Even though they'll certainly bill it to the RNC...
Those specific purchases, on paper, will have been made with donations from the RNC [except those on staffers' credit cards!], but in the real world the public funds help the private, RNC and individual donors' money, go farther. So, we as taxpayers paid for almost half of Sarah's hillbilly spending spree, and the RNC paid for most of the other half. Of course, the real victims are the staff members who had to work with Palin and float her excursion to the real American cities with their hard-earned personal funds.
You were taxed for the Palin family's shopping spree, but not for Michelle Obama's funny-looking black-with-red dress, because McCain-Palin accepted public financing and Obama-Biden did not. Even though they'll certainly bill it to the RNC, McCain's campaign had more of the RNC's money to waste on wardrobes due to public financing. So in effect we were taxed for half of all their expenses, from bathroom tissue to needless markups. Which is why McCain's whining about Obama's private, donor-funded campaign and "floodgates" didn't work. If he had been serious about "campaign finance reform" McCain would have insisted that only individual citizens may give to candidates and political parties. If businesspersons want to donate, they must have the courage to put their name on their activities, to donate as individuals like everybody else.
Biden is on record talking against coal, and Obama himself talked in January (when he needed to appeal to the Left, rather than the whole country), how he'll bankrupt the coal industry.
FYI, the absence of any source for the above opinion about Obama's position on coal is even more conspicuous due to the liberal use of hyperlinks for your other claims.
I mean seriously, all those paranoid big chiefs sitting in powerful seats within government organizations? They have careers to protect. Why not make whoever gets into power fearful of the "outside world and it's dangers" before they even get into office? Sure would help get their policy in line with the policy of aforementioned big chiefs in government seats.
s/government/corporate
War or no war, we will have government. Halliburton and Blackwater are the prime suspects according to the "follow the money" school of investigation which was employed to discover the Watergate crimes. Beware the military-industrial complex.
mean, escaping spaces is all fine and dandy, but what about "/usr/bin/?*&!" Perfectly legal unix filename, but an unholy bitch to deal with. Not that anyone would ever do that with non-malicious motives, but still...
Self-defense is non-malicious, even if it pisses off attackers. :p
Normally I like to see these things divided between the two parties so nobody gets too far away from lagom.
"Normally I like" countries that go to war only in legitimate self-defense, not outright lies about suitcase nukes, substantiated only by a source known as "curveball."
George Walker Bush and Dick Cheney are traitors and their GOP accomplices in the Congress do not deserve the trust "normally" extended to the Legislative Branch, to keep the Executive in check.
If the Republican Party's main competitor were the International Communist Party, would you want balanced representation by both in the House and Senate? Well, I, and many other voters, don't want a Congress with a balanced composition of democrats and the fascists who today call themselves "Republicans." In a republic, the elected represent the people instead of the people deciding everything by referendum, in a democracy. The GOP is not Republican, it represents big business first, people only by happenstance. Fascists, QED.
...everybody is polarized into two virtually identical camps, each one thinking that the other camp's opinions are so insane that only an idiot or a villain could hold them. As such, absolutely no useful discussion can take place anymore.
Then, what, you're just practicing your typing skills here?
If the voter can not properly answer the question then he forfeits his right to vote due to Mental Incompetence. Mentally-incompetent people are typically treated the same way, legally, as a minor. Minors can not vote.
1) Name one indicator of macroeconomic health that economists describe with the phrase "fundamentals of the economy".
No, Panderpants, it is not "the American worker." Just because you're campaigning to the "non-elite" voter demographic doesn't mean you're excused from a basic understanding of the job you're seeking. My reading of the polls is that even your core constituents began wondering if you were deliberately insulting their intelligence, or whether you're really that stupid yourself.
2) Is bin Laden an Afghan or a Shiite?
If you're caught trying to cheat the people by copying answers, say from Joe Lieberman for sake of discussion, you will also be removed from any office you currently hold. Maybe you can find gainful employment making deliveries for a nearby beer distributor.
Obviously, until we have stricter minimum standards for a representatives than an age and being birthed in United States territory, any such test for the voter puts the cart before the horse. Then, there will still be the problem that voting is a right, not a privilege to be exercised according to anybody else's standards, but at least the candidates would be held to the same standard, albeit unjust and un-Constitutional.
Between the two major candidates there's just not enough difference between them to effect my vote. Big business will continue to run the government no matter who wins, the war will go on, and probably expand, and thousands of people will remain in prison over possession of a plant.
Don't expect a "legalize it" presidential candidate, ever. By the time legalization is socially compatible with a winning campaign for president, it will have already happened, from the bottom up. So if poking smot is important enough to you to influence your vote for President, get to work petitioning Congress, and organizing prominent law enforcement personnel in your state to hold press conferences to educate your fellow voters who don't care, but are satisfied leaving prohibition laws on the books. You don't even have to do any original work, just use teh Google. Plenty of reputable studies already show that prohibiting recreational use of drugs is always a net loss for the society foolish enough to keep and enforce such laws.
It's very simple. Even with prohibition laws, it's the social stigma, not the law that keeps people from using frowned-upon chemicals. Those who are not dissuaded by law or stigma finance a lucrative market for contraband which, according to pure economics, is overpriced compared to the costs of manufacture and market demand. The thefts and violence that result spread the damage of drug abuse from users and their direct acquaintances to many more random bystanders. The myth that sustains drug prohibition is that drug violence is caused by intoxication and withdrawal symptoms. The truth is that elevated, easy profits, not physiological effects of intoxicants are responsible for the vast majority of prohibition-related violence [as opposed to the fallacy "drug-related" violence, which only truly describes the angry drunk who starts a bar fight].
The RIAA/MPAA are recovering damages they have not proven they have suffered. How is this even a question? As I said the last time we discussed the RIAA:
What "loss of revenue"? Document the loss of revenue, or throw out the cases. Granted, copyright is violated with not-for-profit file sharing, but without proven [the standard of guilt according to the supreme laws of the land, remember] loss of revenue, the only equitable punishment, meaning fitting the crime, is to confiscate the copies and nothing more. Because in cases that the copies are shared without payment, no loss of revenue is apparent, and can only be ascertained by speculation -- of various levels of sophistication, but ultimately it can be no more than speculation -- and that is traditionally not admissible as evidence. Is it admissible as argument? Reasonable suspicion? If so, then also and equally, as counterargument and as reasonable doubt, respectively.
Disclaimer: I'm not very interested in this subject and thus not especially well-read in it, but occasionally I feel motivated to donate my $0.02 to a discussion, for basically the same reason people watch Jerry Springer I guess, just the absurd, yet presumed "real" spectacle of it.
I most often see [notice] the question of lost revenue in file sharing cases discussed as mitigating the criminals' intent, as in something for the judge to consider in assigning a lighter or harsher sentence, but not factored into the determination of guilt or innocence. But I think the absence of exchange of money absolves the mischief-makers of any financially quantifiable crime, not because of their inferred "good intentions" or absence of malice, but simply and amorally, because the assumption of lost revenue is unproven, thus legally invalid according to the assumption of innocence until proven guilty in the United States.
No, a downloaded file is not as good as the original. Some mp3s are "as good" -- for purposes of background noise, but not hi-fi or audiophile intense enjoyment of a real work of art -- as the original. But even when sound quality alone is not important enough for the downloader to purchase the copyrighted work on its originally intended format, the suitability of an mp3 is not reliably comparable to a CD. The unwanted insertion or removal of 2-second pauses between tracks on an album comes to mind, a much more noticeable defect to the casual listener than "quality" differences in mp3s or compressed video. Also, dedicated fans, defined as willing to pay retail CD mark-ups, generally want the liner notes, the high-quality photos and/or artwork, etc., available only on the original. Downloaders are not, generally, the same people as purchasers of the same work. So, no, it is not reasonable to assume that each file downloaded represents a lost sale, of either an album or single or anything, nor even that a consistent ratio of downloads to one lost sale, exists. Any such ratio would differ according to the particular work [genre, live performance vs. studio recording, etc.] and the average quality standards of the audience.
For the reason of the differences I described above, I purchase any music or video I expect to be worthy of my time, basically because I value the one or more hours that I might otherwise spend learning something, too valuable to waste on the chance of copying errors. I've seen software being written, so I don't trust my music to software. Despite having no files in my personal collection subject to the DMCA, music and software copyright litigation is a blatant waste of the judicial system which I'm taxed to perpetuate. The cost/benefit analysis is a matter of public record, and does not support the business case for the corporations to initiate litigation. Only the lawyers are gaining from this. So, as they're already running the businesses [into the ground, btw] let ^H^H^H make them write the code and the lyrics, too, for Pete's sake. Right now, they are looting economic value, meaning acquiring loot without providing anything of value, to anybody.
Users will be so conditioned to accepting mediocrity that even iterative improvements will seem like miracles. Technologists are then rewarded as miracle-workers for delivering the bare minimum.
A few paragraphs earlier the author made a better point, that users are the cause of mediocrity in their own software, via their demands of software that's so easy a caveman could use it.
In a keynote speech in 1997, Alan Kay affirmed the success of Arpanet, the Internet's predecessor, on which he worked. Yet almost as an aside, he decimated our conceptions of the worth of standard Web technologies, such as HTML: "HTML on the Internet has gone back to the dark ages because it presupposes that there should be a browser that understands its formats... You don't need a browser, if you followed what this Staff Sergeant in the Air Force knew how to do in 1961. You just read [data] in. It should travel with all the things that it needs, and you don't need anything more complex than something like X Windows."
All the other paragraphs of buzzwords and euphemisms like "content-centric" are just fig leaves for the fact that the less users understand about the tools they use, the more those tools have to be dumbed-down. That always includes a cost in functionality, either in versatility [only one mode of operation, or relatively narrow ranges of configurability in relatively few, narrowly defined modes] or efficiency [Windows users don't know how to restart a process or the ramifications of unloading one hardware driver in favor of another, so now every minor tweak requires a full reboot. Or so I'm told.].
Let's see... an organization repeatedly violates federal laws and despite assurances leaves in place the exact system that promotes the law breaking (pay per registration) and miserably polices itself.
Laws require that ACORN flag suspicious registrations, but leave deletion to the government. Do you know of ACORN systematically getting either part of that wrong? The GOP would love to have the info, because so far they've had to whine about ACORN in conspicuously vague terms while they dance around the fact that any real wrongdoing by its entry-level hires is consistently, conscientiously reported by the organization.
I found the post implied only that logic is the standard of the quality of an argument, not that "the economy (and the world in general, for that matter) functions in a manner consistent with logic." Granted, the historical record includes illogical behavior, but such does not alter the definitions of logic and truth.
The judge did not seem to acknowledge any responsibility on her part, however, for having created the 'imbalance,' and also stated that the law is 'overwhelmingly on the side of the record companies,' even though she seems to recognize that for the past 5 years she has been hearing only one side of the legal story."
This has gotten completely out of hand. The law is not "overwhelmingly" on the side of the RIAA/MPAA, from my perspective. In some cases, probably, and in other cases, definitely not.
What "loss of revenue"? Document the loss of revenue, or throw out the cases. Granted, copyright is violated with not-for-profit file sharing, but without proven [the standard of guilt according to the supreme laws of the land, remember] loss of revenue, the only equitable punishment, meaning fitting the crime, is to confiscate the copies, and nothing more. Because, in cases that the copies are shared without payment, no loss of revenue is apparent, and can only be ascertained by speculation -- of various levels of sophistication, but ultimately it can be no more than speculation -- and that is traditionally not admissible as evidence. Is it admissible as argument? Reasonable suspicion? If so, then also and equally, as reasonable doubt.
Disclaimer: I'm not very interested in this subject and thus not especially well-read in it, but occasionally I feel motivated to donate my $0.02 to a discussion, for basically the same reason people watch Jerry Springer I guess, just the absurd, "real" spectacle of it.
I most often see [notice] the question of lost revenue in file sharing cases discussed as mitigating the criminals' intent, as in something for the judge to consider in assigning a lighter sentence, but not factored into the determination of guilt or innocence. But I think the absence of exchange of money absolves the mischief-makers of any financially quantifiable crime, not because of their inferred "good intentions" or absence of malice, but simply and amorally, because the assumption of lost revenue is totally invalid.
No, a downloaded file is not as good as the original. Some mp3s are "as good" -- for purposes of background noise, but not hi-fi or audiophile intense enjoyment of a real work of art -- as the original, but even when sound quality is not important enough for the downloader to purchase the original copyrighted work, the suitability of an mp3 is not reliably comparable to a CD. The unwanted insertion or removal of 2-second pauses between tracks on an album comes to mind, a much more noticeable defect to the casual listener than "quality" differences in mp3s or compressed video. Also, dedicated fans, defined as willing to pay retail CD mark-ups, generally want the liner notes, the high-quality photos and/or artwork, etc., available only on the original. Downloaders are not, generally, the same people as purchasers of the same work. So, no, it is not reasonable to assume that each file downloaded represents a lost sale, of either an album or single or anything, nor even that a consistent ratio of downloads represents one lost sale. Any such ratio would differ according to the nature of the work and the average quality standards of the audience.
For the reason of the differences I described above, I purchase any music or video I expect to be worthy of my time, basically because I value the one or more hours that I might otherwise spend learning something, too valuable to waste on the chance of copying errors. I've seen software being written. 'Nuff said. Despite having no files in my personal collection subject to the DMCA, music and software copyright litigation is a blatant waste of the judicial system for which I'm taxed. The cost/benefit analysis is a matter of public record, and does not support the business case for the corporations to initiate litigation, IIRC. Only the lawyers are gaining from this. So, as they're already running the businesses [into the ground, btw] let ^H^H^H make them write the code and the lyrics, too, for Pete's sake. Right now, they are looting economic value, meaning acquiring loot without providing anything of value, to anybody.
Mikko's a nice guy but we can't get together and stamp out genocide (Darfur et al), arms dealing (see the UN security council's arms sales) or world peace what hope do we have with cybercrime.
Cybercrime is easier to stop, not harder, than crime or warfare in meatspace. Cybercrime is easier to commit, too, of course, but it's not like the FBI & CIA are working with 50kg mice & keyboards preventing them from being as agile as criminals. They're just less motivated and less competent, and "complexity" is a pathetic fig leaf which we citizens must all stop granting our "protectors" ASAP.
Hypponen gives examples of why such a supernational force is needed -- and these are not hard to find -- but provides few details about how such an outfit could get started or how it would work. He does mention the wrinkle that in some countries malware writing, cracking, spamming, and phishing are not illegal or not prosecuted. Is an Internetpol even possible, let alone practical?
[snicker] Countries that refuse to punish antisocial 'Net conduct don't get public IPs transmitted over satellites and undersea fiber optic cables, which are US property or property of US [Delaware, probably] corporations. Although some of the tech was put in place via rocketry, this is not rocket science. It's as simple as "play nice, or I kick you off my playground." Yes, it IS mine. I built it and I own it. [my country, that is]
calmofthestorm:
I can see some use for this, but I fear like most things it would go after political dissidents and copyright infringers rather than actual criminals. Generally speaking I don't want the government to have/more/ power.
[shivers] This government is obviously not competent to wield the power it already has!
Following an appeal, Virginia Supreme Court decided that the state Anti-Spam Law violated the First Amendment to the United States Constitution concerning the right to free and anonymous speech.
My copy of the United States Constitution does not include the word "anonymous" in the First Amendment, but I think it's basically a good idea. However, anonymity can be achieved by concealing or withholding identity. Assuming a false identity is not necessary for anonymity, and tends to implicate the individual[s] impersonated, therefore it should not be protected by law, and especially not by the supreme law of the land.
The Court documents show that there was no question about Jaynes' guilt. He used several computers, routers and servers [belonging to other people, thus implicating them, thus committing slander/libel against them, thus criminal and not protected by the Constitution] to send over 10,000 e-mails within a 24-hour period to subscribers of America Online, Inc. (AOL) on three separate occasions. He intentionally falsified the header information and sender domain names before transmitting the e-mails.
The Court confused the right to anonymity with the crime fraud, misrepresentation of identity. Of course, some fault has to be assigned to the advocates, as well, especially the prosecutors. They should make use of statutes prohibiting fraud, not depend on new legislation specific to the Internet. The case is as simple as truth and the right to property, and independent of the medium used to commit fraud.
Obviously, any international "Internet police" should have no greater power than revocation of IP addresses allocated to offending nations, which would literally solve the rest of the world's problems [arising from such cases].
"The Internet has no borders and online crime is almost always international, yet local police authorities often have limited resources for investigations. Even if the locations of online criminals are discovered, the investigations rarely uncover the full scope of the crime. The victims, police, prosecutors and judges cannot see the full picture and therefore don't know the true costs of the crime," says Hypponen.
Any agency that offers computer forensics as requested and does not presume to dictate to sovereign nations would obviously be appreciated. Anything more authoritarian should be refused, but will probably be forced on the world by corporatists, especially within the US, UK and Germany.
... have a lot to offer and a lot of potential benefit to realize from one another: agree or disagree? If "agree," any reliable info on why S3/VIA have not thus far been more open to assistance from the Open Source community?
Gaming hardware is developed for power first, with lower power as an afterthought. A separate market of buyers exists, which prioritize compactness and low Wattage. Why not a separate R&D model? Both have a legitimate place in computer hardware, but like you, I think S3 has different plans than trying to compete on ATI's & nVidia's terms. And I'm excited about the possibilities.
If they do that and release documentation for Linux, they can pwn the netbook market.
It's only a "service" if it works in a way that's acceptable to The Customer. If it doesn't, it's incompetence or a bait & switch, ie fraud. A little melodramatic, I know, for a redesigned iGoogle page layout, but the reasoning that we ought to be grateful for corporate commodities that consistently function substantially below advertised quality is offensive. I'm just commenting on the reasoning, not the iGoogle story that it's applied to. The fact that funds are transferred via producers of other products, called advertisers in the online business model Google and others use, doesn't change who is ultimately The Customer.
It's just free advertising for the corporation mentioned in the second link with no useful information, ie no "News for Nerds", about the process they used beyond the vague "data warehouse" in the summary. If/. was always like this, everybody would stop reading the articles.
On a serious note, confiscate not only what he stole, but all his income as a corrupt government employee. Seriously. Government power is too great not to punish such blatant abuse of it more harshly than the same crime, committed by a private citizen. Similarly, for Sarah Palin, Alberto Gonzales, and the NSA goof-offs listening to soldiers' private romantic conversations from foreign countries to spouses in the United States. Treason!
"The secret sauce was data warehouse-based analytics. I.e., eBay instrumented its own network to do minute-by-minute status checks, then crunched the resulting data to find bottlenecks that needed removing."
Performing this number-crunching on idle CPUs/cores is responsible for 90% or more of the improvement from 50% to 80% Parallel Efficiency?
It's one thing to be user-friendly, but Yahoo's content always suggested to me a culture that was more about looking good than being good. Obviously, their target is the mainstream computer user, but my impression is that beyond that, their tone is almost anti-tech, definitely anti-nerd. Don't ask me to cite examples, I won't bother. As I said, this is "my impression," and it's a general one. I'd guess that in their hiring decisions, they consider "fitting into the company culture" far too much, and qualifications far too little to be a place I'd like to work, so I haven't applied. Google asks the right questions of applicants: numbers of patents, entrepreneurial successes, programming awards won. So, I'm not at all surprised to see this happen to Yahoo!
Slashdot Mirror
Even though they'll certainly bill it to the RNC...
Those specific purchases, on paper, will have been made with donations from the RNC [except those on staffers' credit cards!], but in the real world the public funds help the private, RNC and individual donors' money, go farther. So, we as taxpayers paid for almost half of Sarah's hillbilly spending spree, and the RNC paid for most of the other half. Of course, the real victims are the staff members who had to work with Palin and float her excursion to the real American cities with their hard-earned personal funds.
You were taxed for the Palin family's shopping spree, but not for Michelle Obama's funny-looking black-with-red dress, because McCain-Palin accepted public financing and Obama-Biden did not. Even though they'll certainly bill it to the RNC, McCain's campaign had more of the RNC's money to waste on wardrobes due to public financing. So in effect we were taxed for half of all their expenses, from bathroom tissue to needless markups. Which is why McCain's whining about Obama's private, donor-funded campaign and "floodgates" didn't work. If he had been serious about "campaign finance reform" McCain would have insisted that only individual citizens may give to candidates and political parties. If businesspersons want to donate, they must have the courage to put their name on their activities, to donate as individuals like everybody else.
Biden is on record talking against coal, and Obama himself talked in January (when he needed to appeal to the Left, rather than the whole country), how he'll bankrupt the coal industry.
FYI, the absence of any source for the above opinion about Obama's position on coal is even more conspicuous due to the liberal use of hyperlinks for your other claims.
I mean seriously, all those paranoid big chiefs sitting in powerful seats within government organizations? They have careers to protect. Why not make whoever gets into power fearful of the "outside world and it's dangers" before they even get into office? Sure would help get their policy in line with the policy of aforementioned big chiefs in government seats.
s/government/corporate
War or no war, we will have government. Halliburton and Blackwater are the prime suspects according to the "follow the money" school of investigation which was employed to discover the Watergate crimes. Beware the military-industrial complex.
mean, escaping spaces is all fine and dandy, but what about "/usr/bin/?*&!" Perfectly legal unix filename, but an unholy bitch to deal with. Not that anyone would ever do that with non-malicious motives, but still...
Self-defense is non-malicious, even if it pisses off attackers.
:p
Normally I like to see these things divided between the two parties so nobody gets too far away from lagom.
"Normally I like" countries that go to war only in legitimate self-defense, not outright lies about suitcase nukes, substantiated only by a source known as "curveball."
George Walker Bush and Dick Cheney are traitors and their GOP accomplices in the Congress do not deserve the trust "normally" extended to the Legislative Branch, to keep the Executive in check.
If the Republican Party's main competitor were the International Communist Party, would you want balanced representation by both in the House and Senate? Well, I, and many other voters, don't want a Congress with a balanced composition of democrats and the fascists who today call themselves "Republicans." In a republic, the elected represent the people instead of the people deciding everything by referendum, in a democracy. The GOP is not Republican, it represents big business first, people only by happenstance. Fascists, QED.
Ron Paul 2012
...everybody is polarized into two virtually identical camps, each one thinking that the other camp's opinions are so insane that only an idiot or a villain could hold them. As such, absolutely no useful discussion can take place anymore.
Then, what, you're just practicing your typing skills here?
"Is Obama a Republican?"
If the voter can not properly answer the question then he forfeits his right to vote due to Mental Incompetence. Mentally-incompetent people are typically treated the same way, legally, as a minor. Minors can not vote.
1) Name one indicator of macroeconomic health that economists describe with the phrase "fundamentals of the economy".
No, Panderpants, it is not "the American worker." Just because you're campaigning to the "non-elite" voter demographic doesn't mean you're excused from a basic understanding of the job you're seeking. My reading of the polls is that even your core constituents began wondering if you were deliberately insulting their intelligence, or whether you're really that stupid yourself.
2) Is bin Laden an Afghan or a Shiite?
If you're caught trying to cheat the people by copying answers, say from Joe Lieberman for sake of discussion, you will also be removed from any office you currently hold. Maybe you can find gainful employment making deliveries for a nearby beer distributor.
Obviously, until we have stricter minimum standards for a representatives than an age and being birthed in United States territory, any such test for the voter puts the cart before the horse. Then, there will still be the problem that voting is a right, not a privilege to be exercised according to anybody else's standards, but at least the candidates would be held to the same standard, albeit unjust and un-Constitutional.
Between the two major candidates there's just not enough difference between them to effect my vote. Big business will continue to run the government no matter who wins, the war will go on, and probably expand, and thousands of people will remain in prison over possession of a plant.
Don't expect a "legalize it" presidential candidate, ever. By the time legalization is socially compatible with a winning campaign for president, it will have already happened, from the bottom up. So if poking smot is important enough to you to influence your vote for President, get to work petitioning Congress, and organizing prominent law enforcement personnel in your state to hold press conferences to educate your fellow voters who don't care, but are satisfied leaving prohibition laws on the books. You don't even have to do any original work, just use teh Google. Plenty of reputable studies already show that prohibiting recreational use of drugs is always a net loss for the society foolish enough to keep and enforce such laws.
It's very simple. Even with prohibition laws, it's the social stigma, not the law that keeps people from using frowned-upon chemicals. Those who are not dissuaded by law or stigma finance a lucrative market for contraband which, according to pure economics, is overpriced compared to the costs of manufacture and market demand. The thefts and violence that result spread the damage of drug abuse from users and their direct acquaintances to many more random bystanders. The myth that sustains drug prohibition is that drug violence is caused by intoxication and withdrawal symptoms. The truth is that elevated, easy profits, not physiological effects of intoxicants are responsible for the vast majority of prohibition-related violence [as opposed to the fallacy "drug-related" violence, which only truly describes the angry drunk who starts a bar fight].
The RIAA/MPAA are recovering damages they have not proven they have suffered. How is this even a question? As I said the last time we discussed the RIAA:
What "loss of revenue"? Document the loss of revenue, or throw out the cases. Granted, copyright is violated with not-for-profit file sharing, but without proven [the standard of guilt according to the supreme laws of the land, remember] loss of revenue, the only equitable punishment, meaning fitting the crime, is to confiscate the copies and nothing more. Because in cases that the copies are shared without payment, no loss of revenue is apparent, and can only be ascertained by speculation -- of various levels of sophistication, but ultimately it can be no more than speculation -- and that is traditionally not admissible as evidence. Is it admissible as argument? Reasonable suspicion? If so, then also and equally, as counterargument and as reasonable doubt, respectively.
Disclaimer: I'm not very interested in this subject and thus not especially well-read in it, but occasionally I feel motivated to donate my $0.02 to a discussion, for basically the same reason people watch Jerry Springer I guess, just the absurd, yet presumed "real" spectacle of it.
I most often see [notice] the question of lost revenue in file sharing cases discussed as mitigating the criminals' intent, as in something for the judge to consider in assigning a lighter or harsher sentence, but not factored into the determination of guilt or innocence. But I think the absence of exchange of money absolves the mischief-makers of any financially quantifiable crime, not because of their inferred "good intentions" or absence of malice, but simply and amorally, because the assumption of lost revenue is unproven, thus legally invalid according to the assumption of innocence until proven guilty in the United States.
No, a downloaded file is not as good as the original. Some mp3s are "as good" -- for purposes of background noise, but not hi-fi or audiophile intense enjoyment of a real work of art -- as the original. But even when sound quality alone is not important enough for the downloader to purchase the copyrighted work on its originally intended format, the suitability of an mp3 is not reliably comparable to a CD. The unwanted insertion or removal of 2-second pauses between tracks on an album comes to mind, a much more noticeable defect to the casual listener than "quality" differences in mp3s or compressed video. Also, dedicated fans, defined as willing to pay retail CD mark-ups, generally want the liner notes, the high-quality photos and/or artwork, etc., available only on the original. Downloaders are not, generally, the same people as purchasers of the same work. So, no, it is not reasonable to assume that each file downloaded represents a lost sale, of either an album or single or anything, nor even that a consistent ratio of downloads to one lost sale, exists. Any such ratio would differ according to the particular work [genre, live performance vs. studio recording, etc.] and the average quality standards of the audience.
For the reason of the differences I described above, I purchase any music or video I expect to be worthy of my time, basically because I value the one or more hours that I might otherwise spend learning something, too valuable to waste on the chance of copying errors. I've seen software being written, so I don't trust my music to software. Despite having no files in my personal collection subject to the DMCA, music and software copyright litigation is a blatant waste of the judicial system which I'm taxed to perpetuate. The cost/benefit analysis is a matter of public record, and does not support the business case for the corporations to initiate litigation. Only the lawyers are gaining from this. So, as they're already running the businesses [into the ground, btw] let ^H^H^H make them write the code and the lyrics, too, for Pete's sake. Right now, they are looting economic value, meaning acquiring loot without providing anything of value, to anybody.
Users will be so conditioned to accepting mediocrity that even iterative improvements will seem like miracles. Technologists are then rewarded as miracle-workers for delivering the bare minimum.
A few paragraphs earlier the author made a better point, that users are the cause of mediocrity in their own software, via their demands of software that's so easy a caveman could use it.
In a keynote speech in 1997, Alan Kay affirmed the success of Arpanet, the Internet's predecessor, on which he worked. Yet almost as an aside, he decimated our conceptions of the worth of standard Web technologies, such as HTML: "HTML on the Internet has gone back to the dark ages because it presupposes that there should be a browser that understands its formats... You don't need a browser, if you followed what this Staff Sergeant in the Air Force knew how to do in 1961. You just read [data] in. It should travel with all the things that it needs, and you don't need anything more complex than something like X Windows."
All the other paragraphs of buzzwords and euphemisms like "content-centric" are just fig leaves for the fact that the less users understand about the tools they use, the more those tools have to be dumbed-down. That always includes a cost in functionality, either in versatility [only one mode of operation, or relatively narrow ranges of configurability in relatively few, narrowly defined modes] or efficiency [Windows users don't know how to restart a process or the ramifications of unloading one hardware driver in favor of another, so now every minor tweak requires a full reboot. Or so I'm told.].
Somebody has to pay the electric bill...
Not necessarily.
Let's see... an organization repeatedly violates federal laws and despite assurances leaves in place the exact system that promotes the law breaking (pay per registration) and miserably polices itself.
Laws require that ACORN flag suspicious registrations, but leave deletion to the government. Do you know of ACORN systematically getting either part of that wrong? The GOP would love to have the info, because so far they've had to whine about ACORN in conspicuously vague terms while they dance around the fact that any real wrongdoing by its entry-level hires is consistently, conscientiously reported by the organization.
I found the post implied only that logic is the standard of the quality of an argument, not that "the economy (and the world in general, for that matter) functions in a manner consistent with logic." Granted, the historical record includes illogical behavior, but such does not alter the definitions of logic and truth.
The judge did not seem to acknowledge any responsibility on her part, however, for having created the 'imbalance,' and also stated that the law is 'overwhelmingly on the side of the record companies,' even though she seems to recognize that for the past 5 years she has been hearing only one side of the legal story."
This has gotten completely out of hand. The law is not "overwhelmingly" on the side of the RIAA/MPAA, from my perspective. In some cases, probably, and in other cases, definitely not.
What "loss of revenue"? Document the loss of revenue, or throw out the cases. Granted, copyright is violated with not-for-profit file sharing, but without proven [the standard of guilt according to the supreme laws of the land, remember] loss of revenue, the only equitable punishment, meaning fitting the crime, is to confiscate the copies, and nothing more. Because, in cases that the copies are shared without payment, no loss of revenue is apparent, and can only be ascertained by speculation -- of various levels of sophistication, but ultimately it can be no more than speculation -- and that is traditionally not admissible as evidence. Is it admissible as argument? Reasonable suspicion? If so, then also and equally, as reasonable doubt.
Disclaimer: I'm not very interested in this subject and thus not especially well-read in it, but occasionally I feel motivated to donate my $0.02 to a discussion, for basically the same reason people watch Jerry Springer I guess, just the absurd, "real" spectacle of it.
I most often see [notice] the question of lost revenue in file sharing cases discussed as mitigating the criminals' intent, as in something for the judge to consider in assigning a lighter sentence, but not factored into the determination of guilt or innocence. But I think the absence of exchange of money absolves the mischief-makers of any financially quantifiable crime, not because of their inferred "good intentions" or absence of malice, but simply and amorally, because the assumption of lost revenue is totally invalid.
No, a downloaded file is not as good as the original. Some mp3s are "as good" -- for purposes of background noise, but not hi-fi or audiophile intense enjoyment of a real work of art -- as the original, but even when sound quality is not important enough for the downloader to purchase the original copyrighted work, the suitability of an mp3 is not reliably comparable to a CD. The unwanted insertion or removal of 2-second pauses between tracks on an album comes to mind, a much more noticeable defect to the casual listener than "quality" differences in mp3s or compressed video. Also, dedicated fans, defined as willing to pay retail CD mark-ups, generally want the liner notes, the high-quality photos and/or artwork, etc., available only on the original. Downloaders are not, generally, the same people as purchasers of the same work. So, no, it is not reasonable to assume that each file downloaded represents a lost sale, of either an album or single or anything, nor even that a consistent ratio of downloads represents one lost sale. Any such ratio would differ according to the nature of the work and the average quality standards of the audience.
For the reason of the differences I described above, I purchase any music or video I expect to be worthy of my time, basically because I value the one or more hours that I might otherwise spend learning something, too valuable to waste on the chance of copying errors. I've seen software being written. 'Nuff said. Despite having no files in my personal collection subject to the DMCA, music and software copyright litigation is a blatant waste of the judicial system for which I'm taxed. The cost/benefit analysis is a matter of public record, and does not support the business case for the corporations to initiate litigation, IIRC. Only the lawyers are gaining from this. So, as they're already running the businesses [into the ground, btw] let ^H^H^H make them write the code and the lyrics, too, for Pete's sake. Right now, they are looting economic value, meaning acquiring loot without providing anything of value, to anybody.
Mikko's a nice guy but we can't get together and stamp out genocide (Darfur et al), arms dealing (see the UN security council's arms sales) or world peace what hope do we have with cybercrime.
Cybercrime is easier to stop, not harder, than crime or warfare in meatspace. Cybercrime is easier to commit, too, of course, but it's not like the FBI & CIA are working with 50kg mice & keyboards preventing them from being as agile as criminals. They're just less motivated and less competent, and "complexity" is a pathetic fig leaf which we citizens must all stop granting our "protectors" ASAP.
Hypponen gives examples of why such a supernational force is needed -- and these are not hard to find -- but provides few details about how such an outfit could get started or how it would work. He does mention the wrinkle that in some countries malware writing, cracking, spamming, and phishing are not illegal or not prosecuted. Is an Internetpol even possible, let alone practical?
[snicker] Countries that refuse to punish antisocial 'Net conduct don't get public IPs transmitted over satellites and undersea fiber optic cables, which are US property or property of US [Delaware, probably] corporations. Although some of the tech was put in place via rocketry, this is not rocket science. It's as simple as "play nice, or I kick you off my playground." Yes, it IS mine. I built it and I own it. [my country, that is]
calmofthestorm:
I can see some use for this, but I fear like most things it would go after political dissidents and copyright infringers rather than actual criminals. Generally speaking I don't want the government to have /more/ power.
[shivers] This government is obviously not competent to wield the power it already has!
Following an appeal, Virginia Supreme Court decided that the state Anti-Spam Law violated the First Amendment to the United States Constitution concerning the right to free and anonymous speech.
My copy of the United States Constitution does not include the word "anonymous" in the First Amendment, but I think it's basically a good idea. However, anonymity can be achieved by concealing or withholding identity. Assuming a false identity is not necessary for anonymity, and tends to implicate the individual[s] impersonated, therefore it should not be protected by law, and especially not by the supreme law of the land.
The Court documents show that there was no question about Jaynes' guilt. He used several computers, routers and servers [belonging to other people, thus implicating them, thus committing slander/libel against them, thus criminal and not protected by the Constitution] to send over 10,000 e-mails within a 24-hour period to subscribers of America Online, Inc. (AOL) on three separate occasions. He intentionally falsified the header information and sender domain names before transmitting the e-mails.
The Court confused the right to anonymity with the crime fraud, misrepresentation of identity. Of course, some fault has to be assigned to the advocates, as well, especially the prosecutors. They should make use of statutes prohibiting fraud, not depend on new legislation specific to the Internet. The case is as simple as truth and the right to property, and independent of the medium used to commit fraud.
Obviously, any international "Internet police" should have no greater power than revocation of IP addresses allocated to offending nations, which would literally solve the rest of the world's problems [arising from such cases].
"The Internet has no borders and online crime is almost always international, yet local police authorities often have limited resources for investigations. Even if the locations of online criminals are discovered, the investigations rarely uncover the full scope of the crime. The victims, police, prosecutors and judges cannot see the full picture and therefore don't know the true costs of the crime," says Hypponen.
Any agency that offers computer forensics as requested and does not presume to dictate to sovereign nations would obviously be appreciated. Anything more authoritarian should be refused, but will probably be forced on the world by corporatists, especially within the US, UK and Germany.
... have a lot to offer and a lot of potential benefit to realize from one another: agree or disagree? If "agree," any reliable info on why S3/VIA have not thus far been more open to assistance from the Open Source community?
If they do that and release documentation for Linux, they can pwn the netbook market.
And therein lies the difference between software that runs on the user's local computer, under the user's control, and software that runs in the cloud, under the service provider's control.
It's only a "service" if it works in a way that's acceptable to The Customer. If it doesn't, it's incompetence or a bait & switch, ie fraud. A little melodramatic, I know, for a redesigned iGoogle page layout, but the reasoning that we ought to be grateful for corporate commodities that consistently function substantially below advertised quality is offensive. I'm just commenting on the reasoning, not the iGoogle story that it's applied to. The fact that funds are transferred via producers of other products, called advertisers in the online business model Google and others use, doesn't change who is ultimately The Customer.
Instead of stealing his company's data or damaging a server, he put his professional training to use and suicide bombed their colo.
It's just free advertising for the corporation mentioned in the second link with no useful information, ie no "News for Nerds", about the process they used beyond the vague "data warehouse" in the summary. If /. was always like this, everybody would stop reading the articles.
On a serious note, confiscate not only what he stole, but all his income as a corrupt government employee. Seriously. Government power is too great not to punish such blatant abuse of it more harshly than the same crime, committed by a private citizen. Similarly, for Sarah Palin, Alberto Gonzales, and the NSA goof-offs listening to soldiers' private romantic conversations from foreign countries to spouses in the United States. Treason!
"The secret sauce was data warehouse-based analytics. I.e., eBay instrumented its own network to do minute-by-minute status checks, then crunched the resulting data to find bottlenecks that needed removing."
Performing this number-crunching on idle CPUs/cores is responsible for 90% or more of the improvement from 50% to 80% Parallel Efficiency?
It's one thing to be user-friendly, but Yahoo's content always suggested to me a culture that was more about looking good than being good. Obviously, their target is the mainstream computer user, but my impression is that beyond that, their tone is almost anti-tech, definitely anti-nerd. Don't ask me to cite examples, I won't bother. As I said, this is "my impression," and it's a general one. I'd guess that in their hiring decisions, they consider "fitting into the company culture" far too much, and qualifications far too little to be a place I'd like to work, so I haven't applied. Google asks the right questions of applicants: numbers of patents, entrepreneurial successes, programming awards won. So, I'm not at all surprised to see this happen to Yahoo!