Posts by Bathrug

Dutch efforts to decapitate Pirate Bay could end up before ECJ

i love this , every time a posting come up about piracy , everyone claims they never broke a law ever. I admit i started pirating when I listened to Tommy Vance in the 70's doing the charts as I sat there with my tape recorder trying in vain to cut out as much of the talking as possible, I then become complicit as I drew my favorite characters on my homework book .. blatantly reproducing works that I did not get given permission to copy. At 10 years old I should have been hung drawn and quartered and my disregard for the law.

The truth of the matter is , copy write should exist, to protect the theft and monetization of another's works, strangely those that police that system, are those that do not create and business model is based on the monetization of other peoples works and have at least in part stolen or reproduced others works before they became so well off, that it was easier to buy than it was to stream/download. We all know the stories of the reason copy write came to pass , is to stop others reproducing the books that were being copied in the USA after independence (without permission) So I say , give me the latest movies, but let me watch them in my home, so I can smoke a cig, eat something that doesn't cost me £20 while sitting on sticky seats next to somebody who hasn't bathed in a week. I would HAPPILY sit through the adverts that were forced on me (if a show) or pay a price if a movie. Truth be told, the distribution is old, outdated and fails in todays market, if the product is good, let me pay you for it ... but i should receive it HOW i want it, rather than like cattle milked for every cent. And like i said ... if you have never pirated , it goes to say .. every man is a wanker , just some are liars too :P

Spoiling staff with toys could turn against your business

its a two level issues, BYOD is great for users who want to use better kit than assigned and certainly companies see this as a free ride for overheads on the hardware side. This however does take into consideration that business free hardware has a technical support aspect that can be costly.

Of course what then happens when somebody cant do their job because their equipment is shyte, and you are asked nicely to sort it out. I am not a PC world geek corner employee, I'm not here to fix the crap that belongs in the local tip's electrical bins.

That doesn't mean that BYOD doesn't have a place , but in real terms, its been developed into a standard by people wanting to use Facebook on equipment that they control and approved by businesses that want to save heap loads of cash on equipment/licensing.

As for standardization , whats wrong with it ..... really? I bet you most of the " i really need a i7 laptop " is for undisclosed reasons such as watching movies, playing games and other work free activities. I work in a place that has some level of standardization but most of the kit is old and gets replaced as when something dies, I would like to standardize with new equipment and certainly if the likes of chrome book can give you everything for little all cloud based then those higher level munchkins need to raise a business case, " I want......" is not a case, its a want... a desire. Just give everyone Salesforce, Office365/google docs and a netbook.. and they CAN do their job.

Should online pirates get the same sentences as offline ones?

There was once a time when a " record" was a promotional item to support a live band. The record would be distributed in order to get gigs etc. This promotional tool then became the product and the live artist became virtually non existent. Move forward even more and the artist becomes the employee of the record label and they become the sleeping partner of the corporate known as "insert artist name here".

I don'y have an opinion as to whether "piracy" is legal or illegal as some business models only really succeeded due to the pirates. e.g do you really think that MS office would be the common place tool, if you could have not have got a dodgy copy, ergo increasing its popularity and familiarity and therefor its common place in the business community.

Remember ... art is a form of creativity, there are multitudes of musicians who could be excellent, but have no real avenue to perform so upload to youtube, do they stop because they get no money .... no, because they are artists ... they need to create. Money on the other hand is the music business, they need to create wealth, and will whore out the artists work to who ever can pay.

If you want to support a band .. steal the music, but go to their gigs, buy their merchandise and shitty t-shirts. after all then you ARE paying the band for a perfomance; rather than just a digital copy that cost ZERO to reproduce, has no physical media and has no distribution costs. When will the entertainment industry learn that its HOW something is released that impacts on the availability; i.e if a movie costs £5 and you could choose to watch it at home on your tv, would you choose that over a crappy cam with poor sound?

Ultimately .. imm filling in time till I go home on Friday afternoon :D

Britain's housing crisis: What are we going to do about it?

the point of this ...

House prices are over valued, they have been since the 80's where estate agents were playing off buyers against each other in the golden age of " guzumping". Agents made a LOT of money, sellers made a LOT of money and the age of where a house was worth what "a man could pay on a single salary" over to both people needing to work highly paid jobs, lie about their income, have large deposits and extended terms to buy a one bedroom box with no garden.

People now stress over loosing "value" on property that they over paid for in the first place, most of this and the next generation will be reliant on both sets of parents passing away in order to free up enough equity to purchase anything.

We don't need more land for houses to be built on, there are houses everywhere that are unoccupied, what we need .... is housing that people can actually afford.

Study accuses media companies of cooking the books on piracy losses

The problem has been and will tend to always be a case of the consumer wanting what they want, when they want it and HOW they want it.

If movie studios offer its releases on your cable tv box as a pay per view, you would sit at home in your undies with your beer and cigarette to watch your movie, If you wanted to make a night of it , take the GF out for dinner and a flick. This would offer the product as a service, rather than the antiquated control mechanism of the music industry where a record was a promo tool for live shows, rather than the end product. This has just became more clearer since the conveyor belt of singers on the X Factor who say " this is my LAST chance" , yes maybe the last chance this year, or your last chance on ITV before you flick over to " the voice" the truth is that artists or any kind; take a product they create, be it acting, music or art and sell it to a music company in the belief that they have no other distribution media other than those avenues.

A musician should gig in pubs and bars, yet you hear judges on these music shows say " no ... too much of a cabaret act, or bar singer" but these people WORK ... so whats demeaning in that work. Legendary artists such as the Beatles, or Led Zeplin were not found on Opportunity Knocks , however if they were an artist of today , they would fail believing they had no chance outside the " industry" so is it piracy that is killing the art ... no , its the industry that's loosing control, the art still remains, the artist can still work, can still publicize their craft, they just have to use a little bit of creativity , or just plane go back to hard work gigging. which brings us back to the original statement.. give people what they want, when they want and HOW they want it.

Release a tv show at the same time so people don't pirate it; as they don't want to wait 6 months, give people the option on how they wish to consume that media , rather than through a corporate approved whoremonger outlet (aka cinema). The future is easy to see, it may not be free... but it isn't through its current channels. and finally

Look at the Apple way of business to steal everyone's ideas, change it then sue them for IP, rather than make things that are new. THAT is what the MPAA RIAA type folks are doing , they sue to protect the revenue as they arn't producing marketable products

US.gov - including NASA et al - quits internet. Is the UN running it now?

Closed ... was it ever open

I find it just hilarious, the US government is closed, how can you close a government.

What they are really doing is just making each other look childish, What ever odd system is in place; the truth of the matter is that business runs the USA, not government and certainly not By the people FOR the people.

The rants about Obamacare are really irrelevant considering health care is a human right as laid out under section 25 in the universal declaration of human rights. It doesn't say " you have the right to purchase health care" if we used that mentality...

We would have no democratic system at all , only a system of lobbyists, capitalists and the corporate entities that hang in the shadows behind them.

I agree with the earlier poster, that the biggest danger to American health .. is the complete f**ked up mentality that sending people to war is more important than saving them from illness and death. That somehow the USA can use warfare to rescue them from a recession/depression as was in the 1930's.

Cut spending to defense, as invading everyone else .. it isn't defense; its OFFENSE, and start spending it on Schools to educate those who use the military as a career, spend it on a healthcare system that gives people the ability to live without bankruptcy. Ultimately we are watching the USA unravel before our eyes and how can it give democracy to others, when it clearly cant find its arse with both hands