Kind of small as in "holy crap, it's amazing how you can analyze the patterns of a few to determine the patterns of the many," you mean. Anyone with a rudimentary grasp of statistics should know that 200 is more than enough to suggest a high degree of confidence. You ought to take note when the number drops below thirty, because that's when your sample size really begins to affect the usability of the data.
Could it be we are not hearing good arguments in favor of copyright because there aren't any?
It may have something to do with 99.9% of the "good arguments" breaking down in anything beyond a perfect world. That and the only people willing to come up with arguments are likely strawmanning anyway.
---
Pro-copyright strawman: "If you download something you didn't pay for, you're hurting the artist!"
Monkeywrench: "What if you couldn't afford to buy it in the first place?"
Strawman: *brain breaks*
---
Pro-copyright strawman: "Piracy could threaten the music industry!"
Monkeywrench: "So?"
Strawman: *brain breaks*
---
Pro-copyright strawman: "If anyone can get it for free, what's to stop everyone from getting it for free?"
Monkeywrench: "Ask Radiohead?"
Strawman: *brain breaks*
---
And people wonder why I don't take them seriously. That thugs like the RIAA are allowed to spread such blatant lies and ruin so many people makes me wonder about the usefulness of the legal system. The RIAA is out to protect their own business interests/stranglehold over American artists. To actually buy into their propaganda is nothing short of ludicrious.
The courts aren't vulnerable to being bought the way that politicians are
Actually, the courts are quite open to corruption, and partial to parties with ample funds.
Those willing to fight should do everything they can to stay in the game, but it's something of an uphill battle at this point. As to believing whether Sony would jeopardize its core business for media battles...well, there was a time when I didn't believe banks would lay it all on the line for the sake of writing a few bad loans. I'm afraid I just don't have that kind of faith anymore.
The alternative is honesty. Telling someone they won't have any problems, ever, is a complete lie. I may as well tell my children that they won't contract any venereal diseases if they remember to bring a condom. Granted, telling someone with the attention span of a fly the exact details of why and how and blah blah blah...not the best approach. But it doesn't cost anything to say "look, nothing is 100% secure but this is probably enough to deal with everything you'll encounter for the next five years."
The OS X approach to root access and its integration of BSD is excellent, and part of why I use Macs frequently. But it still isn't a guarantee, and end users deserve to know that. If the user is never educated, they remain vulnerable to every social engineering trick in the book and most phishing, fake software, and related scams.
The only way I would promise no virus/spyware problems is with a computer that never goes live.
Vista's attempts at security are a weak attempt at reassurance, and deserve to be scrapped. I'd rather use XP - something that doesn't pretend to have Unix under the hood - or OS X, which has Unix under the hood. But this is for many of the same reasons as my reasoning behind warning users about risks.
The illusion of security is more dangerous than a lack of security.
Is OS X more secure than any Windows version? Absolutely. Impervious? Of course not. Should every user know this? Of course.
Google isn't Swedish. Were the two on equal footing, I would agree with that analogy. As it is, Google is subject to U.S. laws and The Pirate Bay is not.
Frankly, I fail to see how "working with" a few powerful, copyright-obsessed companies makes a difference. For one, the entire point of Google is vastly different from TPB, and for another, these few companies represent few interests. If something I own the rights to is anywhere without my permission, I am at a loss compared to these behemoths and their agendas.
And really, even trackers that make attempts to work with the companies end up taking flak for it. I do not believe for one moment that TPB was targeted solely because of this. It has increased attention due to situation and because its owners decided to reject the advances of these companies in favor of advocating a copyright-free, fair use model (and ignoring irrelevant laws and claims).
Calm down. They won't go to jail for a long time yet. First it'll be the appeals process. Then if they're found guilty again, it's another appeal to the supreme court.
Thankfully. But if they've been found guilty on - let me be blunt - incredibly pathetic grounds, then they are at high risk of being found guilty again or having the ruling upheld.
And if the supreme court comes down on them, we'll all be humped for the next fifty years and stuck listening to how the ruling is precedent for every other judicial quack looking for a reason to go after people who don't love the heavy-handed arms of the studios and labels. Given Obama's recent appointees from the RIAA, Isohunt's embroilment in another baseless case, and the continued (read:unchecked) malicious actions of the dogs of the RIAA/CRIA/MPAA/et al, my optimism might be described as waning at best.
Furthermore, I don't think they'll want for a moment to pay off the media industry,
If anything, they'll be looking to fight this.
That said, they may end up needing a legal defense fund, or something to help them find a country that won't sell them out on account of foreign pressures.
and I really doubt that Sweden will put them to jail for not paying a fine they cannot pay. We're not talking about a barbaric country here.
Apparently we're talking about one in which people can be imprisoned or stolen from because somebody doesn't like them.
What, if anything, was civilized about the 2006 raids?
As a long-time Mac (and PC) user myself, I've been known to give someone a "simplified version" of the truth, telling them "you won't have any virus or spyware problems on a Mac".
It's not that I'm some clueless user who doesn't know better. It's that I have a pretty good idea of what the individual does with and expects from their computer. Judging by that, and knowing they're not a very "technical" user to begin with, I know that practically speaking, they really aren't going to need to worry about infections on their Mac.
(So far, just about all of the trojan horses and viruses people mentioned for OS X involved downloading files of unknown origins, or running something you received in an unsolicited email. When you have a user who is already scared to open any email at all from people he/she doesn't know, they're hopefully in good shape there. They're certainly not savvy enough to fire up bittorrent and start seeking out pirated software, either.)
But they are sometimes savvy enough to open chain e-mails from people they do know.
The dangers of hypersimplification extend beyond the death of precision and loss of credibility: they carry straight to the continued promotion of ignorance.
If you dumb technology down for a user, all you get is a dumb user.
Mod this up. The strongest attack vector is the social engineering vector.
And always was, and always will be.
Social engineering is the most useful and the closest thing to a guaranteed success, especially when the target is, say, a top officer at a company or a fourteen-year-old who obsesses over MySpace friend lists.
Also, so touch on one of wumingzi's remarks, Vista's horrific attempt to block admin access is one of the worst attempts at security I have ever had the misfortune of observing. The lack of sudo alone is a dealbreaker, and a vast number of the important, known vulnerabilities spotted in XP are unaddressed in Vista.
On-screen keyboard, er, command line at login, anyone?
Yes.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to accomplish anything with a beautiful naked woman throwing herself at you and claiming you don't need a set of redundant backups?
Because that's actually hell.
I don't trust ANYTHING that blacklists my security toolkits and looks at me like I owe it something.
Is malicious code on the rise? Probably. So is the poplation of computer users. Is Symantec padding its "findings" by including anything it can get away with? Oh very yes.
Just one more thing wrong in the church annals.
It's too bad that the church records are so heavily relied upon for genealogy, statistical research, and for certain clergy members to decide which politician needs to be chided publicly for not doing everything in accordance with what they want.
Since when is removing a baptism record any different from an annulment, anyway?
Slashdot Mirror
Kind of small as in "holy crap, it's amazing how you can analyze the patterns of a few to determine the patterns of the many," you mean. Anyone with a rudimentary grasp of statistics should know that 200 is more than enough to suggest a high degree of confidence. You ought to take note when the number drops below thirty, because that's when your sample size really begins to affect the usability of the data.
Marketing Students should go on forums and attempt to defend ID. Bonus credit for converting people.
I'd award bonus points for arguing a variant of ID that wasn't predicated on Christianity. Convert another student, win a fellowship.
Could it be we are not hearing good arguments in favor of copyright because there aren't any?
It may have something to do with 99.9% of the "good arguments" breaking down in anything beyond a perfect world. That and the only people willing to come up with arguments are likely strawmanning anyway.
---
Pro-copyright strawman: "If you download something you didn't pay for, you're hurting the artist!"
Monkeywrench: "What if you couldn't afford to buy it in the first place?"
Strawman: *brain breaks*
---
Pro-copyright strawman: "Piracy could threaten the music industry!"
Monkeywrench: "So?"
Strawman: *brain breaks*
---
Pro-copyright strawman: "If anyone can get it for free, what's to stop everyone from getting it for free?"
Monkeywrench: "Ask Radiohead?"
Strawman: *brain breaks*
---
And people wonder why I don't take them seriously. That thugs like the RIAA are allowed to spread such blatant lies and ruin so many people makes me wonder about the usefulness of the legal system. The RIAA is out to protect their own business interests/stranglehold over American artists. To actually buy into their propaganda is nothing short of ludicrious.
The courts aren't vulnerable to being bought the way that politicians are
Actually, the courts are quite open to corruption, and partial to parties with ample funds.
Those willing to fight should do everything they can to stay in the game, but it's something of an uphill battle at this point. As to believing whether Sony would jeopardize its core business for media battles...well, there was a time when I didn't believe banks would lay it all on the line for the sake of writing a few bad loans. I'm afraid I just don't have that kind of faith anymore.
If a Swedish court is bowing to US pressures, the legal climate in the US has everything to do with this.
The alternative is honesty. Telling someone they won't have any problems, ever, is a complete lie. I may as well tell my children that they won't contract any venereal diseases if they remember to bring a condom. Granted, telling someone with the attention span of a fly the exact details of why and how and blah blah blah...not the best approach. But it doesn't cost anything to say "look, nothing is 100% secure but this is probably enough to deal with everything you'll encounter for the next five years."
The OS X approach to root access and its integration of BSD is excellent, and part of why I use Macs frequently. But it still isn't a guarantee, and end users deserve to know that. If the user is never educated, they remain vulnerable to every social engineering trick in the book and most phishing, fake software, and related scams.
The only way I would promise no virus/spyware problems is with a computer that never goes live.
Vista's attempts at security are a weak attempt at reassurance, and deserve to be scrapped. I'd rather use XP - something that doesn't pretend to have Unix under the hood - or OS X, which has Unix under the hood. But this is for many of the same reasons as my reasoning behind warning users about risks.
The illusion of security is more dangerous than a lack of security.
Is OS X more secure than any Windows version? Absolutely. Impervious? Of course not. Should every user know this? Of course.
Google isn't Swedish. Were the two on equal footing, I would agree with that analogy. As it is, Google is subject to U.S. laws and The Pirate Bay is not.
Frankly, I fail to see how "working with" a few powerful, copyright-obsessed companies makes a difference. For one, the entire point of Google is vastly different from TPB, and for another, these few companies represent few interests. If something I own the rights to is anywhere without my permission, I am at a loss compared to these behemoths and their agendas.
And really, even trackers that make attempts to work with the companies end up taking flak for it. I do not believe for one moment that TPB was targeted solely because of this. It has increased attention due to situation and because its owners decided to reject the advances of these companies in favor of advocating a copyright-free, fair use model (and ignoring irrelevant laws and claims).
Calm down. They won't go to jail for a long time yet. First it'll be the appeals process. Then if they're found guilty again, it's another appeal to the supreme court.
Thankfully. But if they've been found guilty on - let me be blunt - incredibly pathetic grounds, then they are at high risk of being found guilty again or having the ruling upheld.
And if the supreme court comes down on them, we'll all be humped for the next fifty years and stuck listening to how the ruling is precedent for every other judicial quack looking for a reason to go after people who don't love the heavy-handed arms of the studios and labels. Given Obama's recent appointees from the RIAA, Isohunt's embroilment in another baseless case, and the continued (read:unchecked) malicious actions of the dogs of the RIAA/CRIA/MPAA/et al, my optimism might be described as waning at best.
Furthermore, I don't think they'll want for a moment to pay off the media industry,
If anything, they'll be looking to fight this.
That said, they may end up needing a legal defense fund, or something to help them find a country that won't sell them out on account of foreign pressures.
and I really doubt that Sweden will put them to jail for not paying a fine they cannot pay. We're not talking about a barbaric country here.
Apparently we're talking about one in which people can be imprisoned or stolen from because somebody doesn't like them. What, if anything, was civilized about the 2006 raids?
As a long-time Mac (and PC) user myself, I've been known to give someone a "simplified version" of the truth, telling them "you won't have any virus or spyware problems on a Mac".
It's not that I'm some clueless user who doesn't know better. It's that I have a pretty good idea of what the individual does with and expects from their computer. Judging by that, and knowing they're not a very "technical" user to begin with, I know that practically speaking, they really aren't going to need to worry about infections on their Mac.
(So far, just about all of the trojan horses and viruses people mentioned for OS X involved downloading files of unknown origins, or running something you received in an unsolicited email. When you have a user who is already scared to open any email at all from people he/she doesn't know, they're hopefully in good shape there. They're certainly not savvy enough to fire up bittorrent and start seeking out pirated software, either.)
But they are sometimes savvy enough to open chain e-mails from people they do know.
The dangers of hypersimplification extend beyond the death of precision and loss of credibility: they carry straight to the continued promotion of ignorance.
If you dumb technology down for a user, all you get is a dumb user.
Mod this up. The strongest attack vector is the social engineering vector.
And always was, and always will be.
Social engineering is the most useful and the closest thing to a guaranteed success, especially when the target is, say, a top officer at a company or a fourteen-year-old who obsesses over MySpace friend lists.
Also, so touch on one of wumingzi's remarks, Vista's horrific attempt to block admin access is one of the worst attempts at security I have ever had the misfortune of observing. The lack of sudo alone is a dealbreaker, and a vast number of the important, known vulnerabilities spotted in XP are unaddressed in Vista.
On-screen keyboard, er, command line at login, anyone?
Yes. Do you have any idea how hard it is to accomplish anything with a beautiful naked woman throwing herself at you and claiming you don't need a set of redundant backups? Because that's actually hell.
I find it very endearing that someone felt the need to explain what Lynx is on SlashDot.
Whereas I just find that it makes me feel old.
I don't trust ANYTHING that blacklists my security toolkits and looks at me like I owe it something.
Is malicious code on the rise? Probably. So is the poplation of computer users. Is Symantec padding its "findings" by including anything it can get away with? Oh very yes.
Uh, WHAT!? Seriously, Microsoft? You're selling concatenation as a feature?.
You seem surprised. Did you entirely miss the release of Vista or something?
Frankly, nearly every option I have ever heard containing the phrase "with Windows Server" has been a terrible idea.
Just one more thing wrong in the church annals. It's too bad that the church records are so heavily relied upon for genealogy, statistical research, and for certain clergy members to decide which politician needs to be chided publicly for not doing everything in accordance with what they want. Since when is removing a baptism record any different from an annulment, anyway?