Yea, haven't they ever read Islands in the Net? These guys are pissing off the governments of the world by pretending to be a soverign nation to skirt their laws, and they're pissing of almost everyone who has a stake on intellectual property by facilitating piracy. Right now, they're just a bunch of crazy cypherpunks, but what happens when they become successful, i.e., when organized criminals become their primary customers? They're gonna wake up one morning and find their dinky little island captured by Navy SEALS or the British equivalent.
Hmm, that would make a great mission pack to Rainbow Six.:-)
Seriously though, is there any anime that isn't about giant robots, pop culture, and obnoxious children with superpowers? As astouding as anime can be visually, it always seems like the scripts are written by twelve year olds.
I think it simply says that the relativly low risk associated with high-tech warfare will encourage military action without properly evaluating the moral consequences. People are less likely to shoot first and ask questions later when it is more likely that they'll be shot in retaliation.
There is no such thing as "honorable" combat. War is nothing but risk aversion. Those who believe otherwise, well, those are the evil side.
On the other hand, I think what Bidder's Edge does is really indefensible from an ethical standpoint and I am rooting for them to lose because they are in effect *competing* with eBay for advertising dollars by *using* eBay's content. If you view content from ebay through Bidder's Edge, that's advertising revenue eBay doosn't get which BE does.
How much of ebay's content are they using? If it is nothing but item names and bid prices, to hell with ebay. Those are facts, and facts aren't copyritable. They should have known that for markets to work there's got to be easy access to pricing information, and people are going to make it so if ebay doesn't. If they had any brains they'd set up some sort RDF-like publishing system, so others can grab it quickly without sucking all their CPU cycles. And let others submit bids in large batches on behalf of third parties, for a small fee of course.
As for using server cycles, who are they kidding? In ten years, every person is going to haven dozens of software agents doing their bidding. What's the differnce in my robot scouring auction sites and Bidder's Edge doing it for me? Bidder's Edge is actually more efficient because it removes the duplication of effort. How would ebay feel if all it's thousands of users turned their own robots loose on the the servers?
I can name 1000 different record labels off of the top of my head
Go for it, dude! Show 'em you know your stuff!
I don't know about Napster, but when I was in college most of the mp3 trading was of top 40 crap, not the sort of thing an independant label would produce. Besides, if those responsible for 99% of CD sales collude in pricing, it is a monopoly. It makes no difference how many independant labels there are, because music is not a commodity, where one artist can be substituted by any another.
I can almost guarantee you that the farmhand has had a more moral upbringing and goes to Church more than the programmer.
Indeed. Those evil non-Christians have destroyed our country. What we need to do now is overthrow the government and set up a Christrian monarchy. There will be no juries, because all trials will be settled by Judges, who will also be executioners. I think you have what it takes to be a Judge, so please join us at http://www.shadowgov.com/
No world government? What do you call the WTO, and the WIPO treaty that the DMCA implements? I suppose you don't mind then that some nations don't give a rat's ass about copyright law, after all, who are we to impose world government on them?
Ah, you are wise. There is one particular difference, however. This particular brute has a collar around his neck, and attached to it are about 300 million leases, whose holders it serves. Lately he's grown big and fat, as people have discovered he is more responsive to treats than tugs on the chain. Whether he grows bigger or smaller, the important part is to never let go of that chain, especially when he claims that he can serve you better if you would just loosen it up.
Those are still symbolic assets. Somewhere, at some time, they'll be exchanged for real property, which will be taxed under a stable government, or under threat of theft or destruction under an unstable one.
No, the cave man with the biggest club and the most lackeys existed before government. What he wanted he took. After government, we'll revert to that state.
If the top 1% of US earners could move their assets offshore, the Federal Government would lose 30% of its tax revenue.
And find their assets are worth less than half of what they used to be, while still having to pay off the army of whatever third-world dictatorship they move to, lest they just steal everything.
Property doesn't exist without a government to protect it, especially information property.
Bad analogy. The appropriate comparison is between anonymous pay phones and anonymous net access in "cyber-cafe"-like environments.
Besides, a requirement for common-carrier legal protection is that the carrier must not monitor the content, otherwise it could recognize illegal activity and would be obliged to report it. This applies to your example.
I'm talking about ISPs knowing illegal activity is occuring, knowing who is doing it, and refusing to take responsibility while also refusing to identify the perpetrators.
Of course ISPs are going to collect identifying information on you, because you have to pay them! How many ISPs are you aware of that accept anonymous subscribers who pay in cash?
Now, I'm not expert on the law, but I imagine if you want to avoid responsiblity for copyright infringment, that responsiblity must be transferred to someone else. You can't just shrug and say, "yeah, I own the server, but someone else is responsible for those gigs of pirated music, and I'm not telling you who."
The problem with that statement in the report, however, is that Napster is not an ISP. They are not breaking the law, because no pirated content resides on or is transferred through their machines.
Because Napster is not actually an ISP, what they're really asking for is the ability and requirement to identify everybody who uses any net service that could potentially be used to break the law. The logical conclusion is really disturbing. Imagine something like identd, but legally required for every ISP to dish out complete identification for a user for any site that asks for it.
FYI, Chomsky is an anarchist who probably hates the government more than you do. He's certainly gone to great lengths trying to expose the murder our government encourages (and commits) in the name of foreign policy.
FYI #2, it is still up in the air on whether click-through licenses are actually legally binding, mainly because nobody takes them seriously, and therefore do not read them. And besides, Real knows full well that people do not read them, so hiding the admission of some extremely intrusive behavior of its software inside the license rather than making it obvious on the download page or on a privacy statement shows an extreme amount of contempt for their users' privacy, and therefore they deserve all the bad publicity we can generate.
FYI #3, if you still think anyone who signs (or clicks) something without reading it is a moron (and I'm inclined to agree with you), consider a bill that was recently passed by the Republican controlled Senate: http://cryptome.org/4th-sneaky.htm.
The laws of supply and demand being what they are, Sterling commands that kind of price because Schizmatrix is 1.) a great, mind-bending book, and 2.) very hard to find in any other form. The price of those larger paperbacks has less to do with the quality of the paper than the fact that the title is no longer in print as a standard trade paperback. I believe two kinds of books get that treatment: older books with strong demand by fans of the author who are willing to pay more, and new work by critically acclaimed authors who have demand from serious readers and academics, but not enough popular appeal to make a hardcover profitable or to merit space on the softcover racks of smaller bookstores. I think the only reason they make the books larger is to counter the pscychological reaction of feeling ripped off for paying higher prices for paperbacks when most are standardized at between 5 and 7 dollars.
I really don't see how templated design and XML support Zeldman over Nielson. If anything, Neilson's mantra is that content and organization are everything. The use of templates and stylesheets reenforce this view because it keeps the focus on the data, not the frills.
Standards are vendor neutral. You can make up whatever definition you want, but that is how the industry uses the word. XML, TCP/IP, OpenGL, these are standards. DirectX is not a standard, because it is tightly coupled with the Windows API.
Until it is possible to sell a complete Windows clone, nothing Microsoft-specific can be considered a standard.
I suggest you have an assheadendectomy yourself. In one paragraph you mock having a choice in who implements a standard, and then claim standardization results in boring sameness. Make up your mind.
Standards are good because they promote interoperability while at the same time encouraging competition. With MS, you're interoperable with nothing, and you're stuck with their mediocre implementation.
Hasn't the recent Microsoft debacle taught people anything? You can't post a copyrighted work in it's entirity without permission, even if it is slashdoted. That goes way beyond the provisions for fair use, and only encourages people to start reducing the simplicity of accessing information.
Do you want slashdot to become like those theiving commies at FreeRepublic?
Essentially HTML is a programming language, as is Postscript..
Nope, HTML and Postscript are completely different beasts. Postscript is Turing complete programming language used to drive printers and other rasterizers. HTML is declaritive markup language. You could write an HTML renderer in Postscript, but not the other way around.
Even using tests and asking for sample code is not all that useful.
I used to feel that way about tests, but then I started grading them at my company. Let me tell you, for entry level positions in the current market, nothing cuts the wheat from the chaff more effectively than a simple programming test. It seems like every small college has become a diploma mill for CS degrees.
You're right, but most of the blame still falls on the suits, because they're the ones hiring these people.
The problem is the objective evaluation of a person's skills. It isn't that hard to determine the skills of an applicant for a techincal position. The reason suits tend to be morons is because they are more likely to be hired by their friends (good ol' networking), or have their qualifications based more on "leadership" or business skills than technical or financial knowledge. Not to knock people skills, I know how important they are in a managerial position, but when it comes time to make hard decisions, you better know what you're freaking doing, and I think a lot of MBA grads don't.
But then again, I'm biased. I can't wait for the day when we are all managed by AI constructs.:-)
The whole case is about the freedom to distribute information. Try thinking about it some more.
In other words, he doesn't "get it"?:-)
...the First Amendment is not and never has been a defence...
Actually, the first amendment is a defense against so-called SLAPP suits (suing for libel or slander with the intention of quieting constitutionally protected criticism or dissent). It won't prevent the suit from going to court, but it will protect the defendant, and in states with anti-SLAPP laws, prevent it from going to trial.
Words can be very, very powerful -- by moving people to action.
So where does the power originate, the speaker or people acting on those words? The mob, or the agitator? The government that criminalized DeCSS, or the corporations that paid them to do it?
I prefer the cynical value of nuclear weapons: they are the first weapon that puts the wagers of war in as much, if not more, danger as the people who actually have to fight their wars. They also make the objectives of war pointless, as they exterminate most of your potential ideological converts/slaves/scapegoats, and render your enemy's resources hazardously radioactive.
Slashdot Mirror
Yea, haven't they ever read Islands in the Net? These guys are pissing off the governments of the world by pretending to be a soverign nation to skirt their laws, and they're pissing of almost everyone who has a stake on intellectual property by facilitating piracy. Right now, they're just a bunch of crazy cypherpunks, but what happens when they become successful, i.e., when organized criminals become their primary customers? They're gonna wake up one morning and find their dinky little island captured by Navy SEALS or the British equivalent.
:-)
Hmm, that would make a great mission pack to Rainbow Six.
It's by Don Bluth, so it's got to be good.
Seriously though, is there any anime that isn't about giant robots, pop culture, and obnoxious children with superpowers? As astouding as anime can be visually, it always seems like the scripts are written by twelve year olds.
I think it simply says that the relativly low risk associated with high-tech warfare will encourage military action without properly evaluating the moral consequences. People are less likely to shoot first and ask questions later when it is more likely that they'll be shot in retaliation.
There is no such thing as "honorable" combat. War is nothing but risk aversion. Those who believe otherwise, well, those are the evil side.
On the other hand, I think what Bidder's Edge does is really indefensible from an ethical standpoint and I am rooting for them to lose because they are in effect *competing* with eBay for advertising dollars by *using* eBay's content. If you view content from ebay through Bidder's Edge, that's advertising revenue eBay doosn't get which BE does.
How much of ebay's content are they using? If it is nothing but item names and bid prices, to hell with ebay. Those are facts, and facts aren't copyritable. They should have known that for markets to work there's got to be easy access to pricing information, and people are going to make it so if ebay doesn't. If they had any brains they'd set up some sort RDF-like publishing system, so others can grab it quickly without sucking all their CPU cycles. And let others submit bids in large batches on behalf of third parties, for a small fee of course.
As for using server cycles, who are they kidding? In ten years, every person is going to haven dozens of software agents doing their bidding. What's the differnce in my robot scouring auction sites and Bidder's Edge doing it for me? Bidder's Edge is actually more efficient because it removes the duplication of effort. How would ebay feel if all it's thousands of users turned their own robots loose on the the servers?
Interesting idea, I think I'll write a program that contains a list of grocery items and buys them from webvan.com...
Put it in cron.weekly, and hot damn, I'll never have to go to the store again!
I can name 1000 different record labels off of the top of my head
Go for it, dude! Show 'em you know your stuff!
I don't know about Napster, but when I was in college most of the mp3 trading was of top 40 crap, not the sort of thing an independant label would produce. Besides, if those responsible for 99% of CD sales collude in pricing, it is a monopoly. It makes no difference how many independant labels there are, because music is not a commodity, where one artist can be substituted by any another.
I can almost guarantee you that the farmhand has had a more moral upbringing and goes to Church more than the programmer.
Indeed. Those evil non-Christians have destroyed our country. What we need to do now is overthrow the government and set up a Christrian monarchy. There will be no juries, because all trials will be settled by Judges, who will also be executioners. I think you have what it takes to be a Judge, so please join us at http://www.shadowgov.com/
Any government that can take lives without any sort of due process will most certainly turn a blind eye towards favored companies doing the same.
Which do you want, companies that can take lives, or governments so weak that they can't protect their citizens from murderers or foreign invaders?
No world government? What do you call the WTO, and the WIPO treaty that the DMCA implements? I suppose you don't mind then that some nations don't give a rat's ass about copyright law, after all, who are we to impose world government on them?
Ah, you are wise. There is one particular difference, however. This particular brute has a collar around his neck, and attached to it are about 300 million leases, whose holders it serves. Lately he's grown big and fat, as people have discovered he is more responsive to treats than tugs on the chain. Whether he grows bigger or smaller, the important part is to never let go of that chain, especially when he claims that he can serve you better if you would just loosen it up.
Those are still symbolic assets. Somewhere, at some time, they'll be exchanged for real property, which will be taxed under a stable government, or under threat of theft or destruction under an unstable one.
No, the cave man with the biggest club and the most lackeys existed before government. What he wanted he took. After government, we'll revert to that state.
If the top 1% of US earners could move their assets offshore, the Federal Government would lose 30% of its tax revenue.
And find their assets are worth less than half of what they used to be, while still having to pay off the army of whatever third-world dictatorship they move to, lest they just steal everything.
Property doesn't exist without a government to protect it, especially information property.
Bad analogy. The appropriate comparison is between anonymous pay phones and anonymous net access in "cyber-cafe"-like environments.
Besides, a requirement for common-carrier legal protection is that the carrier must not monitor the content, otherwise it could recognize illegal activity and would be obliged to report it. This applies to your example.
I'm talking about ISPs knowing illegal activity is occuring, knowing who is doing it, and refusing to take responsibility while also refusing to identify the perpetrators.
Of course ISPs are going to collect identifying information on you, because you have to pay them! How many ISPs are you aware of that accept anonymous subscribers who pay in cash?
Now, I'm not expert on the law, but I imagine if you want to avoid responsiblity for copyright infringment, that responsiblity must be transferred to someone else. You can't just shrug and say, "yeah, I own the server, but someone else is responsible for those gigs of pirated music, and I'm not telling you who."
The problem with that statement in the report, however, is that Napster is not an ISP. They are not breaking the law, because no pirated content resides on or is transferred through their machines.
Because Napster is not actually an ISP, what they're really asking for is the ability and requirement to identify everybody who uses any net service that could potentially be used to break the law. The logical conclusion is really disturbing. Imagine something like identd, but legally required for every ISP to dish out complete identification for a user for any site that asks for it.
FYI, Chomsky is an anarchist who probably hates the government more than you do. He's certainly gone to great lengths trying to expose the murder our government encourages (and commits) in the name of foreign policy.
FYI #2, it is still up in the air on whether click-through licenses are actually legally binding, mainly because nobody takes them seriously, and therefore do not read them. And besides, Real knows full well that people do not read them, so hiding the admission of some extremely intrusive behavior of its software inside the license rather than making it obvious on the download page or on a privacy statement shows an extreme amount of contempt for their users' privacy, and therefore they deserve all the bad publicity we can generate.
FYI #3, if you still think anyone who signs (or clicks) something without reading it is a moron (and I'm inclined to agree with you), consider a bill that was recently passed by the Republican controlled Senate:
http://cryptome.org/4th-sneaky.htm.
The laws of supply and demand being what they are, Sterling commands that kind of price because Schizmatrix is 1.) a great, mind-bending book, and 2.) very hard to find in any other form. The price of those larger paperbacks has less to do with the quality of the paper than the fact that the title is no longer in print as a standard trade paperback. I believe two kinds of books get that treatment: older books with strong demand by fans of the author who are willing to pay more, and new work by critically acclaimed authors who have demand from serious readers and academics, but not enough popular appeal to make a hardcover profitable or to merit space on the softcover racks of smaller bookstores. I think the only reason they make the books larger is to counter the pscychological reaction of feeling ripped off for paying higher prices for paperbacks when most are standardized at between 5 and 7 dollars.
I really don't see how templated design and XML support Zeldman over Nielson. If anything, Neilson's mantra is that content and organization are everything. The use of templates and stylesheets reenforce this view because it keeps the focus on the data, not the frills.
Um, they're not actually readers...
That is really frightening though, what that girl did to herself (or allowed to be done). I wonder if Romero has brainwashed her?
Standards are vendor neutral. You can make up whatever definition you want, but that is how the industry uses the word. XML, TCP/IP, OpenGL, these are standards. DirectX is not a standard, because it is tightly coupled with the Windows API.
Until it is possible to sell a complete Windows clone, nothing Microsoft-specific can be considered a standard.
I suggest you have an assheadendectomy yourself. In one paragraph you mock having a choice in who implements a standard, and then claim standardization results in boring sameness. Make up your mind.
Standards are good because they promote interoperability while at the same time encouraging competition. With MS, you're interoperable with nothing, and you're stuck with their mediocre implementation.
Hasn't the recent Microsoft debacle taught people anything? You can't post a copyrighted work in it's entirity without permission, even if it is slashdoted. That goes way beyond the provisions for fair use, and only encourages people to start reducing the simplicity of accessing information.
Do you want slashdot to become like those theiving commies at FreeRepublic?
Essentially HTML is a programming language, as is Postscript..
Nope, HTML and Postscript are completely different beasts. Postscript is Turing complete programming language used to drive printers and other rasterizers. HTML is declaritive markup language. You could write an HTML renderer in Postscript, but not the other way around.
Even using tests and asking for sample code is not all that useful.
I used to feel that way about tests, but then I started grading them at my company. Let me tell you, for entry level positions in the current market, nothing cuts the wheat from the chaff more effectively than a simple programming test. It seems like every small college has become a diploma mill for CS degrees.
You're right, but most of the blame still falls on the suits, because they're the ones hiring these people.
:-)
The problem is the objective evaluation of a person's skills. It isn't that hard to determine the skills of an applicant for a techincal position. The reason suits tend to be morons is because they are more likely to be hired by their friends (good ol' networking), or have their qualifications based more on "leadership" or business skills than technical or financial knowledge. Not to knock people skills, I know how important they are in a managerial position, but when it comes time to make hard decisions, you better know what you're freaking doing, and I think a lot of MBA grads don't.
But then again, I'm biased. I can't wait for the day when we are all managed by AI constructs.
The whole case is about the freedom to distribute information. Try thinking about it some more.
:-)
...the First Amendment is not and never has been a defence...
In other words, he doesn't "get it"?
Actually, the first amendment is a defense against so-called SLAPP suits (suing for libel or slander with the intention of quieting constitutionally protected criticism or dissent). It won't prevent the suit from going to court, but it will protect the defendant, and in states with anti-SLAPP laws, prevent it from going to trial.
Words can be very, very powerful -- by moving people to action.
So where does the power originate, the speaker or people acting on those words? The mob, or the agitator? The government that criminalized DeCSS, or the corporations that paid them to do it?
I prefer the cynical value of nuclear weapons: they are the first weapon that puts the wagers of war in as much, if not more, danger as the people who actually have to fight their wars. They also make the objectives of war pointless, as they exterminate most of your potential ideological converts/slaves/scapegoats, and render your enemy's resources hazardously radioactive.