If you have a situation where potential buyers can't tell the difference between crap and good stuff, eventually the only thing left for sale is crap. For example, pharmaceuticals. Before the FDA and it's equivalent in other countries, you had no end of snake-oil salesmen with patent medicines etc. Seems like a lot of stuff in IT looks very similar.
I think you're right, a little googling took me to some forums, I changed some settings, made a huge difference, and it doesn't appear to have slowed down the speed my torrents download at.
Shaw tech support claims that they don't do any sort of throttling, maybe I should ask them if they'll put it in writing...
Because I recently started using uTorrent instead of just the straight-up bt client.
Now I notice that I see a dramatic drop in my connection speed (speedtest.net) when it's running. Without uTorrent (or any other BT client) my connection speed drops from 6000k down/500 up to more like 900k down and 300k up.
I have yet to get a straight answer out of tech support.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the non-proliferation treaty deal goes like this: Those without nukes agree that nukes are bad (and minimally useful on the battlefield anyway), and they agree not to develop them. Those that have nukes agree to eventually phase out their nuclear arsenals.
So, given that the various nuclear armed powers like France, UK, and the USA will be giving up their nukes about the same time that Satan drives a snowplow to work in the morning, how can the nuclear armed countries say to Iran "we get to have nukes, but you don't"?
I mean, that line of reasoning only makes sense if you accept the premise that there's one set of rules for the west, and one set of rules for everybody else.
The sad fact is, there isn't much the US, or anybody else can do to stop Iran from getting nukes if they really want to.
Military strikes may or may not be effective on shutting down their nuclear program. Iran has located a lot of their facilities in underground bunkers in and around populated areas. Not an attractive place for air strikes, and it's unknown whether or not strikes would actually take out underground bunkers.
One thing we can say for sure though is that military strikes on Iran will lead them to closing the strait of Hormutz, kneecapping everybody's economy. Iran can do that without even breaking a sweat, and mobile launchers means that there will be little anybody can do about it. In fact, Iran doesn't even need to close the strait, just sink enough tankers that the insurance rates are so high that nobody will send their tankers through the strait.
The consequences of attacking Iran are very serious, and we should really think this through before considering attacks.
Besides, what's the worst case scenario, Iran gets the bomb. Big bloody deal. It's not like that automatically gives them ICBM capabilities. What are they gonna do, attack Israel? I'd like to see them try. That'd be a very short war (roughly the time it takes to fly from Israel to Tehran) and at the end, Iran will be flat and glowing in the dark.
Well, we can argue morality and ethics and philosophy all we like, but where the rubber hits the road is, there isn't much you can do to stop Iran from getting nukes if they decide they're going to have them. (For the record, if I was a country with several of my close neighbors being nuclear powers, I'd want to join the nuclear club as well.)
So, options: The US can attempt military strikes, which may or may not work, as many of the nuclear facilities are underground, in cities. Not an attractive prospect for military strikes.
If the US tries military strikes, um, you don't mind the price of oil going to $150/barrel, do you? 'Cause Iran can close the strait of hormuz without even breaking a sweat, and there won't be much anybody can do about it. In fact, they don't even need to close the strait, they just need to sink enough tankers that nobody can afford the insurance rates to take a tanker through the strait.
So, given the catastrophic consequences of a military strike on Iran, let's make sure we have a really good reason, first. If you assert that Iran would be an unacceptable danger were they to possess nukes, well, burden of proof is on the person who makes a claim. Ball's in your court, let's see the proof.
Look, the Iranians probably want a nuke for very sensible reasons: 1) the US is making noise about invading them or attacking them 2) Several of their neighbors have them
If I was Iran, I'd want the bomb too. Only a few of them, basically the minimum number required to be a credible deterrence against Israel or one of my other neighbors nuking me.
Iran doesn't want nukes so they can wipe Israel off the map (OK, maybe in their wilder dreams they'd like to do that), they want nukes for the deterrent effect so that nobody else will nuke _them_.
Israel's got the bomb, but I guess that's OK, as their military functions like an surrogate of the US military. Pakistan and India both have nukes.
Look, I have absolutely no love for the theocracy in Iran, a theocracy's basically the worst case scenario for forms of government. But they aren't stupid. They know very well that were they to use nukes on someone else, (like Israel) that they'd be nuked with a retaliatory strike, either by the Israelis or the US.
So let's not buy into the propaganda that Iran is a threat to anybody else, the US in particular. The US used to stare down the USSR, who did in fact have nukes, delivery systems, tanks, the whole nine yards and a larger population and land mass. Why is it that the USA, a country strong enough to stand up to the USSR, is frightened by a (comparatively) pissant country like Iran.
Um, I'm no fan of the current theocracy in Iran, but let's not pretend that it was a paradise before the 79 revolution, but they had a secret police, SAVAK, torture of dissidents, unlimited power to arrest and detain any opposition to the Shah.
So, sure, things have gotten worse now, a theocracy is basically the worst case scenario for forms of government, but the point I'm trying to make is that the Shah was set up by the US, UK, and the CIA, and was responsible for some pretty awful stuff.
So let's recap: The US ran a covert operation and overthrew a democratically elected prime minister, to protect US interests (read: Oil companies). The guy the put in turns out to be fond of things like arbitrary arrest/detention and torture, so after the Iranian people threw him out on his ass, what the fuck do Americans expect Iranians to think of Americans?
And, were it any other country, most of us on slashdot would be saying that the Shah DESERVED to be overthrown. We may not like the successor, but let's not pretend that the Shah and his government didn't have it coming.
Iran didn't _start_ the nuclear arms race in the region. Arguably, Israel did, although their official position is still a "neither confirm nor deny" existence of nukes.
But Pakistan is their eastern neighbor, little further east is India.
Iran is just finally in a position to enter the race. And the fact that the evidence of your senses seems to indicate that having nukes makes you less likely to be invaded by the USA doesn't help to stop proliferation.
Look, the deal with the non-proliferation treaty was, "OK, we all agree that nukes are bad. So these guys who don't have them agree not to pursue them, and those of us that have them agree to start phasing them out".
Does anybody think there's a reasonable chance that the US, Britian, France, or Russia will give up their nukes in my lifetime? Given that the answer is 'no', then how can the US suggest that Iran having nukes is a problem? Is it any worse than, say, Nixon having access to nukes?
And really, how can the US take the position that Israel gets to keep their nukes but Iran can't have them?
Yes, to set the record straight, that is an entirely accurate picture of a Canadian riot. Although you can see by the lack of beer, moose, or hockey sticks that this was a spontaneous riot, not a properly planned and government approved one.
That's some nice work. I also wrote a snail-mail copy, a friend of mine who worked for federal public works once told me that for every letter the feds receive, they assume somewhere between 1000 and 10,000 people also feel the same way, but didn't write.
here's what I went with: First I'd like to point out a fundamental shift in the way copyright law functions. Before the age of networked computers, copyright law functioned as a restriction on publishers by authors, more like an industrial regulation. If you wanted to have a business publishing books/movies/etc, you had to accept this as the 'cost of doing business'.
However, in an age of networked computers, copyright law functions as a restriction on ordinary citizens by publishing companies, and is something citizens must accept by the act of reading something.
This is a fundamental shift in the function of the law, and the enforcement of it requires invasions into the private life and freedoms of each and every one of us.
The publishing industries claim that this is necessary to preserve their business model, but I ask you, since when is it the business of government to preserve an obsolete business model? The 'content publishers' like the MPAA, RIAA, and the CRIA believe that if a person has made a profit off the public in the past, that it is the role of government and courts to guarantee that income in perpetuity. This belief is not supported by statute or case law. When the automobile first came into production, were manufacturers of buggy whips able to sue Ford and General Motors? Were producers of whale oil able to prevent the production and sale of the electric light bulb?
Furthermore, the copyright holders claim they act for the betterment of artists, but let's be honest: The MPAA/RIAA/CRIA's members have the same relationship to artists that a pimp has to a prostitute. Does the Conservative government feel that this is the sort of relationship that Parliament ought to preserve?
I know this kind of an off-topic thread, but yeesh, surely you don't think there's anything to this load of crap article?
I could go point-by-point on matters of fact that he gets wrong, or distorts to suggest things like an Iraq-Al Queda connection, but really the point he misses is that Al Queda is not a threat long term, because they believe in nothing and stand for nothing. If you ask bin Laden what his policy would be on unemployment or monetary policy or social spending or deficits he wouldn't have an answer. They're more like the anarchists and nilists of the early 20th century, and they'll eventually die out because they have nothing to offer people.
The other thing he doesn't realize (I wonder where this guy lives) is that when you give non-white, yes, even muslim people the opportunity to integrate, they take it, because strangely enough, our lifestyle is a lot more fun than living in the mid-east. The problems you see in europe are the result of (sometimes literally) creating second-class citizens or 'guest workers' to make up for the fact that nobody wants to spend all their life working as a janitor. Europe tried to 'import' a new working class that wouldn't do pesky things like unionize and stuff. You compare the situation in Canada, where recent immigrants do much better, and the first generation born here is virtually indistinguishable from WASP-type Canadians who's families have been here for 100 years.
There's no reason to take a band of criminals, anarchists and nihilists who's best work couldn't even kill as many Americans as six months of traffic accidents, and elevate them to an actual threat to NATO, an alliance that stared down the USSR. Let's get some perspective here.
This is a video of Industry Minister Jim Prentice getting ambushed by amateur reporters and bloggers on the way to his riding association's Xmas party, and he comes across not only as not caring about anyone who isn't a CEO, but not really understanding the issue.
No, my mother's been telling me that particular advice since at least 1990 or so.
Although I did see that "malcom" episode, and I nearly wet myself laughing that he did that...
And, btw, that malcom episode the situation was that he felt he didn't need the surgery at all, and gave them diagnostic information as to why he thought that. Not quite the same situation as what I was referring to, i.e. doctors/surgery team getting patients or procedures mixed up.
But thanks for accusing a stranger of lying, for no particular reason... This is how flamewars etc get started, I think.
Is that, if you're going in for, say, surgery on your left knee, then take a black magic marker and write "wrong knee, dumbass" on your right knee. If you're having your gall bladder out, write that on your abdomen.
I gotta tell ya, it does my left-leaning Canadian heart good to hear people who describe themselves as conservatives so unsatisfied with Harper. Not sure what I think of Dion, totally unimpressed with Layton, but as long as the bloc's still a factor, we'd better get used to minority governments...
I wonder if what google fears, long-term, is a scenario like the one alluded to in John Walker's "Digital Imprimatur", combined with a non-neutral net.
A scenario whereby Verizon, Comcast, AT & T, et. al. have a shakedown-type operation, if you don't want your customers delayed getting to google, pay extra. The cartel of ISPs collude (or, if no collusion/conspiracy, they all just come to the same conclusion as to what strategy they should pursue) to bugger with anything new google develops, like say a VoIP client etc.
Between the 700mhz spectrum and all the dark fiber that google's been buying, maybe they're doing a contingency plan so that, if necessary, they could do without Verizon/comcast/AT&T et. al.
Try and spend a day or two spending money only on the things that you ethically/morally support. It's next to impossible.
You can hypothetically 'vote with your wallet' and not buy drm-ed products (do you count DVDs in that, btw? It's a debatable point, where there is DRM on them, but it's so trivial to get around...), but once you expand the scope of "stuff I won't buy because ethically, I don't support the actions of the producers", well, try and buy a computer that wasn't manufactured with near-slave-labor conditions. Or a pair of sneakers. Try and buy food that isn't screwing up the environment in and around where it's produced. Don't even get me started on fossil fuels. Do you like the idea of your dollars going to support the ruling regimes in Saudi Arabia or Iran?
One of the troubles with a market economy, is stuff you buy is so disconnected from you that you can't really even get a grip on the total effects of your purchasing decisions, let alone decide to behave ethically.
So I think any argument around "vote with your wallet" is probably flawed. After all, if _everybody_ stopped buying CD's until the RIAA stopped suing children and grandmothers, they'd jerk the numbers and claim it's due to piracy.
I don't know what the solution is to bad behavior of corporations, maybe it's trade treaties, maybe it's regulations, maybe not, but I have minimal confidence in the effectiveness of consumer boycotts.
Well, I'm kind of using my own attitude as a guide for that. I'm basically an anti-copyright zealot, so I think I fit the profile of a steady downloader.
I download the occasional album (really I'm just not much of a music nerd), the occasional movie, and probably 1 or 2 TV shows a week, if there's something that I didn't watch or tape, generally these days it's 30 rock, the office, dexter, heroes, battlestar galactia, the simpsons, and house, maybe 2 or 3 others.
If I try and imagine which of those that I'd buy or rent if I couldn't download them and didn't have cable, I figure I'd _probably_ buy the DVDs of Dexter, and I'd (eventually) either buy or rent BSG. Everything else, I'd just live without, read more or something.
So, of 7-10 shows, let's say that there's 2 that I would buy, if downloading was not feasible. And I estimate that tv shows probably make up about 1/2 of all total downloads, so we're looking at about 10% of what I download, I would purchase. And, let's not forget, I have a middle-class income. For some college kid or a single mom or a guy making minimum wage, it'd be substantially less.
I think the movie business is safe as a church. There's no way to pirate the "see it in the theater" experience, (which, btw, is the way I watch most movies that I know will be good), and ticket sales are very strong. TV or music though, they have a problem.
I think the history of how royalties for radio play evolved is a good starting point. Let's not forget, that the position of the copyright holders at the time was to stall, drag their feet, and try and prevent anything from being played on the radio. Eventually they had the royalty system imposed on them by governments.
Something like that will eventually become necessary. (I'm not confident that even under a "Cory Doctorow's-worst-nightmare trusted computing" scenario, that piracy will ever be stopped. Everything else as been broken, why not this?) A surcharge on your ISP bill, and all you can download. Need a system of monitoring # of downloads per tv show/movie/album, which determines the distribution of that surcharge.
Now, this is of course fine for the MPAA and it's equivalent in the TV industry. The initial investment to make a quality TV show or movie is several orders of magnitude greater than the initial investment required to produce an album. The people left out in the cold however are the RIAA.
You can make a case that the infrastructure required for sets and cameras and lighting and whatever you need to do film/tv justifies the existence of the studio system, (debatable point) but I don't think that anybody can seriously suggest that the RIAA members are anything but leeches, a general dead weight on the economy. They have the same relationship to artists that a pimp has to prostitutes. A bully, who lives off the labor of others, and adds nothing.
of people who talk about "the people pirating your movies WOULD NOT PAY FOR THEM OTHERWISE" is thus:
Most people who pirate, if pirating were somehow (hypothetically) 100% technically impossible, would not all of a sudden start buying or renting the DVDs that they're downloading. They'd probably just do something else. So those people do not represent an actual loss to the MPAA.
The people that want to own a copy of a movie (like when I bought the DVD of Apocalypse Now: Redux, despite owning two other versions and having seen it in the theatre) still want to own the DVD, so even if they do download a copy for whatever reasons, this does not represent a loss for the copyright holder either.
Basically, worrying about the actions of people who download movies or music and don't also buy a copy means the copyright holders are worrying about the actions of people who, with or without the ability to pirate, are not, never have been, and never will be, your customers.
The MPAA is so full of crap, even more so than the RIAA. The MPAA types are safe as a church, and always will be, because there's really no way to "pirate" the 'going to a movie in a theater' experience. I mean, really, most movies, if they don't gross an amount equal to their production costs in the first _weekend_, they're considered failures.
The DVD market might be taking a hit, but the movie industry is safe as a church.
Now, the RIAA? They've got a genuine problem. The equivalent of the "Theater experience" is the rock concert, which people will always want in the future, but it's the one area where they're cut out of the $$. But who cares? What value does the RIAA provide, anyway? With movies, well, aside from flukes like "the blair witch project", the cost of making a movie is probably always going to be 8 figures or more. You need an 'infrastructure' for that stuff, production crews, studios, etc. But that factor has no analog in the record industry. The RIAA has the same relationship to it's 'artists' as a pimp does to a hooker.
"It seems that anti-copyright campaigners would much rather portray every copyright owner as being like Madonna, prince or Metallica,"
I think this largely stems from the fact that, as RMS articulated, copyright in the age of networked computers has fundamentally been transformed in it's actual function.
It used to function as a restriction on PUBLISHERS by authors and artists, like any other industrial regulation, it had a 'voluntary' component, in the sense that "If you wanna get into the publishing business, this is the cost of doing business".
Now, copyright functions as a restriction on _individual citizens_ by 'copyright holders'. That's a fundamental shift.
Copyright owners tend to be large media conglomerates these days.
So people quite rightly attack the pro-copyright position as being 'pro big business' because large media companies are seen as receiving more benefits than anyone else.
The question is, how does this translate into any situation _outside_ the lab?
They may be able to show this or that brain state change, but does that actually translate into behavioral changes? Not sure how you'd test that.
Personally, I think that this sort of technology (fMRI) is being very much oversold, and the people doing the selling are implying that we have a much better understanding of the brain then we actually have.
We can say that violent images correspond with changes in the brain that are associated with this or that behavior, but this kind of study is similar to how we get dumb ideas like "smoking pot is a gateway drug". (Yes, the vast majority of hard drug users smoked pot before trying pcp/crack/heroin/etc, but at the same time, 80% of those who smoke pot never try anything harder.)
These studies are only a little bit better than correlation studies in social sciences. And as somebody pointed out above, the fact that violent crime rates are dropping everywhere suggests that there isn't a problem.
Cory Doctorow had a line about how "The United States traded its manufacturing sector's health for its entertainment industry, hoping that Police Academy sequels could take the place of the rust belt. The United States bet wrong."
Basically, ill-informed lawmakers in the US got tricked into believing that the declining manufacturing sector could be replaced by movies/software/music.
Ludicrous, of course, as any modern economist could tell you now, but it wasn't obvious to lawmakers in the 90's.
Depending on how this turns out (and whether or not Schrieber really has the dirt to fry Mulroney, or if it was all just a bluff), the Liberals might decide to bring down the government before the spring budget.
That is, if Stephan Dion can manage to locate his testicles...
If you have a choice of nearly-identical plans on a choice of 3 nearly-identical companies, can there really even be said to be "a market" in the first place?
The cell phone 'market' in Canada from the consumer's point of view looks more like a soviet-style command economy than a free market, just instead of the Politburo pushing you around you have Ted Rogers doing it.
Of course, Bell, Rogers, and Telus don't have the ability to send you to a gulag, so there's that...
You wanna see a comparison of just Canada to the US? Try and buy a data plan. You can't, in the first place (last time I looked, ~2 months back) buy an unlimited data plan at any price, something AT&T sells for sixty bucks in the US. Best Rogers offers is 100 megs for 100 bucks.
Highway robbery, and they do it for the same reason a dog licks his balls - because they can.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, of course not. If they put it in writing, then they wouldn't be able to change their mind whenever they like in the future.
Yeesh... Maybe it's time to regulate these weasels. In the spirit of "the market for lemons"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
If you have a situation where potential buyers can't tell the difference between crap and good stuff, eventually the only thing left for sale is crap. For example, pharmaceuticals. Before the FDA and it's equivalent in other countries, you had no end of snake-oil salesmen with patent medicines etc. Seems like a lot of stuff in IT looks very similar.
I think you're right, a little googling took me to some forums, I changed some settings, made a huge difference, and it doesn't appear to have slowed down the speed my torrents download at.
Shaw tech support claims that they don't do any sort of throttling, maybe I should ask them if they'll put it in writing...
Because I recently started using uTorrent instead of just the straight-up bt client.
Now I notice that I see a dramatic drop in my connection speed (speedtest.net) when it's running. Without uTorrent (or any other BT client) my connection speed drops from 6000k down/500 up to more like 900k down and 300k up.
I have yet to get a straight answer out of tech support.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the non-proliferation treaty deal goes like this: Those without nukes agree that nukes are bad (and minimally useful on the battlefield anyway), and they agree not to develop them. Those that have nukes agree to eventually phase out their nuclear arsenals.
So, given that the various nuclear armed powers like France, UK, and the USA will be giving up their nukes about the same time that Satan drives a snowplow to work in the morning, how can the nuclear armed countries say to Iran "we get to have nukes, but you don't"?
I mean, that line of reasoning only makes sense if you accept the premise that there's one set of rules for the west, and one set of rules for everybody else.
The sad fact is, there isn't much the US, or anybody else can do to stop Iran from getting nukes if they really want to.
Military strikes may or may not be effective on shutting down their nuclear program. Iran has located a lot of their facilities in underground bunkers in and around populated areas. Not an attractive place for air strikes, and it's unknown whether or not strikes would actually take out underground bunkers.
One thing we can say for sure though is that military strikes on Iran will lead them to closing the strait of Hormutz, kneecapping everybody's economy. Iran can do that without even breaking a sweat, and mobile launchers means that there will be little anybody can do about it. In fact, Iran doesn't even need to close the strait, just sink enough tankers that the insurance rates are so high that nobody will send their tankers through the strait.
The consequences of attacking Iran are very serious, and we should really think this through before considering attacks.
Besides, what's the worst case scenario, Iran gets the bomb. Big bloody deal. It's not like that automatically gives them ICBM capabilities. What are they gonna do, attack Israel? I'd like to see them try. That'd be a very short war (roughly the time it takes to fly from Israel to Tehran) and at the end, Iran will be flat and glowing in the dark.
Well, we can argue morality and ethics and philosophy all we like, but where the rubber hits the road is, there isn't much you can do to stop Iran from getting nukes if they decide they're going to have them. (For the record, if I was a country with several of my close neighbors being nuclear powers, I'd want to join the nuclear club as well.)
So, options: The US can attempt military strikes, which may or may not work, as many of the nuclear facilities are underground, in cities. Not an attractive prospect for military strikes.
If the US tries military strikes, um, you don't mind the price of oil going to $150/barrel, do you? 'Cause Iran can close the strait of hormuz without even breaking a sweat, and there won't be much anybody can do about it. In fact, they don't even need to close the strait, they just need to sink enough tankers that nobody can afford the insurance rates to take a tanker through the strait.
So, given the catastrophic consequences of a military strike on Iran, let's make sure we have a really good reason, first. If you assert that Iran would be an unacceptable danger were they to possess nukes, well, burden of proof is on the person who makes a claim. Ball's in your court, let's see the proof.
Look, the Iranians probably want a nuke for very sensible reasons:
1) the US is making noise about invading them or attacking them
2) Several of their neighbors have them
If I was Iran, I'd want the bomb too. Only a few of them, basically the minimum number required to be a credible deterrence against Israel or one of my other neighbors nuking me.
Iran doesn't want nukes so they can wipe Israel off the map (OK, maybe in their wilder dreams they'd like to do that), they want nukes for the deterrent effect so that nobody else will nuke _them_.
Israel's got the bomb, but I guess that's OK, as their military functions like an surrogate of the US military. Pakistan and India both have nukes.
Look, I have absolutely no love for the theocracy in Iran, a theocracy's basically the worst case scenario for forms of government. But they aren't stupid. They know very well that were they to use nukes on someone else, (like Israel) that they'd be nuked with a retaliatory strike, either by the Israelis or the US.
So let's not buy into the propaganda that Iran is a threat to anybody else, the US in particular. The US used to stare down the USSR, who did in fact have nukes, delivery systems, tanks, the whole nine yards and a larger population and land mass. Why is it that the USA, a country strong enough to stand up to the USSR, is frightened by a (comparatively) pissant country like Iran.
Um, I'm no fan of the current theocracy in Iran, but let's not pretend that it was a paradise before the 79 revolution, but they had a secret police, SAVAK, torture of dissidents, unlimited power to arrest and detain any opposition to the Shah.
So, sure, things have gotten worse now, a theocracy is basically the worst case scenario for forms of government, but the point I'm trying to make is that the Shah was set up by the US, UK, and the CIA, and was responsible for some pretty awful stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
So let's recap: The US ran a covert operation and overthrew a democratically elected prime minister, to protect US interests (read: Oil companies). The guy the put in turns out to be fond of things like arbitrary arrest/detention and torture, so after the Iranian people threw him out on his ass, what the fuck do Americans expect Iranians to think of Americans?
And, were it any other country, most of us on slashdot would be saying that the Shah DESERVED to be overthrown. We may not like the successor, but let's not pretend that the Shah and his government didn't have it coming.
Iran didn't _start_ the nuclear arms race in the region. Arguably, Israel did, although their official position is still a "neither confirm nor deny" existence of nukes.
But Pakistan is their eastern neighbor, little further east is India.
Iran is just finally in a position to enter the race. And the fact that the evidence of your senses seems to indicate that having nukes makes you less likely to be invaded by the USA doesn't help to stop proliferation.
Look, the deal with the non-proliferation treaty was, "OK, we all agree that nukes are bad. So these guys who don't have them agree not to pursue them, and those of us that have them agree to start phasing them out".
Does anybody think there's a reasonable chance that the US, Britian, France, or Russia will give up their nukes in my lifetime? Given that the answer is 'no', then how can the US suggest that Iran having nukes is a problem? Is it any worse than, say, Nixon having access to nukes?
And really, how can the US take the position that Israel gets to keep their nukes but Iran can't have them?
Heh, that made me laugh out loud.
Yes, to set the record straight, that is an entirely accurate picture of a Canadian riot. Although you can see by the lack of beer, moose, or hockey sticks that this was a spontaneous riot, not a properly planned and government approved one.
That's some nice work. I also wrote a snail-mail copy, a friend of mine who worked for federal public works once told me that for every letter the feds receive, they assume somewhere between 1000 and 10,000 people also feel the same way, but didn't write.
here's what I went with:
First I'd like to point out a fundamental shift in the way copyright law functions. Before the age of networked computers, copyright law functioned as a restriction on publishers by authors, more like an industrial regulation. If you wanted to have a business publishing books/movies/etc, you had to accept this as the 'cost of doing business'.
However, in an age of networked computers, copyright law functions as a restriction on ordinary citizens by publishing companies, and is something citizens must accept by the act of reading something.
This is a fundamental shift in the function of the law, and the enforcement of it requires invasions into the private life and freedoms of each and every one of us.
The publishing industries claim that this is necessary to preserve their business model, but I ask you, since when is it the business of government to preserve an obsolete business model? The 'content publishers' like the MPAA, RIAA, and the CRIA believe that if a person has made a profit off the public in the past, that it is the role of government and courts to guarantee that income in perpetuity. This belief is not supported by statute or case law. When the automobile first came into production, were manufacturers of buggy whips able to sue Ford and General Motors? Were producers of whale oil able to prevent the production and sale of the electric light bulb?
Furthermore, the copyright holders claim they act for the betterment of artists, but let's be honest: The MPAA/RIAA/CRIA's members have the same relationship to artists that a pimp has to a prostitute. Does the Conservative government feel that this is the sort of relationship that Parliament ought to preserve?
I know this kind of an off-topic thread, but yeesh, surely you don't think there's anything to this load of crap article?
I could go point-by-point on matters of fact that he gets wrong, or distorts to suggest things like an Iraq-Al Queda connection, but really the point he misses is that Al Queda is not a threat long term, because they believe in nothing and stand for nothing. If you ask bin Laden what his policy would be on unemployment or monetary policy or social spending or deficits he wouldn't have an answer. They're more like the anarchists and nilists of the early 20th century, and they'll eventually die out because they have nothing to offer people.
The other thing he doesn't realize (I wonder where this guy lives) is that when you give non-white, yes, even muslim people the opportunity to integrate, they take it, because strangely enough, our lifestyle is a lot more fun than living in the mid-east. The problems you see in europe are the result of (sometimes literally) creating second-class citizens or 'guest workers' to make up for the fact that nobody wants to spend all their life working as a janitor. Europe tried to 'import' a new working class that wouldn't do pesky things like unionize and stuff. You compare the situation in Canada, where recent immigrants do much better, and the first generation born here is virtually indistinguishable from WASP-type Canadians who's families have been here for 100 years.
There's no reason to take a band of criminals, anarchists and nihilists who's best work couldn't even kill as many Americans as six months of traffic accidents, and elevate them to an actual threat to NATO, an alliance that stared down the USSR. Let's get some perspective here.
Understands the first thing about the issue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF_dHu5fRAk
This is a video of Industry Minister Jim Prentice getting ambushed by amateur reporters and bloggers on the way to his riding association's Xmas party, and he comes across not only as not caring about anyone who isn't a CEO, but not really understanding the issue.
He may be our "series of tubes" guy in Canada.
No, my mother's been telling me that particular advice since at least 1990 or so.
Although I did see that "malcom" episode, and I nearly wet myself laughing that he did that...
And, btw, that malcom episode the situation was that he felt he didn't need the surgery at all, and gave them diagnostic information as to why he thought that. Not quite the same situation as what I was referring to, i.e. doctors/surgery team getting patients or procedures mixed up.
But thanks for accusing a stranger of lying, for no particular reason... This is how flamewars etc get started, I think.
Is that, if you're going in for, say, surgery on your left knee, then take a black magic marker and write "wrong knee, dumbass" on your right knee. If you're having your gall bladder out, write that on your abdomen.
Point is, surgical mistakes happen.
I gotta tell ya, it does my left-leaning Canadian heart good to hear people who describe themselves as conservatives so unsatisfied with Harper. Not sure what I think of Dion, totally unimpressed with Layton, but as long as the bloc's still a factor, we'd better get used to minority governments...
I wonder if what google fears, long-term, is a scenario like the one alluded to in John Walker's "Digital Imprimatur", combined with a non-neutral net.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/
A scenario whereby Verizon, Comcast, AT & T, et. al. have a shakedown-type operation, if you don't want your customers delayed getting to google, pay extra. The cartel of ISPs collude (or, if no collusion/conspiracy, they all just come to the same conclusion as to what strategy they should pursue) to bugger with anything new google develops, like say a VoIP client etc.
Between the 700mhz spectrum and all the dark fiber that google's been buying, maybe they're doing a contingency plan so that, if necessary, they could do without Verizon/comcast/AT&T et. al.
Try and spend a day or two spending money only on the things that you ethically/morally support. It's next to impossible.
You can hypothetically 'vote with your wallet' and not buy drm-ed products (do you count DVDs in that, btw? It's a debatable point, where there is DRM on them, but it's so trivial to get around...), but once you expand the scope of "stuff I won't buy because ethically, I don't support the actions of the producers", well, try and buy a computer that wasn't manufactured with near-slave-labor conditions. Or a pair of sneakers. Try and buy food that isn't screwing up the environment in and around where it's produced. Don't even get me started on fossil fuels. Do you like the idea of your dollars going to support the ruling regimes in Saudi Arabia or Iran?
One of the troubles with a market economy, is stuff you buy is so disconnected from you that you can't really even get a grip on the total effects of your purchasing decisions, let alone decide to behave ethically.
So I think any argument around "vote with your wallet" is probably flawed. After all, if _everybody_ stopped buying CD's until the RIAA stopped suing children and grandmothers, they'd jerk the numbers and claim it's due to piracy.
I don't know what the solution is to bad behavior of corporations, maybe it's trade treaties, maybe it's regulations, maybe not, but I have minimal confidence in the effectiveness of consumer boycotts.
Well, I'm kind of using my own attitude as a guide for that. I'm basically an anti-copyright zealot, so I think I fit the profile of a steady downloader.
I download the occasional album (really I'm just not much of a music nerd), the occasional movie, and probably 1 or 2 TV shows a week, if there's something that I didn't watch or tape, generally these days it's 30 rock, the office, dexter, heroes, battlestar galactia, the simpsons, and house, maybe 2 or 3 others.
If I try and imagine which of those that I'd buy or rent if I couldn't download them and didn't have cable, I figure I'd _probably_ buy the DVDs of Dexter, and I'd (eventually) either buy or rent BSG. Everything else, I'd just live without, read more or something.
So, of 7-10 shows, let's say that there's 2 that I would buy, if downloading was not feasible. And I estimate that tv shows probably make up about 1/2 of all total downloads, so we're looking at about 10% of what I download, I would purchase. And, let's not forget, I have a middle-class income. For some college kid or a single mom or a guy making minimum wage, it'd be substantially less.
I think the movie business is safe as a church. There's no way to pirate the "see it in the theater" experience, (which, btw, is the way I watch most movies that I know will be good), and ticket sales are very strong. TV or music though, they have a problem.
I think the history of how royalties for radio play evolved is a good starting point. Let's not forget, that the position of the copyright holders at the time was to stall, drag their feet, and try and prevent anything from being played on the radio. Eventually they had the royalty system imposed on them by governments.
Something like that will eventually become necessary. (I'm not confident that even under a "Cory Doctorow's-worst-nightmare trusted computing" scenario, that piracy will ever be stopped. Everything else as been broken, why not this?) A surcharge on your ISP bill, and all you can download. Need a system of monitoring # of downloads per tv show/movie/album, which determines the distribution of that surcharge.
Now, this is of course fine for the MPAA and it's equivalent in the TV industry. The initial investment to make a quality TV show or movie is several orders of magnitude greater than the initial investment required to produce an album. The people left out in the cold however are the RIAA.
You can make a case that the infrastructure required for sets and cameras and lighting and whatever you need to do film/tv justifies the existence of the studio system, (debatable point) but I don't think that anybody can seriously suggest that the RIAA members are anything but leeches, a general dead weight on the economy. They have the same relationship to artists that a pimp has to prostitutes. A bully, who lives off the labor of others, and adds nothing.
of people who talk about "the people pirating your movies WOULD NOT PAY FOR THEM OTHERWISE" is thus:
Most people who pirate, if pirating were somehow (hypothetically) 100% technically impossible, would not all of a sudden start buying or renting the DVDs that they're downloading. They'd probably just do something else. So those people do not represent an actual loss to the MPAA.
The people that want to own a copy of a movie (like when I bought the DVD of Apocalypse Now: Redux, despite owning two other versions and having seen it in the theatre) still want to own the DVD, so even if they do download a copy for whatever reasons, this does not represent a loss for the copyright holder either.
Basically, worrying about the actions of people who download movies or music and don't also buy a copy means the copyright holders are worrying about the actions of people who, with or without the ability to pirate, are not, never have been, and never will be, your customers.
The MPAA is so full of crap, even more so than the RIAA. The MPAA types are safe as a church, and always will be, because there's really no way to "pirate" the 'going to a movie in a theater' experience. I mean, really, most movies, if they don't gross an amount equal to their production costs in the first _weekend_, they're considered failures.
The DVD market might be taking a hit, but the movie industry is safe as a church.
Now, the RIAA? They've got a genuine problem. The equivalent of the "Theater experience" is the rock concert, which people will always want in the future, but it's the one area where they're cut out of the $$. But who cares? What value does the RIAA provide, anyway? With movies, well, aside from flukes like "the blair witch project", the cost of making a movie is probably always going to be 8 figures or more. You need an 'infrastructure' for that stuff, production crews, studios, etc. But that factor has no analog in the record industry. The RIAA has the same relationship to it's 'artists' as a pimp does to a hooker.
"It seems that anti-copyright campaigners would much rather portray every copyright owner as being like Madonna, prince or Metallica,"
I think this largely stems from the fact that, as RMS articulated, copyright in the age of networked computers has fundamentally been transformed in it's actual function.
It used to function as a restriction on PUBLISHERS by authors and artists, like any other industrial regulation, it had a 'voluntary' component, in the sense that "If you wanna get into the publishing business, this is the cost of doing business".
Now, copyright functions as a restriction on _individual citizens_ by 'copyright holders'. That's a fundamental shift.
Copyright owners tend to be large media conglomerates these days.
So people quite rightly attack the pro-copyright position as being 'pro big business' because large media companies are seen as receiving more benefits than anyone else.
The question is, how does this translate into any situation _outside_ the lab?
They may be able to show this or that brain state change, but does that actually translate into behavioral changes? Not sure how you'd test that.
Personally, I think that this sort of technology (fMRI) is being very much oversold, and the people doing the selling are implying that we have a much better understanding of the brain then we actually have.
We can say that violent images correspond with changes in the brain that are associated with this or that behavior, but this kind of study is similar to how we get dumb ideas like "smoking pot is a gateway drug". (Yes, the vast majority of hard drug users smoked pot before trying pcp/crack/heroin/etc, but at the same time, 80% of those who smoke pot never try anything harder.)
These studies are only a little bit better than correlation studies in social sciences. And as somebody pointed out above, the fact that violent crime rates are dropping everywhere suggests that there isn't a problem.
Cory Doctorow had a line about how "The United States traded its manufacturing sector's health for its entertainment industry, hoping that Police Academy sequels could take the place of the rust belt. The United States bet wrong."
http://informationweek.com/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199903173&pgno=1&queryText=
Basically, ill-informed lawmakers in the US got tricked into believing that the declining manufacturing sector could be replaced by movies/software/music.
Ludicrous, of course, as any modern economist could tell you now, but it wasn't obvious to lawmakers in the 90's.
Mulroney, and Schrieber.
Depending on how this turns out (and whether or not Schrieber really has the dirt to fry Mulroney, or if it was all just a bluff), the Liberals might decide to bring down the government before the spring budget.
That is, if Stephan Dion can manage to locate his testicles...
Here, here.
If you have a choice of nearly-identical plans on a choice of 3 nearly-identical companies, can there really even be said to be "a market" in the first place?
The cell phone 'market' in Canada from the consumer's point of view looks more like a soviet-style command economy than a free market, just instead of the Politburo pushing you around you have Ted Rogers doing it.
Of course, Bell, Rogers, and Telus don't have the ability to send you to a gulag, so there's that...
You wanna see a comparison of just Canada to the US? Try and buy a data plan. You can't, in the first place (last time I looked, ~2 months back) buy an unlimited data plan at any price, something AT&T sells for sixty bucks in the US. Best Rogers offers is 100 megs for 100 bucks.
Highway robbery, and they do it for the same reason a dog licks his balls - because they can.