I imagine that the chemical reactions that allow this thing to subsist on iron don't work too well at lower temperatures anyway. Otherwise we'd have seen that particular niche filled here on the surface a _long_ time ago.
Ahh, but that would only apply to the top few meters of water. Past that and the temperature remains fairly constant. I mean, I don't see the cold, dark depths of the oceans all rising by 3 degrees no matter how much the air temperature rises. And given that the average ocean depth is something like 4000 meters, expanding the top 10 by 2% or 3% isn't going to do much.
And how exactly will you be sure that a given diamond is indeed pre-CVD? As the Wired article pointed out, the only way the jeweler was able to ID it as artificial was that it was _too_ perfect. That's kind of an easy problem to solve, counterfeiting-wise.
As many have no doubt pointed out, no evolutionary change in our computer technology is likely to render our encryption systems useless. If we get processors another million times faster than today's, it'd still be trivial to just increase the key length to match. We'd need either radically new algorithms to attack encryption or revolutionary computing hardware, a la quantum computers, which make key length essentially irrelevant.
Nope, remember that article on/. a while back about the smallest possible executable? A judge might look at that and think, "Well, maybe they could fit MS Office onto a grain of rice". And remember, the FBI has arrested people on even less sane reasoning than that.
I wish I had your confidence. But as you say, wholesale violence by governments far in excess of what could reasonable be required to maintain order is nothing new. Why should we techies be immune? I mean, c'mon, 2 million people? Pick 100 adults; 1 of them is behind bars right now and one or two more are doing nothing but paying for his upkeep. That image, though sickening and revolting to you and I, does not appear to faze some of our legislators in the slightest. 2 million prisoners and what's their answer? Let's make some more felons! Having a plant isn't dubious enough, we'll put copying bits and even talking about copying bits in the same category as wholesale murder. As some glib tongues on/. have pointed out, I could blow up a schoolbus full of kindergartners and get a lighter sentence than what I would be entitled to for clicking the checkbox on KaZaA that says to share my C drive.
Yeah, so? It's been that way for all of recorded history.
Oh, certainly. My concern is that in the process they're going to royally fuck up my life and the lives of nearly 300 million citizens and countless people abroad beforehand. Like I said, things will get worse before they get better, and who wants to live through that? Love my country, fear my government, right? Well, I do love my country and it just breaks my heart to think it may be run through the meat grinder by its own shortsightedness.
Actually, you'd be surprised at the number of crimes you can commit that won't get you imprisoned
Oh not at all. I sat down, pulled up some legal-oriented websites, and researched this very topic one day; I stopped counting my 'criminal behavior' when I got to 5 felonies warranting prison time. It's a great argument to use against the kneejerk-"There ought to be a law"-mentality.
I know, I know, I know. Relax. Today's a bad day. On good days I actually have a fairly high opinion of my fellow man and _know_ that the shrill cries of Valenti and Rosen and the various Disney reps will eventually get them the duct tape gag they so richly deserve.
You have to make certain that anyone with a brain would have been able to tell that the files weren't actually the ones they claimed to be. Like make them 1 byte each or some such.
because the masses will happily break any law that they don't agree with
Quite true. And as far as the US government is concerned, this is not any great difficulty. Hence the 2,000,000+ prison population and the blind embrace of more laws making more felons of just about everyone. Can we take the chance that the politicians will happily toss the 3.5 million users KaZaA says are online in jail too?
You may note that while the War on Drugs is indeed beginning to polarize politically (not just socially as it always has been), there is _huge_ inertia towards keeping it running, both in terms of image (tough on drugs = good PR) and bureaucratic selfishness (DEA's funding drops by 90% if drugs are legalized). And quite frankly, most of the people in charge still honestly believe that the whole charade is worth the time, money, effort, freedoms, and human lives they've squandered on it (either that or they just won't admit they're full of crap, which amounts to same thing).
The only way to fix this will be to replace all the politicians in support of uber-IP laws, which requires a massive popular backlash against them, which requires things to get much worse before they get better. I doubt anyone 60 years ago imagined that every year we'd arrest enough people to form a large city (800,000 people) for nothing more than having in their posession a naturally occuring plant. And yet here we are.
I'm with the parent on this. I'm well aware that every generation preceding mine has though the sky is falling, but The Powers That Be seem to be so powerfully and ignorantly set on destroying everything to protect their own little fiefdoms. Valenti isn't going to ever 'get it'. He'll keep bribing congresscritters and telling them that VCRs and PVRs and the Internet are costing the MPAA members billions of dollars lost sales every minute until the day he dies. The DEA was started on a basis of lies, racism, and general bullshit (actual 1930's Congressional quote: "Marijuana causes violent behavior in the degenerate races"); they'll _never_ turn around and say, "Oh yeah, our bad". I'm not sure enough people in charge will be willing or able to stand against the tide before the US legislates itself to third-world status in the next few decades.
And it could happen! It's pure speculation of course, but can you imagine the effects US and EU IP laws would have on a world of Star Trek replicators or cheap nano? If corporations are cringing at the new lack of scarcity of information, they'll go berserk if it applies to the physical. And if past performance is any indication, our elected officials will happily kowtow to them and try to legislate it out of existence.
Besides, *all* property rights are a social construct. The idea that physical property is somehow more real than non-physical property is silly
Physical property has the virtue of being naturally exclusive. Ownership rights are simply a codification of this into legal terms. Regardless of whether or not the law says I own my car, I still have exclusive control over of it (well, at least as long as I have the keys).
Copyright is fundamentally different. The only way to naturally keep exclusive use of information is to not give it to anyone. IP law consists of an entirely artificial idea of control and scarcity over something that is naturally intangible and easily reproduced. It is quite literally an attempt to legislate lead into gold. The only reason anyone puts up with it is because it has historically been fairly successful at balancing the desire to reward creators with the desire of people to do what comes naturally (i.e., share information for free). And in this balancing act, Congress is loading up lead weights on the side of copyright owners (and generally only wealthy ones). Small wonder millions of people are beginning to ignore it and are instead deciding to share it free of charge.
Remember, copyright is not its own raison d'etre. It is merely a means to the end; an evil we have long perceived to be a necessary one. If it ceases to be an effective means, or a better one comes along, we _should_ drop it like the bad habit it is.
That's because "get the guy driving around shooting innocent people" is the sort of motivation the average citizen can get on board with. Does anyone here think that governmental use of power over people is always limited to things like finding violent criminals? Anyone? Or is the government really made up of ordinary people who will use and abuse any kind of power they are given?
But what if this is taking place in New Rome where they crank the speed limit down by 30 just so they can rake in the speeding tickets? If you've got yourself a major highway in the middle of nowhere and the speed limit goes from 70 to 30mph in the course of 1/4 mile, is it _really_ a crime to be doing 60?
Remember, to obey only the letter of the law is to say "It's illegal becuase it's wrong and it's wrong because it's illegal". Cirular logic at its finest. Above all, it is imperative that you know _why_ it is illegal. If real people are actually being hurt by what the law is supposed to be curtailing, the average citizen will be fairly receptive to it. If the law exists simply because someone got bribed or a politician got himself into a morality frenzy, you end up with such wonderful results like The War on Drugs, anti-gay/sodomy laws, the UCITA, DMCA, and CBDTPA, etc, etc. Every one of them based on wacky assumptions and bogus (or nonexistent) supporting data. And of course they are generally ignored entirely except when someone with power and money sees fit to 'make an example' out of someone.
Ha! Like, "I'm so rich I have more money than everyone else on the planet combined including, and this is the tricky part, myself." Tip o' the hat to Doug Adams.
Good, but not quite. In addition to deciding who is allowed who is allowed to use the content/car, every DRM suggestion to date has included restrictions on where and how. So Ford won't make any Model-T's until there's door and ignition locks as well as tires that won't run on anything but Ford Motors Approved Roads, on which you certainly won't be able to drive faster than 45 MPH. And under the Road Usage Protection Act, it's illegal to modify your tires on your car to let you drive your car up onto your non-standard driveway; you gotta park out in the road like everyone else. If your 16-year-old son or daughter wants to take the thing out for a spin, you'll have to purchase another license to use your existing car. But fortunately for you, this license is only 90% of the orignal cost of the vehicle! And, of course, the motor company will be allowed to disable or take posession of your car at any time if they suspect you shouldn't be driving it.
If there are any psych majors in the crowd could you please explain to me the appeal of seeking out the "latest 3 letter fad" regardless of any the predictable outcomes
The executives of the pro-DRM groups must have issues with their mothers. "Mom", you may notice, is a three-letter word (as is "Mum", for those english-speakers on the other side of the pond). Obviously, they had insufficient support from and poor relationships with their maternal guardians and compensate in their adult life by latching on to the nearest three-letter entity capable of nurturing them and taking on the life-giving role. When that one fails, far from becoming disillusioned, they respond by seeking out three-letter solutions with ever-greater tenacity and hunger. You see? Very simple. We just need to find a tri-cronym capable of giving them what their subconscious desires but doesn't also ask for magic, unatainable fixes from the techies of the world.
Would posting a Cliff-Notes summary and character analysis of a book be theft? Would posting the entire text? No, the first is perfectly fine and the second is a copyright issue.
The RIAA has taken down some extremely good lyrics databases on the basis of copyright infringement.
Copyright theft, obviously, would be if I actually stole your copyright. By forging legal transfer documents or some such. You may not know that this is the exact stunt the RIAA tried to pull en masse a few years ago with their 'work for hire' add-on to a congressional bill. IIRC, it would have made the music produced by bands under contract with RIAA members works bought and paid for by the company. The musicians themsevles would have had nothing. That is copyright theft.
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Cool! Then all they have to add are strip and body cavity searches and their attendance rate will actually drop into the negative!
High-carbon steel?
I imagine that the chemical reactions that allow this thing to subsist on iron don't work too well at lower temperatures anyway. Otherwise we'd have seen that particular niche filled here on the surface a _long_ time ago.
Nah, I'll just stick to hypothermia, thank you very much. Though death by sexual exhaustion wouldn't be a bad way to go, either.
Ahh, but that would only apply to the top few meters of water. Past that and the temperature remains fairly constant. I mean, I don't see the cold, dark depths of the oceans all rising by 3 degrees no matter how much the air temperature rises. And given that the average ocean depth is something like 4000 meters, expanding the top 10 by 2% or 3% isn't going to do much.
Shit, I use Windows and even I think I'm lame for it.
And how exactly will you be sure that a given diamond is indeed pre-CVD? As the Wired article pointed out, the only way the jeweler was able to ID it as artificial was that it was _too_ perfect. That's kind of an easy problem to solve, counterfeiting-wise.
As many have no doubt pointed out, no evolutionary change in our computer technology is likely to render our encryption systems useless. If we get processors another million times faster than today's, it'd still be trivial to just increase the key length to match. We'd need either radically new algorithms to attack encryption or revolutionary computing hardware, a la quantum computers, which make key length essentially irrelevant.
Nah, they just called DirecTV and had them get the Pay-Per-View events for the time period.
Nope, remember that article on /. a while back about the smallest possible executable? A judge might look at that and think, "Well, maybe they could fit MS Office onto a grain of rice". And remember, the FBI has arrested people on even less sane reasoning than that.
I wish I had your confidence. But as you say, wholesale violence by governments far in excess of what could reasonable be required to maintain order is nothing new. Why should we techies be immune? I mean, c'mon, 2 million people? Pick 100 adults; 1 of them is behind bars right now and one or two more are doing nothing but paying for his upkeep. That image, though sickening and revolting to you and I, does not appear to faze some of our legislators in the slightest. 2 million prisoners and what's their answer? Let's make some more felons! Having a plant isn't dubious enough, we'll put copying bits and even talking about copying bits in the same category as wholesale murder. As some glib tongues on /. have pointed out, I could blow up a schoolbus full of kindergartners and get a lighter sentence than what I would be entitled to for clicking the checkbox on KaZaA that says to share my C drive.
Yeah, so? It's been that way for all of recorded history.
Oh, certainly. My concern is that in the process they're going to royally fuck up my life and the lives of nearly 300 million citizens and countless people abroad beforehand. Like I said, things will get worse before they get better, and who wants to live through that? Love my country, fear my government, right? Well, I do love my country and it just breaks my heart to think it may be run through the meat grinder by its own shortsightedness.
Actually, you'd be surprised at the number of crimes you can commit that won't get you imprisoned
Oh not at all. I sat down, pulled up some legal-oriented websites, and researched this very topic one day; I stopped counting my 'criminal behavior' when I got to 5 felonies warranting prison time. It's a great argument to use against the kneejerk-"There ought to be a law"-mentality.
I know, I know, I know. Relax. Today's a bad day. On good days I actually have a fairly high opinion of my fellow man and _know_ that the shrill cries of Valenti and Rosen and the various Disney reps will eventually get them the duct tape gag they so richly deserve.
You have to make certain that anyone with a brain would have been able to tell that the files weren't actually the ones they claimed to be. Like make them 1 byte each or some such.
Quite true. And as far as the US government is concerned, this is not any great difficulty. Hence the 2,000,000+ prison population and the blind embrace of more laws making more felons of just about everyone. Can we take the chance that the politicians will happily toss the 3.5 million users KaZaA says are online in jail too?
You may note that while the War on Drugs is indeed beginning to polarize politically (not just socially as it always has been), there is _huge_ inertia towards keeping it running, both in terms of image (tough on drugs = good PR) and bureaucratic selfishness (DEA's funding drops by 90% if drugs are legalized). And quite frankly, most of the people in charge still honestly believe that the whole charade is worth the time, money, effort, freedoms, and human lives they've squandered on it (either that or they just won't admit they're full of crap, which amounts to same thing).
The only way to fix this will be to replace all the politicians in support of uber-IP laws, which requires a massive popular backlash against them, which requires things to get much worse before they get better. I doubt anyone 60 years ago imagined that every year we'd arrest enough people to form a large city (800,000 people) for nothing more than having in their posession a naturally occuring plant. And yet here we are.
I'm with the parent on this. I'm well aware that every generation preceding mine has though the sky is falling, but The Powers That Be seem to be so powerfully and ignorantly set on destroying everything to protect their own little fiefdoms. Valenti isn't going to ever 'get it'. He'll keep bribing congresscritters and telling them that VCRs and PVRs and the Internet are costing the MPAA members billions of dollars lost sales every minute until the day he dies. The DEA was started on a basis of lies, racism, and general bullshit (actual 1930's Congressional quote: "Marijuana causes violent behavior in the degenerate races"); they'll _never_ turn around and say, "Oh yeah, our bad". I'm not sure enough people in charge will be willing or able to stand against the tide before the US legislates itself to third-world status in the next few decades.
And it could happen! It's pure speculation of course, but can you imagine the effects US and EU IP laws would have on a world of Star Trek replicators or cheap nano? If corporations are cringing at the new lack of scarcity of information, they'll go berserk if it applies to the physical. And if past performance is any indication, our elected officials will happily kowtow to them and try to legislate it out of existence.
And how is that different from what we have today? :)
You havn't figurd out how to typ with using th forbiddn ky yt?
By god, I wish I had some mod points. That was so very excellently written.
Physical property has the virtue of being naturally exclusive. Ownership rights are simply a codification of this into legal terms. Regardless of whether or not the law says I own my car, I still have exclusive control over of it (well, at least as long as I have the keys).
Copyright is fundamentally different. The only way to naturally keep exclusive use of information is to not give it to anyone. IP law consists of an entirely artificial idea of control and scarcity over something that is naturally intangible and easily reproduced. It is quite literally an attempt to legislate lead into gold. The only reason anyone puts up with it is because it has historically been fairly successful at balancing the desire to reward creators with the desire of people to do what comes naturally (i.e., share information for free). And in this balancing act, Congress is loading up lead weights on the side of copyright owners (and generally only wealthy ones). Small wonder millions of people are beginning to ignore it and are instead deciding to share it free of charge.
Remember, copyright is not its own raison d'etre. It is merely a means to the end; an evil we have long perceived to be a necessary one. If it ceases to be an effective means, or a better one comes along, we _should_ drop it like the bad habit it is.
That's because "get the guy driving around shooting innocent people" is the sort of motivation the average citizen can get on board with. Does anyone here think that governmental use of power over people is always limited to things like finding violent criminals? Anyone? Or is the government really made up of ordinary people who will use and abuse any kind of power they are given?
Remember, to obey only the letter of the law is to say "It's illegal becuase it's wrong and it's wrong because it's illegal". Cirular logic at its finest. Above all, it is imperative that you know _why_ it is illegal. If real people are actually being hurt by what the law is supposed to be curtailing, the average citizen will be fairly receptive to it. If the law exists simply because someone got bribed or a politician got himself into a morality frenzy, you end up with such wonderful results like The War on Drugs, anti-gay/sodomy laws, the UCITA, DMCA, and CBDTPA, etc, etc. Every one of them based on wacky assumptions and bogus (or nonexistent) supporting data. And of course they are generally ignored entirely except when someone with power and money sees fit to 'make an example' out of someone.
Ha! Like, "I'm so rich I have more money than everyone else on the planet combined including, and this is the tricky part, myself." Tip o' the hat to Doug Adams.
Bah. Ancient greeks had a highly accurate estimate of Earth's size and mass thousands of years before Columbus.
Good, but not quite. In addition to deciding who is allowed who is allowed to use the content/car, every DRM suggestion to date has included restrictions on where and how. So Ford won't make any Model-T's until there's door and ignition locks as well as tires that won't run on anything but Ford Motors Approved Roads, on which you certainly won't be able to drive faster than 45 MPH. And under the Road Usage Protection Act, it's illegal to modify your tires on your car to let you drive your car up onto your non-standard driveway; you gotta park out in the road like everyone else. If your 16-year-old son or daughter wants to take the thing out for a spin, you'll have to purchase another license to use your existing car. But fortunately for you, this license is only 90% of the orignal cost of the vehicle! And, of course, the motor company will be allowed to disable or take posession of your car at any time if they suspect you shouldn't be driving it.
The executives of the pro-DRM groups must have issues with their mothers. "Mom", you may notice, is a three-letter word (as is "Mum", for those english-speakers on the other side of the pond). Obviously, they had insufficient support from and poor relationships with their maternal guardians and compensate in their adult life by latching on to the nearest three-letter entity capable of nurturing them and taking on the life-giving role. When that one fails, far from becoming disillusioned, they respond by seeking out three-letter solutions with ever-greater tenacity and hunger. You see? Very simple. We just need to find a tri-cronym capable of giving them what their subconscious desires but doesn't also ask for magic, unatainable fixes from the techies of the world.
The RIAA has taken down some extremely good lyrics databases on the basis of copyright infringement.
Copyright theft, obviously, would be if I actually stole your copyright. By forging legal transfer documents or some such. You may not know that this is the exact stunt the RIAA tried to pull en masse a few years ago with their 'work for hire' add-on to a congressional bill. IIRC, it would have made the music produced by bands under contract with RIAA members works bought and paid for by the company. The musicians themsevles would have had nothing. That is copyright theft.