sarcasm: The use of irony to mock or convey contempt: she didn't like the note of sarcasm in his voice. Origin: mid 16th century from French sarcasme, or via Latin from late Greek sarkasmos, from Greek sarkazein 'tear flesh', in late Greek 'gnash the teeth, speak bitterly' (from sarx, sark- 'flesh').
It would be like saying Coke has to give away their formula so everyone can make Coke
As far as I know, anybody can make cola. What's the big deal about Coke? It's brand-recognition, that's all. If you can't make money in the face of direct competition (like neighborhood bars and restaurants do) then you need to do something to differentiate yourself from the rest. Coke would still be Coke even if they posted the secret formula on/.
It could be called sarcasm, but it's also called writing or speaking in ironic tone. The example that I got when I was in high school was the Swift essay about using babies for food.
From the Oxford English Dictionary:
ironic >adjective using or characterized by irony.
happening in the opposite way to what is expected, and typically causing wry amusement because of this.
The "ironic tone" is the term used in literary criticism to describe adopting the opposite opinion to that which you wish to convey. Poems and prose written this way are said to be written in the ironic tone or ironic voice.
That's how you would describe something like the Dead Kennedy's song "I kill children". Tipper Gore thought they were serious, but you and I know better.
without such a process the government could charge anyone with any thing and get away with it, at least until the people rebel. with such a process you get death row inmates running up in think it is 20 years (or is it 50?) of appeals expenses.
<ironic tone> Wouldn't it be great if we could do away with all those time-consuming and costly appeals and just declare martial law in South Central LA? Anybody matching the LAPD's weekly "profile target" would just get shot on sight. Time to clean up this stinking country! </ironic tone>
Companies should have the opportunity to get the electric chair just like people. Whew! If that's what you call an opportunity, I hate to see you doing something risky!!
Here in the US, we pride ourselves on being the "land of the free",
that's very nice, but whether Amerikkka is truly free is another matter entirely. As Bob Dylan put it in one of his worst songs: "You're gonna have to serve somebody".
simply do not agree that Microsoft is a monopoly.
What WOULD be a monopoly, in your estimation? 100% of the market and competitors with their limbs cut off and their eyes glued shut? I suppose you'd get a real thrill watching the Miami Dolphins play against P.S.77 middle school intramural.
Install Linux on your PC.
That is one of the main reasons why Microsoft has cemented its position as a monopoly -- they have ensured that I have to INSTALL Linux rather than buying a computer with Linux pre-installed.
Microsoft won't prevent you from doing any of this.
Now I understand your view of what constitutes a monopoly. A company that has "scrutineers" stationed in every Circuit City outlet to ensure that there is no "outside influence" on the customer's preference. Those who choose an "inferior" product are quietly escorted by the scrutineers to the "showers". Now THAT'S a monopoly for REAL MEN.
When you live in a society which the outocomes of legal actions are determined by how expensive your lawyers are (cf. the OJ trial), I think that it's safe to say that the basis of all your freedom lies on economic factors.
Is that what you mean by "the US prides itself on being a free country" ? Maybe you should have said "the US prides itself on being a FEE country".
Money buys guns. Guns make power. Power makes government. No matter how you slice it, there's going to be assholes on this planet that want to rule other people's lives. What makes you think representation by remuneration would be better than what we have?
What this means is that economic freedom is the basis for all other freedoms.
No. What it means is economic "freedom" is a meaningless phrase. Here's the history of the US economy in one runon sentence: Discover a new continent with a whole bunch of unclaimed land; kill all the native inhabitants; manipulate the poor white folks to take up arms against the poor black folks to keep the poor from rising up against the rich landowners; then kill some confederate yahoos so that all the black slaves can come up and work in northern factories and so on and so forth. Where do you think the land that your house stands on came from? Who said it was yours? God? Get real, man. Government is just as much a necessity for an economy as an economy is for a government. The two are symbiotic. Co-dependent. Fraternally linked. Siamese Twins. Yin and Yang. Get the idea?
Will the government come after me if I become too successful?
Not if you become too successful, but if you ABUSE your market power. It is not an easy thing to determine if someone is abusing market power, and consequently there is probably a great deal of lattitude in what type of behaviour will be subject to regulation. Hence a great deal of freedom still exists even for the largest of businesses.
There's nothing frightening about being fair, is there?
We all get to suggest our own punishments in court. That's the nature of settlement... of course, the judge also gets the right to deny our requests if they're not reasonable, as is happening in this case.
But you and I don't have armies of public relations people and a battalion of angry young lawyers at our beck and call. This means that whereas Joe Average gets bribed into plea bargain deals (a lighter sentence if you admit your guilt) or gets hustled out of the court so that the prisons get meet their profit target.
I wonder what Microsoft would be like if there WERE no threat of anti-trust action. It would be very much like living in a Communist state, except instead of the power of the State, the minority would be subject to the Iron Fist of Bourgeois Taste.
OK, I'll join the chorus of respondents. (or appellants, take your pick)
Yeah, the government could, in the interests of National Security, do just about anything it damn well pleases. But in order to keep the well armed citizens from suffering collective road rage, they try do to things by the book.
I notice that when a person is accused of murder in Texas, most people don't make half as much noise about "due process" as they do when we are talking about a respected corporate citizen. Where were all the highly paid lawyers when Rubin Carter needed them?
the ILOVEYOU nonsense was never presented on the news as an MS-Outlook bug, but as a general computer bug.
Not really as a computer "bug" but as an evil plot by crypto-commie cyber-terrorist. Microsoft had nothing to do with it, if you read the mainstream media.
Breaking MS up will only exacerbate the company's monopoly. The government's remedy proposal doesn't do enough to stop collusion, even if Jackson accepts it.
The best thing we could do for the economy and the software industry would be to revoke Microsoft's Corporate Charter. Distribute the assets to university computer science departments around the world. Make the source code public and license it under the GPL. Then there would be some competition in the software industry.
Now that we've moved from H==Hemos to H==Hitler, this thread is officially dead. Off the record, though, what did the Cold War have to do with Hitler? WWII allowed the superpowers to emerge by destroying Britain, Germany, and Japan. Short of that, I see no relation.
It's the equivalent of a tavern, which used to be called 'Open' when the doors weren't locked. Now the tavern is occupied by a big crowd of the homeless who've kicked out the owner and made the beer free. Of course, the beer delivery trucks no longer make their usual stop, because nobody will pay the invoice.
Yeah, but the beer in our tavern never runs out, no matter how much we drink. Even if there are a few freeloaders, we can still brew enough for everyone.
Pirates of copyrighted works often claim "civil disobedience" as a justification. "We just want to protest Evil Corporations Who Exploit Artists And Customers Alike."
I'm not claiming it as a justification, because I have no desire to actually pirate anything. I'm not rationalizing my own greed and cowardice. I actually just want to hurt the cause of corporate power.
If I want music, I'll make it myself or with my friends or go to a concert. I don't really NEED pre-packaged, mass-produced, mass-marketed glop. So the only reason I would pirate would be to make a statement.
Would you pirate if it weren't so anonymous?
You don't see me hiding behind an AC, do you? But I suppose that's not what you meant. You mean like the anti-mafia judges in Sicily who virtually knew they would be killed and yet continued their campaign against the 'cosa nostra'.
Yes, I would send out press releases to the media that I was pirating CD's and explain why I thought it was an act of civil disobedience. I would probably arrange to have the money donated to a charity (though I don't know if charities accept proceeds from a crime) or perhaps I'd just give the stuff away to prove that I'm not doing it just for my own gain.
if you're not willing to reap the consequences of breaking the law you disagree with, any sanctimonious claims of "civil disobedience" ring pretty hollow.
I haven't tried either of those, but I'll definitely give them a go.
There's still something that bothers me about having to feel like a criminal for trying to find out how something works, or making a backup copy in case my DVD player breaks down. This hurts the public more than it helps the artists. Of course, it helps the big record companies most of all.
But then, it's not like this hasn't been said before 10^6 times on/.
They couldn't fine me that much because I don't have that much, so I'd probably wind up doing hard time. Hmmm... selling one pirated copy of "The Lion King" == 300lb tatooed live-in "girlfriend" for 10 years.
I noticed with some amusement and disgust that the MPAA propaganda page states that copying a DVD for your own personal use is illegal. Since when? What a load of #%@$%$%!
That's exactly what the DMCA changed. Fair use doesn't matter if you circumvented copy protection to get at the copyrighted material. That's what makes DMCA so dangerous: it renders the concept of fair use legally insignificant.
I'm so fed up with the power of the mass-media conglomerates, I'm considering taking up full time piracy as a form of civil disobedience. Has anyone else had this thought cross their mind, or am I insane? (not XOR).
So if I understand this correctly: if I come up with an idea for a new type of steel which will revolutionize the railroad industry, and I keep it all to my greedy self, I am harming the "global public good"? If I have the cure for AIDS locked up in my head and I don't share it, I am stealing something that belongs to "the people"?
Yes, in fact it does belong to the people. Whose ideas did you use to think up your cure for AIDS? Did you use Watson and Crick's work? Did you use the work of other individuals who came before you? What portion, exactly, did you add to the already existing information that made it yours?
What hubris to think that laying the last stone in the building makes you the landlord.
information will always cost something to create, and those that put their resources into it should be the ones to profit from it.
Information doesn't cost as much to create as you might believe. From 1996 until 1999, Pharmacia and Upjohn spent twice as much on sales & marketing as they did on research. They spend over 2 Billion a year on marketing and about 1 billion a year on research & development.
A billion is still a lot of money, but when the pharmaceutical companies whine about patent duration being too short, they can always make it look like a lot more.
The laws governing the ownership of intellectual property were intended to help creators produce works of value to humanity. In achieving this social purpose, intellectual property laws have been more successful than anyone dreamed possible. Now we have the opposite problem. Too much information. Humanity serves the creators of science and technology rather than vice versa.
We were once able to see a collective purpose -- the creation of knowledge would be a benefit that could be enjoyed by all people. We created intellectual property law to help bring about that benefit. That was 300 years ago. Times have changed. We are now entering a period in which our collective purpose is best served by placing some measured limits on technological "progress".
We could act rashly and try to impose those limits by force -- simply demanding that all corporate research to be state approved. Instead of directly trying to limit the behaviour of companies like Monsanto (who now own Pharmacia and Upjohn), we have an opportunity to achieve this outcome by gradually phasing out intellectual property law. Then we can have a sensible and circumspect view of technological development. We will be the owners of the technology, rather than being its slaves.
Read (Blaise) Pascal's Wager -- on playing the odds (from a different perspective, of course). It goes something like: if you play the odds and lose, you get eternal damnation. If you win, you get to be right. Shouldn't you calculate the potential risk when calculating the odds? Like an insurance company, you have to take into account not just the odds of a particular state of affairs being actualized, but also how much it will cost to pay for the damage.
Of course, this is sacreligious anyway, (believing in God to win a bet essentially) but it was an interesting form of religious argument.
Occam's razor is just a moral rule. It says "If you do things this way, you will be right". According to Occam the thing you had to do is be a minimalist, then you would magically be right. What kind of nonsense is that? There is no a priori reason for choosing the simplest theory rather than the most complex one, from amongst competing theories all of which are equally consistent with the relevant facts. Nor can there be any empirical evidence proving that leaner theories are more likely to be correct.
If the reason you believe in Occam's Razor is for notational convenience, then that's fine. But don't pretend that it tells you anything about the world. It's meaningless, really. Without the support of Occam's Razor, your statement would be more like -- "Hey, I don't believe in your silly God so just buzz off".
According to the initial decision in the DeCSS case, fair use is not considered if the material that is being fairly used was obtained by circumventing copy protection features.
If MS can claim that a self-extracting zip file is copy protection, then I suppose fair use will be no use:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I've never heard about it. Did I miss a story?
So instead of berk, you can call me sarx or "gnash the teeth". Remember "Nash the Slash"?
Origin: mid 16th century from French sarcasme, or via Latin from late Greek sarkasmos, from Greek sarkazein 'tear flesh', in late Greek 'gnash the teeth, speak bitterly' (from sarx, sark- 'flesh').
No, no. I think Berkshire Hunt rhymes with "excellunt".
As far as I know, anybody can make cola. What's the big deal about Coke? It's brand-recognition, that's all. If you can't make money in the face of direct competition (like neighborhood bars and restaurants do) then you need to do something to differentiate yourself from the rest. Coke would still be Coke even if they posted the secret formula on /.
From the Oxford English Dictionary:
The "ironic tone" is the term used in literary criticism to describe adopting the opposite opinion to that which you wish to convey. Poems and prose written this way are said to be written in the ironic tone or ironic voice.
That's how you would describe something like the Dead Kennedy's song "I kill children". Tipper Gore thought they were serious, but you and I know better.
<ironic tone>
Wouldn't it be great if we could do away with all those time-consuming and costly appeals and just declare martial law in South Central LA? Anybody matching the LAPD's weekly "profile target" would just get shot on sight. Time to clean up this stinking country!
</ironic tone>
Companies should have the opportunity to get the electric chair just like people. Whew! If that's what you call an opportunity, I hate to see you doing something risky!!
that's very nice, but whether Amerikkka is truly free is another matter entirely. As Bob Dylan put it in one of his worst songs: "You're gonna have to serve somebody".
simply do not agree that Microsoft is a monopoly.
What WOULD be a monopoly, in your estimation? 100% of the market and competitors with their limbs cut off and their eyes glued shut? I suppose you'd get a real thrill watching the Miami Dolphins play against P.S.77 middle school intramural.
Install Linux on your PC.
That is one of the main reasons why Microsoft has cemented its position as a monopoly -- they have ensured that I have to INSTALL Linux rather than buying a computer with Linux pre-installed.
Microsoft won't prevent you from doing any of this.
Now I understand your view of what constitutes a monopoly. A company that has "scrutineers" stationed in every Circuit City outlet to ensure that there is no "outside influence" on the customer's preference. Those who choose an "inferior" product are quietly escorted by the scrutineers to the "showers". Now THAT'S a monopoly for REAL MEN.
When you live in a society which the outocomes of legal actions are determined by how expensive your lawyers are (cf. the OJ trial), I think that it's safe to say that the basis of all your freedom lies on economic factors.
Is that what you mean by "the US prides itself on being a free country" ? Maybe you should have said "the US prides itself on being a FEE country".
Money buys guns. Guns make power. Power makes government. No matter how you slice it, there's going to be assholes on this planet that want to rule other people's lives. What makes you think representation by remuneration would be better than what we have?
What this means is that economic freedom is the basis for all other freedoms.
No. What it means is economic "freedom" is a meaningless phrase. Here's the history of the US economy in one runon sentence: Discover a new continent with a whole bunch of unclaimed land; kill all the native inhabitants; manipulate the poor white folks to take up arms against the poor black folks to keep the poor from rising up against the rich landowners; then kill some confederate yahoos so that all the black slaves can come up and work in northern factories and so on and so forth. Where do you think the land that your house stands on came from? Who said it was yours? God? Get real, man. Government is just as much a necessity for an economy as an economy is for a government. The two are symbiotic. Co-dependent. Fraternally linked. Siamese Twins. Yin and Yang. Get the idea?
Will the government come after me if I become too successful?
Not if you become too successful, but if you ABUSE your market power. It is not an easy thing to determine if someone is abusing market power, and consequently there is probably a great deal of lattitude in what type of behaviour will be subject to regulation. Hence a great deal of freedom still exists even for the largest of businesses.
There's nothing frightening about being fair, is there?
Huh? I thought the Sherman Anti-trust Act provided for fines? Isn't there some measure of punitive justice that can be meted out in these cases?
I'd be really surprised if there were not.
But you and I don't have armies of public relations people and a battalion of angry young lawyers at our beck and call. This means that whereas Joe Average gets bribed into plea bargain deals (a lighter sentence if you admit your guilt) or gets hustled out of the court so that the prisons get meet their profit target.
I wonder what Microsoft would be like if there WERE no threat of anti-trust action. It would be very much like living in a Communist state, except instead of the power of the State, the minority would be subject to the Iron Fist of Bourgeois Taste.
Yeah, the government could, in the interests of National Security, do just about anything it damn well pleases. But in order to keep the well armed citizens from suffering collective road rage, they try do to things by the book.
I notice that when a person is accused of murder in Texas, most people don't make half as much noise about "due process" as they do when we are talking about a respected corporate citizen. Where were all the highly paid lawyers when Rubin Carter needed them?
Not really as a computer "bug" but as an evil plot by crypto-commie cyber-terrorist. Microsoft had nothing to do with it, if you read the mainstream media.
The best thing we could do for the economy and the software industry would be to revoke Microsoft's Corporate Charter. Distribute the assets to university computer science departments around the world. Make the source code public and license it under the GPL. Then there would be some competition in the software industry.
Now that we've moved from H==Hemos to H==Hitler, this thread is officially dead. Off the record, though, what did the Cold War have to do with Hitler? WWII allowed the superpowers to emerge by destroying Britain, Germany, and Japan. Short of that, I see no relation.
Yeah, but the beer in our tavern never runs out, no matter how much we drink. Even if there are a few freeloaders, we can still brew enough for everyone.
I'm not claiming it as a justification, because I have no desire to actually pirate anything. I'm not rationalizing my own greed and cowardice. I actually just want to hurt the cause of corporate power.
If I want music, I'll make it myself or with my friends or go to a concert. I don't really NEED pre-packaged, mass-produced, mass-marketed glop. So the only reason I would pirate would be to make a statement.
Would you pirate if it weren't so anonymous?
You don't see me hiding behind an AC, do you? But I suppose that's not what you meant. You mean like the anti-mafia judges in Sicily who virtually knew they would be killed and yet continued their campaign against the 'cosa nostra'.
Yes, I would send out press releases to the media that I was pirating CD's and explain why I thought it was an act of civil disobedience. I would probably arrange to have the money donated to a charity (though I don't know if charities accept proceeds from a crime) or perhaps I'd just give the stuff away to prove that I'm not doing it just for my own gain.
if you're not willing to reap the consequences of breaking the law you disagree with, any sanctimonious claims of "civil disobedience" ring pretty hollow.
Don't tempt me. I'm not the kind to sit idly by.
There's still something that bothers me about having to feel like a criminal for trying to find out how something works, or making a backup copy in case my DVD player breaks down. This hurts the public more than it helps the artists. Of course, it helps the big record companies most of all.
But then, it's not like this hasn't been said before 10^6 times on /.
They couldn't fine me that much because I don't have that much, so I'd probably wind up doing hard time. Hmmm... selling one pirated copy of "The Lion King" == 300lb tatooed live-in "girlfriend" for 10 years.
Aw, f**k it. OK, I love Big Brother. :0(
That's exactly what the DMCA changed. Fair use doesn't matter if you circumvented copy protection to get at the copyrighted material. That's what makes DMCA so dangerous: it renders the concept of fair use legally insignificant.
I'm so fed up with the power of the mass-media conglomerates, I'm considering taking up full time piracy as a form of civil disobedience. Has anyone else had this thought cross their mind, or am I insane? (not XOR).
Yes, in fact it does belong to the people. Whose ideas did you use to think up your cure for AIDS? Did you use Watson and Crick's work? Did you use the work of other individuals who came before you? What portion, exactly, did you add to the already existing information that made it yours?
What hubris to think that laying the last stone in the building makes you the landlord.
Information doesn't cost as much to create as you might believe. From 1996 until 1999, Pharmacia and Upjohn spent twice as much on sales & marketing as they did on research. They spend over 2 Billion a year on marketing and about 1 billion a year on research & development.
A billion is still a lot of money, but when the pharmaceutical companies whine about patent duration being too short, they can always make it look like a lot more.
The laws governing the ownership of intellectual property were intended to help creators produce works of value to humanity. In achieving this social purpose, intellectual property laws have been more successful than anyone dreamed possible. Now we have the opposite problem. Too much information. Humanity serves the creators of science and technology rather than vice versa.
We were once able to see a collective purpose -- the creation of knowledge would be a benefit that could be enjoyed by all people. We created intellectual property law to help bring about that benefit. That was 300 years ago. Times have changed. We are now entering a period in which our collective purpose is best served by placing some measured limits on technological "progress".
We could act rashly and try to impose those limits by force -- simply demanding that all corporate research to be state approved. Instead of directly trying to limit the behaviour of companies like Monsanto (who now own Pharmacia and Upjohn), we have an opportunity to achieve this outcome by gradually phasing out intellectual property law. Then we can have a sensible and circumspect view of technological development. We will be the owners of the technology, rather than being its slaves.
Of course, this is sacreligious anyway, (believing in God to win a bet essentially) but it was an interesting form of religious argument.
Point taken, however.
If the reason you believe in Occam's Razor is for notational convenience, then that's fine. But don't pretend that it tells you anything about the world. It's meaningless, really. Without the support of Occam's Razor, your statement would be more like -- "Hey, I don't believe in your silly God so just buzz off".
If MS can claim that a self-extracting zip file is copy protection, then I suppose fair use will be no use :-)