Speakeasy is a good provider because they offer a reasonable terms of service without charging "Business Class" prices. Most ISP's charge more for their business class, not because of the terms of service, but because of the Quality of Service requirements. Speakeasy's QoS for their SysAdmin offering is the same as BellSouth's home user, so they don't charge an arm & a leg for it.
Those people will only sell me SDSL at 119.99$ month where as bellsouth provides ADSL for just 49.99$.
Oddly, I had the same thing in my case. I tried to order from Speakeasy when I moved into my new house, but Verizon couldn't find a loop that would do anything but SDSL. I went with cable for a while. Then I get an offer from Verizon -- three months free ADSL. I order it, and like magic, they find my original loop can do ADSL (yes, maybe there were changes upstream. And maybe they just didn't try when I wasn't ordering from their service provider.) I get good xfer rates. I log my rates over two months and then I order Speakeasy. Since I now have proof that my loop can support ADSL, Verizon has no choice. So, I pay $15/mo more for my service, but I have a sane terms of service.
Just because those people advt run your ownserver doesn't make them good.
Not everyone wants that. I do. I'm willing to pay a little more for that than for standard connectivity, but there's no good reason I should have to pay Business Class prices for it. Speakeasy is the only provider who offers this in my area. When someone offers a service that you want, for a price you are willing to pay, and nobody else offers the same, that does make them good.
Don't be silly. Only one person can eat any given candy bar. Depriving somebody of that candy bar is theft.
That was the point of the sarcasm pseudo-tags. I agree that depriving someone of a candy-bar is theft. Note that removing the candy-bar from the premisis without authorization is theft, and it doesn't stop being theft if you bring it back a minute later. The act of return can lessen moral culpability to some extent, but it does not erase the act of theft. And if a swarm of hungry 10 year olds comes and goes, cleaning out the store and leaving little Johnny without a candy bar, between the time you removed the candy bar and the time you returned it, you have deprived the store owner of a sale.
However, if I'm using a cell phone I've "liberated" at a non-peak time when I'm not denying anybody else bandwidth they've paid for, that's not "theft". It might be illegal, and it might be wrong, but "theft" is taking objects away from their owners.
Similar to (but not exactly like) the candy-bar, only one person can use a phone line at a given time. If you appropriate one of the lines coming out of a cell tower for one minute at midnight and a busload of cheerleaders drives by chatting with the busload of football players behind them on their cell phones, and Brittany's call to Dawson gets dropped due to a lack of capacity, then you have deprived the cell tower owner of a sale. However unlikely this event may be, it is possible, and that is what makes it theft in my opinion. This is not even theoretically possible with copyright violation (though the RIAA an their ilk argue that it deprives the copyright holder of demand, which is debatable. Regardless it still is fundamentally different than theft, which reduces a finite supply.)
Similarly, if I decode the signal that's already coming into my house on Time Warner's coaxial cable, and it happens to show me HBO, that's not "theft". I'm not denying anybody else access to that programming: I'm decoding a signal they're sending into my home.
I agree with these examples. Descrambling a signal that is transmitted into your home is not theft by any stretch of the imagination, since there is no possibility that you could deprive a paying customer of access to the signal.
Our main disagreement is over edge cases. For example, a store owner has a stock of milk that will go past its expiration date tomorrow, and he has more than he is at all likely sell in that time. Local law requires that it be discarded. If I remove any of that stock without authorization before it is discarded, it is still theft. Even if there is no practical way that the milk could have been used by anyone else, it is still theft because a millionaire might buy up all the milk in the store to give to all the homeless shelters in the state. You can not guarantee that this will not happen, just as you can not gurantee that a network won't become suddenly saturated. The difference between theft and copyright violation (and similar acts) is that theft reduces a finite supply. Of course, this is all at a moral level and all IMO. You are perfectly within your rights to draw the line at physical objects. I still think that there is a fundamental difference between reducing a supply limmited by its very nature and reducing a supply limmited artificially, and that's where I draw the "theft" line.
Yeah, yeah, day old thread, but I'm just catching up.
Blockquoth the poster:
Unless the systems were somehow saturated and I was denying a paying customer access, I do not believe that any of those items can be "stolen".
<sarcasm>Similarly, if the 7-11 never runs out of stock after I liberate a candy-bar, it's not theft, because there are always more candy-bars to be sold to paying customers.</sarcasm>
Seriously, there is a difference between theft of service in those instances and copyright infringement. With copyright infringement, it is not possible, even in theory, to deprive a paying customer of access to inventory. If I have 24 lines coming out of a cell tower, and someone uses one without authorization, then I only have 23 lines available for paying customers. This reduction in inventory *is* theft, in my opinion. Whether or not this reduction in inventory results in a lost sale or not, it is still theft. In no way can copyright infringement be viewed as a reduction in inventory, so it can not be theft.
It's *WRONG* to say 'disorientate'. It's not a word people, puh-lease!!!
You are mistaken. Now, it may not be a mellifluous word, but it is still a word.
-C
Re:Lost sales and/or lower profits for Apple
on
Beige Box Apple Clone?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
JabberWocky wrote:
Had you read the article, he's using Apple motherboards - bought from Apple. You know - "Apple Hardware".
To which some AC Responded:
Had you read the article, you'd know he is using motherboards Apple sells for repair and spare part purposes. Manufacturers supply boards like that with much lower than retail markup because they're intended to serve its existing user base....
Technically correct. This has nothing to do with the point that JabberWocky was addressing; namely, this statement by (perhaps some other) AC:
Apparently nobody is aware that Mac OS X CAN'T BE RUN (legally) on non-Apple hardware?
See, since this is Apple hardware, running software that has a "you can't run this on non-Apple hardware" clause in it's license does not violate that clause of the license.
Do you have to register your beer to prove you paid your sales tax on it?
Does your car have a revenue sticker on it?
Only for anually assessed taxes; not for one-time taxes, like sales tax. This copyright tax is a one time levy taken at the time of sale. No special registration required. Not that an additional entertainment distribution industry support tax is a good thing, but it's not quite as Orwellian as registering your printing press.
Hmm that "real world" idea is part of the problem right there. In the real world, there's both MS stuff AND *nix stuff. A school that focuses purely on MS is just as detrimental as a school that focuses purely on *nix.
The fellow would be better off spending the $2.4 million on developing methods of teaching students how MS and *nix are related to each other, how BOTH are used in the real world, and familiarizing students with both.
The idea of a contract to remove MS products may help promote OSS, and help fight off monopolies, but it would be very, very bad for the students' futures.
I disagree. Colleges should notbe in the business of providing vocational training. They should be providing a general education. In CS, that means learning about data structures/algorithms/languages/protocols,etc; not about a given OS's APIs. Granted you have to work with some API, and you should make the student aware of others, but that doesn't require exposure to any given API in the classroom, no matter how prevalent it is in the "real" world. Any CS grad who can't pick up the Windows (or any other) API in an internship or a few weeks on the job should be flipping burgers, anyway.
Kinda, but you're prolly paying more like 1/8 of the bandwidth in reality. If 8 random people rent a basketball court together, what happens when one of them wants to lay down basketball court sized paper and paint basketball court sized murals? Shouldn't he have to get his own court instead?
But this is an entireley seperate issue from running servers. The equivalent of taking the entire basketball court could well be done by downloading pr0n all day, while my hobbyist (read doesn't need business quality SLA) servers serving pictures of the baby to grandma and catching mail for my family & letting me ssh in remotely plays very well with the neighbors checking their mail and surfing the web. And if it doesn't, call me on that -- not for running servers.
With government subsidy and a government guaranteed monopoly.
Bell gets split up.
Because AT&T wanted to start manufacturing computers. The government didn't want them leveraging the protected monopoly in order to compete in an unregulated industry.
Baby bells enhance telephone infrastructure.
At a snails pace, since it didn't make any business sense to add low cost broadband to compete with their high cost digital lines. DSL was going nowhere until cable & the telecom act forced their hands.
Covad and others come along and want to use the infrastructure for essentially free.
No, not for free. Just for the same price that they charged their internal business unit.
Personally, I would have liked to have seen a stronger Telecom Act -- split the infrastructure from the service providing units competely. Continue to regulate the infrastructure company, and deregulate the service company completely. The infrastructure company would make money by charging the service companies what is costs to to provide the infrastructure. This is essentially what the Telecom Act tried to do without actually breaking up the Baby Bells. And the Bell lobbyists and PR folks have earned their money selling the FCC and people like you a long line of shit.
So basically, SBC/pacbell (in my area) is being forced to provide infrastructure, forced to update it to benefit their competitors, and for what? Because they were there first? That's bullshit, son.
Indeed, that is bullshit, because that is not what was required by the Telecom Act. All that was required was that they charge external customers the same price they charge their internal customer. If they aren't accounting for the actual costs internally, that's their problem.
If the government wants to control the telephone infrastructure to this extent they should have to own it, and they don't.
They do support it quite a bit, however. Why don't you see if you can start up a phone company and run some copper parallel to SBC's in your neighborhood. SBC will sue your ass out of existence (based on their protected status) so fast it'll make your head spin. Similarly, start up a company that runs electric lines parallel to your Electric company's or cable lines parallel to your cable company's. Utilities are protected monopolies.
It's one thing to say that the phone company has to provide reduced-cost telephone services to poor people like me, it's entirely another to suggest that they should be leasing capacity to competitors at less than its value considering the amount it costs for maintenance.
It's not less than the cost of the line.
Fuck 'em. Break 'em up again. Do not allow the government subsidized and protected infrastructure company provide service. And don't regulate the service company. But don't protect them either. If the Bell service company pays $15/mo for a loop, then any company should be able to get a loop for $15/mo. And if the Bell service company pays $25/mo per sq. foot of CO space, then any company should be able to get CO space for $25/sq foot. Like I said, that's what the Telecom Act tried to do in a half-assed way. But the Bell's pockets are too deep. And now you'll have a choice to use you cable company's monopoly broadband with restrictive ToS or you local Bell's monopoly broadband with restrictive ToS.
If mass-marketing the book is so all-fired profitable, then why didn't the original author do it their own self?
Good point, and it wasn't just marketing, it was production and distribution as well. It used to be a fairly expensive to put a book (or a lot of other products) into the hands of consumers. Interestingly, technology is making this less of an issue. It's easier to produce just one of certain types of widgets than it used to be. For example, companies like Cafe Shops (nee Press) make an essentially zero barrier to entry business possible. When that becomes feasable for books, you'll see a lot more authors self publishing. Of course, given the past quality of self published books, only time will tell if this is a good thing.
I'm sorry, but I mean, seriously. If you really expect someone to be able to profit for the rest of their life off the one work, then maybe they should die penniless. (Okay, I realize that's kind of an inflamatory statement, but you know what I mean.) If someone's profession is "author", shouldn't they be, you know, writing some more books?
The poster to whom you are responding might actually have a point if septegenarian authors and artists didn't die penniless now while the present day corporations in the distribution cartel make money off of their works. No one has the right to make money in perpetuity for a single act of labor.
Although many people seem to assume otherwise, so did Occam.
While I agree that many people assume that things should be made simpler than possible, William of Ockham was not among them. He said (citing a common medieval principle) "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate" or "plurality should not be posited without necessity." Thus, if there is a necessity to make a model less simple, then you may do so. While this phrasing does not explicitly prohibit a "simpler" explaination, the use of the term "necessity" implies it. Einstein was pointing out a common misuse of Occam's Razor, but his statement is entirely consistent with its intent.
If theres something I can't live without... I'll download the MP3 and be a pirate:D.
Download the MP3 from who?
If it's protected, what makes you think you'll be able to get MP3s of your favorite tracks? Sure this 'copy-protection' scheme will have a work-around, but I can imagine it would put a large dent in how many copies are floating around Kazaa.
I don't think that it will put any dent in the number of copies floating around -- all it takes is one digital copy to hit the p2p scene and it'll be available. Look at cracked warez from the last decade -- there weren't large numbers of independently cracked copies, there were large numbers of the same one or two cracked copies available. I think that the barriers to copying limit only the independent sources of copies, not the final volume available.
So if I drop off my 12-year old daughter at the library, I'm considering them a "babysitting service"? Sheesh, some of you people assume too much.
If you are expecting the library to ensure that your daughter doesn't do things in your absence which she wouldn't do in your presence, then yes, you are shifting some of your parenting responsibility to the library. And in so doing you are restricting access to legitimate information for all library patrons.
And, y'know, I've been to my local library, which has unfiltered (though attended) internet access, and I've never seen anything on those screens which I would've worried about my daughter seeing at 10.
Of course, there's a technical solution -- user accounts on the library computers. You have the library filter for your daughter's account, and I'll trust my daughter. Problem solved.
It ironic that you encourage people to fight for their rights by lobbying against one particular group, right-wing republicans. Everyone has the right to free speech, or else it is meaningless.
It is not at all ironic, since the freedom of speech does not imply the freedom from political opposition. That said, supporting bad laws is hardly the unique domain of legislators from any wing of any party.
Everyone knows that the ACLU is hardly an unbiased organization. They support the first amendment, but only to the extent that it doesn't impede their own leftist agenda. Meanwhile, other important rights, like self defense and religion, are ignored or even attacked.
While I agree that the ACLU has an agenda (as does the AARP, and other advocacy organizations) it is false to claim that the ACLU only defends the right to free speech unless it interferes with its leftist agenda. Unless by "free speech" you mean the right to threaten and intimidate those seeking to exercise something that the ACLU also considers a fundamental right. And even then, they are fairly strong in the support of speech: it was they who defended the Nazi's right to march in Skokie. As for your right to self defense, there are other organization that fight for that; and as for the right to religious expression, there is no other organization in the US that fights for the rights of all religious expression by private individuals and groups not using my tax dollars.
The law applied to copyrights should be the law that was in place at the time of their creation, not subsequent law, for similar reasons. The intention of copyright law is to encourage creativity; changing the length of copyright after the work has been created inherently cannot do this.
The argument that is being used by the government is that the increased revenue to the copyright holder resulting from retroactively extending copyright provides capital which can be used to finance the creation of new works, thus promoting the useful arts and sciences. It's a crock of shit, as my father would say, but it is a damned good argument from a Constitutional perspective. I am not optimistic.
Linux had timing. BSD has been around much longer, and its much more mature than Linux. Linux has GREAT marketing, BSD has (basically) none.
Its not about the technology, but about the marketing, the timing, and the media's embrace.
It is true that linux had timing, but it predates the tech boom era by a few years. Back in the day (early '90s,) linux could be downloaded anonymously without making any promises to anyone. There were still concerns regarding AT&T code in BSD at that time. Linux was just the easiest to get (from my perspective) in those days, and it was clearly and unambiguously free (beer.) This meant that it had a larger hobbyist install base than BSD, and that is why it is more popular now, IMO. All the stuff you talk about is true. But it wouldn't have happened if BSD had been as readily available as linux. BSD had the reputation of being a "real" Unix, and I would have chosen it over linux if I had been able to easily get my hands on it in '92. I suspect other early adopters would have as well.
I use the "so if I accidently leave my car unlocked, it's my fault some thief steals my stereo? I'm to blame?"
To some extent, yes. If you leave your car unlocked and running, an insurance company is within its rights under most contracts not to cover a loss resulting from your negligence. This does not usually relieve the thief of criminal culpability, though.
But your analogy is flawed on a number of levels. I think the original posters' analogy was somewhat closer, but I think it would have been spot on if he'd used a business instead of a residence, and mere trespassing and use of service. That is, if a business' door is unlocked and not signed (and you have not been otherwise notified that access to the property is restricted,) and you walk in and use the bathroom, you usually cannot be charged with trespassing in the US. If the door were signed, then you could. Leaving an open AP is like not restricting public access to your bathroom. Similarly, in many rural areas in the US, if you do not sign your property (commercial or private) prohibitting trespassing and hunting, you open yourself up to civil responsibility for the results of actions of people on your property. So, yes, as a property owner, it is your responisbility to take measures limiting the use of your property, and other people may make some use of your property without culpability for that use in the absence of such measures being taken in many cases.
Clinton had no interest in deregulation. A Republican Congress did.
I agree that Clinton wasn't the biggest advocate of deregulation (though he was enough of a political whore to not oppose it in the face of popular support,) but where is the administration now? The Republican controlled FCC recently defanged the telecom act that was supposed to open the publicly subsidized PSTN to service competition. I think a strict division of infrastructure and service, with continued regulation of infrastructure and competition at the service level would have been great. The BOCs have fought this tooth and nail, and they have won. For now. Honest deregulation has few friends in either major party in the U.S.
I built my own voicemail a few years ago using an old 486, a Dialogic 2-port voice card and their DOS drivers (what? DOS is a decent loader if you want to do your own scheduling.) It had most of the features on your list, excepting the X10 and speech recognition stuff; plus it had custom messages based on caller-id. Oh and the IM was an email, this being 1998.
The #1 feature missing from your list, and from my box (since I couldn't afford the switch card or the case/power supply to drive it at the time) is a whitelist only ring through. Incoming calling # not on the list? Straight to voicemail (with a pass-code for getting through, if people are calling from non-standard #'s.) No more voice-spam. Now that's a feature I really wish I had. Hmmm, maybe it's time to revisit that old idea. Especially since there are linux systems available fairly cheaply.
Right. So how does this affect the copyright violation statistics....I don't see how this can lead to bad results
Yes, exactly. The poster to whom I was responding was implying that people who didn't use word processors at all would be skewing the results. They wouldn't - they'd be completely excluded as you correctly point out.
The poster to whom you were responding was saying that the article wasn't clear. And it wasn't. Nowhere is the claim made in the openning sentence that "[a] flaw in the way annual software usage statistics are compiled may have led to legal distribution of open-source programs being lumped with illegal trafficking in desktop applications, inflating losses to industry through `phantom' piracy" justified. The poster to whom you were responding isn't saying that people who didn't use listed word processors were skewing the numbers, he was asking if that's what the article was implying. I think you, he and I are agreeing that the given information does not justify the conclusion presented in the article. Can anyone divine the justification for the article's claim that free (beer) software is skewing BSA(A)'s copyright violation estimates?
So, do they assume that because x% of users say they don't have a licenced copy of one of Word/WordPerfect/etc, then some percent of this percentage MUST have an unlicenced copy of one of the above? What about people who just don't use Word Processors, or Spreadsheets, or whatever?
The statement you quote specifically exludes people who don't use use Word, WordPerfect etc.
To re-iterate, with my added emphasis:
"We ask respondents to choose from a very long list of specific software titles, reporting which ones they regularly use. This means we identify Microsoft Word versus, say, WordPerfect," says Metafacts principal analyst Dan Ness.
Right. So how does this affect the copyright violation statistics. If I am using OpenOffice.org and they ask me to report which ones of MSWord, WP &c that I use regularly, I answer "none." I don't see how this can lead to bad results unless they assume people who answer "none" are lying.
How did this get modded up? Yes, you disagree with how the Italians do things, and their laws. We all know that Italian law is different than American law. The only real issue is if Amarican law or Italian law applies.
Because religious liberty (and the right to religious dissent) is a moral issue rather than a legal issue? Religious bigotry is religious bigotry even if the local culture is dominated by a bunch of religious bigots.
-Craig
PS - Yes, I have no problem judging another culture.
Sure, unless I'm also running it. Then, we can't talk to each other because our polite automated replies won't be read.
That seems like a nasty Catch-22. I wonder what the solution is?
Slashdot Mirror
-Craig
Our main disagreement is over edge cases. For example, a store owner has a stock of milk that will go past its expiration date tomorrow, and he has more than he is at all likely sell in that time. Local law requires that it be discarded. If I remove any of that stock without authorization before it is discarded, it is still theft. Even if there is no practical way that the milk could have been used by anyone else, it is still theft because a millionaire might buy up all the milk in the store to give to all the homeless shelters in the state. You can not guarantee that this will not happen, just as you can not gurantee that a network won't become suddenly saturated. The difference between theft and copyright violation (and similar acts) is that theft reduces a finite supply. Of course, this is all at a moral level and all IMO. You are perfectly within your rights to draw the line at physical objects. I still think that there is a fundamental difference between reducing a supply limmited by its very nature and reducing a supply limmited artificially, and that's where I draw the "theft" line.
-Craig
Blockquoth the poster:<sarcasm>Similarly, if the 7-11 never runs out of stock after I liberate a candy-bar, it's not theft, because there are always more candy-bars to be sold to paying customers.</sarcasm>
Seriously, there is a difference between theft of service in those instances and copyright infringement. With copyright infringement, it is not possible, even in theory, to deprive a paying customer of access to inventory. If I have 24 lines coming out of a cell tower, and someone uses one without authorization, then I only have 23 lines available for paying customers. This reduction in inventory *is* theft, in my opinion. Whether or not this reduction in inventory results in a lost sale or not, it is still theft. In no way can copyright infringement be viewed as a reduction in inventory, so it can not be theft.
-Craig
-C
-C
-Craig
-Craig
-Craig
Personally, I would have liked to have seen a stronger Telecom Act -- split the infrastructure from the service providing units competely. Continue to regulate the infrastructure company, and deregulate the service company completely. The infrastructure company would make money by charging the service companies what is costs to to provide the infrastructure. This is essentially what the Telecom Act tried to do without actually breaking up the Baby Bells. And the Bell lobbyists and PR folks have earned their money selling the FCC and people like you a long line of shit.Indeed, that is bullshit, because that is not what was required by the Telecom Act. All that was required was that they charge external customers the same price they charge their internal customer. If they aren't accounting for the actual costs internally, that's their problem.They do support it quite a bit, however. Why don't you see if you can start up a phone company and run some copper parallel to SBC's in your neighborhood. SBC will sue your ass out of existence (based on their protected status) so fast it'll make your head spin. Similarly, start up a company that runs electric lines parallel to your Electric company's or cable lines parallel to your cable company's. Utilities are protected monopolies.It's not less than the cost of the line.
Fuck 'em. Break 'em up again. Do not allow the government subsidized and protected infrastructure company provide service. And don't regulate the service company. But don't protect them either. If the Bell service company pays $15/mo for a loop, then any company should be able to get a loop for $15/mo. And if the Bell service company pays $25/mo per sq. foot of CO space, then any company should be able to get CO space for $25/sq foot. Like I said, that's what the Telecom Act tried to do in a half-assed way. But the Bell's pockets are too deep. And now you'll have a choice to use you cable company's monopoly broadband with restrictive ToS or you local Bell's monopoly broadband with restrictive ToS.
-Craig
-Craig
-Craig
-Craig
-Craig
And, y'know, I've been to my local library, which has unfiltered (though attended) internet access, and I've never seen anything on those screens which I would've worried about my daughter seeing at 10.
Of course, there's a technical solution -- user accounts on the library computers. You have the library filter for your daughter's account, and I'll trust my daughter. Problem solved.
-Craig
-Craig
-Craig
-Craig
But your analogy is flawed on a number of levels. I think the original posters' analogy was somewhat closer, but I think it would have been spot on if he'd used a business instead of a residence, and mere trespassing and use of service. That is, if a business' door is unlocked and not signed (and you have not been otherwise notified that access to the property is restricted,) and you walk in and use the bathroom, you usually cannot be charged with trespassing in the US. If the door were signed, then you could. Leaving an open AP is like not restricting public access to your bathroom. Similarly, in many rural areas in the US, if you do not sign your property (commercial or private) prohibitting trespassing and hunting, you open yourself up to civil responsibility for the results of actions of people on your property. So, yes, as a property owner, it is your responisbility to take measures limiting the use of your property, and other people may make some use of your property without culpability for that use in the absence of such measures being taken in many cases.
-Craig
-Craig
Old thread, but I'll respond anyway.
I built my own voicemail a few years ago using an old 486, a Dialogic 2-port voice card and their DOS drivers (what? DOS is a decent loader if you want to do your own scheduling.) It had most of the features on your list, excepting the X10 and speech recognition stuff; plus it had custom messages based on caller-id. Oh and the IM was an email, this being 1998.
The #1 feature missing from your list, and from my box (since I couldn't afford the switch card or the case/power supply to drive it at the time) is a whitelist only ring through. Incoming calling # not on the list? Straight to voicemail (with a pass-code for getting through, if people are calling from non-standard #'s.) No more voice-spam. Now that's a feature I really wish I had. Hmmm, maybe it's time to revisit that old idea. Especially since there are linux systems available fairly cheaply.
-Craig
-Craig
-Craig
-Craig
-Craig
PS - Yes, I have no problem judging another culture.
-Craig