Why didn't that work? Extrans (html tags to text) has been broken for months now.. This is SO annoying for posting a reply!
Sorry. Had to vent a bit.
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Re:In The Spirit Of Quickies
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Quickielanche
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· Score: 1
Probably didn't cost them a thing. Over in the shipping dept here at my office, we've easily got about 20x as many peanuts as it would take to fill a cubicle... Of course, we do a lot of shipping.:)
From the article: The broadcasters yesterday asked a U.S. District Court in New York to rule that sending over-the-air radio signals with recorded music to the Web is no violation of "digital performance" rights under a 1998 copyright law.... The 1998 digital copyright law affects Internet radio stations but not those that broadcast over the air.
Is this the DMCA? What law are they referring to here? ---
In legal sense, releasing something under the GPL is not an assignment of rights. You still call it assignment which is ok with me, but that doesn't have significance in court.
Nothing has any significance in court until a judge says so. You feel that it's not an assignment, whereas many of us feel it could be successfully argued as being the functional equivalent, and therefore legally equivalent.
In point of fact, that's a bad thing. If GPL = assignment, then fewer people will want to use it. Nobody wants to give up certain rights. So, I hope they DON'T succeed with an arguement like this, if it ever comes down to it. But the possibility is there, and it's important to be aware of that.
And before you say a judge wouldn't do go that way, think about the ways many judges have gone in various cases recently. I have no friggin' clue what a judge will say, because they have consistantly proven themselves ignorant of issues in the tech arena. ---
Re:Evidence of intelligent design
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The Mind of God
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There is an absolute, multilayed interconnectedness between matter which causes many confusing effects, and is quite chaotic/complex in nature. The fact is, it may be simple and straightforeward in design, but we may never know because all we can and ever will be able to see are the 'effects', or the fractal image as referred to in the original example.
True, but for the same reasons I outlined above. What I'm trying to state is that we would like to know that fundamental underlying design. We can't see it because there are simply too many variables. Not because of the fundamental interconnectedness of all particles, but because every measurement stirs up the mix, as it were.
With that said, we agree.:-) ---
Re:Evidence of intelligent design
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The Mind of God
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· Score: 1
We now know that the subatomic particles arent really solid at all, but interact according to complex wave functions that predict their behavior on average. That last but is important, because it shows that our understanding of sub atomic particles and matter in general is based on a large number of assumptions wich may not be valid.
True, but the whole problem is one of perception. If you knew all possible starting conditions, you could predict the outcome. Quantum Mechanics is based on the simple, proveable, fact that it is impossible to know all possible starting conditions. You can either know the position of a particle, or you can know it's speed. You can never know both, because measuring one affects the other, and you cannot predict the affects of the measurement for precisely the same reasons.
If you COULD get both, or measure one without affecting the particle in any way, Quantum Mechanics wouldn't be a game of probabilities. It would be a game of certainties, just like the macroscopic universe we all know and love.
Schrodinger's cat cannot be both alive and dead at the same time. It is one, or the other. But the fact that you don't know which makes it a question of probability. You treat it as if it were both alive and dead in order to get on with things and do the math.
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Re:you make the same mistake!
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The Mind of God
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· Score: 1
Absence of proof, and proof of absence are two completely different things...Prove that the aliens don't exist. I've got a box of cookies for the first person to do so.
Are you serious?
Of course you can't prove that something doesn't exist. Prove that pink flying elephants that read minds don't exist. Go on, try.:)
To prove something doesn't exist, there are two ways. Method 1: Show that everything else that does exist is not that thing. Method 2: Assume it exists, then follow a chain of reason that leads to an impossible conclusion (a contradiction).
However, it's trivally easy to prove something does exist. Point at it. Say, "Look! There it is! Flying pink mind-reading elephants do exist after all!"
Since it's (usually) a lot simple to prove something positive, the burden of proof falls there.
Some of the manufacturing plants I've installed stuff like this at have huge, overlapping coverage, because of so much machine noise in the plant itself. Since I always take the laptop + radio card with me, I've tested a few of them. It's AMAZING the kind of distance you can get from some of these places. At one plant (I won't say which), it's almost trivial to get on their network from about 1/8 mile away, outside the plant. Not to say that it doesn't come in handy when I'm staying at the hotel next door, but security? Forget it.
If I buy three wireless LAN equiped laptops (such as those ibooks or PCs with cards, whatever) and arrange them so that laptop A is at one end of a very long room, and laptop B is at the other end of the room, so that B and A *cannot* communicate, but I place C in the middle such that B and C *can* talk and A and C *can* talk -- does the obvious thing happen ?
Easy answer: Nope, not usually. Wouldn't it be nice?:)
Hard answer: You can do this yourself, as I see another poster as already described. But, that method may or may not work depending on your network interfaces.
For example: I use a lot of Aironet cards at work, since we do some wireless interfacing between all sorts of various devices. One thing we do is switch the card, programatically (sp?), between using the access point, and using ad-hoc (really peer-to-peer, IMHO, but let them call it what they will).
In peer-to-peer mode, it just broadcasts the packet out with a destination address. Anyone else in peer-to-peer just looks at everything coming in to see if it's for them. If it's not, they ignore it.
In other words, if A is sending to B, and C sees the packet going to B, it ignores it in the driver and the packet never reaches the upper layer (my software). Since it never gets to B at all because of distance, B doesn't get squat.
There are workarounds. You can stick C into promicuious (sp?) mode, where it watches everything. I've used that as a sniffer to see what's going on for debugging sometimes (The aironet guys we talked to about it were amazed when we showed them how we could watch the packets flying across the airwaves like that and said they'd never thought of using it that way before)..
The access points WILL do what you're thinking, but not when the devices are in ad-hoc mode. Access points ignore ad-hoc communication. The access point method involves a device registering with the access point and then routing ALL communication through it. If two devices are registered to the same access point, the communication doesn't go through a wire, but still gets routed through the acces point. With multiple access points, the devices switch around between them rather quickly and flagrantly, if you have overlapping coverage. In this mode, no two wireless devices ever talk directly, they always go through the access points (which communicate to each other over the wire networks, if needed).
This ZoomAir software sounds like it does the same thing as an access point. I have done something like this with an access point before. It doesn't have to be connected to the wire to pass messages in it's own coverage area, so the software probably can do the same.
They didn't assign the rights, they licenced the use. The GPL is not an assignment of copy-rights, it's a license granting permission to do something that one normally couldn't do.
Perhaps, perhaps not. I think a smart judge might see the GPL for what it is functionally equivalent to, which is a copy of copyright from one person to all other persons. (Copy of copyright.. snicker...)
I mean, a person who uses the GPL on their software cannot revoke it later. That's a bit against a more "traditional" license. However, that's not the only thing. The GPL gives the end-user the ability to: modify and redistribute, without asking the original copyright holder. That's pretty much is the same thing as a copyright, isn't it? Functionally equivalent anyway. Rather, it's copyright with a clause to prevent you holding exclusive copyright.
If this turns out the way I think it will, Mattel will nail (or try to nail) those two guys for breach of contract or some such.
When you release something under GPL, you give up some rights to that software to anyone who acquires the software. Thus, when you release using GPL, you are no longer "the sole proprietors of all rights", because you have assigned some of those rights (the right to copy and distribute) to the world. This is NOT the same as public domain software. Essentially, you've assigned the distribution rights to each and every person in existance now or later, individually. Also, it's not really giving up those rights, it's giving up those SOLE rights. In tech speak, you've copied the rights to everybody else.:)
Anyway, I think the GPL will probably hold. At the time the software was released under GPL, those two guys had all the rights to do so, therefore that's all good. But in doing that, they gave some of those rights away, and thus can't transfer ALL the rights back, without every person with a copy of the software doing that individually, in order to give them to Mattel. The people who downloaded the software have the right to modify, redistribute, etc... all the good GPL clauses apply.
Anyway, screw Mattel. They can shove a Barbie where the sun don't shine, AFAIC.:)
While it does depend somewhat on the person, everyone has their time/value treshhold.
Do you seriously mean to tell me you consider everything you do based on time vs. value recieved?
You must be joking. How can you post to/. then? Typing that message must have cost you at least 3 bucks!:-)
What I will say, however, is that the industry can effectively stiffle the ability of the average Joe (and even more skilled users, to a lesser degree) to get whatever song they want, quickly, cheaply, and without wasting a great deal of time.
This is true. I totally agree. But, that just gives me more incentive to find another way that avoids the pitfalls of the previous. Take Napster/Gnutella. Napster looked like it was being shutdown by campuses everywhere, so Gnutella came out, and was much harder to block. Gnutella got pulled quick, but now people are creating clones of it. If they figure out how to block that, someone else will make another way to do it. Hell, you could make a distributed system similar to Gnutella that uses HTTP protocol, if you want to be tricky. Will they block the whole web?
There's ALWAYS a way around, and as long as people want to do something, they will. My point is that even if you make something illegal, it will still be done by those who want to do it bad enough. You cannot stop the masses. The 'net community essentially automatically self-organizes to avoid the same problems as before. It's not intentional, that just the way it ends up. I know how cheesy it sounds, but it's true. All the corporate lawyers in the world cannot fight the power of a mass of billions of people. ---
While the system may be "unfair", and while you're free to disagree with it, it does not make intellectual property null and void. It exists for a reason, you, as a consumer, have a simple choice: Accept conditions and buy it, or not.
Theft is a choice too. I am a free individual. I choose to steal my music, break the law, and give a big "Fuck you!" to the music distribution industry. I support those musicians who do the same and independently release their music on the internet. I still buy those CD's I really want to own, but I no longer will buy a CD with two good songs and 12 crap ones. Who loses? Why, the distributor, and the artists who can't produce enough good quality music to fill a CD.
Are my actions legal? No. Is it likely that I will be caught? No. Is there anything preventing me from performing these actions, from a practical standpoint? No. Do I give a shit about the artist or the industry? Hell, no. If the artist can't make a CD that I want to buy, fuck 'em. If they can, I'll buy it.
I'm rambling now, but I guess the point is that the majority of the public does not care if it's legal. The law doesn't prevent crime, and never has. The law gives an excuse to punish those who commit crime, and to do it fairly. You cannot prevent a crime when it's what a person really wants to do.
Look guys: being religious (including, specifically, Christian) does not mean checking your brain at the door. And it never has.
No, it merely seems that way from the majority of preachy religious people you meet.:-) Not to bash on you, but it has been my experience that having "faith" in a religion usually means you don't have the brains to pour piss out of a boot. There are exceptions, but I've never met any in person.
It means (broadly speaking) acceptance of a setup of principles, a world view, and a decision to devote your life to it. In Christianity, this is expressed by (to oversimplify) the Ten Commandments, Christ as the risen savior, and (of course) the decision to act on this information -- we call that decision faith.
You chose to believe in Jesus? What, did you shop around first? "Well, I liked the buddist ideas, but I didn't dig the fact that they all were bald, so I went with Jesus, because I really like those Southern preachers!"
Get real. Belief is not a choice. I don't believe in any god/s, for a very simple reason. The whole idea strikes me as absurd. I didn't wake up one morning and say "you know, I think I'll be atheist from now on." I've never believed in a god. My parents took me to church like any good parents would, and it just made me wonder why all these appearantly rational people could spew such obvious nonsense about reality. Even allowing for metaphor, it was ridiculous.
I'll give X-tianity its due, though. It provides a pretty good moral foundation, once you ignore the crap. It gives a pretty workable set of rules for getting along. Of course, they're not original to xtianity by any means, but hey, they're there. For a person who needs the rules spelled out for him/her, and would be nuts otherwise, it's not a bad way to go. But for the rest of the world, I feel that religion has caused more suffering, tyrany, and harm to humanity than anything else on the face of the earth. I just don't feel that its worth it's price.
However, that's just me. Feel free to feel however the hell you like.:-)
From the article: "Programs such as Wrapster and Nullsoft's Gnutella, which mimic and expand on Napster, are quickly speeding the erosion of copyright protections online, leaving copyright holders scrambling to keep up. "
Oh, and like I haven't been seeing downloads for pirated software for the last 10 years on EFNet?
For crying out loud.. Napster has done nothing new in the world. All it has done is grabbed media attention. Sheesh.
Okay. I didn't know what to believe, so I tried a little test. I don't normally use netscape anyway, but I do have it installed.
I killed the cookie text file. Just deleted it. Start up Netscape (blank home page), so no cookies yet. Change the setting in the preferences. This is Communicator 4.6 for Windows, BTW. Go to a page I know had a doubleclick banner: http://www.userfriendly.org/static/ Look again, voila, a cookie file. Open it up: There's the doubleclick cookie all right.
They may have changed the behavior in later versions, I dunno. But the behavior I see is exactly what the option says. Allow cookies that get sent back only to originating server. The cookie originated at doubleclick.net, NOT at userfriendly.org.
A cookie is not set in HTML, it's set in the HTTP headers. You get those headers with every single web request, be it GIF or HTML.
The option they NEED, and the one I described, is simple: Only accept cookies originating from the same server as the page being viewed. Or perhaps, disallow cookies with non-HTML files. I can't think of any good reason, other than ads, to send a cookie with a graphic image.
Erm.. Not sure what you're using, but that option is NOT in Netscape 4.6...
There's a "Accept only cookies that get sent back to the originating server" option, but if the GIF comes from another server, then it's all good.
This should actually be real simple to implement. In your cookie routine, do something like: if (cookie.hostname != address_bar.hostname) return without_setting_the_damn_cookie..
23. You will have problems updating to Windows 2000 if you have an NE2000 or compatible network adapter in your computer, and it has an input/output (I/O) address at 340h (0x340). According to Microsoft, your computer may lock up during installation when you get to text mode. As a workaround, you can remove the card or change its I/O setting. After Windows 2000 is installed, the card will work correctly, even at that address.
That explains why I couldn't install the damn thing. What a piece of junk, man... argh..
Perhaps this analogy will help: There you are playing with your brand new Nintendo Entertainment System, and your neighbor shows you a Playstation. Does your jaw drop or what?
Okay. I can see that. How about this? Your friend shows you his playstation, and you show him your 1 Gigahertz multi-processor PC running Quake 3 on a GeForce card at 1024x768, 200 fps. Then you tell him it cost the same, because the playstation is outdated, old, garbage and prices have dropped considerably since then. Then you show him your playstation emulator, pop in the playstation disk, and play the exact same game.
This is kind of how I see the Amiga comeback type of people. Sure, it was good for it's time. However, it's time has long since passed. Any "new" Amiga won't be the same in any way. So what's the big deal? Just whip the old Amiga out of the closet (or dumpster) and there you go.
Okay. Fine. From dictionary.com (which is not very good, I admit, but hey):
imposev. tr.
To establish or apply as compulsory; levy: impose a tax.
To apply or make prevail by or as if by authority: impose a peace settlement.
To obtrude or force (oneself, for example) on another or others.
Printing. To arrange (type or plates) on an imposing stone.
To offer or circulate fraudulently; pass off: imposed a fraud on consumers.
Okay. The difference is in the definitions #1 and #3. From #1, all laws are imposed. From #3, any law you disagree with is an imposition. So it's semantics here. Therefore, we're both right. 'Nuff said.:-)
> Rape is not an issue of ethics or morality. Maybe we need to explore our definitions of "morality". In my book it most definitely is a moral issue -- as are things like theft, murder, and kicking the neighbor's dog. It is precisely that -- harm to others -- which makes them wrong.
Okay, it IS an issue of morality. But my point was that the morality of it has nothing to do with WHY it's illegal.
Rape is illegal not because it's wrong, but because the person (rapist) is a danger to society (and/or members of that society). Therefore society must protect itself from that person, and lock 'em up.
Along those same lines, there are things that are morally okay that are still illegal, because they hurt society as a whole. I can't think of an example offhand. I have brain problems at the moment, in that I had to sit through company meetings today.:-)
Ooh, while looking at the preview, I thought of one. Prostitution. Not a very good example, but hey...
Everything is wrong, to someone. But only those things that hurt society (and/or members of such) should be illegal.
However, more and more people who circumvent this "damage" are no longer damamge control experts, but criminals.
Well, if I was arguing, I would argue thusly:
If everyone does it, how can it be criminal? They can't jail EVERYBODY. The net is empowering people in this way.
a) An illegal activity is widespread, easy, and most people think nothing of it. b) You can't trace most of the illegal activity due to it's very nature, at least not without an infrastructure in place that makes "1984" and "Big Brother" look like some guy in his backyard with cheap plastic kiddy binoculars. c) Yes, if everyone jumped off a cliff, you would too. You know it, I know it. The community as a whole determines right and wrong for that community. In this case, the community is the world. There is no universal standard of ethics, morals, or anything else. Everything is relative. d) You can always "throw the bums out". Whether this is peaceful (as in voting them out) or not (as in bloody revolution) is immaterial. If enough people get riled up enough, change occurs. There is no stopping it. There is no holding it back. At least, not without killing the dissenting parties as they arise, which is a shocking blow to the rest to the peepul (sic)...
Conclusion: at some point, the teaming masses of humanity will not take it anymore, and throw the bums out. You cannot continually remove a man's freedoms and expect him not to react. Everyone has their breaking point. So does a society. Things balance out.
A bit OT, but as I recall, the main reason they were able to enforce it in the first place was that iCraveTV, while being located mostly in Canada, was actually based out of Michigan (or something to that effect). At least, their mailing address was Michigan, as I recall.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I know this is a bit OT...
<i>italic</i>
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Why didn't that work? Extrans (html tags to text) has been broken for months now.. This is SO annoying for posting a reply!
Sorry. Had to vent a bit.
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Probably didn't cost them a thing. Over in the shipping dept here at my office, we've easily got about 20x as many peanuts as it would take to fill a cubicle... Of course, we do a lot of shipping. :)
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From the article:
The broadcasters yesterday asked a U.S. District Court in New York to rule that sending over-the-air radio signals with recorded music to the Web is no violation of "digital performance" rights under a 1998 copyright law.... The 1998 digital copyright law affects Internet radio stations but not those that broadcast over the air.
Is this the DMCA? What law are they referring to here?
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In legal sense, releasing something under the GPL is not an assignment of rights. You still call it assignment which is ok with me, but that doesn't have significance in court.
Nothing has any significance in court until a judge says so. You feel that it's not an assignment, whereas many of us feel it could be successfully argued as being the functional equivalent, and therefore legally equivalent.
In point of fact, that's a bad thing. If GPL = assignment, then fewer people will want to use it. Nobody wants to give up certain rights. So, I hope they DON'T succeed with an arguement like this, if it ever comes down to it. But the possibility is there, and it's important to be aware of that.
And before you say a judge wouldn't do go that way, think about the ways many judges have gone in various cases recently. I have no friggin' clue what a judge will say, because they have consistantly proven themselves ignorant of issues in the tech arena.
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There is an absolute, multilayed interconnectedness between matter which causes many confusing effects, and is quite chaotic/complex in nature. The fact is, it may be simple and straightforeward in design, but we may never know because all we can and ever will be able to see are the 'effects', or the fractal image as referred to in the original example.
:-)
True, but for the same reasons I outlined above. What I'm trying to state is that we would like to know that fundamental underlying design. We can't see it because there are simply too many variables. Not because of the fundamental interconnectedness of all particles, but because every measurement stirs up the mix, as it were.
With that said, we agree.
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We now know that the subatomic particles arent really solid at all, but interact according to complex wave functions that predict their behavior on average. That last but is important, because it shows that our understanding of sub atomic particles and matter in general is based on a large number of assumptions wich may not be valid.
True, but the whole problem is one of perception. If you knew all possible starting conditions, you could predict the outcome. Quantum Mechanics is based on the simple, proveable, fact that it is impossible to know all possible starting conditions. You can either know the position of a particle, or you can know it's speed. You can never know both, because measuring one affects the other, and you cannot predict the affects of the measurement for precisely the same reasons.
If you COULD get both, or measure one without affecting the particle in any way, Quantum Mechanics wouldn't be a game of probabilities. It would be a game of certainties, just like the macroscopic universe we all know and love.
Schrodinger's cat cannot be both alive and dead at the same time. It is one, or the other. But the fact that you don't know which makes it a question of probability. You treat it as if it were both alive and dead in order to get on with things and do the math.
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Absence of proof, and proof of absence are two completely different things...Prove that the aliens don't exist. I've got a box of cookies for the first person to do so.
:)
Are you serious?
Of course you can't prove that something doesn't exist. Prove that pink flying elephants that read minds don't exist. Go on, try.
To prove something doesn't exist, there are two ways.
Method 1: Show that everything else that does exist is not that thing. Method 2: Assume it exists, then follow a chain of reason that leads to an impossible conclusion (a contradiction).
However, it's trivally easy to prove something does exist. Point at it. Say, "Look! There it is! Flying pink mind-reading elephants do exist after all!"
Since it's (usually) a lot simple to prove something positive, the burden of proof falls there.
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It's not as jesting as you think.
Some of the manufacturing plants I've installed stuff like this at have huge, overlapping coverage, because of so much machine noise in the plant itself. Since I always take the laptop + radio card with me, I've tested a few of them. It's AMAZING the kind of distance you can get from some of these places. At one plant (I won't say which), it's almost trivial to get on their network from about 1/8 mile away, outside the plant. Not to say that it doesn't come in handy when I'm staying at the hotel next door, but security? Forget it.
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If I buy three wireless LAN equiped laptops (such as those ibooks or PCs with cards, whatever) and arrange them so that laptop A is at one end of a very long room, and laptop B is at the other end of the room, so that B and A *cannot* communicate, but I place C in the middle such that B and C *can* talk and A and C *can* talk -- does the obvious thing happen ?
:)
Easy answer: Nope, not usually. Wouldn't it be nice?
Hard answer: You can do this yourself, as I see another poster as already described. But, that method may or may not work depending on your network interfaces.
For example: I use a lot of Aironet cards at work, since we do some wireless interfacing between all sorts of various devices. One thing we do is switch the card, programatically (sp?), between using the access point, and using ad-hoc (really peer-to-peer, IMHO, but let them call it what they will).
In peer-to-peer mode, it just broadcasts the packet out with a destination address. Anyone else in peer-to-peer just looks at everything coming in to see if it's for them. If it's not, they ignore it.
In other words, if A is sending to B, and C sees the packet going to B, it ignores it in the driver and the packet never reaches the upper layer (my software). Since it never gets to B at all because of distance, B doesn't get squat.
There are workarounds. You can stick C into promicuious (sp?) mode, where it watches everything. I've used that as a sniffer to see what's going on for debugging sometimes (The aironet guys we talked to about it were amazed when we showed them how we could watch the packets flying across the airwaves like that and said they'd never thought of using it that way before)..
The access points WILL do what you're thinking, but not when the devices are in ad-hoc mode. Access points ignore ad-hoc communication. The access point method involves a device registering with the access point and then routing ALL communication through it. If two devices are registered to the same access point, the communication doesn't go through a wire, but still gets routed through the acces point. With multiple access points, the devices switch around between them rather quickly and flagrantly, if you have overlapping coverage. In this mode, no two wireless devices ever talk directly, they always go through the access points (which communicate to each other over the wire networks, if needed).
This ZoomAir software sounds like it does the same thing as an access point. I have done something like this with an access point before. It doesn't have to be connected to the wire to pass messages in it's own coverage area, so the software probably can do the same.
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They didn't assign the rights, they licenced the use. The GPL is not an assignment of copy-rights, it's a license granting permission to do something that one normally couldn't do.
Perhaps, perhaps not. I think a smart judge might see the GPL for what it is functionally equivalent to, which is a copy of copyright from one person to all other persons. (Copy of copyright.. snicker...)
I mean, a person who uses the GPL on their software cannot revoke it later. That's a bit against a more "traditional" license. However, that's not the only thing. The GPL gives the end-user the ability to: modify and redistribute, without asking the original copyright holder. That's pretty much is the same thing as a copyright, isn't it? Functionally equivalent anyway. Rather, it's copyright with a clause to prevent you holding exclusive copyright.
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IANAL, but I can read. :-)
:)
:)
If this turns out the way I think it will, Mattel will nail (or try to nail) those two guys for breach of contract or some such.
When you release something under GPL, you give up some rights to that software to anyone who acquires the software. Thus, when you release using GPL, you are no longer "the sole proprietors of all rights", because you have assigned some of those rights (the right to copy and distribute) to the world. This is NOT the same as public domain software. Essentially, you've assigned the distribution rights to each and every person in existance now or later, individually. Also, it's not really giving up those rights, it's giving up those SOLE rights. In tech speak, you've copied the rights to everybody else.
Anyway, I think the GPL will probably hold. At the time the software was released under GPL, those two guys had all the rights to do so, therefore that's all good. But in doing that, they gave some of those rights away, and thus can't transfer ALL the rights back, without every person with a copy of the software doing that individually, in order to give them to Mattel. The people who downloaded the software have the right to modify, redistribute, etc... all the good GPL clauses apply.
Anyway, screw Mattel. They can shove a Barbie where the sun don't shine, AFAIC.
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While it does depend somewhat on the person, everyone has their time/value treshhold.
/. then? Typing that message must have cost you at least 3 bucks! :-)
Do you seriously mean to tell me you consider everything you do based on time vs. value recieved?
You must be joking. How can you post to
What I will say, however, is that the industry can effectively stiffle the ability of the average Joe (and even more skilled users, to a lesser degree) to get whatever song they want, quickly, cheaply, and without wasting a great deal of time.
This is true. I totally agree. But, that just gives me more incentive to find another way that avoids the pitfalls of the previous. Take Napster/Gnutella. Napster looked like it was being shutdown by campuses everywhere, so Gnutella came out, and was much harder to block. Gnutella got pulled quick, but now people are creating clones of it. If they figure out how to block that, someone else will make another way to do it. Hell, you could make a distributed system similar to Gnutella that uses HTTP protocol, if you want to be tricky. Will they block the whole web?
There's ALWAYS a way around, and as long as people want to do something, they will. My point is that even if you make something illegal, it will still be done by those who want to do it bad enough. You cannot stop the masses. The 'net community essentially automatically self-organizes to avoid the same problems as before. It's not intentional, that just the way it ends up. I know how cheesy it sounds, but it's true. All the corporate lawyers in the world cannot fight the power of a mass of billions of people.
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While the system may be "unfair", and while you're free to disagree with it, it does not make intellectual property null and void. It exists for a reason, you, as a consumer, have a simple choice: Accept conditions and buy it, or not.
Theft is a choice too. I am a free individual. I choose to steal my music, break the law, and give a big "Fuck you!" to the music distribution industry. I support those musicians who do the same and independently release their music on the internet. I still buy those CD's I really want to own, but I no longer will buy a CD with two good songs and 12 crap ones. Who loses? Why, the distributor, and the artists who can't produce enough good quality music to fill a CD.
Are my actions legal? No. Is it likely that I will be caught? No. Is there anything preventing me from performing these actions, from a practical standpoint? No. Do I give a shit about the artist or the industry? Hell, no. If the artist can't make a CD that I want to buy, fuck 'em. If they can, I'll buy it.
I'm rambling now, but I guess the point is that the majority of the public does not care if it's legal. The law doesn't prevent crime, and never has. The law gives an excuse to punish those who commit crime, and to do it fairly. You cannot prevent a crime when it's what a person really wants to do.
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BWAHAHAHAH!
I have no idea why, but on that last line, I had a vision of Sam Kinison screaming: "Fuck you kernel! Remove Slash! AWW AUUUUGH!!!"
:-)
Oh well. Gotta lay off the Excedrin.
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Look guys: being religious (including, specifically, Christian) does not mean checking your brain at the door. And it never has.
:-) Not to bash on you, but it has been my experience that having "faith" in a religion usually means you don't have the brains to pour piss out of a boot. There are exceptions, but I've never met any in person.
:-)
No, it merely seems that way from the majority of preachy religious people you meet.
It means (broadly speaking) acceptance of a setup of principles, a world view, and a decision to devote your life to it. In Christianity, this is expressed by (to oversimplify) the Ten Commandments, Christ as the risen savior, and (of course) the decision to act on this information -- we call that decision faith.
You chose to believe in Jesus? What, did you shop around first? "Well, I liked the buddist ideas, but I didn't dig the fact that they all were bald, so I went with Jesus, because I really like those Southern preachers!"
Get real. Belief is not a choice. I don't believe in any god/s, for a very simple reason. The whole idea strikes me as absurd. I didn't wake up one morning and say "you know, I think I'll be atheist from now on." I've never believed in a god. My parents took me to church like any good parents would, and it just made me wonder why all these appearantly rational people could spew such obvious nonsense about reality. Even allowing for metaphor, it was ridiculous.
I'll give X-tianity its due, though. It provides a pretty good moral foundation, once you ignore the crap. It gives a pretty workable set of rules for getting along. Of course, they're not original to xtianity by any means, but hey, they're there. For a person who needs the rules spelled out for him/her, and would be nuts otherwise, it's not a bad way to go. But for the rest of the world, I feel that religion has caused more suffering, tyrany, and harm to humanity than anything else on the face of the earth. I just don't feel that its worth it's price.
However, that's just me. Feel free to feel however the hell you like.
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Why name a supercomputer after a second rate band? I mean, yes, the soundtrack to La Bamba and Desperado, but everything else they've ever done sucks.
:-)
As long as the computer plays that cool guitar intro from Desperado when it boots, I guess it's okay.
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From the article:
"Programs such as Wrapster and Nullsoft's Gnutella, which mimic and expand on Napster, are quickly speeding the erosion of copyright protections online, leaving copyright holders scrambling to keep up. "
Oh, and like I haven't been seeing downloads for pirated software for the last 10 years on EFNet?
For crying out loud.. Napster has done nothing new in the world. All it has done is grabbed media attention. Sheesh.
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Hmm. Well. Nope, it doesn't.
Okay. I didn't know what to believe, so I tried a little test. I don't normally use netscape anyway, but I do have it installed.
I killed the cookie text file. Just deleted it. Start up Netscape (blank home page), so no cookies yet. Change the setting in the preferences. This is Communicator 4.6 for Windows, BTW. Go to a page I know had a doubleclick banner: http://www.userfriendly.org/static/
Look again, voila, a cookie file. Open it up: There's the doubleclick cookie all right.
They may have changed the behavior in later versions, I dunno. But the behavior I see is exactly what the option says. Allow cookies that get sent back only to originating server. The cookie originated at doubleclick.net, NOT at userfriendly.org.
A cookie is not set in HTML, it's set in the HTTP headers. You get those headers with every single web request, be it GIF or HTML.
The option they NEED, and the one I described, is simple: Only accept cookies originating from the same server as the page being viewed. Or perhaps, disallow cookies with non-HTML files. I can't think of any good reason, other than ads, to send a cookie with a graphic image.
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Erm.. Not sure what you're using, but that option is NOT in Netscape 4.6...
There's a "Accept only cookies that get sent back to the originating server" option, but if the GIF comes from another server, then it's all good.
This should actually be real simple to implement. In your cookie routine, do something like: if (cookie.hostname != address_bar.hostname) return without_setting_the_damn_cookie..
Or something like that...
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23. You will have problems updating to Windows 2000 if you have an NE2000 or compatible network adapter in your computer, and it has an input/output (I/O) address at 340h (0x340). According to Microsoft, your computer may lock up during installation when you get to text mode. As a workaround, you can remove the card or change its I/O setting. After Windows 2000 is installed, the card will work correctly, even at that address.
That explains why I couldn't install the damn thing. What a piece of junk, man... argh..
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Perhaps this analogy will help: There you are playing with your brand new Nintendo Entertainment System, and your neighbor shows you a Playstation. Does your jaw drop or what?
Okay. I can see that. How about this? Your friend shows you his playstation, and you show him your 1 Gigahertz multi-processor PC running Quake 3 on a GeForce card at 1024x768, 200 fps. Then you tell him it cost the same, because the playstation is outdated, old, garbage and prices have dropped considerably since then. Then you show him your playstation emulator, pop in the playstation disk, and play the exact same game.
This is kind of how I see the Amiga comeback type of people. Sure, it was good for it's time. However, it's time has long since passed. Any "new" Amiga won't be the same in any way. So what's the big deal? Just whip the old Amiga out of the closet (or dumpster) and there you go.
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impose v. tr.
- To establish or apply as compulsory; levy: impose a tax.
- To apply or make prevail by or as if by authority: impose a peace settlement.
- To obtrude or force (oneself, for example) on another or others.
- Printing. To arrange (type or plates) on an imposing stone.
- To offer or circulate fraudulently; pass off: imposed a fraud on consumers.
Okay. The difference is in the definitions #1 and #3. From #1, all laws are imposed. From #3, any law you disagree with is an imposition. So it's semantics here. Therefore, we're both right. 'Nuff said.> Rape is not an issue of ethics or morality.
Maybe we need to explore our definitions of "morality". In my book it most definitely is a moral issue -- as are things like theft, murder, and kicking the neighbor's dog. It is precisely that -- harm to others -- which makes them wrong.
Okay, it IS an issue of morality. But my point was that the morality of it has nothing to do with WHY it's illegal.
Rape is illegal not because it's wrong, but because the person (rapist) is a danger to society (and/or members of that society). Therefore society must protect itself from that person, and lock 'em up.
Along those same lines, there are things that are morally okay that are still illegal, because they hurt society as a whole. I can't think of an example offhand. I have brain problems at the moment, in that I had to sit through company meetings today.
Ooh, while looking at the preview, I thought of one. Prostitution. Not a very good example, but hey...
Everything is wrong, to someone. But only those things that hurt society (and/or members of such) should be illegal.
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However, more and more people who circumvent this "damage" are no longer damamge control experts, but criminals.
:-)
Well, if I was arguing, I would argue thusly:
If everyone does it, how can it be criminal? They can't jail EVERYBODY. The net is empowering people in this way.
a) An illegal activity is widespread, easy, and most people think nothing of it.
b) You can't trace most of the illegal activity due to it's very nature, at least not without an infrastructure in place that makes "1984" and "Big Brother" look like some guy in his backyard with cheap plastic kiddy binoculars.
c) Yes, if everyone jumped off a cliff, you would too. You know it, I know it. The community as a whole determines right and wrong for that community. In this case, the community is the world. There is no universal standard of ethics, morals, or anything else. Everything is relative.
d) You can always "throw the bums out". Whether this is peaceful (as in voting them out) or not (as in bloody revolution) is immaterial. If enough people get riled up enough, change occurs. There is no stopping it. There is no holding it back. At least, not without killing the dissenting parties as they arise, which is a shocking blow to the rest to the peepul (sic)...
Conclusion: at some point, the teaming masses of humanity will not take it anymore, and throw the bums out. You cannot continually remove a man's freedoms and expect him not to react. Everyone has their breaking point. So does a society. Things balance out.
Ah well. I'm ranting again.
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A bit OT, but as I recall, the main reason they were able to enforce it in the first place was that iCraveTV, while being located mostly in Canada, was actually based out of Michigan (or something to that effect). At least, their mailing address was Michigan, as I recall.
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Here's the link:
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0212720
The info is thin, though. No mention of Kubrick. Mentions Aldiss as a writing credit and that's it.
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