I think that there are significant deterrents to successfully implementing XP in the software development field:
1) Cost Even though the "all bugs are shallow under many eyes" argument holds true, try convincing management that two programmers working on the same thing is cost-effective.
2) Trust I'll be the first to admit it, but the concept of having someone hanging over your shoulder while you code is rather disconcerting. There has to be an understanding that mistakes will be made, and not all coders are good at all things. Anything involving scary mathematics and optimized algorithm design, keep me the hell away from that. Object oriented analysis and design? Now we're talking.
3) Inertia Everyone remembers "a body in motion," but most forget "a body a rest." In the business world this is also known as: "We've always done it this way." As much as we would like to believe everyone is on the cutting edge, a lot of folks get nervous around sharp objects. There is significant resistance to change in a lot of established organizations.
Still, XP has a lot of promise, but I've seen the whole "new paradigm programming methodology" upset thing before. I like parts of it, others I'm skeptical and concerned about (ie: how well does it scale?).
Living here in Sunny Alberta (tm), Canada and having family members directly involved in agriculture, I am saddened by this decision.
Unlike some of the raving left-wing crowd crowing about GM foods, and how wrong they are, I have no personal problem with them.
Having taken a whack of genetics courses (before deciding that messing around with fruit flies is not how I want to spend the rest of my life), I am surprised he did not use the simple defence of:
It's a naturally occuring mutation.
Prove it otherwise.
Really. What could Monsanto do in that scenario? Do they have a patent on randomly occuring genetic mutation? Cross-polination? NO.
All genetic modification is really just selectively chosing genes that exist elsewhere. Nature does this too. It's called...wait for it...evolution.
Rip proof CD's? Funny, how the Canadian governement in their esteemed wisdom *cough* instituted a levy on CD-Rs (aka: the Keep-Celine-Dion-Clothed-and-Fed levy). The thought was that recording artists' rights and revenues were being circumvented through the illegal duplication of their creative works. Fine. Place a levy, redistribute the wealth, and copy with abandon.
With the introduction of copy protected audio CDs, can I reasonably expect this levy to be lifted? I can no longer duplicate audio CDs, after all.
I remember getting hooked rather early in the MtG beginnings. At one point I realized that it had all the earmarks of something else.
1600's. Holland. Tulips.
Yup, that frenzied and frenetic, glassed-eyed look of the masses trying to accumulate coloured peices of paper. Sort of like the dot gone IPO frenzy.
The amount of money being spent on *cough* collectible cards was truly staggering. These things are going to hold value in 50 years times? Can I bank on retiring on a box full of Alpha Black Lotuses? Not likely.
So I bailed, sold 'em off at insanely inflated prices and put the money where it would actually have some worth.
Like the game but don't like the amount of money it costs? Type out the text, mana cost, etc. and tape it to a card. Use them instead. All the fun at a fraction of the cost.
You want pretty pictures? alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.* has tons of them to keep you amused while playing the game;-)
"Does anyone know what napster would have done if Aimster hadn't removed the Pig Latin encoder?"
Likely, they would have gotten the RIAA to send a C&D letter, letter stating it's purpose was for illegal activity as it furthered the distribution of copyright material on Napster via undermining the monitoring system (or atleast something to that extent.)
Or would they have sent one themselves, stating it was made for the sole purpose of furthering illegal sharing of copyright material on their servers?
Gosh, and what would they do if I released a simple utility that allowed you to convert any file (not just mp3s) name on *your* hard drive to one that is ROT?
And a simple utility to convert any text string into ROT13?
Wait a minute, the last exists pretty much in any Usenet reader....
This is now considered to be a DRCM (digital rights copyright management) circumvention device? Puh-lease! Considering that ROT13 has been used for *years* as a way of:
1) Preventing people from accidentally reading naughty things that they don't want to read
2) "Punch line" disguisers in jokes.
3) Etc.
Hooters Media, c. 2000 "We bring you the bust, re, best in news!"
NEW YAWK, NEW YAWK:
Government officials reported that men are not entering into certain career paths. Statistics show that men, regardless of government sponsored initiatives, are not entering into certain gender dominated career paths.
"It's staggering. The female-to-male ratio in certain areas of health care are almost 100-to-1. All areas of nursing are suffering from an acute shortage of male representation." Other sectors also affected are stay-at-home parenting, geriatric care and child care facilities.
"Our survey data was gathered from secondary school male students. Some of the responses to why they would not choose a career in these traditionally female-dominated areas ranged from, 'There's no math involved. It's all touchy-feely,' 'I don't want to be labeled a homosexual' and 'All the cool jobs are in technology and aerospace. Besides, who wants to be surrounded by emotional chicks all day?'"
Government officials are at a loss on how to correct this imbalance.
There must be a medical boneheaded-knee-jerk response test that is a mandatory job requirement in some of the corporate legal departments.
Instead of viewing it correctly as free publicity, it's automatically classified as a threat.
Beta-screen leaks to be accepted. It's all calculated into the marketing scheme to grab attention and future {mind, market} share. Suing the companies that publish (as in, freedom of the press, a "Constitutionally-but-still-subject-to-corporate-l egal-nonsense" guaranteed right ), is only biting the hand that feeds you. Cover your the new version release of your primary revenue stream software? I'll have to consult our legal department first....
Maybe what they should do is what the automotive industry does: disguise the object in question. That's right. Photographs of prototype cars, pre-production models, proof-of-concept cars, etc. are a mainstay of the automotive magazine. The manufacturer's counter to the various "spy" photographs: disguise the vehicles in question.
I can just see the user interface now:
Beta Tester: "Where's the zoom button?"
Quality Assurance Tester: "It's that black button right there."
BT: "You mean this black button?"
QAT "No, no, the other black button."
BT: "Oh, you mean this black button."
QAT (frustrated tone): "No, that black button."
BT: "Screw this, the entire user interface is black buttons. Even the workspace is blacked out. Why don't I just turn off the monitor and move my mouse around and make 'ooh, ahh, pretty' sounds?"
QAT: (under their breath) "I hate this fucking job...."
Wow. Now there's someone from the marketing department at Nokia/Qualcomm/Motorola doing some serious brainstorming.
"Dammit Jim, we gotta do something to drive airtime costs up."
"Look, these rubes doing know nothing. Nothing! If we hook them on old Zork games, they won't know what hit 'em."
"Jim, you're brilliant."
"I know. They just don't give out MBA's to anyone, nowadays."
But really now. One of the great hurdles for WAP handheld devices is resolution. Here the consumer market has been getting accustomed to large format monitors for cheap, and now we want to have them going back to squinting at 3" diagonal output. It's okay for quick {pager, email} messages, but come on. Text RPG's? Egads! My eyes just hurt thinking about it.
Then again, maybe Gate's is considering cornering the eyeglass market....
Yes, it's a breakdown-prone analogue device. So what? Life's not solid state, you know.
Unlike most reflex-twicth games, (ie: if it moves, {shoot, kick, avoid} it), pinball is directly kinesthetic in nature. The joys of a subtle table slap to full-on, tilt inducing hip check are uniquely pinball. Not to mention that pinball uses real world physics, not an approximation found in digital arcade games. No trickery or savvy programming here, folks. Just hard Newtonian rules and a dash of chaos theory to keep it fresh every time.
That's the fun.
Not to mention that I feel like a lab rat pressing a lever to get a food pellet every time I play a digital game for hours, and I know that I'm not alone in this feeling. Pinball won't die, but it will be relegated to a niche market (and this is not a bad thing).
Many have said it before, but Metallica has screwed the pooch but good on this one.
I, and I am sure many others, will not buy Metallica product henceforth.
Yes, they are protecting their rights as musicians. They could have been smarter about the whole thing.
For the slow of learning in the music industry, two words to save your sorry behinds in the big bandwith future:
VALUE ADDED
It's not just a CD. It's a whole whack of other things (ie: decent liner notes, merchandising cupons (buy the CD and get 20% off of all Metallica merchandise, for instance), etc.)
What's the difference between tap water and bottled water (sans marketing)? Perceived added value for the consumer. Other examples: is it a cup of coffee or Starbucks?
Do the math. People will pay a premium for something that they perceive value in.
1) Domain names are not property. (At least in California, that is.)
2) NSI claims ownership/control over domain names registered through them.
3) Who owns NSI's domain name, then?
What the hell, I'm sure I can do a good ol' fashioned DNS grab and reassign "ownership" of the various NSI domain names to myself.
Why not? It's not as if they own it, after all (For that matter, it's not as if NSI is advocating extending property rights to domain names themselves).
Time to set up that high-traffic for-profit porn site that I've been thinking of.... "Time to go and pay the NSI-tax and register a domain...Hello!"
The more I read of Katz, the less surprised I am about him being kicked out of various post-secondary institutions. I'd kick him out of any liberal arts program with the fallacious logic he regurgitates.
It's been said many, many, many times before, but for the slow of learning, here it is again: Metallica is within their rights to sue.
We don't have to like it, but the truth hurts. Sure, everyone knew that what they were doing was illegal regarding MP3 trading an such.
After all, who hasn't run a red light? Or broken the speed limit? Or run a stop sign on a deserted country road at 0300 in the morning? To get away from moving violations, one last one: smoked pot at one point or another?
There we go. Sins, stones, throwing, all over again.
The problem is really evident when everyone starts doing it. What's the point of having red lights at intersections if everyone runs them? (Ahhh, Montreal...so what if I can't turn right on a red light, because tabernacle, I can RUN RIGHT THROUGH IT!)
An artist is not going to suffer if one or two (or a thousand) pirate their music (the signal to noise ratio is low). They will if hundreds of thousands (or millions) do (lots of noise, no signal).
Sure, it's the new economy, but the old laws are still around. Plain as day.
Oh yeah, while we're at it, do you even own a Rottweiler? Quit propagating a negative stereotype on a perfectly fine breed. It's not as if they're as bad as journalists.
Sorry, I don't buy that this is the Linux-using David vs. the big, bad, coporate censor Goliath. People use Napster to break the laws. We have bans on certain types of guns which are used to break the law (eg, assault rifles, which have *no* legitimate purpose), likewise, Napster could be legally banned. Sure, maybe 1/100,000th of Napster users download only legit mp3s, but let's not paint to bright a picture of copyright violations, eh emmett?
Banning Napster? Have we not played this game of Whack-a-Mole one too many times already? Then again, intellectual property lawyers need employment too.
There is no doubt that Napster represents a vehicle for copyright infringement. Just in the same way a real vehicle is useful to a real criminal (drive-by shootings, bank robberies, etc.). Should we ban all vehicle because criminals use them? No. So why should we ban something which is strictly speaking peer-to-peer filesharing?
It's the message that's the problem, not the medium.
As for assault rifles having no purpose, have you not heard of parity? Considering how US Federal agents are so very considerate of the Constitution (1st Amendment, 4th Amendment, etc.), anything which makes them think twice before kicking down the door is a good thing.
After all, being able to turn gophers into a fine pink mist with a AR-15 is the de facto embodiment of the American Dream!
The more I hear about supermassive black holes being found in the centres of galaxies, the more I am reminded of Larry Niven's "Known Space" series. Rather than the threat posed by radation from supernovae in the galaxy core postulated by Niven, it seems rather to be astronomical/dev/null threat.
The real question is: do they burp when they're done?
Napster was an interesting proof of concept, in that it allowed for a large peer-to-peer MP3 fileshare.
Regardless of the outcome of the RIAA lawsuit against Napster, developments such as Gnullsoft's illustrate the "Whack-a-Mole" problem the government and industry face.
Lucasfilm announced that they have patented the DNA sequence to Natalie Portman.
"We felt that there was an overwhelming demand for black market clones of Natalie Portman, and in order to prevent pirated copies of Natalie, we have secured our intellectual property rights," A Lucasfilm spokesperson stated at a press conference. "We intend to do this for others as well."
When questioned on the legitimacy of patenting a still living human, their answer was direct. "When we hired Natalie, we had a clause that protected our derivative works from infringement. Since clones could be used to make infringing product, we have to prevent this from occuring. We have the greatest amount to lose if gene pirates have their way."
Neither Natlie Portman's agent or manager could be reached for comment.
A fundamental problem with the rash of intellectual property driven laws is the fact that they are increasingly distant from their intended origins.
Simple stated, copyright (and other intellectual property) is designed to reward the creator of artistic product. No one denies the right for an individual to be gainfully employed through proceeds (ie: royalties) from their craft (ie: songs, writings, etc.)
Historically, this can be viewed as an offshoot of the patronage-artisan agreement. The artisan would receive earnings from the sale/performance of their work, and the patron would receive acknowledgement of their contribution (primarily, through financially supporting them and allowing them to develop their craft).
The problem lies in that the current set of laws rewards the corporations moreso than the creators. Significantly so.
Digital distribution of artistic work is a direct threat to the corporation's highly refined business model. As creative work is a primary export for the United States (ie: television, movies, and music), the legislative bodies are going to pay attention when lobbists come knocking.
After all, the did cut the artist out of the equation a long time ago. We will see how well geographically delinated laws survive in a geopolitical internetworked world. Chances are, poorly.
Representatives from the RIAA brought forward musicians financially hurt by the existence of MP3's and other direct-to-digital recording devices.
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards expressed their dismay at lost revenue, stating "Yeah, now we can't plan to cruise around the Med'erreanean in our yet to be built 120' yacht. We 'ad to lop a 'ole 20 freaking feet off just to make budget! Bloody pirates!"
Britanny Spears looked crestfallen at the conference. When questioned, she stated, "My manager had lined me up for breast augmentation, you know, for some double D-cups, but thanks to Napster, I can only aford run-of-the mill C-cups. I am so out of the Hollywood scene now!"
Puff Coombs dispatched a letter that was read by his lawyer, Mr. Ein T. Le Tualproperti. "Mr. Coombs is expressedly dismayed at the ease of prolification and distribution of illegal digital copies of his opus work, 'Crackwhore Pimpin' Cop-Killah Mothafucker'. Due to this substantial loss of revenue, he is unable to make bail."
All members of the RIAA entourage left the conference in stretch limos and flew to the next conference in their chartered 767.
What would Internet life be like without being exposed to GeHoWa (Geek Holy War)?
The Internet wolrd isn't Teletubbie Nirvana, after all.
What's the next instalment? Post-modern feminist analysis of the Internet? "E=mail. Think of the inherent sexism in this. It means 'E-male', showing a inherent and deliberate gender exclusion and thus creating a hostile online environment to womyn...."
Check out this strip of Space Moose to get a reality check.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that there are significant deterrents to successfully implementing XP in the software development field:
1) Cost Even though the "all bugs are shallow under many eyes" argument holds true, try convincing management that two programmers working on the same thing is cost-effective.
2) Trust I'll be the first to admit it, but the concept of having someone hanging over your shoulder while you code is rather disconcerting. There has to be an understanding that mistakes will be made, and not all coders are good at all things. Anything involving scary mathematics and optimized algorithm design, keep me the hell away from that. Object oriented analysis and design? Now we're talking.
3) Inertia Everyone remembers "a body in motion," but most forget "a body a rest." In the business world this is also known as: "We've always done it this way." As much as we would like to believe everyone is on the cutting edge, a lot of folks get nervous around sharp objects. There is significant resistance to change in a lot of established organizations.
Still, XP has a lot of promise, but I've seen the whole "new paradigm programming methodology" upset thing before. I like parts of it, others I'm skeptical and concerned about (ie: how well does it scale?).
Time will tell.
Living here in Sunny Alberta (tm), Canada and having family members directly involved in agriculture, I am saddened by this decision.
Unlike some of the raving left-wing crowd crowing about GM foods, and how wrong they are, I have no personal problem with them.
Having taken a whack of genetics courses (before deciding that messing around with fruit flies is not how I want to spend the rest of my life), I am surprised he did not use the simple defence of:
It's a naturally occuring mutation.
Prove it otherwise.
Really. What could Monsanto do in that scenario? Do they have a patent on randomly occuring genetic mutation? Cross-polination? NO.
All genetic modification is really just selectively chosing genes that exist elsewhere. Nature does this too. It's called...wait for it...evolution.
Personally, I would welcome Coca Cola to install a soda fountain in my house.
;-)
Yup, put in a CO2 line, tubing, chiller and dispenser in the kitchen. Might as well have one for the bar downstairs as well.
Then I'll have the ultimate way to dispense my craft (home) brewed beer.
And have a Coke now and then just so I don't violate the TOS agreements
Mmmm...pale ale on tap. I can taste it now....
Rip proof CD's? Funny, how the Canadian governement in their esteemed wisdom *cough* instituted a levy on CD-Rs (aka: the Keep-Celine-Dion-Clothed-and-Fed levy). The thought was that recording artists' rights and revenues were being circumvented through the illegal duplication of their creative works. Fine. Place a levy, redistribute the wealth, and copy with abandon.
With the introduction of copy protected audio CDs, can I reasonably expect this levy to be lifted? I can no longer duplicate audio CDs, after all.
I'm not going to hold my breath on this one....
I remember getting hooked rather early in the MtG beginnings. At one point I realized that it had all the earmarks of something else.
;-)
1600's. Holland. Tulips.
Yup, that frenzied and frenetic, glassed-eyed look of the masses trying to accumulate coloured peices of paper. Sort of like the dot gone IPO frenzy.
The amount of money being spent on *cough* collectible cards was truly staggering. These things are going to hold value in 50 years times? Can I bank on retiring on a box full of Alpha Black Lotuses? Not likely.
So I bailed, sold 'em off at insanely inflated prices and put the money where it would actually have some worth.
Like the game but don't like the amount of money it costs? Type out the text, mana cost, etc. and tape it to a card. Use them instead. All the fun at a fraction of the cost.
You want pretty pictures? alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.* has tons of them to keep you amused while playing the game
And a simple utility to convert any text string into ROT13?
Wait a minute, the last exists pretty much in any Usenet reader....
This is now considered to be a DRCM (digital rights copyright management) circumvention device? Puh-lease! Considering that ROT13 has been used for *years* as a way of:
1) Preventing people from accidentally reading naughty things that they don't want to read
2) "Punch line" disguisers in jokes.
3) Etc.
ROT13 != Illegal intent to break the law.
"We bring you the bust, re, best in news!"
NEW YAWK, NEW YAWK:
Wow.
l egal-nonsense" guaranteed right ), is only biting the hand that feeds you. Cover your the new version release of your primary revenue stream software? I'll have to consult our legal department first....
There must be a medical boneheaded-knee-jerk response test that is a mandatory job requirement in some of the corporate legal departments.
Instead of viewing it correctly as free publicity, it's automatically classified as a threat.
Beta-screen leaks to be accepted. It's all calculated into the marketing scheme to grab attention and future {mind, market} share. Suing the companies that publish (as in, freedom of the press, a "Constitutionally-but-still-subject-to-corporate-
Maybe what they should do is what the automotive industry does: disguise the object in question. That's right. Photographs of prototype cars, pre-production models, proof-of-concept cars, etc. are a mainstay of the automotive magazine. The manufacturer's counter to the various "spy" photographs: disguise the vehicles in question.
I can just see the user interface now:
Beta Tester: "Where's the zoom button?"
Quality Assurance Tester: "It's that black button right there."
BT: "You mean this black button?"
QAT "No, no, the other black button."
BT: "Oh, you mean this black button."
QAT (frustrated tone): "No, that black button."
BT: "Screw this, the entire user interface is black buttons. Even the workspace is blacked out. Why don't I just turn off the monitor and move my mouse around and make 'ooh, ahh, pretty' sounds?"
QAT: (under their breath) "I hate this fucking job...."
Wow. Now there's someone from the marketing department at Nokia/Qualcomm/Motorola doing some serious brainstorming.
"Dammit Jim, we gotta do something to drive airtime costs up."
"Look, these rubes doing know nothing. Nothing! If we hook them on old Zork games, they won't know what hit 'em."
"Jim, you're brilliant."
"I know. They just don't give out MBA's to anyone, nowadays."
But really now. One of the great hurdles for WAP handheld devices is resolution. Here the consumer market has been getting accustomed to large format monitors for cheap, and now we want to have them going back to squinting at 3" diagonal output. It's okay for quick {pager, email} messages, but come on. Text RPG's? Egads! My eyes just hurt thinking about it.
Then again, maybe Gate's is considering cornering the eyeglass market....
Pinball.
Yes, it's a breakdown-prone analogue device. So what? Life's not solid state, you know.
Unlike most reflex-twicth games, (ie: if it moves, {shoot, kick, avoid} it), pinball is directly kinesthetic in nature. The joys of a subtle table slap to full-on, tilt inducing hip check are uniquely pinball. Not to mention that pinball uses real world physics, not an approximation found in digital arcade games. No trickery or savvy programming here, folks. Just hard Newtonian rules and a dash of chaos theory to keep it fresh every time.
That's the fun.
Not to mention that I feel like a lab rat pressing a lever to get a food pellet every time I play a digital game for hours, and I know that I'm not alone in this feeling. Pinball won't die, but it will be relegated to a niche market (and this is not a bad thing).
Pinball is Dead! Long live Pinball!
Many have said it before, but Metallica has screwed the pooch but good on this one.
I, and I am sure many others, will not buy Metallica product henceforth.
Yes, they are protecting their rights as musicians. They could have been smarter about the whole thing.
For the slow of learning in the music industry, two words to save your sorry behinds in the big bandwith future:
VALUE ADDED
It's not just a CD. It's a whole whack of other things (ie: decent liner notes, merchandising cupons (buy the CD and get 20% off of all Metallica merchandise, for instance), etc.)
What's the difference between tap water and bottled water (sans marketing)? Perceived added value for the consumer. Other examples: is it a cup of coffee or Starbucks?
Do the math. People will pay a premium for something that they perceive value in.
'Nuff said.
Okay. Let's get this straight:
1) Domain names are not property. (At least in California, that is.)
2) NSI claims ownership/control over domain names registered through them.
3) Who owns NSI's domain name, then?
What the hell, I'm sure I can do a good ol' fashioned DNS grab and reassign "ownership" of the various NSI domain names to myself.
Why not? It's not as if they own it, after all (For that matter, it's not as if NSI is advocating extending property rights to domain names themselves).
Time to set up that high-traffic for-profit porn site that I've been thinking of....
"Time to go and pay the NSI-tax and register a domain...Hello!"
The more I read of Katz, the less surprised I am about him being kicked out of various post-secondary institutions. I'd kick him out of any liberal arts program with the fallacious logic he regurgitates.
It's been said many, many, many times before, but for the slow of learning, here it is again: Metallica is within their rights to sue.
We don't have to like it, but the truth hurts. Sure, everyone knew that what they were doing was illegal regarding MP3 trading an such.
After all, who hasn't run a red light? Or broken the speed limit? Or run a stop sign on a deserted country road at 0300 in the morning? To get away from moving violations, one last one: smoked pot at one point or another?
There we go. Sins, stones, throwing, all over again.
The problem is really evident when everyone starts doing it. What's the point of having red lights at intersections if everyone runs them? (Ahhh, Montreal...so what if I can't turn right on a red light, because tabernacle, I can RUN RIGHT THROUGH IT!)
An artist is not going to suffer if one or two (or a thousand) pirate their music (the signal to noise ratio is low). They will if hundreds of thousands (or millions) do (lots of noise, no signal).
Sure, it's the new economy, but the old laws are still around. Plain as day.
Oh yeah, while we're at it, do you even own a Rottweiler? Quit propagating a negative stereotype on a perfectly fine breed. It's not as if they're as bad as journalists.
Banning Napster? Have we not played this game of Whack-a-Mole one too many times already? Then again, intellectual property lawyers need employment too.
There is no doubt that Napster represents a vehicle for copyright infringement. Just in the same way a real vehicle is useful to a real criminal (drive-by shootings, bank robberies, etc.). Should we ban all vehicle because criminals use them? No. So why should we ban something which is strictly speaking peer-to-peer filesharing?
It's the message that's the problem, not the medium.
As for assault rifles having no purpose, have you not heard of parity? Considering how US Federal agents are so very considerate of the Constitution (1st Amendment, 4th Amendment, etc.), anything which makes them think twice before kicking down the door is a good thing.
After all, being able to turn gophers into a fine pink mist with a AR-15 is the de facto embodiment of the American Dream!
Slightly offtopic
/dev/null threat.
The more I hear about supermassive black holes being found in the centres of galaxies, the more I am reminded of Larry Niven's "Known Space" series. Rather than the threat posed by radation from supernovae in the galaxy core postulated by Niven, it seems rather to be astronomical
The real question is: do they burp when they're done?
Napster was an interesting proof of concept, in that it allowed for a large peer-to-peer MP3 fileshare.
Regardless of the outcome of the RIAA lawsuit against Napster, developments such as Gnullsoft's illustrate the "Whack-a-Mole" problem the government and industry face.
Call it gestalt critical mass. Viral software memes. Slashdot backlash. Whatever.
Simply stated, you can't keep a good idea down.
A fundamental problem with the rash of intellectual property driven laws is the fact that they are increasingly distant from their intended origins.
Simple stated, copyright (and other intellectual property) is designed to reward the creator of artistic product. No one denies the right for an individual to be gainfully employed through proceeds (ie: royalties) from their craft (ie: songs, writings, etc.)
Historically, this can be viewed as an offshoot of the patronage-artisan agreement. The artisan would receive earnings from the sale/performance of their work, and the patron would receive acknowledgement of their contribution (primarily, through financially supporting them and allowing them to develop their craft).
The problem lies in that the current set of laws rewards the corporations moreso than the creators. Significantly so.
Digital distribution of artistic work is a direct threat to the corporation's highly refined business model. As creative work is a primary export for the United States (ie: television, movies, and music), the legislative bodies are going to pay attention when lobbists come knocking.
After all, the did cut the artist out of the equation a long time ago. We will see how well geographically delinated laws survive in a geopolitical internetworked world. Chances are, poorly.
What a bunch of pre-chordate (spineless) whining.
What would Internet life be like without being exposed to GeHoWa (Geek Holy War)?
The Internet wolrd isn't Teletubbie Nirvana, after all.
What's the next instalment? Post-modern feminist analysis of the Internet?
"E=mail. Think of the inherent sexism in this. It means 'E-male', showing a inherent and deliberate gender exclusion and thus creating a hostile online environment to womyn...."
Check out this strip of Space Moose to get a reality check.