When it gets released, give it a try before you knock it. I think most people will be pleasantly surprised.
LOL! Yeah right! How? M$ is going to make it run on Solaris or Linux?
I got several good laughs from the article, too:
It [C#] provides operating system independence
From M$!? That'll be the day. M$ couldn't produce platform independant software if their sales depended on it; they just don't have the skillz.
...it also provides language independence...
Cool, a language with no syntax.
But he said C# "helps with the vision of Web services. It's a platform-agnostic method of building these rapidly distributed applications."
Goodhew added that C# allows "developers (to) access any hardware and software." C# provides "complete access to (the) underlying platform."
Uh-huh. So this "platform independant", "platform agnostic" new language will allow me to write X apps for Linux? What's that? It only runs on Windoze boxes? That's what I thought. It's platform independant/agnostic how, exactly?
M$ is just trying to spin this to minimize publics awareness of the anti-trust conviction.
The way they act is as if the whole trial is just a big misunderstanding. I'm beginning to wonder if they're expecting Bush to somehow pressure the courts or the DOJ into either dropping the trial or doing something else that would favor Microsoft.
Yes, their mannerisms are those typical of criminals, caught red-handed, who know that the fix is in. There is no doubt that they believe that they will get away with it. That, I think, was what got under Judge Jackson's skin worse than anything.
It is clear to any thinking person that M$ is a criminal enterprise. Jackson is not a man inclined to pull punches with unrepentent criminals, I think.
Does anyone know if something like this is possible? From what I know, Bush is totally pro-Microsoft regarding the trial...
Possible? M$ is spending millions to make it a certainty. M$ considers both congress and the upcoming presidential elections bought and paid for. They are going to be very upset if a rescue does not materialize to get them off the hook after November. It all boils down to whether or not there are any politicians left who believe that the citizenry are a force to be reckoned with.
Do a web search on the names Ralph Reed, George W. Bush, and Microsoft. If it doesn't turn anything, then it's already over. Otherwise, the FBI may be able to do something. Gore is not clean, either. M$ is playing both sides, with a heapin' helpin' of spin for the general public.
M$ needs the help of the government to stay afloat, at this point. That's why they have "innovated" things like the DMCA and UCITA. M$ believes they can criminalize behaviors that involve using non-M$ products. If they don't succeed in that, M$ will not be able to compete in an open market. That is the concesion they will try to win, regardless of any "penalty"; they want the industry regulated. No more non-corporate servers...
Send BATF to serve the warrents at the Redmond Compound
Yes, M$ opened a research division in India. We know. We know M$ is supporting visas for you non-amerikans because all the amerikan programmers are so greedy and incompetent.... We also know other non-ameikans, so we know how full of shit you really are.
If M$ were what non-amerikans thought of when they think of the US, then amerikans would be damn glad for what Jackson has done, since most amerikans are honest, law-abiding citizens who despise the criminal mentality that has created M$.
Amerikans also understand you know what side your bread is buttered on; relax and enjoy. Amerikans are hoping M$ will move its entire operation to India or Malaysia, or somewhere that cannot confused with Amerika in the minds of the world.
Amerikans are sick of M$. M$ is un-Amerikan, and should get the hell out. Let some other country enjoy the same "benefits" amerikans have been stuck with for the last decade. Let M$ go fuck with the national security of some other country. Are you volunteering? Call M$. I understand they are reviewing offers.
I just wish more US citizens could see (as I'm sure the intelligent ones can) that government propaganda isn't something that "happens in other corrupt countries" only - that their opinions are also manipulated by the press.
I don't know a single individual in the US who likes or respects the US federal govt. Problem is, there's nothing anyone can do. The national elections are a joke, and anybody who speaks out too loudly gets killed or just disapeared.
Many of the citizens are ready to fight, but being fundamentally good people, they don't know who to go after. The govt knows that the citizenry is hostile, that's why they are picking up speed on the trying to get guns out of the hands of the populace. They are afraid. Ignore the hype about in the national media about why they are doing it. It's propaganda. I don't know of any citizens who actually think the way CNN claims they do... The media is a tool of the govt. The govt uses the media to make the population feel isolated and powerless. That's why they are attacking the internet.... etc, etc. I'm sure you've heard all this before.
The Chinese are no more against the internet than the US, they are just more open about it. Their population is already disarmed, and the Chinese govt actually has broader popular support in their population than the US does, percentage-wise. The US continues to work very hard to keep US citizens from knowing this, but it's fairly obvious if you talk to the people, instead of depending on the media for information.
The younger people, in general, are not aware of the scope of the problem. Did you note that the previous poster, even while he was claiming he had been taught about US propaganda in school, still seemed to think of it as something that was done to other countries (e.g. Latin America, etc)?
That's how bad it is. People here don't want to admit how far from their control their govt really is, or how totalitarian it has become. A friend of mine in the legal system recently refered to it as a "Velvet Lined Police State". I thought that was apt. They give you what they think should be enough to keep you quiet. If that doesn't work, they erase you.
I'm quite certain the percentage of Chinese citizens who are unhappy with their govt is no greater than the percentage of Amerikan citizens who are unhappy with the US govt. They stand about the same chance of changing it, too.
I can't believe someone on Slashdot actually figured this out.
I sympathize with your being bitter, but I think you're being a bit harsh with the slashdotters. I've seen more M$ advocates here than I ever did in Usenet, for instance. In fact, I think remarks like yours are just part of an concerted effort to destroy a market -- the non-M$ market.
There is a consumer market for commercial *nix software. I am part of it. It is that market that scares M$ to death, not the Open Source advocates. The *nix consumer software market represents competion with M$. The Open Source "market" is a small demograhpic that everyone is working very hard to make go away. There are not enough people out there who buy anything (including software) based on quality (as opposed to hype) to make an impact on any corp that spends more than a few billion a year on marketing...
Open source IS working, and providing rapid updates for free.
The only place where I see Open Source working now is in the Linux system software. All the Open Source applications I try to use are buggy as hell...
No one will adopt a buggy product and no one can make a living supporting a product that no one uses.
Yes, that's my point. I personally don't know a single person making a living supporting Open Source. I know plenty of people make good livings supporting proprietary softeware systems...
Linux works better on all of my boxes. It's getting better while M$ gets worse.
Mine too. I think that's because Microsoft is so pathethic, though, not necesarily because Linux is Open Source. Solaris seems at least as robust as Linux, for instance...
In general, you'll get no argument from me on most of your points here, but my conclusions are differnt. I don't think M$ sux because it's proprietary, I think it sux because it's bad software. That does not mean proprietary software is inherently bad. I mentioned Solaris as an example. Opera is another example...
The real question in my mind is why people who can write good software (I'm talking about Opera, and Netscape -- the original Netscape was good software, I *bought* a copy) refuse to support robust operating systems.
I see two possible answers: 1) they've pegged the demographic as a bunch of geeks who won't pay money for software, and proceeded to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy, or 2) M$ is buying them off.
I don't think you can reasonably claim that the Open Source application products that are available for Linux are particularly less buggy that M$ products. They *are* better supported, and you *can* fix them yourself if you have time, but they definitely crash plenty. Especially Netscape.
If you've never had Netscape crash a Linux box, I can only assume you've never run Netscape on Linux. Netscape is the only Linux product I've seen that will lock up the entire box (not just the X session) if it gets away from you. It has to be kill -9'd regularly. Bad HTML or Javascript shouldn't be able to crash the app, let alone crash X, or lock up the box.
...and it crahsed. It wouldn't let me log in to/. either. These are things that will have to fixed before I can use it regularly...
I do like the product, though. I like it a lot better than Mozilla, in fact. I find it much more accessible, for one thing. I like the interface better, and hey, if the pre-release is going to crash, at least I didn't have to waste a lot of time or disk space mucking about with it. Can't say that about Mozilla. It crashes all the time, even when I sacrifice all those megabytes to it.
I had hoped that when Netscape went open source it would get leaned down to something usable, but I don't see that happening. After 3 years, there's still no usable version. I have small hope that it will ever be anything but a development resource for kiosk manufacturers.
Opera, on the other has a lot of potential for actual users. I just wish they'd focus more on their Linux market. I would certainly pay money for a good quality Linux browser, since none currently exists.
I actually think this whole Open Source thing is getting in the way of development of good software for the platform. Nobody wants to commit resources to develop for a market that won't pay for the goods. If the only way to make money of a product is thru support, where's the incentive to develop a quality product? Hell, that's the M$ business model. Produce buggy software, hype it till it sells, then charge the real bucks to make it usable.
The fact that the CNN stories chose not to say anything at all about affected platforms stinks.
Are they so anxious to protect M$ from negative publicity that they can't even give a list of what platforms are vulnerable to this new "threat"?!
I wasted almost 5 minutes tracking down the fact that only win machines are vulnerable. Even then it was not explicitly stated.
A. That's shoddy reporting (nothing new, for CNN), and B. It's an obvious way to avoid saying yet again "Only computers running M$ software are vulnerable to this Trojan." I wonder how much Gates & Co. paid to keep that out of print this time (CNN was a unix shop, last I heard, btw).
M$ is enabling these attacks. Hanging a Windoze box on a DSL line or cable modem should a misdemeanor, punishable my not less 6 months running MS-DOS 4.0 with no TCP/IP stack, and a fine of $1000.
What does an individual have to do to be considered for Sealand citizenship? Is residency required? Taxes?
It occurs to me that many of the potential problems listed in questions in this forum would be solved if Sealand hand available a large, dedicated population distributed across the globe, which could answer a call to arms in case of trouble.
Arms are the basis for diplomacy. If Sealand had a significant number of citizens under arms, that fact could be used to support diplomatic missions to say, the UN.
Could Sealand manage such distributed armed forces? What about intelligence services? Counter-espionage?
Is there an immigration policy or any kind of arrangement for refugees seeking political asylum?
What about expansion of land area? Is Sealand in a position to accept colonies if said refugees manage to gain control of some piece of land? Is there any requirement under international law for a nation to exist on a contiguous land mass?
Is there a Charter or Constitution-type document that potential immigrants could study before deciding to swear allegiance?
Does Sealand have a State Religion?
Comments
Stephenson is great, but it might be a good idea to take a page from Gibson (Idoru) concerning establishment of a virtual nation.
Fwiw, there can be no doubt that Sealands existance will not be tolerated by the US. I can't say how the Europeans will see it, but the US govt is a bunch of vicious, ignorant, despots; there is no hope in sight.
The first attacks will doubtless be economic, then physical (in the form of disconnection of backbones, etc), then the knives will come out. You need a deterrent.
You will need enough citizens, widely distributed enough, to prevent the effective use of "precision" tactics the likes of which we saw in the Wavo raid in Texas, the MOVE raid in Philadelphia, the Fremen in Montana, the action in the Balkans, etc. The US has a long history of use of extreme force against small groups of disenfranchised persons who won't conform.
Sealand should serve as a capitol -- the seed for a widely distributed, heavily encrypted data virtual nation. As things stand right now, a single cruise missle could bring this all to an end, and your supporters worldwide would have absolutely no recourse.
were you seriously suggesting writing software that can detect songs recorded by Metallica from content alone?
Well, I wasn't the one suggesting it, but I think it would be as terribly difficult as all that.
First, you could do a comparison of the composite waverform, rather like a voice print. This would not be prohibitively CPU intensive for modern hardware, I think.
Second, You wouldn't have to download the entire song unless you got a positive on the first say 20 seconds, of the stream.
The bandwith required would be a fraction of what is being used now to actually exchange the dsongs.
Not that I would write something like that for fun, of course... but it's definitely doable, fwiw.
I recieved the following email, apparently in response to my remark that audio is a poor applicion for digitization. Don't know why the author chose not to post; doesn't know how, maybe?
I don't know if s/he works for Time-Warner, or is just borrowing their networks. Anyway, I got a chuckle out of it....
From L0pht Sun May 28 12:29:08 2000 X-Apparently-To: zero_hex@yahoo.com via mdd102.yahoomail.com Received: from fe5.southeast.rr.com (EHLO mail5.sc.rr.com) (24.93.67.52) by mta208.mail.yahoo.com with SMTP; 28 May 2000 09:28:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from workstation ([24.31.205.234]) by mail5.sc.rr.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.5.1877.357.35); Sun, 28 May 2000 12:28:01 -0400 Message-ID: From: "L0pht" To: Subject: mp3 Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 12:29:08 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0005_01BFC8A0.51DB1CA 0" X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2919.6600 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6600 Return-Path: l0phtlee@yah00.com Content-Length: 3082
Your putrid attempt to devalue the superior mp3 standard shows you as the over-zealous undereducated bullshit spewing anti-social leper that you are. I pity the test tube that bore you asshole. You must have an inferior PC and an inferior PC audio interface (Nothing less than an 800 MHZ processor will suffice dickhead). You can have your inferior tape and vinyl formats, nothing beats high compression (512Kbs) audio. The truth is your just jealous you could never come with and develope a method of mpeg compression audio yourself. You never could and you never would. If you honestly think mp3's are not superior to any other digital format out there (again, its because you have a shitty PC, get a real one leper) why not come up with a better format yourself ? Do the world a favor and shut your fucking pie hole up. The only thing that spews out of it is bullshit. Nobody likes you, so do the world a better favor and stick a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger, Bastard.
PS. Dont cry to your live-in mommy that I'm utilizing opinionated speech protected by the first amendment, you commie wanker. --
I didn't realize my detractors were so ignorant. Sounds to me like it L0pht can't quite grasp the difference between digitization and MP3, and took it reeel purse'nahl.
How 'er ya'll'uns dewin over ther, einyway, L0pht? Ya'll likin' th' Kunfederacy purty good siance th' Wahr indid? Ya'll geet that-thur sheeyit about th' FLAG wurked out yit?
Simple oscillators demonstrate that the waveshape is not dependant upon the size of the particles of the medium.
Think of a chain of ping-pong balls, or beads, or something, all connected into a rope or chain. Now, grab one end of it, and flip it so that a waveshape propagates up the chain. Note that the sinusoidal shape of the wave described by the movement of the objects is not dependant on the size of the balls or beads.
The simplest case of this principle is the arc described by a pendulum.
"Sound" is the movement of the medium, (usually air). The movement of the molecules of the medium is described by waves-shapes. The compression and rarefecation of these waves is not dependant on the size of the particles that make up the medium, it is dependant on their position.
Likewise, the eardrum is moved by the wave-shaped motion of the air. The change in position of the eardrum's surface is "continuous", and does not depend upon the size of the molecules from which the eardrum is composed.
I don't know whether the signal from ear to brain varies by current or potential, but either way, I see no real reason to believe that the level is not continuously variable. Perhaps the brain "digitizes" the electrical signal, but that goes against my understanding of the way the brain works; i.e. that it is an "analog computer".
A number of record labels are owned by Universal Music Group (UMG), a Unit of The Segram Company Ltd. A partial list can be found on the Seagram's Entertainment page.
Another, more comprehensive list of Seagram owned businesses and brands is given as the Seagram portfolio of brands (part of their 1999 annual report, a public filing, I believe?). This list also contains names of artists, film companies, television networks, and beverage brands owned by Seagram. The list is also available in PDF format "for easy downloading".
The Seagram Board of Directors list lists the members of the board and the other companies which they represent. There is also a Canadian Senator on the list. These people are public figures, and contact information shouldn't be terribly difficult to derive.
Seagrams is Heaquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
The division of UMG that markets outside the US is known as UM3.
The US Division of UMG is Universal Music Enterprises (UME).
Bronfman is Chairman of Hillel, the Foundation for Jewish Campus Life
Bronfman is 71 years old, Gemini, and lives in New York City.
Editorial Commentary
It is clear to me from the remarks that Lars
made in the Metallica piece, taken together with the remarks of Mr Edward Bronfman, that the entertainment industry has designs on Napster and any similar services.
Between Lars' contention that Metallica's main dispute with Napster was that Napster allowed distribution of Metallica material without the consent of Metallica, and Mr Bronfman's frontal assault on anonymity in general and anonymity for internet users in particular, I find a disturbing picture emerging.
The music industry is setting the stage to co-opt Napster technology for their own use. They will no doubt use filtered Napster-type servers much like radio stations. Payola schemes will determine whose music is distributed and whose is not. The status quo marches on. The rich get richer, the band and the audience gets shit. As Bronfman states, they will move quickly to expand into "mutimedia" (movies).
The man is asking for war. Given the fact of the music industry's close ties to organized crime and the drug cartels, it is a virtual certainty that blood will be shed over these issues, if it hasn't been already. Start keeping track of your friends.
The most sickening part of the Bronfman's entire rant, to me was that he is trying to do all this for the good of the internet. I am so goddam sick and tired of idiots trying to legislate and litigate their moronic ideas for my own good... I am left speechless.
Bronfman and his ilk must be stopped. Unless we intend to allow them to usurp the legacy we would leave to future generations; unless we would allow them to make the internet over in the image of the non-virtual corporate world as we have known it for the last 40 years, their powerbase must be destroyed. No quarter.
For now, boycott. This thing is already in motion. No doubt legal venues have already been selected, and the outcomes of the cases predetermined. Expect will see the first anti-anonymity cases made quite soon.
Mr. Bronfman has declared war on the internet, not just Napster.
Suggestions for a Boycott
Don't buy any Seagrams branded product. Remember to contructively engage anyone wearing or using any Seagrams branded products as well. Talk to your local bartenders and tavern owners. Note that Seagram owns film and cable t.v. outlets.
Download the Seagram portfolio of brands (PDF), print it, and distribute to stores, resteraunts, clubs, etc, with the notation "We won't buy these". The list is partial, but contains a list of artists, t.v. shows, and cable networks associated with Seagram. Contact these people and let them know that their association with Seagram is poison.
Be sure to boycott any live performance by bands associated with the CMG labels. Let the performers know why, but don't buy the tickets or the merchandise.
Contact the Hillel organization on your campus. Protest Bronfman's behavior and ask that he be removed as Chairman. Explain why. You can join Hillel online if you'd like to pursue this course as a member of the organization.
If you're in New York City, drop in on Mr Bronfman. Explain to him why you value anonymity on the net, and why you don't believe he has the right to deny you that anonymity. Ask him to lunch, and offer to help arrange for the net community to accept Seagram's unconditional surrender to end this war they cannot win.
Get this into the newspapers. Get the facts about what is going on into the public awareness. The corps that are trying to paint us, the internet community, as criminal are drug pushers, thieves, and murderers many times over. These facts are already widely known, and should be the first relevent information that comes to peoples' minds when they hear news about these issues.
Probe the members of the board for schism within the corp. There may be some there who would not agree that Seagram's entire corporate weight should be thrown into the erradication of the internet as we know it.
Buy Seagram stock. Don't give a proxy. Got to the shareholders meetings and raise hell.
Flyers and broadsides posted in public locations remain a viable way of reaching masses of people.
A couple of cases of Chivas tossed into the harbour might help get the point across, as well.
Love also seems to be embracing the mp3 revolution and has plans to distribute her music through her website while severing ties with her current label, Geffen.
Good. She'll need to get off Geffen to suppot MP3 since Geffen is on the list of labels owned by Seagram.
This thing is picking up speed. Best form up now. As the man said: Choose your killing ground, and bring the enemy to it.
Think Seegrams will lose a few sales this Memorial Day weekend?
Thanks for the informed responses, both the AC with the quantum states point and jpowers. From what you have said, I believe I understand the refrence the original poster made to the ear sampling at a slightly higer rate than the "analog" audio equipment.
At the risk of being moderated down for being OT, I'd like to take this one more step; Isn't it true that the resolution of a wave is not necesarily limited to a step size equal to the size of the particles of the medium?
IANAPhysicist, but it seems to me that the facts that a) the particles are oscillating, and b) the volumes occupied by individual oscillating particles may overlap, allow the waveform to be defined with a point resolution something less than the diameter(?) of the particle. The discrete analysis seems to work well for a static waveshape, but seems incomplete when one considers that the wave one perceives as sound is in fact being reshaped dynamicly as it propagates....
I'm operating entirely from memory (~10yrs) and "intuition" here. Is there a good reference work on this stuff that could be absorbed in a weekend? I.e. as easy to read as your post, but with some math?
Wow. Thanks, guys.I sure am relieved. I thought I was the only person in the world who thought MP3 quality was second rate. I haven't really understood the Naptster ruckus well, since I couldn't imagine how anyone could think of MP3 as a substitute for owning the CD, anyway, but there's no accounting for taste, I suppose.
There was one thing about your post that did bother me, tho, and this is OT I know. Sorry...
our ears sample at about the same rate or slightly higher than standard "analog" media reproduces (tape master, vinyl record), which is like 40% more samples per sec than standard digital media reproduces (CD, DAT).
I'm not trying to be confrontational, here, but: Ears don't sample. They are analog devices. Also, analog media don't use the concept of a sample rate. Sampling is purely a digital thing.
Analog reproduction means that the wave form produced by from the vinyl (for instance) is actually the same continuous waveform produced by the instrument/band/voice/whatever. The analog recording process took the sound wave, converted it to an electrical signal (waveshape), then converted the electrical shape and converted it to a groove in a the vinyl. Vinyl is mechanical storage. I.e. the shape of the groove in vinyl contains an imprint of the audio waveform.
By contrast, digital recording approximates the audio wave by sampling it at some rate. The mimimum useful sample rate is a function of the maximum frequencycomponent of the signal being being sampled. IIRC, it's something like 2 * Fmax. Say 40kHz for audio.
This is an oversimplification, but the idea is that analog deals with signals that are continuous waveshapes, and digital deals with discrete samples of that wave shape. It is the difference between a sine wave (analog), and a square or triangular wave (digital). The ear smooths the digital signal into the perception of a continuous wave (assuming the sample rate is high enough), by virtue of a phenomenon of retention (can't recall the technical term for it, but it's a bit like capacitance of neurons, or something) in much the same way the eye percieves frames of a film to be a continuous moving picture...
Points exist on the analog signal that are not saved in the digitized signal, but the threory is that no one will notice. Also, electronics can be used to estimate those points for the digital to analog conversion that occurs before the output to the speakers. Latencies in the speakers will also provide a certain amount of smoothing on the signal; speakers are analog devices.
Anyway, I always thought audio was a pretty lame application for digitization. Sound is an analog phenomenon. In fact, I don't think there are any naturally occuring physical digital (discrete signal) phenomena. Music can only be listened to in an "analog" (continuous waveform) fashion, but I suppose that will change too, given time.
You're mistaking events for social and political realities in these two countries.
The last time I checked, the events I mentioned were realities. Rationalizations concerning social and political conditions won't change that.
You can off on a rant about Waco and Tienneman square all you want,
Thanks, but I wasn't ranting. Really. I can find some examples of some of my rants to illustrate the difference, if you'd like...
but there are fundamental differences between the rights in these two countries.
Well, in fact I didn't deny differences. I simply re-affirmed that those differences are described by certain words on certain pieces of paper, which have been largely ignored for some while now. Then I made a trivial case for the fact that those words are no longer part and parcel of the governance of the US. I did this by pointing out that, given a similar crisis, the US govt behaves identically with a totalitarian communist regime.
I even went out of my way to avoid overstating the case. I'm disapointed you didn't notice.
If you would ignore simple assertions of events like this and actually look at the differences, then you'd be able to understand why your hyperbolic supposition lacks evidence.
If I choose to ignore the events or the meaning of the events, then I become guilty of sophistry, which is what you are engaging in, I believe. You do not address the point, here, you simply ask me to join you in the consensual denial that the power mongers wish you to believe most citizens comfort themselves with.
The actions of the parties concerned is not supposition. The evidence is factual, and the portions of that evidence upon which my example depends are not subject to question or misinterpretation.
My ability to understand (or lack thereof) is not the issue. I was not addressing differences, I was addressing similarities. I further assert that these similarities indicate that the US govt no longer governs in accordance with the words that define the diference between a democratic republic and a totalitarian regime.
I am well versed in modern social engineering, corporate hegemony, authoritarian world institutions such as the IMF and WTO, and fundamental flaws in scaling and corruption in the democratic republic.
That is a very interesting statement. Perhaps you could elaborate. Perhaps draw explicit parallels or demarcate clear differences between the social engineering techniques in use in China and the US. Perhaps you could address the similarities in behavior between a corrupt democratic republic and a totalitarian regime?
I am quite aware of corporate attempts to subvert government through lobbying, back room agreements, and moronic attempts at creating censorship and other laws with no merit because of a life time of social indoctrination.
Yes, if we could attempt to break thru the lifetimes of social indoctrination for a moment here: You make my point for me. What you describe is the type of thing one might expect to find within a communist totalitarian regime, correct?
On the other hand, one might expect to find somewhat less of that type of behavior in a democratic republic, operated by, for, and of the citizens, no?
The fact, however, is that there are major differences between this and an authoritarian "communist" regimine in china.
There are differences, yes. The fact is, the nature of those differences is not so profound as you seem to believe. The diferencees that now exist are purely superficial, an artifact of those "lifetimes of social indoctrination" you mentioned (that really was a nice turn of a phrase, btw), whose most substantial element is the populace's perception of their govt's actions.
Your placement of these two examples is nothing but useless frippery.
I really can't concede this point without some more substantial logic or evidence. I do not accept that my description of an instance of the use of a totalitarian strategy to control a population that believes itself to be free is in any way frivolous or "frippery".
"All that seperates us from the Chinese are a few words on a page that no one takes seriously anymore anyway."
This point is paranoid and I lacks factual evidence and established patterns of behavior.
Bullshit. I think it's a very valid point. Compare Tieneman(sp) Square to, say, Waco.
Perhaps more people were killed in Tieneman Sq? Do the numbers as percentages of the population.
The govt strategies in these cases were so similar as to be indistiguishable. The same can be said for the relative socio-political positions of the victims. The diffences in the operations were purely of a tactical nature.
More examples are available, but one suffices to disprove your thoughtless remark.
The only way you could miss it is if you're just not paying attenion, which proves that you are among those that no longer take seriously the documents which define the US government, and the previous poster was correct.
These companies have the right to make a profit off of their products.
I keep seeing remarks to this effect, and I have to point that your statement is just patently false.
Nowhere is a corporation (or individual) assured the Right to a profit.
If you favor Right to Work, you could argue that a Corp or individual has the right to do business (attempt to make a profit), but to assert that the corp has a right to make a profit implies that if the company loses money, then their rights have somehow been violated. That is incorrect.
Furthermore, if a right of a corporation to do business is based on the right of an individual to work, then it can be shown that the coroporations do no have any inherent right to do business by their own lights, since the corporate stance seems to be generally against the right of the individual to work.
At best, the "right to do business" is a priviledge, sanctioned by the govt (which was supposed to represent people); it stops well short of ensuring that a company will make a profit simply by virtue of having won the priviledge of doing business.
Sorry if this seems like splitting hairs, but I've seen that type of remark so often, I'm afraid some younglings might actually believe it...
It is Right of Ownership which is at the crux of the problems facing the internet. What constitutes ownership, and what benefits and responsibilities are attached to it?
The right of ownership is also at the very basis of capitalism. I'll leave that proof for somebody else, since I want to harp on another topic you touched on (sort of)....
[about the press and the internet]
One is a more proffesional invironment that I see as being too tainted by big buisiness and the other an unrully mass or rioters.
Just as it is important that the press strive to be percieved as impartial (mostly a joke, these days), I think it is becoming important that netizens fight against the characterization of lawlessness that is being foisted upon them by, among others, the press.
A Reuters article of this morning refers to the internet as a "culture of theft".
I believe the long term goal of many elements within the govt and industry is to criminalize the types of knowledge and behavior associated with net culture, hacking, and so on. This is a tactic used throughout history by entrenched power structures to protect their position.
When the PTBs feel that there is a possiblity of any measure of control of the populace slipping from their grasp, expect them to demonstrate complete disregard for established legal conventions, compacts, treaties, and agreements of any kind. They will deny the need for a mandate to perform any henious action to damp what they will label first "disruptive", and then "criminal" behavior or attitudes.
What we are seeing now is only the pre-implementation spin: "*bad* hackers, *bad* internet gurus; they do criminal things." => UCITA, DMCA, etc, ad infinitum.
The financial rewards which will acrue to industry if it becomes illegal, say, for an individual to host a website on a non-company-owned server, are manifest.
This type of control is also a direct goal of the govt, who, as we all know, is all in favor of preventing any form of terrorism not perpetrated by those 3-letter agency charged with identifying, evaluating, and neutralizing any real or potential disidents within the population.
Keep Cracking, just keep it a little more quiet!
The quieter you are, the fewer people notice when you disapear, the easier it is to paint you a criminal in the eyes of the world, the fewer people care when BATF splatters your brains to take you offline.
MPAA is all about control of entertainment, which is known to be a powerful and pervasive influence, which cannot be entrusted to just anyone. If you don't believe it, ask a film-maker from the former USSR.
MPAA controlling the long arm of the law is just a gun to your head making sure you listen to what you're supposed to.
I'm sorry if this has been discussed before, but has anyone considered the possible implications of the much-touted NGWS (Next Generation Windows Services)?
Isn't that the thing where M$ software is available by subscription?
Looks like the split needs to be at least 4-way.
M$ Apps (Office)
M$ OSs (flavor du jour)
M$ Internet services (MSN,NGWS,etc)
M$ HW (X-Box, PocketPC, etc)
Each division will have to purchase what it wants to use from any other division, in much the same way ATT had to work with the Baby Bells to terminate calls. E.g. M$IS could license M$ Office from M$Apps, since NGWS is really just a distribution mechanism, not a new set of applications. Additionally, other companies could compete against M$IS for the right to distribute M$Apps in the same manner, and M$IS could competitively try for other software to distribute e.g. Star Office. X-box builders will have to buy any WinOS they want, if they still want one by then, etc.
The hard part will be preventing backdoor deals between the baby bills.
What if Microsoft just tells the Government that if they split up the company they?ll shut it down? Just close the doors and be done.
Good question. Corporate hari kari? I don't think it will happen, since in order to do something like that, M$ would have to have some sense of honor....
Is this possible?
...and that's the other thing. Would the stockholders allow it? My guess is no.
With the restrictions proposed it will be very hard for MS to compete in the long term, what if they choose not to?
I can't agree that a breakup, or any of the other proposed restrictions will make it hard for M$ to compete. In fact, the measures are designed to ensure that they must compete in order to remain viable. That's the problem, you see, is that they haven't been competing for some time. They are an anti-competitive monopoly, which means, by definition, that they have chosen to strong-arm any potential competition, rather than compete head-to-head.
I think this idea, that M$ is out there competing (and winning) to improve the quality of software for everyone, is one of the most commonly held fallacies about M$. Fortunately for all of us (M$ shareholders included), the DoJ, and Judge Jackson in particular, seem to have made it a point to make themselves better informed than the average joe-user.
The idea of a break up of M$ is a win-win scenario. If M$ chooses to continue to refuse to compete, it'll be no big loss, as long as they're out of the marketplace, and are no longer stifling competition, as they have been for the last decade or so.
The other thing, one that I haven't seen anyone ask, is what if M$ dumps their software business and chooses to focus soley on their ongoing takeover of the telecomm industry?
They have been steadily buying up the wire and wireless companies that the communications depend on since shortly before the anti-trust action began. I can envision them trying to use that position as a choke point on the industry in much the same manner they have used their position in the PC OS market. In fact, given their history, I can't envision them doing much else.
They will continue to run protection rackets of one sort or another until they are either dead or in prison, since they are not really capable of doing anything else.
Slashdot Mirror
I got several good laughs from the article, too:
From M$!? That'll be the day. M$ couldn't produce platform independant software if their sales depended on it; they just don't have the skillz. Cool, a language with no syntax. Uh-huh. So this "platform independant", "platform agnostic" new language will allow me to write X apps for Linux? What's that? It only runs on Windoze boxes? That's what I thought. It's platform independant/agnostic how, exactly?M$ is just trying to spin this to minimize publics awareness of the anti-trust conviction.
Get a Linux box!
It is clear to any thinking person that M$ is a criminal enterprise. Jackson is not a man inclined to pull punches with unrepentent criminals, I think.
Possible? M$ is spending millions to make it a certainty. M$ considers both congress and the upcoming presidential elections bought and paid for. They are going to be very upset if a rescue does not materialize to get them off the hook after November. It all boils down to whether or not there are any politicians left who believe that the citizenry are a force to be reckoned with.Do a web search on the names Ralph Reed, George W. Bush, and Microsoft. If it doesn't turn anything, then it's already over. Otherwise, the FBI may be able to do something. Gore is not clean, either. M$ is playing both sides, with a heapin' helpin' of spin for the general public.
M$ needs the help of the government to stay afloat, at this point. That's why they have "innovated" things like the DMCA and UCITA. M$ believes they can criminalize behaviors that involve using non-M$ products. If they don't succeed in that, M$ will not be able to compete in an open market. That is the concesion they will try to win, regardless of any "penalty"; they want the industry regulated. No more non-corporate servers...
Send BATF to serve the warrents at the Redmond Compound
If M$ were what non-amerikans thought of when they think of the US, then amerikans would be damn glad for what Jackson has done, since most amerikans are honest, law-abiding citizens who despise the criminal mentality that has created M$.
Amerikans also understand you know what side your bread is buttered on; relax and enjoy. Amerikans are hoping M$ will move its entire operation to India or Malaysia, or somewhere that cannot confused with Amerika in the minds of the world.
Amerikans are sick of M$. M$ is un-Amerikan, and should get the hell out. Let some other country enjoy the same "benefits" amerikans have been stuck with for the last decade. Let M$ go fuck with the national security of some other country. Are you volunteering? Call M$. I understand they are reviewing offers.
Sorry man, you are really pathetic.
Many of the citizens are ready to fight, but being fundamentally good people, they don't know who to go after. The govt knows that the citizenry is hostile, that's why they are picking up speed on the trying to get guns out of the hands of the populace. They are afraid. Ignore the hype about in the national media about why they are doing it. It's propaganda. I don't know of any citizens who actually think the way CNN claims they do... The media is a tool of the govt. The govt uses the media to make the population feel isolated and powerless. That's why they are attacking the internet.... etc, etc. I'm sure you've heard all this before.
The Chinese are no more against the internet than the US, they are just more open about it. Their population is already disarmed, and the Chinese govt actually has broader popular support in their population than the US does, percentage-wise. The US continues to work very hard to keep US citizens from knowing this, but it's fairly obvious if you talk to the people, instead of depending on the media for information.
The younger people, in general, are not aware of the scope of the problem. Did you note that the previous poster, even while he was claiming he had been taught about US propaganda in school, still seemed to think of it as something that was done to other countries (e.g. Latin America, etc)?
That's how bad it is. People here don't want to admit how far from their control their govt really is, or how totalitarian it has become. A friend of mine in the legal system recently refered to it as a "Velvet Lined Police State". I thought that was apt. They give you what they think should be enough to keep you quiet. If that doesn't work, they erase you.
I'm quite certain the percentage of Chinese citizens who are unhappy with their govt is no greater than the percentage of Amerikan citizens who are unhappy with the US govt. They stand about the same chance of changing it, too.
There is a consumer market for commercial *nix software. I am part of it. It is that market that scares M$ to death, not the Open Source advocates. The *nix consumer software market represents competion with M$. The Open Source "market" is a small demograhpic that everyone is working very hard to make go away. There are not enough people out there who buy anything (including software) based on quality (as opposed to hype) to make an impact on any corp that spends more than a few billion a year on marketing...
In general, you'll get no argument from me on most of your points here, but my conclusions are differnt. I don't think M$ sux because it's proprietary, I think it sux because it's bad software. That does not mean proprietary software is inherently bad. I mentioned Solaris as an example. Opera is another example...
The real question in my mind is why people who can write good software (I'm talking about Opera, and Netscape -- the original Netscape was good software, I *bought* a copy) refuse to support robust operating systems.
I see two possible answers: 1) they've pegged the demographic as a bunch of geeks who won't pay money for software, and proceeded to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy, or 2) M$ is buying them off.
I don't think you can reasonably claim that the Open Source application products that are available for Linux are particularly less buggy that M$ products. They *are* better supported, and you *can* fix them yourself if you have time, but they definitely crash plenty. Especially Netscape.
If you've never had Netscape crash a Linux box, I can only assume you've never run Netscape on Linux. Netscape is the only Linux product I've seen that will lock up the entire box (not just the X session) if it gets away from you. It has to be kill -9'd regularly. Bad HTML or Javascript shouldn't be able to crash the app, let alone crash X, or lock up the box.
I do like the product, though. I like it a lot better than Mozilla, in fact. I find it much more accessible, for one thing. I like the interface better, and hey, if the pre-release is going to crash, at least I didn't have to waste a lot of time or disk space mucking about with it. Can't say that about Mozilla. It crashes all the time, even when I sacrifice all those megabytes to it.
I had hoped that when Netscape went open source it would get leaned down to something usable, but I don't see that happening. After 3 years, there's still no usable version. I have small hope that it will ever be anything but a development resource for kiosk manufacturers.
Opera, on the other has a lot of potential for actual users. I just wish they'd focus more on their Linux market. I would certainly pay money for a good quality Linux browser, since none currently exists.
I actually think this whole Open Source thing is getting in the way of development of good software for the platform. Nobody wants to commit resources to develop for a market that won't pay for the goods. If the only way to make money of a product is thru support, where's the incentive to develop a quality product? Hell, that's the M$ business model. Produce buggy software, hype it till it sells, then charge the real bucks to make it usable.
Are they so anxious to protect M$ from negative publicity that they can't even give a list of what platforms are vulnerable to this new "threat"?!
I wasted almost 5 minutes tracking down the fact that only win machines are vulnerable. Even then it was not explicitly stated.
A. That's shoddy reporting (nothing new, for CNN), and B. It's an obvious way to avoid saying yet again "Only computers running M$ software are vulnerable to this Trojan." I wonder how much Gates & Co. paid to keep that out of print this time (CNN was a unix shop, last I heard, btw).
M$ is enabling these attacks. Hanging a Windoze box on a DSL line or cable modem should a misdemeanor, punishable my not less 6 months running MS-DOS 4.0 with no TCP/IP stack, and a fine of $1000.
Spin, spin, spin.
Arms are the basis for diplomacy. If Sealand had a significant number of citizens under arms, that fact could be used to support diplomatic missions to say, the UN.
Could Sealand manage such distributed armed forces? What about intelligence services? Counter-espionage?
Comments
Stephenson is great, but it might be a good idea to take a page from Gibson (Idoru) concerning establishment of a virtual nation.
Fwiw, there can be no doubt that Sealands existance will not be tolerated by the US. I can't say how the Europeans will see it, but the US govt is a bunch of vicious, ignorant, despots; there is no hope in sight.
The first attacks will doubtless be economic, then physical (in the form of disconnection of backbones, etc), then the knives will come out. You need a deterrent.
You will need enough citizens, widely distributed enough, to prevent the effective use of "precision" tactics the likes of which we saw in the Wavo raid in Texas, the MOVE raid in Philadelphia, the Fremen in Montana, the action in the Balkans, etc. The US has a long history of use of extreme force against small groups of disenfranchised persons who won't conform.
Sealand should serve as a capitol -- the seed for a widely distributed, heavily encrypted data virtual nation. As things stand right now, a single cruise missle could bring this all to an end, and your supporters worldwide would have absolutely no recourse.
Open Source Imperialism
Did anyone else email CowboyNeal about it?
First, you could do a comparison of the composite waverform, rather like a voice print. This would not be prohibitively CPU intensive for modern hardware, I think.
Second, You wouldn't have to download the entire song unless you got a positive on the first say 20 seconds, of the stream.
The bandwith required would be a fraction of what is being used now to actually exchange the dsongs.
Not that I would write something like that for fun, of course... but it's definitely doable, fwiw.
I don't know if s/he works for Time-Warner, or is just borrowing their networks. Anyway, I got a chuckle out of it....
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Your putrid attempt to devalue the superior mp3 standard shows you as the over-zealous undereducated bullshit spewing anti-social leper that you are. I pity the test tube that bore you asshole. You must have an inferior PC and an inferior PC audio interface (Nothing less than an 800 MHZ processor will suffice dickhead). You can have your inferior tape and vinyl formats, nothing beats high compression (512Kbs) audio. The truth is your just jealous you could never come with and develope a method of mpeg compression audio yourself. You never could and you never would. If you honestly think mp3's are not superior to any other digital format out there (again, its because you have a shitty PC, get a real one leper) why not come up with a better format yourself ? Do the world a favor and shut your fucking pie hole up. The only thing that spews out of it is bullshit. Nobody likes you, so do the world a better favor and stick a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger, Bastard.
PS. Dont cry to your live-in mommy that I'm utilizing opinionated speech protected by the first amendment, you commie wanker. --
I didn't realize my detractors were so ignorant. Sounds to me like it L0pht can't quite grasp the difference between digitization and MP3, and took it reeel purse'nahl.
How 'er ya'll'uns dewin over ther, einyway, L0pht? Ya'll likin' th' Kunfederacy purty good siance th' Wahr indid? Ya'll geet that-thur sheeyit about th' FLAG wurked out yit?
Fuhk yew, boah.
"You are The Son of The Bitch!"
Think of a chain of ping-pong balls, or beads, or something, all connected into a rope or chain. Now, grab one end of it, and flip it so that a waveshape propagates up the chain. Note that the sinusoidal shape of the wave described by the movement of the objects is not dependant on the size of the balls or beads.
The simplest case of this principle is the arc described by a pendulum.
"Sound" is the movement of the medium, (usually air). The movement of the molecules of the medium is described by waves-shapes. The compression and rarefecation of these waves is not dependant on the size of the particles that make up the medium, it is dependant on their position.
Likewise, the eardrum is moved by the wave-shaped motion of the air. The change in position of the eardrum's surface is "continuous", and does not depend upon the size of the molecules from which the eardrum is composed.
I don't know whether the signal from ear to brain varies by current or potential, but either way, I see no real reason to believe that the level is not continuously variable. Perhaps the brain "digitizes" the electrical signal, but that goes against my understanding of the way the brain works; i.e. that it is an "analog computer".
Thanks for getting me to think about this.
Editorial Commentary
Between Lars' contention that Metallica's main dispute with Napster was that Napster allowed distribution of Metallica material without the consent of Metallica, and Mr Bronfman's frontal assault on anonymity in general and anonymity for internet users in particular, I find a disturbing picture emerging.
The music industry is setting the stage to co-opt Napster technology for their own use. They will no doubt use filtered Napster-type servers much like radio stations. Payola schemes will determine whose music is distributed and whose is not. The status quo marches on. The rich get richer, the band and the audience gets shit. As Bronfman states, they will move quickly to expand into "mutimedia" (movies).
The man is asking for war. Given the fact of the music industry's close ties to organized crime and the drug cartels, it is a virtual certainty that blood will be shed over these issues, if it hasn't been already. Start keeping track of your friends.
The most sickening part of the Bronfman's entire rant, to me was that he is trying to do all this for the good of the internet. I am so goddam sick and tired of idiots trying to legislate and litigate their moronic ideas for my own good... I am left speechless.
Bronfman and his ilk must be stopped. Unless we intend to allow them to usurp the legacy we would leave to future generations; unless we would allow them to make the internet over in the image of the non-virtual corporate world as we have known it for the last 40 years, their powerbase must be destroyed. No quarter.
For now, boycott. This thing is already in motion. No doubt legal venues have already been selected, and the outcomes of the cases predetermined. Expect will see the first anti-anonymity cases made quite soon.
Mr. Bronfman has declared war on the internet, not just Napster.
Suggestions for a Boycott
- Don't buy any Seagrams branded product. Remember to contructively engage anyone wearing or using any Seagrams branded products as well. Talk to your local bartenders and tavern owners. Note that Seagram owns film and cable t.v. outlets.
- Download the Seagram portfolio of brands (PDF), print it, and distribute to stores, resteraunts, clubs, etc, with the notation "We won't buy these". The list is partial, but contains a list of artists, t.v. shows, and cable networks associated with Seagram. Contact these people and let them know that their association with Seagram is poison.
- Be sure to boycott any live performance by bands associated with the CMG labels. Let the performers know why, but don't buy the tickets or the merchandise.
- Contact the Hillel organization on your campus. Protest Bronfman's behavior and ask that he be removed as Chairman. Explain why. You can join Hillel online if you'd like to pursue this course as a member of the organization.
- If you're in New York City, drop in on Mr Bronfman. Explain to him why you value anonymity on the net, and why you don't believe he has the right to deny you that anonymity. Ask him to lunch, and offer to help arrange for the net community to accept Seagram's unconditional surrender to end this war they cannot win.
- Get this into the newspapers. Get the facts about what is going on into the public awareness. The corps that are trying to paint us, the internet community, as criminal are drug pushers, thieves, and murderers many times over. These facts are already widely known, and should be the first relevent information that comes to peoples' minds when they hear news about these issues.
- Probe the members of the board for schism within the corp. There may be some there who would not agree that Seagram's entire corporate weight should be thrown into the erradication of the internet as we know it.
- Buy Seagram stock. Don't give a proxy. Got to the shareholders meetings and raise hell.
- Flyers and broadsides posted in public locations remain a viable way of reaching masses of people.
- A couple of cases of Chivas tossed into the harbour might help get the point across, as well.
"Fire when you can see the whites of their eyes."This thing is picking up speed. Best form up now. As the man said: Choose your killing ground, and bring the enemy to it.
Think Seegrams will lose a few sales this Memorial Day weekend?
At the risk of being moderated down for being OT, I'd like to take this one more step; Isn't it true that the resolution of a wave is not necesarily limited to a step size equal to the size of the particles of the medium?
IANAPhysicist, but it seems to me that the facts that a) the particles are oscillating, and b) the volumes occupied by individual oscillating particles may overlap, allow the waveform to be defined with a point resolution something less than the diameter(?) of the particle. The discrete analysis seems to work well for a static waveshape, but seems incomplete when one considers that the wave one perceives as sound is in fact being reshaped dynamicly as it propagates....
I'm operating entirely from memory (~10yrs) and "intuition" here. Is there a good reference work on this stuff that could be absorbed in a weekend? I.e. as easy to read as your post, but with some math?
There was one thing about your post that did bother me, tho, and this is OT I know. Sorry...
I'm not trying to be confrontational, here, but: Ears don't sample. They are analog devices. Also, analog media don't use the concept of a sample rate. Sampling is purely a digital thing.Analog reproduction means that the wave form produced by from the vinyl (for instance) is actually the same continuous waveform produced by the instrument/band/voice/whatever. The analog recording process took the sound wave, converted it to an electrical signal (waveshape), then converted the electrical shape and converted it to a groove in a the vinyl. Vinyl is mechanical storage. I.e. the shape of the groove in vinyl contains an imprint of the audio waveform.
By contrast, digital recording approximates the audio wave by sampling it at some rate. The mimimum useful sample rate is a function of the maximum frequencycomponent of the signal being being sampled. IIRC, it's something like 2 * Fmax. Say 40kHz for audio.
This is an oversimplification, but the idea is that analog deals with signals that are continuous waveshapes, and digital deals with discrete samples of that wave shape. It is the difference between a sine wave (analog), and a square or triangular wave (digital). The ear smooths the digital signal into the perception of a continuous wave (assuming the sample rate is high enough), by virtue of a phenomenon of retention (can't recall the technical term for it, but it's a bit like capacitance of neurons, or something) in much the same way the eye percieves frames of a film to be a continuous moving picture...
Points exist on the analog signal that are not saved in the digitized signal, but the threory is that no one will notice. Also, electronics can be used to estimate those points for the digital to analog conversion that occurs before the output to the speakers. Latencies in the speakers will also provide a certain amount of smoothing on the signal; speakers are analog devices.
Anyway, I always thought audio was a pretty lame application for digitization. Sound is an analog phenomenon. In fact, I don't think there are any naturally occuring physical digital (discrete signal) phenomena. Music can only be listened to in an "analog" (continuous waveform) fashion, but I suppose that will change too, given time.
I even went out of my way to avoid overstating the case. I'm disapointed you didn't notice.
If I choose to ignore the events or the meaning of the events, then I become guilty of sophistry, which is what you are engaging in, I believe. You do not address the point, here, you simply ask me to join you in the consensual denial that the power mongers wish you to believe most citizens comfort themselves with.The actions of the parties concerned is not supposition. The evidence is factual, and the portions of that evidence upon which my example depends are not subject to question or misinterpretation.
My ability to understand (or lack thereof) is not the issue. I was not addressing differences, I was addressing similarities. I further assert that these similarities indicate that the US govt no longer governs in accordance with the words that define the diference between a democratic republic and a totalitarian regime.
That is a very interesting statement. Perhaps you could elaborate. Perhaps draw explicit parallels or demarcate clear differences between the social engineering techniques in use in China and the US. Perhaps you could address the similarities in behavior between a corrupt democratic republic and a totalitarian regime? Yes, if we could attempt to break thru the lifetimes of social indoctrination for a moment here: You make my point for me. What you describe is the type of thing one might expect to find within a communist totalitarian regime, correct?On the other hand, one might expect to find somewhat less of that type of behavior in a democratic republic, operated by, for, and of the citizens, no?
There are differences, yes. The fact is, the nature of those differences is not so profound as you seem to believe. The diferencees that now exist are purely superficial, an artifact of those "lifetimes of social indoctrination" you mentioned (that really was a nice turn of a phrase, btw), whose most substantial element is the populace's perception of their govt's actions. I really can't concede this point without some more substantial logic or evidence. I do not accept that my description of an instance of the use of a totalitarian strategy to control a population that believes itself to be free is in any way frivolous or "frippery".red pill + blue pill = purple haze
Perhaps more people were killed in Tieneman Sq? Do the numbers as percentages of the population.
The govt strategies in these cases were so similar as to be indistiguishable. The same can be said for the relative socio-political positions of the victims. The diffences in the operations were purely of a tactical nature.
More examples are available, but one suffices to disprove your thoughtless remark.
The only way you could miss it is if you're just not paying attenion, which proves that you are among those that no longer take seriously the documents which define the US government, and the previous poster was correct.
More like they'll move to the Indian sub-continent, where they already have a programming staff in place; that way the relo costs are reduced....
The X-Files are kid stuff compared to this...
Nowhere is a corporation (or individual) assured the Right to a profit.
If you favor Right to Work, you could argue that a Corp or individual has the right to do business (attempt to make a profit), but to assert that the corp has a right to make a profit implies that if the company loses money, then their rights have somehow been violated. That is incorrect.
Furthermore, if a right of a corporation to do business is based on the right of an individual to work, then it can be shown that the coroporations do no have any inherent right to do business by their own lights, since the corporate stance seems to be generally against the right of the individual to work.
At best, the "right to do business" is a priviledge, sanctioned by the govt (which was supposed to represent people); it stops well short of ensuring that a company will make a profit simply by virtue of having won the priviledge of doing business.
Sorry if this seems like splitting hairs, but I've seen that type of remark so often, I'm afraid some younglings might actually believe it...
It is Right of Ownership which is at the crux of the problems facing the internet. What constitutes ownership, and what benefits and responsibilities are attached to it?
The right of ownership is also at the very basis of capitalism. I'll leave that proof for somebody else, since I want to harp on another topic you touched on (sort of)....
[about the press and the internet]
Just as it is important that the press strive to be percieved as impartial (mostly a joke, these days), I think it is becoming important that netizens fight against the characterization of lawlessness that is being foisted upon them by, among others, the press.A Reuters article of this morning refers to the internet as a "culture of theft".
I believe the long term goal of many elements within the govt and industry is to criminalize the types of knowledge and behavior associated with net culture, hacking, and so on. This is a tactic used throughout history by entrenched power structures to protect their position.
When the PTBs feel that there is a possiblity of any measure of control of the populace slipping from their grasp, expect them to demonstrate complete disregard for established legal conventions, compacts, treaties, and agreements of any kind. They will deny the need for a mandate to perform any henious action to damp what they will label first "disruptive", and then "criminal" behavior or attitudes.
What we are seeing now is only the pre-implementation spin: "*bad* hackers, *bad* internet gurus; they do criminal things." => UCITA, DMCA, etc, ad infinitum.
The financial rewards which will acrue to industry if it becomes illegal, say, for an individual to host a website on a non-company-owned server, are manifest.
This type of control is also a direct goal of the govt, who, as we all know, is all in favor of preventing any form of terrorism not perpetrated by those 3-letter agency charged with identifying, evaluating, and neutralizing any real or potential disidents within the population.
The quieter you are, the fewer people notice when you disapear, the easier it is to paint you a criminal in the eyes of the world, the fewer people care when BATF splatters your brains to take you offline.MPAA is all about control of entertainment, which is known to be a powerful and pervasive influence, which cannot be entrusted to just anyone. If you don't believe it, ask a film-maker from the former USSR.
MPAA controlling the long arm of the law is just a gun to your head making sure you listen to what you're supposed to.
Take back the law.
Looks like the split needs to be at least 4-way.
Each division will have to purchase what it wants to use from any other division, in much the same way ATT had to work with the Baby Bells to terminate calls. E.g. M$IS could license M$ Office from M$Apps, since NGWS is really just a distribution mechanism, not a new set of applications. Additionally, other companies could compete against M$IS for the right to distribute M$Apps in the same manner, and M$IS could competitively try for other software to distribute e.g. Star Office. X-box builders will have to buy any WinOS they want, if they still want one by then, etc.
The hard part will be preventing backdoor deals between the baby bills.
I think this idea, that M$ is out there competing (and winning) to improve the quality of software for everyone, is one of the most commonly held fallacies about M$. Fortunately for all of us (M$ shareholders included), the DoJ, and Judge Jackson in particular, seem to have made it a point to make themselves better informed than the average joe-user.
The idea of a break up of M$ is a win-win scenario. If M$ chooses to continue to refuse to compete, it'll be no big loss, as long as they're out of the marketplace, and are no longer stifling competition, as they have been for the last decade or so.
The other thing, one that I haven't seen anyone ask, is what if M$ dumps their software business and chooses to focus soley on their ongoing takeover of the telecomm industry?
They have been steadily buying up the wire and wireless companies that the communications depend on since shortly before the anti-trust action began. I can envision them trying to use that position as a choke point on the industry in much the same manner they have used their position in the PC OS market. In fact, given their history, I can't envision them doing much else.
They will continue to run protection rackets of one sort or another until they are either dead or in prison, since they are not really capable of doing anything else.