Hmmm....

[feren]

After reading this article on Slashdot I'm starting to get a handle why the Japanese (Hell, why the world at large) mock us and why we're getting eaten alive out there.

I think the most succinct comment to the so-called story was the one that went along the lines of, "It's sure a shame you can't steal music and movies at the speed you were expecting."

Amen to that! Here's an idea, you slime-sucking gutter fish: how about you put mommy and daddy's money (and mine, since you've surely got a loan from the Fed that's using my tax dollars as well) to good use and actually go out and get the higher education you're supposed to be there to attain?

Sweet father chipped up and served on toast, the balls that these people must have! I mean, to complain about not being able to chew up an entire DS3 for goddamn MP3 and warez trading? That's just tragic. I mean that sincerely, that's on par with the entire Holocaust and surely a travesty such as this will be righted.

You'd think fast, unfettered Internet connectivity at a University so they can ignore their education and pursue illegal activities was a right they were entitled to. Screw free speech or the right to a trial, I should be able to abuse the school's facilities and thousands of taxpayer's dollars a month so I can get a copy of Photoshop 2002 for free instead of paying those greedy capitalist pigs for software they invested time and money to create! I'm not hurting anybody, I'm helping to stick it to the man!

This society gets what it deserves.

When you dance, do your senses tingle?

Comments

[yakko.livejournal.com]

I knew someone would come out and give the long version of how I basically feel. :o)

(Great phraseology, btw... I've been using "Creamed crud on a stick" this past weekend, myself)

[genet.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm with Paul on this one- I'm old fashioned. You go to school to get an education, not steal software from online. For the little bit of time I was actually in college, we were able to connect to the college's network on a 14.4 connection shared with lots of other students. Downloading was out of the question. The private university I attended for a bit had no internet access at all.

Yes, I think it's wonderful that higher education is providing T1 access to their students. But it's a privledge. Not a damned right.

[brianblackberry.livejournal.com]

Boy, these people are extremely whiny. I went to a Junior College so of course the only Internet access was in the school labs and we were happy that we simply had access to the 'net to do the research. One couldn't even install P2P software due to user privileges restrictions.

Heh, if they can afford to go to such a college (aka, their parents can afford it), then one could surmise that maybe, just maybe, they can afford the software they so desperately try to download for free.

[roho.livejournal.com]

Those whippersnappers! Why, in my day, we had to write the P2P packets ourselves, uphill both ways, in the snow! And one packet would hold the full works of Gilbert and Sullivan, with enough left over to buy a dinner and catch the moving picture at the local cinema!

[spoothbrush.livejournal.com]

That's way smarter a way of dealing with it than my esteemed undergraduate institution, where they just increase the pipe every year. They've upped it by I think about a hundredfold in the past four years. Because the IDIOTUNDERCLASSWOMEN can't imagine life without their P2P sharing. Fucking morons.

[lcremeans.livejournal.com]

Never mind the fact that a lot of software has nice chunky educational discounts attached. If you're in school, you can get Photoshop for something like $150, which is a STEAL compared to its usual MSRP. And even if you can't, there's always things like Paint SHop Pro, GIMP, etc.; none of them are Photoshop, but unless you're doing work that involves CMYK or prepress functions, it doesn't really matter much.

-lee

[lcremeans.livejournal.com]

When I first read this article, I was playing devil's advocate a bit. Sure, it's okay to "stick it to the man" sometimes, IMO (ridiculously overpriced software with no demo that you just want to try out without having to get a bank loan, out of print titles that you can't buy at ANY price, etc.)

But then I read the Slashdot thread....what the FUCK? People are complaining that their P2P suddenly got slow? And talking about tunnelling around it?

<Dr. Evil> Insolent little shits...

Personally, I'd be glad P2P worked at all, even if the downloads went at 60k/s instead of, say, 600k/s (WAH 60k/s is too slow! But gee, that's what I have here, and it's plenty fast to me...). Also, having seen how cavalier with bandwidth P2P programs are just on protocol overhead, traffic shaping is an absolute must. I've been running it here on my FreeBSD firewall for a long time now, ever since Napster died and the chat-happy Gnutella clients took over. I basically had to; the clents would kill my (admittedly paltry) 128k outbound if I let them run unchecked.

Traffic shaping really is a great solution, and it sure beats blocking ports or punishing students for going over a bandwidth quota (or worse, charging them for it), but the whining is just unacceptable. They really don't know how good they still have it.

Then again, this is Slashdot, home of the modern "gimme gimme" crowd. Would you expect anything less?

-lee

[brianblackberry.livejournal.com]

You're right! I remember for my computer classes all the discount software I was able to purchase. Photoshop 5 cost me half of what I would of normally paid at the time (and allowed me to by Photoshop 6 cheaper as an upgrade after school was finsihed).

Heck, I bought a perfectly good C compiler program that was both discounted becuase of school and because it wasn't the latest and greatest version. Cost me $70, instead of $400! :)

[roho.livejournal.com]

Heck yeah, I had fun with academic discounts! Took advantage of those offers multiple times. Even bought a bona-fide copy of Mathematica, for a still fairly-pricey sum (couple hundred bucks, if I remember rightly).

Then I upgraded my machine sometime after that...and Mathematica prompted me for a new password. Their passwords are based on your hardware setup (like WinXP), and you had to call Wolfram for a new one each time it changed. I called them up...and they said they'd have to charge me $45 for the new password.

I downloaded a crack, instead, and felt not the slightest pang of guilt ;)

Er, that kinda' got off the original topic of academic pricing, I guess...but it was a fun little rant :P