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Comment Does anybody care? (Score 2, Interesting) 25

I suppose the fact that this story has been up for an hour with only three comments answers that question.

But really, does anybody care? The PS5 basically didn't exist for the first three years it was out. It's only been readily available for the past year, and even then, pretty much everything released on it (including Sony stuff) is also getting released on PC. The PS5 might as well already be dead.

Plus, Nintendo's new console is also expected out next year. The Switch has proven that a dedicated portable gaming console that supports docking with a TV works. Why would I want to get a large, expensive box I can only use with a TV? Especially when Nintendo is almost certainly going to be coming out with a cheaper console that, while expected to be far less powerful, will play a far greater assortment of exclusive titles?

Sony's going to have to provide a pretty compelling reason to bother with a new, even more expensive PS5. A better framerate or higher resolution graphics isn't it. The Switch has proven that pretty conclusively.

Comment Why ban? I thought there was no demand for EVs? (Score 1) 283

Funny how the narrative has changed. Weren't the legacy automakers were shelving EV plans because consumers didn't want EVs? So the Chinese EVs should find no demand, pack up their wares, and go home. So what harm could affordable EVs possibly cause?

Unless, and this is a stretch, what if consumers DO want EVs, just not $70K EV trims of $38K cars?. In that case the problem is automakers can't, or more likely don't want to, make EVs in a price range appealing to consumers. I'm all for anti-dumping legislation, but this doesn't feel like dumping, this is a rebuke to automakers who thought they'd be able to control the narrative and avoid selling EVs to keep the parts and service money tap flowing. The automakers should head the wake up, and for example, stop offering $70K* Ford F150 EVs and give consumers a $38K Ford F150 EV. If the Chinese can build them cheap, we're going to have to find a way to build them cheap while still turning a profit.

*The F150 standard battery with 230 miles of range is sub-ICE range, 300 miles is the minimum comparable for an ICS replacement.

Comment Re:Why are they punishing me? (Score 1) 185

I have a houseful of PCs, but only one will officially run Win11 -- a low-powered netbook that ironically is the least competent hardware I own (its horsepower is on par with my laptop from 2003). I'll give it this -- Win11 does a good job of downshifting to match the environment it finds itself in; Win10 would struggle on that netbook.

Comment Re:Or, you know, (Score 1) 185

Which desktops did you try, and what issues blew it for you?

I had a hard time finding a linux I could live with, and I first started looking over 25 years ago. It's only been about six years now since it's become sufficiently stable and complete. And implementations vary wildly. I prefer the KDE desktop as being the most functional (and least annoying), but KDE on Kubuntu is not nearly as slick as KDE on PCLinuxOS.

But at the far end, IMO current Gnome makes Win10 look stellar.... good gods, who thought a cellphone makes a good desktop??

Comment Re:highways are state owned, Electric and Water ar (Score 1) 70

If Cox is liable for user's copyright infringement then Tesla is liable for drivers speeding.

Not if there's a federal law that explicitly declares that middlemen are liable if they don't comply with the DMCA process, while there isn't a federal law saying car manufacturers are liable for speeding.

You might be looking at the underlying principles and making common sense value judgements, instead of reading what the law says.

This is ultimately why politics exists: to influence what the law is, in an attempt to make it more like your common sense value judgements. And it's really hard because these are issues that your congressional candidates probably aren't talking about at all, because they're talking about someone else's "important" [eyeroll] issues instead. We needed to stop DMCA in 1997/1998 and we failed.

Comment Re:Were there DMCA notices? (Score 1) 70

The jury seemed to decide that accusations qualify as infringement

However regrettable, it's easy to understand how that can happen.

The jury could have just been told testimony that "we saw xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx was seeding our movie" (with screenshots of MPAA's torrent client showing a seeder at that address and the packets they got from that address correctly matching the torrent's checksum). Meanwhile, Cox wouldn't have any evidence refuting it (even though the assertion isn't proven; the "screenshots" could have been made in GIMP for all we know). And then the jury might have ruled based on "preponderance" of evidence.

Kind of like 3 cops saying "the perp resisted arrest" and the perp saying "no I didn't" and a criminal jury (where the bar is much higher) still deciding that the perp resisted arrest. Sigh. You know that happens.

Had Cox ratted their customer out (or gotten a DMCA counternotice from them), then the customer could have been sued instead, and raised doubts by saying "I have an open wifi" or something like that. But Cox didn't, and they certainly aren't going to say "we have an open wifi" since they're in the network business so of course they don't offer free networking to strangers. It sounds like a difficult situation for Cox.

Comment Re:Were there DMCA notices? (Score 1) 70

The story is light on details so I ass/u/me some things. The copyright infringement was likely due to torrents, i.e. from the internet's point of view, addresses owned by Cox were publishing/hosting content (under the hood: really Cox's customers seeding torrents).

So if I were an MPAA/RIAA -member company, I'd send Cox a DMCA notice ("Cox, stop sharing my copyrighted work") which really means "Cut that customer off or otherwise make them stop, or else get a DMCA counternotice from them, so I can go after them instead of you." And if that's what happened, then it sounds like Cox said no (didn't make it stop and also didn't pass the buck to their customers. So they sued Cox instead of Cox's customers.

But that's based on assumptions and speculation, hence my question. But yes, I know what a DMCA notice is and I think that mechanism was likely in involved at some point in the story.

Comment Non-native speakers need to be eloquent (Score 1) 115

My ukrainian wife runs everything through chatGPT as if it was a spell checker. Data speaks for itself. It doesn't matter if you use Google translate or even a grammar checker that came with Word 20 years ago. My English teacher refused to accept my homework because I used a fucking THESAURUS to change some words for fancier ones and said it was too good to be true and that's not the level of fluency I usually demonstrate in class.

Comment Were there DMCA notices? (Score 3, Insightful) 70

It's unclear from the articles whether or not this happened: did the record labels send DMCA notices to Cox, which Cox blew off (thereby becoming liable in place of the original suspected infringer)? Or did the record labels just sue 'em first?

Prior to 1998 they wouldn't have been liable (just like Western Digital and Seagate aren't liable for whatever I may be suspected of doing) but DMCA makes hosting services (and networks? hmm...) a special case, unlike power utilities, computer equipment manufacturers, etc.

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