Re:bearshare/napster/etc
on
Dorm Storm?
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· Score: 2
Wow, 1.5 GB a day! My ISP limits me to 4 GB/month, and I've yet to exceed that, even on 640K DSL. That's partly because I only download ISOs in my university department's computer lab, where I have access to a CD burner. One day I downloaded all 6 ISOs of the Debian distro from linuxiso.org. It was around 3 am though.
My original (sarcastic) remark stands. It would be impossible to upgrade from NT 4 to 2000 without rebooting, and 2000 has been out much less than 4 yrs, therefore you have not had your computer online nonstop.
This has everything to do with copyright. The moment a work is fixed in any medium (paper, tape, film, etc.) it is copyrighted. That means as soon as an e-mail is sent or a word document is saved, it is copyrighted. Granted, John Doe the office worker probably won't sue anybody for decrpyting an e-mail, but a corporation could use this angle in a lawsuit.
I did read the whole article. Most of the quotes were from Mama Doudou that pimps out prostitutes to the workers, or workers that spend all their money on prostitutes threatening to break up their marriages.
The author even admits their bias in this paragraph:
The Coltan story seemed clear when I flew to Congo early this summer. Globalization was causing havoc in a desperate country. For the sake of our electronic toys, guerrillas were getting rich, gorillas were getting slaughtered and the local people were getting paid next to nothing to ruin their country's environment. Traveling inside Congo, however, I found clarity on the question of coltan to be as scarce as paved roads, functioning schools or sober soldiers.
Later a scientist offers a rational viewpoint:
Terese Hart, an American botanist who helped create the Okapi Faunal Reserve and has worked there since the early 1980's, supports neither an embargo on coltan nor a quick pullout of Ugandan forces from northeast Congo.
The overall conclusion I draw from the article is this:
The Congo is in political and military turmoil right now, which has little to do with the tantalum mining.
Some Congolese are capitalizing on the tantalum demand and raising their standard of living, while others squander their money on prostitutes.
The "mining" is causing little environmental damage; the people are just digging holes by hand (it's not strip mining).
Another anti-globalization bleeding heart liberal journalist is blaming everyone and everything but the real cause of the problems.
I don't know what the idiot who modded this as flamebait was smoking, or the generally clueless posts underneath it. This (parent) is the most insightful post in the whole article.
I'll agree that there are definitely problems there, but whatever happened to objective journalism? From the first sentence, the author has convicted every cell phone user of some crime against humanity.
The article reads worse than some flamebait & troll posts I've seen here on Slashdot. Of course, it is in the NY Times, which is hardly an unbiased news source.
Computer production has never been clean. In fact, it's nearly as dirty as the military.
Now there's a loaded statement. Nowadays, the military is on the cutting edge of environmentally friendly technology. I'll admit, they had a lousy track record many years ago, but it's changed significantly.
They've undertaken huge clean-up projects at most of their bases, plan every exercise & project for minimal environmental impact, and try to stay in strict compliance with US and state or host-nation environmental laws. Unlike many corporations that would rather pay the fines for non-compliance when it's cheaper.
I speak from personal experience, in Air Force Civil Engineering. The construction projects I was involved in used high efficiency HVAC systems, low energy lighting, motion sensors that automatically turn lights off when rooms aren't in use, super-insulated buildings, toilets that use less water volume per flush, etc. These things all cost more up front, but have lower long-range operating costs. Now that I'm working in the private sector, commercial & residential clients forgo these systems for more traditional, environmentally unfriendly systems.
Energy conservation wasn't even spoken about in the media in recent years, until Califonia's self inflicted energy crisis. The military has been heavily promoting it internally for several years.
There was even a/. article a few months ago, about new bullets the Army is researching, for the sole reason they aren't harmful to our health & the environment like lead bullets.
No, a "rights model" is not an appropriate framework for IP. What fundamental human right (i.e. life, property, religion, speech, etc.) does this have to do with?
Talking about rights in this context, or so-called "animal rights" or a "patients' bill of rights" cheapens the very foundational concept of rights.
Rights are inherent, God-given (natural), and inalienable. The US Constitution and Bill of Rights do not create or grant rights, but merely recognize them and establish guarantees of their protection.
Also, "intellectual property," is a terrible misnomer. To quote Thomas Jefferson:
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
Is paying DirecTV for usage of their system too much to ask? Nobody really needs all those channels. People generally only get DirecTV for a couple of channels they wouldn't otherwise be able to get in their area. If DirecTV can offer these programs you want to watch in a better way than you can see them now, why not just pay for the service?
Why couldn't they charge for DirectTV like you pay for a pizza? A set number of channels/toppings you get to pick and choose for a set price, with extra charges for extra channels/toppings.
That [eminent domain] applies to great public need, freeways, bridges, infrastructure to support society.
Eminent domain applies to more than just infrastructure projects. It's one of the most abused laws by local governments nowadays, mostly used as corporate subsidies.
The city of Richfield, MN in the Twin Cities, condemned several properties, residential & commercial, to let Best Buy build a new HQ campus there. The reason they did it was for the increased tax revenue. One of the businesses, a car dealership, sued the city, but to no avail. Here's the court decision (google cache).
The city of Columbia Heights, MN condemned a property that was being used as a charity for unemployed & homeless people because it didn't present the right "image" the city wanted for its downtown.
I'd imagine they'd use something similar to the Fulton "Skyhook" nose recovery system. Film from the first US spy satellites, the Corona series, returned to Earth in capsules that were retrieved by C-130s as they parachuted down.
Specially designated JC-130s were used to test the concept in the 1960s. The system was also used to pick people up from the ground in-flight. The Air Force retired the system on its MC-130 Combat Talons in 1996.
There are some pretty good photos of Fulton equipped C-130s on this page.
If I were to buy a Mac right now, I would end up spending around $3000. A roughly equivalent Intel system would be no more than half that.
You haven't priced Macs recently, have you? A 500 MHz G3 iMac w/128 MB RAM (even includes a CD burner) is available for $999. A 500 MHz G3 iBook w/64 MB RAM is available for $1299.
These systems include OS 9 & X, so they're easy for beginners, and also have standard Unix development tools.
I agree that x86 based system are available for a lot cheaper, but then you have to deal with the whole Windows thing.
Is it ok to break laws you don't personally care for?
There's a difference between laws you disagree with and unjust laws. I don't agree with speed limits, but I accept that the government has the authority to regulate this for public safety. However, if a law is unjust, it is our civic duty to disobey it. Like the other poster said, remember Rosa Parks?
If something is perfectly legal where you live, but illegal in another jurisdiction, shouldn't you avoid that jurisdiction?
Dmitry wrote the software in Russia, where it is legal, and for Adobe to restrict copying is illegal. Elcomsoft was going to sell the software in the US, but stopped at Adobe's request.
All he did in the US was give an academic presentation on the flaws in Adobe's software. How that would be illegal is beyond me.
Don't simply break the law. If you do, you are likely to end up in jail. How does that help your cause of freedom?
Sometimes, civic disobedience is the proper course of action. I don't think the Jim Crow laws in the south would've been overturned for many more years if Rosa Parks hadn't broken the law. That and the bus boycotts that followed brought national attention to the situation.
He broke the law of the country he was in.... And it doesn't matter what the law is where he's from and where his company is based. While he's in the US he needs to adhere to US laws.
No, he didn't break the law.
Dmitry wrote the software in Russia, where it is legal, and for Adobe to restrict copying is illegal. Elcomsoft was going to sell the software in the US, but stopped at Adobe's request.
All he did in the US was give an academic presentation on the flaws in Adobe's software. How that would be illegal is beyond me.
Is the law a good law? Well, that's up for intepretation. But in the meantime, it's a law that's in the books.
Not only is it not a good law, it's unjust and most probably unconstitutional. What if Rosa Parks hadn't broken the law by refusing to sit in the back of the bus? If a law is unjust, it is our civic duty to disobey it.
Dmitry wrote the software in Russia, where it is legal, and for Adobe to restrict copying is illegal. Elcomsoft was going to sell the software in the US, but stopped at Adobe's request.
All he did in the US is give an academic presentation on the flaws in Adobe's software.
Many states have their own debt. I also live in MN, and thankfully, our public debt is almost all bond issues to spread the cost of infrastructure over its useful lifetime. According to the MN state treasurer, we have about $2.5 billion in outstanding bond payments.
No, you should interpret legal texts according to their meaning and purpose.
You must not have read the end of my sentence you quoted, so I'll repeat it here:
as it was written,
and in accordance with the writings of the founding fathers.
Many of the founding fathers wrote extensively about the principles behind and purpose of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
If you do this with the second amendement, you will have to reduce the right to a point where it only allows you to bear weapons unless the government can provide sufficient protection (which it can nowadays)...
But the government can't provide sufficient protection to any individual person or people. In fact, police have no duty to protect individuals, only the community as a whole.
Several courts have ruled on this, including: South v. Maryland (US Supreme Court, 1856), Warren v. District of Columbia (D.C. Appeals Court, 1981), and Rogers v. City of Port Huron (Michigan, 1993).
Here are excerpts from the South v. Maryland ruling:
"police have a duty only to the public at large and not to individual members of the community"
"a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen"
the U.S. Constitution...the religious wacko right wants to do away with, that the chucklehead left wants to do away with
Besides a few far-out extremists on both sides, I don't think anyone wants to do away with the constitution.
In fact, conservatives interpret (rightly IMHO) the constitution literally, as it was written, and in accordance with the writings of the founding fathers.
Liberals reinterpret the constitution to fit the situation. During the presidential debates, Gore said the constitution should be a "living document." A prime example is the former solicitor general's letter that explained the official stand of the DOJ was that the 2nd amendment did not guarantee an individual right to bear arms, only a collective right for state militias. That's funny, they don't argue that about the 1st or 4th amendments.
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Wow, 1.5 GB a day! My ISP limits me to 4 GB/month, and I've yet to exceed that, even on 640K DSL. That's partly because I only download ISOs in my university department's computer lab, where I have access to a CD burner. One day I downloaded all 6 ISOs of the Debian distro from linuxiso.org. It was around 3 am though.
My original (sarcastic) remark stands. It would be impossible to upgrade from NT 4 to 2000 without rebooting, and 2000 has been out much less than 4 yrs, therefore you have not had your computer online nonstop.
The previous poster pretty much made it clear that, yes, his former boss doesn't have a clue how to run a server.
The author even admits their bias in this paragraph:
Later a scientist offers a rational viewpoint:
The overall conclusion I draw from the article is this:
The Congo is in political and military turmoil right now, which has little to do with the tantalum mining.
Some Congolese are capitalizing on the tantalum demand and raising their standard of living, while others squander their money on prostitutes.
The "mining" is causing little environmental damage; the people are just digging holes by hand (it's not strip mining).
Another anti-globalization bleeding heart liberal journalist is blaming everyone and everything but the real cause of the problems.
I don't know what the idiot who modded this as flamebait was smoking, or the generally clueless posts underneath it. This (parent) is the most insightful post in the whole article.
I'll agree that there are definitely problems there, but whatever happened to objective journalism? From the first sentence, the author has convicted every cell phone user of some crime against humanity.
The article reads worse than some flamebait & troll posts I've seen here on Slashdot. Of course, it is in the NY Times, which is hardly an unbiased news source.
They've undertaken huge clean-up projects at most of their bases, plan every exercise & project for minimal environmental impact, and try to stay in strict compliance with US and state or host-nation environmental laws. Unlike many corporations that would rather pay the fines for non-compliance when it's cheaper.
I speak from personal experience, in Air Force Civil Engineering. The construction projects I was involved in used high efficiency HVAC systems, low energy lighting, motion sensors that automatically turn lights off when rooms aren't in use, super-insulated buildings, toilets that use less water volume per flush, etc. These things all cost more up front, but have lower long-range operating costs. Now that I'm working in the private sector, commercial & residential clients forgo these systems for more traditional, environmentally unfriendly systems.
Energy conservation wasn't even spoken about in the media in recent years, until Califonia's self inflicted energy crisis. The military has been heavily promoting it internally for several years.
There was even a
I've had the opposite experience. I got over 60 hits in the first round of the Code Red worm, and 32 from this round tonight.
Talking about rights in this context, or so-called "animal rights" or a "patients' bill of rights" cheapens the very foundational concept of rights.
Rights are inherent, God-given (natural), and inalienable. The US Constitution and Bill of Rights do not create or grant rights, but merely recognize them and establish guarantees of their protection.
Also, "intellectual property," is a terrible misnomer. To quote Thomas Jefferson:
They have an MP3 of the New York radio ad online here.
Like another comment said, this is almost like Joseph Stalin telling kids to turn their parents in.
The city of Richfield, MN in the Twin Cities, condemned several properties, residential & commercial, to let Best Buy build a new HQ campus there. The reason they did it was for the increased tax revenue. One of the businesses, a car dealership, sued the city, but to no avail. Here's the court decision (google cache).
The city of Columbia Heights, MN condemned a property that was being used as a charity for unemployed & homeless people because it didn't present the right "image" the city wanted for its downtown.
I'd imagine they'd use something similar to the Fulton "Skyhook" nose recovery system. Film from the first US spy satellites, the Corona series, returned to Earth in capsules that were retrieved by C-130s as they parachuted down.
Specially designated JC-130s were used to test the concept in the 1960s. The system was also used to pick people up from the ground in-flight. The Air Force retired the system on its MC-130 Combat Talons in 1996.
There are some pretty good photos of Fulton equipped C-130s on this page.
Only in the NT & 2000 version of Notepad. In 95, 98, & ME Notepad doesn't have this capability.
The President of the US gives an annual speech called the State of the Union address, so Larry Wall gives a State of the Onion address.
These systems include OS 9 & X, so they're easy for beginners, and also have standard Unix development tools.
I agree that x86 based system are available for a lot cheaper, but then you have to deal with the whole Windows thing.
Dmitry wrote the software in Russia, where it is legal, and for Adobe to restrict copying is illegal. Elcomsoft was going to sell the software in the US, but stopped at Adobe's request.
All he did in the US was give an academic presentation on the flaws in Adobe's software. How that would be illegal is beyond me.
Sometimes, civic disobedience is the proper course of action. I don't think the Jim Crow laws in the south would've been overturned for many more years if Rosa Parks hadn't broken the law. That and the bus boycotts that followed brought national attention to the situation.
Dmitry wrote the software in Russia, where it is legal, and for Adobe to restrict copying is illegal. Elcomsoft was going to sell the software in the US, but stopped at Adobe's request.
All he did in the US was give an academic presentation on the flaws in Adobe's software. How that would be illegal is beyond me.
Not only is it not a good law, it's unjust and most probably unconstitutional. What if Rosa Parks hadn't broken the law by refusing to sit in the back of the bus? If a law is unjust, it is our civic duty to disobey it.
No, it wasn't a crime.
Dmitry wrote the software in Russia, where it is legal, and for Adobe to restrict copying is illegal. Elcomsoft was going to sell the software in the US, but stopped at Adobe's request.
All he did in the US is give an academic presentation on the flaws in Adobe's software.
Many states have their own debt. I also live in MN, and thankfully, our public debt is almost all bond issues to spread the cost of infrastructure over its useful lifetime. According to the MN state treasurer, we have about $2.5 billion in outstanding bond payments.
The national debt, as of July 20, 2001 is:
$5,723,280,631,657.09 ($5.723 trillion)
Total federal government spending for FY 2001 is:
$1,856 billion ($1.856 trillion)
In other words, the national debt is over 3 times the yearly budget of the federal budget. Maybe you should check your facts before posting lies.
Many of the founding fathers wrote extensively about the principles behind and purpose of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
But the government can't provide sufficient protection to any individual person or people. In fact, police have no duty to protect individuals, only the community as a whole.
Several courts have ruled on this, including: South v. Maryland (US Supreme Court, 1856), Warren v. District of Columbia (D.C. Appeals Court, 1981), and Rogers v. City of Port Huron (Michigan, 1993).
Here are excerpts from the South v. Maryland ruling:
"police have a duty only to the public at large and not to individual members of the community"
"a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen"
In fact, conservatives interpret (rightly IMHO) the constitution literally, as it was written, and in accordance with the writings of the founding fathers.
Liberals reinterpret the constitution to fit the situation. During the presidential debates, Gore said the constitution should be a "living document." A prime example is the former solicitor general's letter that explained the official stand of the DOJ was that the 2nd amendment did not guarantee an individual right to bear arms, only a collective right for state militias. That's funny, they don't argue that about the 1st or 4th amendments.
Why start from China? Terrorists could easily get into the US legally, acquire bio-agents, and attack a major city.