No thats stupid - to say patterns can be "owned". Patterns are just patterns, and if person A knows a pattern and tells parson B this pattern there is nothing that makes a person C able to regulate it.
If some laws say otherwise, the laws are stupid to. Whats stupid or not is not determined by law but is a subjective view. You think it is natural that people own patterns, but many dont think so.
In polls in swedens biggest newspaper, with 80000 respondants, on this question: "Is it morally right to download movies and music illegaly?"
> 85% answered yes.
The pirates and antipirates has debated in newspaper, television and the "piratbyrån" (pro piracy organization) has even published a book which has recieved good critics. The sum of all this is that the pirates is seen as normal humans that download stuff on internet and the antipirates are greedy corporate a**es. Its not hard do figure out which side will win the hearts of the population.
This has even gone so far as the minister of justice has stated in media that "with the new anti-piracy laws the police should not go hunt for teenagers downloading music, but for big scale for-profit copying"
Since we have a democracy the only outcome I can see in the long run is that not-for-profit private piracy will become legal, even two parties in our parliament has expressed support for piracy.
Also, the results of a lawsuit will be released next week which will determine wether it will even be possible for police to request information on IPs from ISPs when they suspect piracy. One pirate has ben sued because he shared a movie on the internet, if he gets anything below prison swedish privacy laws will make it impossible for the police to request identy of IPs in the future. (which says that for the identity to be reviled for the police it is required that the crime commited has prison as one possible punishment).
(* with piracy I mean copying of music/movies over the internet without any money going to the owner of the work).
Why does everyone say this always; when china do spaceflight and africa gets computers.
Let me tell you something; in todays worlds all type of fields are interlinked. A diverce economy is needed to become successful. We cannot grow food in large quantities if we do not have technology. If everyone focuses on farming in africa noone will develop technology, infrastructure, stores, and other things that are necessary for a well functioning non-starving country. In my country 2% of the population does farming, in africa I bet it is much more, still we probably produce much more food for every citizen. Why? Well mostly because they dont have as much technology to help and many are poorly educated.
Helping africa is NOT about constantly sending them supplies they need; but to help them get educated so they will be more efficient farmers and build themselves a stable infrastructure and economy to distribute the food and other things amongst them. Preferably helping them by going there; when we send technology we should be there and learn a few who in turn can learn others. Helping someone is often mostly about fixing the root to someones problem. One way to help africa get educated is to send them computers with internet - one really good thing with this is that it opens up the world for many ordinary africans.
I have a friend that went to Sierra Leone, one of the poorest countries in the world, to install computers and microwavelinks for internet. He was there for a few months and when he got back he told me a lot of the country and showed me pictures. The problem there seemes not to be mass starvation or anything; most people in africa *HAVE* food for the day. They have clothes etc. What they dont have is education, internal technology know-how, or organizational skills. They seem to have lots of problems organising themselves into companies or other forms of organizations. Everyone, mostly, does everything on their own for themselves (or their close family). We need to teach them those important things. My friend who went there said that there was a lot of intrest in the computers and internet, they teached them to use it and to do maintenance on the hardware+software, so that they can teach others who in turn can teach others, and so on.. Most people here on slashdot learned themselves computers when they where kids, kids/adults in africa can and will do the same if we give them the changce.
If other slashdotters have the time, I think they also should go to some country and help them with what they are good at. Are you good at farming, then well you can help with that; are you good at technology then you can help them with that, and so on.. You get no pay of course, but most organizations that organizes these things pay for your flight and stay.
I find it quite intresting that the US always takes such an agressive attitude against weapons of mass destruction at the same time as they have this on their conscious: The biggest use of mass destruction weapons ever. Hundred of thousands of civilians died or suffered. Biggest terrorist act ever. Or what do you think - 180000 dead in 1945, above 200000 dead total as of 2004. 270,000 still suffering from damages due to radiation, etc. Most of them are civilians. US - the world saviour, indeed.
I guess the problem USA has regarding WMD:s, is not really the mass destruction weapons per se, and its capacity to kill lots of civilians. But rather that mass destruction weapons in other hands might kill americans which "of course" is a far worse crime than killing some japanese?
I suggest that everyone read through the piece on this on wikipedia. Its quite good.
The next service on the web I would like to see; is to send in the N3A forms electronically. Currently those cannot be filled out on the web afaik. (or I missed how one could do that); so I had to fill out the declaration on the web electronically and then fill out the n3a on a physical dead-tree and snailmail it.
The n3a should be simple to include in the web-system, and save you even more money.
I believe there is even a n3a generator somewhere on your webpage, which calculates stuff and generates you a nice.pdf. Maybe you can reuse parts of that code if you really want to save money?
In sweden I have been doing tax returns via internet since 2003 or 2004. You just log in on the swedish IRS webpage, using the national internet-id system "bankID" (its platform indepedent). When you are logged in you find a bunch of html forms (income, profit on capital, etc) prefilled with numbers, just as the ordinary tax return. You also see how much return on tax you get or if you must pay more tax.
If everything is ok, you just click "send in", if you think something is wrong, you just change the numbers, give a motivation, and then click "send in". Just like with the normal declaration.
Also one can do the tax return via SMS; if everything looks good, you can SMS a code to a certain number, and voila, done. However, this sms-tax-return does not allow for altering of the declaration. But most people does not need to anyway.
There is also lots of other stuff to do on the swedish IRS webpage using BankID, such as checking the "tax-account" (its like a bank account, but on this only tax gets in and out) to see if the return of tax has come yet. Normally amounts above 100 SEK is automatically transferred to ones normal bank account (this is also configured via the webb).
It works really good. "E-government", as it is called here, is a good idea.
IP is something i am FORCED to live with, others use it to protect "their" IP, which in turn hurts me and limits my freedom....
No, it is not just an excuse to get other peoples work for free.
Many see that a different future is possible, where the IP laws have room for free sharing between humans. This is great for many reasons, for example, that the consumption of culture will increase, grass-root-level of distribution works good, and it makes it easier for good stuff to be noticed (piracy is some kind of counterweight to commercials for music). Also piracy enables everyone in the world to access the same content. Where I live, for instance, most tv-shows aired in US never reaches me the "classic way".
I download hundreds of movies each year and follow 10-20 tv-series (which most does never even air here). AND I am also a mass consumer of culture-for-money. For example, I am a "gold member" at the local cinema for watching a lot of movies (> 25 / year), I own lots of CD:s and DVDs. Generally piracy makes it possible for me to sample lots of different kids of culture which I could never afford normally (I am a poor student). Then I can choose to buy what is intresting to me; what I want to see at the silverscreen, or own in a nice box with all the extras, etc..
In effect, piracy has made me consume more culture and spending more money on movies and music than I did before. I simply had other prioritys before, such as buying computer hardware or stuff for my car.
In the end, I believe that the free flow of information is desired. Be it "copyrighted" information or other information, that does not matter. But the free flow is important.
I agree to that. Attribution and credit should be given where its due. However, this is not in conflict with piracy (which you didnt say, just clarifying for others who might make the confusion)
THere is nothing wrong with sharing copyrighted material. There is NOTHING in nature that says whatever bran that came up with a pattern should have exclusive rights to that pattern. Its just made up and not real. Just ignore copyrights and other IP laws since they are infact harmful for society.
Piracy (of copyrighted material) is just a natural defence to this IP crap and hence piracy is the good thing and its the IP laws that are bad and evil.
Why does not the SETI project simply build/launch a robotic radioobservatory to the side of the moon that is always turned away from us? This way they will have the entire moon as a sheld from human created radiowaves.
Also it should not cost THAT much, I mean, if nasa can send two rovers to Mars, SETI should be able to send a observatory the much shorter distance to the Moon on public donations?
There is nothing wrong with software/music/movie piracy - you should not try to stop it. In fact, you should even encourage it! - teach the visitors to use DC or bittorrent. It gets kids intrested in culture and it gives everyone equal access to it.
Here in sweden there are lots of LAN parties where piracy is rampant and there are even official warez-ftp:s provided by the crew, bigscreens with scrolling warez-ftp info, etc etc.. Its really nice and the visitors *love* it. (Piracy would not reflect badly on your LAN - it would be seen as a good thing with your LAN).
However, if you dont agree that piracy is good, maybe you atleast can agree to this;
I think its quite dangerous to crack down on exchange of information - no matter what reasons one might have. Afterall, its not YOUR business what information your visitors exchange over your network - its as little your business as it is the teleco:s business what you say to people on their phone network.
There is a major benefit of moving the pollution from the highways to the power plants. And the benefit is that there are new kinds of oil/coal plants that pump the CO2 into the ground instead of into the atmosphere.
A car cannot dump the CO2 into the ground, since it is moving. But a stationary powerplant can do exactly that.
Furtheron, as others have pointed out, when we have electric cars in place we can change the powergeneration to nuclear, fusion, the sun, whatever.
They could. But if they do not adhere to EU laws they are not allowed to sell their stuff in EU...and I guess it is Microsofts intrest to sell their stuff on the european market, which mean they wont do what you described.
Actually I have downloaded it and seen it - and will also go to the cinema today and see it there.
Reason for downloading and watching it? Just wanted to see the movie asap.:) Will still consume the stuff they sell though - as many other pirates do. The RIAA/MPAA thinking that piracy = stealing is flawed.
Its VCD quality, but without the typical TS/TC problems such as distorted and flickering image and bad sound. The sound was totally acceptable for computer-viewing and the only two problems i had with the image was: low resolution and the counter in the top.
This leads me to believe that the copy is not a TS/TC but a ripp from some kind of DVD. In the movies Peter Jackson put on the internet, one can see him using a portable DVD player + dvd-records to watch the movie they are making.
All special F/X seemes to be there. I will see the movie in the cinema today but I doubt that it will be any different.
I downloaded it and watched it yesterday. The quality is crap but actually better than most other TS/TC:s. No flickering picture was the best thing. Low resolution was the worst thing. The sound was ok.
However - and this demonstrates why the MPAA/RIAA reasoning is flawed - I will STILL go and see it @ the cinema. I have tickets for tonight.
Anti piracy organizations alwas think that one pirate-copy equals a lost sale. But that is wrong thinking.
Communicating with us humans might be the same to the aliens as it is for for us humans to interact with ants. We are simply not interested in interacting with primitive lesser lifeforms such as ants; why should any hypothetical advanced aliens have any interest in interacting with us, when changes are that they are far more advanced?
Especially considering if these advanced aliens are probably already used to "extrahomeworld" lifeforms. - "oh, another planet with near-bacteria-level-lifeforms (humans) - booooring".
However, this does not mean that we should stop our efforts in trying to communicate with others / find life.
In some countries some kinds of webpages are illegal - for example, webpages that spread "hate speach" such as nazi stuff.
Or in china there are probably a hole bunch of kinds of webpages that are forbidden.
So, using this extradition as a referense, if someone in the USA made one of these illegal pages; which are not illegal in the USA but elsewhere, it would be possible to have him extradited because he DID commit a crime in another country - without leaving US.
Is that fair? Is that good?
What about dictatorship X (imaginary) which bans 99% of all webpages on the web? Are we all going to be extradited then? Horrible!
Here they say that the reason to trademark Mame, is to stop piracy? Wtf? Why shouldnt the mame team own the mame trademark, and the company stop piracy using the normal laws for that.
I suggest that the Mame team agrees to no less than owning all the mame trademarks themselves. I do NOT trust this company.
Slashdot Mirror
No thats stupid - to say patterns can be "owned". Patterns are just patterns, and if person A knows a pattern and tells parson B this pattern there is nothing that makes a person C able to regulate it.
If some laws say otherwise, the laws are stupid to. Whats stupid or not is not determined by law but is a subjective view. You think it is natural that people own patterns, but many dont think so.
In polls in swedens biggest newspaper, with 80000 respondants, on this question: "Is it morally right to download movies and music illegaly?"
> 85% answered yes.
The pirates and antipirates has debated in newspaper, television and the "piratbyrån" (pro piracy organization) has even published a book which has recieved good critics. The sum of all this is that the pirates is seen as normal humans that download stuff on internet and the antipirates are greedy corporate a**es. Its not hard do figure out which side will win the hearts of the population.
This has even gone so far as the minister of justice has stated in media that "with the new anti-piracy laws the police should not go hunt for teenagers downloading music, but for big scale for-profit copying"
Since we have a democracy the only outcome I can see in the long run is that not-for-profit private piracy will become legal, even two parties in our parliament has expressed support for piracy.
Also, the results of a lawsuit will be released next week which will determine wether it will even be possible for police to request information on IPs from ISPs when they suspect piracy. One pirate has ben sued because he shared a movie on the internet, if he gets anything below prison swedish privacy laws will make it impossible for the police to request identy of IPs in the future. (which says that for the identity to be reviled for the police it is required that the crime commited has prison as one possible punishment).
(* with piracy I mean copying of music/movies over the internet without any money going to the owner of the work).
Why does everyone say this always; when china do spaceflight and africa gets computers.
Let me tell you something; in todays worlds all type of fields are interlinked. A diverce economy is needed to become successful. We cannot grow food in large quantities if we do not have technology. If everyone focuses on farming in africa noone will develop technology, infrastructure, stores, and other things that are necessary for a well functioning non-starving country. In my country 2% of the population does farming, in africa I bet it is much more, still we probably produce much more food for every citizen. Why? Well mostly because they dont have as much technology to help and many are poorly educated.
Helping africa is NOT about constantly sending them supplies they need; but to help them get educated so they will be more efficient farmers and build themselves a stable infrastructure and economy to distribute the food and other things amongst them. Preferably helping them by going there; when we send technology we should be there and learn a few who in turn can learn others. Helping someone is often mostly about fixing the root to someones problem. One way to help africa get educated is to send them computers with internet - one really good thing with this is that it opens up the world for many ordinary africans.
I have a friend that went to Sierra Leone, one of the poorest countries in the world, to install computers and microwavelinks for internet. He was there for a few months and when he got back he told me a lot of the country and showed me pictures. The problem there seemes not to be mass starvation or anything; most people in africa *HAVE* food for the day. They have clothes etc. What they dont have is education, internal technology know-how, or organizational skills. They seem to have lots of problems organising themselves into companies or other forms of organizations. Everyone, mostly, does everything on their own for themselves (or their close family). We need to teach them those important things. My friend who went there said that there was a lot of intrest in the computers and internet, they teached them to use it and to do maintenance on the hardware+software, so that they can teach others who in turn can teach others, and so on.. Most people here on slashdot learned themselves computers when they where kids, kids/adults in africa can and will do the same if we give them the changce.
If other slashdotters have the time, I think they also should go to some country and help them with what they are good at. Are you good at farming, then well you can help with that; are you good at technology then you can help them with that, and so on.. You get no pay of course, but most organizations that organizes these things pay for your flight and stay.
I find it quite intresting that the US always takes such an agressive attitude against weapons of mass destruction at the same time as they have this on their conscious: The biggest use of mass destruction weapons ever. Hundred of thousands of civilians died or suffered. Biggest terrorist act ever. Or what do you think - 180000 dead in 1945, above 200000 dead total as of 2004. 270,000 still suffering from damages due to radiation, etc. Most of them are civilians. US - the world saviour, indeed.
I guess the problem USA has regarding WMD:s, is not really the mass destruction weapons per se, and its capacity to kill lots of civilians. But rather that mass destruction weapons in other hands might kill americans which "of course" is a far worse crime than killing some japanese?
I suggest that everyone read through the piece on this on wikipedia. Its quite good.
Wikipedia article on subject
The next service on the web I would like to see; is to send in the N3A forms electronically. Currently those cannot be filled out on the web afaik. (or I missed how one could do that); so I had to fill out the declaration on the web electronically and then fill out the n3a on a physical dead-tree and snailmail it.
.pdf. Maybe you can reuse parts of that code if you really want to save money?
The n3a should be simple to include in the web-system, and save you even more money.
I believe there is even a n3a generator somewhere on your webpage, which calculates stuff and generates you a nice
Anyways, thanks for a great system!
Information is any pattern. Music and movies are just patterns. Data is information.
I mean information in the sence that one says in physics - "information can never be destroyed (except perhaps in black holes).
In sweden I have been doing tax returns via internet since 2003 or 2004. You just log in on the swedish IRS webpage, using the national internet-id system "bankID" (its platform indepedent). When you are logged in you find a bunch of html forms (income, profit on capital, etc) prefilled with numbers, just as the ordinary tax return. You also see how much return on tax you get or if you must pay more tax.
If everything is ok, you just click "send in", if you think something is wrong, you just change the numbers, give a motivation, and then click "send in". Just like with the normal declaration.
Also one can do the tax return via SMS; if everything looks good, you can SMS a code to a certain number, and voila, done. However, this sms-tax-return does not allow for altering of the declaration. But most people does not need to anyway.
There is also lots of other stuff to do on the swedish IRS webpage using BankID, such as checking the "tax-account" (its like a bank account, but on this only tax gets in and out) to see if the return of tax has come yet. Normally amounts above 100 SEK is automatically transferred to ones normal bank account (this is also configured via the webb).
It works really good. "E-government", as it is called here, is a good idea.
IP is something i am FORCED to live with, others use it to protect "their" IP, which in turn hurts me and limits my freedom.. ..
No, it is not just an excuse to get other peoples work for free.
Many see that a different future is possible, where the IP laws have room for free sharing between humans. This is great for many reasons, for example, that the consumption of culture will increase, grass-root-level of distribution works good, and it makes it easier for good stuff to be noticed (piracy is some kind of counterweight to commercials for music). Also piracy enables everyone in the world to access the same content. Where I live, for instance, most tv-shows aired in US never reaches me the "classic way".
I download hundreds of movies each year and follow 10-20 tv-series (which most does never even air here). AND I am also a mass consumer of culture-for-money. For example, I am a "gold member" at the local cinema for watching a lot of movies (> 25 / year), I own lots of CD:s and DVDs. Generally piracy makes it possible for me to sample lots of different kids of culture which I could never afford normally (I am a poor student). Then I can choose to buy what is intresting to me; what I want to see at the silverscreen, or own in a nice box with all the extras, etc..
In effect, piracy has made me consume more culture and spending more money on movies and music than I did before. I simply had other prioritys before, such as buying computer hardware or stuff for my car.
In the end, I believe that the free flow of information is desired. Be it "copyrighted" information or other information, that does not matter. But the free flow is important.
I agree to that. Attribution and credit should be given where its due. However, this is not in conflict with piracy (which you didnt say, just clarifying for others who might make the confusion)
THere is nothing wrong with sharing copyrighted material. There is NOTHING in nature that says whatever bran that came up with a pattern should have exclusive rights to that pattern. Its just made up and not real. Just ignore copyrights and other IP laws since they are infact harmful for society.
Piracy (of copyrighted material) is just a natural defence to this IP crap and hence piracy is the good thing and its the IP laws that are bad and evil.
Yeah, but arecibo is ancient? I bet they could design a better radio telescope using LOTS of really small radio recievers in a grid?
Why does not the SETI project simply build/launch a robotic radioobservatory to the side of the moon that is always turned away from us? This way they will have the entire moon as a sheld from human created radiowaves.
Also it should not cost THAT much, I mean, if nasa can send two rovers to Mars, SETI should be able to send a observatory the much shorter distance to the Moon on public donations?
There is nothing wrong with software/music/movie piracy - you should not try to stop it. In fact, you should even encourage it! - teach the visitors to use DC or bittorrent. It gets kids intrested in culture and it gives everyone equal access to it.
Here in sweden there are lots of LAN parties where piracy is rampant and there are even official warez-ftp:s provided by the crew, bigscreens with scrolling warez-ftp info, etc etc.. Its really nice and the visitors *love* it. (Piracy would not reflect badly on your LAN - it would be seen as a good thing with your LAN).
However, if you dont agree that piracy is good, maybe you atleast can agree to this;
I think its quite dangerous to crack down on exchange of information - no matter what reasons one might have. Afterall, its not YOUR business what information your visitors exchange over your network - its as little your business as it is the teleco:s business what you say to people on their phone network.
There is a major benefit of moving the pollution from the highways to the power plants. And the benefit is that there are new kinds of oil/coal plants that pump the CO2 into the ground instead of into the atmosphere.
A car cannot dump the CO2 into the ground, since it is moving. But a stationary powerplant can do exactly that.
Furtheron, as others have pointed out, when we have electric cars in place we can change the powergeneration to nuclear, fusion, the sun, whatever.
They could. But if they do not adhere to EU laws they are not allowed to sell their stuff in EU. ..and I guess it is Microsofts intrest to sell their stuff on the european market, which mean they wont do what you described.
Actually I have downloaded it and seen it - and will also go to the cinema today and see it there.
:) Will still consume the stuff they sell though - as many other pirates do. The RIAA/MPAA thinking that piracy = stealing is flawed.
Reason for downloading and watching it? Just wanted to see the movie asap.
For me, the audio was not out of sync. Also the image was 2.25:1 anamorphic, not 20:9.
I have downloaded it and seen it. The quality is much better than a cam. The audio also.
The only problems are: low resolution and timers at the top. But you can live with that if you really want to see the moive *now*.
I have seen it.
Its VCD quality, but without the typical TS/TC problems such as distorted and flickering image and bad sound. The sound was totally acceptable for computer-viewing and the only two problems i had with the image was: low resolution and the counter in the top.
This leads me to believe that the copy is not a TS/TC but a ripp from some kind of DVD. In the movies Peter Jackson put on the internet, one can see him using a portable DVD player + dvd-records to watch the movie they are making.
All special F/X seemes to be there. I will see the movie in the cinema today but I doubt that it will be any different.
I downloaded it and watched it yesterday. The quality is crap but actually better than most other TS/TC:s. No flickering picture was the best thing. Low resolution was the worst thing. The sound was ok.
However - and this demonstrates why the MPAA/RIAA reasoning is flawed - I will STILL go and see it @ the cinema. I have tickets for tonight.
Anti piracy organizations alwas think that one pirate-copy equals a lost sale. But that is wrong thinking.
Here is a great problemsolving game in witch you construct bridges:
h tm
:)
http://www.chroniclogic.com/index.htm?pontifex.
I have bought it and played it lot. Its really fun.
Exactly!
Communicating with us humans might be the same to the aliens as it is for for us humans to interact with ants. We are simply not interested in interacting with primitive lesser lifeforms such as ants; why should any hypothetical advanced aliens have any interest in interacting with us, when changes are that they are far more advanced?
Especially considering if these advanced aliens are probably already used to "extrahomeworld" lifeforms. - "oh, another planet with near-bacteria-level-lifeforms (humans) - booooring".
However, this does not mean that we should stop our efforts in trying to communicate with others / find life.
In some countries some kinds of webpages are illegal - for example, webpages that spread "hate speach" such as nazi stuff.
Or in china there are probably a hole bunch of kinds of webpages that are forbidden.
So, using this extradition as a referense, if someone in the USA made one of these illegal pages; which are not illegal in the USA but elsewhere, it would be possible to have him extradited because he DID commit a crime in another country - without leaving US.
Is that fair? Is that good?
What about dictatorship X (imaginary) which bans 99% of all webpages on the web? Are we all going to be extradited then? Horrible!
That is not needed. For when stem cells will be legal, there will be national stem cell supplies, not much different than the blood banks.
Here they say that the reason to trademark Mame, is to stop piracy? Wtf? Why shouldnt the mame team own the mame trademark, and the company stop piracy using the normal laws for that.
I suggest that the Mame team agrees to no less than owning all the mame trademarks themselves. I do NOT trust this company.