I'm laughing so hard right now at anyone who continued to buy ebooks from amazon after the 1984 incident. This whole thing makes me a little reluctant to even consider buying any gadget with this kind of purchase-direct-to-the-device capability. If the manufacturer can send an e-book to your device over the air, they can send a kill switch; and as Amazon has demonstrated, if they have the capability they will find a reason to use it.
I've been on the "don't buy it until I know I can burn full custom ROMs" policy for awhile now, precisely because of problems like this.
Moreover, requiring your users to maintain a 1:1 ratio guarantees that your torrent site can never really be private, since you'll always need a constant influx of new users to replace the banned "leeches" and prop up the "good users" ratios. If you want a good, healthy, private tracker it's probably best to require a ratio somewhere between 0.5 and 0.7.
Like it or not, your morals are irrelevant here. An entire generation has grown up with the basic truth that you can download anything you want off the internet for free, and no matter how much you rage against it you're not going to change their minds. You are no different than grandparents a generation ago who were appalled at the immorality of the younger generation committing such heinous acts as boy-girl dancing and girls wearing pants.
Your store analogy is a little off. In reality the copyright-analogy-store would gladly sell you the merchandise; the problem comes up when you try to carry the items you've purchased out of the store:)
Botnet owners make money off their botnets, right? Maybe there's someone out there with a little money who's been looking for a way to stick it to the **AA without dirtying his own hands. Maybe some of that money could find it's way to the owners of the botnets in exchange for the botnets running some kind of P2P server?
When will the authorities realize that this thing relies on inherent features of the Internet, and that it cannot be prevented by force without taking down the 'net itself?
They already have. They're working on taking down "the net itself", but in the mean time they continue to fight by the usual methods, ineffectual as they may be.
As long as you're Fing them, you might as well pirate some PS3 games in the mean time, right?
I'm going to play Nethack;
If you handn't just sworn off PS3 games, I'd recommend Demon's Souls to you in a heartbeat. It's not a roguelike (combat is real time), but it does have the brutal unforgiving-ness and fair, player-skill-based difficulty that makes nethack great. One of the few games that makes the PS3 a must-have system in my mind.
Calling it now: before the year 2030 we will be able to move a chunk of matter from point A to point B faster than the distance between A and B divided by the speed of light.
It doesn't matter how many elected officials we replace, the CIA will still have the same people in it. Your local police department will still have the same cops taking bribes and curb-checking you for trying to video them. There aren't enough good people running for office to fill in the vacuum even if we could vote out all the bad ones.
Your tattle tail analogy is just flat out wrong. Here's a better one: imagine that a teacher is secretly giving undeserved bad grades and detentions to kids she doesn't like. Now imagine one kid finds out, exposes it, and gets the teacher fired. That kid would be a fucking hero to all the other kids, and rightly so.
Summary: giving THE MAN dirt on your comrades makes you a rat; giving your comrades dirt on THE MAN makes you robin hood.
I'm of the same opinion as GP about WoW. I wouldn't say that I'm completely unwilling to pay a monthly fee; it's more that the price model I'm used to for games is "pay once then it's free forever". I might be willing to pay a monthly fee for one game, but either it would have to be ridiculously amazing, or the monthly fee would have to be around 1-2 dollars.
I'm not sure I follow the analogy. Why would I buy a standalone coffee maker when I've already got a toaster that can have coffee-making ability added on with a simple, well documented software upgrade? Also, if the toaster had the coffee making hardware built in, why didn't the manufacturer enable it advertise that fact?
>What do you think we would do if a group of Native Americans started dropping rockets on American towns? Do you think we would allow them unfettered trade with the rest of the world so as to continue arming themselves?
I think the US should make reparations to Native Americans by establishing a homeland for them. We'll give them the western half of France. If the French people don't support this "partition plan" and choose to resist we'll call them terrorists. After the US has used it's military strength to enforce the Native American nation in Europe for 50 years we'll say "You can have a problem with it all you want, but there are six million Native Americans living in West France now and they aren't going anywhere.".
Tumor-eating robots are also a bad idea. Anything it can do, can be done in surgery.
Exactly! Why use a non-invasive method that could precisely remove every cancer cell with minimum collateral damage when you could hack the patient wide open and rely on the surgeon's eye to decide what gets removed!
The majority of that post was pretty much describing how much pleasure the poster gets trolling everyone who is unlucky enough to share the road with him. I like to think he was modded (-1, troll) for real-life trolling that could get people killed.
Ah, I see you're not a native speaker of American English. In this context, "big company" means "company with a big lobbying budget". I think the tag team of big pharma + copyright cartels beats Costco in that regard.
4) Jedi are more powerful than anything else if you're good enough to use them skillfully; The average player will not be good enough and will get destroyed by other classes if they try to use a jedi without practicing first.
"good enough" here should reflect some actual player skill, not "how many hours are you willing to grind".
This isn't a recent phenomenon, this is "just how it works". Governments, over time, tend to increase their own power and take away the freedoms of the people they govern. They can do this because humans, as a group, are easily scared into accepting almost anything. People who like freedom will always, always, ALWAYS have to engage in violet uprising once every few years to maintain that freedom.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm laughing so hard right now at anyone who continued to buy ebooks from amazon after the 1984 incident. This whole thing makes me a little reluctant to even consider buying any gadget with this kind of purchase-direct-to-the-device capability. If the manufacturer can send an e-book to your device over the air, they can send a kill switch; and as Amazon has demonstrated, if they have the capability they will find a reason to use it.
I've been on the "don't buy it until I know I can burn full custom ROMs" policy for awhile now, precisely because of problems like this.
Nice try, Shel Silverstien!
Moreover, requiring your users to maintain a 1:1 ratio guarantees that your torrent site can never really be private, since you'll always need a constant influx of new users to replace the banned "leeches" and prop up the "good users" ratios. If you want a good, healthy, private tracker it's probably best to require a ratio somewhere between 0.5 and 0.7.
This is wikipedia we're talking about, so it was probably deemed not-notable and deleted.
Like it or not, your morals are irrelevant here. An entire generation has grown up with the basic truth that you can download anything you want off the internet for free, and no matter how much you rage against it you're not going to change their minds. You are no different than grandparents a generation ago who were appalled at the immorality of the younger generation committing such heinous acts as boy-girl dancing and girls wearing pants.
Your store analogy is a little off. In reality the copyright-analogy-store would gladly sell you the merchandise; the problem comes up when you try to carry the items you've purchased out of the store :)
Botnet owners make money off their botnets, right? Maybe there's someone out there with a little money who's been looking for a way to stick it to the **AA without dirtying his own hands. Maybe some of that money could find it's way to the owners of the botnets in exchange for the botnets running some kind of P2P server?
When will the authorities realize that this thing relies on inherent features of the Internet, and that it cannot be prevented by force without taking down the 'net itself?
They already have. They're working on taking down "the net itself", but in the mean time they continue to fight by the usual methods, ineffectual as they may be.
F them,
As long as you're Fing them, you might as well pirate some PS3 games in the mean time, right?
I'm going to play Nethack;
If you handn't just sworn off PS3 games, I'd recommend Demon's Souls to you in a heartbeat. It's not a roguelike (combat is real time), but it does have the brutal unforgiving-ness and fair, player-skill-based difficulty that makes nethack great. One of the few games that makes the PS3 a must-have system in my mind.
Calling it now: before the year 2030 we will be able to move a chunk of matter from point A to point B faster than the distance between A and B divided by the speed of light.
And quantum teleportation doesn't count.
It doesn't matter how many elected officials we replace, the CIA will still have the same people in it. Your local police department will still have the same cops taking bribes and curb-checking you for trying to video them. There aren't enough good people running for office to fill in the vacuum even if we could vote out all the bad ones.
Your tattle tail analogy is just flat out wrong. Here's a better one: imagine that a teacher is secretly giving undeserved bad grades and detentions to kids she doesn't like. Now imagine one kid finds out, exposes it, and gets the teacher fired. That kid would be a fucking hero to all the other kids, and rightly so.
Summary: giving THE MAN dirt on your comrades makes you a rat; giving your comrades dirt on THE MAN makes you robin hood.
I'm of the same opinion as GP about WoW. I wouldn't say that I'm completely unwilling to pay a monthly fee; it's more that the price model I'm used to for games is "pay once then it's free forever". I might be willing to pay a monthly fee for one game, but either it would have to be ridiculously amazing, or the monthly fee would have to be around 1-2 dollars.
I'm not sure I follow the analogy. Why would I buy a standalone coffee maker when I've already got a toaster that can have coffee-making ability added on with a simple, well documented software upgrade? Also, if the toaster had the coffee making hardware built in, why didn't the manufacturer enable it advertise that fact?
>What do you think we would do if a group of Native Americans started dropping rockets on American towns? Do you think we would allow them unfettered trade with the rest of the world so as to continue arming themselves?
I think the US should make reparations to Native Americans by establishing a homeland for them. We'll give them the western half of France. If the French people don't support this "partition plan" and choose to resist we'll call them terrorists. After the US has used it's military strength to enforce the Native American nation in Europe for 50 years we'll say "You can have a problem with it all you want, but there are six million Native Americans living in West France now and they aren't going anywhere.".
Oh yeah? Well me and my 7-digit ID say "lol slashdot is ok but it wud be better if more of the stories were funny pics of dogs~!"
My online poker margin is already pretty thin, if the government starts taking a rake I might go from long-term winner to loser :(
Tumor-eating robots are also a bad idea. Anything it can do, can be done in surgery.
Exactly! Why use a non-invasive method that could precisely remove every cancer cell with minimum collateral damage when you could hack the patient wide open and rely on the surgeon's eye to decide what gets removed!
Unless you're doing something wrong there's no reason to ever try to trace it back to a source.
I realize that it's a bad idea, but posts like this make me think we should have a (-1, ignorant) mod anyway.
dude dude dude dude dude DUDE!
They could use it to FIX THE OIL SPILL!
quick somebody get me the president on the phone!
The majority of that post was pretty much describing how much pleasure the poster gets trolling everyone who is unlucky enough to share the road with him. I like to think he was modded (-1, troll) for real-life trolling that could get people killed.
Ah, I see you're not a native speaker of American English. In this context, "big company" means "company with a big lobbying budget". I think the tag team of big pharma + copyright cartels beats Costco in that regard.
If you don't like it, just take your business to one of the many alternate ISP choices that are no doubt available in your area! Oh, wait...
4) Jedi are more powerful than anything else if you're good enough to use them skillfully; The average player will not be good enough and will get destroyed by other classes if they try to use a jedi without practicing first.
"good enough" here should reflect some actual player skill, not "how many hours are you willing to grind".
This isn't a recent phenomenon, this is "just how it works". Governments, over time, tend to increase their own power and take away the freedoms of the people they govern. They can do this because humans, as a group, are easily scared into accepting almost anything. People who like freedom will always, always, ALWAYS have to engage in violet uprising once every few years to maintain that freedom.