jheiss

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Commented on Viacom's top lawyer thinks lawsuits were "terrorism" - but he's learned nothing from the experience
How to make a viable business out of distributing content digitally? Price it reasonably, make sure the quality is on par with what users can get the old-fashioned way (CDs, DVDs, etc.) and what they can get illegally, and skip...
Commented on A bouncy, anti-gravity workout with the new AlterG treadmill
As opposed to? Running on the sidewalk? Around my house there are no sidewalks, but presuming that's what you meant sidewalks are often narrow enough that dealing with other pedestrians is somewhere between annoying and dangerous. As the runner the...
Commented on A geeky introduction to cheap remote control helicopters and planes
The still makes it look like he's missing an arm. Made me think there had been a bad accident involving a helicopter......
Commented on The Lost Art of Cable Lacing
When I did some consulting work for AT&T Wireless about 10 years ago I noticed that all the cabling in their production data center was laced. It looked amazing. The data center guys were really proud of their work to...
Commented on Industrial robotic pancake production video
The robotics are rather spiffy, but I'm with 1B: what's the market for pre-made pancakes? Anyway, cool video....
Commented on Griddleville: amazing cartoon made entirely by one dude.
Now that's wonderful...
Commented on Light show caused by astronaut urine
Urine is (just recently) recycled on the ISS. Urine is not recycled on the Shuttle as the equipment to do so would likely weigh much more than the water, take up precious space, etc. And much of the fresh water...
Commented on Laughing, flywheel-driven mechanical bellows robot
The construction looks mostly very nice, yet the flywheel wobbles. Odd. Definitely creepy....
Commented on The Bing Thing
Bing's first three search suggestions when you enter "linux" are "linux windows", "linux microsoft" and "linux vista". None of those possibilities show up anywhere in the suggestion list on Yahoo! or Google, which leads me to believe they aren't an...
Commented on Infinite Typewriters: Goats webcomic collection is transcendantly silly without being forced
Nifty. I have some of the previous Goats books but got out of the habit of reading it. Got me a copy of Typewriters on order now....
Commented on Stuff it would be great to have designed
@9: F1 coverage via DirecTV and U-verse (Speed for most of the races, Fox for a few of the more high-profile ones) is in HD and very pretty. It was my test sample for deciding whether to keep DirecTV or...
Commented on V8 motorcycle from 1918
@2: 45 HP according to the first couple of Google hits. So @9 I'm not convinced it would beat a 172 in a 1/4 mile, the second Google hit says it has a top speed of 75 mph. "There's no...
Commented on Japanese Surgical Mask Culture
@23 Funny, I grew up in Eugene and never had hay fever there. But I get it miserably every year here in Southern California. If it weren't for the lovely drugs I might try the mask. Must have adapted to...
Commented on Naughty speed camera prank
@#23: It was a Nissan GT-R. That episode was just on BBC America last night....
Commented on Red-lined upside-down baby-head bowl
Why dd clck n ths pst? Yck....
Commented on Plant an organic garden on the White House Lawn
On the TV show Invention Nation which aired about a year ago they put a small garden on the roof of their bus....
Commented on Bill threatens lien, penalty to elderly, blind homeowner who owes one cent
My dad was the student loan manager for a large state university. His policy was that if you were within $10 of a zero balance (positive or negative) he closed the loan as paid-in-full. Saved on postage for trivial amounts....
Commented on Working Medeco high-security keys can be whittled out of plastic
Housemates of mine in college used to make keys for Medeco locks out of some more generic key blank (Yale I think, something that was thin enough to fit in a Medeco key path). The material just needs to be...

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cuvtixo commented on Viacom's top lawyer thinks lawsuits were "terrorism" - but he's learned nothing from the experience
But, for better or worse, the "terrorism" lawsuits which severely punish a few DRM breakers in very public, high profile cases will discourage large numbers of people. They don't have to stop piracy altogether, just as store owners don't need to bring shoplifting to 0. Ever have cashiers wave you through tripped alarms or even ignore the lights and sirens of tripped alarms altogether? Cause if they discourage just enough theft to cover the cost of the alarm system-- no one cares how well it actually works in practice....
Itsumishi commented on Viacom's top lawyer thinks lawsuits were "terrorism" - but he's learned nothing from the experience
Bullshit. Point to one study that says rate of piracy has been affected by these sorts of court cases. They've been going on for years and piracy hasn't dropped an iota....
AirPillo commented on Viacom's top lawyer thinks lawsuits were "terrorism" - but he's learned nothing from the experience
I'm sorry, but the heart-break story still fails to account for the dichotomy that people place their own, personal cash incomes as a higher priority than the civil rights of everyone in a nation, or several nations, rights which in several places were bought at the price of thousands of human lives. As sad and tragic as misguided artists make their case out to be, it's just a soft and deceptive way of saying "fuck you, gimme." I'd rather see a billion musicians/artists/media workers complain about their income than see rights and legal systems which have preserved human dignity and...
Itsumishi commented on Viacom's top lawyer thinks lawsuits were "terrorism" - but he's learned nothing from the experience
Highest Grossing Films - note that 3 of the top 20 were made in 2009. Is it any real loss that massive film making studios lose profits from DVD sales? They can easily adapt to selling films online (distribution is virtually free so overheads are much lower). As for Newspapers, etc. Well that's another debate entirely....
enkiv2 commented on Viacom's top lawyer thinks lawsuits were "terrorism" - but he's learned nothing from the experience
I think this is the bottom line right here, in terms of copyright policy. People pirate a lot. People probably wouldn't pirate significantly more even if 'piracy' was no longer 'piracy' and instead was some legal form of distribution. Organizations whose products have been pirated still make plenty of money. Even for a smaller organization (rather than an MGM), it is not necessarily the case that no money can be made when anti-piracy measures are not enforced or nonexistent. Cory Doctorow releases his books under creative commons; I have a digital copy of all of them, and a physical copy...

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