Studies have shown time and time again that violent games (and violent movies, etc.) nurture violent instincts. The thing is that most people can consciously rationalise their violent instincts into nonviolent aggression.
The problem with games like this is twofold. The first is the general and subtle change in society's attitude. We are continually becoming more and more desensitized to violence and sex. The second problem (FAR more serious in the short term), is the 0.01% of the society who can't cope with extensive exposure to these things--these are the people who become rapists, murderers, and child molesters.
Is the game at fault? Not really. Are the parents at fault? Certainly somewhat (and the fact that they're suing suggests to me that they are QUITE guilty of bad parenting.) Could this have been prevented? Maybe, maybe not. There are ALWAYS people who go off the deep end. What we don't yet know is if that behaviour is destined to be triggered eventually, or if it's latent in most (or all?) people, but closer to or farther from the surface in different people.
$0.77 for CD-R and CD-RW audio $0.21 for CD-R and CD-RW $0.29 for cassette tapes over 40 minutes
CDR Audio media is flagged specifically as such both in the packaging, and manufacture. It is supposed to not work for recording data. Some audio CD burners (i.e. stereo component, not computer component) will not work with media that isn't CDR Audio.
But practically speaking, the market for standalone burners has pretty much cratered, and som there's no purpose in coughing up nearly four times the levy for media that doesn't work for storing data. That, unfortunately, is why the government is considering bumping the levy on CD-R and CD-RW media to $0.59.
Offensive corporate behaviour is the easiest thing in the world to stop. Don't support them. If Ford is buying ads from VeriSign on mistyped Toyota domains and you feel that it's wrong, then don't buy from Ford! People toss around the word boycott as if it's a special act, but unless it's done as an organised, concerted effort, then boycotting is just personal choice in action.
Every time we spend money (or not), we are making a choice. When we buy something, we are buying a product based on our needs, wants, perceptions, and beliefs. When you buy something from a company, you are supporting that company and their actions. When you decide against buying something from a company which you would like to have, you are making a statement that you will NOT support them, based on...whatever you're not supporting, be it sleazy advertising (spam, or the Ford example), bad corporate behaviour (Microsoft, the major RIAA members), or unethical products (Tobacco companies).
PERSONAL ACTION is an easy easy easy easy easy way to prevent most corporate excess. Unfortunately, it's also nearly impossible, because not enough people are willing to implement it. "Yeah, I've heard about the problems with the RIAA, but I want the new (x) album." Even such things as, "my old stereo is fantastic, but this year's model is NEWER (with less features, poorer specs, etc.)" defeat a big chunk of personal action.
Can you imagine what would happen to companies like VeriSign if EVERYONE actually made all of their decisions consciously, and let the companies know about it? Why, we might have corporate responsibility.
" Have you considered the idea that perhaps most Americans like the idea of making the world more like us? Just wondering..."
Right now, I actually don't think they do. I've not seen the US populace more embarassed on the whole of their country and their leaders since Vietnam.
But regardless, it doesn't make any difference. It doesn't give the US the right to invade my country, or any other. It's a basic statement of freedom: You are free to do whatever you want, until it impinges on my freedoms. Influencing by making decisions about foreign aid is well within a country's realm. Expansion by hostile invasion is not. Not India, not Israel, and not the US.
As far as 'not killing each other,' let's not forget that the coalition has killed far more than ten times as many Iraqi civilians as they've lost in soldiers. I don't think the American people condone this, but neither do I think that Bush and his cronies give a rats ass about any number of incidental casualties.
It all boils down to a difference between minding your own affairs, and wholesale conquest. If you support the latter, then god help the rest of the world.
The site is well and truly/.ed now, so I unfortunately can't get to it to see what they have to say. I did notice, however, that the title was top UNDERREPORTED stories--not censored, underreported.
As for Bush being evil and wanting to take over the world, his entire entourage (except for Colin Powell) are members of the Project for a New American Century. Have you read their goals? Primary plans are: Extending US influence in the Middle East by instigating regime change in several countries, starting with Iraq; and Undermining and reducing the effectiveness of the UN. All of this is because they feel they have a moral obligation to lead the world into a future that serves the interests of the US.
This is not a crazed leftist conspiracy either. It is the publically stated goal of the organisation that Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al. founded several years before Bush got into power.
OK, just one point. I honestly do not believe that there is any degree of facism that Bush will not go along with, if he can get away with it. If there were some way he could manage the PR, I don't think he'd hesitate for more than five seconds to round up every Arab in the US right now, and put them in 'detainment' camps.
Hmmm. Yep, that covers most of the salient points. However...
With regards to (E), there will be no defense. If your product isn't on "the list," then it'll be fair game for anyone to sue. They'll say, "We're not on the list, we never promised anything!" and the plaintifs will say, "You're not on the list--we're going to take you down!" Who has the deeper pockets?
Also, items (A) through (E) are SO large, that (F) and (G) are msotly irrelevant. It won't matter if the seal is fake or not, because the seal won't matter. At all.
It's pathetic. Anti-capitalist, anti-competitive, doesn't provide any security at all, creates an entirely false sense of security in the population, and promotes special interest groups.
Good to see that things are going according to plan under Bush.
"By the way, if you were one of those guys who said that the RIAA shouldn't sue Napster because it's not the service's fault if people trade copyrighted material... what prompted your reversal of opinion?"
You make a big presumption, and one that's not entirely correct. I had mixed feelings on the Napster case.
Now if Kazaa is charging a fee to trade files that they could trade elsewhere for free, and the fee is the only material difference, then it seems fairly reasonable to naively expect that the service charge allows you to download whatever you find on the service. I think that a court would have a field day with this one. It's just too thorny to nail down to a single settlement, or a bunch of/. posts.
There's tons of evidence that these people downloaded the songs. They also PAID FOR A DOWNLOADING SERVICE! If there's illegality going on, then the RIAA should fight it out with Kazaa. Period. They should NOT be allowed to go after the end users of this service.
It's not age. It's money and PR. They'll hurt people absolutely as much as they can get away with. If they don't get beaten down by a David and soon, I honestly expect them to be destroying computers with baseball bats and professional hackers by Christmas 2005. They're behaviour is getting closer and closer to organised crime.
Evil fucktards. They'll keep threatening and settling, threatening and settling, until everyone is scared to listen to music they've legally bought.
These people paid for a service that they believed to be a legal and appropriate way of getting music online. Like oh, cable TV, maybe? There is NO EVIDENCE one way or another that these people have legally done anything wrong, but they can't afford to not settle.
Again, Fucktards. That's not nearly nasty enough, but it's all I can come up with right now.
OK, I have a separate firewall, two NICs, running iptables.
The question I have is this: I have some ports open from the outside, for specific purposes (ssh, for example). Now if I'm going to have ports open, what do I need to have blocked to avoid spoofing?
For instance, I currently am blocking incoming traffic:
1) with a source IP of 127.x.x.x 2) with a source IP from inside my firewall 3) with any other non-routable source IP
What else do I need to block, before forwarding it on to the appropriate machine/port internally?
I copy my material to my own physical disk array. I can do that. Apparently though, if I then open CIFS or NFS access to that disk array, I've infringed on the copyright. It seems strange and counterintuitive that copying files from my media to my other media is allowed, and giving access to my media is allowed, but putting the two together isn't. I don't think the courts are going to see this as cut and dried in either direction.
Theft? Oh yes, of course. They knowingly and wilfully stole music online, because they didn't know it was wrong.
Read the article. Then read it again. They're paying Kazaa a service fee, and downloading songs to listen to. In an other industry, this is called "Cable TV."
How can a person be legitimately accused of theft when they are paying for a (supposedly legitimate) service that provides the alleged stolen material? While it's true that if I buy a pair of speakers for $0.05 on the dollar from a guy out of the back of his van, I could be charged with posession of stolen goods, I am protected from such charges if I buy the speakers in good faith from a registered business where there is no appearance of wrongdoing.
This lady and her daughter actually tried to do the appropriate thing, and pay for their music download service. Calling them thieves completely sidesteps the issue of how to deal with the reality of downloadable and easily accessible music.
The genie is out of the bottle. Quit trying to point fingers at the people who are getting their wishes granted.
"His stance was that the artists are working and ought to be paid."
This is true. I hope that no one would argue this point.
"If not for the RIAA, their music wouldn't get distribution."
This, on the other hand, is utter bollocks. The whole fight over P2P networks and online redistribution is tied to the fact that the music DOES get distributed without going through the RIAA. The money involved or lack of it, is a red herring that the RIAA keeps bringing up. In reality, they don't care about the loss of income, because they're smart enough to know that it's a trivial amount.
FURTHERMORE, even if the RIAA were the only distribution game in town, they've fallen down on their end of the deal. They are not fairly redistributing the income back to the artists. The artists signed to the major labels are not getting paid fairly for their work, and haven't been for decades.
It's time for the artists to break free from the RIAA, and the major labels. Private studios, basement digital recording, and online distribution are making a truly independent music "industry" a reality. All the RIAA is doing is speeding up the process.
First of all, that's bullshit. The full statement you're looking for is, "Ignorance of the law is no defense." The point the parent poster raised isn't one of ignorance of the law, but of the technology.
Secondly, ignorance of the law IS a valid defense--if the law is non-obvious, or not commonly known. If your behaviour is (a) common and reasonable, but (b) violates an obscure and obtuse law, you're more likely to get the charges thrown out than not. (Assuming that (c) you haven't done material damage to someone/something)
My ISP has spam filters. If you log into their webmail client, you can turn on or off the various rulesets, or tune them at will.
Now if they didn't have this adjustment ability, I'd be moving elsewhere in a big hurry--but they give me the filters, default them to all on, and let me turn off what I want. I don't see why they can't do that with internet ports. Default to everything turned off, and then have a website that I could authenticate against, which would allow me to open ports. ACLs in FW1 should be able to accomplish this.
Now before you start up the flame throwers, this is not a message to deride high school students over their lack of creativity.
But when I was in high school, we were told that proper essay writing was an essential skill for the departmentals, and when they said "proper," they meant "Must conform to between five and seven paragraphs, with the first and last being this opening and conclusion with three to five paragraphs of body--each containing one topic of discussion."
Furthermore, it was made VERY clear that creative or unconventional ideas (let alone language!) would be strongly frowned upon. There was One True Way to write an essay, and One True Opinion on any given subject. Any deviations from that would cost you.
I hated it then, I hate it now, but I don't see any problem with having computers mark essays like this. After all, they were trying to turn us into computers to create them.
Used to work with a guy who had his MCSE. He was utterly pissed off, because he worked bloody hard for his (one of the first five in Canada), when the exam failure rate was more than 50%. However, to increase the number of MCSEs and make everyone happier, they went through the process of dumbing down the MCSE path until everyone had one, and they were worth nothing.
My friend felt betrayed by Microsoft by making his training worthless and an object of derision--just to make some market statements. That's one of the things that drove him into Unix, where he's been ever since.
Slashdot Mirror
So, you're going to be using an XML format for the next version of MSOffice, right? Right?
You believe wrong.
Studies have shown time and time again that violent games (and violent movies, etc.) nurture violent instincts. The thing is that most people can consciously rationalise their violent instincts into nonviolent aggression.
The problem with games like this is twofold. The first is the general and subtle change in society's attitude. We are continually becoming more and more desensitized to violence and sex. The second problem (FAR more serious in the short term), is the 0.01% of the society who can't cope with extensive exposure to these things--these are the people who become rapists, murderers, and child molesters.
Is the game at fault? Not really. Are the parents at fault? Certainly somewhat (and the fact that they're suing suggests to me that they are QUITE guilty of bad parenting.) Could this have been prevented? Maybe, maybe not. There are ALWAYS people who go off the deep end. What we don't yet know is if that behaviour is destined to be triggered eventually, or if it's latent in most (or all?) people, but closer to or farther from the surface in different people.
Incorrect, but close.
The levy is different, for different media.
$0.77 for CD-R and CD-RW audio
$0.21 for CD-R and CD-RW
$0.29 for cassette tapes over 40 minutes
CDR Audio media is flagged specifically as such both in the packaging, and manufacture. It is supposed to not work for recording data. Some audio CD burners (i.e. stereo component, not computer component) will not work with media that isn't CDR Audio.
But practically speaking, the market for standalone burners has pretty much cratered, and som there's no purpose in coughing up nearly four times the levy for media that doesn't work for storing data. That, unfortunately, is why the government is considering bumping the levy on CD-R and CD-RW media to $0.59.
No, that just means that you're a young punk. :-)
Although now that I think about it, the web has been around for about a quarter of my life. Yikes!
Offensive corporate behaviour is the easiest thing in the world to stop. Don't support them. If Ford is buying ads from VeriSign on mistyped Toyota domains and you feel that it's wrong, then don't buy from Ford! People toss around the word boycott as if it's a special act, but unless it's done as an organised, concerted effort, then boycotting is just personal choice in action.
Every time we spend money (or not), we are making a choice. When we buy something, we are buying a product based on our needs, wants, perceptions, and beliefs. When you buy something from a company, you are supporting that company and their actions. When you decide against buying something from a company which you would like to have, you are making a statement that you will NOT support them, based on...whatever you're not supporting, be it sleazy advertising (spam, or the Ford example), bad corporate behaviour (Microsoft, the major RIAA members), or unethical products (Tobacco companies).
PERSONAL ACTION is an easy easy easy easy easy way to prevent most corporate excess. Unfortunately, it's also nearly impossible, because not enough people are willing to implement it. "Yeah, I've heard about the problems with the RIAA, but I want the new (x) album." Even such things as, "my old stereo is fantastic, but this year's model is NEWER (with less features, poorer specs, etc.)" defeat a big chunk of personal action.
Can you imagine what would happen to companies like VeriSign if EVERYONE actually made all of their decisions consciously, and let the companies know about it? Why, we might have corporate responsibility.
As much as I dislike the idea, what internet standard are they violating here? Which of the RFCs?
Most of the 'good neighbor' related RFCs relate to excess or inappropriate packets, not actual behaviour.
" Have you considered the idea that perhaps most Americans like the idea of making the world more like us? Just wondering..."
Right now, I actually don't think they do. I've not seen the US populace more embarassed on the whole of their country and their leaders since Vietnam.
But regardless, it doesn't make any difference. It doesn't give the US the right to invade my country, or any other. It's a basic statement of freedom: You are free to do whatever you want, until it impinges on my freedoms. Influencing by making decisions about foreign aid is well within a country's realm. Expansion by hostile invasion is not. Not India, not Israel, and not the US.
As far as 'not killing each other,' let's not forget that the coalition has killed far more than ten times as many Iraqi civilians as they've lost in soldiers. I don't think the American people condone this, but neither do I think that Bush and his cronies give a rats ass about any number of incidental casualties.
It all boils down to a difference between minding your own affairs, and wholesale conquest. If you support the latter, then god help the rest of the world.
The site is well and truly /.ed now, so I unfortunately can't get to it to see what they have to say. I did notice, however, that the title was top UNDERREPORTED stories--not censored, underreported.
As for Bush being evil and wanting to take over the world, his entire entourage (except for Colin Powell) are members of the Project for a New American Century. Have you read their goals? Primary plans are: Extending US influence in the Middle East by instigating regime change in several countries, starting with Iraq; and Undermining and reducing the effectiveness of the UN. All of this is because they feel they have a moral obligation to lead the world into a future that serves the interests of the US.
This is not a crazed leftist conspiracy either. It is the publically stated goal of the organisation that Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al. founded several years before Bush got into power.
OK, just one point. I honestly do not believe that there is any degree of facism that Bush will not go along with, if he can get away with it. If there were some way he could manage the PR, I don't think he'd hesitate for more than five seconds to round up every Arab in the US right now, and put them in 'detainment' camps.
Um...no thanks.
I've never been a terribly polite person when it comes to delicate language, but that's misogynistic enough to give me hives.
I'll stick with fucktards. Rabid fucktards maybe.
Hmmm. Yep, that covers most of the salient points. However...
With regards to (E), there will be no defense. If your product isn't on "the list," then it'll be fair game for anyone to sue. They'll say, "We're not on the list, we never promised anything!" and the plaintifs will say, "You're not on the list--we're going to take you down!" Who has the deeper pockets?
Also, items (A) through (E) are SO large, that (F) and (G) are msotly irrelevant. It won't matter if the seal is fake or not, because the seal won't matter. At all.
It's pathetic. Anti-capitalist, anti-competitive, doesn't provide any security at all, creates an entirely false sense of security in the population, and promotes special interest groups.
Good to see that things are going according to plan under Bush.
"By the way, if you were one of those guys who said that the RIAA shouldn't sue Napster because it's not the service's fault if people trade copyrighted material... what prompted your reversal of opinion?"
/. posts.
You make a big presumption, and one that's not entirely correct. I had mixed feelings on the Napster case.
Now if Kazaa is charging a fee to trade files that they could trade elsewhere for free, and the fee is the only material difference, then it seems fairly reasonable to naively expect that the service charge allows you to download whatever you find on the service. I think that a court would have a field day with this one. It's just too thorny to nail down to a single settlement, or a bunch of
There's tons of evidence that these people downloaded the songs. They also PAID FOR A DOWNLOADING SERVICE! If there's illegality going on, then the RIAA should fight it out with Kazaa. Period. They should NOT be allowed to go after the end users of this service.
It's not age. It's money and PR. They'll hurt people absolutely as much as they can get away with. If they don't get beaten down by a David and soon, I honestly expect them to be destroying computers with baseball bats and professional hackers by Christmas 2005. They're behaviour is getting closer and closer to organised crime.
Evil fucktards. They'll keep threatening and settling, threatening and settling, until everyone is scared to listen to music they've legally bought.
These people paid for a service that they believed to be a legal and appropriate way of getting music online. Like oh, cable TV, maybe? There is NO EVIDENCE one way or another that these people have legally done anything wrong, but they can't afford to not settle.
Again, Fucktards. That's not nearly nasty enough, but it's all I can come up with right now.
OK, I have a separate firewall, two NICs, running iptables.
The question I have is this: I have some ports open from the outside, for specific purposes (ssh, for example). Now if I'm going to have ports open, what do I need to have blocked to avoid spoofing?
For instance, I currently am blocking incoming traffic:
1) with a source IP of 127.x.x.x
2) with a source IP from inside my firewall
3) with any other non-routable source IP
What else do I need to block, before forwarding it on to the appropriate machine/port internally?
The key is "writes the bits to the network."
I copy my material to my own physical disk array. I can do that. Apparently though, if I then open CIFS or NFS access to that disk array, I've infringed on the copyright. It seems strange and counterintuitive that copying files from my media to my other media is allowed, and giving access to my media is allowed, but putting the two together isn't. I don't think the courts are going to see this as cut and dried in either direction.
On behalf of MINNLES (MIdget Neo-Nazi LESbians) everywhere, I'm offended by your post, and insist that you submit to punishment by our organisation.
What do you mean, "OK?"
Theft? Oh yes, of course. They knowingly and wilfully stole music online, because they didn't know it was wrong.
Read the article. Then read it again. They're paying Kazaa a service fee, and downloading songs to listen to. In an other industry, this is called "Cable TV."
How can a person be legitimately accused of theft when they are paying for a (supposedly legitimate) service that provides the alleged stolen material? While it's true that if I buy a pair of speakers for $0.05 on the dollar from a guy out of the back of his van, I could be charged with posession of stolen goods, I am protected from such charges if I buy the speakers in good faith from a registered business where there is no appearance of wrongdoing.
This lady and her daughter actually tried to do the appropriate thing, and pay for their music download service. Calling them thieves completely sidesteps the issue of how to deal with the reality of downloadable and easily accessible music.
The genie is out of the bottle. Quit trying to point fingers at the people who are getting their wishes granted.
Your friend said...
"His stance was that the artists are working and ought to be paid."
This is true. I hope that no one would argue this point.
"If not for the RIAA, their music wouldn't get distribution."
This, on the other hand, is utter bollocks. The whole fight over P2P networks and online redistribution is tied to the fact that the music DOES get distributed without going through the RIAA. The money involved or lack of it, is a red herring that the RIAA keeps bringing up. In reality, they don't care about the loss of income, because they're smart enough to know that it's a trivial amount.
FURTHERMORE, even if the RIAA were the only distribution game in town, they've fallen down on their end of the deal. They are not fairly redistributing the income back to the artists. The artists signed to the major labels are not getting paid fairly for their work, and haven't been for decades.
It's time for the artists to break free from the RIAA, and the major labels. Private studios, basement digital recording, and online distribution are making a truly independent music "industry" a reality. All the RIAA is doing is speeding up the process.
First of all, that's bullshit. The full statement you're looking for is, "Ignorance of the law is no defense." The point the parent poster raised isn't one of ignorance of the law, but of the technology.
Secondly, ignorance of the law IS a valid defense--if the law is non-obvious, or not commonly known. If your behaviour is (a) common and reasonable, but (b) violates an obscure and obtuse law, you're more likely to get the charges thrown out than not. (Assuming that (c) you haven't done material damage to someone/something)
You're right.
But there's a difference between what they can do (anything), and what they should do (the question under discussion).
So go back and read the subject, THEN come and let us know if you have any insight.
My ISP has spam filters. If you log into their webmail client, you can turn on or off the various rulesets, or tune them at will.
Now if they didn't have this adjustment ability, I'd be moving elsewhere in a big hurry--but they give me the filters, default them to all on, and let me turn off what I want. I don't see why they can't do that with internet ports. Default to everything turned off, and then have a website that I could authenticate against, which would allow me to open ports. ACLs in FW1 should be able to accomplish this.
Now before you start up the flame throwers, this is not a message to deride high school students over their lack of creativity.
But when I was in high school, we were told that proper essay writing was an essential skill for the departmentals, and when they said "proper," they meant "Must conform to between five and seven paragraphs, with the first and last being this opening and conclusion with three to five paragraphs of body--each containing one topic of discussion."
Furthermore, it was made VERY clear that creative or unconventional ideas (let alone language!) would be strongly frowned upon. There was One True Way to write an essay, and One True Opinion on any given subject. Any deviations from that would cost you.
I hated it then, I hate it now, but I don't see any problem with having computers mark essays like this. After all, they were trying to turn us into computers to create them.
Used to work with a guy who had his MCSE. He was utterly pissed off, because he worked bloody hard for his (one of the first five in Canada), when the exam failure rate was more than 50%. However, to increase the number of MCSEs and make everyone happier, they went through the process of dumbing down the MCSE path until everyone had one, and they were worth nothing.
My friend felt betrayed by Microsoft by making his training worthless and an object of derision--just to make some market statements. That's one of the things that drove him into Unix, where he's been ever since.