If you were to "shutdown the internet" do you realize just what kind of disaster that would be for the US?! Our government would face open revolt in the US and a bunch of very angry neighbors as well
If cds were priced realistically at local stores at say..... $7-$12 before sales tax then piracy wouldn't be common at all. People would feel good about the music they buy because they would feel like they got a good product at a good price. But come on people! $18 is the norm for new cds where I live. I went to buy the new sunny day realestate cd at sam goody (the only decent record store at our mall:( ) and it cost $18!! I bought my copy their "how it feels to be something on" cd online for $11 before s&h (which wasn't bad at all because I bought 17 cds in the order).
If stuff like this happens in the US I plan to start getting my friends and I split the cost of the original cd and burn copies of it! We'll just roll dice or something to see who gets the original copy.
Most americans can't take animation seriously
on
End Of Fox Animation
·
· Score: 5
We've been raised for generations to believe that animation is for little kids and that live action somehow is for adults. Most of the kids at my high school (I'll be a senior this year) don't even for the most part respect anime thanks to the marketting bastards that have made many americans think "sailor moon/pokemon==anime".
Most of americans won't even watch serious anime like the guyver series, nge, macross II, ninja scroll and akira. So I say that there isn't much hope for serious animation in general here in the US if most americans won't even willingly give some serious anime like the series listed above.
Remember folks, this ain't Japan where animation is considered a highly respectable, serious artform that all ages appreciate. You can find R rated anime in theatres in Japan and it can do quite well if it is well done, but here in the US it will be lucky if it is successful in ANY form at all.
that could kill wireless internet for laptop users. Afterall..... what self-respecting person would want to run the risk of sterilizing themselves by having a laptop in their lap which is sending out dangerous levels of radiation?
how are C++ and Java procedural languages? Both are designed with OOP in mind. My understanding is that C is a procedural language because it has no OO capabilities but C++ and Java are OO languages and thus NOT procedural. Could someone then explain the difference between Haskell and say... C++/Java?
Since Earthlink is only collecting that data when it is being ordered to by a court I think that isn't such a bad thing especially since Earthlink is in charge of the data collection, not the feds. That way there is a 99.9% less chance of a federal fishing expedition which ends up monitoring half of the earthlink users because carnivore decided 1/2 the messages were suspicious.
it is the fact that the government keeps on expanding its powers that is every bit the problem. As for whether the government invented the internet, it laid the foundation but private work was responsible for most of what we now call the internet. Basically it doesn't matter who made the initial investment, it has an independent life of its own now.
The FBI also is not an agency that I choose to trust. I lost any faith I had in them when I was 11 or 12 and saw Waco on the evening news. I mean come on folks then there was ruby ridge, do we want to trust an agency with our privacy that has no respect for human life?! And no I'm not a republican, I am a libertarian.
I think Katz is missing the point that first off, 2/3 of the 30's and under crowd knows next to nothing about computers and 2nd those of us who do know how to use them will be parents one day and it will be back to square one with the parents knowing more than their kids. Basically the fun of being the smart kids on the block is going to last only for the current teen generation.
I don't think that online voting should be given any more oohs and ahhs unless 3rd parties can jump on the ballet unrestricted. What's the difference between an online voting ballet and an offline voting ballet if they only have the Republicratic candidates?
Until there is a concerted effort to make sure that 3rd parties like the LP, Green and Reform party can get on the ballets everytime online.... you won't get me excited about this.
Corporations have NO constitutional protection. In other words no property rights, no right to bear arms, no right to free speech, no right to freedom of press, no protection from search and siezure, etc. The bill of rights is for INDIVIDUALS ONLY. You and I can speak freely, but corporations can be restricted in whatever way the government wants to because as I said they have no protection granted by the bill of rights because it is specificaly a bill-of-rights-for-the-individual
Afterall only we dotcommunists would dare to use the internet to criticize the wonderful, self-sacrificing and just well.... all american corporate america. We're the dotRouge... beware we're out there and armed and we're dotcoming for your corporate asses!
Something like Sealand comes to mind
on
Pirate DNS?
·
· Score: 1
I know it couldn't be done without much expense but something like Sealand would offer a wonderful advantage. Some eccentric rich person could buy a small carribean island, setup shop there and create the ultimate data haven/dns service. He could then petition either the US or some of the European nations to recognize the island-company as a soverign nation... if that fails he/she could always go to Japan.
If that were to happen we would have a DNS/Data Haven that is unrestricted by bullshit like WIPO and thus can give its domain names on a first come, first served basis. Frankly I don't think it is possible otherwise to do DNS without incurring the wrath of the corporations seeking to "protect" their trademarks.
On one hand they claim that the reports are totally false and on the other they report that they are making Mac video cards and drivers. Or is this a clever way to tell the public that they WILL be the Mac video card provider once they get Microsoft in too deep with the XBox to safely drop them as a chipset provider?
McDonalds isn't a threat to most mom and pop restaurants because those restaurants aren't in the same business as McDonalds. They specialize in REAL food.... not trashy, fatty fast food like McDonalds. Both can coexist wonderfully, my county is a good example of that. We have several mom and pop restaurants which are quite successful.
As for the guy you're talking about, I don't respect him because he vandalized property that didn't belond to him. If he wants to complain about the cheese duties then why doesn't he push his OWN country to lower its regulations on imports. Both the US and France are fairly protectionist nations. If he can't understand that the feds want to protect dairy farmers in the US at the expense of foreign dairy farmers then he is an idiot.
I once believed in the "corporate republic" but I don't believe it will come to pass any longer. Things like eBooks will make it much easier for the creators to circumvent the corporate system... and why should the providers of that kind of technology care about the book publishers, etc? Their money comes from empowering the creator to take total control over their works.
Here are my suggestions on how you can avoid the permanent establishment of the corporate republic without going over to the equally-conformist socialist system advocated by people like that French protester.
-restrict patents to ONLY physical products which the inventor can show that he/she/the company has already made and has a working implementation of it. No patenting of ideas, regardless of how narrow or broad.... only specific products that the inventor has a working model of
-give JOINT ownership of the copyright of a corporate production to the creative team.... disney publishes Bambi 2.0 and the team that made it has a shared, 50/50, stake in the copyright (or even better give them the copyright completely)
-recognize the supreme authority of the constitution regardless of whether the institution violating the rights of the individual/group is publically or privately owned
-allow judges to give extreme fines, without appeal, to companies which attempt to use the courts to silence/persecute their enemies
-allow the courts to impose jail sentences or fines on school officials that attack their eccentric students.
That's why they don't go for us. It's interesting though because physically I'm built much more like a jock than a geek but mentally I'm probably 80-90% geek if not 100%:) The girls react to me once they deal with me no differently than they do when they meet the average stereotype geek.
Coding is not a glamorous job to the general public. It really is seen as being as mysterious and arcane as witchcraft (which is fairly easy to understand when you actually study it). I also think many of the females in our society fear geeks because we have skills which make us look like people that are too smart for them.
As for social pressure..... BAH! You're supposed to rise up beyond those around you and achieve the things in life that mean something to you. Right now I'm learning C++ and PERL and am going to strongly consider learning either ObjectiveC or Java so I can learn COCOA development. Frankly I think it's just easier for guys to tell society that it can take its demands that we conform and shove them up its ass.
The final thing I think should be pointed out if it hasn't already been is that even in high school the smart girls don't have the sense to go to the guys they know will adore them and NOT want them to hide their smarts. My school's ACT (academic competition team) has a lot of guys that are in as good a shape as the jocks and we are also very intelligent. Most of the smart girls though don't have the sense to go to us instead of the jocks, even though they know WE WANT SMART GIRLS.
Here's the best way to stop this, give your ISP a market incentive to block this kind of stuff from being sent to their users. It shouldn't be too difficult for ISP's to block content from certain domains like say..... doubleclick's. It could be done on a $.25-$.50 per blocked domain and/or IP basis.
First it was the black racists in the NAACP, etc complaining that Jar Jar's accent makes him sound like a Jamaican and they found that offensive because he was a dumb/subordinate character who they thought made blacks look bad.
So now I'm wondering, which group will be pissed off this time? Which bunch of racists will find an "attack" against their race's pride and dignity? This will be interesting though, my bet is that this go around it will be some of the good ole boys (not just from the south mind you) who'll get pissed cuz the storm troopers are all white guy clones and act like NAZI's.
It seems to me that the IP laws are being designed these days to DISCOURAGE people from making their IP freely availible to the public. UCITA is a perfect example of this. Everyone knows that the average free software coder can't afford to give warranties for his/her software.
Another issue is that our government is getting ridiculous with its favoritism. It seeks to stifle one form of creation, coding, to protect another, dvd movies. The natural conclusion of such a mindset is to punish book authors because reading takes away time that could be spent consuming audio/visual media (rather than printed media).
It has been of course quite easy (and rightfully so) to be cynical towards modern representative democracy. Special interests control every aspect of the process of getting the leaders that we want or don't want into power. The media powers for all intents and purposes silence the 3rd parties by not allowing them to enter into televised presidential debates, big corporations control the funding of the political parties who are themselves the ultimate special interest group. Until we remove these kinds of road blocks the kind of IP reform we want will not be possible and things like UCITA will popup as often as new cases of AIDS in many of the unfortunate african nations.
Don't feel bad, grits are a quite delicious dish perfectly suitable for feeding a small nation like Canada afterall they've supplied the poor in the South with low-cost food for centuries. Now if your nation was run by some sort of yankee food then I would be the first to volunteer to join a peacekeeping force to liberate Canada from the oppression of northern culinery imperfection.
(I'm a Virginian, i've got a right to make fun of the south; yankees however do not)
Just a little off topic side note, the only difference between pre-emancipation North and South was that slavery in the south was based on race whereas in the North slavery was based on economic class.
The courts could very easily rule against the RIAA because of that logic. The last thing the courts want is to be flooded with cases where people like us get sued for linking to sites which link to sites with "bad" content.
If that site had linked directly to the copyrighted material the case would have merit but if not then the case could be easily dismissed as an Internet version of guilty by association
In a true lassiez faire system it is up to the corporations to protect their own IP. If they cannot, then that's their problem, not the government's.
Most corporations are like fat sheep that have grown lazy under the protection of the shepherd (the government). If the shepherd leaves then the corporations would be eaten alive by the wolves in the free market. Find that hard to believe? Without governmental protection of IP, most music, movie and software companies would die within a few years of the revokation of the IP laws.
here on/. to get the federal government to abolish the patent system. A free society is one where you don't have to pay royalties for using other people's ideas and making something even bigger and better.
It would be truly dangerous for gamers if they stary going after the big guys like square. Especially square. Everyone knows that the FF series is one of the most popular game series in the history of electronic gaming. While it is true that Microsoft would give them more resources, we have no proof that Microsoft will leave their game development studios alone creatively. Imagine Microsoft strongly censoring the FF games because they get pressure from groups claiming that the promote satanism, etc by making main characters who're black mages, and so on.
I can only see one benefit to Microsoft buying up development studios and that is that we'll see games being released in the US before they are in Japan. However, call me paranoid, but I am still concerned about Microsoft either proactively or reactively restricting the creative liberties of its development studios.
I think you have a good point but what happens if the site gets popular and starts eating up the hosting service's bandwidth? The fees will start to rise really quickly and the site may have to scale back or go under if there is no source of revenue that helps offset the costs other than the maintainer's salary.
Even worse, suppose you're writing OSS and you want to post your code to your site. Say the code is 512k (we'll use this just cuz it's 1/2 a meg). If you get 200 downloads that's 100mb of monthly bandwidth used up right there. Now say there are 8000 or 9000 downloads. That is most if not all of the bandwidth allocated each month by most of the hosting services I've seen.
The worst part of it all is that if everyone just clicked on a banner once or twice a month it would help get the sites the revenue they need to stay afloat. Blocking the ads with software only makes it harder for sites to raise revenue and of course that leaves less incentive for people to maintain free sites. Blocking popups is certainly justified but banners embedded in the page is not.
Also what would we do without many of the free services like tripod and geocities? They are the easiest ways for people to publish content online. If they go under then much of the free speech hype given to the web will be gone.
Slashdot Mirror
If you were to "shutdown the internet" do you realize just what kind of disaster that would be for the US?! Our government would face open revolt in the US and a bunch of very angry neighbors as well
If cds were priced realistically at local stores at say..... $7-$12 before sales tax then piracy wouldn't be common at all. People would feel good about the music they buy because they would feel like they got a good product at a good price. But come on people! $18 is the norm for new cds where I live. I went to buy the new sunny day realestate cd at sam goody (the only decent record store at our mall :( ) and it cost $18!! I bought my copy their "how it feels to be something on" cd online for $11 before s&h (which wasn't bad at all because I bought 17 cds in the order).
If stuff like this happens in the US I plan to start getting my friends and I split the cost of the original cd and burn copies of it! We'll just roll dice or something to see who gets the original copy.
We've been raised for generations to believe that animation is for little kids and that live action somehow is for adults. Most of the kids at my high school (I'll be a senior this year) don't even for the most part respect anime thanks to the marketting bastards that have made many americans think "sailor moon/pokemon==anime".
Most of americans won't even watch serious anime like the guyver series, nge, macross II, ninja scroll and akira. So I say that there isn't much hope for serious animation in general here in the US if most americans won't even willingly give some serious anime like the series listed above.
Remember folks, this ain't Japan where animation is considered a highly respectable, serious artform that all ages appreciate. You can find R rated anime in theatres in Japan and it can do quite well if it is well done, but here in the US it will be lucky if it is successful in ANY form at all.
that could kill wireless internet for laptop users. Afterall..... what self-respecting person would want to run the risk of sterilizing themselves by having a laptop in their lap which is sending out dangerous levels of radiation?
how are C++ and Java procedural languages? Both are designed with OOP in mind. My understanding is that C is a procedural language because it has no OO capabilities but C++ and Java are OO languages and thus NOT procedural. Could someone then explain the difference between Haskell and say... C++/Java?
Since Earthlink is only collecting that data when it is being ordered to by a court I think that isn't such a bad thing especially since Earthlink is in charge of the data collection, not the feds. That way there is a 99.9% less chance of a federal fishing expedition which ends up monitoring half of the earthlink users because carnivore decided 1/2 the messages were suspicious.
it is the fact that the government keeps on expanding its powers that is every bit the problem. As for whether the government invented the internet, it laid the foundation but private work was responsible for most of what we now call the internet. Basically it doesn't matter who made the initial investment, it has an independent life of its own now.
The FBI also is not an agency that I choose to trust. I lost any faith I had in them when I was 11 or 12 and saw Waco on the evening news. I mean come on folks then there was ruby ridge, do we want to trust an agency with our privacy that has no respect for human life?! And no I'm not a republican, I am a libertarian.
I think Katz is missing the point that first off, 2/3 of the 30's and under crowd knows next to nothing about computers and 2nd those of us who do know how to use them will be parents one day and it will be back to square one with the parents knowing more than their kids. Basically the fun of being the smart kids on the block is going to last only for the current teen generation.
I don't think that online voting should be given any more oohs and ahhs unless 3rd parties can jump on the ballet unrestricted. What's the difference between an online voting ballet and an offline voting ballet if they only have the Republicratic candidates?
Until there is a concerted effort to make sure that 3rd parties like the LP, Green and Reform party can get on the ballets everytime online.... you won't get me excited about this.
Corporations have NO constitutional protection. In other words no property rights, no right to bear arms, no right to free speech, no right to freedom of press, no protection from search and siezure, etc. The bill of rights is for INDIVIDUALS ONLY. You and I can speak freely, but corporations can be restricted in whatever way the government wants to because as I said they have no protection granted by the bill of rights because it is specificaly a bill-of-rights-for-the-individual
Afterall only we dotcommunists would dare to use the internet to criticize the wonderful, self-sacrificing and just well.... all american corporate america. We're the dotRouge... beware we're out there and armed and we're dotcoming for your corporate asses!
I know it couldn't be done without much expense but something like Sealand would offer a wonderful advantage. Some eccentric rich person could buy a small carribean island, setup shop there and create the ultimate data haven/dns service. He could then petition either the US or some of the European nations to recognize the island-company as a soverign nation... if that fails he/she could always go to Japan.
If that were to happen we would have a DNS/Data Haven that is unrestricted by bullshit like WIPO and thus can give its domain names on a first come, first served basis. Frankly I don't think it is possible otherwise to do DNS without incurring the wrath of the corporations seeking to "protect" their trademarks.
On one hand they claim that the reports are totally false and on the other they report that they are making Mac video cards and drivers. Or is this a clever way to tell the public that they WILL be the Mac video card provider once they get Microsoft in too deep with the XBox to safely drop them as a chipset provider?
McDonalds isn't a threat to most mom and pop restaurants because those restaurants aren't in the same business as McDonalds. They specialize in REAL food.... not trashy, fatty fast food like McDonalds. Both can coexist wonderfully, my county is a good example of that. We have several mom and pop restaurants which are quite successful.
As for the guy you're talking about, I don't respect him because he vandalized property that didn't belond to him. If he wants to complain about the cheese duties then why doesn't he push his OWN country to lower its regulations on imports. Both the US and France are fairly protectionist nations. If he can't understand that the feds want to protect dairy farmers in the US at the expense of foreign dairy farmers then he is an idiot.
I once believed in the "corporate republic" but I don't believe it will come to pass any longer. Things like eBooks will make it much easier for the creators to circumvent the corporate system... and why should the providers of that kind of technology care about the book publishers, etc? Their money comes from empowering the creator to take total control over their works.
Here are my suggestions on how you can avoid the permanent establishment of the corporate republic without going over to the equally-conformist socialist system advocated by people like that French protester.
-restrict patents to ONLY physical products which the inventor can show that he/she/the company has already made and has a working implementation of it. No patenting of ideas, regardless of how narrow or broad.... only specific products that the inventor has a working model of
-give JOINT ownership of the copyright of a corporate production to the creative team.... disney publishes Bambi 2.0 and the team that made it has a shared, 50/50, stake in the copyright (or even better give them the copyright completely)
-recognize the supreme authority of the constitution regardless of whether the institution violating the rights of the individual/group is publically or privately owned
-allow judges to give extreme fines, without appeal, to companies which attempt to use the courts to silence/persecute their enemies
-allow the courts to impose jail sentences or fines on school officials that attack their eccentric students.
That's why they don't go for us. It's interesting though because physically I'm built much more like a jock than a geek but mentally I'm probably 80-90% geek if not 100% :) The girls react to me once they deal with me no differently than they do when they meet the average stereotype geek.
Coding is not a glamorous job to the general public. It really is seen as being as mysterious and arcane as witchcraft (which is fairly easy to understand when you actually study it). I also think many of the females in our society fear geeks because we have skills which make us look like people that are too smart for them.
As for social pressure..... BAH! You're supposed to rise up beyond those around you and achieve the things in life that mean something to you. Right now I'm learning C++ and PERL and am going to strongly consider learning either ObjectiveC or Java so I can learn COCOA development. Frankly I think it's just easier for guys to tell society that it can take its demands that we conform and shove them up its ass.
The final thing I think should be pointed out if it hasn't already been is that even in high school the smart girls don't have the sense to go to the guys they know will adore them and NOT want them to hide their smarts. My school's ACT (academic competition team) has a lot of guys that are in as good a shape as the jocks and we are also very intelligent. Most of the smart girls though don't have the sense to go to us instead of the jocks, even though they know WE WANT SMART GIRLS.
Here's the best way to stop this, give your ISP a market incentive to block this kind of stuff from being sent to their users. It shouldn't be too difficult for ISP's to block content from certain domains like say..... doubleclick's. It could be done on a $.25-$.50 per blocked domain and/or IP basis.
First it was the black racists in the NAACP, etc complaining that Jar Jar's accent makes him sound like a Jamaican and they found that offensive because he was a dumb/subordinate character who they thought made blacks look bad.
So now I'm wondering, which group will be pissed off this time? Which bunch of racists will find an "attack" against their race's pride and dignity? This will be interesting though, my bet is that this go around it will be some of the good ole boys (not just from the south mind you) who'll get pissed cuz the storm troopers are all white guy clones and act like NAZI's.
It seems to me that the IP laws are being designed these days to DISCOURAGE people from making their IP freely availible to the public. UCITA is a perfect example of this. Everyone knows that the average free software coder can't afford to give warranties for his/her software.
Another issue is that our government is getting ridiculous with its favoritism. It seeks to stifle one form of creation, coding, to protect another, dvd movies. The natural conclusion of such a mindset is to punish book authors because reading takes away time that could be spent consuming audio/visual media (rather than printed media).
It has been of course quite easy (and rightfully so) to be cynical towards modern representative democracy. Special interests control every aspect of the process of getting the leaders that we want or don't want into power. The media powers for all intents and purposes silence the 3rd parties by not allowing them to enter into televised presidential debates, big corporations control the funding of the political parties who are themselves the ultimate special interest group. Until we remove these kinds of road blocks the kind of IP reform we want will not be possible and things like UCITA will popup as often as new cases of AIDS in many of the unfortunate african nations.
Don't feel bad, grits are a quite delicious dish perfectly suitable for feeding a small nation like Canada afterall they've supplied the poor in the South with low-cost food for centuries. Now if your nation was run by some sort of yankee food then I would be the first to volunteer to join a peacekeeping force to liberate Canada from the oppression of northern culinery imperfection.
(I'm a Virginian, i've got a right to make fun of the south; yankees however do not)
Just a little off topic side note, the only difference between pre-emancipation North and South was that slavery in the south was based on race whereas in the North slavery was based on economic class.
The courts could very easily rule against the RIAA because of that logic. The last thing the courts want is to be flooded with cases where people like us get sued for linking to sites which link to sites with "bad" content.
If that site had linked directly to the copyrighted material the case would have merit but if not then the case could be easily dismissed as an Internet version of guilty by association
Even worse, you may have to get a crusoe embedded in your hand like those techno savy preachers like van impe tell us the antichrist will use.
In a true lassiez faire system it is up to the corporations to protect their own IP. If they cannot, then that's their problem, not the government's.
Most corporations are like fat sheep that have grown lazy under the protection of the shepherd (the government). If the shepherd leaves then the corporations would be eaten alive by the wolves in the free market. Find that hard to believe? Without governmental protection of IP, most music, movie and software companies would die within a few years of the revokation of the IP laws.
here on /. to get the federal government to abolish the patent system. A free society is one where you don't have to pay royalties for using other people's ideas and making something even bigger and better.
It would be truly dangerous for gamers if they stary going after the big guys like square. Especially square. Everyone knows that the FF series is one of the most popular game series in the history of electronic gaming. While it is true that Microsoft would give them more resources, we have no proof that Microsoft will leave their game development studios alone creatively. Imagine Microsoft strongly censoring the FF games because they get pressure from groups claiming that the promote satanism, etc by making main characters who're black mages, and so on.
I can only see one benefit to Microsoft buying up development studios and that is that we'll see games being released in the US before they are in Japan. However, call me paranoid, but I am still concerned about Microsoft either proactively or reactively restricting the creative liberties of its development studios.
I think you have a good point but what happens if the site gets popular and starts eating up the hosting service's bandwidth? The fees will start to rise really quickly and the site may have to scale back or go under if there is no source of revenue that helps offset the costs other than the maintainer's salary.
Even worse, suppose you're writing OSS and you want to post your code to your site. Say the code is 512k (we'll use this just cuz it's 1/2 a meg). If you get 200 downloads that's 100mb of monthly bandwidth used up right there. Now say there are 8000 or 9000 downloads. That is most if not all of the bandwidth allocated each month by most of the hosting services I've seen.
The worst part of it all is that if everyone just clicked on a banner once or twice a month it would help get the sites the revenue they need to stay afloat. Blocking the ads with software only makes it harder for sites to raise revenue and of course that leaves less incentive for people to maintain free sites. Blocking popups is certainly justified but banners embedded in the page is not.
Also what would we do without many of the free services like tripod and geocities? They are the easiest ways for people to publish content online. If they go under then much of the free speech hype given to the web will be gone.