I believe there is no natural right to own ideas. Thomas Jefferson seemed to agree.
I also believe that allowing someone to profit from their inventions/artwork will provide an economic incentive to create more, which will benefit all of society. So, we allow inventors and artists to have exclusive control over their inventions because it benefits society by helping to assure future works.
Personal information is of a different nature. It isn't an invention or artistic work. It wasn't created by the person it was disclosed to. Society as a whole won't benefit by knowing what cereal I eat for breakfast. Advertisers/Governments/whoever have no more right to know the average height of women I like to have sex with than they do to find out by staring in my second floor bedroom window.
That is to say, I have a right to privacy.
I'm interested to hear what you think about my distinction.
Did you bother to read the Bill? It is sponsored by Democrats, and numerous people have posted links to the Salon story which exposes it for the garbage that it is.
This is a clear example of how awful Democrats are with protecting privacy, and you are going to sit there and say how wonderful they are? "They are great except for when they aren't" is what I'm getting from this.
I still find the Republicans lacking in many ways. First, they claim to be for a free market economy, i.e. Capitalism. I'm all for Laissez Faire Capitalism, don't get me wrong. But the Republicans are the first to run to bail out a failing business or industry. Not a very capitalistic idea afaic...
Not to get off on a tangent, but I just thought I'd pass along a few facts to ruin your day dream. Go read some real numbers. The top 1% are paying 33% of all taxes. They earned 13% of the total income. The top 50% pay 92% of taxes. The top 50% is only earning 85% of the income. That leaves the bottom 50% paying less than 8% of the income tax. Real equal, huh?
If you want to take back the congress there is only one option I'm aware of, the green party. It is not a perfect choice, but, alas, I don't have any other idea to solve this fundamental problem of wealth inballence.
The Green Party? They are, just as you allude to in your second sentence, Communists/Socialists/Marxists/whatever you want to call them.
Some people having more money than others isn't a problem either, by the way. Some people work 60 hours a week, some work 40. Would you suggest that those working 60 should earn less money per hour than those working 40? And how about what those people do with the money they earn.
There's another problem. Suppose we earn the same amount of money. If I invest/save my money, and you buy a car with yours five years from now who has more wealth? I would, because I've earned interest and my wealth appreciated in value, while you drove your car and your wealth depreciated in value. Should I then forfeit some of my money to you so that we're equal?
I'm all for the law being applied to everyone the same. That's quite different than "equality" consisting of robbing Paul to pay Peter.
All socialism amounts to is a desire to have some entity exercise absolute control everyone's thoughts, time, and property. You socialist moderators might try rebutting me rather than modding me down for expressing one different than your own.
You shouldn't make laws like that at all, they are unnecessary and unconstitutional. It was already illegal to threaten and harrass people without such a law. The majority of protesters weren't assaulting or harrassing people, and now they are all being denied their right to peaceful protest.
I'm not surprised. Seeing as we had Bill Clinton a pro-abortion President in office for 8 years that Federal Judges some of whom he could have appointed would side against this website.
I'm not sure how this site is supposed to be different than those redneck KKK websites that tell people to go out and kill blacks, jews, catholics, immigrants, and any other group of people that aren't white and protestant. Those are of = social value (depending on your point of view on abortion), and are legal so I don't see why this site shouldn't be.
I know that a Russian who writes code that is legal in Russia, but illegal in the US because of that absurd law isn't going to be extradited. But, it does make it impossible for that Russian to ever come to the US for any reason afterwards. That could severly hurt someones career if he can't come to one of the largest industrial nations in the world..
I was pretty sure that the int'l author of code was being held liable for anything the US downloader could do. At least that is what Elcomsoft/Dmitry led me to believe...
"I'm upset by all the RF radiation created by cellphone use around me. So, I'll go buy a device that emits lots of RF radiation in the form of noise to prevent anyone else from creating useful RF radiation around me."
You can get 8MB buffers on the newest Western Digital drives. That gives a 7200RPM IDE drive nearly the raw performance of a 10000RPM SCSI disk. You can also run two in RAID0, which comes standard on many motherboards anymore nearly doubling the read/write performance again.
Unless you really need hotswappable disks or have huge I/O demands there isn't much point to SCSI on the desktop anymore imho.
There is quite simply nothing to compromise on here. Fritz Hollings can take his bill, turn it sideways, and stick it up Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti's asses.
The CBDTPA is on its face value a load of bunk! It is intended to violate the rights of every single human being on this planet because they are capable of infringing on copyrights.
The only reason Hollywood still exists is because of the technology industry that it attempts to rape a sodomize a few times every decade. They are making more money than ever, and have never in the past been sucessful in there absurd raids on freedom. If we allow them now, it just confirms they were right all along and should remaim persistant for future even more invasive legislation.
You do realize this isn't the ending, but the very beginning of what they want, right?
P.S. You should mention to your Congressman that if he is against gun control then he's blatantly hypocritical to support this bill.
Now, maybe he'll actually do something? Hollings has introduced two shitty pieces of legislation and I'm still waiting on the Anti-DMCA one from Boucher. Where the hell is it? I don't give a rat's ass what he's for if all he does is sit on his hands.
Mod me down if you want, but have the balls to face the truth.
I wonder if these bozos run their schools and roads departments with the same level of professionalism.
I can assure you that their road department doesn't even have an office building, they just drink themselves to death slowly everyday in a nearby pub. They've had holes in the road up there for YEARS. Maybe the IT staff does something similar?
In my experience, this is quite simply an oxymoron in the United States/Canada. I've dealt with several large ISPs, hardware manufacturers, and a number of other groups.
The only good thing I can say about a tech support rep was when I was working as a PC repair tech and reloading Windows on a old ASUS motherboard. Apparently, there were three different onboard sound chips used, and the website only documented and provided drivers for one. So, after numerous attempts with different drivers I ended up calling the US tech support office. 45 minutes later still without getting a live person, I called the office in Taiwan (you can do these things when you aren't paying the phone bill =). I got a live person within three minutes. He spoke english much better than most US ISP support monkeys do, and knew exactly what driver I needed and where to download it. THAT is what I call service.
Lucas is legally entitled to do just this. Under US Copyright law, "...the owner of copyright.. has the exclusive rights... to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work"* i.e. Lucas has the sole right to create a sequel, write another Jar Jar adventure, or whatever. The only stuff he's "allowing" is stuff that he doesn't have a legal right to prevent anyway. Commentary and parody are protected as Fair Uses.**
If you don't like the law, think it is ridiculously restrictive of free speech maybe, then perhaps you should write your Congressman?
If he wants on my good side he can tell me who bought this legislation and how they are directly benefiting from it!
Hypothetical Scenario: Does Disney not need to buy personal information (maybe they collect enough on their own?), so they are going to use it to prevent others from access to such information to prevent them from competing?
I don't claim to know in anyway the above is true, but it would seem possible. I'm certainly not stupid enough to believe that after Mister Hollings publically demonstrates what a whore he is with his so-called Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act that he's suddenly interested in protecting the rights of the people of the United States.
If I were in Congress I'd vote against this Bill based on who's the owner of the rock it crawled out from under.
It took all of a week to get my answer. I'd only change one thing... if I were in the Senate I'd punch the scumbag in his mouth.
"Piracy is not a private offense, it hurts everyone by diminishing the incentive to invest in the creation of music."
Or to paraphrase, 'Piracy is a public offense because it hurts the recording industry.' Great concern for the artists yet again, Hilary!
"..incentive to invest in the creation of music." what nonsense, the RIAA doesn't even do that anyway. 'Incentive to manufacture pop' might be an accurate description of what it does, but I can take no pity on the folks who brought us the Backstreet Boys, NSync, 98 Degrees, Britney Spears, and a boat load of other talentless phonies. Hey, I wonder why album sales are down?
I thought it was fairly obvious that if you can delete "iexplore.exe" and "wmplayer.exe" from Windows and it still worked that those were obviously not essential to its operation.
not trying to troll, but they could make a not network transparent version that's faster couldn't they? I don't often find myself needing a remote X session on an OS that has a useful command line interface (almost anything not Windows/Mac).
They only offer their free Solaris license for 2= CPU systems and not for commercial applications, iirc. (I'm honestly much to lazy to reread their license to confirm:)
In my opinion, its more likely they are distributing an x86 version for free to get more people using it on regular PCs to learn it. That way, there will be lots of people able to admin it and recommend their companies to purchase Sun's higher end SPARC server hardware.
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I don't think its particularly inconsistent.
I believe there is no natural right to own ideas. Thomas Jefferson seemed to agree.
I also believe that allowing someone to profit from their inventions/artwork will provide an economic incentive to create more, which will benefit all of society. So, we allow inventors and artists to have exclusive control over their inventions because it benefits society by helping to assure future works.
Personal information is of a different nature. It isn't an invention or artistic work. It wasn't created by the person it was disclosed to. Society as a whole won't benefit by knowing what cereal I eat for breakfast. Advertisers/Governments/whoever have no more right to know the average height of women I like to have sex with than they do to find out by staring in my second floor bedroom window.
That is to say, I have a right to privacy.
I'm interested to hear what you think about my distinction.
Did you bother to read the Bill? It is sponsored by Democrats, and numerous people have posted links to the Salon story which exposes it for the garbage that it is.
This is a clear example of how awful Democrats are with protecting privacy, and you are going to sit there and say how wonderful they are? "They are great except for when they aren't" is what I'm getting from this.
I still find the Republicans lacking in many ways. First, they claim to be for a free market economy, i.e. Capitalism. I'm all for Laissez Faire Capitalism, don't get me wrong. But the Republicans are the first to run to bail out a failing business or industry. Not a very capitalistic idea afaic...
The Green Party? They are, just as you allude to in your second sentence, Communists/Socialists/Marxists/whatever you want to call them.
Some people having more money than others isn't a problem either, by the way. Some people work 60 hours a week, some work 40. Would you suggest that those working 60 should earn less money per hour than those working 40? And how about what those people do with the money they earn.
There's another problem. Suppose we earn the same amount of money. If I invest/save my money, and you buy a car with yours five years from now who has more wealth? I would, because I've earned interest and my wealth appreciated in value, while you drove your car and your wealth depreciated in value. Should I then forfeit some of my money to you so that we're equal?
I'm all for the law being applied to everyone the same. That's quite different than "equality" consisting of robbing Paul to pay Peter.
All socialism amounts to is a desire to have some entity exercise absolute control everyone's thoughts, time, and property. You socialist moderators might try rebutting me rather than modding me down for expressing one different than your own.
The last sentence is supposed to say "equal or lesser value" not "=value"
You shouldn't make laws like that at all, they are unnecessary and unconstitutional. It was already illegal to threaten and harrass people without such a law. The majority of protesters weren't assaulting or harrassing people, and now they are all being denied their right to peaceful protest.
I'm not surprised. Seeing as we had Bill Clinton a pro-abortion President in office for 8 years that Federal Judges some of whom he could have appointed would side against this website.
I'm not sure how this site is supposed to be different than those redneck KKK websites that tell people to go out and kill blacks, jews, catholics, immigrants, and any other group of people that aren't white and protestant. Those are of = social value (depending on your point of view on abortion), and are legal so I don't see why this site shouldn't be.
Doom 2022: Demons on Phobos
So if I looked at a SSC program I'd see lots of:
switch()
{
foo:
}
?
I know that a Russian who writes code that is legal in Russia, but illegal in the US because of that absurd law isn't going to be extradited. But, it does make it impossible for that Russian to ever come to the US for any reason afterwards. That could severly hurt someones career if he can't come to one of the largest industrial nations in the world..
I was pretty sure that the int'l author of code was being held liable for anything the US downloader could do. At least that is what Elcomsoft/Dmitry led me to believe...
It need only be stolen from the vulnerable and highly enticing gov't system that holds it in a database.
"I'm upset by all the RF radiation created by cellphone use around me. So, I'll go buy a device that emits lots of RF radiation in the form of noise to prevent anyone else from creating useful RF radiation around me."
That's what I'm getting from this, am I wrong?
You can get 8MB buffers on the newest Western Digital drives. That gives a 7200RPM IDE drive nearly the raw performance of a 10000RPM SCSI disk. You can also run two in RAID0, which comes standard on many motherboards anymore nearly doubling the read/write performance again.
Unless you really need hotswappable disks or have huge I/O demands there isn't much point to SCSI on the desktop anymore imho.
There is quite simply nothing to compromise on here. Fritz Hollings can take his bill, turn it sideways, and stick it up Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti's asses.
The CBDTPA is on its face value a load of bunk! It is intended to violate the rights of every single human being on this planet because they are capable of infringing on copyrights.
The only reason Hollywood still exists is because of the technology industry that it attempts to rape a sodomize a few times every decade. They are making more money than ever, and have never in the past been sucessful in there absurd raids on freedom. If we allow them now, it just confirms they were right all along and should remaim persistant for future even more invasive legislation.
You do realize this isn't the ending, but the very beginning of what they want, right?
P.S. You should mention to your Congressman that if he is against gun control then he's blatantly hypocritical to support this bill.
Now, maybe he'll actually do something? Hollings has introduced two shitty pieces of legislation and I'm still waiting on the Anti-DMCA one from Boucher. Where the hell is it? I don't give a rat's ass what he's for if all he does is sit on his hands.
Mod me down if you want, but have the balls to face the truth.
"..Everything I need to know I learned from Miss Cleo, everything I need to know I learned from Miss Cleo.."
That'll be $4.95, thanks!
I wonder if these bozos run their schools and roads departments with the same level of professionalism.
I can assure you that their road department doesn't even have an office building, they just drink themselves to death slowly everyday in a nearby pub. They've had holes in the road up there for YEARS. Maybe the IT staff does something similar?
In my experience, this is quite simply an oxymoron in the United States/Canada. I've dealt with several large ISPs, hardware manufacturers, and a number of other groups.
The only good thing I can say about a tech support rep was when I was working as a PC repair tech and reloading Windows on a old ASUS motherboard. Apparently, there were three different onboard sound chips used, and the website only documented and provided drivers for one. So, after numerous attempts with different drivers I ended up calling the US tech support office. 45 minutes later still without getting a live person, I called the office in Taiwan (you can do these things when you aren't paying the phone bill =). I got a live person within three minutes. He spoke english much better than most US ISP support monkeys do, and knew exactly what driver I needed and where to download it. THAT is what I call service.
Lucas is legally entitled to do just this. Under US Copyright law, "...the owner of copyright.. has the exclusive rights... to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work"* i.e. Lucas has the sole right to create a sequel, write another Jar Jar adventure, or whatever. The only stuff he's "allowing" is stuff that he doesn't have a legal right to prevent anyway. Commentary and parody are protected as Fair Uses.**
If you don't like the law, think it is ridiculously restrictive of free speech maybe, then perhaps you should write your Congressman?
Sources:
* Title 17 Section 106
** Title 17 Section 107
It took all of a week to get my answer. I'd only change one thing... if I were in the Senate I'd punch the scumbag in his mouth.
"..incentive to invest in the creation of music." what nonsense, the RIAA doesn't even do that anyway. 'Incentive to manufacture pop' might be an accurate description of what it does, but I can take no pity on the folks who brought us the Backstreet Boys, NSync, 98 Degrees, Britney Spears, and a boat load of other talentless phonies. Hey, I wonder why album sales are down?
I thought it was fairly obvious that if you can delete "iexplore.exe" and "wmplayer.exe" from Windows and it still worked that those were obviously not essential to its operation.
not trying to troll, but they could make a not network transparent version that's faster couldn't they? I don't often find myself needing a remote X session on an OS that has a useful command line interface (almost anything not Windows/Mac).
They only offer their free Solaris license for 2= CPU systems and not for commercial applications, iirc. (I'm honestly much to lazy to reread their license to confirm :)
In my opinion, its more likely they are distributing an x86 version for free to get more people using it on regular PCs to learn it. That way, there will be lots of people able to admin it and recommend their companies to purchase Sun's higher end SPARC server hardware.