In any case, "copyright protections" are inevitably circumvented, inconvenient for users who never try to copy anything, and inherently act as "fair use preventions" just as much as "copyright protections." As such they ought to be ruled prima facie illegal, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's how the Supreme Court will rule once the DMCA, DVD CSS, and their ilk finally wind their way up there.
Ooh, I like this. A fucking lot. IANAL, but someone needs to file an amicus brief in this case, arguing precisely this!
sulli
"If I'm a friend of the court, why does the judge hate me?" - Snoopy
Coercion is definitely possible on a large scale. The PRI was only defeated in Mexico last year after many years of giving away washing machines, etc. to voters in exchange for votes.
In this specific case: imagine that a large employer or union decided to endorse a candidate. Sure, it would be illegal, but that would not stop them from "reminding" employees to vote for the Favored Candidate, perhaps with the help of WinWhatWhere or other snooping software. It could make a difference in, say, San Francisco, where city employees all magically got a vacation day last year to campaign for Mayor Willie Brown...
And it has. MP3 is the leading digital format. SDMI, Liquid, Music Clip, and all related encrypted formats are burnt-to-a-crisp toast. Napster has 20M users, very few of whom give a rat's ass about DMCA or other alphabet soup.
That the RIAA and its members have chosen not to participate in this market, which is satisfying millions of users daily, is their own damn fault. Now that the market has passed them by, they're trying to get in the way.
I know it's more complex than this, but choosing to prohibit others from participating sounds severely anticompetitive to me. Where's Joel Klein when you need him?
Some guy at Forrester looked at a bunch of gambling websites, and then picked a year in the future and a number of billion dollars directly out of his ass. MSNBC, being lazy, took it as gospel. That's how so many stupid dotcoms got funded, after all!
As a fellow Jetta owner, I can sympathize, but I would hope it has a direct GPS-enabled lookup of the nearest VW dealer if your Jetta (not MP3) reliability experience is anything like mine!
1. contribute large sums of money to their Representatives' parties' soft-money stashes, as the RIAA is surely doing (note the behavior of the NAB and even NPR concerning low-power radio!)
2. get the headlines, except when well organized, and even then not always
So we're not invited, because - one person, one vote notwithstanding - Congress has decided that we don't count.
Protest method: get a copy of Orrin Hatch's country tunes, put it on Napster, get all your friends to do the same!
But this attack may not work in all cases. If the router keeping track of the customer's connections has to maintain a 1-1 relationship between the IP and the ATM circuit connecting each location, won't the hax0r's traffic be ignored? I guess if that router were (accidentially) configured to allow all outbound traffic (regardless of actual IP range) from subscriber lines to go out to the net, that might be a problem, but ISPs should filter... right?
Woud DHCP have been more useful? (I believe it's automatically supported by Linux; some ISPs use it instead of PPPoE. However, it's only fifth in the Best Protocol Poll.) Or did you specifically require a fixed IP? Just curious.
Actually, the author of this famous quote (mostly used by advocates of censorship such as Focus on the Family), who I believe was Oliver Wendell Holmes, wrote that one cannot falsely yell "fire" in a crowded theater. Of course, if the theater is crowded with people and is also on fire, you would be entitled to let the former know about the latter.
This is useful to point out when people complain about potentially inflammatory or offensive speech. If the speech is accurate to the best of your knowledge, even if people get pissed off, you have a right - nay, a duty! - to utter it. IMHO(IANAL).
sulli
Also: Do not forget to shout "theater" in a crowded fire!
Toysmart has warehouses full of Sooper Soakers and a legion of G.I. Joes with Kung Fu Grip[tm].
Actually, they have nothing! It's all in their suppliers' warehouses. That's the magic of the virtual store - when it's time to liquidate, you save a heck of a lot of time.
Toysmart might still be able to use its customers' data to court financial suitors. Should the company be acquired and then restart operations under the same name, the FTC could technically decide that the data would not have been transferred to a third party. Steer says TRUSTe would accept such a solution.
So I guess they could sell themselves to the KGB, as long as they said on their website: "Toysmart, a division of the Federal Security Bureau, Russian Federation."
You're damn right. Both corporations and unions need to be held accountable. Particularly when the unions and corps are in cahoots to keep consumers paying more and getting less (e.g. the airline biz, fights notwithstanding).
However, this is a little bit offtopic. The key question facing this board is: what level of scrutiny is appropriate for individuals who post comments publicly, and how much "safe harbor" exists for those who disagree with their employer or ISP? I would argue that the "I speak only for myself" clause should be 100% sufficient to protect individual speech, but unfortunately there appears to be a lot of practice contrary to this going on these days.
But back on this sidetopic: take a look at what happens to union rank-and-file who disagree with their bosses (e.g. Teamsters for a Democratic Union). Some of these folks get silenced too, and not always in pretty ways.
Like I said: personal responsibility. If someone is yacking on the phone during a movie, he should be held accountable by being thrown out. No reason to get violent - particularly since your "cell-phone jerk" friend will probably respond in kind, and then you'll have a nasty situation on your hands.
On the Nokia 6160/2, a very popular phone, you can select "Silent" by pushing the power button once and then selecting it from a menu. It also lets you turn off the ringer when the phone is ringing by pushing the power button once, which is useful when that guy you're sick of is still calling...
If only cellphones had a "Make This Guy Forget My Number" button.
The net is how a lot of people live. It's an extraordinarily useful thing that millions use. The fact that not everyone uses it makes it more interesting, because it hasn't yet become something we all take for granted, like electric power or running water - or television or radio, for that matter. Once that happens, it will be very interesting to look back on how it got that way. Future historians will thank the people doing this, even if Erikson doesn't.
What will RJ Reynolds have to say? After all, Camel cigarettes have satisfied the T-Zone (that's T for Taste, and T for Throat) for half a century now.
And, I can see the slogan now, as doctors can turn it off: "More Doctors Use Q-Zone than Any Other Phone!"
Indeed. Talk about crappy design: screen real estate that ever allows content seems to be less than 50%, what with all the mandatory-ad frames &c. I know they gotta pay the bills, but Good Lord!
Modern cellphones have a SILENT feature that works wonders. I guess some people can't be bothered to use such a thing, but I for one would prefer to control my own damn phone than submit to something like this. You know, personal responsibility and all that?
Well, when I clicked on Home Depot, it got stuck in an endless loop of redirecting to itself - I think it was trying to do a single redirect, making itself the "last visited" site, but just kept going and going and going. Maybe they're trying to inflate their Media Metrix scores, I dunno.
It's a good thing this doesn't happen in the bricks and mortar world -- oh wait, I forgot, Home Depots are cropping up everywhere!
This article did have that quality common in early 90s manage ment books by Tom Peters et al. that repeated "The only constant is change! You have to be an agent of change to successfully manage change in this rapidly changing world! Change or be changed!!" ad nauseam. Only in this case it's cyber-this and network that.
But there were some fairly interesting points buried in the cyberhype, so don't entirely discount it. One thing I enjoyed was the following element:
Using your powerful desktop computer as a mere channel to reach web sites, reaching through and beyond it instead of using it, is like renting a Hyundai and keeing your Porsche in the garage. Like executing programs out of disk storage instead of main memory and cache. The Web makes the desktop impotent.... The power of desktop machines is a magnet that will reverse today's "everything onto the Web!" trend. Desktop power will inevitably drag information out of remote servers onto desktops.
Of course we've seen some of this already, but it's a nice counterpoint to the perennial "the network is the computer" discussion, 1996-vintage though it may be.
Lots of Mac fans use Virtual PC to run those programs that are only available for Windows. Seems to me that Wine would be an excellent way to get Linux fans access to the services that only Windows supports, and would also give Win users an easy upgrade path to Linux if they so desire.
his format is 99% likely NOT TO BE backward compatible. Your AudioCD player, PSX, Dreamcast, (insert your own consumer device here) will NOT be able to read these discs.
And this is why I think it will be a total failure. If the tens of millions of CD-ROMs out there can't read this, nobody will use it.
After sony introduces this format, It's likely that we'll see a plethora of firmware upgrades to every CDROM reader under the sun to support this stuff and the format will take off and soar.
Not too bloody likely. Can you imagine iMac users or corporate IT guys upgrading CD-ROM drives en masse to support such a small incremental improvement - and be forced to deal with copy protection to boot? Upgrading firmware is a pain on anything, particularly cheap devices like CD-ROMs/CD-R, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Ooh, I like this. A fucking lot. IANAL, but someone needs to file an amicus brief in this case, arguing precisely this!
sulli
"If I'm a friend of the court, why does the judge hate me?" - Snoopy
In this specific case: imagine that a large employer or union decided to endorse a candidate. Sure, it would be illegal, but that would not stop them from "reminding" employees to vote for the Favored Candidate, perhaps with the help of WinWhatWhere or other snooping software. It could make a difference in, say, San Francisco, where city employees all magically got a vacation day last year to campaign for Mayor Willie Brown...
sulli
That the RIAA and its members have chosen not to participate in this market, which is satisfying millions of users daily, is their own damn fault. Now that the market has passed them by, they're trying to get in the way.
I know it's more complex than this, but choosing to prohibit others from participating sounds severely anticompetitive to me. Where's Joel Klein when you need him?
sulli
sulli
sulli
2. get the headlines, except when well organized, and even then not always
So we're not invited, because - one person, one vote notwithstanding - Congress has decided that we don't count.
Protest method: get a copy of Orrin Hatch's country tunes, put it on Napster, get all your friends to do the same!
sulli
Curious.
sulli
sulli
This is useful to point out when people complain about potentially inflammatory or offensive speech. If the speech is accurate to the best of your knowledge, even if people get pissed off, you have a right - nay, a duty! - to utter it. IMHO(IANAL).
sulli
Also: Do not forget to shout "theater" in a crowded fire!
Actually, they have nothing! It's all in their suppliers' warehouses. That's the magic of the virtual store - when it's time to liquidate, you save a heck of a lot of time.
sulli
sulli
Yahoo news report
But they did leave themselves an out:
Toysmart might still be able to use its customers' data to court financial suitors. Should the company be acquired and then restart operations under the same name, the FTC could technically decide that the data would not have been transferred to a third party. Steer says TRUSTe would accept such a solution.
So I guess they could sell themselves to the KGB, as long as they said on their website: "Toysmart, a division of the Federal Security Bureau, Russian Federation."
sulli
However, this is a little bit offtopic. The key question facing this board is: what level of scrutiny is appropriate for individuals who post comments publicly, and how much "safe harbor" exists for those who disagree with their employer or ISP? I would argue that the "I speak only for myself" clause should be 100% sufficient to protect individual speech, but unfortunately there appears to be a lot of practice contrary to this going on these days.
But back on this sidetopic: take a look at what happens to union rank-and-file who disagree with their bosses (e.g. Teamsters for a Democratic Union). Some of these folks get silenced too, and not always in pretty ways.
sulli
Whoa there cowboy!
Like I said: personal responsibility. If someone is yacking on the phone during a movie, he should be held accountable by being thrown out. No reason to get violent - particularly since your "cell-phone jerk" friend will probably respond in kind, and then you'll have a nasty situation on your hands.
sulli
If only cellphones had a "Make This Guy Forget My Number" button.
sulli
The net is how a lot of people live. It's an extraordinarily useful thing that millions use. The fact that not everyone uses it makes it more interesting, because it hasn't yet become something we all take for granted, like electric power or running water - or television or radio, for that matter. Once that happens, it will be very interesting to look back on how it got that way. Future historians will thank the people doing this, even if Erikson doesn't.
sulli
And, I can see the slogan now, as doctors can turn it off: "More Doctors Use Q-Zone than Any Other Phone!"
sulli
Not to mention cookies.
sulli
I grew up in Washington, DC!
sulli
sulli
It's a good thing this doesn't happen in the bricks and mortar world -- oh wait, I forgot, Home Depots are cropping up everywhere!
sulli
But there were some fairly interesting points buried in the cyberhype, so don't entirely discount it. One thing I enjoyed was the following element:
Using your powerful desktop computer as a mere channel to reach web sites, reaching through and beyond it instead of using it, is like renting a Hyundai and keeing your Porsche in the garage. Like executing programs out of disk storage instead of main memory and cache. The Web makes the desktop impotent.... The power of desktop machines is a magnet that will reverse today's "everything onto the Web!" trend. Desktop power will inevitably drag information out of remote servers onto desktops.
Of course we've seen some of this already, but it's a nice counterpoint to the perennial "the network is the computer" discussion, 1996-vintage though it may be.
sulli
Lots of Mac fans use Virtual PC to run those programs that are only available for Windows. Seems to me that Wine would be an excellent way to get Linux fans access to the services that only Windows supports, and would also give Win users an easy upgrade path to Linux if they so desire.
sulli
his format is 99% likely NOT TO BE backward compatible. Your AudioCD player, PSX, Dreamcast, (insert your own consumer device here) will NOT be able to read these discs.
And this is why I think it will be a total failure. If the tens of millions of CD-ROMs out there can't read this, nobody will use it.
After sony introduces this format, It's likely that we'll see a plethora of firmware upgrades to every CDROM reader under the sun to support this stuff and the format will take off and soar.
Not too bloody likely. Can you imagine iMac users or corporate IT guys upgrading CD-ROM drives en masse to support such a small incremental improvement - and be forced to deal with copy protection to boot? Upgrading firmware is a pain on anything, particularly cheap devices like CD-ROMs/CD-R, etc.
sulli