Let me run "a few miles" at "a few G's" by my (admittedly rusty) physics, rounding up to the nearest power of ten (as tradition dictates;-) ).
Let's say 10km @ 100m/s2 (~10G). s=1/2at^2, t^2=2s/a, t^2 = 20000/100 = 200, t = 14.14s, so v = t * a = 14.14 * 100 = 1.4 km/s, and you need 7.73 km/s for a 300km orbit.
What am I missing? Is this really a big enough fuel saving to justify building and maintaining 10km of track?
I'm not trolling, I do actually agree that this is the most practical solution we have right now, but I can't get the maths to work out.
That doesn't make sense. Isn't going up the hard part?
Uhhh... no. Going sideways at 7.73 km/s is the hard part. Once you hit that speed (assuming you don't burn up, which you would, so you have to accelerate as you rise out of the atmosphere), you'll rise to 300km and stay there. If you just rise to 300km with no angular speed, you'll come straight back down again. Not much use for putting satellites into, what's the word... orbit.
If the "you" in the above sentence relates to a company, the company is essentially saying that your company is embarrased of the programmers
Well, sure. I'm a commercial programmer, and I after a string of "bend over and take it" contract modifications, I now give my employer code that meets their standards and no more, i.e. it doesn't crash 90% of the time.
If we ever released our source, our competitors would find and publish all of the bugs in it, while ripping it off (sorry, "clean room re-implementing it"), probably wrecking my company and putting me out of a job.
Wait.. what's the downside again?
I'm sure I'll have a change of heart once I enter the industry
My personal experience has been that it's folly to mix work and pleasure. Don't do your hobby as a job, because you'll get screwed into working 80 hours weeks, and you'll end up hating it. So just get screwed 40 hours a week, and reserve your spare time for doing what you enjoy (e.g. open source projects), to your own standards.
Rockets are the most inefficient method of propulsion that's still in use, a better goal would be figuring out an entirely new propulsion system that could apply to everything
Got any ideas? Once you're at the edge of the atmosphere, you're pretty much limited to using a self contained reaction motor.
Ground laser launching relies on superheating air, plus it's only been used to shove vehicles directly up, so it's basically a really cool but expensive way to replace July 4 bottle rockets. A more viable alternative is turning beamed EM into electricity then powering magnetohydrodynamic motors that superheat air, but you still have that pesky problem that you are relying on an atmosphere to get your speed.
You could accelerate the vehicle in a rail gun or rocket sled until it reaches orbital velocity while it's still on the ground. Ballpark figure, at a (barely) survivable 20g, you'd need a 150km track to reach the 7.73km/s orbital velocity of a typical shuttle mission, ignoring air resistance. Except you can't ignore air resistance, because at 7.73km/sec at 1 atmosphere, you'd burn the vehicle to a toasty crisp.
Even if you postulated antigrav, you still need to generate lateral acceleration to achieve orbital velocity, which again requires a self contained rocket, or an atmosphere.
A beanstalk (space elevator)? Heck, maybe we've already got the technology to do it, but we're not going to, not for a long, long time.
So, really, if you've got any ideas about what to use as an alternative to rocketry today, let's hear them. I'm fresh out.
I do NOT want a scratch-and-sniff Queen Elizabeth II stamp.
<rant>That's Queen Elizabeth the First of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, aka Queen Elizabeth the Second of England and Wales. If you're going to crown James VI of Scotland as James I of the United Kingdom of England, Wales and Scotland, we'll damn well apply that to her Royal Highnessnessess as well.</rant>
IMO if the ridiculously alarmist predictions you posted were to begin to come to pass
Given that you're unaware that they're either passed, in progress, or passed in other 1st world democracies, we don't really have much basis for debate. Ah well.
Wake up RIAA. You're just pissing more people off and you can't win, but there are alternatives to fighting
One of which is changing the rules. People can only do this if they have access to their own hard drives. And hey, why would you need that? Surely you're using licensed products to move licensed data around, so what's your objection to having mandatory copy control built in to the hardware? You'll only notice it if you're a theif, so how could you possibly object?
In the year 2525 (if man is still alive), content will be completely controlled by AOL-Disney-Coke-Warner right up until it hits the jack direct into our brains. Maybe further. Heck, we'll be lucky to make it to 2005 with non-copy controlled hard drives.
With the imminent launch of legitimate subscription services we have to get our customers back.
To which I can only respond "what customers?"
Uh, the teens that reliably blow their allowances on whatever CD's have had the most marketing bucks spent on them that week?
Although it's not fair to criticise teens; I had conversation with a 40-ish coworker today. He's going to see A.I. tonight. He knows it's garbage, but he's already decided to go to the cinema, and it's the least bad thing showing that he hasn't seen.
People like you make me sick! The U.S. always gives peace a chance
The US has the greatest, kindest people in the world, as just demonstrated by the response to September 11th. But the US people don't decide and implement US foreign policy.
Perhaps you mean that the US military prefers to use DUP rounds, cluster munitions and mines that kill civilians for years after the military strikes are over? Sure, there's some birth defects and missing legs, and such, but that all happens off camera, so nobody really suffers. Maybe the Iraqis and the Kuwaitis suffering from these long term effects might not see it quite that way though.
Or maybe you mean that the US government prefers to pay foreigners to kill other foreigners off camera? Like they paid the Taliban to kill Russian troops, and like they're now paying the Northen Alliance to kill Taliban troops. I doubt that the Russians saw it quite that way, nor do the Taliban now, nor will the Northern Alliance when they are in power and the US government has to fund another faction to keep them in check.
Sanctions are the neatest of all though. Sure, they kill 5,000 children in Iraq every month (UNICEF figures), but you can blame Saddam Hussein (say hi to your old buddies at the CIA, Saddam!) for scamming funds, and hope nobody notices that you're blocking items like water purifiers and antibiotics.
Osama bin Laden is a vile and abhorent excuse for a human being. I'd put his nuts in a blender myself given half a chance. But that doesn't excuse the millions of civilians murdered by the US governments of the past fifty years for ideological, political or commercial reasons. Neither of them can match up to Hitler or Stalin, but we're only talking degrees here.
And yet the US people really are the greatest and kindest in the world. I really, truly don't understand that.
Canada, Australia, Germany that I know of for sure. Anyone got others?
The bandwidth tax is hypthosesis, but if Napster really was the biggest driver of broadband takeup, then that leaves ISPs vulnerable on the same grounds: they're facilitating breach of copyright, they know it's happening, and they're making money off of it.
It could just be a small tax. So tiny you'll hardly notice. Not at first.
Uh, have you read the DMCA? That's an actual law, actually passed by actual elected representatives.
they're spending tons of cash every time they try to fight one of these services
Pocket change; they have lawyers on retainer, they might as well use them. Anyway, the aim is to lose, the real focus is on removing our ability to move or store data without a license and a tax levy.
That's an awul lot of "they will control's" floating around. A ridiculously extreme idea. They will not control these things because the people of this country will not stand for it. There are limits to what the general public will take from government
I didn't notice a revolution starting over the DMCA. What do you think that it will take to kick of a popular backlash?
The Afghan Mujahedin are the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers of America." Ronald Reagan, March 2000.
Your point is... ?
That people are very strange creatures? I dunno, it's just one of those statements that's so indefinably wierd that I felt strangely compelled to share it. Source is the The Times of India, March 8th 2000, but I couldn't fit that in 120 characters.;)
I can't help but feel that you are being a bit overly-paranoid
I keep telling myself that, but either the RIAA are really dumb, or really clever. It's comforting to think that it's the former, but I fear that's egotism speaking.
And the DMCA wasn't dumb. It was risible, it might be struck down yet, but it's on the books, and it's hurting real people right now. It's easy for you and I to laugh at it, but I expect the people currently defending themselves against it might not agree. It's hard to get your head round it, but try and remember that DMCA isn't some theoretical bill. It actually exists. Once our legislators let that one through, they signalled that it was open season.
So now we have a proposed bill on mandatory copy control in hardware, with an intimation that OS's that bypass it will be illegal. OK, it's unpopular, it will probably be defeated, but we said that about the DMCA as well. And if it fails, there will be another one next year, and the year after that, until one much like it passes. Then we have to fight it on every point up to the supremes, and then they can just buy another bill.
The one thing that I have no doubt on is that internet traffic will be taxed. Germany and Australia already tax blank media on the basis that it's used overwhelmingly to copy protected material. The same argument applies to residential broadband connections. It's only a matter of time.
If it was true, than Ronald Reagan said it in March 2000... but he hasn't been in a state of speaking since around 1998. HELLO
The Times of India, March 8th 2000. The quotation might have been from earlier, but that's when it was reported. Take it up with them if you have a problem with it's veracity.
I predict people will end up using BBS software over ssh and downloading using zmodem. (as some ppl are doing already). I'd like to see the RIAA have ssh banned
Lucky you. Not banned, but how will you feel about having all of your traffic taxed on the presumption of guilt? That's where we're going here, and every time the RIAA demonstrates the futility of individual litigation, we get a little closer.
Enforcement is up to the artists. If "Vibrating Sandbox" doesn't want its music distributed on *ster, then that's their problem.
Most artists sell all rights to their music to their recording/distribution company. Not just the Britneys, the real artists too.
That's bogus in itself, but let's buy into the RIAA "you're stealing from the artists" spin.
The thing with organizations like the RIAA and the MPAA is they don't know when to quit. They need to learn a new way to make money that works with the modern world
They are doing that. They are buying laws that assume guilt, and that will eventually see all hardware sales and internet traffic taxed on that basis (Germany already taxes blank media for that reason).
I wouldn't be too amazed if the MPAA joined the fray
This poster clearly hasn't even bothered to read the article, where it is clearly stated that the MPAA are on board with this, and yet he still gets modded up as "insightful"? Hilarious or scary?
The RIAA has learned their lesson and won't screw it up this time by driving people away from the service before making a deal like they did with Napster
Again with the assumption that they didn't know what they were doing. Every time the RIAA lose a case or demonstrate the futility of litigation, they just make it easier to buy more laws that ensure that eventually they will control the cable that brings the data into your home, and the hardware that stores that data. Meanwhile, for all their ranting and wailing, profits keep going up.
Given this, why should they change tactics? Things are going just fine for them.
2. The moment when some dumb exec decides the only way to stop it is to take out EVERY supernode
While you're laughing at the idiocy of the RIAA, does it occur that they're chuckling away to themselves as well? They're not losing money right now, and they see a way to make even more money in the future by demonstrating that we're all thieves.
They don't have to win these suits. Actually, they want to lose them (in court, or de facto as the users switch to a new service) as this just demonstrates how ineffectual individual litigation is. Then they just buy more laws that effect everyone. We will be presumed guilty, and taxed on that basis.
The RIAA will buy laws that let them tax your ISP for carrying copyrighted data. They will have a tax placed on blank media and will then extend it to all hardware. They will buy laws that let them view all of your data traffic, and have your ports blocked or your service throttled or cut off. If they feel like having a show trial to try out their new laws, they will have you thrown in jail for longer than a murderer or a rapist, along with the sysadmins of ISPs and sites, including.govs and.edus, that refuse or fail to comply with their laws. They will control what hardware you can buy, and what operating systems and applications you can run on it. They will control what software you are allowed to write yourself, or to run on your own system. They will control who you can discuss software with.
If you think the RIAA is losing by making it clear how impossible it is to stop or monitor file sharing under the current model of the internet, then I urge you to have a think about how many of the extreme measures that I describe above already exists in the USA or other democracies, and I ask you who you honestly believe will still be laughing in ten years time.
"We have solid claims against FastTrack, MusicCity, and Grokster of secondary liability for copyright infringement. The claims are not as strong as those against Napster, but they are also not so remote as to be wishful,"
At first I laughed out loud at the ignorance of the RIAA (and the MPAA if you read the memo) believing that they could actually stamp out file sharing. But then I had a re-think, and saw only one way for this to go.
The RIAA will lose this one. Oh, maybe they'll win the lawsuits, or maybe they'll get the commercial developers to whore for them like Napster.
But the sharing will go on. Open source protocols and clients will spring up faster than they can beat them down. The genie is out of the bottle, and they can't put it back in. They can't win this through marketing, or through software technology, or through individual litigation.
The only way that the RIAA/MPAA can win this is by changing the world, starting with the USA.
The RIAA will use this case as a platform to push the overwhelming need for hardware copy control, for the banning or restriction of non-<strike>corporate</strike>governme nt controlled software including operating systems, for taxation of ISPs (who make money from facilitating the sharing of copyrighted material, and so are fair game), and for the need for easy <strike>corporate</strike>government access to ISP logs so that a trickle of users can be caught, given show trials using the laws the RIAA/MPAA have bought, and given harsher sentences than murderers and rapists.
So, while we can all have a good laugh about how stupid the RIAA are being by thinking that they can win this, just as we laughed at them for thinking that killing Napster would solve the problem, let's not forget that they're not idiots.
I truly believe that they are playing a long game here. They use idiotic lawsuits to demonstrate how helpless they are. They scream about every tiny periodic drop in CD sales and blame it on Napster (now Morpheus et al), while ignoring that overall sales and profit is up. They pay a few super-rich artists to wail about how sharing steals from them and tramples on their rights (neatly ignoring that nearly all artists sell all rights to one of five huge companies).
All of this is done to prepare the way for their bought politicians as they submit and re-submit ever harsher variations on the same dreadful laws that say: the profit of a few CEO's and major shareholders is a right that must be protected, regardless of the cost to individuals..
Cutting it down even further, let me suggest that there are perhaps two dozen people in the world who will lose out significantly if commercial sales of CD's and DVD's drops off (which isn't happening). These people are already rich beyond the dreams of avarice. They're not interested in profit or money in real terms, all they care about is the number of digits in their latest stock option exercise, because that shows that they're winners. That's all that matters, that they win the numbers game.
So the next time you gasp in horror at Son of DMCA, remember that it's even worse that it first looks. It's not about real people, or real money measured in human terms. It's about nothing more than two dozen men (and women) saying: I demand profit so that no one will question the size of my dick.
I don't think I've seen a Scifi show ever that is like Farscape
I wrote it off because of the "damn muppets", and only eventually and very reluctantly sat down to watch an episode at the insistence of a long suffering friend, who just kept patiently plugging it while I teased him mercilessly.
Oh my. Oh my.
For those who haven't seen it, here's a taster of how slick and knowing it is. Picture our protagonists fighting off an attack by evil space pirates armed with powerful strap-on bracer weapons. Our ersatz-Klingon protagonist picks up a discarded weapon and straps it on. It injects some glowing green goo into him. After the pirates are beaten off, ersatz-Klingon is still angry and bellowing, and declares that he should lead the ship in this crisis.
How would Star Trek handle this? Fifteen minutes of hammering the point home, while he cackles maniacally and the crew go "Gee, Dargo seems a little out of sorts today. Is he wearing black eye liner?" and we shout "He's evil! Get the weapon off of him! You idiots!"
On Farscape, his companions exchange one subtle glance - and no words - and jump him the instant his back is turned. The writers expect us to know the genre and to have figured it out. No patronising exposition is required, no frustrating and uncharacteristic period of ignorance by the crew. I really appreciate that.
This theme continues through most of the episodes. When the characters can't figure something out, it's not made obvious to us the viewer either. Sometimes the characters figure situations out before the viewer does. Often, there are no obvious solutions to their problems, and the solution is rarely if ever a Particle of the Week or a Deus Ex Machine.
Farscape treats its characters and its viewers with equal respect. The characters never get conveniently dumb, and the viewers aren't expected to either. I really appreciate that.
Witty and knowing? Really, give it a try. It's the most complete show in terms of writing, acting and cinematography. Yes, the puppetry can look a little fake, but high budget puppetry still wipes the floor with low budget CGI. Did you see the Voyager episode with the flying spikey tentacled pyramid things? It was painfully embarrasing to watch the actors trying to wrestle with bits of empty space. Farscape avoids that by having physical beasties, and also by clever cuts and angles rather than monotonous mid range shots.
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Let me run "a few miles" at "a few G's" by my (admittedly rusty) physics, rounding up to the nearest power of ten (as tradition dictates ;-) ).
Let's say 10km @ 100m/s2 (~10G). s=1/2at^2, t^2=2s/a, t^2 = 20000/100 = 200, t = 14.14s, so v = t * a = 14.14 * 100 = 1.4 km/s, and you need 7.73 km/s for a 300km orbit.
What am I missing? Is this really a big enough fuel saving to justify building and maintaining 10km of track?
I'm not trolling, I do actually agree that this is the most practical solution we have right now, but I can't get the maths to work out.
Uhhh... no. Going sideways at 7.73 km/s is the hard part. Once you hit that speed (assuming you don't burn up, which you would, so you have to accelerate as you rise out of the atmosphere), you'll rise to 300km and stay there. If you just rise to 300km with no angular speed, you'll come straight back down again. Not much use for putting satellites into, what's the word... orbit.
Well, sure. I'm a commercial programmer, and I after a string of "bend over and take it" contract modifications, I now give my employer code that meets their standards and no more, i.e. it doesn't crash 90% of the time.
If we ever released our source, our competitors would find and publish all of the bugs in it, while ripping it off (sorry, "clean room re-implementing it"), probably wrecking my company and putting me out of a job.
Wait.. what's the downside again?
My personal experience has been that it's folly to mix work and pleasure. Don't do your hobby as a job, because you'll get screwed into working 80 hours weeks, and you'll end up hating it. So just get screwed 40 hours a week, and reserve your spare time for doing what you enjoy (e.g. open source projects), to your own standards.
Got any ideas? Once you're at the edge of the atmosphere, you're pretty much limited to using a self contained reaction motor.
Ground laser launching relies on superheating air, plus it's only been used to shove vehicles directly up, so it's basically a really cool but expensive way to replace July 4 bottle rockets. A more viable alternative is turning beamed EM into electricity then powering magnetohydrodynamic motors that superheat air, but you still have that pesky problem that you are relying on an atmosphere to get your speed.
You could accelerate the vehicle in a rail gun or rocket sled until it reaches orbital velocity while it's still on the ground. Ballpark figure, at a (barely) survivable 20g, you'd need a 150km track to reach the 7.73km/s orbital velocity of a typical shuttle mission, ignoring air resistance. Except you can't ignore air resistance, because at 7.73km/sec at 1 atmosphere, you'd burn the vehicle to a toasty crisp.
Even if you postulated antigrav, you still need to generate lateral acceleration to achieve orbital velocity, which again requires a self contained rocket, or an atmosphere.
A beanstalk (space elevator)? Heck, maybe we've already got the technology to do it, but we're not going to, not for a long, long time.
So, really, if you've got any ideas about what to use as an alternative to rocketry today, let's hear them. I'm fresh out.
<rant>That's Queen Elizabeth the First of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, aka Queen Elizabeth the Second of England and Wales. If you're going to crown James VI of Scotland as James I of the United Kingdom of England, Wales and Scotland, we'll damn well apply that to her Royal Highnessnessess as well.</rant>
Given that you're unaware that they're either passed, in progress, or passed in other 1st world democracies, we don't really have much basis for debate. Ah well.
One of which is changing the rules. People can only do this if they have access to their own hard drives. And hey, why would you need that? Surely you're using licensed products to move licensed data around, so what's your objection to having mandatory copy control built in to the hardware? You'll only notice it if you're a theif, so how could you possibly object?
In the year 2525 (if man is still alive), content will be completely controlled by AOL-Disney-Coke-Warner right up until it hits the jack direct into our brains. Maybe further. Heck, we'll be lucky to make it to 2005 with non-copy controlled hard drives.
Uh, the teens that reliably blow their allowances on whatever CD's have had the most marketing bucks spent on them that week?
Although it's not fair to criticise teens; I had conversation with a 40-ish coworker today. He's going to see A.I. tonight. He knows it's garbage, but he's already decided to go to the cinema, and it's the least bad thing showing that he hasn't seen.
I despair, I really do.
The US has the greatest, kindest people in the world, as just demonstrated by the response to September 11th. But the US people don't decide and implement US foreign policy.
Perhaps you mean that the US military prefers to use DUP rounds, cluster munitions and mines that kill civilians for years after the military strikes are over? Sure, there's some birth defects and missing legs, and such, but that all happens off camera, so nobody really suffers. Maybe the Iraqis and the Kuwaitis suffering from these long term effects might not see it quite that way though.
Or maybe you mean that the US government prefers to pay foreigners to kill other foreigners off camera? Like they paid the Taliban to kill Russian troops, and like they're now paying the Northen Alliance to kill Taliban troops. I doubt that the Russians saw it quite that way, nor do the Taliban now, nor will the Northern Alliance when they are in power and the US government has to fund another faction to keep them in check.
Sanctions are the neatest of all though. Sure, they kill 5,000 children in Iraq every month (UNICEF figures), but you can blame Saddam Hussein (say hi to your old buddies at the CIA, Saddam!) for scamming funds, and hope nobody notices that you're blocking items like water purifiers and antibiotics.
Osama bin Laden is a vile and abhorent excuse for a human being. I'd put his nuts in a blender myself given half a chance. But that doesn't excuse the millions of civilians murdered by the US governments of the past fifty years for ideological, political or commercial reasons. Neither of them can match up to Hitler or Stalin, but we're only talking degrees here.
And yet the US people really are the greatest and kindest in the world. I really, truly don't understand that.
Canada, Australia, Germany that I know of for sure. Anyone got others?
The bandwidth tax is hypthosesis, but if Napster really was the biggest driver of broadband takeup, then that leaves ISPs vulnerable on the same grounds: they're facilitating breach of copyright, they know it's happening, and they're making money off of it.
It could just be a small tax. So tiny you'll hardly notice. Not at first.
Uh, have you read the DMCA? That's an actual law, actually passed by actual elected representatives.
Pocket change; they have lawyers on retainer, they might as well use them. Anyway, the aim is to lose, the real focus is on removing our ability to move or store data without a license and a tax levy.
I didn't notice a revolution starting over the DMCA. What do you think that it will take to kick of a popular backlash?
Shhh, don't tell anyone, but I only read half of it myself before I started hammering out my own rants. Just between you and me, eh? ;-)
- The Afghan Mujahedin are the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers of America." Ronald Reagan, March 2000.
Your point is... ?That people are very strange creatures? I dunno, it's just one of those statements that's so indefinably wierd that I felt strangely compelled to share it. Source is the The Times of India, March 8th 2000, but I couldn't fit that in 120 characters. ;)
I keep telling myself that, but either the RIAA are really dumb, or really clever. It's comforting to think that it's the former, but I fear that's egotism speaking.
And the DMCA wasn't dumb. It was risible, it might be struck down yet, but it's on the books, and it's hurting real people right now. It's easy for you and I to laugh at it, but I expect the people currently defending themselves against it might not agree. It's hard to get your head round it, but try and remember that DMCA isn't some theoretical bill. It actually exists. Once our legislators let that one through, they signalled that it was open season.
So now we have a proposed bill on mandatory copy control in hardware, with an intimation that OS's that bypass it will be illegal. OK, it's unpopular, it will probably be defeated, but we said that about the DMCA as well. And if it fails, there will be another one next year, and the year after that, until one much like it passes. Then we have to fight it on every point up to the supremes, and then they can just buy another bill.
The one thing that I have no doubt on is that internet traffic will be taxed. Germany and Australia already tax blank media on the basis that it's used overwhelmingly to copy protected material. The same argument applies to residential broadband connections. It's only a matter of time.
The Times of India, March 8th 2000. The quotation might have been from earlier, but that's when it was reported. Take it up with them if you have a problem with it's veracity.
Some of us think that their intention is to lose.
For "eliminate" substitute "tax" and we're in agreement.
Lucky you. Not banned, but how will you feel about having all of your traffic taxed on the presumption of guilt? That's where we're going here, and every time the RIAA demonstrates the futility of individual litigation, we get a little closer.
Most artists sell all rights to their music to their recording/distribution company. Not just the Britneys, the real artists too.
That's bogus in itself, but let's buy into the RIAA "you're stealing from the artists" spin.
They are doing that. They are buying laws that assume guilt, and that will eventually see all hardware sales and internet traffic taxed on that basis (Germany already taxes blank media for that reason).
This poster clearly hasn't even bothered to read the article, where it is clearly stated that the MPAA are on board with this, and yet he still gets modded up as "insightful"? Hilarious or scary?
Again with the assumption that they didn't know what they were doing. Every time the RIAA lose a case or demonstrate the futility of litigation, they just make it easier to buy more laws that ensure that eventually they will control the cable that brings the data into your home, and the hardware that stores that data. Meanwhile, for all their ranting and wailing, profits keep going up.
Given this, why should they change tactics? Things are going just fine for them.
While you're laughing at the idiocy of the RIAA, does it occur that they're chuckling away to themselves as well? They're not losing money right now, and they see a way to make even more money in the future by demonstrating that we're all thieves.
They don't have to win these suits. Actually, they want to lose them (in court, or de facto as the users switch to a new service) as this just demonstrates how ineffectual individual litigation is. Then they just buy more laws that effect everyone. We will be presumed guilty, and taxed on that basis.
The RIAA will buy laws that let them tax your ISP for carrying copyrighted data. They will have a tax placed on blank media and will then extend it to all hardware. They will buy laws that let them view all of your data traffic, and have your ports blocked or your service throttled or cut off. If they feel like having a show trial to try out their new laws, they will have you thrown in jail for longer than a murderer or a rapist, along with the sysadmins of ISPs and sites, including .govs and .edus, that refuse or fail to comply with their laws. They will control what hardware you can buy, and what operating systems and applications you can run on it. They will control what software you are allowed to write yourself, or to run on your own system. They will control who you can discuss software with.
If you think the RIAA is losing by making it clear how impossible it is to stop or monitor file sharing under the current model of the internet, then I urge you to have a think about how many of the extreme measures that I describe above already exists in the USA or other democracies, and I ask you who you honestly believe will still be laughing in ten years time.
At first I laughed out loud at the ignorance of the RIAA (and the MPAA if you read the memo) believing that they could actually stamp out file sharing. But then I had a re-think, and saw only one way for this to go.
The RIAA will lose this one. Oh, maybe they'll win the lawsuits, or maybe they'll get the commercial developers to whore for them like Napster.
But the sharing will go on. Open source protocols and clients will spring up faster than they can beat them down. The genie is out of the bottle, and they can't put it back in. They can't win this through marketing, or through software technology, or through individual litigation.
The only way that the RIAA/MPAA can win this is by changing the world, starting with the USA.
The RIAA will use this case as a platform to push the overwhelming need for hardware copy control, for the banning or restriction of non-<strike>corporate</strike>governme nt controlled software including operating systems, for taxation of ISPs (who make money from facilitating the sharing of copyrighted material, and so are fair game), and for the need for easy <strike>corporate</strike>government access to ISP logs so that a trickle of users can be caught, given show trials using the laws the RIAA/MPAA have bought, and given harsher sentences than murderers and rapists.
So, while we can all have a good laugh about how stupid the RIAA are being by thinking that they can win this, just as we laughed at them for thinking that killing Napster would solve the problem, let's not forget that they're not idiots.
I truly believe that they are playing a long game here. They use idiotic lawsuits to demonstrate how helpless they are. They scream about every tiny periodic drop in CD sales and blame it on Napster (now Morpheus et al), while ignoring that overall sales and profit is up. They pay a few super-rich artists to wail about how sharing steals from them and tramples on their rights (neatly ignoring that nearly all artists sell all rights to one of five huge companies).
All of this is done to prepare the way for their bought politicians as they submit and re-submit ever harsher variations on the same dreadful laws that say: the profit of a few CEO's and major shareholders is a right that must be protected, regardless of the cost to individuals..
Cutting it down even further, let me suggest that there are perhaps two dozen people in the world who will lose out significantly if commercial sales of CD's and DVD's drops off (which isn't happening). These people are already rich beyond the dreams of avarice. They're not interested in profit or money in real terms, all they care about is the number of digits in their latest stock option exercise, because that shows that they're winners. That's all that matters, that they win the numbers game.
So the next time you gasp in horror at Son of DMCA, remember that it's even worse that it first looks. It's not about real people, or real money measured in human terms. It's about nothing more than two dozen men (and women) saying: I demand profit so that no one will question the size of my dick.
I wrote it off because of the "damn muppets", and only eventually and very reluctantly sat down to watch an episode at the insistence of a long suffering friend, who just kept patiently plugging it while I teased him mercilessly.
Oh my. Oh my.
For those who haven't seen it, here's a taster of how slick and knowing it is. Picture our protagonists fighting off an attack by evil space pirates armed with powerful strap-on bracer weapons. Our ersatz-Klingon protagonist picks up a discarded weapon and straps it on. It injects some glowing green goo into him. After the pirates are beaten off, ersatz-Klingon is still angry and bellowing, and declares that he should lead the ship in this crisis.
How would Star Trek handle this? Fifteen minutes of hammering the point home, while he cackles maniacally and the crew go "Gee, Dargo seems a little out of sorts today. Is he wearing black eye liner?" and we shout "He's evil! Get the weapon off of him! You idiots!"
On Farscape, his companions exchange one subtle glance - and no words - and jump him the instant his back is turned. The writers expect us to know the genre and to have figured it out. No patronising exposition is required, no frustrating and uncharacteristic period of ignorance by the crew. I really appreciate that.
This theme continues through most of the episodes. When the characters can't figure something out, it's not made obvious to us the viewer either. Sometimes the characters figure situations out before the viewer does. Often, there are no obvious solutions to their problems, and the solution is rarely if ever a Particle of the Week or a Deus Ex Machine.
Farscape treats its characters and its viewers with equal respect. The characters never get conveniently dumb, and the viewers aren't expected to either. I really appreciate that.
Joyously so. "Spare me the technobabble, gadget girl, let's just get on with it." I nearly wet myself.
Witty and knowing? Really, give it a try. It's the most complete show in terms of writing, acting and cinematography. Yes, the puppetry can look a little fake, but high budget puppetry still wipes the floor with low budget CGI. Did you see the Voyager episode with the flying spikey tentacled pyramid things? It was painfully embarrasing to watch the actors trying to wrestle with bits of empty space. Farscape avoids that by having physical beasties, and also by clever cuts and angles rather than monotonous mid range shots.