Whilst the net is changing this, allowing artists to reach a potentially far larger audience without the "backing" of a major label, at the moment the key word is potential. Nobody denies that the net has potential, especially not the RIAA/MPAA, but people are still trying to work out workable models that benefit both artists and consumers. A lot of people are happy with MP3.com's business model, but I'm sure there will be a lot more progress in the next few years.
Unfortunately for us, the RIAA/MPAA have realised this huge potential at a time when it is still vulnerable to pre-emptive legislation. They want to chain and guide this potential whilst they still can and their resources are up to the challenge.
I'm sorry, but I'm missing a part of your logic here. What website, list or server that works purely to distribute the works of consenting artists has been attacked by the RIAA/MPAA? Where has an attempt to promote unsigned artists with the permission of all artists involved been threatened or shut down by one of these groups? What part of any of their arguments against napster could be used to shut down such a service?
Yeah, so the big evil initials have been known to take advantage of artists they represent if they can, and don't try to make life easy for outsiders. But their actions towards Napster have so far been totally legitimate and in the interests of their artists, and largely orthogonal to the interests of unsigned artists. No precedent is being set which threatens the voluntary use of online distribution by an artist. The only attacks have been against third parties which distribute works they have no rights to, with small collateral damage to unsigned artists who use those channels. Unless you can correct these perceptions, I can't see any way they are threatening the potential of the net for unsigned artists.
Citizens should be pushing for constitutional protection of privacy (in nations that don't have it already; it exists in the US, but only by Supreme Court fiat, AFAICT). Unless you think it's OK to read your mail before even charging you with anything.
Yes, I think its "OK" for law enforcement agencies to monitor my communications after demonstrating reasonable cause for suspicion but before formally charging me. Thats what warrents are for. So, I guess I don't need to worry ablout constitutional garantees of privacy.
Personally, I do believe in privacy, but as a balanced, rather than absolute right. That is, all things being equal, people should have a right to personal privacy. However, the world is full of situations in which all things are not equal and the right to privacy must be balanced against other equal or more important rights. Unfortunately,/. is the land of absolutes and slippery slopes, making a reasonable balancing of rights nigh impossible.
As for the title question, I don't think criminals will "wise up" to the extent of making this useless. Taps are useful at the stage where the criminal does not yet know how suspicious the leos are of him/her. Everyone who commits a crime is not a criminal mastermind with an evil tech wizard advising them on how to stay one step ahead. Email taps will be helpful for leos, and public watchdogs will continue to act against excesses of all kinds by leos. Its not really that big a change if the taps are held to pre-existing standards of survielance.
"Don't be silly, you have the rights to a physical creation as well, until you sell or give it to someone."
Ummm...that's my point. Person A creates physical item I. A gives I to B. At this point A has no claim whatsoever on I. B can resell, give, dismantle, copy and redistribute, etc. But if I is non-physical, B can't do all those things.
Wrong. You cut the next sentance of my post, where I clearly said that a person can choose to not sell an object to someone unless they abide by certain standards of use. The difference is that in IP certain restrictions are assumed unless explicitly revoked in a contract, while with physical property they are assumed to not be present unless explicitly stated. This is due to standardization of the two types of sale.
More important at the moment, you have misrepresented my words through excising a relevant part of them, then responding to the abreviated version as though it supported your point. You thus demonstrate yourself as a dishonest or not very intelligent debater, and not worth even the abriviated time I've given this so far. Hope someone else finds the time to laboriously explain why people have the right to their own creations.
You mean only if that something is non-physical. If I built a car and sold it to you and you gave it to Frank (or built another one and gave THAT to Frank) no one would say that MY rights had been violated.
Don't be silly, you have the rights to a physical creation as well, until you sell or give it to someone. If you wanted to only sell or give it to someone who used it in certain ways, you have that right as well. (ever hear of conditional behests in wills?)
I'm not rejecting the answer because I don't like it. I'm rejecting the answer because it's not an answer. It's just a word. "We hold these things to be self-evident..." doesn't work for me. EXPLAIN WHY there is such a thing as copyright, don't just tell me it exists.
I fear that you are venturing into sophistry. Yes, its just a word and so is "privacy" or "rape". It is a word with meaning that people understand and respect. I could sit down and write you a drawn out philosophical explaination of the ethical extraction of Intellectual Property and why it should be defended, but 1) I'm typing this at work and need to keep it short, and 2) you're not worth it. If you honestly don't understand a concept that enough other people grasp, its your job to educate yourself, not everyone elses to stop using the word until you personally accept it.
If *I* own it, why should the RIAA have any say what I do with it? Don't say "copyright"--that's an answer to "why DOES the RIAA have any say". I want to know why SHOULD the RIAA have any say.
Because the RIAA defends the distribution interests of their artists. The artists have a say because they created it and because "death of IP" ramblings aside, most people believe that when you create something you have an interest and ownership in it, even if that "something" is non-physical in nature.
In other words, copyright. Don't be childish and reject an answer you don't like if thats the answer motivating your opponents. (especially if in the real world they outnumber you.)
Let me see, if my neighbor is being threatened with a gun, I shouldn't feel so bad that I'm being threatened with just a knife. Gee, I feel so much better.
No one has the right to threaten you when you are doing nothing wrong. Law enforcment agencies do have the right to solve or prevent crimes through survelance, with the balance of protecting peoples rights. There is no comparison.
Allegedly, the technology is extremely easy for savvy computer users to avoid (i.e. the sort of people that the government hopes to catch in illegal acts). If the cybercriminals can bypass the tap with ease, then whose e-mail gets scanned? Answer: ordinary people.
This seems like quite a leap. One might just as well say that people trying to rip off the phone company can avoid having their calls traced, so wiretaps or traces are only useful against "ordinary people". Just like phone taps or any other survelance method, the is a huge gulf of situations between "cyber-criminals" and "ordinary people" (implying no criminal concerns) where email survelance could prove useful.
That said, perhaps this should get people to chill out a little bit about carnivore, given that it at least opperates under warrent. Look objectively at the two programs and gain some perspective. Law enforcement has a right to monitor communications of those individuals who a judge will give them a warrent for. But depending on how UK LEOs will be able to use this stockpiled info, this seems much more of a concern.
Tell you what. Why don't you small lables buy a domain name of "musicfreelikespeechmusicfreelikebeer.org" or something and set up a voluntary from the artist file sharing network. Make it non-annonymous, because you want people to know it's your music right? And don't let any of those big lable songs on. Guess what would happen? The RIAA wouldn't give a flying you know what in a rolling donut if you use the internet to distribute your own songs, and people looking for new music would actually be able to find your stuff without searching amoung the piles of eighties top 40.
If you were using napster as a promotional tool, you need a lesson in marketing. If you really want online distribution, get together with some people and do it yourself. Show the big lables how much you know better than them, and keep their music off it. If you are really speaking as a small artist, you should like it better that way.
What? IANASWBE (I am not a Star Wars biotechnology expert), but what do you think the the mentions of the clone wars in EP4 were all about?
Er, a throwaway line?
Perhaps some of the books talk more about clone wars, or the stormtroopers being clones, (are SW books cannonical?) but everything I recal of the actual movies supports the idea that biotech was not a concern. Come on, even when Luke lost his hand, he built a robotic one to replace it, even though it reminded him of Vader's transformation and scared him. Why not just grow a new one?
And even if you assume the same tech level, the same social structures lasting for millenia? Its their universe, they can say that if they want to, but why not be believable instead? What would they be losing?
I'm glad you decided to get a dog from the pound. Pet stores don't just cost more, they keep puppy mills in business and promote irresponsible pet ownership. I'm also glad to hear about someone taking a chance on an older dog. Its natural to want the excited little puppy, and people sometimes assume an older dog must have had "something wrong with it" to end up in a shelter. More often it was the owners that had something wrong with them.
Good luck with both your pets, I hope the one with cancer isn't in pain. I used to be a vet tech and have done some writing on animal death and euthanasia, so if you need to talk about anything, let me know.
I think maybe you're confusing passive resistance with civil disobedience. PR is, by definition, non-violent. CD is not necessarily non-violent.
no offense, but I know what I mean. In my opinion, CD is non-violent or it is not civil disobedience, it's "direct action" against the governement. Passive resistance is one of the components of civil disobedience, it describes how you respond to an arresting or expelling authority.
And even given your def. of CD, I have to ask again how supportive you are of blockading abortion clinics? It's a legitimate act of CD, but does that mean we should tolerate it?
Personlly, I feel that the "blockading" portion of the question speaks for itself. The purpose of those actions is not merely to protest, it is to physically prevent people from gaining access to health clinics which perform abortions. Just as sidewalk protesters do not merey be visable or audible, but activly stand in women's way and try to intimidate them. I know people who have done escort duty at Planned Parenthood when operation rescue was in town, and I do not consider their tactics CD.
Whether you "tolerate" or even support them depends entirely on to what extent you agree or disagree with the assumptions driving them.
On a clarifying note, if my state legislature ever gets around to passing the buffer zone law here, abortion right oponents will get a chance to practice CD by simply being (non-violently) inside the buffer zone. But I don't think that would suit their goals. CD is useless to them, because everyone knows how they feel and how strongly they feel about it. Their strategy seems to be to indimidate, not to change minds. IMHO intimidation is not a CD accomplishable objective.
Considering the average length of a King novel (600.. 700 pages?), he'll be doing quite well if his fan base isn't familiar with grade school math -- That's $30 or $35 per book.:)
Not bad for a hardcover, really, cut that in half and its softcover price in a searchable format. works for me.
But the micropayment thing is going to have to come into its own before this stuff will work. On the Napster threads, people keep going on about artists doing it for the love of the work and people paying them what they're worth. The idea seems to be to make the internet a giant subway where street musicians wait for your quarters. The problem is, on the internet, no one has any quarters. We don't even have singles. We have our credit cards and thats it. And, as was pointed out in the article, taking a dollar on a credit card is a money losing proposition for the artist. Plus, going to the trouble of entering your card number eliminates the feeling that tipping has - a casual thank you for a small favor, not considered or counted out carefully, just taken out of your pocket and tossed into the guitar case.
I don't know pay pals, but I do think that scemes like this are asking people to have a cash/small change mentality in a credit based/big bucks only environment until some micropayment system becomes standard.
Organized civil disobedience is a method by which a vocal minority can exert its views over a majority, regardless of what the majority feels about it. We don't think of it as a bad thing because we associate it with MLK and Ghandi, guys who used it in service of causes we generally regard as worthy. But it is an extremely dangerous thing in the wrong hands (ie, yours).
I think of CD as a good thing, because I define it somewhat more narrowly than many people on this thread. CD, to me is intrinsicly non-violent, non-destructive and based mostly on getting attention and demonstrating the extent of your dedication to a cause. True CD (IMHO) does not "exert its views" over anyone - but it does put your views right out front where people have to deal with them, and they have to deal with the fact that the person expressing those views holds them so strongly that they will keep coming back, keep being arrested, keep being harrassed, because it means that much. The Boston Tea Party was not civil disobedience IMHO, because it involved destroying other people's property.
Mirroring your program everywhere so they "can't get rid of it" is not civil disobedience. Sitting in front of the courthouse until they arrest you and telling everyone that you are going through it for free software rights is. One tries to inspire other people with the depth of your commitment, the other just flaunts the law for its own sake. Its trying to bring the government to its senses instead of to its knees.
I have yet to see an act of civil disobedience out of this crowd.
I'm afraid you aren't making the point you think you are. Letters to the editor can be edited without your permission.
Or am I? Letters to the editor are not altered without my permission. The nature of possible alterations is made clear when I send it in, and I can choose not to do so if I don't trust their editing. And, as the poster below noted, they cannot change the intent of the message, and it would never be acceptable to insert a message I did not intend. (Any inserted words are proper only to clarify a pronoun or similar cause and must be bracketed.)
Compare this to Deja. Posts will be altered unless you opt out, and the vast majority of posters won't even know that they can or should. Content is added, not deleted, and as a result a poster may apear to be promoting soemthing that zie is not. Editors edit Deja is adding. this is a major distinction.
That said, I did not phrase my orriginal statement very well. The point that I was trying to get across was that such a forum cannot alter the message that I am trying to get across or add content and still list it under my name.
It seems quite obvious to me from the one example given in the posting that these links are put in by Deja; the little orange triangle amidst the plain text of a Usenet posting stands out to me very well. And anyone with half a brain knows that the original poster wouldn't have embedded that painful looking link to some dynamic deja.com page; in fact, they COULDN'T, because it was a plain text posting in the first place, by the nature of Usenet.
This is stupid. The triangle looks like a little "hey this is a link" signal to newbies. there is nothing about it to indicate that the link itself is inserted. If you want to insult the intelligence of those who would make the mistake, whatever (though an intelligent person would insult their expereince). but I don't care who makes the mistake, the mistake is there to be made, no matter how many people try to deny it.
You're going way overboard and simply saying "everyone is trying to fuck me, the poster, over" for no reason and with no justification. Grow up; they're a few stupid little links, which any garden-variety moron can differentiate from the original poster's content.
Honey, I think you're projecting. I never said everyone was trying to do anything to me. I said that this instance is a problem to me, and you need to grow up if you think corporate profits trump my rights to communicate what I want to.
And in case it makes a dent in your "I look cool if I insult other people for defending their rights" attitude, it seems to me that this in also a violation of Deja's own terms of agreement for users, which makes it blazing clear that they have no responsibility for the content of any Usenet posting read through their service. By editing the content, they are violating their own terms of agreement, and IMHO taking responsibility for the content they are displaying.
They _are_ clearly discernable for anyone with a brain from the deja.com links
Hmmm... Lets see. I have a brain, and I don't see a tiny orange triangle as "clearly discernable", especially for a new user of the service who has not seen dozens of other normal links in Deja posts. And since there will most likely be more of these kind of links that normal links, there is really no reason that a person of normal intelligence would see that little triangle and say "Oh! this must be trying to tell me that this link is inserted by Deja and not an orriginal part of the message!" The symbol looks to me like nothing more than an additional "this is a link" signal to newbies.
I have suggested other places that an honest way of doing the same thing would be to put a icon off to the side of the message that said "deja content". It would be clearly part of the deja expereince and not the message. The way Deja is doing it is dishonest and you don't need to insult the intelligence of people just to make them look better.
I'm not quite sure how that makes them 'corporate jerks', though. God forbid they should try and make money from the service they provide, free, to the end user.
They are corporate jerks because no legitamate business that dealt in people's writing would try to make money by putting ads in my mouth when I'm talking about something else.
This is not a writer's forum, and I can understand how some people wouldn't get it. But as a writer, I take my written words, be it a article, a letter to the editor or a rant on Usenet, very seriously. As a person with a mild reputation on some newsgroups, I take my posts that much more seriously. When someone alters the content and intent of my writing, whether by sticking in an editorial content into my article before publication, excising a crucial sentance of a letter to the editor or making it look like I am linking willy nilly to useless sites, I get mad.
If Deja were picking out key words relating to drugs and selling the poster's addresses to the DEA,/.ers would be in an uproar, even if its just a way of making money and something the DEA could have done on their own. Making money by misrepresenting thier posters is no better than making money by selling info.
Not that I want to see this tested in the courts, but it seems like common sense SHOULD prevail... if you don't want others to make use of your statements, don't post them in a public forum. Put them in a medium supported by copyright laws, instead.
So if I send a letter to the editor, or the "Confidential Chat" my local paper runs, it can be altered without notice and still published under my name? Do you understand what Public Domain is?
Even under public domain, there are still rights the orriginal author has. (Even a dead or sometimes even annonymous author.) You cannot take a peice of public domain and republish it under your own name. (Stupid columnist at the Globe recently got suspended for exactly that.) You cannot alter that content and republish it under the author's name, unless the orrignal is so well known and the alterations so severe that the entire thing is clearly satire.
Also, consider parts of their terms of agreement (which, as a new user, I just recently read). They spend entire paragraphs spelling out that they are only providing a link to these discussion groups, they are not responsible for anything you might find there. In order for their alteration of messages to be appropriate, they would have to be taking public domain works and choosing to republish them for their subscribers use. If they are republishing them, they are responsible for the content. I don't think they should be able to have it both ways.
Meanwhile, I don't have too great a problem with these ads, ignoring them is not too hard, and deja has to pay all those hard drives in some way, no?
The problem with just ignoring them is that a person who would put a real link to something relevant to what they are talking about has their effort wasted. This is not your problem, but it is another way that Deja is corrupting messages.
Their stated goals could have been honestly accomplished by sticking a little icon out to the side of the relevant sentance that says "deja content" or something and takes you to the same places. Their statement that no one would think it was you putting those links in your message is laughable, and their current method is IMWO* simply unethical.
(*In My Writer's Opinion. As a freelance writer I take my written words anywhere very seriously and get pissed when they are messed with.)
And anyone who has been using the web for any amount of time should be used to checking where a link leads anyway. If you read/. you should be used to it, otherwise you'll end up at some pretty grim sites:)
Yes and they are grim sites that the poster was trying to send you to. You seem to be missing who has a problem with this. As a deja reader, I am annoyed that the intent of other posters may be misrepresented to me by making it look like they linked to something they didn't. But as a Usenet poster, I am furious that the readers of Deja will be given an altered version of my writings.
As a/. reader in particular, I assume that links are deliberate, and factor the number and content of links into my assessment of a poster. Putting in links that were not intended is the problem, not just someone seeing an extra link in their day.
In my post below I recommended an honest way that Deja could accomplish the same goals. They chose a way that corrupts the person's message without their consent.
However, because we realize that some users would rather not have Deja display links to our Precision Buying Service content from product names mentioned in Usenet postings, we are currently in the process of implementing an "x-no-productlinks: yes" header which will suppress the generation of these hyperlinks on those messages.
What I am unclear on is whether they are only placing these links in posts that originated from Deja, or, as some parts of the post and response imply, into everything you can read on Deja.
The former would be bad enough, but if the latter, how do they expect to be able to communicate the "opt out"* option to everyone whose messages will be corrupted** by their new "service".
*It will of course be an opt out rather than opt in, and will probably be set up so you need to type it into every single message. Corporate jerks.
** Just for the record, I do consider this a serious corruption of a person's orriginal message. Maybe its just the/.er in me, but when I see a link in the body of a post, I see that as an intentional part of the message, and linking to something the poster was not talking about is as bad as re-editing a letter to the editor so that the word "copier" was followed by "of which xerox is the first and best".
An honest way to do this would be to stick in a little icon off to the side of the sentance in question that said "Deja content" or something. Make it very clearly a part of your Deja veiwing and not part of the intended message. But who expects web businesses to be honest?
Hardly. His point was that the US was "backwards" and had the worst social policy of any indusrtial nation. The claim was that if we were not so "backwards" our children would respect sex. I pointed out that other nations have people with far less "respect" than we have, which could hardly make his point that we are the most backwards, now could it?
In fact, for all the problems I have with americans sometimes, I would say that respect for people's sexual rights is better here than most places around the globe. If thats backwards repression and not understanding sex, bring it on.
If it's constitutional to slap an age restriction on drinking that occurs after the age of citizenship and voting, it occurs to me it would also be constitutional to slap an age restriction on anything else. For example, the government can constitutionally say, "No one under the age of 75 has protection against cruel and unusual punishment."
Don't be silly. Drinking is not a constitutionally protected right. Even though an amendment repeals the earlier nationwide prohibition, individual government bodies can still pass ordinances restricting alcohol for anyone of any age. (One of my favorite little seaside towns has been dry for decades. Even the resturants don't serve wine.)
And cruel and unusual is especially silly, since thats a restriction on the gov no matter who they are dealing with. Even non-citizens are protected.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately for us, the RIAA/MPAA have realised this huge potential at a time when it is still vulnerable to pre-emptive legislation. They want to chain and guide this potential whilst they still can and their resources are up to the challenge.
I'm sorry, but I'm missing a part of your logic here. What website, list or server that works purely to distribute the works of consenting artists has been attacked by the RIAA/MPAA? Where has an attempt to promote unsigned artists with the permission of all artists involved been threatened or shut down by one of these groups? What part of any of their arguments against napster could be used to shut down such a service?
Yeah, so the big evil initials have been known to take advantage of artists they represent if they can, and don't try to make life easy for outsiders. But their actions towards Napster have so far been totally legitimate and in the interests of their artists, and largely orthogonal to the interests of unsigned artists. No precedent is being set which threatens the voluntary use of online distribution by an artist. The only attacks have been against third parties which distribute works they have no rights to, with small collateral damage to unsigned artists who use those channels. Unless you can correct these perceptions, I can't see any way they are threatening the potential of the net for unsigned artists.
-Kahuna Burger
Yes, I think its "OK" for law enforcement agencies to monitor my communications after demonstrating reasonable cause for suspicion but before formally charging me. Thats what warrents are for. So, I guess I don't need to worry ablout constitutional garantees of privacy.
Personally, I do believe in privacy, but as a balanced, rather than absolute right. That is, all things being equal, people should have a right to personal privacy. However, the world is full of situations in which all things are not equal and the right to privacy must be balanced against other equal or more important rights. Unfortunately, /. is the land of absolutes and slippery slopes, making a reasonable balancing of rights nigh impossible.
As for the title question, I don't think criminals will "wise up" to the extent of making this useless. Taps are useful at the stage where the criminal does not yet know how suspicious the leos are of him/her. Everyone who commits a crime is not a criminal mastermind with an evil tech wizard advising them on how to stay one step ahead. Email taps will be helpful for leos, and public watchdogs will continue to act against excesses of all kinds by leos. Its not really that big a change if the taps are held to pre-existing standards of survielance.
-Kahuna Burger
-Kahuna Burger
Ummm...that's my point. Person A creates physical item I. A gives I to B. At this point A has no claim whatsoever on I. B can resell, give, dismantle, copy and redistribute, etc. But if I is non-physical, B can't do all those things.
Wrong. You cut the next sentance of my post, where I clearly said that a person can choose to not sell an object to someone unless they abide by certain standards of use. The difference is that in IP certain restrictions are assumed unless explicitly revoked in a contract, while with physical property they are assumed to not be present unless explicitly stated. This is due to standardization of the two types of sale.
More important at the moment, you have misrepresented my words through excising a relevant part of them, then responding to the abreviated version as though it supported your point. You thus demonstrate yourself as a dishonest or not very intelligent debater, and not worth even the abriviated time I've given this so far. Hope someone else finds the time to laboriously explain why people have the right to their own creations.
-Kahuna Burger
Don't be silly, you have the rights to a physical creation as well, until you sell or give it to someone. If you wanted to only sell or give it to someone who used it in certain ways, you have that right as well. (ever hear of conditional behests in wills?)
I'm not rejecting the answer because I don't like it. I'm rejecting the answer because it's not an answer. It's just a word. "We hold these things to be self-evident..." doesn't work for me. EXPLAIN WHY there is such a thing as copyright, don't just tell me it exists.
I fear that you are venturing into sophistry. Yes, its just a word and so is "privacy" or "rape". It is a word with meaning that people understand and respect. I could sit down and write you a drawn out philosophical explaination of the ethical extraction of Intellectual Property and why it should be defended, but 1) I'm typing this at work and need to keep it short, and 2) you're not worth it. If you honestly don't understand a concept that enough other people grasp, its your job to educate yourself, not everyone elses to stop using the word until you personally accept it.
-Kahuna Burger
Because the RIAA defends the distribution interests of their artists. The artists have a say because they created it and because "death of IP" ramblings aside, most people believe that when you create something you have an interest and ownership in it, even if that "something" is non-physical in nature.
In other words, copyright. Don't be childish and reject an answer you don't like if thats the answer motivating your opponents. (especially if in the real world they outnumber you.)
-Kahuna Burger
No one has the right to threaten you when you are doing nothing wrong. Law enforcment agencies do have the right to solve or prevent crimes through survelance, with the balance of protecting peoples rights. There is no comparison.
Please get some perspective.
-Kahuna Burger
This seems like quite a leap. One might just as well say that people trying to rip off the phone company can avoid having their calls traced, so wiretaps or traces are only useful against "ordinary people". Just like phone taps or any other survelance method, the is a huge gulf of situations between "cyber-criminals" and "ordinary people" (implying no criminal concerns) where email survelance could prove useful.
That said, perhaps this should get people to chill out a little bit about carnivore, given that it at least opperates under warrent. Look objectively at the two programs and gain some perspective. Law enforcement has a right to monitor communications of those individuals who a judge will give them a warrent for. But depending on how UK LEOs will be able to use this stockpiled info, this seems much more of a concern.
-Kahuna Burger
If you were using napster as a promotional tool, you need a lesson in marketing. If you really want online distribution, get together with some people and do it yourself. Show the big lables how much you know better than them, and keep their music off it. If you are really speaking as a small artist, you should like it better that way.
-kahuna burger
Er, a throwaway line?
Perhaps some of the books talk more about clone wars, or the stormtroopers being clones, (are SW books cannonical?) but everything I recal of the actual movies supports the idea that biotech was not a concern. Come on, even when Luke lost his hand, he built a robotic one to replace it, even though it reminded him of Vader's transformation and scared him. Why not just grow a new one?
And even if you assume the same tech level, the same social structures lasting for millenia? Its their universe, they can say that if they want to, but why not be believable instead? What would they be losing?
-Kahuna Burger
Good luck with both your pets, I hope the one with cancer isn't in pain. I used to be a vet tech and have done some writing on animal death and euthanasia, so if you need to talk about anything, let me know.
-Kahuna Burger
no offense, but I know what I mean. In my opinion, CD is non-violent or it is not civil disobedience, it's "direct action" against the governement. Passive resistance is one of the components of civil disobedience, it describes how you respond to an arresting or expelling authority.
And even given your def. of CD, I have to ask again how supportive you are of blockading abortion clinics? It's a legitimate act of CD, but does that mean we should tolerate it?
Personlly, I feel that the "blockading" portion of the question speaks for itself. The purpose of those actions is not merely to protest, it is to physically prevent people from gaining access to health clinics which perform abortions. Just as sidewalk protesters do not merey be visable or audible, but activly stand in women's way and try to intimidate them. I know people who have done escort duty at Planned Parenthood when operation rescue was in town, and I do not consider their tactics CD.
Whether you "tolerate" or even support them depends entirely on to what extent you agree or disagree with the assumptions driving them.
On a clarifying note, if my state legislature ever gets around to passing the buffer zone law here, abortion right oponents will get a chance to practice CD by simply being (non-violently) inside the buffer zone. But I don't think that would suit their goals. CD is useless to them, because everyone knows how they feel and how strongly they feel about it. Their strategy seems to be to indimidate, not to change minds. IMHO intimidation is not a CD accomplishable objective.
-Kahuna Burger
Not bad for a hardcover, really, cut that in half and its softcover price in a searchable format. works for me.
But the micropayment thing is going to have to come into its own before this stuff will work. On the Napster threads, people keep going on about artists doing it for the love of the work and people paying them what they're worth. The idea seems to be to make the internet a giant subway where street musicians wait for your quarters. The problem is, on the internet, no one has any quarters. We don't even have singles. We have our credit cards and thats it. And, as was pointed out in the article, taking a dollar on a credit card is a money losing proposition for the artist. Plus, going to the trouble of entering your card number eliminates the feeling that tipping has - a casual thank you for a small favor, not considered or counted out carefully, just taken out of your pocket and tossed into the guitar case.
I don't know pay pals, but I do think that scemes like this are asking people to have a cash/small change mentality in a credit based/big bucks only environment until some micropayment system becomes standard.
All IHMO of course.
-kahuna Burger
I think of CD as a good thing, because I define it somewhat more narrowly than many people on this thread. CD, to me is intrinsicly non-violent, non-destructive and based mostly on getting attention and demonstrating the extent of your dedication to a cause. True CD (IMHO) does not "exert its views" over anyone - but it does put your views right out front where people have to deal with them, and they have to deal with the fact that the person expressing those views holds them so strongly that they will keep coming back, keep being arrested, keep being harrassed, because it means that much. The Boston Tea Party was not civil disobedience IMHO, because it involved destroying other people's property.
Mirroring your program everywhere so they "can't get rid of it" is not civil disobedience. Sitting in front of the courthouse until they arrest you and telling everyone that you are going through it for free software rights is. One tries to inspire other people with the depth of your commitment, the other just flaunts the law for its own sake. Its trying to bring the government to its senses instead of to its knees.
I have yet to see an act of civil disobedience out of this crowd.
-Kahuna Burger
Or am I? Letters to the editor are not altered without my permission. The nature of possible alterations is made clear when I send it in, and I can choose not to do so if I don't trust their editing. And, as the poster below noted, they cannot change the intent of the message, and it would never be acceptable to insert a message I did not intend. (Any inserted words are proper only to clarify a pronoun or similar cause and must be bracketed.)
Compare this to Deja. Posts will be altered unless you opt out, and the vast majority of posters won't even know that they can or should. Content is added, not deleted, and as a result a poster may apear to be promoting soemthing that zie is not. Editors edit Deja is adding. this is a major distinction.
That said, I did not phrase my orriginal statement very well. The point that I was trying to get across was that such a forum cannot alter the message that I am trying to get across or add content and still list it under my name.
-Kahuna Burger
This is stupid. The triangle looks like a little "hey this is a link" signal to newbies. there is nothing about it to indicate that the link itself is inserted. If you want to insult the intelligence of those who would make the mistake, whatever (though an intelligent person would insult their expereince). but I don't care who makes the mistake, the mistake is there to be made, no matter how many people try to deny it.
You're going way overboard and simply saying "everyone is trying to fuck me, the poster, over" for no reason and with no justification. Grow up; they're a few stupid little links, which any garden-variety moron can differentiate from the original poster's content.
Honey, I think you're projecting. I never said everyone was trying to do anything to me. I said that this instance is a problem to me, and you need to grow up if you think corporate profits trump my rights to communicate what I want to.
And in case it makes a dent in your "I look cool if I insult other people for defending their rights" attitude, it seems to me that this in also a violation of Deja's own terms of agreement for users, which makes it blazing clear that they have no responsibility for the content of any Usenet posting read through their service. By editing the content, they are violating their own terms of agreement, and IMHO taking responsibility for the content they are displaying.
-Kahuna Burger
Hmmm... Lets see. I have a brain, and I don't see a tiny orange triangle as "clearly discernable", especially for a new user of the service who has not seen dozens of other normal links in Deja posts. And since there will most likely be more of these kind of links that normal links, there is really no reason that a person of normal intelligence would see that little triangle and say "Oh! this must be trying to tell me that this link is inserted by Deja and not an orriginal part of the message!" The symbol looks to me like nothing more than an additional "this is a link" signal to newbies.
I have suggested other places that an honest way of doing the same thing would be to put a icon off to the side of the message that said "deja content". It would be clearly part of the deja expereince and not the message. The way Deja is doing it is dishonest and you don't need to insult the intelligence of people just to make them look better.
-kahuna Burger
They are corporate jerks because no legitamate business that dealt in people's writing would try to make money by putting ads in my mouth when I'm talking about something else.
This is not a writer's forum, and I can understand how some people wouldn't get it. But as a writer, I take my written words, be it a article, a letter to the editor or a rant on Usenet, very seriously. As a person with a mild reputation on some newsgroups, I take my posts that much more seriously. When someone alters the content and intent of my writing, whether by sticking in an editorial content into my article before publication, excising a crucial sentance of a letter to the editor or making it look like I am linking willy nilly to useless sites, I get mad.
If Deja were picking out key words relating to drugs and selling the poster's addresses to the DEA, /.ers would be in an uproar, even if its just a way of making money and something the DEA could have done on their own. Making money by misrepresenting thier posters is no better than making money by selling info.
-Kahuna Burger
So if I send a letter to the editor, or the "Confidential Chat" my local paper runs, it can be altered without notice and still published under my name? Do you understand what Public Domain is?
Even under public domain, there are still rights the orriginal author has. (Even a dead or sometimes even annonymous author.) You cannot take a peice of public domain and republish it under your own name. (Stupid columnist at the Globe recently got suspended for exactly that.) You cannot alter that content and republish it under the author's name, unless the orrignal is so well known and the alterations so severe that the entire thing is clearly satire.
Also, consider parts of their terms of agreement (which, as a new user, I just recently read). They spend entire paragraphs spelling out that they are only providing a link to these discussion groups, they are not responsible for anything you might find there. In order for their alteration of messages to be appropriate, they would have to be taking public domain works and choosing to republish them for their subscribers use. If they are republishing them, they are responsible for the content. I don't think they should be able to have it both ways.
-Kahuna Burger
The problem with just ignoring them is that a person who would put a real link to something relevant to what they are talking about has their effort wasted. This is not your problem, but it is another way that Deja is corrupting messages.
Their stated goals could have been honestly accomplished by sticking a little icon out to the side of the relevant sentance that says "deja content" or something and takes you to the same places. Their statement that no one would think it was you putting those links in your message is laughable, and their current method is IMWO* simply unethical.
(*In My Writer's Opinion. As a freelance writer I take my written words anywhere very seriously and get pissed when they are messed with.)
-Kahuna Burger
Yes and they are grim sites that the poster was trying to send you to. You seem to be missing who has a problem with this. As a deja reader, I am annoyed that the intent of other posters may be misrepresented to me by making it look like they linked to something they didn't. But as a Usenet poster, I am furious that the readers of Deja will be given an altered version of my writings.
As a /. reader in particular, I assume that links are deliberate, and factor the number and content of links into my assessment of a poster. Putting in links that were not intended is the problem, not just someone seeing an extra link in their day.
In my post below I recommended an honest way that Deja could accomplish the same goals. They chose a way that corrupts the person's message without their consent.
-Kahuna Burger
However, because we realize that some users would rather not have Deja display links to our Precision Buying Service content from product names mentioned in Usenet postings, we are currently in the process of implementing an "x-no-productlinks: yes" header which will suppress the generation of these hyperlinks on those messages.
What I am unclear on is whether they are only placing these links in posts that originated from Deja, or, as some parts of the post and response imply, into everything you can read on Deja.
The former would be bad enough, but if the latter, how do they expect to be able to communicate the "opt out"* option to everyone whose messages will be corrupted** by their new "service".
*It will of course be an opt out rather than opt in, and will probably be set up so you need to type it into every single message. Corporate jerks.
** Just for the record, I do consider this a serious corruption of a person's orriginal message. Maybe its just the /.er in me, but when I see a link in the body of a post, I see that as an intentional part of the message, and linking to something the poster was not talking about is as bad as re-editing a letter to the editor so that the word "copier" was followed by "of which xerox is the first and best".
An honest way to do this would be to stick in a little icon off to the side of the sentance in question that said "Deja content" or something. Make it very clearly a part of your Deja veiwing and not part of the intended message. But who expects web businesses to be honest?
-Kahuna Burger
-Kahuna burger
In fact, for all the problems I have with americans sometimes, I would say that respect for people's sexual rights is better here than most places around the globe. If thats backwards repression and not understanding sex, bring it on.
-Kahuna Burger
Don't be silly. Drinking is not a constitutionally protected right. Even though an amendment repeals the earlier nationwide prohibition, individual government bodies can still pass ordinances restricting alcohol for anyone of any age. (One of my favorite little seaside towns has been dry for decades. Even the resturants don't serve wine.)
And cruel and unusual is especially silly, since thats a restriction on the gov no matter who they are dealing with. Even non-citizens are protected.
-Kahuna Burger