Stop asking difficult questions. Next you will be asking why the freedom loving libertarians want to remove all parts of goverment except the two that are about removing freedom (police, army).
Or why communists keep dreaming about the day when there are no more scarcity, claiming that it is near, when it is obvious looking at the world that more and more resources are in scarce supply due to an increasing amount of people wanting to increase their living standards.
Aside from that, I don't get why people in the US call "Socialist" anything they dislike regarding politics, either.
Exactly. Instead they get bankrupted. Much cheaper for the state. Why put people in expensive jails when you can ruin them without putting them in jail.
Hmm, reading the law it looks like you don't actually have to send a DMCA takedown request to force something down. If you simply make the site owner aware of any infringing copyrighted material he becomes liable for it and is no longer protected under the DMCA. (Reference: 17USC 512(c)(1)(a) )
Of course, without a proper DMCA notification the defender could always claim that he didn't have sufficent knowledge, but it is still a weakness in the "safe harbor" protection of the DMCA. Claiming ignorance is a protection in the case of DMCA but only as long as you can actually claim reasonable ignorance.
Ah, the youtube copyright violation flagging system where only the copyright owner can flag it even though it obvious that it is a copyright violation.
It is funny (or not) how you can get videos removed for containing content against their tos, but if the content is actually illegally distributed, the copyright owner is the only one who can do anything about it.
n the exact same respect, Evolution cannot be a theory with that logic
Testing a theory works like this:
1. Prediction: Think of a way that the world can be obeserved that could contradict the theory in question. 2. Preparation: If the observation can not be found or is more difficult to do in nature, create it artifically, otherwise find it in nature. 3. Observation: Make the observation and see if the observation matches or contradicts the theory.
A common misconception seems to be about points number two. Creationists seems to have the misconceptions that tests has to be done in labs and be infinitly repeatable in the exact same way. This is simply not true. As long as similar tests can be done on the same prediction, that is more than enough.
There exists more than enough fossiles to implement the scientific method. While there aren't an infinite number of fossiles, there are enough to provide for an acceptable amount of repeatable observations. Of course, we could one day run out of new fossiles to study and that would mean we could no longer make tests based on finding new fossiles. Still, even then it would be possible to study existing fossiles.
and when it is decided that it is several thousand years old, life just evolved a bit faster. "Theory" status only fits on limited perspectives, such as gravity on earth and the laws of thermodynamics.
Oh, that reminds me. The grandparent is slightly incorrect. Creationism actually had a theory which was disproven. The 6000 year old prediction simply didn't work out. Too many scientists has found how it contradicts various observations.
He may be talking about intelligent design which distanced itself from anything that could be disproven.
"Fair share" is right up there with "unlimited" as the most abused words in a discussion about broadband.
If life was fair, then people wouldn't be leaving their P2P connections running full-tilt 24/7 and giving everyone else affected the middle-finger.
I love how everyone likes to blame 24/7 p2p:ers when in reality what they do is a minor issue in a well managed network. (Note: Well managed, which doesn't seem to be case with many networks)
12-18 hours of the day the network really isn't fully used, and as such the bandwidth used by p2p:ers isn't scarce. It doesn't hurt anyone that someone uses it at off hours. Supply is greater than demand. In fact, it is good that some people p2p during that time since it makes use of a resource that would otherwise be wasted. Of course, someone with an "business 101 pseudo economics class" would never understand that.
Of course during prime time, the lines get congested because everyone tries to use it at the same time, watching their youtube feeds, downloading their big http media files, watching large media files from pay services and browsing the internet in general, oh and using p2p.
Suddenly the demand is greater than the supply and the resources have to be distributed as such. In other words, everyone getting their fair share. The 24/7 p2p users, who make up maybe 5% of the users, will get their 5% of the bandwidth while the rest get their share 95%. I don't really see a problem with that. It sounds reasonable. You could even give the p2p people less priority as they use the network more over all.
What can cause problems are two things.
* The ISP has a bad system that doesn't properly utilize market economy to distribute resources and manages to give too much bandwidth to some people. A system that distributes bandwidth per connection is one example of this, but there are other ways to completly fail.
* The ISP has oversold their bandwidth so much that during prime time all the people streaming video, downloading game demos and browsing the internet will clog the internet for everyone including the p2p user (who won't mind that much as he downloaded his stuff in advance during the night when noone else was using the lines and therefore can stand the lower bandwidth at prime time).
Good thing US schools are teaching a healthy dose of economics right along side their technology courses.
Doesn't look like it from where I am sitting. Fortunally I am not an american.
Really, monthly caps will do little as long as they are 24/7. Even a beginner economist with a brain (added because brainless people are way too common) should be able to look at usage patterns and tell you that. The only ones affects by a 250GB monthly cap are 24/7 p2p users and they will just decrease their usage slightly to fit within the cap.
The real problem, being people like ordinary Joe HD streamer that want to view his HD quality football matches and movies during prime time. He and his other fellow prime time users will still manage to create as much congestion as before. Sure, the p2p may use slightly less than before, but then again maybe not. In fact, with a lower cap per month the usage pattern for a p2per may change to include more prime time traffic instead of less.
Specific prime time caps could fix the problem, but the ones that would be bothered most by those aren't p2p people. They can easily move their usage to less occupied times of the day. It is the youtubers and netflix streamers that will be hit the hardest. And what they are doing is using their connection much like the companies advertised. They aren't using it very heavy. Just at the wrong time of the day when everyone else also is doing it.
If someone can "hog all the bandwidth", that is a sign of a badly managed network. Ensuring that each user gets their fair share without artifically limiting the whole network is one of the main responsibilities of an ISP.
Ten years ago I could have understood it, but with todays technology it should no problem ensuring that each user gets their fair share. Of course, lots of ISPs still deal in ancient idiotic ideas like capping per tcp session. Sure, it is the simplest way to cap, but it is just as easy to bypass (by using more sessions than others). And a special mention to all the cable companies with their "shared last mile networks" that are causing problems most everywhere.
Re:How To Detect A Securom Install Attempt?
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Review: Spore
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· Score: 1
This is why the security on most operating system suck currently. There is too much trust given to installers.
I do like the idea of sandboxie which redirects any disk (and registry) write access outside of the sandbox, preventing virus and malware (such as securom) from taking over the system. Unfortunally it doesn't function on Vista 64 because patchguard exists to prevent security systems or rootkits from installing.
The disadvantage with sandboxie is that it is a little rusty when it comes to the user interface part. I think an operating system built around a sandboxie like system, treating each application as its own sandbox, would be far better in that area. The advantage with using sandboxie is that it is faster and less memory consuming than running a full virtual environment.
It actually looks like you may even be able to run securom games in a sandbox under sandboxie as long as you give them access to the dvdrom pipes. Not sure how well it works with the latest version of securom though.
I have been wondering about that argument for a whilte.
Doesn't it mean that I could send a take down notice for any video on youtube as long as I claim that it infringes on one of my own copyrighted works and youtube would have to take it down until someone files a counternotice. And it doesn't matter at all if the video even is related to my work. As long as I claim that it infringes a work I actually own I can't be touched.
Of course, to make it even more fun. File hundreds of thousands of takedown notices, and have a few of them be accurate in case youtube decides to not obey.
If you want a dedicated pipe go look up the price of a T1 line and compare that to your residential internet.
Only a fool or desperate man uses T1 as it is an old outdated and expensive technology. Oh, I forgot, you are talking about the US where there is a lot of desperate men because of the sucky fiber infrastructure in many places.
If the premise of the article is right let's cut the Internet connections of that 5% of power users. We end up using only 50% of the available bandwidth
Except of course that the big cost is in putting down the infrastructure in the first place. That is why you constantly hears whining from those companies that havn't invested enough in a working infrastructure.They want to save money by not having to put it into the ground in the first place, and instead leech of old infrastructure.
On the backbone the 250GB/month that Comcast is talking about is worth a few dollars. The 2-3GB/month that supposedly is the median is a few cents of data. Bandwidth is cheap once you actually get the infrastructure in the ground.
By the way, how it comes that poor granny's connection is slow while power users play WoW without problems?
Because the granny doesn't use adblock, is accessing badly constructed webpages, possibly have spyware installed and the article is written by someone who has fallen for the propaganda of lying scumbags. (or possibly directly written by such a scumbag).
And if the p2p traffic somehow actually affect the speed of webpages loading, it has more to do with the network itself being badly constructed and not accuratly distributing a fair share to each user.
XVid is basically the same as Divx so that is fine, but the rest are weird non standard junk not supported in very much. That's something you reencode to avi as fast as possible if you can't get it in avi to start with.
Non standard junk? x264 is an encoder for h264, which happens to be the standard format for high quality video.
Matroska is the best generic container format (replacing the flawed avi) as well as open standard and open source based. It does suffer somewhat from not being the industry (as in big business) standard, but on merits it is the best on the market, and with the increasing use to distribute high definition content in the scene, improved hardware support is very likely.
The mpeg container format (.mp4 - can't remember its real name right now) is industry supported which means that it is implemented in more hardware, but compared to Matroska it is less flexible. Still, when using h264, I won't blaim any business for going with that format, even though I prefer to use Matroska for all my encoding.
As for Ogg and Theora, they are far less common. Ogg is pretty much dead in the water. Matroska simply won over it at the start, and ogg has never been able to recover from that. Theora is nice in that it isn't patent encumbered, which is a plus for businesses that need to think about licenses, but to be honest it will have a hard time replacing h264 or its older sibling mpeg4 (divx,xvid). The usage for theora lies in specialized software playback such as games, where the playback engine is included and license fees can be troublesome.
The U.S. is China's largest buyer. They wouldn't be where they are without all that money flowing that way. If China were to collapse the U.S. economy which is something they could do right now then they would lose a lot of business devastating their own economy
This is exactly why it is bad to build economies around debt. You get artificial restrictions in the economy that leads to problems (recessions) when you can't find someone willing to get endebted.
And when you actually find people people willing to get endebted the economy will roll on for a while until it reaches its limit and it again isn't possible to find people willing to get endebted.
Of course, the ones making the big money over time on this is bankers, investors and others that deal in debt. For the rest of society it is just another thing that causes instability and inefficency. Of course, coming up with a better system that works in practice isn't an easy task, and implementing it is even harder.
So wealth belongs to whoever can take it? Considering the stats on gun ownership for conservatives and liberals, I don't think you'd like the results of that policy.
First of all, you are talking like it is some new policy. It is the same policy that has always existed. It is called army and police. You know, the two freedom removing goverment institutions, that by coincidence are the only two goverment organisations that the libertarians want to keep. Of course, a successful society also relies on cooperation mixed in with the force. If noone plays along with the "rules" you usually got a civil war or a military dictatorship on your hands.
Secondly, are you seriously comparing conservatives with libertarians? It is easier for a conservative to negotiate with a moderate liberal, because the big difference in opinion between a conservative and a liberal (especially a moderate one) is how much economical redistribution is needed to maintain societal stability. And that can always be compromised. Libertarians however aren't really interested in societal stability.
Wake the fuck up, and pay attention in biology class; nothing is fair about the world
Which is exactly what I say to every libertarian I meet. It may be fair that you get to keep what you have earned, but don't expect that to happen when there is a majority that don't like that idea.
I am so sick of the anti-entitlement movement here on slashdot. Life isn't fair. Deal with it.
Money will never cease to exist as long as there is any kind of scarce goods/resource/property or skill that is needed by others. Sure, you can dream of a time when that isn't true, but it will remain a dream.
Still, there are many ways that economy could change in the future. A society can be run where everyone gets paid the same or based on effort put in. It may also be possible to remove common house hold items from the equation, and only require payment for "luxury items". Also, having a society where loans/borrowing is illegal is also possible, although that requires all expensive products (cars, houses) to be leased/rented instead of owned.
Sounds utopian? Why Not!!
Anything is possible to those who wish it.
Yes, too utopian. And no, anything isn't possible.
There is nothing wrong with utopian visions, but aiming towards them and thinking you will reach them with just wishes is the act of a fool.
A good visionaire needs three worlds. One is the utopian world that he wishes for. The second is the nightmare world where everything he implements fails. And the third is the real world where he tries to make progress towards the utopia while avoiding the nightmare scenarios.
Communists as well as libertarians both aim for the utopia while ignoring the nightmares, and that is a recipe for disaster.
Also, make sure that the utopia is actually an utopia that everyone wants. The communist utopia is far to restrained to be called an utopia. It is way too much about individual sacrifice, which is a very non utopian thing in my and many others meaning. I much prefer the social liberalism utopia.
How could this be possible? when we (humanity) realize that we are all the same deep down and we all want peace and prosperity, regardless or politics and religious beliefs.
Yup.
What's the biggest hurdle? Us the people, which is part being lazy and part resisting and fearing change, and those who right now, are in power and truly benefit from this unfair world as it is.
I definitly don't agree on laziness. Being lazy is a virtue. It is the lazy people who try to do more with less effort that make the world go forward.
It is the working ants that are satisfied working 40+ hours a week in stressful hierarcical systems, doing unproductive work (bueraucracy, marketing) spending borrowed money on shiny toys (that they only buy because other working marketing ants convince them to do so), while their bosses takes the big profits that are the real problem.
I live in Sweden and am single. I have a 1mbit upload adsl connection. As a p2p user, download doesn't really matter although if you are wondering it is 24mbit.
I am a heavy user, mainly using bittorrent to download anime/tv and various other things. I also watch youtube and download other big files from the internet sometimes. I consider myself a good torrent citizen, so I usually upload atleast as much as I download.
Since 2006-07-22 I have uploaded 3344GB and downloaded 2667GB for a total of about 6000GB. That makes for 7,8GB per day or near 240GB per month on average. Some months see more heavy usage (up to 350GB) while other months are less usage.
1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.
Of course the best terrorists are smart enough to do any violence or threatening themselves, and instead just use the fear created by other terrorists to get their agenda implemented.
The "best" part in using that strategy is that you won't even get recognized as a terrorist by the majority, but instead as a patriot.
Considering the protections afforded to most credit card customers, the vast majority of all damage is going to be against the credit card companies anyways, so it would be up to them. It is far more likely that a civil suit will result from this, and only if the credit card companies believe they can construct a case that will convince a jury that negligence exists.
The credit card companies trying to build a case of negilence???
The whole idea of using number that you have to show to untrusted individuals to make a payment and which can be reused any number of times is negilent in itself.
The sooner we get rid of credit card numbers the better.
In some extreme cases, software people seem to believe that the use of software should determine its value.
This is not only common in software but in other markets. The idea that the value of something should determine the price.
That is of course ridicioulus for anyone who have the slighest understanding of supply and demand. The value (not market value, but real value) of a product plays a very small role in the free market. Only when supply is very limited/expensive does the real value have any effect at all. And if that happens, it is usually a sign of either something gone wrong or a key basic resource being in too high of a demand.
The fact is that business people hate the free market. It simply isn't very profitable. Lots and lots of money is spent trying to sell products via "uniqueness/coolness" advertising or IP monopolies, which basically are ways of creating a new market where your own product is the only one. Of course, other products may exist that can do similar things which can affect the sales of your own product, so some small market forces remains, but most modern businesses will do their best to limit such things. Competition is bad for business (your own that is), plain and simple.
The people who used the terrorists to their advantage have won.
That depends on how you defines terrorism and terrorist. The most common usage seems to imply the following:
Terrorism: Blowing civilians up. Terrorist: Person that does terrorism.
However, I personally find those definitions lacking and prefer the following that fits more in line with other -isms.
Act of terror: Blowing civilians up. Terrorism: Using the threat of future act of terrors to coerce a population into obedience. Terrorist: Person that does terrorism.
Title V - Obscenity and Pornography Subtitle A - Child Obscenity and Pornography Prevention Section 502, page 77, paragraph 11, lines 3-10 of the PROTECT Act of 2003, it states that "(11) the term 'indistinguishable' used with respect to a depiction, means virtually indistinguishable, in that the depiction is such that an ordinary person viewing the depiction would conclude that the depiction is of an actual minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct. This definition does not apply to depictions that are drawings, cartoons, sculptures or paintings depicting minors or adults."
The fact that Loli or Lolicon art are drawings indicates that Loli or Lolicon art does not apply to this definition of 'indistinguishable'.
child pornography means any visual depiction, including any photograph, film, video, picture, or computer or computer-generated image or picture, whether made or produced by electronic, mechanical, or other means, of sexually explicit conduct, where (A) the production of such visual depiction involves the use of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; (B) such visual depiction is a digital image, computer image, or computer-generated image that is, or is indistinguishable from, that of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; or (C) such visual depiction has been created, adapted, or modified to appear that an identifiable minor is engaging in sexually explicit conduct.
identifiable minor (A) means a person (I) who was a minor at the time the visual depiction was created, adapted, or modified; or (II) whose image as a minor was used in creating, adapting, or modifying the visual depiction; and (ii) who is recognizable as an actual person by the persons face, likeness, or other distinguishing characteristic, such as a unique birthmark or other recognizable feature; and (B) shall not be construed to require proof of the actual identity of the identifiable minor.
Lolicon art or Loli does not directly use minors so it is another exemption.
Note though that there is no beyond reasonable doubt though. It is your word vs the prosecutor that no real child modelling in the production of the drawing.
Also, the laws differs from country to country. In some (Canada, Sweden, etc) it is illegal with drawings.
Regardless, do you think it's acceptable that if I draw Britney Spear's younger sister in a sexual situation I should face criminal penalties?
Definitly not. I find the current laws to be offensive as they still supress free speech and thought in areas where actions aren't conflicting with other rights. Your example is very good, using your imagination to create an image that happens to depict a real person should not be illegal, but is. Neither should photo montage be forbidden if adequate evidence can be provided that it is a montage, as there is no right to not be offended.
The fact that copies of this creativity cost $0 to duplicate and distribute does not mean that the creativity itself is worthless.
I agree that the grandparent misused the word worthless. The important thing to remember though is that the price in a market economy has zero to do with the worth/value of a product. Supply & Demand is all that matters.
The only reason why things that worth more often cost more is because of
* Higher demand (people want stuff that is more valuable) * Less supply (more difficult to produce valuable stuff)
However, there are lots of very valuable products that are easy to produce and as such have a big supply. Those products are both valuable and cheap. Water and Air are two good examples.
All of the above is actually a good lesson to learn, because understanding that makes you realize that GDP and similar measurements have nothing to do with measuring real wealth. Real wealth is almost impossible to measure accuratly.
Of course, using the free market is not always the best idea, however much some people worship it. In the case of intellectual property that have a high production cost but near zero margin cost some kind of alternative may be needed. I still think that copyright/patent monopolies are a bad idea as they limit how much the information is used and copied, basically reducing total societal wealth generated from it. Blanket licensing are probably a better idea in many cases, of course having the problem of being able to distribute the money fairly.
Slashdot Mirror
Stop asking difficult questions. Next you will be asking why the freedom loving libertarians want to remove all parts of goverment except the two that are about removing freedom (police, army).
Or why communists keep dreaming about the day when there are no more scarcity, claiming that it is near, when it is obvious looking at the world that more and more resources are in scarce supply due to an increasing amount of people wanting to increase their living standards.
Aside from that, I don't get why people in the US call "Socialist" anything they dislike regarding politics, either.
Another good question.
Exactly. Instead they get bankrupted. Much cheaper for the state. Why put people in expensive jails when you can ruin them without putting them in jail.
Hmm, reading the law it looks like you don't actually have to send a DMCA takedown request to force something down. If you simply make the site owner aware of any infringing copyrighted material he becomes liable for it and is no longer protected under the DMCA. (Reference: 17USC 512(c)(1)(a) )
Of course, without a proper DMCA notification the defender could always claim that he didn't have sufficent knowledge, but it is still a weakness in the "safe harbor" protection of the DMCA. Claiming ignorance is a protection in the case of DMCA but only as long as you can actually claim reasonable ignorance.
Ah, the youtube copyright violation flagging system where only the copyright owner can flag it even though it obvious that it is a copyright violation.
It is funny (or not) how you can get videos removed for containing content against their tos, but if the content is actually illegally distributed, the copyright owner is the only one who can do anything about it.
n the exact same respect, Evolution cannot be a theory with that logic
Testing a theory works like this:
1. Prediction: Think of a way that the world can be obeserved that could contradict the theory in question.
2. Preparation: If the observation can not be found or is more difficult to do in nature, create it artifically, otherwise find it in nature.
3. Observation: Make the observation and see if the observation matches or contradicts the theory.
A common misconception seems to be about points number two. Creationists seems to have the misconceptions that tests has to be done in labs and be infinitly repeatable in the exact same way. This is simply not true. As long as similar tests can be done on the same prediction, that is more than enough.
There exists more than enough fossiles to implement the scientific method. While there aren't an infinite number of fossiles, there are enough to provide for an acceptable amount of repeatable observations. Of course, we could one day run out of new fossiles to study and that would mean we could no longer make tests based on finding new fossiles. Still, even then it would be possible to study existing fossiles.
and when it is decided that it is several thousand years old, life just evolved a bit faster. "Theory" status only fits on limited perspectives, such as gravity on earth and the laws of thermodynamics.
Oh, that reminds me. The grandparent is slightly incorrect. Creationism actually had a theory which was disproven. The 6000 year old prediction simply didn't work out. Too many scientists has found how it contradicts various observations.
He may be talking about intelligent design which distanced itself from anything that could be disproven.
"Fair share" is right up there with "unlimited" as the most abused words in a discussion about broadband.
If life was fair, then people wouldn't be leaving their P2P connections running full-tilt 24/7 and giving everyone else affected the middle-finger.
I love how everyone likes to blame 24/7 p2p:ers when in reality what they do is a minor issue in a well managed network. (Note: Well managed, which doesn't seem to be case with many networks)
12-18 hours of the day the network really isn't fully used, and as such the bandwidth used by p2p:ers isn't scarce. It doesn't hurt anyone that someone uses it at off hours. Supply is greater than demand. In fact, it is good that some people p2p during that time since it makes use of a resource that would otherwise be wasted. Of course, someone with an "business 101 pseudo economics class" would never understand that.
Of course during prime time, the lines get congested because everyone tries to use it at the same time, watching their youtube feeds, downloading their big http media files, watching large media files from pay services and browsing the internet in general, oh and using p2p.
Suddenly the demand is greater than the supply and the resources have to be distributed as such. In other words, everyone getting their fair share. The 24/7 p2p users, who make up maybe 5% of the users, will get their 5% of the bandwidth while the rest get their share 95%. I don't really see a problem with that. It sounds reasonable. You could even give the p2p people less priority as they use the network more over all.
What can cause problems are two things.
* The ISP has a bad system that doesn't properly utilize market economy to distribute resources and manages to give too much bandwidth to some people. A system that distributes bandwidth per connection is one example of this, but there are other ways to completly fail.
* The ISP has oversold their bandwidth so much that during prime time all the people streaming video, downloading game demos and browsing the internet will clog the internet for everyone including the p2p user (who won't mind that much as he downloaded his stuff in advance during the night when noone else was using the lines and therefore can stand the lower bandwidth at prime time).
Good thing US schools are teaching a healthy dose of economics right along side their technology courses.
Doesn't look like it from where I am sitting. Fortunally I am not an american.
Really, monthly caps will do little as long as they are 24/7. Even a beginner economist with a brain (added because brainless people are way too common) should be able to look at usage patterns and tell you that. The only ones affects by a 250GB monthly cap are 24/7 p2p users and they will just decrease their usage slightly to fit within the cap.
The real problem, being people like ordinary Joe HD streamer that want to view his HD quality football matches and movies during prime time. He and his other fellow prime time users will still manage to create as much congestion as before. Sure, the p2p may use slightly less than before, but then again maybe not. In fact, with a lower cap per month the usage pattern for a p2per may change to include more prime time traffic instead of less.
Specific prime time caps could fix the problem, but the ones that would be bothered most by those aren't p2p people. They can easily move their usage to less occupied times of the day. It is the youtubers and netflix streamers that will be hit the hardest. And what they are doing is using their connection much like the companies advertised. They aren't using it very heavy. Just at the wrong time of the day when everyone else also is doing it.
If someone can "hog all the bandwidth", that is a sign of a badly managed network. Ensuring that each user gets their fair share without artifically limiting the whole network is one of the main responsibilities of an ISP.
Ten years ago I could have understood it, but with todays technology it should no problem ensuring that each user gets their fair share. Of course, lots of ISPs still deal in ancient idiotic ideas like capping per tcp session. Sure, it is the simplest way to cap, but it is just as easy to bypass (by using more sessions than others). And a special mention to all the cable companies with their "shared last mile networks" that are causing problems most everywhere.
This is why the security on most operating system suck currently. There is too much trust given to installers.
I do like the idea of sandboxie which redirects any disk (and registry) write access outside of the sandbox, preventing virus and malware (such as securom) from taking over the system. Unfortunally it doesn't function on Vista 64 because patchguard exists to prevent security systems or rootkits from installing.
The disadvantage with sandboxie is that it is a little rusty when it comes to the user interface part. I think an operating system built around a sandboxie like system, treating each application as its own sandbox, would be far better in that area. The advantage with using sandboxie is that it is faster and less memory consuming than running a full virtual environment.
It actually looks like you may even be able to run securom games in a sandbox under sandboxie as long as you give them access to the dvdrom pipes. Not sure how well it works with the latest version of securom though.
I have been wondering about that argument for a whilte.
Doesn't it mean that I could send a take down notice for any video on youtube as long as I claim that it infringes on one of my own copyrighted works and youtube would have to take it down until someone files a counternotice. And it doesn't matter at all if the video even is related to my work. As long as I claim that it infringes a work I actually own I can't be touched.
Of course, to make it even more fun. File hundreds of thousands of takedown notices, and have a few of them be accurate in case youtube decides to not obey.
If you want a dedicated pipe go look up the price of a T1 line and compare that to your residential internet.
Only a fool or desperate man uses T1 as it is an old outdated and expensive technology. Oh, I forgot, you are talking about the US where there is a lot of desperate men because of the sucky fiber infrastructure in many places.
If the premise of the article is right let's cut the Internet connections of that 5% of power users. We end up using only 50% of the available bandwidth
Except of course that the big cost is in putting down the infrastructure in the first place. That is why you constantly hears whining from those companies that havn't invested enough in a working infrastructure.They want to save money by not having to put it into the ground in the first place, and instead leech of old infrastructure.
On the backbone the 250GB/month that Comcast is talking about is worth a few dollars. The 2-3GB/month that supposedly is the median is a few cents of data. Bandwidth is cheap once you actually get the infrastructure in the ground.
By the way, how it comes that poor granny's connection is slow while power users play WoW without problems?
Because the granny doesn't use adblock, is accessing badly constructed webpages, possibly have spyware installed and the article is written by someone who has fallen for the propaganda of lying scumbags. (or possibly directly written by such a scumbag).
And if the p2p traffic somehow actually affect the speed of webpages loading, it has more to do with the network itself being badly constructed and not accuratly distributing a fair share to each user.
XVid is basically the same as Divx so that is fine, but the rest are weird non standard junk not supported in very much. That's something you reencode to avi as fast as possible if you can't get it in avi to start with.
Non standard junk? x264 is an encoder for h264, which happens to be the standard format for high quality video.
Matroska is the best generic container format (replacing the flawed avi) as well as open standard and open source based. It does suffer somewhat from not being the industry (as in big business) standard, but on merits it is the best on the market, and with the increasing use to distribute high definition content in the scene, improved hardware support is very likely.
The mpeg container format (.mp4 - can't remember its real name right now) is industry supported which means that it is implemented in more hardware, but compared to Matroska it is less flexible. Still, when using h264, I won't blaim any business for going with that format, even though I prefer to use Matroska for all my encoding.
As for Ogg and Theora, they are far less common. Ogg is pretty much dead in the water. Matroska simply won over it at the start, and ogg has never been able to recover from that. Theora is nice in that it isn't patent encumbered, which is a plus for businesses that need to think about licenses, but to be honest it will have a hard time replacing h264 or its older sibling mpeg4 (divx,xvid). The usage for theora lies in specialized software playback such as games, where the playback engine is included and license fees can be troublesome.
The U.S. is China's largest buyer. They wouldn't be where they are without all that money flowing that way. If China were to collapse the U.S. economy which is something they could do right now then they would lose a lot of business devastating their own economy
This is exactly why it is bad to build economies around debt. You get artificial restrictions in the economy that leads to problems (recessions) when you can't find someone willing to get endebted.
And when you actually find people people willing to get endebted the economy will roll on for a while until it reaches its limit and it again isn't possible to find people willing to get endebted.
Of course, the ones making the big money over time on this is bankers, investors and others that deal in debt. For the rest of society it is just another thing that causes instability and inefficency. Of course, coming up with a better system that works in practice isn't an easy task, and implementing it is even harder.
So wealth belongs to whoever can take it? Considering the stats on gun ownership for conservatives and liberals, I don't think you'd like the results of that policy.
First of all, you are talking like it is some new policy. It is the same policy that has always existed. It is called army and police. You know, the two freedom removing goverment institutions, that by coincidence are the only two goverment organisations that the libertarians want to keep. Of course, a successful society also relies on cooperation mixed in with the force. If noone plays along with the "rules" you usually got a civil war or a military dictatorship on your hands.
Secondly, are you seriously comparing conservatives with libertarians? It is easier for a conservative to negotiate with a moderate liberal, because the big difference in opinion between a conservative and a liberal (especially a moderate one) is how much economical redistribution is needed to maintain societal stability. And that can always be compromised. Libertarians however aren't really interested in societal stability.
Wake the fuck up, and pay attention in biology class; nothing is fair about the world
Which is exactly what I say to every libertarian I meet. It may be fair that you get to keep what you have earned, but don't expect that to happen when there is a majority that don't like that idea.
I am so sick of the anti-entitlement movement here on slashdot. Life isn't fair. Deal with it.
money as we know it would cease to exist
Money will never cease to exist as long as there is any kind of scarce goods/resource/property or skill that is needed by others. Sure, you can dream of a time when that isn't true, but it will remain a dream.
Still, there are many ways that economy could change in the future. A society can be run where everyone gets paid the same or based on effort put in. It may also be possible to remove common house hold items from the equation, and only require payment for "luxury items". Also, having a society where loans/borrowing is illegal is also possible, although that requires all expensive products (cars, houses) to be leased/rented instead of owned.
Sounds utopian? Why Not!!
Anything is possible to those who wish it.
Yes, too utopian. And no, anything isn't possible.
There is nothing wrong with utopian visions, but aiming towards them and thinking you will reach them with just wishes is the act of a fool.
A good visionaire needs three worlds. One is the utopian world that he wishes for. The second is the nightmare world where everything he implements fails. And the third is the real world where he tries to make progress towards the utopia while avoiding the nightmare scenarios.
Communists as well as libertarians both aim for the utopia while ignoring the nightmares, and that is a recipe for disaster.
Also, make sure that the utopia is actually an utopia that everyone wants. The communist utopia is far to restrained to be called an utopia. It is way too much about individual sacrifice, which is a very non utopian thing in my and many others meaning. I much prefer the social liberalism utopia.
How could this be possible? when we (humanity) realize that we are all the same deep down and we all want peace and prosperity, regardless or politics and religious beliefs.
Yup.
What's the biggest hurdle?
Us the people, which is part being lazy and part resisting and fearing change, and
those who right now, are in power and truly benefit from this unfair world as it is.
I definitly don't agree on laziness. Being lazy is a virtue. It is the lazy people who try to do more with less effort that make the world go forward.
It is the working ants that are satisfied working 40+ hours a week in stressful hierarcical systems, doing unproductive work (bueraucracy, marketing) spending borrowed money on shiny toys (that they only buy because other working marketing ants convince them to do so), while their bosses takes the big profits that are the real problem.
I live in Sweden and am single. I have a 1mbit upload adsl connection. As a p2p user, download doesn't really matter although if you are wondering it is 24mbit.
I am a heavy user, mainly using bittorrent to download anime/tv and various other things. I also watch youtube and download other big files from the internet sometimes. I consider myself a good torrent citizen, so I usually upload atleast as much as I download.
Since 2006-07-22 I have uploaded 3344GB and downloaded 2667GB for a total of about 6000GB. That makes for 7,8GB per day or near 240GB per month on average. Some months see more heavy usage (up to 350GB) while other months are less usage.
1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.
Of course the best terrorists are smart enough to do any violence or threatening themselves, and instead just use the fear created by other terrorists to get their agenda implemented.
The "best" part in using that strategy is that you won't even get recognized as a terrorist by the majority, but instead as a patriot.
Considering the protections afforded to most credit card customers, the vast majority of all damage is going to be against the credit card companies anyways, so it would be up to them. It is far more likely that a civil suit will result from this, and only if the credit card companies believe they can construct a case that will convince a jury that negligence exists.
The credit card companies trying to build a case of negilence???
The whole idea of using number that you have to show to untrusted individuals to make a payment and which can be reused any number of times is negilent in itself.
The sooner we get rid of credit card numbers the better.
In some extreme cases, software people seem to believe that the use of software should determine its value.
This is not only common in software but in other markets. The idea that the value of something should determine the price.
That is of course ridicioulus for anyone who have the slighest understanding of supply and demand. The value (not market value, but real value) of a product plays a very small role in the free market. Only when supply is very limited/expensive does the real value have any effect at all. And if that happens, it is usually a sign of either something gone wrong or a key basic resource being in too high of a demand.
The fact is that business people hate the free market. It simply isn't very profitable. Lots and lots of money is spent trying to sell products via "uniqueness/coolness" advertising or IP monopolies, which basically are ways of creating a new market where your own product is the only one. Of course, other products may exist that can do similar things which can affect the sales of your own product, so some small market forces remains, but most modern businesses will do their best to limit such things. Competition is bad for business (your own that is), plain and simple.
The people who used the terrorists to their advantage have won.
That depends on how you defines terrorism and terrorist. The most common usage seems to imply the following:
Terrorism: Blowing civilians up.
Terrorist: Person that does terrorism.
However, I personally find those definitions lacking and prefer the following that fits more in line with other -isms.
Act of terror: Blowing civilians up.
Terrorism: Using the threat of future act of terrors to coerce a population into obedience.
Terrorist: Person that does terrorism.
http://www.hongfire.com/forum/archive/index.php?t-42579.html/
Title V - Obscenity and Pornography
Subtitle A - Child Obscenity and Pornography Prevention
Section 502, page 77, paragraph 11, lines 3-10 of the PROTECT Act of 2003, it states that "(11) the term 'indistinguishable' used with respect to a depiction, means virtually indistinguishable, in that the depiction is such that an ordinary person viewing the depiction would conclude that the depiction is of an actual minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct. This definition does not apply to depictions that are drawings, cartoons, sculptures or paintings depicting minors or adults."
The fact that Loli or Lolicon art are drawings indicates that Loli or Lolicon art does not apply to this definition of 'indistinguishable'.
child pornography means any visual depiction, including any photograph, film, video, picture, or computer or computer-generated image or picture, whether made or produced by electronic, mechanical, or other means, of sexually explicit conduct, where
(A) the production of such visual depiction involves the use of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct;
(B) such visual depiction is a digital image, computer image, or computer-generated image that is, or is indistinguishable from, that of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; or
(C) such visual depiction has been created, adapted, or modified to appear that an identifiable minor is engaging in sexually explicit conduct.
identifiable minor
(A) means a person
(I) who was a minor at the time the visual depiction was created, adapted, or modified; or
(II) whose image as a minor was used in creating, adapting, or modifying the visual depiction; and
(ii) who is recognizable as an actual person by the persons face, likeness, or other distinguishing characteristic, such as a unique birthmark or other recognizable feature; and
(B) shall not be construed to require proof of the actual identity of the identifiable minor.
Lolicon art or Loli does not directly use minors so it is another exemption.
Note though that there is no beyond reasonable doubt though. It is your word vs the prosecutor that no real child modelling in the production of the drawing.
Also, the laws differs from country to country. In some (Canada, Sweden, etc) it is illegal with drawings.
Regardless, do you think it's acceptable that if I draw Britney Spear's younger sister in a sexual situation I should face criminal penalties?
Definitly not. I find the current laws to be offensive as they still supress free speech and thought in areas where actions aren't conflicting with other rights. Your example is very good, using your imagination to create an image that happens to depict a real person should not be illegal, but is. Neither should photo montage be forbidden if adequate evidence can be provided that it is a montage, as there is no right to not be offended.
You can draw an "obscene" picture of minors and go to prison for it in the United States.
Yes, you can. Of course, it must be a depictation of an actual existing minor. A made up one doesn't count and is protected under the first amendment.
The fact that copies of this creativity cost $0 to duplicate and distribute does not mean that the creativity itself is worthless.
I agree that the grandparent misused the word worthless. The important thing to remember though is that the price in a market economy has zero to do with the worth/value of a product. Supply & Demand is all that matters.
The only reason why things that worth more often cost more is because of
* Higher demand (people want stuff that is more valuable)
* Less supply (more difficult to produce valuable stuff)
However, there are lots of very valuable products that are easy to produce and as such have a big supply. Those products are both valuable and cheap. Water and Air are two good examples.
All of the above is actually a good lesson to learn, because understanding that makes you realize that GDP and similar measurements have nothing to do with measuring real wealth. Real wealth is almost impossible to measure accuratly.
Of course, using the free market is not always the best idea, however much some people worship it. In the case of intellectual property that have a high production cost but near zero margin cost some kind of alternative may be needed. I still think that copyright/patent monopolies are a bad idea as they limit how much the information is used and copied, basically reducing total societal wealth generated from it. Blanket licensing are probably a better idea in many cases, of course having the problem of being able to distribute the money fairly.
If you want security you use a firewall, not a NAT.