Exactly, I think it would be an interesting experiment to buy a large number of names that start with www.ithink___.com so that you might own www.ithinkfordsucks.com or www.ithinkfuckford.com.
They might sue you for it, but all you are doing is expressing your feelings, aren't you?
Just because the artist wants to release a song for free in this manor doesn't mean they can. Just look at the case of The Offspring. Last year they announced that they were going to release their entire new album for free on Napster. Only to have Sony their record label give them a big no no and after much bitching and negotiation let them release only a single song.
Granted the artist created the music, in many cases they don't have exclusive rights to it. They would need the labels OK. Do you honestly think they would give their OK like that?
Back in the fall I wrote a little piece for my school paper, but they turned it down. It raises good points about if we are going to blame people of school violence and shootings, why just stop with games and music... why not blame more wholesome things?
I wrote this as a person who knows this subject in depth, I was once told by one of my principals that "out of all the disgruntled white males I know Brendan, you would probably be the most likely I know to go into a school shooting." He didn't mean that in a joking way, he was dead serious. He was right. I was the most likely to do it for many reasons. Wanna know why I didn't? Cause I knew that if I did it would solve nothing, and even then, I had no desire to do such a thing. Video games don't take that idea away, only thing that can is you. You need to learn it for yourself.
Anyway, if you want an interesting read check this article I wrote out, I think you might like it.
Place the Blame
by
Brendan Grant
I don't know about you, but I've had enough. I've had enough of the blame, the finger pointing, and the accusations, when it comes to the school shootings that have occurred over the last few years.
Like with any major event where not all facts are known, everyone has their opinions of who is to blame, and what drove those people to do what they did. These theories range from the blame of the students parents, all the way to pointing the finger at things like video games and violence on television.
Like with any ruling class, they will demonize those things that witch they do not understand, agree with or associate with. How many 50 year olds who spend any real time playing a 'violent' video game like Doom, or listen to 'satanic' music like Marilyn Manson. Not many, their primary users are more of a youthful group, so naturally, we get blamed. That blame doesn't just come into play with things like school shootings, but that is all I am going to explore today.
What else could be to blame? Many say that what could be blamed has been, music, media, video games, and society, what else could be left? Think back to when you were growing up, did you ever play Cowboys and Indians, or the more current Cops and Robbers? Where you would stick your pointer finger out like the barrel of a gun, point it at someone and say BANG you're dead!
Why hasn't someone blamed this wholesome childhood activity, on no, they are just kids being kids they say. That's exactly what teachers and parents say when kids in school complain about being made fun of or harassed by others at the school. It is those same harassed students that are the ones who bring the gun to schools generally, because they feel that they need that defense since no one else is willing/able to fix it.
Look at the TV shows that many of our generation grew up on, should they be blame free? In GI Joe the 'good guys' would fight the 'bad guys', not just with words, but with guns and bombs. We never saw anyone die, but we knew what was happening, almost a Hitchcock style of it.
In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the turtles would fight the evil forces of Shredder, many of these battles would be against the Foot Soldiers, robots that could fight using the martial arts. It was rare when the turtles would leave a single one standing, granted they weren't human, but they looked human enough.
Who is to say that such stimuli doesn't desensitize us to violence, you don't need to see gallons of blood on the movie screen when you are 17 years old to do it do you?
Enough about TV, who saw the Homecoming parade recently? One of the bands had 2 girls holding white mock up rifles and were twirling them in the air, doing tricks with them. I wonder how many kids saw them, rather then having a deep respect for the power of the gun, and a slight fear of that power (as is healthy). In stead a child should easily be looking at them as nothing more then play things. That play thing idea, re enforced with other signals that they might have gotten growing up from watching GI Joe shooting the forces of Cobra.
Who is to say that all of these signs that were programmed into us as we grow up aren't as much to blame for school violence as Doom or Marilyn Manson is. Maybe they are all to blame, maybe not. But I personally am getting so sick of the powers that be blaming those things that they don't understand or in some cases aren't a part of. What's next, placing the blame on religion, ethic background, or even sex?
That raises a question, in some schools, trench coats have been ban for fear of that school having their own Trench Coat Mafia, has anyone realized that all of the school shooters have been male, why haven't they ban all men in schools, after all, we are the only ones have gone in shooting.
In the end, placing blame on such stereotypical groups wont help, it's like saying all Nazi's were like Hitler, that all Priests molest little boys, or that all politicians lie. Some out of any group do bad things, but is it really fair to blame the group as a whole?
My school is having a problem with this (although they don't admit it). A fair number of sites that I want to go to I can't because the DNS server has bad entries for them. It would be very easy to cripple the Internet without crashing a single router or cutting a single piece of wire. All you'd need to do is corrupt a bunch of DNS servers. If that were to happen, suddenly every time you typed in http://www.slashdot.com you wouldn't go anywhere, if you were to use the web servers IP of 64.28.67.150 then you could... but how many users know the Pi's of their fav servers.
This is one of the few nice things to come out of MN... other then me of course. It's nice to see something good coming from the state that elected Jesse Ventura.
Am I the only one that is a little sick of the remote controlled battle bots, admit it, it would be interesting to see a couple fully autonomous bots going at it, completely independent of any external control.
Heck 99% of the fun would be trying to build one of these.
To anyone who hasn't, spend 30 or 60 min and read the brief, it is an amazing read. I have been following the MPAA vs 2600 case for a while and this document really lays it out on how critical this case is not only to 2600 and it's supporters, but also to the open source community, the hacker community and even the movie watching community.
Just like the RIAA vs Napster, this is a precedent setting event that not only has to do with massive corporate dollars going against the little guy, but more so being huge corporations trying to control the way we live our lives and access media.
A friend of mine down the dorm hall from me has been playing with Whistler for a while now, since he got a copy of it with the authorization built in he's found a crack for it. In fact the latest version of Whistler/XP that he's been using has it pre cracked so that when it says you must contact Microsoft for the code, all you do is hit OK and you are done.
Just like with CD checks for games, as soon as a new patch comes out for the game, someone comes out with a way to prevent it. Yea such a thing is against the DMCA, let em find me and sue me. I call it fair use.
This is crazy story, you can't claim trademark over an English word. It's like someone copyrighting the name Computer or Car and then suing anyone who uses it to describe their products.
This reminds me of the Microsoft antitrust trial, someone was talking about Microsoft and windows in general and said "You know, the only think I would like to own more then Microsoft would be the English alphabet, that way I could charge people extra ever time I add new letters to the alphabet, I don't know, like N and T."
I wish I could remember who said that, but it's much like this. Just as stupid. Just as true.
I am one who thinks that such rebates should be made illegal, they are nothing more then false advertising, look at a Comp USA or Best Buy add, you'll see very expensive things marked down to practically nothing. When you pull out your microscope you see the hoops that you need to jump through to get it. I have no problem with instant rebates... but those damn mail in rebates that lie to you on the price and then there is no guarantee that you are going to get it back.
I agree with anj. It looks like it is a DoS attack... kinda ironic don't you think? A DoS on the people who brought us DOS.
I too can ping their dns servers but only a few come back to me, and their web ip is running slow as *bleep*.
Wouldn't a search engine be against the DCMA? Rather then link you to the main page of a site, it could link you directly to the page that meets your search criteria thus bypassing any banners, adds or other things that the web site operator might have wanted you to see prior to seeing that page.
I can see it now, the next round of law suits will be against the search engines for that, and just think, id software suing Webcrawler because using WC you can find warez copies of Quake 3, they are linking to it so according to judge Kaplan's ruling, that's illegal, and plus it is bypassing the protection of buying and owning the CD.
This is why I will be voting for Nader comes next week, he will talk to slashdot while Bush/Gore wont... that's not my only reason, but one none the least.
I'd really like to see that one go to court, it's a great example of how out of control license agreements are getting. Ever read any? In the MS Office 2000 agreement, it basically states that if your business should fail due to a bug or flaw in the software, Microsoft isn't liable. Or America Online "Your sole remedy of any dispute with AOL is the immediate cancellation of your account," I got confirmation from AOL on that one, it basically means that you can't sue them, unless you can catch them in a breach of contract.
I say all of this because as many would agree, license agreements are getting out of hand, many times when you break the seal on a CD case, it says that by breaking the seal you agree to the enclosed agreement... the one that you can't read until after you break the seal.
How soon until we will be giving up our first born to these agreements?
Also, with that MS one from office, wouldn't that be something like General Motor's selling a call with a license agreement that says "If at any time this vehicle should suddenly explode for no apparent reason, GM is not responsible." Yea, right, Ford in being sued over their explorer and Firestone about their tires, such a thing would never hold up in court, and I for one think it's time for someone to challenge some of the ridiculous license agreements out there.
Lets see GM tell Consumer Reports that they don't want CS crashing cars and telling people how they fair.
I say that it'd be in the best interest of the makers of the Furbys to release the needed info to reprogram them, it would surly boost sales to tech geeks like us, I personally would buy a couple if it were possible to reprogram them.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly, I think it would be an interesting experiment to buy a large number of names that start with www.ithink___.com so that you might own www.ithinkfordsucks.com or www.ithinkfuckford.com. They might sue you for it, but all you are doing is expressing your feelings, aren't you?
Doh... 2600 gets sued for their fuckford.com name and I haven't heard anything from Digital Convergence on my name fuckDigitalConvergence.com
when I just read this I was shocked, I have had people die around me... but none of them touched me like this has.
I'll talk one, I need to find one for much less then the MSRP.
Granted the artist created the music, in many cases they don't have exclusive rights to it. They would need the labels OK. Do you honestly think they would give their OK like that?
Back in the fall I wrote a little piece for my school paper, but they turned it down. It raises good points about if we are going to blame people of school violence and shootings, why just stop with games and music... why not blame more wholesome things? I wrote this as a person who knows this subject in depth, I was once told by one of my principals that "out of all the disgruntled white males I know Brendan, you would probably be the most likely I know to go into a school shooting." He didn't mean that in a joking way, he was dead serious. He was right. I was the most likely to do it for many reasons. Wanna know why I didn't? Cause I knew that if I did it would solve nothing, and even then, I had no desire to do such a thing. Video games don't take that idea away, only thing that can is you. You need to learn it for yourself. Anyway, if you want an interesting read check this article I wrote out, I think you might like it. Place the Blame by Brendan Grant I don't know about you, but I've had enough. I've had enough of the blame, the finger pointing, and the accusations, when it comes to the school shootings that have occurred over the last few years. Like with any major event where not all facts are known, everyone has their opinions of who is to blame, and what drove those people to do what they did. These theories range from the blame of the students parents, all the way to pointing the finger at things like video games and violence on television. Like with any ruling class, they will demonize those things that witch they do not understand, agree with or associate with. How many 50 year olds who spend any real time playing a 'violent' video game like Doom, or listen to 'satanic' music like Marilyn Manson. Not many, their primary users are more of a youthful group, so naturally, we get blamed. That blame doesn't just come into play with things like school shootings, but that is all I am going to explore today. What else could be to blame? Many say that what could be blamed has been, music, media, video games, and society, what else could be left? Think back to when you were growing up, did you ever play Cowboys and Indians, or the more current Cops and Robbers? Where you would stick your pointer finger out like the barrel of a gun, point it at someone and say BANG you're dead! Why hasn't someone blamed this wholesome childhood activity, on no, they are just kids being kids they say. That's exactly what teachers and parents say when kids in school complain about being made fun of or harassed by others at the school. It is those same harassed students that are the ones who bring the gun to schools generally, because they feel that they need that defense since no one else is willing/able to fix it. Look at the TV shows that many of our generation grew up on, should they be blame free? In GI Joe the 'good guys' would fight the 'bad guys', not just with words, but with guns and bombs. We never saw anyone die, but we knew what was happening, almost a Hitchcock style of it. In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the turtles would fight the evil forces of Shredder, many of these battles would be against the Foot Soldiers, robots that could fight using the martial arts. It was rare when the turtles would leave a single one standing, granted they weren't human, but they looked human enough. Who is to say that such stimuli doesn't desensitize us to violence, you don't need to see gallons of blood on the movie screen when you are 17 years old to do it do you? Enough about TV, who saw the Homecoming parade recently? One of the bands had 2 girls holding white mock up rifles and were twirling them in the air, doing tricks with them. I wonder how many kids saw them, rather then having a deep respect for the power of the gun, and a slight fear of that power (as is healthy). In stead a child should easily be looking at them as nothing more then play things. That play thing idea, re enforced with other signals that they might have gotten growing up from watching GI Joe shooting the forces of Cobra. Who is to say that all of these signs that were programmed into us as we grow up aren't as much to blame for school violence as Doom or Marilyn Manson is. Maybe they are all to blame, maybe not. But I personally am getting so sick of the powers that be blaming those things that they don't understand or in some cases aren't a part of. What's next, placing the blame on religion, ethic background, or even sex? That raises a question, in some schools, trench coats have been ban for fear of that school having their own Trench Coat Mafia, has anyone realized that all of the school shooters have been male, why haven't they ban all men in schools, after all, we are the only ones have gone in shooting. In the end, placing blame on such stereotypical groups wont help, it's like saying all Nazi's were like Hitler, that all Priests molest little boys, or that all politicians lie. Some out of any group do bad things, but is it really fair to blame the group as a whole?
My school is having a problem with this (although they don't admit it). A fair number of sites that I want to go to I can't because the DNS server has bad entries for them. It would be very easy to cripple the Internet without crashing a single router or cutting a single piece of wire. All you'd need to do is corrupt a bunch of DNS servers. If that were to happen, suddenly every time you typed in http://www.slashdot.com you wouldn't go anywhere, if you were to use the web servers IP of 64.28.67.150 then you could ... but how many users know the Pi's of their fav servers.
This will hopfuly finaly give firewire the boost that it needs to beat the living daylights out of USB2. I'm glad MS is going this way.
This is one of the few nice things to come out of MN ... other then me of course. It's nice to see something good coming from the state that elected Jesse Ventura.
Am I the only one that is a little sick of the remote controlled battle bots, admit it, it would be interesting to see a couple fully autonomous bots going at it, completely independent of any external control. Heck 99% of the fun would be trying to build one of these.
bow before them.
... need I say more.
To anyone who hasn't, spend 30 or 60 min and read the brief, it is an amazing read. I have been following the MPAA vs 2600 case for a while and this document really lays it out on how critical this case is not only to 2600 and it's supporters, but also to the open source community, the hacker community and even the movie watching community. Just like the RIAA vs Napster, this is a precedent setting event that not only has to do with massive corporate dollars going against the little guy, but more so being huge corporations trying to control the way we live our lives and access media.
A friend of mine down the dorm hall from me has been playing with Whistler for a while now, since he got a copy of it with the authorization built in he's found a crack for it. In fact the latest version of Whistler/XP that he's been using has it pre cracked so that when it says you must contact Microsoft for the code, all you do is hit OK and you are done. Just like with CD checks for games, as soon as a new patch comes out for the game, someone comes out with a way to prevent it. Yea such a thing is against the DMCA, let em find me and sue me. I call it fair use.
This is crazy story, you can't claim trademark over an English word. It's like someone copyrighting the name Computer or Car and then suing anyone who uses it to describe their products. This reminds me of the Microsoft antitrust trial, someone was talking about Microsoft and windows in general and said "You know, the only think I would like to own more then Microsoft would be the English alphabet, that way I could charge people extra ever time I add new letters to the alphabet, I don't know, like N and T." I wish I could remember who said that, but it's much like this. Just as stupid. Just as true.
I agree, PA is the only online commic I read
2001-03-24 07:42:12 arg, it was saying that there are to many caps in the above.
I am one who thinks that such rebates should be made illegal, they are nothing more then false advertising, look at a Comp USA or Best Buy add, you'll see very expensive things marked down to practically nothing. When you pull out your microscope you see the hoops that you need to jump through to get it. I have no problem with instant rebates ... but those damn mail in rebates that lie to you on the price and then there is no guarantee that you are going to get it back.
I agree with anj. It looks like it is a DoS attack... kinda ironic don't you think? A DoS on the people who brought us DOS. I too can ping their dns servers but only a few come back to me, and their web ip is running slow as *bleep*.
It makes you wonder why the RIAA has never gone after used CD places like Disc-Go-Round and Cheap-O.
Wouldn't a search engine be against the DCMA? Rather then link you to the main page of a site, it could link you directly to the page that meets your search criteria thus bypassing any banners, adds or other things that the web site operator might have wanted you to see prior to seeing that page. I can see it now, the next round of law suits will be against the search engines for that, and just think, id software suing Webcrawler because using WC you can find warez copies of Quake 3, they are linking to it so according to judge Kaplan's ruling, that's illegal, and plus it is bypassing the protection of buying and owning the CD.
This is why I will be voting for Nader comes next week, he will talk to slashdot while Bush/Gore wont... that's not my only reason, but one none the least.
I'd really like to see that one go to court, it's a great example of how out of control license agreements are getting. Ever read any? In the MS Office 2000 agreement, it basically states that if your business should fail due to a bug or flaw in the software, Microsoft isn't liable. Or America Online "Your sole remedy of any dispute with AOL is the immediate cancellation of your account," I got confirmation from AOL on that one, it basically means that you can't sue them, unless you can catch them in a breach of contract. I say all of this because as many would agree, license agreements are getting out of hand, many times when you break the seal on a CD case, it says that by breaking the seal you agree to the enclosed agreement ... the one that you can't read until after you break the seal.
How soon until we will be giving up our first born to these agreements?
Also, with that MS one from office, wouldn't that be something like General Motor's selling a call with a license agreement that says "If at any time this vehicle should suddenly explode for no apparent reason, GM is not responsible." Yea, right, Ford in being sued over their explorer and Firestone about their tires, such a thing would never hold up in court, and I for one think it's time for someone to challenge some of the ridiculous license agreements out there.
Lets see GM tell Consumer Reports that they don't want CS crashing cars and telling people how they fair.
I say that it'd be in the best interest of the makers of the Furbys to release the needed info to reprogram them, it would surly boost sales to tech geeks like us, I personally would buy a couple if it were possible to reprogram them.