The RIAA will lobby the US Treasury to start stamping $10 coins, and you'll have to pay for the new discs with only the new coins. To try to use paper money, checks, or even credit cards will qualify as an attempt to reverse-engineer their proprietary and highly researched 'you-give-us-money-and-we-loan-you-music trading scheme' (US Patent #5,560,893).
I would explain further, but their lawyers and the police (in that order) are already knocking down my door...
I think there are also programs that can 'fake' a sound card in your system. The content control player outputs audio to what it thinks is a normal sound card, but it actually gets dumped straight to a file. Neat trick, that.
Hmmm, I checked it out and it seems you are correct. I do apologize.
[1718 to 1868] During that period, dispatching felons into exile was one of the prime ways in which the British courts sentenced offenders guilty of various types of larceny; some 50,000 of 'His Majesty's seven-year passengers' - as they were called in the eighteenth century - were sent to North America and a further 160,000 reached Australian shores.
I think most of it is that in NA, convicts represented only a quarter of the immigrants, while Australia was rather more; fewer people could afford to go under their own steam.
But of course at this time, a British 'convict' could be someone who stole a loaf of bread, so they could still make perfectly good colonists (assuming they made the trip without dying or going crazy).
Indeed. One should remember that the RIAA has been pulling nasty media coverage tricks on Napster since day one. About time they got some of their own back.
Also, $1 billion is a lot, even to the record companies. An extra 5% or so on earnings for doing _nothing_ is pretty nice.
Lemme get this straight. A government somewhere is trying to make it illegal not only to show pictures of, but even talk about on a certain topic. And you think that their motives are purely altruistic?
Would you tolerate this kind of censorship in other forms? If your local government made it illegal to talk about with your friends or write on paper anything having to do with 'adult themed topics', how long would it take you to leave the area for good? How is this very different from what the South Australian state government is trying to do?
In the chess game, the majority of the people went for what was the most visible 'best' move. Never mind the fact that it is in the long and even medium term the dumbest thing possible. Most of them probably never looked more than one move into the game, and those who did didn't have the clout to overrule them. In a similar fashion, the response to the Columbine shootings is to ban violence from kids' lives. Most people won't think about the consequences of such an act more than a week into the future. If the government wants to ban free speech, they come up with some excuse, "All we want to do is ban child porn!", that sounds reasonable to a sufficient number of people, and wallah! Those few players who see the ulterior motives or blatantly bad consequences get drowned out in the furor.
10: After slugging down six Shirley Temple's in 10-forward, Wes stumbles to the holodeck, which he commands to "take me to hell." His broken body is later found on the empty holodeck in a pool of vomit.
9: Wesley gets gang-raped by a group of female Klingons.
8: Riker gets carried away executing an order from Picard to "knock the little snot around a bit."
7: Data catches him tossing off. Uncomprehending, he requires a detailed explanation from Wesley, who dies of embarrassment.
6: Extensive lab analysis of a green slime found on one of the control panels uncovers the fact that our favorite ensign has, once again, been picking his nose. He is summarily fired and commits suicide.
5: Wes gets gang-raped by a group of male Klingons.
4: On an earlier episode, Wes got to kiss a girl who turned into a Chewbacca-like creature. Here, she returns, and they once again get involved. (Un)fortunately, once she gets really heated, she mutates back into a wookie and forces Wesley to be her cringing sex slave. She then tears him limb from limb and eats him.
3: In a rare episode involving characters from both ST and ST:TNG, Spock attempts a Vulcan mind-meld with Wesley. Wesley's head explodes. Spock barely survives, spending the next several days scratching himself and whining.
2: Worf notices a Romulan ship on the scanners, and sends Wesley down to clean out the photon tubes. Later, someone makes a comment about the needs of the many having outweighed the needs of the few.
1: Wes gets involved in a deviant sexual practice known as "tribble stuffing," not realizing that tribbles multiply _anywhere_. Even an emergency laser enema by Dr. Crusher fails to save him.
These are obviously not my own, but I thought they certainly applied. May the writers take them to heart when they get an urge to write in an annoying character WHO DOESN'T DIE AND STAY DEAD, DAMMIT! [wipes drool]
in startrek: next generation there was an episode where there was a planet populated completely by clones. The population of an entire world, and they were all based on a half dozen people. The janitor looked exactly like their ruler, but with a worse aditude!
Yup. But there was certainly no war. The plot thickener in that episode was about cloning people without their permission. Naughty, naughty.
The other episode I was thinking of was a DS9 one where a guy was arrested for killing... his own clone. Which is something that damn well better be the case if we do start cloning people. Treating clones as subhuman is just wrong in so many ways.
Now the Jem'Hadar were genetically engineered (possibly from scratch) and reproduced entirely through cloning, but that's not quite the same issue here. Those poor bastards had enough problems anyway: no sex, no food, no sleep, and an average lifespan of 5-10 years.
Except it's not. It's the interpretations of various myths, prophecies, and messiahs by dozens of perfectly ordinary men over a period of centuries, translated a dozen times over by still more men with their own agendas and theories as to how it should read. It's like a millennia-long game of Telephone. Hell, some of the events in it took place at a time when an advanced written language (you wouldn't believe just how primitive those early writing systems were) wasn't even a gleam in anyone's eye. Granted, the accumulated discrepancies are probably not too outrageous, but it's almost certainly enough to make argument over the fine points a foolish prospect.
Regarding the dictionary entries, I realized and stated from the beginning that it was obviously not a complete list. I have neither the time nor the inclination to thumb through a thick book compiling what are likely to be many conflicting descriptions (eg, ever try to find the shape of the earth in the bible?) of something I don't think exists anyway. I was willing to bet that one of the people who contributed to these definitions had done exactly that, however. If you have more and better definitions, I'm all ears.
What, praytell, is God's policy towards meting out souls? Only people who are conceived in a womb and born naturally? Tough luck for all those C-section babies. Or do only people who are conceived from an egg and sperm get one? Does the soul get split for identical twins, or does only one of the two get a soul? What if the fetus grows in a woman other than the genetic mother? Are they out of luck? What, exactly, is his policy?
A better question would be, what makes you think humans are fit to guess as to what that policy is? I mean, I doubt the bible says anything about cloning. God is supposed to be unknowable, so quit trying to guess his intentions.
Furthermore, you don't even know what a soul is. Maybe it is encoded in the DNA. Maybe the clone and the original can make nice and share. Point is, you don't know, but you're perfectly willing to make judgements about it. I checked the dictionary, and there were a number of interesting definitions. Obviously this is not the end-all list, but it's a good start.
the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life: So, since those cloned animals don't get a soul (or the animal equivalent), they are really just undead zombies? the spiritual principle embodied in human beings, all rational and spiritual beings, or the universe: So it's this intangible, invisible, immaterial thing that does... what? That certainly clears things up for me. a person's total self: So, the whole flesh and blood part doesn't count? the moral and emotional nature of human beings; the quality that arouses emotion and sentiment: So any human clones will be mindless, immoral, unemotional borg drones incapable of feeling anything at all? Somehow, I just don't think so.
That last is a good question. What does a person without a soul act like? Nobody I know of can answer that for one simple reason: nobody can identify anyone with or without a soul since no one can show any concrete proof whatsoever that there is such a thing. For all we know, only one person in a million gets a soul and the rest of us bumble through life without one.
If you are religious and don't like cloning, fine; don't make one, in whole or in part. But you do not get to tell me that I cannot, ok? Your faith is your own thing, and I do not have to subscribe to it's tenets.
You, sir, replied to a post about Napster users in general by calling them worthless members of society. Gee, that's nice. You made absolutely no distinction between people who get mp3's of cd's they own and people who don't. I seem to recall hearing RIAA drones spouting this exact same nonsense, hence my comparing you to one.
Tell me, have you never in your entire life had an mp3 of a song you didn't buy? How about someone in your family? Any of your friends? I mean, they're all 'freeloading leeches' who don't contribute the slightest bit to society. They really should just be taken out and shot, shouldn't they?
[IT industry] these are rich kids or at least potentially rich and above the law
I named an industry with major clout and employees who are likely to use mp3's. If this were all about people getting free dress suits I'd have named up law firms as the affected companies. And where did you get the idea that I thought them, and myself, above the law? I said that the companies who would eventually be recruiting them would be pissed off. Read before you make stupid remarks.
No, it wouldn't go up by a factor of 20
Almost certainly not, but even if, say, 5% of the 'music criminals' are imprisoned, that's just doubled the prison population here. That would be a massive headache for the Justice department who would not want the bad PR of having to release more 'real' criminals to make room for people who did nothing worse than downloading a file.
I think not
well, there's something I could agree with
If you disagree with the principal of copyright law
I do, but other than that my problem is with companies assuming that every copy made is money that would have been given to them. It that were true, then it would be like stealing from them, but it's not.
I agree with this article, but the MS anti-Open Source article was quite correct. Reasoning is as follows:
M$ claims that X is bad in many ways. M$ does not want X used at all, anywhere. M$ claims that X is a threat to our very way of life. M$ wants to 'educate' legislators about how evil X really is. Well, what is it that legislators do? For one, they make things legal or illegal. Would M$ want X to be legal? I think not.
But yes, it would be nice if those trained monkeys who poke and prod our submissions read the article in question as well.
Why do you people keep insisting that when you copy information the owner of the original has somehow lost money? This is why the idea of 'theft' of Intelectual Property is so stupid. The original owner has not lost anything! How can it be put in the same category as a 5-fingered discount?
Furthermore, everyone who copies a song would not otherwise have bought the CD, so the company's not losing business they would have had. CD prices being what they are, I can't afford them. And since when is it a crime to make a company lose business? I do it all the time by choosing to buy from store A over store B. Should store B be allowed to sue me for not paying them for merchandise I opted not to get from them?
I have a hard time seeing how freeloaders count as a value producing segment of anything
You sound like an RIAA drone, saying that all MP3 users wear black overcoats, have thick, unkempt beards, and spend their time reading the anarchist's cookbook and making evil plans to hack The Establishment.
In reality, however, I think a Fight Club quote, oddly enough, is most appropriate. "The people you are looking for are the people you depend on. We do your laundry, cook your food and serve you dinner. We guard you while you sleep."
Hmmm, let's see. What percentage of students at technical universities do you suppose are Napster users? I bet it'd go over real well with the IT industry to start throwing large numbers of their future employees in the slammer for downloading 'naughty files'.
There are literally millions of people who would have to be arrested if this were enforced. Entire companies would be gutted of their workforce. It's like saying, "Everyone whose last name begins with a vowel, please report to the nearest correctional facility".
The US has 1 million people in prisons, and that's friggin ridiculous. You are suggesting that this number could go up by factor of 20 or so, and as a bonus put a significant portion of it's technical elite behind bars, and nobody is going to notice? I think not.
They should certainly be handed out on a first come first serve basis. Why? Well what if I own bspringsteen.com? Should I have to give that one up too? What about brycespringsteen.com? Gotta have all those typo domains. Where do you draw the line at 'legitimate trademark concerns'?
What if someone else out there is actually named Bruce Springsteen and owns the domain? Should they be forced to give it up simply because the musician didn't bother to get it in a timely fashion? For instance, McDonalds the restaurant suing McDonald the family for trademark infringement.
What if AMD were to come up with a cool new chip, and Intel ran to the courts and said, "Well we have been making chips for a long time now. Our claim on them supercedes AMD's. It is your duty to give us the rights to their design. If you don't, people will get confused and won't be able to buy our chips". This is really, utterly wrong, no? Yet how is it any different from someone demanding that I hand over a domain, which I have paid for with real money, simply because the WIPO thinks they have more of a right to it than me. I don't have to have a legitmate use to own a car, why a domain name?
These domains are property in the literal sense. Unlike IP, we cannot both have it at the same time. It should be treated as such. I buy (rent, lease, whatever) it, it's mine until I say otherwise.
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Re:This has to be the stupidest thing I've ever he
on
Suing Over... Fans?
·
· Score: 1
Going after Creative and nVidia allows them to sue under US patent law
And, as a bonus, lets them get bitch-slapped by two large companies who are not actually breaking the law and have lawyers drooling at the prospect of of getting time in a courtroom.
Slashdot Mirror
Or on some of the steel 1943 pennies!
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And as we all know from reading Snowcrash, it's illegal to use billion-dollar bills as toilet paper...
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I would explain further, but their lawyers and the police (in that order) are already knocking down my door...
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Well, we can all see what a bang-up job the DMCA has done on, oh, say, keeping DeCSS code out of the public eye.
This is not to say they won't try, but if there's a software based crack, they'll certainly fail.
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I think there are also programs that can 'fake' a sound card in your system. The content control player outputs audio to what it thinks is a normal sound card, but it actually gets dumped straight to a file. Neat trick, that.
--
[1718 to 1868] During that period, dispatching felons into exile was one of the prime ways in which the British courts sentenced offenders guilty of various types of larceny; some 50,000 of 'His Majesty's seven-year passengers' - as they were called in the eighteenth century - were sent to North America and a further 160,000 reached Australian shores.
I think most of it is that in NA, convicts represented only a quarter of the immigrants, while Australia was rather more; fewer people could afford to go under their own steam.
But of course at this time, a British 'convict' could be someone who stole a loaf of bread, so they could still make perfectly good colonists (assuming they made the trip without dying or going crazy).
--
My bad, that $1b isn't 5%. It's $150m every year, which is more like 1%.
--
Indeed. One should remember that the RIAA has been pulling nasty media coverage tricks on Napster since day one. About time they got some of their own back.
Also, $1 billion is a lot, even to the record companies. An extra 5% or so on earnings for doing _nothing_ is pretty nice.
--
Would you tolerate this kind of censorship in other forms? If your local government made it illegal to talk about with your friends or write on paper anything having to do with 'adult themed topics', how long would it take you to leave the area for good? How is this very different from what the South Australian state government is trying to do?
--
In the chess game, the majority of the people went for what was the most visible 'best' move. Never mind the fact that it is in the long and even medium term the dumbest thing possible. Most of them probably never looked more than one move into the game, and those who did didn't have the clout to overrule them. In a similar fashion, the response to the Columbine shootings is to ban violence from kids' lives. Most people won't think about the consequences of such an act more than a week into the future. If the government wants to ban free speech, they come up with some excuse, "All we want to do is ban child porn!", that sounds reasonable to a sufficient number of people, and wallah! Those few players who see the ulterior motives or blatantly bad consequences get drowned out in the furor.
--
Not true and you know it.
--
9: Wesley gets gang-raped by a group of female Klingons.
8: Riker gets carried away executing an order from Picard to "knock the little snot around a bit."
7: Data catches him tossing off. Uncomprehending, he requires a detailed explanation from Wesley, who dies of embarrassment.
6: Extensive lab analysis of a green slime found on one of the control panels uncovers the fact that our favorite ensign has, once again, been picking his nose. He is summarily fired and commits suicide.
5: Wes gets gang-raped by a group of male Klingons.
4: On an earlier episode, Wes got to kiss a girl who turned into a Chewbacca-like creature. Here, she returns, and they once again get involved. (Un)fortunately, once she gets really heated, she mutates back into a wookie and forces Wesley to be her cringing sex slave. She then tears him limb from limb and eats him.
3: In a rare episode involving characters from both ST and ST:TNG, Spock attempts a Vulcan mind-meld with Wesley. Wesley's head explodes. Spock barely survives, spending the next several days scratching himself and whining.
2: Worf notices a Romulan ship on the scanners, and sends Wesley down to clean out the photon tubes. Later, someone makes a comment about the needs of the many having outweighed the needs of the few.
1: Wes gets involved in a deviant sexual practice known as "tribble stuffing," not realizing that tribbles multiply _anywhere_. Even an emergency laser enema by Dr. Crusher fails to save him.
These are obviously not my own, but I thought they certainly applied. May the writers take them to heart when they get an urge to write in an annoying character WHO DOESN'T DIE AND STAY DEAD, DAMMIT! [wipes drool]
--
Yup. But there was certainly no war. The plot thickener in that episode was about cloning people without their permission. Naughty, naughty.
The other episode I was thinking of was a DS9 one where a guy was arrested for killing ... his own clone. Which is something that damn well better be the case if we do start cloning people. Treating clones as subhuman is just wrong in so many ways.
Now the Jem'Hadar were genetically engineered (possibly from scratch) and reproduced entirely through cloning, but that's not quite the same issue here. Those poor bastards had enough problems anyway: no sex, no food, no sleep, and an average lifespan of 5-10 years.
--
Except it's not. It's the interpretations of various myths, prophecies, and messiahs by dozens of perfectly ordinary men over a period of centuries, translated a dozen times over by still more men with their own agendas and theories as to how it should read. It's like a millennia-long game of Telephone. Hell, some of the events in it took place at a time when an advanced written language (you wouldn't believe just how primitive those early writing systems were) wasn't even a gleam in anyone's eye. Granted, the accumulated discrepancies are probably not too outrageous, but it's almost certainly enough to make argument over the fine points a foolish prospect.
Regarding the dictionary entries, I realized and stated from the beginning that it was obviously not a complete list. I have neither the time nor the inclination to thumb through a thick book compiling what are likely to be many conflicting descriptions (eg, ever try to find the shape of the earth in the bible?) of something I don't think exists anyway. I was willing to bet that one of the people who contributed to these definitions had done exactly that, however. If you have more and better definitions, I'm all ears.
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Maybe, but it's still a hell of a lot of fun.
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Star Trek never had Clone Wars; that was Star Wars.
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Err, no. The clone is a genetic duplicate of someone who did indeed get physical traits from two people.
It's like a biological transitive principle: C is made from A and B; D is identical to C, therefore D is also made from A and B.
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A better question would be, what makes you think humans are fit to guess as to what that policy is? I mean, I doubt the bible says anything about cloning. God is supposed to be unknowable, so quit trying to guess his intentions.
Furthermore, you don't even know what a soul is. Maybe it is encoded in the DNA. Maybe the clone and the original can make nice and share. Point is, you don't know, but you're perfectly willing to make judgements about it. I checked the dictionary, and there were a number of interesting definitions. Obviously this is not the end-all list, but it's a good start.
the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life: So, since those cloned animals don't get a soul (or the animal equivalent), they are really just undead zombies? ... what? That certainly clears things up for me.
the spiritual principle embodied in human beings, all rational and spiritual beings, or the universe: So it's this intangible, invisible, immaterial thing that does
a person's total self: So, the whole flesh and blood part doesn't count?
the moral and emotional nature of human beings; the quality that arouses emotion and sentiment: So any human clones will be mindless, immoral, unemotional borg drones incapable of feeling anything at all? Somehow, I just don't think so.
That last is a good question. What does a person without a soul act like? Nobody I know of can answer that for one simple reason: nobody can identify anyone with or without a soul since no one can show any concrete proof whatsoever that there is such a thing. For all we know, only one person in a million gets a soul and the rest of us bumble through life without one.
If you are religious and don't like cloning, fine; don't make one, in whole or in part. But you do not get to tell me that I cannot, ok? Your faith is your own thing, and I do not have to subscribe to it's tenets.
--
Start with an insult
You, sir, replied to a post about Napster users in general by calling them worthless members of society. Gee, that's nice. You made absolutely no distinction between people who get mp3's of cd's they own and people who don't. I seem to recall hearing RIAA drones spouting this exact same nonsense, hence my comparing you to one.
Tell me, have you never in your entire life had an mp3 of a song you didn't buy? How about someone in your family? Any of your friends? I mean, they're all 'freeloading leeches' who don't contribute the slightest bit to society. They really should just be taken out and shot, shouldn't they?
[IT industry] these are rich kids or at least potentially rich and above the law
I named an industry with major clout and employees who are likely to use mp3's. If this were all about people getting free dress suits I'd have named up law firms as the affected companies. And where did you get the idea that I thought them, and myself, above the law? I said that the companies who would eventually be recruiting them would be pissed off. Read before you make stupid remarks.
No, it wouldn't go up by a factor of 20
Almost certainly not, but even if, say, 5% of the 'music criminals' are imprisoned, that's just doubled the prison population here. That would be a massive headache for the Justice department who would not want the bad PR of having to release more 'real' criminals to make room for people who did nothing worse than downloading a file.
I think not
well, there's something I could agree with
Well, fuck you too.
--
I do, but other than that my problem is with companies assuming that every copy made is money that would have been given to them. It that were true, then it would be like stealing from them, but it's not.
--
M$ claims that X is bad in many ways. M$ does not want X used at all, anywhere. M$ claims that X is a threat to our very way of life. M$ wants to 'educate' legislators about how evil X really is. Well, what is it that legislators do? For one, they make things legal or illegal. Would M$ want X to be legal? I think not.
But yes, it would be nice if those trained monkeys who poke and prod our submissions read the article in question as well.
--
Furthermore, everyone who copies a song would not otherwise have bought the CD, so the company's not losing business they would have had. CD prices being what they are, I can't afford them. And since when is it a crime to make a company lose business? I do it all the time by choosing to buy from store A over store B. Should store B be allowed to sue me for not paying them for merchandise I opted not to get from them?
--
You sound like an RIAA drone, saying that all MP3 users wear black overcoats, have thick, unkempt beards, and spend their time reading the anarchist's cookbook and making evil plans to hack The Establishment.
In reality, however, I think a Fight Club quote, oddly enough, is most appropriate. "The people you are looking for are the people you depend on. We do your laundry, cook your food and serve you dinner. We guard you while you sleep."
Hmmm, let's see. What percentage of students at technical universities do you suppose are Napster users? I bet it'd go over real well with the IT industry to start throwing large numbers of their future employees in the slammer for downloading 'naughty files'.
There are literally millions of people who would have to be arrested if this were enforced. Entire companies would be gutted of their workforce. It's like saying, "Everyone whose last name begins with a vowel, please report to the nearest correctional facility".
The US has 1 million people in prisons, and that's friggin ridiculous. You are suggesting that this number could go up by factor of 20 or so, and as a bonus put a significant portion of it's technical elite behind bars, and nobody is going to notice? I think not.
--
They should certainly be handed out on a first come first serve basis. Why? Well what if I own bspringsteen.com? Should I have to give that one up too? What about brycespringsteen.com? Gotta have all those typo domains. Where do you draw the line at 'legitimate trademark concerns'?
What if someone else out there is actually named Bruce Springsteen and owns the domain? Should they be forced to give it up simply because the musician didn't bother to get it in a timely fashion? For instance, McDonalds the restaurant suing McDonald the family for trademark infringement.
What if AMD were to come up with a cool new chip, and Intel ran to the courts and said, "Well we have been making chips for a long time now. Our claim on them supercedes AMD's. It is your duty to give us the rights to their design. If you don't, people will get confused and won't be able to buy our chips". This is really, utterly wrong, no? Yet how is it any different from someone demanding that I hand over a domain, which I have paid for with real money, simply because the WIPO thinks they have more of a right to it than me. I don't have to have a legitmate use to own a car, why a domain name?
These domains are property in the literal sense. Unlike IP, we cannot both have it at the same time. It should be treated as such. I buy (rent, lease, whatever) it, it's mine until I say otherwise.
--
And, as a bonus, lets them get bitch-slapped by two large companies who are not actually breaking the law and have lawyers drooling at the prospect of of getting time in a courtroom.
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