like chamberpots or bedwarmers.
I'm tired of hearing it as well - because other businesses with narrower margins have survived some form of First Sale Doctrine for literally centuries at this point.
Of course, some of them have not. And, crucially, that's a good thing, too.
Well, in this case, it is basically Microsoft defending itself against the FUD from Norton, because the only reason you should need Norton is if Microsoft Windows sucks.
Which is ironic, because Norton sucks like a black hole with daddy issues.
When you're calling in Microsoft to help expose the FUD, you are dealing with some military grade bullshit.
It's been pointed out the problems in Jurassic Park are not Man's Arrrogance in playing God but rather lousy zookeeping and corruption and sabotage.
Man's Arrogance in thinking he is competent. I see that story all the time.
but at least they were topical.
today's top story: worlds hardest sudoku
summary: not actually the world's hardest sudoku.
more at 11.
1) O'Dwyer never went to the US whilst running the site. He visited as a small child, but I don't think he has a stronger connection to the US than this.
2) The servers on which his service were being run were not in the US.
Most sensible people would therefore argue that he hasn't comitted a crime on US soil.
But it gets worse. The existing case law in the UK suggests very strongly that the UK does not consider what O'Dwyer did to be a crime. A similar site (TV links) was accused in similar circumstances and let off the hook, because it was deemed to be a 'mere conduit' (Like a safe harbour defense, rather than that deciding that *linking to things is not a crime*, for example).
Now a UK judge has said that O'Dwyer probably was criminal in this case, because he exerted considerable control over the site, and therefore cannot use the same defense.
But that's smoke and mirrors, frankly. The way we figure out if that is a crime or not is to try him in court, not to push him off to some corrupt nation where it definitely is a crime.
At most I can imagine a heads-up display that is wirelessly linked to the smartphone in your pocket. That would have some use. Beyond that I don't see anything obvious; perhaps future developments give us other hardware that is worth wearing.
Every year or two somebody comes up with something that "could replace the mouse". It never does. I'm not saying never will, but I don't see anything coming. Why? Because the mouse is pretty close to perfect. It allows for fine manipulation from the wrist and/or fingertips without fatigue - in fact the arm is almost at rest. Only the nipple, trackball, and touchpad have ever really come close, and I'd argue that most people consider them to be acceptable compromises.
Kinaesthetic peripherals such as the Kinect, the Wiimote, the Move, Gyroscopic mice, heck, even the Gloves of Love from Minority Report - none of them are never going to become ubiquitious input devices like the mouse, because none of them are better than the mouse for general purpose input, in these really fundamental ways. If you want fine motor movement, you generally don't want to get the whole arm involved.
All novel ways to interact with the world are up against similar issues. They can't all be directly compared to the mouse, but for genuinely novel ways of interacting with the world, consider these three questions: 'is it a hassle to use?', 'can you forget it is there?*', and eventually, 'do you look for it, when it is not there?'.
A lot of wearable computing devices won't even pass the first test - you're right about the batteries being a likely issue. Keeping five or six items charged is going to be a pain. But also consider fatigue, fineness of control, etc.
* under 'can you forget it is there?', consider also 'are you always looking for the thing you know exists, which would be simpler to use'... such as a mouse, or sometimes a keyboard. :)
"Is this the beginning of the end for Android?"
No, it's the beginning of the end for Apple.
On the other hand, if the brother never comes up with an heir, then Onan gets the brother's stuff....
What a wanker!
He was refering to a recent well-known incident in which a SWAT team was sent to arrest a suspected drug dealer...
And here is the (really quite horrifying) video of that incident: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b-67q0vlCw
The point at which the man realises his dog has been shot is heartbreaking.
How interesting really is this? Not very.Bandcamp already does this. Spotify already does this.
Whataboutery, and irrelevance.
This is a story about a Filelocker service that has been deemed to be a haven for piracy launching a legitmate service directly in collaberation with the artists themselves. Unlike BandCamp and Spotify what its success would tell you is that many Artists aren't having a problem getting into bed with a so called haven for piracy. And a good number of them may even be choosing it in preference to working with all those 'legitimate' labels.
I would find that very interesting indeed.
And, if megaupload was any indication, both services will be much better than megabox.
Hmm, you could be right. Which streaming music service was MegaUpload worse than?
The US Justice department is infiltrated with agents of Big Media. They don't care what the law is, they know what they want it to be and they have power.
Power without intelligence is like a rocket engine without a nozzle.
The bad news for those guys is that it's still good to go. I wonder if it will be successful.
http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-artists-rejoice-megabox-is-not-dead-120621/
The content industry does not seem to recognize that society has already given them all sorts of concessions; which limit the rights of others in order to protect them. They have copyright extensions that go well beyond what the Constitution stated the aim of copyright to be...
They have copyright. Period.
what a cunt
The point is that the owner of copyright should be free to dictate the terms under which others can access that content. There's no ethical or moral argument that really holds water to contradict that.
Are you joking? The creator of a work should be able to decide whether or not to release a work, and... well, that's about it. Once it is out there, they absolutely should not have any say over how it is used or accessed.
The complete underlying rationale behind copyright is to encourage new works to enter the public domain. The public domain is the space in which shared cultural works are available to everyone and anyone, without restrictions of any form - in case you were in any doubt at all about that.
Allowing content creators to selectively control the process of release and distribution is a workaround to generate more of this free content, longer term. It's not an inalienable right, let alone some kind of good in and of itself. Thinking that we own our ideas sets us down some very dark paths.
Already we've lost the right of first sale on most copyrighted works, which is a right which applies to every other kind of property. Already copyright terms have begun their long journey towards infinite duration.
These are the states of affairs which have 'no ethical or moral argument that really holds water to contradict' them.
Here is a novel thought: if you can't pay for something that is a 100% luxury (and having your own copies of songs is exactly that), do without!
Why? It's our culture. It is a different thing to say that it has no value, than to say some must be excluded for lack of funds.
The "companies" he is complaining about are not the labels, they are The Pirate Bay and MegaUpload.
And Google. And Apple. What nonsense. It's just the same old 'ohh, it's big technology' argument again.
Even Megaupload is something of a stretch. Or are they really guilty until proven innocent, despite having their assests unlawfully seized, and despite being denied access to defence materials, and despite the fact that due process was not followed in either the seizure or the extradition proceedings?
Megaupload MAY have been profiting from unathorised copies, and there MAY be a criminal element to this. This remains to be seen. But a billion dollar business got killed overnight because the music and movie industries sent government agencies to another country to take them out of the game, and as far as we can tell they're only now looking for evidence to use against Megaupload (whilst denying Megaupload the corresponding opportunity to look for evidence in their defence). They're building a case after the fact, and they've already destroyed the company.
This isn't some one sided thing. Even if it turns out that nobody is clean, you can definitely point out the 'bad guys' right now.