Where were the people who complained when movie theaters started showing commercials before a movie starts? Where are the people who complained when theaters expanded these commercials to over 20 minutes before a movie starts? Did anyone stop going to the theater?
Actually, I did stop going to theaters... and advertising was one of the reasons. When Star Theaters started showing ads, I stopped going there and only went to AMC. Unfortunately AMC started showing ads too a few months later. I occasionally still make it to a theater for a movie that I want to see on the big screen (LoTR, Star Wars, etc)... But other than that, nope, don't really like the theaters anymore. Add in the insanely high ticket prices and the adolescents that just can't stop talking about so and so and their boyfriend and ohmygod and it's a real blast:)
Unfortunately, it didn't seem to make any difference, as I hear that they still run those commercials @ the beginning. So yes, we're out there... we're just outnumbered by idiots:) And it seems as though society nowadays has moved away from "survival of the fittest" to something more like "survival of the dumbest"...
If they want to do it in the privacy of their guild, that's cool! But it should NOT be allowed in public channels.
Heh, that sounds like the people that complain about gay pride parades. "I dont' care if they're gay, but why do they have to parade it around all the time?!?!?!?"
Heh, I'll tell you why: Because these people have been shunned and ousted from society from so long, and they're sick of it. They're proud of who they are, and they want to be able to express themselves and their way of life freely the same way that the rest of the world does...
Your comment almost sounds like you think that homosexuals should all just stay in the closet...
I'm gladdened to see that there are some other thinking americans left:)
The other thing that people seem to forget is that the government exists to serve the people, not control the people. And, if the "terrorist threat" is as bad as they like to make it out to be, then it is the duty of every american to strap on a sidearm and defend their country and their freedoms from the imminent threat.
You're exactly right -- americans are too self-centered and uncaring about anything going on that doesn't affect their immediate life... but they're not willing to do anything themselves to protect themselves or their way of life... all we hear is cries of "please protect me oh great benevolent government!".
They often times can be as if not more so addicting than drugs. See recovering evercrack addicts and world of warcraft addicts.
That's really an issue of willpower though, as opposed to an actual physical addiction. Similar to the "addiction" to marijuana as opposed to other drugs that are actually physically addictive (heroin, cocaine, etc). There isn't really any physical addictivness to marijuana, but there's a psychological one possibly... it's just up to the individual to exert their will to control their situation rather than being a spineless jellyfish and blaming it on something else:)
..which is what I think they were getting at. I bought every id game from wolfenstein3d to...wolfenstein redux. I did not buy doom 3 nor quake 4 and have no desire to do so; I'm just not interested in either one anymore. Walk, get spooked, shoot, repeat. Graphics look awesome but it seems to me just a rehash of the games I played in the early 90s.
Gotta disagree on this point... For me, having played the original Doom and Doom2 back when they originally came out made Doom 3 even more enjoyable for me. For me, it was like revisiting the games I loved from back then, but now they were done how they were originally intended to be. I mean, the original Doom made me jump a couple times (like the first time one of those pink things jumped out of the dark and bit me:)), but back then I was younger and I don't think playing Doom again would make me jump now. But believe me, when I was playing Doom 3 through for the first time on my xbox w/surround sound in a dark room, there were numerous places that it made me jump, 20 years later:)
Sure, the Doom story was never that great, but at least in Doom 3 they at least tried to have a story of some sort... I dunno, guess it was nostalgia and memory of playing the originals that made me enjoy Doom 3 so much. It was nice to see the game that I played as a youth revitalized with today's tech..
Um, AFAIK, google re-instated the xenu.net links shortly after they were pulled. In fact, clicking on your link shows that the first link in the list is in fact, to xenu.net...
The irony of the console's name and it's inability to ever "materialize" always gives me a chuckle. It's almost like they intended to never bring it to market, and thought... hmm, what would be a good name for a product like that..?
We definitely need to remove some of the obstacles for researching joints. There needs to be much more research done in that area to clear up some of the BS propoganda that was created for us in the Anslinger/Hearst days.
The obstacles must be removed so real scientific research can be done on joints.
I would like to volunteer for this research as well.
My reply was supposed to be an over-simplified view of it, and you and the other poster above you have done a nice job filling in the blanks I missed. I'm very bad with actually finding the laws and stuff once I've read them, so I paraphrase a lot... and forget a lot too:)
Thanx for the extra info, and thanx to shmlco for posting that other section which I seem to have neglected. In response to the section that shmlco posted, I would contend that when an individual downloads a song or movie off a p2p network, they are not neccessarily engaging in "large scale" distribution. However, that is an arguable point too, considering that uploading is required by some clients, and on others sharing is set up by default. Therefore by them leaving it available to be downloaded, that may be considered "large scale" distribution. But in the case where someone just logs on every now and then to get a song or movie... is that "large scale" distribution? If they're only grabbing a copy for personal use? Or if instead of going to their friend's house and burning a copy of the CD, they just get it off a p2p network...?
many of their customers *are* criminals and are either downloading or distributing content illegaly.
Depends on your interpretation of copyright law. The way I've read it, it says that copies are only prohibited when there's commercial gain. Therefore, personal, not-for-profit sharing is ok.
But IANAL, and I don't know how well that particular defense would hold up in court, considering the way the courts have been ruling lately on the **AA crap...
Sorry, I didn't read the linked article, it's true. I was getting that from an article that I had seen on p2pnet.net yesterday: http://p2pnet.net/story/6799.
I was assuming that since the BBC article was on the same topic and drawing from the same source, it would say similar things. Guess my assumption was wrong -- my bad.
Here's the quote I was referring to, if you're interested: "If you have a window titled 'WoW!Inmate,' "regardless of what that window really does, it could result in a ban. If you can't believe it, make a dummy window that does nothing at all and name it this, then start WoW. It certainly will result in warden reporting you as a cheater."
and for the record, I do know what a hash function is:)
You can't tell Blizzard what to do with their servers just because you don't like it. Either use the free market and don't use the software or shut up.
Except that they aren't running this on their servers, it's being run on your computer. Taking your computer resources and sniffing what else you may be using your computer for. If you have a window title that even resembles one of the programs they have blacklisted, you can get banned... even if you weren't cheating. Not to mention that it's looking through all kinds of other personal information like email addresses, IM conversations, etc. Sure, they say they don't use that info for anything, but the fact that it's looking at it is kind of disturbing in and of itself.
For the record, I don't play WoW (can't afford any game that has a subscription fee), and if I did I wouldn't be cheating. I also believe that cheaters ruin the game for everyone, but I think there are better ways to combat it then spying on your users' computers.
Your response sounds strikingly similar to "if you don't like the USA, then you can geeeeeeeet oooooouut!":)
I'll second that. NoCat is what you want. It does the "captive portal" that you're talking about quite well. And according to the dox, it can do it on a 486/25:) I still haven't managed to get the bandwidth throttling working, but that's something w/tc I think so it's not neccessarily a NoCat problem. But doesn't sound like you'd need bandwidth throttling anyway, so it should work perfectly for what you want.
For a media center, try a modified xbox with XBMC. Unfortunately I don't think that XBMC can rip movies yet, so you would still need to do the ripping on a computer. I use AutoGK to do my ripping on my windoze pc, and store the files in numerous places, like the windoze pc, a linux box, or on the xbox itself.
I'm sure there has to be some ripping software for a Mac as well... A friend of mine does his ripping on a Mac, and has mentioned a program called Mac the Ripper.
It is a cancer on the Web, and must be stopped. IE is insecure and is not standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable for both end users and Web content creators...
I've been saying the same thing about AOL for years!:)
So why would I want to use google's toolbar (that is closed source and does who knows what) as opposed to the FOSS Googlebar that I've been using for months?
This was a big stumbling point for me in switching to firefox, that I wouldn't have my google toolbar. Once I found out aboot the Googlebar, I've never looked back.
I think I'll stick w/FOSS for now. I can't see any advantage to using the "official" one really... unless I want to have my browsing recorded for pagerank or whatever...
If everyone just let them do their thing without forcing them into hiding and wiping out the ones that are found, they would grow so organized that they could create chaos worldwide on a scale way beyond this.
Or, if everyone would just let them do their thing and have their own cival wars and internal problems, maybe they wouldn't be so pissed off at other countries meddling in their affairs all the time and wouldn't want to blow up said other countries.
If the USA and its allies would stop being the world's self-appointed police force, that might help.
"America! Fuck Yeah! Comin' again to save the motherfuckin' day!" Team America, World Police indeed...:)
The problem is western governments meddle in middle eastern affairs because they need the region to be "compliant". They don't want to get too involved, but at the same time they've spent several decades meddling (usually with disasterous side effects) and thus building up the hatred.
Bingo! The U.S. has been meddling in the middle east for years. Waaay before 9-11 happened..
The U.S. has this "holier than thou" attitude that "our way is right" and we want to make everyone else do things the way that we do. Well, guess what? Not everyone or every country wants to be like the U.S.!! It's not our place to tell another country how to run themselves, every nation must stand or fall on its own.
I really think we need to adopt the Prime Directive from Star Trek... Roddenberry was on to something w/that one:)
the guy who kept the attacks from happening for 4 years evil
Yeah, it's all because of dubya's "war on terror" that we've been safe for 4 years.
More likely, it's because of his "war on terror" (and specifically Iraq) that we will be the target of more terroist actions in the future. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean that we haven't pissed off a whole new generation of terrorists by invading Iraq. We just gave them more fuel for their cause with that, by invading a country that had nothing to do w/the attack on the WTC...
I don't understand how anyone can see dubya as anything else, personally. He is arrogant, abusive of his power, and condescending. He thinks that "I'm the president, that means I don't have to give reasons" (not a direct quote, but he said something similar). Wrong! As the president, you are accountable to the people, not an all powerful ruler like he seems to think.
I'm glad that more people are "waking up" and questioning, rather than blindly following. Dubya needs to answer to the american people for his betrayal of their trust.
Which suggests that your liability may be open-ended if it can be shown that distribution of your source code was intended to encourage piracy or any other illegal act.
If it is determined that it is "intended to encourage piracy", then yes, that could suck for Mr. Cohen... but is doesn't stop others in other countries that don't have such laws from doing something with his source code. Wheras with closed source projects (like DVDDecrypter) it's too late to release the source once you've been hit...
It suggests as well that your code may be permanently tainted, there may be no way for anyone to use it or adapt it without exposing themselves to a lifetime of lawsuits and legal hassles.
Also a possibility, but again it all depends on the country and the laws of that country. Like how CloneCD/DVD sold their software to a company that's based in Antigua, as the laws there apparently don't prevent someone from making backup software (that circumvents silly protections:)
(until the U.S. finally creates their one world order, that is:)
Perhaps not screwed... it would seem that the MPAA has already commented on this, from TFA:
Kori Bernards, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association of America said "we want to work with people like Bram and others to come up with a solution to the problem of illegal trading of copyrighted material.... With regards to (what he said about) digital piracy, we hope he's changed his mind."
Together with the Grokster ruling -- and all happening within such a short interval -- he's just too likely of a target now. Once big media realizes that knocking down the Grokster's does NOTHING to stem the tide of wares being traded via BT, they have to go after Bram.
It really sucks that a guy who's given us so much is going to be made to suffer so, but it looks to be damn near inevitable.
Ahhh, but here's the difference between Grokster and BitTorrent: Bram Cohen had the foresight and wisdom to release his app as Open Source. Grokster, KaZaa, Morpheus, Napster, all those were/are closed source apps, so shutting down the company can have an effect on killing the software. BitTorrent is different because it's open source -- you can't stop it once it's out. There are so many various BitTorrent clients that it should be impossible to stop them all, especially if some of them are developed from countries with less draconian legal systems than the good 'ol U.S of A...
A good analogy might be DeCSS. Sure, it's technically illegal in the U.S. (and possibly other countries), but is it really hard to find the code if you want to? And then write your own app that uses it? And there are always "less obvious" ways to distribute such software... IRC comes to mind as one... (wonder how long it will be before they start saying IRC is the next big copyright threat... despite the fact that as far as I can tell, IRC today is pretty much the same as IRC was 10 years ago:) If there's a demand, someone will find a way...
Slashdot Mirror
Where were the people who complained when movie theaters started showing commercials before a movie starts? Where are the people who complained when theaters expanded these commercials to over 20 minutes before a movie starts? Did anyone stop going to the theater?
:)
:) And it seems as though society nowadays has moved away from "survival of the fittest" to something more like "survival of the dumbest"...
Actually, I did stop going to theaters... and advertising was one of the reasons. When Star Theaters started showing ads, I stopped going there and only went to AMC. Unfortunately AMC started showing ads too a few months later. I occasionally still make it to a theater for a movie that I want to see on the big screen (LoTR, Star Wars, etc)... But other than that, nope, don't really like the theaters anymore. Add in the insanely high ticket prices and the adolescents that just can't stop talking about so and so and their boyfriend and ohmygod and it's a real blast
Unfortunately, it didn't seem to make any difference, as I hear that they still run those commercials @ the beginning. So yes, we're out there... we're just outnumbered by idiots
If they want to do it in the privacy of their guild, that's cool! But it should NOT be allowed in public channels.
Heh, that sounds like the people that complain about gay pride parades. "I dont' care if they're gay, but why do they have to parade it around all the time?!?!?!?"
Heh, I'll tell you why: Because these people have been shunned and ousted from society from so long, and they're sick of it. They're proud of who they are, and they want to be able to express themselves and their way of life freely the same way that the rest of the world does...
Your comment almost sounds like you think that homosexuals should all just stay in the closet...
Hear hear!
:)
I'm gladdened to see that there are some other thinking americans left
The other thing that people seem to forget is that the government exists to serve the people, not control the people. And, if the "terrorist threat" is as bad as they like to make it out to be, then it is the duty of every american to strap on a sidearm and defend their country and their freedoms from the imminent threat.
You're exactly right -- americans are too self-centered and uncaring about anything going on that doesn't affect their immediate life... but they're not willing to do anything themselves to protect themselves or their way of life... all we hear is cries of "please protect me oh great benevolent government!".
sickening...
They often times can be as if not more so addicting than drugs. See recovering evercrack addicts and world of warcraft addicts.
:)
That's really an issue of willpower though, as opposed to an actual physical addiction. Similar to the "addiction" to marijuana as opposed to other drugs that are actually physically addictive (heroin, cocaine, etc). There isn't really any physical addictivness to marijuana, but there's a psychological one possibly... it's just up to the individual to exert their will to control their situation rather than being a spineless jellyfish and blaming it on something else
..which is what I think they were getting at. I bought every id game from wolfenstein3d to ...wolfenstein redux. I did not buy doom 3 nor quake 4 and have no desire to do so; I'm just not interested in either one anymore. Walk, get spooked, shoot, repeat. Graphics look awesome but it seems to me just a rehash of the games I played in the early 90s.
:)), but back then I was younger and I don't think playing Doom again would make me jump now. But believe me, when I was playing Doom 3 through for the first time on my xbox w/surround sound in a dark room, there were numerous places that it made me jump, 20 years later :)
Gotta disagree on this point... For me, having played the original Doom and Doom2 back when they originally came out made Doom 3 even more enjoyable for me. For me, it was like revisiting the games I loved from back then, but now they were done how they were originally intended to be. I mean, the original Doom made me jump a couple times (like the first time one of those pink things jumped out of the dark and bit me
Sure, the Doom story was never that great, but at least in Doom 3 they at least tried to have a story of some sort... I dunno, guess it was nostalgia and memory of playing the originals that made me enjoy Doom 3 so much. It was nice to see the game that I played as a youth revitalized with today's tech..
For the same reason why I cant refer to my female dog or type that im going to have a brittish slang ciggarette.
:)
So what you're saying is that you're going to have a fag while you play with your bitch?
Ooooh yeah!
Hmmm, interesting, I didn't notice that note @ the bottom. Questionable and intriguing indeed...
thanx for the clarification.
Um, AFAIK, google re-instated the xenu.net links shortly after they were pulled. In fact, clicking on your link shows that the first link in the list is in fact, to xenu.net...
The irony of the console's name and it's inability to ever "materialize" always gives me a chuckle. It's almost like they intended to never bring it to market, and thought... hmm, what would be a good name for a product like that..?
We definitely need to remove some of the obstacles for researching joints. There needs to be much more research done in that area to clear up some of the BS propoganda that was created for us in the Anslinger/Hearst days.
The obstacles must be removed so real scientific research can be done on joints.
I would like to volunteer for this research as well.
Yes, you said it much better than I did :)
:)
:P
My reply was supposed to be an over-simplified view of it, and you and the other poster above you have done a nice job filling in the blanks I missed. I'm very bad with actually finding the laws and stuff once I've read them, so I paraphrase a lot... and forget a lot too
Thanx for the extra info, and thanx to shmlco for posting that other section which I seem to have neglected. In response to the section that shmlco posted, I would contend that when an individual downloads a song or movie off a p2p network, they are not neccessarily engaging in "large scale" distribution. However, that is an arguable point too, considering that uploading is required by some clients, and on others sharing is set up by default. Therefore by them leaving it available to be downloaded, that may be considered "large scale" distribution. But in the case where someone just logs on every now and then to get a song or movie... is that "large scale" distribution? If they're only grabbing a copy for personal use? Or if instead of going to their friend's house and burning a copy of the CD, they just get it off a p2p network...?
fun stuff, this copyright law...
many of their customers *are* criminals and are either downloading or distributing content illegaly.
Depends on your interpretation of copyright law. The way I've read it, it says that copies are only prohibited when there's commercial gain. Therefore, personal, not-for-profit sharing is ok.
But IANAL, and I don't know how well that particular defense would hold up in court, considering the way the courts have been ruling lately on the **AA crap...
Where did you get that? Not from TFA
:)
Sorry, I didn't read the linked article, it's true. I was getting that from an article that I had seen on p2pnet.net yesterday: http://p2pnet.net/story/6799.
I was assuming that since the BBC article was on the same topic and drawing from the same source, it would say similar things. Guess my assumption was wrong -- my bad.
Here's the quote I was referring to, if you're interested: "If you have a window titled 'WoW!Inmate,' "regardless of what that window really does, it could result in a ban. If you can't believe it, make a dummy window that does nothing at all and name it this, then start WoW. It certainly will result in warden reporting you as a cheater."
and for the record, I do know what a hash function is
You can't tell Blizzard what to do with their servers just because you don't like it. Either use the free market and don't use the software or shut up.
:)
Except that they aren't running this on their servers, it's being run on your computer. Taking your computer resources and sniffing what else you may be using your computer for. If you have a window title that even resembles one of the programs they have blacklisted, you can get banned... even if you weren't cheating. Not to mention that it's looking through all kinds of other personal information like email addresses, IM conversations, etc. Sure, they say they don't use that info for anything, but the fact that it's looking at it is kind of disturbing in and of itself.
For the record, I don't play WoW (can't afford any game that has a subscription fee), and if I did I wouldn't be cheating. I also believe that cheaters ruin the game for everyone, but I think there are better ways to combat it then spying on your users' computers.
Your response sounds strikingly similar to "if you don't like the USA, then you can geeeeeeeet oooooouut!"
I'll second that. NoCat is what you want. It does the "captive portal" that you're talking about quite well. And according to the dox, it can do it on a 486/25 :) I still haven't managed to get the bandwidth throttling working, but that's something w/tc I think so it's not neccessarily a NoCat problem. But doesn't sound like you'd need bandwidth throttling anyway, so it should work perfectly for what you want.
For a media center, try a modified xbox with XBMC. Unfortunately I don't think that XBMC can rip movies yet, so you would still need to do the ripping on a computer. I use AutoGK to do my ripping on my windoze pc, and store the files in numerous places, like the windoze pc, a linux box, or on the xbox itself.
I'm sure there has to be some ripping software for a Mac as well... A friend of mine does his ripping on a Mac, and has mentioned a program called Mac the Ripper.
It is a cancer on the Web, and must be stopped. IE is insecure and is not standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable for both end users and Web content creators...
:)
I've been saying the same thing about AOL for years!
So why would I want to use google's toolbar (that is closed source and does who knows what) as opposed to the FOSS Googlebar that I've been using for months?
This was a big stumbling point for me in switching to firefox, that I wouldn't have my google toolbar. Once I found out aboot the Googlebar, I've never looked back.
I think I'll stick w/FOSS for now. I can't see any advantage to using the "official" one really... unless I want to have my browsing recorded for pagerank or whatever...
If everyone just let them do their thing without forcing them into hiding and wiping out the ones that are found, they would grow so organized that they could create chaos worldwide on a scale way beyond this.
:)
Or, if everyone would just let them do their thing and have their own cival wars and internal problems, maybe they wouldn't be so pissed off at other countries meddling in their affairs all the time and wouldn't want to blow up said other countries.
If the USA and its allies would stop being the world's self-appointed police force, that might help.
"America! Fuck Yeah! Comin' again to save the motherfuckin' day!" Team America, World Police indeed...
The problem is western governments meddle in middle eastern affairs because they need the region to be "compliant". They don't want to get too involved, but at the same time they've spent several decades meddling (usually with disasterous side effects) and thus building up the hatred.
... Roddenberry was on to something w/that one :)
Bingo! The U.S. has been meddling in the middle east for years. Waaay before 9-11 happened..
The U.S. has this "holier than thou" attitude that "our way is right" and we want to make everyone else do things the way that we do. Well, guess what? Not everyone or every country wants to be like the U.S.!! It's not our place to tell another country how to run themselves, every nation must stand or fall on its own.
I really think we need to adopt the Prime Directive from Star Trek
Yeah, 'cause WWII was the last war the US was involved in...
Well, it was the last legal war.
Congress has the authority to declare war, not the president. The last time that Congress declared war was WWII.
the guy who kept the attacks from happening for 4 years evil
Yeah, it's all because of dubya's "war on terror" that we've been safe for 4 years.
More likely, it's because of his "war on terror" (and specifically Iraq) that we will be the target of more terroist actions in the future. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean that we haven't pissed off a whole new generation of terrorists by invading Iraq. We just gave them more fuel for their cause with that, by invading a country that had nothing to do w/the attack on the WTC...
I don't understand how anyone can see dubya as anything else, personally. He is arrogant, abusive of his power, and condescending. He thinks that "I'm the president, that means I don't have to give reasons" (not a direct quote, but he said something similar). Wrong! As the president, you are accountable to the people, not an all powerful ruler like he seems to think.
I'm glad that more people are "waking up" and questioning, rather than blindly following. Dubya needs to answer to the american people for his betrayal of their trust.
Which suggests that your liability may be open-ended if it can be shown that distribution of your source code was intended to encourage piracy or any other illegal act.
:)
:)
If it is determined that it is "intended to encourage piracy", then yes, that could suck for Mr. Cohen... but is doesn't stop others in other countries that don't have such laws from doing something with his source code. Wheras with closed source projects (like DVDDecrypter) it's too late to release the source once you've been hit...
It suggests as well that your code may be permanently tainted, there may be no way for anyone to use it or adapt it without exposing themselves to a lifetime of lawsuits and legal hassles.
Also a possibility, but again it all depends on the country and the laws of that country. Like how CloneCD/DVD sold their software to a company that's based in Antigua, as the laws there apparently don't prevent someone from making backup software (that circumvents silly protections
(until the U.S. finally creates their one world order, that is
Perhaps not screwed... it would seem that the MPAA has already commented on this, from TFA:
Kori Bernards, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association of America said "we want to work with people like Bram and others to come up with a solution to the problem of illegal trading of copyrighted material.... With regards to (what he said about) digital piracy, we hope he's changed his mind."
Together with the Grokster ruling -- and all happening within such a short interval -- he's just too likely of a target now. Once big media realizes that knocking down the Grokster's does NOTHING to stem the tide of wares being traded via BT, they have to go after Bram.
:) If there's a demand, someone will find a way...
It really sucks that a guy who's given us so much is going to be made to suffer so, but it looks to be damn near inevitable.
Ahhh, but here's the difference between Grokster and BitTorrent: Bram Cohen had the foresight and wisdom to release his app as Open Source. Grokster, KaZaa, Morpheus, Napster, all those were/are closed source apps, so shutting down the company can have an effect on killing the software. BitTorrent is different because it's open source -- you can't stop it once it's out. There are so many various BitTorrent clients that it should be impossible to stop them all, especially if some of them are developed from countries with less draconian legal systems than the good 'ol U.S of A...
A good analogy might be DeCSS. Sure, it's technically illegal in the U.S. (and possibly other countries), but is it really hard to find the code if you want to? And then write your own app that uses it? And there are always "less obvious" ways to distribute such software... IRC comes to mind as one... (wonder how long it will be before they start saying IRC is the next big copyright threat... despite the fact that as far as I can tell, IRC today is pretty much the same as IRC was 10 years ago