"I don`t want to bring in politics, but that "government microscope" you mentioned, reportedly will tend to be less regulative towards big corporations, a small side effect of the recent election results."
You also must remember: that government microscope was made by the lowest bidder.:)
"Okay, so the monster company created by this merger does seem a little worrying at first, especially given the amount of scare stories that this site has run. But thankfully the FCC has made sure that the new company must still allow other ISPs to access the content provided by Time-Warner, so there's no need to cry about locking people out. "
Here's the multi-billion dollar qustion for everyone: Do they (they being AOL-Time Warner) have to allow their internet customers to be able to access a competitor's content? I'm still surfing through the FCC text, but don't haven't seen any such detail.
As we all know to painfully well, the devil is in the details.
"I just wonder which company the government will fall under..."
The Controling Company.
Or probably "The Company" for short.
Of course, if you went the Truth in Advertising route, it would be called "Big Brother."
It would stand to reason that the management training manual would likely consist of a nightmarish compilation of 1984, Catch-22, Brave New World, Ferenheit 451, and a host of other works with which I am not familiar.
Though I'm not familiar with the book, I understand Dante's Inferno could also fit in as well.
This is a somehwat long comment. I plead with you, the reader, to take the time to read this completely, even if you read the first few paragraphs and decide I'm a loon. I know I'm not exactly the best or most coherent writer. I'm far from being the most educated or the most informed person on slashdot. I write this in spite of my limitations.
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Another huge corporation that wants to control our lives and determine what we do and when we do it..
Or am i just a bit pessimistic?:)
No. You're a realist.
A pessimist is what an optimist calls a realist.
Of course this is a grab for power. The more power they have over our lives, the more they can control how we spend the (meager) wages we eark out working for them.
Trent Rezor has it right: "God money don't want everything, he wants it all." Riches have always brought power. Power corrupts. At least, power corrupts those who seek it.
The men who run the world's mega-corporations certainly seek power. They also have vast riches. Anything that gives them more power, more riches, or allows them to thurther seek out power and riches, they'll do. To a mega-corporation, rules and morals are simply obsticles to me maneuvered around, toppled, or brutally crushed under the wheels of the huge corporate machine.
AOL-Time Warner is no different. Such is the status quo. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class gets screwed.
Unfortunaly, the money they make also brings political power, or at least political clout. What's frightening is how we allow such corporations to buy influence in government, and do so in such a very blatent and obviouse manner.
Some have argued that the people who work for and run corporations are citizens to, entitled to government representation. I argue that most people work not because they agree with a corporations actions, policies and politics: most employees are essentially drones in a corporations. Gears in the machine, if you will. It doesn't mean they like what their company does. It doesn't mean they agree with the positions of their corporate superiors. It means they are working to prodive themselves and possibly their family with the essentials of life, and perhaps afford some non-essential goods as well.
In most large corporations, the salaries of the CEO is about 2 or 3 powers of 10 (if not more) greater then the salaries of the average employee in a given large corporation or mega-corporation.
BTW, it'll be interesting to see the finicial report of electric utilities in California. I imagine that despite the lack of power generating facilities, their "high fuel cost" for producing power, and blackouts (rolling and otherwise), they will still manage to pull in a pretty decent profit. Oh yes, they'll eventually increase their power generation capabilities. However, the foundation will be poured upon our bruised and broken back, as well as the reminants of our bank accounts.
On the other hand, in the United States, electricity has become an essential in life. Without it, our furnace fan doesn't work. Without it, our (somewhat) affordable perishables spoil. People (and perhaps even other corporations)will only take astronomical power rates for so long.
There's already the threat of a rate revolt in California. The fuel's there. We're just waiting on the spark.
In the time it took you to load/. and post the story, you could have gone to e-bay and flipped the switches off.
We shouldn't *HAVE* to. If it were truly an error, why would the "correction" be to simply put us "in line with the rest of the eBay community"? Even if there *IS* nothing dirty going, the wording of their letter is damnable.
Not that I don't see how it's a stupid action, I just think you two are whining a little too much about it.
Why not complain now? Is this not the time to do so, BEFORE this is considered an acceptable practice? It's much harder to get rid of a practice once too many people (or companies) come to believe such a practice is acceptable.
Kinda reminds me of The Foolproof Ballot for Palm Beach County. You know what you want. You choose what you want. Ut's just that in the end, someone "helps" you make a "better" choice.
Didn't realize that Katherine Harris was eBay's CIO.
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Who benefits from this war?
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Apart from law enforcement, here's a few other powerful lobbies that benefit:
Gun and Law Enforcement Equipment Manufacturers.
Drug Testing companies.
For-profit rehab facilities.
Alcohol and tobacco.
People who have bought the propoganda.
There are others that benefit, and evils that I haven't seen touched yet:
Civil Forfiture: You don't even have to be charged with a crime. Your assets (car, money, home, computer, etc) can be seized as being suspected drug assets. PEOPLE are considered innocent until proven guilty, but a person's PROPERTY is guilty until you can prove it innocent. And since you can almost never prove that your property was not used for illegal activities, the government has a nice new car or house that you still have to make payments on. Of course, the money gets used, the cars and homes are sold at auction to the highest bidder. You never get compensated, you just get stuck with the payments for something you don't possess anymore. Oh yea, the people who go to those auctions make out big, so do the governments. So do the police. Next time you see a nice car being put on a flatbed, remember: That car's going to help pay for tghe propaganda your kid will get through their local DARE program.
Prison Industries: That's right, the people convicted of drug crimes are building BMWs in a prison factory in Indiana, if I remember correctly. In Iowa, prisoners are SOLD to the Texas corrections system. Iowa gets money for their prisoners, Iowa doesn't have to house them anymore, and Texas uses the prison labor in industry. States profit, industry gets cheap, forced labor, and where there's money being made, there's little incentive to change.
However, something I haven't figured out: Is there a tax break if your company is over a certain size, and you do pre-employment drug testing? It seems like evey company (unless they're a mom & pop operation, and some of those even test) does urine testing anymore. What are the costs of pre-employment drug screens? I have to imagine there's some kind of tax incentives, because no business in their right mind would spend money on something like that unless there was the major possibility of legal liability or unless there are even bigger tax benefits to doing so.
We have been slipping down this slope for a long time. Price (and people committing real crimes to afford drugs), impurities, and over doses due to varying potency are really caused by the prohibition of drugs. Remember: In the 20's, methenol (which causes blindness and death, among other things) was mixed into any kind of ethynol to keep people from being able to drink it. Our government was so gung-ho on prohibition that they would rather people DIED then to be able to have a drink of ethyl alcohol.
There is also the self-fulling prophecy that you can't achieve anything if you use drugs. We have drug testing to keep drug users from being able to work. We have laws in place to keep anyone who has been convicted of a "drug crime" from receiving federal tuition assistance, so drug users cannot get education. With every budget our government passes, there is more money set aside per capita to prosecute and imprison a person then there is set aside to educate them.
If drugs are really a dead end, it's only because the road has a police barricade.
From the logical side in me... If the developers hacking these systems would concentrate their obvious talent into something like perfecting support on standard PC/Mac etc hardware I think it may be more benificial to the community at large.
Why do people put their efforts into netBSD/DC? Because they can. Because obviously it's something they want to do. Because they have that freedom of will.
Besides, maybe they don't want to work on PC/Mac hardware. Maybe some of them ALREADY work on PC/Mac hardware. I don't know.
Consider this, though: To port netBSD to the Dreamcast, they probably have to have a good idea how to develop and OS port, they have to have an idea how to write device drivers, and certaily they would have had to have exercise that knowledge before. So what do you think they honed their skills on?
You know, it's probably better to have people working on project that are very enthusiastic and personally interested in a positive outcome.
First of all, I'd like to ask, how in the HELL did something this big manage to be slipped completely under our radar? Why did we hear about it only after implementation has been worked out?
Don't like the RIAA? Don't buy CD's. It is not as hard as it seems to break away from these industry's controls. If they saw that there was a limit to how far they could push these types of technologies before people just walk away, you can bet they would calm down. I think most of us get enough EM radiation at work. Go out, go to a bar, get laid, do something else.
How about the fact that the RIAA, the recording industry, the movie industry, and the software industry have way too much power (and way too many acronyms)?
Fair Use isn't dead yet, but it's on life support during a power failure, and the backup batteries are running low. We have many old movies whose celluloid is rotting away as we speak. A recording of many cultures, social attitudes,--things that could someday be considered historical treasures--are rotting away because certain companies own the rights to them, aren't using them, aren't preserving them, and aren't letting anyone preserve and restore them.
We really need to make the public more informed on these issues, and put some public pressure on Congress to pass some legislation that will protect us, protect Fair Use, and protect the buried treasure that would otherwise fade away in Hollywood film vaults.
The "permatemp" problem reaches far, far beyond Microsoft. To put it in perspective, Manpower (a temp agency) is *THE* largest employer in the United States.
A friend of mine has a term for the massive shift to temporary employees: Disposable Labor.
It is no suprise that in a society where everything else has disposable that labor has become disposable as well.
This social ill has been brought to you by the WTO. WTO: Globalizing Poverty!
Microsoft has invested MANY millions of dollars into their software -- something they obviously don't want to lose -- against your theory. With all the funky legal stuff going on in recent years, I must say if Microsoft hasn't used this vehicle, you are first, in my book, to give ideas to those who will;-)
Maybe he should patent that as a business process. Hmmm... One-Click Acquisition?
But actual hackers? No self-respecting hacker would ant or need to crib from Microsoft's notes. That would be like copying off the paper of the class idiot.
Most class idiots aren't pulling down A's. Microsoft software is almost standard (as in, it's there and used)in business environment.
As some people have pointed out, if someone makes the source to Microsoft software avaiable, a whole pandora's box could open:
3rd party programmers may be able to increase the stability and speed of their software under Windows.
By examining the source to say, Windows ME, Windows 2000, etc, we may have proof that Microsoft does or doesn't code their OS's to break specific peices of software.
As others have pointed out, this berak in proves just how insecure NT is. However, if the source is published, it may be possible to make NT more secure.
Of course, this makes it impossible for Microsoft to ignore obviouse problems with Outlook running vbs scripts from an e-mail.
Another interesting point is the impact on schools or libraries that CANNOT AFFORD to go out and buy blocking software for all their internet connected computers. So potentially, schools which are already underfunded will get more federal funds cut.
Answer me this: To get into Congress, do you have to play connect the dots and LOSE every time???
How many of us have actually *DONE* something about this issue? Not buying a damn t-shirt, actually showing up at political fundraisers and asking your Congressman what his position is?
We're really good at coming together on the net to voice our opinions, but we lack the widespread organization in Real Life (outside the net) to really leave our mark on the workings of government and the judicial system.
We may have a few organizations at the national level, but I believe that any organization would tell you that you need to have good organization at the state and local level. Such organization would be helpful when it comes time to hold demonstrations and petition congressmen and senators from our districts on issues.
Organization at the state level would also afford the opportunity to watch and petition state government on electronic issues as well. (How many states have passed UTICA laws now?) Organizations at the state level would be able to get assistance, information, ect. from other state-level organizations through ties to the natioal organization.
I know I'm being real vague, so I'll make my point: Somehow, we've got to organize in real life. We need a national organization, supported at the state and local level by state and local organizations. We need the state and local organizations to get people to lobby the congressmen and senators they elect. We need a national organization to provide direction and focus on nationwide issues, and provide support when issues come up at the state and local level.
My $0.02 worth. Organization on the national level is of course necessary as well, as you have to coordinate effort
Had you read the story that was linked to in the article, you would have read that itrace messages would only be sent for 1 out of 20,000 ICMP packets. Because of the size limitation of ICMP packet, they are only useful for diagnosing network problems, or as we have seen, for flooding a site to a point that it is unusable, or as we call them, Denial of Service attacks. Besides, unless you're IP spoofing, the administrator of the target network can already figure out where you're pinging or tracerouting from. The same is true for about any type of IP connection you make. Itrace really has no affect on privacy. It does, however, have an effect on people IP spoofing and lauching DoS attacks. Besides, I'm not entirly sure that I'm not responding to a troll.:)
Re:It didn't last long
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Geek Flavor
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Now the site can't be accessed at all.:( No permission for the directory. Either it's been shut down, or someone has done something really lame.
In about 1994, I had a 386DX-20. It one of of those Tandy 3000 computers, with a heavy ass case, and RUBBER SPACERS for the hard drive. Anyway, I was letting a friend use it, and went to pick it up. I put it on the roof of my car, and then got distracted. As I was leaving, the computer flew off the roof as I cornered.
I got out, pick up the computer, and took it home, feeling embarrassed as hell. However, when I plugged it in, it still worked fine. Case was dented pretty good, but it worked.
There is a reason I have a facination with older electronic equipment. stereo equipment, telephone sets, and lots of other stuff. I've got a Western Electric touch-tone phone (think Beige Box) that was made in the days where AT&T was *THE* phone company, and they still leased equipment. Of course, to keep replacement costs down, AT&T had them built to last. As a result, you can literally bludgeon someone to death with one of these phones, and then use it to call the coroner.:)
The problem is this: Sometime after the industrial revolution, when assembly lines were standard, and companies were spitting out product like never before, someone had the bright idea that they were building a product that was *TOO* good. (I think this probably started with light bulbs.) Someone figured that they could cut some corners, and produce a product that was cheaper to make. Of course, it didn't last as long, but it gave the added advantage that the product needed to be replaced more frequently. If they didn't reduced the selling price for their product, the extra money lined their pockets.
Of course, this seems (to me) to be a massive waste of resources. We could build better products that were more durable, and individuals could save a lot of money on replacement. We also be saving natural resources, reducing trash, and freeing up monitary and physical resources to use for other purposes.
Yes, it's true that you can get products that are more durable then is the standard. It's also true you pay out the nose for them, and that most people don't need products that can survive bomb blasts and 20 foot drops. I contend, hoever, that it isn't that expensive to build products that can take some abuse and still hold up well, even with modern manufacturing techniques. For me, a perfect example of durability in modern manufactoring is my Nokia 6190. It's been dropped times, and yet it still works well. A little scratched, one latch tab for the battery finally broke off, but still, it's useable.
Ultimately, DeCSS will be sent underground, and that could possibly strengthen the MPAA's argument that DeCSS is a tool of piracy (Oh look, they're hiding behind handles on secret undernet channels. They must be 31337 pir8ez.)
Exactly. I very much doubt that this is an accident. In fact, it looks like a strategy that is working very well. First demonize DeCSS as being a tool of pirates. Then send hoardes of lawyers into court to seek unjuctions against anyone even LINKING to DeCSS, and push the supporters underground. Then point to their underground nature.
They know *EXACTLY* what they're doing, and they're doing it quite well.
Napster doesn't have to serve as a means to illegal music. In my own opinion, I think that RIAA and the government shouldn't be trying to get rid of Napster. Instead, they should be trying to work in concert with Napster to fundamentally change it. Wouldn't you enjoy a free service where you could download the latest popular songs in mp3 format, in order to preview the cd?
But which tracks will be pick as samples? Certainly the ones that get the best reaction. You ever buy a CD becuase of a couple great song you heard from it, only to find out the rest of the CD was utter crap?
Or how about a fully downloadable album at reduced sound quality? Napster could even retain the free trading system by letting users trade only certain "accepted" mp3's, or by imposing a lower sound quality (say 56kb/s) on each downloaded song. If this were the case, you could download and then buy the cd, helping Napster and the RIAA thrive.
As with limiting trading to certain "accepted" mp3's, you would put a serious crimp on trading of concert recordings (of band that allow the recording of concert and trading of those recordings), and the trade of lesser known artists trying to get their music out.
How would Napster ever be able to deal with say, the volume of Phish concert recordings?
Do we want Napster to be another puppet of the recording industry? We can already see that the RIAA wants to control the what media you can play, where you can play that media, where you can buy that media, how much you pay for that media, and what means you can use to play that media. You only need to look at the DVD controversy to see that.
Remember lyrics.ch? Since the RIAA castrated them, I haven't been able to find lyrics to any of the songs that I've searched for, but there always seems to be a link to "Buy this CD!"
Just how obscenely powerful and weathy does one industry need to be anyway? It seems the more we feed them, the more hungry they become. What's worse, they've concentrated so much that they control most of what we see and hear.
Corporatism is here, but only because the general public has been apathic and uninformed enough to let it happen.
What's worse, is that they use and bankroll the very government that is supposed to represent us.
Industry may be able to outspend the average citizen, but we can do something that (hopefully) they can never do: VOTE.
Just remember: Politicians are like babies diapers: They both stink after awhile, and need to be changed frequently.
Besides, online cd sales places at this point literally sell a cd and ship it to you, and they can sell them for cheaper due to a loophole in the recording industry's pricing scheme (they forbid places that sell their cds to advertise a price lower than X dollars... online places don't advertise generally, so it doesn't affect them) (there's currently debate going on in congress about whether or not this policy is of the recording industry's is legal... it may drop prices for everyone soon) Actually, I believe the Supreme Court recently took up this issue. If I recall correctly, they said that such practices were illegal. However, I cannot say that for sure, so if anyone has better information they can cite, do post it.
Slashdot Mirror
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You also must remember: that government microscope was made by the lowest bidder. :)
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Here's the multi-billion dollar qustion for everyone: Do they (they being AOL-Time Warner) have to allow their internet customers to be able to access a competitor's content? I'm still surfing through the FCC text, but don't haven't seen any such detail.
As we all know to painfully well, the devil is in the details.
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Or probably "The Company" for short.
Of course, if you went the Truth in Advertising route, it would be called "Big Brother."
It would stand to reason that the management training manual would likely consist of a nightmarish compilation of 1984, Catch-22, Brave New World, Ferenheit 451, and a host of other works with which I am not familiar.
Though I'm not familiar with the book, I understand Dante's Inferno could also fit in as well.
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Another huge corporation that wants to control our lives and determine what we do and when we do it..
Or am i just a bit pessimistic? :)
No. You're a realist.
A pessimist is what an optimist calls a realist.
Of course this is a grab for power. The more power they have over our lives, the more they can control how we spend the (meager) wages we eark out working for them. Trent Rezor has it right: "God money don't want everything, he wants it all." Riches have always brought power. Power corrupts. At least, power corrupts those who seek it.
The men who run the world's mega-corporations certainly seek power. They also have vast riches. Anything that gives them more power, more riches, or allows them to thurther seek out power and riches, they'll do. To a mega-corporation, rules and morals are simply obsticles to me maneuvered around, toppled, or brutally crushed under the wheels of the huge corporate machine.
AOL-Time Warner is no different. Such is the status quo. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class gets screwed. Unfortunaly, the money they make also brings political power, or at least political clout. What's frightening is how we allow such corporations to buy influence in government, and do so in such a very blatent and obviouse manner.
Some have argued that the people who work for and run corporations are citizens to, entitled to government representation. I argue that most people work not because they agree with a corporations actions, policies and politics: most employees are essentially drones in a corporations. Gears in the machine, if you will. It doesn't mean they like what their company does. It doesn't mean they agree with the positions of their corporate superiors. It means they are working to prodive themselves and possibly their family with the essentials of life, and perhaps afford some non-essential goods as well.
In most large corporations, the salaries of the CEO is about 2 or 3 powers of 10 (if not more) greater then the salaries of the average employee in a given large corporation or mega-corporation.
BTW, it'll be interesting to see the finicial report of electric utilities in California. I imagine that despite the lack of power generating facilities, their "high fuel cost" for producing power, and blackouts (rolling and otherwise), they will still manage to pull in a pretty decent profit. Oh yes, they'll eventually increase their power generation capabilities. However, the foundation will be poured upon our bruised and broken back, as well as the reminants of our bank accounts.
On the other hand, in the United States, electricity has become an essential in life. Without it, our furnace fan doesn't work. Without it, our (somewhat) affordable perishables spoil. People (and perhaps even other corporations)will only take astronomical power rates for so long.
There's already the threat of a rate revolt in California. The fuel's there. We're just waiting on the spark.
Anyone have a lightning rod?
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We shouldn't *HAVE* to. If it were truly an error, why would the "correction" be to simply put us "in line with the rest of the eBay community"? Even if there *IS* nothing dirty going, the wording of their letter is damnable.
Not that I don't see how it's a stupid action, I just think you two are whining a little too much about it.
Why not complain now? Is this not the time to do so, BEFORE this is considered an acceptable practice? It's much harder to get rid of a practice once too many people (or companies) come to believe such a practice is acceptable.
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Didn't realize that Katherine Harris was eBay's CIO.
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- Gun and Law Enforcement Equipment Manufacturers.
- Drug Testing companies.
- For-profit rehab facilities.
- Alcohol and tobacco.
- People who have bought the propoganda.
There are others that benefit, and evils that I haven't seen touched yet:However, something I haven't figured out: Is there a tax break if your company is over a certain size, and you do pre-employment drug testing? It seems like evey company (unless they're a mom & pop operation, and some of those even test) does urine testing anymore. What are the costs of pre-employment drug screens? I have to imagine there's some kind of tax incentives, because no business in their right mind would spend money on something like that unless there was the major possibility of legal liability or unless there are even bigger tax benefits to doing so.
We have been slipping down this slope for a long time. Price (and people committing real crimes to afford drugs), impurities, and over doses due to varying potency are really caused by the prohibition of drugs. Remember: In the 20's, methenol (which causes blindness and death, among other things) was mixed into any kind of ethynol to keep people from being able to drink it. Our government was so gung-ho on prohibition that they would rather people DIED then to be able to have a drink of ethyl alcohol.
There is also the self-fulling prophecy that you can't achieve anything if you use drugs. We have drug testing to keep drug users from being able to work. We have laws in place to keep anyone who has been convicted of a "drug crime" from receiving federal tuition assistance, so drug users cannot get education. With every budget our government passes, there is more money set aside per capita to prosecute and imprison a person then there is set aside to educate them.
If drugs are really a dead end, it's only because the road has a police barricade.
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Why do people put their efforts into netBSD/DC? Because they can. Because obviously it's something they want to do. Because they have that freedom of will.
Besides, maybe they don't want to work on PC/Mac hardware. Maybe some of them ALREADY work on PC/Mac hardware. I don't know.
Consider this, though: To port netBSD to the Dreamcast, they probably have to have a good idea how to develop and OS port, they have to have an idea how to write device drivers, and certaily they would have had to have exercise that knowledge before. So what do you think they honed their skills on?
You know, it's probably better to have people working on project that are very enthusiastic and personally interested in a positive outcome.
So why climb that mountain? Because it's there!
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How about the fact that the RIAA, the recording industry, the movie industry, and the software industry have way too much power (and way too many acronyms)?
Fair Use isn't dead yet, but it's on life support during a power failure, and the backup batteries are running low. We have many old movies whose celluloid is rotting away as we speak. A recording of many cultures, social attitudes,--things that could someday be considered historical treasures--are rotting away because certain companies own the rights to them, aren't using them, aren't preserving them, and aren't letting anyone preserve and restore them.
We really need to make the public more informed on these issues, and put some public pressure on Congress to pass some legislation that will protect us, protect Fair Use, and protect the buried treasure that would otherwise fade away in Hollywood film vaults.
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Naw, if anything, George "Dubbya" would morph into a 30 foot nose with a McDonald's straw. In other words, Cokezilla!
Better bring in the dumptrucks of nose candy before he heads for Tokoyo.
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A friend of mine has a term for the massive shift to temporary employees: Disposable Labor.
It is no suprise that in a society where everything else has disposable that labor has become disposable as well.
This social ill has been brought to you by the WTO. WTO: Globalizing Poverty!
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Maybe he should patent that as a business process. Hmmm... One-Click Acquisition?
Most class idiots aren't pulling down A's. Microsoft software is almost standard (as in, it's there and used)in business environment.
As some people have pointed out, if someone makes the source to Microsoft software avaiable, a whole pandora's box could open:
- 3rd party programmers may be able to increase the stability and speed of their software under Windows.
- By examining the source to say, Windows ME, Windows 2000, etc, we may have proof that Microsoft does or doesn't code their OS's to break specific peices of software.
- As others have pointed out, this berak in proves just how insecure NT is. However, if the source is published, it may be possible to make NT more secure.
Of course, this makes it impossible for Microsoft to ignore obviouse problems with Outlook running vbs scripts from an e-mail.Another interesting point is the impact on schools or libraries that CANNOT AFFORD to go out and buy blocking software for all their internet connected computers. So potentially, schools which are already underfunded will get more federal funds cut. Answer me this: To get into Congress, do you have to play connect the dots and LOSE every time???
STOP IT!!!!
You're giving me flashback to Microsoft certification tests, man!
Naw.... we should call this cluster iSkittles. iSkittles: Process the Rainbow.
But who's going to make the "Nanotubes Rock!" t-shirts?
We're really good at coming together on the net to voice our opinions, but we lack the widespread organization in Real Life (outside the net) to really leave our mark on the workings of government and the judicial system.
We may have a few organizations at the national level, but I believe that any organization would tell you that you need to have good organization at the state and local level. Such organization would be helpful when it comes time to hold demonstrations and petition congressmen and senators from our districts on issues.
Organization at the state level would also afford the opportunity to watch and petition state government on electronic issues as well. (How many states have passed UTICA laws now?) Organizations at the state level would be able to get assistance, information, ect. from other state-level organizations through ties to the natioal organization.
I know I'm being real vague, so I'll make my point: Somehow, we've got to organize in real life. We need a national organization, supported at the state and local level by state and local organizations. We need the state and local organizations to get people to lobby the congressmen and senators they elect. We need a national organization to provide direction and focus on nationwide issues, and provide support when issues come up at the state and local level.
My $0.02 worth. Organization on the national level is of course necessary as well, as you have to coordinate effort
Had you read the story that was linked to in the article, you would have read that itrace messages would only be sent for 1 out of 20,000 ICMP packets. Because of the size limitation of ICMP packet, they are only useful for diagnosing network problems, or as we have seen, for flooding a site to a point that it is unusable, or as we call them, Denial of Service attacks. Besides, unless you're IP spoofing, the administrator of the target network can already figure out where you're pinging or tracerouting from. The same is true for about any type of IP connection you make. Itrace really has no affect on privacy. It does, however, have an effect on people IP spoofing and lauching DoS attacks. Besides, I'm not entirly sure that I'm not responding to a troll. :)
Now the site can't be accessed at all. :( No permission for the directory. Either it's been shut down, or someone has done something really lame.
I got out, pick up the computer, and took it home, feeling embarrassed as hell. However, when I plugged it in, it still worked fine. Case was dented pretty good, but it worked.
There is a reason I have a facination with older electronic equipment. stereo equipment, telephone sets, and lots of other stuff. I've got a Western Electric touch-tone phone (think Beige Box) that was made in the days where AT&T was *THE* phone company, and they still leased equipment. Of course, to keep replacement costs down, AT&T had them built to last. As a result, you can literally bludgeon someone to death with one of these phones, and then use it to call the coroner. :)
The problem is this: Sometime after the industrial revolution, when assembly lines were standard, and companies were spitting out product like never before, someone had the bright idea that they were building a product that was *TOO* good. (I think this probably started with light bulbs.) Someone figured that they could cut some corners, and produce a product that was cheaper to make. Of course, it didn't last as long, but it gave the added advantage that the product needed to be replaced more frequently. If they didn't reduced the selling price for their product, the extra money lined their pockets.
Of course, this seems (to me) to be a massive waste of resources. We could build better products that were more durable, and individuals could save a lot of money on replacement. We also be saving natural resources, reducing trash, and freeing up monitary and physical resources to use for other purposes.
Yes, it's true that you can get products that are more durable then is the standard. It's also true you pay out the nose for them, and that most people don't need products that can survive bomb blasts and 20 foot drops. I contend, hoever, that it isn't that expensive to build products that can take some abuse and still hold up well, even with modern manufacturing techniques. For me, a perfect example of durability in modern manufactoring is my Nokia 6190. It's been dropped times, and yet it still works well. A little scratched, one latch tab for the battery finally broke off, but still, it's useable.
Exactly. I very much doubt that this is an accident. In fact, it looks like a strategy that is working very well. First demonize DeCSS as being a tool of pirates. Then send hoardes of lawyers into court to seek unjuctions against anyone even LINKING to DeCSS, and push the supporters underground. Then point to their underground nature.
They know *EXACTLY* what they're doing, and they're doing it quite well.
But which tracks will be pick as samples? Certainly the ones that get the best reaction. You ever buy a CD becuase of a couple great song you heard from it, only to find out the rest of the CD was utter crap?
Or how about a fully downloadable album at reduced sound quality? Napster could even retain the free trading system by letting users trade only certain "accepted" mp3's, or by imposing a lower sound quality (say 56kb/s) on each downloaded song. If this were the case, you could download and then buy the cd, helping Napster and the RIAA thrive.
As with limiting trading to certain "accepted" mp3's, you would put a serious crimp on trading of concert recordings (of band that allow the recording of concert and trading of those recordings), and the trade of lesser known artists trying to get their music out.
How would Napster ever be able to deal with say, the volume of Phish concert recordings?
Do we want Napster to be another puppet of the recording industry? We can already see that the RIAA wants to control the what media you can play, where you can play that media, where you can buy that media, how much you pay for that media, and what means you can use to play that media. You only need to look at the DVD controversy to see that.
Remember lyrics.ch? Since the RIAA castrated them, I haven't been able to find lyrics to any of the songs that I've searched for, but there always seems to be a link to "Buy this CD!"
Just how obscenely powerful and weathy does one industry need to be anyway? It seems the more we feed them, the more hungry they become. What's worse, they've concentrated so much that they control most of what we see and hear.
Corporatism is here, but only because the general public has been apathic and uninformed enough to let it happen.
What's worse, is that they use and bankroll the very government that is supposed to represent us.
Industry may be able to outspend the average citizen, but we can do something that (hopefully) they can never do: VOTE.
Just remember: Politicians are like babies diapers: They both stink after awhile, and need to be changed frequently.
Besides, online cd sales places at this point literally sell a cd and ship it to you, and they can sell them for cheaper due to a loophole in the recording industry's pricing scheme (they forbid places that sell their cds to advertise a price lower than X dollars... online places don't advertise generally, so it doesn't affect them) (there's currently debate going on in congress about whether or not this policy is of the recording industry's is legal... it may drop prices for everyone soon) Actually, I believe the Supreme Court recently took up this issue. If I recall correctly, they said that such practices were illegal. However, I cannot say that for sure, so if anyone has better information they can cite, do post it.