Neither did MS. There are alternatives to every product MS bundles with Windows. Usually there are better alternatives, sometimes there is not.
I'm not saying they are not a monopoly or even monopolistic. Just pointing out your incorrect statement... one I see a lot of people use as the entire and only foundation for their Anti-MS Fanboyism.
The whip might provide a powerful tool when ones charges has been wrong. However, without also a carrot when they are right the whip only breeds in them a desire to rebel.
It was inevitable that something like this would happen. Indie artists were first and they were over looked. Major established artists were next and people took note. Judges are no longer blindly accepting the RIAAs lies. Now an entire label is signaling it's discontent with RIAA practices. This I take as a firm signal that a turning point in this war has been reached.
"Apparently, that includes graphic or gratuitous violence perpetrated by governments against innocent civilians." Of course it does. I don't see how which party perpetrated the violence or who the target of the violence is would change whether or not it qualifies as violence.
What a statement like that does when taken within the context of th article and the rest of your post is try to connect the guy being an activist against torture to him being suspended from YouTube as cause and effect. I'm sure there are a lot of sheep out there that won't realize these two things are NOT cause and effect. However, I've come to expect much higher standards from TechDirt and I find it disappointing to see something like that here.
He broke YouTube's rules and got suspended. The end. That the video in question was of torture is only relevant in that a video featuring torture, whether against torture or for it, is a blatant violation of YouTube's policies. Noble cause or not he violated the TOS he agreed to when he signed up and for that he got suspend.
Kudos to the guy for trying to save humanity from itself but he needs to be respectful of the parties who are enabling him to do so. YouTube doesn't give a crap about torture. YouTube isn't a political entity. YouTube is a corporate entity and like other corporate entities its primary interest is in making money.
Recently I went to download and watch an anime that is still not available in the USA but which a friend told me I would like. I went to my usual site and where I had actually started to download the anime before only to find a notice saying Viz had demanded that it be taken down. I was shocked. It was the first time I had ever seen anything like it in anime and by knowing a friend in the fansubing community I knew of the truce between fansubers and anime media companies. I didn't research further though. I just hoped on bittorent and got it that way.
Quite disheartening to say the least. Soon I'll be forced to ether miss out on anime shows that are good or watch the vandalized American versions.
I see what your saying but really your argument is based on semantics. Yes, he is wrong that you can not patent [any] facts. However, the point is that you can not patent "publicly available" facts. See what I mean? You're right but only cause of the semantics.
I have a saying: I only hate stupid people... the problem is people are stupid.
It's a play on words meaning that I only hate [individual] people who are stupid, but when [a group of] people get together their collective intelligence ends up lower than that of the least intelligent individual among them.
This guy however is genuinely stupid. Even more stupid to be admitting to how colossal of a screw up he is in an interview with a member of the press who's boss he doesn't own.
Also, it's nice to see that some one out there actually understands the issue of why the music industry has to adapt to the fact the music itself is now without monetary value. Kudos Mike for noting the water "industry" makes money even though the water itself is free (IE it's the distribution and quality control that people pay for).
I read a blurb not too long back on some site or another which mentioned the trend in which scientists rarely claim something to be absolute. The author postulated that working in scientific endevers forces scientist to acknowledge that even once all the data is collected and even when a objective decision is made in the end it is still possible that some variables were not accounted for.
The author claimed having experienced cases such as these had trained scientist to remain open to even the slimmest possibility that even the obvious "truths" and accepted "scientific facts" of our time are not quite correct and that the "impossible" is in fact simply improbable.
My point to all this is as follows. While opinions are great for tabloids, blogs, and perhaps even sites like Wired, nothing can be learned in a conversation where people just give their opinions. People have to remain objective enough to change their opinions if a solid well founded counter argument is made.
This is something I have to tell some of my students: the moment you insist on being right is the moment you lose the ability to learn. Being right requires you to literally know everything. Learning requires you to acknowledge that you do not know everything.
And so I say again opinions have their place, but nothing can be learned from opinions alone and objective reporting of facts make forming an unbiased opinion of your own much more likely. The "journalists" may not be truly objective in their reporting of the facts but that is no excuse to throw objectivity to the wind. Giving opinions of your own is all well and good if you are willing to be honest about your level of objectivity and are willing to give all the facts, not just the ones that support your opinion.
As for people wanting opinions. I want a pizza with pepperoni, black olives, mushrooms, and extra cheese, a 2 liter bottle of Sunkist, and to watch a good Anime flick. However, seeing as the ideal weight for some one with my height and body type is 160 pounds, and seeing as I currently weigh over 260: what I NEED is fish, some salad, and lots of exercise. Moderation applies to more than just eating habits.
Most stable game in the series? My god! What are the others like? Since release BF2142 has had horrendous flaws such as explosions killing people through walls and people being able to shoot at one titan and the bullets killing people inside the other titan. If the other games are worse than that then EA just needs to give up and close its doors.
Overall I find this article to be one of the best I've seen on Techdirt, so don't take this the wrong way.
However your comparison of Doctors to IT Profesional in relation to "quackery" is entirely too accurate for your end conclusion. I have been an "IT Proffesional" for over 8 years now. I work in retail computer repair. I've had to develop a very broad skill set and am constantly exposed to new issues and technologies from a wide range of IT needs and uses. I've also had to work with people in a more narrow branches of IT such as those who spend their time setting up and maintaining large networks for corporations or developing software. The most disturbing thing I've noticed in this time is how prevalent "quackery" in the IT Industry is. I've had supposed "IT Professionals" tell me that scanning to JPEG format can not be done, that virus' can not infect the boot sector of a hard drive, that wifi is inherently more secure than wired networking, that putting a PSU with too much wattage will fry a computer, that you should use acidic human saliva (otherwise known as spit) for cleaning the sensitive plastic optics of your cd/dvd drive, and on and on. The scary part is this is the rule, not the exception. Less than 20% of the "IT Professionals" that I have met knew and understood basic computer concepts much less were knowledgeable enough that I would let them check their email on my computer. I'd break their hands if they even mentioned working on it. We're talking about people with 4+ years of college and more certifications than you can shake a stick at. People who have been working in the IT Industry since before Windows 95 came out, since before I was in high school.
Why is this possible? I've watched them rattle off bullshit and blatantly wrong information to customers faces while looking them right in the eye. It's not that they are lying since they actually believe their own bullshit. Why wouldn't they believe it? They get paid to spout it time and time again. The customer of course has no idea. It only takes a hand full of obscure (often made up) terms and half truths to have a customer eating out of your hand. Not only that but the customer will likely never realize they were taken for a ride. They barely even understand enough about how a computer is supposed to work to realize when it isn't working the way it is supposed to (they don't want to). So they will bring the same computer that was never really fixed back to the same computer tech who never really fixed it to not really fix it time and time again for a supposedly different problem each time. Why bother actually knowing what your doing when you can get people to pay you for messing their computer up worse than it was. These are the people that work as sys admin at ISPs and banks. These are the people that get hired at firedog and geek squad. More often than not these are the people working at your local ma'n'pa computer shop.
The same thing could easily happen in a deregulated Medial Industry thanks to the lack of consumer knowledge on how medicine really works and the fact that, out of necessity, people must trust their doctors. Thus, while I agree that the current regulation is used more for keeping prices high, I think some level of regulation is a must simply to ensure the safety of patients.
Oh btw, my business model allows me to make obscene amounts of profit will still undercutting my competition 15%. I don't need regulation to make a healthy living. I just get irritated seeing people taken advantage of.
This isn't even an apples and oranges comparison. This is an apples and frying pans comparison. What do apples and frying pans have in common? They are both tangible things and they are both involved in eating. I wouldn't claim that eating a frying pan is good for you based on the fact that both it and apples are involved in eating. Your argument is comparatively just that.
The core of every argument I have heard claiming content sites based on user submissions are exploiting their users centers around the fact that the site is making ALL of the money while doing very little of the work. For this to be an accurate comparison in respect to such an argument then the metro system would need to be profiting directly from the info their "users" are submitting to them.
Show me where the metro system is profiting DIRECTLY from the information being submitted to their system. Who is it that is paying money or producing ad clicks to view the list of who _might_ have lost what? The only people that even see that list is the janitors. Are they paying money for access to it?
At least in and apples an oranges comparison both are edible.
You have managed to miss the entire issue by a oceans width and be cocky about it at the same time with your comments like, "Now, some may bizarrely claim that this is 'exploitation,'." The only person that would even think to consider what the metro system is doing exploitation is you. Thats because the differences are so clear they qualify as obvious.
BTW. I do not claim such sites exploit their users. However the argument I have for such a statement actually makes sense. It is because I know better than to think the people submitting content to these sites are in a situation where there is no good alternative to submitting content. Do they honestly expect me to believe that they can't go to the living room and flip on the TV, go to the movies, hang out with friends at the mall, mow the grass, take a walk, play a video game, etc? No one is making any one submit info to these sites. It is a choice and as long as there are viable choices it _can not_ be exploitation.
If these people crying exploitation really feel users should be paid for the content they submit then they need to start a site of their own where users get paid. If they are right and people deserve to get paid, are willing to hand out personal information, willing to hand out their bank account info, and go through the hassle of setting up an account their site should be a success and will likely push the other sites to pay their users or risk going under. Stop bitching about the problem and do something about it.
Has no one yet realized that the government is basically looking for a way to sensor political unrest? Considering this is almost certainly the intended goal (or at the very least the end result) it is likely they would spare no effort or cost to achieve it to the best level possible. Over the counter software is not bloody likely for an application on which their government's stability could one day hinge.
Also, word filters are not hard to implement. With negligible coding experience and very little effort it was possible to hack a feature like this into the production ircd hosting a few hundred users that works extremely well and NEVER produces false positives. With a reasonably competent coder and some time and money behind it, it is possible to have reasonably reliable coding for entire word patterns.
As for problems, blocking a few hundred legit text messages per week is no big deal when your trying to control the minds of your population.
First and foremost, hacking does include social engineering. In fact that is a massive percentage of how most hacks are preformed.
It seems the poster here has fallen into the same habit that the media has. The habit of thinking of hackers as simply people who make viruses, used obscure security flaws to access restricted data, and cause mayhem for amusement.
Hacking is not limited or restricted to computers or even electronics. Hacking simply put is the act of finding ways around the intended functionality of an item in order to achieve something not normally possible with it. This could be getting an apache web server to spit out the contents of the server root folder or it could be getting the security dude at a companies front desk to hand out information about the system that allows you to compromise it.
Further more not all hacks are illegal as not all hacks involve gaining access to restricted information.
In short I have two major issues with the post. The idea that hacking is inherently illegal, and the idea that hacking is restricted entirely to technical endeavors.
hours? I've reactivated dozens of computers (im a computer repair tech) with XP. Never once had it take more than about 15 minutes. Usualy takes less than 5...
On the post: Antitrust Lawsuit Wants To Force Apple To Add WMA Support To iPods
Re: Give Me A Break Already
Neither did MS. There are alternatives to every product MS bundles with Windows. Usually there are better alternatives, sometimes there is not.
I'm not saying they are not a monopoly or even monopolistic. Just pointing out your incorrect statement... one I see a lot of people use as the entire and only foundation for their Anti-MS Fanboyism.
On the post: EMI Might Not Like The RIAA Very Much
Re:
On the post: EMI Might Not Like The RIAA Very Much
And the winds of change begin to blow...
"Blow, wind! come, wrack!" indeed...
On the post: YouTube Suspends Egyptian Anti-Torture Activist's Account
I expect more from TechDirt
What a statement like that does when taken within the context of th article and the rest of your post is try to connect the guy being an activist against torture to him being suspended from YouTube as cause and effect. I'm sure there are a lot of sheep out there that won't realize these two things are NOT cause and effect. However, I've come to expect much higher standards from TechDirt and I find it disappointing to see something like that here.
He broke YouTube's rules and got suspended. The end. That the video in question was of torture is only relevant in that a video featuring torture, whether against torture or for it, is a blatant violation of YouTube's policies. Noble cause or not he violated the TOS he agreed to when he signed up and for that he got suspend.
Kudos to the guy for trying to save humanity from itself but he needs to be respectful of the parties who are enabling him to do so. YouTube doesn't give a crap about torture. YouTube isn't a political entity. YouTube is a corporate entity and like other corporate entities its primary interest is in making money.
On the post: Did Anime Producers Go From Embracing Fansubbers To Blaming Them?
viz media
Quite disheartening to say the least. Soon I'll be forced to ether miss out on anime shows that are good or watch the vandalized American versions.
On the post: Yet Again: Court Tells MLB It Doesn't Own Facts
Re: I can see...
On the post: Universal Music's CEO Gleefully Explains How Clueless He Is
Speaking of hammers...
It's a play on words meaning that I only hate [individual] people who are stupid, but when [a group of] people get together their collective intelligence ends up lower than that of the least intelligent individual among them.
This guy however is genuinely stupid. Even more stupid to be admitting to how colossal of a screw up he is in an interview with a member of the press who's boss he doesn't own.
Also, it's nice to see that some one out there actually understands the issue of why the music industry has to adapt to the fact the music itself is now without monetary value. Kudos Mike for noting the water "industry" makes money even though the water itself is free (IE it's the distribution and quality control that people pay for).
On the post: People Want Analysis Of The News, Rather Than Just Facts
learning requires objectivity.
The author claimed having experienced cases such as these had trained scientist to remain open to even the slimmest possibility that even the obvious "truths" and accepted "scientific facts" of our time are not quite correct and that the "impossible" is in fact simply improbable.
My point to all this is as follows. While opinions are great for tabloids, blogs, and perhaps even sites like Wired, nothing can be learned in a conversation where people just give their opinions. People have to remain objective enough to change their opinions if a solid well founded counter argument is made.
This is something I have to tell some of my students: the moment you insist on being right is the moment you lose the ability to learn. Being right requires you to literally know everything. Learning requires you to acknowledge that you do not know everything.
And so I say again opinions have their place, but nothing can be learned from opinions alone and objective reporting of facts make forming an unbiased opinion of your own much more likely. The "journalists" may not be truly objective in their reporting of the facts but that is no excuse to throw objectivity to the wind. Giving opinions of your own is all well and good if you are willing to be honest about your level of objectivity and are willing to give all the facts, not just the ones that support your opinion.
As for people wanting opinions. I want a pizza with pepperoni, black olives, mushrooms, and extra cheese, a 2 liter bottle of Sunkist, and to watch a good Anime flick. However, seeing as the ideal weight for some one with my height and body type is 160 pounds, and seeing as I currently weigh over 260: what I NEED is fish, some salad, and lots of exercise. Moderation applies to more than just eating habits.
On the post: EA Boss Admits: We Have A Problem
Re: There programming sucks too.
On the post: How The AMA Preserves The Status Quo In Medicine
quacks in tech comparison
However your comparison of Doctors to IT Profesional in relation to "quackery" is entirely too accurate for your end conclusion. I have been an "IT Proffesional" for over 8 years now. I work in retail computer repair. I've had to develop a very broad skill set and am constantly exposed to new issues and technologies from a wide range of IT needs and uses. I've also had to work with people in a more narrow branches of IT such as those who spend their time setting up and maintaining large networks for corporations or developing software. The most disturbing thing I've noticed in this time is how prevalent "quackery" in the IT Industry is. I've had supposed "IT Professionals" tell me that scanning to JPEG format can not be done, that virus' can not infect the boot sector of a hard drive, that wifi is inherently more secure than wired networking, that putting a PSU with too much wattage will fry a computer, that you should use acidic human saliva (otherwise known as spit) for cleaning the sensitive plastic optics of your cd/dvd drive, and on and on. The scary part is this is the rule, not the exception. Less than 20% of the "IT Professionals" that I have met knew and understood basic computer concepts much less were knowledgeable enough that I would let them check their email on my computer. I'd break their hands if they even mentioned working on it. We're talking about people with 4+ years of college and more certifications than you can shake a stick at. People who have been working in the IT Industry since before Windows 95 came out, since before I was in high school.
Why is this possible? I've watched them rattle off bullshit and blatantly wrong information to customers faces while looking them right in the eye. It's not that they are lying since they actually believe their own bullshit. Why wouldn't they believe it? They get paid to spout it time and time again. The customer of course has no idea. It only takes a hand full of obscure (often made up) terms and half truths to have a customer eating out of your hand. Not only that but the customer will likely never realize they were taken for a ride. They barely even understand enough about how a computer is supposed to work to realize when it isn't working the way it is supposed to (they don't want to). So they will bring the same computer that was never really fixed back to the same computer tech who never really fixed it to not really fix it time and time again for a supposedly different problem each time. Why bother actually knowing what your doing when you can get people to pay you for messing their computer up worse than it was. These are the people that work as sys admin at ISPs and banks. These are the people that get hired at firedog and geek squad. More often than not these are the people working at your local ma'n'pa computer shop.
The same thing could easily happen in a deregulated Medial Industry thanks to the lack of consumer knowledge on how medicine really works and the fact that, out of necessity, people must trust their doctors. Thus, while I agree that the current regulation is used more for keeping prices high, I think some level of regulation is a must simply to ensure the safety of patients.
Oh btw, my business model allows me to make obscene amounts of profit will still undercutting my competition 15%. I don't need regulation to make a healthy living. I just get irritated seeing people taken advantage of.
On the post: User Generated Content Is About Efficiency And Growth, Not Exploitation
apples and frying pans comparison
The core of every argument I have heard claiming content sites based on user submissions are exploiting their users centers around the fact that the site is making ALL of the money while doing very little of the work. For this to be an accurate comparison in respect to such an argument then the metro system would need to be profiting directly from the info their "users" are submitting to them.
Show me where the metro system is profiting DIRECTLY from the information being submitted to their system. Who is it that is paying money or producing ad clicks to view the list of who _might_ have lost what? The only people that even see that list is the janitors. Are they paying money for access to it?
At least in and apples an oranges comparison both are edible.
You have managed to miss the entire issue by a oceans width and be cocky about it at the same time with your comments like, "Now, some may bizarrely claim that this is 'exploitation,'." The only person that would even think to consider what the metro system is doing exploitation is you. Thats because the differences are so clear they qualify as obvious.
BTW. I do not claim such sites exploit their users. However the argument I have for such a statement actually makes sense. It is because I know better than to think the people submitting content to these sites are in a situation where there is no good alternative to submitting content. Do they honestly expect me to believe that they can't go to the living room and flip on the TV, go to the movies, hang out with friends at the mall, mow the grass, take a walk, play a video game, etc? No one is making any one submit info to these sites. It is a choice and as long as there are viable choices it _can not_ be exploitation.
If these people crying exploitation really feel users should be paid for the content they submit then they need to start a site of their own where users get paid. If they are right and people deserve to get paid, are willing to hand out personal information, willing to hand out their bank account info, and go through the hassle of setting up an account their site should be a success and will likely push the other sites to pay their users or risk going under. Stop bitching about the problem and do something about it.
On the post: Iran Plans To Filter Immoral SMS And MMS Transmissions
time to state the obvious...
Has no one yet realized that the government is basically looking for a way to sensor political unrest? Considering this is almost certainly the intended goal (or at the very least the end result) it is likely they would spare no effort or cost to achieve it to the best level possible. Over the counter software is not bloody likely for an application on which their government's stability could one day hinge.
Also, word filters are not hard to implement. With negligible coding experience and very little effort it was possible to hack a feature like this into the production ircd hosting a few hundred users that works extremely well and NEVER produces false positives. With a reasonably competent coder and some time and money behind it, it is possible to have reasonably reliable coding for entire word patterns.
As for problems, blocking a few hundred legit text messages per week is no big deal when your trying to control the minds of your population.
On the post: Suggestion: Don't Name Your Illegal Computer Spying Business 'Hackers Are Us'
hacking is not illegal
It seems the poster here has fallen into the same habit that the media has. The habit of thinking of hackers as simply people who make viruses, used obscure security flaws to access restricted data, and cause mayhem for amusement.
Hacking is not limited or restricted to computers or even electronics. Hacking simply put is the act of finding ways around the intended functionality of an item in order to achieve something not normally possible with it. This could be getting an apache web server to spit out the contents of the server root folder or it could be getting the security dude at a companies front desk to hand out information about the system that allows you to compromise it.
Further more not all hacks are illegal as not all hacks involve gaining access to restricted information.
In short I have two major issues with the post. The idea that hacking is inherently illegal, and the idea that hacking is restricted entirely to technical endeavors.
On the post: Falsely Accusing Your Customers Of Software Piracy Is Not A Victimless Crime
Re:
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