"I say, we develop manned space travel so that we may send some of our elected leaders to meet with the black hole in its homeland of the galactic nucleus to discuss the situation."
So what you're saying is we fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here. Brilliant! You build the spaceship, I'll build the giant magnetic yellow support-the-troops ribbon. (Well, I won't really *build* it so much as I'll outsource the building of it to China).
"Give me 30 minutes and an SSH connection and I'll get you the latest Ricky Martin album downloaded to an IP apparently in Brazil.
True, the vast majority of infringers are not going to go to that kind of extreme or hassle, but downloading to another IP isn't that hard, especially if you have physical access to the machine."
Hell, give me 15 minutes, Ricky Martin, and a length of rubber hose, and I'll get him out to your IP apparently in Brazil *personally*.
"In fact, had civilization arose in American before Europe, it's likely that the territory we now call the United States would be a fragmented group of states the way Europe is now (Canada would be Russia, of course)."
You lost me here. Civilization did arise in America before Europe. Or at least at more or less the same time. But we Europeans quickly crushed them, reformatted the land, and installed our own civilization over top of theirs. This was mostly due to the fact that most of the domesticable large animals and energy intensive grains were native to Europe and the middle east/north africa, which in turn was due to Europe having the geographic fortune to be laid out East to West and thus having a more uniform climate throughout, as opposed to North and South America's North to South orientation spanning all of the Earth's climate zones.
"The quid pro quo is usually community requirements like public access channels and promises not to red line. It seems like neutrality should be part of these franchise agreements."
Agreed. I get the need for the franchise, and in some parts of my town there are in fact other options for HSI, I guess I'm just unlucky in that Comcast is my only option. Maybe I'll run for township supervisor, and when Comcast's franchise comes up for renewal in 2047 I'll make them agree to a net neutrality clause;)
The extroverts are either calling the people they want to talk to or just walking over to their desk to communicate via wireless F2F (Face-to-Face) protocol.
"But I don't think I saw anything there I would fly to Asia just to obtain."
Why would you fly to Asia to obtain anything? That is what the little known invention of "ordering things over the internet" is for. Now I realize the readers of this site might not be that technically savvy, but there are ways, however magical and arcane, to get things out of Asia that don't involve physically flying there. Its not like the Asians are well known as a people for their utter refusal to sell things over the internet to Westerners.
"Perhaps you should've said "Just like Clinton has some sort of contract in place to protect her if George Bush turns out to be fake, You have to assume that there was some sort of contract between them""
I'll be damned if I can find the car reference in your analogy. Therefore, its not a proper analogy. Are you sure you didn't mean ""Just like Clinton has some sort of contract in place to protect her if George Bush turns out to be fake, You have to assume that there was some sort of contract between them, sort of like the contract you have with your neighbors not to steal your car when you leave it unlocked and running at the post office""?
You are exaggerating and paranoid. I can't believe you got modded a 4. RTFA, their 'one click way to harass' involved a guy going to a freaking russian kiddie porn website and clicking that link! We're not talking about the FBI arresting political dissidents here, IT WAS A GUY GOING TO A CHILD PORN WEBSITE!!!
"The last thing I would want if I were doing illegal things was someone else drawing attention to me."
That depends on what 'illegal things' you're doing. This is a legitimate question: If I'm doing nothing illegal, and for whatever reason (roommate makes a threat online against the president, whatever) my stuff gets confiscated. Do I have to worry about proving where and when I purchased every single mp3 found on my hard drive? Or do they only go after stuff in the warrant?
My guess would be you are correct and they only go after the stuff in the warrant, so you should have nothing to worry about apart from legal fees/confiscated stuff.
The person who is interested in doing illegal things should do it like the mob does: never do it in your own house
"As to clicking a hyperlink being intent to download -- aside from the thoughtcrime aspect of such laws, I know plenty of inexperienced computer users who haven't yet learned not to click random links, and who would be easily ensnared by the FBI's scam, even tho these people have absolutely no interest in porn (kiddie or otherwise)."
But what were those people doing on a russian kiddie porn forum in the first place to click those links. You are acting like the FBI was spamming the general internet with this stuff when what they were really doing was more akin to staking out a known crack house and busting the people who went inside. Actually, scratch that. They weren't even busting the people who were going inside, they were ID'ing them and getting a warrant on the basis that most people who go into a crack house are going in there to, surprise, buy crack.
What a RELIEF! Oh man, you have no idea how liberating that is! Here I was walking around constantly paranoid the cops were going to bust in on me at anytime for being a pedo. See, the problem is, every time I go to the gym, or anywhere for that matter, my pedometer constantly increments itself, practically after every step...I was beginning to think of turning myself in until you set me straight!
"There are a lot of people out there who think it would be hilarious to find that FBI address and hide it all over there internet camouflaged and try to get it clicked as often as possible, both to waste the FBI time as well as make strangers and sometimes known enemies suffer."
That would be quite a feat. That person would have to either 1.) know the link the FBI is using in their investigation, which is probably a closely held secret, or 2.) be in the habit of hiding unnoticed camouflaged child porn links all over their (presumably fairly popular non-child-porn oriented website) in the hopes of stumbling onto the one FBI child porn link (not withstanding the fact that at some point somebody clicking on one of those fake links would probably start to question why child porn was loading in their browser from a completely innocent website).
Either one would be quite the hacking accomplishment, easily on par with Jeff Goldblum in independence day blowing up the mothership with his ibook.
"Accepting something as fact despite evidence to the contrary is foolishness."
Ol' Georgie Bush was right. Sometimes the problem in this country is we have *too much* freedom. If you're going to tell me the sky is scientifically demonstrably blue, I have the freedom to say "Go Eff yourself, Nerdlington, Me and my God say its British Racing Green, and your machine that tells you its blue was built by the Devil to mislead you. THE DEVIL!!!!!"
"Trent Reznors business model is a nine inch coffin nail"
Yeah, but I would argue Trent made $1.6 million on that record because he is as famous as he is. Due in large part to previous work promoted, no doubt, by industry groups like the RIAA.
Other than that, I have to agree. I think artists can and will make money just distributing their music their damn selves. They just have to figure out how to become famous enough to do it without the distribution chain of middlemen. Hopefully there will also be the side effect of loosening LA's death grip on the industry as well so people can live wherever they want and still make money creating art.
Tell me about it. My father fought in the first Format War against VHS. Some of the things he described were absolutely horrible. Betas disappearing from stores in the middle of the night, never to be seen again, mass graves on the edge of town where thousands upon thousands of cassettes were covered over. Entire villages burned and re-formatted, sometimes in the span of weeks. There was this one time when Victor Henry Stevens just came through and distributed free tapes of some kid's show to all the kids in my town. Had the effect of turning the kids against their parents almost immediately. All of a sudden you were at risk of being turned in if you showed up at school and talked about some beta exclusive movie you saw the night before. The old man was never the same after the summer of '82.
Slashdot Mirror
Pfft... 30 LY? Is that all? I made the Kessel run in 13 parsecs, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.
"I say, we develop manned space travel so that we may send some of our elected leaders to meet with the black hole in its homeland of the galactic nucleus to discuss the situation."
So what you're saying is we fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here. Brilliant! You build the spaceship, I'll build the giant magnetic yellow support-the-troops ribbon. (Well, I won't really *build* it so much as I'll outsource the building of it to China).
"Give me 30 minutes and an SSH connection and I'll get you the latest Ricky Martin album downloaded to an IP apparently in Brazil.
True, the vast majority of infringers are not going to go to that kind of extreme or hassle, but downloading to another IP isn't that hard, especially if you have physical access to the machine."
Hell, give me 15 minutes, Ricky Martin, and a length of rubber hose, and I'll get him out to your IP apparently in Brazil *personally*.
"In fact, had civilization arose in American before Europe, it's likely that the territory we now call the United States would be a fragmented group of states the way Europe is now (Canada would be Russia, of course)."
You lost me here. Civilization did arise in America before Europe. Or at least at more or less the same time. But we Europeans quickly crushed them, reformatted the land, and installed our own civilization over top of theirs. This was mostly due to the fact that most of the domesticable large animals and energy intensive grains were native to Europe and the middle east/north africa, which in turn was due to Europe having the geographic fortune to be laid out East to West and thus having a more uniform climate throughout, as opposed to North and South America's North to South orientation spanning all of the Earth's climate zones.
"you forgot to read the first line of the summery."
You forgot to spell summary correctly.
I kid, I kid.
"The quid pro quo is usually community requirements like public access channels and promises not to red line. It seems like neutrality should be part of these franchise agreements."
;)
Agreed. I get the need for the franchise, and in some parts of my town there are in fact other options for HSI, I guess I'm just unlucky in that Comcast is my only option. Maybe I'll run for township supervisor, and when Comcast's franchise comes up for renewal in 2047 I'll make them agree to a net neutrality clause
Right, I meant you as in 'someone', not you personally.
"Are they a de facto monopoly?"
In my town they are. Oh, excuse me. They are "Franchised" by the township. Huge difference, apparently. Not in practice though.
The extroverts are either calling the people they want to talk to or just walking over to their desk to communicate via wireless F2F (Face-to-Face) protocol.
"But I don't think I saw anything there I would fly to Asia just to obtain."
Why would you fly to Asia to obtain anything? That is what the little known invention of "ordering things over the internet" is for. Now I realize the readers of this site might not be that technically savvy, but there are ways, however magical and arcane, to get things out of Asia that don't involve physically flying there. Its not like the Asians are well known as a people for their utter refusal to sell things over the internet to Westerners.
"I wonder what FBI list this guy is now on for buying pictures of a 4 year old girl off of eBay??"
Particularly a 4-year-old with a pearl necklace. Oh man. I'm going straight to hell for that one, aren't I?
"Perhaps you should've said "Just like Clinton has some sort of contract in place to protect her if George Bush turns out to be fake, You have to assume that there was some sort of contract between them""
I'll be damned if I can find the car reference in your analogy. Therefore, its not a proper analogy. Are you sure you didn't mean ""Just like Clinton has some sort of contract in place to protect her if George Bush turns out to be fake, You have to assume that there was some sort of contract between them, sort of like the contract you have with your neighbors not to steal your car when you leave it unlocked and running at the post office""?
If you love Google and Apple so much, why don't you marry them? Afraid your kids will be funny looking?
"Now they have a one click way to harass"
You are exaggerating and paranoid. I can't believe you got modded a 4. RTFA, their 'one click way to harass' involved a guy going to a freaking russian kiddie porn website and clicking that link! We're not talking about the FBI arresting political dissidents here, IT WAS A GUY GOING TO A CHILD PORN WEBSITE!!!
"The last thing I would want if I were doing illegal things was someone else drawing attention to me."
That depends on what 'illegal things' you're doing. This is a legitimate question: If I'm doing nothing illegal, and for whatever reason (roommate makes a threat online against the president, whatever) my stuff gets confiscated. Do I have to worry about proving where and when I purchased every single mp3 found on my hard drive? Or do they only go after stuff in the warrant?
My guess would be you are correct and they only go after the stuff in the warrant, so you should have nothing to worry about apart from legal fees/confiscated stuff.
The person who is interested in doing illegal things should do it like the mob does: never do it in your own house
"As to clicking a hyperlink being intent to download -- aside from the thoughtcrime aspect of such laws, I know plenty of inexperienced computer users who haven't yet learned not to click random links, and who would be easily ensnared by the FBI's scam, even tho these people have absolutely no interest in porn (kiddie or otherwise)."
But what were those people doing on a russian kiddie porn forum in the first place to click those links. You are acting like the FBI was spamming the general internet with this stuff when what they were really doing was more akin to staking out a known crack house and busting the people who went inside. Actually, scratch that. They weren't even busting the people who were going inside, they were ID'ing them and getting a warrant on the basis that most people who go into a crack house are going in there to, surprise, buy crack.
What a RELIEF! Oh man, you have no idea how liberating that is! Here I was walking around constantly paranoid the cops were going to bust in on me at anytime for being a pedo. See, the problem is, every time I go to the gym, or anywhere for that matter, my pedometer constantly increments itself, practically after every step...I was beginning to think of turning myself in until you set me straight!
"There are a lot of people out there who think it would be hilarious to find that FBI address and hide it all over there internet camouflaged and try to get it clicked as often as possible, both to waste the FBI time as well as make strangers and sometimes known enemies suffer."
That would be quite a feat. That person would have to either 1.) know the link the FBI is using in their investigation, which is probably a closely held secret, or 2.) be in the habit of hiding unnoticed camouflaged child porn links all over their (presumably fairly popular non-child-porn oriented website) in the hopes of stumbling onto the one FBI child porn link (not withstanding the fact that at some point somebody clicking on one of those fake links would probably start to question why child porn was loading in their browser from a completely innocent website).
Either one would be quite the hacking accomplishment, easily on par with Jeff Goldblum in independence day blowing up the mothership with his ibook.
HERETIC!
"Accepting something as fact despite evidence to the contrary is foolishness."
Ol' Georgie Bush was right. Sometimes the problem in this country is we have *too much* freedom. If you're going to tell me the sky is scientifically demonstrably blue, I have the freedom to say "Go Eff yourself, Nerdlington, Me and my God say its British Racing Green, and your machine that tells you its blue was built by the Devil to mislead you. THE DEVIL!!!!!"
"you cannot even prove that you or I are not the center of the universe."
Actually, its worse than that. You and I are *both* the center of our overlapping universes.
I'd have to say Jesus. He's a zombie, he turns his followers into brainwashed cannibals, and if you stare at him you go blind.
"Trent Reznors business model is a nine inch coffin nail"
Yeah, but I would argue Trent made $1.6 million on that record because he is as famous as he is. Due in large part to previous work promoted, no doubt, by industry groups like the RIAA.
Other than that, I have to agree. I think artists can and will make money just distributing their music their damn selves. They just have to figure out how to become famous enough to do it without the distribution chain of middlemen. Hopefully there will also be the side effect of loosening LA's death grip on the industry as well so people can live wherever they want and still make money creating art.
PS. kudos for the Caddyshack quote!
"Format wars suck."
Tell me about it. My father fought in the first Format War against VHS. Some of the things he described were absolutely horrible. Betas disappearing from stores in the middle of the night, never to be seen again, mass graves on the edge of town where thousands upon thousands of cassettes were covered over. Entire villages burned and re-formatted, sometimes in the span of weeks. There was this one time when Victor Henry Stevens just came through and distributed free tapes of some kid's show to all the kids in my town. Had the effect of turning the kids against their parents almost immediately. All of a sudden you were at risk of being turned in if you showed up at school and talked about some beta exclusive movie you saw the night before. The old man was never the same after the summer of '82.
five words: that was five words, fool!