There are a lot of Indians in very high places in many global technology companies. No matter what passport they are carrying, all of them are VERY VERY LOYAL to their homeland, India.
The influential Indian diaspora might just be the key for India to push its _Gag-the-Net_ agenda across the proposed global meeting in Geneva.
Solution: we employ guard cows in every server room. The Indians won't dare upset their sacred beasts. Problem solved!
Moreover, we hire people Dalits (Indian untouchable caste) as security. Now they can't even get into the building!
Hey, ain't nothin' wrong with using a country's ignorance against itself.
That should work out well for a free and open internet, eh?
Strat
Hypothetical example: our worst dreams come true, and everything goes to shit on the Internets. Now everything in monitored and watched.
Solution: do what geeks have always done, and create the Darknet version of BitTorrent. That is, a darknet that is easy to use, cryptographically strong, and damn near impossible to detect.
Even if, well, any government clamps down and does their best effort, it won't matter for much terribly. Look at Iran, China, et. al. and how easily their censorship schemes are bypassed by their people.
Lastly (in the United States at least), we have no problem telling other countries to fuck off when it comes to doing things we're not all that interested in following through with. As an example, there's been multiple proposals in the U.N. for personal restrictions on Firearms (i.e. citizens can't have guns), which basically has about as much of a chance in passing in America as a bisexual, atheist, and Arab President has being elected in 2012.
The U.N. has proved ineffectual time and time again, so there's not really a whole lot to worry about here. Backwards countries like India will do their best to keep their citizens in the dark and fail on every level. The population will get more connected in every way and we'll see less and less bullshit as time goes on. Keep in mind things like how you can easily look up the voting record of any American politican from the comfort of your home and how we didn't have that capability 10 years ago. It's one of many small (but significant) ways in which the people have been empowered by technology, and I only expect them to grow and I also expect politicians' efforts to suppress them to fail due to, ironically, their lack of understanding of technology and the difficulty of the problem.
Really? Because yours is the only industrialized nation that I know of that has data caps on landlines. My Aussie friends constantly complain about it. Mobile might be the norm, but a connection to your home having a data cap?
I don't think having 100mBps speed or something matters very much when you have a data cap of something like 25 gigs. For your average user that's fine, but for gamers or power users (read: young people, professionals, etc.), consumer-level Internet is unusable in Australia and commercial-level Internet is, well, expensive.
Actually, you're not watching them for free. Your eyeballs earn them money in the form of advertising.
Sure, unless you don't watch commercials, fast forward through them, or stop the tape when commercials come in. You know, the things that damn near everyone does.
I deleted my account well over a year ago so I can't search FB.
Don't worry, friend! Even though you "deleted" it, your Facebook account is never really deleted! For your convenience, of course! Just log back in and it's all still there, and now you're back whether or not you want to be! Hooray!
We can already align satellite dishes just fine on our own. Now would my idea be any good for the city? Not really. But how about in a rural area where they have a lot of open space and LoS? Sure, the occasional passing goose might get blinded, but hey, free dinner if he crashes onto land!
^^ This. 5 year personal, 15-20 year commercial. As vain and impatient as (most) people are, they aren't going to all of a sudden stop buying content until it has been out 5 years.
No. No no no no. Thanks for agreeing with me, but 5 years is way, way too long.
You hear it again and again. Movies, games, books, etc. make "most of their money in the first 6-12 weeks". Ditto on DVD sales. A year is more than long enough.
A major part of copyright - a part we seem to have forgotten as a people, and I mean nearly all people, not just Americans - is that the "culture" created has to go into the public domain. 14 years+ was reasonable when it took a month for the mail to get cross country. When you can download the entire Lord of the Rings extended edition in a couple of hours, I'd say that the dynamic has significantly changed.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but Internet memes are a big proving factor of this. Look at stuff like Boromir and "one does not simply etc.", Strutting Leo, and so on. I'm sure there's many more recent examples. These all were based off of relatively recent movies when they came out, and technically could be considered illegal by some judges. (Sure, there's a legit fair use there, but it's so ambiguous that if someone really did decide to sue you you would have a lengthy court fight.)
iPhone users can't run what they want without talented hackers.
Well to get the ball rolling, yes, but in my experience running Jailbreak on an iPhone is about as plug and play as a dildo. It's not all that difficult.
Well, TPB has the established community. So you have people who have been there for 5, 10 years saying a file is good or bad, virus alert is a false positive, etc. Otherwise it's just a list of torrents which you can get anywhere.
How about just drawing a line between personal and private use?
I wouldn't mind a 20 year copyright or patent for commercial licensing, but after a year or two I don't see why the average person can't download a movie that came out a few years ago. They've already made the majority of the money they're going to make off of the movie itself.
When you need to feed a family of four on a tight budget, well, you just can't do it healthy unless you grow stuff yourself - which requires a time investment and green space that you can use (and in the city, that doesn't exist for a lot of people).
Let me give you an example - I bought a few bananas yesterday. 3 1/4 pounds, cost me about $2.20. That same $2.20 can buy two boxes of Macaroni and Cheese (or three if you get the cheapo store brand), and each of those can basically be dinner for a family of four for a night. So if you have $50 for food for the week, which decision do you think most parents are going to make?
It's legal to hire someone else to do pretty much anything you can legally do yourself - I don't see why this would be any different.
Can you hire someone else to vote for you or give deposition in your place at a trial?
I'm not saying who's right and who's wrong here, but this is a bit of a grey area. IANAL but I can't recall any similar cases previously in any country.
On the other hand, there is the example of Germany, which still seems to have its financial head screwed on right, and I don't have an answer for that. Maybe there are some constitutional guards, or maybe it has something to do with German character, whatever that is.
AFAIK isn't Germany one of the few economies in Europe that isn't being fucked sideways by bad decisions?
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
on
Diablo III Released
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· Score: 1
And Battle.net had a whole bunch of server-side only stuff. It's called "packet sniffing". That doesn't leave out any potential for corporate espionage, either.
Even if they can't get their hands on the actual stuff, the community can write emulators. See: World of Warcraft.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
on
Diablo III Released
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· Score: 1
Will the same be true 10 or 15 years from now when the Diablo 3 servers no longer work, or if you should lose your internet connection for some reason (or if Blizzard ever goes belly-up)?
Absolutely. We just have to wait a few months for the pirate version to come out.
I have friends with a lot of purchasing power who buy a game, throw it in a drawer, and download the pirate version to deal with less bullshit and a clear conscience. (I don't really do that since I have a lot of games on my Steam account and more games than time to play them.) If they really don't like the company, they'll buy it used - if at all.
It's amazing. It used to be that pirate versions would just break copy protection. Later on, they were necessary for the games to actually even work on some systems. Now you have pirate versions (such as Starcraft II since we're on the subject of Blizzard) that is actually adding features that don't exist in the core game - like LAN play for instance.
People complain that Starcraft II doesn't have LAN play? Sure it does, just not in the retail version. Diablo III doesn't have offline and LAN play yet, but it will.
Lethal force is acceptable if it's the minimum force you can reasonably use and killing isn't your primary intention.
Lethal force is acceptable if you're honestly in fear for your life or the lives of others, full stop.
I had a sensei who took the position of "one on one, do a judgement call. When you start talking 3 on 1 or 4 on 1 - especially if you're protecting someone - there's gonna end up bein' a dead body probably. When you're dealing with that many attackers you need to incapacitate them quickly and there's a good chance you're gonna kill them doing it."
Um, outside of blocking, dodging, and conflict avoidance... attacking and injuring people deliberately is a pretty goddamned important component of self-defense. Probably the most important one. You can't block and evade forever, eventually you're going to have to pop them back.
Slashdot Mirror
There are a lot of Indians in very high places in many global technology companies. No matter what passport they are carrying, all of them are VERY VERY LOYAL to their homeland, India.
The influential Indian diaspora might just be the key for India to push its _Gag-the-Net_ agenda across the proposed global meeting in Geneva.
Solution: we employ guard cows in every server room. The Indians won't dare upset their sacred beasts. Problem solved!
Moreover, we hire people Dalits (Indian untouchable caste) as security. Now they can't even get into the building!
Hey, ain't nothin' wrong with using a country's ignorance against itself.
That should work out well for a free and open internet, eh?
Strat
Hypothetical example: our worst dreams come true, and everything goes to shit on the Internets. Now everything in monitored and watched.
Solution: do what geeks have always done, and create the Darknet version of BitTorrent. That is, a darknet that is easy to use, cryptographically strong, and damn near impossible to detect.
Even if, well, any government clamps down and does their best effort, it won't matter for much terribly. Look at Iran, China, et. al. and how easily their censorship schemes are bypassed by their people.
Lastly (in the United States at least), we have no problem telling other countries to fuck off when it comes to doing things we're not all that interested in following through with. As an example, there's been multiple proposals in the U.N. for personal restrictions on Firearms (i.e. citizens can't have guns), which basically has about as much of a chance in passing in America as a bisexual, atheist, and Arab President has being elected in 2012.
The U.N. has proved ineffectual time and time again, so there's not really a whole lot to worry about here. Backwards countries like India will do their best to keep their citizens in the dark and fail on every level. The population will get more connected in every way and we'll see less and less bullshit as time goes on. Keep in mind things like how you can easily look up the voting record of any American politican from the comfort of your home and how we didn't have that capability 10 years ago. It's one of many small (but significant) ways in which the people have been empowered by technology, and I only expect them to grow and I also expect politicians' efforts to suppress them to fail due to, ironically, their lack of understanding of technology and the difficulty of the problem.
This is why I'm happy to live in Australia.
Really? Because yours is the only industrialized nation that I know of that has data caps on landlines. My Aussie friends constantly complain about it. Mobile might be the norm, but a connection to your home having a data cap?
I don't think having 100mBps speed or something matters very much when you have a data cap of something like 25 gigs. For your average user that's fine, but for gamers or power users (read: young people, professionals, etc.), consumer-level Internet is unusable in Australia and commercial-level Internet is, well, expensive.
Actually, you're not watching them for free. Your eyeballs earn them money in the form of advertising.
Sure, unless you don't watch commercials, fast forward through them, or stop the tape when commercials come in. You know, the things that damn near everyone does.
I deleted my account well over a year ago so I can't search FB.
Don't worry, friend! Even though you "deleted" it, your Facebook account is never really deleted! For your convenience, of course! Just log back in and it's all still there, and now you're back whether or not you want to be! Hooray!
Big tower with multiple IR lasers.
Every roof has an IR receiver.
We can already align satellite dishes just fine on our own. Now would my idea be any good for the city? Not really. But how about in a rural area where they have a lot of open space and LoS? Sure, the occasional passing goose might get blinded, but hey, free dinner if he crashes onto land!
^^ This. 5 year personal, 15-20 year commercial. As vain and impatient as (most) people are, they aren't going to all of a sudden stop buying content until it has been out 5 years.
No. No no no no. Thanks for agreeing with me, but 5 years is way, way too long.
You hear it again and again. Movies, games, books, etc. make "most of their money in the first 6-12 weeks". Ditto on DVD sales. A year is more than long enough.
A major part of copyright - a part we seem to have forgotten as a people, and I mean nearly all people, not just Americans - is that the "culture" created has to go into the public domain. 14 years+ was reasonable when it took a month for the mail to get cross country. When you can download the entire Lord of the Rings extended edition in a couple of hours, I'd say that the dynamic has significantly changed.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but Internet memes are a big proving factor of this. Look at stuff like Boromir and "one does not simply etc.", Strutting Leo, and so on. I'm sure there's many more recent examples. These all were based off of relatively recent movies when they came out, and technically could be considered illegal by some judges. (Sure, there's a legit fair use there, but it's so ambiguous that if someone really did decide to sue you you would have a lengthy court fight.)
iPhone users can't run what they want without talented hackers.
Well to get the ball rolling, yes, but in my experience running Jailbreak on an iPhone is about as plug and play as a dildo. It's not all that difficult.
Well, TPB has the established community. So you have people who have been there for 5, 10 years saying a file is good or bad, virus alert is a false positive, etc. Otherwise it's just a list of torrents which you can get anywhere.
And the other half coulda banged out the code in binary using a toy xylaphone in pre-school.
Hook up a BitTorrent seedbox to the live Internet. You'll find out the maximum capacity pretty quickly.
There are young people alive today who have no idea what Matlock is because they've never seen it on television. And now you feel old.
How about just drawing a line between personal and private use?
I wouldn't mind a 20 year copyright or patent for commercial licensing, but after a year or two I don't see why the average person can't download a movie that came out a few years ago. They've already made the majority of the money they're going to make off of the movie itself.
No, being poor is the problem.
When you need to feed a family of four on a tight budget, well, you just can't do it healthy unless you grow stuff yourself - which requires a time investment and green space that you can use (and in the city, that doesn't exist for a lot of people).
Let me give you an example - I bought a few bananas yesterday. 3 1/4 pounds, cost me about $2.20. That same $2.20 can buy two boxes of Macaroni and Cheese (or three if you get the cheapo store brand), and each of those can basically be dinner for a family of four for a night. So if you have $50 for food for the week, which decision do you think most parents are going to make?
It's legal to hire someone else to do pretty much anything you can legally do yourself - I don't see why this would be any different.
Can you hire someone else to vote for you or give deposition in your place at a trial?
I'm not saying who's right and who's wrong here, but this is a bit of a grey area. IANAL but I can't recall any similar cases previously in any country.
Pretty amazing surgery, but watching the videos shows limited restoration of function.
I know a couple of people personally who would vastly prefer "limited restoration of function" over "no function".
Here, use this free Mindfuck Brand (TM) Idiot Trap anytime someone uses statistics or probability wrong:
What are the chances of getting this question right?
a) 25%
b) 50%
c) 60%
d) 25%
On the other hand, there is the example of Germany, which still seems to have its financial head screwed on right, and I don't have an answer for that. Maybe there are some constitutional guards, or maybe it has something to do with German character, whatever that is.
AFAIK isn't Germany one of the few economies in Europe that isn't being fucked sideways by bad decisions?
And Battle.net had a whole bunch of server-side only stuff. It's called "packet sniffing". That doesn't leave out any potential for corporate espionage, either.
Even if they can't get their hands on the actual stuff, the community can write emulators. See: World of Warcraft.
Will the same be true 10 or 15 years from now when the Diablo 3 servers no longer work, or if you should lose your internet connection for some reason (or if Blizzard ever goes belly-up)?
Absolutely. We just have to wait a few months for the pirate version to come out.
I have friends with a lot of purchasing power who buy a game, throw it in a drawer, and download the pirate version to deal with less bullshit and a clear conscience. (I don't really do that since I have a lot of games on my Steam account and more games than time to play them.) If they really don't like the company, they'll buy it used - if at all.
It's amazing. It used to be that pirate versions would just break copy protection. Later on, they were necessary for the games to actually even work on some systems. Now you have pirate versions (such as Starcraft II since we're on the subject of Blizzard) that is actually adding features that don't exist in the core game - like LAN play for instance.
People complain that Starcraft II doesn't have LAN play? Sure it does, just not in the retail version. Diablo III doesn't have offline and LAN play yet, but it will.
I wonder if you can replace the paintballs with ball bearings and use it as a form of home defense.
INTRUDER DETECTED. PLEASE ENTER ALARM CODE. LETHAL COUNTERMEASURES AUTHORIZED. YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO COMPLY.
.
.
.
(Getting around the filter error, filter error, filter error. Getting around the filter error, ear-lye in the morrrrrrnin'.)
I came into the comments
I do hope you've cleaned up after yourself. Slashdot is messy enough as is.
the US secrete service
Yes, those secretions are to be avoided at all costs.
They really dropped the ball during the Clinton administration.
Lethal force is acceptable if it's the minimum force you can reasonably use and killing isn't your primary intention.
Lethal force is acceptable if you're honestly in fear for your life or the lives of others, full stop.
I had a sensei who took the position of "one on one, do a judgement call. When you start talking 3 on 1 or 4 on 1 - especially if you're protecting someone - there's gonna end up bein' a dead body probably. When you're dealing with that many attackers you need to incapacitate them quickly and there's a good chance you're gonna kill them doing it."
Um, outside of blocking, dodging, and conflict avoidance... attacking and injuring people deliberately is a pretty goddamned important component of self-defense. Probably the most important one. You can't block and evade forever, eventually you're going to have to pop them back.