True. The t-shirt thing is being blown out of proportion here, though. That was just one of a range of examples meant to point out the absurdity of trying to ban DeCSS source. There was an issue in the court over the difference between source and object code and the t-shirt example was just meant to show that it was not even THAT cut and dried, and that computer code could be expressed in ways one would not immediately think of. Or something like that. I was not there and I'm not a lawyer, but those are my impressions from reading about it.
It's kinda funny to think about what lawyering these day's really is: two people (or groups of people) drawing lines in the sand for each other, trying to see who's got the most sack, and basically costing everyone a ton of money in the process.
I would argue that one book and two emails is not a large enough data set for drawing any significant conclusions about "geek culture" but our ideas of content may differ. I do agree he has an interesting point this time but it is not really backed up with any good data other than his own personal impressions. Of course we are all just re-enforcing his point by criticising him. Perhaps this article could be considered his crowning achievement: His enemies, who flame him, in the end prove his point! He has used them against themselves. Amazing.
Re:The solution is not another special interest gr
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Selfish Society
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Hear Hear!
What people who complain about the disproportionate influence of interest groups miss is that the government is still ultimately responsible to the voters. The power rests with the people. If they choose not to use it by remaining disinterested and un-involved, then the power vacuum is filled by interest groups and lawyers et. al. But the reality is we have no one to blame but ourselves for the present situation.
Re:Why the anti-Katz postings?
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Selfish Society
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· Score: 1
I used to feel the same way, but the more of Katz's articles I read the more I agree with the Katz bashers. His articles DO sometimes make interesting points, and they certainly spark discussion, which I'm sure is why he is here despite the large movement against him. However, they consistently lack substance or good examples. For instance, for this article he read one book and two emails. The rest of it is his general impressions. And I think even what data he did use is suspect. I seem to recall reading somewhere that the author of that book is a well-known technophobe, and those two emails do not sound representative of anyone I know. So it becomes hard to take Katz seriously after a string of articles like this.
Some thoughts on this article:
on
Selfish Society
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· Score: 2
Hmmm. While I would tend to agree with Katz's general point that tech-culture tends toward elitism, I think he is blowing everything way out of proportion. Consider:
Not surprisingly, this techno-civilization has little interest in the political systems that still dominate society, so it radically underestimates their power and has an inflated sense of its own.
This seems like a generalization or stereotype. I personally am double majoring in polticial science and computer science, and most of my friends from the CS side of things do take at least a passing interest in politics. At least as much as anyone else in this country does, but I will try to avoid ranting about that for now. I would also mention the very successful OpenLaw group, which has submitted briefs and advised legal teams in several high-profile tech law cases, including the suit against 2600. The technical people involved with that could not be accused of not caring about politics and law.
Having known only one reality, the young and techno-savvy can't quite imagine any other.
It seems to me that we can easily imagine other realities, which is why there is always so much howling when something like Carnivore is announced. Everyone can see that we must not take technological freedoms for granted and must fight for our rights. If we could truly not conceive of other realities no one would pay any attention to Carnivore et. al, because we would be convinced that it could not effect us.
The techno-young correctly grasp that many of the country's seminal institutions -- politics, journalism, education -- have failed them and the larger society. But nobody seems to have given much thought to what might replace them,
Here, Katz finally admits how silly many of his previous articles have been. We have heard him going on and on for months and years about how Open Media was going to replace closed media, the young were building a new culture on line, blah blah blah, and now he tells us no one has given much thought to what is going to replace the "old order!"
I usually refrain from Katz bashing, but this article is just a bit too much. He takes a single book and two emails and from that data set presumes to make generalizations about all of tech culture. Ordinarily, this would be par for the course where Katz is concerned, but in this case it is even more annoying than usual because he is contradicting virtually his entire body of previous work.
Then: "Tech empowers the geeks! It lets them be individuals! Gives them power!"
Now: "Geeks are too individualistic! They have no values and don't know what to do with their power! Everyone should be nicer to each other!"
I too would like to see tech culture become a little less elitist, but I don't think the problem is anywhere near as bad as Katz is making it out to be. If I got an email claiming that anyone knew where to get encryption software I would think it was silly, because it should be obvious that not everyone does. The problem that that particular email shows is not with "tech culture", it is with the writer. (No offense to whoever wrote it, but go talk to some non-techies on occasion. It will be a good experience for you.)
This could have been a really good, interesting article, but instead Katz has used a tiny amount of data to create a huge problem out of a fairly minor issue.
I know a couple of people who use wheel mice with their PC's and just ignore the thing. It doesn't confuse them or anything; they just don't know what it is for so they leave it alone. It strikes me that one would have to be pretty dense to think that the screen was moving by itself, unless someone somehow forgot that they were also turning the wheel. Most people understand cause and effect even if they don't get computers very well:)
I don't know about what we will do if there is ever no media to accept copies. However, as long as there is media availible, music will always be easy to copy. There is nothing to stop you from setting up a mic in front of each of your speakers and copying a song that way even if it has totally uncrackable encryption protecting it. There is really no way that anyone can ever stop you from doing this. Granted the quality of the sound will suffer somewhat, but if you get a good mic and are careful I'm sure it would be listenable for most people. People already do this when they smuggle camcorders into movie theatres to bootleg movies before their theatrical run is even over.
What you have written here is essentially the street performer protocol, which was outlined by Kelsey and Schneier right here back in 1999. They say that there is no way to effectively stop piracy where music and video are concerned short of instituting a sort of copyright police state. With music and video, no matter how good your protection/encryption is, eventually it still has to go out the speakers or the monitor. There is never going to be any way to stop someone from setting up a mic in front of their speakers and making copies that way.
So instead, they advocate something like you discussed above, where artists essentially hold their work for ransom until they feel they have been fairly compensated, then release it, and it immediately enters the public domain. While the scheme is not without its problems, it is the most seeminly workable alternative to our present system I have yet to come across.
If you are gonna be idealistic and refuse to use windows that's your right. However, in sticking to your idealism you must know that you will have to pay certain prices. In this case that means getting to play games a year late, if ever.
I have no problem with idealists but whiny idealists annoy me. "Oh boo hoo I can't play Alpha Centarui or Half Life etc.." You knew what you were getting into when you wiped your disk and stuck linux on there. Or you should have.
*Disclaimer* This ranting is not directed at the parent poster in particular but more at all the whiny idealists I know are out there somewhere:)
I don't think it was that they didn't understand the original so much as it didn't do hardly anything they wanted it to do. The animation system was much crappier than half life's, the texturing was not as good, the lighting was not as good, it had no scripting, etc. etc.
I have played Q1, Q2, and HL extensively and if no one had told me I would not have guessed that HL is built on quake because it looks and feels so different...
Also, if I am not mistaken, Gabe Newell (sp?) who runs Valve is a former Microsoftie and I wouldn't be surprised if he still has friends/connections/co-conspirators there. Also, the PowerPlay initiative valve is leading may involve Microsoft (I am not sure about this but it would not surprise me) and Valve needs to have MS on board if powerplay is gonna pan out. So your theory that they don't want to antagonize MS is more plausible than it might at first seem.:)
Linux is not gonna be the OS of choice for gamers until the games start coming out for it at the same time or sooner than they come out for windows. This is the same thing I always used to tell my mac friends. They told me I should get a mac, I pointed out that there were few games for it and I mainly used my computer for games at the time. They protested "but Starcraft is out for Mac!" etc., to which I could only say, "Great, I'm very happy for you, but I already beat that game A YEAR AGO when it came out on PC!"
The very same cutting edge mentaltiy that many people think would drive gamers to Linux will in fact drive them away from it if they have to wait a year or more for the newset games to be released. They want to play new games NOW and if that means using windows then that's what will happen.
So now I am supposed to buy overpriced records from monopolistic labels because THEIR EMPLOYEES MIGHT GET FIRED if I don't???
Why don't you also go around telling everyone here to use MS Windows because the poor microsofties will get fired if they don't sell enough copies of Windows 2000?
I know that lots of people work at record companies, and I'm sure they're very nice, but I am not going to help prepetuate their monopoly just so they can keep their jobs. That doesn't really make sense.
Here's hoping I'm not just feeding a troll here...
Valve is working on TF2 and their "Powerplay" initiative. I have not heard anything about a port of Half Life to linux. I did read about a couple of people getting half life to run in WINE believe it or not. Try looking here for more info about this.
That said, is it really so hard to leave a couple gigs of your hard drive as a windows partition so you can play some games occasionally? I mean seriously. If I want a good packet sniffer I KNOW I am gonna have to run it on some kind of unix. No one complains about that, and yet when people are told they will need to run windows to play games, they get all up in arms. Doesn't make sense.
I think he got smacked for being the second post. Someone wasn't paying close attention and thought he was going for the first. I would fix it but I don't have any mod points today.
I think my point (I am not going to speak for anyone else here) is that I know the entire infrastructure gets hurt. This is a good thing. The current music dissemination infastructure completely sucks. There is no reason for record labels as we know them at this point. Their main reason to exist is to make money for themselves. It is often said they provide a service to the artists by buying advertising for them and whatnot, but the only reason they do that is to make more money for themselves. They are not in it for the artist's benefit, as much as they yell and scream otherwise. They are essentially parasites on the artist-->fan connection. Before, this was necessary because the cost of actually producing the physical records was somewhat prohibitive, but this is no longer the case.
I am not usually a "tear the system down" kinda guy (if you don't believe me go read all my posts in other topics about voting) but in this case I feel the record industry's time has come.
That might be nice for reminding people like Katz (and many others who frequent this site) that, despite the fact that Lobbyists hold significant sway in Congress, YOU STILL VOTE FOR YOUR REPRESENATIVE. Or at least you are supposed to. If statistics are corect, 50% of America doesn't.
The reason the lobbyists have so much power is that so few people vote. If more people voted, then congresspeople would actually have to be accountable to the voters. If they pissed off a lot of people, the system would work and they would get voted out. But no one votes. Instead, everyone just bitches and whines about how they don't support the system and voting would give it legitimacy etc. And then they wonder why congress won't listen to the public. CONGRESS LISTENS TO THOSE WHO VOTE. And the people who are voting tend to be corpratist minded people (katz buzzword sorry) or what I will call "right-wingers" (even though that is a loaded term). Small wonder that the government is operating to serve these people's needs.
And if you complain that you don't like either of the main candidates, at least go vote for Nader. Or vote for yourself. Or Roseanne Barr. That would actually be showing your displeasure with the "main choices". A lack of participation just looks lazy or irresponsible. And it will make a much bigger statement if Nader (or Roseanne for that matter) gets a significant portion of the vote than it would if, for yet another year, more than half the electorate stays home.
-rant off-
In conclusion, I support your flyer. Sorry about the ranting but people's thinking on this sort of thing is so messed up I can't help myself.:)
It doesn't matter who picks up the tab, the big label or the band itself. The point is everyone you mentioned in your other post (engineers security guards etc.) has ALREADY BEEN PAID before a recording ever hits the streets. Even when a big label is picking up the tab they have to pay the recording studio IN ADVANCE. OK? By giving money directly to the artist you are not screwing anyone except perhaps the Big Record Label. But they are the same ones who have been screwing the artists all along.
The labels don't just screw artists by keeping 90% or more of the record sales. They actually get rights to the artist's songs. If the artist wants to leave the label it's tough luck, they must leave their songs behind too. Labels often sign bands to multi-album deals. This seems great, until you realize that there is no escape clause. Let's say your band gets signed to a 4 album deal. If your band makes 2 records and then wants to leave and start your own record label instead, though luck again. The Big Label owns your next two records whether you want them too or not. Time to give in or break up the band. This is why Prince changed his name to that dumb symbol for a while: to get out of a record deal. He recently changed it back amid little publicity because his deal finally ended.
Honestly, considering what bastards they are, I have no sympathy for the big record labels or anyone who works there.
I personally would have no problem with $1 per song if I knew most of that monet was going to go to the artist. That is not an unreasonable fee to support an artist you genuinely like. Let's be honest here, you probably spend about a dollar getting a coke out of the vending machine down the hall, which makes you happy for maybe 30 minutes (depending on your caffeine tolerance, but I digress). That same amount could also buy you a song that you will probably listen to 30 times even if it doesn't become one of your favorites. If it does, you may listen to it thousands of times over the course of your life. The $1 should not go to cover the cost of production, it goes to support the artist and reward them for writing a good song which makes you happy for a long time.
The reason I have trouble paying $1 per song NOW, though, is that 90 cents or more out of that dollar goes right to the RIAA. I do not want to support such a monopolistic organization even if it means I have to forgo buying a new CD every now and then. If you object to the cost on that ground, then I agree with you. But as long as most of the money was going to the artist, $1 a song is really quite cheap compared to the value it will bring you.
I think this is to some degree how freenet works, although I am not actually sure and I am at work now so I don't have time to go find out. If you want to look for yourself I believe the link is here.
Re:We can't vote on every single thing...
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Inside Echelon
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· Score: 1
While the idealist in me wishes we could have direct voting on all issues, the realist in me thinks it will never work. If we were to allow the public to take over congress's job, the country as we know it would either fall apart or quickly be forced to switch back to a represenative style of government.
Most americans today do not vote at all. Even in presidential elections, voter turnout rarely rises above 50%. In my subjective opinion, even many of those who do turn out to vote end up casting their votes based on poor information. This is not totally their fault; the media is supposed to help them out, but it is doing an increasingly bad job of this. But most voters are too lazy or do not care enough to go learn about the issues on their own anyway.
Why do you think there is so much money in politics today? Because people vote based on campaign commercials and other propaganda! It takes a lot of money for the candidates to buy all those commercials. If people went out and educated themselves about the issues, they would be able to rationally evaluate the candidates using their own information. Campaign propaganda would be much less effective.
But I am digressing here. My point is is that, whatever its problems, Congress at least tries to consider issues thouroughly before voting on them, at least compared to most of the general populace. Giving legislative power to the masses would quickly result in either tyranny of the majority or simple bad decisions based on poor information. Avoiding these outcomes is one of the reasons we even have a represenative government to begin with. These factors do not go away simply because we now have the technology to allow easy voting by the masses on every issue.
I actually have a "Demo DVD" which came with my DVD drive and promised to show me all the cool features which DVD's have. It is actually not encoded or encrypted at all. I tried to use DeCSS on it just to see if it even worked, and it failed due to the fact that there was nothing there to decrypt!
All of the bashing of Nvidia here and elsewhere for poor open source/Linux support does not seem to have hurt them too much. Their products are simply too good to pass up in many cases, although it seems that 3dFx and ATI are finally catching up in this product generation. But honestly, how many reviews of video boards even mention linux performance? I haven't been able to read the sharkey one due to its slashdotted status (poor sharkey), but in past reviews on that site I never see linux preformance brought up as an issue. Same for other review sites. They test performance for well known games like quake 3, which may or may not be multi-platform, but they almost ALWAYS test under windows. This is because the majority of games are for windows and the majority of gamers run windows and I think the hardcore gamer/linux zealot crossover is much smaller than it might seem to be. You rarely hear talk of linux on the counterstrike forums...
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True. The t-shirt thing is being blown out of proportion here, though. That was just one of a range of examples meant to point out the absurdity of trying to ban DeCSS source. There was an issue in the court over the difference between source and object code and the t-shirt example was just meant to show that it was not even THAT cut and dried, and that computer code could be expressed in ways one would not immediately think of. Or something like that. I was not there and I'm not a lawyer, but those are my impressions from reading about it.
When was law something other than that?
I would argue that one book and two emails is not a large enough data set for drawing any significant conclusions about "geek culture" but our ideas of content may differ. I do agree he has an interesting point this time but it is not really backed up with any good data other than his own personal impressions. Of course we are all just re-enforcing his point by criticising him. Perhaps this article could be considered his crowning achievement: His enemies, who flame him, in the end prove his point! He has used them against themselves. Amazing.
What people who complain about the disproportionate influence of interest groups miss is that the government is still ultimately responsible to the voters. The power rests with the people. If they choose not to use it by remaining disinterested and un-involved, then the power vacuum is filled by interest groups and lawyers et. al. But the reality is we have no one to blame but ourselves for the present situation.
I used to feel the same way, but the more of Katz's articles I read the more I agree with the Katz bashers. His articles DO sometimes make interesting points, and they certainly spark discussion, which I'm sure is why he is here despite the large movement against him. However, they consistently lack substance or good examples. For instance, for this article he read one book and two emails. The rest of it is his general impressions. And I think even what data he did use is suspect. I seem to recall reading somewhere that the author of that book is a well-known technophobe, and those two emails do not sound representative of anyone I know. So it becomes hard to take Katz seriously after a string of articles like this.
Not surprisingly, this techno-civilization has little interest in the political systems that still dominate society, so it radically underestimates their power and has an inflated sense of its own.
This seems like a generalization or stereotype. I personally am double majoring in polticial science and computer science, and most of my friends from the CS side of things do take at least a passing interest in politics. At least as much as anyone else in this country does, but I will try to avoid ranting about that for now. I would also mention the very successful OpenLaw group, which has submitted briefs and advised legal teams in several high-profile tech law cases, including the suit against 2600. The technical people involved with that could not be accused of not caring about politics and law.
Having known only one reality, the young and techno-savvy can't quite imagine any other.
It seems to me that we can easily imagine other realities, which is why there is always so much howling when something like Carnivore is announced. Everyone can see that we must not take technological freedoms for granted and must fight for our rights. If we could truly not conceive of other realities no one would pay any attention to Carnivore et. al, because we would be convinced that it could not effect us.
The techno-young correctly grasp that many of the country's seminal institutions -- politics, journalism, education -- have failed them and the larger society. But nobody seems to have given much thought to what might replace them,
Here, Katz finally admits how silly many of his previous articles have been. We have heard him going on and on for months and years about how Open Media was going to replace closed media, the young were building a new culture on line, blah blah blah, and now he tells us no one has given much thought to what is going to replace the "old order!"
I usually refrain from Katz bashing, but this article is just a bit too much. He takes a single book and two emails and from that data set presumes to make generalizations about all of tech culture. Ordinarily, this would be par for the course where Katz is concerned, but in this case it is even more annoying than usual because he is contradicting virtually his entire body of previous work.
Then: "Tech empowers the geeks! It lets them be individuals! Gives them power!"
Now: "Geeks are too individualistic! They have no values and don't know what to do with their power! Everyone should be nicer to each other!"
I too would like to see tech culture become a little less elitist, but I don't think the problem is anywhere near as bad as Katz is making it out to be. If I got an email claiming that anyone knew where to get encryption software I would think it was silly, because it should be obvious that not everyone does. The problem that that particular email shows is not with "tech culture", it is with the writer. (No offense to whoever wrote it, but go talk to some non-techies on occasion. It will be a good experience for you.)
This could have been a really good, interesting article, but instead Katz has used a tiny amount of data to create a huge problem out of a fairly minor issue.
I know a couple of people who use wheel mice with their PC's and just ignore the thing. It doesn't confuse them or anything; they just don't know what it is for so they leave it alone. It strikes me that one would have to be pretty dense to think that the screen was moving by itself, unless someone somehow forgot that they were also turning the wheel. Most people understand cause and effect even if they don't get computers very well :)
I don't know about what we will do if there is ever no media to accept copies. However, as long as there is media availible, music will always be easy to copy. There is nothing to stop you from setting up a mic in front of each of your speakers and copying a song that way even if it has totally uncrackable encryption protecting it. There is really no way that anyone can ever stop you from doing this. Granted the quality of the sound will suffer somewhat, but if you get a good mic and are careful I'm sure it would be listenable for most people. People already do this when they smuggle camcorders into movie theatres to bootleg movies before their theatrical run is even over.
So instead, they advocate something like you discussed above, where artists essentially hold their work for ransom until they feel they have been fairly compensated, then release it, and it immediately enters the public domain. While the scheme is not without its problems, it is the most seeminly workable alternative to our present system I have yet to come across.
I have no problem with idealists but whiny idealists annoy me. "Oh boo hoo I can't play Alpha Centarui or Half Life etc.." You knew what you were getting into when you wiped your disk and stuck linux on there. Or you should have.
*Disclaimer* This ranting is not directed at the parent poster in particular but more at all the whiny idealists I know are out there somewhere :)
I have played Q1, Q2, and HL extensively and if no one had told me I would not have guessed that HL is built on quake because it looks and feels so different...
Also, if I am not mistaken, Gabe Newell (sp?) who runs Valve is a former Microsoftie and I wouldn't be surprised if he still has friends/connections/co-conspirators there. Also, the PowerPlay initiative valve is leading may involve Microsoft (I am not sure about this but it would not surprise me) and Valve needs to have MS on board if powerplay is gonna pan out. So your theory that they don't want to antagonize MS is more plausible than it might at first seem. :)
The very same cutting edge mentaltiy that many people think would drive gamers to Linux will in fact drive them away from it if they have to wait a year or more for the newset games to be released. They want to play new games NOW and if that means using windows then that's what will happen.
Why don't you also go around telling everyone here to use MS Windows because the poor microsofties will get fired if they don't sell enough copies of Windows 2000?
I know that lots of people work at record companies, and I'm sure they're very nice, but I am not going to help prepetuate their monopoly just so they can keep their jobs. That doesn't really make sense.
Here's hoping I'm not just feeding a troll here...
That said, is it really so hard to leave a couple gigs of your hard drive as a windows partition so you can play some games occasionally? I mean seriously. If I want a good packet sniffer I KNOW I am gonna have to run it on some kind of unix. No one complains about that, and yet when people are told they will need to run windows to play games, they get all up in arms. Doesn't make sense.
I think he got smacked for being the second post. Someone wasn't paying close attention and thought he was going for the first. I would fix it but I don't have any mod points today.
I am not usually a "tear the system down" kinda guy (if you don't believe me go read all my posts in other topics about voting) but in this case I feel the record industry's time has come.
That might be nice for reminding people like Katz (and many others who frequent this site) that, despite the fact that Lobbyists hold significant sway in Congress, YOU STILL VOTE FOR YOUR REPRESENATIVE. Or at least you are supposed to. If statistics are corect, 50% of America doesn't.
The reason the lobbyists have so much power is that so few people vote. If more people voted, then congresspeople would actually have to be accountable to the voters. If they pissed off a lot of people, the system would work and they would get voted out. But no one votes. Instead, everyone just bitches and whines about how they don't support the system and voting would give it legitimacy etc. And then they wonder why congress won't listen to the public. CONGRESS LISTENS TO THOSE WHO VOTE. And the people who are voting tend to be corpratist minded people (katz buzzword sorry) or what I will call "right-wingers" (even though that is a loaded term). Small wonder that the government is operating to serve these people's needs.
And if you complain that you don't like either of the main candidates, at least go vote for Nader. Or vote for yourself. Or Roseanne Barr. That would actually be showing your displeasure with the "main choices". A lack of participation just looks lazy or irresponsible. And it will make a much bigger statement if Nader (or Roseanne for that matter) gets a significant portion of the vote than it would if, for yet another year, more than half the electorate stays home.
-rant off-
In conclusion, I support your flyer. Sorry about the ranting but people's thinking on this sort of thing is so messed up I can't help myself. :)
The labels don't just screw artists by keeping 90% or more of the record sales. They actually get rights to the artist's songs. If the artist wants to leave the label it's tough luck, they must leave their songs behind too. Labels often sign bands to multi-album deals. This seems great, until you realize that there is no escape clause. Let's say your band gets signed to a 4 album deal. If your band makes 2 records and then wants to leave and start your own record label instead, though luck again. The Big Label owns your next two records whether you want them too or not. Time to give in or break up the band. This is why Prince changed his name to that dumb symbol for a while: to get out of a record deal. He recently changed it back amid little publicity because his deal finally ended.
Honestly, considering what bastards they are, I have no sympathy for the big record labels or anyone who works there.
The reason I have trouble paying $1 per song NOW, though, is that 90 cents or more out of that dollar goes right to the RIAA. I do not want to support such a monopolistic organization even if it means I have to forgo buying a new CD every now and then. If you object to the cost on that ground, then I agree with you. But as long as most of the money was going to the artist, $1 a song is really quite cheap compared to the value it will bring you.
I think this is to some degree how freenet works, although I am not actually sure and I am at work now so I don't have time to go find out. If you want to look for yourself I believe the link is here.
Most americans today do not vote at all. Even in presidential elections, voter turnout rarely rises above 50%. In my subjective opinion, even many of those who do turn out to vote end up casting their votes based on poor information. This is not totally their fault; the media is supposed to help them out, but it is doing an increasingly bad job of this. But most voters are too lazy or do not care enough to go learn about the issues on their own anyway.
Why do you think there is so much money in politics today? Because people vote based on campaign commercials and other propaganda! It takes a lot of money for the candidates to buy all those commercials. If people went out and educated themselves about the issues, they would be able to rationally evaluate the candidates using their own information. Campaign propaganda would be much less effective.
But I am digressing here. My point is is that, whatever its problems, Congress at least tries to consider issues thouroughly before voting on them, at least compared to most of the general populace. Giving legislative power to the masses would quickly result in either tyranny of the majority or simple bad decisions based on poor information. Avoiding these outcomes is one of the reasons we even have a represenative government to begin with. These factors do not go away simply because we now have the technology to allow easy voting by the masses on every issue.
I actually have a "Demo DVD" which came with my DVD drive and promised to show me all the cool features which DVD's have. It is actually not encoded or encrypted at all. I tried to use DeCSS on it just to see if it even worked, and it failed due to the fact that there was nothing there to decrypt!
In all honesty I don't really care about getting karma. Yes, someone who logs in and yet is not a karma whore! Who woulda thunk it?
All of the bashing of Nvidia here and elsewhere for poor open source/Linux support does not seem to have hurt them too much. Their products are simply too good to pass up in many cases, although it seems that 3dFx and ATI are finally catching up in this product generation. But honestly, how many reviews of video boards even mention linux performance? I haven't been able to read the sharkey one due to its slashdotted status (poor sharkey), but in past reviews on that site I never see linux preformance brought up as an issue. Same for other review sites. They test performance for well known games like quake 3, which may or may not be multi-platform, but they almost ALWAYS test under windows. This is because the majority of games are for windows and the majority of gamers run windows and I think the hardcore gamer/linux zealot crossover is much smaller than it might seem to be. You rarely hear talk of linux on the counterstrike forums...