This is a windfall for hard disk makers. According to the article, the copy protected disks will not be compatible with legacy hard disks, so entire companies will have to upgrade all hard disks at once. I'd expect the disk manufacturers to be pushing this pretty hard. They stand to make a fortune.
A lot of conversations I've had in the past with/. folks leads me to believe that majority of people here think that children
can be given, at an arbitrarily young age, the magical ability to discern what's right and wrong without fail. I hate to break
the news to those folks, but kids are as dumb as a sack of hammers
Perhaps this is because "right and wrong", "moral and immoral", etc., are more or less arbitrary cultural conventions that must be learned (and taught), rather than inherent properties of the universe that can be discovered. As long as people want to indoctrinate children into their own prejudices, and to perpetuate the belief that some information is good and some information is evil, censorship of this kind will continue to be "necessary".
Libertarians are not saying that noone should be allowed to help anyone they see fit. But, no person should be REQUIRED to contribute to charities. Should you feel the need/desire to do so, no one will stop you, but do not try to force me to.
I used to feel the same way when I was younger: if I'm successful in working my way up from the bottom rung of the ladder, I have no one to thank but myself, and I don't owe anybody anything for that success. I took no handouts and forged my own way with more than a little blood, sweat and tears.
But then as I got older and gradually evolved into a more socially oriented and less introverted and egocentric person, I began to realize that nothing I have accomplished has been done in a vacuum. Sure I taught myself almost everything I know, but I didn't invent the wheel all by myself. Other people wrote the books and software that I learned from/with. All my ideas are based on other people's ideas that I have internalized and extended and morphed into my own. Those other people in turn based their ideas on still earlier ideas, which were based on still earlier ones. I am a white, male, American, and that simple bit of demographic fortune has provided me with more opportunites than most people on this planet will ever get. As much as I might like to think that "I did it all by myself", this sentiment is patently untrue. I am standing on the shoulders of millions of people that came before me, most of whom enjoyed a considerably less comfortable existence than I.
From where I'm sitting the United States seems to currently be the most prosperous nation in the history of the Earth. Not everyone has shared in that prosperity however, and in my opinion every one of us who has prospered owes a very real debt to the society that provided us with our opportunity. I don't care if the poverty stricken got that way because they are lazier, stupider, less clever or simply unluckier than me. It makes no difference. The instant I was born in this country I got something for nothing, whether I like it or not. It seems the worst kind of hypocrisy and ingratitude to deny those less fortunate a roof over their heads, food in their bellies and a minimal quality of life simply because "they haven't earned it".
It is shameful that anyone in this country should ever die from starvation, exposure or lack of affordable health care. We should take pride in creating a "floor", a lowest standard of living below which no American citizen can ever sink NO MATTER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. We CAN AFFORD it and we do OWE A DEBT to the society we live in. Callously denying either of these premises is tantamount to spitting in the faces of every individual that made our priviledged status possible.
(Please note: I'm not suggesting that you are young or egocentric or immature, just relaying my own experience and opinions.)
This is nothing new. In high school Social Studies I was taught that it's called "Sin Tax". Isn't the tax on cigarrettes something like 66% now? I'm a smoker and am not particularly crazy about the high taxes I have to pay for my "sin", but I understand the reasoning and don't necessarily disagree with it.
Another interesting point from the article: The "solution" recommended was simply purchasing a PC without a copy of windows.
In other words, pay MS, not the OEM, for your copy of windows. I imagine MS gets a much bigger cut that way. The other alternative offered by the article was to use the OEM copy for your imaging process -- but didn't Microsoft recently forbid OEMs to ship the Windows CD with a new computer?
COPA defines material that is "harmful to minors" as:
[a]ny communication, picture, image, graphic image file, article, recording, writing, or other matter of any kind that is obscene or that -- (A) the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find, taking the material as a whole and with respect to minors, is designed to appeal to, or is designed to pander to, the prurient interest; (B) depicts, describes, or represents, in a manor patently offensive with respect to minors, an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact, an actual or simulated normal or perverted sexual act, or a lewd exhibition of the genitals or post-pubescent female breast; and (C) taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.
Shouldn't the proponents of COPA have to demonstrate that such material is harmful to minors? How exactly are minors alleged to be harmed by exposure to sexuality?
Slashdot Mirror
Your vote counts the same whether it's counted first or last.
This is a windfall for hard disk makers. According to the article, the copy protected disks will not be compatible with legacy hard disks, so entire companies will have to upgrade all hard disks at once. I'd expect the disk manufacturers to be pushing this pretty hard. They stand to make a fortune.
-bonzo
Perhaps this is because "right and wrong", "moral and immoral", etc., are more or less arbitrary cultural conventions that must be learned (and taught), rather than inherent properties of the universe that can be discovered. As long as people want to indoctrinate children into their own prejudices, and to perpetuate the belief that some information is good and some information is evil, censorship of this kind will continue to be "necessary".
-bonzo
Libertarians are not saying that noone should be allowed to help anyone they see fit. But, no person should be REQUIRED to contribute to charities. Should you feel the need/desire to do so, no one will stop you, but do not try to force me to.
I used to feel the same way when I was younger: if I'm successful in working my way up from the bottom rung of the ladder, I have no one to thank but myself, and I don't owe anybody anything for that success. I took no handouts and forged my own way with more than a little blood, sweat and tears.
But then as I got older and gradually evolved into a more socially oriented and less introverted and egocentric person, I began to realize that nothing I have accomplished has been done in a vacuum. Sure I taught myself almost everything I know, but I didn't invent the wheel all by myself. Other people wrote the books and software that I learned from/with. All my ideas are based on other people's ideas that I have internalized and extended and morphed into my own. Those other people in turn based their ideas on still earlier ideas, which were based on still earlier ones. I am a white, male, American, and that simple bit of demographic fortune has provided me with more opportunites than most people on this planet will ever get. As much as I might like to think that "I did it all by myself", this sentiment is patently untrue. I am standing on the shoulders of millions of people that came before me, most of whom enjoyed a considerably less comfortable existence than I.
From where I'm sitting the United States seems to currently be the most prosperous nation in the history of the Earth. Not everyone has shared in that prosperity however, and in my opinion every one of us who has prospered owes a very real debt to the society that provided us with our opportunity. I don't care if the poverty stricken got that way because they are lazier, stupider, less clever or simply unluckier than me. It makes no difference. The instant I was born in this country I got something for nothing, whether I like it or not. It seems the worst kind of hypocrisy and ingratitude to deny those less fortunate a roof over their heads, food in their bellies and a minimal quality of life simply because "they haven't earned it".
It is shameful that anyone in this country should ever die from starvation, exposure or lack of affordable health care. We should take pride in creating a "floor", a lowest standard of living below which no American citizen can ever sink NO MATTER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. We CAN AFFORD it and we do OWE A DEBT to the society we live in. Callously denying either of these premises is tantamount to spitting in the faces of every individual that made our priviledged status possible.
(Please note: I'm not suggesting that you are young or egocentric or immature, just relaying my own experience and opinions.)
-bonzo
This is nothing new. In high school Social Studies I was taught that it's called "Sin Tax". Isn't the tax on cigarrettes something like 66% now? I'm a smoker and am not particularly crazy about the high taxes I have to pay for my "sin", but I understand the reasoning and don't necessarily disagree with it.
-bonzo
Another interesting point from the article: The "solution" recommended was simply purchasing a PC without a copy of windows.
In other words, pay MS, not the OEM, for your copy of windows. I imagine MS gets a much bigger cut that way. The other alternative offered by the article was to use the OEM copy for your imaging process -- but didn't Microsoft recently forbid OEMs to ship the Windows CD with a new computer?
Shouldn't the proponents of COPA have to demonstrate that such material is harmful to minors? How exactly are minors alleged to be harmed by exposure to sexuality?
-bonzo