Don't limit yourself to science fiction. Some old books are actually fun in a way very similar to science fiction. The Anabasis by Xenophon for instance tells the story of 10000 Greek mercenaries stranded in the middle of the Persian empire. I enjoyed the encounters with the foreign people, the way they get organized and are voting all the time etc. All this makes it a bit like the kind of social thought experiment that the best science fiction produces. Except it really happened and they didn't have light sabers but overall I loved it. It brought a lot of the stuff I like in Babylon 5 for instance.
There are also complete NASA shows from the 60s that explain the progress of the effort to land guys on the Moon. My 5 year old watched a 30 minute episode with interest!
Anyway, you are right, if you disagree with copyright holders, a boycott is the best way as they only have themselves to blame and can't accuse 'the pirates'. As you said there is an abundance of content distributed in more open ways. And it's all competing for our limited spare time. And most content is only as worthy as we allow it to be.
I am telling you, Hollywood is turning pirates into boycotters. And they will regret it as they will lose mindshare and the value of their brands will diminish. I admit most of the strategies you outlined don't qualify as "boycott" but reading does and a man can dream, can't I?
If you compare a country where advertisement for drugs is illegal, you can see that: - new drugs are used just as well (as long as the doctors and patients see the value proposition) - drugs are actually cheaper in countries where said advertisement is illegal (and we are talking expensive countries here, where most stuff is selling at prices similar to those of the US except for know ripoffs such as Verizon cell phone service or internet).
In such countries the doctors are usually determining what your ailments are and offering what they think are the best corresponding drugs. So drug companies just have to convince these experts that you need the drugs and they will be used. That seems quite reasonable, efficient and reasonably respectful of individual freedom, although there is some abuse (drug companies sometimes offer free seminars in tropical islands for instance).
In the US, advertising to end users also increases some risks that people will ask for drugs they don't really need. When you see the list of side effects, it's easy how to see how this could be quite dangerous and 'give cancer' as was said...
Example: Lovaza is refined Omega3 with some testing done (basically filtered fish oil...). They have ads on TV all the time and the drug is very expensive. You can buy Omega3 for much less from all kinds of supplement manufacturers. That seems to contradict your theory.
Well, Engadget and other sister sites accept Facebook and Google. I am pretty sure the 3 don't belong to the same company so that sounds like openid is working to some extent.
There is cyanogenmod which is a distribution of Android with more freedom. After that you can choose not to install the Google Apps, not configure any Google accounts (or have a dummy one).
Avoiding Google on Cyanogenmod means: - no Google market for apps. You can download packages for Open Source apps, you can use somebody else's market (say Amazon if you don't feel like they are bad for your privacy) - no gmail, you can use another mail service, choose a non Google mail client - no Google maps. There is an Open Street Map application but it's not lightweight and seamless (not used it in 6 months though)
I do that on my Nook Color but I actually have a dummy Google account and I use Google books and other Google apps as it's easier. And I got the Google market too as I mostly use the machine for entertainment (i.e read books, listen to music) and development so it's not really a very private device...
Indeed, that's why we need to sue them for discrimination and any other statute that applies. We just need one high profile case that just settles and their lawyers will be advising all employers to stay clear from Facebook. And Facebook could help: they could update their terms of service to make it a violation of their terms of service to allow people to look at your Facebook page since it invades the privacy of the other users that trusted you.
Facebook (or Google) has a role here. They can organize the defense of their users. If they don't, I expect people will have a bland Facebook page and do all their fun interaction on some other website that allows nicknames and doesn't let you search by public names...
Yup, I'd say 10ms is not uncommon for modern The FCC Says: Results by ISP. The highest average round-trip latency among ISPs was 75 ms, while the lowest average latency was 14 ms. This is from "Measuring Broadband America - FCC" found on the FCC website.
Walking the aisles means you are exposed to advertising by looking at the packaging of all the other items you didn't want in the first place. That sounds like a feature that the stores would want to keep for as long as they can, no?
You can't do that. At the time they were postponing publication of the research there was no published scientific research that showed the danger of exposure to Diesel exhausts. So basically, they were acting in good faith and just bringing healthy debate to this issue.
You probably can't get old gear to be retrofitted and some old gear might be very important (think your Fire Department's truck's GPS or something like that). But if the GPS manufactures stop selling the GPSes that are not filtering the frequencies and the FCC stops allowing the sale of those GPSes, then, after a while, the spectrum will be useable in the way that Lightsquared is planning (may it will take 5 years). That means the value of the spectrum will raise and LightSquared stands a better chance of swapping it or avoiding losing money on that spectrum.
Frankly, I don't think calling people names is very appropriate. I don't think the guys at Lightsquared really want to break our GPS (which is a marvelous common good and I can't express how awesome and useful I think it is). They just think the GPS manufacturers are "trespassing", that the FCC has not done its work and are trying to fix it. That's actually not the worst example of "lawyering up" I can think of.
Well, I am not sure it's really that clear cut. The Ars Technica article explains that 25% of the GPS receivers were unharmed by Lightsquared's towers. That means 75% of the receivers tested are not filtering out properly the bandwidths that were not intended for GPS. Normally, when gadgets and electronic devices go through the FCC (like they all do before they can be sold), that's to prove they don't cause harmful interferences and that they are not susceptible to interference from lawful emissions in other parts of the spectrum. So, it seems on interpretation is that: - GPS manufacturers sold devices that in fact not compliant to FCC rules - FCC accepted those non-compliant devices because they did not test properly So I suppose you could sue people so that they stop the sale of the 75% of non-compliant receivers (assuming lightsquared's interpretation of the meaning of the licenses is correct). GPS manufacturers might also just decide to fix the designs voluntarily to make the issue moot. That way, the inventory of problem receivers would at least stop growing and the value of Lightsquared's spectrum would slowly grow as old receivers die and the probability of obtaining an authorization grows. That would not solve the issue for Lightsquared but maybe that would help them get better spectrum.
Actually when the Shah was overthrown, most of the brightest people in Iran celebrated. That's because he was a really bad dictator and the only reason most people in the West are not aware of it is because he was very pro-American and very friendly with most western countries. The problem with revolutions is that it's hard to stabilize things afterwards. And there is no guarantee that the nice and respectful people will take over to draft a Constitution that grants freedom for the people. That's when many of the brightest in Iran got really disappointed and the religious extremists took the power.
You can read the account of one of those brightest people who left Iran years later: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjane_Satrapi Marjane's account seemed pretty fair and balanced to me (based on the differences with the cliches I had heard, what I know about the publishers, the variety of the anecdotes and their "true to life" aspect).
The constitution explicitly says that congress can only allow patents to further progress. So a patent that blocks critical progress in our society would mean that the law that allowed the patent is unconstitutional, no? So when you interpret the laws, look at the patents, you need to check that you are not interpreting in ways that would violate the constitution.
So taking into account the effect on society doesn't sound that stupid to me...
Don't worry, politicians know how to judge industries worth saving based on contributions to their campaigns and to super PACs. The economics are merely indicators but campaign contributions tell the Truth. And I am sure Hollywood accounting allows for plenty of lobbying and campaign contribution. After all, money spent on politicians can't be profit and if it's not profit then you don't have to give their share to the right holders or the government.
So lobbying is indeed compatible with Hollywood accounting.
It sounded like the examples given were to use the rooms when nobody is in there: 1) look inside the empty room and see what was left on the white board or post it notes etc. 2) listen and here people in an another room.
That seems quite clever and hard to notice. Somebody might walk in, notice the conf system is on and turn it off.
Spying on an actual meeting happening in the same room that the conf system did not seem to be the main target.
Actually some websites actually manage to make Google ads very unpleasant by putting so many of them on the top of the page, in the middle of the content etc. This probably leads to people clicking on them by mistake which from the advertiser's perspective is bad. The advertisers are likely to complain to Google and any ad agency or even to ask Google for refunds for such clicks.
So a page full of ads is not just bad for the user, it's bad for targeted advertising which is what Google does.
They have 13$ arduinos... That said, I prefer a Linux machine that can run python, java, apache and everything and then just talk to some IO library or something to take care of moving motors etc. But that's because I am a software guy....
Anybody knows what the liability is when parts of somebody's rocket land on somebody's home and kill someone? This thread has quite a few examples of rocket components falling on houses, so it seems the risk is actually pretty high. Do government representatives come and indemnify the victims? And then, what's going to happen for private launches?
Actually it's pretty much a story if it's low-level employees doing it. Come on! the MPAA and RIAA are always trying to get ISPs to police their customers and make sure nobody is using their connection to pirate stuff. But then they can't even block their own freaking employees from going to torrents and pirating copyrighted works?
I mean, it should be easier to control employees than customers, no? So this makes the point of the ISPs that have long said that they can't monitor their customers and make sure they don't pirate.
This brings us to the core issue: power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. a typical nuclear power plant is such an enormous effort and investment with so much money and power involved over such insanely long periods of times (it's likely some will operate for 100 years) that many actors involved stop being human and rational as you justly outlined above.
Smaller scale distributed systems that don't involve such intense issues are less likely to corrupt people. They could be nuclear, solar, wave based or anything, but what's important is to avoid the 'too big too fail' and the 'what are a few human lives in the balance of something that benefits so many people'.
As far as I am concerned, I'd want code multiplexing or other interference avoiding techniques. And then full encryption with authentication to make sure the components that have been paired and only them can give each other orders. I mean, this is going to be some guy's way of commanding his limbs. Nobody wants a script kiddie to be able to play Darth Vader's grip of death with a poor guy's 'Luke' prosthetic arm that did not have adequate protection...
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Hi,
Don't limit yourself to science fiction. Some old books are actually fun in a way very similar to science fiction. The Anabasis by Xenophon for instance tells the story of 10000 Greek mercenaries stranded in the middle of the Persian empire. I enjoyed the encounters with the foreign people, the way they get organized and are voting all the time etc. All this makes it a bit like the kind of social thought experiment that the best science fiction produces. Except it really happened and they didn't have light sabers but overall I loved it. It brought a lot of the stuff I like in Babylon 5 for instance.
There are also complete NASA shows from the 60s that explain the progress of the effort to land guys on the Moon. My 5 year old watched a 30 minute episode with interest!
Anyway, you are right, if you disagree with copyright holders, a boycott is the best way as they only have themselves to blame and can't accuse 'the pirates'. As you said there is an abundance of content distributed in more open ways. And it's all competing for our limited spare time. And most content is only as worthy as we allow it to be.
I am telling you, Hollywood is turning pirates into boycotters. And they will regret it as they will lose mindshare and the value of their brands will diminish. I admit most of the strategies you outlined don't qualify as "boycott" but reading does and a man can dream, can't I?
If you compare a country where advertisement for drugs is illegal, you can see that:
- new drugs are used just as well (as long as the doctors and patients see the value proposition)
- drugs are actually cheaper in countries where said advertisement is illegal (and we are talking expensive countries here, where most stuff is selling at prices similar to those of the US except for know ripoffs such as Verizon cell phone service or internet).
In such countries the doctors are usually determining what your ailments are and offering what they think are the best corresponding drugs. So drug companies just have to convince these experts that you need the drugs and they will be used. That seems quite reasonable, efficient and reasonably respectful of individual freedom, although there is some abuse (drug companies sometimes offer free seminars in tropical islands for instance).
In the US, advertising to end users also increases some risks that people will ask for drugs they don't really need. When you see the list of side effects, it's easy how to see how this could be quite dangerous and 'give cancer' as was said...
Example: Lovaza is refined Omega3 with some testing done (basically filtered fish oil...). They have ads on TV all the time and the drug is very expensive. You can buy Omega3 for much less from all kinds of supplement manufacturers. That seems to contradict your theory.
Well, Engadget and other sister sites accept Facebook and Google.
I am pretty sure the 3 don't belong to the same company so that sounds like openid is working to some extent.
There is cyanogenmod which is a distribution of Android with more freedom.
After that you can choose not to install the Google Apps, not configure any Google accounts (or have a dummy one).
Avoiding Google on Cyanogenmod means:
- no Google market for apps. You can download packages for Open Source apps, you can use somebody else's market (say Amazon if you don't feel like they are bad for your privacy)
- no gmail, you can use another mail service, choose a non Google mail client
- no Google maps. There is an Open Street Map application but it's not lightweight and seamless (not used it in 6 months though)
I do that on my Nook Color but I actually have a dummy Google account and I use Google books and other Google apps as it's easier. And I got the Google market too as I mostly use the machine for entertainment (i.e read books, listen to music) and development so it's not really a very private device...
Indeed, that's why we need to sue them for discrimination and any other statute that applies.
We just need one high profile case that just settles and their lawyers will be advising all employers to stay clear from Facebook.
And Facebook could help: they could update their terms of service to make it a violation of their terms of service to allow people to look at your Facebook page since it invades the privacy of the other users that trusted you.
Facebook (or Google) has a role here. They can organize the defense of their users. If they don't, I expect people will have a bland Facebook page and do all their fun interaction on some other website that allows nicknames and doesn't let you search by public names...
Yup, I'd say 10ms is not uncommon for modern
The FCC Says:
Results by ISP. The highest average round-trip latency among ISPs
was 75 ms, while the lowest average latency was 14 ms.
This is from "Measuring Broadband America - FCC" found on the FCC website.
Walking the aisles means you are exposed to advertising by looking at the packaging of all the other items you didn't want in the first place.
That sounds like a feature that the stores would want to keep for as long as they can, no?
You can't do that. At the time they were postponing publication of the research there was no published scientific research that showed the danger of exposure to Diesel exhausts.
So basically, they were acting in good faith and just bringing healthy debate to this issue.
Now, where's that "sarcasm mark" key already?
You probably can't get old gear to be retrofitted and some old gear might be very important (think your Fire Department's truck's GPS or something like that).
But if the GPS manufactures stop selling the GPSes that are not filtering the frequencies and the FCC stops allowing the sale of those GPSes, then, after a while, the spectrum will be useable in the way that Lightsquared is planning (may it will take 5 years).
That means the value of the spectrum will raise and LightSquared stands a better chance of swapping it or avoiding losing money on that spectrum.
Frankly, I don't think calling people names is very appropriate. I don't think the guys at Lightsquared really want to break our GPS (which is a marvelous common good and I can't express how awesome and useful I think it is). They just think the GPS manufacturers are "trespassing", that the FCC has not done its work and are trying to fix it. That's actually not the worst example of "lawyering up" I can think of.
Or use tethered blimps at 600 feet, that would be cool...
Well, I am not sure it's really that clear cut.
The Ars Technica article explains that 25% of the GPS receivers were unharmed by Lightsquared's towers. That means 75% of the receivers tested are not filtering out properly the bandwidths that were not intended for GPS.
Normally, when gadgets and electronic devices go through the FCC (like they all do before they can be sold), that's to prove they don't cause harmful interferences and that they are not susceptible to interference from lawful emissions in other parts of the spectrum.
So, it seems on interpretation is that:
- GPS manufacturers sold devices that in fact not compliant to FCC rules
- FCC accepted those non-compliant devices because they did not test properly
So I suppose you could sue people so that they stop the sale of the 75% of non-compliant receivers (assuming lightsquared's interpretation of the meaning of the licenses is correct). GPS manufacturers might also just decide to fix the designs voluntarily to make the issue moot.
That way, the inventory of problem receivers would at least stop growing and the value of Lightsquared's spectrum would slowly grow as old receivers die and the probability of obtaining an authorization grows. That would not solve the issue for Lightsquared but maybe that would help them get better spectrum.
Actually when the Shah was overthrown, most of the brightest people in Iran celebrated. That's because he was a really bad dictator and the only reason most people in the West are not aware of it is because he was very pro-American and very friendly with most western countries.
The problem with revolutions is that it's hard to stabilize things afterwards. And there is no guarantee that the nice and respectful people will take over to draft a Constitution that grants freedom for the people. That's when many of the brightest in Iran got really disappointed and the religious extremists took the power.
You can read the account of one of those brightest people who left Iran years later: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjane_Satrapi
Marjane's account seemed pretty fair and balanced to me (based on the differences with the cliches I had heard, what I know about the publishers, the variety of the anecdotes and their "true to life" aspect).
The constitution explicitly says that congress can only allow patents to further progress.
So a patent that blocks critical progress in our society would mean that the law that allowed the patent is unconstitutional, no?
So when you interpret the laws, look at the patents, you need to check that you are not interpreting in ways that would violate the constitution.
So taking into account the effect on society doesn't sound that stupid to me...
Don't worry, politicians know how to judge industries worth saving based on contributions to their campaigns and to super PACs. The economics are merely indicators but campaign contributions tell the Truth.
And I am sure Hollywood accounting allows for plenty of lobbying and campaign contribution. After all, money spent on politicians can't be profit and if it's not profit then you don't have to give their share to the right holders or the government.
So lobbying is indeed compatible with Hollywood accounting.
A 1 week vacation was enough for a coworker to forget his passphrase on his work desktop.
Clearly, a week in jail could be enough.
It sounded like the examples given were to use the rooms when nobody is in there:
1) look inside the empty room and see what was left on the white board or post it notes etc.
2) listen and here people in an another room.
That seems quite clever and hard to notice. Somebody might walk in, notice the conf system is on and turn it off.
Spying on an actual meeting happening in the same room that the conf system did not seem to be the main target.
Actually some websites actually manage to make Google ads very unpleasant by putting so many of them on the top of the page, in the middle of the content etc.
This probably leads to people clicking on them by mistake which from the advertiser's perspective is bad. The advertisers are likely to complain to Google and any ad agency or even to ask Google for refunds for such clicks.
So a page full of ads is not just bad for the user, it's bad for targeted advertising which is what Google does.
They could do a Doodle that says that, Google Doodles are actually NEWS and reported in many places.
They have 13$ arduinos... That said, I prefer a Linux machine that can run python, java, apache and everything and then just talk to some IO library or something to take care of moving motors etc.
But that's because I am a software guy....
They will ask Walmart for video footage to identify who bumped into your car and drove away.
At least that's what the insurance told my wife once...
Anybody knows what the liability is when parts of somebody's rocket land on somebody's home and kill someone?
This thread has quite a few examples of rocket components falling on houses, so it seems the risk is actually pretty high.
Do government representatives come and indemnify the victims?
And then, what's going to happen for private launches?
Actually it's pretty much a story if it's low-level employees doing it.
Come on! the MPAA and RIAA are always trying to get ISPs to police their customers and make sure nobody is using their connection to pirate stuff.
But then they can't even block their own freaking employees from going to torrents and pirating copyrighted works?
I mean, it should be easier to control employees than customers, no? So this makes the point of the ISPs that have long said that they can't monitor their customers and make sure they don't pirate.
The article says
"any of their books exclusive to the Kindle Store for at least 90 days:"
So you get your freedom back in 3 months.
This brings us to the core issue: power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
a typical nuclear power plant is such an enormous effort and investment with so much money and power involved over such insanely long periods of times (it's likely some will operate for 100 years) that many actors involved stop being human and rational as you justly outlined above.
Smaller scale distributed systems that don't involve such intense issues are less likely to corrupt people. They could be nuclear, solar, wave based or anything, but what's important is to avoid the 'too big too fail' and the 'what are a few human lives in the balance of something that benefits so many people'.
As far as I am concerned, I'd want code multiplexing or other interference avoiding techniques. And then full encryption with authentication to make sure the components that have been paired and only them can give each other orders.
I mean, this is going to be some guy's way of commanding his limbs. Nobody wants a script kiddie to be able to play Darth Vader's grip of death with a poor guy's 'Luke' prosthetic arm that did not have adequate protection...