Huh? Migrating to a different search engine is trivial; just set a different home page in your browser, or tell it to default to a different one for the search box if it has one.
Not if you have your documents, code, mail, etc. With one search provider.
Yes, the problem I see is the small government vs big government debate tearing them apart. On one hand you can have a really tiny government that doesn't do much, low taxes, totally free market, little to no copyrights, little to no regulation, because the government is tiny, privacy violations are few and far between. On the other hand you can have a really huge government that socializes most everything, sky-high taxes, highly regulated but competitive market, copyright very regulated, the economy highly regulated, even though the government is huge it is so regulated that privacy violations are regulated against.
I'm a content provider. I make games and sell them.
No, you are a content producer. Two vastly different things. You make games. On the other hand a studio that does nothing but buys the rights of other games, puts them on disks and distributes them are a content provider. They provide content, they do not create it. As another example look at YouTube, YouTube is a content provider, they provide content, however they are not content producers in that they do not make videos for YouTube (well, there are a few, but not very many)
BTW, as a content producer, I disagree that p2p helps me in an way. In fact, I strongly refute that.
Well I suppose you either don't patch your games or require patches to be played as with servers, or have enough money that you can afford bandwidth for how many players you have. Also, have you ever released any of your older games via P2P? Having visited the site in your sig I can say that I have never heard of any of your games (well, save for the link on your sig on your/. posts). I don't know how popular your games now are, but a few good older releases can help people buy into a developer, such as with used games. I buy a used game that 0% of the profits go to the publisher or anyone other than the game store. However, if that game is really amazing, I might tend to buy more games in the future from them (possibly new).
Sure, but just look at OSS. With the exception of niche programs and games, there is an OSS equivalent for just about everything. Piracy isn't hurting them any.
In Europe though, you guys actually have a democratic system that lets you have more than the two government determined choices. There were plenty of parties that shared the Pirate Party agenda, at the very least you could have voted to block the lesser of the two evils like we have to do in the USA.
Content providers are simply middlemen, they are very small in number, do an increasingly useless job, and employ tactics that most of the internet-using population hates to use their unpopular viewpoints. There are a lot of content producers such as artists, writers, etc. that applaud the Pirate Party.
I mean this is the party who seriously proposes replacing pharma patents with all drug R&D being government funded.
In a country with sky-high taxes, government healthcare, etc. that could very well work. Now, in a more capitalist economy such as the USA, it would fail, but in a more socialist economy such as that of Sweeden, it could very well work.
It's just "p2p should be free, drm should be illegal, nobody needs to make money after 5 years anyway".
P2P for non-profit use should be allowed because it eventually helps the content producers. DRM should be perfectly legal to break and should require warning labels when it is used. And really, after 5 years most of the money from most works have dried up (or releasing them to the public domain wouldn't hurt sales), however they could be built upon, expanded and generally contribute more to the world.
Sure, but the point of the party isn't really to become a "real" party but to force other parties into taking strong stances in making copyright weaker, protecting the fair use and the right to personal filesharing along with actually giving a crap about privacy. Perhaps it will take more than one or two elections, but 30-40 years down the road, the Pirate Party will most likely become obsolete as the other more "mainstream" parties will have taken up the pirate cause and then people will vote based on the economy, etc. because everyone will care about allowing filesharing and increasing privacy.
I don't think so, and I don't really think the point of the pirate party is to be a continual party. Their point is to say A) Filesharing for personal use should be legal B) Give us our privacy C) Enough people care about this that they will elect people who are virtually unknown just so they don't have to be stuck with you. Eventually, they will get their goals if this keeps coming up, real debate on copyright and privacy. When that happens other parties will take their stances (and most will be pro-pirate) and so eventually the pirate party will become obsolete. It takes a few radicals to make change happen.
Why isn't this stuff encrypted? For the few places that would need the data why not have a special viewer that would decrypt the stuff thats sensitive?
Well, considering that the entire OS is HTML/XML based, I'd say that they have a pretty efficient/good rendering engine. What I'd like to see though, are plugins or at least/etc/hosts modification so I can block ad-servers to make browsing fast on cell networks.
Assuming that most of the top sex results would have been from porn sites which would have been illegal under the law, I don't think they could sue. On the other hand most torrent sites have a lot of legal content on them.
But there are a few differences. One, we have no evidence that the Indian government (which isn't as totalitarian as China's) asked MS to remove this term like in China. Two, Google has a responsibility to its shareholders to make the most profit. If Google got themselves banned from one of the largest developing economies with the most population and a captive audience, shareholders wouldn't be happy. Three, even though MS has this responsibility, there is no evidence they would be kicked out of India or India banning its citizens from accessing Bing like China would have done to Google.
Well, some people don't, some people search for a general term. For example I knew someone who was searching for Dick's Sporting Goods which is a major sporting goods retailer... He made the mistake of just typing in "Dicks" in Google. There are a few less obvious ones, "coke" can refer to both a drug (cocaine) or a beverage (coca-cola) and so even typing in "how to make coke" might contain information on refining the coca leaf or how to emulate the flavor of coca-cola. Sure, when you type in "sex" you are practically begging for porn, but similarly if you search for "pots" (most search engines ignore plurals so it comes out as just "pot") how do you know what they are searching for? Either cookware or drugs. If they tried to remove all references to drugs too they would run into problems like that. While "sex" is rather obvious, others are not.
Um, in case you haven't already looked around the US, but there are plenty of courts in which to sue. And by judge I also included other court staff in there but I didn't feel like pointing out all the mundane jobs done in the court.
Because otherwise TPB would sue MS? Its a lot easier to say "we don't filter anything" on the rare occasions that someone might find something totally objectionable but a lot harder to justify "Oh we blocked this, this, this, and this because they might be illegal" because thats just inviting lawsuits. Its hard enough for Google to have adwords let alone filtering of searches.
Um, you can run Linux on them, and really I was figuring an extra $50 for upgrades (RAM, second-hand OS, etc) because you can routinely find them on E-Bay for ~$100 or less.
Or get a really cheap Mac (you can get an EMac thats fast enough for browsing for less than ~$150) because usually they let you through with a Mac. Otherwise use a router. You would be surprised how many things just pass right through a wireless router. Case in point, I was at a college for a conference and this guy even with access to the Ethernet ports couldn't get on the network because it required a student ID, he plugged in a cheap Linksys router and instant access, no ID required.
Other than provide the safety regulations to minimize the risk the product harms you,
You can sue for fraud and sue them out of business. If the store itself is unsafe you don't have to shop there, etc. If they made it look like it was safe you could still sue.
the advertising regulations to minimize the chance you are scammed, etc, etc.
Again, you can sue. I don't get what part of my post you didn't understand but there was clearly lawsuits available as an option. Fraud would still be illegal and you could sue.
In general, I don't think there are many government services that you can fund on a pay-per-use basis. Fire department? Are you kidding? Many places in the country, they have to put your fire out to keep it from spreading to your neighbors. Having a patchwork of private providers mixed in would be a nightmare.
Then you can force regulations in the neighborhood that you must have a fire service. A patchwork of private providers might actually help you salvage some things because you directly pay them. They would actually try to put out the fire rather then saying to let it burn.
For police, similarly -- take all the issues we have with police brutality, privacy violation, etc, and now throw in groups who are not directly run by a group (nominally, at least) constrained by Constitutional limits? No thanks.
We already have private detectives and private security firms. This would be no different except for the fact that you could choose to use them exclusively.
Throw in the fact that you're going to have to construct an enormous infrastructure to monitor who's paying for what, whether you get access to x y or z service, etc, and I think a lot of the purported benefit is going to go out the window.
How? If you were say the public fire department you would simply respond to all calls then deal with billing later. Billing would be simple, address not covered? Charge them more. Its no different than any other business.
Also, for many of these (e.g., libraries), there is more benefit than simply "what do I get today?" Sure, you could allow for private libraries, but they would be driven solely by profit motive. Public libraries serve as important record-keepers and generally provide a service to society in a more general sense than just a pay-for-service sense. Look at the book selection in your typical bookstore and compare it to that in the library. In my experience, the library is a much better place for obscure or old books-- the purpose of the library is to preserve information. The purpose of the bookstore is to sell books. They're both valuable, but sometimes very different.
Thats what the internet is for too. If you allow for private libraries to have more lenient copyright stances, or make copyright more lenient for everyone, the internet will archive all this. Sure, there will still be paper records and there will still be physical libraries but just take a look at your favorite torrent site, there is archived probably more information than any chain of public libraries. And contain a lot of things that would never be in public libraries.
Heck, it make sense to abolish all income taxes. Establish a pay-per-use system. If Most government programs were just service providers. Every household would have to pay a "defense fee" this simply keeps up the costs of our armed forces, this is one of the few mandatory taxes because it affects everyone. Because its not much harder to defend a house of 1 than a household of 10, its done by household not by person and if the US was actually invaded, its hard to exclude a household. Fire departments and police departments would charge an annual or monthly fee if you chose to have their protection, you could chose to have a third party protect you from fire or to secure your home. The government's fire/police would be regulated so fees couldn't go up, would have a mandatory quality of service, and would be required to respond to any call, however after the call they could charge for a heavy payment if they did not subscribe to their service. Roads would be financed through either an optional license fee that would allow you to be on any government road, or you could choose to pay tolls throughout the way. Healthcare and social security would be optional, however you would have to pay to get them along with guarantees that the more you payed the better the service you would get (for example, someone who worked and payed social security for 50 years would get a much higher return then someone who paid social security for 10 years). Public libraries would be funded with library card dues along with a loosening of copyright laws for public libraries that would allow for free books for any book either A) Not being actively printed B) With a dead author or C) Has been printed for 30 years. This would allow for them to continue. As for courts, anyone who won a lawsuit would be required to pay A) The jury B) The judge C) Their lawyer. In a criminal case, the fees paid would pay for the judge, jury and public defendants. If they got prison time, they would have to work for a small wage, use that wage to buy food, with a proceeds being used to pay the judge, jury, and any public defendants. And then either after a certain amount of time or after all that was paid, they would be set free.
The government is meant for the people, governments are meant to be paid when they do something for you. Whenever I buy something in a store, there is very, very, very, little that the government did for me. They paid for the roads, yes, however I purchased a license for my car that should be used to drive on those roads. It makes no sense to license something if its not going to be used to pay for that thing.
The government should be run much like a business in the fact that if I don't use it, I shouldn't have to pay, and I should have a right to not use it. Just like I have a right not to eat at McDonalds, if I don't eat, McDonalds doesn't get my money.
Um, I'd say you are in the middle class if you can A) Afford an apartment or house B) Can afford various "luxuries" such as a working car, TV, computer, etc. C) Have enough money for food.
I'd say most people living in the US are in the middle class or above especially with "luxuries" becoming cheap, housing prices incredibly low, housing assistance, etc. About the only way that the middle class is shrinking is because of some people becoming unemployed.
Or... You know we could actually have sane tax reform where you simply pay for what you use and you don't have to pay if you don't want to use it... However I don't think we will see that until Obama is out of office
Same things with drugs, etc. Really, if the governments of the world would legalize a lot of the trade that is today illegal (Marijuana, Modchips, etc) we would have a lot more tax revenue and despite what everyone says, the world wouldn't collapse. Heck, whenever we make some drugs legal we could cut down majorly on police spending and jail.
Judges who allow stuff like this are either A) Incompetent in the law B) have some kind of bias C) are bribed or otherwise make money from these sort of cases.
Slashdot Mirror
Huh? Migrating to a different search engine is trivial; just set a different home page in your browser, or tell it to default to a different one for the search box if it has one.
Not if you have your documents, code, mail, etc. With one search provider.
Yes, the problem I see is the small government vs big government debate tearing them apart. On one hand you can have a really tiny government that doesn't do much, low taxes, totally free market, little to no copyrights, little to no regulation, because the government is tiny, privacy violations are few and far between. On the other hand you can have a really huge government that socializes most everything, sky-high taxes, highly regulated but competitive market, copyright very regulated, the economy highly regulated, even though the government is huge it is so regulated that privacy violations are regulated against.
I'm a content provider. I make games and sell them.
No, you are a content producer. Two vastly different things. You make games. On the other hand a studio that does nothing but buys the rights of other games, puts them on disks and distributes them are a content provider. They provide content, they do not create it. As another example look at YouTube, YouTube is a content provider, they provide content, however they are not content producers in that they do not make videos for YouTube (well, there are a few, but not very many)
BTW, as a content producer, I disagree that p2p helps me in an way. In fact, I strongly refute that.
Well I suppose you either don't patch your games or require patches to be played as with servers, or have enough money that you can afford bandwidth for how many players you have. Also, have you ever released any of your older games via P2P? Having visited the site in your sig I can say that I have never heard of any of your games (well, save for the link on your sig on your /. posts). I don't know how popular your games now are, but a few good older releases can help people buy into a developer, such as with used games. I buy a used game that 0% of the profits go to the publisher or anyone other than the game store. However, if that game is really amazing, I might tend to buy more games in the future from them (possibly new).
Sure, but just look at OSS. With the exception of niche programs and games, there is an OSS equivalent for just about everything. Piracy isn't hurting them any.
In Europe though, you guys actually have a democratic system that lets you have more than the two government determined choices. There were plenty of parties that shared the Pirate Party agenda, at the very least you could have voted to block the lesser of the two evils like we have to do in the USA.
I mean this is the party who seriously proposes replacing pharma patents with all drug R&D being government funded.
In a country with sky-high taxes, government healthcare, etc. that could very well work. Now, in a more capitalist economy such as the USA, it would fail, but in a more socialist economy such as that of Sweeden, it could very well work.
It's just "p2p should be free, drm should be illegal, nobody needs to make money after 5 years anyway".
P2P for non-profit use should be allowed because it eventually helps the content producers. DRM should be perfectly legal to break and should require warning labels when it is used. And really, after 5 years most of the money from most works have dried up (or releasing them to the public domain wouldn't hurt sales), however they could be built upon, expanded and generally contribute more to the world.
Sure, but the point of the party isn't really to become a "real" party but to force other parties into taking strong stances in making copyright weaker, protecting the fair use and the right to personal filesharing along with actually giving a crap about privacy. Perhaps it will take more than one or two elections, but 30-40 years down the road, the Pirate Party will most likely become obsolete as the other more "mainstream" parties will have taken up the pirate cause and then people will vote based on the economy, etc. because everyone will care about allowing filesharing and increasing privacy.
I don't think so, and I don't really think the point of the pirate party is to be a continual party. Their point is to say A) Filesharing for personal use should be legal B) Give us our privacy C) Enough people care about this that they will elect people who are virtually unknown just so they don't have to be stuck with you. Eventually, they will get their goals if this keeps coming up, real debate on copyright and privacy. When that happens other parties will take their stances (and most will be pro-pirate) and so eventually the pirate party will become obsolete. It takes a few radicals to make change happen.
This is a historic step towards economic freedom and reform. Congrats to Sweeden for actually making democracy happen.
Why isn't this stuff encrypted? For the few places that would need the data why not have a special viewer that would decrypt the stuff thats sensitive?
Well, considering that the entire OS is HTML/XML based, I'd say that they have a pretty efficient/good rendering engine. What I'd like to see though, are plugins or at least /etc/hosts modification so I can block ad-servers to make browsing fast on cell networks.
Pornography in India is illegal and attracts several penal provisions. The law also states that distributing and publishing pornography is illegal.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porn_in_India
Assuming that most of the top sex results would have been from porn sites which would have been illegal under the law, I don't think they could sue. On the other hand most torrent sites have a lot of legal content on them.
But there are a few differences. One, we have no evidence that the Indian government (which isn't as totalitarian as China's) asked MS to remove this term like in China. Two, Google has a responsibility to its shareholders to make the most profit. If Google got themselves banned from one of the largest developing economies with the most population and a captive audience, shareholders wouldn't be happy. Three, even though MS has this responsibility, there is no evidence they would be kicked out of India or India banning its citizens from accessing Bing like China would have done to Google.
Well, some people don't, some people search for a general term. For example I knew someone who was searching for Dick's Sporting Goods which is a major sporting goods retailer... He made the mistake of just typing in "Dicks" in Google. There are a few less obvious ones, "coke" can refer to both a drug (cocaine) or a beverage (coca-cola) and so even typing in "how to make coke" might contain information on refining the coca leaf or how to emulate the flavor of coca-cola. Sure, when you type in "sex" you are practically begging for porn, but similarly if you search for "pots" (most search engines ignore plurals so it comes out as just "pot") how do you know what they are searching for? Either cookware or drugs. If they tried to remove all references to drugs too they would run into problems like that. While "sex" is rather obvious, others are not.
Um, in case you haven't already looked around the US, but there are plenty of courts in which to sue. And by judge I also included other court staff in there but I didn't feel like pointing out all the mundane jobs done in the court.
Because otherwise TPB would sue MS? Its a lot easier to say "we don't filter anything" on the rare occasions that someone might find something totally objectionable but a lot harder to justify "Oh we blocked this, this, this, and this because they might be illegal" because thats just inviting lawsuits. Its hard enough for Google to have adwords let alone filtering of searches.
1. In the same way civilian reactors are basically a way around fission weapon testing.
Just look at North Korea and Iran, sure, the US is a bit more stable than Mr. Kim's country, but its the same principle.
Um, you can run Linux on them, and really I was figuring an extra $50 for upgrades (RAM, second-hand OS, etc) because you can routinely find them on E-Bay for ~$100 or less.
Or get a really cheap Mac (you can get an EMac thats fast enough for browsing for less than ~$150) because usually they let you through with a Mac. Otherwise use a router. You would be surprised how many things just pass right through a wireless router. Case in point, I was at a college for a conference and this guy even with access to the Ethernet ports couldn't get on the network because it required a student ID, he plugged in a cheap Linksys router and instant access, no ID required.
Other than provide the safety regulations to minimize the risk the product harms you,
You can sue for fraud and sue them out of business. If the store itself is unsafe you don't have to shop there, etc. If they made it look like it was safe you could still sue.
the advertising regulations to minimize the chance you are scammed, etc, etc.
Again, you can sue. I don't get what part of my post you didn't understand but there was clearly lawsuits available as an option. Fraud would still be illegal and you could sue.
In general, I don't think there are many government services that you can fund on a pay-per-use basis. Fire department? Are you kidding? Many places in the country, they have to put your fire out to keep it from spreading to your neighbors. Having a patchwork of private providers mixed in would be a nightmare.
Then you can force regulations in the neighborhood that you must have a fire service. A patchwork of private providers might actually help you salvage some things because you directly pay them. They would actually try to put out the fire rather then saying to let it burn.
For police, similarly -- take all the issues we have with police brutality, privacy violation, etc, and now throw in groups who are not directly run by a group (nominally, at least) constrained by Constitutional limits? No thanks.
We already have private detectives and private security firms. This would be no different except for the fact that you could choose to use them exclusively.
Throw in the fact that you're going to have to construct an enormous infrastructure to monitor who's paying for what, whether you get access to x y or z service, etc, and I think a lot of the purported benefit is going to go out the window.
How? If you were say the public fire department you would simply respond to all calls then deal with billing later. Billing would be simple, address not covered? Charge them more. Its no different than any other business.
Also, for many of these (e.g., libraries), there is more benefit than simply "what do I get today?" Sure, you could allow for private libraries, but they would be driven solely by profit motive. Public libraries serve as important record-keepers and generally provide a service to society in a more general sense than just a pay-for-service sense. Look at the book selection in your typical bookstore and compare it to that in the library. In my experience, the library is a much better place for obscure or old books-- the purpose of the library is to preserve information. The purpose of the bookstore is to sell books. They're both valuable, but sometimes very different.
Thats what the internet is for too. If you allow for private libraries to have more lenient copyright stances, or make copyright more lenient for everyone, the internet will archive all this. Sure, there will still be paper records and there will still be physical libraries but just take a look at your favorite torrent site, there is archived probably more information than any chain of public libraries. And contain a lot of things that would never be in public libraries.
Heck, it make sense to abolish all income taxes. Establish a pay-per-use system. If Most government programs were just service providers. Every household would have to pay a "defense fee" this simply keeps up the costs of our armed forces, this is one of the few mandatory taxes because it affects everyone. Because its not much harder to defend a house of 1 than a household of 10, its done by household not by person and if the US was actually invaded, its hard to exclude a household. Fire departments and police departments would charge an annual or monthly fee if you chose to have their protection, you could chose to have a third party protect you from fire or to secure your home. The government's fire/police would be regulated so fees couldn't go up, would have a mandatory quality of service, and would be required to respond to any call, however after the call they could charge for a heavy payment if they did not subscribe to their service. Roads would be financed through either an optional license fee that would allow you to be on any government road, or you could choose to pay tolls throughout the way. Healthcare and social security would be optional, however you would have to pay to get them along with guarantees that the more you payed the better the service you would get (for example, someone who worked and payed social security for 50 years would get a much higher return then someone who paid social security for 10 years). Public libraries would be funded with library card dues along with a loosening of copyright laws for public libraries that would allow for free books for any book either A) Not being actively printed B) With a dead author or C) Has been printed for 30 years. This would allow for them to continue. As for courts, anyone who won a lawsuit would be required to pay A) The jury B) The judge C) Their lawyer. In a criminal case, the fees paid would pay for the judge, jury and public defendants. If they got prison time, they would have to work for a small wage, use that wage to buy food, with a proceeds being used to pay the judge, jury, and any public defendants. And then either after a certain amount of time or after all that was paid, they would be set free.
The government is meant for the people, governments are meant to be paid when they do something for you. Whenever I buy something in a store, there is very, very, very, little that the government did for me. They paid for the roads, yes, however I purchased a license for my car that should be used to drive on those roads. It makes no sense to license something if its not going to be used to pay for that thing.
The government should be run much like a business in the fact that if I don't use it, I shouldn't have to pay, and I should have a right to not use it. Just like I have a right not to eat at McDonalds, if I don't eat, McDonalds doesn't get my money.
Um, I'd say you are in the middle class if you can A) Afford an apartment or house B) Can afford various "luxuries" such as a working car, TV, computer, etc. C) Have enough money for food.
I'd say most people living in the US are in the middle class or above especially with "luxuries" becoming cheap, housing prices incredibly low, housing assistance, etc. About the only way that the middle class is shrinking is because of some people becoming unemployed.
Or... You know we could actually have sane tax reform where you simply pay for what you use and you don't have to pay if you don't want to use it... However I don't think we will see that until Obama is out of office
Same things with drugs, etc. Really, if the governments of the world would legalize a lot of the trade that is today illegal (Marijuana, Modchips, etc) we would have a lot more tax revenue and despite what everyone says, the world wouldn't collapse. Heck, whenever we make some drugs legal we could cut down majorly on police spending and jail.
Judges who allow stuff like this are either A) Incompetent in the law B) have some kind of bias C) are bribed or otherwise make money from these sort of cases.