If it's one company that has the locked chips versus a number of companies that don't, they'd likely have more incentive to lower their prices a token amount in order to have a comparative bargain. Granted, they could squander away the profits, but if they can use it to be cheapest.
Also, the DRMs you mentioned prevent extralegal piracy, and don't even do it well. This is something that funnels money from widespread legal markets of aftermarket cart-makers into that company's coffers.
Tired opinion, sans backing. Overgeneralized. Easily refutable with counterexamples. All-in-all, fluff, with no real purpose save possibly trolling. I'd support the mod.
To make a "practically perpetual" motion machine, although it may be utilize obscure or improbable sources of existing energy, is a completely different matter than violating known solid physical laws, and doing something "impossible". In a large respect, it's the principle of the thing.
It's an artificial restriction, yes, and it may be a "monopoly" in the sense of that one work, but there's nothing restricting a class of goods to a single particular supplier. You can still source information/entertainment from a variety of sources. You may have to pay a premium for certain qualities (popularity, quality, specific choice) or settle for less, but such is the case with physical goods as well.
In context, Using group membership as a way to shape a sovereign nation's policy = Using group membership as a way to shape a sovereign nation's policy.
I used to have one in my wallet-- It came in a CD from a store that didn't use the system. I was surprised how often I got away with it. If you just keep walking like you own the place, nobody bats an eye (of course, it does help that the alarm goes nuts when I walk in as well).
I think the main argument against a dual system is that the cost-proscribed, state-run side would tend to have worse care and facilities. The private-practice side would be able to charge a premium for their premium services, and the resulting higher incomes and better facilities would siphon off the better doctors from the state-run system, leaving the state-run system with the sub-par left-overs who couldn't make the threshold of private practice.
Although there could be further rate-cap regulation (for private practices) or incentives (for public doctors) to make the public-care career more attractive, there really is no way to equalize both sides-- overregulation of private practices would make them the undesired and poorly-staffed ones, while underregulation would do it to the public system.
Now, I'm still personally up in the air in the universal healthcare debate (I live in the US, without it)-- both sides tend to have good arguments, and both sides have different clear advantages and detriments. I think that, more than anything, a privately-funded healthcare system (perhaps with some sort of "health-Welfare" padding) could work well in theory, but the closed-loop game of leap-frog among healthcare providers and insurers has just spiralled the costs and expectations into a stratosphere that they would have to come down from in order for any system to be effective.
I could see your point if they were selling something like unmarked artificially-high search rankings. As it stands, though, they're pushing their services in a PR context, and selling things like paid ads (which are marked obviously as such). Yes, the people with more money can place more ads, but the sources and intents are known, and discriminating viewers can weight them as they wish. Until Google assists in spreading known falsehoods, artificially driving competitors' information out of the otherwise free discussion (by killing their rankings or inflating unpaid-search rankings of clients), or astroturfing the source of discussions, there's really nothing all that awful going on.
Besides, how come most slashdotters are against digital rights management but have nothing against analog rights (such as healthcare) management.
Because most Slashdotters have a more intimate knowledge and relationship of the issues involved, can pinpoint the detrimental effects, and can speak to the issue with assured clarity.
If cartridges are being refilled then there is no need to hack the system at all, just take it out, drill a hole in the top, inject ink into it and plug it back in, no microchip cryptography in sight.
You probably still have to reset the cartridge's ink-level measurement, so the cartridge will indicate to the printer that it's full.
Actually, not having to compete with aftermarket ink could mean that they can have extra income (or leeway to loss-lead with cheap printers) without having to raise the price of their own products. Although, from the consumer's perspective, the price of the cheapest possible ink has "raised" to that of the OEM ink.
Or, the one that I hate even more: An exact description of the problem, aaaaand... "To see the rest of this discussion, become a subscriber! Only $29.99 per year!" (Yes, I'm looking at you, ExpertsExchange.)
These things should be downlisted like spam-sites, IMO, but they have enough signal to stay on top of the rankings, just nothing actually helpful.
The Interstate commerce clause is to prevent states from legislating themselves trade advantages and taking advantage of other US states-- sort of a "We're all in this together" idea. The Internet and neutrality falls perfectly well under interstate commerce's umbrella. There's the possibility (high probability, even) that one state's ISP would end up interfering with another state's servers*, and being as it's a transaction across state lines, any legislation to condone or prohibit such behavior would have to be done on a super-state level.
* (meaning ISPs and servers IN a state, not specifically RUN BY the state)
I'm with you there. That's why I'm glad I live in a place large enough to have competition in the phone/Internet sphere (TDS Metrocom and lovin' it). The place I grew up has two choices for Internet: Charter Cable, who can't even get the fuzzy lines out of the cable TV, or Verizon, who... well... do I even need to go into Verizon?
I've found that the smaller shops tend to have less hassle on setup because they use common "plug it in and it works" commodity hardware. Even on dialup, the big guys give you an install CD full of useless branded garbage. The smaller ones give you an instruction sheet on how to set up DUN.
OTOH, the few times I've had to deal with Comcast cable Internet or SBC/Yahoo! DSL (now AT&T, IIRC), It's been a nightmare of Flash for dimwits and crapware installers that were basically required in order to get the hardware online and the drivers installed.
No self-respecting service provider would intentionally break SSL in order to eavesdrop or inject. I wouldn't be surprised if such a move took them all the way from the consumer-news section straight to the courtroom, not to mention the damage they'd get in any press that touched them. Even to the non-technical, the phrase "could be storing your credit card info" has a lot of pull.
You'd need the private encrypting key from the real www.chase.com though, in order for the content to have the correct signature and for the certificate they spoofed to have a correct signature verifying it from the root cert. Otherwise, they'd have to get a key signed for every secure site they wanted to inject, signed by a commonly-included root authority. Or they'd have to trojan their own root authority onto your trusted list. There's no realtime lookup of authority, AFAIK.
So can you have an https:/// URL without having an SSL connection? (I'm assuming you meant just to drop it down to plain old http:/// and spoof that, but I wasn't sure)
The important players-- the portals and the people who set up the networks-- even when they all but outright say "OUR SITE IS FOR MEDIA PIRACY!", can rarely be touched, since they do little more than host harmless tracker files or facilitate dumb networks with a nudge and a wink. Granted, I realize there would be problems in legislating against software or network creators. BitTorrent, for instance, was originally designed to be a P2P protocol that fostered legitimacy. The tracker file, for instance, meant that there had to be a distinct citeable source for a given file. Well, look how that turned out.
So, that (and other things) makes the central facilitators hard to eradicate, leaving only action against the individuals trading content as a viable source of recourse or a possible halt to the situation.
The problem with that is that it takes a high threshold of time and money to achieve the certainty the law requires. So, in order to get even net zero gain (not even speaking of positive gain) from the process, they have to swat these flies with a bomb. Consider that even if they could get a paltry judgement that didn't stretch far past retail compensation-- say a dollar a song-- many casual traders' lifetime collections would span into the hundreds and thousands of dollars.
On the other hand, if they take no action, they're doing a disservice to the industry they try to represent, and the seemingly small casual piracy of millions of individuals can scale up to seriously and unfairly distort the media market.
Yes, the xxAA have overstepped reasonable bounds and misused the law on a number of cases, and I won't forgive them that, but to call their cases as a whole frivolous is to miss the fact that they are backed into a bit of a corner in regards to having to ask for large judgements from small infringers.
Then again, if you were referring to practices like the "we're suing... we're suing... Nope, we're not suing"... yeah, I'm with you there.
Slashdot Mirror
You're talking about monopolies there, though.
If it's one company that has the locked chips versus a number of companies that don't, they'd likely have more incentive to lower their prices a token amount in order to have a comparative bargain. Granted, they could squander away the profits, but if they can use it to be cheapest.
Also, the DRMs you mentioned prevent extralegal piracy, and don't even do it well. This is something that funnels money from widespread legal markets of aftermarket cart-makers into that company's coffers.
Outside of the manufacturer, there'd be no normal use of a signal telling the cartridge "reset your ink counter", would there?
Can you pre-emptively sue to invalidate a patent? I remember there was a case that brought this into question, but I don't know how it ended up.
Your link, it says what? I didn't notice anything to that effect.
Tired opinion, sans backing. Overgeneralized. Easily refutable with counterexamples. All-in-all, fluff, with no real purpose save possibly trolling. I'd support the mod.
To make a "practically perpetual" motion machine, although it may be utilize obscure or improbable sources of existing energy, is a completely different matter than violating known solid physical laws, and doing something "impossible". In a large respect, it's the principle of the thing.
It's an artificial restriction, yes, and it may be a "monopoly" in the sense of that one work, but there's nothing restricting a class of goods to a single particular supplier. You can still source information/entertainment from a variety of sources. You may have to pay a premium for certain qualities (popularity, quality, specific choice) or settle for less, but such is the case with physical goods as well.
Theft of a physical item is not comparable to duplication of information.
Okay, so you shot down "produce", but what about "design"?
In context, Using group membership as a way to shape a sovereign nation's policy = Using group membership as a way to shape a sovereign nation's policy.
I used to have one in my wallet-- It came in a CD from a store that didn't use the system. I was surprised how often I got away with it. If you just keep walking like you own the place, nobody bats an eye (of course, it does help that the alarm goes nuts when I walk in as well).
Wow... in my blind fury (well, mostly annoyance, really) I never bothered to see that. Thanks for the tip.
I think the main argument against a dual system is that the cost-proscribed, state-run side would tend to have worse care and facilities. The private-practice side would be able to charge a premium for their premium services, and the resulting higher incomes and better facilities would siphon off the better doctors from the state-run system, leaving the state-run system with the sub-par left-overs who couldn't make the threshold of private practice.
Although there could be further rate-cap regulation (for private practices) or incentives (for public doctors) to make the public-care career more attractive, there really is no way to equalize both sides-- overregulation of private practices would make them the undesired and poorly-staffed ones, while underregulation would do it to the public system.
Now, I'm still personally up in the air in the universal healthcare debate (I live in the US, without it)-- both sides tend to have good arguments, and both sides have different clear advantages and detriments. I think that, more than anything, a privately-funded healthcare system (perhaps with some sort of "health-Welfare" padding) could work well in theory, but the closed-loop game of leap-frog among healthcare providers and insurers has just spiralled the costs and expectations into a stratosphere that they would have to come down from in order for any system to be effective.
I could see your point if they were selling something like unmarked artificially-high search rankings. As it stands, though, they're pushing their services in a PR context, and selling things like paid ads (which are marked obviously as such). Yes, the people with more money can place more ads, but the sources and intents are known, and discriminating viewers can weight them as they wish. Until Google assists in spreading known falsehoods, artificially driving competitors' information out of the otherwise free discussion (by killing their rankings or inflating unpaid-search rankings of clients), or astroturfing the source of discussions, there's really nothing all that awful going on.
Besides, how come most slashdotters are against digital rights management but have nothing against analog rights (such as healthcare) management.
Because most Slashdotters have a more intimate knowledge and relationship of the issues involved, can pinpoint the detrimental effects, and can speak to the issue with assured clarity.
If cartridges are being refilled then there is no need to hack the system at all, just take it out, drill a hole in the top, inject ink into it and plug it back in, no microchip cryptography in sight.
You probably still have to reset the cartridge's ink-level measurement, so the cartridge will indicate to the printer that it's full.
Actually, not having to compete with aftermarket ink could mean that they can have extra income (or leeway to loss-lead with cheap printers) without having to raise the price of their own products. Although, from the consumer's perspective, the price of the cheapest possible ink has "raised" to that of the OEM ink.
Or, the one that I hate even more: An exact description of the problem, aaaaand... "To see the rest of this discussion, become a subscriber! Only $29.99 per year!" (Yes, I'm looking at you, ExpertsExchange.)
These things should be downlisted like spam-sites, IMO, but they have enough signal to stay on top of the rankings, just nothing actually helpful.
The Interstate commerce clause is to prevent states from legislating themselves trade advantages and taking advantage of other US states-- sort of a "We're all in this together" idea. The Internet and neutrality falls perfectly well under interstate commerce's umbrella. There's the possibility (high probability, even) that one state's ISP would end up interfering with another state's servers*, and being as it's a transaction across state lines, any legislation to condone or prohibit such behavior would have to be done on a super-state level.
* (meaning ISPs and servers IN a state, not specifically RUN BY the state)
Has this been tested? Region encoding isn't a copy-protection device, it's a market segmentation device.
Well, when the addiction gets in the way of things like bathing, you really cut down the potential there.
I'm with you there. That's why I'm glad I live in a place large enough to have competition in the phone/Internet sphere (TDS Metrocom and lovin' it). The place I grew up has two choices for Internet: Charter Cable, who can't even get the fuzzy lines out of the cable TV, or Verizon, who... well... do I even need to go into Verizon?
I've found that the smaller shops tend to have less hassle on setup because they use common "plug it in and it works" commodity hardware. Even on dialup, the big guys give you an install CD full of useless branded garbage. The smaller ones give you an instruction sheet on how to set up DUN.
OTOH, the few times I've had to deal with Comcast cable Internet or SBC/Yahoo! DSL (now AT&T, IIRC), It's been a nightmare of Flash for dimwits and crapware installers that were basically required in order to get the hardware online and the drivers installed.
Worst. PR. Move. Ever.
No self-respecting service provider would intentionally break SSL in order to eavesdrop or inject. I wouldn't be surprised if such a move took them all the way from the consumer-news section straight to the courtroom, not to mention the damage they'd get in any press that touched them. Even to the non-technical, the phrase "could be storing your credit card info" has a lot of pull.
You'd need the private encrypting key from the real www.chase.com though, in order for the content to have the correct signature and for the certificate they spoofed to have a correct signature verifying it from the root cert. Otherwise, they'd have to get a key signed for every secure site they wanted to inject, signed by a commonly-included root authority. Or they'd have to trojan their own root authority onto your trusted list. There's no realtime lookup of authority, AFAIK.
So can you have an https:/// URL without having an SSL connection? (I'm assuming you meant just to drop it down to plain old http:/// and spoof that, but I wasn't sure)
The important players-- the portals and the people who set up the networks-- even when they all but outright say "OUR SITE IS FOR MEDIA PIRACY!", can rarely be touched, since they do little more than host harmless tracker files or facilitate dumb networks with a nudge and a wink. Granted, I realize there would be problems in legislating against software or network creators. BitTorrent, for instance, was originally designed to be a P2P protocol that fostered legitimacy. The tracker file, for instance, meant that there had to be a distinct citeable source for a given file. Well, look how that turned out.
So, that (and other things) makes the central facilitators hard to eradicate, leaving only action against the individuals trading content as a viable source of recourse or a possible halt to the situation.
The problem with that is that it takes a high threshold of time and money to achieve the certainty the law requires. So, in order to get even net zero gain (not even speaking of positive gain) from the process, they have to swat these flies with a bomb. Consider that even if they could get a paltry judgement that didn't stretch far past retail compensation-- say a dollar a song-- many casual traders' lifetime collections would span into the hundreds and thousands of dollars.
On the other hand, if they take no action, they're doing a disservice to the industry they try to represent, and the seemingly small casual piracy of millions of individuals can scale up to seriously and unfairly distort the media market.
Yes, the xxAA have overstepped reasonable bounds and misused the law on a number of cases, and I won't forgive them that, but to call their cases as a whole frivolous is to miss the fact that they are backed into a bit of a corner in regards to having to ask for large judgements from small infringers.
Then again, if you were referring to practices like the "we're suing... we're suing... Nope, we're not suing"... yeah, I'm with you there.