if you take a strict constructionist approach to the US Constitution because the 9th amendment clearly states that any power not specifically mentioned by the US Constitution or not listed but directly connected to one (such as the creation of new branches of the military) doesn't exist for the federal government. In other words the federal government can make an air force, a space force or whatever because the US Constitution says that it can build a military (by saying it can raise armies and navies, for those that don't know the USAF was once a part of the US Army), but cannot regulate pornography because no where in the US Constitution does it say that there is power to establish a national code of morality.
The only exception to that rule is for-profit pornography because that is interstate or international commerce. However if no money is made by the site owner (intentionally, not the result of bad business planning) then it isn't commerce and thus cannot be regulated. And for the morality police among us I would say.... most porn I agree is disgusting and unethical, if not all of it, but I like to think of myself as a man of principle and thus I won't make an exception here.
"To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man." The greater liberal (as in liberal of the 18th and 19th centuries) argument: you have no right to restrain YOUR liberty with law because the law will affect future generations which may not want such restrictions and may not be able to repeal it while your generation is alive. Of course I guess when we allow populist idiots and demagogues to roam free Roussea's opening line in the social contract will be very much alive here in the US: "Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains."
Probably not since most people within 5-10 years will have the choice of cable or DSL. The people will be able to tell their service provider to stop screwing them lest they go to another type of provider. Also it could get very nasty for the service providers here because at a minimum they would find the state regulatory agencies sinking their teeth into their hides, then the FCC would eventually jump in too. What telecoms sometimes forget is that they are actually under the jurisdiction of the state for all telecom transactions within the state. That means that here in VA, if GTE tries that kind of shit, the general assembly can pass regulations mandating that all Virginians have unlimited downloads. And it is perfectly constitutional as GTE is operating within state borders and the sole purpose of the law would be to regulate what goes on in GTE inside our state.
My copy of Easy Cd Creator 4.0 Deluxe works just fine and I have no intentions of upgrading. Unless there is something truly compelling like DVD-R support in the next version where this feature is going to be introduced, I won't upgrade. Why? My software works just fine. The problem with humans is that we are never happy with what works. We tinker, but 90% of the time go about it the wrong way. If your software works as-is, then don't change unless you will get something that will make your life better without much hassle. If ain't broke, don't fix it. That is why our government is in such shambles, we tinker with it and never go back to proven methods and configurations when the hacks don't work.
I do wonder how effective this will be though. How do they plan to stop bootlegs from being made? Take out mp3 support? Make it so you have to pay royalties whenever you burn your own compilations for personal use? This to me sounds like corporate suicide, as much so as the new XP copy restraint system. People don't like being nickled and dimed to death, and making people pay a lot of money for the "right" (notice how any "right" these days can be taken away as easily as a privelege?) to make compilations from the cds they legally buy sure as hell is a doomed idea. Part of me is wondering if Roxio isn't trying to give out good PR to keep the DMCA from being expanded to provide massive oversight and regulation of the burning industry. Just a thought.
Only the government can do that. Corporations have no legal power to tell you what to do. You can look a CEO in the face and say "fuck you" and walk away if he orders you to do something. A cop does it, you risk going to jail. There is a difference!
Microsoft cannot force me to use Windows against my will on my home computer. I'm happy using Mandrake. If I go to work at a company that uses Windows for example, I must abide by the terms of my employment one of those being to use Windows unless I can show that Linux or MacOS X is a better solution to my company's problems. Are multinationals all bad too? I don't think so. If I don't like Sony I can go to another local electronics maker like Philips, or another multinational. Besides, all a multinational is, is a company with an office or two outside its home country.
That is exactly what we want. We want the "industry to sort it out!" As for your ignorant rant about planting chips in the hind quarters of the population, as a libertarian I just want to know one thing.... what corporation will legally be able to do that? Yeah that's right Rob, no corporation can legally do that, that is an initiation of force. We don't tolerate that, that is what the government is here to stop. Corporations cannot legally force you to do that. But oh wait, you're a Gore supporter that means that anything that corporations do that you don't like is a fundamental violation of your "rights." Don't criticize Bush for being ignorant about politics if you confuse liberals with libertarians. Liberals want active intervention, not us. The only exception to that is spam and only because it is theft of someone's resources.
And for those of you that think the government has all the makings of being the great champion of privacy remember that it started the war on drugs, and created wiretapping
In related news in a raid similar to the one that occupied Alcatraz Island, the American Indian Movement (AIM) siezed control of the building at American Online controlling the AIM instant messaging service on the grounds that the service violated the trademark intellectual property of the American Indian Movement and was also indirectly biggoted against American Indians everywhere.....
Let's think about this very slowly. $500,000,000 for advertising. Probably anywhere between $50 and $300,000,000 in R&D and god only knows how many billions for production, shipping to stores, etc. Take into account the probability that MS will take a loss on each hardware unit.... that leaves the question, how will they make bookoo bucks? Unless they plan to gouge their developers on royalties, are playing hopeful, a combination of those two or I'm missing something here.
Why not have the US government mandate that all frequencies in the next 10 years or so be used soly for digital/internet broadcasts so that way all of those internet radio stations can become real radio stations. Just think you'll be able to tune into mp3.com and more.
Does anyone here honestly have any intellectual respect for the protestors in question? They are the same morons that go around city to city "protesting" (actually usually more like rioting) against everything from milk made by genetically altered cows to trivial labor issues associated with free trade.
These are the same people that always attack new technologies that could affect the environment regardless of whether they will or not. They also attack all power sources with the word nuclear in their name, but their alternatives like fossil fuel plants and hydro-electric dams are far worse for the environment than nuclear power. These are the people stupid enough to think that nuclear fusion is a dangerous technology and could ruin our environment completely because they assume all nuclear reactions require critical mass to be achieved (which fusion does NOT). They are the ones that instead of protesting the non-existance of massive federal tax credits for early adopters of clean energy and the funding of research into said technologies, they call for restrictions on what is here and now. They are so quick to attack the symptoms, but when it comes to the environmental issues they haven't enough balls between the entire mainstream of the environmental movement to push for truly effective measures.
Remember too that these people are the ones that think that only the rich are corporate stockholders and thus the rich only stand to gain from free(er) trade. Well kiddywinks, hate to break it to y'all, but there are almost 50 million americans that are corporate stockholders. That means that you are affecting the futures of almost 50 million americans. But of course those luddite loony leftists are too caught up fighting for the dictatorship of the proletariate to see that the workers are not a large majority of our population anymore. Guess what, white collar workers account for a significant percentage of american jobs now. That's what we call progress. As for me while I'm a moderate libertarian, y'all can expect my votes to go to the LP.
The professor could put the documents on a computer that is a part of the greater university network and can be accessed from outside. He could then get a sympathetic computer science or information technology student to "hack" his computer, get the data and release it "against his will."
KDE team doesn't seem to have that problem!
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Eazel On The Ropes
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The KDE team doesn't announce that a new version is ready for public consumption until they either have working binaries or are in the process of finishing up the testing of the binaries. It was only around 1-2 weeks before Mandrake 7.2 users had fully operational RPMs ready for installation. It has been what.... at least 3 weeks going on a month and not even an announcement that "hey guys, we're working on the binaries.... here's our expected ETA for them, we'll keep you all posted!" from Ximian.
Eazel makes it too difficult for non-RH users
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Eazel On The Ropes
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· Score: 2
I'm using Mandrake 7.2 which is based on an update to parts of the RH 6.X distributions and yet the installer won't run on my computer. It doesn't even bother to try to see if it will install, it flat out refuses to even attempt to get Eazel working on my copy of Linux! So how am I supposed to feel sorry for a company that makes it a pain in the ass to get its product working? Also everytime I've tried updating Bonobo without the ximian installer, I get dependecy problems. So installing by RPMs is out of the question for me and I have no plans to download the sources and try to build it.
At the rate the GNOME world is going I very well may switch back to KDE 2 when it is all said and done. Why? Here's why!
-the GNOME team and/or Ximian DO NOT release packages on a timely basis when new versions of GNOME are out, users should not have to wait a month or more or in the case of Mandrake users for their distribution creator to release a new distro with the updated GNOME
-updating GNOME easily for the average user requires the ximian installer/updater to be sure that all dependencies are downloaded; KDE users can just download everything they want to update in the stable directory and know that ALL dependecies are included there
And finally while I'll probably still use GNOME 1.4 when I get Mandrake 8, why should I feel sorry for a company that ignores the existance of a significant portion of the Linux community, especially users it could easily support since they use a RH-derived distro like Mandrake 7?
Use the power of the state government over schools
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Sean In The Middle
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What we need to do in this country is push the state legislatures to create a system by which local officials have absolutely no power to make these kinds of decisions without state approval. In order for these kinds of things to be done, the school would either have to appear before a local chapter of a state school regulatory agency or a state judge and make a legal argument as to why such action should be taken. And the kid, his/her parents and any of their friends, teachers and/or witnesses could be there to defend the accused. Essentially require a quasi-court case before such action could be taken!
The more I see stuff like this, the less I am for local control of the school system and the more I want to see heavy oversight by the state governments. I would also like to see the governor given strong discretionary power to punish administrators that make such stupid mistakes.
A barn wasn't the kinda small target I had in mind. I meant something like a terrorist blowing up a school in a suburban area, something that would say to most Americans that terrorism isn't just a problem for the big areas, you aren't safe no matter where you are.
Their actions are nothing more than a form of legal terrorism. The only difference in my opinion between these industries (intellectual property) and the terrorists that have in the past struck fear in countless nations' civilian populations is the weapon of choice. For Osama Bin Laden and the like it is a bomb/gun, for these guys it is a court brief. The end result is the same: extreme response against those that are the weakest, most defenseless targets to send a message to the strong/rest of society saying that "none of you are safe from us, all of you are at our mercy."
That my friends is how terrorism works. You don't strike the strongest, most visible targets in this case organizations like Philips Electronics for making stuff like mp3 cd players, you attack the small targets that everyone assumes are more or less outside the conflict.... the students in this case. Why do terrorists of all stripes do this? Simple: the more visibile targets usually have more than sufficient resources to retaliate in full force. Who here honestly thinks that if IBM were to make a lot of really good mp3 players and the like that the RIAA would dare take them on in court? IBM's annual revenues are probably at least 2x the entire recording industry's combined! So you go after the middle and lower class guys that you know will be forced to play russian roulette in that they have two options: submit and be forgiven for now, or fight for their rights and run the risk of paying off legal bills for the rest of their life and/or destroying their family's economic future.
Finally one thing to keep in mind is that other industries don't behave this way when they are "robbed" by the public. Most other industries don't deceive themselves and their member companies' stockholders into equating not achieving the maximum profits with being victimized by thieves. The fact of the matter remains that even when other industries are affected by theft, they don't respond by lashing out at a great many of their potential customers. They isolate the problem few and deal with them and leave the rest out of it. That is the difference between an intelligent, shrewd corporate approach and the insanely stupid and self-defeating approach most intellectual property giants have. To the IP companies I say keep it up bozos, the more people you all go after, the less sympathy you all will have and the more contempt the average joe blow will hold you in.
I'm an iconoclast at my school. We have no goth or punk scene here and it has taught me a lot about how shallow and pathetic most of the "non-conformists" really are. I used to hang out with all the non-conformists and the level of resentment is insane in many cases. When I moved to my current high school (I've been here for 3 years and am a senior) I had to actually get to know people outside those cliques. And that is all they are, cliques.
Would I be accepted back by the people in those cliques at my old high school? Most likely not because I'm no longer a very judgemental person as they are and I don't get mad, I get even when people try to torment me. So stop crying about how bad these kids have it. I was tormented psychologically for about 7 hours a day in 7th grade and most of the time I've been in school other than 11th and 12th grade has quite frankly sucked big time. I haven't killed anyone and I just got into college on early decision.
I get back by rubbing it into the cool kids' faces that I got into one of Virginia's most competitive colleges, JMU, on early decision and they probably won't even get in on regular admissions. I rub in the fact that yeah.... I maybe a virgin... but I'm not the one that is going to have to pay child support in less than 9 months!
Many of the things now that make up the brunt of what I love in life such as computers and history, philosophy, listening to "uncool" music and linguistics would be sneered at by many of the fringe kids I used to hang out with. Why? They're "preppy" things, they're not "cool." Stop whining and bitching and moaning Katz about how bad these kids have it. Ones like the gamers, yeah they don't deserve it but most goths do deserve to be treated with little respect. Most of them have no clue what the pentagrams they wear really mean. Most of them try to just scare the "normal" kids. They don't scare me, modern goth is so passe. Frankly I find the majority of modern goth to be disrespectful to neo-paganism and wicca because of the blatant abuse of their symbols and practices.
So Katz, lay off the schpele about how so many kids are being hurt by bullies. Some of them such as the gamer crowd are often attacked without reason, but ones like the gothic crowd actively antagonize in many cases. Believe me Katz, been there, done that... I've seen happen plenty of times in front of me.
If liberals are such great defenders of free speech then why are liberal mobs rushing out to protest the publishing of David Horowitz's list of reasons why racial reparations are unjust and racist on university campuses? If liberals are such great defenders of freedom then why are conservatives, libertarians and objectivists persecuted by the faculties and left wing students at most decent universities because of their beliefs?
And as for your comment about the Rainbow Coallition, how are they not racist? Racism is a minor problem yet they constantly exhume the carcas of the dead horse of racism and beat it whenever they want more donations. How is it not racist to constantly be obsessed with race? I've known very few blacks they didn't overtly make race a dividing issue. I live in a rural area of Virginia now and I dated a non-white Hispanic girl for a while and no one made the fact that we were an interracial couple a big deal, in fact some of the farm boys that are often stereotyped as rednecks (they're not when you actually get to know them, god forbid!!) thought it was pretty cool cuz she was very attractive. If she and I could be together without a problem in such a part of the country, that is proof alone that racism is dead as an issue in mainstream America now!! Yet in the part of north carolina I lived in prior to moving here, my relationship with her would have been an issue and it was a VERY socially liberal part of coastal NC, Wilmington.
What you fail to see is that the political correctness that is promoted by the left is the ultimate censorship; it is a more palatable version of newspeak! I assume you've read 1984 so you know the reason why Newspeak was invented was to create a language in which one could not deviate from party doctrine in one's thoughts and words. By not protecting those things we despise such as the "Nuremburg Files" we give in more and more to political correctness. Eventually we will simply be referring to people who do stuff like that as "Ungoodthinkful nogoodniks." In the spirit of our society I say celebrate diversity, but not of race, etc.... diversity of thought. You want to celebrate diversity, celebrate the fact that we live in a society that is relatively tolerant of the very things it despises the most such as hate speech and pornography.
Read "On Prerogative" in the 2nd Treatise on Civil Government to understand why people such as myself (I'm a combination of classical liberal and objectivist) harbor no love for the left and its knee-jerk, reactionary approach to society's problems. The government is just about never the solution, it is almost inevitably the source of the problem, the heart of the crisis.
Before anyone flames me, understand that I understand you don't believe that the Nuremburg Files should be censored, but I don't completely support your reasons for why not. It isn't just
about protecting the stuff you like, it is about protecting the speech you don't like because censorship of any kind is morally wrong in the most fundamental way. You hate the KKK's website, but David Duke may hate the Rainbow coallition. Which one of you should have the discretionary power to decide which is good and which is bad speech and thus should be censored? I say neither because "offensive" speech is in the eye of the beholder; it is not an absolute. I find the rainbow coallition, the nation of islam and al sharpton to be extremely racist and I'm sure they find me to be so because I oppose their racist schemes, but in the interests of maintaining a free civil society I could never in good conscience condone them being censored no matter how many kill whitey pamphlets and websites they make. So remember kiddiewinks, the first amendment was never created to protect popular speech because popular speech would be protected by the majority, the first amendment was created to protect exactly those things they majority despises so people would never have to fear being punished for daring to question society's norms and the status quo's values.
But the previous poster was arguing that Linux *itself* would be ruled a circumvention device. If my memory serves me the support for dvd-roms is perfectly legal, just not necessary the playback of dvd movies. I have a dvd rom and it works just fine in Linux-Mandrake 7.2.
Do you honestly think as stupid as some may be that any federal judge is going to rule that an entire operating system is a circumvention device? For every user out there that uses it for the purpose of getting around CPRM there are 5 that use it because it is simply the OS they prefer as a desktop/server! Linus would only have to hand a few Netcraft survey results to the judge to prove that Linux is not only used by countless reputable people and businesses, but also serves a very solid purpose in its current incarnation.
Local and state governments would have good reason to begin regulating the huge cable monopolies because they have an almost guaranteed market. Almost everyone I know that gets tv where I live uses cable and my cousins in NC get their net access via cable broadband. I think there is going to be a trade off: much less competition but a right to use government regulation to demand a good level of quality. Frankly I think neither the cable companies nor consumers would really complain, the cable companies because they would make so much money that quite frankly a little more regulation and taxation than what they pay with only a small amount of the market would be well worth it for the stockholders.
The liberal argument of liberty without restraint
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The DeCSS Haiku
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Our society was founded on the liberalism of the 17th and 18th centuries such as the writings of John Locke. Liberty without restraint isn't liberty under classical liberal world views. So that begs the question Jack [Valenti] and Hillary [Rossen], if you two want software developers to have some of their liberties restrained then which of your liberties should be restrained? How about a nice state or federal censorship board? Sounds like an even trade off to me if you won't allow projects like DeCSS, OpenNap and LiViD to exist.
Slashdot Mirror
if you take a strict constructionist approach to the US Constitution because the 9th amendment clearly states that any power not specifically mentioned by the US Constitution or not listed but directly connected to one (such as the creation of new branches of the military) doesn't exist for the federal government. In other words the federal government can make an air force, a space force or whatever because the US Constitution says that it can build a military (by saying it can raise armies and navies, for those that don't know the USAF was once a part of the US Army), but cannot regulate pornography because no where in the US Constitution does it say that there is power to establish a national code of morality.
The only exception to that rule is for-profit pornography because that is interstate or international commerce. However if no money is made by the site owner (intentionally, not the result of bad business planning) then it isn't commerce and thus cannot be regulated. And for the morality police among us I would say.... most porn I agree is disgusting and unethical, if not all of it, but I like to think of myself as a man of principle and thus I won't make an exception here.
"To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man." The greater liberal (as in liberal of the 18th and 19th centuries) argument: you have no right to restrain YOUR liberty with law because the law will affect future generations which may not want such restrictions and may not be able to repeal it while your generation is alive. Of course I guess when we allow populist idiots and demagogues to roam free Roussea's opening line in the social contract will be very much alive here in the US: "Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains."
Got to hand it to them, they are at least using technology to solve their problems instead of resorting to the usual spree of legal terrorism.
Probably not since most people within 5-10 years will have the choice of cable or DSL. The people will be able to tell their service provider to stop screwing them lest they go to another type of provider. Also it could get very nasty for the service providers here because at a minimum they would find the state regulatory agencies sinking their teeth into their hides, then the FCC would eventually jump in too. What telecoms sometimes forget is that they are actually under the jurisdiction of the state for all telecom transactions within the state. That means that here in VA, if GTE tries that kind of shit, the general assembly can pass regulations mandating that all Virginians have unlimited downloads. And it is perfectly constitutional as GTE is operating within state borders and the sole purpose of the law would be to regulate what goes on in GTE inside our state.
I do wonder how effective this will be though. How do they plan to stop bootlegs from being made? Take out mp3 support? Make it so you have to pay royalties whenever you burn your own compilations for personal use? This to me sounds like corporate suicide, as much so as the new XP copy restraint system. People don't like being nickled and dimed to death, and making people pay a lot of money for the "right" (notice how any "right" these days can be taken away as easily as a privelege?) to make compilations from the cds they legally buy sure as hell is a doomed idea. Part of me is wondering if Roxio isn't trying to give out good PR to keep the DMCA from being expanded to provide massive oversight and regulation of the burning industry. Just a thought.
http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0-1896420-100-5 590701.html?tag=st.dl.10001-103-1.lst-7-1.5590701
Microsoft cannot force me to use Windows against my will on my home computer. I'm happy using Mandrake. If I go to work at a company that uses Windows for example, I must abide by the terms of my employment one of those being to use Windows unless I can show that Linux or MacOS X is a better solution to my company's problems. Are multinationals all bad too? I don't think so. If I don't like Sony I can go to another local electronics maker like Philips, or another multinational. Besides, all a multinational is, is a company with an office or two outside its home country.
And for those of you that think the government has all the makings of being the great champion of privacy remember that it started the war on drugs, and created wiretapping
In related news in a raid similar to the one that occupied Alcatraz Island, the American Indian Movement (AIM) siezed control of the building at American Online controlling the AIM instant messaging service on the grounds that the service violated the trademark intellectual property of the American Indian Movement and was also indirectly biggoted against American Indians everywhere.....
Let's think about this very slowly. $500,000,000 for advertising. Probably anywhere between $50 and $300,000,000 in R&D and god only knows how many billions for production, shipping to stores, etc. Take into account the probability that MS will take a loss on each hardware unit.... that leaves the question, how will they make bookoo bucks? Unless they plan to gouge their developers on royalties, are playing hopeful, a combination of those two or I'm missing something here.
Why not have the US government mandate that all frequencies in the next 10 years or so be used soly for digital/internet broadcasts so that way all of those internet radio stations can become real radio stations. Just think you'll be able to tune into mp3.com and more.
These are the same people that always attack new technologies that could affect the environment regardless of whether they will or not. They also attack all power sources with the word nuclear in their name, but their alternatives like fossil fuel plants and hydro-electric dams are far worse for the environment than nuclear power. These are the people stupid enough to think that nuclear fusion is a dangerous technology and could ruin our environment completely because they assume all nuclear reactions require critical mass to be achieved (which fusion does NOT). They are the ones that instead of protesting the non-existance of massive federal tax credits for early adopters of clean energy and the funding of research into said technologies, they call for restrictions on what is here and now. They are so quick to attack the symptoms, but when it comes to the environmental issues they haven't enough balls between the entire mainstream of the environmental movement to push for truly effective measures.
Remember too that these people are the ones that think that only the rich are corporate stockholders and thus the rich only stand to gain from free(er) trade. Well kiddywinks, hate to break it to y'all, but there are almost 50 million americans that are corporate stockholders. That means that you are affecting the futures of almost 50 million americans. But of course those luddite loony leftists are too caught up fighting for the dictatorship of the proletariate to see that the workers are not a large majority of our population anymore. Guess what, white collar workers account for a significant percentage of american jobs now. That's what we call progress. As for me while I'm a moderate libertarian, y'all can expect my votes to go to the LP.
The professor could put the documents on a computer that is a part of the greater university network and can be accessed from outside. He could then get a sympathetic computer science or information technology student to "hack" his computer, get the data and release it "against his will."
The KDE team doesn't announce that a new version is ready for public consumption until they either have working binaries or are in the process of finishing up the testing of the binaries. It was only around 1-2 weeks before Mandrake 7.2 users had fully operational RPMs ready for installation. It has been what.... at least 3 weeks going on a month and not even an announcement that "hey guys, we're working on the binaries.... here's our expected ETA for them, we'll keep you all posted!" from Ximian.
At the rate the GNOME world is going I very well may switch back to KDE 2 when it is all said and done. Why? Here's why!
The more I see stuff like this, the less I am for local control of the school system and the more I want to see heavy oversight by the state governments. I would also like to see the governor given strong discretionary power to punish administrators that make such stupid mistakes.
Just think, now parents in Britain with sons in MI5 and MI6 can tell their little kids that "Big Brother is watching you!"
A barn wasn't the kinda small target I had in mind. I meant something like a terrorist blowing up a school in a suburban area, something that would say to most Americans that terrorism isn't just a problem for the big areas, you aren't safe no matter where you are.
Their actions are nothing more than a form of legal terrorism. The only difference in my opinion between these industries (intellectual property) and the terrorists that have in the past struck fear in countless nations' civilian populations is the weapon of choice. For Osama Bin Laden and the like it is a bomb/gun, for these guys it is a court brief. The end result is the same: extreme response against those that are the weakest, most defenseless targets to send a message to the strong/rest of society saying that "none of you are safe from us, all of you are at our mercy." That my friends is how terrorism works. You don't strike the strongest, most visible targets in this case organizations like Philips Electronics for making stuff like mp3 cd players, you attack the small targets that everyone assumes are more or less outside the conflict.... the students in this case. Why do terrorists of all stripes do this? Simple: the more visibile targets usually have more than sufficient resources to retaliate in full force. Who here honestly thinks that if IBM were to make a lot of really good mp3 players and the like that the RIAA would dare take them on in court? IBM's annual revenues are probably at least 2x the entire recording industry's combined! So you go after the middle and lower class guys that you know will be forced to play russian roulette in that they have two options: submit and be forgiven for now, or fight for their rights and run the risk of paying off legal bills for the rest of their life and/or destroying their family's economic future. Finally one thing to keep in mind is that other industries don't behave this way when they are "robbed" by the public. Most other industries don't deceive themselves and their member companies' stockholders into equating not achieving the maximum profits with being victimized by thieves. The fact of the matter remains that even when other industries are affected by theft, they don't respond by lashing out at a great many of their potential customers. They isolate the problem few and deal with them and leave the rest out of it. That is the difference between an intelligent, shrewd corporate approach and the insanely stupid and self-defeating approach most intellectual property giants have. To the IP companies I say keep it up bozos, the more people you all go after, the less sympathy you all will have and the more contempt the average joe blow will hold you in.
I'm an iconoclast at my school. We have no goth or punk scene here and it has taught me a lot about how shallow and pathetic most of the "non-conformists" really are. I used to hang out with all the non-conformists and the level of resentment is insane in many cases. When I moved to my current high school (I've been here for 3 years and am a senior) I had to actually get to know people outside those cliques. And that is all they are, cliques. Would I be accepted back by the people in those cliques at my old high school? Most likely not because I'm no longer a very judgemental person as they are and I don't get mad, I get even when people try to torment me. So stop crying about how bad these kids have it. I was tormented psychologically for about 7 hours a day in 7th grade and most of the time I've been in school other than 11th and 12th grade has quite frankly sucked big time. I haven't killed anyone and I just got into college on early decision. I get back by rubbing it into the cool kids' faces that I got into one of Virginia's most competitive colleges, JMU, on early decision and they probably won't even get in on regular admissions. I rub in the fact that yeah.... I maybe a virgin... but I'm not the one that is going to have to pay child support in less than 9 months! Many of the things now that make up the brunt of what I love in life such as computers and history, philosophy, listening to "uncool" music and linguistics would be sneered at by many of the fringe kids I used to hang out with. Why? They're "preppy" things, they're not "cool." Stop whining and bitching and moaning Katz about how bad these kids have it. Ones like the gamers, yeah they don't deserve it but most goths do deserve to be treated with little respect. Most of them have no clue what the pentagrams they wear really mean. Most of them try to just scare the "normal" kids. They don't scare me, modern goth is so passe. Frankly I find the majority of modern goth to be disrespectful to neo-paganism and wicca because of the blatant abuse of their symbols and practices. So Katz, lay off the schpele about how so many kids are being hurt by bullies. Some of them such as the gamer crowd are often attacked without reason, but ones like the gothic crowd actively antagonize in many cases. Believe me Katz, been there, done that... I've seen happen plenty of times in front of me.
And as for your comment about the Rainbow Coallition, how are they not racist? Racism is a minor problem yet they constantly exhume the carcas of the dead horse of racism and beat it whenever they want more donations. How is it not racist to constantly be obsessed with race? I've known very few blacks they didn't overtly make race a dividing issue. I live in a rural area of Virginia now and I dated a non-white Hispanic girl for a while and no one made the fact that we were an interracial couple a big deal, in fact some of the farm boys that are often stereotyped as rednecks (they're not when you actually get to know them, god forbid!!) thought it was pretty cool cuz she was very attractive. If she and I could be together without a problem in such a part of the country, that is proof alone that racism is dead as an issue in mainstream America now!! Yet in the part of north carolina I lived in prior to moving here, my relationship with her would have been an issue and it was a VERY socially liberal part of coastal NC, Wilmington.
What you fail to see is that the political correctness that is promoted by the left is the ultimate censorship; it is a more palatable version of newspeak! I assume you've read 1984 so you know the reason why Newspeak was invented was to create a language in which one could not deviate from party doctrine in one's thoughts and words. By not protecting those things we despise such as the "Nuremburg Files" we give in more and more to political correctness. Eventually we will simply be referring to people who do stuff like that as "Ungoodthinkful nogoodniks." In the spirit of our society I say celebrate diversity, but not of race, etc.... diversity of thought. You want to celebrate diversity, celebrate the fact that we live in a society that is relatively tolerant of the very things it despises the most such as hate speech and pornography.
Read "On Prerogative" in the 2nd Treatise on Civil Government to understand why people such as myself (I'm a combination of classical liberal and objectivist) harbor no love for the left and its knee-jerk, reactionary approach to society's problems. The government is just about never the solution, it is almost inevitably the source of the problem, the heart of the crisis.
Before anyone flames me, understand that I understand you don't believe that the Nuremburg Files should be censored, but I don't completely support your reasons for why not. It isn't just about protecting the stuff you like, it is about protecting the speech you don't like because censorship of any kind is morally wrong in the most fundamental way. You hate the KKK's website, but David Duke may hate the Rainbow coallition. Which one of you should have the discretionary power to decide which is good and which is bad speech and thus should be censored? I say neither because "offensive" speech is in the eye of the beholder; it is not an absolute. I find the rainbow coallition, the nation of islam and al sharpton to be extremely racist and I'm sure they find me to be so because I oppose their racist schemes, but in the interests of maintaining a free civil society I could never in good conscience condone them being censored no matter how many kill whitey pamphlets and websites they make. So remember kiddiewinks, the first amendment was never created to protect popular speech because popular speech would be protected by the majority, the first amendment was created to protect exactly those things they majority despises so people would never have to fear being punished for daring to question society's norms and the status quo's values.
But the previous poster was arguing that Linux *itself* would be ruled a circumvention device. If my memory serves me the support for dvd-roms is perfectly legal, just not necessary the playback of dvd movies. I have a dvd rom and it works just fine in Linux-Mandrake 7.2.
Do you honestly think as stupid as some may be that any federal judge is going to rule that an entire operating system is a circumvention device? For every user out there that uses it for the purpose of getting around CPRM there are 5 that use it because it is simply the OS they prefer as a desktop/server! Linus would only have to hand a few Netcraft survey results to the judge to prove that Linux is not only used by countless reputable people and businesses, but also serves a very solid purpose in its current incarnation.
Local and state governments would have good reason to begin regulating the huge cable monopolies because they have an almost guaranteed market. Almost everyone I know that gets tv where I live uses cable and my cousins in NC get their net access via cable broadband. I think there is going to be a trade off: much less competition but a right to use government regulation to demand a good level of quality. Frankly I think neither the cable companies nor consumers would really complain, the cable companies because they would make so much money that quite frankly a little more regulation and taxation than what they pay with only a small amount of the market would be well worth it for the stockholders.
Our society was founded on the liberalism of the 17th and 18th centuries such as the writings of John Locke. Liberty without restraint isn't liberty under classical liberal world views. So that begs the question Jack [Valenti] and Hillary [Rossen], if you two want software developers to have some of their liberties restrained then which of your liberties should be restrained? How about a nice state or federal censorship board? Sounds like an even trade off to me if you won't allow projects like DeCSS, OpenNap and LiViD to exist.