The ease of doing it over the Internet does not negate the law
But that's exactly the point - they are suing "the ease of doing it" instead of the people that do it.
While I admit that this would be practicly impossible that ought to be the only way to do it. This suit doesnt go anywhere. If they'd be more consequent they should just sue Cisco and 3Com and whoever for building routers and network cards also.
The internet and its inherent possibilities are a fact now - we should either try to live with it or else shut the whole damn thing down. The fact that Napster is mainly used illegaly is mainly because there is no legal alternative that offers the same functionality/features. I actually liked the idea of paylars.com - give musicians money for the songs you like/listen to. I dont know why none of the big recording companies hasnt yet come up with an intelligent idea for marketing mp3s (well, probably because musicians would soon realize that they dont need them) but that isnt my problem. And it certainly shouldnt be the problem of Universities...
"The black scenario of all major ISPs falling for this software is very grim. But is it realy true that in a commercial world the ISPs that deliver bad service or block parts of the Internet *remain* big ISPs? Filtering fat Internet pipes is perhaps feasible, but doing it provides not real benefit for the ISPs. Is the music industry preasure big enough to block parts of the Internet? "
I guess so. There's only a handful of really big providers. Once these implement the filtering the smaller providers get it automaticly. And I fear it's rather likely that the big providers will implement it as there are some dubious legal possibilities to sue them for any illegal content that goes over their lines.
We have a law that makes providers responsible for the content they provide as long as it's "technicaly feasible" to monitor the content. With the proposition of this RPS it would be "feasible", so it's likely that they get sued to hell if they dont implement it. The only legal ground that might actually prevent this from happening is our 5th ammendement (I'm not sure if that's the right word but you get the idea:) which states that we bear the right to access any kind of information without censoring.
And german politicians might actually like the idea of a nationwide filtering system. After all they could be protecting the poor musicians, prevent the kids from accessing porn and the bad Nazis from spreading their crap. The same negative hype that caused the whole library censoring in the US is comming up in germany, also. So it's likely some conservative politicians will use this for their own agenda.
And with the decreasing interest in politics and self-education that's currently ongoing here (well, maybe i'm cynical, but what the heck) those claims might be taken for true without a closer look at the consequences.
Altough I admit I'm not an expert on Darwin or evolutionaru theories the point about "survival of the fittest" is not always valid. Evolution always draws from diversity which makes everything thats not "normal" quite interesting to preserve.
The problem is that the definition of "fittest" in these days is constantly changing.
At a point were ideas - mental abilities - change evolution a lot faster then physical abilities a classic interpretation of "survival of the fittest" doesnt get you anywhere.
So, while someone might not be self-reliant he might still produce a lot of good thoughts. Hawkins is actually a good example although not really relevant to the "euthanizing babies" discussion. But if you'd bring him out in the woods he would starve. Which brings me to the next point - I would probably starve in the woods too because I just barely know how to use a microwave. Yet I think my life is quite worth preserving;).
The problem is where to draw the border to what is "severly disabled". And I'm pretty glad I dont have to make that decision.
Well, its a pretty philosophical discussion and I'm used to be drunk when takeing part in those discussions. I'm not right now, so I'll stop here:).
Well, I think the main problem is that it's not so easy to distinguish the voices from each other. This would suggest you alter the voices (wich I think is still more comfortable for you then changing your gender, as suggested somewhere else;)) or you switch to video.
Well, it doesnt bother me too much though... I liked it anyways...
I thought Brett started Epitaph to keep him busy to stay away from heroin. Sad to see it doesnt seem to work. And when was he lead singer of Bad Religion anyway?
And I always thought of Epitaph as a label for unrecognized bands as even Bad Religion didnt want to manage themselves as they got bigger.
Oh and didnt Tom Waitts just said he'll stick to Epitaph?
Well... apart from me just asking questions I'll have to say that I still like the idea of selling mp3s. Seems like a step in the right direction.
Well, I for myself have the ability to laugh about those kinda jokes (well, maybe not that one in particular). And I'm europian, lost family members in WW2 and am pretty sure that I dont like wars at all. Humans tend to make fun of things they fear or dont understand. And I generally think that its a good thing.
What did I want to say? Ah, yes... dont take everything so damn seriously...
Well, given that the petition wasnt publicized pretty much here (well, I heard about it for the first time) it's still a good outcome.
Also, if you take a closer look at who actually signed the petition there are quite a few interesting startup companies (or at least their CEOs) at wich this whole new-media center thing aims.
OTOH, I'm not too optimistic about the outcome of this movement, though.
> I suppose the argument can be made that bandwidth > would be even cheaper today than it is if not for > spam. This may be true, but such arguments are > hard to prove.
Well, either way you wouldn't say that bandwith is generally satisfying atm. If it would be there wouldn't be any of the InterNAP ads showing up on/.;)
> In the US, most ISPs charge a flat monthly rate, > so you can't even argue that you are being > charged for the time to download it.
That's not the point. In general the backbones have to pay for that and eventually you pay it because the backbones costs end up in your flat rate.
You have a point on the free speech issue though. OTOH, in this particular case AOLusers would still be able to read news and in the end also be "allowed" to post via a different newsserver. The UDP aims at AOL and not it's users.
What I wanted to say was that I think it read about a more open standard for storing information. But I cant remember where I read it and as I wont buy/use Office 2000 anyway I dont really care either. (That, of course, until someone wants... ummm... forces me to read something stored by Office 2000)
Ok. But I dont see much of a problem there. Except for that communications on a higher level are harder to persue as it's more likely that the one you're talking to doesnt understand what you mean (I think you went into that in your first editorial). But that is more a matter of people wanting to learn/understand rather than a slight increase in what there is that actualy has to be learned.
I'm of the opinion that being dumb must probably feel pretty good. You dont have that much fun but you cant worry about anything. And there's always been dumb people. And that's not because they wouldnt be able to learn or wouldnt have the access to information but because it seems to be easier. You can definately survive without knowing Yoda.
The only problem is that you start to feel pretty lonesome if you're in a room full of people with noone "knowing Yoda". And it gets more frustrating if you try to get people to teach themselves so you might someday have the possibility to have a decent conversation with them. That's not "it's lonely at the top" but more "its sad that so few actually want to get higher" (no puns intended).
All in all the rules dont seem to change that fast though. It's still not cool to kill people and sex is still the first thing I think of when seeing an appealing woman.
With Word having 95% market share it's pretty useless to have anything like it w/o being able to read those crappy.doc files.
On the other hand you're probably right about the proprietary formats. I think I even read somewhere that Office 2000 would use a different approach in storing things.
basicly rating from proxy logs
on
Quickielanche
·
· Score: 1
Yeah... absolutely right. While this was a carefully planned plot just think about how easy it would be for sites with an even bigger reputation than/., UF, segfault or whoever.
We've been had by this prank and we could've been by anything else...
So we gotta be careful... but I'm still laughing. Man did they have us...;)
Maybe you should read Rob's posting about complaints for posting things twice and Hemos' comments up here... it kinda makes sense to have a day in wich you can get a little bit anoying in return (if that really is the intention here).
Besides, I think this day has been pretty funny so far. Keep on going everyone!
Slashdot Mirror
> I didn't know /. had a WAP page... what is the URL?
;)
www.slashdot.org should work
HTH
But that's exactly the point - they are suing "the ease of doing it" instead of the people that do it.
While I admit that this would be practicly impossible that ought to be the only way to do it.
This suit doesnt go anywhere. If they'd be more consequent they should just sue Cisco and 3Com and whoever for building routers and network cards also.
The internet and its inherent possibilities are a fact now - we should either try to live with it or else shut the whole damn thing down. The fact that Napster is mainly used illegaly is mainly because there is no legal alternative that offers the same functionality/features. I actually liked the idea of paylars.com - give musicians money for the songs you like/listen to. I dont know why none of the big recording companies hasnt yet come up with an intelligent idea for marketing mp3s (well, probably because musicians would soon realize that they dont need them) but that isnt my problem. And it certainly shouldnt be the problem of Universities...
Argh... I'll just stop now...
"The black scenario of all major ISPs falling for this software is very grim. But is it realy true that in a commercial world the ISPs that deliver bad service or block parts of the Internet *remain* big ISPs?
:) which states that we bear the right to access any kind of information without censoring.
Filtering fat Internet pipes is perhaps feasible, but doing it provides not real benefit for the ISPs. Is the music industry preasure big enough to block parts of the Internet? "
I guess so. There's only a handful of really big providers. Once these implement the filtering the smaller providers get it automaticly. And I fear it's rather likely that the big providers will implement it as there are some dubious legal possibilities to sue them for any illegal content that goes over their lines.
We have a law that makes providers responsible for the content they provide as long as it's "technicaly feasible" to monitor the content. With the proposition of this RPS it would be "feasible", so it's likely that they get sued to hell if they dont implement it. The only legal ground that might actually prevent this from happening is our 5th ammendement (I'm not sure if that's the right word but you get the idea
And german politicians might actually like the idea of a nationwide filtering system. After all they could be protecting the poor musicians, prevent the kids from accessing porn and the bad Nazis from spreading their crap. The same negative hype that caused the whole library censoring in the US is comming up in germany, also. So it's likely some conservative politicians will use this for their own agenda.
And with the decreasing interest in politics and self-education that's currently ongoing here (well, maybe i'm cynical, but what the heck) those claims might be taken for true without a closer look at the consequences.
All in all, yes, I am worried...
Altough I admit I'm not an expert on Darwin or evolutionaru theories the point about "survival of the fittest" is not always valid. Evolution always draws from diversity which makes everything thats not "normal" quite interesting to preserve.
;).
:).
The problem is that the definition of "fittest" in these days is constantly changing.
At a point were ideas - mental abilities - change evolution a lot faster then physical abilities a classic interpretation of "survival of the fittest" doesnt get you anywhere.
So, while someone might not be self-reliant he might still produce a lot of good thoughts. Hawkins is actually a good example although not really relevant to the "euthanizing babies" discussion. But if you'd bring him out in the woods he would starve. Which brings me to the next point - I would probably starve in the woods too because I just barely know how to use a microwave. Yet I think my life is quite worth preserving
The problem is where to draw the border to what is "severly disabled". And I'm pretty glad I dont have to make that decision.
Well, its a pretty philosophical discussion and I'm used to be drunk when takeing part in those discussions. I'm not right now, so I'll stop here
Well, I think the main problem is that it's not so easy to distinguish the voices from each other. This would suggest you alter the voices (wich I think is still more comfortable for you then changing your gender, as suggested somewhere else ;)) or you switch to video.
Well, it doesnt bother me too much though... I liked it anyways...
Just a few questions...
I thought Brett started Epitaph to keep him busy to stay away from heroin. Sad to see it doesnt seem to work. And when was he lead singer of Bad Religion anyway?
And I always thought of Epitaph as a label for unrecognized bands as even Bad Religion didnt want to manage themselves as they got bigger.
Oh and didnt Tom Waitts just said he'll stick to Epitaph?
Well... apart from me just asking questions I'll have to say that I still like the idea of selling mp3s. Seems like a step in the right direction.
Well, I for myself have the ability to laugh about those kinda jokes (well, maybe not that one in particular). And I'm europian, lost family members in WW2 and am pretty sure that I dont like wars at all. Humans tend to make fun of things they fear or dont understand. And I generally think that its a good thing.
What did I want to say? Ah, yes... dont take everything so damn seriously...
They're just planting trees to stop me from making a giant parking-lot/haute-cuisine-drive-thru out of France.
;)
You're not fooling me, you french guys.
Oh well, maybe I just didnt like my french lessons back then...
Well, given that the petition wasnt publicized pretty much here (well, I heard about it for the first time) it's still a good outcome.
Also, if you take a closer look at who actually signed the petition there are quite a few interesting startup companies (or at least their CEOs) at wich this whole new-media center thing aims.
OTOH, I'm not too optimistic about the outcome of this movement, though.
The artcile talks about a letter to Wolfgang Clement who 'governs' Nordrhein-Westfalen (or northrhein-westfalia) not Rheinland-Pfalz.
Nevertheless you were right about that its just a state... though the one whith the most inhabitants.
Argh, talk about jealousy... :)
I dont know much about it but doesnt that also mix with those stories about chaos computers that were on /. a couple of month ago...
:)
All these things make my brain so fuzzy
> Hackers rarely waste time on hostility...
;)
Seems he should read more of the comments here
> I suppose the argument can be made that bandwidth
/. ;)
> would be even cheaper today than it is if not for
> spam. This may be true, but such arguments are
> hard to prove.
Well, either way you wouldn't say that bandwith
is generally satisfying atm. If it would be there
wouldn't be any of the InterNAP ads showing up
on
> In the US, most ISPs charge a flat monthly rate,
> so you can't even argue that you are being
> charged for the time to download it.
That's not the point. In general the backbones
have to pay for that and eventually you pay it
because the backbones costs end up in your
flat rate.
You have a point on the free speech issue though.
OTOH, in this particular case AOLusers would
still be able to read news and in the end also be
"allowed" to post via a different newsserver. The
UDP aims at AOL and not it's users.
With their mouse drivers diabling my modem under Windows (not that solving that is very hard) a few more eyes on the driver code probably wont hurt.
;)
Now I only need the games to make use of my joystick, huh?
ooops... yup, that was too obvious. ;)
What I wanted to say was that I think it read about a more open standard for storing information. But I cant remember where I read it and as I wont buy/use Office 2000 anyway I dont really care either. (That, of course, until someone wants... ummm... forces me to read something stored by Office 2000)
Ok. But I dont see much of a problem there. Except for that communications on a higher level are harder to persue as it's more likely that the one you're talking to doesnt understand what you mean (I think you went into that in your first editorial). But that is more a matter of people wanting to learn/understand rather than a slight increase in what there is that actualy has to be learned.
I'm of the opinion that being dumb must probably feel pretty good. You dont have that much fun but you cant worry about anything. And there's always been dumb people. And that's not because they wouldnt be able to learn or wouldnt have the access to information but because it seems to be easier. You can definately survive without knowing Yoda.
The only problem is that you start to feel pretty lonesome if you're in a room full of people with noone "knowing Yoda". And it gets more frustrating if you try to get people to teach themselves so you might someday have the possibility to have a decent conversation with them. That's not "it's lonely at the top" but more "its sad that so few actually want to get higher" (no puns intended).
All in all the rules dont seem to change that fast though. It's still not cool to kill people and sex is still the first thing I think of when seeing an appealing woman.
With Word having 95% market share it's pretty useless to have anything like it w/o being able to read those crappy .doc files.
On the other hand you're probably right about the proprietary formats. I think I even read somewhere that Office 2000 would use a different approach in storing things.
You can look up the methodology here
Hey, they're looking for geeks. Would it be geek-style to wade through dozens of pages each day or rather write something automating that?
/. effect? Get so many hits that advertisers would have to pay more? ;)
What's the goal anyway? Multiply the
Yeah... absolutely right. While this was a carefully planned plot just think about how easy it would be for sites with an even bigger reputation than /., UF, segfault or whoever.
;)
We've been had by this prank and we could've been by anything else...
So we gotta be careful... but I'm still laughing. Man did they have us...
What's your problem then? I mean, it's just one day in a whole year where the keepers of a (after all) private site have a little fun with us.
I think we all should be able to think twice about the news we get in those 24 hours...
Maybe you should read Rob's posting about complaints for posting things twice and Hemos' comments up here... it kinda makes sense to have a day in wich you can get a little bit anoying in return (if that really is the intention here).
Besides, I think this day has been pretty funny so far. Keep on going everyone!
Hmmm... I didnt even realize how well that Pulp Fiction quote figured.
:)
Funny coincident though.
I'd rather have some iced tea with that, please