My dad has his email on a website, and he gets about 40 spam messages a day. Since they do anything to disguise the nature of their spam, sometimes he loses email that he meant to keep.
This is his business email address. He has lost *important* messages. He is not a technical person. This should not require expert intervention.
And clearly, grandparent poster was kidding. A hefty fine for bulk violators would be completely fair. Spam does real damage.
You're right. And because of the Patriot act, things are changing. Somewhat. A lot of librarians are realizing that they shouldn't keep info for very long.
Well. We aren't going to see anything about rBGH... they already covered up the *short* term effects. I don't see why they'd let the long term effects get researched.
Of course, there aren't necessarily any adverse health effects to drinking milk that's high in puss. So maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion.
Well. MOSR is the only site that's both constantly incorrect and constantly paid attention to. There are other sites that are just as full of crap, but MOSR gets attention... well... because they act like they get attention.
The frustrating thing with MOSR is that they seem to never fucking learn. They might always have well placed sources for their info, but... those sources are so overly optimistic that they consistently make MOSR look like idiots.
ThinkSecret and MacRumors are both much better rumor sites, and I don't believe that they detract from Apple's sales in the slightest. Nick DePlume of Thinksecret seems to care enough about accuracy that he doesn't make many long-distance predictions. I've never seen him be very incorrect. His steadfast accuracy has made me reconsider purchase of a PC desktop, lately, because he says ATI is working on an all-in-wonder card for the mac. I believe him completely.
MacRumors has a much higher volume of information, so sometimes they come up with crap, but they never make it sound more authoritative than it is. They don't act like you can bet the farm on their information.
At this point, MOSR needs to curl up and die. Back in the day, they had enough viewers and sources that they could have been the premier rumor site indefinitely. Even with Jobs' crackdown on leaks. But their BS predictions (and crappy management) probably alienated as many sources as it did readers. So now those sources go to Thinksecret.
Ironic that you choose this example. The embargoes were being used in iraq to starve that population into submission (by and large we did manage to starve several hundred thousand to death). Despite this they did not attack us. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
I'm sorry, you're not making any sense. That was not an example. It had nothing to do with my point at all. It was a sidebar. And I said the same thing about it that you did. I do not believe that we actually disagree. I believe that you have misread all of my posts. I don't think they were complicated, either.
Be fair. Levy isn't evil, he's just naive. He wrote that fluff peice about Palladium, but he's also written articles with some good cypherpunk content that's been published in Newsweek. Sometimes he gets it, and often he doesn't. In order to make a story more interesting or readable for a lay-person, he'll often emphasize the wrong thing. I don't mind, because otherwise there's no way that lay-person was ever going to know about the subject in the first place. I don't think he's trying to undermine Lessig at all.
Radio stations pay licensing fees to broadcast the music they play.
Um, sure. Radio stations pay miniscule fees to labels that pay massive sums to "promoters" that pay massive sums to the radio stations so that the radio station will play the music.
So legally, yes, there is a difference. De facto, however, the only difference between Napster and ClearChannel is that the record labels have to pay ClearChannel, and Napster was supplied to them for free. Of course, on Napster, you get to choose what you listen to, and on ClearChannel, the record labels get to choose.
I still feel like that's relying on the physical goods metaphor, but I can't see how. I suppose I don't feel that SPSS has a natural right to a monopoly on distribution of their creation.
I did not say or imply that it wasn't a crime. It was a crime. It wasn't stealing, and it wasn't "intellectual property trespassing" either. It was a copyright violation.
To your point, though, I didn't need statistics software. I played with it in my dorm room. I didn't use it for homework. I didn't publish results. The only third parties that might have been disadvantaged were the makers of the video games I didn't play for two weeks.
My intended point was not that we did not commit a crime. I know we committed a crime: unauthorized computer use, least of all, since we got it off a school computer. My point was that what we did was not immoral.
Step 1) In a major metropolitan area, set up a huge wifi network. Name it "GCN $50/mo 555-1212" where 555-1212 is your phone number and GCN is the name of your ISP.
Step 2)...
Step 3) Profit!
That's what some folks are doing in Mendocino, and it seems like it'd be a great service. I opened up my laptop in a friends house, and saw I was getting wifi access. I'd have paid them $10 for the weekend, easily.
Their are a TON of ways you can steal without it being a physical good. If I hack a university and enroll myself classes, free of charge, I would consider that stealing.
Hrm... that's interesting. Most people (and the government) would consider that unauthorized computer use, fraud, and trespass. If you equate theft with damaging illegal activity, well... then... you win. But it's not grandparent poster that's being ignorant.
Your ranking implies that things that are illegal are necessarily less moral.
This is an upsetting distinction. I think that MLK and Ghandi would make two distinctions: Effective vs inneffective, and violent vs nonviolent. Prefering legal means might be more effective in certain cases, but if the gov't is immoral, often the law should be violated.
Also, keep in mind that Ghandi, most famous pacifist, knew perfectly well when and why violence would be necessary. When dealing with the British, he succeeded by using the threat of violence. Although the situation was never forced upon him, he knew that he would need to use immediate violent means with the soviets if they ever threatened.
Um. I don't think that MLK Jr. or Ghandi would argue that it's important to work toward a solution without breaking the law. It's important to be nonviolent, but sometimes breaking the law is exactly what they did. MLK spent plenty of time in prison.
I also don't think that Chris would rationalize this with a cause.
Personally, I am for the destruction of copyright as we know it. I don't believe it should last much more than 20 years, and until there's a legal change, I want to execute a de facto change. I also believe in vastly expanded fair use. I haven't done anything spectacularly illegal about it yet, but if and when I do, I'll be ready to accept the consequences.
Also, keep in mind that the first person that was *ever* arrested for doing what Chris was doing was arrested in like 1998. Trading copyrighted works for free was NOT ILLEGAL until there was some law passed in 1996. Of course, to be fair, until recently, trading copyrighted works cost a lot of money.
1. Piously sure of one's own righteousness; moralistic.
I'd say you're pretty sure of your own righteousness and moralistic. I'm also not sure it's so bad to be self-righteous.
A friend of mine figured out how to get a copy of SPSS Clementine off a machine at school. The software costs $50,000. I spent weeks playing with that thing. It's fantastically interesting for anyone that's taken an intro AI course. We did not steal from anybody. Bits are not like bricks. We were not going to pay anyone $50,000 for anything. No one lost money.
You said, "It is not only illegal to steal code, it is wrong." That would indicate that you do, in fact, care what we do. And also, the logic that makes the GPL immoral to break and the MS EULA moral to break is widely proclaimed here on/. all the time: The MS EULA says that you cannot use something you own in any way you like. The GPL only gives you abilities that would otherwise be illegal. They are different morally, and even enforceable by different laws.
Let's see, how are we addressing this issue this week? Isn't this the way that we *want* piracy to be addressed? By going after the *pirates* instead of the *technology?* I wonder how many reactionary Slashbots will attack USC for taking *exactly* the approach that these same Slashbots have recommended so many times.
Hat's off to you, USC. Keep up the good work.
Man... This troll comes out to play on *every* *single* *topic*. I almost feel like wading through past topics to cut and paste the response that someone else made to this post in one of it's original locations. I wouldn't be surprised if most of this post was cut and pasted itself.
Anyway. The obvious response is, AC, that Slashdot is a heterogenous community. As much as you'd like to think we're all hypocrites that agree with each other about everything, sometimes the differing responses aren't due to hypocrisy, but rather honest disagreement.
And even more to the point: NONE OF THE HIGHLY MODDED POSTS SAY ANYTHING LIKE THAT. It looks like all us slashbots are thinking harder than you are.
Personally, I oppose copyright. I would like to live to see the death of copyright. I don't like what USC is doing, only because they're slowing down the process. But, everyone here has to see that USC has the right to do whatever the fuck they like with their bandwidth. If they don't want P2P traffic on it, that's up to them. They could also decide that they don't want any foreign language traffic. And no slashbot said any different.
Um. PGP supplies both secure authentication and secure communication. Secure authentication is provided by signing an outgoing email. Secure communication is provided by encrypting an outgoing signed email. The only thing that regular cleartext password exchange on POP3 messes up is secure availability. That is, someone could get your password and start deleting incoming emails that were for you.
You are of course correct: The benefits of PGP are not confered upon email correspondents that do not use it. You also said, "Yes if you encrypt all of your emails and if everyone who ever emails you encrypts their's your a step up, but that clear text thing kinda makes it all worthless. "
And that is not correct at all. If everyone you correspond with uses PGP, and all your passwords are sent in cleartext, then no one can impersonate you, and no one can snoop your email. They could only delete your incoming mail. That's a pretty significant step up.
If this post is dead on topic, then my name isn't Elwood P Dowd.
And it isn't.
Re:Crack to stop all this...
on
"Squishy" DRM?
·
· Score: 2
If by "More effective" you mean less effective, sure. I would never suggest that grandparent poster's idea is a good one, but please explain to me how your plan will be more effective.
"As technology makes things easier to do, the concepts we grew up with -- sharing a tape with a friend, making a mixed tape -- turned from sharing an LP with a friend into plugging in an iPod and downloading 1,000 songs in eight minutes," said Cohen. "That may have to change."
Oooh. I'm so angry I could spit. The $20 Billion music industry wants to curb the $600 Billion tech industry? I didn't steal anything when I put 1000 songs on my ipod. He wants DRM to be squishy in that no software will contain the features that violate DRM. They're just talking about improving the user interface so you don't realize that capabilities have been stolen from you.
Tigers have to struggle for their existence. They have very good reasons for wanting to conserve as much energy as possible. Tigers should *want* to become fat, because then they would have more energy to screw and make baby tigers.
People do not have to struggle for their existence. We do not need to store fat, because we are guaranteed to be able to eat later.
Our core desires and behaviors have not changed since our operational environment was more like that of tigers. So we want to sleep when after we eat large meals so we can turn it into fat. Keep in mind that evolution isn't going to necessarily favor a very long life. If we lived to be 90 years old when we were still hunters, too much of the population would not be able to produce food.
>>>Pretty impressive, but you still can't get the constrasts and subtle shadows and depth that you can get with film.
>>That's only true in some sense. Many people compose multiple digital images at different exposures in order to get _greater_ range than film.
>That technique only works on something that doesn't move too much. Try it with children, say.
Staples work great. Anyway, the only requirement is that you get the fast-moving portion in one shot. Keep the camera in the same place and take a few extra shots to fill in the background textures.
Um. As your other respondents have pointed out, production, manufacturing, and distribution costs really have gone down. CDs are cheap, digital transmission is cheaper, and production is infinitely cheaper.
The only thing they still do that costs money is marketting. Their prices are high because of all the dollars they poured into the next *nSync knockoff.
Call me crazy, but I have no sympathy for that kind of mistake. I don't want to pay for that when I buy my new Radiohead album.
Slashdot Mirror
It already costs me a day-job just to keep my slashdot-Karma positive,
(...)
Moderation Totals: Funny=3, Total=3.
Every little bit helps!
My dad has his email on a website, and he gets about 40 spam messages a day. Since they do anything to disguise the nature of their spam, sometimes he loses email that he meant to keep.
This is his business email address. He has lost *important* messages. He is not a technical person. This should not require expert intervention.
And clearly, grandparent poster was kidding. A hefty fine for bulk violators would be completely fair. Spam does real damage.
You're right. And because of the Patriot act, things are changing. Somewhat. A lot of librarians are realizing that they shouldn't keep info for very long.
Well. We aren't going to see anything about rBGH... they already covered up the *short* term effects. I don't see why they'd let the long term effects get researched.
Of course, there aren't necessarily any adverse health effects to drinking milk that's high in puss. So maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion.
Well. MOSR is the only site that's both constantly incorrect and constantly paid attention to. There are other sites that are just as full of crap, but MOSR gets attention... well... because they act like they get attention.
The frustrating thing with MOSR is that they seem to never fucking learn. They might always have well placed sources for their info, but... those sources are so overly optimistic that they consistently make MOSR look like idiots.
ThinkSecret and MacRumors are both much better rumor sites, and I don't believe that they detract from Apple's sales in the slightest. Nick DePlume of Thinksecret seems to care enough about accuracy that he doesn't make many long-distance predictions. I've never seen him be very incorrect. His steadfast accuracy has made me reconsider purchase of a PC desktop, lately, because he says ATI is working on an all-in-wonder card for the mac. I believe him completely.
MacRumors has a much higher volume of information, so sometimes they come up with crap, but they never make it sound more authoritative than it is. They don't act like you can bet the farm on their information.
At this point, MOSR needs to curl up and die. Back in the day, they had enough viewers and sources that they could have been the premier rumor site indefinitely. Even with Jobs' crackdown on leaks. But their BS predictions (and crappy management) probably alienated as many sources as it did readers. So now those sources go to Thinksecret.
Ironic that you choose this example. The embargoes were being used in iraq to starve that population into submission (by and large we did manage to starve several hundred thousand to death). Despite this they did not attack us. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
I'm sorry, you're not making any sense. That was not an example. It had nothing to do with my point at all. It was a sidebar. And I said the same thing about it that you did. I do not believe that we actually disagree. I believe that you have misread all of my posts. I don't think they were complicated, either.
Be fair. Levy isn't evil, he's just naive. He wrote that fluff peice about Palladium, but he's also written articles with some good cypherpunk content that's been published in Newsweek. Sometimes he gets it, and often he doesn't. In order to make a story more interesting or readable for a lay-person, he'll often emphasize the wrong thing. I don't mind, because otherwise there's no way that lay-person was ever going to know about the subject in the first place. I don't think he's trying to undermine Lessig at all.
Um. I don't think you could really say the Hip started it either.
Radio stations pay licensing fees to broadcast the music they play.
Um, sure. Radio stations pay miniscule fees to labels that pay massive sums to "promoters" that pay massive sums to the radio stations so that the radio station will play the music.
So legally, yes, there is a difference. De facto, however, the only difference between Napster and ClearChannel is that the record labels have to pay ClearChannel, and Napster was supplied to them for free. Of course, on Napster, you get to choose what you listen to, and on ClearChannel, the record labels get to choose.
Fair 'nuff.
I still feel like that's relying on the physical goods metaphor, but I can't see how. I suppose I don't feel that SPSS has a natural right to a monopoly on distribution of their creation.
I did not say or imply that it wasn't a crime. It was a crime. It wasn't stealing, and it wasn't "intellectual property trespassing" either. It was a copyright violation.
To your point, though, I didn't need statistics software. I played with it in my dorm room. I didn't use it for homework. I didn't publish results. The only third parties that might have been disadvantaged were the makers of the video games I didn't play for two weeks.
My intended point was not that we did not commit a crime. I know we committed a crime: unauthorized computer use, least of all, since we got it off a school computer. My point was that what we did was not immoral.
Step 1) In a major metropolitan area, set up a huge wifi network. Name it "GCN $50/mo 555-1212" where 555-1212 is your phone number and GCN is the name of your ISP.
...
Step 2)
Step 3) Profit!
That's what some folks are doing in Mendocino, and it seems like it'd be a great service. I opened up my laptop in a friends house, and saw I was getting wifi access. I'd have paid them $10 for the weekend, easily.
Fair 'nuff.
Their are a TON of ways you can steal without it being a physical good. If I hack a university and enroll myself classes, free of charge, I would consider that stealing.
Hrm... that's interesting. Most people (and the government) would consider that unauthorized computer use, fraud, and trespass. If you equate theft with damaging illegal activity, well... then... you win. But it's not grandparent poster that's being ignorant.
Your ranking implies that things that are illegal are necessarily less moral.
This is an upsetting distinction. I think that MLK and Ghandi would make two distinctions: Effective vs inneffective, and violent vs nonviolent. Prefering legal means might be more effective in certain cases, but if the gov't is immoral, often the law should be violated.
Also, keep in mind that Ghandi, most famous pacifist, knew perfectly well when and why violence would be necessary. When dealing with the British, he succeeded by using the threat of violence. Although the situation was never forced upon him, he knew that he would need to use immediate violent means with the soviets if they ever threatened.
Um. I don't think that MLK Jr. or Ghandi would argue that it's important to work toward a solution without breaking the law. It's important to be nonviolent, but sometimes breaking the law is exactly what they did. MLK spent plenty of time in prison.
I also don't think that Chris would rationalize this with a cause.
Personally, I am for the destruction of copyright as we know it. I don't believe it should last much more than 20 years, and until there's a legal change, I want to execute a de facto change. I also believe in vastly expanded fair use. I haven't done anything spectacularly illegal about it yet, but if and when I do, I'll be ready to accept the consequences.
Also, keep in mind that the first person that was *ever* arrested for doing what Chris was doing was arrested in like 1998. Trading copyrighted works for free was NOT ILLEGAL until there was some law passed in 1996. Of course, to be fair, until recently, trading copyrighted works cost a lot of money.
self-righteous
/. all the time: The MS EULA says that you cannot use something you own in any way you like. The GPL only gives you abilities that would otherwise be illegal. They are different morally, and even enforceable by different laws.
adj.
1. Piously sure of one's own righteousness; moralistic.
I'd say you're pretty sure of your own righteousness and moralistic. I'm also not sure it's so bad to be self-righteous.
A friend of mine figured out how to get a copy of SPSS Clementine off a machine at school. The software costs $50,000. I spent weeks playing with that thing. It's fantastically interesting for anyone that's taken an intro AI course. We did not steal from anybody. Bits are not like bricks. We were not going to pay anyone $50,000 for anything. No one lost money.
You said, "It is not only illegal to steal code, it is wrong." That would indicate that you do, in fact, care what we do. And also, the logic that makes the GPL immoral to break and the MS EULA moral to break is widely proclaimed here on
Let's see, how are we addressing this issue this week? Isn't this the way that we *want* piracy to be addressed? By going after the *pirates* instead of the *technology?* I wonder how many reactionary Slashbots will attack USC for taking *exactly* the approach that these same Slashbots have recommended so many times.
Hat's off to you, USC. Keep up the good work.
Man... This troll comes out to play on *every* *single* *topic*. I almost feel like wading through past topics to cut and paste the response that someone else made to this post in one of it's original locations. I wouldn't be surprised if most of this post was cut and pasted itself.
Anyway. The obvious response is, AC, that Slashdot is a heterogenous community. As much as you'd like to think we're all hypocrites that agree with each other about everything, sometimes the differing responses aren't due to hypocrisy, but rather honest disagreement.
And even more to the point: NONE OF THE HIGHLY MODDED POSTS SAY ANYTHING LIKE THAT. It looks like all us slashbots are thinking harder than you are.
Personally, I oppose copyright. I would like to live to see the death of copyright. I don't like what USC is doing, only because they're slowing down the process. But, everyone here has to see that USC has the right to do whatever the fuck they like with their bandwidth. If they don't want P2P traffic on it, that's up to them. They could also decide that they don't want any foreign language traffic. And no slashbot said any different.
Um. PGP supplies both secure authentication and secure communication. Secure authentication is provided by signing an outgoing email. Secure communication is provided by encrypting an outgoing signed email. The only thing that regular cleartext password exchange on POP3 messes up is secure availability. That is, someone could get your password and start deleting incoming emails that were for you.
You are of course correct: The benefits of PGP are not confered upon email correspondents that do not use it. You also said, "Yes if you encrypt all of your emails and if everyone who ever emails you encrypts their's your a step up, but that clear text thing kinda makes it all worthless. "
And that is not correct at all. If everyone you correspond with uses PGP, and all your passwords are sent in cleartext, then no one can impersonate you, and no one can snoop your email. They could only delete your incoming mail. That's a pretty significant step up.
If this post is dead on topic, then my name isn't Elwood P Dowd.
And it isn't.
If by "More effective" you mean less effective, sure. I would never suggest that grandparent poster's idea is a good one, but please explain to me how your plan will be more effective.
"As technology makes things easier to do, the concepts we grew up with -- sharing a tape with a friend, making a mixed tape -- turned from sharing an LP with a friend into plugging in an iPod and downloading 1,000 songs in eight minutes," said Cohen. "That may have to change."
Oooh. I'm so angry I could spit. The $20 Billion music industry wants to curb the $600 Billion tech industry? I didn't steal anything when I put 1000 songs on my ipod. He wants DRM to be squishy in that no software will contain the features that violate DRM. They're just talking about improving the user interface so you don't realize that capabilities have been stolen from you.
Tigers have to struggle for their existence. They have very good reasons for wanting to conserve as much energy as possible. Tigers should *want* to become fat, because then they would have more energy to screw and make baby tigers.
People do not have to struggle for their existence. We do not need to store fat, because we are guaranteed to be able to eat later.
Our core desires and behaviors have not changed since our operational environment was more like that of tigers. So we want to sleep when after we eat large meals so we can turn it into fat. Keep in mind that evolution isn't going to necessarily favor a very long life. If we lived to be 90 years old when we were still hunters, too much of the population would not be able to produce food.
>>>Pretty impressive, but you still can't get the constrasts and subtle shadows and depth that you can get with film.
>>That's only true in some sense. Many people compose multiple digital images at different exposures in order to get _greater_ range than film.
>That technique only works on something that doesn't move too much. Try it with children, say.
Staples work great. Anyway, the only requirement is that you get the fast-moving portion in one shot. Keep the camera in the same place and take a few extra shots to fill in the background textures.
Um. As your other respondents have pointed out, production, manufacturing, and distribution costs really have gone down. CDs are cheap, digital transmission is cheaper, and production is infinitely cheaper.
The only thing they still do that costs money is marketting. Their prices are high because of all the dollars they poured into the next *nSync knockoff.
Call me crazy, but I have no sympathy for that kind of mistake. I don't want to pay for that when I buy my new Radiohead album.