Art in the form of cave paintings can be seen as a form of record keeping directly related to major events and hunting rituals, that would seem to have a relevance to survival.
And they did it instead of hunting, eating, reproducing, etc.
...digitable distribution model that is killing traditional music sales.
The industry shouldn't exist today period. There is no 'killing', it is dead, and the music executives are corpse camping.
Why do we make art? It's not for money. It's not for social prestige. We make art as an act of self expression and as a way of passing the time when we're not engaged in activities necessary for our own survival. Art has no survival value -- and yet it has persisted since before recorded history. Cave paintings and such, jewelry, etc.
The recording industry couldn't exist until it was possible to capture audiovisual events. When the technology was first invented, it was expensive to record, duplicate, and distribute it so that people could observe the art of others. Music didn't start with the invention of the phonograph, anymore than acting started with the invention of motion picture.
But what has happened is that the technology has gotten cheaper, and cheaper, to the point where audio-visual recording equipment only costs a few dollars and reproducing those recordings costs nothing. The industry's raisin de etre is gone.
The advent of digital technology is what killed the recording industry -- they are no more relevant today than horse shoe manufacturers. The only reason they still exist is because they are sitting on massive piles of cash garnered because the technology decreased the business cost, and they pocketed the difference; They can afford to spend millions, even billions, convincing countries worldwide to rewrite their laws to create artificial markets and monopolies under the guise that if their industry disappears, the art will too.
So if companies or individuals voluntarily choose to provide this information then there is no need to obtain a warrant. People must make a stand if they really care. But what incentive do corporations have to do this?
They can only provide that information if it is not solicited, otherwise it is inadmissible as evidence. So when the police decide to monitor someone's cell phone without a warrant, they are giving that evidence up -- it can't be used. But if in the course of listening to that cell phone they discover an opportunity to observe someone engaged in illegal activity, then the police can simply "happen" to be sitting in a van next door when the crime takes place. Of course, with the Patriot Act et al and our new conservative supreme court, that evidence can sometimes be given post facto approval and then used against a person.
But.. that's how it used to work; So long as the police only presented a chain of evidence based on observations and reasonable cause for any evidence obtained, it was okay; There might have been more evidence, but it couldn't be used or presented... That is how the system ensured justice. So it has always been okay to bend the rules -- but only recently has it been okay to not have any.
They never needed a warrant to "tail" a guy driving round in his car, or "shadow" him walking down the street, so why need one to tail/shadow a cellphone?
Because I can tail a guy, or "shadow" him walking down the street. Anyone can do those activities in public. Not anyone can eavesdrop on a cell phone which is being used in someone's home, car, etc. Warrants are when the police want to do something an ordinary citizen cannot.
operators have no incentive to maintain good infrastructure because it costs money and the artificial scarcity of capacity allows them to charge more.
Which wouldn't be a problem except the government created the teleco monopoly by creating a resource scarcity, namely exclusive contracts, tower permits, etc. The cost of entry into the market is so high that there can be no new players except from related businesses who feel like blowing a few billion cutting the red tape will go over well with their shareholders.
the copyright holders seem to be finding less and less favor with judges."
Curiously, all of those judges were replaced when exceptionally large political donations were made to every one of their opponents during the next election. -_- The last time a few judges got it in their head to go against the corporate agenda, they were declared "activist judges" and dealt a massive amount of media spin, quickly ending their careers. That phrase has since lost the spotlight, but the instigators of that media frenzy are still perfectly willing and able to do the same thing.
Looks like a very good way to get yourself tagged as a 'person of interest' if you access it from any western country. Anyone want an all expenses paid holiday to some non-specific Caribbean island?
I'm not sure that it's an encouraging sign when we are more afraid of what our government will do to us for accessing a terrorists' website than what the terrorists will.
authorities told Carpathia (the hosting company that MegaUpload was using to host their content to the tune of $9,000 a day) that after it was done examining the servers and had copied portions of the data, the hosting company could delete the files and re-purpose its servers
So after...
illegally seizing the servers,
illegally seizing the financial assets of a
non-US citizen using a
non-US financial service located in a
non-US controlled area,
the US government is now asking that
all the evidence and data be destroyed,
The company be buried in the US' endless appeal's process,
the end-users who legally used the service are labeled as criminals,
and the United States is once again proving to the world that it's financial networks, data networks, or any property located on, near, or in any way related to, itself is inherently untrustworthy for the purposes of conducting any form of commercial enterprise.
redactions from the invoices from cell companies (at the end), you'll notice that a few times names and emails are NOT redacted.
Someone now has the name and e-mail address of a few of the secretaries that process the paperwork for [ 3 letter government agency]. We'll have to raise the terror alert to Muave: 'Increased Risk of Angry Letters Being Sent to Actual People Instead of Boiler Room.'
Can any of the programs available to jailbroken phones prevent scans?
You're using an iPhone and you have illusions about your privacy? Dude, have you read the EULA? Law enforcement has more restrictions on what it can and cannot do with your data than the manufacturer does, which is basically no restrictions. Worry less about what the ACLU found out and more about the people who made your phone.
"...you agree that Apple and its subsidiaries
and agents may collect, maintain, process and use diagnostic, technical, usage and related information, including but not limited to information about your iOS Device, computer, system and application software, and peripherals, that is gathered periodically..."
"...To provide and improve these services, where available, Apple and its partners and licensees may
transmit, collect, maintain, process and use your location data, including the real-time geographic location of your iOS Device, road travel speed information, and location search queries."
"These unique identifiers may include your email address(es), the Apple ID information you provide, a hardware identifier for your iOS Device, and your iPhoneâ(TM)s telephone number. By using the iOS Software, you agree that Apple may transmit, collect, maintain, process and use these identifiers..."
By the way, that's all on page 1. There are 96 pages after that.
d 2) are sufficiently unique that they can be used to reliably distinguish two individuals?
Short answer: No.
Long answer:
Consider this: There are any number of comedians that are capable of mimicking the vocal characteristics of famous people to the point that unless you are directly observing the person, you would have no way of saying that say, Bill Clinton, wasn't standing in front of you. Consider as well the wide dynamic range of the human voice -- From Opera to pop music singer, we have the ability to make a stunningly wide range of sounds; and reliably reproduce them. Now consider that this recording was taken of a telephone call. First, telephone calls are stripped of most frequencies to focus only on those used during normal conversation. Some women are nearly unintelligible on a phone without deepening their voice because their natural range falls outside what the phone will transmit. Now consider that this signal was further degraded because it was a cell phone: Which use very small and notoriously distortion-prone microphones to capture audio. Now I'll throw in my personal and subjective experience here; I've worked in a call center and have done QA on a number of calls as well as taken a number myself; I would say roughly 15% of women can be misidentified as men, and vice versa. That is how much of the signal is lost or distorted. When people can't even positively identify the gender of a caller to better than 85%, well... food for thought.
The idea of differentiating from two people with similar vocal characteristics over the phone is patently absurd. It may be sufficient to identify a person from, say, 30 other people that can be identified using, say, a security camera... but it is nowhere near as forensically sound as fingerprints. That is to say, by itself, it's worthless -- I wouldn't count on it to establish more than reasonable suspicion, let alone beyond reasonable doubt.
So Navy's of tomorrow will have their ships covered in mirrors. Now, someone tell me why this won't work... because it seems like a really obvious way to divert a laser beam.
The only reason why Joe Trucker doesn't get turned in with his 1kw linear on CB is because he's a moving target
Actually, it's because the government just doesn't give a sh*t about CB radio frequencies. But given that it uses an incredibly simple modulation scheme, it can easily be traced and tracked in realtime. All you need to catch "Joe Trucker" is three antennas spaced one wavelength or more apart and you can get a fix on their position. They may be a moving target, but they're moving along a fixed path: The road. Find a guy heading northwest in the same direction as the highway and you just hop on the road a few exits up and join the flow of traffic. He'll talk again, and when he does... oh look, it's the guy 50 feet in front of you in the left lane... *flips on lights* Goodbye 1kW transmitter, goodbye trucker.
Be more concerned about frequency hopping mobile devices that use a PRNG to communicate with another device over a range of frequencies and encoding techniques... That requires a LOT more equipment to sort out where the signal is coming from. Actually, that's pretty much what the military does... o_o
I agree. Micro sim cards are bad enough already. If they get smaller, I'll need tweezers and a jeweler's loop to deal with them.
Most people put a SIM into one phone, and it stays there until it dies, they lose the phone, or they upgrade to a better phone. If using a tweezers once is a big problem for you, maybe you should inform your service provider at the time of purchase of your sausage fingers. I'm sure they'll install it for you. Oh wait... they usually do that anyway.
Minaturization has at least one benefit: The smaller and lighter the electronics become, the more space there is for other things... like that 70s-era battery tech powering the damn thing. And as things become smaller, they usually become more energy efficient. Unless it has "Intel Inside" printed on it... then abandon all hope.:\
Negotiations are at a standstill because the corporations involved can't determine the best way to rape the customer. Apple wants to shove it down their throats. RIM wants to shove it up their butt. Nokia isn't sure whether to go for the crotch, or the ear. They also haven't decided whether they'll take turns, or do it all at once. But they are all in agreement that whichever route they go, what they shove into the customer will be both smaller and more expensive than anything designed yet.
They're in the business of making passengers feel safe. Passengers like that. They'll gladly suffer through free prostate exams if it means they can sit comfortably on the flight, believing they won't be one of the next set of 9/11 martyrs.
And it's a popular product: Look at how many people fly. If people didn't like the product, they wouldn't buy it. So whenever someone says "Ah! They're taking away their civil liberties!"... Well, yes, but that's no worse than you forcing your own beliefs on them that they shouldn't be able to buy free prostate exams.
At the end of the day, you can only be responsible for your own behavior: These people aren't being forced to board a plane at gunpoint. They wllingly accept what the TSA is doing, regardless of whether or not it is necessary.
If you want the situation to change: Don't fly. Let the airplanes rust in their hangars. Let the corporations go bankrupt one by one. The TSA is only allowed to live by the patronage of the passengers. No passengers = No TSA.
You expect this kind of craven, heavy-handed behavior out of a Samsung or a Panasonic, sure. But Sony?!?!?
Why not? It's not like the consumers are protesting or anything. They'll buy it no matter how restrictive it is because they've become accustomed to it from years of using ipods, windows vista, dvds, etc. There isn't a popular consumer entertainment product out there that doesn't have some form of content restriction.
Don't blame Sony: Blame the idiot consumers... they'd probably buy a three coiled shit if it had 'Sony' emblazoned across the front and some semi-naked girl promoting it. The primary demographic for these games are people who are under 25 years old, have a lot of disposable income (teenagers!), and that group doesn't remember a time when DRM wasn't ever-present. Anyone my age (30+) can and does call me when they can't find a torrent or piece of software they want. Anyone under the age of about 25 is afraid the FBI is going to bust down their door and rape them with an anal probe... even though none of them have ever met or known anyone this happened to.
So strike my last... don't blame Sony. In fact, don't even blame the consumer: Blame yourself, the one person who has the facts, the technical expertise, and the social awareness of the problem. You can't count on the kids these days to know better... fuck, they can't even do basic division anymore their education's been so watered down. From everything I've seen of the teenagers today, their education has been shit, and I don't think that's accidental.. we're moving in a direction of having this country be run by a very few haves, and a whole lot of have-nots. I don't feel this is accidental... DRM is just one front in a very large war against the working class.
Footnote: HEY SLASHDOT, using a greater than sign by itself should not mean your html parsing code goes all pac-man on the rest of the comment.
You expect this kind of craven, heavy-handed behavior out of a Samsung or a Panasonic, sure. But Sony?!?!?
Why not? It's not like the consumers are protesting or anything. They'll buy it no matter how restrictive it is because they've become accustomed to it from years of using ipods, windows vista, dvds, etc. There isn't a popular consumer entertainment product out there that doesn't have some form of content restriction.
Don't blame Sony: Blame the idiot consumers... they'd probably buy a three coiled shit if it had 'Sony' emblazoned across the front and some semi-naked girl promoting it. The primary demographic for these games are people who are none of them have ever met or known anyone this happened to.
So strike my last... don't blame Sony. In fact, don't even blame the consumer: Blame yourself, the one person who has the facts, the technical expertise, and the social awareness of the problem. You can't count on the kids these days to know better... fuck, they can't even do basic division anymore their education's been so watered down. From everything I've seen of the teenagers today, their education has been shit, and I don't think that's accidental.. we're moving in a direction of having this country be run by a very few haves, and a whole lot of have-nots. I don't feel this is accidental... DRM is just one front in a very large war against the working class.
Creating an environment where scientists are reluctant to share odd results and get help finding mistakes will impede the progress of science.
That may have been precisely the point. People doing perfectly good science are being hung out to dry in the court of public opinion. Why? You'll note in this country a sudden rise in the number of science articles which are (almost) immediately proven wrong. The press then makes a big deal about this. Funding for science has been sharply curtailed and all manner of anti-science has gained mainstream attention and appeal: The anti-vaxxers, the creationists, homeopathic remedies, alternative medicine, indigo kids, people against fluorinated water... the list goes on. The media has been giving "equal time" to these rubbish movements, and being very uncritical of even the most outlandish claims, while being exceptionally critical of proper science. All the while our rates of high school graduation are dropping, conservatives are telling us that turning to church-based learning is the answer, and technology-based companies are increasingly moving labor and capital overseas to get out from under the onerous requirements of our patent and copyright system.
The ultimate goal of all these seemingly disparate legal and social changes appears to be to deprive the american public of its most valuable asset: It's own minds. You don't need to know science, math, technology, etc., to work in a factory, or a call center, or a service job. We're creating a vast gap between the few who are rich enough to afford an education -- who have enough resources to know the literal truth of things, and the rest, who are fed non-sense ideas that make their behavior easy to predict and control. We may very well be reverting to a world where the commoners think the world is flat and only the few scientists who, at the behest of their land barons are called upon to do limited inquiry and research for their own personal gain, will know any better.
This might be a stretch, but I've talked to way too many teenagers that can't even do basic math.. like division of whole numbers. They have no understanding of the relationships between numbers, whether an answer 'sounds right'. I know reading comprehension was low in my day, but right now I have a 15 yo kid sister who has just now reached 5th grade reading comprehension. Mom insists that it's because of a "learning disability", but there's nothing wrong with her -- the quality of her education has simply been shit. And mom's solution? An online school! Homeschooling. And she's hardly alone... where I live (Minneapolis, MN), there are almost as many kids in private or charter schools as public school. The only cities near here to maintain their graduation rate has been in relatively affluent neighborhoods that due to local law are inaccessible by anyone not a resident in those cities.
I can see no real hope here; I think we've managed to raise a generation predisposed to an almost caste-like system based on their education.
Just watch and wait: it'll be the kid who takes apart his iPod to replace the broken battery who gets charged.
He hurt a poor, defenseless, for-profit corporation. Taking two years of his life for slightly modifying a thing he already owns is getting off easy -- the kid is a monster.
Um... Anyone who is actually logged into their Google account while searching for porn is a moron.
Yes, but there is no way to logout really. Your browser is leaking your personal information, your IP address doesn't change when you logout, your habits are known, predictable, and that little logon button is about as useful as the interrogator turning off the tape recorder when you ask to go "off the record"... there's still a dozen other microphones in the room that are on, and he can lie as much as he want and it's legal.
Slashdot Mirror
Am I the only one that noticed that the author got supply and demand mixed up?
"Yes." ~ The Author
Art in the form of cave paintings can be seen as a form of record keeping directly related to major events and hunting rituals, that would seem to have a relevance to survival.
And they did it instead of hunting, eating, reproducing, etc.
...digitable distribution model that is killing traditional music sales.
The industry shouldn't exist today period. There is no 'killing', it is dead, and the music executives are corpse camping.
Why do we make art? It's not for money. It's not for social prestige. We make art as an act of self expression and as a way of passing the time when we're not engaged in activities necessary for our own survival. Art has no survival value -- and yet it has persisted since before recorded history. Cave paintings and such, jewelry, etc.
The recording industry couldn't exist until it was possible to capture audiovisual events. When the technology was first invented, it was expensive to record, duplicate, and distribute it so that people could observe the art of others. Music didn't start with the invention of the phonograph, anymore than acting started with the invention of motion picture.
But what has happened is that the technology has gotten cheaper, and cheaper, to the point where audio-visual recording equipment only costs a few dollars and reproducing those recordings costs nothing. The industry's raisin de etre is gone.
The advent of digital technology is what killed the recording industry -- they are no more relevant today than horse shoe manufacturers. The only reason they still exist is because they are sitting on massive piles of cash garnered because the technology decreased the business cost, and they pocketed the difference; They can afford to spend millions, even billions, convincing countries worldwide to rewrite their laws to create artificial markets and monopolies under the guise that if their industry disappears, the art will too.
So if companies or individuals voluntarily choose to provide this information then there is no need to obtain a warrant. People must make a stand if they really care. But what incentive do corporations have to do this?
They can only provide that information if it is not solicited, otherwise it is inadmissible as evidence. So when the police decide to monitor someone's cell phone without a warrant, they are giving that evidence up -- it can't be used. But if in the course of listening to that cell phone they discover an opportunity to observe someone engaged in illegal activity, then the police can simply "happen" to be sitting in a van next door when the crime takes place. Of course, with the Patriot Act et al and our new conservative supreme court, that evidence can sometimes be given post facto approval and then used against a person.
But.. that's how it used to work; So long as the police only presented a chain of evidence based on observations and reasonable cause for any evidence obtained, it was okay; There might have been more evidence, but it couldn't be used or presented... That is how the system ensured justice. So it has always been okay to bend the rules -- but only recently has it been okay to not have any.
They never needed a warrant to "tail" a guy driving round in his car, or "shadow" him walking down the street, so why need one to tail/shadow a cellphone?
Because I can tail a guy, or "shadow" him walking down the street. Anyone can do those activities in public. Not anyone can eavesdrop on a cell phone which is being used in someone's home, car, etc. Warrants are when the police want to do something an ordinary citizen cannot.
operators have no incentive to maintain good infrastructure because it costs money and the artificial scarcity of capacity allows them to charge more.
Which wouldn't be a problem except the government created the teleco monopoly by creating a resource scarcity, namely exclusive contracts, tower permits, etc. The cost of entry into the market is so high that there can be no new players except from related businesses who feel like blowing a few billion cutting the red tape will go over well with their shareholders.
What are we doing different in the U.S.?
We're throwing our money at CEOs the same way school girls throw wet panties at Justin Bieber at concerts. Next question.
the copyright holders seem to be finding less and less favor with judges."
Curiously, all of those judges were replaced when exceptionally large political donations were made to every one of their opponents during the next election. -_- The last time a few judges got it in their head to go against the corporate agenda, they were declared "activist judges" and dealt a massive amount of media spin, quickly ending their careers. That phrase has since lost the spotlight, but the instigators of that media frenzy are still perfectly willing and able to do the same thing.
Looks like a very good way to get yourself tagged as a 'person of interest' if you access it from any western country. Anyone want an all expenses paid holiday to some non-specific Caribbean island?
I'm not sure that it's an encouraging sign when we are more afraid of what our government will do to us for accessing a terrorists' website than what the terrorists will.
authorities told Carpathia (the hosting company that MegaUpload was using to host their content to the tune of $9,000 a day) that after it was done examining the servers and had copied portions of the data, the hosting company could delete the files and re-purpose its servers
So after...
illegally seizing the servers,
illegally seizing the financial assets of a
non-US citizen using a
non-US financial service located in a
non-US controlled area,
the US government is now asking that
all the evidence and data be destroyed,
The company be buried in the US' endless appeal's process,
the end-users who legally used the service are labeled as criminals,
and the United States is once again proving to the world that it's financial networks, data networks, or any property located on, near, or in any way related to, itself is inherently untrustworthy for the purposes of conducting any form of commercial enterprise.
That sound about right?
redactions from the invoices from cell companies (at the end), you'll notice that a few times names and emails are NOT redacted.
Someone now has the name and e-mail address of a few of the secretaries that process the paperwork for [ 3 letter government agency]. We'll have to raise the terror alert to Muave: 'Increased Risk of Angry Letters Being Sent to Actual People Instead of Boiler Room.'
Can any of the programs available to jailbroken phones prevent scans?
You're using an iPhone and you have illusions about your privacy? Dude, have you read the EULA? Law enforcement has more restrictions on what it can and cannot do with your data than the manufacturer does, which is basically no restrictions. Worry less about what the ACLU found out and more about the people who made your phone.
"...you agree that Apple and its subsidiaries and agents may collect, maintain, process and use diagnostic, technical, usage and related information, including but not limited to information about your iOS Device, computer, system and application software, and peripherals, that is gathered periodically..."
"...To provide and improve these services, where available, Apple and its partners and licensees may transmit, collect, maintain, process and use your location data, including the real-time geographic location of your iOS Device, road travel speed information, and location search queries."
"These unique identifiers may include your email address(es), the Apple ID information you provide, a hardware identifier for your iOS Device, and your iPhoneâ(TM)s telephone number. By using the iOS Software, you agree that Apple may transmit, collect, maintain, process and use these identifiers..."
By the way, that's all on page 1. There are 96 pages after that.
d 2) are sufficiently unique that they can be used to reliably distinguish two individuals?
Short answer: No.
Long answer:
Consider this: There are any number of comedians that are capable of mimicking the vocal characteristics of famous people to the point that unless you are directly observing the person, you would have no way of saying that say, Bill Clinton, wasn't standing in front of you. Consider as well the wide dynamic range of the human voice -- From Opera to pop music singer, we have the ability to make a stunningly wide range of sounds; and reliably reproduce them. Now consider that this recording was taken of a telephone call. First, telephone calls are stripped of most frequencies to focus only on those used during normal conversation. Some women are nearly unintelligible on a phone without deepening their voice because their natural range falls outside what the phone will transmit. Now consider that this signal was further degraded because it was a cell phone: Which use very small and notoriously distortion-prone microphones to capture audio. Now I'll throw in my personal and subjective experience here; I've worked in a call center and have done QA on a number of calls as well as taken a number myself; I would say roughly 15% of women can be misidentified as men, and vice versa. That is how much of the signal is lost or distorted. When people can't even positively identify the gender of a caller to better than 85%, well... food for thought.
The idea of differentiating from two people with similar vocal characteristics over the phone is patently absurd. It may be sufficient to identify a person from, say, 30 other people that can be identified using, say, a security camera... but it is nowhere near as forensically sound as fingerprints. That is to say, by itself, it's worthless -- I wouldn't count on it to establish more than reasonable suspicion, let alone beyond reasonable doubt.
So Navy's of tomorrow will have their ships covered in mirrors. Now, someone tell me why this won't work... because it seems like a really obvious way to divert a laser beam.
The only reason why Joe Trucker doesn't get turned in with his 1kw linear on CB is because he's a moving target
Actually, it's because the government just doesn't give a sh*t about CB radio frequencies. But given that it uses an incredibly simple modulation scheme, it can easily be traced and tracked in realtime. All you need to catch "Joe Trucker" is three antennas spaced one wavelength or more apart and you can get a fix on their position. They may be a moving target, but they're moving along a fixed path: The road. Find a guy heading northwest in the same direction as the highway and you just hop on the road a few exits up and join the flow of traffic. He'll talk again, and when he does... oh look, it's the guy 50 feet in front of you in the left lane... *flips on lights* Goodbye 1kW transmitter, goodbye trucker.
Be more concerned about frequency hopping mobile devices that use a PRNG to communicate with another device over a range of frequencies and encoding techniques... That requires a LOT more equipment to sort out where the signal is coming from. Actually, that's pretty much what the military does... o_o
I agree. Micro sim cards are bad enough already. If they get smaller, I'll need tweezers and a jeweler's loop to deal with them.
Most people put a SIM into one phone, and it stays there until it dies, they lose the phone, or they upgrade to a better phone. If using a tweezers once is a big problem for you, maybe you should inform your service provider at the time of purchase of your sausage fingers. I'm sure they'll install it for you. Oh wait... they usually do that anyway.
Minaturization has at least one benefit: The smaller and lighter the electronics become, the more space there is for other things... like that 70s-era battery tech powering the damn thing. And as things become smaller, they usually become more energy efficient. Unless it has "Intel Inside" printed on it... then abandon all hope. :\
Negotiations are at a standstill because the corporations involved can't determine the best way to rape the customer. Apple wants to shove it down their throats. RIM wants to shove it up their butt. Nokia isn't sure whether to go for the crotch, or the ear. They also haven't decided whether they'll take turns, or do it all at once. But they are all in agreement that whichever route they go, what they shove into the customer will be both smaller and more expensive than anything designed yet.
P.S. Yes, I used 'prostate exam' and 'sit comfortably' in the same sentence. The irony is not lost on me.
They're in the business of making passengers feel safe. Passengers like that. They'll gladly suffer through free prostate exams if it means they can sit comfortably on the flight, believing they won't be one of the next set of 9/11 martyrs.
And it's a popular product: Look at how many people fly. If people didn't like the product, they wouldn't buy it. So whenever someone says "Ah! They're taking away their civil liberties!" ... Well, yes, but that's no worse than you forcing your own beliefs on them that they shouldn't be able to buy free prostate exams.
At the end of the day, you can only be responsible for your own behavior: These people aren't being forced to board a plane at gunpoint. They wllingly accept what the TSA is doing, regardless of whether or not it is necessary.
If you want the situation to change: Don't fly. Let the airplanes rust in their hangars. Let the corporations go bankrupt one by one. The TSA is only allowed to live by the patronage of the passengers. No passengers = No TSA.
You expect this kind of craven, heavy-handed behavior out of a Samsung or a Panasonic, sure. But Sony?!?!?
Why not? It's not like the consumers are protesting or anything. They'll buy it no matter how restrictive it is because they've become accustomed to it from years of using ipods, windows vista, dvds, etc. There isn't a popular consumer entertainment product out there that doesn't have some form of content restriction.
Don't blame Sony: Blame the idiot consumers... they'd probably buy a three coiled shit if it had 'Sony' emblazoned across the front and some semi-naked girl promoting it. The primary demographic for these games are people who are under 25 years old, have a lot of disposable income (teenagers!), and that group doesn't remember a time when DRM wasn't ever-present. Anyone my age (30+) can and does call me when they can't find a torrent or piece of software they want. Anyone under the age of about 25 is afraid the FBI is going to bust down their door and rape them with an anal probe... even though none of them have ever met or known anyone this happened to.
So strike my last... don't blame Sony. In fact, don't even blame the consumer: Blame yourself, the one person who has the facts, the technical expertise, and the social awareness of the problem. You can't count on the kids these days to know better... fuck, they can't even do basic division anymore their education's been so watered down. From everything I've seen of the teenagers today, their education has been shit, and I don't think that's accidental .. we're moving in a direction of having this country be run by a very few haves, and a whole lot of have-nots. I don't feel this is accidental... DRM is just one front in a very large war against the working class.
Footnote: HEY SLASHDOT, using a greater than sign by itself should not mean your html parsing code goes all pac-man on the rest of the comment.
You expect this kind of craven, heavy-handed behavior out of a Samsung or a Panasonic, sure. But Sony?!?!?
Why not? It's not like the consumers are protesting or anything. They'll buy it no matter how restrictive it is because they've become accustomed to it from years of using ipods, windows vista, dvds, etc. There isn't a popular consumer entertainment product out there that doesn't have some form of content restriction.
Don't blame Sony: Blame the idiot consumers... they'd probably buy a three coiled shit if it had 'Sony' emblazoned across the front and some semi-naked girl promoting it. The primary demographic for these games are people who are none of them have ever met or known anyone this happened to.
So strike my last... don't blame Sony. In fact, don't even blame the consumer: Blame yourself, the one person who has the facts, the technical expertise, and the social awareness of the problem. You can't count on the kids these days to know better... fuck, they can't even do basic division anymore their education's been so watered down. From everything I've seen of the teenagers today, their education has been shit, and I don't think that's accidental .. we're moving in a direction of having this country be run by a very few haves, and a whole lot of have-nots. I don't feel this is accidental... DRM is just one front in a very large war against the working class.
Creating an environment where scientists are reluctant to share odd results and get help finding mistakes will impede the progress of science.
That may have been precisely the point. People doing perfectly good science are being hung out to dry in the court of public opinion. Why? You'll note in this country a sudden rise in the number of science articles which are (almost) immediately proven wrong. The press then makes a big deal about this. Funding for science has been sharply curtailed and all manner of anti-science has gained mainstream attention and appeal: The anti-vaxxers, the creationists, homeopathic remedies, alternative medicine, indigo kids, people against fluorinated water... the list goes on. The media has been giving "equal time" to these rubbish movements, and being very uncritical of even the most outlandish claims, while being exceptionally critical of proper science. All the while our rates of high school graduation are dropping, conservatives are telling us that turning to church-based learning is the answer, and technology-based companies are increasingly moving labor and capital overseas to get out from under the onerous requirements of our patent and copyright system.
The ultimate goal of all these seemingly disparate legal and social changes appears to be to deprive the american public of its most valuable asset: It's own minds. You don't need to know science, math, technology, etc., to work in a factory, or a call center, or a service job. We're creating a vast gap between the few who are rich enough to afford an education -- who have enough resources to know the literal truth of things, and the rest, who are fed non-sense ideas that make their behavior easy to predict and control. We may very well be reverting to a world where the commoners think the world is flat and only the few scientists who, at the behest of their land barons are called upon to do limited inquiry and research for their own personal gain, will know any better.
This might be a stretch, but I've talked to way too many teenagers that can't even do basic math.. like division of whole numbers. They have no understanding of the relationships between numbers, whether an answer 'sounds right'. I know reading comprehension was low in my day, but right now I have a 15 yo kid sister who has just now reached 5th grade reading comprehension. Mom insists that it's because of a "learning disability", but there's nothing wrong with her -- the quality of her education has simply been shit. And mom's solution? An online school! Homeschooling. And she's hardly alone... where I live (Minneapolis, MN), there are almost as many kids in private or charter schools as public school. The only cities near here to maintain their graduation rate has been in relatively affluent neighborhoods that due to local law are inaccessible by anyone not a resident in those cities.
I can see no real hope here; I think we've managed to raise a generation predisposed to an almost caste-like system based on their education.
Just watch and wait: it'll be the kid who takes apart his iPod to replace the broken battery who gets charged.
He hurt a poor, defenseless, for-profit corporation. Taking two years of his life for slightly modifying a thing he already owns is getting off easy -- the kid is a monster.
Um... Anyone who is actually logged into their Google account while searching for porn is a moron.
Yes, but there is no way to logout really. Your browser is leaking your personal information, your IP address doesn't change when you logout, your habits are known, predictable, and that little logon button is about as useful as the interrogator turning off the tape recorder when you ask to go "off the record"... there's still a dozen other microphones in the room that are on, and he can lie as much as he want and it's legal.
is that the government version of saying, "I know I'll get down-modded for this, but..."
Sortof, except you can't just sign up under another account, and if you get downmodded enough you won't be able to post anymore. Ever.