Can't argue with much of that, except for your assertion that atheism is a faith. That assertion is almost as common, and just as off-base, as citing Communism to illustrate why atheism is bad. Am I allowed to vehemently deny the existence of invisible pink unicorns without being accused of propagating an anti-Unicornistic "faith"? Given two competing, unprovable statements, the one that makes the more-specific claim is ordinarily subject to greater skepticism... but for some reason religion is considered exempt from that standard.
But yeah, your main point is totally right: mob identity really is the source of a great deal of what we call evil.
It's always maddening to see Christians citing Communists as examples of atheism run amok. As a rule, Communist governments are based on personality cults. They have all of the attributes of theocracies except for the (trivial, in practice) bits about an invisible man in the sky. Communism is a religion whose founding principles (Marxism) are held to be unquestionable axioms, with severe earthly penalties for dissenters. The movements' leaders and founders are considered to be sources of fundamental, universal enlightenment. (Of course, Marx's writings proved to be about as influential to actual Communists as Jesus's writings are to actual Christians.)
Through its explicit denial of human nature, Communism is as much a faith-based form of government as any ever devised by man. The only reason atheism was so important to the Communists was that their leaders literally couldn't handle competition.
Historically, the American's Freedom in Speech in rooted in a concept of citizenship: the right of every responsible adult to participate in open political debate.
Got a link? I've checked the hardcopy docs a couple of times, but all I see is some stuff that starts out with, "Congress shall make no law." Nothing about political debate, or Saving The Children, or even responsibility.
If the patents were vague and ambigous, they would be challenged in a courtroom by the alleged infringer's attorneys under 35 USC 112 and would be found invalid.... This hilarious "critique" of the patent system is the logical equivalent arguing that cats are fish because they have whiskers, fur, and four legs.
You forgot, "after the alleged infringer has paid anywhere from one hundred thousand to several million dollars in legal fees."
But I guess in your rhetorical world, that'd be the equivalent of arguing that cats aren't fish because they don't have gills and fins. (Did I get that right?)
Microsoft also has free caffeinated soda machines and the food on campus is pretty cheap:)
On the other hand, living/working across from Google's office in Kirkland, WA, I can see a whole freakin' espresso bar through their office windows.
The choice comes down to whether you want to play defense or offense, I guess. They're both decent, quality-oriented companies, but Microsoft seems to spend a lot of time and effort making their products do less with each release. These days, Microsoft's 'customers' -- the people they go to work every day trying to serve -- are media conglomerates rather than end users. Maybe that's sustainable, maybe not. Google, on the other hand, makes little effort to hide the fact that their real customers are advertising buyers.
The fact is, neither Google nor Microsoft ultimately exist to serve the end user. That's something I'd think about fairly carefully if I were just coming into the field.
OEM copies of Windows aren't "locked to the BIOS" or anything like that. I don't even know what the hell that is. You just call MS, tell them you replaced a dead motherboard, and you're set.
From now on, whenever anybody replaces a motherboard or NIC on a Windows PC, they are required to call me at 1-800-RUN-VSTA and ask for permission to continue operating their computer. That's the way it's going to be, boys and girls, from here on out. And you'd better be quiet and respectful while I have you on the phone.
What's that? "Eat a dick," you say? "What gives you the right to determine on a day-to-day basis when I'm allowed to use my computer?"
Well, at least you're asking the right questions now. You just need to ask Microsoft, instead of me.
There is a utility called "Tag and Rename" that addresses the problem of "Help, I have 15,000 MP3 files with accurate, consistent filenames but no ID3 tags." You can create a batch job that parses the metadata in your.MP3 filenames and turns it into ID3 tags. It's a real lifesaver when using iTunes.
So what? Upon the expiration of copyright, the content still falls into the public domain. What difference does it make if the particular copy you purchased is encrypted?
The law requires that copyrighted material be made available to the public domain (hence the original purpose of the Library of Congress).
While older DRM mechanisms such as CSS did nothing to prevent copying, newer systems work by associating players and content via hardware keys. The goal of these technological protections is to ensure that the content will never become accessible on any terms other than those of the content publisher-player manufacturer cartel.
As I said, there's not a shred of Constitutionality behind any law that sanctions this business model. However, it's been argued (by actual attorneys) that no one will have "standing" to challenge the DMCA on this basis until someone is actually unable to access protected content whose copyright has expired.
The likelihood of a benevolent DRM-breaking hacker appearing to save us all from bad legislation should not affect the legal questions behind DRM enforcement. That's as naive as the judge who said something to the effect of, "Let them make copies of the cassette version, then," when confronted by fair-use arguments.
Re:Would some one please explain...
on
The Day Against DRM
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· Score: 5, Informative
But is there anyone out there that is cool with copyrights, but thinks DRM is bad?
Here's the problem: copyrights are a limited monopoly offered by the government as one half of a bargain with creators. The other half of the bargain lies in the creator's agreement that the protected content will become available to the public domain when the copyright term expires.
DRM allows publishers to evade their half of the copyright bargain. In particular, the DMCA anti-circumvention law in the US is unconstitutional because it does not require publishers to disable their DRM protection, or arrange for it to disable itself, upon the expiration of copyright protection. That means that the DMCA explicitly sanctions perpetual copyright protection... a clear violation of both the letter and intent of the Constitution's clause that authorizes that protection in the first place. With a combination of traditional copyright law and hypothetical DRM technology that remains unbreakable after copyright expiration, a publisher will enjoy an unlimited monopoly at the public's expense.
But do they not have a right to protect their intellectual property? Are the detractors of DRM against the concept of intellectual property altogether?
Some are against the whole concept of IP, but not being an ideologue, I can't speak for them. I do, however, believe that publishers and creators should have to choose between self-enforced protection (DRM) and government-enforced protection (copyright law). They should not be able to leverage both at the same time, because the two legal concepts of DRM and the "copyright bargain" are diametrically opposed to each other.
Here's an honest question: Ignoring the cost, just what is it that you think is so much better about Windows 2000 compared to XP?
Product activation. If I tried to sell you my car, but insisted on keeping the starter-kill remote, you'd tell me to go jump in the lake. For some reason, people don't subject Microsoft to the same scrutiny.
Product activation is bad enough at the application level, where individual programs have to phone home to receive permission to run. It should be absolutely unacceptable at the OS level... which is why it really, really sucks that everybody accepted it.
As far as I can tell, people who still use 2000 by choice are either ignorant or just dumb.
As of last week, PHX's free WiFi connectivity works very well for general surfing, but they block VPN connections. That makes it more or less useless for many business travellers. I've been meaning to track down the people responsible and ask them why in the world they'd do that.
... still don't seem to have been added, although I'm sure the new blue-note icon motif is to die for. Sheesh. Apple still seems to be convinced that iTunes is the only application their Windows users ever run.
It remains to be seen if Apple has divined the secrets of the holy WM_PAINT message. I'm optimistic; the UI does look a little snappier.
(Plug for my freeware implementation of iTunes global hotkeys, which really should have been rendered obsolete by Apple: http://www.ke5fx.com/ilaunch/readme.htm)
Bullshit, the rich stole the means of producion (natural resource) from the people, fenced them off, and only then worked them and claimed that working them was justification for stealing them in the first place. Kind of like if I stole a bike, painted it, then claimed it was mine because I had worked on it. They are only more productive because they control more resources. Love the way you gloss over inherited wealth, which is most of it.
1895 on line 1. They're going on and on about a whole shipment of missing rhetoric; want me to take a message?
Well, you can always trade time resolution for bit depth. That's what a sigma-delta converter does, and I think he's saying that Sony's format is based on a serial bitstream that can drive some kind of a reconstruction filter directly.
The notion that this somehow rules out transport controls is what's weird. That's like blaming your bad gas mileage on the guy who stole the "BMW" symbol off your hood.
SACD is a streming bit format. each bit signals either an up or down step on the waveform, rather than having sampled bytes indicating a complete level. This is why you can't really start an SACD song in the middle of the song.
I think I'll go back to bed now, on the grounds that the day can only get weirder after reading something like that.
It just seems silly to me, let's fund the country that is on the precipice of becoming the next communist superpower. Sweet.
That's one way to think of it, but another argument is that the best way to fight Communism is to encourage the country to participate in the global economy. Trying to isolate a Communist regime has never worked in any case I can think of. Nor does bombarding them with empty capitalistic propaganda.
Where's the upside for the US in treating China like Cuba or North Korea? Communist party bosses respond to those pressures by digging in their heels and living like czars as usual, while the people suffer all of the drawbacks of living in a pariah state.
Re:If I am the copyright owner
on
30 Days of DRM
·
· Score: 1
Circumvention of what type?
That's a good question. DRM is sold as "copy protection," but as you point out, its effect is "access protection." CSS does nothing to stop DVDs from being copied, for instance. It's an important distinction for users, but not from a legal standpoint. The bargain encoded in US copyright law is that protected works must eventually be made available for both public-domain access and unfettered copying. A company that uses DRM is evading its half of that bargain.
There should be no basis for legal protection of works that already carry in-perpetuity technological protections. Publishers should be able to distribute their works with either perpetual DRM or copyright protection, but not both.
Re:If I am the copyright owner
on
30 Days of DRM
·
· Score: 1
The goal of DRM is to make circumvention impossible. Eventually, that goal will become feasible. (It may already have: no one ever cracked the triple-DES encryption on the original Divx DVDs, and AFAIK there has never been a successful attack on the latest Videocipher implementation.)
So, if circumvention requires me to leave my codebreaking machine running until the heat death of the universe, wouldn't you call that a de facto perpetual copyright?
Re:If I am the copyright owner
on
30 Days of DRM
·
· Score: 1
If I am the owner of copyright in a work, why don't I have the authority to apply true and correct copyright management information to the work?
In the US, copyright terms are limited to a specific duration. DRM that does not include a sunset provision is, therefore, incompatible with US copyright law. It effectively grants a perpetual copyright... something that is wrong on so many levels that even the Supreme Court would agree.
Slashdot Mirror
Can't argue with much of that, except for your assertion that atheism is a faith. That assertion is almost as common, and just as off-base, as citing Communism to illustrate why atheism is bad. Am I allowed to vehemently deny the existence of invisible pink unicorns without being accused of propagating an anti-Unicornistic "faith"? Given two competing, unprovable statements, the one that makes the more-specific claim is ordinarily subject to greater skepticism... but for some reason religion is considered exempt from that standard.
But yeah, your main point is totally right: mob identity really is the source of a great deal of what we call evil.
It's always maddening to see Christians citing Communists as examples of atheism run amok. As a rule, Communist governments are based on personality cults. They have all of the attributes of theocracies except for the (trivial, in practice) bits about an invisible man in the sky. Communism is a religion whose founding principles (Marxism) are held to be unquestionable axioms, with severe earthly penalties for dissenters. The movements' leaders and founders are considered to be sources of fundamental, universal enlightenment. (Of course, Marx's writings proved to be about as influential to actual Communists as Jesus's writings are to actual Christians.)
Through its explicit denial of human nature, Communism is as much a faith-based form of government as any ever devised by man. The only reason atheism was so important to the Communists was that their leaders literally couldn't handle competition.
All of the above devoutly believed (believes, in the case of Knuth, who is still alive) in God and the Bible!
In many cases that was because professing otherwise would have been a career-limiting move, if not a life-ending one.
Historically, the American's Freedom in Speech in rooted in a concept of citizenship: the right of every responsible adult to participate in open political debate.
Got a link? I've checked the hardcopy docs a couple of times, but all I see is some stuff that starts out with, "Congress shall make no law." Nothing about political debate, or Saving The Children, or even responsibility.
If the patents were vague and ambigous, they would be challenged in a courtroom by the alleged infringer's attorneys under 35 USC 112 and would be found invalid. ... This hilarious "critique" of the patent system is the logical equivalent arguing that cats are fish because they have whiskers, fur, and four legs.
You forgot, "after the alleged infringer has paid anywhere from one hundred thousand to several million dollars in legal fees."
But I guess in your rhetorical world, that'd be the equivalent of arguing that cats aren't fish because they don't have gills and fins. (Did I get that right?)
How about Vietnam? Was that a PR mission, too?
What I cant understand is when the schools prevent the students from privately saying them.
That simply does not happen outside the American Family Association's press releases.
Microsoft also has free caffeinated soda machines and the food on campus is pretty cheap :)
On the other hand, living/working across from Google's office in Kirkland, WA, I can see a whole freakin' espresso bar through their office windows.
The choice comes down to whether you want to play defense or offense, I guess. They're both decent, quality-oriented companies, but Microsoft seems to spend a lot of time and effort making their products do less with each release. These days, Microsoft's 'customers' -- the people they go to work every day trying to serve -- are media conglomerates rather than end users. Maybe that's sustainable, maybe not. Google, on the other hand, makes little effort to hide the fact that their real customers are advertising buyers.
The fact is, neither Google nor Microsoft ultimately exist to serve the end user. That's something I'd think about fairly carefully if I were just coming into the field.
OEM copies of Windows aren't "locked to the BIOS" or anything like that. I don't even know what the hell that is. You just call MS, tell them you replaced a dead motherboard, and you're set.
From now on, whenever anybody replaces a motherboard or NIC on a Windows PC, they are required to call me at 1-800-RUN-VSTA and ask for permission to continue operating their computer. That's the way it's going to be, boys and girls, from here on out. And you'd better be quiet and respectful while I have you on the phone.
What's that? "Eat a dick," you say? "What gives you the right to determine on a day-to-day basis when I'm allowed to use my computer?"
Well, at least you're asking the right questions now. You just need to ask Microsoft, instead of me.
That puts dieing in war right up there with drowning (~4000)
And terrorism.
There is a utility called "Tag and Rename" that addresses the problem of "Help, I have 15,000 MP3 files with accurate, consistent filenames but no ID3 tags." You can create a batch job that parses the metadata in your .MP3 filenames and turns it into ID3 tags. It's a real lifesaver when using iTunes.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
I'm sorry; can you elaborate on that? Are you aware of a concept called key revocation?
So what? Upon the expiration of copyright, the content still falls into the public domain. What difference does it make if the particular copy you purchased is encrypted?
The law requires that copyrighted material be made available to the public domain (hence the original purpose of the Library of Congress).
While older DRM mechanisms such as CSS did nothing to prevent copying, newer systems work by associating players and content via hardware keys. The goal of these technological protections is to ensure that the content will never become accessible on any terms other than those of the content publisher-player manufacturer cartel.
As I said, there's not a shred of Constitutionality behind any law that sanctions this business model. However, it's been argued (by actual attorneys) that no one will have "standing" to challenge the DMCA on this basis until someone is actually unable to access protected content whose copyright has expired.
The likelihood of a benevolent DRM-breaking hacker appearing to save us all from bad legislation should not affect the legal questions behind DRM enforcement. That's as naive as the judge who said something to the effect of, "Let them make copies of the cassette version, then," when confronted by fair-use arguments.
But is there anyone out there that is cool with copyrights, but thinks DRM is bad?
Here's the problem: copyrights are a limited monopoly offered by the government as one half of a bargain with creators. The other half of the bargain lies in the creator's agreement that the protected content will become available to the public domain when the copyright term expires.
DRM allows publishers to evade their half of the copyright bargain. In particular, the DMCA anti-circumvention law in the US is unconstitutional because it does not require publishers to disable their DRM protection, or arrange for it to disable itself, upon the expiration of copyright protection. That means that the DMCA explicitly sanctions perpetual copyright protection... a clear violation of both the letter and intent of the Constitution's clause that authorizes that protection in the first place. With a combination of traditional copyright law and hypothetical DRM technology that remains unbreakable after copyright expiration, a publisher will enjoy an unlimited monopoly at the public's expense.
But do they not have a right to protect their intellectual property? Are the detractors of DRM against the concept of intellectual property altogether?
Some are against the whole concept of IP, but not being an ideologue, I can't speak for them. I do, however, believe that publishers and creators should have to choose between self-enforced protection (DRM) and government-enforced protection (copyright law). They should not be able to leverage both at the same time, because the two legal concepts of DRM and the "copyright bargain" are diametrically opposed to each other.
Here's an honest question: Ignoring the cost, just what is it that you think is so much better about Windows 2000 compared to XP?
Product activation. If I tried to sell you my car, but insisted on keeping the starter-kill remote, you'd tell me to go jump in the lake. For some reason, people don't subject Microsoft to the same scrutiny.
Product activation is bad enough at the application level, where individual programs have to phone home to receive permission to run. It should be absolutely unacceptable at the OS level... which is why it really, really sucks that everybody accepted it.
As far as I can tell, people who still use 2000 by choice are either ignorant or just dumb.
Yeah, OK, that must be it.
As of last week, PHX's free WiFi connectivity works very well for general surfing, but they block VPN connections. That makes it more or less useless for many business travellers. I've been meaning to track down the people responsible and ask them why in the world they'd do that.
... still don't seem to have been added, although I'm sure the new blue-note icon motif is to die for. Sheesh. Apple still seems to be convinced that iTunes is the only application their Windows users ever run.
It remains to be seen if Apple has divined the secrets of the holy WM_PAINT message. I'm optimistic; the UI does look a little snappier.
(Plug for my freeware implementation of iTunes global hotkeys, which really should have been rendered obsolete by Apple: http://www.ke5fx.com/ilaunch/readme.htm)
Bullshit, the rich stole the means of producion (natural resource) from the people, fenced them off, and only then worked them and claimed that working them was justification for stealing them in the first place. Kind of like if I stole a bike, painted it, then claimed it was mine because I had worked on it. They are only more productive because they control more resources. Love the way you gloss over inherited wealth, which is most of it.
1895 on line 1. They're going on and on about a whole shipment of missing rhetoric; want me to take a message?
Well, you can always trade time resolution for bit depth. That's what a sigma-delta converter does, and I think he's saying that Sony's format is based on a serial bitstream that can drive some kind of a reconstruction filter directly.
The notion that this somehow rules out transport controls is what's weird. That's like blaming your bad gas mileage on the guy who stole the "BMW" symbol off your hood.
SACD is a streming bit format. each bit signals either an up or down step on the waveform, rather than having sampled bytes indicating a complete level. This is why you can't really start an SACD song in the middle of the song.
I think I'll go back to bed now, on the grounds that the day can only get weirder after reading something like that.
It just seems silly to me, let's fund the country that is on the precipice of becoming the next communist superpower. Sweet.
That's one way to think of it, but another argument is that the best way to fight Communism is to encourage the country to participate in the global economy. Trying to isolate a Communist regime has never worked in any case I can think of. Nor does bombarding them with empty capitalistic propaganda.
Where's the upside for the US in treating China like Cuba or North Korea? Communist party bosses respond to those pressures by digging in their heels and living like czars as usual, while the people suffer all of the drawbacks of living in a pariah state.
Circumvention of what type?
That's a good question. DRM is sold as "copy protection," but as you point out, its effect is "access protection." CSS does nothing to stop DVDs from being copied, for instance. It's an important distinction for users, but not from a legal standpoint. The bargain encoded in US copyright law is that protected works must eventually be made available for both public-domain access and unfettered copying. A company that uses DRM is evading its half of that bargain.
There should be no basis for legal protection of works that already carry in-perpetuity technological protections. Publishers should be able to distribute their works with either perpetual DRM or copyright protection, but not both.
The goal of DRM is to make circumvention impossible. Eventually, that goal will become feasible. (It may already have: no one ever cracked the triple-DES encryption on the original Divx DVDs, and AFAIK there has never been a successful attack on the latest Videocipher implementation.)
So, if circumvention requires me to leave my codebreaking machine running until the heat death of the universe, wouldn't you call that a de facto perpetual copyright?
If I am the owner of copyright in a work, why don't I have the authority to apply true and correct copyright management information to the work?
In the US, copyright terms are limited to a specific duration. DRM that does not include a sunset provision is, therefore, incompatible with US copyright law. It effectively grants a perpetual copyright... something that is wrong on so many levels that even the Supreme Court would agree.
In Canada, your mileage may vary.