Actually, although I've not read the article, personally your description of what you do (divert all traffic to a set page) meets my definition of "disconnected from the net".
The user's PC can still connect to a small area of the ISP's network, but not to The Internet - surely that counts? (It's also a far better solution than just killing their connection completely, as you say)
There's a difference between being able to store TB of data in something, and that thing being able to handle it (eg access/process it effectively, store it safely, etc)
For example, you can store gigabytes of data in a flat file rather than a database, but I wouldn't want to try to query it. (Sure, you *could* use grep...)
Microsoft realized it's out of the game and.Net became the next end-all, be-all application framework
MS got its ass handed it in court by Sun for breaching the terms of its licence and adding its own classes into the java.* package hierarchy in its VM. So, MS took its toys away and went home and developed C# to try to piss on Sun's parade.
*That* is (at least part of) why MS dumped Java. For what it's worth, Visual J++ still exists, and is supported in VS.NET at least as of the current release (I'm not sure about the upcoming release). Iirc it's stuck at v1.1.4 (thanks to the court case), which means its essentially just a curiosity. Too much has been added since then to make it worthwhile using.
So now I sit asking myself what I should be coding in, and I more and more find that the answer is as same as always, good ol' C++. Piece of shit language, but at least I know it'll still be around in 5 years, and everything should be able to compile without fighting a million version changes.
I have Java code from 5 years ago that still runs in recent JVMs without recompilation. I really don't see that being a problem over that sort fo time scale.
Well, I've been writing web apps in Java for 5 years, so perhaps I'm a special case.
That said, I have had zero trouble getting Java apps working for the last few years. That's not zero as in "it was easy, I just installed $foo, set $bar and $baz in the environment, recompiled the widgets and was good to go", that's zero as in "I downloaded it, ran the installer/unzipped it and there it was".
It probably helps that I already have a recent version of Sun's JVM installed, but I can't think of a single Java app that's given me any trouble in a good few years. True, I'm not big on downloading random stuff from freshmeat, so perhaps I'm spoilt by my choice of apps. That said though, I remember having hellish problems getting random (and not so random) C and C++ apps compiled and running a couple of years ago...
Basically, stick to well-written, well maintained apps and you'll have no problems. Download any old crap and well, what do you expect?
No, it's not difficult. The way I see it is as an alternate form of compensation. When the government doesn't mandate vacation days, you, as an employee, can negotiate with a prospective employer to get something that you both think is fair. For example, you can agree to get one less week a year of vacation time in exchange for a slightly higher salary. If the employer doesn't agree, then you go find one who will./i.
I am in the UK, employed by a UK company. I have sold 5 days of holiday time back to my company in return for 5 days worth extra money, spread over the year.
I still get my government-mandated holiday time; this was an extra 5 days that my company gave (as a benefit) over and above that.
Those from the UK may recall the curious scandal of "Phantom Withdrawls" from ATM machines
Something like that happened to a work mate of mine a couple of years ago. A couple of grand disappeared from his account, so naturally he spoke to the bank about it. He convinced them that it wasn't him (in fact, I think they tracked it to Brazil), and so the replaced the money.
A week or so later he had to speak to them again, this time to get them to waive the charge incurred when his account went overdrawn because of the fraudulent withdrawl..
Because they can counter that argument by claiming that if it weren't for the piracy, they'd have made even more money.
Forgetting the money and success for a moment though, this is a clear-cut case of copyright infringement. That's illegal whether there's any monetary gain (or loss) or not.
You can walk past a club where a loud concert is going on, and hear the music for free.
That's unimportant, as there is a world of difference between listening to a muffled, quiet rendition of each song and actually being there in the crowd. For me at least, the atmosphere is half the point of going to a gig, and you don't get that outside.
You can go to a friend's house and watch his DVDs for free.
If you believe the legalese on the back of the DVD case, you may well be on shaky ground there. My copy of The Increidbles says it is licensed "for private home use only", and in the list of things I'm not allowed to do are "unauthorised... exhibition,... public performance". If there are too many people there with you, you may fall foul of one or the other clause.
Of course, no-one would ever even attempt to bring a case against you, unless you were charging admission to the general public.
You can go to the library and read books for free.
Your taxes pay for that.
You can turn on the radio and hear music for free.
Advertising pays for that.
You can turn on TiVo and watch TV shows for free, without even watching the commercials.
I pay for my satellite TV subscription.
Besides which, you're (willfully?) missing the point - in none of those situations other than the last one do you actually possess a copy of the copyrighted work. That is the main difference - when you download a film off a p2p network, you do. When you listen in to a concert as you walk past, or turn on the radio, you don't have anything lasting. Even in that last case, at least as far as UK copyright law goes, while you may time-shift a broadcast, you are specifically not allowed to keep it - the law explicitly disallows building up a "library" of recorded broadcasts.
I'm not saying that it's necessarily right, but none of your examples bear much relation to the actual topic at hand.
Also, whenever you can, please keep correcting people who regard this as "piracy", "stealing" or "theft". It is nothing of the sort. It is "copyright infringement", plain and simple.
Use of the word "piracy" in place of "copyright infringement" has been commonplace for decades, if not longer. See for example here and here.
No, it isn't accurate. Yes, it was almost certainly started by content producers to try to provoke a negative emotional response in people. But just like the "hacker vs cracker" debate, you've already lost. There's not generally any point to fighting a battle you can't win.
Trying to persuade people to stop calling it piracy is just going to confuse and distract from the real argument.
As I understand it, if someone has the binary, then they are entitled to the source. If they don't have the binary, they have no entitlement to the source.
"Everyone" therefore means "everyone who has the binary".
Quite often that's how it happens out here in the corporate world, too. My company has never fired anyone, even when it was apparent that they were up to no good (including stealing stuff). It has, however, encouraged a few people to resign. It's better for them (no stain on their record) and for us (less paper work, no potential claim for unfair dismissal, etc).
They still focus on dial up, versus the exploading broadband arena.
That may be the case in the US, but here in the UK they're very much pushing broadband. Just look at their home page. For what it's worth, the prices quoted are competitive with other broadband services.
As for nuclear waste, IMO it's pretty arrogant to think we'll be around 50k years from now, while at the same time not being clever enough to figure out how to handle the waste by the time the 50k year countdown ends...
What? Nuclear waste is a problem *today*, and *every* day until sufficient time has passed that it's no longer a danger.
Depending on the isotopes, it won't *be* a problem in 50k years. I think you've got it the wrong way round...
The enviromental extremest... will find any reason to complain , we have heaps of them here in Germany , I often drive past them. And have never once seen a dead bird laying around at the bottom of them , they are hardly noisy atall and generaly not that much of an eye sore
Oh I don't know, the really extreme ones can be pretty vocal and I've known a few that weren't exactly pleasing on the eye. They don't generally kill very many birds though, I'll give you that...
I take it you're just as worried about nuclear powered submarines then? I appreciate that there's a difference in scale, and I'm not saying you're not right to be concerned...
Yes, if the law says that each law must be re-examined *before* it expires, which it would have to. Otherwise, you'd end up with periods in which the thing legislated were no longer illegal (or a legal requirement, as appropriate). Imagine if murder or theft were legal for a month or so while it was being re-examined...
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Actually, although I've not read the article, personally your description of what you do (divert all traffic to a set page) meets my definition of "disconnected from the net".
The user's PC can still connect to a small area of the ISP's network, but not to The Internet - surely that counts? (It's also a far better solution than just killing their connection completely, as you say)
There's a difference between being able to store TB of data in something, and that thing being able to handle it (eg access/process it effectively, store it safely, etc)
For example, you can store gigabytes of data in a flat file rather than a database, but I wouldn't want to try to query it. (Sure, you *could* use grep...)
With regards to #3, that sounds like something like RSA's SecurID key fob.
or he got confused between Java and Javascrip
I've worked in the web for 6 years now, and you'd (apparently) be amazed how many times I've seen people make exactly that mistake.
Microsoft realized it's out of the game and .Net became the next end-all, be-all application framework
MS got its ass handed it in court by Sun for breaching the terms of its licence and adding its own classes into the java.* package hierarchy in its VM. So, MS took its toys away and went home and developed C# to try to piss on Sun's parade.
*That* is (at least part of) why MS dumped Java. For what it's worth, Visual J++ still exists, and is supported in VS.NET at least as of the current release (I'm not sure about the upcoming release). Iirc it's stuck at v1.1.4 (thanks to the court case), which means its essentially just a curiosity. Too much has been added since then to make it worthwhile using.
So now I sit asking myself what I should be coding in, and I more and more find that the answer is as same as always, good ol' C++. Piece of shit language, but at least I know it'll still be around in 5 years, and everything should be able to compile without fighting a million version changes.
I have Java code from 5 years ago that still runs in recent JVMs without recompilation. I really don't see that being a problem over that sort fo time scale.
Well, I've been writing web apps in Java for 5 years, so perhaps I'm a special case.
That said, I have had zero trouble getting Java apps working for the last few years. That's not zero as in "it was easy, I just installed $foo, set $bar and $baz in the environment, recompiled the widgets and was good to go", that's zero as in "I downloaded it, ran the installer/unzipped it and there it was".
It probably helps that I already have a recent version of Sun's JVM installed, but I can't think of a single Java app that's given me any trouble in a good few years. True, I'm not big on downloading random stuff from freshmeat, so perhaps I'm spoilt by my choice of apps. That said though, I remember having hellish problems getting random (and not so random) C and C++ apps compiled and running a couple of years ago...
Basically, stick to well-written, well maintained apps and you'll have no problems. Download any old crap and well, what do you expect?
"Protected" is not a synonym of "impervious".
You got any sources to back that assertion up? Not saying it's not true, just that that's the first I've heard of it (and I'm European).
No, it's not difficult. The way I see it is as an alternate form of compensation. When the government doesn't mandate vacation days, you, as an employee, can negotiate with a prospective employer to get something that you both think is fair. For example, you can agree to get one less week a year of vacation time in exchange for a slightly higher salary. If the employer doesn't agree, then you go find one who will./i.
I am in the UK, employed by a UK company. I have sold 5 days of holiday time back to my company in return for 5 days worth extra money, spread over the year.
I still get my government-mandated holiday time; this was an extra 5 days that my company gave (as a benefit) over and above that.
Personally, I'll take our way, thanks.
Those from the UK may recall the curious scandal of "Phantom Withdrawls" from ATM machines
Something like that happened to a work mate of mine a couple of years ago. A couple of grand disappeared from his account, so naturally he spoke to the bank about it. He convinced them that it wasn't him (in fact, I think they tracked it to Brazil), and so the replaced the money.
A week or so later he had to speak to them again, this time to get them to waive the charge incurred when his account went overdrawn because of the fraudulent withdrawl..
Because they can counter that argument by claiming that if it weren't for the piracy, they'd have made even more money.
Forgetting the money and success for a moment though, this is a clear-cut case of copyright infringement. That's illegal whether there's any monetary gain (or loss) or not.
You can walk past a club where a loud concert is going on, and hear the music for free.
That's unimportant, as there is a world of difference between listening to a muffled, quiet rendition of each song and actually being there in the crowd. For me at least, the atmosphere is half the point of going to a gig, and you don't get that outside.
You can go to a friend's house and watch his DVDs for free.
If you believe the legalese on the back of the DVD case, you may well be on shaky ground there. My copy of The Increidbles says it is licensed "for private home use only", and in the list of things I'm not allowed to do are "unauthorised... exhibition,... public performance". If there are too many people there with you, you may fall foul of one or the other clause.
Of course, no-one would ever even attempt to bring a case against you, unless you were charging admission to the general public.
You can go to the library and read books for free.
Your taxes pay for that.
You can turn on the radio and hear music for free.
Advertising pays for that.
You can turn on TiVo and watch TV shows for free, without even watching the commercials.
I pay for my satellite TV subscription.
Besides which, you're (willfully?) missing the point - in none of those situations other than the last one do you actually possess a copy of the copyrighted work. That is the main difference - when you download a film off a p2p network, you do. When you listen in to a concert as you walk past, or turn on the radio, you don't have anything lasting. Even in that last case, at least as far as UK copyright law goes, while you may time-shift a broadcast, you are specifically not allowed to keep it - the law explicitly disallows building up a "library" of recorded broadcasts.
I'm not saying that it's necessarily right, but none of your examples bear much relation to the actual topic at hand.
Also, whenever you can, please keep correcting people who regard this as "piracy", "stealing" or "theft". It is nothing of the sort. It is "copyright infringement", plain and simple.
Use of the word "piracy" in place of "copyright infringement" has been commonplace for decades, if not longer. See for example here and here.
No, it isn't accurate. Yes, it was almost certainly started by content producers to try to provoke a negative emotional response in people. But just like the "hacker vs cracker" debate, you've already lost. There's not generally any point to fighting a battle you can't win.
Trying to persuade people to stop calling it piracy is just going to confuse and distract from the real argument.
As I understand it, if someone has the binary, then they are entitled to the source. If they don't have the binary, they have no entitlement to the source.
"Everyone" therefore means "everyone who has the binary".
Knee-deep in dupes, that's where it's gotten us.
Quite often that's how it happens out here in the corporate world, too. My company has never fired anyone, even when it was apparent that they were up to no good (including stealing stuff). It has, however, encouraged a few people to resign. It's better for them (no stain on their record) and for us (less paper work, no potential claim for unfair dismissal, etc).
If we downloaded officially we'd spin the ads on anyway, just as we do with taped stuff/Tivo.
Unless the format and player prevented that, of course.
They still focus on dial up, versus the exploading broadband arena.
That may be the case in the US, but here in the UK they're very much pushing broadband. Just look at their home page. For what it's worth, the prices quoted are competitive with other broadband services.
The problem with ignorant people is that there are so many of them
Seriously, go on fighting if you want, but you've already lost.
As for nuclear waste, IMO it's pretty arrogant to think we'll be around 50k years from now, while at the same time not being clever enough to figure out how to handle the waste by the time the 50k year countdown ends...
What? Nuclear waste is a problem *today*, and *every* day until sufficient time has passed that it's no longer a danger.
Depending on the isotopes, it won't *be* a problem in 50k years. I think you've got it the wrong way round...
The enviromental extremest... will find any reason to complain , we have heaps of them here in Germany , I often drive past them. And have never once seen a dead bird laying around at the bottom of them , they are hardly noisy atall and generaly not that much of an eye sore
Oh I don't know, the really extreme ones can be pretty vocal and I've known a few that weren't exactly pleasing on the eye. They don't generally kill very many birds though, I'll give you that...
Still, you'd need something lime X000 km^2 to provide all of the UK's electricity this way.
So don't try to produce it all using this, just produce some of it.
Anything that reduces our dependence on fossil fuels, even a little, has to be a good thing.
I take it you're just as worried about nuclear powered submarines then? I appreciate that there's a difference in scale, and I'm not saying you're not right to be concerned...
Yes, if the law says that each law must be re-examined *before* it expires, which it would have to. Otherwise, you'd end up with periods in which the thing legislated were no longer illegal (or a legal requirement, as appropriate). Imagine if murder or theft were legal for a month or so while it was being re-examined...
Or, at least, preventing such self-incriminating evidence to come to light could be considered exercising ones right to plead the fifth.
Of course, depending on *when* you do it, it could also be considered at attempt to pervert the course of justice and/or destruction of evidence.