I think you're overestimating the Canadian legislative process, since the Bill itself will be set onto the back burner for maybe the next year or so before actually passing, assuming the government doesn't dissolve into another election and will have to be backburner'd indefinitely. There was almost a couple of times just this summer a Vote of no confidence was brought up.
Liberal and Conservative are indeed the two dominant parties, but they must try their best to cater to voters from other parties (like a Bloc Quebecois supporter who votes for PC while waiting for Bloc to get more power). This is really counter-intuitive, but it's literally impossible to pigeonhole Canadians into two groups, and the both the liberals and conservatives need support of non-party supporters, otherwise they won't get a majority government. (By contrast, PC currently has a minority government, meaning that they've won less than half of the seats available during the last election). Please correct me if I messed up one of these details above, but that's basically federal party politics in summary.
The whole technology and corporations thing isn't as cut and dried as that either. For example, Sony is somewhat opposed to this, since details of the Bill-C61 will means less sales of their DivX television player. But at the same time, Sony represents many label whose interests may be protected by the Bill. So Sony's been mostly passive. Microsoft, on the other hand, is basically threatening to lay off a bunch of workers in Canada, since it's not in their interest to operate as heavily here.
I'm opposed to the bill myself, but I'm optimistic that it will be shut down, maybe occasionally to be rewritten and rear its ugly head again.
They're hypothetical universes, used as abstract ideas.
A physicist might talk about different types of universes the same you would take about different types of coffee. A licorice flavored coffee may exist, but a zebra-striped balloon coffee can't exist, simply because it doesn't make sense.
Too true, coffee makers aren't too expensive, and coffee grounds are cheap. A twenty dollar coffee maker can almost pay for itself after the first 12 cup pot(versus going to buy $1 or $2 cups of coffee).
In a general sense, it's a good analogy. But it still kind of doesn't work, because of the convenience factor. Buying a Tim Horton's coffee is more convenient than brewing your own, whereas downloading music is more convenient than going to a music store and maybe finding what you're looking for (and maybe not). The Pirate Bay tends to be even more convenient than services like iTunes, especially since TPB tends to have more content, and iTunes is kind of bogged down with DRM and platforms restrictions.
There's more I could say about the appeal of visiting a coffee shop versus the appeal of drinking coffee at home, but that would probably be a pretty debatable tangent.
I'd say that feeling if you felt that it was necessary to philosophize about it, then that itself would suggest that you do have free will.
Logic and free will are definitely not mutually exclusive. I'd go as far to say that curiosity and sentience may require free will, and logic/philosophical discord are a means (or rather, one of the only appropriate means) to satisfying that curiosity. Otherwise, we're all just automatons.
I've heard this line of reasoning before, but the problem is that free will normally means that your actions are self-determined or self-caused, rather than the universe at large. It goes against the ideas of causality that there are effects that go un-caused.
Strictly speaking, you are correct. But only for a universe that is not causal. And to suggest otherwise requires non-causal explanations of the universe (which of course undermines that whole "science" thing...)
For many scientists, a bit of philosophical drive is almost necessary. When you're studying the nature of the universe, it's understandable to get a little existential more than just once in a while.
A philisophical drive may complicate the practice of math or science, but I would be of the opinion that it does more good than bad. A scientist that puts his/her own viewpoints before the evidence is just a lazy scientist. A strong scientist would either be able explain away the evidence without hiding it, or reconsider their own position.
Laws of Science, like religion/existential philosophy, are sets of rules and ideas meant to convey abstract concepts and proofs without doing your homework. It would be very difficult to completely seperate the two.
I kind of wonder if the Rock Band guys would ever consider using any creative commons or netlabel music?
Netlabel music doesn't usually evoke the same kind of live-fast die young superstar feeling that these games usually seem aim to evoke. And they'd probably prefer to stick to songs that people have actually heard of. Still it's probably a cool idea.
It is entirely within your power to stop the RIAA suits as well.
Turn off your file-sharing software.
What about legitimate file-sharing, such as creative commons, open source, and free as in free beer content? And how exactly do you define "File sharing". File sharing can be done through anything as simple as e-mail or ftp.
The RIAA's been known to target the most trivial instances of file sharing, and in some cases youdon't even need a computer
Whoever modded parent 'funny' hasn't heard of Dark Room Sex Game[No images, mostly SFW], playable with wiimotes and computers with blue tooth. It's obviously not a Nintendo title. But if there were games similar to this for the console itself, there would be a fair amount of money to be made.
More like it kind of takes two problems and just turns them into one big problem. Kind of like consilidating a mortagage. Except that that increased reliance on the power grid might also cause additional problems.
But it's not like you're going to go to a DIY'ers house and tell him/her to stop doing it. Part of a free market is being able to choose to not participate in it, at least untill the industry meets the consumer's interests.
Not that the US economy is a completely free market, but the principals are close enough in this case.
That might be a good idea, but it automatically causes a divide between athletes, since an athlete could only reasonably train to be one or the other, switching from one side to the other would be a long and difficult and possibly risky process no matter which camp you migrated from.
And then, the doped games would be a lot more popular then the clean games, since even the dope haters will want to watch.
Maybe so, but with the amount of data they're talking about, you'd need more than a couple of beowulf clusters to get the encrypted data processed in any reasonable amount of time. Data collected will be measured in terabytes, and even if ten percent of that is encrypted traffic, the encrypted bits will take either a lot of equipment or a lot of time.
I wonder what would happen if somebody decided to record and archive all "incidents of data exchange" on the UK government's end, and then make that data publicly available?
I mean, obviously you'd want to avoid getting the public's data that the government is recording, otherwise they'd probably record you recording their records, and the feed back loop would cause BT workers to commit sepuku. On the other hand, would that be a bad thing?
Most network encryption methods might not be 100% bulletproof, but if more people did it, massive data collection projects like this would be a lot less worthwhile.
If the artist and the record company both agree to the terms of the contract, it's a fair deal. If bands really thought they were getting screwed by the RIAA, they'd stop signing contracts with them.
They're being taken advantage of by the lawyers and watchdog groups/companies that fight their fans in the name of the record label. I'm not saying anyone's mucking around with their contracts or anything; this isn't about any label in particular, but the RIAA as a whole. AFAIK, artists seldom deal with the RIAA directly, the RIAA's interests are that of the many record labels', not the artists.
...and then sign an RIAA contract anyway, they're idiots getting what they deserve. I just can't feel bad for somebody in that situation.
I don't agree with the whole 'it's fair for them to be idiots' thing, because them being idiots makes it unfair for me, unfair to their fans, unfair to anyone that uses p2p filesharing for legitimate purposes, unfair for people that buy a disc expecting that they can do what they want with it, unfair for people that buy some media but then can't play it because they haven't got the right DRM-enabled device. If you can't feel bad for 'idiot' artists, at least feel bad for yourself.
Not that I'm saying artist's that do like the RIAA don't exactly know what they're doing, because I know some do. Some artists (or their managers) can simply engineer albums to contain only one or two decent songs. They will have successful sales just because of those one or two very popular songs wrapped around other tracks that, for all intents and purposes, are disposable music. If the RIAA can stop people from downloading those one or two extremely popular songs, they do benefit.
In reality, the only people screwing the artists are the people pirating music. It's screwing them out of the already tiny fraction of CD sales they agreed in their contract was fair.
Oh, and the bands pretending to dislike the RIAA? They're doing it for the publicity.
No disrespect intended, but I don't think that you really know for sure what you're talking about. There are recording artists that not only speak out against the RIAA, but the implicitly endorse piracy and bootlegging. Official Bootlegs, talk of the DRM-Free Music, File-sharing as advertising. Look up any of these topics. And it's not just for Indie labels either, but mainstream characters such as Avril Lavigne and Mike Portnoy like to use phrases such as "Free music model" and "copyleft philosophy".
Many aspects of these ideas recording artists benefit from whether or not they care about piracy. Pirates don't hurt artists by copying music. Pirates do hurt artists by giving groups like the RIAA the justification for carrying on as they are.
The RIAA's tactics are unethical and their goals are shortsighted. That's why they are hurting the artists of the record labels that they represent.
Slashdot Mirror
http://janitor.kernelnewbies.org/
Maybe this will answer some of your questions. But yes, and it's good that the linux kernel doesn't operate like wikipedia, for obvious reasons.
sail through Canada's legislative process...
I think you're overestimating the Canadian legislative process, since the Bill itself will be set onto the back burner for maybe the next year or so before actually passing, assuming the government doesn't dissolve into another election and will have to be backburner'd indefinitely. There was almost a couple of times just this summer a Vote of no confidence was brought up.
Liberal and Conservative are indeed the two dominant parties, but they must try their best to cater to voters from other parties (like a Bloc Quebecois supporter who votes for PC while waiting for Bloc to get more power). This is really counter-intuitive, but it's literally impossible to pigeonhole Canadians into two groups, and the both the liberals and conservatives need support of non-party supporters, otherwise they won't get a majority government. (By contrast, PC currently has a minority government, meaning that they've won less than half of the seats available during the last election). Please correct me if I messed up one of these details above, but that's basically federal party politics in summary.
The whole technology and corporations thing isn't as cut and dried as that either. For example, Sony is somewhat opposed to this, since details of the Bill-C61 will means less sales of their DivX television player. But at the same time, Sony represents many label whose interests may be protected by the Bill. So Sony's been mostly passive. Microsoft, on the other hand, is basically threatening to lay off a bunch of workers in Canada, since it's not in their interest to operate as heavily here.
I'm opposed to the bill myself, but I'm optimistic that it will be shut down, maybe occasionally to be rewritten and rear its ugly head again.
They're hypothetical universes, used as abstract ideas.
A physicist might talk about different types of universes the same you would take about different types of coffee. A licorice flavored coffee may exist, but a zebra-striped balloon coffee can't exist, simply because it doesn't make sense.
Wow. That's kind of a serious claim. It's not that I don't believe to be possible, but could you provide some examples maybe?
Too true, coffee makers aren't too expensive, and coffee grounds are cheap. A twenty dollar coffee maker can almost pay for itself after the first 12 cup pot(versus going to buy $1 or $2 cups of coffee).
In a general sense, it's a good analogy. But it still kind of doesn't work, because of the convenience factor. Buying a Tim Horton's coffee is more convenient than brewing your own, whereas downloading music is more convenient than going to a music store and maybe finding what you're looking for (and maybe not). The Pirate Bay tends to be even more convenient than services like iTunes, especially since TPB tends to have more content, and iTunes is kind of bogged down with DRM and platforms restrictions.
There's more I could say about the appeal of visiting a coffee shop versus the appeal of drinking coffee at home, but that would probably be a pretty debatable tangent.
because they can ;-)
I'd say that feeling if you felt that it was necessary to philosophize about it, then that itself would suggest that you do have free will.
Logic and free will are definitely not mutually exclusive. I'd go as far to say that curiosity and sentience may require free will, and logic/philosophical discord are a means (or rather, one of the only appropriate means) to satisfying that curiosity. Otherwise, we're all just automatons.
I've heard this line of reasoning before, but the problem is that free will normally means that your actions are self-determined or self-caused, rather than the universe at large. It goes against the ideas of causality that there are effects that go un-caused. Strictly speaking, you are correct. But only for a universe that is not causal. And to suggest otherwise requires non-causal explanations of the universe (which of course undermines that whole "science" thing...)
For many scientists, a bit of philosophical drive is almost necessary. When you're studying the nature of the universe, it's understandable to get a little existential more than just once in a while.
A philisophical drive may complicate the practice of math or science, but I would be of the opinion that it does more good than bad. A scientist that puts his/her own viewpoints before the evidence is just a lazy scientist. A strong scientist would either be able explain away the evidence without hiding it, or reconsider their own position.
Laws of Science, like religion/existential philosophy, are sets of rules and ideas meant to convey abstract concepts and proofs without doing your homework. It would be very difficult to completely seperate the two.
Maybe so, but it's definitely a lot more interesting to see a little guy who's fund raising campaign is 99% based through the Internet.
I dunno, After going from 4.0 to 3.1, 3.11 sounds more like a step backwards. Or forwards?
I kind of wonder if the Rock Band guys would ever consider using any creative commons or netlabel music?
Netlabel music doesn't usually evoke the same kind of live-fast die young superstar feeling that these games usually seem aim to evoke. And they'd probably prefer to stick to songs that people have actually heard of. Still it's probably a cool idea.
Just like it says beside his name, shown without obfuscation. ;-)
Quite right,
For example, Bill C61 passes in Canada, the RIAA would be able to prosecute Canadian file-sharers from across the border.
It is entirely within your power to stop the RIAA suits as well.
Turn off your file-sharing software.
What about legitimate file-sharing, such as creative commons, open source, and free as in free beer content? And how exactly do you define "File sharing". File sharing can be done through anything as simple as e-mail or ftp.
The RIAA's been known to target the most trivial instances of file sharing, and in some cases you don't even need a computer
Side note: I mean, no images on the page linked. Obviously the link that says 'video' will have NSFW sounds.
Whoever modded parent 'funny' hasn't heard of Dark Room Sex Game[No images, mostly SFW], playable with wiimotes and computers with blue tooth. It's obviously not a Nintendo title. But if there were games similar to this for the console itself, there would be a fair amount of money to be made.
More like it kind of takes two problems and just turns them into one big problem. Kind of like consilidating a mortagage. Except that that increased reliance on the power grid might also cause additional problems.
But it's not like you're going to go to a DIY'ers house and tell him/her to stop doing it. Part of a free market is being able to choose to not participate in it, at least untill the industry meets the consumer's interests.
Not that the US economy is a completely free market, but the principals are close enough in this case.
That might be a good idea, but it automatically causes a divide between athletes, since an athlete could only reasonably train to be one or the other, switching from one side to the other would be a long and difficult and possibly risky process no matter which camp you migrated from.
And then, the doped games would be a lot more popular then the clean games, since even the dope haters will want to watch.
**Sigh
I guess you'd have to start writing in code as well as using encryption then.
Hey, can someone snurf me a baloney kargel? I looked on the stardiffel and didn't see any kegels for it.
Maybe so, but with the amount of data they're talking about, you'd need more than a couple of beowulf clusters to get the encrypted data processed in any reasonable amount of time. Data collected will be measured in terabytes, and even if ten percent of that is encrypted traffic, the encrypted bits will take either a lot of equipment or a lot of time.
I wonder what would happen if somebody decided to record and archive all "incidents of data exchange" on the UK government's end, and then make that data publicly available?
I mean, obviously you'd want to avoid getting the public's data that the government is recording, otherwise they'd probably record you recording their records, and the feed back loop would cause BT workers to commit sepuku. On the other hand, would that be a bad thing?
Most network encryption methods might not be 100% bulletproof, but if more people did it, massive data collection projects like this would be a lot less worthwhile.
What are we going to do tomorrow night?
The same thing we do every night, TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!
If the artist and the record company both agree to the terms of the contract, it's a fair deal. If bands really thought they were getting screwed by the RIAA, they'd stop signing contracts with them.
They're being taken advantage of by the lawyers and watchdog groups/companies that fight their fans in the name of the record label. I'm not saying anyone's mucking around with their contracts or anything; this isn't about any label in particular, but the RIAA as a whole. AFAIK, artists seldom deal with the RIAA directly, the RIAA's interests are that of the many record labels', not the artists.
...and then sign an RIAA contract anyway, they're idiots getting what they deserve. I just can't feel bad for somebody in that situation.
I don't agree with the whole 'it's fair for them to be idiots' thing, because them being idiots makes it unfair for me, unfair to their fans, unfair to anyone that uses p2p filesharing for legitimate purposes, unfair for people that buy a disc expecting that they can do what they want with it, unfair for people that buy some media but then can't play it because they haven't got the right DRM-enabled device. If you can't feel bad for 'idiot' artists, at least feel bad for yourself.
Not that I'm saying artist's that do like the RIAA don't exactly know what they're doing, because I know some do. Some artists (or their managers) can simply engineer albums to contain only one or two decent songs. They will have successful sales just because of those one or two very popular songs wrapped around other tracks that, for all intents and purposes, are disposable music. If the RIAA can stop people from downloading those one or two extremely popular songs, they do benefit.
In reality, the only people screwing the artists are the people pirating music. It's screwing them out of the already tiny fraction of CD sales they agreed in their contract was fair.
Oh, and the bands pretending to dislike the RIAA? They're doing it for the publicity.
No disrespect intended, but I don't think that you really know for sure what you're talking about. There are recording artists that not only speak out against the RIAA, but the implicitly endorse piracy and bootlegging. Official Bootlegs, talk of the DRM-Free Music, File-sharing as advertising. Look up any of these topics. And it's not just for Indie labels either, but mainstream characters such as Avril Lavigne and Mike Portnoy like to use phrases such as "Free music model" and "copyleft philosophy".
Many aspects of these ideas recording artists benefit from whether or not they care about piracy. Pirates don't hurt artists by copying music. Pirates do hurt artists by giving groups like the RIAA the justification for carrying on as they are.
The RIAA's tactics are unethical and their goals are shortsighted. That's why they are hurting the artists of the record labels that they represent.