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February 24, 2007
Sunburn: Not Fun, But Musical?
Posted by lsloan at 07:51 PM | Comments (0)
February 19, 2007
Screw the Country!
Break.com - Funny Pics, Hot Chicks, & Cool Flicks
Posted by lsloan at 04:08 PM | Comments (0)
February 09, 2007
Mac Address Book Exporter
Gwenhiver.net - Applications - Address Book Exporter
Posted by lsloan at 08:50 AM | Comments (0)
February 07, 2007
Downloading or Uploading: Which Is Illegal?
Steve Jobs wrote this nice article about DRM (digital rights management), "Apple - Thoughts on Music". It's an informative read and easy to understand. The usual Steve Jobs quality.
However, near the end of the article, I read this:
"No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player."
That makes me pause to think. Why is the downloading of music that one didn't pay for illegal? Wouldn't it be more appropriate to say that the uploading of the music in the first place is the illegal act?
If music weren't (illegally) uploaded, nobody would be able to download it, correct? Many people, perhaps naïvely, believe that anything on the Internet must be legal. If it weren't legal it wouldn't be available.
So, let's say somebody made several copies of some music CDs onto other CDs. Maybe they made straight copies or maybe the copies are encoded in a popular digital format usable on computers and portable players. The copy CDs are well-labelled with what they contain. These CDs are left lying around on tables in a popular coffee shop, on a bench in a bus stop, taped up to a lamppost, or whereever for anybody to take if they want.
Who has done something illegal in this case? The people that take the copied CDs or the one that made them available in the first place? How is this different than the Internet upload and download scenario?
Posted by lsloan at 10:11 AM | Comments (0)
Chinglish!
"Boao: Style Plaza or Amorous Square?", has a great discussion about the difficulties of translating a place name from Chinese to English. There are also links to several humorous web sites that contain poor translations of various languages into English.
Posted by lsloan at 08:35 AM | Comments (0)