No, he doesn't. This is precisely what copyright industry is doing - charging us for copies of copyrighted material that they have a legal monopoly to copy.
It's kind of understandable. They're the richest technology company in the world, they don't want to piss off their government serv... i mean overlords with this whole politics thing.
I have seen this before. My good friend has studied in London Metropolitan University, and it got into similar trouble a few years ago. The problem was they have reported all the students who have registered rather than those who actually studied. It was actually ridiculous sometimes, because they had reported students as attending classes who were long gone from the university, or even dead. They also didn't do their book-keeping properly and filled their electronic system with random data (and not marking it as such, making it difficult to distinguish bullshit from real data afterwards). There were also all sorts of other funny things around that. Basically, it was a disaster.
The problem was that the university was overtaken by managers, MBA's, lawyers and such. For every member of the teaching staff there was three or four managers, HR's, accountants, lawyers etc. Naturally, when UK government found out about it, they demanded the money back (in UK, universities are partially funded by government for UK citizens), and this resulted in a lot of teaching and IT staff being fired, but not a single manager or exec has lost his job. In fact, the number of them increased.
Why does this happen? Pretty simple. The government is pushing for everyone having a degree. Aside from the fact that this doesn't make sense in the first place, there are two ways of doing that - either find good teaching staff, pay them properly and make students attend or be kicked out; or try to pass everyone so that every idiot will have a degree.
Naturally, everyone chooses the latter. This results in atmosphere with extremely lax rules. A student can come once a month, don't study shit, watch youtube throughout the whole lecture, talk, eat and listen to music in class, et cetera. They can't kick them out because this will affect the numbers, and the numbers determine the amount of funding.
Now, the big question is, who's dumb idea it was that everyone has to have a degree?
carefully timed? come on. it's blocked only in one city, certainly not a terribly major one. if they wanted to block opposition, there are other, more effective means to do that.
their goal is to have no secrets that shouldn't have been secrets in the first place.
look, you guys aren't even funny any more. publish it unredacted - ooooh, wikileaks leaks state secrets, kill it. be discrete and redact before publishing - oooooh, wikileaks has an agenda, it publishes only damaging things. what is it that you want wikileaks to do?
consider the following scenario. let's say you fired someone over being gay, and successfully obtained a gag order over this information, so even talking to anyone about it is a felony. somehow, this information ends up in the public, and now you're in trouble. is it wrong or you got what you deserve?
Well, he (or whoever is acting on his behalf) is kind of trying to do exactly that. I know this is misguided and all, but i don't believe it's all about himself. I mean, he has enough money already, i doubt it's his earnings that he's concerned about.
This is a wild speculation, but i would think that he is most probably worried that today's mainstream music sucks (which it does, and Adele is a prime example) and it happens because talented musicians don't bother trying themselves in music (maybe forgetting how he himself was living in a shithole in the early days of Queen), and record sales go down which he interprets as a sign that music industry is dying (when in fact it's changing).
This is a lot of assumptions, but while Brian May might be misinformed, he's certainly not that dumb.
Look, everyone knows that it's Pirate Eric wants to share free stuff with his pirate friends. He even set up a free fiber to kill the competition, because you can't compete with free, and you can't compete with guys who make their money elsewhere.
Re:
or use FOSS and encryption.
Re: Symbiotic relationship
they already do that. have you missed all those fake FBI terrorist plot stories lately?
(untitled comment)
funny how i expected to get a sudden rise around 2001 when 9/11 happened but it's actually much later, about the time Wikileaks happened.
Re:
No, he doesn't. This is precisely what copyright industry is doing - charging us for copies of copyrighted material that they have a legal monopoly to copy.
(untitled comment)
It's kind of understandable. They're the richest technology company in the world, they don't want to piss off their government serv... i mean overlords with this whole politics thing.
(untitled comment)
What, not a single reference to Rick Astley?! Come on...
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I repeatedly accuse Chris Dodd of being a dick. Do i get to raid his home?
(untitled comment)
The "pirate the shit out of X" is not a vindictive piracy, it's a refusal to support X.
Managers
I have seen this before. My good friend has studied in London Metropolitan University, and it got into similar trouble a few years ago. The problem was they have reported all the students who have registered rather than those who actually studied. It was actually ridiculous sometimes, because they had reported students as attending classes who were long gone from the university, or even dead. They also didn't do their book-keeping properly and filled their electronic system with random data (and not marking it as such, making it difficult to distinguish bullshit from real data afterwards). There were also all sorts of other funny things around that. Basically, it was a disaster.
The problem was that the university was overtaken by managers, MBA's, lawyers and such. For every member of the teaching staff there was three or four managers, HR's, accountants, lawyers etc. Naturally, when UK government found out about it, they demanded the money back (in UK, universities are partially funded by government for UK citizens), and this resulted in a lot of teaching and IT staff being fired, but not a single manager or exec has lost his job. In fact, the number of them increased.
Why does this happen? Pretty simple. The government is pushing for everyone having a degree. Aside from the fact that this doesn't make sense in the first place, there are two ways of doing that - either find good teaching staff, pay them properly and make students attend or be kicked out; or try to pass everyone so that every idiot will have a degree.
Naturally, everyone chooses the latter. This results in atmosphere with extremely lax rules. A student can come once a month, don't study shit, watch youtube throughout the whole lecture, talk, eat and listen to music in class, et cetera. They can't kick them out because this will affect the numbers, and the numbers determine the amount of funding.
Now, the big question is, who's dumb idea it was that everyone has to have a degree?
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the point still stands. he recorded new stuff. he also has two solo albums (three, if you count starfleet).
Re: Re: Re:
carefully timed? come on. it's blocked only in one city, certainly not a terribly major one. if they wanted to block opposition, there are other, more effective means to do that.
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git commit seppuku?
Re: Wait a sec...
maybe he meant silicone valley...
(untitled comment)
This is why i never buy freshly launched products.
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why not just abolish the government and get a new one, with blackjack and hookers?
Re: Re: Re: It's a very odd situation
their goal is to have no secrets that shouldn't have been secrets in the first place.
look, you guys aren't even funny any more. publish it unredacted - ooooh, wikileaks leaks state secrets, kill it. be discrete and redact before publishing - oooooh, wikileaks has an agenda, it publishes only damaging things. what is it that you want wikileaks to do?
consider the following scenario. let's say you fired someone over being gay, and successfully obtained a gag order over this information, so even talking to anyone about it is a felony. somehow, this information ends up in the public, and now you're in trouble. is it wrong or you got what you deserve?
Re: Re: Re:
because his name is Mike and he's a pirate?
Re: So I guess 70s rockers can be picky about what laws they should follow
they clearly didn't think of the children back in the day...
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Well, he (or whoever is acting on his behalf) is kind of trying to do exactly that. I know this is misguided and all, but i don't believe it's all about himself. I mean, he has enough money already, i doubt it's his earnings that he's concerned about.
This is a wild speculation, but i would think that he is most probably worried that today's mainstream music sucks (which it does, and Adele is a prime example) and it happens because talented musicians don't bother trying themselves in music (maybe forgetting how he himself was living in a shithole in the early days of Queen), and record sales go down which he interprets as a sign that music industry is dying (when in fact it's changing).
This is a lot of assumptions, but while Brian May might be misinformed, he's certainly not that dumb.
(untitled comment)
Look, everyone knows that it's Pirate Eric wants to share free stuff with his pirate friends. He even set up a free fiber to kill the competition, because you can't compete with free, and you can't compete with guys who make their money elsewhere.