The Sony CD's are not the ones which can damage your speakers, your copy is. Sony has no liability here, because the CD you made yourself is the one which is going to damage your CD player. Sony's lawyers would correctly point out that no one forced you to make a copy, so whatever happened with that copy is not their problem.
I also remember reading, I think it may have been in that same column actually, that there have been several BROKEN BAT home runs in the majors this year. How you can put enough energy into the ball for it to be a home run, when you are losing so much energy to shattering the bat, is beyond me...
If they did what you suggest, and make this a fight only about linking, then they are implicitly conceding that DeCSS is illegal.
The terms of the debate are very important here: what you suggest would make this a debate about linking to illegal material. Hence, DeCSS is illegal, and we have already lost one battle.
There is no reason to let the MPAA set the terms of the debate in this way. DeCSS is NOT "another fight for another day" because if we don't fight for it now, WE LOSE. There will be no other day.
The fight should not be focused on linking to illict material, because the entire point here is that DeCSS should not be illegal! All it does is give you back fair use rights you should never have lost in the first place. Furthermore, the issue of whether or not source code can be considered speech strikes me as one of the more important tech-related issues which the courts have considered so far. This case has raised a large number of very thorny issues, and we shouln't ignore any of them, or we may come to regret it in the future.
Yeah, but with mac you are paying 3 or 400 bucks more start with (when compared with pc's), so you are still paying A LOT just for a graphics card.
Plus, there is the plain fact that if you buy a whole computer you are spending ~1500 bucks, which is over twice what buying the card alone would cost, even considering its inflated price. So if all you really want is that card buying a mac just to save money or have the card a month sooner is pretty dumb.
The problem I see with engineering new humans to be space travelers is the same problem I see with engineering new humans to be anything: What if they don't want to do it? You've made this great, radiation resistant, strong boned, etc. new human, who decides they don't really want to be a spaceman, but instead would prefer to sell pretzels out of a cart on the corner. Are you going to try to force them to go to space anyway? Seems like they might not be too energetic about their mission goals...
I think the only way something like this could work would be if you could change people after they have already been born and already decided they want to become space travelers. Perhaps using genetic therapy or something like that. Otherwise you are just betting on the fact that the new human will be ok with the role you have chosen for it, which seems like a bad bet to me.
AudioGalaxy may track the songs you download. I don't know exactly whether they actually do this or not, but even the fact that they may be able to is worrying to me.
While their satellite program is small, there is no way to easy close it without doing so from the task list, and there is also no uninstall program.
The second of these objections is minor, but I stay away from the thing because I am not sure I like the idea of a company tracking my music downloads, at least not till a court somewhere explicitly rules them legal...
I don't know what happens to the wash outs, but there are several "minor-league" type places, such as NFL Europe, Arena Football, or soon the XFL, where they could go. Players do sometimes go to these leagues first and then to the NFL later (the most famous being Rams quaterback Kurt Warner, a former Arena player)
The people who wash out altogether I assume get jobs and go back to being "normal" because the base pay in the NFL is not that high compared to most American pro sports. Around 100k if I remember right. Football actually has fairly low salaries. Even the really highly paid players usually earn about 8-9 million $ a year, which is a far cry from the 25 million a year Alex Rodriguez is now making in baseball, or the several NBA players earning 20 million or more per year (Shaquille O'Neal and Kevin Garnett come to mind...)
Apparently you should check again. This site is a lot more than a bunch of linux hackers at this point, and if you can't see that, I question what I could even say to convince you. A large percentage of the articles now are in the "Your rights online" category. Jon Katz, whatever your feelings about his writing, is not a linux hacker. Slashdot is functioning more and more as a sort of cnn.com, only with more user participation. And while I acknowledge that Taco can write whatever he wants, the offhand, unsubstantiated MS bashing reflects poorly on him. Not to mention the underhanded insults to all his readers who submitted the story:
as zillions of people somehow think that this matters. Yup. Its down. Ye haw. Do you people actually visit microsoft.com? It didn't even render under Netscape for the longest time. I can't remember the last time I intentionally went to that site. There's just no need. (Well, I guess if you run windows you gotta get your service packs every few minutes;)
Other people have already pointed out the spelling and grammar errors, as well as the absurdity of a linux user criticizing windows users for having to get service packs "every few minutes". If Taco keeps up with this flamebait I wouldn't be surprised if his site regresses to its previous state, "a bunch of linux hackers in Holland, Michigan" and not much more than that.
The official language for all government and legal business in India is english. So it seems unlikely that no one at the company was able to understand the GPL. Perhaps they just didn't read it throughly enough, or at all...
Whether he out for sales or not, if a lot of people buy his music then it is pop music. pop music = contraction of "POPular music." I think what you really mean is that he doesn't set out to be pop in the same way that BSB do. He just does his thing and if people like it great, but he is not going to pander to them.
"up up down down left right left right b a start" was/is the code to get 30 lives in various Konami games on the old NES, including Contra and Life Force, among others.
I think you highly over-estimate prison life. Ever see the shawshank redemption? From everything I have read prison is at least as bad as it was depicted in that movie, and is a far cry from the utopia you make it out to be. You are at constant risk of being violently assaulted or raped, the food is terrible, you have no privacy whatsoever, etc etc. Mistreatment by the guards is rampant and prisoners have no method of recourse. You point out that they get exercise time, but do not mention that this hour is in some cases the only time all day they are allowed out of their cell. Perhaps if you are so high on prison you should go live there yourself? It would certainly be a lot easier than working for a living, and according to you there are no downsides...
Out of the 3 major weekly US news mags, time is the centrist one. It sometimes leans slightly conservative but overall it's pretty middle of the road. Newsweek is the liberal one, and US News and World Report is the conservative one. Time is just considered a liberal rag by conservatives because anything that isn't strictly conservative must be liberal in their view...
I don't really see at all how the press has been hostile to Bush. You keep saying they are, but give no examples to back it up. The press has not persued Bush on his past drinking and drug use with anything like the ferocity that they hit Clinton with during his first campaign. They have not investigated why Bush did not show up for his assigned duty with the Air National Guard. They did not make a big deal of the fact that he didn't remember how many people he was putting to death in the Robert Byrd case (remember the second debate? He said all 3 men were being put to death. Only two were. Way to take the death penalty seriously huh??). If Gore had made a similar slip up, his campaign would have been over in a heart beat. And yet it wasn't even a problem for Bush, because the standards have been set so low for him that if he can just avoid fucking up he is thought to have done a good job...
The War on Drugs has been a consistently neglected topic in discussions surrounding this federal election. My question is, do you believe the War on Drugs has been an unqualified success, and if not, what would you change about it if elected president?
Gore: Well, I never had any trouble buying pot while I was at harvard, so I will have to say that the war on drugs has been a failure. I wanna fight for you! I want to fight to keep you from buying drugs!
Bush: My daddy always got me plenty of booze and cocaine! The current administration has done nothing to stop him. They've had 8 years to do something about drugs, and they haven't done it. It's time for someone new to take over.
Seriously, both of these guys are hypocrites where the war on drugs is concerned...
...computer security flaws is essential for system administrators to protect there own systems...
The bold word "there" in the quote above is incorrect. It should be "their." Ordinarily I am not anal about these things, but if you sent this letter to your congressman it is important that you use proper grammar and spelling if he is to take it seriously.
My question is, how much time is everyone going to spend keeping track of every single company, who owns them, and how many skeletons they have in their closet?
I try to be an informed consumer, but I need to live my life at the same time. For example, I have severely curtailed my movie viewing due to the actions of the MPAA. But these days it is next to impossible to buy clothing or shoes that did not come from a sweatshop. It's tough to avoid RIAA music because every little label you think is independent ends up being owned by one of the big boys 4 levels up. I pretty much stopped buying cd's too but that is a big concession for me as I like music a lot. I guess my point is that it is possible to be an informed consumer without being a zealot or having to live a spartan life style. A middle ground...
Those other kinds of formats you mentioned are not digital, with the exception of CD's. And you can see where having unprotected digital product got the RIAA. That is the rationale of the MPAA in implementing CSS: they thought it would stop them from having the situation the RIAA now has. Of course they stepped all over fair use rights along the way, which is the real reason this case is important. Comparing DVD's to other kinds of media players and their lack of licenses is not the way to win the case. There is nothing inherently illegal about protective encryption for intellectual property (in fact the DMCA sort of encourages it) but in this case it infringes on other, more important rights.
The judge ignored those arguments because he decided not to look at the legality/constitutionality/intelligence of the DMCA. And if you throw out the fact that the law itself is inherently dumb, then DeCSS is pretty clearly illegal under the DMCA. Possible legitimate uses of DeCSS never really entered into the judge's mind. If I remember correctly, Kaplan dismissed that argument with about one sentence in the eventual verdict.
Supposedly the next level of court will be more open to looking at the legality of the DMCA itself...
You must not have tried very hard to think of more repressive regimes than the US. You mentioned china already but that barely scratches the surface...
Burma/Myanmar
Indonesia
Most any african nation you would care to name, with a few notable exceptions
Singapore
Vietnam
Any of the remaing central or south american military dictatorships
I mean honestly it's the middle of the night and I was able to come up with those just off the top of my head. I get the feeling I am feeding a troll here but I just can't stop myself. Must be a good troll...
Anyway about this part:
But, let's not talk drugs: it's too controversial. Let's talk politics -- or, rather, not being allowed to be political.
Did you know that a third of the US population can't name a single first-amendment right? That'd include some biggies, like "freedom of speech" and
"freedom to peaceably assemble."
That is indeed sad but it doesn't mean we are not being allowed to be political, it means we are generally stupid and poorly informed. You are drawing the wrong conclusion. The government is not engaged in a campaign to hide the constitution or anything like that, it's just that no one cares anymore...
If I remember correctly, Tomb Raider actually jumped from PC to console, not the other way around. The sequels came out on console first because they were having more success there but the original started as a PC game...
Duh ? That [Electricity] was invented in Europe, and well over 200 centuries ago. Of course guys like Edison were very good at STEALING others idea. In a way Edison was like modern America : not good at inventing or research, but very good at making money out of others research (look at recent US Nobel prices, and then count how many were born and raised in ANOTHER country).
200 Centuries ago would be approximately the year 18,000 BC. I am fairly sure that Europe did not have an electrical grid back then. Your comment about stealing others inventions is interesting when you consider that the US basically invented the first mobile phones and then japenese and other foreign companies (whom you seem to be defending) took the idea and ran with it. And while we are at it, what is a Nobel price? The fact of the matter is regardless of where a researcher is born they frequently come to the US to actually do their research.
Yes - a free nation where you learn creationism in school, where the RIAA and MPAA decide for you what you should watch and listen, where you can't go anywhere whithout being assaulted by commercials and advertisement, where everyone is free to carry a gun but many still can't afford a doctor. Where the CIA store all your personnal emails and the FBI pretends to be underage minor on chat rooms, etc...
Or, we could be a free nation like many of those in Europe. Like Britain, where there is no constitutional right to free speech. Or Sweden, where taxes hover around 60%. Or France, where the government decides how many foreign movies may be shown in the country so that "French Cinema" can be protected. That is at least as bad as what the MPAA is doing. The french government even tried to make up a new word for "walkman" because they felt that using the American word would be bad for their society. Virtually no one here learns creationism in school, save for a few misguided souls in Kansas, and that is in the process of being reversed by angry voters. I don't know where you get these ideas about the CIA and FBI. Perhaps you should read less Jon Katz and stop watching the X-files. Granted there are rumors about these things (Echelon etc.) but if they are true then your email is in there too...
If there's really a free country, it is probably something more like Holland.
Holland is not necessarily "freer" than the US just because they have loser anti-drug and assisted suicide laws, although I agree that they are closer to the right idea on those subjects than we are.
Let me first point out that the French un-employment rate, while perhaps dropping, is still at least twice the US rate...
Do you have any actual evidence that the economic turnaround in France has anything to do with the limited workweek? It seems to me France has been due for a turnaround for some time now due to purely cyclical factors. Even if you don't believe that, there are an entire range of other things which could easily have contributed to an economic turnaround:
Increased int'l trade and commerce from the now-unified European economic system
Increased productivity per worker due to new technology
Increased foreign investment in the country
Those are just a few I came up with off the top of my head. The 35 hour work week is obviously going to lower un-employment because it divides the same amount of work up among more people. It obviously lowers efficiency too, though, which I still think will hurt the french economy in the long run. You didn't really show any connection between it and economic growth other than saying there is one, so I still remain unconvinced of its utiltiy.
And the working at McDonald's thing is a stereotype and you know it. I have finished only one year of college so far and I can already get jobs paying very good wages, which often come with full medical benefits and even stock options. Lest you think this applies only to the computer industry, my friend has been working with disabled children all summer and gets full health benefits, decent pay, and the satisfaction of helping out kids. And her job doesn't even require any education beyond HS so it's not like only rich and priveledged people could get it...
These are all really good ideas but I would be careful about just asking students what they want to learn and then teaching it to them. This works well if you assume the whole class already has enough knowldege to "know what they don't know" and thus will know what they want to learn. If you are dealing with a bunch of people who don't know anything more than how to save and load files (and, at least at my HS, anyone who could do basic file management was considered fairly computer literate!) then they won't even know what the possibilities are.
I know in my case I could never have learned any programming at all if I didn't have some actual projects put in front of me as assignments. I was always more interested in trying to figure out how existing software worked and finding holes in it than writing any of my own. I suppose if I was more malicious I might have ended up as a script kiddie:) But thankfully I did not go down that road and I eventually did get in a class where I was given some assignments and learned to write code.
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The Sony CD's are not the ones which can damage your speakers, your copy is. Sony has no liability here, because the CD you made yourself is the one which is going to damage your CD player. Sony's lawyers would correctly point out that no one forced you to make a copy, so whatever happened with that copy is not their problem.
I also remember reading, I think it may have been in that same column actually, that there have been several BROKEN BAT home runs in the majors this year. How you can put enough energy into the ball for it to be a home run, when you are losing so much energy to shattering the bat, is beyond me...
The terms of the debate are very important here: what you suggest would make this a debate about linking to illegal material. Hence, DeCSS is illegal, and we have already lost one battle.
There is no reason to let the MPAA set the terms of the debate in this way. DeCSS is NOT "another fight for another day" because if we don't fight for it now, WE LOSE. There will be no other day.
The fight should not be focused on linking to illict material, because the entire point here is that DeCSS should not be illegal! All it does is give you back fair use rights you should never have lost in the first place. Furthermore, the issue of whether or not source code can be considered speech strikes me as one of the more important tech-related issues which the courts have considered so far. This case has raised a large number of very thorny issues, and we shouln't ignore any of them, or we may come to regret it in the future.
Plus, there is the plain fact that if you buy a whole computer you are spending ~1500 bucks, which is over twice what buying the card alone would cost, even considering its inflated price. So if all you really want is that card buying a mac just to save money or have the card a month sooner is pretty dumb.
I think the only way something like this could work would be if you could change people after they have already been born and already decided they want to become space travelers. Perhaps using genetic therapy or something like that. Otherwise you are just betting on the fact that the new human will be ok with the role you have chosen for it, which seems like a bad bet to me.
AudioGalaxy may track the songs you download. I don't know exactly whether they actually do this or not, but even the fact that they may be able to is worrying to me.
While their satellite program is small, there is no way to easy close it without doing so from the task list, and there is also no uninstall program.
The second of these objections is minor, but I stay away from the thing because I am not sure I like the idea of a company tracking my music downloads, at least not till a court somewhere explicitly rules them legal...
The people who wash out altogether I assume get jobs and go back to being "normal" because the base pay in the NFL is not that high compared to most American pro sports. Around 100k if I remember right. Football actually has fairly low salaries. Even the really highly paid players usually earn about 8-9 million $ a year, which is a far cry from the 25 million a year Alex Rodriguez is now making in baseball, or the several NBA players earning 20 million or more per year (Shaquille O'Neal and Kevin Garnett come to mind...)
as zillions of people somehow think that this matters. Yup. Its down. Ye haw. Do you people actually visit microsoft.com? It didn't even render under Netscape for the longest time. I can't remember the last time I intentionally went to that site. There's just no need. (Well, I guess if you run windows you gotta get your service packs every few minutes ;)
Other people have already pointed out the spelling and grammar errors, as well as the absurdity of a linux user criticizing windows users for having to get service packs "every few minutes". If Taco keeps up with this flamebait I wouldn't be surprised if his site regresses to its previous state, "a bunch of linux hackers in Holland, Michigan" and not much more than that.
The official language for all government and legal business in India is english. So it seems unlikely that no one at the company was able to understand the GPL. Perhaps they just didn't read it throughly enough, or at all...
I think he meant maxtor :)
Whether he out for sales or not, if a lot of people buy his music then it is pop music. pop music = contraction of "POPular music." I think what you really mean is that he doesn't set out to be pop in the same way that BSB do. He just does his thing and if people like it great, but he is not going to pander to them.
"up up down down left right left right b a start" was/is the code to get 30 lives in various Konami games on the old NES, including Contra and Life Force, among others.
I think you highly over-estimate prison life. Ever see the shawshank redemption? From everything I have read prison is at least as bad as it was depicted in that movie, and is a far cry from the utopia you make it out to be. You are at constant risk of being violently assaulted or raped, the food is terrible, you have no privacy whatsoever, etc etc. Mistreatment by the guards is rampant and prisoners have no method of recourse. You point out that they get exercise time, but do not mention that this hour is in some cases the only time all day they are allowed out of their cell. Perhaps if you are so high on prison you should go live there yourself? It would certainly be a lot easier than working for a living, and according to you there are no downsides...
Out of the 3 major weekly US news mags, time is the centrist one. It sometimes leans slightly conservative but overall it's pretty middle of the road. Newsweek is the liberal one, and US News and World Report is the conservative one. Time is just considered a liberal rag by conservatives because anything that isn't strictly conservative must be liberal in their view...
I don't really see at all how the press has been hostile to Bush. You keep saying they are, but give no examples to back it up. The press has not persued Bush on his past drinking and drug use with anything like the ferocity that they hit Clinton with during his first campaign. They have not investigated why Bush did not show up for his assigned duty with the Air National Guard. They did not make a big deal of the fact that he didn't remember how many people he was putting to death in the Robert Byrd case (remember the second debate? He said all 3 men were being put to death. Only two were. Way to take the death penalty seriously huh??). If Gore had made a similar slip up, his campaign would have been over in a heart beat. And yet it wasn't even a problem for Bush, because the standards have been set so low for him that if he can just avoid fucking up he is thought to have done a good job...
Gore: Well, I never had any trouble buying pot while I was at harvard, so I will have to say that the war on drugs has been a failure. I wanna fight for you! I want to fight to keep you from buying drugs!
Bush: My daddy always got me plenty of booze and cocaine! The current administration has done nothing to stop him. They've had 8 years to do something about drugs, and they haven't done it. It's time for someone new to take over.
Seriously, both of these guys are hypocrites where the war on drugs is concerned...
The bold word "there" in the quote above is incorrect. It should be "their." Ordinarily I am not anal about these things, but if you sent this letter to your congressman it is important that you use proper grammar and spelling if he is to take it seriously.
I try to be an informed consumer, but I need to live my life at the same time. For example, I have severely curtailed my movie viewing due to the actions of the MPAA. But these days it is next to impossible to buy clothing or shoes that did not come from a sweatshop. It's tough to avoid RIAA music because every little label you think is independent ends up being owned by one of the big boys 4 levels up. I pretty much stopped buying cd's too but that is a big concession for me as I like music a lot. I guess my point is that it is possible to be an informed consumer without being a zealot or having to live a spartan life style. A middle ground...
Those other kinds of formats you mentioned are not digital, with the exception of CD's. And you can see where having unprotected digital product got the RIAA. That is the rationale of the MPAA in implementing CSS: they thought it would stop them from having the situation the RIAA now has. Of course they stepped all over fair use rights along the way, which is the real reason this case is important. Comparing DVD's to other kinds of media players and their lack of licenses is not the way to win the case. There is nothing inherently illegal about protective encryption for intellectual property (in fact the DMCA sort of encourages it) but in this case it infringes on other, more important rights.
Supposedly the next level of court will be more open to looking at the legality of the DMCA itself...
I mean honestly it's the middle of the night and I was able to come up with those just off the top of my head. I get the feeling I am feeding a troll here but I just can't stop myself. Must be a good troll...
Anyway about this part: But, let's not talk drugs: it's too controversial. Let's talk politics -- or, rather, not being allowed to be political. Did you know that a third of the US population can't name a single first-amendment right? That'd include some biggies, like "freedom of speech" and "freedom to peaceably assemble."
That is indeed sad but it doesn't mean we are not being allowed to be political, it means we are generally stupid and poorly informed. You are drawing the wrong conclusion. The government is not engaged in a campaign to hide the constitution or anything like that, it's just that no one cares anymore...
If I remember correctly, Tomb Raider actually jumped from PC to console, not the other way around. The sequels came out on console first because they were having more success there but the original started as a PC game...
Duh ? That [Electricity] was invented in Europe, and well over 200 centuries ago. Of course guys like Edison were very good at STEALING others idea. In a way Edison was like modern America : not good at inventing or research, but very good at making money out of others research (look at recent US Nobel prices, and then count how many were born and raised in ANOTHER country).
200 Centuries ago would be approximately the year 18,000 BC. I am fairly sure that Europe did not have an electrical grid back then. Your comment about stealing others inventions is interesting when you consider that the US basically invented the first mobile phones and then japenese and other foreign companies (whom you seem to be defending) took the idea and ran with it. And while we are at it, what is a Nobel price? The fact of the matter is regardless of where a researcher is born they frequently come to the US to actually do their research.
Yes - a free nation where you learn creationism in school, where the RIAA and MPAA decide for you what you should watch and listen, where you can't go anywhere whithout being assaulted by commercials and advertisement, where everyone is free to carry a gun but many still can't afford a doctor. Where the CIA store all your personnal emails and the FBI pretends to be underage minor on chat rooms, etc...
Or, we could be a free nation like many of those in Europe. Like Britain, where there is no constitutional right to free speech. Or Sweden, where taxes hover around 60%. Or France, where the government decides how many foreign movies may be shown in the country so that "French Cinema" can be protected. That is at least as bad as what the MPAA is doing. The french government even tried to make up a new word for "walkman" because they felt that using the American word would be bad for their society. Virtually no one here learns creationism in school, save for a few misguided souls in Kansas, and that is in the process of being reversed by angry voters. I don't know where you get these ideas about the CIA and FBI. Perhaps you should read less Jon Katz and stop watching the X-files. Granted there are rumors about these things (Echelon etc.) but if they are true then your email is in there too...
If there's really a free country, it is probably something more like Holland.
Holland is not necessarily "freer" than the US just because they have loser anti-drug and assisted suicide laws, although I agree that they are closer to the right idea on those subjects than we are.
Do you have any actual evidence that the economic turnaround in France has anything to do with the limited workweek? It seems to me France has been due for a turnaround for some time now due to purely cyclical factors. Even if you don't believe that, there are an entire range of other things which could easily have contributed to an economic turnaround:
Those are just a few I came up with off the top of my head. The 35 hour work week is obviously going to lower un-employment because it divides the same amount of work up among more people. It obviously lowers efficiency too, though, which I still think will hurt the french economy in the long run. You didn't really show any connection between it and economic growth other than saying there is one, so I still remain unconvinced of its utiltiy.
And the working at McDonald's thing is a stereotype and you know it. I have finished only one year of college so far and I can already get jobs paying very good wages, which often come with full medical benefits and even stock options. Lest you think this applies only to the computer industry, my friend has been working with disabled children all summer and gets full health benefits, decent pay, and the satisfaction of helping out kids. And her job doesn't even require any education beyond HS so it's not like only rich and priveledged people could get it...
I know in my case I could never have learned any programming at all if I didn't have some actual projects put in front of me as assignments. I was always more interested in trying to figure out how existing software worked and finding holes in it than writing any of my own. I suppose if I was more malicious I might have ended up as a script kiddie :) But thankfully I did not go down that road and I eventually did get in a class where I was given some assignments and learned to write code.