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Sorry to inform you, but your definition of "open" isn't in line with the RMS/FSF party line. Pretty much MPEG* has all kinds of patents that would exclude it from use. Theora and Vorbis are the only video/audio codecs that would most likely pass the RMS/FSF smell test.

You still need a way to either offer a second stream or embed the Vorbis/Theora stream into a browser. And you would have to require Windows and most likely Mac users to install both codecs.

I don't remember that anecdote about Windows 2000, nor do I remember anyone highlighting any glaring problems with the Windows 2000 source. I *do* remember a similar anecdote about Windows _95_ and SimCity for DOS, from Raymond Chen's blog. The Windows 2000 codebase is also quite old today, and will have been changed substantially into today's Windows Vista and 2008.

Look under "Favoritism"
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/71552/7795

and anohter

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/11942/2702

So it wasn't SimCity necessarily but MS DOES do this and I very much doubt they stopped doing it with XP and Vista. And yes MS reworked their OS, yes the NT codebase is miles better than the 9x codebase obviously but it was nowhere as clean and clearly separated as what Apple did. If I try to run an old version of HyperCard all I am going to see is a circle and slash on the app's icon. They picked a point beyond which they wouldn't worship backwards-compatibility-at-all-costs. I'll give MS credit for finally losing 16-bit compatibility with Vista and closing THAT bit of attack surface off.

I don't remember that anecdote about Windows 2000, nor do I remember anyone highlighting any glaring problems with the Windows 2000 source. I *do* remember a similar anecdote about Windows _95_ and SimCity for DOS, from Raymond Chen's blog. The Windows 2000 codebase is also quite old today, and will have been changed substantially into today's Windows Vista and 2008.

Look under "Favoritism"
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/71552/7795

and anohter

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/11942/2702

So it wasn't SimCity necessarily but MS DOES do this and I very much doubt they stopped doing it with XP and Vista. And yes MS reworked their OS, yes the NT codebase is miles better than the 9x codebase obviously but it was nowhere as clean and clearly separated as what Apple did. If I try to run an old version of HyperCard all I am going to see is a circle and slash on the app's icon. They picked a point beyond which they wouldn't worship backwards-compatibility-at-all-costs. I'll give MS credit for finally losing 16-bit compatibility with Vista and closing THAT bit of attack surface off.

I have a feeling MKV is exactly what's needed right now.

And I have a feeling that you're wrong.

Splendid argument! You clearly are victorious on this one.

MPEG (all revisions) and VP1 are also open standards.

For a fee MPEG is very open for you to implement. Have a look here and here. Mind you H.264 is equally open, so the argument about free and open is moot anyway. We can debate the legality of patents and the GPL as much as we want, but the truth is that in some countries you're very likely to get sued if you ship a commercial product without paying the fee.

MKV is here to stay simply because it's perfect for 2009.

I don't know if Matroska is here to stay, but I'm sure seeing a lot of it lately. I personally prefer Matroska because it's worked well enough for me. If it's here to stay is something we'll see if in 5 years. I'm pretty sure that its use will predominantly be by pirates/thieves/ninjas/media-liberators/whatever-term-you-fancy, and that a small minority will actually use it for something legal. The major media outlets will most likely ignore it completely, because they've already invested tons of money in MPEG and both standards still do the same damn thing. The average consumer won't care as long as the moving pictures keep coming to his giant widescreen tv.

The thing I'm most hyped about anyway is H.264, or rather my experiences with x264. I've been using it to do some tests for encoding data from an HD camera and I'm quite pleased with the results.

No. I never buy "music CDs", but I've transferred most of my cassettes and albums to CD and always just use data CDs. I play them in the car, the stereo at home, the DVD player, aven a cheap $20 boom box. I've yet to see a player they don't work on.

Wow, you just copy-pasted your ludicrous rant from kuro5hin directly into this thread. Truly amazing trolling.

the source of windows 2000 was leaked a few years ago. http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/71552/7795

Most European states. Can you smoke a joint legally? The people in Holland can. Could my grandpa legally drink a beer in 1925? Nope, but people the world over could. Why is it that they needed a Costitutional amendment to outlaw the drug alcohol, but not to outlaw the drug marijuana?

Why is gambling illegal? Why is prostitution illegal?

You have the "right to bear arms" and yet you can't shoot a squirrel or rabbit in your back yard to feed your family.

I've already answered your question many times, here are two links:
Liberty? Whay Liberty?
Police State: In USSA, cops hassle YOU!

"In the UK, you'd actually have to address what she says with debate and criticism beyond the mere ad hominem."

Done:

                        http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2008/11/18/194559/27

Irrelevant. Are you forced to buy electricity? Are you forced to buy telephone service? Internet access? No, and yet the prices are all of those services are artificially inflated by virtue of being government granted monopolies. JUST LIKE COPYRIGHT.

- nah, not irrelevant. You are welcome not to buy any content. Books are not electricity, you can get books for free from a library as well, you can get other material to read that is basically free.

However society decided that copyright is a useful construct, and I have shown that it is in fact useful, otherwise some works would never be available under such licenses as GPL (one example). Society has agreed that paying the cost of distribution to the original content creator (or to a legal licensee) is worth it for the duration of the copyright.

There is competition between different works from different authors, that's the competition that matters. That is why some people provide their work free of charge but the copyright gives them the ability to require that they are credited for their work and this is one of the reasons for this law.

Really? How much value do you assign to the service of distribution? How do you measure it?

- if money is exchanged (as it would be in cases where redistribution is for profit) that is all that is needed to calculate exactly what is lost. Redistribution can happen either on the Internet or by supplying physical book copies, one way or another any amount of money that is made as profit is the obvious loss. You can add, can't you?

Irrelevant. Are you forced to buy electricity? Are you forced to buy telephone service? Internet access? No, and yet the prices are all of those services are artificially inflated by virtue of being government granted monopolies. JUST LIKE COPYRIGHT.

- nah, not irrelevant. You are welcome not to buy any content. Books are not electricity, you can get books for free from a library as well, you can get other material to read that is basically free.

However society decided that copyright is a useful construct, and I have shown that it is in fact useful, otherwise some works would never be available under such licenses as GPL (one example). Society has agreed that paying the cost of distribution to the original content creator (or to a legal licensee) is worth it for the duration of the copyright.

There is competition between different works from different authors, that's the competition that matters. That is why some people provide their work free of charge but the copyright gives them the ability to require that they are credited for their work and this is one of the reasons for this law.

Really? How much value do you assign to the service of distribution? How do you measure it?

- if money is exchanged (as it would be in cases where redistribution is for profit) that is all that is needed to calculate exactly what is lost. Redistribution can happen either on the Internet or by supplying physical book copies, one way or another any amount of money that is made as profit is the obvious loss. You can add, can't you?

1. Don't throw any chairs. Judges hate it when you throw chairs.
2. Don't say "I'm gonna fucking KILL" anything or anybody. Judges hate that, too.

I know this because of a child support hearing I had to attend in 2004 (I was trying to get child support from my ex-wife). Please don't follow Mr. Johnson's example:

There was a huge black man standing before the judge. Apparently this fellow was unemployed and hadn't been paying his child support.

"Look, Judge, I gots no problem with child support."

"Yes, you do," the judge replied. "You may not have a problem with the idea of child support, but you do have a problem with actually paying it.

There was some nearely subaudible back and forth between the judge and the large man standing before him, when the judge said "Do you think this is a joke, Mister Johnson?"

Mr. Johnson replied quietly, too quiet to hear. The judge repeated, "I'll ask you again, Mr. Johnson," very firmly, "Do you think this is a joke??"

"I gots no fuckin' money!" Johnson replied. "You gonna sent me to jail?"

"Would you like me to cite you for contempt, Mr. Johnson?"

"Fuck you, motherfucker!" Gasps and giggles from the gallery...

"Contempt of court!" the judge ordered. "Take him to jail."

"Fuck you!" Johnson added rather stupidly.

"That's two" the judge said.

"Fuck you! Eat shit cocksucker!"

"That's three."

"Kiss my big black ass, motherfucker. Fuck you!"

"That's four!"

"Suck my dick bitch!"

By the time he got to eight, Mr. Johnson was being led out in handcuffs.

Don't let that happen to you, Mr. ballmer!

the man in the box?

There's this even newer project called SCOOP. It's collaborative media. You need a webserver to make it run but it works really well from what I've been testing with it. If you would like to try joining a SCOOP community, check out http://www.kuro5hin.org/

What's so special about the internet? If I do some offline trolling ("I guessed she knew Jarry then, but didn't say so. It seems that the married guy had a few beers, too, bacause he's telling me he was fucking Jennie when she was 15. She looks decidedly embarrassed. So I take a shot in her behalf. 'Oh, then you're a pedophile?'") and the guy kills himself over it. Is there a law that would have me incarcerated? If so, use that law for the internet. If not, then again, what makes doing it on the internet any different?

I'm not an idiot, I can tell when content is infringing copyright or not

I can't, so please tell me how you can. Bits are bits, MP3s are MP3s and there's no way to tell from anything about any unknown file whether or not it's infringing. Metallica-SoWhat.MP3 is (fairly) obviously infringing, but what about TheStation-TheFog.OGG? You wouldn't know it wasn't unless you'd seen this, or the band's web site.

Have you heard of Star Wreck - In The Pirkinning? It's the most populat Finnish film of all time, and it is NOT an infringement to download it. If you'd never heard of it and saw one of your students downloading it, how would you know it was legit?

So if you see TheFog.MP3, how can you tell if it's The Station's freely downloadable one, or some RIAA band's song of the same name?

So please tell this poor idiot how to tell if a file is infringing.

Indeed, it is not just Americans who make the mistake of looking at the world in terms of left and right sides of a supposed and ill-defined political spectrum.

More interestingly, it was a bunch of Americans on Kuro5hin that pointed out the ridiculousness of such a system. See this article and this article.

Indeed, it is not just Americans who make the mistake of looking at the world in terms of left and right sides of a supposed and ill-defined political spectrum.

More interestingly, it was a bunch of Americans on Kuro5hin that pointed out the ridiculousness of such a system. See this article and this article.

dude, you don't get it, do you? While you are arguing about merits of ideas and such and you think that on the other side there is also some thought process going on beyond simple trolling, you are actually being trolled. Blatantly trolled by a very long time, quasi-professional troll, and you just don't get it.

Post it to RedState.

Do they still run on that Communist Open Sores content delivery system?

We have some freedom; more than China or South Korea. But I've written about the loss of our freedom before.

Cars simply have to obey simple rules like "must be a safe mode of transportation on public roads."

I beg to differ - riding in an automobile is about the most dangerous thing any human being ever does (discounting smoking and McFriedFood). Forty thousand people die every year on US highways alone!

the protocols have been continually layered

What does that have to do with the external interface?

it is hard to break out of this lock-in.

Every car has a steering wheel. Where's my joystick?

They didn't use the BSD stack. The UNIX utilities like ftp came from BSD because those utilities came from licensed networking code from Spider Systems that was based on BSD. The licensed stack was intended as a stopgap until Microsoft wrote their own stack for NT 3.5. For whatever reason, the UNIX utilities weren't rewritten, and people saw the BSD copyrights and assumed Microsoft used BSD's stack.

Another bad side effect of SIVs is making it much more difficult to be lenient on mortgages. ... Much better, therefore, to write off, say, 25% of the mortgage without foreclosing and leave the borrower in possession. But if you have sold off the mortgage in many slices to several other investors, this becomes effectively impossible.

But this also opens a huge legal loophole that is allowing some people to keep possession of their home without making mortgage payments. See Who Owns Your Home? for a link to the Reuters story.

What good is a phone call if you're unable to speak, Mister Anderson?

From one of my journals last year:

The cops called her number, and the boyfriend siad he'd locked the screen by mistake. They gave Chris a ride home. "We'll close your gate for you", the cop said, "and your garage door."

My garage! "My lawnmower!" I exclaimed.

"It's ok" the cop said, "we opened it to look around."

So much for the 4th amendment on the day we remember the fallen heros who died defending the Constitution.

It also journals an attempted drug bust ("attempted" because there were no drugs).

Yeah, this SOUNDS like good news, but so long as law enforcement and the legislature holds the Constitution in the utter contempt that they do, it doesn't really matter what the court rules.

Liberty? What Liberty?

OT but I have been to Thailand. Considering your comment, I think you might be interested in this ole K5 diary.

I've heard that "once you do black you never go back" but that's not been my experience.

Florida, too. On this one, reading TFA will chill your spine. Not mine; it seems that Springfield, even though it's in the middle of the US and hundreds of miles from Canada (where all the ebil ter'ists lib;) is a Constitution-free zone. It saddens me that slashdotters read that journal and say "well you should have not been in the ghetto" (so much for freedom of travel and assembly) and "well your former gf is to blame".

I wrote a few years ago in Liberty? What Liberty? that none of the ten of the bill of rights has any meaning these days.

I'm sadened at what has become of my country.

Doesn't open-sourcing a DRM implementation make it extraordinarily easy to circumvent?

DRM on music is trivial to circumvent no matter what media. It's a felony to tell someone how to circumvent DRM, so should I just turn myself in to the FBI?

The Celica GTR doesn't use the same 3SGTE the MR2 uses. The piping is entirely different, as is the frame, and the gearbox, and the radiator and intercooler. It's an entirely unrelated frame because it's an entirely unrelated car except for the top and bottom half of the engine. The motormounts are also different, and the trans spins the opposite way. The turbo is the same for the first three years of production, then the turbo between the two is different also. There's pretty much the MR2 3SGTE and the "everything else" 3SGTE. The current 3SGTE production requires a decent amount of work to get it in an MR2.

So what's the same? The wheel hubs are common between the celica and the MR2 of the same generation, the brakes are common between the celica, the MR2 and the camry, etc. I think I made up a list at one point when I wrote the Kuro5hin Chopper series last time I built an MR2. If you're into cars, it's worth a read.

But as for the claim about the chassis, I'm not changing the original claim. I've built several MR2s out of many more MR2s and I can safely tell you that the frame is way too close on those cars to be "coincidental". You can put a 3SGTE into a car designed for a 1ZZ or 2ZZ and it's because the frame hasn't changed.

You're young and naive; things don't move that fast. I'm 56 and the stuff that was science fiction when I was a kid has mostly already happened.

Look at Star Trek (it's dead, Jim). Self-opening doors? Yep, in every grocery store. Communucators? Yep, only we call them cell phones. Flat screen voice activated talking computers on a desk? Yep. When Star Trek came out the average computer wasn't much more powerful than today's scientific calculator and took a whole building to house, and cost millions of dollars. Say "Mom" into your Razr and it will dial your mother.

Some other things we didn't have included digital clocks, the internet, CDs, DVDs, VCRs, microwave ovens, motion sensors, crack cocaine (some things alas should never be invented), antiviral drugs, antidepressant drugs, LEDs, LCDs, air bags in cars, fuel injectors in cars, or global warming.

In Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan McCoy couldn't cure Kirk's age-related farsightedness. But Dr. Yeh cured mine!

In 2003 the FDA approved the CrystaLens eye implant. It was a life changing technology for me; as the linked journal says, I was very nearsighted all my life, and in middle age I became farsighted as well, using contact lenses AND reading glasses. I wear no corrective lenses at all now.

They invented the flying car in 1903, it's called an "airplane". There is more energy than I can use coming from the wall sockets in my home, is that not "limitless" for all practical purposes? And they can in fact cure many cancers these days provided it is caught soon enough.

To this geezerly nerd, I'm living in a science fiction world. You might be interested to read Growing up with computers. I think you are likely to see as much progress in your life by the time you reach my age as I have. Unless I croak soon I expect to see even more technological miracles.

This kind of bullshit is being spread all the time about Windows NT, and it's simply a lie.
Go read this:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2001/6/19/05641/7357

In short: Windows NT 3.1 used a TCP stack licensed from Spider Systems. Since Windows NT 3.5, a TCP/IP stack developed by Microsoft was used.

Damn, time to go back to the meetings.

It used to be. It has, alas, becime utterly devoid of meaning.

People aren't going to stop "pirating", nor should they. "Pirates" spend more money on music than non-pirates. It's called marketing. The MAFIAA labeled bands have radio, the indies have P2P.

Want to pirate a book? To to Cory Doctorow's site craphound.com. He doesn't mind. In fact, read the forward to Little Brother (free download of the book there) where he explains how your "pirating" his books is a good thing.

Go to my friends in The Station's site. You can "pirate" their stuff, too (first link leads to shn, flac, mp3, ogg). There are dozens of their live shows on archive.org.

You can "pirate" the top 40 by plugging your radio into your PC and sampling. Better quality, less hassle. The only downside is it's only MAFIAA dreck; you have to actually download indie music. A few years ago Micheal Crawford compiled a list of tens of thousands of songs you can pirate legally.

If you live in St Louis you have a lebal-sanctioned pirate radio station that plays seven complete CDs, uncut and uninterrupted, every Sunday night for you to sample and has done so for decades.

Only an idiot wants to keep his art secret.

People aren't going to stop "pirating", nor should they. "Pirates" spend more money on music than non-pirates. It's called marketing. The MAFIAA labeled bands have radio, the indies have P2P.

Want to pirate a book? To to Cory Doctorow's site craphound.com. He doesn't mind. In fact, read the forward to Little Brother (free download of the book there) where he explains how your "pirating" his books is a good thing.

Go to my friends in The Station's site. You can "pirate" their stuff, too (first link leads to shn, flac, mp3, ogg). There are dozens of their live shows on archive.org.

You can "pirate" the top 40 by plugging your radio into your PC and sampling. Better quality, less hassle. The only downside is it's only MAFIAA dreck; you have to actually download indie music. A few years ago Micheal Crawford compiled a list of tens of thousands of songs you can pirate legally.

If you live in St Louis you have a lebal-sanctioned pirate radio station that plays seven complete CDs, uncut and uninterrupted, every Sunday night for you to sample and has done so for decades.

Only an idiot wants to keep his art secret.

YOU could turn on a radio

And sample it. Three or four hours of top-40 radio will have all the hits on your hard drive. Piracy? It's label-sanctioned piracy!

Steal it if you want to, don't steal it if you don't want to

Stealing: You walk into Best Buy or Walmart, stick a CD under your coat, and walk out.

Copyright infringement: Uploading your CD collection as MP3s on Kazaa. Or downloading with Morpheus and letting the downloads go into your "share" folder.

Stealing: misdemeanor retail theift, small fine.

Copyright infringement: Civil suit with a huge payment.

Downloading without sharing; sampling the radio, downloading or buying indie music: PRICELESS as it helps drive the copyright cartel out of business. I, for one, wish to see Sony and the other three evil mainstream labels GO UNDER. They are hindering the creation of art, hampering the independant artists who aren't in it for the dough.

They are, in my opinion, EVIL and should die horribly.

YMMV. HAND.

YOU could turn on a radio

And sample it. Three or four hours of top-40 radio will have all the hits on your hard drive. Piracy? It's label-sanctioned piracy!

Steal it if you want to, don't steal it if you don't want to

Stealing: You walk into Best Buy or Walmart, stick a CD under your coat, and walk out.

Copyright infringement: Uploading your CD collection as MP3s on Kazaa. Or downloading with Morpheus and letting the downloads go into your "share" folder.

Stealing: misdemeanor retail theift, small fine.

Copyright infringement: Civil suit with a huge payment.

Downloading without sharing; sampling the radio, downloading or buying indie music: PRICELESS as it helps drive the copyright cartel out of business. I, for one, wish to see Sony and the other three evil mainstream labels GO UNDER. They are hindering the creation of art, hampering the independant artists who aren't in it for the dough.

They are, in my opinion, EVIL and should die horribly.

YMMV. HAND.

Actually IMO both "troll" and "flamebait" are valid mods for racist remarks. According to wikipedia, it's flamebait if it's an on-topic racist remark and a troll if it's an offtopic racist remark.

There was no reason whatever to inject race into his remark. Had he said [subject] liberalism has progressed [body] "To a point that they now have collapsed all our banks with stupid demands for easy loans with the liberal nominee for president implicated in the scandal."

His stupid racist comment made it look like skin color was the reason behind the econoimic collapse, which is blatantly stupid.

I don't even know why I'm bothering responding, I guess IHBT. I'd better go back to those Biters Anonymous meetings!

I wrote in Liberty? What liberty? back in 2005:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

When I worked at Disney World in the early 1980s, I had a conversation with a gentleman at Epcot's Chinese pavillion who had only arrived from China a month earlier. He had said something positive about President Reagan, and I set him straight about the doddering old fool that occupied the White House. I blasted his cuts of the Capital Gains Tax, which had unleashed an orgy of corporate takeovers and layoffs. The gentleman was horrified that I would dare say anything against the government, and looked around nervously as if expecting the FBI to appear from nowhere, slap me around and drag me away.

Certainly there are other countries (I can think of a few in the Middle East) with no freedom to speak.

But our own freedom to speak carries such heavy limitations that to think we are better than the Chinese is laughable. You can be arrested for "hate speech." If you badmouth the wrong corporation (and face it, the corporations are the government here, the politicians only being figureheads who do the corporations' bidding) you will be slapped down with a S.L.A.P.P. suit. You won't go to jail, but you will be financially ruined.

2600.org wasn't allowed to link to an algorithm (DeCSS). The courts have held that you have no freedom of speech when writing in a computer language.

Our freedom of speech is illusory.

Religion? Again there's China, and Cuba. However, I don't think that Christianity or Hinduism are illegal in Saudia Arabia.

On the other hand, children have been suspended and even expelled from school for evangelizing. They're being punished both for their speech and their religion.

As to freedom of assembly, that's been gone for quite some time. You want to "petition the government for a redress of grievances" by protesting en masse in front of the statehouse? You're going to go to jail for not having a permit- in short, you must have permission to petition the government by peaceful assembly. Having to ask permission doesn't seem too free to me.

The first amendment isn't the only amendment our... excuse me, corporations' bought and paid for governmnet have trampled. The linked article shows how NONE of the first ten amendments have any real meaning whatever.

Certainly, if she had been employed and made the same parody of a supervisor, even if she'd worked for the ost office or other government body, she would have likewise been suspended or even fired.

They are arguing about it here and they do post on Kuro5hin and other sites that Orion mentioned. They even name the snitch that gave up the password. They admit to creating a bunch of bogus emails. A lot of comments got hidden to get rid of evidence and Rusty had to delete some comments and that diary might get deleted as well to hide Kuro5hin's part of it.

Actually, user 36140, I am certain that since that time your IQ hasn't increased dramatically.

There's an LHC joke here somewhere ...

Look, as long as we don't connect it to a sentient computer, it's perfectly safe. Sure, it might kill us all, but at least we don't face the unfathomable horror of being - dare I even say it - slightly bored.

Nothing makes you believe in God more than actually meeting him in person.

I read your story. How is that fundamentally different from a dream? Do you believe everything you experience in your dreams?

tmegapscm

I've seen more than one "spiritual awakening" of a very religious person who learns to set aside childish superstitions.

I had the opposite experience. I'd pretty much convinced myself of the nonexistance of God and anything spiritual until I met a certain Bhuddist priest in Thailand. Then after I was out of the Air Force and back home, I had a deeply religious experience. Nothing makes you believe in God more than actually meeting him in person.

I can now no more question the existance of God than you can question the existance of anything you have experienced in life.

As to your morals coming from who you are rather than your fear of punishment, well, that's how the Christian Bible says you're supposed to be. Your sins are forgiven, your debt paid. You are not judged by the evil that you do, but rather by your good works. Hell is more a Jewish and Muslim concept, from the Torah (Old Testament).

I've seen more than one "spiritual awakening" of a very religious person who learns to set aside childish superstitions.

I had the opposite experience. I'd pretty much convinced myself of the nonexistance of God and anything spiritual until I met a certain Bhuddist priest in Thailand. Then after I was out of the Air Force and back home, I had a deeply religious experience. Nothing makes you believe in God more than actually meeting him in person.

I can now no more question the existance of God than you can question the existance of anything you have experienced in life.

As to your morals coming from who you are rather than your fear of punishment, well, that's how the Christian Bible says you're supposed to be. Your sins are forgiven, your debt paid. You are not judged by the evil that you do, but rather by your good works. Hell is more a Jewish and Muslim concept, from the Torah (Old Testament).

I thought I had read this before so I did a search and came up with this: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/10/2/103735/275 This post was made in 2003 (and references a previous post on Slashdot, so it could easily be older than that.) You are simply reposting a 5 year old story word for word. I somehow doubt that you are the original author (which would, ironically, make that post copyright infringement ;-) ).

That said, there are a couple of big holes in this story.

Why is no one buying CDs? Are people not interested in music? Do people prefer to watch TV, see films, read books? I don't know. But there is one, inescapable truth - Internet piracy is mostly to blame.

The author admits to not knowing why people aren't buying CDs, but then immediately jumps to the "inescapable truth" that Internet piracy is to blame. It isn't because the selection isn't to the buying public's taste, or because a Walmart opened down the block with better prices, or because people were buying more DVDs/video games/etc. Nope, it *had* to be Internet Piracy! And why?

The statistics speak for themselves - one in three discs world wide is a pirate.

Not to overuse a XKCD meme, but: Citation Needed. So I did a Google search and came up with this article: http://www.ifpi.org/content/section_news/20050623.html

Ok, the article is 3 years old, but let's let that slide for a bit. The piracy that the article speaks of is commercial CD pressing. You know, the folks who obtain one CD, burn a hundred copies, and sell them on the street corner for $1.50 each. That is a completely different form of piracy than the guy who clicks "share this folder" in LimeWire/Kazaa/etc.

On The Internet, you can find and download hundreds of dollars worth of music in just minutes. It has the potential to destroy the music industry, from artists, to record companies to stores like my own.

Yes, the Internet does make piracy (of the P2P sharing kind) easier than it used to be. It does also have the potential to destroy the music industry as we know it now. However, many new technologies are disruptive events. The industry either has to adapt or die. When cars first came out, it was disruptive to the people in the Horse and Buggy Industry. We don't hold technology back simply because one industry doesn't want to change how they operate. For an example of how the music industry might adapt, look to eMusic and Amiee Street. As far as local record stores go, they either find a way to adapt (perhaps kiosks selling personal mix CDs) or they die out. It's just a fact of business life.

Before you point to the supposed "economic downturn", I'll note that the book store just across from my store is doing great business. Unlike CDs, it's harder to copy books over The Internet.

In the years since this post was originally written, advances in book piracy have been made.

As for the National Register of Pirates idea, it is quite obviously a bad idea. The original poster of this seemed to be of the opinion that the courts were taking too long so pirates should just be added to a list without a trial. Let's put aside the question of how the RIAA would get the pirates' identities and how it would be enforced for a moment. (Big questions, mind you, but let's assume some process gets put into place.) How will the list be kept focused on pirates and kept clean of the falsely accused? We have only to look at the No Fly List for an example of how a blacklist with no oversight or clear removal process can wind up triggering many false positives. If some other Jason Levine pir

Sounds familiar in many ways.

I know you're joking, but my friend Linda spent four months in Dwight Correctional Center for posession of a controlled substance. Shes on parole right now, not only a victimless criminal, but a victimless felon. Second amendment? She has no second amendment rights; she is banned from owning firearms for life, even though her crime was nonviolent and had no victims.

Police State: In USSA, cops hassle YOU (NSFW?)

Liberty? What liberty?

I don't fear being dead, but as I actually died once I don't look forward to the transition from life to death. Those who die in their sleep, or die without pain or suffering, are extremely lucky. My ex-wife's mother died in mid sentence, never knowing she was dying! That's the way to go, I think.

My grandmother lived a hundred years. She outlived her siblings, her friends, two husbands, and three of her four children. As a father I can't imagine anything worse than outliving one of your children. When Grandma was 95 she told me "I don't know why people want to live to be a hundred, it ain't no fun bein' old".

She was an infant when the Wright brothers flew that short powered flight at Kitty Hawk, and saw the moon landings. When she was born people pretty much lived exactly like they had five hundred years earlier, yet when she died it was 2003, to me the science fiction century. Stuff in Captain Kirk's Star Trek that was unbelievable fantasy when the show was filmed and I was a young teenager is now real - flat screen computers that fit on desks; doors that open automatically; routine space flight; "communicators" (cell phones) -- we even have technology that was impossible in the 23rd century when the movie Star Trek II came out. Kirk was allergic to the drug they used to cure age related presbyopia, so McCoy gave him reading glasses.

I was severly nearsighted all my life, became farsighted as well in middle age, and got an eye implant in 2006 that had just been FDA approved in 2003 that cured my nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism and a cataract that had occurred because of steroid eye drops. I have better than 20/20 vision now! Dr. McCoy would be jealous of my surgeons (I had surgery to my retina this past April, as well as the cataract implant in 2006); today's operating rooms make Dr. McCoy's tech look primitive.

As to living a few hundred years, I'd like to see what the future holds, but there's always more future in the future no matter where in time you live. And a person's perception of time is always a fraction of how long (s)he has lived. Time goes faster when you get older. When you're four, Christmas takes forever to get there - but the day after Christmas, Christmas is 1/4 of a lifetime away. A year to a four year old is the same as a decade to someone who is forty.

Time is a dimention, no different than space. You can only live in a limited space, and a limited time. Make the most of what you have of it!

I don't know if it's universally true that "men that live fully don't despair death" but I live life to the fullest. Hell, I'm 56 and I had sex with a 27 year old woman last month (cost me twenty bucks; although the next time around she stole my money).

I'm spending my remaining space, time, and money on enjoying myself as much as possible (and writing about much of it, which is also enjoyable), and helping others do the same. There's just too much misery in the world. Life's too short to sit around bored.

I spent August 1973 to August 1974 in Utapao AFB in Thailand. Utapao was a short boat ride away from Phuket (pronounced "fuck it"; the Thais have a different alphabet than we do) At the time, Thailand was then a third world country. Utapao was in the southern part of the country, and there was no electricity nor running water nor natural gas in homes. The roads were unpaved. The business districts of Saddaheep and Bong Chong to the south of Utapao had electricity, but not the houses.

We had a Thai intern at work a few years ago, and from her account Thailand has industrialized and is no longer a third world country.

Once while riding a bhat bus (so called because it cost one bhat to ride; a bhat equaled five American pennies. The "bus" was a Japanese pickup truck with benches in the bed) flashing lights came up behind us, the driver skidded to a halt and took off running. I cursed and started to get out. "No!" a fellow passenger insisted, "Day keel you!" She was right; I watched in horror as Thai police shot the driver as he ran across the field.

I attributed it to the fact that Thaland was closer to Vietnam than St Louis is to Chicago, and the war was going on, but it appears that even though they may no longer be a third world country, their government is still authoritarian.

What's troublesome is my government, USA, seems to have been headed more and more towards authoritarianism and less free as time has gone on. So I fear that the answer to the question posed in TFS is "yes".

I wrote two K5 diaries about my Thailand experiences a few years ago, Gecko Poker and War and Sex if anyone is interested in hearing about the place.

While I was there I thought that a visit to Mars couldn't be stranger. Nothing was the same as here, even the dirt was a different color, the hills were a different shape, the vegetation was completely different. But the world seems to becoming more homogenous as time goes on.