Same here (well, except not iTunes).

Been on a couple of years, first and only time I even tried the radio was a couple of weeks ago. That said, I was pleasantly surprised by its selection, so I might use it more in future. (I'm in the UK so this announcement is a non-issue... although it does make me feel a bit guilty, being as I run adblock! I guess if I get in the habit of using the radio, I'll get a subscription.

yes you can

*shrug* My visitors always say "cool, thanks!" when they log on my wireless dead easily. But, hey, personally my visitors are my friends and if they want to check their email in my flat I'm happy to help.

What exactly is on your wireless which requires/justifies such heavy security?

The really hilarious part of that quote is that the instant anybody is quoted as using the word "hip" to describe themselves, they are, by definition, not.

Wait, are you seriously claiming the USA invented agriculture?

And not only that but getting +5 insightful for it?

You're about 9000 years out. My mind boggles.

Funny, I saw them this week at a 20,000 capacity venue, sold out, and that's probably one of the smallest venues on their tour. If that's a killed fanbase I wonder what a healthy fanbase looks like. And despite admittedly horrible overlimited mix, in songwriting terms the latest album is widely considered by fans and critics as being a serious return to the form of their late 80s/ early 90s work.

Still, don't let any of that get in the way of rushing to make a snide remark.

I'm lacking mod points atm so I'm going to quote this with my fancy pants +1 karma bonus, because it deserves to be seen. That website is utterly hilarious as well as totally spot on. Even if you don't care in the least about Adobe interfaces, give it a read for the comedy value alone.

I've got CS3 here (on Win), a new colleague recently started in my team and they don't sell CS3 licenses anymore so they ended up with CS4. I can't show them how to use anything based on my knowledge of CS3, because everything has been changed around for no apparent reason. I can't show them how to use stuff based on an educated guess of how Windows apps usually work, because it looks and works nothing like that. Well, in a lot of ways, they never did behave quite like native Win apps (what with the Mac heritage), but now even less so. And nowhere near native Mac either. It just looks like - bleh. Words fail me really. It's some bizarro dark grey explosion-in-a-flash-factory disaster. It's a total clusterfuck.

Oh for an "edit" function on slashdot.

Fixed That For Myself

This sort of thing is definitely bullshit and really winds me up. If your original payment was for the license, that should be valid forever, and if you lose the CD, you should pay (at most) for the media and postage to replace it.

But you're almost making my point for me here. That sort of thing is bullshit, so attack that directly. Say, "I am downloading this software 'illegally' because as per the company's EULA I have already paid not for my original media but for a (lifetime) license to the IP therein, yet the company is abusing the spirit of copyright by not honouring that purchase...". Don't say "Oh, I'm just sharing some software between friends, it's no different to borrowing my mate's lawnmower".

Copyright isn't going to be reformed unless the problems with it are attacked with intellectual consistency and honesty.

Yes, that's what I meant; I do know MP3s are lossy as compared to the CD, I was talking about lossless within the pirate distribution. i.e. If I send you my MP3, the file you end up with is lossless as compared to the MP3 I started with. And if you then send the MP3 to someone else, that's equally lossless -- and so on for infinite generations.

Which is why

I can't entirely agree with this, personally.

Sorry, but are you dim? How on earth you managed to read my post and interpret that I'm claiming anybody who opposes DRM is a pirate, is rather beyond me. As for astroturfer, I'm even more baffled, do you even know what that means? Which product am I supposed to be puffing up with my abstract discussion of law and language?

The post was aimed at those people who do in fact pirate, who do distribute perfect lossless copies, and yet hide behind exactly the same innaccurate, disengenuous language they decry the RIAA for using. If you don't pirate, or if you do pirate but call it what it is, then the post was relating to you.

What I'm saying is that if you have a decent argument why you should be able to do that (and I by no means claim there is no such argument), you should step forward and make that argument - not fuzzy the issue by saying you only want fair use when you actually want more than that, or whatever. Or, alternatively, just admit that, yeah, you're pirating, tough shit.

Fact is, I've p2p'd more than a few MP3s myself in my time. I'm sworn off it now, but I still pass MP3s to and from my mates via sneakernet. But the point is, I'm not kidding myself by saying I "loaned" my mate the mp3, or that it's "exactly the same" as making him a C90 twenty years ago. I gave him a copy, and it was perfect, and I did so despite copyright explicitly preventing me from doing so. I broke the law, and while I may have a bunch of mitigating factors ("he liked it so much he came to see their next gig, from which they probably made more money than the MP3 sales would have generated"), I'm not confusing that with the media companies' meaningless EULA's somehow being the problem whilst I'm a saint and no shade of grey.

In short: yes, the current legal environment for digital media is insane. But I'm suggesting an internally consistent reaction to that is preferable - even if that reaction is "so fuck the law, I'll break it", that's internally consistent. If that reaction is "the law should be changed to XYZ because of ABC", better still. But "I'm only loaning somebody this tune, that's not illegal" is just a bunch of crap that makes you sound stupid and adds credence to the major media lobby, because no you're not loaning to them, and yes it is. And intellectual dishonesty of that sort is not the way the laws will ever be sanely reformed.

Right. When people transfer MP3, it's definitely like "loaning". Because when someone else gets a copy of my MP3s, I don't have it and can't listen to it for the duration they have it. And when they've finished checking it out, they delete it, naturally, since a "loan" is distinct from a "gift" in that it's temporary. Riiiight.

I'm sorry, but this is just disingenuous bullshit and really does you no favours. (You = the collective group of people trying to reform copyright.) How come every time the RIAA/MPAA/MSM/etc use the word "steal", people fall over themselves to split semantic hairs and insist that it can't be stealing because nobody is deprived of the original - and yet when it's convenient for their cause, they happily play the same linguistic tricks and talk of "loan", again implying the loaner is deprived of the original, when they're not?

Don't get me wrong - I have some issues with excessive copyright too. That whole "it's supposed to be for the encouragement of artists to create and the advancement of culture and society as a whole, not for endless profit generation for huge multinational corps trading off the past" is entirely up my street. I think life+70 is way too long. I think the DMCA and similar laws elsewhere are a bunch of crap. I hate DRM and as such have never purchased DRM'd music. So it's not like I'm trying to be an RIAA shill here.

But all that said, I find there is a frequent lack of honesty from the "copyright reformists", too. If it's not "loan", it's "share", another word that has warm and fuzzy implications and somewhat masks the reality of it. Let's be honest, when you put your MP3s on p2p it is nothing like sharing a toy with your little bro. You don't know the people leeching it, let alone like or respect them; you won't ever sit in the same room and share the experience of listening to it; above all, you aren't sacrificing any use of the MP3 yourself in order for them to have it - all of which are implied by warm and fuzzy words like "share".

Be honest. What you're actually doing is distributing a complete, perfect lossless copy, despite the fact the entire central notion of copyright is restricting who is allowed to distribute complete, perfect lossless copies.

If you honestly believe you should be allowed to do that, have the balls to stand up and actually say so and frame your argument as such. But don't come with these woolly words and metaphors of sharing (see above), home taping (not perfect copies), fair use (about excerpts, academic criticism, parody etc, none of which relate to Kazaa'ing your mp3s). It's just dishonest and undermines your entire position.

Yeah, awesome anecdote. Now go and find the overall crime rates for the uber million dollar gated communities, vs, say, a Jo'burg ghetto.

Honestly, as cute as that Franklin quote is, it's pretty risible seeing it getting trotted out to suggest there is never any possibility of gaining non-illusory security by doing anything, ever, nor would any group of people ever consider a liberty/security tradeoff worth making, whatever the group, and for any given values of security or liberty.