the problem with comparing the human brain to digital storage media is that our brain doesn't exactly store stuff in 0's and 1's. Even if it did, it doesn't save the data the same way that we do on a PC. For example, text can be saved as ASCII, in a.doc/.odf/.pdf file, or in a TIFF/PostScript file. humans can perceive the data in largely similar manners as long as it's displayed on a monitor or printed out, but the computer reacts drastically different to each of those formats. Additionally, on a PC, we can use 7-zip. I can fit over a terabyte of PostScript files on a 300GByte drive with room to spare if I squeeze them in 7zip, so how does that affect the capacity of the drive? I'm no neurologist, but I'm sure that the brain has some means of archiving data from our past, so how does that factor into the equation when calculating the storage capacity of the brain? Really, the biological means of performing tasks comparable to computer-related functions are so drastically different from how our machines do it that it's not entirely a fair comparison.
No, I'm maintaining that the odds of 11 guys maintaining something that they all knew was a lie to some of the most torturous deaths ever devised is quite remote. After all, what did they have to gain for it? Money? Power? Fame? If you're about to be filleted alive and you know that all you've gotta do is tell them "we made the whole thing up" and you're off the hook, then either you're not getting money because everyone will know you're a fraud (and consequently not giving a dime of it away), or you're not getting money because you won't be alive to spend it.
I'll admit that I cannot, off the top of my head, list any extrabiblical accounts of that which you reference. I will, however, point you to two things. The first is the book "More Evidence that Demands a Verdict", which was written by an individual intending to write a book documenting evidences to *disprove* Christianity. The second is the fact that, to my knowledge, Roman records don't reflect any renouncements. Of course one could argue that during the time when Christianity was legalized in Rome that such records could have been removed from the record (or simply altered it), but then why didn't they alter the whole Christians being fed to the lions bit and any number of other things that give Roman treatment of Christians such a negative light? additionally, there were plenty of non-Christians living in Rome at the time, and I'm sure that some of them would have known if something that major had happened, but disappeared.
People who lie (as in fabricate their own lie, not repeat someone else's lie under the belief that it is true) about something will almost always eventually either admit to it, or leave enough cracks in their logic for their lie to be exposed, and THEN admit to it.
Let us assume for a moment that Christianity is a complete lie, and I were given the choice to deny and live or admit and die. If I were to die for my beliefs, then I would be dying for my belief (which for the purposes of my point here is a lie), but it's not a lie that I fabricated. The fact that I believe it doesn't make it true, but it's not a lie that I came up with. Since I wasn't alive ~2,000 years ago, I have no way of personally verifying the validity of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. I'd be dying for my faith, not my claims,
Alternatively, let's assume that I sat down for a month and started my own religion, flukenflagenism, whose foundation is based on the belief that God is the group of beings who live in the core of the moon. In my holy scriptures, I say that I, Joey, went to the moon in a space ship I built out of spare parts of my Toyota Camry, met these moon-creatures, and they requested that for the betterment of us all, we dance around in togas once a week while eating squash. Again, if I were faced with the choice to deny flukenflagenism or die, and I chose to die, it wouldn't make it true, but it would mean that I would be dying for a lie that I personally fabricated, and would die knowing that my death would be due to something that I knew was a lie.
Herein, we have the difference between dying for something you BELIEVE is true, and dying for something you KNOW is not.
In addition to what Jake has said, in most cases, suicide bombers' deaths are near-immediate and self-inflicted. Nearly all of the disciples had extremely tortured deaths. Some were fileted alive, others boiled in oil, upside-down crucifixions...these aren't deaths that happen in seconds like blowing up half a dozen blocks of C-4 duct taped to your belt. If they were all crazy, they were all crazy enough to have their stories line up and all of them took it to their deaths. Perhaps they simply were insane...but it's quite the set of odds to beat to have 11 crazy people each give a consistent testimony to a lie and have all of them take it to their graves amidst extruciatingly painful deaths that makes Guitmo look like a trip to the dentist.
As someone who (presumably) fits the bill for the "religious right", I personally believe that God's ways are higher than our own. Thus, I have trouble believing that God is going to say something to the extent of, "now let me punish {person} by giving him/her HIV...wait, there's a cure...crap, I gotta rethink this now".
There's no saying that your solution isn't employed. The problem is that in this game of cat-and mouse, the mice have two advantages: manpower and social engineering.
First, As soon as one leak is plugged, virus writers can look for the next. Commercially speaking, the virus writers get paid when they find holes to exploit. Anyone can take time to do this. The individuals working to prevent viruses keep their jobs by plugging holes, but Symantec/McAffee/Trend Micro/ESET/Kaspersky/Your Vendor Here only has so many spots on the payroll for leak-pluggers.
Secondly, it's becoming increasingly common to have viruses mimic security software. Some of the latest crops of malware look incredibly similar to Windows security warnings such that even a reasonably computer literate person would have to take a hard look to be sure that they're genuine. Faking someone else's security warnings is significantly easier than proving that one is original in an irreproducible form.
Honorable mention goes to the bean counters. If the network director/consumer sees two packages, and one is $20 more expensive (or $20/seat more expensive), convincing people to pay extra for it becomes difficult. Even if one can prove that it genuinely does a better job, given the number of people who have let their subscriptions laps for months or years, convincing them to pay for the added security proactively, instead of a specialist reactively, is quite a challenge. Just look at how many people balk at paying for a backup solution before their hard drive bites the dust.
Cost of retraining on the OS, probably. But when you factor in the cost of retraining on applications (i.e. Photoshop->GIMP, retraining the helpdesk staff), and loss of investment in applications (expensive licenses for many niche programs are useless now; WINE is great but has compatibility issues of its own and no one is going to test industry-specific apps), the costs get a whole lot closer. If you know people who submit the kind of service requests I get at my help desk, you know that teaching them Windows 7 will be a pain, but teaching them Linux will be neigh impossible. If KDE, OOo, Pidgin, Amarok, and Firefox can take care of one's computer needs (and development platforms, of course), then making the jump is a no-brainer. As someone who relies on many Windows specific applications, I'll probably end up spending more time getting them all to work properly (which won't always be possible at all) than it will take me to earn the money for an upgrade copy of Windows 7. The same line of reasoning is true for the office I work in. It's an unfortunate reality, but an unfortunate reality is still a reality.
I think that your $1/year-to-upload works is a good idea, but that could easily make the swapping of stolen credit card numbers even more lucrative. Use a stolen credit card number for the Rapidshare account, upload the new unreleased Metallica album, and have Mrs. Jones go to court for it. This will also yield the effect whereby if Rapidshare goes pay-to-upload, MegaUpload or ZShare or NewEvenRapiderShare will become more used, until the cycle starts again.
I agree that if Rapidshare is made aware of a specific file containing copyrighted content, that they have the responsibility to remove it. I'll also agree that they should cooperate with law enforcement such that they shouldn't impede the investigation. I'll even go so far as to say that if the RIAA wants to get special accounts whereby they can streamline the process of identifying and removing confirmed infringing material, that I'd even concede (hate them or really hate them, they do, in most cases, own the copyrights). To continue with your warehouse analogy, if I were running a self-storage warehouse and it was brought to my attention that there was reason to believe that it was a hub for stolen goods, it would be my responsibility to honor any search warrants and answer any questions asked by the police. It is my responsibility to evict one of my clients if they are convicted of theft and using my building to house it. It is *not* my responsibility to start running serial numbers against the police database of known thefts.
BTW, to the AC above in the thread, I *do* pay for my music, movies, and software. With the exception of some DJ mixes and Creative Commons-licensed media, I have nothing on my hard drive downloaded from Rapidshare. This doesn't directly affect me. It's the principle of private enterprise A using the government to subpoena private enterprise B into spending additional time, money, and manpower to provide a service which solely benefits enterprise A while causing severe disruption to the business of enterprise B. This has implications that far outreach whether or not the new Britney Spears album is on Rapidshare or not. Expecting a company to comply with a criminal investigation is perfectly reasonable. Expecting a company to PERFORM a criminal investigation is quite another.
What is the viable solution to this? If they solely delete known instances of the data in question, they will be uploaded again in no time. If they add a keyword-based filter, then it'll just become like Napster in its dying days where files are intentionally misnamed enough to skirt the filters, or given random names entirely and linked to elsewhere. If they do hashing, uploaders will use RAR/passworded RAR/encrypted RAR archives. It's a cat-and-mouse game that becomes the prime example as to why, in one of the few glimmers of common sense in the DMCA, services like Rapidshare are exempt from getting brought to court for hosting copyrighted content, as long as they take it down if asked by the copyright holder. Hosting the files is the job of Rapidshare. Policing them isn't.
Dude, you def deserve a +5 insightful. You just described the foundation of the problem. The "pirates" have leverage (stuff is still swapped, which the MAFIAA sees as lost sales), and the MAFIAA has leverage (They own the content and wrap it in DRM). The pirates are concerned that if they stop pirating that the MAFIAA will just jack up prices and the DRM, while the MAFIAA says that without DRM, the pirates will thrive. Neither side feels enough trust in the other to budge...and both are correct.
The single biggest hurdle I see (at least one that they don't immediately address in TFA) is that most ISP's block incoming TCP connections on port 80. Even if the port is forwarded on the end user's router, many will still be unable to host their own sites without using a custom port.
...and trying to find a way to unify the gaming experience across mobile platforms, computers, and consoles.
I got it! We'll build a giant computer network that spans the entire globe. Then we can hook all of these mobile platforms, computers, and consoles up to it so they can communicate seamlessly. In fact, we can hook just about anything up to it. I propose we call this new invention "The Internet."
Slashdot Mirror
Right next to the tape with Nixon's 18.5 minutes.
...so basically this e-mail system will be about as useful as Twitter?
isn't that rule 34?
Machine washable or Dry Clean Only?
the problem with comparing the human brain to digital storage media is that our brain doesn't exactly store stuff in 0's and 1's. Even if it did, it doesn't save the data the same way that we do on a PC. For example, text can be saved as ASCII, in a .doc/.odf/.pdf file, or in a TIFF/PostScript file. humans can perceive the data in largely similar manners as long as it's displayed on a monitor or printed out, but the computer reacts drastically different to each of those formats. Additionally, on a PC, we can use 7-zip. I can fit over a terabyte of PostScript files on a 300GByte drive with room to spare if I squeeze them in 7zip, so how does that affect the capacity of the drive? I'm no neurologist, but I'm sure that the brain has some means of archiving data from our past, so how does that factor into the equation when calculating the storage capacity of the brain? Really, the biological means of performing tasks comparable to computer-related functions are so drastically different from how our machines do it that it's not entirely a fair comparison.
So 1 LoC = 14,000,000,000 BTU or 14,770 gigajoules.
How close is that to 1.21 jigawatts?
No, I'm maintaining that the odds of 11 guys maintaining something that they all knew was a lie to some of the most torturous deaths ever devised is quite remote. After all, what did they have to gain for it? Money? Power? Fame? If you're about to be filleted alive and you know that all you've gotta do is tell them "we made the whole thing up" and you're off the hook, then either you're not getting money because everyone will know you're a fraud (and consequently not giving a dime of it away), or you're not getting money because you won't be alive to spend it.
I'll admit that I cannot, off the top of my head, list any extrabiblical accounts of that which you reference. I will, however, point you to two things. The first is the book "More Evidence that Demands a Verdict", which was written by an individual intending to write a book documenting evidences to *disprove* Christianity. The second is the fact that, to my knowledge, Roman records don't reflect any renouncements. Of course one could argue that during the time when Christianity was legalized in Rome that such records could have been removed from the record (or simply altered it), but then why didn't they alter the whole Christians being fed to the lions bit and any number of other things that give Roman treatment of Christians such a negative light? additionally, there were plenty of non-Christians living in Rome at the time, and I'm sure that some of them would have known if something that major had happened, but disappeared.
People who lie (as in fabricate their own lie, not repeat someone else's lie under the belief that it is true) about something will almost always eventually either admit to it, or leave enough cracks in their logic for their lie to be exposed, and THEN admit to it.
Let us assume for a moment that Christianity is a complete lie, and I were given the choice to deny and live or admit and die. If I were to die for my beliefs, then I would be dying for my belief (which for the purposes of my point here is a lie), but it's not a lie that I fabricated. The fact that I believe it doesn't make it true, but it's not a lie that I came up with. Since I wasn't alive ~2,000 years ago, I have no way of personally verifying the validity of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. I'd be dying for my faith, not my claims,
Alternatively, let's assume that I sat down for a month and started my own religion, flukenflagenism, whose foundation is based on the belief that God is the group of beings who live in the core of the moon. In my holy scriptures, I say that I, Joey, went to the moon in a space ship I built out of spare parts of my Toyota Camry, met these moon-creatures, and they requested that for the betterment of us all, we dance around in togas once a week while eating squash. Again, if I were faced with the choice to deny flukenflagenism or die, and I chose to die, it wouldn't make it true, but it would mean that I would be dying for a lie that I personally fabricated, and would die knowing that my death would be due to something that I knew was a lie.
Herein, we have the difference between dying for something you BELIEVE is true, and dying for something you KNOW is not.
In addition to what Jake has said, in most cases, suicide bombers' deaths are near-immediate and self-inflicted. Nearly all of the disciples had extremely tortured deaths. Some were fileted alive, others boiled in oil, upside-down crucifixions...these aren't deaths that happen in seconds like blowing up half a dozen blocks of C-4 duct taped to your belt. If they were all crazy, they were all crazy enough to have their stories line up and all of them took it to their deaths. Perhaps they simply were insane...but it's quite the set of odds to beat to have 11 crazy people each give a consistent testimony to a lie and have all of them take it to their graves amidst extruciatingly painful deaths that makes Guitmo look like a trip to the dentist.
I wonder if the next 50 Cent could get street cred for music swapping:
Went onto Limewire
Got caught swappin' songs
Got five years in prison
And some tats on my arms
Then add some f-words and n**ga references for good measure...
As someone who (presumably) fits the bill for the "religious right", I personally believe that God's ways are higher than our own. Thus, I have trouble believing that God is going to say something to the extent of, "now let me punish {person} by giving him/her HIV...wait, there's a cure...crap, I gotta rethink this now".
You don't need supercomputers for handling AT&T's data. You need them for decrypting foreign signals. You know, their mission and stuff.
Chloe O'Brien does all that and more for Jack Bauer on a Mac and a few Dell servers in minutes. I want my tax dollars back!
True enough, but everything above still applies to home users, in which case corporate group policy is a moot point.
First, As soon as one leak is plugged, virus writers can look for the next. Commercially speaking, the virus writers get paid when they find holes to exploit. Anyone can take time to do this. The individuals working to prevent viruses keep their jobs by plugging holes, but Symantec/McAffee/Trend Micro/ESET/Kaspersky/Your Vendor Here only has so many spots on the payroll for leak-pluggers.
Secondly, it's becoming increasingly common to have viruses mimic security software. Some of the latest crops of malware look incredibly similar to Windows security warnings such that even a reasonably computer literate person would have to take a hard look to be sure that they're genuine. Faking someone else's security warnings is significantly easier than proving that one is original in an irreproducible form.
Honorable mention goes to the bean counters. If the network director/consumer sees two packages, and one is $20 more expensive (or $20/seat more expensive), convincing people to pay extra for it becomes difficult. Even if one can prove that it genuinely does a better job, given the number of people who have let their subscriptions laps for months or years, convincing them to pay for the added security proactively, instead of a specialist reactively, is quite a challenge. Just look at how many people balk at paying for a backup solution before their hard drive bites the dust.
"Oh my god, not this AGAIN!!"
Since when does a bowl of petunias have a Slashdot account? Did the sperm whale get one before or after you?
+1, The Arduino is blowing up. It's very usable.
Usable for what? A grenade?
Cost of retraining on the OS, probably. But when you factor in the cost of retraining on applications (i.e. Photoshop->GIMP, retraining the helpdesk staff), and loss of investment in applications (expensive licenses for many niche programs are useless now; WINE is great but has compatibility issues of its own and no one is going to test industry-specific apps), the costs get a whole lot closer. If you know people who submit the kind of service requests I get at my help desk, you know that teaching them Windows 7 will be a pain, but teaching them Linux will be neigh impossible. If KDE, OOo, Pidgin, Amarok, and Firefox can take care of one's computer needs (and development platforms, of course), then making the jump is a no-brainer. As someone who relies on many Windows specific applications, I'll probably end up spending more time getting them all to work properly (which won't always be possible at all) than it will take me to earn the money for an upgrade copy of Windows 7. The same line of reasoning is true for the office I work in. It's an unfortunate reality, but an unfortunate reality is still a reality.
I think that your $1/year-to-upload works is a good idea, but that could easily make the swapping of stolen credit card numbers even more lucrative. Use a stolen credit card number for the Rapidshare account, upload the new unreleased Metallica album, and have Mrs. Jones go to court for it. This will also yield the effect whereby if Rapidshare goes pay-to-upload, MegaUpload or ZShare or NewEvenRapiderShare will become more used, until the cycle starts again.
I agree that if Rapidshare is made aware of a specific file containing copyrighted content, that they have the responsibility to remove it. I'll also agree that they should cooperate with law enforcement such that they shouldn't impede the investigation. I'll even go so far as to say that if the RIAA wants to get special accounts whereby they can streamline the process of identifying and removing confirmed infringing material, that I'd even concede (hate them or really hate them, they do, in most cases, own the copyrights). To continue with your warehouse analogy, if I were running a self-storage warehouse and it was brought to my attention that there was reason to believe that it was a hub for stolen goods, it would be my responsibility to honor any search warrants and answer any questions asked by the police. It is my responsibility to evict one of my clients if they are convicted of theft and using my building to house it. It is *not* my responsibility to start running serial numbers against the police database of known thefts.
BTW, to the AC above in the thread, I *do* pay for my music, movies, and software. With the exception of some DJ mixes and Creative Commons-licensed media, I have nothing on my hard drive downloaded from Rapidshare. This doesn't directly affect me. It's the principle of private enterprise A using the government to subpoena private enterprise B into spending additional time, money, and manpower to provide a service which solely benefits enterprise A while causing severe disruption to the business of enterprise B. This has implications that far outreach whether or not the new Britney Spears album is on Rapidshare or not. Expecting a company to comply with a criminal investigation is perfectly reasonable. Expecting a company to PERFORM a criminal investigation is quite another.
What is the viable solution to this? If they solely delete known instances of the data in question, they will be uploaded again in no time. If they add a keyword-based filter, then it'll just become like Napster in its dying days where files are intentionally misnamed enough to skirt the filters, or given random names entirely and linked to elsewhere. If they do hashing, uploaders will use RAR/passworded RAR/encrypted RAR archives. It's a cat-and-mouse game that becomes the prime example as to why, in one of the few glimmers of common sense in the DMCA, services like Rapidshare are exempt from getting brought to court for hosting copyrighted content, as long as they take it down if asked by the copyright holder. Hosting the files is the job of Rapidshare. Policing them isn't.
In Soviet Russia...
My blog post was written specifically to an audience of experienced lawyers.
No wonder my understanding of it went like a call on a cell phone!
Under ....MediaSentry ...testimony barred ...failure ...expert witness ..satisfy...[NO CARRIER]
Dude, you def deserve a +5 insightful. You just described the foundation of the problem. The "pirates" have leverage (stuff is still swapped, which the MAFIAA sees as lost sales), and the MAFIAA has leverage (They own the content and wrap it in DRM). The pirates are concerned that if they stop pirating that the MAFIAA will just jack up prices and the DRM, while the MAFIAA says that without DRM, the pirates will thrive. Neither side feels enough trust in the other to budge...and both are correct.
The single biggest hurdle I see (at least one that they don't immediately address in TFA) is that most ISP's block incoming TCP connections on port 80. Even if the port is forwarded on the end user's router, many will still be unable to host their own sites without using a custom port.
...and trying to find a way to unify the gaming experience across mobile platforms, computers, and consoles.
I got it! We'll build a giant computer network that spans the entire globe. Then we can hook all of these mobile platforms, computers, and consoles up to it so they can communicate seamlessly. In fact, we can hook just about anything up to it. I propose we call this new invention "The Internet."
Al Gore is a slashdotter?
Apparently you haven't seen The Matrix.