These animals are NOT subpoenaeing information from MSN or Yahoo or anyone else. They have a much simpler criterion: If you have a computer and aren't blatantly supporting us, we'll murder you.
This isn't about your special little fight against the horrid western government 'track everything' threat, it's about people being slaughtered en masse, RIGHT NOW!!! To quote Amnesty International's new campaign, "It's not happening here, but it's happening now."
YOur fight IS important, but it's not the same fight that the resistance in Burma is facing. Not even close. Barely in the same book of threats.
Seriously, the of a mass slaughter (still not confirmed publicly) are being picked up by the news agencies across the world. I was expecting it (just look at the '88 coup) and have been watching the ripple all day. First it was a lunatic site. Then something more respectable. Now the Daily Mail and here in Canada, CBC are taking the stories seriously--although cautiously. I expect a massive uproar late tomorrow or early Wednesday.
Of course, access to live satellite images would probably confirm a lot of this.
At the ISP I work for, our customer-facing servers are all Sun Solaris systems, and there are a lot (many hundreds) of them. However, some of our applications are only supported on Windows, and in fact our previous webmail package only worked on IE.
Not much else to say. It sucks, but that's how things are at present.
"Canada is one of those weird places whose gov't functionaries actually adhere to duty..."
Don't believe it too much--We have our fair share of government waste, slimy politicians, and pointless obtuse bureaucracy too. In all honestly, I suspect that about 70% of the civil servants in the US do their job with diligence and pride, same as most places. The biggest difference is arguably that our biggest national media source is decidedly leftist and suspicious of government (ANY government), whereas the big US media is almost owned outright by the Republican party.
It's not sales tax they're after, it's income tax!!!
eBay sellers don't have to pay sales tax to the government in most cases. They do, on the other hand, have to pay income tax, and always have. If they make income, they have to pay income tax.
This program is to catch people who are cheating on their taxes. If eBay prices are low because the seller is breaking the law, then that's too bad.
How many ways can a survey be skewed, either deliberately or accidentally? Lots. More than anyone likely cares to count.
However, the question of the survey is entirely valid, and I think the results are likely true as a philosophy.
Lots of people in the community are really unhappy with the bent of the GPL3. That's the take home message here. Is it 65% or 63% or 97%? I don't really know or care, because that doesn't change the fact that it _is_ controversial among the very group that it's supposed to empower.
Tell you what. Why don't you keep your 'get out yer guns and slaughter the bastards' solutions on your side of the border. In case you haven't noticed, things are actually different in Canada! For starters, we don't have a DMCA-like bill. It was actually DEFEATED!!! Also, Ms. Neri was removed from her position, and (more significantly) Bev Oda was "shuffled" in the last parliament reorg.
You admit, "I am not sure what the basis of legality for copyrights in Canada is." Well then, quit giving advice. Since most of your opinion is based on how fucked up your country is, why don't you apply your advice to your country and leave us the fuck alone.
"Just because the CCL is fair and is meant to be applied and used by fair people it doesn't mean it can't be exploited by *ssholes or people who don't care about common decency."
This is true, but it doesn't mean that anyone can use the CCL for whatever they want.
"I'd say the girl is out of luck and learned her lesson."
Nope. What lesson did she learn? Don't let anyone take your picture? She didn't actively create the content, so she can't be held to it. Basically, if the CCL allows VM to use the picture without consent from the subject, then the picture can't be released under the CCL at all, without her consent.
She's entitled to legal protection of her image. I suspect that the law will find the CCL unenforceable, if it gets that far. At least in this case.
"I saw on another site people were trying to make it like this was racial profiling because the girl is brown-skinned. WTF?"
Pretty simple to understand.
If bad things happen to vaguely black-looking people in the USA these days, it's racial profiling. If you're muslim, mediterranean, aryan, or any other visible group, it's just life. If you're "African American" (including 1/74th black but excluding actual first-generation African immigrants or visitors), then it's ratial profiling. SOMEONE will take your side and jump up and down about the racially insensitive behaviour of the white oppressors.
Seriously when you look at it from the outside, the USA's hypersensitivity about anti-black racism is leading to pro-black racism to a degree that's almost unheard of in the rest of the world (outside of Zimbabwe, of course.)
From a Harvard study: As of 2005, the present proportion of black students at majority white schools "are a level lower than in any year since 1968." What isn't addressed is _why_ this is happening again--it's naturally assumed that the white oppressors (yes, them again!) are isolatiing themselves, but is it really?
Don't know that I agree. I actually wrote a letter to my MP around 2003, expressing my concern with our dependence on a single country (ANY single country is bad--the US is a particularly bad choice right now). To my surprise, I found that the government had been quietly and steadily working towards diversifying our trading partners for some time.
The thing is, these things _do_ take time. Four years ain't enough. Neither are six. two decades is more like what it would take to decouple our majority trading levels with the US. I was hoping the southern collapse wouldn't start for another five or ten years, but it's moving faster than almost anyone would have imagined.
All true, but two things need to be remembered. First of all, our primary exports are raw materials, not finished goods. As a resource exporter, countries can't afford _not_ to buy our products. They can't in-source the mining of bauxite, for instance, if they don't have the stuff. Secondly, this is a measure of the US dollar sinking. Canada has grown modestly against other currencies: ~22% against the pound, ~15% vs. the Euro, and a rather large ~46% against the Yen, in just under five years. Those aren't dangerous numbers, they're a sign of a country growing in the international marketplace. The weakness here, of course, is that our biggest trading partner (by far!) is still the US, and if they go under, it's going to be rough on us.
I wish this had happened a bit slower so that Canada could disconnect their economy from the US a bit more, but the writing on the wall has been there for ages-ever since the invasion of Iraq, and really probably since Bush first got pushed into power by PNAC.
The dual price actually means that in Canada, you pay the Canadian price; and in the US, you pay the US price. This is established as fair advertising.
Besides, if they rang up the US price, would you expect them to take US currency? They don't have to do that ever.
At present, the US dollar is the de facto international currency exchange target--most (but not all) of the countries in the world reference their own currency against the US.
However, more countries are starting to question that. The fact that the Canadian dollar is on par with the US dollar is very relevant, given that the US is Canada's biggest trading partner. However, countries are starting to look at the Euro as a more relevant and stable exchange target; and many are no doubt looking at the EU as a more stable trading partner. Late last year the Euro passed the US dollar in terms of total cash in circulation.
Sooner or later the US dollar is going to have to stabilise, or the rest of the world will cut their strings and let the US economy spiral downwards on its own. I'm not sure what's more likely, but the world is in for a bumpy ride for a few years.
While what you say is correct, the truth of the matter is that from a computer-literate point of view, many end-users (probably the majority of them) completely refuse to read, think for themselves, or even lift a finger to accomplish simple tasks.
For most people, computers are a magic box that should 'just work.' With Windows being invasive and ubiquitous, that ideal _appears_ to be achieved for most people, for a while, regardless of how broken and smelly the guts of the system are. After three years or so, viruses, bugs, and bloat lead to unstable Windows installations so people dump their systems and get new ones. This isn't how things should be, it's how they are.
In that sense, Walt's review was right on the money.
"She has sexual hangups and doesn't personally care for porn so she's projecting this on her son."
Wow, how much did you pay for your psychology degree?
The first part of your post is pretty much on the money. Then you got to this point, and totally lost it.
A concerned parent is a GOOD thing, regardless of their technical naivetee. Being later than she should have been (and how much later--is he 13 or 17?) isn't ideal, but she's trying to deal with things. Accusing her of having sexual hangups and disliking porn as a result is total and utter conjecture on your part.
I should add in here that 'making a living as an artist' includes teaching that art, as far as I'm concerned. With that caveat, I'll say that my brother has made a living as such (without supplementary income) for almost twenty years now. It hasn't been easy, it hasn't been luxurious, but it has been his dream job--something that not many of us get to spend a lifetime at.
I'd also like to address the 'dirt cheap recording and distribution' costs. Distribution of digital files is certainly close to free. Physically producing a CD is cheaper than making any 'take it home' recording has been since the 1930s. However, studio recording costs ain't cheap (for a reason), and there are some things you can't do in your basement. Yeah, you can lay down tracks onto your PC (especially if it's electronic music or some variant), but recording a five-piece acoustic band (country, rock, classical, etc.) requires good mics and good acoustics--one of which is expensive, and one of which is REALLY expensive. Yeah, recording is much cheaper than it used to be, but that doesn't make it free, or even cheap.
Also, let me run back to the original post. It made the assertion that paying for music is evil. That is, as far as I'm concerned, extremist and silly. Supporting the RIAA may be evil, but so is supporting Sony (seen any movies lately?) and Pepsi (how's life in Chile these days?) and so forth. Extending that fact to make the claim that "paying for music is evil" is...stupid.
The thing that bothers me the most is that so much of the geek world (who probably comprise the majority of thinking music sharers) has decided that (a)because the RIAA is evil (no argument), (b)it is my moral duty to download, upload, share, and copy as much music as I can for free. In fact, most of the time it's a smokescreen for "I don't want to buy this album but I want to listen to it."
My point, after all this talking, is that the artist is being lumped in with the RIAA and the labels. Worse, ALL artists are being lumped together in this cloud of evil. People don't have much aversion to hacking a band's website in order to freely access a one-dollar song, and then share it out on the 'net against the artists' wishes.
Let me put it another way: I would simply ask that the people yelling "All music must be free! Data is worthless!" give some consideration to the person who created that original work of art, and recognise that the worthless data wouldn't exist without some very worthwhile creative effort. If it's good enough to listen to and enjoy, it's good enough to respect the creator.
I agree with you. I do. And yet, my brother is a professional musician, and most of the artists I like are barely making ends meet.
How can the artists make a living. The RIAA, for all of its dirty behaviour, at least provided _some_ income for artists--your method provides none.
This has always been the struggle for me: How can I actually support artists (which I will willingly do!) but not the RIAA (who screws the musicians worse than they screw the consumers)?
Any ideas? Without the artists being able to make a living, we'll end up with no dedicated artists at all.
Let's see here. It's a Wednesday, and the date is an even number in a month with 30 days. On the other hand, the moon is just past new, Britney Spears' performance at the VMAs bombed, and oil broke $80/barrel today.
And now let's hear from Eric Raymond. Eric, why don't you tell the group...
Ummm, Eric? Could you put down the gun please? Yes, and the other one. No, we're not violating your right to bear arms, we're just asking that you don't point them at us. That's right...
Ah yes. The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, enacted in the 1970s in the USA. I'm sure the British stores are quaking in fear that they might get this thrown in their faces.
My 'requirements' for Vista are based on what Microsoft states, as were my requirements for all other products. I'm not sure how you can activate Vista legally without an internet connection, but Microsoft doesn't seem to think it's possible according to their website. Ditto for DX9.
Perhaps you didn't read my previous post, which would have clarified this statement: "The ONLY REASON to keep writing bloated software is to make you constantly spend more money staying exactly where you are, and your answer is to reward them by spending that money."
In fact, I made it clear previously that incompetence was also responsible for bloated software (and incompetence can appear in the coders or the project managers). I should have said, "the only reason to deliberately keep writing bloated software..."
"Vista isn't a spectacular improvement over XP but it is an improvement."
Well first of all, I'd disagree strongly with that. Secondly, I'd point out that consuming ten TIMES the resources for "...dozens of little advancements in the UI..." is a perfect example of complete incompetence or deliberate maliciousness. Coming from Microsoft, I'm assuming the latter--especially when one looks at how much of it is DRM-related and privacy related.
Slashdot Mirror
Balls!
These animals are NOT subpoenaeing information from MSN or Yahoo or anyone else. They have a much simpler criterion: If you have a computer and aren't blatantly supporting us, we'll murder you.
This isn't about your special little fight against the horrid western government 'track everything' threat, it's about people being slaughtered en masse, RIGHT NOW!!! To quote Amnesty International's new campaign, "It's not happening here, but it's happening now."
YOur fight IS important, but it's not the same fight that the resistance in Burma is facing. Not even close. Barely in the same book of threats.
Get. Some. Perspective.
Well then, your country sucks. :-)
Seriously, the of a mass slaughter (still not confirmed publicly) are being picked up by the news agencies across the world. I was expecting it (just look at the '88 coup) and have been watching the ripple all day. First it was a lunatic site. Then something more respectable. Now the Daily Mail and here in Canada, CBC are taking the stories seriously--although cautiously. I expect a massive uproar late tomorrow or early Wednesday.
Of course, access to live satellite images would probably confirm a lot of this.
At the ISP I work for, our customer-facing servers are all Sun Solaris systems, and there are a lot (many hundreds) of them. However, some of our applications are only supported on Windows, and in fact our previous webmail package only worked on IE.
Not much else to say. It sucks, but that's how things are at present.
"Canada is one of those weird places whose gov't functionaries actually adhere to duty..."
Don't believe it too much--We have our fair share of government waste, slimy politicians, and pointless obtuse bureaucracy too. In all honestly, I suspect that about 70% of the civil servants in the US do their job with diligence and pride, same as most places. The biggest difference is arguably that our biggest national media source is decidedly leftist and suspicious of government (ANY government), whereas the big US media is almost owned outright by the Republican party.
It's not sales tax they're after, it's income tax!!!
eBay sellers don't have to pay sales tax to the government in most cases. They do, on the other hand, have to pay income tax, and always have. If they make income, they have to pay income tax.
This program is to catch people who are cheating on their taxes. If eBay prices are low because the seller is breaking the law, then that's too bad.
How many ways can a survey be skewed, either deliberately or accidentally? Lots. More than anyone likely cares to count.
However, the question of the survey is entirely valid, and I think the results are likely true as a philosophy.
Lots of people in the community are really unhappy with the bent of the GPL3. That's the take home message here. Is it 65% or 63% or 97%? I don't really know or care, because that doesn't change the fact that it _is_ controversial among the very group that it's supposed to empower.
Tell you what. Why don't you keep your 'get out yer guns and slaughter the bastards' solutions on your side of the border. In case you haven't noticed, things are actually different in Canada! For starters, we don't have a DMCA-like bill. It was actually DEFEATED!!! Also, Ms. Neri was removed from her position, and (more significantly) Bev Oda was "shuffled" in the last parliament reorg.
You admit, "I am not sure what the basis of legality for copyrights in Canada is." Well then, quit giving advice. Since most of your opinion is based on how fucked up your country is, why don't you apply your advice to your country and leave us the fuck alone.
Oh yes, and have a nice day.
Sorry, but you're wrong on this.
"Just because the CCL is fair and is meant to be applied and used by fair people it doesn't mean it can't be exploited by *ssholes or people who don't care about common decency."
This is true, but it doesn't mean that anyone can use the CCL for whatever they want.
"I'd say the girl is out of luck and learned her lesson."
Nope. What lesson did she learn? Don't let anyone take your picture? She didn't actively create the content, so she can't be held to it. Basically, if the CCL allows VM to use the picture without consent from the subject, then the picture can't be released under the CCL at all, without her consent.
She's entitled to legal protection of her image. I suspect that the law will find the CCL unenforceable, if it gets that far. At least in this case.
"I saw on another site people were trying to make it like this was racial profiling because the girl is brown-skinned. WTF?"
Pretty simple to understand.
If bad things happen to vaguely black-looking people in the USA these days, it's racial profiling. If you're muslim, mediterranean, aryan, or any other visible group, it's just life. If you're "African American" (including 1/74th black but excluding actual first-generation African immigrants or visitors), then it's ratial profiling. SOMEONE will take your side and jump up and down about the racially insensitive behaviour of the white oppressors.
Seriously when you look at it from the outside, the USA's hypersensitivity about anti-black racism is leading to pro-black racism to a degree that's almost unheard of in the rest of the world (outside of Zimbabwe, of course.)
From a Harvard study: As of 2005, the present proportion of black students at majority white schools "are a level lower than in any year since 1968." What isn't addressed is _why_ this is happening again--it's naturally assumed that the white oppressors (yes, them again!) are isolatiing themselves, but is it really?
Consider Black Entertainment Television." Could I get away with a "WTV. White TV for White Folks" channel in the USA? I doubt it. Then there's blacknews.com and blacknewsweekly.com, the latter of which would probably constitute hate-speech if it were anyone else writing it.
The USA has to get over itself. That's the short answer.
You apparently don't have the slightest clue what a SAN is.
Don't know that I agree. I actually wrote a letter to my MP around 2003, expressing my concern with our dependence on a single country (ANY single country is bad--the US is a particularly bad choice right now). To my surprise, I found that the government had been quietly and steadily working towards diversifying our trading partners for some time.
The thing is, these things _do_ take time. Four years ain't enough. Neither are six. two decades is more like what it would take to decouple our majority trading levels with the US. I was hoping the southern collapse wouldn't start for another five or ten years, but it's moving faster than almost anyone would have imagined.
*I* can. Apparently *YOU* can't though, which is what separates us.
All true, but two things need to be remembered.
First of all, our primary exports are raw materials, not finished goods. As a resource exporter, countries can't afford _not_ to buy our products. They can't in-source the mining of bauxite, for instance, if they don't have the stuff.
Secondly, this is a measure of the US dollar sinking. Canada has grown modestly against other currencies: ~22% against the pound, ~15% vs. the Euro, and a rather large ~46% against the Yen, in just under five years. Those aren't dangerous numbers, they're a sign of a country growing in the international marketplace. The weakness here, of course, is that our biggest trading partner (by far!) is still the US, and if they go under, it's going to be rough on us.
I wish this had happened a bit slower so that Canada could disconnect their economy from the US a bit more, but the writing on the wall has been there for ages-ever since the invasion of Iraq, and really probably since Bush first got pushed into power by PNAC.
In a word, no.
The dual price actually means that in Canada, you pay the Canadian price; and in the US, you pay the US price. This is established as fair advertising.
Besides, if they rang up the US price, would you expect them to take US currency? They don't have to do that ever.
At present, the US dollar is the de facto international currency exchange target--most (but not all) of the countries in the world reference their own currency against the US.
However, more countries are starting to question that. The fact that the Canadian dollar is on par with the US dollar is very relevant, given that the US is Canada's biggest trading partner. However, countries are starting to look at the Euro as a more relevant and stable exchange target; and many are no doubt looking at the EU as a more stable trading partner. Late last year the Euro passed the US dollar in terms of total cash in circulation.
Sooner or later the US dollar is going to have to stabilise, or the rest of the world will cut their strings and let the US economy spiral downwards on its own. I'm not sure what's more likely, but the world is in for a bumpy ride for a few years.
While what you say is correct, the truth of the matter is that from a computer-literate point of view, many end-users (probably the majority of them) completely refuse to read, think for themselves, or even lift a finger to accomplish simple tasks.
For most people, computers are a magic box that should 'just work.' With Windows being invasive and ubiquitous, that ideal _appears_ to be achieved for most people, for a while, regardless of how broken and smelly the guts of the system are. After three years or so, viruses, bugs, and bloat lead to unstable Windows installations so people dump their systems and get new ones. This isn't how things should be, it's how they are.
In that sense, Walt's review was right on the money.
"She has sexual hangups and doesn't personally care for porn so she's projecting this on her son."
Wow, how much did you pay for your psychology degree?
The first part of your post is pretty much on the money. Then you got to this point, and totally lost it.
A concerned parent is a GOOD thing, regardless of their technical naivetee. Being later than she should have been (and how much later--is he 13 or 17?) isn't ideal, but she's trying to deal with things. Accusing her of having sexual hangups and disliking porn as a result is total and utter conjecture on your part.
I should add in here that 'making a living as an artist' includes teaching that art, as far as I'm concerned. With that caveat, I'll say that my brother has made a living as such (without supplementary income) for almost twenty years now. It hasn't been easy, it hasn't been luxurious, but it has been his dream job--something that not many of us get to spend a lifetime at.
I'd also like to address the 'dirt cheap recording and distribution' costs. Distribution of digital files is certainly close to free. Physically producing a CD is cheaper than making any 'take it home' recording has been since the 1930s. However, studio recording costs ain't cheap (for a reason), and there are some things you can't do in your basement. Yeah, you can lay down tracks onto your PC (especially if it's electronic music or some variant), but recording a five-piece acoustic band (country, rock, classical, etc.) requires good mics and good acoustics--one of which is expensive, and one of which is REALLY expensive. Yeah, recording is much cheaper than it used to be, but that doesn't make it free, or even cheap.
Also, let me run back to the original post. It made the assertion that paying for music is evil. That is, as far as I'm concerned, extremist and silly. Supporting the RIAA may be evil, but so is supporting Sony (seen any movies lately?) and Pepsi (how's life in Chile these days?) and so forth. Extending that fact to make the claim that "paying for music is evil" is...stupid.
The thing that bothers me the most is that so much of the geek world (who probably comprise the majority of thinking music sharers) has decided that (a)because the RIAA is evil (no argument), (b)it is my moral duty to download, upload, share, and copy as much music as I can for free. In fact, most of the time it's a smokescreen for "I don't want to buy this album but I want to listen to it."
My point, after all this talking, is that the artist is being lumped in with the RIAA and the labels. Worse, ALL artists are being lumped together in this cloud of evil. People don't have much aversion to hacking a band's website in order to freely access a one-dollar song, and then share it out on the 'net against the artists' wishes.
Let me put it another way: I would simply ask that the people yelling "All music must be free! Data is worthless!" give some consideration to the person who created that original work of art, and recognise that the worthless data wouldn't exist without some very worthwhile creative effort. If it's good enough to listen to and enjoy, it's good enough to respect the creator.
So let's see here...
I agree with you. I do. And yet, my brother is a professional musician, and most of the artists I like are barely making ends meet.
How can the artists make a living. The RIAA, for all of its dirty behaviour, at least provided _some_ income for artists--your method provides none.
This has always been the struggle for me: How can I actually support artists (which I will willingly do!) but not the RIAA (who screws the musicians worse than they screw the consumers)?
Any ideas? Without the artists being able to make a living, we'll end up with no dedicated artists at all.
Let's see here. It's a Wednesday, and the date is an even number in a month with 30 days. On the other hand, the moon is just past new, Britney Spears' performance at the VMAs bombed, and oil broke $80/barrel today.
/. today.
Clearly Sun is EVIL on
And now let's hear from Eric Raymond. Eric, why don't you tell the group...
Ummm, Eric? Could you put down the gun please? Yes, and the other one. No, we're not violating your right to bear arms, we're just asking that you don't point them at us. That's right...
Call the tabloids.
Ah yes. The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, enacted in the 1970s in the USA. I'm sure the British stores are quaking in fear that they might get this thrown in their faces.
P.S. Love the GIR quote. :-)
"I'm gonna sing the Doom song now."
This certainly deserves a response.
My 'requirements' for Vista are based on what Microsoft states, as were my requirements for all other products. I'm not sure how you can activate Vista legally without an internet connection, but Microsoft doesn't seem to think it's possible according to their website. Ditto for DX9.
Perhaps you didn't read my previous post, which would have clarified this statement:
"The ONLY REASON to keep writing bloated software is to make you constantly spend more money staying exactly where you are, and your answer is to reward them by spending that money."
In fact, I made it clear previously that incompetence was also responsible for bloated software (and incompetence can appear in the coders or the project managers). I should have said, "the only reason to deliberately keep writing bloated software..."
"Vista isn't a spectacular improvement over XP but it is an improvement."
Well first of all, I'd disagree strongly with that. Secondly, I'd point out that consuming ten TIMES the resources for "...dozens of little advancements in the UI..." is a perfect example of complete incompetence or deliberate maliciousness. Coming from Microsoft, I'm assuming the latter--especially when one looks at how much of it is DRM-related and privacy related.