The world already experimented with the idea that "knowledge is free to all". We ended up with opaque guilds that fiercely protected their trade secrets
Exactly in which way that's different from a world where software is sold without source code and movies are sold with DRM?
If the spirit of patents and copyrights were followed by the law, any work sold without full disclosure would be denied the protection of the law.
Otherwise, how can we be sure those studios will release the device drivers and keys for playing bluray discs 75 year after the author dies? Has Microsoft put the source code to Altair 8800 BASIC in escrow to be relased 75 years after Bill Gates dies?
You are right about the whole of the western world becoming like police states, but that's mostly due to the ridiculous ease with which any individual person can win a million-dollar litigation against an organization, be it a corporation, government agency, or even a professional such as a doctor.
When juries started to automatically side with the claimant just because the other side appeared to have money, no matter which stupid thing the plaintiff did, the modern nanny state was born. A nanny state is identical to a police state in that privacy does not exist. Parents *must* monitor their babies.
When citizens stop acting as responsible adults and start behaving like small children it's only to be expected that they will relinquish the rights of adults. With every right comes a responsibility.
Entertainment, media creation, information aggregators and sellers - all require strong copyright to exist. Without these protections they would be hurt, somewhat, and some would go away.
Are you sure of that? I remember a time when one got a lot of entertainment from radio and television where the only way we paid was from buying the items they advertised in the programs.
The greatest enemy the media industry faces today is their own greed. They have forgotten the main principle of the capitalist market economy: "KEEP THE CUSTOMER SATISFIED". They have replaced it with one they borrowed from the socialist world: "ACCORDING TO OUR PLANS, WE SHOULD GET THIS MUCH PROFIT"
The very simple fact is that the market has rejected business plans that say people should pay $0.99 for a song, or $17 for a CD, or $15 for a DVD.
Entertainment should be cheaper, much cheaper. I would be dead in a short while without oxygen, or water, or food. But I can subsist much longer without entertainment. With no pressing need, I'm not willing to pay too much for it.
Bring me the $0.10 song, the $1.00 CD or the $1.50 DVD and I'll readily buy them. At higher prices, I will not buy *anything* from the media industry.
An essential part of jury deliberations is keeping an open mind, explaining your thoughts and opinions, and listening to the opinions of others
Is this in any law? As far as I know, the only absolute thing in a trial by jury (under the American law) is this: in case of doubt, the accused is innocent.
He fully expected the sale to anyone that WATCHED that movie.
Let me tell you a true story very much like the theoretical example you posted. When I was a kid there was a Rolling Stones song I loved, but I had no money to buy the album and my parents hated rock music. Our neighbors had that album, and I used to run to the backyard to listen when they played it. Was I stealing?
I read that post, and the replies, and it seems to me the jury did it wrong. Particularly this post seems to hit the nail on the head.
A jury is *not* required to follow instructions to either absolve or condemn, otherwise what would be the meaning of it all? But too many jurors seem to be swayed by the judge's instructions, which should be mere guidelines. It's not the judge's privilege to make a decision in a trial by jury. In this case, the jury seems to have had a very technical interpretation based solely on the prosecution's version of what it means to deny access to a system.
Terry Childs, if what we read in many reports is true, never denied access to anyone who actually needed to use the system. His only crime was to use his best judgment on who should be allowed to access the passwords. He never denied access to the *system*, he denied access to the *passwords*, which is a different thing. I don't need to give you the keys to my house in order to let you in. I think the jury reached a wrong decision, because the law is very clear on this point.
It was his managers' duty to ensure that passwords were adequately managed, if they left that kind of decision entirely to Terry Childs then they shouldn't complain if his decisions weren't what they expected. When a manager lets a subaltern have total control of the passwords he cannot complain if that subaltern does exactly what he was ordered to do.
This is exactly what the army wants, because wounding one enemy soldier takes two or three other soldiers out of action
Urban legend, any army in the world would rather kill than wound, as a wounded soldier can still shoot. If this were true, armies would shoot rubber bullets.
With regard to damage,.223 - even HP - is considered to be a light hunting round, more suitable for varmints (like a coyote) but not recommended on larger game, like deer
Tell me again about that after you have been shot by an M-16.
Anyhow, considering muzzle velocity, weight isn't that important. Energy scales proportionally with weight, but at a square law with velocity. That's why the US armed forces have standardized with 0.223 inch calibers for over forty years.
For two soldiers carrying the same weight in ammo, the one with the lesser bullet weight has a lot more killing power than the one with the larger caliber bullets.
I will gladly volunteer IF you can find a significant statistical sample of people who are familiar with the English language, the American culture, and current supermarket prices that read the following sentence (FTFA) 'As she walked home, one of the "Mean Girls" drove by and threw a can of Red Bull at her' and conclude it was a full can.
Your English teacher at language interpretation class would ask the following questions:
1) How much does Red Bull cost?
2) What is more demeaning, to be hit by a full can of an expensive beverage or by an empty can?
3) Which is more significant, the 14 grams can or the 250 grams content?
4) Do people throw full cans of expensive beverage out of their cars?
Yes, I know that English, just like any other natural language, is ambiguous but there is something like common sense, an accepted meaning among people. The sentence "he saw that gasoline can explode" could mean either "he saw that it's possible for gasoline to explode" or "he witnessed that particular container of gasoline exploding", however I'm ready to bet that the majority of English language speakers would say that 'as she walked home, one of the "Mean Girls" drove by and threw a can of Red Bull at her' means the Red Bull can was empty.
You don't seem to have followed the link that I posted, which mentions "9.3mm caliber (.366" diameter)... Bullet weights typically run in the 250-300 grain range"
As for the beverage CAN, it weighs 14 grams. The CONTENTS are a different matter. If someone is reporting a case of assault as coming from a can, or a bottle, or any other container, it's presumed to be an EMPTY container, unless stated otherwise. After all, it's rather stupid to mention an attack by a "can" if the contents weigh twenty times as much as the can. At the very least, any literate reporter would write a "full can" in his newspiece.
Can you imagine how stupid a kid must be to be two years behind by fourth grade? He had to be a bully to compensate for that. His dad was very rich, that must have been some relief for him, but it didn't make him any more popular among the kids.
The only problem in being such a bully is that the other kids start to unite against you. Like the day, a few years later, when a contractor came to do some job at the school. Seeing his truck right besides the bully's motorbike, an idea came to us, and we put his bike in the back. The contractor drove away unaware, imagine his amazement the next morning when he found a motorcycle in his truck. The police promised to "investigate" the matter, while barely containing their laughter. His father wasn't very popular in the town, either...
(someone threw a red bull can at her out of a car, which could cause serious injury)
Only for very small values of "serious". A beverage can weighs 14 grams, about the same as a 9 mm bullet.
Assuming the most awesome car at top speed, the speed of a Ferrari is 100 m/s while the speed of a rifle bullet (same link) is 1000 m/s. Considering that energy scales with the square of velocity, it would take one of the most expensive cars in the world at top speed to cause one hundredth of the damage with a beverage can as a bullet shot from a gun that you can buy at any gun shop in the USA.
One the prime reasons that cyber bullying is of particular focus now is that you simply can't escape it
On the contrary, it's *very* easy to escape: don't log in.
When I was 9 I had to face a bad case of bullying by a kid that was 11 and had judo classes. Luckily, I managed to fix that by breaking his nose. Once, when he grabbed me from the back in a judo grip, I realized that his face was right behind my head, so I hit his nose with the back of my head. He was so ashamed that he never admitted to anyone that I had done it, he claimed he tripped and fell.
Compared to that kind of physical abuse, cyber bullying is nothing, just ignore it. You cannot ignore being held from the back in a judo grip by someone who is two years older and way bigger than you are.
It seems like the only people who don't trust Toyota anymore are people who drive non-Toyota vehicles. It reminds me of the Linux users who say Windows crashes all the time.
Wrong analogy. Windows does crash a lot. It should be "It reminds me of Windows users who say Linux isn't ready for the desktop".
Funny, this is the first time I ever saw a computer analogy used to explain a car problem in Slashdot. But, come to think of it, this is a rather neat analogy. Toyota is blaming their problems on driver error, Microsoft says third-party drivers are the only cause of crashes in Windows ever since XP came out.
Both of these corporations are *wrong* at that, any system should be resistant to outside errors.
A computer shouldn't crash just because a hardware driver fails. I have seen several Linux computers freeze when running some graphics applications, ATI cards are particularly prone to this, but you can still enter through the network and kill the offending application or, at worse, restart the windowing system. The fault with Windows is not the third-party hardware driver, it's the windowing system being built into the operating system.
Likewise, a car shouldn't depend entirely on one computer system for operation. Brakes, even with anti-lock, should have a hydraulic system that should always be able to stop the wheels from turning if the driver presses hard enough on the pedal. The transmission should have a mechanical lever that puts it into neutral. Steering should be operable by mechanic links from the wheel if the power-assisted system fails.
All this because a broken mechanical link or a leaking hydraulic system can be seen, or heard, but a software bug will remain lurking there undetected until it kills you.
in all the times you've driven in an automatic, how many times have you shifted to neutral - not through neutral, but to neutral?
I do it every time I stop at a red light. I put it back in D only when the light turns back to green. Saves a bit of gas and wear and tear in the whole car. What's the point in having to hold the brakes while the engine tries to pull the car forward?
This is not unlike payola, where a record label pays a radio station to promote sales of music. Except without the payment. Maybe I need a car analogy...
No need for car analogies here because it's typical of what every person involved with sales do. Offer the thing to everybody, but always claim it's not really for sale, it's too precious to sell.
Like when you go to a used car lot and the salesman tells you he cannot hold that car for you unless you close the deal right then and there, because there are so many people ready to take that car at a much higher price.
Slashdot Mirror
The question is not someone flushing your dump, it's more like having an automatic toilet that flushes as soon as you get up.
This could be a real inconvenience, suppose you wanted to submit a picture to Rate My Poo?
Exactly in which way that's different from a world where software is sold without source code and movies are sold with DRM?
If the spirit of patents and copyrights were followed by the law, any work sold without full disclosure would be denied the protection of the law.
Otherwise, how can we be sure those studios will release the device drivers and keys for playing bluray discs 75 year after the author dies? Has Microsoft put the source code to Altair 8800 BASIC in escrow to be relased 75 years after Bill Gates dies?
You are right about the whole of the western world becoming like police states, but that's mostly due to the ridiculous ease with which any individual person can win a million-dollar litigation against an organization, be it a corporation, government agency, or even a professional such as a doctor.
When juries started to automatically side with the claimant just because the other side appeared to have money, no matter which stupid thing the plaintiff did, the modern nanny state was born. A nanny state is identical to a police state in that privacy does not exist. Parents *must* monitor their babies.
When citizens stop acting as responsible adults and start behaving like small children it's only to be expected that they will relinquish the rights of adults. With every right comes a responsibility.
I clicked on your link and thought it was interesting, until I tried to find more about it.
Where is the data? A list that presents:
1) United States ...
2) Sweden
3) Greenland
WTF??? How is Greenland being third in anything relevant? Then (4) Bahamas, (5) Luxembourg, (6) Cyprus, (7) Paraguay...
Finding some parameter that orders the countries of the world in an unusual way, I could do that too.
Are you sure of that? I remember a time when one got a lot of entertainment from radio and television where the only way we paid was from buying the items they advertised in the programs.
The greatest enemy the media industry faces today is their own greed. They have forgotten the main principle of the capitalist market economy: "KEEP THE CUSTOMER SATISFIED". They have replaced it with one they borrowed from the socialist world: "ACCORDING TO OUR PLANS, WE SHOULD GET THIS MUCH PROFIT"
The very simple fact is that the market has rejected business plans that say people should pay $0.99 for a song, or $17 for a CD, or $15 for a DVD.
Entertainment should be cheaper, much cheaper. I would be dead in a short while without oxygen, or water, or food. But I can subsist much longer without entertainment. With no pressing need, I'm not willing to pay too much for it.
Bring me the $0.10 song, the $1.00 CD or the $1.50 DVD and I'll readily buy them. At higher prices, I will not buy *anything* from the media industry.
this picture provides a very good idea of the total volume of water on earth.
Is this in any law? As far as I know, the only absolute thing in a trial by jury (under the American law) is this: in case of doubt, the accused is innocent.
This may come as a surprise to you, but THE JURY IS ALLOWED TO DISREGARD INSTRUCTIONS
Let me tell you a true story very much like the theoretical example you posted. When I was a kid there was a Rolling Stones song I loved, but I had no money to buy the album and my parents hated rock music. Our neighbors had that album, and I used to run to the backyard to listen when they played it. Was I stealing?
If I could download something from tomorrow right now I surely wouldn't want Qt. A list of winning lottery numbers would be much better, IMHO.
I read that post, and the replies, and it seems to me the jury did it wrong. Particularly this post seems to hit the nail on the head.
A jury is *not* required to follow instructions to either absolve or condemn, otherwise what would be the meaning of it all? But too many jurors seem to be swayed by the judge's instructions, which should be mere guidelines. It's not the judge's privilege to make a decision in a trial by jury. In this case, the jury seems to have had a very technical interpretation based solely on the prosecution's version of what it means to deny access to a system.
Terry Childs, if what we read in many reports is true, never denied access to anyone who actually needed to use the system. His only crime was to use his best judgment on who should be allowed to access the passwords. He never denied access to the *system*, he denied access to the *passwords*, which is a different thing. I don't need to give you the keys to my house in order to let you in. I think the jury reached a wrong decision, because the law is very clear on this point.
It was his managers' duty to ensure that passwords were adequately managed, if they left that kind of decision entirely to Terry Childs then they shouldn't complain if his decisions weren't what they expected. When a manager lets a subaltern have total control of the passwords he cannot complain if that subaltern does exactly what he was ordered to do.
Better to make DRM and copyright mutually exclusive. If you use DRM you don't need the legal protection of copyright.
Urban legend, any army in the world would rather kill than wound, as a wounded soldier can still shoot. If this were true, armies would shoot rubber bullets.
Tell me again about that after you have been shot by an M-16.
You say PISTOL bullets, I say RIFLE bullets.
Anyhow, considering muzzle velocity, weight isn't that important. Energy scales proportionally with weight, but at a square law with velocity. That's why the US armed forces have standardized with 0.223 inch calibers for over forty years.
For two soldiers carrying the same weight in ammo, the one with the lesser bullet weight has a lot more killing power than the one with the larger caliber bullets.
I will gladly volunteer IF you can find a significant statistical sample of people who are familiar with the English language, the American culture, and current supermarket prices that read the following sentence (FTFA) 'As she walked home, one of the "Mean Girls" drove by and threw a can of Red Bull at her' and conclude it was a full can.
Your English teacher at language interpretation class would ask the following questions:
1) How much does Red Bull cost?
2) What is more demeaning, to be hit by a full can of an expensive beverage or by an empty can?
3) Which is more significant, the 14 grams can or the 250 grams content?
4) Do people throw full cans of expensive beverage out of their cars?
Yes, I know that English, just like any other natural language, is ambiguous but there is something like common sense, an accepted meaning among people. The sentence "he saw that gasoline can explode" could mean either "he saw that it's possible for gasoline to explode" or "he witnessed that particular container of gasoline exploding", however I'm ready to bet that the majority of English language speakers would say that 'as she walked home, one of the "Mean Girls" drove by and threw a can of Red Bull at her' means the Red Bull can was empty.
You don't seem to have followed the link that I posted, which mentions "9.3mm caliber (.366" diameter) ... Bullet weights typically run in the 250-300 grain range"
As for the beverage CAN, it weighs 14 grams. The CONTENTS are a different matter. If someone is reporting a case of assault as coming from a can, or a bottle, or any other container, it's presumed to be an EMPTY container, unless stated otherwise. After all, it's rather stupid to mention an attack by a "can" if the contents weigh twenty times as much as the can. At the very least, any literate reporter would write a "full can" in his newspiece.
Can you imagine how stupid a kid must be to be two years behind by fourth grade? He had to be a bully to compensate for that. His dad was very rich, that must have been some relief for him, but it didn't make him any more popular among the kids.
The only problem in being such a bully is that the other kids start to unite against you. Like the day, a few years later, when a contractor came to do some job at the school. Seeing his truck right besides the bully's motorbike, an idea came to us, and we put his bike in the back. The contractor drove away unaware, imagine his amazement the next morning when he found a motorcycle in his truck. The police promised to "investigate" the matter, while barely containing their laughter. His father wasn't very popular in the town, either...
Only for very small values of "serious". A beverage can weighs 14 grams, about the same as a 9 mm bullet.
Assuming the most awesome car at top speed, the speed of a Ferrari is 100 m/s while the speed of a rifle bullet (same link) is 1000 m/s. Considering that energy scales with the square of velocity, it would take one of the most expensive cars in the world at top speed to cause one hundredth of the damage with a beverage can as a bullet shot from a gun that you can buy at any gun shop in the USA.
On the contrary, it's *very* easy to escape: don't log in.
When I was 9 I had to face a bad case of bullying by a kid that was 11 and had judo classes. Luckily, I managed to fix that by breaking his nose. Once, when he grabbed me from the back in a judo grip, I realized that his face was right behind my head, so I hit his nose with the back of my head. He was so ashamed that he never admitted to anyone that I had done it, he claimed he tripped and fell.
Compared to that kind of physical abuse, cyber bullying is nothing, just ignore it. You cannot ignore being held from the back in a judo grip by someone who is two years older and way bigger than you are.
As opposed, I suppose, to Silverlight(TM)?
Which one, the good one, or the remake?
Wrong analogy. Windows does crash a lot. It should be "It reminds me of Windows users who say Linux isn't ready for the desktop".
Funny, this is the first time I ever saw a computer analogy used to explain a car problem in Slashdot. But, come to think of it, this is a rather neat analogy. Toyota is blaming their problems on driver error, Microsoft says third-party drivers are the only cause of crashes in Windows ever since XP came out.
Both of these corporations are *wrong* at that, any system should be resistant to outside errors.
A computer shouldn't crash just because a hardware driver fails. I have seen several Linux computers freeze when running some graphics applications, ATI cards are particularly prone to this, but you can still enter through the network and kill the offending application or, at worse, restart the windowing system. The fault with Windows is not the third-party hardware driver, it's the windowing system being built into the operating system.
Likewise, a car shouldn't depend entirely on one computer system for operation. Brakes, even with anti-lock, should have a hydraulic system that should always be able to stop the wheels from turning if the driver presses hard enough on the pedal. The transmission should have a mechanical lever that puts it into neutral. Steering should be operable by mechanic links from the wheel if the power-assisted system fails.
All this because a broken mechanical link or a leaking hydraulic system can be seen, or heard, but a software bug will remain lurking there undetected until it kills you.
I do it every time I stop at a red light. I put it back in D only when the light turns back to green. Saves a bit of gas and wear and tear in the whole car. What's the point in having to hold the brakes while the engine tries to pull the car forward?
I would give an arm and a leg for an ARM desktop computer.
No need for car analogies here because it's typical of what every person involved with sales do. Offer the thing to everybody, but always claim it's not really for sale, it's too precious to sell.
Like when you go to a used car lot and the salesman tells you he cannot hold that car for you unless you close the deal right then and there, because there are so many people ready to take that car at a much higher price.
Unless the children are adopted, I see no way to become a parent without fucking.