You're the first Athiest I've met who agreed with the statement ("feverishly believes there is no God, and without a whipser of proof or any evidence whatsoever.")
As a Christian, I respect your blind faith in NO God, as you respect my blind faith in God.
(interesting, was it recklessness by which you decided to capitalize "God", and NOT capitalize "athiest"?)
The Catholic church keeps an enormous amount of secrets. Some of these secrets are simply not well-known facts, like the whole Exorcism thing, but there are 2000 years of history, quashing heretical movements, absorbing others. They've been in the unique position of being the sole religious authority over much of Europe, being party to political fighting, mediation, and I'm sure they've had the privilege of documenting much of it.
As far as judging Scientology as an evil cult; if you've ever seen their "church" in Hollywood, (the actual town), with the Gold-lettered sign - it's as lavish as any medieval Catholic church, Orthodox church or Islamic Mosque. (though it IS rather bland, architecturally). Definately gold in them-thar hills. Someone's worshiping Mammon again.
first, the guy was being sarcastic. Wow, it's a rare athiest that doesn't get sarcasm THAT obvious!
The Crusades were NOT about slaughtering people who didn't share the Catholic faith. It was about protecting Christian pilgrims to the holy land from bandits. Until it was later found that some of the "bandits" were sanctioned by the regional authorities at the time, and still attempting to protect the pilgrims from violence, it of course escalated into wholesale warfare, and the Catholic authorities believing that the only way to ensure the safety of the pilgrims was to militarily take control of the region. The Crusades were a lot more complicated than people think. However, I can't say the same thing about the Inquisition (for which, the Catholic church has officially apologised).
The statues in Afghanistan ARE being destroyed, not preserved, by a lunatic fringe of Islam called the Taliban which happens to be in control of the majority of Afghanistan, thanks to the support of the US Government, who was trying to get the Soviets out of there because they were afraid that the Soviets would be able to move their control Westward to Iran, Iraq, etc. It was about OIL. Oil is the God and national religion of the US. Not Christianity.
It's not tiding, it's "tithing" and translated from Hebrew, it means 10%. Not a lot to ask in return for the favor of existance and grace, for those that believe that.
Oh yes there is. There is plenty of need to make fun of Tom Cruise. What is it, exactly that Tom Cruise DOES, anyway?
Tell me *that* wont be replaced by some crafty modelling at Pixar in 10 years. (the good thing being, the only actors that will be employed at that point, will be ones that can *act*)
Re:Return of the Internet As It Should Be
on
Bad News from Yahoo
·
· Score: 2
Oh yeah, well, I was on the net back when it was beating slaves to run papyrus tablets from Ur to Jericho.
Ya think they bothered with banner ads back then? Spam? Flame wars? Fuck no! Papyrus was expensive! besides, you could keep labor costs down by watering down the food supply, or mixing it with dirt. The old joke back then was that bandwidth was dirt cheap! HA HA i crack myself up. Plus, there wasn't all this crazy copyright infringement and intellectual property law crap. Everything belonged to the king. If some author didn't like his scroll copied, the king would gently remind him (not her) who owned the writing. Or the king would just have some lions do it.
Things were great until God decided to bundle the browser with the OS. Then nobody had any choice but to use their eyes for browsing. Try reading cunieform with IE. They say IE is standards compliant? BULL SHIT I say.
I would just like to remind all of our Southern American and South and Central American readers of a little breeding experiment with insects that got out of control.
The Africanized bee (a.k.a. "Killer" bee).
Moving steadily Northward, as far North now in California as Santa Barbara.
The real threat from these bees is not necessarily their propensity for swarming and attacking humans and animals (more people die per year in car accidents - but man, what a way to go!) - but the damage they do to the agriculture industry by mating with other bees and contaminating the colonies with bees that don't produce as much honey, and are not as active in cold weather when farmers need them to get going and pollenate.
I think that the problem with being nickel-and-dimed is when you're not paying attention, and it starts getting out of control. Before you realize what you're doing, you've got $2000 of charges for Asking Jeeves about his evil twin. True, people didn't like paying for AOL access by the minute, as evidenced by AOL's HUGE jump in popularity when they switched over to flat rates - even though they were totally blindsided by service levels. But I don't think that asking someone to subscribe to websites at macropayment levels will work either. A lot of websurfing is based on aimlessly wandering from site to site, and that depends on a very low bar to entry.
If they did THREE things, I think it would be workable.
1) provide a VERY COMPACT UI readout of the account status on the desktop, so I can see where my account stands, and know when I'm being charged, and how much and for exactly what. This has to take up almost NO screen real-estate, and be very configurable, and lightweight, and responsive, and secure, guarantee privacy, and absolutely bulletproof stable, AND FUCKING CROSS PLATFORM!! (I don't mean NT and Win95 either!)
2) Implement this status monitor as an open standard, so I don't have to run one for Yahoo, another for Slashdot, another for SpankMeMama.com, etc. Make it open. I don't exactly believe in DeJure standards, but I think that's the only way we can ensure it gets done in a way that nobody can embrace and extend it.
3) Give people LOTS of free trials. The last thing you want to do is charge everyone $5 to get into a site for the first time, just to see what it has, and then provide them crap. If this happens, consumers will become VERY gunshy, and will avoid trying new sites.
If this can't be done, then Micropayments will not work, and since banner ads obviously don't work, then the internet, as we know it today, will collapse under it's own weight, and what we'll end up with is a more peer-to-peer oriented system without any commercial support (gee, wasn't that what the internet was all about in the first place?).
I have a special user setup to download a My Yahoo page to my Palm III using AvantGo. It kicks ass. I love Yahoo. For all the reasons you state and more. I love the huge broad variety of things available, and I love the fact that I can configure my page and get rid of most of the garbage.
Well, people are buying DVD players because the image quality and the extra content offers them something that VHS/SVHS doesn't even come close to.
In the case of Music, the industry is screwed, because the CD format is already perfect. The only way to improve on it is to do something that will appease the audiophiles who insist that Vinyl is actually better, then market that technology, and bundle it with copy protection. But it will be a very hard sell. It doesn't take trained eyes to see the difference between DVD and SVHS. But it's a rare ear that can tell that CD is not perfect.
I'm guessing that the whole "digital hub" strategy is hardball tactics by Apple to get the entertainment industry to take QuickTime seriously.
Apple desperately needs QuickTime to take more marketshare (then get rid of the stupid Pro-nagware bs, and ship a fucking Linux version!), and one avenue would be to get Sony, etc. to standardize on it as a format, slipping in some copy protection features would be a nice tidbit in trade for a deal like that. I bet it's already in the code, just commented out.
But your points on Open Source are well taken. But like I said about CPRM in another post. Intel could bundle it indivisibly with some other very attractive features in future machines. Microsoft did this very successfully with Windows/IE "innovation". Then the Open Source software people would be forced to modify the software for the new platform (or ignore any new CPU upgrades entirely). Hackers could modify the open source, but I'm sure that will be considered illegal as circumvention under the DCMA, from there on, it's just a matter of enforcement.
Plus, don't kid yourself about the Tobacco lobbies. It was the Insurance lobbies, not the public outrage, that did in the Tobacco industry. And currently, I would expect a huge softening on the stance on Tobacco with the new administration. They gave a lot of $$$ to Bush, and there's already noise about stopping any further prosecution of these cases already pending.
The manufacturers, to appease the entertainment industry, could easily bundle CPRM indivisibly with some very desirable feature (like MS did with Windows and IE). They could make it so that the P5 will ONLY work with a specific new chipset, which ONLY supports drive interfaces with CPRM enabled.
People who don't want CPRM will not be able to upgrade to the Pentium 5. Which will be "twice as fast" and make surfing the internet faster.
Drives that do not support CPRM will be made illegal. Free-copy devices are the bane of IP. It's likely that a case can be made that without IP protection at the hardware level, western civilization as we know it could collapse. (of course, many of us here will argue that that would be a GOOD thing!). They'll craft laws to protect that. And they'll do it internationally, through the current model of WT0/IMF bribery/coercement.
I agree that the business/IT world will not take the loss of the general purpose PC lightly. I only hope that that is enough political pull to quash these ideas.
On the other hand, with the Car hobbyist thing, I chose classic VW's as my car of choice, because they're very simple to work on, because they don't have to conform to current emissions and safety standards. If they did, I would NOT be working on my car today. Other old cars are similar, but not many people soup up modern cars (except for those whack-job Honda-Civic nutbags, and the Monster Truck people, but the Civic guys, they aren't rebuilding engines in their basement, they're bolting on coffee can mufflers and putting on window decals).
Extend this to the computer scene, do you think that the US Govt will grandfather computers made in 1995 so that the DCMA does not apply to them? Consider the DCMA to be the emissions and safety regulations of the computer industry. They have been the absolute fucking bane of the automotive industry (unless you care about safety and pollution; if you care at all about performance and style and value, and ease of maintenance, you'll agree). Yeah, there's a demand for these older cars that you don't have to buy a new catalytic converter for every 3 years, cars with reasonable power, rear-wheel drive, simplicity in design, but if they were illegal, nobody would be able to buy them, and we'd all be driving Honda Civics.
Modern computers threaten the income of ALL corporations who rely on Intellectual Property. The DCMA is an IP safety regulation. The case can be made that if Media Conglomerate X employes N people, and isn't making as much money as it could because of piracy or some other IP issue, then some people are going to have to be laid off (um, forget about cutting the CEO's salary and perks, 'k?) Laid off people means less tax revenue, weaker economy, starving poor people, downward spiral.
Making these restrictive laws will not be an economic impediment, because all other industrialized countries will follow suit with the carrot of liberalized trade (IMF-WTO-M-O-U-S-E) dangling in front of them. (WIPO anyone?) Countries that do not do this sort of thing will lose free trade status, will be found in violation of treaties, and will not be eligible for IMF loans, etc. Will Sudan be manufacturing hard drives without CPRM? Will those drives legally be allowed to be shipped to markets within signatory nations?
There's a good point. I think few people will argue against the civil rights movement, or reform of alcohol prohibition. If there had been gridlock THEN, it would not have been good.
That there is gridlock NOW, is probably a good thing because the overall political climate of this country is not progressive. Unfortunately, when we have gridlock bad laws (like DCMA) get passed, BECAUSE of gridlock - they don't take the time to adequately review and debate issues, because they want to obfuscate and pass the law as quickly as possible. That's exactly what Boucher (boo-shay?) said happened when he tried to protect the MyMP3.com fair rights issue. It got gridlocked to death. So progressive legislation suffers, well-funded crap like DCMA under the guise of "globalization" (trade liberalization) gets passed like a drunk Canadian hockey player's beer fart.
Also, in the name of perceived "efficiency", BECAUSE of gridlock, we have terrible policies in place like the War Powers Act, and "Executive Orders", and "States of Emergency", to allow things to happen in a timely manner when congress can't address issues because of gridlock. This bypasses our constitutional government, and definately opens the doors to tyranny. These policies have been abused (Clinton was THE poster-child for abusing Executive Orders). Although I DO think that the Line Item Veto was probably a good idea. (another anti-gridlock tool).
So I think that while gridlock may be a good thing, it's a bandaid for a far worse problems. If it didn't limit our constitutional right to free association, I'd fucking outlaw political parties so people would have to choose candidates based on their stand on issues, and candidates would have to state those issues, and their records would have to match their stances. And we wouldn't have to watch power brokers juggling huge blocks of votes on issues, we'd have actual real debate.
The problems with Perot and Forbes' went beyond money. Or maybe not. They simply didn't have nearly enough.
In my mind, a vote for any third-party candidate is a waste, (I voted for Nader anyway) because, in the minute chance that they DID get elected president, they still have a bunch of pissed off Republican and Democratic congressmen and governors to contend with. You think gridlock is bad now? Basically, not only would Perot have had to buy his way into office, he would also have to buy enough congressional seats.
I don't think even Bill Gates is *that* rich. You can buy lots of legislation, but a wholesale revolution and uprooting of the two-headed monster is much more costly than that. you can fight the system, but truly winning?
I used to think so too, but in a recent Hatch speech (was in a/. article not too long ago, use search), the language Hatch used was more along the lines of that he supports strong IP laws, and it was more of an appeasement measure, as in, we can't totally quash Napster, because if we do we'll drive the buggers underground, and won't be able to supplant it with a legitimate pay-per-use model.
Slashdot Mirror
You're the first Athiest I've met who agreed with the statement ("feverishly believes there is no God, and without a whipser of proof or any evidence whatsoever.")
As a Christian, I respect your blind faith in NO God, as you respect my blind faith in God.
(interesting, was it recklessness by which you decided to capitalize "God", and NOT capitalize "athiest"?)
The Catholic church keeps an enormous amount of secrets. Some of these secrets are simply not well-known facts, like the whole Exorcism thing, but there are 2000 years of history, quashing heretical movements, absorbing others. They've been in the unique position of being the sole religious authority over much of Europe, being party to political fighting, mediation, and I'm sure they've had the privilege of documenting much of it.
As far as judging Scientology as an evil cult; if you've ever seen their "church" in Hollywood, (the actual town), with the Gold-lettered sign - it's as lavish as any medieval Catholic church, Orthodox church or Islamic Mosque. (though it IS rather bland, architecturally). Definately gold in them-thar hills. Someone's worshiping Mammon again.
"(I'm sure some atheiests have committed an atrocity in the name of atheism at some point in history.)"
They have. To name a couple:
Stalin, 45 million.
Pol Pot, 10 million.
Yes, she should have instead, lobbied the Indian government to create forced-abortion laws like the Chinese.
I am a Christian, and I had never heard that Hitler was an Athiest. Stalin, yes. But not Hitler.
Of course there were also rumors about the SS leadership being involved in some Thor cult.
. . . or NASCAR's status as a sport?
first, the guy was being sarcastic. Wow, it's a rare athiest that doesn't get sarcasm THAT obvious!
The Crusades were NOT about slaughtering people who didn't share the Catholic faith. It was about protecting Christian pilgrims to the holy land from bandits. Until it was later found that some of the "bandits" were sanctioned by the regional authorities at the time, and still attempting to protect the pilgrims from violence, it of course escalated into wholesale warfare, and the Catholic authorities believing that the only way to ensure the safety of the pilgrims was to militarily take control of the region. The Crusades were a lot more complicated than people think. However, I can't say the same thing about the Inquisition (for which, the Catholic church has officially apologised).
The statues in Afghanistan ARE being destroyed, not preserved, by a lunatic fringe of Islam called the Taliban which happens to be in control of the majority of Afghanistan, thanks to the support of the US Government, who was trying to get the Soviets out of there because they were afraid that the Soviets would be able to move their control Westward to Iran, Iraq, etc. It was about OIL. Oil is the God and national religion of the US. Not Christianity.
It's not tiding, it's "tithing" and translated from Hebrew, it means 10%. Not a lot to ask in return for the favor of existance and grace, for those that believe that.
Oh yes there is. There is plenty of need to make fun of Tom Cruise. What is it, exactly that Tom Cruise DOES, anyway?
Tell me *that* wont be replaced by some crafty modelling at Pixar in 10 years. (the good thing being, the only actors that will be employed at that point, will be ones that can *act*)
Oh yeah, well, I was on the net back when it was beating slaves to run papyrus tablets from Ur to Jericho.
Ya think they bothered with banner ads back then? Spam? Flame wars? Fuck no! Papyrus was expensive! besides, you could keep labor costs down by watering down the food supply, or mixing it with dirt. The old joke back then was that bandwidth was dirt cheap! HA HA i crack myself up. Plus, there wasn't all this crazy copyright infringement and intellectual property law crap. Everything belonged to the king. If some author didn't like his scroll copied, the king would gently remind him (not her) who owned the writing. Or the king would just have some lions do it.
Things were great until God decided to bundle the browser with the OS. Then nobody had any choice but to use their eyes for browsing. Try reading cunieform with IE. They say IE is standards compliant? BULL SHIT I say.
I would just like to remind all of our Southern American and South and Central American readers of a little breeding experiment with insects that got out of control.
The Africanized bee (a.k.a. "Killer" bee).
Moving steadily Northward, as far North now in California as Santa Barbara.
The real threat from these bees is not necessarily their propensity for swarming and attacking humans and animals (more people die per year in car accidents - but man, what a way to go!) - but the damage they do to the agriculture industry by mating with other bees and contaminating the colonies with bees that don't produce as much honey, and are not as active in cold weather when farmers need them to get going and pollenate.
Can they bee stopped?
(underscore:)
yeah, want to boycott Rambus?
I think that the problem with being nickel-and-dimed is when you're not paying attention, and it starts getting out of control. Before you realize what you're doing, you've got $2000 of charges for Asking Jeeves about his evil twin. True, people didn't like paying for AOL access by the minute, as evidenced by AOL's HUGE jump in popularity when they switched over to flat rates - even though they were totally blindsided by service levels. But I don't think that asking someone to subscribe to websites at macropayment levels will work either. A lot of websurfing is based on aimlessly wandering from site to site, and that depends on a very low bar to entry.
If they did THREE things, I think it would be workable.
1) provide a VERY COMPACT UI readout of the account status on the desktop, so I can see where my account stands, and know when I'm being charged, and how much and for exactly what. This has to take up almost NO screen real-estate, and be very configurable, and lightweight, and responsive, and secure, guarantee privacy, and absolutely bulletproof stable, AND FUCKING CROSS PLATFORM!! (I don't mean NT and Win95 either!)
2) Implement this status monitor as an open standard, so I don't have to run one for Yahoo, another for Slashdot, another for SpankMeMama.com, etc. Make it open. I don't exactly believe in DeJure standards, but I think that's the only way we can ensure it gets done in a way that nobody can embrace and extend it.
3) Give people LOTS of free trials. The last thing you want to do is charge everyone $5 to get into a site for the first time, just to see what it has, and then provide them crap. If this happens, consumers will become VERY gunshy, and will avoid trying new sites.
If this can't be done, then Micropayments will not work, and since banner ads obviously don't work, then the internet, as we know it today, will collapse under it's own weight, and what we'll end up with is a more peer-to-peer oriented system without any commercial support (gee, wasn't that what the internet was all about in the first place?).
nanopayment.
Picopayment.
Peter Piper Paid a pico PayPal Payment.
I have a special user setup to download a My Yahoo page to my Palm III using AvantGo. It kicks ass. I love Yahoo. For all the reasons you state and more. I love the huge broad variety of things available, and I love the fact that I can configure my page and get rid of most of the garbage.
careful, you're going to piss-off Kuro5hin's readership. All 5 of them.
Hmm. If only the guy who invented the atomic bomb could control exactly when and how it could be used. THEN the world would be a better place. . .
"Within about a year the only books being published were pornography. . ."
.
That sounds pretty good to me. .
Well, people are buying DVD players because the image quality and the extra content offers them something that VHS/SVHS doesn't even come close to.
In the case of Music, the industry is screwed, because the CD format is already perfect. The only way to improve on it is to do something that will appease the audiophiles who insist that Vinyl is actually better, then market that technology, and bundle it with copy protection. But it will be a very hard sell. It doesn't take trained eyes to see the difference between DVD and SVHS. But it's a rare ear that can tell that CD is not perfect.
I'm guessing that the whole "digital hub" strategy is hardball tactics by Apple to get the entertainment industry to take QuickTime seriously.
Apple desperately needs QuickTime to take more marketshare (then get rid of the stupid Pro-nagware bs, and ship a fucking Linux version!), and one avenue would be to get Sony, etc. to standardize on it as a format, slipping in some copy protection features would be a nice tidbit in trade for a deal like that. I bet it's already in the code, just commented out.
But your points on Open Source are well taken. But like I said about CPRM in another post. Intel could bundle it indivisibly with some other very attractive features in future machines. Microsoft did this very successfully with Windows/IE "innovation". Then the Open Source software people would be forced to modify the software for the new platform (or ignore any new CPU upgrades entirely). Hackers could modify the open source, but I'm sure that will be considered illegal as circumvention under the DCMA, from there on, it's just a matter of enforcement.
Plus, don't kid yourself about the Tobacco lobbies. It was the Insurance lobbies, not the public outrage, that did in the Tobacco industry. And currently, I would expect a huge softening on the stance on Tobacco with the new administration. They gave a lot of $$$ to Bush, and there's already noise about stopping any further prosecution of these cases already pending.
The manufacturers, to appease the entertainment industry, could easily bundle CPRM indivisibly with some very desirable feature (like MS did with Windows and IE). They could make it so that the P5 will ONLY work with a specific new chipset, which ONLY supports drive interfaces with CPRM enabled.
People who don't want CPRM will not be able to upgrade to the Pentium 5. Which will be "twice as fast" and make surfing the internet faster.
So, what do you suppose the next step is?
Drives that do not support CPRM will be made illegal. Free-copy devices are the bane of IP. It's likely that a case can be made that without IP protection at the hardware level, western civilization as we know it could collapse. (of course, many of us here will argue that that would be a GOOD thing!). They'll craft laws to protect that. And they'll do it internationally, through the current model of WT0/IMF bribery/coercement.
ph33r this future.
I agree that the business/IT world will not take the loss of the general purpose PC lightly. I only hope that that is enough political pull to quash these ideas.
On the other hand, with the Car hobbyist thing, I chose classic VW's as my car of choice, because they're very simple to work on, because they don't have to conform to current emissions and safety standards. If they did, I would NOT be working on my car today. Other old cars are similar, but not many people soup up modern cars (except for those whack-job Honda-Civic nutbags, and the Monster Truck people, but the Civic guys, they aren't rebuilding engines in their basement, they're bolting on coffee can mufflers and putting on window decals).
Extend this to the computer scene, do you think that the US Govt will grandfather computers made in 1995 so that the DCMA does not apply to them? Consider the DCMA to be the emissions and safety regulations of the computer industry. They have been the absolute fucking bane of the automotive industry (unless you care about safety and pollution; if you care at all about performance and style and value, and ease of maintenance, you'll agree). Yeah, there's a demand for these older cars that you don't have to buy a new catalytic converter for every 3 years, cars with reasonable power, rear-wheel drive, simplicity in design, but if they were illegal, nobody would be able to buy them, and we'd all be driving Honda Civics.
Modern computers threaten the income of ALL corporations who rely on Intellectual Property. The DCMA is an IP safety regulation. The case can be made that if Media Conglomerate X employes N people, and isn't making as much money as it could because of piracy or some other IP issue, then some people are going to have to be laid off (um, forget about cutting the CEO's salary and perks, 'k?) Laid off people means less tax revenue, weaker economy, starving poor people, downward spiral.
Making these restrictive laws will not be an economic impediment, because all other industrialized countries will follow suit with the carrot of liberalized trade (IMF-WTO-M-O-U-S-E) dangling in front of them. (WIPO anyone?) Countries that do not do this sort of thing will lose free trade status, will be found in violation of treaties, and will not be eligible for IMF loans, etc. Will Sudan be manufacturing hard drives without CPRM? Will those drives legally be allowed to be shipped to markets within signatory nations?
There's a good point. I think few people will argue against the civil rights movement, or reform of alcohol prohibition. If there had been gridlock THEN, it would not have been good.
That there is gridlock NOW, is probably a good thing because the overall political climate of this country is not progressive. Unfortunately, when we have gridlock bad laws (like DCMA) get passed, BECAUSE of gridlock - they don't take the time to adequately review and debate issues, because they want to obfuscate and pass the law as quickly as possible. That's exactly what Boucher (boo-shay?) said happened when he tried to protect the MyMP3.com fair rights issue. It got gridlocked to death. So progressive legislation suffers, well-funded crap like DCMA under the guise of "globalization" (trade liberalization) gets passed like a drunk Canadian hockey player's beer fart.
Also, in the name of perceived "efficiency", BECAUSE of gridlock, we have terrible policies in place like the War Powers Act, and "Executive Orders", and "States of Emergency", to allow things to happen in a timely manner when congress can't address issues because of gridlock. This bypasses our constitutional government, and definately opens the doors to tyranny. These policies have been abused (Clinton was THE poster-child for abusing Executive Orders). Although I DO think that the Line Item Veto was probably a good idea. (another anti-gridlock tool).
So I think that while gridlock may be a good thing, it's a bandaid for a far worse problems. If it didn't limit our constitutional right to free association, I'd fucking outlaw political parties so people would have to choose candidates based on their stand on issues, and candidates would have to state those issues, and their records would have to match their stances. And we wouldn't have to watch power brokers juggling huge blocks of votes on issues, we'd have actual real debate.
The problems with Perot and Forbes' went beyond money. Or maybe not. They simply didn't have nearly enough.
In my mind, a vote for any third-party candidate is a waste, (I voted for Nader anyway) because, in the minute chance that they DID get elected president, they still have a bunch of pissed off Republican and Democratic congressmen and governors to contend with. You think gridlock is bad now? Basically, not only would Perot have had to buy his way into office, he would also have to buy enough congressional seats.
I don't think even Bill Gates is *that* rich. You can buy lots of legislation, but a wholesale revolution and uprooting of the two-headed monster is much more costly than that. you can fight the system, but truly winning?
I used to think so too, but in a recent Hatch speech (was in a /. article not too long ago, use search), the language Hatch used was more along the lines of that he supports strong IP laws, and it was more of an appeasement measure, as in, we can't totally quash Napster, because if we do we'll drive the buggers underground, and won't be able to supplant it with a legitimate pay-per-use model.
Hatch is not our friend.