No kidding. So the US is the only country not trading with Cuba? Out of a $43 trillion global economy, Cuba has trading access to all but the 10 in the US, and even that can go through foreign middlemen. And that is the only thing keeping them in the Stone Age? I don't buy it. If Ireland and Britain stopped trading, it wouldn't be good for either, but neither would they collapse into 3rd world status.
That said, I think it is kinda stupid to maintain the embargo. It obviously hasn't ousted Castro and his oh-so humanitarian government and at this point the simplest way to undermine him is to get Cubans living well. Cuba is not much of a physical risk without the Soviet Union behind it.
That censorware is ridiculously biased in building their blacklist is well known. In particular they have a nasty tendency to label poor reviews of their software as violent and pornographic.
Now my question regarding Mr. Pollock is this. Is he now against it because he discovered they blocked his website, or is he now against it because he discovered why they blocked his website?
It's really you Europeans' fault in the first place. Sent too damned many Puritans and religious morality freaks to colonize North America and now look what's happened.:)
Be sure to mention the total population there. Over 11 million. So less than 1 in 20 has a phone, less than 1 in 3000 a cell phone, and one in 200 is online. Compare with 2 out of 3, 1 in 3, and 1 in 2, respectively, for the US.
But I agree, Castro and his cronies are trying to keep everyone under control, even if it also means keeping them in the 19th century.
I cannot count how many times my cat did that with the sliding glass door in particular and walls in general. If any of my former roommates read this, Schizo has stopped doing that and his newer, calmer, disposition is probably a direct result.
Cats don't naturally use toilets but i got mine to do so anyway. What I want to do now is train him to flush (some kind of foot pedal) or rig the toilet to flush automatically after he uses it.
I tell you though, it's the best. I absolutely hate cleaning litter boxes and it's a friggin joy not having to do so.
Theft, pirating, stealing, all are actions that do not apply to what is going on today. If I steal from you, I take something you have and thereby deny you the use of it. Call it what it really is: file copying. And to call someone who clicks a mouse and types on a keyboard a 'pirate' is just silly and rather insulting to both real historical pirates and their victims.
"Stealing intellectual property" would mean taking away the copyright/patent/trademark/whatever from the author, thus denying him the right to distribute it as he pleases. This is something that's more applicable to the music industry than guys with computers! Recall the 'work for hire' fiasco a while back.
Should I not be allowed to make a copy of something provided I do not try to make money off it? You wouldn't, or at any rate shouldn't, find anything wrong with a guy recording the Superbowl and playing it back later for his friends, nor even of giving the tape to someone who didn't see it. Why is there such a great difference here?
What if instead of movies and music being copied, it was something a little less intangible. Like, say, food. Let's ignore the problems involved in teleportation and potential applications for copying anything physical and just say that a device that can make an infinite number of copies of any food item for free is invented and hooked up to the Internet and everything from Wonder Bread to filet mingon to 100-year old wine is being copied. Now, do you honestly side with the farmers and chefs and grocery stores and restaurants and food shipping companies in trying to make it illegal? Do you continue trying to keep a resource scarce long after that has ceased to be the case? Do you complain that their livelihoods and their intellectual property (really only applies to chefs and restaurants) are at risk and that the government must ensure them a steady income by turning back the clock? Or do you accept reality, that nobody really has to pay for food anymore and trying to force them to do so when they don't have to is counterproductive? That if you want to make money by selling tasty treats you have to to do something that people will want to pay you for?
Oh, and they didn't catch any 'guys'. They caught one guy and some equipment. Probably used quite a bit of the NYPD's time and resources in doing so. But that's okay, since NYC has no other real crimes that need their attention, right.
Did you see the Valenti-Lessig debate a few months ago? I actually had my own mother sit down and watch that. She's about as computer savvy as a trained chimp (no offense, ma!) and knew virtually nothing about either side's cases, but even she came away from it thinking Valenti was a schmuck.
I had a chemistry lab at GaTech when Phantom Menace was released. The lab TA was aware of my propensity to acquire movies early after their release and made me a deal. If I could get a copy of Phantom Menace and put it on VHS by the end of the semester, he'd bring in a TV and VCR and we'd watch it in lieu of taking a lab final. Man, that was a great TA!
I can tell you exactly what is going to happen if this nonsense passes. Whatever copy protection the industry implements or is forced to implement will fail miserably. Anything software based will be bypassed within hours of its release (maybe even beforehand), hardware based within days. 99% of the population can't do it, but that doesn't matter.
When this is made so plain even Herr Hollings can see it, he'll run to the press saying that they obviously didn't go far enough with S.2048 in protecting America's precious artists. Those dirty hackers are writing their own software to bypass our perfect copy protection and must be stopped. Therefore, we must restrict software development to trusted developers only. And at that point I, being a programmer, will join you in leaving the country. And so will many others. The quality, quantity, and sheer diversity of software will fall dramatically while prices skyrockets; other countries will stop sending people to our technical universities nor will they be immigrating to get tech jobs (quite the opposite in fact); nobody would invest in US tech companies since they're likely to be snuffed out at the whim of Congress, and very many of the programmers that remain would be out of a job. The economy basically halts as computer equipment ceases to be manufactured, maintained, and programmed as the IT exodus continues, and Disney and their reps blame it all on movie piracy and evil thieves.
This of course assumes that this brand of insanity limits itself to the States. But with something so radical I'd like to think that the EU, for instance, would wait to see how it goes here before maybe cutting their own throats.
The hypocrites are not the/.ers but the courts. MPAA sues 2600 for linking to naughty content and wins. Ellison sues AOL/TW for not only linking to but actually hosting naughty content and the case gets dismissed. The whole ISP non-liability thing has a horrible double standard here.
Regardless of whether they do or not, the problem is that corporate copyright holders win nearly every time but an individual copyright holder will lose. The 2600/DeCSS case is similar to this in so very many ways (being held responsible for linking to content on other people's servers), yet AOL got the case against them thrown out before it got off the ground.
protecting common carriers when one of their users infringes, is a good thing
And most everyone will agree with you. The carrier should be no more held accountable for my actions while using their services than a random bystander. The problem demonstrated here is the double standard the courts have been displaying; AOL as an carrier is immune from prosectution, but Google, 2600, Napster, and even Slashdot as carriers are not. Why?
So, what, I'm not allowed to say anything until it has been deemed acceptable to a copyright holder somewhere? How about I say what I want, then you prove in a court, not just send a nastygram, that it is unacceptable, then and only then does the ISP have to take it down.
Of course this case is bullshit. Homegrown, freshly squeezed, ripe on the vine, bullshit, I agree. But it's no more so than any of the others that have come by, which, golly gee, always seem to end in favor of the side with deeper pockets. Can 2600 or Google actually be held responsible for what people might do with content that isn't even on their servers but happens to be linked to on their site? The courts say, "Hell yes!". Can AOL/TW actually be held responsible for what people might do with content that isn't even on their servers but happens to be linked to on their site? The courts say, "Well, of course not". It's ridiculously hypocritical and we have yet to see the DMCA come down on the side of the people it's proponents claimed it would protect.
Except Napster wan't even hosting anything. There was nothing for them to 'take down' since there was nothing 'put up' in the first place. They were essentially a search engine.
From the article, AOL "lobbied for exemptions that would prevent them from having to spend all their time policing their networks". But then they turn around and say, "Napster must not allow the media to be listed in the first place." Why does Napster have to act first while AOL need only react to alleged copyright violations? The difference sounds small but it's basically saying that the big guys can do anything that is not forbidden, but the little ones can only do what is explicitly permitted.
Actually, I have very poor depth perception.
I have for most of my life
Sure, so do some people with a lazy eye (dunno if that's you). They're used to it. Me, I close one eye while I'm on the road and I freak out. I suppose I could eventually get used to it as well, but it's just not something I want to give up, especially when totally transparent HUD's are Right Around the Corner.
The only way I've been able to think of that would come even close to accomplishing it would be thus. The byte is redefined as having 9 bits: 8 data bits and one indicating 'protected' status. Memory is designed such that any byte with the protected flag on is read-only. Hard drives will not write any bytes that are copy protected.
The radical changes in binary logic aside, 10 seconds contemplation shows tons of problems with this.
If a drive can't write a protected byte, how'd the data get there in the first place? Gotta have 'trusted' software that can bypass that restriction when allowable, thus creating a major security hole.
I can read in a protected byte and AND it with another byte that zero's out the protection bit. I can think of no way to prevent that, short of preventing CPU operations on any protected byte, which kinda makes the whole endeavor pointless.
The way I see it, the protection would have to be built into a very deep layer of the hardware, otherwise it would be trivial to bypass it with software. Dependence on software-based concepts like trusted filesystems and operating systems and network protocols would accomplish nothing, as custom programs could simply work around it or ignore it completely. But the more in the metal the modifications are, the less resemblance it will bear to existing computers. The 9-bit example above would require the trashing of virtually every piece of equipment in existence today.
Of course, there's always the extreme case of sealing up the hardware and not letting it run anything but closed, trusted, authenticated, and proprietary software. But as your example pointed out, even that wouldn't be enough.
They won't outlaw your computer, they'll just outlaw making new ones like it. After giving the tech industry two whole years to implement the impossible, of course.
That's so swell of them. They're such humanitarians, letting blind people read the books they've purchased how they want. But we people who can see, we don't ever need to see our books except on a computer screen or on the paper it was originally printed on, and it's for our own good that we're not allowed to do anything else. Because I never listen to books on tape in the car, no sir! And anyone who wants to run the book they purchased with their own money through a speech program is obviously a terrorist and must be given harsher punishment than those pesky violent criminals.
Where'd you get your numbers here? There is no way that China's agricultural per capita GDP is a full third of the US's. China puts 15% of their population on farms and I don't hear much about their bountiful excess of crops. We have 2%. Right away there is a x7 difference, and our farmers are so prodigous we have to pay them to produce less so they don't glut the market.
I find your industrial GDP's rather suspect as well.
Recall (or rather Rekall, to be true to the movie/book), worked by implanting the memories of the event directly into your head. This is much simpler; it's basically a CRT that uses your retina as the screen. Think of this as the way the Terminator saw the world, only not in red monocolor.
Which is not to say that the potential isn't amazing. In 10 years these things'll probably be about as cumbersome and expensive as ordinary glasses and have fantastic color and resolution. Combined with portable computing power and/or wireless networking and you have the knowledge of the world at your command everywhere you go.
Seems like every time I think an idea on a TV show is good, someone goes and invents it for real... I'm starting to think the only sci-fi ideas that I won't see in my lifetime are the ones that are actuall physically impossible.
Heck, why stop there? How many people a hundred years ago could have imagined the stuff we take for granted today? We're much better than our ancestors at imagining the changes tomorrow may bring, but we're certain to be surprised nontheless.
Sure, but you lose your depth perception. Not sure that'd be a Good Thing for people driving or using heavy machinery. The whole point of augmented vision is that you don't lose anything, you just add to what you would ordinarily see.
Slashdot Mirror
That said, I think it is kinda stupid to maintain the embargo. It obviously hasn't ousted Castro and his oh-so humanitarian government and at this point the simplest way to undermine him is to get Cubans living well. Cuba is not much of a physical risk without the Soviet Union behind it.
Now my question regarding Mr. Pollock is this. Is he now against it because he discovered they blocked his website, or is he now against it because he discovered why they blocked his website?
It's really you Europeans' fault in the first place. Sent too damned many Puritans and religious morality freaks to colonize North America and now look what's happened. :)
But I agree, Castro and his cronies are trying to keep everyone under control, even if it also means keeping them in the 19th century.
I cannot count how many times my cat did that with the sliding glass door in particular and walls in general. If any of my former roommates read this, Schizo has stopped doing that and his newer, calmer, disposition is probably a direct result.
I tell you though, it's the best. I absolutely hate cleaning litter boxes and it's a friggin joy not having to do so.
"Stealing intellectual property" would mean taking away the copyright/patent/trademark/whatever from the author, thus denying him the right to distribute it as he pleases. This is something that's more applicable to the music industry than guys with computers! Recall the 'work for hire' fiasco a while back.
Should I not be allowed to make a copy of something provided I do not try to make money off it? You wouldn't, or at any rate shouldn't, find anything wrong with a guy recording the Superbowl and playing it back later for his friends, nor even of giving the tape to someone who didn't see it. Why is there such a great difference here?
What if instead of movies and music being copied, it was something a little less intangible. Like, say, food. Let's ignore the problems involved in teleportation and potential applications for copying anything physical and just say that a device that can make an infinite number of copies of any food item for free is invented and hooked up to the Internet and everything from Wonder Bread to filet mingon to 100-year old wine is being copied. Now, do you honestly side with the farmers and chefs and grocery stores and restaurants and food shipping companies in trying to make it illegal? Do you continue trying to keep a resource scarce long after that has ceased to be the case? Do you complain that their livelihoods and their intellectual property (really only applies to chefs and restaurants) are at risk and that the government must ensure them a steady income by turning back the clock? Or do you accept reality, that nobody really has to pay for food anymore and trying to force them to do so when they don't have to is counterproductive? That if you want to make money by selling tasty treats you have to to do something that people will want to pay you for?
Oh, and they didn't catch any 'guys'. They caught one guy and some equipment. Probably used quite a bit of the NYPD's time and resources in doing so. But that's okay, since NYC has no other real crimes that need their attention, right.
Did you see the Valenti-Lessig debate a few months ago? I actually had my own mother sit down and watch that. She's about as computer savvy as a trained chimp (no offense, ma!) and knew virtually nothing about either side's cases, but even she came away from it thinking Valenti was a schmuck.
I had a chemistry lab at GaTech when Phantom Menace was released. The lab TA was aware of my propensity to acquire movies early after their release and made me a deal. If I could get a copy of Phantom Menace and put it on VHS by the end of the semester, he'd bring in a TV and VCR and we'd watch it in lieu of taking a lab final. Man, that was a great TA!
When this is made so plain even Herr Hollings can see it, he'll run to the press saying that they obviously didn't go far enough with S.2048 in protecting America's precious artists. Those dirty hackers are writing their own software to bypass our perfect copy protection and must be stopped. Therefore, we must restrict software development to trusted developers only. And at that point I, being a programmer, will join you in leaving the country. And so will many others. The quality, quantity, and sheer diversity of software will fall dramatically while prices skyrockets; other countries will stop sending people to our technical universities nor will they be immigrating to get tech jobs (quite the opposite in fact); nobody would invest in US tech companies since they're likely to be snuffed out at the whim of Congress, and very many of the programmers that remain would be out of a job. The economy basically halts as computer equipment ceases to be manufactured, maintained, and programmed as the IT exodus continues, and Disney and their reps blame it all on movie piracy and evil thieves.
This of course assumes that this brand of insanity limits itself to the States. But with something so radical I'd like to think that the EU, for instance, would wait to see how it goes here before maybe cutting their own throats.
The hypocrites are not the /.ers but the courts. MPAA sues 2600 for linking to naughty content and wins. Ellison sues AOL/TW for not only linking to but actually hosting naughty content and the case gets dismissed. The whole ISP non-liability thing has a horrible double standard here.
Regardless of whether they do or not, the problem is that corporate copyright holders win nearly every time but an individual copyright holder will lose. The 2600/DeCSS case is similar to this in so very many ways (being held responsible for linking to content on other people's servers), yet AOL got the case against them thrown out before it got off the ground.
And most everyone will agree with you. The carrier should be no more held accountable for my actions while using their services than a random bystander. The problem demonstrated here is the double standard the courts have been displaying; AOL as an carrier is immune from prosectution, but Google, 2600, Napster, and even Slashdot as carriers are not. Why?
So, what, I'm not allowed to say anything until it has been deemed acceptable to a copyright holder somewhere? How about I say what I want, then you prove in a court, not just send a nastygram, that it is unacceptable, then and only then does the ISP have to take it down.
Of course this case is bullshit. Homegrown, freshly squeezed, ripe on the vine, bullshit, I agree. But it's no more so than any of the others that have come by, which, golly gee, always seem to end in favor of the side with deeper pockets. Can 2600 or Google actually be held responsible for what people might do with content that isn't even on their servers but happens to be linked to on their site? The courts say, "Hell yes!". Can AOL/TW actually be held responsible for what people might do with content that isn't even on their servers but happens to be linked to on their site? The courts say, "Well, of course not". It's ridiculously hypocritical and we have yet to see the DMCA come down on the side of the people it's proponents claimed it would protect.
From the article, AOL "lobbied for exemptions that would prevent them from having to spend all their time policing their networks". But then they turn around and say, "Napster must not allow the media to be listed in the first place." Why does Napster have to act first while AOL need only react to alleged copyright violations? The difference sounds small but it's basically saying that the big guys can do anything that is not forbidden, but the little ones can only do what is explicitly permitted.
Sure, so do some people with a lazy eye (dunno if that's you). They're used to it. Me, I close one eye while I'm on the road and I freak out. I suppose I could eventually get used to it as well, but it's just not something I want to give up, especially when totally transparent HUD's are Right Around the Corner.
Fire.
The radical changes in binary logic aside, 10 seconds contemplation shows tons of problems with this.
If a drive can't write a protected byte, how'd the data get there in the first place? Gotta have 'trusted' software that can bypass that restriction when allowable, thus creating a major security hole.
I can read in a protected byte and AND it with another byte that zero's out the protection bit. I can think of no way to prevent that, short of preventing CPU operations on any protected byte, which kinda makes the whole endeavor pointless.
The way I see it, the protection would have to be built into a very deep layer of the hardware, otherwise it would be trivial to bypass it with software. Dependence on software-based concepts like trusted filesystems and operating systems and network protocols would accomplish nothing, as custom programs could simply work around it or ignore it completely. But the more in the metal the modifications are, the less resemblance it will bear to existing computers. The 9-bit example above would require the trashing of virtually every piece of equipment in existence today.
Of course, there's always the extreme case of sealing up the hardware and not letting it run anything but closed, trusted, authenticated, and proprietary software. But as your example pointed out, even that wouldn't be enough.
They won't outlaw your computer, they'll just outlaw making new ones like it. After giving the tech industry two whole years to implement the impossible, of course.
That's so swell of them. They're such humanitarians, letting blind people read the books they've purchased how they want. But we people who can see, we don't ever need to see our books except on a computer screen or on the paper it was originally printed on, and it's for our own good that we're not allowed to do anything else. Because I never listen to books on tape in the car, no sir! And anyone who wants to run the book they purchased with their own money through a speech program is obviously a terrorist and must be given harsher punishment than those pesky violent criminals.
I find your industrial GDP's rather suspect as well.
Don't forget his motorcycle!
Recall (or rather Rekall, to be true to the movie/book), worked by implanting the memories of the event directly into your head. This is much simpler; it's basically a CRT that uses your retina as the screen. Think of this as the way the Terminator saw the world, only not in red monocolor.
Which is not to say that the potential isn't amazing. In 10 years these things'll probably be about as cumbersome and expensive as ordinary glasses and have fantastic color and resolution. Combined with portable computing power and/or wireless networking and you have the knowledge of the world at your command everywhere you go.
Seems like every time I think an idea on a TV show is good, someone goes and invents it for real... I'm starting to think the only sci-fi ideas that I won't see in my lifetime are the ones that are actuall physically impossible.
Heck, why stop there? How many people a hundred years ago could have imagined the stuff we take for granted today? We're much better than our ancestors at imagining the changes tomorrow may bring, but we're certain to be surprised nontheless.
Sure, but you lose your depth perception. Not sure that'd be a Good Thing for people driving or using heavy machinery. The whole point of augmented vision is that you don't lose anything, you just add to what you would ordinarily see.