no we just have gun registration that is turning out to be horrendously expensive and hugely ineffective.
Don't get me wrong, I'm actually pro gun control, and I don't believe that gun ownership is a right, but I have to take issue with your implication that the Canadian governments isn't heavy handed and dictatorial when it suits them.
Just look at Chretien's hissy fit when the British government tried to bestow honours on a newspaper owner who critisized him.
speaking as a Canuck, I find our government's pronouncements about the very tiring on a good day and bloody irritating on a bad one.
Did anyone pay attention to the last election. One of their more ridiculous promises was to fund and build a "Canadian" portal to keep Canadians away from nasty american imperialist things like yahoo. This wondersite is supposed to be the one-stop solution to everything Canadian on the web. This is worrisome on several fronts:
1) It WILL end up being a slave to pro-government interest groups as the CBC is.
2) It's unfair to use government money to comete directly with private companies such as canoe and the like.
3) It will be a huge beast that sucks yet more of my tax money for a service that I don't need...
Canada has a few advantages, but these are overshadowed by our sad, pathetic anti-Americanism and self-righteous condemnation of sucess.
You know, if you're going to simply cut and paste your previous rants, you might at least use some cute fake html tags.
But, nitpicking aside, you're "Intelectual Property is bunk" position still fails to address the obvious question of what will motivate organisations such as drug companies to develop new treatments if they cannot recover costs, let alone make a profit.
And as someone said before "Since you can't put a fence around your bank balance, does that mean that I can have it?"
Man I hope I didn't just waste my time feeding a troll...
I don't know why I'm saying this, because/. is perpetually misrepresenting the articles it links to, but the article in question DOES NOT say that Carpal Tunnel Syndrome doesn't exist. Rather it says that there does not appear to be a link between keyboard use and carpal tunnel syndrome. (i.e. Office workers using regular keyboards, have the same incidence of carpal tunnel as the rest of society).
I suppose that if the editors of/. were told that they were not infected with HIV, they would conclude that AIDS is a big hoax...
I'm really showing my ignorance here, but I presume that the requirement of writing over each bit "several times" means that there is some way to tell what a bit was set to immediately before the last time it was set?
Seems a little funky. How many times does a bit have to be changed, to make it's previous value unrecoverable?
do they download the whole game to your hard drive and then have it "expire" in 72 hours, or do they only give you parts of the game, and when your 72 hours are up, they just stop letting you download the game info, and you're left with some code that doesn't add up to a complete game.
I don't know what they're doing, but I suspect that it's the second method or something like it. The first one probably wouldn't make it past too many feasability studies...
The code is released, TiVoNets/TiVo's sell like mad.
DirectTV gets wind, and tells TiVo to "shut them down".
TiVo complies: nightly dialin's delete files that aren't supposed to be there, add software that changes the MFS, add encryption to the MFS data (making any hacking illegal).
This drives the hackers underground. The honeymoon is over. TiVo treats its hackes like DirectTV treats DSS hackers.
The TiVo hackers subvert and make the program guide free.
TiVo looses it's revenue stream.
Everybody looses.
***
Until we find away to make information "free", without removing all incentives to make the content in the first place, these technologies will continue to be surpressed in the legal system. Simply saying "screw 'em" achieves nothing except to make the guy saying it feel all cool and defiant.
Don't know about the USA, but there's definately a Levy in Canada.
We've had two previous/. discussions that I know of. (Here and Here ). Info about the Canadian Levy can be found Here, or you can look at the Copyright Board site and get lost there.
Oh please, that argument has been heard a million times and it wasn't that original to begin with.
1) Porn is defined as such by a general consensus. That means that David is obviously not porn (as 99% of people would say) and whitehouse.com is porn (As 99% of people would say). Grey areas are when you get anything less than 2:1 agreement. In those cases you need to find a way to agree to disagree. One solution would be to say that grey areas fall into the cateogory of not. Another way is to say that they fall up to local discretion. This is what democracy is for.
2) Gee... how feasible is trying to eliminate crime. oh, it's impossible, I guess we should get rid of the legal system then. WRONG! You do the best you can and you try to get better at it.
3) To make sure this happens as little as possible, make sure you properly address grey areas. (See 1). Will the system be perfect? No, but that doesn't mean it's perfectly awful.
Yes because schools are not there to pass on ALL information.
For instance, a school does not exist so that some wacko tell kids how to tell what a jew is by the shape of their nose and how to "deal" with them when they identify them.
Schools exist in order to educate your people and give them some of the skills they will need in the world.
That depends on the age group were talking about. For sake of argument I'm going to choose Junior High. Say 12-13 yr olds.
For that age group it's reasonable to block racist websites. ie. sites that say that niggers [sic] are a pestilence. Same thing if they say that about other groups. Or if they say things like "kill all fags".
Use your head. There are plenty of examples.
Remember. Just because you can't block everything doesn't mean that you shouldn't block anything.
need more volunteers showing up at the protests. This protest is being organized by the EFF against federally mandated censorware in schools and libraries
Maybe, just MAYBE, there isn't actually widespread opposition to censorware in schools & libraries. I for one am not against some form of censorship in schools. These are schools for crying out loud. There are some things that should be blocked out of schools.
Libraries are a different issue, but I find myself unable to support protests because my moderate stance in unwelcome with the EFF.
And I am NOT saying that censoreware is perfect. It's obvious that it's not, but the solution is even more obvious. Build better censoreware with open lists of what is blacklisted.
Moderators: What I've said may be unpopular, but do not mark me down as a troll or flamebait because I'm serious and this is a legitimate point of view.
The problem is that they aren't taking the individual user to court, they are *asking* the ISP to ditch them.
An ISP does not care about the finer points of copyright law, and they almost certainly will not bother to check if the material being shared is actually in violation of copyright. Gnutella shares many things, not just MPAA movies.
If they were really going after the individual user, this is what would happen. Naughty Nate the Gnutella addict would wake up one morning to a letter telling him he's being sued for copyright infringement and many $$$ in damages.
That would be harsh, but then a court, not an ISP or the MPAA would decide if punishment was appropriate.
THAT's going after the user. What they're doing is intimidation.
Once I've created something, surely I am the only person who gets to decide what happens to it?
Yes you are, but for a limited amount of time. After that, material passes into the public domain. The problem with things like the DMCA and CSS is that they effectively extend the copyright on the material on a DVD indefinately.
It doens't ever become okay to break the so called copy protection (i.e. access control) on a DVD and copy the work, so the work effectively never enters the public domain.
Another problem with the control system on DVD's is the region coding. That system is in place to prevent the transfer of a material that has already been paid for. It would be akin to placing some kind of protection on a book published in the USA that made the ink go invisible when you took it overseas.
Now I can understand why they did it, and for new theatre releases they might have a good argument as to why they should be allowed to do it, but they effectively destroyed their own legitimacy when they kept the region coding even for re-releases of old films.
The problem is not that content producers tried to protect their copyrights, the problem is that they made a quick grab to extend them at the expense of the public.
I mean yes, AIM messages do go through AOL servers so adding AIM inter-operability to Jabber does "use" AOL servers in the sense that it sends messages through the servers, but so does e-mail. I mean if I regularly exchange e-mail with a friend with AOL service, I'm "using" AOL servers without paying, but I'd hardly say I'm raping and pillaging.
AOL is a success story and they deserve a lot of praise for it, but they're still part of the rest of the internet which means that others will make some use of their servers.
Although apparently I need to get a bigger antena. I also live in the Okanagan, but I've only been able to get CHBC (which is modified CBC for people who don't know). Could be something to do with being up against the mountains in Glenrosa. Thanks for the info though, I'll try a bigger antena the next time I get ticked with shaw and cancel my cable service.
Thanks.
btw- I don't agree with the British system, but someone asked. But there are better explanations up now, so read one of those.
The Brits collect a fee, (they call it a license) that pays for the signals broadcast over the airwaves. (i.e. the BBC).
No exceptions. I have no idea how it works, but I've heard they have equipment that can tell if you've got an operational TV (power switched on) inside your house, from a van parked outside.
Oh, incidentally, where do you live, I live in BC, and I get exactly one channel in medocre quality off the airwaves. (CBC).
actually, U571 aside, the Brits were primarily responsible for cracking the enigma code. So, it's not self-promotion, it's just a statement of fact.
Yes they did have help, but most of the work was done by the Brits.
Incidentally, I think that snatching of the enigma machine that was loosely portrayed in U571, was actually done by a Canadian. (Thought I think he was under British command at the time). Anyone know for sure?
Slashdot Mirror
no we just have gun registration that is turning out to be horrendously expensive and hugely ineffective. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually pro gun control, and I don't believe that gun ownership is a right, but I have to take issue with your implication that the Canadian governments isn't heavy handed and dictatorial when it suits them. Just look at Chretien's hissy fit when the British government tried to bestow honours on a newspaper owner who critisized him.
speaking as a Canuck, I find our government's pronouncements about the very tiring on a good day and bloody irritating on a bad one.
Did anyone pay attention to the last election. One of their more ridiculous promises was to fund and build a "Canadian" portal to keep Canadians away from nasty american imperialist things like yahoo. This wondersite is supposed to be the one-stop solution to everything Canadian on the web. This is worrisome on several fronts:
1) It WILL end up being a slave to pro-government interest groups as the CBC is.
2) It's unfair to use government money to comete directly with private companies such as canoe and the like.
3) It will be a huge beast that sucks yet more of my tax money for a service that I don't need...
Canada has a few advantages, but these are overshadowed by our sad, pathetic anti-Americanism and self-righteous condemnation of sucess.
I didn't see Canada creating the internet...
Well you can't prove morality by logic alone, but you can prove that divorce is bad if by bad you mean harmful to children.
Check out the 1993 article on the subject in Atlantic Monthly. Always a good source...
You know, if you're going to simply cut and paste your previous rants, you might at least use some cute fake html tags.
But, nitpicking aside, you're "Intelectual Property is bunk" position still fails to address the obvious question of what will motivate organisations such as drug companies to develop new treatments if they cannot recover costs, let alone make a profit.
And as someone said before "Since you can't put a fence around your bank balance, does that mean that I can have it?"
Man I hope I didn't just waste my time feeding a troll...
I don't know why I'm saying this, because /. is perpetually misrepresenting the articles it links to, but the article in question DOES NOT say that Carpal Tunnel Syndrome doesn't exist. Rather it says that there does not appear to be a link between keyboard use and carpal tunnel syndrome. (i.e. Office workers using regular keyboards, have the same incidence of carpal tunnel as the rest of society).
/. were told that they were not infected with HIV, they would conclude that AIDS is a big hoax...
I suppose that if the editors of
Seems a little funky. How many times does a bit have to be changed, to make it's previous value unrecoverable?
well that depends...
do they download the whole game to your hard drive and then have it "expire" in 72 hours, or do they only give you parts of the game, and when your 72 hours are up, they just stop letting you download the game info, and you're left with some code that doesn't add up to a complete game.
I don't know what they're doing, but I suspect that it's the second method or something like it. The first one probably wouldn't make it past too many feasability studies...
This is a reposting of cworley/s comment on the TIVO discussion board.
***
Here's the scenario:
The code is released, TiVoNets/TiVo's sell like mad.
DirectTV gets wind, and tells TiVo to "shut them down".
TiVo complies: nightly dialin's delete files that aren't supposed to be there, add software that changes the MFS, add encryption to the MFS data (making any hacking illegal).
This drives the hackers underground. The honeymoon is over. TiVo treats its hackes like DirectTV treats DSS hackers.
The TiVo hackers subvert and make the program guide free.
TiVo looses it's revenue stream.
Everybody looses.
***
Until we find away to make information "free", without removing all incentives to make the content in the first place, these technologies will continue to be surpressed in the legal system. Simply saying "screw 'em" achieves nothing except to make the guy saying it feel all cool and defiant.
We've had two previous /. discussions that I know of. (Here and Here ). Info about the Canadian Levy can be found Here, or you can look at the Copyright Board site and get lost there.
Perhaps the problem is that the US system of search warrants is wrong.
n sk y.htm
Here's an interesting viewpoint.
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/10/budia
I've made your point myself in the past, so I shouldn't poke holes, but I just realized something.
.AOL have?
WHY would AOL want it's own tld?
What's wrong with AOL.com ?
What clear advantages does
I think the lack of a compelling answer to those questions are the reason it hasn't been done yet.
Corporate pride just doesn't go as far as it used to I guess...
I suppose it depends what you mean by legitimacy.
I would suggest that legitimate is whatever most people use.
I'm not arguing that ICANN has any technical merits, I'm just saying that they've got the loudest voice.
Think of it as democracy. He with the most users wins regardless of technical merit.
As an aside, I think an alternate root needs between 5% and 10% of internet users resolving its names before the count for much on a global scale.
Forget everything else. The biggest thing that makes ICANN legitimate is that practically every ISP in the world follows their lead.
I support OpenNIC, but the fact remains is that I am in a VERY small minority. Until that changes, ICANN is "in charge".
1) Porn is defined as such by a general consensus. That means that David is obviously not porn (as 99% of people would say) and whitehouse.com is porn (As 99% of people would say). Grey areas are when you get anything less than 2:1 agreement. In those cases you need to find a way to agree to disagree. One solution would be to say that grey areas fall into the cateogory of not. Another way is to say that they fall up to local discretion. This is what democracy is for.
2) Gee... how feasible is trying to eliminate crime. oh, it's impossible, I guess we should get rid of the legal system then. WRONG! You do the best you can and you try to get better at it.
3) To make sure this happens as little as possible, make sure you properly address grey areas. (See 1). Will the system be perfect? No, but that doesn't mean it's perfectly awful.
Yes because schools are not there to pass on ALL information.
For instance, a school does not exist so that some wacko tell kids how to tell what a jew is by the shape of their nose and how to "deal" with them when they identify them.
Schools exist in order to educate your people and give them some of the skills they will need in the world.
That depends on the age group were talking about. For sake of argument I'm going to choose Junior High. Say 12-13 yr olds.
For that age group it's reasonable to block racist websites. ie. sites that say that niggers [sic] are a pestilence. Same thing if they say that about other groups. Or if they say things like "kill all fags".
Use your head. There are plenty of examples.
Remember. Just because you can't block everything doesn't mean that you shouldn't block anything.
Maybe, just MAYBE, there isn't actually widespread opposition to censorware in schools & libraries. I for one am not against some form of censorship in schools. These are schools for crying out loud. There are some things that should be blocked out of schools.
Libraries are a different issue, but I find myself unable to support protests because my moderate stance in unwelcome with the EFF.
And I am NOT saying that censoreware is perfect. It's obvious that it's not, but the solution is even more obvious. Build better censoreware with open lists of what is blacklisted.
Moderators: What I've said may be unpopular, but do not mark me down as a troll or flamebait because I'm serious and this is a legitimate point of view.
The problem is that they aren't taking the individual user to court, they are *asking* the ISP to ditch them.
An ISP does not care about the finer points of copyright law, and they almost certainly will not bother to check if the material being shared is actually in violation of copyright. Gnutella shares many things, not just MPAA movies.
If they were really going after the individual user, this is what would happen. Naughty Nate the Gnutella addict would wake up one morning to a letter telling him he's being sued for copyright infringement and many $$$ in damages.
That would be harsh, but then a court, not an ISP or the MPAA would decide if punishment was appropriate.
THAT's going after the user. What they're doing is intimidation.
Absolutely...
If someone wants me to watch a commercial, they better make it entertaining and/or interesting. And that's not impossible, it's just difficult.
The added bonus is that if an advert entertains me it will make me more likely to buy their product.
And to think I used to think his articles were pretty good...
Yes you are, but for a limited amount of time. After that, material passes into the public domain. The problem with things like the DMCA and CSS is that they effectively extend the copyright on the material on a DVD indefinately.
It doens't ever become okay to break the so called copy protection (i.e. access control) on a DVD and copy the work, so the work effectively never enters the public domain.
Another problem with the control system on DVD's is the region coding. That system is in place to prevent the transfer of a material that has already been paid for. It would be akin to placing some kind of protection on a book published in the USA that made the ink go invisible when you took it overseas.
Now I can understand why they did it, and for new theatre releases they might have a good argument as to why they should be allowed to do it, but they effectively destroyed their own legitimacy when they kept the region coding even for re-releases of old films.
The problem is not that content producers tried to protect their copyrights, the problem is that they made a quick grab to extend them at the expense of the public.
uh... don't you think you're over-reacting?
I mean yes, AIM messages do go through AOL servers so adding AIM inter-operability to Jabber does "use" AOL servers in the sense that it sends messages through the servers, but so does e-mail. I mean if I regularly exchange e-mail with a friend with AOL service, I'm "using" AOL servers without paying, but I'd hardly say I'm raping and pillaging.
AOL is a success story and they deserve a lot of praise for it, but they're still part of the rest of the internet which means that others will make some use of their servers.
not that I don't believe you, but I've had my hotmail account a lot longer than 2 days and I'm only getting a little over 1 piece of spam a day.
I use my hotmail account for outgoing mail, and I give people my iname address that is set to forward to hotmail.
So in theory, I should be getting double the spam as I've got two addresses going to a single inbox. (Three if you count my university account).
The only real protection I have is that I have hotmail's spam protection turned on, and I block the sender of every piece of spam I get.
Some people seem to get harder hit by spam than others...
I am a real limey. Proud dual citizen.
Although apparently I need to get a bigger antena. I also live in the Okanagan, but I've only been able to get CHBC (which is modified CBC for people who don't know). Could be something to do with being up against the mountains in Glenrosa. Thanks for the info though, I'll try a bigger antena the next time I get ticked with shaw and cancel my cable service.
Thanks.
btw- I don't agree with the British system, but someone asked. But there are better explanations up now, so read one of those.
...
Said it elsewhere, but I'll say it again here.
The Brits collect a fee, (they call it a license) that pays for the signals broadcast over the airwaves. (i.e. the BBC).
No exceptions. I have no idea how it works, but I've heard they have equipment that can tell if you've got an operational TV (power switched on) inside your house, from a van parked outside.
Oh, incidentally, where do you live, I live in BC, and I get exactly one channel in medocre quality off the airwaves. (CBC).
actually, U571 aside, the Brits were primarily responsible for cracking the enigma code. So, it's not self-promotion, it's just a statement of fact.
Yes they did have help, but most of the work was done by the Brits.
Incidentally, I think that snatching of the enigma machine that was loosely portrayed in U571, was actually done by a Canadian. (Thought I think he was under British command at the time). Anyone know for sure?