Imagine that you sold furniture, and I went to all of your wood suppliers and told them that you were operating illegally and they should stop providing you with wood, but never told you that they were unhappy with your nor give you a chance to fix the situation.
In which case it would be up to the wood suppliers to decide whether they want to lose your business by refusing to sell to you, or whether you had violated their terms. I don't see the problem here. Richter is pissing a lot of people off and they are complaining to his ISP (via SPAMCop). Everyone knows better than to try talking directly to a spammer. You just end up confirming your email address as valid and responsive that way. Why shouldn't they have the right to complain to the ISP that is facilitating this crap?
If no guns have chamber indicators, then shouldn't it be common sense to always check the chamber? I could see a lawsuit if the chamber indicator didn't work correctly and the gun fired when it indicated that there was no round chambered, but in this case I don't see it as a design flaw. Guns have never had chamber indicators. Maybe adding them would be nice, but not having them is certainly not a malfunction. Furthermore, isn't the first rule of gun safety, "Never point the gun at anything that you don't want to destroy"? Stupid people do stupid things. Doing stupid things can often kill you or others.
One could argue all day about fair trials, and they'd only say "we have no intention of even charging them with a crime; we're holding them as POWs till the war is over".
Yeah, but who exactly have we declared war on? Terrorism? We've declared war on a tactic? How the hell will such a war ever have an end? Seems pretty much like the War on Drugs to me. It will go on forever. If there is no declaration of war and no specific enemy, then how can these people be POWs? How can the administration be justified in holding them until the end of the war when no war has been defined?
Yeah, almost all games I've played either lock you into a path or behave as if many of the things you've done haven't happened or don't matter. I think it's mainly a limitation of AI and story trees. The more freedom they give you, the harder it is to write dialog for all the possibilities. I hope that they find ways to overcome these limitations in the future.
Oh, and your GPL example doesn't fly. The GPL grants you *more* rights than you have under regular copyright law. If you want to distribute your mods, they are willing to allow it, as long as you distribute the source as well. Otherwise standard copyright law applies. The DMCA takes standard copyright law and then removes the possibility of fair use whenever any sort of encoding is done on the media. I don't see how you can really compare the two.
What we're arguing here is the merits of the DMCA. I know that the DMCA makes bypassing the encryption illegal. I'm asking why they should have that right under the law to prevent me from decrypting it if that's what it takes to get it to work with my hardware and software. TV makers can't prevent me from taking the TV apart and modifying it. Why should movie-makers be able to prevent me from doing what I want with the movie as long as I'm not distributing it?
Again, you aren't giving any reason why I shouldn't be allowed to make it work with Linux. I can smash it with a hammer or microwave it legally, even though neither involved a licensed player, so why shouldn't I be allowed to rig up a method to allow me to watch the DVD that I paid for with the OS of my choice?
Wrong. Creating a copy (by viewing a website for instance) is not illegal. Distributing that copy *is* illegal. Selling it (e.g. as part of a distro) is even more illegal. That is the difference.
VAlentini: You dont create public policy for the benfit of millions of people on how it inconveniences two people.
What benefit? People lose the right to fair use just to get a picture that's a bit nicer than what they have now? You consider that a benefit?
personally I'd bet that of the 2 million less tahn 1/10th of 1 percent of them are seriously worried they cant watch a movie on thie linux commputer.
You can try to trivialize it all you want, but it still boils down to the fact that we're losing the right to fair use of something we have purchased. Not just for people who want to watch a DVD on their Linux box, but those who might want to create something new from them as well. Perhaps using clips of movies for some purpose. If they purchased the DVD, then they should have the right to use it as they see fit as long as they aren't redistributing the work illegally. The problem with the DMCA is that it makes damn near any use of the work that isn't specifically permitted by the copyright holder illegal. That's not where all the power is supposed to lie under copyright law. Maybe it doesn't particularly matter to you, but I'm sure there are all sorts of areas where laws don't affect you. That doesn't mean those laws shouldn't be fair or that they shouldn't be written for the benefit of the people rather than the few who want to pay for the law's passage.
What really gets me about this is that we, once again, didn't get a useful answer about this from Valenti, and, once again, the interviewer didn't press him on the important part. I would have asked that if there are only maybe a thousand that would want to build their own HDTV, then what's the harm in allowing it? If he is accepting that some engineers might want to do it, and since he didn't argue that part I really don't know if he is or not, then why shouldn't everyone have the right, regardless of whether they exercise it or not?
Me too. We should just change it back to the way it used to be, before they decided we need more God in our lives back in the 50s, and get on with other things.
Well first, torpor didn't start flaming people, AC did. That alone makes AC a target. Second, if you can find a source that disputes torpor's information and has more credibility, then you can probably say the same about him that I just said about the AC. 'Til then, AC seems to be quite obviously in the wrong, and torpor at least read more than one source.
I guess AC should do his homework before flaming others in the first place then, huh? Just because the linked article didn't say specifically how the schools were to be compensated doesn't mean that the info doesn't exist, and it certainly doesn't mean that he should just make an assumption and start flaming away. So if he's going to start ridiculing people, he should damn well make sure he's right first! Otherwise he just looks like an ass and deserves to be flamed in return.
I think that if the system didn't discourage 3rd parties, people would actually give a lot more thought to the candidates rather than just voting for whichever "side" they normally support. Especially people that are independents now. The bottom line is that a system that discourages 3rd parties is a bad system because it keeps other viewpoints out of the running. People can't vote for the person that they really want, for fear of helping the person they want least to win. They feel they have a duty to vote for a candidate that is just the "lesser evil" rather than the candidate that they really want. There are tons of people saying this for every presidential election. Any way you look at it, that's bad. If people really do want to vote for republicans or democrats, they can do that just fine under the IRV system as well. So why not change to the system that is more flexible and gives people the ability to express their true opinion?
A vote for Nader is still a vote for Nader, and a vote taken away from Kerry.
Absolutely. And if we were using IRV then people wouldn't be afraid to vote for Nader if that's who they wanted for pres. They would pick Kerry as their second, and if Nader didn't get enough votes, then those votes would go to Kerry and if that gives Kerry a majority, then the will of the people has been served much more accurately than you get with a plurality vote.
Democrats will vote for Kerry, with Nader as their second pick, and Republicans will vote for Bush with Buchannan as their second pick.
First of all, those aren't moderates you're talking about. You give examples of right and left and then more extreme right and left. Moderate candidates would draw votes from both sides. Probably enough to win too, if people weren't afraid of voting for the candidate that they really want because it could lead to the candidate that they want the least winning the election.
I think you're absolutely wrong. I think that IRV or a similar system would help third (and fourth and fifth) parties develop much faster. Also, 2nd position votes for Nader were your example, not mine. In my opinion, many people who wanted to vote for Nader as their first pick were afraid to because they realized that if they didn't back the candidate with the best perceived chance to beat the republican candidate, then they might as well just vote for the republican themselves as the effect would be the same. We shouldn't have a system where people feel they have to vote for a candidate that is not their first choice just because they have no way of expressing their real views on the candidates. The plurality system is the best way to get the least popular candidate into office. If the majority of the country had liberal leanings, but were split between 2 candidates, then the conservative candidate is likely to win even though he's the last candidate that the majority of the country want to have in office. Sounds like just about the worst system we could have. It's great if your goal is to perpetuate a 2-party system, but there's no way for a 3rd party to gain traction gradually. It has to happen all at once or not at all because those that are split will always lose.
I was just researching this very question for myself today. Found a nifty comparison between several source control systems. Perforce and BitKeeper seem like the most complete systems, with Monotone and Subversion close on their heels. The trial version of Perforce works for up to 2 people with all features enabled. It gets kind of expensive if you need more than that ($750/seat). Couldn't find actual pricing for BitKeeper, although they were prompt in replying to an email to their sales address and I'm discussing it with them.
I get so tired of hearing people complain about TVs or DVD players in cars. They are almost always installed in the ceiling between the front seats and facing the rear, or are installed in the backs of the front seats. They are there for passengers to watch. Usually for children to keep them entertained on trips. Hell, it could almost be considered a safety feature. At least if they are watching TV or playing video games they might not be so bored that they end up fighting with each other and have mom or dad trying to look back at them and yell at them instead of driving.
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Individuals have freedom, while corporations are products of the state and thus do not have the same freedoms individuals have.
They do play by pretty much the same rules when it comes to free speech, which is what this amounts to.
Imagine that you sold furniture, and I went to all of your wood suppliers and told them that you were operating illegally and they should stop providing you with wood, but never told you that they were unhappy with your nor give you a chance to fix the situation.
In which case it would be up to the wood suppliers to decide whether they want to lose your business by refusing to sell to you, or whether you had violated their terms. I don't see the problem here. Richter is pissing a lot of people off and they are complaining to his ISP (via SPAMCop). Everyone knows better than to try talking directly to a spammer. You just end up confirming your email address as valid and responsive that way. Why shouldn't they have the right to complain to the ISP that is facilitating this crap?
If no guns have chamber indicators, then shouldn't it be common sense to always check the chamber? I could see a lawsuit if the chamber indicator didn't work correctly and the gun fired when it indicated that there was no round chambered, but in this case I don't see it as a design flaw. Guns have never had chamber indicators. Maybe adding them would be nice, but not having them is certainly not a malfunction. Furthermore, isn't the first rule of gun safety, "Never point the gun at anything that you don't want to destroy"? Stupid people do stupid things. Doing stupid things can often kill you or others.
One could argue all day about fair trials, and they'd only say "we have no intention of even charging them with a crime; we're holding them as POWs till the war is over".
Yeah, but who exactly have we declared war on? Terrorism? We've declared war on a tactic? How the hell will such a war ever have an end? Seems pretty much like the War on Drugs to me. It will go on forever. If there is no declaration of war and no specific enemy, then how can these people be POWs? How can the administration be justified in holding them until the end of the war when no war has been defined?
I probably should have added that despite its shortfalls, Deus Ex is still one of my all-time favorite gaming experiences.
Yeah, almost all games I've played either lock you into a path or behave as if many of the things you've done haven't happened or don't matter. I think it's mainly a limitation of AI and story trees. The more freedom they give you, the harder it is to write dialog for all the possibilities. I hope that they find ways to overcome these limitations in the future.
Oh, and your GPL example doesn't fly. The GPL grants you *more* rights than you have under regular copyright law. If you want to distribute your mods, they are willing to allow it, as long as you distribute the source as well. Otherwise standard copyright law applies. The DMCA takes standard copyright law and then removes the possibility of fair use whenever any sort of encoding is done on the media. I don't see how you can really compare the two.
What we're arguing here is the merits of the DMCA. I know that the DMCA makes bypassing the encryption illegal. I'm asking why they should have that right under the law to prevent me from decrypting it if that's what it takes to get it to work with my hardware and software. TV makers can't prevent me from taking the TV apart and modifying it. Why should movie-makers be able to prevent me from doing what I want with the movie as long as I'm not distributing it?
Again, you aren't giving any reason why I shouldn't be allowed to make it work with Linux. I can smash it with a hammer or microwave it legally, even though neither involved a licensed player, so why shouldn't I be allowed to rig up a method to allow me to watch the DVD that I paid for with the OS of my choice?
Wrong. Creating a copy (by viewing a website for instance) is not illegal. Distributing that copy *is* illegal. Selling it (e.g. as part of a distro) is even more illegal. That is the difference.
Taking away someone else's rights is NOT your right.
Apparently it is if you have enough money to throw at Congress to get them to give you that right.
Yes, but it doesn't give you some mystical right to use the software on, say, medical equipment or anything.
Why not? If I own the medical equipment, why can't I do any damn thing I please with it?
VAlentini: You dont create public policy for the benfit of millions of people on how it inconveniences two people.
What benefit? People lose the right to fair use just to get a picture that's a bit nicer than what they have now? You consider that a benefit?
personally I'd bet that of the 2 million less tahn 1/10th of 1 percent of them are seriously worried they cant watch a movie on thie linux commputer.
You can try to trivialize it all you want, but it still boils down to the fact that we're losing the right to fair use of something we have purchased. Not just for people who want to watch a DVD on their Linux box, but those who might want to create something new from them as well. Perhaps using clips of movies for some purpose. If they purchased the DVD, then they should have the right to use it as they see fit as long as they aren't redistributing the work illegally. The problem with the DMCA is that it makes damn near any use of the work that isn't specifically permitted by the copyright holder illegal. That's not where all the power is supposed to lie under copyright law. Maybe it doesn't particularly matter to you, but I'm sure there are all sorts of areas where laws don't affect you. That doesn't mean those laws shouldn't be fair or that they shouldn't be written for the benefit of the people rather than the few who want to pay for the law's passage.
What really gets me about this is that we, once again, didn't get a useful answer about this from Valenti, and, once again, the interviewer didn't press him on the important part. I would have asked that if there are only maybe a thousand that would want to build their own HDTV, then what's the harm in allowing it? If he is accepting that some engineers might want to do it, and since he didn't argue that part I really don't know if he is or not, then why shouldn't everyone have the right, regardless of whether they exercise it or not?
Probably the latter. The other 2 shouldn't be terribly surprising if you're being interviewed by an MIT student.
That's ok. If you haven't lost the cops within 15 minutes, you're screwed anyway :)
Nothing much, yes, no, no, who cares, maybe, probably not, and ha ha.
Me too. We should just change it back to the way it used to be, before they decided we need more God in our lives back in the 50s, and get on with other things.
Well first, torpor didn't start flaming people, AC did. That alone makes AC a target. Second, if you can find a source that disputes torpor's information and has more credibility, then you can probably say the same about him that I just said about the AC. 'Til then, AC seems to be quite obviously in the wrong, and torpor at least read more than one source.
I guess AC should do his homework before flaming others in the first place then, huh? Just because the linked article didn't say specifically how the schools were to be compensated doesn't mean that the info doesn't exist, and it certainly doesn't mean that he should just make an assumption and start flaming away. So if he's going to start ridiculing people, he should damn well make sure he's right first! Otherwise he just looks like an ass and deserves to be flamed in return.
I think that if the system didn't discourage 3rd parties, people would actually give a lot more thought to the candidates rather than just voting for whichever "side" they normally support. Especially people that are independents now. The bottom line is that a system that discourages 3rd parties is a bad system because it keeps other viewpoints out of the running. People can't vote for the person that they really want, for fear of helping the person they want least to win. They feel they have a duty to vote for a candidate that is just the "lesser evil" rather than the candidate that they really want. There are tons of people saying this for every presidential election. Any way you look at it, that's bad. If people really do want to vote for republicans or democrats, they can do that just fine under the IRV system as well. So why not change to the system that is more flexible and gives people the ability to express their true opinion?
A vote for Nader is still a vote for Nader, and a vote taken away from Kerry.
Absolutely. And if we were using IRV then people wouldn't be afraid to vote for Nader if that's who they wanted for pres. They would pick Kerry as their second, and if Nader didn't get enough votes, then those votes would go to Kerry and if that gives Kerry a majority, then the will of the people has been served much more accurately than you get with a plurality vote.
Democrats will vote for Kerry, with Nader as their second pick, and Republicans will vote for Bush with Buchannan as their second pick.
First of all, those aren't moderates you're talking about. You give examples of right and left and then more extreme right and left. Moderate candidates would draw votes from both sides. Probably enough to win too, if people weren't afraid of voting for the candidate that they really want because it could lead to the candidate that they want the least winning the election.
I think you're absolutely wrong. I think that IRV or a similar system would help third (and fourth and fifth) parties develop much faster. Also, 2nd position votes for Nader were your example, not mine. In my opinion, many people who wanted to vote for Nader as their first pick were afraid to because they realized that if they didn't back the candidate with the best perceived chance to beat the republican candidate, then they might as well just vote for the republican themselves as the effect would be the same. We shouldn't have a system where people feel they have to vote for a candidate that is not their first choice just because they have no way of expressing their real views on the candidates. The plurality system is the best way to get the least popular candidate into office. If the majority of the country had liberal leanings, but were split between 2 candidates, then the conservative candidate is likely to win even though he's the last candidate that the majority of the country want to have in office. Sounds like just about the worst system we could have. It's great if your goal is to perpetuate a 2-party system, but there's no way for a 3rd party to gain traction gradually. It has to happen all at once or not at all because those that are split will always lose.
I was just researching this very question for myself today. Found a nifty comparison between several source control systems. Perforce and BitKeeper seem like the most complete systems, with Monotone and Subversion close on their heels. The trial version of Perforce works for up to 2 people with all features enabled. It gets kind of expensive if you need more than that ($750/seat). Couldn't find actual pricing for BitKeeper, although they were prompt in replying to an email to their sales address and I'm discussing it with them.
I get so tired of hearing people complain about TVs or DVD players in cars. They are almost always installed in the ceiling between the front seats and facing the rear, or are installed in the backs of the front seats. They are there for passengers to watch. Usually for children to keep them entertained on trips. Hell, it could almost be considered a safety feature. At least if they are watching TV or playing video games they might not be so bored that they end up fighting with each other and have mom or dad trying to look back at them and yell at them instead of driving.