Social bonds dispersing not breaking...
on
Browsing Alone
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
While it may be argued that the influence of the Internet has reduced the social bonds between people at a local level it has arguably made distant bonds with people even stronger. I routinely communicate with people whom I consider close friends that live nowhere near me anymore. In the "good old days" I might get a letter from them every once in a while, but overall would really be able to have the kind of social interaction that I can thanks to this new fangled technology.
To add to this, I have seen numerous people find communities on-line that they would never have found otherwise. These people can become as close to these on-line friends as they would with people nearby, and some of these relationships may evolve to being an in-person relationship when distance constraints fade.
Basically the internet eliminates a lot of the geographic constraints on socializing. This has positives and negatives. It means that an in the closet gay person in a backwater intolerant town can find supportive peers. It also means that people don't need to talk to the people next door very much. At least with the Internet as opposed to television, socializing is one of it's biggest facets. Rather than being hypnotized by the magic box, you are out there seeing what people think and frequently interacting with them.
Personally I think any civillian not smart enough to get the hell away from an active combatant (ie - shooting at me) has just signed up to catch some stray rounds.
Given that, then the point is made about the issues of laser guided and satellite guided weapons. How can I avoid something that falls mostly silently from the sky with little if any warning. On the other hand, if people show up on the ground, at least I can be aware of the danger.
Vehicles are designed to transport, designing a vehicle to fight is less than effective. If you look at a tank, it is basically a truck to carry a big gun around, and enough armor to protect that gun so that it can blow lots of things up. In the end it's terribly inefficient, and imprecise. It's excellent for open warfare on a cleanly drawn battlefield, but for fighting house to house, etc, it is a poor choice.
If you look at the recent history of warfare where tanks were available, look at what happens. You have the tanks run these rapid attacks that overwhelm large open territory but then you get into a village or city and suddenly tanks are useless (unless you plan to blow the city to smithereens). suddenly you are back to a style of warfare little beyond fighting with muskets and swords.
On the other hand, if you can make relatively heavy weapons and armor available in an infantryman size package, you can get into much smaller areas and still have overwhelming force. You'll still need infantry, but this provides a signifcant augmentation to the availabilt of heavy firepower in close.
Also, think about situations where you simply need to police a city. Policing a city with a tank is impossible because you end up killing a lot of bystanders and destroying lots of property needlessly. Having a few armored troops allows you to focus your attack much more precisely. Try chasing that rebel with AK-47 down an alley with an M1A1 and see how well it works.
Although we have striven much to make our weapons of war far more accurate we still have substantial problems with the fact that the only safe way to deliver these munitions is from thousands of feet in the air. It's likely that when the numbers are tallied up as many afghan civilians will be dead as US civilians killed in the WTC attack. In an increasingly interconnected world, innocent casualties are increasingly less tolerable thus making what may be necessary military action very difficult to get the political motivation to undertake.
On the other hand if you can pack a tremendous amount of firepower and armor into a man portable unit (such as power armor). It makes it feasible to put men on the ground quickly without significantly increasing risks of casualties, etc. These men on the ground have a greater ability to precisely attack important targets than we can ever hope to achieve with a cruise missile or laser guided bomb.
The benefit is that the combatants will be the ones who really get involved and the civilians should be able to remain relatively unscathed.
You can pick up a neat little device at Radioshack which will allow you to broadcast video on any cable channel you specify. So if you've only got one Satellite receiver, you can watch the content from it on multiple TV's without needing another receiver. This is all with wires...
This is soooo getting out of hand. I think it's important to remember that copyright law was written at a time when they had no means to control much other than whether you got a copy of the media or not. Now they think they can tell you everything you do with it anytime you want.
A contract, in order to be valid, must be understood and willingly agreed to by both parties. Furthermore a contract cannot obligate somebody to terms that break existing laws. For example, I cannot have a contract that obligates somebody to assasinate a government officiary and have it be legal.
In this case the contract does not have anything in it that is an obvious violation of the law. Furthermore, by clicking the little "I Agree" button you are stating that you understand and consent to the terms. Because of the legislation validating "digital signatures" that button click is enough to obligate you to the terms of the contract.
As far as clause 14.4, there are numerous agreements where you limit your means of recourse. Hell, check out my site for a little rant about such terms that were attached to a Blockbuster gift card I bought. Yeah, a freaking gift certificate that has a license agreement.
So, I wouldn't buy into Borland's software under the assumption that you can beat them in court. I think it may be a faulty assumption, and regardless, which costs you more: an audit, or the murder of lawyers you'll need to fend them off? So why take the chance? Why encourage such behavior?
So let's say nobody raises a stink and nobody buys their product. How do they know that it was the license that killed it? They could think that there's some inherent quality lapse in the product, etc. By e-mailing and telling them, they can know where that drop in sales is coming from. Really it's a polite service to them, and if you like their products for the most part, then perhaps that's valuable.
What I don't fathom is why people release these game consoles where they lose money on the hardware to make up for it on the licensing. I mean heck, just release some VM for a broad base of PC hardware and charge people license fees to publish for it. Then sell
In the commentary RMS says:
Most computer users use Microsoft Word. That is unfortunate for them, because Word is proprietary software, denying its users the freedom to study, change, copy, and redistribute it. Most users of Microsoft Word don't actually care about having the freedom to study or change it. Most don't even care about the right to copy or redistribute it except in making some limited copies for friends or to install on other computers. For most people Word works well and the issue of it being proprietary never effects them in any way they are likely to be aware of.
Until free software advocates can make it clear to the average use what the benefits of that freedom are, it will be very difficult to wipe out things like Word attachments. We have lots of people preaching to the geek choir and people convincing businesses of the value of open source (not free software, and it's an important distinction). But nobody is really convincing the average computer user of the value of free software (aside from possibly the "free as in beer" sense).
Simply responding to Word attachments with a political tirade isn't going to do anything except make the people who sent them to you think you're some commie wacko. The people who are likely to be receptive to such communiques are those who probably wouldn't send you the word attachment in the first place.
Agreed, but in the history of television, how many shows really have the success that the simpsons did. I think the Tick was a fun show and I think it was worth a few more seasons. Then again, I'm not a TV exec:)
Any idea what the history of the Simpsons ratings were? I'm just wondering if back in the day they were as quick to axe as they are now.
War doesn't benefit the economy
on
The Drone War
·
· Score: 2
Remember: how is the way paid for? Tax money. Where does that tax money come from? Those same people who are building the bombs and the tanks. So while you may have a job because of a war, you are also paying more taxes because of it. It falsely boosts production figures without leading to any real increase in wealth.
Sure, a company like General Dynamics might thrive in wartime but other companies will find a starvation of capital and demand which makes it difficult for them to operate. Furthermore, an extended conflict drains resources and thus make those resources more expensive (unless the war is stealing more resources to offset).
Great! So you get a fake driver's license. I mean, wasn't the whole point of a National ID card having a reliable way to identify somebody? What the hell makes them think that driver's licenses are a reliable method? You slip your friend at the DMV a few hundred and you can get a license no problem. Hell, in Illinois they'll even let you drive a truck!
It's all about trust relationships. At some point down the line you have to trust that somebody has verified who a person is and has done so accurately. As long as the system is dependent on trusting an underpaid, overworked, low level bureaucrat, people who want to get false identification will continue to do so. Heck, even if they are a well paid bureaucrat in a cushy position, they can still be bought, it just costs a bit more.
Ultimately the only people who this will effect is law abiding citizens who don't get fake ID's. Anybody who honestly wants to conceal their identity will continue to do so in any number of ways that are nearly impossible to prevent.
That Windows would be absolutely bullet proof and nobody would own a copy of it. Some other company would be selling mildly deffective software, and would be slowly driving Microsoft out of business through a series of orchestrated incompatibilities between the products.
Say, what you will but ubiquity is the trump card in OS's. People can learn to adapt to crashes, bugs, worms, and all the other chaos that ensues because of Microsoft's focus. But it's hard to argue that having software that works on 90% of computers is rather handy.
But how would nimda or september 11th effect the load on your LDAP server? I'm not denying openldap's capabilities because I've only used it in development situations so I know jack, but I just don't see the correlation.
Look at what happened recently with the Ukraine. The US doesn't like their IP policies so they set out a bunch of tariffs to get them into line. The math on this is grim and simple.
Big media corporations stand to benefit from tight intellectual property controls. Wealthy countries have large entertainment industries. Politicians in all of these countries need money and so the politicians bend to the will of those corporations.
Wealthy countries have leverage against poorer countries. They can threaten everything from tariffs to witholding aid money to inciting political unrest in a country to get their way. Smaller countries have very little financial incentive to not confrom to the interests of the wealthier nations and so they give in.
America may be starting down the road to hell first, but they are dragging everybody else with them.
I think Vegas should seriously considering putting odds on crypto standards. Napster's new sound format will have a built in security mechanism that is (I can only assume) based on some sort of encryption. So the bets are:
1) How long before somebody cracks the standard?
2) How long before Napster sues the person who cracks the standard under the DMCA?
Oh and word to the wise of whoever cracks it, don't take credit, just place it anonymously on some newsgroup and dissapear. Let somebody else take the heat.
The lead in to the article says that the problem is a bug in the protocol. From reading the announcement, it sounds like it is really a bug in the implementation of the OSCAR protocol in the AOL released clients. It doesn't sound like it's an inherent flaw in the protocol itself. Also, to talk about the AIM protocol is somewhat non-specific seeing as TOC is technically an AIM protocol as well and it doesn't sound like this has anything to do with that.
Well technically this is probably true. There have been compromises of IIS, MSSQL, and other Microsoft products but the OS itself hasn't been vunerable to such attacks until now.
Now granted, IIS comes with Windows so, is that really a seperate component? Also, by the same logic, Linux has never been exploited either has it? I mean, does Linux run any network daemons on it's own? No. So Linux, itself is bulletproof, it's just all those other things you put on top of it that can cause problems.
I just find it amusing how Microsoft keeps changing where they want to split their hairs when distinguishing between the OS and the applications. IE is part of the OS until it gets compromised and then suddenly it's a seperate application.
So if everybody gave up the time that they spent showering, that could easily be like... well let's see:
Let's assume roughly 170 million people in the US who aren't too old or too young to be useful. Then let's assume they each shower for roughly 15 minutes a day on average. That is 42.5 million man hours per day spent showering. At that rate:
Emprie State Building: Under 4 hours
Panama Canal: Half a day
Apollo project: 36 days
So the empire state building and panama canal are easy. The apollo project is doable, but I doubt anybody would want to fly on it. Man would that thing smell bad.
In reading some of the case studies on this, it looks like the biggest use for Linux is in two realms:
1) Servers - file sharing, web servers, e-mail, etc
2) Making old machines useful again
A lot of schools have old 486's and Pentium lying around which are pretty much useless as a Windows desktop, but set these systems up as X-terminals and throw a sub $1000 server behind it, and suddenly they are rejuvenated. This also has the benefit of making the management of these systems much easier.
I know I've seen a number of initatives where some politician gets the bright idea that the secret to making schools better is to buy a lot of hardware. This usually helps for a little while, but then in 3 or 4 years the hardware becomes nearly useless and nobody's throwing more money at it. By going with Linux, it seems like they can extend the value of that initial investment a lot further and thus save hugely in the long run.
The one thing that has kept me loyal to the Palm derivatives is Grafitti. It is a really excellent way to enter text quickly and accurately (for the most part). What are people's opinions of the Zaurus keyboard. It looks too small to be useful, so I was curious to know what people who have tried one think.
WIPO is coming to a country near you. That whole, it's 's seemed like a really clever move a few years ago but it's not going to be that easy in the future. You get a large number of countries signed on board, then they apply pressure on those who don't through threats of sanctions, etc. WIPO is where that starts.
Well, first of all, if the CD has a warning label that says it won't play on your computer, don't buy it. On the other hand, if it does, I say buy it.
Buy them, lots of them. Try to listen to them on your computer, then when they don't work, try to return them. Tell them you don't own a CD player except for the one on your computer and that you cannot play it. This of course gets very messy because all stores that sell CD's have express policies against returning of opened discs (for copyright reasons once again). If you are insistent enough and explain the problem to them, they will eventually take it back.
Now, at this point your local store now has an opened CD. What are they doing to do with it? Well, in all likelyhood they'll try to return it to the manufacturer because they cannot sell the opened copy. If the manufacturer refuses to return it, then all the stores are going to raise hell with them because the new copy protection is costing them money if they are eating those unusable CD's.
If the manufacturer does accept it back, the manufacturer then either tosses the CD in the trash as a loss, or they repackage. If they repackage it, this costs them additional money before that CD goes back to the store. Even if does go back to the store, it could still wind up in the hands of another computer user who will start the loop over again.
Eventually manufacturers will solve this problem by clearly labeling all CD's as being unplayable on a computer, in which case people are now clear about what they are getting into, and many will likely avoid it, reducing profits for the manufacturer of the CD.
The irony in all of this though is that ultimately copy protection of CD's is going to cost the companies WAY more money than it saves. Less people will buy their CD's because they won't work where they want to listen to them. People will instead find clever hacks to work around the copy protection system and the CD's will still get ripped. Everybody will get their music from Gnutella and the like and the RIAA will create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Conspiracy theory moment: maybe that's their plan. Intentionally do things to drive down CD sales to make their case to the government for new laws, and then go for the jugular of fair use and forever wipe out the balance of copyright law.
Slashdot Mirror
While it may be argued that the influence of the Internet has reduced the social bonds between people at a local level it has arguably made distant bonds with people even stronger. I routinely communicate with people whom I consider close friends that live nowhere near me anymore. In the "good old days" I might get a letter from them every once in a while, but overall would really be able to have the kind of social interaction that I can thanks to this new fangled technology.
To add to this, I have seen numerous people find communities on-line that they would never have found otherwise. These people can become as close to these on-line friends as they would with people nearby, and some of these relationships may evolve to being an in-person relationship when distance constraints fade.
Basically the internet eliminates a lot of the geographic constraints on socializing. This has positives and negatives. It means that an in the closet gay person in a backwater intolerant town can find supportive peers. It also means that people don't need to talk to the people next door very much. At least with the Internet as opposed to television, socializing is one of it's biggest facets. Rather than being hypnotized by the magic box, you are out there seeing what people think and frequently interacting with them.
Personally I think any civillian not smart enough to get the hell away from an active combatant (ie - shooting at me) has just signed up to catch some stray rounds.
Given that, then the point is made about the issues of laser guided and satellite guided weapons. How can I avoid something that falls mostly silently from the sky with little if any warning. On the other hand, if people show up on the ground, at least I can be aware of the danger.
Vehicles are designed to transport, designing a vehicle to fight is less than effective. If you look at a tank, it is basically a truck to carry a big gun around, and enough armor to protect that gun so that it can blow lots of things up. In the end it's terribly inefficient, and imprecise. It's excellent for open warfare on a cleanly drawn battlefield, but for fighting house to house, etc, it is a poor choice.
If you look at the recent history of warfare where tanks were available, look at what happens. You have the tanks run these rapid attacks that overwhelm large open territory but then you get into a village or city and suddenly tanks are useless (unless you plan to blow the city to smithereens). suddenly you are back to a style of warfare little beyond fighting with muskets and swords.
On the other hand, if you can make relatively heavy weapons and armor available in an infantryman size package, you can get into much smaller areas and still have overwhelming force. You'll still need infantry, but this provides a signifcant augmentation to the availabilt of heavy firepower in close.
Also, think about situations where you simply need to police a city. Policing a city with a tank is impossible because you end up killing a lot of bystanders and destroying lots of property needlessly. Having a few armored troops allows you to focus your attack much more precisely. Try chasing that rebel with AK-47 down an alley with an M1A1 and see how well it works.
Although we have striven much to make our weapons of war far more accurate we still have substantial problems with the fact that the only safe way to deliver these munitions is from thousands of feet in the air. It's likely that when the numbers are tallied up as many afghan civilians will be dead as US civilians killed in the WTC attack. In an increasingly interconnected world, innocent casualties are increasingly less tolerable thus making what may be necessary military action very difficult to get the political motivation to undertake.
On the other hand if you can pack a tremendous amount of firepower and armor into a man portable unit (such as power armor). It makes it feasible to put men on the ground quickly without significantly increasing risks of casualties, etc. These men on the ground have a greater ability to precisely attack important targets than we can ever hope to achieve with a cruise missile or laser guided bomb.
The benefit is that the combatants will be the ones who really get involved and the civilians should be able to remain relatively unscathed.
Well as we all know, open source is unamerican so you can't, in good conscience, use open source software. So Linux, BSD, etc, are right out.
You could use a proprietary Unix but that's 70's era technology. You don't want to be using something that out of date.
There's a couple little oddities like BeOS out there but those don't have any software for them and they are doomed so why waste your money.
You could go with MacOS, but as we all know Steve Jobs isn't a techie and is therefor unqualified to be the figurehead for any product worth buying.
So your only reasonable choice is to go with Windows.
You can pick up a neat little device at Radioshack which will allow you to broadcast video on any cable channel you specify. So if you've only got one Satellite receiver, you can watch the content from it on multiple TV's without needing another receiver. This is all with wires...
This is soooo getting out of hand. I think it's important to remember that copyright law was written at a time when they had no means to control much other than whether you got a copy of the media or not. Now they think they can tell you everything you do with it anytime you want.
A contract, in order to be valid, must be understood and willingly agreed to by both parties. Furthermore a contract cannot obligate somebody to terms that break existing laws. For example, I cannot have a contract that obligates somebody to assasinate a government officiary and have it be legal.
In this case the contract does not have anything in it that is an obvious violation of the law. Furthermore, by clicking the little "I Agree" button you are stating that you understand and consent to the terms. Because of the legislation validating "digital signatures" that button click is enough to obligate you to the terms of the contract.
As far as clause 14.4, there are numerous agreements where you limit your means of recourse. Hell, check out my site for a little rant about such terms that were attached to a Blockbuster gift card I bought. Yeah, a freaking gift certificate that has a license agreement.
So, I wouldn't buy into Borland's software under the assumption that you can beat them in court. I think it may be a faulty assumption, and regardless, which costs you more: an audit, or the murder of lawyers you'll need to fend them off? So why take the chance? Why encourage such behavior?
So let's say nobody raises a stink and nobody buys their product. How do they know that it was the license that killed it? They could think that there's some inherent quality lapse in the product, etc. By e-mailing and telling them, they can know where that drop in sales is coming from. Really it's a polite service to them, and if you like their products for the most part, then perhaps that's valuable.
What I don't fathom is why people release these game consoles where they lose money on the hardware to make up for it on the licensing. I mean heck, just release some VM for a broad base of PC hardware and charge people license fees to publish for it. Then sell
In the commentary RMS says:
Most computer users use Microsoft Word. That is unfortunate for them, because Word is proprietary software, denying its users the freedom to study, change, copy, and redistribute it.
Most users of Microsoft Word don't actually care about having the freedom to study or change it. Most don't even care about the right to copy or redistribute it except in making some limited copies for friends or to install on other computers. For most people Word works well and the issue of it being proprietary never effects them in any way they are likely to be aware of.
Until free software advocates can make it clear to the average use what the benefits of that freedom are, it will be very difficult to wipe out things like Word attachments. We have lots of people preaching to the geek choir and people convincing businesses of the value of open source (not free software, and it's an important distinction). But nobody is really convincing the average computer user of the value of free software (aside from possibly the "free as in beer" sense).
Simply responding to Word attachments with a political tirade isn't going to do anything except make the people who sent them to you think you're some commie wacko. The people who are likely to be receptive to such communiques are those who probably wouldn't send you the word attachment in the first place.
Agreed, but in the history of television, how many shows really have the success that the simpsons did. I think the Tick was a fun show and I think it was worth a few more seasons. Then again, I'm not a TV exec :)
Any idea what the history of the Simpsons ratings were? I'm just wondering if back in the day they were as quick to axe as they are now.
Remember: how is the way paid for? Tax money. Where does that tax money come from? Those same people who are building the bombs and the tanks. So while you may have a job because of a war, you are also paying more taxes because of it. It falsely boosts production figures without leading to any real increase in wealth.
Sure, a company like General Dynamics might thrive in wartime but other companies will find a starvation of capital and demand which makes it difficult for them to operate. Furthermore, an extended conflict drains resources and thus make those resources more expensive (unless the war is stealing more resources to offset).
Great! So you get a fake driver's license. I mean, wasn't the whole point of a National ID card having a reliable way to identify somebody? What the hell makes them think that driver's licenses are a reliable method? You slip your friend at the DMV a few hundred and you can get a license no problem. Hell, in Illinois they'll even let you drive a truck!
It's all about trust relationships. At some point down the line you have to trust that somebody has verified who a person is and has done so accurately. As long as the system is dependent on trusting an underpaid, overworked, low level bureaucrat, people who want to get false identification will continue to do so. Heck, even if they are a well paid bureaucrat in a cushy position, they can still be bought, it just costs a bit more.
Ultimately the only people who this will effect is law abiding citizens who don't get fake ID's. Anybody who honestly wants to conceal their identity will continue to do so in any number of ways that are nearly impossible to prevent.
That Windows would be absolutely bullet proof and nobody would own a copy of it. Some other company would be selling mildly deffective software, and would be slowly driving Microsoft out of business through a series of orchestrated incompatibilities between the products.
Say, what you will but ubiquity is the trump card in OS's. People can learn to adapt to crashes, bugs, worms, and all the other chaos that ensues because of Microsoft's focus. But it's hard to argue that having software that works on 90% of computers is rather handy.
But how would nimda or september 11th effect the load on your LDAP server? I'm not denying openldap's capabilities because I've only used it in development situations so I know jack, but I just don't see the correlation.
Look at what happened recently with the Ukraine. The US doesn't like their IP policies so they set out a bunch of tariffs to get them into line. The math on this is grim and simple.
Big media corporations stand to benefit from tight intellectual property controls. Wealthy countries have large entertainment industries. Politicians in all of these countries need money and so the politicians bend to the will of those corporations.
Wealthy countries have leverage against poorer countries. They can threaten everything from tariffs to witholding aid money to inciting political unrest in a country to get their way. Smaller countries have very little financial incentive to not confrom to the interests of the wealthier nations and so they give in.
America may be starting down the road to hell first, but they are dragging everybody else with them.
I think Vegas should seriously considering putting odds on crypto standards. Napster's new sound format will have a built in security mechanism that is (I can only assume) based on some sort of encryption. So the bets are:
1) How long before somebody cracks the standard?
2) How long before Napster sues the person who cracks the standard under the DMCA?
Oh and word to the wise of whoever cracks it, don't take credit, just place it anonymously on some newsgroup and dissapear. Let somebody else take the heat.
The lead in to the article says that the problem is a bug in the protocol. From reading the announcement, it sounds like it is really a bug in the implementation of the OSCAR protocol in the AOL released clients. It doesn't sound like it's an inherent flaw in the protocol itself. Also, to talk about the AIM protocol is somewhat non-specific seeing as TOC is technically an AIM protocol as well and it doesn't sound like this has anything to do with that.
Well technically this is probably true. There have been compromises of IIS, MSSQL, and other Microsoft products but the OS itself hasn't been vunerable to such attacks until now.
Now granted, IIS comes with Windows so, is that really a seperate component? Also, by the same logic, Linux has never been exploited either has it? I mean, does Linux run any network daemons on it's own? No. So Linux, itself is bulletproof, it's just all those other things you put on top of it that can cause problems.
I just find it amusing how Microsoft keeps changing where they want to split their hairs when distinguishing between the OS and the applications. IE is part of the OS until it gets compromised and then suddenly it's a seperate application.
So if everybody gave up the time that they spent showering, that could easily be like... well let's see:
Let's assume roughly 170 million people in the US who aren't too old or too young to be useful. Then let's assume they each shower for roughly 15 minutes a day on average. That is 42.5 million man hours per day spent showering. At that rate:
Emprie State Building: Under 4 hours
Panama Canal: Half a day
Apollo project: 36 days
So the empire state building and panama canal are easy. The apollo project is doable, but I doubt anybody would want to fly on it. Man would that thing smell bad.
In reading some of the case studies on this, it looks like the biggest use for Linux is in two realms:
1) Servers - file sharing, web servers, e-mail, etc
2) Making old machines useful again
A lot of schools have old 486's and Pentium lying around which are pretty much useless as a Windows desktop, but set these systems up as X-terminals and throw a sub $1000 server behind it, and suddenly they are rejuvenated. This also has the benefit of making the management of these systems much easier.
I know I've seen a number of initatives where some politician gets the bright idea that the secret to making schools better is to buy a lot of hardware. This usually helps for a little while, but then in 3 or 4 years the hardware becomes nearly useless and nobody's throwing more money at it. By going with Linux, it seems like they can extend the value of that initial investment a lot further and thus save hugely in the long run.
The one thing that has kept me loyal to the Palm derivatives is Grafitti. It is a really excellent way to enter text quickly and accurately (for the most part). What are people's opinions of the Zaurus keyboard. It looks too small to be useful, so I was curious to know what people who have tried one think.
WIPO is coming to a country near you. That whole, it's 's seemed like a really clever move a few years ago but it's not going to be that easy in the future. You get a large number of countries signed on board, then they apply pressure on those who don't through threats of sanctions, etc. WIPO is where that starts.
Well, first of all, if the CD has a warning label that says it won't play on your computer, don't buy it. On the other hand, if it does, I say buy it.
Buy them, lots of them. Try to listen to them on your computer, then when they don't work, try to return them. Tell them you don't own a CD player except for the one on your computer and that you cannot play it. This of course gets very messy because all stores that sell CD's have express policies against returning of opened discs (for copyright reasons once again). If you are insistent enough and explain the problem to them, they will eventually take it back.
Now, at this point your local store now has an opened CD. What are they doing to do with it? Well, in all likelyhood they'll try to return it to the manufacturer because they cannot sell the opened copy. If the manufacturer refuses to return it, then all the stores are going to raise hell with them because the new copy protection is costing them money if they are eating those unusable CD's.
If the manufacturer does accept it back, the manufacturer then either tosses the CD in the trash as a loss, or they repackage. If they repackage it, this costs them additional money before that CD goes back to the store. Even if does go back to the store, it could still wind up in the hands of another computer user who will start the loop over again.
Eventually manufacturers will solve this problem by clearly labeling all CD's as being unplayable on a computer, in which case people are now clear about what they are getting into, and many will likely avoid it, reducing profits for the manufacturer of the CD.
The irony in all of this though is that ultimately copy protection of CD's is going to cost the companies WAY more money than it saves. Less people will buy their CD's because they won't work where they want to listen to them. People will instead find clever hacks to work around the copy protection system and the CD's will still get ripped. Everybody will get their music from Gnutella and the like and the RIAA will create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Conspiracy theory moment: maybe that's their plan. Intentionally do things to drive down CD sales to make their case to the government for new laws, and then go for the jugular of fair use and forever wipe out the balance of copyright law.