I totally agree. I am advocating a boycott of SW, simply because geeks are such a large part of the audience. And, if you can boycott that, you can boycott anything.
Someone with a lot of literary skills needs to come up with some sort of alert that claims that those bastard liberal media companies and those liberals in Congress (I said sensationalist) are trying to take a way your right to record your TV shows by mandating that all future electronic devices contain copy protections to allow people who make shows to disable your ability to record them without paying for them. Include refs to digitalconsumer.org too. Then put the ole "We need to stop this right away, send this to all of your friends" line, details about the bill, and urge people to contact their congressman.
But this is true. Those other things aren't. There's no need to be sensational. You just have to tell the truth: they want total control of all you see and hear so that they can make you pay-per-use and so they can control new entrants into the marketplace.
I especially enjoyed the part (from the NYT article) where CAMCORDERS will have to recognize digital watermarks. You see, they aren't concerned about piracy...they're concerned about COMPETITION and they want to have control over what you produce with your own camcorders/microphones/cameras...so that you only get to release things if they're approved.
I'm serious about this. Get everyone you know and convince them to not see Star Wars Episode II. Explain to them why you're doing this...then DON'T SEE THE MOVIE! Since geeks are such a huge percentage of the SW fanbase, this might work. If it flops, we can kindly tell them that we won't buy their crap if they want to take away our computers.
Base it on how much money the thing being written or created it worth and tax the person(s) who wrote it.
Then, since laws raising taxes like this bring money into the state coffers, they should impose taxes on legislators who raise taxes...because the result of their "intellectual" activity is increased revenues for their organization.
True...but I am sure they would count as interactive digital devices. So the point is that there will be interactive digital devices that can legally make copies of copy-protected content. The law will make exceptions giving the industry access to technologies that it would deny to the rest of us. Any guesses on how easy it will be to get these uncrippled machines? Any guesses on whether or not you will have to be "approved" by the big content companies before you get an uncrippled device?
That's what I'm trying to say. They will be making copies of copy-protected content...so there will have to be machines that can crank out copies of copy-protected content. The technology will exist. It will just be restricted to those that the industry chooses to trust.
And the funny thing is the record industry will STILL have CD burners. I wonder how they'll get around that little problem. If all CD burners have to be crippled so that they can't copy protected content, how the fuck is the record or movie industry going to produce its product?
Answer: They will have CD burners that aren't crippled. But won't that be illegal?
Answer: Obviously not. So, the SSSCA is even worse than these bastards wanting to cripple all of the electronics in the country...they want to cripple all of the electronics in the country EXCEPT FOR THEIRS BECAUSE THEY NEED FUNCTIONAL ELECTRONICS TO MAKE THEIR PRODUCTS!!!
In fact, I might support the SSSCA if it would apply to everyone, since that would fuck the content industries, and I could live without CDs or movies for a few years before things get straightened out.
When you're writing about the SSSCA to your congressmen, please point out this little piece of hypocrisy. The fact that the industry will keep for itself functional devices and deny these same devices to everyone else. If they can't trust us, why the fuck should we trust them?
Or, maybe I could declare myself to be a record or movie company and get the "privilege" of obtaining the uncrippled devices.
But they will put this protection into ALL hardware components, and then require all software that runs on it to have these protections and then outlaw compilers.
When you're writing your Representative and Senators, make sure you let them know the real thing that the MPAA wants to stop. Competition.
The same devices that can be used to easily copy content are the devices that will allow people to easily make and copy content. They are willing to tolerate a little piracy, but they cannot survive in the face of everyone having the ability to make their own movies and music easily.
Point out that the only way to secure strong copyright is to destroy freedom, since stopping people from having machines that can copy arbitrary data will stop them from having machines that can create that same data.
I keep thinking it's time to buy up dark fiber and make a parallel and totally separate Internet. I only really visit about 10 sites regularly and they aren't commercial sites...so who cares about the rest of this crap.:P And all of those patents on things for the "internet" wouldn't be valid anyway...since we could just call it NotTheInternet.;)
Please explain to us how KDE is 'better' than GNOME. What can you do in KDE which I can't do in GNOME?
I don't think that "What can you do that I can't do?" is the question. It's "What can be done in KDE easier than in GNOME?"
In KDE, if you want to create a custom widget, you create a class derived from a known base widget: You add a few variables and a few methods, and maybe a callback signal or two and you're on your merry way. It seemed like this process was much more painful in GNOME when I looked at it. What is the process of creating custom widgets in GNOME? When I looked at it, it looked much more complex and contrived. I look at it as the compiler is dealing with a lot of the details that I don't want to worry about.
I don't know, but listen to what blizzard asserts on their site: legal FAQ
Q: Does Blizzard Entertainment® allow or support other Battle.net® like or emulation servers? Can I host one of these rogue servers?
No. Except as set forth in the next paragraph, Blizzard Entertainment® does not support or condone network play of its games anywhere but Battle.net®. Specifically, you may not host or provide matchmaking services for any of our games or emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Blizzard Entertainment® in the network feature of its games, through protocol emulation, tunneling, modifying or adding components to the game(s), use of a utility program or any other techniques now known or hereafter developed, for any purpose including, but not limited to network play over the Internet, network play utilizing commercial or non-commercial gaming networks or as part of content aggregation networks without the prior written consent of Blizzard Entertainment®.
I guess you can sniff them, but you just can't do anything to them. That's interesting to me that they say you can't run the output of their sockets through your proxy. That's like saying you can't block or redirect spyware output by use of a proxy. If that isn't bullshit, it should be.
They get a copy on the HD, a BACKUP copy on the HD, and the copy in memory. That's three copies of the Proprietary Digital Content for just one low price. Now they want a *fourth* copy? A copy that could conceivably be copied or (shudder) GIVEN to someone else, even temporarily? A copy that isn't physically tied down to one machine? WTF didn't they notice that little thing called the DMCA? They don't have those rights anymore. All you people: it's time to wake up and pay for a temporary nasal stimulation license so you can smell the digitally stored and manufactured coffee aroma content!
They're not going to allow software patents. The rest of the world just flat out won't respect patents and they will continue to make new software and only the 5 percent of the world's population in the US will get dragged down by them. Think about the long term implications of this:
You can write any software you want for 95 percent of the world's population (a vastly untapped market) or you can run through a minefield of regulations to write software for the 5 percent of the world with a very mature market. I see the rest of the world opting out of the US IP system.
Isn't it strange that I can import a knife but I cannot import a cable?
Well, if your priorities weren't so screwed up, you would notice that a knife can only be used to injure or kill a few people before the attacker gets caught. The victims probably won't be rich people, so they really aren't worth that much to the economy and society anyway. OTOH, a cable like this can be used to steal Copyrighted Digital Content, which can then be copied an infinite number of times, thereby causing an infinite loss to the economy.
Unfortunately, it could be time to get a secondary service that allows people to send encrypted requests to a central server where the requests are decrypted and sent to the real server and then the responses get returned to the central server and re-encrypted so all comcast sees is you constantly sending and receiving packets from this one central location. You would, of course have to add in delays to this so people wouldn't know which request went where during which 10-15 second block...sucky.:P
There are a lot of patents on manure (which is useful). Go to the USPTO and search for the word "manure". I am sure they DO something with the manure, but it's still damn funny. Unless you're in the manure industry. that is.
On the bright side, if things ever do get too bad for programmers...I am sure that it would be possible to get 20000 people to donate a few thousand each to start a patent pool. Not a patent pool for allowing OS/FS software, but a patent death pool to kill off all software development in the entire nation. Just look at the patents being awarded today and patent around them with as much generality and depth as possible, and in a few years noone will be able to move.
The nice thing about patents is that it works both ways. Yes the trolls and extortionists can stop the little guy, but if enough little guys get together, we CAN get enough patents to stop everyone else. No cross-licensing, no licensing period. Just stopping progress. But wait, there's more. Since patents can only be used to stop someone from doing something, and since this plan wouldn't need to be implemented unless software development is impossible, they can't sue you for patent infringement because you already aren't doing anything! (Because as we all know, writing software and getting software patents are two activities with "softare" in their descriptions, but are totally separate things!)
Sure, the courts might throw these patents out, but since patents are given to individual inventors, how can the courts just arbitrarily decide to say that these certain people cannot enforce their patents? Would they say that anyone who got a patent using PDP (Patent Death Pool) money cannot enforce their patent? That wouldn't be very nice. Also, you can stop someone else from using your patented idea, even if you have no intention of using it yourself!:)
Hopefully, the rest of the world would then ignore software patents and charge ahead as we in the US just stagnate. Then people in the US might wake the fuck up and force Congress to get rid of patents on uses of machines.
But, then again maybe not...but at least the rest of the world would be going on ok.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Size doesn't matter, it's how you use it. I get told that all the time, so it must be true.
I know it will be hard to do this. But I will try. As I said, if I can do this, I can avoid anything.
I totally agree. I am advocating a boycott of SW, simply because geeks are such a large part of the audience. And, if you can boycott that, you can boycott anything.
Someone with a lot of literary skills needs to come up with some sort of alert that claims that those bastard liberal media companies and those liberals in Congress (I said sensationalist) are trying to take a way your right to record your TV shows by mandating that all future electronic devices contain copy protections to allow people who make shows to disable your ability to record them without paying for them. Include refs to digitalconsumer.org too. Then put the ole "We need to stop this right away, send this to all of your friends" line, details about the bill, and urge people to contact their congressman.
...so that you only get to release things if they're approved.
But this is true. Those other things aren't. There's no need to be sensational. You just have to tell the truth: they want total control of all you see and hear so that they can make you pay-per-use and so they can control new entrants into the marketplace.
I especially enjoyed the part (from the NYT article) where CAMCORDERS will have to recognize digital watermarks. You see, they aren't concerned about piracy...they're concerned about COMPETITION and they want to have control over what you produce with your own camcorders/microphones/cameras
I'm serious about this. Get everyone you know and convince them to not see Star Wars Episode II. Explain to them why you're doing this...then DON'T SEE THE MOVIE! Since geeks are such a huge percentage of the SW fanbase, this might work. If it flops, we can kindly tell them that we won't buy their crap if they want to take away our computers.
Base it on how much money the thing being written or created it worth and tax the person(s) who wrote it.
Then, since laws raising taxes like this bring money into the state coffers, they should impose taxes on legislators who raise taxes...because the result of their "intellectual" activity is increased revenues for their organization.
Well, I can at least dream, can't I?
True...but I am sure they would count as interactive digital devices. So the point is that there will be interactive digital devices that can legally make copies of copy-protected content. The law will make exceptions giving the industry access to technologies that it would deny to the rest of us. Any guesses on how easy it will be to get these uncrippled machines? Any guesses on whether or not you will have to be "approved" by the big content companies before you get an uncrippled device?
That's what I'm trying to say. They will be making copies of copy-protected content...so there will have to be machines that can crank out copies of copy-protected content. The technology will exist. It will just be restricted to those that the industry chooses to trust.
...only outlaws will have CD burners.
And the funny thing is the record industry will STILL have CD burners. I wonder how they'll get around that little problem. If all CD burners have to be crippled so that they can't copy protected content, how the fuck is the record or movie industry going to produce its product?
Answer: They will have CD burners that aren't crippled. But won't that be illegal?
Answer: Obviously not. So, the SSSCA is even worse than these bastards wanting to cripple all of the electronics in the country...they want to cripple all of the electronics in the country EXCEPT FOR THEIRS BECAUSE THEY NEED FUNCTIONAL ELECTRONICS TO MAKE THEIR PRODUCTS!!!
In fact, I might support the SSSCA if it would apply to everyone, since that would fuck the content industries, and I could live without CDs or movies for a few years before things get straightened out.
When you're writing about the SSSCA to your congressmen, please point out this little piece of hypocrisy. The fact that the industry will keep for itself functional devices and deny these same devices to everyone else. If they can't trust us, why the fuck should we trust them?
Or, maybe I could declare myself to be a record or movie company and get the "privilege" of obtaining the uncrippled devices.
But they will put this protection into ALL hardware components, and then require all software that runs on it to have these protections and then outlaw compilers.
When you're writing your Representative and Senators, make sure you let them know the real thing that the MPAA wants to stop. Competition.
The same devices that can be used to easily copy content are the devices that will allow people to easily make and copy content. They are willing to tolerate a little piracy, but they cannot survive in the face of everyone having the ability to make their own movies and music easily.
Point out that the only way to secure strong copyright is to destroy freedom, since stopping people from having machines that can copy arbitrary data will stop them from having machines that can create that same data.
I keep thinking it's time to buy up dark fiber and make a parallel and totally separate Internet. I only really visit about 10 sites regularly and they aren't commercial sites...so who cares about the rest of this crap. :P And all of those patents on things for the "internet" wouldn't be valid anyway...since we could just call it NotTheInternet. ;)
Please explain to us how KDE is 'better' than GNOME. What can you do in KDE which I can't do in GNOME?
I don't think that "What can you do that I can't do?" is the question. It's "What can be done in KDE easier than in GNOME?"
In KDE, if you want to create a custom widget, you create a class derived from a known base widget: You add a few variables and a few methods, and maybe a callback signal or two and you're on your merry way. It seemed like this process was much more painful in GNOME when I looked at it. What is the process of creating custom widgets in GNOME? When I looked at it, it looked much more complex and contrived. I look at it as the compiler is dealing with a lot of the details that I don't want to worry about.
I don't know, but listen to what blizzard asserts on their site: legal FAQ
Q: Does Blizzard Entertainment® allow or support other Battle.net® like or emulation servers? Can I host one of these rogue servers?
No. Except as set forth in the next paragraph, Blizzard Entertainment® does not support or condone network play of its games anywhere but Battle.net®. Specifically, you may not host or provide matchmaking services for any of our games or emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Blizzard Entertainment® in the network feature of its games, through protocol emulation, tunneling, modifying or adding components to the game(s), use of a utility program or any other techniques now known or hereafter developed, for any purpose including, but not limited to network play over the Internet, network play utilizing commercial or non-commercial gaming networks or as part of content aggregation networks without the prior written consent of Blizzard Entertainment®.
I guess you can sniff them, but you just can't do anything to them. That's interesting to me that they say you can't run the output of their sockets through your proxy. That's like saying you can't block or redirect spyware output by use of a proxy. If that isn't bullshit, it should be.
I assert that the advent of cheap PCs on the the Internet changes what "natural rights" people ought to have.
The "content" industry agrees with you. That's why they're trying to make computers illegal. =D
/. clearly needs a new symbol. Call it the "!Freedom" department.
The picture would be a copy of the Constitution with a pile of shit on top of it, just below someone wiping his ass with hundred dollar bills.
They get a copy on the HD, a BACKUP copy on the HD, and the copy in memory. That's three copies of the Proprietary Digital Content for just one low price. Now they want a *fourth* copy? A copy that could conceivably be copied or (shudder) GIVEN to someone else, even temporarily? A copy that isn't physically tied down to one machine? WTF didn't they notice that little thing called the DMCA? They don't have those rights anymore. All you people: it's time to wake up and pay for a temporary nasal stimulation license so you can smell the digitally stored and manufactured coffee aroma content!
They're not going to allow software patents. The rest of the world just flat out won't respect patents and they will continue to make new software and only the 5 percent of the world's population in the US will get dragged down by them. Think about the long term implications of this:
You can write any software you want for 95 percent of the world's population (a vastly untapped market) or you can run through a minefield of regulations to write software for the 5 percent of the world with a very mature market. I see the rest of the world opting out of the US IP system.
oh the parent wasn't kidding was he.
Are you saying that my dry sarcastic wit has gotten so dry that it is indistinguishable from a pro-IP troll?
Isn't it strange that I can import a knife but I cannot import a cable?
Well, if your priorities weren't so screwed up, you would notice that a knife can only be used to injure or kill a few people before the attacker gets caught. The victims probably won't be rich people, so they really aren't worth that much to the economy and society anyway. OTOH, a cable like this can be used to steal Copyrighted Digital Content, which can then be copied an infinite number of times, thereby causing an infinite loss to the economy.
It is illegal.
As a publicly traded company, they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders.
If they spend money away like this and don't expect a return, they are not living up to that responsibility.
On the other hand, if they're spending the money and they DO expect something back, then these are bribes.
Either way, I don't see how a publicly held corporation can spend any of its money on political activities.
Unless you're like me and you code OSS...but you code MUDs. :P
Unfortunately, it could be time to get a secondary service that allows people to send encrypted requests to a central server where the requests are decrypted and sent to the real server and then the responses get returned to the central server and re-encrypted so all comcast sees is you constantly sending and receiving packets from this one central location. You would, of course have to add in delays to this so people wouldn't know which request went where during which 10-15 second block...sucky. :P
There are a lot of patents on manure (which is useful). Go to the USPTO and search for the word "manure". I am sure they DO something with the manure, but it's still damn funny. Unless you're in the manure industry. that is.
On the bright side, if things ever do get too bad for programmers...I am sure that it would be possible to get 20000 people to donate a few thousand each to start a patent pool. Not a patent pool for allowing OS/FS software, but a patent death pool to kill off all software development in the entire nation. Just look at the patents being awarded today and patent around them with as much generality and depth as possible, and in a few years noone will be able to move.
:)
:)
The nice thing about patents is that it works both ways. Yes the trolls and extortionists can stop the little guy, but if enough little guys get together, we CAN get enough patents to stop everyone else. No cross-licensing, no licensing period. Just stopping progress. But wait, there's more. Since patents can only be used to stop someone from doing something, and since this plan wouldn't need to be implemented unless software development is impossible, they can't sue you for patent infringement because you already aren't doing anything! (Because as we all know, writing software and getting software patents are two activities with "softare" in their descriptions, but are totally separate things!)
Sure, the courts might throw these patents out, but since patents are given to individual inventors, how can the courts just arbitrarily decide to say that these certain people cannot enforce their patents? Would they say that anyone who got a patent using PDP (Patent Death Pool) money cannot enforce their patent? That wouldn't be very nice. Also, you can stop someone else from using your patented idea, even if you have no intention of using it yourself!
Hopefully, the rest of the world would then ignore software patents and charge ahead as we in the US just stagnate. Then people in the US might wake the fuck up and force Congress to get rid of patents on uses of machines.
But, then again maybe not...but at least the rest of the world would be going on ok.