The DMCA passed the senate 99-0. This isn't a liberal/conservative issue. It's an example of how _both_ parties have abandoned the people in service of the dark lord Saur...err....I mean, their corporate masters. I was passed by a republican-controlled house and senate, and signed by a democratic president. Plenty of blame to go around.
They weren't christians as you know them. And if they intended us to follow suit, why is God left out of the Constitution? Not one mention of him, anywhere in it.... curious, don't you think, bud?
As to them being all christians, they were mostly deists. Christians in a "God as a watchmaker" kind of way, not a "God is here watching us" kind of way.
Here's another one.
Honestly, are we more afraid of terrorists, or
our own governments?
George II says that Terrorists hate freedom, and want to take my freedom away. That isn't true.
Terrorists can only take my life. Only my government can take my freedom.
So, let me get this straight.
You pay UPS to deliver a package, but
unless you pay for "protection" err... "insurance", expect your package to be destoyed?
And if it does get destroyed, it's your fault?
Insurance is supposed to cover accidental damage.
Unless this box was on Flt. 587, that damage was
done intentionally by UPS employees. Sue their ass. It's not insurance, its extortion.
No one put a gun to their heads. They have no energy, are too lazy to revolt and usurp their government.
Are you kidding me? How an American can sit here on slashdot and call Indonesian sweat-shop workers lazy is beyond me. Furthermore, how such capital-L Libertarianism gets mod'd up amazes me.
Lets take this apart piece by piece.
1)"No one put a gun to their heads." Are we talking about China? Tianamen square ring a bell? These people, in many cases, quite literally have a gun to their heads.
2)"They have no energy." Well, working 12 hours a day, 6 days a week will probably do that to you.
3)"..are too lazy to revolt." Obviously a troll, I'll have to ignore it. Again, Tianamen Square ring any bells?
4)"Everyone who works in a sweat shop (EVERYONE)..." How on EARTH do you presume to speak for them? Since there's no way you can, the rest of the sentence becomes irrelevant.
5)"They are not slaves, they are free to up and walk out if they want to. Then who would feed their family?" Do you see the contradiction here? If you can leave, but that means your children starve, is that *really* a choice? And if it isn't *really* a choice, is it *really* that different from slavery?
Big Business will always fail with no government intervention, eventually. 10 smaller companies in a co-op situation will always do better in the long run if they have the competitive edge and no sanctions to hurt them or subsidies to help the Big Business competition.
Can you provide 1 example of where this has happened? I see big businesses eating all 10 of their competitors, one by one, but can't recall a single time I've seen it happen the other way around.
We believe that without the government, prices would skyrocket (they wouldn't, supply and demand and competition prevent that)
That depends, I live in California. We had some problems with the Energy market this year. Seems the prices skyrocketed because government "stayed out of it." Funny thing is, they *only* skyrocketed in places where the government "stayed out of it."
there's always a choice. i refuse to believe that the *only* thing a person can do is to go into a sweatshop
You're right, they can always starve. That's a choice, I suppose. And I guess since you "refuse to believe it", it must not be the case. Here's a 10-second primer on American globalism. 1) Third-world country relies on subsistence agriculture. Primitive, but it seems to have worked for them for the last 2000 years or so. 2) U.S. says, "We must have free trade, open your markets. 3) U.S. wealth buys farmland used for subsitence agriculture. 4) U.S. changes agriculture from subsistence to export. 5) Locals must now work to grow something they wont eat, but to sell, and get back money to buy food from elsewhere. 6) The corps. take their profit, so locals now work harder for less food than before. 7) Locals now depend on corporations for food, since their land is gone, and they can no longer grow their own. 8) Corps now have an effective slave market. 9) Modern institutional slavery now called "Triumph of Free Trade" 10) Some liberals and social activists point out the fallacy. 11) Corps reply, well, if we close the factory, they'll starve! They CHOSE to be here! We're not FORCING them to come to work!
and, a little note: they hate us because we're the rich, good-looking kid on the playground who is smart enough not to give his lunch away everyday to the kids who are too stupid to find their own money.
Hmm, racist, xenophobic, arrogant, and wrong all at once. Well done!
A silly example: food. Look at food from 30 years ago: Spaghetti Bolognaise was an exotic dish in the UK. Now I can get Sushi at the corner shop. 30 years ago it was John Wayne, now it's John Woo.
I'm an anti-corporatist. I like this. But this is not how Big Money is going to give us globalization. See, It's not huge corporations that bring us Sushi and African Guitar Music. We usually have to find and get that ourselves. Big Money's view of globalization is: McDonalds in Africa, McDonalds in Asia, McDonalds in Antarctica. Hollywood Movies and American Culture exported 'round the world. John Woo, please. He's a Chinese guy who works for American Studios and makes American Movies for American Audiences, big deal.
They really do believe deep down that when a government intervenes in the economy, it does so most of the time on behalf of the poor, and that such intervention is the only way to ensure social justice.
I'd like to make one small correction here. I don't believe that. I believe, deep down, that when a governemnt intervenes in the economy, it should do so most of the time of behalf of the poor, but actually intervenes on behalf of the rich. I also believe this is the angle that the Economist article misses.
He argues that even though "...now and then, when companies just set out to buy the policies they want, they find in government a willing seller.," we should not fear because a "limited government is not worth buying."
This is total bunk. The government is there to protect us FROM capitalism. We've seen unfettered capitalism. Look at our own history in the last 19th - early 20th century. 72-hour work weeks, four-year old kiddies digging coal, minimal wages. The Progressive Era was our society saying, "Enough!" We want people to be able to live fulfilling, decent lives, and we need to use government to limit the power of corporations in order for this to happen. So it's not OK for goverment to sell out to corporations because somehow the markets will protect us. The markets don't protect us. Social policy does. To say otherwise is to deny history.
This doesn't surprise me in the least. I had planned to buy a nice high-end portable mp3 player for my car, back when Napster was Napster. Now I have serious questions about the validity of the whole mp3 format. The RIAA has said time and again it wont use them, it wants a more "secure" form of digital music. Without confidence in the viability of mp3's, the players will not do well.
The charges against Dmitry Sklaraov must not be dropped. I believe his arrest and imprisonment is unjust, but the implications of this case stretch far deeper than the fate of one man, deeper even than the fate of the DMCA. At the risk of overstating my point, this case tests whether or not we are still represented by a government, "..of the people, by the people, and for the people." The magic of the U.S. Constitution lies in checks and balances. Chief Justice John Marshall, by establishing judicial review in 1801, set up the courts as the ultimate check on congressional authority. It is the nature of Congress and the President to overstep the bounds of their power, and reigning them in is the duty of the courts. The Skylarov case must be fought in the courts, because the DMCA must be brought into line, and only the courts can do that. If the courts fail us, I fear all my notions of what is to be an American, what it is to live in a free society will suffer the same fate as Dmitry. Is our government still the champion of freedom? Are the ideals of 1776 still alive somewhere? Or has Washington sunk to being the strong arm of Wall Street? This battle must be joined, there is just too much at stake.
Re: The DVD decoder,
It's a Sigma-Pro RealMagic Hollywood Plus, and yes, the manufacturer has actually been extremely unhelpful. They won't even release the chipset info so those good citizens at vid4linux can support it for them. They released a new card with linux support though, so i guess they want to force me to buy that.
Re: The TV Tuner
Its a Voodoo3 3500+ AGP video card + TV tuner, the video card is supported but I was never able to find support for the tuner or an app. to use it.
Haven't tried Mandrake yet though, maybe that'll help.
This only confirms my earlier feeling, that the 2.4 kernel is the beginning of linux's migration from the server farm to the desktop. While I was reluctant to use Linux before 2.4, because of incessant problems with my sound card(isapnp.conf anyone?), everything seems to work marvelously with this new kernel. Now if I could just get support for my TV tuner and DVD decoder,I would never need to book into Windows.
I think that is a very important point, not just. We tend to blame industry execs for every ridiculous leap away from the fairness of balance of the old copyright system to the heavy-handedness on the side of property owners in the new. However, the blame, really, belongs on the people who let them get away with this, specifically us. Don't like the MPAA? Don't buy their movies. Don't like the RIAA? Don't buy CD's. It is not as hard as it seems to break away from these industry's controls. If they saw that there was a limit to how far they could push these types of technologies before people just walk away, you can bet they would calm down. I think most of us get enough EM radiation at work. Go out, go to a bar, get laid, do something else. We got along fine before these industries made us dependent on their technologies, we can get along fine without them. But we don't need to, all we NEED to do is show them that we're willing to get along without them, and the battle will be ours. Until then, they will continue to win.
Steal from the record companies?
Since they've been stealing from us for the past
50 years it seems only fair.
Steal from the artists?
Well, maybe, but its not like they're hurting for cash anyway. Maybe if we got more acts interested more
in making good music than a quick buck we'll get more variety and quality in music. Or not, who cares, i'm not crying for either of them. Besides, who ever came up with the idea that you should pay for music? Record companies, thats who.
So they want to charge for PERSON to PERSON
file sharing. That's great, since this probably
hasn't been done before, the patent office will most likely jump at the chance to give the first person who implements this technology a patent.
Maybe if a slashdotter did it, they could get the
rights, then refuse to license it. It would be fun to turn the tables on these corporate tyrants for once.
It's really quite a shame that, while governments
around the world can spend billions of dollars
putting these things into orbit, they are
unwilling to spend the money to bring them down.
Don't you think Sputnik, or Skylab, even Mir
deserve to be in the Smithsonian, or the Russian
equivalent. These are historically relevant
artifacts, but the first two have already been
burnt up, and it seems the third is not far behind.
Slashdot Mirror
The DMCA passed the senate 99-0. This isn't a liberal/conservative issue. It's an example of how _both_ parties have abandoned the people in service of the dark lord Saur...err....I mean, their corporate masters. I was passed by a republican-controlled house and senate, and signed by a democratic president. Plenty of blame to go around.
They weren't christians as you know them.
And if they intended us to follow suit, why
is God left out of the Constitution? Not one
mention of him, anywhere in it.... curious, don't you think, bud?
As to them being all christians, they were mostly deists. Christians in a "God as a watchmaker" kind of way, not a "God is here watching us" kind of way.
Here's another one.
Honestly, are we more afraid of terrorists, or
our own governments?
George II says that Terrorists hate freedom, and want to take my freedom away. That isn't true.
Terrorists can only take my life. Only my government can take my freedom.
So, let me get this straight.
You pay UPS to deliver a package, but
unless you pay for "protection" err... "insurance", expect your package to be destoyed?
And if it does get destroyed, it's your fault?
Insurance is supposed to cover accidental damage.
Unless this box was on Flt. 587, that damage was
done intentionally by UPS employees. Sue their ass. It's not insurance, its extortion.
No one put a gun to their heads. They have no energy, are too lazy to revolt and usurp their government.
Are you kidding me? How an American can sit here on slashdot and call Indonesian sweat-shop workers lazy is beyond me. Furthermore, how such capital-L Libertarianism gets mod'd up amazes me.
Lets take this apart piece by piece.
1)"No one put a gun to their heads." Are we talking about China? Tianamen square ring a bell? These people, in many cases, quite literally have a gun to their heads.
2)"They have no energy." Well, working 12 hours a day, 6 days a week will probably do that to you.
3)"..are too lazy to revolt." Obviously a troll, I'll have to ignore it. Again, Tianamen Square ring any bells?
4)"Everyone who works in a sweat shop (EVERYONE)..." How on EARTH do you presume to speak for them? Since there's no way you can, the rest of the sentence becomes irrelevant.
5)"They are not slaves, they are free to up and walk out if they want to. Then who would feed their family?" Do you see the contradiction here? If you can leave, but that means your children starve, is that *really* a choice? And if it isn't *really* a choice, is it *really* that different from slavery?
Big Business will always fail with no government intervention, eventually. 10 smaller companies in a co-op situation will always do better in the long run if they have the competitive edge and no sanctions to hurt them or subsidies to help the Big Business competition.
Can you provide 1 example of where this has happened? I see big businesses eating all 10 of their competitors, one by one, but can't recall a single time I've seen it happen the other way around.
We believe that without the government, prices would skyrocket (they wouldn't, supply and demand and competition prevent that)
That depends, I live in California. We had some problems with the Energy market this year. Seems the prices skyrocketed because government "stayed out of it." Funny thing is, they *only* skyrocketed in places where the government "stayed out of it."
there's always a choice. i refuse to believe that the *only* thing a person can do is to go into a sweatshop
You're right, they can always starve. That's a choice, I suppose. And I guess since you "refuse to believe it", it must not be the case. Here's a 10-second primer on American globalism. 1) Third-world country relies on subsistence agriculture. Primitive, but it seems to have worked for them for the last 2000 years or so. 2) U.S. says, "We must have free trade, open your markets. 3) U.S. wealth buys farmland used for subsitence agriculture. 4) U.S. changes agriculture from subsistence to export. 5) Locals must now work to grow something they wont eat, but to sell, and get back money to buy food from elsewhere. 6) The corps. take their profit, so locals now work harder for less food than before. 7) Locals now depend on corporations for food, since their land is gone, and they can no longer grow their own. 8) Corps now have an effective slave market. 9) Modern institutional slavery now called "Triumph of Free Trade" 10) Some liberals and social activists point out the fallacy. 11) Corps reply, well, if we close the factory, they'll starve! They CHOSE to be here! We're not FORCING them to come to work!
and, a little note: they hate us because we're the rich, good-looking kid on the playground who is smart enough not to give his lunch away everyday to the kids who are too stupid to find their own money.
Hmm, racist, xenophobic, arrogant, and wrong all at once. Well done!
A silly example: food. Look at food from 30 years ago: Spaghetti Bolognaise was an exotic dish in the UK. Now I can get Sushi at the corner shop. 30 years ago it was John Wayne, now it's John Woo.
I'm an anti-corporatist. I like this. But this is not how Big Money is going to give us globalization. See, It's not huge corporations that bring us Sushi and African Guitar Music. We usually have to find and get that ourselves. Big Money's view of globalization is: McDonalds in Africa, McDonalds in Asia, McDonalds in Antarctica. Hollywood Movies and American Culture exported 'round the world. John Woo, please. He's a Chinese guy who works for American Studios and makes American Movies for American Audiences, big deal.
They really do believe deep down that when a government intervenes in the economy, it does so most of the time on behalf of the poor, and that such intervention is the only way to ensure social justice.
I'd like to make one small correction here. I don't believe that. I believe, deep down, that when a governemnt intervenes in the economy, it should do so most of the time of behalf of the poor, but actually intervenes on behalf of the rich. I also believe this is the angle that the Economist article misses.
He argues that even though "...now and then, when companies just set out to buy the policies they want, they find in government a willing seller.," we should not fear because a "limited government is not worth buying."
This is total bunk. The government is there to protect us FROM capitalism. We've seen unfettered capitalism. Look at our own history in the last 19th - early 20th century. 72-hour work weeks, four-year old kiddies digging coal, minimal wages. The Progressive Era was our society saying, "Enough!" We want people to be able to live fulfilling, decent lives, and we need to use government to limit the power of corporations in order for this to happen. So it's not OK for goverment to sell out to corporations because somehow the markets will protect us. The markets don't protect us. Social policy does. To say otherwise is to deny history.
This doesn't surprise me in the least. I had planned to buy a nice high-end portable mp3 player for my car, back when Napster was Napster. Now I have serious questions about the validity of the whole mp3 format. The RIAA has said time and again it wont use them, it wants a more "secure" form of digital music. Without confidence in the viability of mp3's, the players will not do well.
The charges against Dmitry Sklaraov must not be dropped. I believe his arrest and imprisonment is unjust, but the implications of this case stretch far deeper than the fate of one man, deeper even than the fate of the DMCA. At the risk of overstating my point, this case tests whether or not we are still represented by a government, "..of the people, by the people, and for the people." The magic of the U.S. Constitution lies in checks and balances. Chief Justice John Marshall, by establishing judicial review in 1801, set up the courts as the ultimate check on congressional authority. It is the nature of Congress and the President to overstep the bounds of their power, and reigning them in is the duty of the courts. The Skylarov case must be fought in the courts, because the DMCA must be brought into line, and only the courts can do that. If the courts fail us, I fear all my notions of what is to be an American, what it is to live in a free society will suffer the same fate as Dmitry. Is our government still the champion of freedom? Are the ideals of 1776 still alive somewhere? Or has Washington sunk to being the strong arm of Wall Street? This battle must be joined, there is just too much at stake.
Exclamation Point my patoot!! That's a slashdot symbol on Mars! CmdrTaco, is there something we should know?
Re: The DVD decoder, It's a Sigma-Pro RealMagic Hollywood Plus, and yes, the manufacturer has actually been extremely unhelpful. They won't even release the chipset info so those good citizens at vid4linux can support it for them. They released a new card with linux support though, so i guess they want to force me to buy that. Re: The TV Tuner Its a Voodoo3 3500+ AGP video card + TV tuner, the video card is supported but I was never able to find support for the tuner or an app. to use it. Haven't tried Mandrake yet though, maybe that'll help.
This only confirms my earlier feeling, that the 2.4 kernel is the beginning of linux's migration from the server farm to the desktop. While I was reluctant to use Linux before 2.4, because of incessant problems with my sound card(isapnp.conf anyone?), everything seems to work marvelously with this new kernel. Now if I could just get support for my TV tuner and DVD decoder,I would never need to book into Windows.
I think that is a very important point, not just. We tend to blame industry execs for every ridiculous leap away from the fairness of balance of the old copyright system to the heavy-handedness on the side of property owners in the new. However, the blame, really, belongs on the people who let them get away with this, specifically us. Don't like the MPAA? Don't buy their movies. Don't like the RIAA? Don't buy CD's. It is not as hard as it seems to break away from these industry's controls. If they saw that there was a limit to how far they could push these types of technologies before people just walk away, you can bet they would calm down. I think most of us get enough EM radiation at work. Go out, go to a bar, get laid, do something else. We got along fine before these industries made us dependent on their technologies, we can get along fine without them. But we don't need to, all we NEED to do is show them that we're willing to get along without them, and the battle will be ours. Until then, they will continue to win.
Gee, musicians making music for the love of the music and the art, rather than to make a buck. What a nightmare.
Steal from the record companies? Since they've been stealing from us for the past 50 years it seems only fair. Steal from the artists? Well, maybe, but its not like they're hurting for cash anyway. Maybe if we got more acts interested more in making good music than a quick buck we'll get more variety and quality in music. Or not, who cares, i'm not crying for either of them. Besides, who ever came up with the idea that you should pay for music? Record companies, thats who.
So they want to charge for PERSON to PERSON file sharing. That's great, since this probably hasn't been done before, the patent office will most likely jump at the chance to give the first person who implements this technology a patent. Maybe if a slashdotter did it, they could get the rights, then refuse to license it. It would be fun to turn the tables on these corporate tyrants for once.
It's "should *have*" not "should of." If you must abbreviate "should've" is alright. read a book once in a while, then post.
This is not new information. Did anyone besides me read Hawking's Brief History of Time. It's all in there without the numbers.
It's really quite a shame that, while governments around the world can spend billions of dollars putting these things into orbit, they are unwilling to spend the money to bring them down. Don't you think Sputnik, or Skylab, even Mir deserve to be in the Smithsonian, or the Russian equivalent. These are historically relevant artifacts, but the first two have already been burnt up, and it seems the third is not far behind.