I propose a new test: strap the mobo+Athlon to a wall.
Scientifically fire a.45 into the heart of the processor. Run performance test.
Tests may show that the Athlon does not hold up under impact of a projectile. A video of this process may be necessary to prove the point to the skeptical.
Naysayers and Athlon proponents may argue that this test does not reflect real-world operating conditions, but who cares -- it's a great video.
Re:Ruff Ruff, sayeth the Wizard?
on
Ultima Revived
·
· Score: 2
Thought that was Sting, not Toto. Toto did some tune about Africa in '83, I think. Um, on second thought, Sting just acted in Dune.
Demonstrates what is wrong with current IP laws
on
Ultima Revived
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
After actually reading the article, I notice a few things in passing.
One of the companies demanded contact from the developers because, in some way, shape, or form the game resembled one of "theirs". A passing resemblance is enough to trigger a lawyer.
The companies seemed to think that a non-profit independent venture using some of "their" ideas is under their purvue -- ie, no Fair Use for anyone. No parody or tribute allowed.
These companies did not create these franchises (mostly) -- they didn't design them, or write the code, or even have the original developers on hand. They just bought the "property". Lord British was referred to as "Toto" to their lordly Frank Baum.
Kicker: they have refused to do anything with these "properties" for years. Even though fans begged them to. There was not enough profit, and they let them lie fallow.
That is an ample demostration of why current copyright and IP is a perversion of what Jefferson et al created copyright for -- to encourage the creation of new art for the good of all, not to only profit the holder of the mark. By converting "Bard's Tale" and other games to the status of paperclip inventory on a shelf, the art it engendered lies dead, hostage to greed for property.
As for my opinion, if the mark holders are letting it lie in an intellectual property grave, a non-profit knock-off is an expression of democratic disapproval. The PROPER course of action for these IP holders is to hire these people and release the new games, and sheepishly admit that they should have done it long ago.
Reducing the value of something to its intrinsic worth is not "stealing". Stealing is the deprivation of property from a victim. Copying music does not deprive the writer of the music; it can only arguably deprive him/her of the money he/she might have made --and that is highly debateable, since artists see little to none of the money made by labels selling the music.
The whole concept of "Stealing" is a wordfuck, a lie, a purposeful confusion of concepts to create a false fact, ie copying music=stealing the music.
The only possible crime is unauthorized distribution, which is a COMMERCIAL, CIVIL, offense. Or at least used to be, before the wordfuck of "Steal" began.
Um, no, I believe that the power satellite, a giant breeder reactor, produced safer fissionable materials than that which the sat used itself, and the safer materials were shipped to Earth for use in safe nuke power plants. The Sat, using much more dangerous fissionables, eventually exploded.
I remember the stories: "Blowups Happen", and "The Man Who sold the Moon".
The idea of solar sats beaming power to earth was done back in the sixties, by a Russian scientist, and no, I don't remember the name.
But it was Gerry O'Neill and the rest of the merry engineers in the L5 days who put lunar mining, orbital colonies and factories, and powersats together as a gestalt, and they get the kudos.
Can't cook a bird. Can't even heat a glass of water a degree.
Look, the microwave beam should be attenuated over a square mile or so. At that power density, birds are safe, fish are safe, you are safe. A tinfoil hat would block anything that could remotely hurt anyone.
As a comparison, think of billions of pounds of oxides dumped into the atmosphere by our cars and power plants, every year. Dead lakes in the Northeast from midwestern coal plants. Acid eating the ruins of Roma and Greece. Global warming from the greenhouse gases. Even nuke plants produce waste that is politically and physically dangerous.
Powersats are clean, efficient, eternal, and almost 24/7. The question is, how do we afford notto build them?
BTW, I givethese answers, not as an opinion, but from my studies of the engineering done back in the '70's and '80's. The questions were covered back then to anyone's satisfation. It was just too hard an idea for Americans to understand, since they don't breathe science and engineering the way geeks do.
Nay, no, uh-uh, nope. The fallacy of the fallacy, as it were, is that we launch 10,000 tons of metal per powersat.
Yes, that is insane, absurd, impossible. That's why the aluminum and silicon must be moved from the moon via mass driver (railgun to you yunguns) to Geosych, where it could be melted, smelted and made into yummy struts and solar panels.
Launching the powersat from Earth would be ludicrous, tho it makes NASA and Boeing/Lockheed/Whatever deliriously happy -- dozens of launchers, billions of dollars in contracts, sky's the limit.
Solution: move a small mining plant (manned, essentially a shack and some dozers) to the moon, build a railgun, launch the raw materials to Geosync, process the materials, and build the powersat from construction shacks manned by a few dozen men.
Any other way is impossible.
The power density per cubic meter is too low to do much of anything, if microwaves are used. No, I don;t have the numbers, but this engineering was done to death back then in the '70's.
Asimov was totally won over by Gerry O'Neill, and all the rest of the SPS/Space Colony proponents. And for good reason; all the numbers added up, there was no downside, and we built a space-based industry in the bargain that could move out into the rest of the system at will.
He added the tech into his new SF stories, so that's why you see the SPS bounding in from nowhere around '78 or so.
Note: the SPS, if built from lunar materials, is a tremendous idea. It was researched to death in the '70's and '80's, so the engineering prelim is done. But to be viable, it must be built from lunar materials. Launch costs are ridiculous if one decides to build on Earth and shuttle to orbit. (Though Boeing et al are hot for that notion, not surprisingly).
For peanuts, we can set up a NAN on our own block. We could link these NANs gradually, using directional 80211.x (Pringlenet), or even ruby lasers on rooftops.
Why hook this up to the Internet at all?
The Internet is going to be regulated and policed. Hysteria and business interests are gutting the thing 'til it dies and is reborn as a fancier cable TV network.
Build a new network on poles on rooftops. It's cheap, it's fun, it's not subject to regulation (YET).
Eventually repeaters are going to be tiny things you plug into wall outlets, so relaying the signals into the house past the chickenwire/plaster barrier is not a prolem.
Bandwidth? 802.11a has plenty for our needs at the moment, and higher frequencies will give even more capacity. Latency? Well. that's important for web sites and gaming, but guerilla Pringlenets really should be used as a simpler WWW (Neighborhood Wide Web? NNW?) or even a BBS and newsgroup connection.
Why in the world do this? Because newsgroups and web sites are getting censored preemptively by threatened lawsuits; anonymous posting is becoming impossible; EVERYone seems to want to know what we're doing and who we are.
Don't connect your NAN to the Internet. Connect to other NANs... they'll connect to others... and freedom comes back, at least until the FCC and DOJ enforcers come tearing the poles down.
But the DOJ and the various IP owners have already "torn down the poles" on the Internet as it is, so the Pringlenets give a little more time to think of something else (lasers? power lines? quantum encryption over the regular net?).
Someone here mentioned that someone has to pay for all of this, and I say: why? It costs money for the PC cards and for the wireless routers, but not much. And when you buy a can of Pringles, you get not only a directional focus for 802.11, but also yummy remanufactured potato chips.
Eventually the hardware itself will be regulated, maybe, but we get years of grace from the jackboots, and get to have fun at the same time.
Really? Sounds interesting. Tell us, do you both speak German? And if you don't, do they speak English for you at work? How's age descrimination in IT over there? Maybe it's a magic place for the older programmer crowd...
Federal law enforcement, given shape and purpose by Ashcroft, an old Nixon/Reagan/Bush man, is grabbing everything they can off of the shelves, throwing it into a sack, and running for the exit before the spell wears off and the storeowners notice that they've been robbed.
I mention the Nixon/Reagan/Bush connection, not as a flame, but as a real indicator. Nixon, Reagan, and other very right-wing leaders hated the "liberal" press, believed that freedom was too free, and that law enforcement was hamstrung by civil liberties.
Let us not forget that Hoover, the chief of Fed law enforcement for almost a half-century, ran a despotic organization that nailed people he didn't like, blackmailed presidents and congressmen and citizens with information he obtained from spying, and was himself a security risk par excellence because of his secret homosexuality and cross-dressing.
Nixon used the CIA to spy on and destroy his "enemies", which he saw as threats to his admin and by extension the country. The "enemies" were the press, members of congress, and a hell of a lot of citizens.
The FBI and the CIA were limited BECAUSE of the actions of the leaders that championed more power granted to law enforcement. Too many of you are too young to remember why those laws were passed. The law was abused by quasi-dictators who wanted power, naked and brutal, over their enemies. And such power is never enough for those types of personalities.
Today, the beginnings of such power is being given back to the very people it was taken from 30 years ago. Literally. They didn't deserve it then, they don't deserve it now. no one does -- but they especially do not.
Additionally -- not a single thing would have been changed on September 11th had this series of powers been granted prior to the attack. Nothing.
The agencies responsible have all the power now needed to track and capture terrorists. They were doing so prior to the attack. The Feds just weren't mind readers, and the men struck simutaneously, and there was no chance to stop them.
Finally, it amazes me that people who hate government in our lives have no problem with the current admin making a naked power grab under the cover of "fighting terrorism".
They aren't going to wind up controlling terrorism. They are eventually going to wind up terrorizing us.
Economic theories have nothing to do with this type of power grab/power surrendering.
Your header should read:
Welcome to the United Fascist States of America.
It's the correct adjective. Today we have embraced fascism as a way of life. It will take years, but this seed planted today will grow into a twisted, sickly tree.
Thing is, the people who live in fascist states are usually very happy. Crime is low (depends on what "crime" is tho), streets are safe, and you don't have to think very hard about the big stuff.
Remember, Americans should watch what they say. Or there could be.. consequences.
The police of the U.S. would be able, it seems, to access any record about an individual whatsoever, without warrant. Am I right here?
I heard "someone" on National Public Radio this morning interviewed. They were speaking about "network analysis", and the conversation was quietly interesting. NA covers credit card purchases, credit profiling,that sort of thing.
He said that law enforcement on the Federal level wants access to our marketing data.
You heard me right.
He said that businesses had more information about us than the government did -- implying, to me, some surprise that the government doesn't have as good a set of data on its citizens as biz does, and that that obviously, in the light of the new day, this should be rectified.
The Feds want to apply network analysis, the same kind of tech used to track your credit history, to be applied to everyone's data, so that they can work up a pattern of questionable behavior and jump on someone before they actually do a deed.
You heard me. Pre-emptive law enforcement.
Good enough for terrorists, for now. But remember, the current admin wants to expand the definitions of "terrorism" to someone who gets unauthorized access to a network or computer system. And I gor-un-tee that they will add more definitions of a "terrorist" as the decades wear on in their weary way.
We've lost a big one. One dissenting vote.
Americans are too stupid, and ignorant, to understand the freedoms that they are giving up, the implications of what they are doing for future generations and the current world, and to undertake rational risk analysis of the current, tiny, threat of the bin Laden nutcases.
Sharing programs are legal. They may be held illegal now, but they can't be illegal, or Fair Use and our whole lifestyle is illegal.
I'll stick with the Constitution as it was established. Rich corps will buy laws forever, but: copyright should expire after 20 years, I should be able to copy and share media I own, and I should be able to make Fair Use of quotations and media clips.
The deal originally was that artists get copy rights for their work for a set period of time, in order to promote art and create content, in exchange for that period being limited, so that the artists' work would become part of the public life forever, enriching and advancing civilization.
If this deal is broken by assigning artists' rights to immortal corporations, and making the copyrights eternal, than I disregard the deal until my rights under the contract are restored. Anything else is slavery to the powerful.
Um, try tvguide.com. Fox has, in addition to the broadcast network: Fox News Channel, (or as it's more accurately known, Far-Right TV -- "fair and balanced" if you are Jesse Helms), Fox Sports (I think), and FX.
All of these are owned and operated by Rupert Murdoch, and tend to... shall we say, skew the news a tad to starboard?
Every news outlet that is not Fox News is, of course, liberal and suspect. CBS is the hotbed of communistic romance, NBC a pack of Reds, ABCNews a Worker's Paradise on the glowing tube.
Only Limbaugh and Fox can give us the Real News -- Bush is God's Chosen One and everything bad that has happened, up to and including today, is Clinton's fault because he got a BJ.
Actually, I've had an AOL account since 1993 -- and I actually use my own name as a screenname! It's pretty short and memorable. Pretty cool -- and irreplaceable...
I keep the AOL account for two reasons. First, so that long-lost email friends can find me if they so desire (it's happened! very freaky) after years of absence. Secondly, AOL's mail client sucks. Can't do what Outlook, Eudora, and Netscapes package can. And that's what I want -- simplicity -- and the immunity to all those assinine virii and worms that afflict those programs.
I don't get bugs via the Preview pane, and I don't transmit virri/worms through my address book. AOL is too lame to hack.
BUT -- I agree 100% with the top of this thread : if anyone wants to make life lubberly, CRACK THAT DAMNED PROPRIETARY EMAIL ARCHIVE DATABASE. I would almost have certainly killed my AOL client years back, but for all that email saved up for the last eight years. You need AOL to read them -- or you could purchase a greymarket AOL cracker that could do it, maybe. But the specs should be sniffed out (can't be that bloody hard -- wish I were a coder) and published. Just to spite AOL for keeping such basic abilities off the table such as archiving our email into a open format. (Never said I loved them.)
Slashdot Mirror
I propose a new test: strap the mobo+Athlon to a wall.
.45 into the heart of the processor. Run performance test.
Scientifically fire a
Tests may show that the Athlon does not hold up under impact of a projectile. A video of this process may be necessary to prove the point to the skeptical.
Naysayers and Athlon proponents may argue that this test does not reflect real-world operating conditions, but who cares -- it's a great video.
Thought that was Sting, not Toto. Toto did some tune about Africa in '83, I think. Um, on second thought, Sting just acted in Dune.
After actually reading the article, I notice a few things in passing.
One of the companies demanded contact from the developers because, in some way, shape, or form the game resembled one of "theirs". A passing resemblance is enough to trigger a lawyer.
The companies seemed to think that a non-profit independent venture using some of "their" ideas is under their purvue -- ie, no Fair Use for anyone. No parody or tribute allowed.
These companies did not create these franchises (mostly) -- they didn't design them, or write the code, or even have the original developers on hand. They just bought the "property". Lord British was referred to as "Toto" to their lordly Frank Baum.
Kicker: they have refused to do anything with these "properties" for years. Even though fans begged them to. There was not enough profit, and they let them lie fallow.
That is an ample demostration of why current copyright and IP is a perversion of what Jefferson et al created copyright for -- to encourage the creation of new art for the good of all, not to only profit the holder of the mark. By converting "Bard's Tale" and other games to the status of paperclip inventory on a shelf, the art it engendered lies dead, hostage to greed for property.
As for my opinion, if the mark holders are letting it lie in an intellectual property grave, a non-profit knock-off is an expression of democratic disapproval. The PROPER course of action for these IP holders is to hire these people and release the new games, and sheepishly admit that they should have done it long ago.
"Take the cooler off a T-bird, it destroys itself and the mobo in under 2 seconds. FWAMF!! Sizzle. "
Don't do that. And don't drain your car's oil pan and drive 200 miles, either. May be a problem.
Reducing the value of something to its intrinsic worth is not "stealing". Stealing is the deprivation of property from a victim. Copying music does not deprive the writer of the music; it can only arguably deprive him/her of the money he/she might have made --and that is highly debateable, since artists see little to none of the money made by labels selling the music.
The whole concept of "Stealing" is a wordfuck, a lie, a purposeful confusion of concepts to create a false fact, ie copying music=stealing the music.
The only possible crime is unauthorized distribution, which is a COMMERCIAL, CIVIL, offense. Or at least used to be, before the wordfuck of "Steal" began.
Americans are stubborn.
It is properly called aluminIum, because the -Ium suffix denotes a metallic element.
Yhe entire English-Speaking world calls it aluminium, but since we are dodos, we insist on alumminum. Probably easier to say.
Um, no, I believe that the power satellite, a giant breeder reactor, produced safer fissionable materials than that which the sat used itself, and the safer materials were shipped to Earth for use in safe nuke power plants. The Sat, using much more dangerous fissionables, eventually exploded.
I remember the stories: "Blowups Happen", and "The Man Who sold the Moon".
The idea of solar sats beaming power to earth was done back in the sixties, by a Russian scientist, and no, I don't remember the name.
But it was Gerry O'Neill and the rest of the merry engineers in the L5 days who put lunar mining, orbital colonies and factories, and powersats together as a gestalt, and they get the kudos.
Can't cook a bird. Can't even heat a glass of water a degree.
Look, the microwave beam should be attenuated over a square mile or so. At that power density, birds are safe, fish are safe, you are safe. A tinfoil hat would block anything that could remotely hurt anyone.
As a comparison, think of billions of pounds of oxides dumped into the atmosphere by our cars and power plants, every year. Dead lakes in the Northeast from midwestern coal plants. Acid eating the ruins of Roma and Greece. Global warming from the greenhouse gases. Even nuke plants produce waste that is politically and physically dangerous.
Powersats are clean, efficient, eternal, and almost 24/7. The question is, how do we afford notto build them?
BTW, I givethese answers, not as an opinion, but from my studies of the engineering done back in the '70's and '80's. The questions were covered back then to anyone's satisfation. It was just too hard an idea for Americans to understand, since they don't breathe science and engineering the way geeks do.
Nay, no, uh-uh, nope. The fallacy of the fallacy, as it were, is that we launch 10,000 tons of metal per powersat.
Yes, that is insane, absurd, impossible. That's why the aluminum and silicon must be moved from the moon via mass driver (railgun to you yunguns) to Geosych, where it could be melted, smelted and made into yummy struts and solar panels.
Launching the powersat from Earth would be ludicrous, tho it makes NASA and Boeing/Lockheed/Whatever deliriously happy -- dozens of launchers, billions of dollars in contracts, sky's the limit.
Solution: move a small mining plant (manned, essentially a shack and some dozers) to the moon, build a railgun, launch the raw materials to Geosync, process the materials, and build the powersat from construction shacks manned by a few dozen men.
Any other way is impossible.
The power density per cubic meter is too low to do much of anything, if microwaves are used. No, I don;t have the numbers, but this engineering was done to death back then in the '70's.
Asimov was totally won over by Gerry O'Neill, and all the rest of the SPS/Space Colony proponents. And for good reason; all the numbers added up, there was no downside, and we built a space-based industry in the bargain that could move out into the rest of the system at will.
He added the tech into his new SF stories, so that's why you see the SPS bounding in from nowhere around '78 or so.
Note: the SPS, if built from lunar materials, is a tremendous idea. It was researched to death in the '70's and '80's, so the engineering prelim is done. But to be viable, it must be built from lunar materials. Launch costs are ridiculous if one decides to build on Earth and shuttle to orbit. (Though Boeing et al are hot for that notion, not surprisingly).
How to stop it?
.mil, or .com, or .org.
Don't connect to the Internet. We grow a newer Internet, without
Maybe we get our all new TLDs on our own name servers, and BLOCK ALL THE OLD ONES.
Call it a private network, and tell the RIAA, MPAA, and the various agencies to go hang.
Let's see:
For peanuts, we can set up a NAN on our own block. We could link these NANs gradually, using directional 80211.x (Pringlenet), or even ruby lasers on rooftops.
Why hook this up to the Internet at all?
The Internet is going to be regulated and policed. Hysteria and business interests are gutting the thing 'til it dies and is reborn as a fancier cable TV network.
Build a new network on poles on rooftops. It's cheap, it's fun, it's not subject to regulation (YET).
Eventually repeaters are going to be tiny things you plug into wall outlets, so relaying the signals into the house past the chickenwire/plaster barrier is not a prolem.
Bandwidth? 802.11a has plenty for our needs at the moment, and higher frequencies will give even more capacity. Latency? Well. that's important for web sites and gaming, but guerilla Pringlenets really should be used as a simpler WWW (Neighborhood Wide Web? NNW?) or even a BBS and newsgroup connection.
Why in the world do this? Because newsgroups and web sites are getting censored preemptively by threatened lawsuits; anonymous posting is becoming impossible; EVERYone seems to want to know what we're doing and who we are.
Don't connect your NAN to the Internet. Connect to other NANs... they'll connect to others... and freedom comes back, at least until the FCC and DOJ enforcers come tearing the poles down.
But the DOJ and the various IP owners have already "torn down the poles" on the Internet as it is, so the Pringlenets give a little more time to think of something else (lasers? power lines? quantum encryption over the regular net?).
Someone here mentioned that someone has to pay for all of this, and I say: why? It costs money for the PC cards and for the wireless routers, but not much. And when you buy a can of Pringles, you get not only a directional focus for 802.11, but also yummy remanufactured potato chips.
Eventually the hardware itself will be regulated, maybe, but we get years of grace from the jackboots, and get to have fun at the same time.
They were manufactured from about 12 years ago by a compnay called Ergo, as I recall.
The Ergo Brick was a solid block with everything built in. Had roughly the dimensions of its namesake.
The whole point of the RIAA amendment was to exempt RIAA from the terrorism definition.
BTW, the "hacking==terrorism" meme is not being discussed enough. Class assignment for tonight: let's read the U.S.A. act.
Really? Sounds interesting. Tell us, do you both speak German? And if you don't, do they speak English for you at work? How's age descrimination in IT over there? Maybe it's a magic place for the older programmer crowd...
What more can be said... you anti-Clintonites are utter psychopaths.
Give it up already.
It takes a lot of money to be a terrorist? Really?
Ask Timothy McVeigh... if you could, that is...
Federal law enforcement, given shape and purpose by Ashcroft, an old Nixon/Reagan/Bush man, is grabbing everything they can off of the shelves, throwing it into a sack, and running for the exit before the spell wears off and the storeowners notice that they've been robbed.
I mention the Nixon/Reagan/Bush connection, not as a flame, but as a real indicator. Nixon, Reagan, and other very right-wing leaders hated the "liberal" press, believed that freedom was too free, and that law enforcement was hamstrung by civil liberties.
Let us not forget that Hoover, the chief of Fed law enforcement for almost a half-century, ran a despotic organization that nailed people he didn't like, blackmailed presidents and congressmen and citizens with information he obtained from spying, and was himself a security risk par excellence because of his secret homosexuality and cross-dressing.
Nixon used the CIA to spy on and destroy his "enemies", which he saw as threats to his admin and by extension the country. The "enemies" were the press, members of congress, and a hell of a lot of citizens.
The FBI and the CIA were limited BECAUSE of the actions of the leaders that championed more power granted to law enforcement. Too many of you are too young to remember why those laws were passed. The law was abused by quasi-dictators who wanted power, naked and brutal, over their enemies. And such power is never enough for those types of personalities.
Today, the beginnings of such power is being given back to the very people it was taken from 30 years ago. Literally. They didn't deserve it then, they don't deserve it now. no one does -- but they especially do not.
Additionally -- not a single thing would have been changed on September 11th had this series of powers been granted prior to the attack. Nothing.
The agencies responsible have all the power now needed to track and capture terrorists. They were doing so prior to the attack. The Feds just weren't mind readers, and the men struck simutaneously, and there was no chance to stop them.
Finally, it amazes me that people who hate government in our lives have no problem with the current admin making a naked power grab under the cover of "fighting terrorism".
They aren't going to wind up controlling terrorism. They are eventually going to wind up terrorizing us.
Economic theories have nothing to do with this type of power grab/power surrendering.
Your header should read:
Welcome to the United Fascist States of America.
It's the correct adjective. Today we have embraced fascism as a way of life. It will take years, but this seed planted today will grow into a twisted, sickly tree.
Thing is, the people who live in fascist states are usually very happy. Crime is low (depends on what "crime" is tho), streets are safe, and you don't have to think very hard about the big stuff.
Remember, Americans should watch what they say. Or there could be.. consequences.
The police of the U.S. would be able, it seems, to access any record about an individual whatsoever, without warrant. Am I right here?
I heard "someone" on National Public Radio this morning interviewed. They were speaking about "network analysis", and the conversation was quietly interesting. NA covers credit card purchases, credit profiling,that sort of thing.
He said that law enforcement on the Federal level wants access to our marketing data.
You heard me right.
He said that businesses had more information about us than the government did -- implying, to me, some surprise that the government doesn't have as good a set of data on its citizens as biz does, and that that obviously, in the light of the new day, this should be rectified.
The Feds want to apply network analysis, the same kind of tech used to track your credit history, to be applied to everyone's data, so that they can work up a pattern of questionable behavior and jump on someone before they actually do a deed.
You heard me. Pre-emptive law enforcement.
Good enough for terrorists, for now. But remember, the current admin wants to expand the definitions of "terrorism" to someone who gets unauthorized access to a network or computer system. And I gor-un-tee that they will add more definitions of a "terrorist" as the decades wear on in their weary way.
We've lost a big one. One dissenting vote.
Americans are too stupid, and ignorant, to understand the freedoms that they are giving up, the implications of what they are doing for future generations and the current world, and to undertake rational risk analysis of the current, tiny, threat of the bin Laden nutcases.
Americans scare me.
Sharing programs are legal. They may be held illegal now, but they can't be illegal, or Fair Use and our whole lifestyle is illegal.
I'll stick with the Constitution as it was established. Rich corps will buy laws forever, but: copyright should expire after 20 years, I should be able to copy and share media I own, and I should be able to make Fair Use of quotations and media clips.
The deal originally was that artists get copy rights for their work for a set period of time, in order to promote art and create content, in exchange for that period being limited, so that the artists' work would become part of the public life forever, enriching and advancing civilization.
If this deal is broken by assigning artists' rights to immortal corporations, and making the copyrights eternal, than I disregard the deal until my rights under the contract are restored. Anything else is slavery to the powerful.
Um, try tvguide.com. Fox has, in addition to the broadcast network: Fox News Channel, (or as it's more accurately known, Far-Right TV -- "fair and balanced" if you are Jesse Helms), Fox Sports (I think), and FX.
All of these are owned and operated by Rupert Murdoch, and tend to... shall we say, skew the news a tad to starboard?
Every news outlet that is not Fox News is, of course, liberal and suspect. CBS is the hotbed of communistic romance, NBC a pack of Reds, ABCNews a Worker's Paradise on the glowing tube.
Only Limbaugh and Fox can give us the Real News -- Bush is God's Chosen One and everything bad that has happened, up to and including today, is Clinton's fault because he got a BJ.
I do believe the Judge can pinch-hit for a lawyer. Rumor has it that most judges are lawyers, or at least were.
BTW, this is wickedly great news, but a bit too late to save Napster. It is, tho... vengeance.
Actually, I've had an AOL account since 1993 -- and I actually use my own name as a screenname! It's pretty short and memorable. Pretty cool -- and irreplaceable...
I keep the AOL account for two reasons. First, so that long-lost email friends can find me if they so desire (it's happened! very freaky) after years of absence. Secondly, AOL's mail client sucks. Can't do what Outlook, Eudora, and Netscapes package can. And that's what I want -- simplicity -- and the immunity to all those assinine virii and worms that afflict those programs.
I don't get bugs via the Preview pane, and I don't transmit virri/worms through my address book. AOL is too lame to hack.
BUT -- I agree 100% with the top of this thread : if anyone wants to make life lubberly, CRACK THAT DAMNED PROPRIETARY EMAIL ARCHIVE DATABASE. I would almost have certainly killed my AOL client years back, but for all that email saved up for the last eight years. You need AOL to read them -- or you could purchase a greymarket AOL cracker that could do it, maybe. But the specs should be sniffed out (can't be that bloody hard -- wish I were a coder) and published. Just to spite AOL for keeping such basic abilities off the table such as archiving our email into a open format. (Never said I loved them.)