I could make a convoluted argument about how your knives & prison example could in some convoluted circumstances be considered criminal negligence, but you've gone off on a tangent here, and I really don't see where you're coming from.
The only words I am claiming that you said (and/. would seem to claim otherwise) are these:
I always amazes what bullshit some people come out with in order to justify their continued use of BitTorrent.
Forgive the wordiness of what follows, as I am attempting to be extra-precise, as you appear to have misinterpreted me previously.
My argument was based on the assumption that it could be interpreted that you were implicitly assuming (for the sake of making your point) that "P2P = illegal downloads" (and it sure sounded that way to me). I went on to suggest that if uninformed politicians construct legislation based on having heard this association ("P2P = illegal downloads") many times, then all those who stated the association would share some of the collective responsibility for bringing about that legislation.
If the introduction of such legislation (e.g. banning P2P) was remotely likely, and would adversely affect you, then the task of not further proliferating the incorrect "P2P = illegal downloads" assumption is indeed your problem, as much as it is that of everyone else who makes legitimate use of P2P software.
If you have issues with this argument (other than its length), then please enlighten me.
I wasn't arguing with you on that point, just pointing out that "just support independent artists instead" doesn't solve all your problems if those independent artists aren't the ones whose art interests you.
I suspect MichaelSmith isn't, but we know that some of our politicians and media bosses are. And as they're the ones making the policy decisions, it rather is your problem if you contribute to the "protocol = content" association.
Question: Do you know what makes antimatter different from "normal" matter? Or are you proposing (entirely without evidence) that there is some other difference, apart than the difference in electric charge?
You'd need negative (actual) mass for gravity to be attractive - and that's an impossibility pretty much by definition, by my understanding.
It just seems to me that there could be black holes that we simply are unable to detect.
Indeed, but its only the active ones (I.E. ones emitting gamma rays as they munch stuff) that actually emit the gamma rays in question.
And black holes that aren't emitting gamma rays aren't a terribly plausible source of gamma rays.
Only those that require recharging from mains electricity will be in danger... for those in this category, I would suggest investing in an execise bike and an energetic minion, and hooking the bike up to a dynamo to charge yourself.
The logistics of modern society are extremely complicated, and highly interdependent. Think of how important power is in food production, for example. There's more than a few steps involved after harvesting grain before its turned into bread, breakfast cereal, or many other consumer food products. Many of them dependent on electricity. Food supplies in cities will be a signifiacnt issue. And even if the food gets in, how will banking work? Sure you can bypass the ATMs, but bank branches will struggle to know how much is in your account, even if they get a petrol generator running locally. I bet those things become pretty damn expensive, very fast indeed.
I'm sure there's many other issues that I haven't thought of, also. All of these could be worked around individually (mass distribution of banknotes to employers, paying employees cash-in-hand, greatly simplifying our diet, etc.)... taken together, it's a clusterfuck.
Brood War also didn't use a CD-Key, so if you had the means to emulate the disc the expansion was playable on battle.net.
But not at the same time as someone else using the same serial.
Of course now this is a complete non-issue because Blizzard now offers a complete Starcraft with BroodWar installer... So basically now an original Starcraft key is all that is required.
The whole point of spawn copies was that you could play on battle.net at the same time as the person whose game you had spawned. Of course, you could only play in games created by them, but going by tepples's example, a family could all play original starcraft against each other either online or offline using a single CD key. They cannot do the same (online) using brood war, as you can't spawn that, and nor does it look like they'll be able to do the same with SC2.
I agree that those things all suck, but:
1. I would be suprised if they don't cave in and allow offline single player eventually (its the MP they want to control, after all). This doesn't affect me personally, so doesn't make the game less fun for me.
2. If they end up allowing local LAN games to connect directly over the LAN after initial battlenet authentication, then this problem is mitigated substantially - a sub-par connection would suffice for this. If they don't, then that sucks, but this will rarely affect me personally, so doesn't make the game much less fun for me.
3. How many games these days (excluding indies) allow spawning? Also given that WC3 didn't, I suspect that anyone expecting SC2 to allow spawning was setting up unreasonable expectations. Also, Brood War didn't allow spawning, and I suspect almost no one plays starcraft without Brood War these days (or in the last several years), except perhaps ultra-casually.
Besides, no DRM will last forever with enough people with a vested interest in breaking it. There'll be a SC2 equivalent of hamachi SC1 before too long (complete with fake battlenet authentication server), in all probability.
I imagine it would be difficult to make StarCraft 2 not be fun. And they certainly look to be putting in enough work that it has a reasonable chance of being more fun than the original. If for no other reason than including the (now obligatory) idle workers button:)
By my standards this ruling is suprising, otherwise I wouldn't be suprised.
From TFA:
Little is from California but was tried in Tampa after investigators here ordered his videos through the mail and downloaded them over the Internet.
That certainly makes it sound like the download was a relevant part of court proceedings, though it isn't as specific as it could be.
Note that I didn't claim the mindset of the United States judicial system was uniqe; simply that it works, depsite differences from state to state. The issue was the phrasing 'made for you,' which is wholly innacurate. If you believe that legal decisions are 'made for you,' then your judicial system is very different than that of the US.
If we're going to bicker over wording and nuances of meaning, then I'll point out again that I was describing judges role if interpreting the law, not deciding it. But frankly, to my mind both legal interperations and decisions are made "for" the people, not by them... even though they are made by representatives of the people. The president, members of congress, the House and the judiciary are not "the people" but are representatives thereof - and they're the ones that make the big decisions.
I'd recommend that you investigate the Swiss system of direct democracy if you're interested in power remaining "with the people" rather than with "elected or appointed representatives."
It was supposed to be sympathy, not superiority. But heck, either our "surveilance state" is nowhere near as significant as the media make out, or they just don't bother with much in the way of cameras north of middle-england.
Besides, even if there were many cameras in the streets around me, I'd rest assured that my government is perpetually incapable of appointing a competant IT supplier, so they wouldn't actually be able to process the video in any useful way. Or even archive it properly.
Oh, charming. Perhaps you misunderstood me, I am not suggesting that your judges decree the law, but that it is part of a judge's job to interpret the law when considering an issue that doesn't have a direct legal precedent.
If that interpretation of the law is determined to be "objectionable" by the people, but is upheld as "consistant with the law" at higher level reviews, then the law may be changed.
That's what I meant by "legal decisions" - determining what the law actually is regarding a particular situation, not deciding what you want it to be and making it be so.
If that's an even vaguely accurate assessment of the US system, then let me be the first to congratulate you on the uniqueness of your judicial system that's more or less identical to the rest of the world's.
My original objection was that the judge would appear to have come to a suprising interpretation of the law. But don't mind me, cos I'm a non-american dumbfuck, right?
You'll note that in my example, you wouldn't be disallowed from viewing said objectionable material, but you would have legal recourse if you were subjected to it without the ability to say "no thanks"... after all, you have legal recourse if someone waves their cock in your face without you wanting them to... even if you say "no" after they have already started.
Actually, its censorship, a form of oppression. You're in the right area of political scares, but while oppression and tyranny are often related, they're definately not the same thing.
Why can't there be any position in between "nothing is filtered or blocked" and "everything mildly objectionable to anyone is blocked?"
Would it not be even theoretically possible to mandate warning a web user before showing content that is determined to be "objectionable" beyond a certain standard, determined by what is considered "highly objectionable" by a significant majority (such as 75% of a large number of assessors).
For instance, if I was unwillingly exposed (e.g. by a virus-inspired popup window that also managed to lock my machine) to a detailed video of the gruesome murder and prolonged mutilation of american soldiers, then I would like some legal avenue to pursue those who did the exposing...
Determining how to distribute the responsibility would be another matter - presumably the producer of the virus, the owner of the infected computer, and several others would share responsibility to some degree. But that's rather irrelevant to the general point - are you utterly convinced that anything less than complete access to everything, always, is tantamount to tyranny? (or oppression, or whatever?)
For the sake of argument, assume a new sect formed (they could be Amish or not) that decided that computers and email were great, but that all websites were abhorrant. I'm not saying I think its likely to happen, I'm making up an example to try to demonstrate a point.
I never said that. My point is that the obscenity law shouldn't even exist...
My apologies, but I was responding to the following statements, which I took to be general statements, as opposed to only related to obscenity law:
It's time that we the People stop bowing to judges as if they were the ultimate authorities. They are not. The LAW is the ultimate authority within the Member States and within our Union. Enforce the Constitution - it is the law, and no politician nor judge can trump it. Our various Union and State Constitutions give us the right to speak freely, either vocally or in written form, and censorship violates those Supreme Laws.
As for your point about the heirarchy of legislation, I'm not familiar enough with the american system to be able to comment.
Slashdot Mirror
I predict something stupidly incongruous, like
ID4, ID3D, ID3D^2
Hmm, ID4...
So next up, is it ID4-2 and ID4-3, or ID5 and ID6 - followed 20 years later by a prequal trilogy?
To be honest, I found 3 to be just too much. Felt far too daunting to sit in front of.
Then you'd better start lobbying
The only words I am claiming that you said (and
I always amazes what bullshit some people come out with in order to justify their continued use of BitTorrent.
Forgive the wordiness of what follows, as I am attempting to be extra-precise, as you appear to have misinterpreted me previously.
My argument was based on the assumption that it could be interpreted that you were implicitly assuming (for the sake of making your point) that "P2P = illegal downloads" (and it sure sounded that way to me). I went on to suggest that if uninformed politicians construct legislation based on having heard this association ("P2P = illegal downloads") many times, then all those who stated the association would share some of the collective responsibility for bringing about that legislation.
If the introduction of such legislation (e.g. banning P2P) was remotely likely, and would adversely affect you, then the task of not further proliferating the incorrect "P2P = illegal downloads" assumption is indeed your problem, as much as it is that of everyone else who makes legitimate use of P2P software.
If you have issues with this argument (other than its length), then please enlighten me.
I wasn't arguing with you on that point, just pointing out that "just support independent artists instead" doesn't solve all your problems if those independent artists aren't the ones whose art interests you.
I suspect MichaelSmith isn't, but we know that some of our politicians and media bosses are. And as they're the ones making the policy decisions, it rather is your problem if you contribute to the "protocol = content" association.
Nice in theory, but you missed out one important aspect, given the context of the situation
If you do copy:
- net result for you = +1 song that you want
If you buy from independents
- net result for you = +1 song that isn't the one that you want
Have to take the industry stranglehold into account
Question: Do you know what makes antimatter different from "normal" matter? Or are you proposing (entirely without evidence) that there is some other difference, apart than the difference in electric charge?
You'd need negative (actual) mass for gravity to be attractive - and that's an impossibility pretty much by definition, by my understanding.
It just seems to me that there could be black holes that we simply are unable to detect.
Indeed, but its only the active ones (I.E. ones emitting gamma rays as they munch stuff) that actually emit the gamma rays in question.
And black holes that aren't emitting gamma rays aren't a terribly plausible source of gamma rays.
and he came up with a language that does not allow you to do any different!
sometimes, apparently. I suspect I'll keep my distance til it makes up its mind one way or the other.
Only those that require recharging from mains electricity will be in danger... for those in this category, I would suggest investing in an execise bike and an energetic minion, and hooking the bike up to a dynamo to charge yourself.
The logistics of modern society are extremely complicated, and highly interdependent. Think of how important power is in food production, for example. There's more than a few steps involved after harvesting grain before its turned into bread, breakfast cereal, or many other consumer food products. Many of them dependent on electricity. Food supplies in cities will be a signifiacnt issue. And even if the food gets in, how will banking work? Sure you can bypass the ATMs, but bank branches will struggle to know how much is in your account, even if they get a petrol generator running locally. I bet those things become pretty damn expensive, very fast indeed.
... taken together, it's a clusterfuck.
I'm sure there's many other issues that I haven't thought of, also. All of these could be worked around individually (mass distribution of banknotes to employers, paying employees cash-in-hand, greatly simplifying our diet, etc.)
Brood War also didn't use a CD-Key, so if you had the means to emulate the disc the expansion was playable on battle.net.
But not at the same time as someone else using the same serial.
Of course now this is a complete non-issue because Blizzard now offers a complete Starcraft with BroodWar installer ... So basically now an original Starcraft key is all that is required.
The whole point of spawn copies was that you could play on battle.net at the same time as the person whose game you had spawned. Of course, you could only play in games created by them, but going by tepples's example, a family could all play original starcraft against each other either online or offline using a single CD key. They cannot do the same (online) using brood war, as you can't spawn that, and nor does it look like they'll be able to do the same with SC2.
I agree that those things all suck, but: 1. I would be suprised if they don't cave in and allow offline single player eventually (its the MP they want to control, after all). This doesn't affect me personally, so doesn't make the game less fun for me.
2. If they end up allowing local LAN games to connect directly over the LAN after initial battlenet authentication, then this problem is mitigated substantially - a sub-par connection would suffice for this. If they don't, then that sucks, but this will rarely affect me personally, so doesn't make the game much less fun for me.
3. How many games these days (excluding indies) allow spawning? Also given that WC3 didn't, I suspect that anyone expecting SC2 to allow spawning was setting up unreasonable expectations. Also, Brood War didn't allow spawning, and I suspect almost no one plays starcraft without Brood War these days (or in the last several years), except perhaps ultra-casually.
Besides, no DRM will last forever with enough people with a vested interest in breaking it. There'll be a SC2 equivalent of hamachi SC1 before too long (complete with fake battlenet authentication server), in all probability.
Looking like DNF would be it having the scope of all those three parts, but being released as a single package rather than three, tbh.
I imagine it would be difficult to make StarCraft 2 not be fun. And they certainly look to be putting in enough work that it has a reasonable chance of being more fun than the original. If for no other reason than including the (now obligatory) idle workers button :)
From TFA:
Little is from California but was tried in Tampa after investigators here ordered his videos through the mail and downloaded them over the Internet.
That certainly makes it sound like the download was a relevant part of court proceedings, though it isn't as specific as it could be.
Note that I didn't claim the mindset of the United States judicial system was uniqe; simply that it works, depsite differences from state to state. The issue was the phrasing 'made for you,' which is wholly innacurate. If you believe that legal decisions are 'made for you,' then your judicial system is very different than that of the US.
If we're going to bicker over wording and nuances of meaning, then I'll point out again that I was describing judges role if interpreting the law, not deciding it. But frankly, to my mind both legal interperations and decisions are made "for" the people, not by them ... even though they are made by representatives of the people. The president, members of congress, the House and the judiciary are not "the people" but are representatives thereof - and they're the ones that make the big decisions.
I'd recommend that you investigate the Swiss system of direct democracy if you're interested in power remaining "with the people" rather than with "elected or appointed representatives."
It was supposed to be sympathy, not superiority. But heck, either our "surveilance state" is nowhere near as significant as the media make out, or they just don't bother with much in the way of cameras north of middle-england.
Besides, even if there were many cameras in the streets around me, I'd rest assured that my government is perpetually incapable of appointing a competant IT supplier, so they wouldn't actually be able to process the video in any useful way. Or even archive it properly.
Oh, charming. Perhaps you misunderstood me, I am not suggesting that your judges decree the law, but that it is part of a judge's job to interpret the law when considering an issue that doesn't have a direct legal precedent.
If that interpretation of the law is determined to be "objectionable" by the people, but is upheld as "consistant with the law" at higher level reviews, then the law may be changed.
That's what I meant by "legal decisions" - determining what the law actually is regarding a particular situation, not deciding what you want it to be and making it be so.
If that's an even vaguely accurate assessment of the US system, then let me be the first to congratulate you on the uniqueness of your judicial system that's more or less identical to the rest of the world's.
My original objection was that the judge would appear to have come to a suprising interpretation of the law. But don't mind me, cos I'm a non-american dumbfuck, right?
You'll note that in my example, you wouldn't be disallowed from viewing said objectionable material, but you would have legal recourse if you were subjected to it without the ability to say "no thanks" ... after all, you have legal recourse if someone waves their cock in your face without you wanting them to... even if you say "no" after they have already started.
Excepting countries such as the UK which don't have a constitution, that's a pretty good summary, thanks.
It's tyranny.
Actually, its censorship, a form of oppression. You're in the right area of political scares, but while oppression and tyranny are often related, they're definately not the same thing.
Why can't there be any position in between "nothing is filtered or blocked" and "everything mildly objectionable to anyone is blocked?"
Would it not be even theoretically possible to mandate warning a web user before showing content that is determined to be "objectionable" beyond a certain standard, determined by what is considered "highly objectionable" by a significant majority (such as 75% of a large number of assessors).
For instance, if I was unwillingly exposed (e.g. by a virus-inspired popup window that also managed to lock my machine) to a detailed video of the gruesome murder and prolonged mutilation of american soldiers, then I would like some legal avenue to pursue those who did the exposing...
Determining how to distribute the responsibility would be another matter - presumably the producer of the virus, the owner of the infected computer, and several others would share responsibility to some degree. But that's rather irrelevant to the general point - are you utterly convinced that anything less than complete access to everything, always, is tantamount to tyranny? (or oppression, or whatever?)
For the sake of argument, assume a new sect formed (they could be Amish or not) that decided that computers and email were great, but that all websites were abhorrant. I'm not saying I think its likely to happen, I'm making up an example to try to demonstrate a point.
I never said that. My point is that the obscenity law shouldn't even exist...
My apologies, but I was responding to the following statements, which I took to be general statements, as opposed to only related to obscenity law:
It's time that we the People stop bowing to judges as if they were the ultimate authorities. They are not. The LAW is the ultimate authority within the Member States and within our Union. Enforce the Constitution - it is the law, and no politician nor judge can trump it. Our various Union and State Constitutions give us the right to speak freely, either vocally or in written form, and censorship violates those Supreme Laws.
As for your point about the heirarchy of legislation, I'm not familiar enough with the american system to be able to comment.