A local community service group gives away free home-made lemonade on a busy street corner. A mammoth international corporation observes this, realizes that there is a "market opportunity" in people who are interested in drinking lemonade in that area, spends months putting together a business plan to sell their own lemonade at $5 a glass, and drives their lemonade-trailer over the the community service group's card-table lemonade stand.
The next morning, the trailer manager arrives at work to discover the community service group has pushed the trailer down the street. So he runs them over again. This goes on for an extended period of time, during which no one is getting lemonade because the corporate jugs tipped over as the trailer ran over the card table which held the free jugs. Yet this goes on day after day with no end in sight.
It seems to me that the company is so bent on profit (from a market where the product to be sold is already free) it is willing to engage in a spending race with the non-profit, betting that the cash-strapped non-profit will go home if it can't distribute its product. Most non-profits would rather spend their money on something else if their efforts are for naught.
In this situation, I see one of two things happening:
The non-profit makes use of its local connections to inform the local populace of the situation, and ask them to stop patronizing the corporation's other businesses until it stops trying to take away their free lemonade. The non-profit needs to make a point of explaining that the corporation wants to force consumers to pay for something that's already free.
The international corporation lobbies Congress for a new law which effectively gives for-profit corporations sovereign squatting rights over non-profit entities. That's best for the economy, they will claim, because it creates jobs and keeps money circulating instead of stuffed under mattresses.
My money's on Starbucks paying a political action committee to lobby Congress to "do the right thing for the economy in these troubled times" and "bring order to the wild Wi-Fi frontier."
It seems like this whole "news" article is just a sly advertisment for T-Mobile and Starbucks and their new partnership.
Hardly. Before the article even mentions T-Mobile, it points out that Starbucks is trying to promote a pay-service where a free service already exists. How does informing readers of the free-alternative promote the $30/month service?
But the point is that such things as PBS, et cetera, are broadcasting free of charge, as a public service, and intend for you to be able to record these shows, for either your own children, school, et cetera... Or would it just ignore this altogether and basically say Screw you, PBS.
It's un-American to give away anything of value unless an American company is making a profit (ask the NSA). PBS is an un-American institution that will be liquidated in the New World Order TM.
I realize that this happens in Europe right now. Before it can come to the U.S., here's what needs to happen:
the explicit legalization of all copying of copyrighted works, and the explicit endorsement of copying by the industry that will be the beneficiary of the tax revenue
If we are being charged (financially) on the presumption that we will engage in copying of copyrighted works, it has to be legalized. You can't tax an illegal activity any more than you can have your cake and eat it too.
Any good college textbook on "oppression and how to make the masses scream for it" will tell you that the following pattern must be followed:
Introduce oppression as a theoretical idea. Guage the response.
Make oppression optional. Depending on the opposition to the idea (you did remember to guage the response to the theoretical idea, didn't you?), offer some worthless token that the masses believe has some great value and tell the masses that the oppression is the "tradeoff" needed to obtain the token. Highlight the fact that it is still optional -- if they don't want the token, they don't have to accept the oppression. Some people will buy into it; others won't.
Make oppression mandatory for some things. It is essential that you create the appearance that the masses have a choice. Only instead of pointing out that those who do not choose your oppression are missing out on exclusive benefits, paint the opposition as a deluded group of sadists who are "depriving themselves" of "basic rights" to your worthless tokens. This will win you converts, because no one wants to be seen as depriving himself of anything.
Make oppression mandatory across the board. If you have followed the above steps, you can now claim that the oppression is the de facto standard that has not only been "accepted" but "endorsed" by the masses. Anyone who questions the oppression can be refuted with this claim, which will strengthen the masses' belief that the oppression is "right" and "good." At this point, you may withdraw the worthless tokens or advance your oppression, because the masses no longer have a choice -- they have already made it and must trust their own judgment.
The industry seemed to be following this pattern pretty well.
DIVX was its theoretical idea, which created a backlash that was carefully guaged.
The masses who bought DVDs (which are optional -- a superior alternative to VHS for those who like the finer things in life) congratulated themselves on defeating the sinister premise of pay-per-view disks, but gave no thought to the copy-protection and region-encoding incorporated into DVDs. "At least we're not paying to watch our own disks!" And people can still tape movies from cable/broadcast TV, so they feel secure because they have that option.
Consumers are all too happy to pay more for the superior picture and sound on a disk that actually costs the industry less to mass produce and ship than VHS tapes. The higher price and the mandatory five-minute commercials (which one could FFWD through on a VCR) are accepted as the "tradeoff" for these great benefits. The industry sweetens the deal by offering special features for PCs (worthless Flash games that could be reused from disk to disk by slapping a new front end on them -- anyone play the Bowling Game on the Shrek DVD?) and chides non-converts for "depriving themselves" of their basic rights to the superior picture quality and sound of DVD. Meanwhile, DVDs that work with your PC now install software on your PC, connect to industry Web sites (sending who knows what information back) and some even require you to register to use the "features" on your disk. "Why not," people shrug, "I already bought the disk. I'm not going to deprive myself of features I paid for just because I'm afraid to give out my name and address."
Here's where Valenti fucks up. He should have killed the consumer's ability to record when it was in its infancy. He certainly tried, but failed, and people became accustomed to being able to make and share recordings (share as in "bring a movie to a friend's house," not Napster).
Since he failed to kill the consumer's ability to record, he should have conceeded that victory to the people -- then they would continue to follow him blindly, satisfied with their little VCRs. Now that he tells us we've been been breaking the law all this time, that we are not only morally but legally wrong, he may lose the trust of the sheep. If he mounts a serious effort to inform consumers that they cannot watch movies at friends houses, that they cannot tape movies off their TVs, the sheep may wake up. And they won't be happy little sheep anymore.
I like to print out the Microsoft press releases that complain about how much headway Linux and the Macintosh have made in unseating Windows. Yes, it's all BS designed to bolster Microsoft's contention that there's no need for the government to restrain Windows, but it makes me feel better.
If anyone's interested, I'll be combining them in a bound volume for only $19.95 a copy, per year, per seat.
Agent: National Security Agency. Martin: Oh, you're the guys I hear breathing on the other end of my phone. Agent: No, that's the FBI. We're not chartered for domestic surveillance. Martin: Oh, I see. You just overthrow governments; set up friendly dictators. Agent: No, that's the CIA. We protect our government's communications. We try to break the other fella's codes. We're the good guys, Marty. Martin: Gee, I can't tell you what a relief that is, Dick... You know, I could have joined the NSA, but they found out my parents were married.
Bear in mind that just because it's illegal for the NSA to spy on Americans doesn't mean they don't. Also, any technology released to commercial entities or the public in America is going to find its way to the rest of the world. Therefore, it is in the interest of the NSA to prevent Microsoft/Linux users/common people from securing their computers (the only computers the NSA is charged with protecting are the government's). However, it would be in the interest of the NSA to lead those groups to believe their computers are "so secure not even the NSA could get into them" when in fact they have easily-exploitable holes.
Ask yourself this question: why would the NSA release open source security software to the world?
Fishburne should have walked to the edge of the stage and pointed at the offending theater-goer.
"You are the One!" he would boom, waiting for his echo to die out before jumping off the stage and walking purposefully to 'the One.'
"The Oracle told me I would find the One. Why must there be One in every production? Why must she always be right?" He would then grab the phone from the One and point to the door.
"There are two ways out of this building. One is that door, the other is on a stretcher. If you want to get out of here alive, you must do exactly as I tell you. The lobby at the front of the theater is empty. Go! Now!" As the One leaves, Fishburne should call after him, "You forgot your phone! Never mind, I'll FedEx it to you!"
These days, if the kid doesn't bring his gaming system he won't be able to socialize because everyone else will be be playing Unreal Tournament between fencing tournament matches. They wouldn't know how to socialize without the proper hardware interface.
OK, let's say Ford makes a standard Focus today with a 150hp engine. Over the next year, Ford discovers a way to make an inexpensive 450hp engine whose performance really isn't much better than the 150hp model (except when climbing hills in Switzerland, in which case it is a little better, but still not 3 times better), and they begin running ads for their "new 2004 model Focus, with the revolutionary new 450hp engine." That's far more specific than "like a rock" or "super powerful." After a few million people have purchased these Foci and discovered there was really no reason for them to ditch their old cars in the first place, I think Ford would be in serious legal trouble.
Then again, as Bill Gates pointed out in the MS antitrust trial, the computer industry is so incomprehensively different from any other industry there's no point in wasting a judge's time on computer industry lawsuits.
...when the public find out that it's actually Two Pentium IIs on top of each other...
This explains how the Pentium 4 came to be. When the parents are so closely related, you get an inbred, deformed offspring with ADD and a wicked case of hypertension.
2002-08-17 23:19:36 Intel, Gateway and HP Sued Over P4 Performance (articles,intel) (rejected)
Yesterday I submit a story linking directly to the PCWorld article on this, and today the editors post a story linking to a less-detailed Inquirer re-write of the PCWorld story (I'm not grousing about the fact that my submission was not picked; I'm grousing about the fact that an inferior copy of the story I linked to was picked). Is there a bias against PCWorld, or are the editors just trying to make it appear that Slashdot stories come from a greater variety of eclectic sources?
Washington Times stories routinely cite reports generated by political action committees as the basis for its stories. Those reports are written because special interest groups paid their authors to produce reports that appear to support their the special interest groups' positions. That is the first reason The Washington Times is not a real newspaper. In this respect, it is more of a glorified business journal.
Second, real newspapers do not exist for the purpose of promoting their owners' beliefs. Real newspapers have a strict separation between the editors and the publishers.
Sun Moon himself says he created The Washington Times so he could influence the world:
"Do you know that I was creating the Washington Times during the court case?... Do you know how much the Washington Times spent? 830 million.... Why? I gave everything, centered on true love. So it expands everyday. So that I could affect the depth of American thinking, filling it full of true love water. Completely full, occupying everything."
The court case he refers to is regarding charges of tax evasion. He was convicted and spent over a year in prison.
The Unification Church, centering on Reverend Moon, came to America to connect that victorious foundation with the American government, the presidential level.... Reagan became the president in 1980 through me. Think about it. Five years after the Vietnam War, a conservative, moral, rightwing Reagan could become the President of the United States. Who made that? Reverend Moon. During my time in Danbury jail, in 1984, I helped Reagan too. He was my enemy. Bush, too. I chose those great American leaders, centering on the Unification Church as subject, with the American government as object-connected into one. The Washington Times helped America overcome the communist world.
Father [Moon] was in prison, but at that time said Nicaragua must not be abandoned, the Freedom Fighters must be supported. US Congress abandoned the project, they didn't want to give any money to the Freedom Fighters. So the Washington Times made a special editorial on the front page. You never see front page editorials, but it was published. Many people sent money and letters to Congress and the Senate. The leaders were shaken and knew they had to pass the resolution for support that had already been sent to the trash can. They decided that instead of fourteen million dollars, they would send twenty seven million. That is the money that Father earned for the Freedom Fighters of Nicaragua.
Through The Washington Times and other organizations he founded, Rev. Moon staunchly supported President Reagan's proposed Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as "Star Wars," to protect the United States from Soviet nuclear missiles through space-based defense.
I'm getting tired of looking up instances in which the owner or publisher of The Washington Times states that Rev. Moon used the publication to extend his influence over the world, so I'm going to go take a nap now. If you still want to believe the WashTimes is a real newspaper, well, it's your loss.
With five-dollar-an-hour security checkpoint employees operating the scanning equipment, I have to assume that every now and then one of them would screw up the voltage and fry the brain of a passenger who is walking through. The first few times this would shock the other passengers, but eventually we'd accept it as the price of secure air travel and we'd get used to hearing:
Cleanup in aisle seven.
Followed by the collective groan of the travelers in aisle seven who are faced with a choice between jumping onto the end of another line or waiting for "Irv from cleanup" to arrive.
The Washington Times is not a real newspaper. It is a publication of the Rev. Sun Moon's Unification Church that was founded in the 1980s to advance church interests by influencing people who would mistake the publication for the Washington equivalent of The New York Times.
You should see the stories they ran during the Clinton administration... one front page I remember staring out of the newsbox at me as I walked up the Metro steps one day featured a giant photo of kids dancing around a bonfire at a rave. The headline on that story criticized Clinton for not supporting an "anti-drug" bill, but the article said nothing about the fact that he was opposed to the non-drug-related things that were tacked onto the bill.
The publication survives for two reasons:
Church funding
A decent sports section (not news)
The Washington Times did not obtain these documents from the government; EPIC did.
The organization [the Electronic Privacy Information Center] obtained documents July 31, the product of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Transportation Security Administration, and offered the documents to this newspaper.
The EPIC story plays down the brain-reading aspect by devoting only one sentence to it:
NASA has even suggested developing "non-invasive neuro-electric sensors" or brain scans at the security gate to see if people are having suspicious thoughts.
Neither organization which claims to have these documents provides them or quotes more than one out-of-context sentence fragment from them. Normally when an organization obtains government documents through FOIA, it provides the focuments themselves as proof. Anything obtained through FOIA is public record. If EPIC took the trouble to show us its FOIA request in PDF format, why isn't it showing us the documents it claims were obtained?
Conclusions:
Washington Times readers are by nature a paranoid, ultra-conservative group that likes to feel informed of the stories the real media "conveniently ignores." (Aside from the people who pick up the paper and throw out everything but the sports sections... and I've seen people do this on the Metro)
Any Washington Times story should be carefully scrutinized before treated as news.
Hey, at least now some of the defendants have equally deep pockets.
It turns out those really "deep pockets" of UUNet's (UUNet is part of WorldCom) are actually "holes" through which money falls and disappears. It's a common mistake -- apparently even WorldCom's accountants mistook them for really deep pockets:
"Wow! Look at how far down this pocket goes! I can stick my whole arm in! Now if only I could find the money in this pocket..."
August 16, 2003 - Internet-Enabled Lawnmower Man becomes self aware
August 17, 2003 - has sex with unsuspecting client. Dissatisfaction with the incident leads to the creation of a companion: Internet-Enabled Chainsaw Woman
August 18, 2003 - The Ambiguously-Lawnmowing-Chainsawing Duo begin a massive telemarketing scheme to take over the world
Of course, you'd be unable to move your music files from one computer to another, but that's the whole point of the system, isn't it?
No, if that was the "whole point of the system," the system would violate the fair use provision of copyright law. If I purchase a CD, I have the right to play it in my car, my stereo or my computer. I don't have to purchase three copies.
I think we're all going to have to acknowledge that some form of copy protection for media is necessary.
Copy protection for media is not any more necessary than speed bumps are necessary to enforce stop signs (I used to work in an office park where the real estate developer actually did this on roads and parking lots, and the local government ordered him to remove the speed bumps). No corporation has the right to make it impossible for you to break the law. If you break the law, you suffer the consequences.
Next time somebody advocates something like the Pentium unique serial number scheme from a few years back, don't be quite so quick to flame them.
Subtitle: Unique serial number schemes are still bad. Flame on.
Slashdot Mirror
why does their Web site need a splash page?
The next morning, the trailer manager arrives at work to discover the community service group has pushed the trailer down the street. So he runs them over again. This goes on for an extended period of time, during which no one is getting lemonade because the corporate jugs tipped over as the trailer ran over the card table which held the free jugs. Yet this goes on day after day with no end in sight.
It seems to me that the company is so bent on profit (from a market where the product to be sold is already free) it is willing to engage in a spending race with the non-profit, betting that the cash-strapped non-profit will go home if it can't distribute its product. Most non-profits would rather spend their money on something else if their efforts are for naught.
In this situation, I see one of two things happening:
- The non-profit makes use of its local connections to inform the local populace of the situation, and ask them to stop patronizing the corporation's other businesses until it stops trying to take away their free lemonade. The non-profit needs to make a point of explaining that the corporation wants to force consumers to pay for something that's already free.
- The international corporation lobbies Congress for a new law which effectively gives for-profit corporations sovereign squatting rights over non-profit entities. That's best for the economy, they will claim, because it creates jobs and keeps money circulating instead of stuffed under mattresses.
My money's on Starbucks paying a political action committee to lobby Congress to "do the right thing for the economy in these troubled times" and "bring order to the wild Wi-Fi frontier."It's not illegal to own a screwdriver, but it is illegal to screw with the MPAA, the FCC, or their anti-copying technology.
the explicit legalization of all copying of copyrighted works, and the explicit endorsement of copying by the industry that will be the beneficiary of the tax revenue
If we are being charged (financially) on the presumption that we will engage in copying of copyrighted works, it has to be legalized. You can't tax an illegal activity any more than you can have your cake and eat it too.
- Introduce oppression as a theoretical idea. Guage the response.
- Make oppression optional. Depending on the opposition to the idea (you did remember to guage the response to the theoretical idea, didn't you?), offer some worthless token that the masses believe has some great value and tell the masses that the oppression is the "tradeoff" needed to obtain the token. Highlight the fact that it is still optional -- if they don't want the token, they don't have to accept the oppression. Some people will buy into it; others won't.
- Make oppression mandatory for some things. It is essential that you create the appearance that the masses have a choice. Only instead of pointing out that those who do not choose your oppression are missing out on exclusive benefits, paint the opposition as a deluded group of sadists who are "depriving themselves" of "basic rights" to your worthless tokens. This will win you converts, because no one wants to be seen as depriving himself of anything.
- Make oppression mandatory across the board. If you have followed the above steps, you can now claim that the oppression is the de facto standard that has not only been "accepted" but "endorsed" by the masses. Anyone who questions the oppression can be refuted with this claim, which will strengthen the masses' belief that the oppression is "right" and "good." At this point, you may withdraw the worthless tokens or advance your oppression, because the masses no longer have a choice -- they have already made it and must trust their own judgment.
The industry seemed to be following this pattern pretty well.DIVX was its theoretical idea, which created a backlash that was carefully guaged.
The masses who bought DVDs (which are optional -- a superior alternative to VHS for those who like the finer things in life) congratulated themselves on defeating the sinister premise of pay-per-view disks, but gave no thought to the copy-protection and region-encoding incorporated into DVDs. "At least we're not paying to watch our own disks!" And people can still tape movies from cable/broadcast TV, so they feel secure because they have that option.
Consumers are all too happy to pay more for the superior picture and sound on a disk that actually costs the industry less to mass produce and ship than VHS tapes. The higher price and the mandatory five-minute commercials (which one could FFWD through on a VCR) are accepted as the "tradeoff" for these great benefits. The industry sweetens the deal by offering special features for PCs (worthless Flash games that could be reused from disk to disk by slapping a new front end on them -- anyone play the Bowling Game on the Shrek DVD?) and chides non-converts for "depriving themselves" of their basic rights to the superior picture quality and sound of DVD. Meanwhile, DVDs that work with your PC now install software on your PC, connect to industry Web sites (sending who knows what information back) and some even require you to register to use the "features" on your disk. "Why not," people shrug, "I already bought the disk. I'm not going to deprive myself of features I paid for just because I'm afraid to give out my name and address."
Here's where Valenti fucks up. He should have killed the consumer's ability to record when it was in its infancy. He certainly tried, but failed, and people became accustomed to being able to make and share recordings (share as in "bring a movie to a friend's house," not Napster).
Since he failed to kill the consumer's ability to record, he should have conceeded that victory to the people -- then they would continue to follow him blindly, satisfied with their little VCRs. Now that he tells us we've been been breaking the law all this time, that we are not only morally but legally wrong, he may lose the trust of the sheep. If he mounts a serious effort to inform consumers that they cannot watch movies at friends houses, that they cannot tape movies off their TVs, the sheep may wake up. And they won't be happy little sheep anymore.
If anyone's interested, I'll be combining them in a bound volume for only $19.95 a copy, per year, per seat.
What are thousand-dollar Aeron chairs, which the dot coms were criticized for wasting money on, doing at a government lab?
Agent: National Security Agency.
Martin: Oh, you're the guys I hear breathing on the other end of my phone.
Agent: No, that's the FBI. We're not chartered for domestic surveillance.
Martin: Oh, I see. You just overthrow governments; set up friendly dictators.
Agent: No, that's the CIA. We protect our government's communications. We try to break the other fella's codes. We're the good guys, Marty.
Martin: Gee, I can't tell you what a relief that is, Dick... You know, I could have joined the NSA, but they found out my parents were married.
Bear in mind that just because it's illegal for the NSA to spy on Americans doesn't mean they don't. Also, any technology released to commercial entities or the public in America is going to find its way to the rest of the world. Therefore, it is in the interest of the NSA to prevent Microsoft/Linux users/common people from securing their computers (the only computers the NSA is charged with protecting are the government's). However, it would be in the interest of the NSA to lead those groups to believe their computers are "so secure not even the NSA could get into them" when in fact they have easily-exploitable holes.
Ask yourself this question: why would the NSA release open source security software to the world?
"You are the One!" he would boom, waiting for his echo to die out before jumping off the stage and walking purposefully to 'the One.'
"The Oracle told me I would find the One. Why must there be One in every production? Why must she always be right?" He would then grab the phone from the One and point to the door.
"There are two ways out of this building. One is that door, the other is on a stretcher. If you want to get out of here alive, you must do exactly as I tell you. The lobby at the front of the theater is empty. Go! Now!" As the One leaves, Fishburne should call after him, "You forgot your phone! Never mind, I'll FedEx it to you!"
Don't you feel old?
Then again, as Bill Gates pointed out in the MS antitrust trial, the computer industry is so incomprehensively different from any other industry there's no point in wasting a judge's time on computer industry lawsuits.
The Pentium 2? The Pentium 2 box held my front door open while my friends and I labored to carry the huge Pentium 3 box into the house.
I would be far more concerned if the headline read "FBI Warns Activists About Wireless Warchalking."
Second, real newspapers do not exist for the purpose of promoting their owners' beliefs. Real newspapers have a strict separation between the editors and the publishers.
Sun Moon himself says he created The Washington Times so he could influence the world:
The court case he refers to is regarding charges of tax evasion. He was convicted and spent over a year in prison.He also claims he used The Washington Times to bring Reagan and Bush to power to defeat Communism:
Moon claims he used The Washington Times to influence Congress (yawn): Bo Hi Pak, publisher of the WashTimes, claims Moon used The Washington Times to promote Star Wars (SDI -- double yawn): I'm getting tired of looking up instances in which the owner or publisher of The Washington Times states that Rev. Moon used the publication to extend his influence over the world, so I'm going to go take a nap now. If you still want to believe the WashTimes is a real newspaper, well, it's your loss.With five-dollar-an-hour security checkpoint employees operating the scanning equipment, I have to assume that every now and then one of them would screw up the voltage and fry the brain of a passenger who is walking through. The first few times this would shock the other passengers, but eventually we'd accept it as the price of secure air travel and we'd get used to hearing:
Followed by the collective groan of the travelers in aisle seven who are faced with a choice between jumping onto the end of another line or waiting for "Irv from cleanup" to arrive.- The Washington Times is not a real newspaper. It is a publication of the Rev. Sun Moon's Unification Church that was founded in the 1980s to advance church interests by influencing people who would mistake the publication for the Washington equivalent of The New York Times.
- Church funding
- A decent sports section (not news)
- The Washington Times did not obtain these documents from the government; EPIC did. The EPIC story plays down the brain-reading aspect by devoting only one sentence to it:
- Neither organization which claims to have these documents provides them or quotes more than one out-of-context sentence fragment from them. Normally when an organization obtains government documents through FOIA, it provides the focuments themselves as proof. Anything obtained through FOIA is public record. If EPIC took the trouble to show us its FOIA request in PDF format, why isn't it showing us the documents it claims were obtained?
Conclusions:You should see the stories they ran during the Clinton administration... one front page I remember staring out of the newsbox at me as I walked up the Metro steps one day featured a giant photo of kids dancing around a bonfire at a rave. The headline on that story criticized Clinton for not supporting an "anti-drug" bill, but the article said nothing about the fact that he was opposed to the non-drug-related things that were tacked onto the bill.
The publication survives for two reasons:
"Wow! Look at how far down this pocket goes! I can stick my whole arm in! Now if only I could find the money in this pocket..."
August 17, 2003 - has sex with unsuspecting client. Dissatisfaction with the incident leads to the creation of a companion: Internet-Enabled Chainsaw Woman
August 18, 2003 - The Ambiguously-Lawnmowing-Chainsawing Duo begin a massive telemarketing scheme to take over the world