I doubt it. Though there are a few decent alternatives, Google Maps and Gmail are pretty much ubiquitous now, in my experience. I admit I'm speaking as to the U.S., so I don't know what Germany's demographics are as far as that's concerned. Maybe their hold is much more tenuous there, maybe not.
I would understand their decision to pull out, though. It would hurt to lose Youtube, but I doubt I would migrate off of Gmail or stop using Google maps over it, especially if it was a result of the RIAA trying to fuck them over. The MAFIAA as a whole needs to be exterminated, they're like roaches infesting the entire globe.
True...but I'm betting very few of the people manning those guns would use them against U.S. citizens.
Organizations such as Oath Keepers give me hope that, if it came down to it, the people of this country would remain free through the help of those soldiers. I'm betting the vast majority of our active duty armed services, at least among the enlisted men that would man the front lines, are more Bradley Manning than G.I. Joe these days. Those members of my extended family still actively serving certainly are (privately, of course).
I'm far more worried about the police of this country than the military, but lucky for us, a large-scale police assault would be international news within moments of it occurring due to the fact that everyone and their sister has a camera phone capable of recording and uploading video to Youtube in seconds. This hopefully serves to temper any hot-headed ideas that come out of that particular part of the Executive Branch.
While they may have more guns, as of now, they still need human beings to pull the triggers, and every action like this is just fewer and fewer people they can count on to do that.
It's ridiculous that things are getting so extreme that pretty soon the only way to escape these burgeoning corporate-controlled police states is to eschew first-world life completely.
Is it possible to live in a first-world manner without the government watching every fucking move you make and violating civil liberties left and right 'for the common good'? Or was that always a pipe dream?
I'm seriously asking myself questions like these every single day, because I don't see how we're going to pull ourselves out of this nightmare. Civil liberties get violated, which leads to civil unrest, which leads to more civil liberties being violated, which leads to more civil unrest...when does it all end? When a bunch of protesters end up on slabs in the morgue? When the only people allowed to communicate on the internet are those with state approval?
It's funny, growing up, I'd always been one of those people that were against the widespread proliferation of guns in the U.S., but believe me, my opinion has changed in recent years. Those privately owned guns are really the only thing preventing the government from steamrolling right over the people of this country, and now I realize the wisdom of that right and how it enables the people to be a real check on the power of their government when the shit hits the fan.
I'm no Kacynski-esque government-fearing anarchist by any stretch, but this kind of nonsense makes me understand their fears in a way I never could before.
Either they have legitimate access to the data or they don't. How can someone be charged with breaking in to a system that they are openly given access to as a part of their employment?
Everything else is beside the point. You can't invite someone into your home and then turn around and claim they broke in, which is exactly what these guys were alleging. Nobody is saying they're not guilty of a crime, they're just saying they're not guilty of this crime.
Your employees can attack from within with impunity.
If you fear and distrust your employees this much, why the fuck do you keep them on the payroll? Just another asshole that sees their employees as a liability despite the fact that you're making money off of their productivity day after fucking day. You guys need a reality check.
I watched the hell out of the '92 Olympics, but that was solely because of the Dream Team. I mean, the games were a total joke, they beat everybody by at least 30 points, but it was great seeing all those amazing players on the same team.
From what I've read, pretty much every one of their opponents didn't even care that they'd lost, they were just fucking ecstatic to play with those guys. I can't say I blame them...
Haven't really watched any subsequent ones outside of checking scores from time to time...just highlights if something truly newsworthy happens (like Michael Phelps winning his 8th gold medal).
The problem I see with this minimum is that it is far too extreme for the crime, in the same way a life sentence is unreasonable for jaywalking,
That's just the problem, no matter what, in some cases it is too extreme, and the judges hands are tied anyway. The sentence isn't being imposed by a judge on a case by case basis with access to the facts, as it should be.
Moving violations, which includes your seat belt example, aren't technically crimes, they're civil infractions (outside of egregious behavior, obviously, such as driving recklessly or intoxicated, which is why those behaviors usually end in an arrest).
The difference between someone pirating an album to listen to it and pirating an album to makes copies of it and sell them at a profit is enormous in terms of intent, and intent is a big part of the law. Clearly the latter deserves a harsher sentence than the former, but mandatory minimums would impose the same sentence on both, and that's not really fitting with the spirit of justice, in my opinion.
The most ridiculous thing about these sentences, especially as concerns all this IP bullshit these days, is that a person that literally walked into a Best Buy and stole a physical CD would have 1/10th of the financial penalties of someone downloading that same CD's music online. The arbitrary nature of the determination of these financial penalties themselves is ridiculous. I mean, how could anyone see a $1,900,000 judgement for downloading 24 songs solely for personal use as a reasonable judgement at all? These guys literally argued with a straight face that Limewire cost them $75 trillion in damages. This exceeds the CIA's estimation of the Gross World Product in 2010 by $5 trillion, so apparently Limewire cost the RIAA more money than there is on the entire planet. Even the judge in that case thought it was completely absurd.
Mandatory minimum sentences when we're dealing with a civil infraction is much different in my eyes than mandatory minimum sentences for an actual crime. Historically the power to sentence has been in the judge's hands, and I still see no compelling reason whatsoever that a judge should have that power taken away by a mandatory minimum sentence.
And how the hell do you propose we do that? Mandatory roadside checks so the police can make sure your custom firmware is sound?
Everyone keeps saying "as long as they're inspected/regulated" but how in the hell would you enforce something like that? If the system is open to user modification at all than there is simply no way to stop people from doing so whether it's regulated or not. People are going to do it anyway.
This is why I feel that certain safety related features be set to "read only" by the factory, while allowing code monkeys to get in there and play around with non-essential stuff would be the way to go. There will always be grumbling from people looking for deeper access (and lord knows they'll hack their way in whether you like it or not, so even that isn't 100%) but it will at least prevent the "script kiddies" from downloading malicious code and blowing up their car's batteries or have their braking system BSoD on the freeway.
This is a war that's been raging for years on other fronts...the automobile is just the newest battlefield.
Either we're going to be signing EULAs and ToS documentation when we take possession of a new car in the future that specifically states that any modifications are at the owners risk....or there is going to be regulation in place prohibiting 3rd parties from editing the car's software. Either way, it's really going to depend on the first few legal cases to set some sort of precedent one way or the other.
But generally in the past, it took at least a modicum of skill to work on a car.
I bet there are a lot of mechanics out there that would beg to differ. I'm sure any one of them could tell you stories of people fucking their cars up thinking they're Mr. Goodwrench (although probably not as much as there used to be).
Provided there are safeguards to prevent someone from doing something really stupid with their car's software, especially as concerns safety.
We're never going to eliminate tinkering; no matter how closed a system is, people find ways around it whether they like it or not. With safety concerns, I don't see why they can't have core safety software be read only (to prevent people from blowing up their batteries or something stupid) while still allowing people to poke around in less crucial areas to customize their car's operation.
The "limited complaints" you're talking about involved millions of dollars in legal fees and even the involvement of members of congress and other federal agencies.
Not to mention the fact that these companies were given their local monopolies as incentive in order to speed the spread of high-speed internet in the communities (not to mention prevent the nightmare that would be multiple brand-specific network infrastructures), but now that most everyone outside of rural areas are wired, they're abusing their market position by keeping prices artificially high and speeds somewhat lower than most first-world countries, and all this while bringing in record profits year after year and signing up more and more customers than ever before.
This is why, in my opinion, they need to open up the network like the did telephones and have mandated line-sharing regulations in place to ensure that the last-mile is covered. Then we'd have real competition and, I'm betting, end user prices would plummet. The metered internet idea scares a lot of people because they're used to paying an arm and a leg for internet, but if you could sign up with any provider in the U.S., I'm positive the prices would plummet and be more reflective of the actual costs of maintaining the networks themselves. We've seen this before with long distance telephone service, when over the course of a few short years the per minute costs went from over 25cents/minute to 10cents/minute to less than 5cents/minute (when I last had terrestrial telephone I think I was paying 3cents a minute after the free 120 minutes a month they gave me).
I'm ready to join that angry mass of citizens, believe me, but unfortunately 50% of the people in this country still think the internet is a luxury good for people solely to play video games, consume pornography, or worship Satan with, so it's probably going to be a while before that comes to pass. I'm being facetious, but I honestly speak to a surprising number of people that have a real disdain for the internet as a whole.
It would almost be worth reading the canned WhiteHouse.gov bullshit to actually have a petition like that get the 25,000 sigs it needs for an official response.
The world will be a better place when the MAFIAA is gone. They're a relic from a time when an artist required a middleman to get their art to the masses, and internet has made them largely unnecessary.
I have as much sympathy for them as the first automobile owners had for the harrier. It's progress, baby...
Please explain, then, why some countries (European and Asian) are able to give 100Mbps UNLIMITED access to the home for vast swathes of people and have been doing so for years.
That's easy: it's government subsidized. So is ours, of course, the only difference is, here in the States we just give large amounts of taxpayer money away to major corporations without requiring anything in return for the people because the right palms are getting greased in Washington D.C.. In Europe, they actually require something in return, i.e., 21st century internet connectivity. Try that here and you'll get called a "soshulist" within minutes...God Forbid we regulate an industry, even one that gets dump trucks worth of money every day due to the fact that they're a local monopoly.
Slashdot Mirror
I doubt it. Though there are a few decent alternatives, Google Maps and Gmail are pretty much ubiquitous now, in my experience. I admit I'm speaking as to the U.S., so I don't know what Germany's demographics are as far as that's concerned. Maybe their hold is much more tenuous there, maybe not.
I would understand their decision to pull out, though. It would hurt to lose Youtube, but I doubt I would migrate off of Gmail or stop using Google maps over it, especially if it was a result of the RIAA trying to fuck them over. The MAFIAA as a whole needs to be exterminated, they're like roaches infesting the entire globe.
My thoughts exactly. This could actually be a good political opportunity for them.
Plus, the thought of the MAFIAA getting their ass handed to them in the political arena is just too delicious to pass up...
Look out, guys, we've got a real internet tough guy over here...
True...but I'm betting very few of the people manning those guns would use them against U.S. citizens.
Organizations such as Oath Keepers give me hope that, if it came down to it, the people of this country would remain free through the help of those soldiers. I'm betting the vast majority of our active duty armed services, at least among the enlisted men that would man the front lines, are more Bradley Manning than G.I. Joe these days. Those members of my extended family still actively serving certainly are (privately, of course).
I'm far more worried about the police of this country than the military, but lucky for us, a large-scale police assault would be international news within moments of it occurring due to the fact that everyone and their sister has a camera phone capable of recording and uploading video to Youtube in seconds. This hopefully serves to temper any hot-headed ideas that come out of that particular part of the Executive Branch.
While they may have more guns, as of now, they still need human beings to pull the triggers, and every action like this is just fewer and fewer people they can count on to do that.
It's ridiculous that things are getting so extreme that pretty soon the only way to escape these burgeoning corporate-controlled police states is to eschew first-world life completely.
Is it possible to live in a first-world manner without the government watching every fucking move you make and violating civil liberties left and right 'for the common good'? Or was that always a pipe dream?
I'm seriously asking myself questions like these every single day, because I don't see how we're going to pull ourselves out of this nightmare. Civil liberties get violated, which leads to civil unrest, which leads to more civil liberties being violated, which leads to more civil unrest...when does it all end? When a bunch of protesters end up on slabs in the morgue? When the only people allowed to communicate on the internet are those with state approval?
It's funny, growing up, I'd always been one of those people that were against the widespread proliferation of guns in the U.S., but believe me, my opinion has changed in recent years. Those privately owned guns are really the only thing preventing the government from steamrolling right over the people of this country, and now I realize the wisdom of that right and how it enables the people to be a real check on the power of their government when the shit hits the fan.
I'm no Kacynski-esque government-fearing anarchist by any stretch, but this kind of nonsense makes me understand their fears in a way I never could before.
Either they have legitimate access to the data or they don't. How can someone be charged with breaking in to a system that they are openly given access to as a part of their employment?
Everything else is beside the point. You can't invite someone into your home and then turn around and claim they broke in, which is exactly what these guys were alleging. Nobody is saying they're not guilty of a crime, they're just saying they're not guilty of this crime.
Your employees can attack from within with impunity.
If you fear and distrust your employees this much, why the fuck do you keep them on the payroll? Just another asshole that sees their employees as a liability despite the fact that you're making money off of their productivity day after fucking day. You guys need a reality check.
Mod parent up!
These guys didn't "hack" shit...and a ruling allowing the CFAA to be applied here would have set an awful, awful precedent.
I call player one!
Oh, they value their sovereignty, they're just monetizing it.
You're not one of those freedom hating socialists, are you?
I watched the hell out of the '92 Olympics, but that was solely because of the Dream Team. I mean, the games were a total joke, they beat everybody by at least 30 points, but it was great seeing all those amazing players on the same team.
From what I've read, pretty much every one of their opponents didn't even care that they'd lost, they were just fucking ecstatic to play with those guys. I can't say I blame them...
Haven't really watched any subsequent ones outside of checking scores from time to time...just highlights if something truly newsworthy happens (like Michael Phelps winning his 8th gold medal).
Just build a space elevator, dummies!
I think they all died off when Reagan was elected.
I don't really see a problem, as they could be used to make insurance arguments a lot less painful.
Man I hope that's sarcasm....
The problem I see with this minimum is that it is far too extreme for the crime, in the same way a life sentence is unreasonable for jaywalking,
That's just the problem, no matter what, in some cases it is too extreme, and the judges hands are tied anyway. The sentence isn't being imposed by a judge on a case by case basis with access to the facts, as it should be.
Moving violations, which includes your seat belt example, aren't technically crimes, they're civil infractions (outside of egregious behavior, obviously, such as driving recklessly or intoxicated, which is why those behaviors usually end in an arrest).
The difference between someone pirating an album to listen to it and pirating an album to makes copies of it and sell them at a profit is enormous in terms of intent, and intent is a big part of the law. Clearly the latter deserves a harsher sentence than the former, but mandatory minimums would impose the same sentence on both, and that's not really fitting with the spirit of justice, in my opinion.
The most ridiculous thing about these sentences, especially as concerns all this IP bullshit these days, is that a person that literally walked into a Best Buy and stole a physical CD would have 1/10th of the financial penalties of someone downloading that same CD's music online. The arbitrary nature of the determination of these financial penalties themselves is ridiculous. I mean, how could anyone see a $1,900,000 judgement for downloading 24 songs solely for personal use as a reasonable judgement at all? These guys literally argued with a straight face that Limewire cost them $75 trillion in damages. This exceeds the CIA's estimation of the Gross World Product in 2010 by $5 trillion, so apparently Limewire cost the RIAA more money than there is on the entire planet. Even the judge in that case thought it was completely absurd.
Mandatory minimum sentences when we're dealing with a civil infraction is much different in my eyes than mandatory minimum sentences for an actual crime. Historically the power to sentence has been in the judge's hands, and I still see no compelling reason whatsoever that a judge should have that power taken away by a mandatory minimum sentence.
And how the hell do you propose we do that? Mandatory roadside checks so the police can make sure your custom firmware is sound?
Everyone keeps saying "as long as they're inspected/regulated" but how in the hell would you enforce something like that? If the system is open to user modification at all than there is simply no way to stop people from doing so whether it's regulated or not. People are going to do it anyway.
This is why I feel that certain safety related features be set to "read only" by the factory, while allowing code monkeys to get in there and play around with non-essential stuff would be the way to go. There will always be grumbling from people looking for deeper access (and lord knows they'll hack their way in whether you like it or not, so even that isn't 100%) but it will at least prevent the "script kiddies" from downloading malicious code and blowing up their car's batteries or have their braking system BSoD on the freeway.
This is a war that's been raging for years on other fronts...the automobile is just the newest battlefield.
Shoot the hostage!!!
I'm sure that any insurance investigation would involve investigating the car's software if there was a question of driver liability. We're already not far off from every car being required to have a "black box" for the purposes of accident reconstruction and assigning fault.
Either we're going to be signing EULAs and ToS documentation when we take possession of a new car in the future that specifically states that any modifications are at the owners risk....or there is going to be regulation in place prohibiting 3rd parties from editing the car's software. Either way, it's really going to depend on the first few legal cases to set some sort of precedent one way or the other.
But generally in the past, it took at least a modicum of skill to work on a car.
I bet there are a lot of mechanics out there that would beg to differ. I'm sure any one of them could tell you stories of people fucking their cars up thinking they're Mr. Goodwrench (although probably not as much as there used to be).
Provided there are safeguards to prevent someone from doing something really stupid with their car's software, especially as concerns safety.
We're never going to eliminate tinkering; no matter how closed a system is, people find ways around it whether they like it or not. With safety concerns, I don't see why they can't have core safety software be read only (to prevent people from blowing up their batteries or something stupid) while still allowing people to poke around in less crucial areas to customize their car's operation.
Just another example of why mandatory minimum sentences make absolutely zero sense in any way, whether financial or in the way of jail time.
You can fool around with your friends later!
MUNICIPALITIES in most cases can just string up their neighborhood, and complaints will be limited.
Tell that to the people in Wilson, NC.
Oh, and the people of Monticello, MN., too.
The "limited complaints" you're talking about involved millions of dollars in legal fees and even the involvement of members of congress and other federal agencies.
Not to mention the fact that these companies were given their local monopolies as incentive in order to speed the spread of high-speed internet in the communities (not to mention prevent the nightmare that would be multiple brand-specific network infrastructures), but now that most everyone outside of rural areas are wired, they're abusing their market position by keeping prices artificially high and speeds somewhat lower than most first-world countries, and all this while bringing in record profits year after year and signing up more and more customers than ever before.
This is why, in my opinion, they need to open up the network like the did telephones and have mandated line-sharing regulations in place to ensure that the last-mile is covered. Then we'd have real competition and, I'm betting, end user prices would plummet. The metered internet idea scares a lot of people because they're used to paying an arm and a leg for internet, but if you could sign up with any provider in the U.S., I'm positive the prices would plummet and be more reflective of the actual costs of maintaining the networks themselves. We've seen this before with long distance telephone service, when over the course of a few short years the per minute costs went from over 25cents/minute to 10cents/minute to less than 5cents/minute (when I last had terrestrial telephone I think I was paying 3cents a minute after the free 120 minutes a month they gave me).
I'm ready to join that angry mass of citizens, believe me, but unfortunately 50% of the people in this country still think the internet is a luxury good for people solely to play video games, consume pornography, or worship Satan with, so it's probably going to be a while before that comes to pass. I'm being facetious, but I honestly speak to a surprising number of people that have a real disdain for the internet as a whole.
It would almost be worth reading the canned WhiteHouse.gov bullshit to actually have a petition like that get the 25,000 sigs it needs for an official response.
Of all the times to be out of mod points...
The world will be a better place when the MAFIAA is gone. They're a relic from a time when an artist required a middleman to get their art to the masses, and internet has made them largely unnecessary.
I have as much sympathy for them as the first automobile owners had for the harrier. It's progress, baby...
Please explain, then, why some countries (European and Asian) are able to give 100Mbps UNLIMITED access to the home for vast swathes of people and have been doing so for years.
That's easy: it's government subsidized. So is ours, of course, the only difference is, here in the States we just give large amounts of taxpayer money away to major corporations without requiring anything in return for the people because the right palms are getting greased in Washington D.C.. In Europe, they actually require something in return, i.e., 21st century internet connectivity. Try that here and you'll get called a "soshulist" within minutes...God Forbid we regulate an industry, even one that gets dump trucks worth of money every day due to the fact that they're a local monopoly.