Thankfully, I've yet to see a film where someone turns a car into a Molotov cocktail by inserting a rag into the fuel cap and lighting it up.. thankfully, because kids have a thing for emulating what they see in films.
Feel free to try to turn my car into a molotov cocktail. I'll especially enjoy the part where you try to throw it so that the tank breaks, allowing the fuel vapor to be ignited by the lit fuse.
The OLPC can (will?) vastly improve the eduction of third world children. It's better to teach a man how to fish than to just give him a fish. The OLPC is just taking this to a new level.
Sigh... so much for the days when the average slashdot user wasn't a lawyer;-)
I'm sure you meant that as a joke (and it gave me a good laugh), but you're also insightful. A lot of people seem to be hung up on the legality of it all, and there are a lot less comments appealing to the common sense approach.
Why is that that so much is dealth with by lawyers today, in stead of sitting down for a reasonable talk between reasonable people?
If you read TFA, you see that the main reason they're proposing to legalize non-commercial filesharing, is that they value the privacy rights of their citizens over the wants of the special interest groups (eg RIAA).
We politicians have to make clear that we are not prepared to build the technology-hostile control state that would be necessary to satisfy the Antipiracy Bureau and their likes.
So yes, it would be a net gain. There would be at least one country in the world that values its citizen's privacy.
you could just create electricity and reduce the need for coal and prevent that coal from being burned
You are right ofcourse, but the fact remains that coal plants exist. You can be idealistic about it, and want to get rid of them completely. Or you can be pragmatic about it, and encourage every technology that might help, even if it's only a little bit.
I understand the reasoning of 'do it well, or don't do it at all', but there are a million political and economic reasons why 'doing it well' isn't going to happen anytime soon. 'Doing it slightly better' doesn't seem a bad thing to me.
My point is that you can both advocate getting rid of coal power (and/or other fossil fuels) and support technologies like these at the same time.
Freedom is the right of others to make choices you think are wrong and supporting freedom means supporting the right of others to make those wrong choices
I'd add something like 'as long as no harm is done' to that. You know, just to avoid giving people the 'freedom' to kill others for example. The big question is where to draw the line. Does a same sex marriage harm anyone? Does the right to carry arms harm anyone? Does it harm anyone if the government isn't allowed to eavesdrop on your communications?
This is why it's vital to have a good constitution in any form of democracy, to ensure that a line is drawn that cannot be crossed by regular laws. Unfortunately, either a lot of constitutions aren't good enough, or a lot of governments are working around them.
You are right though about the value of freedom being dead. I'm from The Netherlands, and I remember that we used to be seen as a tolerant, freedom loving nation full of strange people. I feel we have a decent constitution, yet our governments have managed to put us firmly in the red category. Sure, we can still smoke weed, have abortions and euthanize ourselves, but that's only a part of freedom. Unfortunately, not many people seem to realize that. Give the people bread and games, and they'll be happy.
This action plan (it's not legislation, yet) is intended to get government agencies to use both open source software, and open standards.
I don't really care wheter or not our government uses open source or proprietary software, whatever works best for the task at hand. I do however care a lot about them using open standards. It sure would be nice if we can still figure out how to open a certain document in 50 years time, without depending on a single software vendor to help us out.
The point of e-voting is to remove human error (in all shapes and forms) from the counting process. Assuming that at one point the electronic voting machines can be made secure enough, it's a much better way of getting accurate numbers than by paper voting.
And while we're at it, let's put a charge on p2p traffic as well. Oh wait, net neutrality and all that.
While you could probably solve a lot of the spam problem by metered billing for e-mail, the same could be said for p2p. Only for p2p it would just solve the ISP's problem (and possibly the content industry), in stead of a user problem.
To fight spam in stead of reacting to it (i.e. using spam filters), you have to attack the problem itself. As soon as an ISP notices a botnetted PC in their network, drop its internet connection. Redirect all their webtraffic to a page displaying a phonenumber they can call, and don't let them back on until they cleaned their machine. A Dutch ISP (http://www.xs4all.nl/) already does this, and I happen to think it's great.
Then there's the problem of economic incentive. If only there was a way to stop people from actually bying any of this crap. I'm not sure if it would be legal, but an ISP that has marked a message as spam, could collect any linked urls from those messages, and tell their DNS to redirect to a single specific page for all them (goatse.cx perhaps). Ofcourse, they'd still need a decent spam filter to actually do this. Chicken and egg kind of thing I suppose.
Dell doesn't offer any sytems with Ubuntu preinstalled in the Netherlands. I was looking for a new laptop for my parents, and I managed to convince them to go Linux. So I went to the Dell website, but alas, no such luck. Still, knowing that their hardware will work with Ubuntu was enough for me to go Dell anyway.
Kopiloff is charged with mail fraud, accessing a protected computer, and two counts of aggravated identity theft. Authorities allege he victimized at least 83 people.
I can understand the other charges, but accessing a protected computer? I'd think it would be reasonable to assume files that are found on a p2p network are meant to be shared. IANAL, but if he gets convicted for that, wouldn't that allow a "I'm sorry, I never meant to share these mp3's" defense in most, if not all, of the RIAA cases?
You can price anything right if you choose not to pay your suppliers
Exactly. With Allofmp3 back in business, you now have 3 basic choices for your online music.
1. Download illegally and pay nothing
2. Download legally, and pay the copyrightholder
3. Download questionably, and pay some Russian bloke so he can drive a nice car
Something like Allofmp3 would stand a much better chance of waking up the RIAA if they could manage to pull it off in a country that has comparable copyright laws to the US. I love the businessmodel, but don't kid yourself. By using them, you're essentially paying to silence your conscience.
From whom do you think they should get help, and at what price?
People that want to drive cars, have to get a licence to do so, because it's rather dangerous to drive a car if you don't know what you're doing. Same thing with wifi (and most things internet related really).
If you bring equipment into your home that you don't know how to properly operate, you're putting yourself at risk. It is (or should be anyway) your own responsibility to deal with that risk. Reading the manual that comes with your router would be a good start, and it's free too.
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The OLPC can (will?) vastly improve the eduction of third world children. It's better to teach a man how to fish than to just give him a fish. The OLPC is just taking this to a new level.
Why is that that so much is dealth with by lawyers today, in stead of sitting down for a reasonable talk between reasonable people?
So yes, it would be a net gain. There would be at least one country in the world that values its citizen's privacy.
He means a gramophone record.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramophone_record
you could just create electricity and reduce the need for coal and prevent that coal from being burned
You are right ofcourse, but the fact remains that coal plants exist. You can be idealistic about it, and want to get rid of them completely. Or you can be pragmatic about it, and encourage every technology that might help, even if it's only a little bit.
I understand the reasoning of 'do it well, or don't do it at all', but there are a million political and economic reasons why 'doing it well' isn't going to happen anytime soon. 'Doing it slightly better' doesn't seem a bad thing to me.
My point is that you can both advocate getting rid of coal power (and/or other fossil fuels) and support technologies like these at the same time.
Freedom is the right of others to make choices you think are wrong and supporting freedom means supporting the right of others to make those wrong choices
I'd add something like 'as long as no harm is done' to that. You know, just to avoid giving people the 'freedom' to kill others for example. The big question is where to draw the line. Does a same sex marriage harm anyone? Does the right to carry arms harm anyone? Does it harm anyone if the government isn't allowed to eavesdrop on your communications?
This is why it's vital to have a good constitution in any form of democracy, to ensure that a line is drawn that cannot be crossed by regular laws. Unfortunately, either a lot of constitutions aren't good enough, or a lot of governments are working around them.
You are right though about the value of freedom being dead. I'm from The Netherlands, and I remember that we used to be seen as a tolerant, freedom loving nation full of strange people. I feel we have a decent constitution, yet our governments have managed to put us firmly in the red category. Sure, we can still smoke weed, have abortions and euthanize ourselves, but that's only a part of freedom. Unfortunately, not many people seem to realize that. Give the people bread and games, and they'll be happy.
The comparison in TFA says the new KITT has 24-Hour Roadside Assistance, where the old one didn't.
I guess they don't make them like they used to... (either that, or they scrapped the maintenance truck)
This action plan (it's not legislation, yet) is intended to get government agencies to use both open source software, and open standards.
I don't really care wheter or not our government uses open source or proprietary software, whatever works best for the task at hand. I do however care a lot about them using open standards. It sure would be nice if we can still figure out how to open a certain document in 50 years time, without depending on a single software vendor to help us out.
The point of e-voting is to remove human error (in all shapes and forms) from the counting process. Assuming that at one point the electronic voting machines can be made secure enough, it's a much better way of getting accurate numbers than by paper voting.
And while we're at it, let's put a charge on p2p traffic as well. Oh wait, net neutrality and all that.
While you could probably solve a lot of the spam problem by metered billing for e-mail, the same could be said for p2p. Only for p2p it would just solve the ISP's problem (and possibly the content industry), in stead of a user problem.
To fight spam in stead of reacting to it (i.e. using spam filters), you have to attack the problem itself. As soon as an ISP notices a botnetted PC in their network, drop its internet connection. Redirect all their webtraffic to a page displaying a phonenumber they can call, and don't let them back on until they cleaned their machine. A Dutch ISP (http://www.xs4all.nl/) already does this, and I happen to think it's great.
Then there's the problem of economic incentive. If only there was a way to stop people from actually bying any of this crap. I'm not sure if it would be legal, but an ISP that has marked a message as spam, could collect any linked urls from those messages, and tell their DNS to redirect to a single specific page for all them (goatse.cx perhaps). Ofcourse, they'd still need a decent spam filter to actually do this. Chicken and egg kind of thing I suppose.
You know, there's a difference between serving coffee in a ceramic mug, or serving it in a styrofoam cup.
Guess which one lets the coffee cool down to safe drinking/handling temperature within 2 minutes?
Dell doesn't offer any sytems with Ubuntu preinstalled in the Netherlands. I was looking for a new laptop for my parents, and I managed to convince them to go Linux. So I went to the Dell website, but alas, no such luck. Still, knowing that their hardware will work with Ubuntu was enough for me to go Dell anyway.
I can understand the other charges, but accessing a protected computer? I'd think it would be reasonable to assume files that are found on a p2p network are meant to be shared. IANAL, but if he gets convicted for that, wouldn't that allow a "I'm sorry, I never meant to share these mp3's" defense in most, if not all, of the RIAA cases?
You can price anything right if you choose not to pay your suppliers Exactly. With Allofmp3 back in business, you now have 3 basic choices for your online music. 1. Download illegally and pay nothing 2. Download legally, and pay the copyrightholder 3. Download questionably, and pay some Russian bloke so he can drive a nice car Something like Allofmp3 would stand a much better chance of waking up the RIAA if they could manage to pull it off in a country that has comparable copyright laws to the US. I love the businessmodel, but don't kid yourself. By using them, you're essentially paying to silence your conscience.
From whom do you think they should get help, and at what price? People that want to drive cars, have to get a licence to do so, because it's rather dangerous to drive a car if you don't know what you're doing. Same thing with wifi (and most things internet related really). If you bring equipment into your home that you don't know how to properly operate, you're putting yourself at risk. It is (or should be anyway) your own responsibility to deal with that risk. Reading the manual that comes with your router would be a good start, and it's free too.
They use pictures gathered on the web to fill their database. Just 'repair' your favourite shots from your holidays at the beach if you want porn.
That announcement is just as false as the allegations they recently made. Just because it's posted on a forum, doesn't mean it's true.