Why? Because without the broadcasters and cable companies and satelite dishes, TVs have no audience. You think Sony and RCA and all those comapnies can sell a TV that can't get cable or satelite dish pickups? Not enough to make it profitable.
They don't even need to include a box that blocks out certain things... they just scramble -every- channel, and say you can't watch it unless you have a descrambler. Which also happens to block stuff out.
No more buying a Pay-Per-View wrestling match and taping it for a friend. They'll have to wait four months and pay twenty bucks for the DVD.
No more taping the Super Bowl. No more taping the last episode of your favorite show. The entire home recording industry will cease to exist.
It's all a chain... just like DVD players near-universally have region coding (because otherwise mmovie companies wouldn't put out the discs), so too will this come to pass.
How long will it take before two powerful companies decide to merge, the FTC says they can't, and they say "Screw you, we'll merge anyways"? If Microsoft and the AOL/Time-Warner groups decided to become one big huge conglomerate... who would stop them? Would we hit the point of cyberpunk-fiction where they'd be hiring armed guards to keep FTC-led cops from shutting them down? Or would the FTC just cave in and admit it has no real power?
Are they really -that- much better than paper? I mean, okay, they save space. I can fit the Bible and a good half-dozen classics on my Palm and still have room for otehr stuff, and I don't have to lug around a few pounds of paper.
Beyond that... isn't it easier to just turn a page? Instead of scrolling the text, just move your eyes? Are we so freakin' lazy we don't even want to move our eyes, just push a button to scroll down a line?
"If games really did affect the mental health of our children, then the generation that grew up playing Pac-Man would be doing nothign but running around dark rooms, eating pills, and listening to repeditive music."
Anyone ever been to a rave? Lots of people, moving around a dark room, popping pills, and listening to... well, you get the idea...
In related news, the flaws in the electoral collage will mean that the United States will never survive past the year 1879. Catholicism, based on a single book, will not last past 'The Dark Ages'. And the sky is falling. Thank you, goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow.
Honestly, it's not like you're making any money off it anyway... and I can't get replacement floppies for my copies of SimEarth and Deathtrack anymore...
"By playing this game, you hereby give up your right to have a life outside of video-game playing, and shall spend hours on this game until completed. You shall also spend every waking hour that is not spent playing this game, talking about how cool this game is to all your friends, even if they do not have the system required to play the game."
Or you'd think that was in there, by how some people act.
Perhaps not knowingly, but you did start a personal attck on me. By saying that sci-fi is dangerous and that it can cause problems in children, when I myself had read more sci-fi by age 12 than most people (/. readers excepted) do in a lifetime, you implied the belief that I was a sci-fi-driven loony. You compounded this by refering to American teens having problems with reality due to games like D&D.
I certainly hope you do not continue this blasie attitude of yours that by hiding 'the dark side' of the human psyche from your children, they won't be affected by it. They will. When they smoke a join in the bathroom with a friend at age 11, they'll have to deal with it. When they're beaten by classmates for looking funny, they'll need it. Sometimes, the story of a man who protects aliens from people who hate them can be far more comforting to a child than simply being told "Well, hit them back then."
That, and I'm somewhat bored and feel like ranting about stuff. Honestly, did you think posting this to/. was -not- goin to get this sort of response?
You know... I wish I could -1 Flamebait this... but instead, I'm gonna give you the flame you're looking for.
You, sir, are an idiot. To prohibit something from your children on the basis that it's removed from reality? I supose you don't let them watch Loony Tunes (that'd be Bugs Bunny and Roadrunner cartoons), or for that matter, Teletubbies (which is about as removed from reality as you can get without chemical influences).
And, just since I'm a gamer geek... those things you read about 'Dungeons and Dragons teenagers in America'? Hogwash, all of it. And that wasn't even sci-fi. If given a choice between my kids stabbing an orc or shooting a robot, I'll take shooting the robot.
If you're going to make a life-altering decision for your children like that, at least make it in an informed manner. If not for sci-fi, many of us would have grown up to be low-IQ auto mechanics or drunken sluts. If we grew up at all.
Let them decide what they want to read. Only step in if you find them spending too much time on it. Pre-emptive banning is only a good thing when drugs or other crimes are involved.
Excuse the ignorant question, but WTF is 'DragonWare'? The last paragraph mentions Carnivore as being part of the DargonWare Suite... what other stuff is running around out there?
And does any of it fall into the "We're fucked if this gets into the wrong (ie, script kiddie) hands" category?
I'm launching a last-minute write-in campaign for President. Below is my platform, as the answers to these nine questions. Remember, vote InfinityWpi on election day!
1) War on Drugs
by Tim Doran
The 'War on Drugs' is a sticky issue. But we need to look at it the same we look at all wars, in the cost to human life. Because of the war on drugs, we have law enforcement officers and those who are on the other side dying violent deaths. In all matters, human life must be our first priority. The war must end, by legallizing drugs and taxing the hell out of them, just like nicotine. We'll institute the same rules for them we have for smoking and drinking, that is, no driving, no opperating heavy machinery, and withhold federal benefits from HMOs that do not include a "We don't pay for drug-related injuries" clause. The war on drugs shouldn't be fought with bullets, it should be fought with money and advertising.
2) Minority Religions...
by Electric Angst
The fact that this question even needs to be asked goes to show why the American Civil Liberties Union exists. A new cabinet post, Secretary of Civil Liberties, would be created, and this person would work closely with the ACLU and other groups with the same goals, to help insure that in the future, the government doesn't railroad over the rights of the few at the whim of the many.
3) Why give a tax cut?
by funkman
Exactly. We do not need a tax cut at this time. Instead, that money should be going to fund programs like the construction of homeless shelters, free clinics, and other programs that go to improve the quality of life for the poor. The goal is to help those without money, not to give more money back to those who already have it.
4) electoral reform
by carleton
As a union of states as set forth in the Constitution, it's truely up to the states to determine hwo they go about with their seperate electoral processes. I would surely hope that more states adopt Vermont's attitude, as the current system is a holdover from the days when representative democary was required simply due ot the long travel tiems involved with getting from place to place. With the speed of communication being nearly instantaneous, we only rely on the antiquated electoral process out of habit, and the feeling that any new system cold not make everybody happy.
5)How Do You Feel About Intellectual Property?
by Phil Gregory
Obviously, changes are needed. Patents are being issued, no longer on devices, but on broad concepts. You patent the cash register, not "Use of a cash register to store money for a business." You trademark your brand name, not "Everythign even slightly resembling our brand name." Ina capitalist society, it's only natural to try to make money wherever possible, but the government needs to be more strict in deciding when to say "We're not idiots, you can't do that." Or else someone will have a patent on "the use of lower extremeties for the reproductive effor of conceiving children" and we'll all have to pay to have families.
6) Encryption....
by SquadBoy
At the basest level, we shouldn't have a need for encryption. Nobody would look at our data without permission, and we'd feel safe that it would only be read by those we want to read it. But this is not a perfect world. Encryption, much like home safes and safety deposit boxes, is a vital part of keeping things safe from 'the outside world'. Encryption is much like a gun. On it's own, it is harmless. But if loaded with the right data (bullets) and used by someone with an intent to harm (shoot), it's dangerous. And it's far easier to regulate the gun itself than to outlaw certain types of data or determine after the fact if harm was meant. It's an unfortunate thing, but if someone were planning to kill my daughter, and the only conviction-worthy evidence sits on his hard drive under encryption, I damn sure want the government ot be able to go get it. Does this mean I give up some of my rights, in that the government can search my hard drive when they want to? Maybe. But with a warrent, they can search my house, my car, even search me with only reasonable cause. The same should be true of encrypted data.
7) Rising Political Protests
by sterno
Let's be honest for a moment... the people elect the president. But big companies 'elect' how congressmen vote on bills. We have so many protests because there's so much corruption to protest. I would introduce a law that specifical bans congressmen from accepting any assets, directly or indirectly, from a corporation. Congressmen used to seek to get elected so they could pass good laws, now, they seek to be re-elected because they like th money that comes with the job. We must take away that narcotic, not by artificially imposing term limits, but by saying, "You were elected to serve the people, not the multi-nationals. You do not need private jet rides, you do not need new cars, you will have to live like the majority of the American people live. Lease your car for three years, live in an apartment, buy your own groceries." Unfortunately, any such bill would have to be voted on by Congress, the one great failing in our system of checks and balances. Any Constitutional amendment allowing the Executive and Judicial branches power to say, "Sorry, but you should pass this law," would also have to go through Congress.
8) Asteroid Defenses
by Ethelred Unraed
To study and explore space, yes. But the threat of an asteroid collusion is so small, we'd be better off spending billions of dollars to establish a counter-Cyborg defense system or (not so sarcasticly) an anti-flesh-eating-virus defense system. Terrorists are far more likely to use chemical and germ warfare, and these are what we shoudl plan to defend against. If an asteroid is going to hit Earth, there's very little we can do abut it, and one would have to ask if we're -meant- to do anything about it.
9) The Future of the Country, and of Humanity
by 11223
The main problem here is that 'manifest destiny' still exists, science is just behind the times. The Moon, Mars, space, is all out there waiting to be explored and colonized, but science is behind the times. We spend trillions on 'national defense', but pitifally little on our attempts to enlarge the nation. I would call for military spending to be cut in half. Of that half, ten percent for soucial security and medicare. Ten percent for education. Ten percent for homeless shelters and free clinics (using personel that the Armed Forces may fire instead of reducing a general's salary). Ten percent to improve our information infostructure. And ten percent to science research and NASA. The reason the expensive missions fail is that we don't spend enough money on making sure they'll succeed. And that must change. America does still have a driving passion, but we've become complacent in allowing science time to catch up with us.
I'm not going to bash him, but I believe he's not suspicious enough. I might trust him as a person, but I'm still not going to trust his report.
..... Since he's not suspicious enough? You don't need to be suspicious to be thorough. Simply because he doesn't have the preconcieved notion that Carnivore is bad doesn't mean his report will state "Carnivore is fine." Are you saying that if his report details a list of thirty ways that Carnivore is illegal, you'll still not trust it? Why? Because you'll think there's more things wrong? You've already pre-judged the report withotu even having a look at it or the equipment the report is based on, just on what you've gotten from/. and the 'net. That would be as bad as voting for or against a president based on late-night talk-show monologues.
Let the report come out, read it, then judge if you can trust it or not.
This man does not share the belief that most/.ers have, that being, the government in inherently evil and trying to screw us over.
I, for one, have to applaud him for answering these questions without resorting to calling us the paranoid delusionals we really are.
It would be easy to say that he's just a governmen patsy, but that wouldn't be true. The man's being asked to do a job. He'll do it. And he honestly believes that there will be no problems with issuing his report afterwards. And, you know? He's right.
The government isn't always out to screw us, people. Don't go bashing the guy for his point of view.
How the hell do you make it slow down? Even if you never touched an atmosphere, you'd still need big, bulky engines to slow down so you don't splat yourself into wherever it is you're going. And it may deflect solar flares, but it damn sure isn't going to deflect a head-on collusion with anythign solid.
Couldn't Carnivore do many of the things it claims to do simply by being a software package installed on an ISP's host machines? Why does it require a seperate 'box' when everything it's been purported to do can be acomplished by a script kiddie with a floppy disk of programs run from any Windows box on the 'net?
Didn't we read that the entire review team seems to have top-secret level clearance? That some are ex-DoD people? That not a single one of them is a legitimate researcher or scientist without government ties?
You know what we need to do? Get a team of students. Not even graduates, undergrads. A pair of EE majors, and a half-dozen CS majors. Give them the device. Come back a month later, they'll be able to tell you what it does, how it does it, and how you can use it to screw iwth other people's stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
WIPOsucks.com, and see how they react to it...
Four foot -wide- door, perhaps? Would make a lot more sense...
Why? Because without the broadcasters and cable companies and satelite dishes, TVs have no audience. You think Sony and RCA and all those comapnies can sell a TV that can't get cable or satelite dish pickups? Not enough to make it profitable.
They don't even need to include a box that blocks out certain things... they just scramble -every- channel, and say you can't watch it unless you have a descrambler. Which also happens to block stuff out.
No more buying a Pay-Per-View wrestling match and taping it for a friend. They'll have to wait four months and pay twenty bucks for the DVD.
No more taping the Super Bowl. No more taping the last episode of your favorite show. The entire home recording industry will cease to exist.
It's all a chain... just like DVD players near-universally have region coding (because otherwise mmovie companies wouldn't put out the discs), so too will this come to pass.
Someone please mail/email/fax/anything Prodigy that earlier patent, just so they can make this suit look totally foolish...
How long will it take before two powerful companies decide to merge, the FTC says they can't, and they say "Screw you, we'll merge anyways"? If Microsoft and the AOL/Time-Warner groups decided to become one big huge conglomerate... who would stop them? Would we hit the point of cyberpunk-fiction where they'd be hiring armed guards to keep FTC-led cops from shutting them down? Or would the FTC just cave in and admit it has no real power?
Are they really -that- much better than paper? I mean, okay, they save space. I can fit the Bible and a good half-dozen classics on my Palm and still have room for otehr stuff, and I don't have to lug around a few pounds of paper.
Beyond that... isn't it easier to just turn a page? Instead of scrolling the text, just move your eyes? Are we so freakin' lazy we don't even want to move our eyes, just push a button to scroll down a line?
"If games really did affect the mental health of our children, then the generation that grew up playing Pac-Man would be doing nothign but running around dark rooms, eating pills, and listening to repeditive music."
Anyone ever been to a rave? Lots of people, moving around a dark room, popping pills, and listening to... well, you get the idea...
Maybe games really -do- have an impact?
In related news, the flaws in the electoral collage will mean that the United States will never survive past the year 1879. Catholicism, based on a single book, will not last past 'The Dark Ages'. And the sky is falling. Thank you, goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow.
Honestly, it's not like you're making any money off it anyway... and I can't get replacement floppies for my copies of SimEarth and Deathtrack anymore...
"By playing this game, you hereby give up your right to have a life outside of video-game playing, and shall spend hours on this game until completed. You shall also spend every waking hour that is not spent playing this game, talking about how cool this game is to all your friends, even if they do not have the system required to play the game."
Or you'd think that was in there, by how some people act.
Perhaps not knowingly, but you did start a personal attck on me. By saying that sci-fi is dangerous and that it can cause problems in children, when I myself had read more sci-fi by age 12 than most people (/. readers excepted) do in a lifetime, you implied the belief that I was a sci-fi-driven loony. You compounded this by refering to American teens having problems with reality due to games like D&D.
/. was -not- goin to get this sort of response?
I certainly hope you do not continue this blasie attitude of yours that by hiding 'the dark side' of the human psyche from your children, they won't be affected by it. They will. When they smoke a join in the bathroom with a friend at age 11, they'll have to deal with it. When they're beaten by classmates for looking funny, they'll need it. Sometimes, the story of a man who protects aliens from people who hate them can be far more comforting to a child than simply being told "Well, hit them back then."
That, and I'm somewhat bored and feel like ranting about stuff. Honestly, did you think posting this to
How many of the justices on the Supreme Court were apointed by Republicns, anyway?
Not that it matters, since it was unanimous, but still...
You know... I wish I could -1 Flamebait this... but instead, I'm gonna give you the flame you're looking for.
You, sir, are an idiot. To prohibit something from your children on the basis that it's removed from reality? I supose you don't let them watch Loony Tunes (that'd be Bugs Bunny and Roadrunner cartoons), or for that matter, Teletubbies (which is about as removed from reality as you can get without chemical influences).
And, just since I'm a gamer geek... those things you read about 'Dungeons and Dragons teenagers in America'? Hogwash, all of it. And that wasn't even sci-fi. If given a choice between my kids stabbing an orc or shooting a robot, I'll take shooting the robot.
If you're going to make a life-altering decision for your children like that, at least make it in an informed manner. If not for sci-fi, many of us would have grown up to be low-IQ auto mechanics or drunken sluts. If we grew up at all.
Let them decide what they want to read. Only step in if you find them spending too much time on it. Pre-emptive banning is only a good thing when drugs or other crimes are involved.
French judge declares moon is now legally green!
Excuse the ignorant question, but WTF is 'DragonWare'? The last paragraph mentions Carnivore as being part of the DargonWare Suite... what other stuff is running around out there?
And does any of it fall into the "We're fucked if this gets into the wrong (ie, script kiddie) hands" category?
I'm launching a last-minute write-in campaign for President. Below is my platform, as the answers to these nine questions. Remember, vote InfinityWpi on election day!
1) War on Drugs
by Tim Doran
The 'War on Drugs' is a sticky issue. But we need to look at it the same we look at all wars, in the cost to human life. Because of the war on drugs, we have law enforcement officers and those who are on the other side dying violent deaths. In all matters, human life must be our first priority. The war must end, by legallizing drugs and taxing the hell out of them, just like nicotine. We'll institute the same rules for them we have for smoking and drinking, that is, no driving, no opperating heavy machinery, and withhold federal benefits from HMOs that do not include a "We don't pay for drug-related injuries" clause. The war on drugs shouldn't be fought with bullets, it should be fought with money and advertising.
2) Minority Religions...
by Electric Angst
The fact that this question even needs to be asked goes to show why the American Civil Liberties Union exists. A new cabinet post, Secretary of Civil Liberties, would be created, and this person would work closely with the ACLU and other groups with the same goals, to help insure that in the future, the government doesn't railroad over the rights of the few at the whim of the many.
3) Why give a tax cut?
by funkman
Exactly. We do not need a tax cut at this time. Instead, that money should be going to fund programs like the construction of homeless shelters, free clinics, and other programs that go to improve the quality of life for the poor. The goal is to help those without money, not to give more money back to those who already have it.
4) electoral reform
by carleton
As a union of states as set forth in the Constitution, it's truely up to the states to determine hwo they go about with their seperate electoral processes. I would surely hope that more states adopt Vermont's attitude, as the current system is a holdover from the days when representative democary was required simply due ot the long travel tiems involved with getting from place to place. With the speed of communication being nearly instantaneous, we only rely on the antiquated electoral process out of habit, and the feeling that any new system cold not make everybody happy.
5)How Do You Feel About Intellectual Property?
by Phil Gregory
Obviously, changes are needed. Patents are being issued, no longer on devices, but on broad concepts. You patent the cash register, not "Use of a cash register to store money for a business." You trademark your brand name, not "Everythign even slightly resembling our brand name." Ina capitalist society, it's only natural to try to make money wherever possible, but the government needs to be more strict in deciding when to say "We're not idiots, you can't do that." Or else someone will have a patent on "the use of lower extremeties for the reproductive effor of conceiving children" and we'll all have to pay to have families.
6) Encryption....
by SquadBoy
At the basest level, we shouldn't have a need for encryption. Nobody would look at our data without permission, and we'd feel safe that it would only be read by those we want to read it. But this is not a perfect world. Encryption, much like home safes and safety deposit boxes, is a vital part of keeping things safe from 'the outside world'. Encryption is much like a gun. On it's own, it is harmless. But if loaded with the right data (bullets) and used by someone with an intent to harm (shoot), it's dangerous. And it's far easier to regulate the gun itself than to outlaw certain types of data or determine after the fact if harm was meant. It's an unfortunate thing, but if someone were planning to kill my daughter, and the only conviction-worthy evidence sits on his hard drive under encryption, I damn sure want the government ot be able to go get it. Does this mean I give up some of my rights, in that the government can search my hard drive when they want to? Maybe. But with a warrent, they can search my house, my car, even search me with only reasonable cause. The same should be true of encrypted data.
7) Rising Political Protests
by sterno
Let's be honest for a moment... the people elect the president. But big companies 'elect' how congressmen vote on bills. We have so many protests because there's so much corruption to protest. I would introduce a law that specifical bans congressmen from accepting any assets, directly or indirectly, from a corporation. Congressmen used to seek to get elected so they could pass good laws, now, they seek to be re-elected because they like th money that comes with the job. We must take away that narcotic, not by artificially imposing term limits, but by saying, "You were elected to serve the people, not the multi-nationals. You do not need private jet rides, you do not need new cars, you will have to live like the majority of the American people live. Lease your car for three years, live in an apartment, buy your own groceries." Unfortunately, any such bill would have to be voted on by Congress, the one great failing in our system of checks and balances. Any Constitutional amendment allowing the Executive and Judicial branches power to say, "Sorry, but you should pass this law," would also have to go through Congress.
8) Asteroid Defenses
by Ethelred Unraed
To study and explore space, yes. But the threat of an asteroid collusion is so small, we'd be better off spending billions of dollars to establish a counter-Cyborg defense system or (not so sarcasticly) an anti-flesh-eating-virus defense system. Terrorists are far more likely to use chemical and germ warfare, and these are what we shoudl plan to defend against. If an asteroid is going to hit Earth, there's very little we can do abut it, and one would have to ask if we're -meant- to do anything about it.
9) The Future of the Country, and of Humanity
by 11223
The main problem here is that 'manifest destiny' still exists, science is just behind the times. The Moon, Mars, space, is all out there waiting to be explored and colonized, but science is behind the times. We spend trillions on 'national defense', but pitifally little on our attempts to enlarge the nation. I would call for military spending to be cut in half. Of that half, ten percent for soucial security and medicare. Ten percent for education. Ten percent for homeless shelters and free clinics (using personel that the Armed Forces may fire instead of reducing a general's salary). Ten percent to improve our information infostructure. And ten percent to science research and NASA. The reason the expensive missions fail is that we don't spend enough money on making sure they'll succeed. And that must change. America does still have a driving passion, but we've become complacent in allowing science time to catch up with us.
Isn't this illegal in Europe now? Or will be, if they sign that cybercrimes treaty?
Not a single mention of Columbine. Good job, Katz! You've finally kicked the habit!
I liked 'Insightful'. I was expecting 'flamebait'. But 'funny'? Geeze...
Let the report come out, read it, then judge if you can trust it or not.
This man does not share the belief that most /.ers have, that being, the government in inherently evil and trying to screw us over.
I, for one, have to applaud him for answering these questions without resorting to calling us the paranoid delusionals we really are.
It would be easy to say that he's just a governmen patsy, but that wouldn't be true. The man's being asked to do a job. He'll do it. And he honestly believes that there will be no problems with issuing his report afterwards. And, you know? He's right.
The government isn't always out to screw us, people. Don't go bashing the guy for his point of view.
How the hell do you make it slow down? Even if you never touched an atmosphere, you'd still need big, bulky engines to slow down so you don't splat yourself into wherever it is you're going. And it may deflect solar flares, but it damn sure isn't going to deflect a head-on collusion with anythign solid.
Couldn't Carnivore do many of the things it claims to do simply by being a software package installed on an ISP's host machines? Why does it require a seperate 'box' when everything it's been purported to do can be acomplished by a script kiddie with a floppy disk of programs run from any Windows box on the 'net?
Can it tell between 'one' and 'won'?
Didn't we read that the entire review team seems to have top-secret level clearance? That some are ex-DoD people? That not a single one of them is a legitimate researcher or scientist without government ties?
You know what we need to do? Get a team of students. Not even graduates, undergrads. A pair of EE majors, and a half-dozen CS majors. Give them the device. Come back a month later, they'll be able to tell you what it does, how it does it, and how you can use it to screw iwth other people's stuff.