Slashdot Mirror
Life on The Net in 2004
NewtonsLaw writes "In recent years the Net has changed very quickly from a great place for geeks and nerds into a highly commercialized marketplace in which everyone is making a grab for your wallet. If it's not wave after wave of spam in your mailbox, it's excessively intrusive ad banners and popups, or demands by websites that you pay a subscription for access.
The DMCA and other pending legislation could soon mean that companies such as Microsoft and the recording labels will cement their total ownership of your online rights -- leaving you with nothing but a hefty bill to pay whenever you want to use their software or services.
Today's Aardvark Daily carries an interesting editorial that speculates on just what life could be like in the very near future. Sobering -- but perhaps not too far from reality?"
is it me, or does this story seem like it was piped from /dev/katz?
Buying a Dell computer is equivalent to dropping the soap in a prison shower.
that the internet started off as such a place of freedom and expression, and decentralization.. and now this is all being pulled away by the mere fact of the dollar.
Hint: disable javascript, edit your /etc/hosts file to map various interesting domain names to 127.0.0.1, and don't use an idiotic mail client that eagerly executes scripted content.
Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase
sniff* *sniff* Smells like good times to me.
You may not like it, but I think some people are in for a reality check. This world is not like, say, RMS's ideal utopia -- share and share alike. The world thrives on commerce and, well, if you've got business practices that will get you the extra mile (whether you agree with them or not), that will be the company that will ultimately succeed. Can anyone say Microsoft?
[An advertisement airs on broadcast television during 2004....]
Narrator: Deep in the shadows and during late night hours, terrorists construct computers so they may prevent Americans the opportunity to enjoy music, film, and software.
(Display a family enjoying a movie and children listening to music)
Narrator: These terrorists are responsible for up to 30% of unemployment in our nation due to reductions in revenue for American businesses.
(Display an unemployment line and a line of Russians waiting to receive bread during the Soviet-era)
Narrator: Moreover, parts (primarily manufactured in the non-American and ugly capitalistic and piggish democractic nation of Russia) are purchased via the computer blackmarket and finance drug sales to children at schools.
(Display computers alongside dead children)
Narrator: Why would a person wish to build a computer?
(Display an individual covered by a black and dark shadow)
Narrator: Only an anti-societal and evil intention lurks in these terrorists to undermine our common courage: "one nation under god, indivisible, and united we stand."
(Display the flag of the United States of America)
Narrator: These terrorists must be reported to the Civilian Protection Team immediately! Now is the time to defend our nation! Do your part... today!
(Display a telephone and Citizen Protection Member (CPM) dressed in uniform and receiving a request from a female citizen in the foreground with the flag in the background)
Narrator 2: This message brought to you by the Council for an Evil Free America.
(Display Evil Buster Logo (TM) )
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
This pie in the sky analogy is only if everyone gives up the battle. The battle is far from over, and the RIAA, I suspect, will find a fate similar to RAMBUS. Sooner or later, the consumer will rebel en masse.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
I could see wireless freenets in all city's and perhaps even connecting rural areas. These freenets will evolve the net even further and in Canada, at least, 2.4 Ghz is free for public use.
File sharing will reach new speeds in local nets and I bet p2p apps will evolve to take advantage of the change.
Sure people will still have their cable modems and such, but I think if the freenet catches on (most likely around Universities at first) things will most likely remain the same. .Net be damned.
I am going to hell and I am going to take all of you with me.
If this happens there's still really nothing stopping hackers from writing their own software. Even if they can't do it legally or distrubute it, Joe Hacker can use his old Linux box to come up with something. Although with all that legislation there will undoubtedly be a black market and underground software dealings. The geeks will come up with something new and it will develop from there. Kinda like the Internet, but not. I can't think of what it'll be, but if this comes to pass I don't doubt something new will evolve.
There is this fear of government 'ruining' your life by passing laws about software and copy rights and such.
Some of it is warranted but not this kind of horrid future.
There is a very good alternative to it all. Just walk away from it. I know I don't have to have email in my personal life. I don't have to have the web either. I certainly don't need the music produced by the big record companies, or the movies and t.v. shows produced by the big entertainment conglomerates.
If enough people opt out of these things- and put their energy into developing alternatives, those alternatives will thrive.
The only government that can stop that is one that does away with the very basic liberties of movement and ownership. I know- a lot of people think that is already happening but I would say not.
I'm not saying don't be concerned or take action. I just think that this dark vision of the future is a bit much.
Not to mention it completely leaves out the advances that will be made in the circumvention of these laws.
Imagine before cable t.v. someone writing a story where the draconian cable company sends you a bill- or they'll turn your t.v. off!
Some people pay and don't think anything of it.
A lot of people just steal cable.
Me- I just go without and save a lot of time that would have been wasted watching what is for the most part drivel.
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
... I will just switch to Linux, *BSD, or any other number of free operating systems, and I suspect others will too.
I'm a coder, but I don't like having to configure all my hardware and deal with endless conf files and what-not (read: software person, not hardware). BUT, if I start getting charged everytime I reboot, I will configure whatever the hell I have to. I will not tolerate my rights being trampled by charge happy corporations.
I currently use OS X, and I think it's great, but if Apple started charging a monthly fee for it's use, I would drop it like a hot potato. I think many people would do the same. Think if Ford charged you every time you started your car. A lot of people would take the bus...
*everything* is Orwellian to cats.
Note that anyone can peruse the signatures and comments (a good idea to help sign the petition with an intelligent comment), but it appears that only U.S. citizens can sign. Of course, it's also a good idea to read the petition fully rather than blindly signing.
Read my sig if you like, but I'll never see yours, thanks to Discussions, Viewing, Disable sigs...
What is up with all the bitching about intrusive ads and whatnot? I thought everyone here was running Mozilla or some other highly evolved web broswer that can block most advertisements? I have been doing it since the features where put in place and never had a problem with bad advertising -- except when Slashdot runs a story that is really a thinnly veiled ad for some dumpass company's product nobody cares about.
SPAM? Is the Slashdot audience so retarded at this point that setting up a spam filter is considered too techi?
Call me a flammer if you want, but these are NOT, I repeat NOT DIFFICULT to setup.
Compare it to McDonald's, which is really in the real estate business, NOT necessarily profiting from fast food. The same is coming true for Microsoft - Windows is simply a vehicle to intellectual property rights.
Websites that charge for content!! Gasp. Frankly, I've been wondering how long before sites like Washingtonpost.com, USAToday, etc started charging for subscriptions. Seems natural as putting all of your print content online for free would, as more and more people are online, likely cannibalize (sp) your paid subscriptions. I've been paying for the WSJ for a couple of years now. I've got no beef with that. This sort of business is a natural subscription business. The pay-per-byte DSL worries me a alot - I hope it never comes to that. The music part seems pre-ordained as the RIAA, et.al. seems prepared to spend whatever sum it requires to make it real. Yes, I realize this is somewhat schizo but well, that's me...:)
1) Exactly what this article states. Although I find this the least likely outcome.
2) The internet turns into tv + shopping. Lots of ads you can't get past
3) The internet gets so bad, that the geeks create decentralised, efficient, free-floating network partially on top of the existing network, partially outside of it, and it all begins again
4) It goes on exactly like it is now. the (x)AAs of the world keep trying to hold us down, the advertisers keep trying to make us look, MS keeps trying to make us pay (again), and we keep trying to stay one step ahead of them all. This is IMHO the most likely situation.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I just love it how they have little ads dispersed throughout the article. Granted, they are from Aardvark and aren't terribly intrusive, but funny just the same.
Oh, and am I the only one that wouldn't mind the following...
Suddenly your PC's screen clears and the image of a naked woman in a seductive pose appears. Oh no, more porno-hacks. Maybe you should have downloaded those latest security patches after all.
Wow! No work involved at all, 2004 here I come!
Once a country catches on to the fact that it could rake in billions of revenue by allowing freedom on the net it will do it.
Take this SSSCA (cant remember exact sp) bill thats currently going through your government. That in no way in hell would even get a look at in europe, russia or asia for that matter.
If the US keeps restricting freedom on the net your companies and users are going to look externally for it services.
This is just absurd. If it EVER cost me $67 or whatever for the bandwidth to check my e-mail and download 213 messages of spam, I simply would not check your e-mail. There's nothing scary about a company charging an absurd price for a product or service. It's only scary when they can come into your house and kill you if you don't like the product. If you don't feel like paying $200 an hour to be on the web, then do not. They cannot force you to pay it. Windows is already overpriced, so I don't buy it. Simple as that.
"disable javascript"
Great. Now most web sites won't work.
...and before you say "then don't go to those sites"...most sites worth visiting daily use javascript.
Try again. But this time try giving good advice.
http://www.thelinuxshow.com/otc.htm
The open technology movement.
Go to that site and donate, your donation will be used to help create a lobbying group to congress,
If you dont have money to donate, if you are on a campus, host a rally, make posters, find ways to raise money and then donate.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
i'm not too worried, sure there's a whole online world for idiots now, but the smart will survive.
/.'s new ads don't bother me nearly as much as i thought they would.
but seriously, i think that people will only put up with so much crap... popup windows, subscription services, etc.
speaking of crappy ads...
anyone used freenet lately? is it usable yet? i haven't in over 6 months.
as for microsoft, i believe the history books will point to windows xp, with it's lack of compelling new features and unattractive licensing loan (i.e. lease) as the beginning of the end. but that's another rant...
perlgolf: the only place where shorter is better
Cabrones con más.
OPEN TECHNOLOGY MOVEMENT
Please support it
The only way to fight back, is to get serious and forget these damn petitions.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
It was interesting that they suggested that news sites might be shut down due to copyright problems. Another possible problem for independent news sites would be defamation suits launched in countries other than the US. Slashdot has talked about this here and here.
Although these cases may end up showing that the jurisdiction of defamation comes down to where the site was published, the cost of defending nuisance suits could grow to the point where editors of such sites find other things to publish. Having to send a legal representative to some other country (or employing local counsel) every time you need some spurious legal argument thrown out of court is going to add up financially.
why do we need to sell an endless supply?
Its like selling air, water, etc
We'll never run out, instead of sharing we sell it
Its called greed, not capitalism, greed.
Capitalism works when you have a limited supply of something and need a way to decide who gets what, when everyone can have everything, whats the point of capitalism? Greed & Selfishness
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
For example, when you embraced quicktime, you embraced the whole bill of goods that came with it, and clicked "I agree" before you downloaded. You didn't have to do that.
You embraced cookies, java, javascript, and a whole raft of other silliness, when you didn't have to.
If you havn't noticed yet, when they come at you, they usually come at an angle that you find somewhat pleasing. ANd by the time you're within arms reach,it's too late to change your mind.
I never chose cookies, javascript, or quicktime, but enough of you did so that it now effects my life and the lives of others who've watched the world of the internet get transformed into a thing that demands submission before entry.
Yes the internet is going to change much more than it has already. Will you submit to the changes as readily as you submitted to Apples thrusting it's codecs upon you?
You will. ANd you will give some justification to it just like people do for cookies and Quicktime. For the former "They have the potential to be used for good..", for the latter "Well, the Sorenson is a nice codec and quicktime is something totally different, it's just a capsule for all kinds of formats!"
Never mind that cookes have had the potential for good for the better half of a decade but always seem to end up with you grabbing your ankles, or that you never see the sorenson codec outside of the times webpages demand you head over to apple.com to go get Quicktime.
Regardless of the justifications, you sold a piece of your soul when accepting each of them into your lives. Little bit here little bit there, and hey, pretty soon things start to look different.
And set the configuration to ask you before popping up windows.
this artile sounds like a moron's nightmare.
;) *STILL* use punch cards in the days of DVD-Rs
a) nothing will kill open source
b) no industry has ever quickly and successfully changed formats... some computer labs and specialized 9i.e. crappy and not worth updating
c) i trust my spam filters
d) that 20MB email can be filtered
e) web service won't cost that much... everyone wants it.. it isn't that hard to get and peple want it... that means prices go down, not up
f) windows xp 2004 will be called some gay like Windows #$ (...oh wait, that looks like perl)
g) popup banners can be defated, get ad-aware and/or a recent version of mozilla and opera
perlgolf: the only place where shorter is better
Lets see here, my monthly Internet bill for 2005
ISP.com 65.48
includes:
- Local carrier surcharge for two network ports and 3 emails with a limit of unique five CPU IDs
- Newsgroup Access Fee
- Search Engine Subscription to Yahoo.com
- "First Play" Digital Access Entertainment subscription
- Gamenet Networked entertainment Access
- Spam Blocker (tm) Service fee
- Application Services charge from m$.net (the 'family connected' plan)
- And various charges from those pay for access '.fee' sites (still fighting that one that last virus dumped you into.)
- Government infrastructure surcharge
- Sin tax on porn/gambling sites
- Local taxes for for community referral databank and library access
- Wife's Chat Service
Yep, just think of it as just another cable bill or phone bill and you get the idea...
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I'd figure I would write an accound of how I would live then.
.
_ __
_____________________________________________
It's 6:30am some day in 2004.
The alarm goes and you rise from your bed to face the day's challenges.
After a quick shower and breakfast you wander over to your PC and check to see if any email has arrived overnight.
Hmm... 231 new emails but procmail say that 217 of those are likely to be spam. Even though they've cp'ed dropped into another folder you'll still have to wade through them to make sure that you don't miss an important message that might have been accidentally sidetracked by the less-than-perfect software. But, you still rm -rf them...
Damn, it looks as if you've also received 5 new virus/trojan attachments as well and one of them was 20MB in size -- that's another $4 on your DSL bill.
Suddenly a pop-up dialog box, through emulation by Wine, appears advising you that there are 2 new Windows Security updates that should be downloaded, totalling some 60MB in size (another $12 worth of traffic). You block the server in HOSTS, as so your Windows emulation doesn't tattle on you.
Within seconds, the PC's desktop comes alive with pop-up flashing, animated advertising banners -- you proceed to kill Mozilla you hacked to use with the newer, propeirty html'like protocol. You start up lynx.
Another dialog box pops up, this time warning you that the license for your copy of Windows XP2004 is due to expire in 10 days. You run the registry crack within linux so the emulation dll's will still work.
Fond memories of the days when there were alternatives to Microsoft's OS pass through your mind -- but that was before the government realised that software was like petrol -- a totally essential commodity in the lives of most businesses and individuals. Legislation was passed in 2003 that required all software developers and vendors to be licensed and a 45% tax added to all sales. However, in China, they realised that everything revolved around freely accessible software. China has changed in all thier practices, as to make thier ideal commuinist regime a very livable place for free people. Of course, much to Microsoft's glee, this killed the Open Source from being supported by companies in the US. You howver, bought a black marked copy of DRM linux. This software exploits bugs within the hardware. Of course, having the PCI64 (bought in Korea) anti-drm card has made this much easier
You type in "cnn.com" then enter the ID and password associated with your monthly subscription. Remember when there were hundreds of sites offering the latest news for free? Not any more. Sure, there still a few, but they're regularly hit with law suits by the big names who allege breach of copyright. Although such suits are inevitably dismissed -- the cost of defending them means that the independent news sites usually only last a few months at most. SO you hop onto freenet and use the strange lists of characters that somehow, somewhere lead you to slashdot.
Flicking the remote beside you kicks your digital music player into action and you marvel that 5% of its computing power is dedicated to the sophisticated digital rights management system it contains. You inwardly cheer, as your newly bought anti-drm card with DRM linux does work.
Following an unsuccessful attempt to copy-protect CDs, the recording industry forced everyone to a new mini-CD format that has yet to be cracked (although there are rumours that some Russians have succeeded). You just can't buy music on CDs anymore and the old CDR/RW media now costs $10 a disk, thanks to the $9 anti-piracy levy that was introduced in 2003. Since, the US put levies on anti-'capitalism' countries, you carry removable drives with your required software and movies on them.
Another warning appears -- "Your license for this recording has expired, unable to play." Damn -- another $49 if you want to listen to that music for another year. You then erase them, as you have all your music backed up on steel tape. You wonder, if as they claim, these new measures significantly reduce piracy, why music is now so much more expensive? "It's because of people libe me", you say under your breath.
You type up a quick email to a friend, inviting them to meet you for lunch. As to attract governmental idiots, so they use thier time on a nobody like yourself, you post as your signature the following words:
I will Bomb aeroplane shit damn nuke EMP fire death murder poison buy pirate warez mp3 ogg gpg
After all, every single bit that enters and leaves your PC is now scanned by the authorities -- under the premise that it is in the interests of (inter)national security and crime reduction. I'll make sure to be here at 4 am tomorrow, as they'll make YET another raid. They won't find a thing.
It's funny how they can supposedly detect even an unfriendly tone in an email but they can't (or won't) stop the endless tide of spam isn't it?
Suddenly your PC's screen clears and the image of a naked woman in a seductive pose appears. Oh no, more of those shlopenglaurs whatsits. You see wht pid it's running, and kill it with -9
For a moment a smile crosses your face -- you're thinking of the "good old days" when the Internet was a much simpler, saner, safer place. Instead, you live on the edge of piracy, illegitimacy. You are a hacker.
Then you return to reality with the realisation that it's just 7:05am and the sucker's accound you hacked already spent $264.
_______________________________________________
As a last note, I used this article without permission (I see this differently than normal slashdot cut/paste jobs). So I give full permission to aardvark.co.nz to use my article (even if it makes money (heh, like thats going to happen, but still...)
CARRIER LOST....
http://www.thelinuxshow.com/otc.htm Join the open technology movement, the plan is for you to raise money via rallys and fundraising or however you can get people to donate, and then you donate that money to Open Technology Movement This will allow us to hire a lobbyist, and allow us to have even bigger fund raises, like marching in front of washington. The only way to stop this is by actions, forget petitions. raise some funds and donate a few thousand dollars, if we all do this at our college campus's we'll be able to generate a few hundred thousand bucks
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Well, the great thing about the Internet is that everyone -- anyone -- can have their place, their nook, their niche.
But let's be honest here... if 50% of America has Internet access -- a good 140 some million people -- it's a safe bet that a minority of those 140,000,000 are "geeks" or "nerds." The net reflects what people online demand. If 90% of surfers were "nerds," I'm sure we'd see it slanted the other way.
I'm not much into programming anymore and I'm done with Linux. I'm a non-programming OS X user now but I come to Slashdot every day (more than once a day) because I love this community... but I also have demands for CNN.com, Macintouch.com, Apple.com, guitar websites, TheOnion.com, Yahoo Finance, Google, and so on... and none of those are "geek locations."
I think the net is just how I like it. In fact, it's close to how anyone likes it! The net's very adaptive because it's distributed. Like democracy, it shifts to what the majority want and allows space for the minority, too (though sometimes slowly).
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
It's getting open sourced, too!
This is the most ridiculous article I've read in a while.
Yes a lot of sites are going to subscriptions for premium content, but there are, and always will be, THOUSANDS of sites out there that offer free content, or at least some free content with premiums for those who subscribe.
Yes popup ads are annoying. But who among us is so dumb as to not know how to disable these things?
And yes, MS has gotten a lot of people into a chokehold and continues to offer inferior products at outrageous prices. But damnit people, we have ALTERNATIVES.
As bleak as this future is, it's the future for those who are uneducated and unsophisticated enough to fall for the idiocy that these businesses push. Those of us with two brain cells to rub together will always be able to find alternative sources of news/information/software.
And in my final rant of the hour, the DMCA is a US law. Believe it or not, it doesn't apply to the entire world, and one would hope that the rest of the free world can grasp the fact that some of us do indeed have a seperate legal system.
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo - H. G. Wells
Greed is evil, Selfishness is evil, If i want you to die, I can kill you because you consume my oxygen and drink my water.
Hell if i want all your stuff why dont i just take it, i mean who cares about you, I mean I'm selfish, only I matter right?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
... the flow of digital information
The next generation peer networks are going to make all of this a moot point. Large, fully decentralized open source peer networks have no point of centralized vulnerability to law suits or attack. They have no corporate owner to go after. They are written by the people, for the people, and nothing will be able to stifle their use to share and distribute digital information.
The RIAA/MPAA and other content industries know this, and are pushing for the only possible way to thwart this inevitable digital bazaar by using extreme legislation (SSSCA and co) to restrict general purpose computing and networking devices.
They will fail. The coming years will bring ever more resilient, secure, efficient, and useable peer networking software to accomplish everything from file sharing to colloborative development, distributed processing & storage, etc.
This is one of the few situations where the individual has the capability to fight back and win against the vested interests of the powers that be to restrict freedoms and profit from it.
Nice work
... actually promoted an essay writing competition to encourage how people approved of the the way IP laws helped them. (http://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/alert/2001/ma03r ev.htm)
A bunch of legal scholars spearheaded a counter-essay competition to reflect less sanguine views (http://www.wipout.net/essays.html)
It will be interesting to compare the results.
Selfishness is not evil unless it involves intrusion upon the rights of others. I think the part that you take offense to is that the classic definition shows no regard for the happiness and interests of others; explain to me why I should be interested in your happiness?
As a happy capitalist who is engaged in the writing of software (which you seem to think there's a 'limitless supply' of) you seem pretty determined against my interests and happiness.
Only on slashdot can a posting be rated "Score -1, Insightful".
If you use IE and windows (Yhea yhea, windows sucks, yadda yadda, IE sucks, all MS sucks) then there is a great peice of software called POW from http://www.analogx.com. Usually people frequently visit a few sites, which have the same popups. With POW you open the software, double click the offending it browser window(s), and every time a window opens with that name POW will close it. It works wonders.
If it's not wave after wave of spam in your mailbox, it's excessively intrusive ad banners and popups, or demands by websites that you pay a subscription for access.
Kind of like Slashdot is doing?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
After reading this article and the way it makes me feel, I'm starting to understand the Islamic Terrorist. Alomst. The difference is I want to destroy parts of my own country (Redmond, Washington) not somebody elses.
Put down the Ayn Rand, and step away from the book, please.
Any group theorist will tell you that doing what is best for yourself AND society will reap more rewards over doing what is only best for yourself. In addition, everyone else benefits from the actions of individuals.
Instead of asking "Why should I care?" why don't you ask "Why shouldn't I care?"
Tools > Internet Options... > Security tab > Internet Zone / Custom Settings... keep hitting disable / prompt until the cows come home. Problem solved. If you *really* need to activate some feature or other for a site, you can always add it to the trusted sites.
And $12 for 60MB of traffic? Puhleeeeeeze. 60MB on cheap DSL (512k) represents about 17 minutes of download time. If it was say 10 GB I might believe $12. And bandwidth usage charges tend to be on the upload side, rather than the download side. Moreover, despite the overdramatic exagerration of the current afflictions of online activity it misses almost completely the true dangers possible with new trends in computing and networking. Spam, pop-ups, viruses, and costly operating system releases are a circus side show, nothing more.
I read your document. Has it occured to you that several corporate sponsors to your program could pretty much wipe it out the way you seem to have it structured?
I gave up thinking of a cool sig
. . .none of these measures prevents you from spamming us all with your ad for Immunix.
Just goes to show you that when it comes to capitalism, sleaze is always one step ahead.
Takahashi Rumiko made beats! DON, taku, DON, taku. . .
Anytime you are selfish, you are keeping someone else from having what you have.
If you take all the water away because you are selfish, no one else can have it.
If you take all the food, no one else can have any.
Most americans are selfish, including you oviously
Why? Americans take over the world, and use capitalism to control all the resources while third world countries get to starve and die.
This is selfishness.
We have more than enough food to feed them all, and its not a money issue, its selfishness
Same with water, why the hell should we pay for water? Greed is why.
People dont want only what they need to survive, they want everything, this is why alot of people are against socialism and communism, communism is about helping the majority, and socialism is about everyone being equal.
With our technology, we could easily feed the planet, and no one would starve, no one would need water, everyone would have a place to live, and free medicine.
Its capitalism that allows us to live in mansions, have all of the medicines, and the best food, its also what pisses everyone in third world countries off
People in africa, china, afganastan, and other co untries hate us because we are greedy. We take everything and give nothing.
You cant take everything from everyone, and expect everyone to love you
You can expect everyone to try to be like you, even try to side with you, and become american like you, but they'll always hate you.
Its almost like slavery, look at the effects slavery had,. you still have black people in the USA who believe because of slavery, you were given an unfair advantage (assuming you are white) and they want some kinda payback for that.
Same with native americans.
So yes, theres a problem with selfishness, it creates hate,. war, etc.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Geez guys.. cant we post.. something more cheerfull? some good news or somthing
all this M$, CCDBAT, SSSCA, DMCA, FBI, CNNAOLTWBRH, MSNBC stuff.. really gets a guy down ya know.. lets the lighten the mood allready.
just my $0.02
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
Everything is cyclical. The 2004 article may in fact happen. If life on the net somehow gets that bad, there will be an equal and opposite force that limits the damage.
Without a doubt, the legal aspects of this will be every bit as bad as the article suggests. However, there is a big difference between having laws and enforcing them. In the 2004 scenario, practically everyone who owns a computer will be violating somebody's license or patent. The legal system may very well drown in it's own filth.
Considering how Napster was launched by a few low-budget geeks, imagine what might happen with serious opposition. I have often heard about the open source movement being the "Viet Cong" of the software world. Using laws to control a guerilla force is not going to be effective. If gun control doesn't stop criminals from using guns, I don't see how SSSCA is going to fare any better with computers. Surely, some people will be intimidated, but the Internet will simply become more encrypted and private. Historically, the Russians have been among the world leaders in dealing with repressive regimes. They are especially well suited for the Microsoft-Disney-Hollings world. Dimitry Sklyarov may very well have the last laugh after all.
The 2004 article presumes that the bad guys have achieved a total victory. The same mentality would have predicted a British victory in the American revolution, and a US victory in the Vietnam war. Goliath doesn't always win.
On the surface, it looks like Microsoft, RIAA, and Disney are a dominant force because they have money. We can assume that money will buy custom-crafted legislation (DMCA, SSSCA, and whatever Hollings is told to produce). But the advantage ends there. If you think about the brainpower aspect of this battle, a finite number of software professionals will have to outsmart an almost limitless number of guerilla hackers -- 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. Every time the hackers get lucky, the "axis of evil" loses millions of dollars. The reason why Micrsoft is being hacked and embarrassed on a daily basis is not because they are dumb, it's because they are outnumbered.
We can't afford to be complacent, but this battle is by no means over.
...but it's possible. However, I'm of the opinion the 'big boys' (M$, AOL, DISNEY, etc) will spend so much money, time, and effort trying to control the internet that nothing will be so streamlined (as the article seems to suggest). Hell, it's even possible one will get the other convicted AND punished for being a predatory monopoly...
So is my dream.
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old enough to set the table, old enough to pass the meat
please moderate as such, thanks
I just upgraded my DVD-rom just to find out that its RPC-2. They moved the Region code from the OS (RPC-1) to the firmware on the drive. You can only switch it 5 times, then it locks in firmware. No where on the box did it say it was RPC-2, nor is there any requirements for them to do so.
/bin/freedom
Maybe DRM is closer than you think.
-
chmod +a rwx
The article, despite some interesting theorizations, basically supposes the internet and technology already exists in a vaccum that only a few people can affect, and that they're all on the same side. So this future will come about.
.
The internet does not exist in a vaccum, it is used by millions of people.
Technology is not just a monolithic product, and attempts to make it so will doubtlessly backfire. If the US government mandated ridiculous standards, what that did in the US would NOT necessarily affect the rest of the world. One could also kiss some exports goodbye.
The various 800-lb Gorillas in technology are NOT on the same side, and they've got other factions nipping at their heels as well. Take a look at the new Gateway commericals that emphasize CD ripping for just one example . .
It is also assumed people are sheep. The problem being of course everyone assumes OTHER people are sheep while they of course are independent and free-spirited. Take a look at the spambusting, the popupkillers, DCSS, etc. People have been rebelling against this crap for some time.
Would some people like the 'net this way? Definitely. Will it happen? The fact we already have stories like this tells me probably not.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
What do all these companies have in common?
Ariba
Commerce One
Razorfish
LoudCloud
VA Linux
Are there base are belong TO ME.
I shorted dem all - and I are RICH!
You dot com suckas aint gots no educations
"leaving you with nothing but a hefty bill to pay whenever you want to use their software or services"
It would never reach this point. The very success of the internet depends on its affordability. If a news service charges a subscription fee I will just use something else. If such regulation were to render the internet so unaffordable it would simply cease to be used by the public anymore, ensuring its own demise, and that is why this article is nothing more then anti-Microsoft propaganda.
I think Microsoft can be questionable at times, just like most people here, but such blatant lies are just entirely wacko....
This article reminds me of the movie Red Dawn, where the Russians were these evil people who wanted to take over the USA and enslave everyone for no apparant reason.
[FromTheMorning]
C'mon! We're always looking for creative ways to punish these slime, but what do we ever really get out of it?
How about some of these fine punishments? Let's run some of these up the flagpole and see if the swine salute!
1.Phone company and telecomm vendors
Free ultrawide-band internet for all regular phone service subscribers.
2. Microsoft
Refunds for Windows licenses. Damage awards for having endured extended use of MS Windows.
3. "Energy" top brass
Exposure before their peers.
4. Credit card and bank marketing people.
"City Year"
-Biswas
100Mps UWB or bust!
Is that anything like this? Announcing Slashdot Subscriptions http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/03/01/135220 0&mode=thread :-)
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
this is the scary version of the flying car promise. Open source will never be "outlawed" and there will always be free news sources on the net. The music predictions are the only ones that even come close...
Well, if this guy is so scared about what the 'net will be like in 2004, then let's revisit this story in two years and see how much is true.
My guess is that there will still be free news sites, and that DSL bandwidth will still be unmetered, and that there will still be free software.
But that doesn't make for much of a story, does it?
Funny, when I first read the article title I was curious what it was going to be about. The way I figred, you could probably sum up "your rights online in 2004" in just one word:
none
but then again, I'm sure its more compex than that because there will be various corporations vying for various parts of "you" and the rights will really be dictacting what they can do amoungst themselves more than "your" rights.
-Michael
Take a hike! Go to http://www.mtnhike.com
Anything a geek can create, a politician can legislate against.
A political problem doesn't cry out for a technological solution... but we're not politicians. We're geeks.
-Eldurbarn
I'm building the sweetest desktop workstation I can afford to pay for ASAP then not buying another system until *all* this crap blows over or runs itself into the ground. As I'm considering a ham licence already, I'll at least have a potential freenet there, and with the development of 802.11 and other protocols, I'm sure I can get others. I'll pay for internet access if I can aford it and iff it *stays a flat price*. This talk of per-bit pricing scares me. (it costs no more to keep a fiber line lit if I use it or no. And the number of lines that need to be lit scales with the number of users paying monthly fees.) I know there's no free lunch, but there's already a bandwidth cap (of 31 days * 80KiBps) on my DSL line.
But I digress. The thing that scares me *more* than the loss of the internet (since we can just throw up freenets - HAM, 802.11, etc, as I mentioned) is the loss of control over the software in my computer. Screw DRM - it's not touching my new system. A plain old boring ACPI BIOS, DRM-free HDDs, cracked DVD drive, and a good CDRW drive... everything runs just fine under Linux, with open source and open program channels. Sounds good to me. ^^
Though, while I'm rambling, what we need as geeks wanting a freenet is a grand unified peer-to-peer system. If possible (I'm not sure it is, but, this is just a sketchy list to try to convey the ideas I'm talking about) the system should:
0) Be open. GPL/BSD dual licence, or somesuch.
1) Be truly peer to peer. The network can elect transient ultrapeers (ala Gnutella v0.6) should nodes "wish."
2) Allow for file sharing (duh), ideally with some way of tracking files (unique IDs on the network... maybe just a combination of name, md5, and size information?) so they can be referenced exactly by other documents (equivelant of web, right there). It must still be searchable like gnutella or FastTrack or whatever.
3) Allow for distributed computing with fully authenticated cores. Something like the (now defunct and abandoned?) distributed.net v3, a proposal I liked very much. Ideally we'd find a way of allowing the dist-comp aspect to scale from low-bandwidth dist-comp to ultra-high bandwidth requirements so that the same API, maybe not actual implementation, could be used universally.
3.1) Allow dist-comp cores to come in a variety of languages. A java core would be great for the truly paranoid, whereas a highly tweaked assembler version would be great for speed. Allow the owner of the computers to decide which cores and whom to trust.
Anybody got any pointers? ^^
Ok, I'm sorry, I got a little off there. I tend to ramble, what can I say.
-knots
Anarchy$ dd if=/dev/random of=~/.signature bs=120 count=1
The internet is a distributed system that is entirely decentralized. As such, there is no real way to say that the "net is this." The net is simply the nodes you connect to.
/., Google, SatireWire, SourceForge, Freshmeat, and various personal web sites.
:)
What nodes do I connect to? I connect to
For me, the net is better than it was in the past. Free Software is taking off and SourceForge provides an incredibly service in hosting so much of it. As far as I'm concerned, things are just fine. BTW, I use Mozilla and run Linux so the only time I hear of Email Virii are when the people at work start bitching. At least it gives me a chance to recommend Linux to people
Really though, what sites do people find all this crap on? If I went to site that pop-up'd an automated d/l, I simply would stop going to it. If it offends you so much, why to you continue to go to it?
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
I think I would sell my computer hardware, all my gadgets, move to an island somewhere and buy a fishing boat. Then I would curl up with an old novel checked out from a library.
Find yours hosts file, just do a search, in Windows systems its usually in:
%windir%\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\etc\
its called hosts, just open it with notepad, when a pop up appears, make it look like this:
i.e. whenever a bastard pop-up appears, trim the http:// part and add it to your list and save it...its convenient to just make a shortcut to your hosts file on your desktop..
ya ya I know windows sucks, blah blah, quit your whining, it gets my job done. BY THE WAY, TRY RUNNING WINDOWS WITH NO THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE..ITS SOLID AS A ROCK...
# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # xclient host
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.2 ads.x10.com
127.0.0.2 ad.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.2 casino-online.com
Just take the WTO riots for example. That was the big story for days, and did more to help and create awareness for the anti-WTO "movement" than worthless petetion writing or peaceful protests ever could. I didn't even know there was an "anti-WTO" group before I saw the riots on the news.
Riots are an excellent way to get people to join you also, as a lot of people will participate just for the riot thrill, and in a riot, the more the merrier. The best part about violent protests is that it creates a lot of sympathizers. When people see the police use "excessive violence" against "someone trying to speak their mind" on the news, it hits a soft spot and a desire to cheer for the underdog. Many people have no love for the police and will side with your point of view simply because "the man" is against it.
I say we should organise a "peaceful protest" on the Washington mall, but instead have something "happen" to turn it into a gigantic bloodfest. We will be heard.
It does nothing but make things look insane. You think people would stand for this? Where is all the income going to come from this? Someone is going to pay $12 to download 60MB of stuff? Come on. $149 for a software license YEARLY? Please.
What are they going to do, format your hard drive if you connect with an older version of windows? of Linux?
Oh yeah, and of course IBM, Sun, HP, and all those vendors with other OSes besides MS are going to let them get a state mandated desktop OS.
The government would NEVER pass a low outlawing development of software. That would be struck down for anti-free speech rules easy.
Oh yeah, European Union? Canada? They're gonna stand for it? Right. People emigrating from the US so they can use a computer. Whee.
plus, every self respecting geek on the planet would quit working on computers, and the whole frickin internet would collpase in a day.
Paper MCSE's can't run the internet.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
This reminds me of the Simpsons episode and things like:
CNNBCBS
and "In memory of a real tree"
then again I find this funny cause I wouldn't even bother making that sort of appeal to authority.
... help them get organized. The development of GNU tools and Linux has so many parallels to Anarchist beliefs that I cannot help myself from bringing this up.
..... :-)
I say work with the anarchist organizations
Anarchism, in the more traditional meaning of it, is libertarian-socialism
No one is FORCED to program GPL'd code. It's a complete voluntary activity. But the restriction is that it's no longer just yours when you GPL it.
People who support micropayments usually claim that they'll be so small that you won't notice them, much less care about them. Nice dream, but it doesn't take into account the motivations of the people involved.
When people set their mandatory micropayment prices, they'll do it to maximize profit. The prices will find and sit at the awareness threshold of users, so you'll look up and see you've spent $5 over the course of a few minutes without really noticing it. People will respond to this by thinking of internet use as an expensive activity, and keeping it to a minimum. The reduced demand will drive prices up higher.
That's a natural consequence of each entity setting the prices of what their selling. Information doesn't compete on price very well. I forget who said it... "Information wants to be free, because it's so easy to distribute, yet information wants to be expensive, because it's so useful." When the people owning the information set the price, they can make it expensive, because it takes a fairly high price before it's better than not having the information.
However, voluntary micropayments don't have this tendency, being set by the users. Ultimately, I think voluntary payments will win out in any area with a sufficiently clued-in audience to make it work. The competitive advantages of free information are obviously huge, so wherever they can make enough profit to develop a comparable product to the restricted information, they'll win. Also, voluntary micropayments are much simpler and cheaper to implement.
I've written a bit on the kind of systems that would be needed (and can fairly easily be developed) to replace intellectual property restrictions, and I've done some work developing parts of them (see my sig).
Posted by Jay and Silent Bob:
In Reply to: Jay & Silent Bob lick balls - Darth Randal 15:25:37
All you motherfuckers are gonna pay. You are the ones who are the ball-lickers.
We're gonna fuck your mothers while you watch and cry like little whiny bitches. Once we get to Hollywood and find those Miramax fucks who's making that movie, we're gonna make 'em eat our shit, then shit out our shit, then eat their shit which is made up of our shit that we made 'em eat.
And then all you mother fucks are next.
Love,
Jay and Silent Bob
Back in the 1970s, what did geeks do? They couldn't use the Internet or computers, because they didn't exist. (Obviously, neither did Napster, Gnutella, or FastTrack.) So instead, they invented computers. And it's not to say that there weren't any computers, because there was of course the Commodore 64 and Apple II, among others, but nothing as revolutionary in design as the original IBM PC.
If the Internet becomes as commercial, and computers as regulated, then us geeks will simply have to find a new hobby. Maybe we'll have to make our own music; maybe we'll have to get into politics to try to reform technology laws. Maybe we'll bring back BBSes. Maybe we'll make a wireless HP calculator network. Maybe we'll move to Canda.
But we can't, and won't, let the US legislate us out of existence.
According to the Washington Post the ANSWER is converging on D.C. to do an Anti-War protest. I'm sure there is room for some protesting against the anti-terrorism legislation...
Am I the only one who glanced at this article and thought that Katz wrote this?
It worked once against anti-piracy measures in software (I saw more -2 week pirated software when it was protected than unprotected -- doesn't mean I downloaded it, though), it can work again against media companies.
The truth is that piracy is an effective control measure. In the case of price, as price goes up the incentive to pirate increases expoentially. So you have to charge a "reasonable" rate the market will bear or you go out of business because you can't sell product.
Just think about it, if each PS/2 game (for example) cost $5000 instead of $50, would you buy it? No. Would you pirate it?
You don't even have to answer that one, because either way (pirated or not) you've defeated the corps.
BTW: At $264 a day, that's $96,360 per year. Considering how unlikely it would be that you'd be caught for copyright infringement, you'd be better paying the $250k fine every three years than paying for any media at all.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Well that was a rather depressing vision of the not too distant future. What's really sad is that it is probably not too far off base.
You can say "well just don't use their services" but you had better be prepared NEVER to surf the web again because people are like sheep and there will always be enough people who do pay to keep the corporations screwing us forever.
Sadly, everything is about taking as much money from as many people as possible and we have jerk politicians like Senator Hollins who are willing to take campain contributions in trade for helping the corporations to do just that. All so the jackass can keep his high paying job.
Politicians will tell you that we need to pay high wages to attract quality. I say that money doesn't attract quality, money attracts greed.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
So, the internet may become a den of filth and slime.
So what? You know what'll happen? The rise of the BBS, all over again. We've a lot more technology availible to us now than we have in the past. We'd probably see multiple WANs set up.
Ya know, I don't tend to have much of a problem with spam. The odd message every few months. Certainly not waves of the stuff. I don't use any kind of spam-blocker software (at least not yet). But then, I don't have a hotmail or yahoo account (specifically because I don't want to deal with spam), and I'm careful about where I hand out my email address.
Pop-up ads? As other posters have mentioned, you can disable javascript. Or, you can just choose to not frequent websites that have obnoxious ads. It's not like there are no alternatives, just that the alternatives won't be as "professional". In the early days there weren't any ads on the web because it was all hobbyists. There are still hobbyist websites out there - you can probably avoid the commercial web completely if you want to.
The web of yore (or even the internet of yore - usenet) is still out there. You just have to look for it.
A most refreshing and talented
1st post. Very good work.
Yo...
Simps on slashdot too ignorant to mod down
an obvious troll that would make Michael Powell frown
but which millionaire in the Administration isn't a clown?
Kicking out a whack freestyle rap troll that's straight up crazy
To post on this wasteland I'm too lazy
after a full day of free unix hacking
into a chimp's whack-ass aol e-mail I've never considered cracking
Lamer script kiddies get a late pass and take a shower because your fat butts smell
watch me get gcc running on this handheld
Crazy whack daydreams of a schizo fantasy
letting loose a gigawatt EMP near a shipment of machines running windows CE (TM)
This post is extra lame so that you can see the futility squared
If you're reading this at level 1, no one read this or cared.
Peace in the Middle East, South Asia, and back home at your broken household...
Word to the mutha[censored]
-Biswas K. in full effizect
Von Neumann (1903-1957): Hungarian mathematician, considered the initiator of The Dark Age of Copyright Protection (~1945-2004) by proposing the foolish notion that computer code is data.
Viewing this encyclopedia entry cost you $0.85. Have a nice day.
I wish people would address and discuss the real issue at stake here. What I believe too many of these posters have failed to neglect in their responses is that they do NOT live in the scenario this article poses - one in which corporations and government become less distinguishable from one another. And in this scenario they simply might not have the option of using anything free, or turning on a spam filter in the first place.
A free economy does not suppose a free people. Even an economy in which one thinks he is free may not be free. A government is supposed to serve it's people and corporations are supposed to serve their customers.
Please indulge my imagination for a moment. Pretend that corporations have been merging for long enough that only two remain, the civil service provider and the corporate service provider. *eerie music* The Final Merger. Now turn both concepts into one and you have Service Commerce. You are provided everything. The opportunity to spend money, the opportunity to have your garbage collected. The opportunity to get higher education so you can be an engineer or an art major.
What you are not provided is the ability to choose who provides you these services. You don't get to choose the popups you see, they just popup. You don't have the option to get free information, you must subscribe. Since the advent of Service Commerce the head CEO's and execs now own roughly 80% of the world's money while the rest of us all get paid the same regardless of duties.
Then consider that instead of being fired, bad workers are just put into the correctional work force where they no longer even choose whether they will watch a particular commercial or speak a certain way. Those on the outside may still opt out but are none the less hurded through the Service Commerce machine.
My point is that all the common intrusive examples - spam, popups, subscriptions - posed by this article are no more the root problem of this orwellian prophesy than run down housing tenaments and squalid living conditions are the root problem of inner city violence. They merely reflect the state of the organization.
So what can we do? Simple, we can know. We can get educated. We can know our rights. We can vote not because it's just one vote but because we are allowed to. We can realize that we are consumers and we DO vote EVERY DAY. For all those who have already expressed their vote for linux and the Open Source community, wonderful, you've already started to make a difference and you know it and you are proud.
If you use linux for any of the same reasons as I do I can bet you are a perfectionist of sorts, perhaps a rebel, iconoclastic even and desire complete and full knowlege and control of your computer. Now realize that you have the same power to control your government, the people that put arsenic in your drinking water, BHG in your food and carbon monoxide in your air. Go vote at the next school board election, go rant at the next city buget proposal, write your congress people, write an editorial, join a peace rally, join a hate rally. Let your own voice be not heard, but affective (yes affective, not effective). Get mad. Go vote.
I'm too lame for sigs
When Spam and tke town criers shilling their crap is all that can be found, that's when the interneyt will have been led out to a small balcony, had a rope tied to its neck and it will have willingly jumped off.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I can't stand most of the crap out there, so I don't buy it. I don't buy CDs or DVDs anymore, I don't go out to movies or rent them, I don't buy pay-per-view or subscribe to premium cable channels, etc. (and I don't download any of this stuff either). Instead of producing something I would want to buy, the companies that produce this junk complain about piracy, as if I would even take their crap for free. Unfortunately, they have the money and power to make it more difficult to avoid their products (and avoid paying for them).
Despite all of this, I'm not too worried about the future described in the article. It's not that I don't see it as being likely, I just don't see it being impossible to avoid. If I don't pay today's prices for music, I won't pay high subscription fees. If web sites start charging more than they're worth, I'll go elsewhere or just go without. I base my purchasing decisions on quality, and that won't change with electronic services.
Of course, I have one secret weapon to fall back on if I have to abandon all else. Over the past few years, I have accumulated hundreds of books, at an average price of about 5 cents each. When all else fails, I'll just sit down and read (well, read more actually). And yes, Fahrenheit 451 is in there...
We (the Nerd community in general) could easily take it back if the majority of us didn't have such damn argumentative and subservient natures. :(
/. ) believe that the reducing the time to program something is more important then reducing the SIZE of that which is being programmed? Seriously, does anybody here even realize anymore that a fully featured word processing suite need not take up over 100megabytes? Or even over 2 megabytes? Or hell even over ONE megabyte?
I mean hell, an ORGANIZED security attack upon the infostructure of the commercial entities operating on the net, not to mention various companies that have chosen to foolishly put all of (or the majority of) their assets (employee records and such) online or on to internet routable machines would ensure a quick and swift victory over the forces of commercialism.
Of course too many potential Nerds have been taken in by the false dreams of big business and their promises to middle manage everything to perfection. The fact that VBscript is considered a 'language on the way up' is evidenced of this.
The darned thing is that an organized attack from both the inside and the outside of companies could easily either take them down or dehabilitate them for a long enough period of time to allow for open source alternatives to take a foothold. Even complete system backups would be a bit hard to retrieve if all of a companies assets had just been invested, say, Russian plutonium mines.
It is not that hard to get an agent on the inside of even a company like Microsoft either. Once access to the internal network has been gained a good deal of the security is gone, granted while I am sure that MS has good security inside of their compound itself, the fact is that a dedicated agent COULD and CAN gain complete or near complete control over their systems.
Hell Microsoft takes on numerous interns every year, often times in tech support or repair roles. Even an office lackey would have significant freedom of movement over a designated area.
Surely one or two just out of highschool Nerds can be found who have social engineering skills of some sort and reside nearby an Microsoft compound? It is not like MS has just one (though the largest goal of Redmond should of course be kept in mind.)
The the main issue at heart is really the lack of consensus amongst internet Nerds in general. Far too many have been brainwashed by the propaganda put out by the big businesses. Hell look at how many people (even on
Until we gain regain our consensus over such simple and in the past considered trivial issues, we will not be able to unite against the forces of those that oppose us, and in fact it could be said that those that oppose us are indeed the ones who have fragmented our groupings to begin with.
In a day in age where code can be measured in millions of lines, is it no wonder that the great society of Nerds that had been built up is so quickly falling?
We had taken (have taken, past or present. . . . and hopefully not into the future) too much pride in our creations, we tried to show them to the world, but then when they would not look we committed one of the ultimate mistakes, we tried to appeal to their greed.
We said not how computers could make life easier for all, but rather how they could 'increase worker productivity'. We said not how cancer could be cured, but rather how upgrade cycles could be created so that an industry could spring up designed soley to leech off of the artificially created need of the very market of which it had created.
And when they did not listen, nay, when they did not understand that which we had created was none less then a work of art, we instead lowered not but itself, but ourselves along with it, down to the levels of mere machinations by selling our creations off as thus. We have created our own end, and if that end is to be adverted we must create our own new beginning.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
"Of course you're very careful not to use the words "bomb" and "aeroplane" in the same message for fear of attracting the attention of the new anti-terrorism police."
I was under the impression that massive information filters were a little more sophisticated than simple word matches. This sounds like a bit of paranoid nit-picking. Although I could be wrong, maybe Echelon is just a shell script that calls grep (echelon.sh). But I`m sure it will be rewritten it in Perl by 2004. Maybe they`ll even borrow some code from Slash. Then violate the GPL by not releasing their code.
Not that I`m against privacy.
I'm very glad I can pre-order DVDs online and don't have to limit myself to what the local stores carry or wait for them to carry them. Or that in a class the other night, I could use my Palm VIIx to order a book for the class that no one told me we needed, and didn't have to make a note and a special trip to a bookstore during working hours to get it. Any technology can and will be misused, but the net is a Good Thing overall, including the commercial aspects.
Not to mention it completely leaves out the advances that will be made in the circumvention of these laws.
DCMA, circumvention is illegal. Do it and go to jail.
What's wrong with this picture? I don't listen to radio, watch TV much less have cable, and hardly go to the movies. The advertising/content ratio passed my threshold years ago. 4 of 5 calls to my house are by agressive salespeople. I'd like to chop my land line, but I know the same people will find my cell phone. My snail mail is composed entirely of junk mail and bills. I can't do so much as walk down the street without being assaulted by a 30 foot tall pop star billboard. Oh, that's right, people are making all means of communications useless with comercial agression. Oh yes, I pay handsomly for all of it. The phone bill is outrageous, the cable modem bill is a joke for a "service" with blocked ports and a ToS that is essentially, browse at our descresion, and we all pay for those billboards and those adverts on TV and Radio in the price of basic living needs. Even the electric company puts adverts on TV, what a waste of public money!
Have you used a Microsoft platform lately? It's just like the article describes, less some of the cost. You will, of course, provide a credit card for for your unilaterally modifiable license to browse, to subscribe to your favorite news site, etc ad nauseum. If Hollings has his way and kills free software, we will all suffer this. Remember paying money to the cable company for advert free entertainment? Here we are now! The lowest of the publishers are trying to set the rules for all future publication including what you type on your computer.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
When did i say capitalism sucks? I said it wasnt perfect.
I dont really care about capitalism, i care about technology being open.
Capitalism has nothing to do with technology, the russians had more technology than with did with their communism, and plenty of socialist countries in europe have plenty of technology, as does socialist canada.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
people were drawn to the net because of its freedom, and because it was free (information) Now that its commercialised people are losing that freedom. If corporates ever do manage to control content on the net, with things like the DMA, then you'll just see people move on. Hows anyone for a MAN? With so many metro wireless projects starting up.. who needs the net, when you can get 11Mbit/sec without wires? & then there's the added 'freedom' 120+ gig of mp3 fileserving anyone?
Every time a topic like this comes up, I am inclined to remind everyone that our online culture originated in the world of BBS's. That's where the real communities are. I've been running UNCENSORED! BBS (click to log in) for the last 14 years, and lemme tellya, I've seen it all. From the heyday of dialup to the commercialization of the Internet, from the utopian vision of a level playing field to the inevitable commercialization of the mainstream Web... guess what, folks? Through all that time, us old-school BBS geeks have been enjoying each other's company for years, in relative peace and quiet.
A friend of mine once put it this way: if places like Disneyopolis, MSN, and America Online compose the roar of the information highway, then your favorite friendly BBS could be likened to the corner pub where the locals gather.
Therefore I challenge each and every one of you to quit whining about what a commercial cesspool the mainstream Web has become, and go find your niche. Locate a BBS you like (I'd be thrilled if you chose mine, but there are lots of good ones out there) and log in daily. Become a part of the community. Meet people. Chat about whatever's on your mind: media, politics, sports, weather, relationships, technology, pets... it's all out there, and the sites operated by hobbyists are completely below the radar of corporate greed.
It's up to you. Don't like Disney's version of the 'net? Neither do I. Come join us in a place where they won't bother you.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Sorry to sound so cynical, but this just reads like a bad piece of half-baked sci-fi. $264 in net charges by the end of morning.
<count floyd 3d-glasses="on">
Ooh... the future is sooooo scary.
</count floyd>
It would be easy to tear this article apart piece-by-piece but it would be a further waste of time and little more than opinions clashing. Keep this in mind when reading these kinds of doom-and-gloom pieces: if the Internet has proven anything, it is that it is flexible and bends in unexpected ways that are usually dictated by the demands of the majority of its users. How successful have corporations been in harnessing the Internet so far? A few pop-up ads? Spam? Really, is that a threat to our freedoms? Thus far, major industries throwing millions of dollars at lobbying and technology development have hardly put a dent in the ability to download music. It's been, what, two years now since the recording industry has attempted to kill off Napster and its P2P spawn? How successful have they been? Let's project their success two years into the future... hmm....
Not quite $264 worth of scary, is it?
The Internet is too unpredictable and too young to be tamed, in my humble opinion, by corporate interests that require stability and predictability to achieve anything. Spouting doomsday theories at this point is ludicruous, plays into the silliest fears of the most gullible geeks out there, and runs counter to everything we've seen thus far.
--Rick
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Eventually blocking ads will be illegal; either under copyright laws (as a circumvention technique to get around paying attention), or under "attention rights" legislation enshrining the practice of content providers' rights to consumers' attention in law.
I said, "The reduced demand will drive prices up higher," but I meant the reduced use would drive up both price tolerance and the need to make more money for value delivered. Basically, the same way arcade game prices crept up from quarters to dollars as fewer people used them less often.
Also, for those of you with sigs turned off (I forget you can do that), my sig links to buskpay.com.
Stallman wrote something about this a while back if I remember.
The Right To Read
Would it not be possible to come up with a second net? I know it would probably be a lot of work, resources, cash, etc but may well be worth it in order to let them own the old net and have a new free net.
I only need the Preview button when I haven't used the Preview button.
The DMCA is merely an implementation of the last WIPO treaty. Europe has its own DMCA-like law (the European Directive on Copyright), which member nations are obliged to implement in laws. Australia has a similar law. Only "rogue nations" (i.e., the ones that Mozilla tells you it's illegal to export it to) are likely to not have WIPO-based laws.
Interesting article, however if computers were to ever become that opressive I'd be like the guy who went to Gateway to fix his computer with a sledge hammer. The same would go for the CD player and any other electronic device that fits that view of the future.
They won't get my money with terms like that. The RIAA and MPAA havn't gotten a dime from me since the DMCA was enacted, I can do it. Can you?
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Pardon the expression, but grow the fuck up, people. The amateur material on the net, which includes a lot of genuinely interesting and entertaining stuff, will still be there and will still be 100% free(beer). If you want to use commercial material, then you'll pay for access. If anything, this will make the net more like the real world, in which you get what you pay for, people have to pay their bills, etc.
I see this as not only inevitable, but a very good thing. If nothing else it will help kill off this ridiculous notion that a bunch of people sitting in front of computers is somehow a "community" with a unique "culture" worth preserving.
A couple days ago, I got a spam email from an address at rocketfire.com
I headed over to rocketfire.com to see what was up, and apparently whatever idiot owns the site decided to display some of his emails with his cohort spammers discussing their 4 million DoubleClick spammail campaign.
Unfortunately for the spammers, one of the emails contains a phone number, as well as email addresses of the spammers.
I urge you to call the spammers and tell them exactly what you think of their spam.
The url for the emails is http://www.rocketfire.com/Mail/
Have a nice day,
- Spamsturbator
Commercialization -- this is the hell of the modern world, but it needn't overtake the entirety of the internet. My own site has a single ad on it, but it's not mine(free hosting has it's price).
:)
The best way to avoid commercialism is to avoid places which attract lots of "customers". Find a website out of the way, find a good niche, and you can even get out of the way of commercialism altogether.
In 2004, I hope to have my game finished, but I doubt it.
finally, remember that commercialism is enevitable when the common man enters any arena. These are the sheep which make the spice girls and britany spears moneymakers.It's probably best to find another haven; once the masses enter, the leeches follow.
It's been a long time.
The thing is, the guys on top (big conglomerates and industry groups) will be VERY vulnerable to the slings and arrows of misfortune, especially with a legion of hackers out there ready to point out the chinks in their armour. This is principle of "infinite eyes", where nobody can hide the truth when enough people have access to the raw data.
So any industry that REALLY wants to succeed will find a way to use these principles to their advantage: be the "nice guy"/underdog, let the minor stuff slide, give people more for their money, look at hackers as a resource and bellweather. You may not become dominant, but you will probably survive while the big guys struggle ever-harder to keep control on the way down.
Just try and stay clear of those dinosaurs during their death throes... it's not a safe place to be. So I guess that also means don't tie yourself to them with partnership agreements.
Remember, all you Anarchists and Libertarians... the Wheel turns. Try and stay off the Top, for your own sake.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
I am speechless.
The reality for Internet users in Australia is that traffic costs a minimum of $0.13/Mb.
The ACCC is fighting to make Region Encoding of DVDs illegal in Australia - claiming that it's an anti-competitive trade practice.
I browse with images off as often as possible, because images cost ten times as much as the article they're obscuring. Spam costs me money. Running "apt-get upgrade" on my Debian box will cost me about $3-$10, depending on how much "woody" has changed in the last fortnight.
Opening Internet Explorer costs me money because it insists on redirecting me to the Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 home page and claiming that I really, really should download this new version of IE.
Thanks to spam, "postcards", NTP, scheduled IMAP checks and other non-interactive traffic, I can easily spend $1/hour when I'm sleeping. I don't even have to check my mail in the morning to start racking up the bills.
You people in the USA are living in a market-share-broadening dreamland, where providers are tripping over each other in an attempt to get you signed up to their networks. They all realise that once you've been using their service for 6 months "for free", they can start charging for traffic, and you'll just roll over and accept it like the good consumer-sheep you are.
In any Capitalist economy, you have to keep repeating this holy mantra - "The money has to come from somewhere. There is no such thing as a free lunch."
In the article, the author proposes a future where "open/free software" has been made illegal. The only software you're allowed to run is what Microsoft provides you. There are no features to disable JavaScript. You are a slave to the media and they to Microsoft. You have no ability to change settings like /etc/hosts. You cannot install JunkBuster or Jesred. You have no power.
After all, if you had the ability to control your computer, you'd also have the ability to create or alter data ("content"). If you have the ability to create or alter content, you also have the ability to steal content. That's what SSSCA and DRM is all about - preventing "theft" of "intellectual property" by removing your ability to make the choice to not steal.
Quite simple really.
How much talent does it take to run a jpg through an ascii converter? none
About 250 vinyl LPs, a score of cassettes, a dozen 8-track tapes, and 9 CDs.
:)
Boy am I strange
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Nuff said...
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
they can control your ISP, then you can't connect at all
If it can happen, it will happen. So you what choice do you have except a fight for your freedom on line or join the capitalists and close it down
your a flammer
Forget the promise of information everywhere, forget the concept of human knowledge being an open river to drink from, forget the community where you meet people you've never seen before.
Narrow.
The world is always trying to get into your head. Always selling. Always yelling. Always turning the lights on. Cower in your hole, like the mushroom you are.
Hide.
The world's full of differences, what does it matter if I see them? Critical thinking is all about data. If the data's locked down, so are you. If your perspectives narrow, the blinders get thicker.
Balkanize.
I don't like it. Not one bit.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
The GPL never said you had to release anything. All it ever said was that if you do release anything, it has to be with source available.
If you keep the mods internal to your organization, the GPL remains unviolated.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
And you are advocating a move towards terrorism to achieve your goal (note that I say *your* goal. I doubt anyone agrees with your lovely nihilist "death is the martyr of beauty" stuff.) That's fucking brilliant.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
ISP's have safe harbor. The content industries can no sooner shutdown all ISP's than they can get the SSSCA passed.
Neither one is going to happen.
One way around the GPL might be to charge a symbolic, one-time fee for shares in the co-operative or corporation for the possibility to access the binaries of the mods internal to your organization. Followed by large subscription fees for the actual access.
The important part of the GPL is the spirit or ideal -- that work contributes to progress. This is just a codification of how most of the Internet and its dependent technologies (TCP/IP, BIND, NCSA Mosaic and so on) have and are being created. Without these, the Internet and Web would never have happened and we'd still be locked into the same weird, private, incompatible networks as a few decades ago. The hard and fast practical benefits of the GPL are the result of following the spirit or goal, which is specifically to allow the future to build on the work of the past.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Ditch-diggers don't get paid forever for the drains they dig, that's reserved for the elite.
And you're only whining 'cos your not one of them.
Suck it up, and get on.
Please, Dr. Cowan: it's viruses.
I don't mean to get overly semantic about it, but the pseudo-word "virii" needs to go away.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
leaving you with nothing but a hefty bill to pay whenever you want to use their software or services.
Notice the word want. If they're trashing the internet, why would I want to use their software or services?
Because they don't need you. In fact, you threaten them. They'd rather you sat and watch TV-plus ("iTV" or whatever) and just fished out your credit card and kept shopping on the online mall. If that's not what you want to do, you're more trouble than you're worth, and they'd rather you sit and stew.
Ah, yes! Before everyone else showed up, the Net was this fantastic Geek Heaven, where all things were possible. You could download naughty pictures from the Delft University sever. You could engage in endlessly stimulating MUDs with fellow dungeon-crawling geeks. You could send e-mail! Hell, you could even use Gopher to snag files. It was Heaven on Earth!
Snap out of it! There was no Slashdot (founded in 1997, decidedly after the invasion of "other people"). There was no Gnutella. No Everquest. No online newspapers. No online banking. No ordering that hard-to find computer game or book or whatever in the dead of night when you live miles from the nearest store that carries what you're looking for.
There was less of a connection between "geeks" and "normal people", meaning that people who liked to tinker with computers were shunned far more than they are today.
It wasn't Heaven, just as this predicted 2004 won't be Hell.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Fnord, man... Fnord.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
This was actually considered by the UK government, because so many people have realized that juries won't send a person to jail for something like smoking cannabis. Thankfully, it was later dropped, but I'm sure it'll come back in some form.
"If it's not wave after wave of spam in your mailbox, it's excessively intrusive ad banners and popups, or Slashdot Articles "
What about the fully cryptated and anonymous
GNUnet
The article is incorrect because it is just too america-centrered. There are already more european internet users online than americans, by 2004 although americans will still be an important part of the web they will be a small, albeit important, minority.
To assume that american laws will totally control the internet in the EU, Russia, Japan, Australia, Africa, China (which will probably use linux as their standard OS anyway) and anywhere else beyond your shores is the cultural arrogance of breathtaking proportions
That's not much use to those of us who have been on the web for a while (though I my case not very intensively), and had set up homepages with email addresses on them before this recent crop of spam became a problem. Even as late as 1996, I was not getting any spam, but that's all changed now :-(
this all reminds me a bit of that book...
:)
and also a bit of that movie johnny mnemonic...
Sure it will come that far in 2004, and I'l start living underground with the other loteks
Do they really think I will pay for spam?? fsck it!
Really that's one reason why I don't think this will ever come true: You pay for the services AND you have to wade through advertisements? Normally things are free or inexpensive with a lot of "sponsoring", or they are expensive and you're free of most advertising.
Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers. -- Leonard Brandwein
Sod Capitalism, it's only one political philosophy afterall. The idea that capitalism is something we should accept because it is such a huge force dominating every aspect of ourlives is at best defeatist and at worst blind idiocy. I believe in a free world, not one that charges you for what was there already. Remember when the internet was touted as a means for potentially open everything. Open government, open access to knowledge, open expression of ideas and opinion, open source (Ha Ha). The free availability of information is a noble idea. Many of us who remember innocently believing that the internet would be a 'force for good' and the ultimate tool for the true empowerment of the people have been sorely disappointed. It's not enough to hope that the masses will become skilled in the use of the internet and become geeks and gurus with the knowledge and skills needed to navigate the mess that is the internet with some success. You have to act. Teach those who do not know. Show them the light at the end of the tunnel. Be the finger that points to the moon. Make a difference to the sad gits who spend thousands on 'state of the art' hardware because some dick of a salesman said they needed all that power to get the most out of 'the net'. Capitalism is by definition exploitation. Don't sell your knowledge give it away. Change yourself and your surroundings first. Don't just sit about moaning and theorising . DO SOMETHING. Be positive a positive force for change not a whinging techy geek.
Big deal... I pay the man in the newspaper kiosk, why shouldnt i pay cnn.com then?
And spending $264 in the morning on fees that are internet related is a pile of - pardon my french - bullcrap.
Those sort of fees would make sure the average consumer wouldnt buy computers anymore... Who will MS sell it's licences to then? I doubt someone stupid enough to pay $264 to read the news he could buy for $1 on hardcopy and some spam would be a good target market. Someone that stupid prolly can't keep a decent job and therefore prolly hasn't got any money
"explain to me why I should be interested in your happiness?"
I bet the last occupants of the World Trade Center could explain it to you. We dont all have to play nice together, and under your world of selfishness, greed, and freedom, thats what ya get.
I used to think it was funny to see the mouthy rich kid get his ass kicked for lippin off about how funny it was that some kids had to get the "welfare lunch ticket", that was before I found out I AM THAT RICH PRICK (read AMERICAN CAPITOLIST).
"Doctor, it's not the voices I hear in MY head, but the voices I hear in YOUR head that really frighten me."
Oooh scary monsters! The US can tax, regulate, control, etc all it wants. The web is GLOBAL (duh). As long as the states is playing a globalization game that includes withdrawing from any world-wide governing bodies and conventions, this scenario will not happen.
Descartes' last words: "I don't think..."
for months and months until the trial (e.g. the guy who wanted to walk around London naked). Then when the jury lets him off, what has he gained? He's been in jail for just as long anyway. I think some student did that at Berkley without getting jailed, so maybe they have more freedom there (I wouldn't try it in Salt Lake City though).
A short bit from John Donne's "Meditation 17" (which you might know as "For Whom the Bell Tolls" -- used without permission . . . )
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No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
-----
Questions?
Just because something is free does not mean you have to take it.
In the early ninites everyone, thought that the future lay in some kind of "interactive" TV system. A paradigm that still rears its ugly head from time to time (much like virtual reality, that most over hyped of technologies). With the killer app being "downloadable movies on demand". Basically, people in suits "get this" business modal, with installation done by some local company and subsriptions sold to punters. More or less what cable TV is today, or phone services etc. This has been the dream of failed tech like push and its kin.
It stands to reason that companies like to push this along, because, after all, it is all they understand and, over the years, have become very good at making money off this modal.
However, they forget the far greater power of the internet (as a medium). Is in its ablity to provide personal empowerment, I go online because I like to post stories on slashdot (despite getting trolled most of the time), to play interactive games, To download stuff just to see if it will compile, not to be some mindless consumer of some pathetically put together medium pathetic in comparison broadcast TV (which is still the better tech for delivering that kind of crap, for the time being).
To better illustrate my point, even if the perfect copyright scheme was introduced (very unlikly) or that most fascist (and unconsitutional) of laws introduced, The medium would still survive, things like linux and music underground would just become more popular, since the kiddies have to have something to download, and if band's become expensive, smaller for once.
The strength of the net is that it gives you access to some weirdos opinion of 911, and his freedom to post it, with out that the medium would just die. Ardvark fail to expain that, If "evil corps" had surceeded in bending ppp to their ends, then why the hell would the narrator even bother to use it? when all you got was overpriced access to MSN. He could have, just plugged into the local underground wireless LAN, which are sure to be everywhere by then.
Pianist : Some jerk whos taught themselves how to type in rhythm
Yes, History repeats itself and in the case of the internet, it will happen again. The geeks will start up a new completely separate network, perhaps called internet2? ;) BBS's will come back, perhaps in different form, etc. The simple fact is that commercialization can't ruin our lives, only things that are presently available to us. Just like bell bottoms, there'll be another network to rise up in place of the current internet.
Of course not. Anyone can run a jpg through an ascii converter. However, this fine person thought of doing it, and claimed a wonderful first post with it.
Very well done in deed.
Hello Titty (.)(.)
Breasts make everything better.(tm)
"Remember when there were hundreds of sites offering the latest news for free? Not any more. Sure, there still a few" -- wonder if /. would be one of those 'few'...
dmarien
In Roman Times, the governments soon realized that one way to keep the population calm and peaceful was to ensure that they had access to adequate entertainment. It's been a basic governmental strategry ever since. (Heck, it could have been before, the Romans just raised it to an art form)
Certain people in Congress have been studying history. The government has a vested interest in keeping the citizens distracted. They are in partnership with the Entertainment industry both to pacify the populace and to liberate some of the disposable income that might otherwise be locked up in savings.
Because of that, I find the scenario in the article to be very far fetched. Unless people really have a lot more disposable income to spend (inflation), the goverment will work to keep entertainment at least affordable.
...How many /. readers remember Robocop, and the all-encompassing OCP?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It looks like the big cash grab for the internet may result in an implosion for the internet, Just like CB radio. It may dwindle back down to just universities, military and B2B use with everyone else but the very rich relegated to slow connections with mega adverts and no free content.
It's pretty dismal picture for what we once thought of as THE unfettered commons.
Hmm... 231 new emails but your filters say that 217 of those are likely to be spam. Even though they've been dropped into another folder you'll still have to wade through them to make sure that you don't miss an important message that might have been accidentally sidetracked by the less-than-perfect software.
Damn, it looks as if you've also received 5 new virus/trojan attachments as well and one of them was 20MB in size -- that's another $4 on your DSL bill.
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Suddenly a pop-up dialog box appears advising you that there are 2 new Windows Security updates that should be downloaded, totalling some 60MB in size (another $12 worth of traffic).
You just know that downloading these updates will require you to reboot your PC and you're in a hurry so you hit the "cancel" button and fire up your web-browser to check the latest news headlines.
Readers Say
(updated hourly)
Be careful...-Dominic Computing in 2004...-Kez damn that's scary!...-Chris The Internet of 2004...-James Have Your Say
Within seconds, the PC's desktop comes alive with pop-up flashing, animated advertising banners -- but you're used to this highly intrusive advertising by now.
It is, it is, a glorious thing to be a Pirate King!
Selfishness is not evil unless it involves intrusion upon the rights of others.
Why? Out of what opening did you pull this
axiom?
A lot of people are confusing "Internet" with "Web". The Internet is the connections made between computers. This can happen on any port, any protocol. The Web is just data that comes from the Internet via HTTP. When you see a "pop-up" it is simply your web browser choosing to allow the web page to pop up a window.
So, the answers are (1) install a local firewall, don't allow odd connections (you may want to pay someone to administer your firewall), (2) Use a web browser that markets itself as a spam fighter (the closest now is a proxy such as WebWasher)
These two steps will make your internet use a far more enjoyable experience.
Travis
Magius_AR
That's a cute creative writing exercise, and a vehicle for highlighting today's issues in Internet politics, I guess. I don't mean to be some sort of nationalistic shit, but wouldn't most of the predicted nastiness only affect Americans? Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing if the next phase of internet growth was extra-American, so to speak. The various Open Source movements are hardly confined to the USA. (And, no matter how much clout the USA has in international affairs, it certainly isn't going to have much luck convincing every other Western nation to adopt similar freedom-stomping laws.) Anyway, I don't want to diminish America's contributions to the birth of the internet, but, in terms of the future -- if they're going to be enforcing such restrictive laws on their citizens, maybe their day is done. And ought to be. I thank you for your attention / je vous remercie de votre attention.
I am from a small, grease-loving country in the north called Ca-na-da.
This ominous future is completely silly. Charging for downloads at 20 cents a meg? At that rate I would have had to pay about 9000 dollars for all of the downloaded content on my harddrive. Our economy functions on supply and demand, if you could charge a dollar for every five megs downloaded you could set up a T-1 and by selling bandwidth recoup your costs before the end of the week. By the end of the year you would be fabulously wealthy. Of course this sounds like a marvelous buisness plan and everyone would want in, and everyone would get in. Of course it is clear that there would be an explosion of bandwidth providers and the bottom would drop out of the market and consumer costs would plummet. Hence charging 20cents/meg is farcical (similarly the software and content costs the article suggests would price the providers out of the market).
...and maybe once or twice a day I have to turn it on to look at some page. That's fairly quick and easy to do in Opera.
Maybe running with JS off isn't for everybody, but to me the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Frankly I have more of a problem with badly coded HTML that Opera won't parse than I do with JS sites.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Every once in a while, I saw one of those <55 MPH people. Mostly retired folks with Florida plates, just visiting for the summer (or using an out-of-state residence for tax purposes). It was never so much a matter of road rage as it was the cluelessness with which they would make unsafe merges & lane changes. When cars are passing you left & right about twice per second, there is no such thing as a waiting for a gap in traffic to change lanes. At that point, there are no "gaps" at all -- the other drivers detect a slowpoke nearby and close-in formation like a bunch of B-17 bombers in a WWII movie. The irony here is that any "road rage" was mostly confined to the people who obeyed the speed limit; the process of leaving them in the dust was relatively trouble-free.
umm is it just me or is this REALLY disturbing? even as a joke this would be disturbing but actually writing a serious guide step by step....it's just wrong, i think this could be the one and only good reason for censorship