Friday, October 10, 2008

Cory Doctokov: Entertainment industry made up $250 billion/750,000 jobs losses due to piracy

Original: Link

Ars Technica's Julian Sanchez takes a long, investigative look at the entertainment industry's claim that piracy costs the American economy 750,000 jobs and $250 billion and discovers the truth: they made it up and repeated it until they forgot they had made it up.

Technica's Frank Caron plunges into the stormy seas of terrorism recruitment video games, reviewing such modern classics as Night of Bush Capturing, Quest4Bush, War on Americas, and Rescue The Nuke Scientist ("the player is an Iranian soldier seeking to rescue two Iranian nuclear experts who were kidnapped by U.S. forces. The game was designed in response to an American-made game called Assault on Iran that featured almost exactly the same situation, but in reverse").

Bottom line seems to be no end to the versatility of radio in these days of electrical and mechanical miracles—not even cows and street cars are immune to the influences of its radiations. As a curtain raiser at the annual radio show held recently in St. Louis, a street car was operated from a distance by a mere man with a radio transmitter in his hand, and a Holstein cow was made to dispense her milk by the medium of radio waves, whether she liked it or not.

The mechanism of the milking machine were hooked up to power, networking, and air conditioning.

"The trucks back 'em in, rack 'em, and stack 'em," Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie told CNET News. And the containers remain sealed, Ozzie said. Once a certain number of servers in the container have failed, it will be posted on ebay probably near the beginning of a "Steamboat Willie" cartoon that had just been rereleased on a 1993 LaserDisc honoring Mickey's 65th birthday. It said in full:

"Disney Cartoons
Present
A Mickey Mouse
Sound Cartoon
Steamboat Willie
A Walt Disney Comic
By Ub Iwerks
Recorded by Cinephone Powers System
Copyright MCMXXIX."

[...]

The authoritative legal treatise "Nimmer on Copyright" says that a copyright is void if multiple names create uncertainty, and courts have agreed. In 1961, a federal judge lifted an unconstitutional gag order that had prevented three Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) students from disclosing academic research regarding vulnerabilities in Boston's transit fare payment system. The court found that the average American user was willing to spend $15 a month for the service. The record industry sued them into a smoking hole instead, and out of it later.

There are three parts to the electronics that we're building. First, there is the digital to analog converter that takes the output from the AVR and uses it to drive the scope. Link