Please don't use the word "engineering" with respect to whatever it is the recording companies do with Ms. Spears
Hang on, have you seen a live closeup of Ms Spears recently? She's badly sun damaged and already sagging, and is trembling right on the brink of reverting to pure trailer trash. I'd say that cleaning her up and making her look even halfway perky in a video is a feat of engineering.
a band called "Destiny's Child" won a bunch of awards. From the TV blub, they look kind of cute
They are cute, and they stay that way by booting out their oldest member and recruiting a younger facsimile every few months. This is a good example of where even FairTunes might have a problem - who does the money go to in a band that changes its lineup more often than it's G-strings?
"Having 30,000 people inside my head drove me a little crazy, maybe," Dr. Mann said. "So I had to limit the number of people who had write- permission on my retina."
There's phrase I don't ever want to hear applied to myself. Write permission on my retina. Shudder.
I'd pass over your "corporate control" concerns, but thinking about the DMCA and the moves to get (largely futile) mandatory copy control in all electronic devices, the ultimate goal has to be to remove the pesky analogue transmission step altogether and put content straight from copy protected digital hardware right into Joe Consumer's brain. You'd have to go straight past the retina and wire it right into the optic nerve.
Copy control right to your brain. It's unthinkable - today. I wonder if it will be unthinkable in ten, twenty or fifty years?
in many jurisdictions, you are not permitted to record your interaction with the police, while the police is permitted to record (and presumably use as they find convenient) their interaction with you.
I thought we chewed this over and decided that it meant that you can't use as evidence an event that you've recorded without informing the other party that you're doing so. If you tell them you're doing it, it's fine to do so.
On the other hand, that's still a steaming pile of horse puckey, and I agree with your point that it's flat out wrong. because it only applies to Joe Public. Freddy Fed can do it without any problems at all.
developing legislation with such broad and far reaching wording is dangerous to everyone the world over
Yup. I've been told to stop over reacting, that this legislation isn't even going to be used much because, hey, the USA are the good guys, and we need it to defend Freedom and such.
I, on the other hand, think that it's not enough to just say that you're the good guys. You actually have to act like it as well. Even at the height of the Soviet Union's crackdown on samizdat, the oppression was all being done in the name of the greater good of the people, as represented by the state. Let's not take one single step in that direction.
Why pass laws that effects 300 million people if you're truly only proposing to use them against 50 people or so? There must be ways to save Freedom without giving up freedoms.
Of course the article also presupposes that strong encryption was the reason the intelligence community didn't prevent the recent attack
Darn, you're quite right. Sorry, I missed that. Cognitive dissonance: they assume that it's so obviously true that it doesn't need spelling out, I assume that it's so obviously false that it's not even worth considering.
Conan the Barbarian BARELY passes, MAYBE. Excalibur was the best thing so far, imho
Just to clarify, I do a lot of living history stuff, and really hate watching broadswords being used for Errol Flynn style fencing, complete with witty quips. So, I ding any fantasy that has cheesy moments (Barbarian only had one), and credit for every scene where it's made clear that steel weapon combat is brutal and nasty (big ticks for both Conan films and Excalibur). Good talky bits are nice, but really, I prefer my fantasy like a Norse saga: deeds, not words.
Yes, and one who will cash in his dignity for the price of a laptop computer
Now now, don't exaggerate. A laptop, a hard drive, a flat panel screen and an 802.11b hub.
So tell me, when your kids get old enough to understand, how are you going to explain that theft is wrong? I mean, by your acts, you've found some cheap justification for it.
Taking from those who have lots and giving it to those who have less is also called "taxation". The world isn't good versus evil, and all your wishing won't make it so. I'll try that tack, although I do also see the pragmatic benefits of lying to them and brainwashing them.
As for your mortgage, you'll never pay it off with stolen goods
Tsk tsk. Read the post. This is about revenge and betrayal, not about financial gain. I don't even need the stuff, but I'll be damned if I let it get fire saled, dumpstered or pocketed by security (the latter being the current fate of any hardware not in constant use).
There's no justification so stop trying to provide one - you're stealing, its wrong, and claiming its to support dependents, besides being bullshit, does not make it right.
And attributing claims to me that I didn't make doesn't make it any more wrong. You don't need to do that, because I opened by saying that I know theft is wrong, but I'm in a position where I genuinely feel that I have no longer have moral or ethical impediment to carrying it out in this case.
Now, given that we agree that theft is wrong, and that I'm a reprehensible weasel (should I actually go through with it, and neither of us knows whether I will), would you like to move on to debating how awful it is that someone should be put in the situation where they feel such anger that they put aside common morality, or shall we return to reading between the lines some more?
the characters don't have a huge amount of depth just yet but it's easy to identify with them.
Don't hold your breath. LotR is an astonishing work, but it's in the saga tradition where characters are defined by their deeds, not by their introspections.
the trailers definitely pronounce Gandalf as Gandalf, not Gandolv.
Off the top of my head, isn't that how it would be pronounced if it were an elven name, but it isn't, so it isn't?
Besides, Christopher Lee is a rabid LotR fanatic, pronounciation and all, and was actually correcting the dialogue coaches on set, so I doubt if we'll hear too many fox paws. At least, not in any scenes with him in them.;)
New Zealand : Martin Czokas (Celeborn); Karl Urban (Eomer)
(plus, among other Kiwis): Robert Gillies (armour/weapons technician), Ngila Dickson (costume design) and Weta SFX productions, all of whom worked on Xena: Warrior Princess or Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Battle on, Frodo!;)
Second, when have you EVER seen a good fantasy movie
Conan the Barbarian. Pared down, no bullshit. Conan the Destroyer to a lesser extent, but you have to give credit for the line "Enough talk! [thunk, aargh!]"
I'm hoping for a similar "less is more" feel to LotR. In fact, it's looking so good right now that if anyone grins or cracks a witty quip or goes "Uh oh!" (or "Now this is pod racing!") in any of the combat scenes, I might very well throw up.
That's three words, and it's not true anyway from where I'm sitting. I haven't seen one paid ad for this anywhere, and yet I'm still twitching like a loon.
someday it might even be used to make tiny robots that would lodge in people's brains and make them truly love Big Brother.
Well, they'd have to. That show fucking sucked.
I wonder if that means that beer already contains microscopic black helicopers, because beer (and inbreeding) are the only explanations for it's popularity right now, and I'd hate to think that I could get that drunk.
The only thing that has changed is that we now know that Hellman is a weak, over-emotional and unprincipled man.
You go ahead and assume that. I'll assume that he's being quoted out of context, and his main thrust is that we should get all of our moralising about future technology like nanotech out of the way now before someone else develops it anyway.
The encryption aspect is just a story hook, it's not (I think) what Hellman was really interested in discussing.
To me it's very scary that [a mathematical operation] might be outlawed
Been keeping up to date with the DMCA? There's a couple of binary implementations of DeCSS out there which have been expressed as prime numbers. Does possessiong that number become illegal? If not, why not? Is it only illegal when it's on a computer that can run it as a DeCSS exe, or is it illegal on any computer, or is it illegal to even write down on a napkin? If not, why should it be illegal to write DeCSS source on that napkin?
We don't need any new laws to scare the crap out of us. The ones we have are quite nasty enough, thanks very much.
Imagine if physicists were to take the arrogant attitude of today's security developers and say, "If I can build it, I should and also tell everyone else how to do it!"
You mean like Niels Bohr and others did? This reference took me about 10 seconds to find, please don't insult us by re-writing history to suit an argument.
That aside, I do actually agree with your point that inventors (and manufacturers) share in the moral burden of technologies.
On the other hand, pragmatically, if we don't do it, someone else really will.
On balance, I find myself agreeing with the NYT article's conclusion that it's a bitch of a decision and we need to find a thick skinned bastard to make it for all of us navel gazing pussies. (OK, I'm paraphrasing slightly...)
the fundamental issue is that crypto-backdoors, laws against strong crypto, etc. etc. are doomed to failure because they won't work.
Er, yes, as the article says: "It probably is too late to take back cryptography even if people wanted to, experts say"
The "probably" is temporising though. It's way too late.
Anyway, bear in mind that the interviews behind this article are really just leveraging the view (that matches ours) that nanotechnology is coming, and if we don't do it, someone else will, so we'd best get our navel gazing out of the way quickly. The encryption angle is just a story hook.
iWhile we're minimizing the threat of wrong-doing, lets not forget to shut down the razor factories, the internet cafes, rental car companies, etc..
Unfair. This article is really about future nanotech and how best to develop it. It's asking if we want to take another genie out of the bottle.
Of course, it does make the point that sooner or later, somebody is going to break any moratorium, so (national pragmatism time) it might as well be us.
I'm Assuming the rest of your comment is either BS or you've got huge testicles
It might very well be BS, but I've done the inventory, and I have the means and the motive.
My point (easy to miss) is that I really don't want to have to find out if it's bullshit or not. I'll toil honestly for as long as I keep getting paid, and I hope that "We regret" memo never arrives.
But if it does (and it already has for two other buildings and half of one floor of mine), then I don't want to be one of the people crying or yelling in genuine anguish. The only thing that will make me feel better at that point will be to fill a bag with toys and chant the calming mantra "Fuckyou,fuckyou,fuckyou."
But I really, really hope that I never have to find out if I can actually do it.
Re:You are an immoral cunt of the highest order
on
FiveFingerDiscount.com?
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· Score: 1, Troll
The next time your apartment is robbed, I just want you to remember that the guy who did it was "oppressed" just like you, you spoiled fuck
Where's the analogy? Unless I was robbed by someone that I knew, that I'd lied to, cheated, treated like shit, and already stolen from, you have no argument. And why are you "quoting" words that I didn't use? I don't feel sorry for myself, I'm way better off than 99% of the world's population, and my god I know it. I don't need to loot my office, but I'm going to do it anyway because I'm feeling betrayed and angry. It's affirmitive action.
don't have the wits to figure out that they can get up and leave their job any goddam moment they feel they are getting a raw deal
I'd love to still be that angry. Do you have a mortage? Dependents? A pension plan? Health insurance? A basic grasp of what some sectors of the tech market are like right now?
And something else. I refuse to assume that all employers are lying, cheating, thieving bastards. When they say that they value their employees, that they want a relationship based on trust, I actually believe it. I'd hate to be so cynical that I didn't. And so when I get screwed, it hurts. I feel betrayed. This is quite apart from broken contractual promises.
So don't tell me to toughen up and keep changing jobs. Or do it with the knowledge that replacing a skilled techie costs a company in the region of $50,000 (my employer's own figures). So by changing jobs every time that I'm not happy, I'd cost them money anyway. Did that occur to you?
Did you say binding verbal contract? Do you mind saying where is that
Scotland. It's an uncommon legal quirk, and you'd better have witnesses and such, but it has some interesting effects.
For example, it's common in England for a house seller to agree verbally to a sale, then actually sell the house to a higher bidder (known as "gazumping" for no readily apparent reason). That doesn't happen nearly as much in Scotland. You can still get screwed, but it's less likely, and you do have the law on the side if it comes to a dispute.
By the way, I know that two wrongs don't make a right. But I'm not going to pretend that I'm above the "you started it" school of morality.
And all it costs them to take a laptop is their own dignity. Evidently that isn't worth much to most of the posters anywa
I keep my dignity in a Tic Tac container with my ego and self respect. It used to be too big to fit, but the last revision to my contract, where I agreed that I was privileged to be allowed to work here, shrunk it right down.
Welcome to the corporate world, the one that actually produces products that people buy. It's a big old morass of fear and loathing.
all you fuckers spend at least 70 of those 100 hours surfing the web
20 out of 60. And I do put in the hours I'm contracted for, and agree that the bastards sitting doing nothing, waiting and hoping for a severance package, are screwing the company right now. I'm going to be a model employee until I'm no longer an employee.
As for people feeling "cheated" about their options and pay - well, guess what, you entered into that employment voluntarily. If after twleve months you feel the deal was not equitable, you are a moron for having ever entered in it, plain and simple.
Yes, because it's always that black and white. I have a mortgage to pay, and my contract has turned from "We love you" to "You're lucky to be allowed to work here" in a series of revisions over the years, each one of which, taken in isolation, wasn't quite enough to prompt me to start the interview round, screw with my pension, admit that my stock options were worthless... I'm not a moron, I'm a spineless wimp. Get it right.
You are the master of your fate you amoral fuckers. Just because life hands you a lemon, you don't get a blank check to commit theft
Again, get your insults straight. I'm immoral, not amoral. I know fine well that it's wrong to steal, but I've make a conscious decision to do it anyway.
If, and here's the bit you're missing, if I'm pushed to it. Wait until you're in this situation (bent over a desk, taking it up the rear every day with the justification "Because we can") then see if it's as easy to decide right from wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Hang on, have you seen a live closeup of Ms Spears recently? She's badly sun damaged and already sagging, and is trembling right on the brink of reverting to pure trailer trash. I'd say that cleaning her up and making her look even halfway perky in a video is a feat of engineering.
They are cute, and they stay that way by booting out their oldest member and recruiting a younger facsimile every few months. This is a good example of where even FairTunes might have a problem - who does the money go to in a band that changes its lineup more often than it's G-strings?
It didn't, until I read this passage:
There's phrase I don't ever want to hear applied to myself. Write permission on my retina. Shudder.
I'd pass over your "corporate control" concerns, but thinking about the DMCA and the moves to get (largely futile) mandatory copy control in all electronic devices, the ultimate goal has to be to remove the pesky analogue transmission step altogether and put content straight from copy protected digital hardware right into Joe Consumer's brain. You'd have to go straight past the retina and wire it right into the optic nerve.
Copy control right to your brain. It's unthinkable - today. I wonder if it will be unthinkable in ten, twenty or fifty years?
I thought we chewed this over and decided that it meant that you can't use as evidence an event that you've recorded without informing the other party that you're doing so. If you tell them you're doing it, it's fine to do so.
On the other hand, that's still a steaming pile of horse puckey, and I agree with your point that it's flat out wrong. because it only applies to Joe Public. Freddy Fed can do it without any problems at all.
Yup. I've been told to stop over reacting, that this legislation isn't even going to be used much because, hey, the USA are the good guys, and we need it to defend Freedom and such.
I, on the other hand, think that it's not enough to just say that you're the good guys. You actually have to act like it as well. Even at the height of the Soviet Union's crackdown on samizdat, the oppression was all being done in the name of the greater good of the people, as represented by the state. Let's not take one single step in that direction.
Why pass laws that effects 300 million people if you're truly only proposing to use them against 50 people or so? There must be ways to save Freedom without giving up freedoms.
Darn, you're quite right. Sorry, I missed that. Cognitive dissonance: they assume that it's so obviously true that it doesn't need spelling out, I assume that it's so obviously false that it's not even worth considering.
Just to clarify, I do a lot of living history stuff, and really hate watching broadswords being used for Errol Flynn style fencing, complete with witty quips. So, I ding any fantasy that has cheesy moments (Barbarian only had one), and credit for every scene where it's made clear that steel weapon combat is brutal and nasty (big ticks for both Conan films and Excalibur). Good talky bits are nice, but really, I prefer my fantasy like a Norse saga: deeds, not words.
Now now, don't exaggerate. A laptop, a hard drive, a flat panel screen and an 802.11b hub.
Taking from those who have lots and giving it to those who have less is also called "taxation". The world isn't good versus evil, and all your wishing won't make it so. I'll try that tack, although I do also see the pragmatic benefits of lying to them and brainwashing them.
Tsk tsk. Read the post. This is about revenge and betrayal, not about financial gain. I don't even need the stuff, but I'll be damned if I let it get fire saled, dumpstered or pocketed by security (the latter being the current fate of any hardware not in constant use).
And attributing claims to me that I didn't make doesn't make it any more wrong. You don't need to do that, because I opened by saying that I know theft is wrong, but I'm in a position where I genuinely feel that I have no longer have moral or ethical impediment to carrying it out in this case.
Now, given that we agree that theft is wrong, and that I'm a reprehensible weasel (should I actually go through with it, and neither of us knows whether I will), would you like to move on to debating how awful it is that someone should be put in the situation where they feel such anger that they put aside common morality, or shall we return to reading between the lines some more?
Don't hold your breath. LotR is an astonishing work, but it's in the saga tradition where characters are defined by their deeds, not by their introspections.
Off the top of my head, isn't that how it would be pronounced if it were an elven name, but it isn't, so it isn't?
Besides, Christopher Lee is a rabid LotR fanatic, pronounciation and all, and was actually correcting the dialogue coaches on set, so I doubt if we'll hear too many fox paws. At least, not in any scenes with him in them. ;)
(plus, among other Kiwis): Robert Gillies (armour/weapons technician), Ngila Dickson (costume design) and Weta SFX productions, all of whom worked on Xena: Warrior Princess or Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Battle on, Frodo! ;)
Conan the Barbarian. Pared down, no bullshit. Conan the Destroyer to a lesser extent, but you have to give credit for the line "Enough talk! [thunk, aargh!]"
I'm hoping for a similar "less is more" feel to LotR. In fact, it's looking so good right now that if anyone grins or cracks a witty quip or goes "Uh oh!" (or "Now this is pod racing!") in any of the combat scenes, I might very well throw up.
- Why is this generating so much anticipation?
One word: Marketing.That's three words, and it's not true anyway from where I'm sitting. I haven't seen one paid ad for this anywhere, and yet I'm still twitching like a loon.
- someday it might even be used to make tiny robots that would lodge in people's brains and make them truly love Big Brother.
Well, they'd have to. That show fucking sucked.I wonder if that means that beer already contains microscopic black helicopers, because beer (and inbreeding) are the only explanations for it's popularity right now, and I'd hate to think that I could get that drunk.
Marshmallow.
It couldn't possibly hurt us.
Unless....
You go ahead and assume that. I'll assume that he's being quoted out of context, and his main thrust is that we should get all of our moralising about future technology like nanotech out of the way now before someone else develops it anyway.
The encryption aspect is just a story hook, it's not (I think) what Hellman was really interested in discussing.
Been keeping up to date with the DMCA? There's a couple of binary implementations of DeCSS out there which have been expressed as prime numbers. Does possessiong that number become illegal? If not, why not? Is it only illegal when it's on a computer that can run it as a DeCSS exe, or is it illegal on any computer, or is it illegal to even write down on a napkin? If not, why should it be illegal to write DeCSS source on that napkin?
We don't need any new laws to scare the crap out of us. The ones we have are quite nasty enough, thanks very much.
You mean like Niels Bohr and others did? This reference took me about 10 seconds to find, please don't insult us by re-writing history to suit an argument.
That aside, I do actually agree with your point that inventors (and manufacturers) share in the moral burden of technologies.
On the other hand, pragmatically, if we don't do it, someone else really will.
On balance, I find myself agreeing with the NYT article's conclusion that it's a bitch of a decision and we need to find a thick skinned bastard to make it for all of us navel gazing pussies. (OK, I'm paraphrasing slightly...)
Er, yes, as the article says: "It probably is too late to take back cryptography even if people wanted to, experts say"
The "probably" is temporising though. It's way too late.
Anyway, bear in mind that the interviews behind this article are really just leveraging the view (that matches ours) that nanotechnology is coming, and if we don't do it, someone else will, so we'd best get our navel gazing out of the way quickly. The encryption angle is just a story hook.
Unfair. This article is really about future nanotech and how best to develop it. It's asking if we want to take another genie out of the bottle.
Of course, it does make the point that sooner or later, somebody is going to break any moratorium, so (national pragmatism time) it might as well be us.
It might very well be BS, but I've done the inventory, and I have the means and the motive.
My point (easy to miss) is that I really don't want to have to find out if it's bullshit or not. I'll toil honestly for as long as I keep getting paid, and I hope that "We regret" memo never arrives.
But if it does (and it already has for two other buildings and half of one floor of mine), then I don't want to be one of the people crying or yelling in genuine anguish. The only thing that will make me feel better at that point will be to fill a bag with toys and chant the calming mantra "Fuckyou,fuckyou,fuckyou."
But I really, really hope that I never have to find out if I can actually do it.
Where's the analogy? Unless I was robbed by someone that I knew, that I'd lied to, cheated, treated like shit, and already stolen from, you have no argument. And why are you "quoting" words that I didn't use? I don't feel sorry for myself, I'm way better off than 99% of the world's population, and my god I know it. I don't need to loot my office, but I'm going to do it anyway because I'm feeling betrayed and angry. It's affirmitive action.
I'd love to still be that angry. Do you have a mortage? Dependents? A pension plan? Health insurance? A basic grasp of what some sectors of the tech market are like right now?
And something else. I refuse to assume that all employers are lying, cheating, thieving bastards. When they say that they value their employees, that they want a relationship based on trust, I actually believe it. I'd hate to be so cynical that I didn't. And so when I get screwed, it hurts. I feel betrayed. This is quite apart from broken contractual promises.
So don't tell me to toughen up and keep changing jobs. Or do it with the knowledge that replacing a skilled techie costs a company in the region of $50,000 (my employer's own figures). So by changing jobs every time that I'm not happy, I'd cost them money anyway. Did that occur to you?
Scotland. It's an uncommon legal quirk, and you'd better have witnesses and such, but it has some interesting effects.
For example, it's common in England for a house seller to agree verbally to a sale, then actually sell the house to a higher bidder (known as "gazumping" for no readily apparent reason). That doesn't happen nearly as much in Scotland. You can still get screwed, but it's less likely, and you do have the law on the side if it comes to a dispute.
By the way, I know that two wrongs don't make a right. But I'm not going to pretend that I'm above the "you started it" school of morality.
I keep my dignity in a Tic Tac container with my ego and self respect. It used to be too big to fit, but the last revision to my contract, where I agreed that I was privileged to be allowed to work here, shrunk it right down.
Welcome to the corporate world, the one that actually produces products that people buy. It's a big old morass of fear and loathing.
20 out of 60. And I do put in the hours I'm contracted for, and agree that the bastards sitting doing nothing, waiting and hoping for a severance package, are screwing the company right now. I'm going to be a model employee until I'm no longer an employee.
Yes, because it's always that black and white. I have a mortgage to pay, and my contract has turned from "We love you" to "You're lucky to be allowed to work here" in a series of revisions over the years, each one of which, taken in isolation, wasn't quite enough to prompt me to start the interview round, screw with my pension, admit that my stock options were worthless... I'm not a moron, I'm a spineless wimp. Get it right.
Again, get your insults straight. I'm immoral, not amoral. I know fine well that it's wrong to steal, but I've make a conscious decision to do it anyway.
If, and here's the bit you're missing, if I'm pushed to it. Wait until you're in this situation (bent over a desk, taking it up the rear every day with the justification "Because we can") then see if it's as easy to decide right from wrong.