The consensus on Slashdot is that patents are evil tools of corporate greed
The only consensus I've ever seen on slashdot is that we can't agree on anything. Try it at home: get 10,000 people in a room and try to find something they all agree on.
You know how dumb the average guy is? Well, by definition, half of them are even dumber than THAT.
[John Glenn] went back into space as a genuine hero to many Americans. Dennis Tito was nothing but a crass opportunist using his money to buy something he could never earn.
Notwithstanding the fact that by design, Java will be around long after the Win32 APIs have gone the way of the dodo, and you can merge native and Java object code without destroying the OO design of your system... Use Java, dude!
I'm not a big follower of Java, but how, exactly, do you design non-obsolescence?
Unless you're claiming that the Java design somehow schedules when other, competing, technologies will become obsolete.
You are making an amazing assumption: that the people that are opposed to DMCA are the same people that pirate. There probably is some overlap, but not much. What the pirates do was already illegal even before DMCA, so DMCA doesn't effect them much.
I would contend that very few people who pirate things on a regular basis really care about this law. Oh, we have our opinions on it, we don't think it's right, etc., etc.
But the truth is that we really don't care. It makes the things we do, which are illegal, illegal. So what. It won't change the legality of what we do at all.
What it will do instead is remove rights from people who do care about the law. They then can either choose to become a criminal and continue to do the same things, or they can choose to stop. Please, don't let people fool you into thinking this is about piracy, because it isn't. It's about taking your rights away.
If you believe that those rights are undeserved and should be taken away, then by all means, support the DMCA.
Slashdot Mirror
The consensus on Slashdot is that patents are evil tools of corporate greed
The only consensus I've ever seen on slashdot is that we can't agree on anything. Try it at home: get 10,000 people in a room and try to find something they all agree on.
You know how dumb the average guy is? Well, by definition, half of them are even dumber than THAT.
[John Glenn] went back into space as a genuine hero to many Americans. Dennis Tito was nothing but a crass opportunist using his money to buy something he could never earn.
And thus became a hero to many Americans.
Shouldn't that be "FIRST CONTACT!!!" instead? Mal-2
"Those that give up essential liberty for a little security, deserve neither liberty nor security."
"Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Ben Franklin
The second form seems to be slightly more authoritative, being listed in several quotation dictionaries, but the first form appears on the net a lot.
I'm not a big follower of Java, but how, exactly, do you design non-obsolescence?
Unless you're claiming that the Java design somehow schedules when other, competing, technologies will become obsolete.
I would contend that very few people who pirate things on a regular basis really care about this law. Oh, we have our opinions on it, we don't think it's right, etc., etc.
But the truth is that we really don't care. It makes the things we do, which are illegal, illegal. So what. It won't change the legality of what we do at all.
What it will do instead is remove rights from people who do care about the law. They then can either choose to become a criminal and continue to do the same things, or they can choose to stop. Please, don't let people fool you into thinking this is about piracy, because it isn't. It's about taking your rights away.
If you believe that those rights are undeserved and should be taken away, then by all means, support the DMCA.