As for popular revolutions - few have actually occurred. Generally hierachies change when two top powers clash.
This is a fairly salient point. Bookchin would call the popular revolutions of the last two centuries "particularistic" revolutions. Revolution in Europe and North America, for instance, has been largely bourgeois revolution -- and moreover, it was incited by a rather particular minority with a specialized interest. (The American, French, European bourgeois, and Russian revolutions, all come to mind.) As a result, while "heirarchies" became simpler, they did not become irrelevant. Of course, unless heirarchical institutions themselves are replaced with more anarchic ones, the same power roles apply... hence, the state of "American freedom." Free, on the face of it--at least, if you're gullible--but, surreptitiously counterlibertarian.
There have been quite a few revolts and revolutions in history, but they tend to occur in exceptional cases where a vast majority is oppressed.
I disagree at this point. The revolutions that took place in the last few centuries have been mostly actions by minorities who sought to establish themselves as the ruling order. Of course, revolution is always versed in talk of "freedom" and "liberty for all," but, I think a more honest critique of the results of revolution is required in order to truly gauge it.
The American revolution did little to further the cause of freedom and democracy. Through it's devotion to private property and capitalist enterprise, it lead to the rise of private tyrants in place of the more traditional public ones. It created a labour force and an industrial system that is both dehumanizing and alienating. And, ultimately, it has condemned a great portion of the world's population to starvation and poverty. It has, however, made the lyrics of freedom fresh in the public mind--if as the cover story for tyranny.
Two hundred some years later, the Russian revolution of October 1917, also, did very little for freedom. It erected a monstrous and unaccountable bureaucracy in the name of "people" -- the lauded and treasonous Worker's State -- that crushed the vitality of a great many peoples worldwide and further sullied the name of "socialism" the world over. It also, ruled in the name of "freedom" and "liberty for all."
Today that simple isn't the case in the West, because most people are approaching the middle classes and don't think of themselves as oppressed (despite growing working hours for less pay, on average). And those that are oppressed (in the developing world) have no recourse to overthrow the West. THAT is why it "appears to be working well".
Agreed! The system appears to work, from our Western perspective, because particular strata of the middle class are becoming "more wealthy," insomuch as that means anything. Capitalist systems tend to centralise wealth, however, so, it's really only a matter of time until the global South can't be sapped of its labour and resources any longer. That's when it'll start to sink in here in North America that there's something very wrong with this picture...
We're simply on the better end of the stick for the time being. As such, it's pretty much an inevitability, that things can't continue like this for long.
I think it's rather presumptuous of you to assume that "people [who use] their braun instead of their brains," in the present social order, are incapable of creative activity on their own terms.
It's that old truism: "You are what you do." If you do stupid, boring, and monotonous work, chances are pretty good that you'll end up boring, stupid and monotonous.
A postcapitalist society has the potential to really permit people to live again -- to work because they love to work and love what they do -- not out of some fallacious and wrongheaded "work ethic."
Insomuch as the Slashdot crowd is concerned, consider the early hackers.... why did they get into this in the first place? I doubt greatly that "making myself and a bunch of heartless VCs richer than snot" was high on the agenda. No, rather, it was about the love of learning, creating, tinkering... hacking.
It's the same thing that drove Beethoven. And Shakespeare. And Picaso and van Gogh. The work itself was a labour of love, not some toiling monotony. Just because the hacker's passion is technology doesn't mean this "toiling underclass" you describe don't have -- or couldn't have -- passions that are equally voracious.
I'm not so presumptuous to think that ethic -- that work should be play -- can't enrapture people who don't fit into some elite model of the "intellectual."
There don't have to be jobs for the "bottom half," because the idea of the "bottom half" is absurd.
Automation, cybernation and liberatory technologies have the potential to make work itself -- in a capitalistic sense, in any case -- obsolete.
Maybe, then, we can get back to our humanity for a change.
"The guys at Google thought, 'How cool that we can offer this to our users,' without thinking about security. If you want to do this right, you have to think about security from the beginning and have a very solid approach to software design and software development that is based on what bad guys might possibly do to cause your program grief." - Gary McGraw (quoted in the CNet article).
*blinks*
Well, actually, Gary, it seems to me that it isn't Google that's been caused any grief here, but, those wembasters who didn't "think about security from the beginning." In fact, it looks like Google runs a pretty tight ship.
This is the kind of guy who blames incidents.org for his web server getting hacked. After all, they weren't thinking about security from the beginning, were they?
Of course, if my religious beliefs dictate abstention from the religious ceremonies of another faith, then by enforcing prayer in a public school you are prohibiting the free exercise of my religion. Or rather, the school board, and by extension, the government, has prohibited it.
On the other hand, you were always free, of your own volition, to pray in school. By forcing me to pray with you, you've violated my right to exercise religion in favour of yours.
Clearly, you haven't thought this through. (Or, you're being wilfully ignorant.)
BRx.
ClarisWorks was great
on
Looking At Gobe
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Personally? I'd pay $120 for Productive--even if it's only half as good as it sounds. I was a big fan of ClarisWorks for the Macintosh--I preferred it greatly to MS Word due to its simple, elegant design. If Gobe succeeds in bringing a ClarisWorks-like product to the Linux environment, I'd jump at the chance to use it.
How do the other office suites stack up? StarOffice is a positively huge application (especially for those who need only "light word processing.") KOffice seemed buggy and unimpressive. WordPerfect for Linux has one of the most rauciously flawed font renderers I've ever come across. So... I've had my eye on Gobe for some time--I hope they come through.
Copyright protects the unique expression of a work--it certainly cannot protect the ideas that a particular work represents.
For instance, if you read a book on carpentry, you are free to teach someone else carpentry. Or to write your own book on carpetry that covers the exact same material.
Copyright doesn't cover, nor address, agreements to keep certain information secret. Non-disclosure agreements exist outside the framework of the DMCA. I suppose it's theoretically possible to require that one not disclose the information contained within a work, but, it wouldn't be the DMCA or copyright law which accomplished that legal feat.
MP3 streaming isn't so controversial, really. In fact, it's not very difficult--nor very expensive--to get the appropriate licenses to broadcast music (legally) on the Internet.
The problem lies in the fine line between distribution and broadcast. When you distribute an MP3 online, you run the risk of violating the distributor's copyright to the actual CD medium. So, if that MP3 happens to be of a song by Metallica, and you don't have permission from the recording company, or its agent, you've violated copyright law for duplicating the CD (or a portion of it).
On the other hand, when you stream an MP3 online, you're broadcasting it. Broadcast isn't distribution, it's public performance. Public performance rights belong to the songwriters. If you broadcast that Metallica MP3 without permission from artist, or from one of the appropriate songwriter's associations, you've violated copyright law.
Thankfully, getting permission from the songwriter's associations--that's ASCAP, BMI and SESAC--is a piece of cake. The licensing rate depends on a number of factors -- available here, here and here -- but for the most part, for small internet broadcasters the fees are minimal. ASCAP charges about $250 a year to start... BMI is more expensive, SESAC is considerably less (something like $50 or $75 annually.)
The United States has additional rules for online broadcasters that don't apply to airwave broadcasters. For instance, you can't provide music on-demand... you can't announce your playlist in advance... and you can't play too many songs from the same artist/album in a row. Nor can your playlist repeat predictably or too frequently.
Other countries have less restrictive rules.
Where things get messy is where you start to provide audio on-demand, or whenever audio is made available for download. In those cases, distribution rights apply as well as (or instead of) public performance rights...
I found the last article you linked to had many if interesting facts. I found it a bit too pro-Laden though
You've created a fallacious false dilemma--as if the only two options were "support the US government" or "support bin Laden."
To make a rational argument against US policy does not make one an apologist for terrorists. Or worse, a supporter of terrorists as you claim this person to be.
I think most people would find it hard to believe the violence is really about that. It really angers me to see an attempt at rationalizing terrorism in this way.
By the same argument, you could posit that American rebels during your* own revolution were terrorists against the British Empire. I don't think people find it so hard to believe that one might be willed to violence against an oppressive empire in the pursuit of liberty.
In any case, this attitude of "if you're not with us, you're against us" will only inevitably lead to witch hunts and the further degradation of what little democracy we have. Such arguments don't hold water.
When was the last time we used them on a civilian target?
Hm! How about Kosovo? Or Serbia? Or Iraq? What about the US involvement in Kenya or Afghanistan... or in Vietnam, Colombia, El Salvador, Somalia, or Haiti...? Let's of course not forget Japan.
The fact that companies in the United States manufacture and export lots of stuff does not in any way legitimize terrorist attacks against our civilians.
I don't think anyone has made that argument. The original poster's arguments had nothing to do with legitimizing terrorist attacks against American civilians.
His arguments went to the naïvety (or ignorance) in the American reaction to the recent bombings in New York and Washington D.C.
Your country was not attacked because it is a "beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world" but precisely because your country is seen to be the root of despair and suffering throughout the world--a cause of war and poverty for millions of people internationally.
Colombian organizations produce and manufacture lots of cocaine that has resulted in lots of deaths around the world.
Certainly not as many deaths as the American "War on Drugs."
Prohibition has caused more death and ruined more lives than so-called "drug abuse" could ever have. Drug prohibition leads to poor treatment of actual cases of abuse, jails otherwise innocent people--ruining lives & crowding prisons, not to mention that it creates and maintains a criminal black market.
Furthermore, American involvement in Colombia can certainly be considered "terrorist" activity--unless you're about a rather acrobatic leap in logic.
I don't use that to legitimize killing civilians in that country either.
First off--the original poster did not make that argument. Secondly, by your own argument, you ought to condemn your own country for its terrorist activities specifically in Columbia.
Insofar as "giving credit where credit is due," I'd agree with you--attribution for hard work is a fair concept.
However, the argument is whether or not the actions of RedHat's programmers constitutes "IP theft." For instance, consider that we have a doorway. Currently, there is a large steel door in this doorway which we want to replace with a glass door. In order to do this, I need to know the size of the previous door so I can make a glass replica.
I could look up the specifications for the original steel door, or, I could take my own measurements. In either case, I arrive at the same results. In either case, the results I arrive at are factual in nature and not expressive.
I realize it's rather absurd to posit that I would go to the trouble of finding the original manufacturer of a door just to get at its physical dimensions--especially given the ease of simply measuring it, or perhaps the standard size of doors--however I suppose it's equally absurd to posit that RedHat would duplicate all the effort required to reverse-engineer a RAID controller.
We're talking about mathematical representations of the physical structures in a controller card...except in this case, as opposed to our example with a door, it is much easier to find pre-existing specifications than it is to measure them ourselves.
It's not IP theft any more than reporting on a news story that was already covered by another paper is "IP theft" -- you can't steal facts. Facts belong to everyone.
"guilty until proven innocent" does not apply since we are talking about one company providing a service to another under contract. Due process only applies to government action against individuals (including corporations in the US). If you rented a house to someone and discovered thay they were punching holes in the walls should the court stop you from evicting them if the renter claims the holes constitute "normal wear"? No, of course not.
Perhaps not-- but, in my jurisdiction at least, landlords have no right to evict. Only the provincial Housing Tribunal is allowed to evict a tenent. And yes, landlords are as good as enjoined from kicking you out up to and until an eviction order is issued by the Tribunal.
I think you misunderstand what's happened. The dispute is precisely over whether or not MonsterHut has in fact violated Paetec's terms of service.
A preliminary injunction was ordered to prevent one party in the dispute (the ISP) from withholding services essential to the business of the other party (the Spammer) until it can be determined on the balance of probabilities whether or not MonsterHut did in fact violate Paetec's Terms of Service.
It's perhaps analogous to saying that the State cannot execute a man until after he's been tried and convicted. In other words, MonsterHut deserves due process of law.
I mean, when someone is arrested for capital murder we know he won't be executed prior to his trial... some people would like to say: "Since when can't a Government execute its citizens for violating its rules!" But, then, we have a name for those people, don't we?;)
I'd hate to see people attack the fact that Paetec was enjoined from terminating MonsterHut's service because MonsterHut is a spam cannon... the injunction is a good thing insofar as justice is concerned. It does not prevent MonsterHut from ever being shut down.
However, precedents like these can help to protect you when, oh I don't know, the largest media content production and media distribution network in the world wants to shut you down for having unpopular opinions.
Light means prosperity. And prosperity generally means taking better care of the environment. When China is lit up like the U.S., you can bet it will be easier to breath there, too.
*black stare*
Pardon me while I laugh hysterically at that comment. Yes, American air is so much cleaner than the air in the nonindustralized world. (Including parts of Commiela--er, China.) Of course, I suppose it's obvious -- what with all the smog warnings they face in the third world. It is truly terrible that parts of their population can't leave the house due to air polution generated by all those consumer automobiles and industrial infrastructure they don't have. Riiiiight...
Again, these aren't totally valid arguments. I've not seen any valid, technical reason to prohibit servers on broadband connections that cannot be satisfied by other means. As I've said before, the real push seems to be to restrict home users from being content producers.
It also creates an artificial market-- why would I buy "business class" bandwidth or co-locate a server for a site that's adequately hosted on broadband for a fraction of the price? We're not talking "enterprise, mission-critical, ecommerce" web applications or anything... we're talking about noncommerical, nonprofit media forums.
I run a site that gets maybe 100 hits a day, is frequented by only a small group of 15 visitors. However, we have very complicated custom web applications the drive the sorts of things we do... free or paid shared hosting is not an option. Nor is it a real possibility to shell out money for co-location or "business class" bandwidth for this sort of thing -- that of course generates no profit. The idea that the home user should settle for less (yanno, the idea that a 5MB, add-riddled, censored, GeoCities account "is good enough") -- that only big corporations should have access to high quality server applications -- is disturbing. It reinforces the idea that the Internet is here for business-- not for culture, not for recreation, not for academia, not for the free exchange of ideas.
Access to the tools big business uses is a real possibility with broadband since a lot of hobbyists, enthusiasts or professionals working in their spare time can put together a lot of the same things that corporate and "ecommerce" sites can...
As I say, I'm not claiming that broadband needs to come tethered to the sorts of service levels that corporate folks are expecting-- nobody suggests such a thing... but there's no good reason to limit people to Geocities because... "pfah! if you're serious, you'd co-locate in an Exodus data center."
That argument is pretentious and elitist. I get no Darwinian thrill from seeing only the moneyed have access to technologies all of us could use, enjoy and share at minimal cost.
However, use of so-called "shared" or "virtual" web hosting services limits greatly the sorts of applications you can create and run. It also limits your ability to administer your machine and configure the applications you use the way you see fit.
Some hosts are more forgiving than others, but, for highly specific development environments any shared host is less than ideal. Also, censorship considerations by [corporate] hosting providers may also be a concern...
Further, shared web hosting says nothing of other content servers which may be unavailable completely or available in shared configurations only in highly restricted circumstances.
I don't know if its just the prole in me talking or the heat, but it seems to me that the arrogance & pretentiousness of saying, "Get your own T1 or stop complaining," is just a bit mindboggling.
From a social standpoint -- where our priorities are less about the "bottom line" and more about providing for a healthy, vibrant, diverse democracy -- there isn't an incredibly good reason why web servers or other content servers are prohibited on so-called "consumer" Internet service providers.
In some cases the bandwidth isn't there-- I understand that, however, in general, the speeds are suitable for most people's private soapboxes... further, overall and in general, home servers do little harm to the network, Code Red notwithstanding.
And in all seriousness, I doubt anyone expects strict uptime SLAs or performance guarantees from your local @Home franchise. I'm not suggesting that "consumer-grade" Internet access claims to offer such things or even really ought to... However, I tend to believe that the prohibition on servers is more an effort to control media content creation & affordable distribution more than it is an effort to ensure network stability.
In effect, a ban on servers prevents citizens from competing affordably for so-called "mindshare" with big corporations and others who don't sweat the cost of dual redundant T3 connectivity.
Broadband internet access has the potential to really revolutionize media distribution by empowering individuals to affordably control & create new and innovative media outlets.
On the other hand, most home servers probably aren't even public servers but private servers used for, say, development purposes or sharing files between office & home. These uses are of course even less stressful on the network and certainly more benign.
I think it's more likely that the FBI has made use of so-called "tempest radiation." It's an interesting field of espionage because it allows you to pluck information directly off a wire-- such as the PS/2 or USB cable that connects your keyboard to the computer (though more likely, your very noisy UTP LAN).
Basically, tempest eavesdroppers exploit the electromagnetic radiation generated by things like your monitor, UTP Ethernet, serial cables... in some cases the radiation thrown into the shortwave band is broadcast fairly significant distances... also advanced techniques -- such as irraditing a building with a certain frequency of electromagnetic radition -- prove that it's been possible to pluck individual instructions of a CPU.
The most simple form of tempest eavesdropping is reconstructing the image displayed on your CRT, however, it would also be possible to grab keystrokes from a PS/2 cable (or your pin code from the serial cable that connects the keypad of an ATM)...
Actualy CRT eavesdropping is fairly simple... all you really need to get started is an old B&W TV with manual sync signal adjustment (the sync signal on a monitor usually isn't powerful enough for "home-made" [i.e. crude] eavesdropping devices to detect-- so in order to get a coherent picture you need to manually control sync.)
Do a search on Google for tempest radiation-- you'll find all sorts of interesting things... Check out also Tempest for Eliza -- it's a neat functional demonstration. With it, you can use your monitor to broadcast music on the shortwave spectrum. It's sort of eerie actually.
Hm. Slashdot ate part of my ping example;p the correct command should've been:
ping xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx >/dev/null &
where xxx, etc. is your gateway's IP.
You all assumed that anyways, but...;)
BRx.
Re:Cutting off port 80?
on
Code Redux
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· Score: 1
I'm not sure of the extent of AT&T's actions, but, they've probably blocked all incoming connections on port 80. This wouldn't prevent connections *to* port 80, of course, since web content itself is returned to the client on an ephemeral port...
I've been afraid broadband providers would move to do this anyways... since in most cases the ISP explicitly forbids server activity on end-user systems. Rogers@Home, in my area, sets their cablemodems to "sleep" after some predetermined interval-- this prevents any incoming connections unless the modem is awakened by outgoing traffic. Of course, putting "ping >/dev/null &" where into your rc.local makes short work of that;)
Hrm. From what I understand of the letter and of the post-- The NetBSD Project has not reproduced a patented technology, nor are they accsed of doing so: what they've done is link to a project which has allegedly reproduced a patented technology without license.
IIRC, the only case where someone was prohibited from linking-to allegedly illegal content was the MPAA vs. 2600... which is a sad precedent, but it's hardly a universally illegal activity.
Hm... your argument isn't totally consistant. You say that America was founded partly on secular ideals -- that Church and State be seperated. What this means, in both practice and theory, is that the Church (any Church) will not have privileged or systemic influence over the State. As well, the State can not infringe upon the free exercise of religion by Churches.
You go on to say that centuries down the road, a more enlightened America will decide that similar separation ought to apply to business. Business, after all, being the new Church, should not have privileged or systemic influence over the State. It sounds great on the surface-- "Finally, the Corporate whores^H^H^H^H^H^H Suits at Exxon can no longer install an unelected & curiously unintelligent man as President on their whim!"
However, even based on your own argumentation, there's a fatal flaw: the State can now no longer infringe on the free exercise of business. At least, if we're keeping up with your analogy in terms of Church and State. In fact, what we've basically accomplished through this wonderful corporate secularism has another name: laissez-faire capitalism.
Call me confused, but, didn't America try that approach extensively throughout the 19th century? I believe it was Mark Rosenfelder who described those times as: "Filth in our meat, shantytowns, racism, 'No Irish need apply', company towns, union-busting goons, monopolies, corruption scandals, a punishing business cycle, old folks living in poverty, failing banks, Boss Tweed, gunboat diplomacy..."
I'm not suggesting for a second we're much better off at this present date... but, "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me." I suppose it's too much to ask of our enlightened future America to think of the mistakes of the past;)
Separation of "business" and State in this manner, as you describe it, is also self-contradictory-- how precisely do you plan on separating the two one the one hand, when we've just gone ahead and given business an unlimited license to act as it pleases on the other?
We need to think this through a little more clearly-- we should perhaps start looking at the actual sources of distress and poverty in our society (yea, in our World) and address those issues on a more fundamental level. Perhaps we need to rethink our concepts of economics, of labour, of government-- and build a more free and more fair system from the ground up.
Slashdot Mirror
As for popular revolutions - few have actually occurred. Generally hierachies change when two top powers clash.
This is a fairly salient point. Bookchin would call the popular revolutions of the last two centuries "particularistic" revolutions. Revolution in Europe and North America, for instance, has been largely bourgeois revolution -- and moreover, it was incited by a rather particular minority with a specialized interest. (The American, French, European bourgeois, and Russian revolutions, all come to mind.) As a result, while "heirarchies" became simpler, they did not become irrelevant. Of course, unless heirarchical institutions themselves are replaced with more anarchic ones, the same power roles apply... hence, the state of "American freedom." Free, on the face of it--at least, if you're gullible--but, surreptitiously counterlibertarian.
There have been quite a few revolts and revolutions in history, but they tend to occur in exceptional cases where a vast majority is oppressed.
I disagree at this point. The revolutions that took place in the last few centuries have been mostly actions by minorities who sought to establish themselves as the ruling order. Of course, revolution is always versed in talk of "freedom" and "liberty for all," but, I think a more honest critique of the results of revolution is required in order to truly gauge it.
The American revolution did little to further the cause of freedom and democracy. Through it's devotion to private property and capitalist enterprise, it lead to the rise of private tyrants in place of the more traditional public ones. It created a labour force and an industrial system that is both dehumanizing and alienating. And, ultimately, it has condemned a great portion of the world's population to starvation and poverty. It has, however, made the lyrics of freedom fresh in the public mind--if as the cover story for tyranny.
Two hundred some years later, the Russian revolution of October 1917, also, did very little for freedom. It erected a monstrous and unaccountable bureaucracy in the name of "people" -- the lauded and treasonous Worker's State -- that crushed the vitality of a great many peoples worldwide and further sullied the name of "socialism" the world over. It also, ruled in the name of "freedom" and "liberty for all."
Today that simple isn't the case in the West, because most people are approaching the middle classes and don't think of themselves as oppressed (despite growing working hours for less pay, on average). And those that are oppressed (in the developing world) have no recourse to overthrow the West. THAT is why it "appears to be working well".
Agreed! The system appears to work, from our Western perspective, because particular strata of the middle class are becoming "more wealthy," insomuch as that means anything. Capitalist systems tend to centralise wealth, however, so, it's really only a matter of time until the global South can't be sapped of its labour and resources any longer. That's when it'll start to sink in here in North America that there's something very wrong with this picture...
We're simply on the better end of the stick for the time being. As such, it's pretty much an inevitability, that things can't continue like this for long.
bacchusrx.
I think it's rather presumptuous of you to assume that "people [who use] their braun instead of their brains," in the present social order, are incapable of creative activity on their own terms.
It's that old truism: "You are what you do." If you do stupid, boring, and monotonous work, chances are pretty good that you'll end up boring, stupid and monotonous.
A postcapitalist society has the potential to really permit people to live again -- to work because they love to work and love what they do -- not out of some fallacious and wrongheaded "work ethic."
Insomuch as the Slashdot crowd is concerned, consider the early hackers.... why did they get into this in the first place? I doubt greatly that "making myself and a bunch of heartless VCs richer than snot" was high on the agenda. No, rather, it was about the love of learning, creating, tinkering... hacking.
It's the same thing that drove Beethoven. And Shakespeare. And Picaso and van Gogh. The work itself was a labour of love, not some toiling monotony. Just because the hacker's passion is technology doesn't mean this "toiling underclass" you describe don't have -- or couldn't have -- passions that are equally voracious.
I'm not so presumptuous to think that ethic -- that work should be play -- can't enrapture people who don't fit into some elite model of the "intellectual."
There don't have to be jobs for the "bottom half," because the idea of the "bottom half" is absurd.
Automation, cybernation and liberatory technologies have the potential to make work itself -- in a capitalistic sense, in any case -- obsolete.
Maybe, then, we can get back to our humanity for a change.
bacchusrx.
"The guys at Google thought, 'How cool that we can offer this to our users,' without thinking about security. If you want to do this right, you have to think about security from the beginning and have a very solid approach to software design and software development that is based on what bad guys might possibly do to cause your program grief." - Gary McGraw (quoted in the CNet article).
;)
*blinks*
Well, actually, Gary, it seems to me that it isn't Google that's been caused any grief here, but, those wembasters who didn't "think about security from the beginning." In fact, it looks like Google runs a pretty tight ship.
This is the kind of guy who blames incidents.org for his web server getting hacked. After all, they weren't thinking about security from the beginning, were they?
Riight.
BRx
Of course, if my religious beliefs dictate abstention from the religious ceremonies of another faith, then by enforcing prayer in a public school you are prohibiting the free exercise of my religion. Or rather, the school board, and by extension, the government, has prohibited it.
On the other hand, you were always free, of your own volition, to pray in school. By forcing me to pray with you, you've violated my right to exercise religion in favour of yours.
Clearly, you haven't thought this through. (Or, you're being wilfully ignorant.)
BRx.
Personally? I'd pay $120 for Productive--even if it's only half as good as it sounds. I was a big fan of ClarisWorks for the Macintosh--I preferred it greatly to MS Word due to its simple, elegant design. If Gobe succeeds in bringing a ClarisWorks-like product to the Linux environment, I'd jump at the chance to use it.
How do the other office suites stack up? StarOffice is a positively huge application (especially for those who need only "light word processing.") KOffice seemed buggy and unimpressive. WordPerfect for Linux has one of the most rauciously flawed font renderers I've ever come across. So... I've had my eye on Gobe for some time--I hope they come through.
BRx.
That's nonsense.
Copyright protects the unique expression of a work--it certainly cannot protect the ideas that a particular work represents.
For instance, if you read a book on carpentry, you are free to teach someone else carpentry. Or to write your own book on carpetry that covers the exact same material.
Copyright doesn't cover, nor address, agreements to keep certain information secret. Non-disclosure agreements exist outside the framework of the DMCA. I suppose it's theoretically possible to require that one not disclose the information contained within a work, but, it wouldn't be the DMCA or copyright law which accomplished that legal feat.
BRx.
Seriously ;)
;)
We've got all the essentials -- decent beer, good crypto, and a lack of the DMCA
The problem lies in the fine line between distribution and broadcast. When you distribute an MP3 online, you run the risk of violating the distributor's copyright to the actual CD medium. So, if that MP3 happens to be of a song by Metallica, and you don't have permission from the recording company, or its agent, you've violated copyright law for duplicating the CD (or a portion of it).
On the other hand, when you stream an MP3 online, you're broadcasting it. Broadcast isn't distribution, it's public performance. Public performance rights belong to the songwriters. If you broadcast that Metallica MP3 without permission from artist, or from one of the appropriate songwriter's associations, you've violated copyright law.
Thankfully, getting permission from the songwriter's associations--that's ASCAP, BMI and SESAC--is a piece of cake. The licensing rate depends on a number of factors -- available here, here and here -- but for the most part, for small internet broadcasters the fees are minimal. ASCAP charges about $250 a year to start... BMI is more expensive, SESAC is considerably less (something like $50 or $75 annually.)
The United States has additional rules for online broadcasters that don't apply to airwave broadcasters. For instance, you can't provide music on-demand... you can't announce your playlist in advance... and you can't play too many songs from the same artist/album in a row. Nor can your playlist repeat predictably or too frequently.
Other countries have less restrictive rules.
Where things get messy is where you start to provide audio on-demand, or whenever audio is made available for download. In those cases, distribution rights apply as well as (or instead of) public performance rights...
BRx.
To make a rational argument against US policy does not make one an apologist for terrorists. Or worse, a supporter of terrorists as you claim this person to be.
By the same argument, you could posit that American rebels during your* own revolution were terrorists against the British Empire. I don't think people find it so hard to believe that one might be willed to violence against an oppressive empire in the pursuit of liberty.In any case, this attitude of "if you're not with us, you're against us" will only inevitably lead to witch hunts and the further degradation of what little democracy we have. Such arguments don't hold water.
BRx.
When was the last time we used them on a civilian target?
Hm! How about Kosovo? Or Serbia? Or Iraq? What about the US involvement in Kenya or Afghanistan... or in Vietnam, Colombia, El Salvador, Somalia, or Haiti...? Let's of course not forget Japan.
The fact that companies in the United States manufacture and export lots of stuff does not in any way legitimize terrorist attacks against our civilians.
I don't think anyone has made that argument. The original poster's arguments had nothing to do with legitimizing terrorist attacks against American civilians.
His arguments went to the naïvety (or ignorance) in the American reaction to the recent bombings in New York and Washington D.C.
Your country was not attacked because it is a "beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world" but precisely because your country is seen to be the root of despair and suffering throughout the world--a cause of war and poverty for millions of people internationally.
Colombian organizations produce and manufacture lots of cocaine that has resulted in lots of deaths around the world.
Certainly not as many deaths as the American "War on Drugs."
Prohibition has caused more death and ruined more lives than so-called "drug abuse" could ever have. Drug prohibition leads to poor treatment of actual cases of abuse, jails otherwise innocent people--ruining lives & crowding prisons, not to mention that it creates and maintains a criminal black market.
Furthermore, American involvement in Colombia can certainly be considered "terrorist" activity--unless you're about a rather acrobatic leap in logic.
I don't use that to legitimize killing civilians in that country either.
First off--the original poster did not make that argument. Secondly, by your own argument, you ought to condemn your own country for its terrorist activities specifically in Columbia.
Your rebuttal, sir, is fallacious.
BRx.
Insofar as "giving credit where credit is due," I'd agree with you--attribution for hard work is a fair concept.
However, the argument is whether or not the actions of RedHat's programmers constitutes "IP theft." For instance, consider that we have a doorway. Currently, there is a large steel door in this doorway which we want to replace with a glass door. In order to do this, I need to know the size of the previous door so I can make a glass replica.
I could look up the specifications for the original steel door, or, I could take my own measurements. In either case, I arrive at the same results. In either case, the results I arrive at are factual in nature and not expressive.
I realize it's rather absurd to posit that I would go to the trouble of finding the original manufacturer of a door just to get at its physical dimensions--especially given the ease of simply measuring it, or perhaps the standard size of doors--however I suppose it's equally absurd to posit that RedHat would duplicate all the effort required to reverse-engineer a RAID controller.
We're talking about mathematical representations of the physical structures in a controller card...except in this case, as opposed to our example with a door, it is much easier to find pre-existing specifications than it is to measure them ourselves.
It's not IP theft any more than reporting on a news story that was already covered by another paper is "IP theft" -- you can't steal facts. Facts belong to everyone.
BRx.
In X? COMPOSE-o-/
t ml
t xt
:)
See also:
http://www.uni-ulm.de/~s_smasch/X11/input8bit.h
and
http://www.uni-ulm.de/~s_smasch/X11/multi_keys.
(of course, if you're not running X, this means nothing.)
BRx.
BRx.
A preliminary injunction was ordered to prevent one party in the dispute (the ISP) from withholding services essential to the business of the other party (the Spammer) until it can be determined on the balance of probabilities whether or not MonsterHut did in fact violate Paetec's Terms of Service.
It's perhaps analogous to saying that the State cannot execute a man until after he's been tried and convicted. In other words, MonsterHut deserves due process of law. I mean, when someone is arrested for capital murder we know he won't be executed prior to his trial... some people would like to say: "Since when can't a Government execute its citizens for violating its rules!" But, then, we have a name for those people, don't we? ;)
I'd hate to see people attack the fact that Paetec was enjoined from terminating MonsterHut's service because MonsterHut is a spam cannon... the injunction is a good thing insofar as justice is concerned. It does not prevent MonsterHut from ever being shut down.
However, precedents like these can help to protect you when, oh I don't know, the largest media content production and media distribution network in the world wants to shut you down for having unpopular opinions.
BRx.
Ahem. *blank* stare.
:p
BRx.
*black stare*
Pardon me while I laugh hysterically at that comment. Yes, American air is so much cleaner than the air in the nonindustralized world. (Including parts of Commiela--er, China.) Of course, I suppose it's obvious -- what with all the smog warnings they face in the third world. It is truly terrible that parts of their population can't leave the house due to air polution generated by all those consumer automobiles and industrial infrastructure they don't have. Riiiiight...
BRx ;)
It also creates an artificial market-- why would I buy "business class" bandwidth or co-locate a server for a site that's adequately hosted on broadband for a fraction of the price? We're not talking "enterprise, mission-critical, ecommerce" web applications or anything... we're talking about noncommerical, nonprofit media forums.
I run a site that gets maybe 100 hits a day, is frequented by only a small group of 15 visitors. However, we have very complicated custom web applications the drive the sorts of things we do... free or paid shared hosting is not an option. Nor is it a real possibility to shell out money for co-location or "business class" bandwidth for this sort of thing -- that of course generates no profit. The idea that the home user should settle for less (yanno, the idea that a 5MB, add-riddled, censored, GeoCities account "is good enough") -- that only big corporations should have access to high quality server applications -- is disturbing. It reinforces the idea that the Internet is here for business-- not for culture, not for recreation, not for academia, not for the free exchange of ideas.
Access to the tools big business uses is a real possibility with broadband since a lot of hobbyists, enthusiasts or professionals working in their spare time can put together a lot of the same things that corporate and "ecommerce" sites can...
As I say, I'm not claiming that broadband needs to come tethered to the sorts of service levels that corporate folks are expecting-- nobody suggests such a thing... but there's no good reason to limit people to Geocities because... "pfah! if you're serious, you'd co-locate in an Exodus data center."
That argument is pretentious and elitist. I get no Darwinian thrill from seeing only the moneyed have access to technologies all of us could use, enjoy and share at minimal cost.
BRx.
However, use of so-called "shared" or "virtual" web hosting services limits greatly the sorts of applications you can create and run. It also limits your ability to administer your machine and configure the applications you use the way you see fit.
Some hosts are more forgiving than others, but, for highly specific development environments any shared host is less than ideal. Also, censorship considerations by [corporate] hosting providers may also be a concern...
Further, shared web hosting says nothing of other content servers which may be unavailable completely or available in shared configurations only in highly restricted circumstances.
BRx.
From a social standpoint -- where our priorities are less about the "bottom line" and more about providing for a healthy, vibrant, diverse democracy -- there isn't an incredibly good reason why web servers or other content servers are prohibited on so-called "consumer" Internet service providers.
In some cases the bandwidth isn't there-- I understand that, however, in general, the speeds are suitable for most people's private soapboxes... further, overall and in general, home servers do little harm to the network, Code Red notwithstanding.
And in all seriousness, I doubt anyone expects strict uptime SLAs or performance guarantees from your local @Home franchise. I'm not suggesting that "consumer-grade" Internet access claims to offer such things or even really ought to... However, I tend to believe that the prohibition on servers is more an effort to control media content creation & affordable distribution more than it is an effort to ensure network stability.
In effect, a ban on servers prevents citizens from competing affordably for so-called "mindshare" with big corporations and others who don't sweat the cost of dual redundant T3 connectivity.
Broadband internet access has the potential to really revolutionize media distribution by empowering individuals to affordably control & create new and innovative media outlets.
On the other hand, most home servers probably aren't even public servers but private servers used for, say, development purposes or sharing files between office & home. These uses are of course even less stressful on the network and certainly more benign.
Meh... just some food for thought.
BRx.
No, but, the judge is unlikely in that event to allow evidence obtained by means of the keylogger device to be used against the defendent in court.
BRx.
Basically, tempest eavesdroppers exploit the electromagnetic radiation generated by things like your monitor, UTP Ethernet, serial cables... in some cases the radiation thrown into the shortwave band is broadcast fairly significant distances... also advanced techniques -- such as irraditing a building with a certain frequency of electromagnetic radition -- prove that it's been possible to pluck individual instructions of a CPU.
The most simple form of tempest eavesdropping is reconstructing the image displayed on your CRT, however, it would also be possible to grab keystrokes from a PS/2 cable (or your pin code from the serial cable that connects the keypad of an ATM)...
Actualy CRT eavesdropping is fairly simple... all you really need to get started is an old B&W TV with manual sync signal adjustment (the sync signal on a monitor usually isn't powerful enough for "home-made" [i.e. crude] eavesdropping devices to detect-- so in order to get a coherent picture you need to manually control sync.)
Do a search on Google for tempest radiation-- you'll find all sorts of interesting things... Check out also Tempest for Eliza -- it's a neat functional demonstration. With it, you can use your monitor to broadcast music on the shortwave spectrum. It's sort of eerie actually.
BRx.
Hm. Slashdot ate part of my ping example ;p the correct command should've been:
/dev/null &
;)
ping xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx >
where xxx, etc. is your gateway's IP.
You all assumed that anyways, but...
BRx.
I've been afraid broadband providers would move to do this anyways... since in most cases the ISP explicitly forbids server activity on end-user systems. Rogers@Home, in my area, sets their cablemodems to "sleep" after some predetermined interval-- this prevents any incoming connections unless the modem is awakened by outgoing traffic. Of course, putting "ping > /dev/null &" where into your rc.local makes short work of that ;)
BRx.
IIRC, the only case where someone was prohibited from linking-to allegedly illegal content was the MPAA vs. 2600... which is a sad precedent, but it's hardly a universally illegal activity.
BRx.
You go on to say that centuries down the road, a more enlightened America will decide that similar separation ought to apply to business. Business, after all, being the new Church, should not have privileged or systemic influence over the State. It sounds great on the surface-- "Finally, the Corporate whores^H^H^H^H^H^H Suits at Exxon can no longer install an unelected & curiously unintelligent man as President on their whim!"
However, even based on your own argumentation, there's a fatal flaw: the State can now no longer infringe on the free exercise of business. At least, if we're keeping up with your analogy in terms of Church and State. In fact, what we've basically accomplished through this wonderful corporate secularism has another name: laissez-faire capitalism.
Call me confused, but, didn't America try that approach extensively throughout the 19th century? I believe it was Mark Rosenfelder who described those times as: "Filth in our meat, shantytowns, racism, 'No Irish need apply', company towns, union-busting goons, monopolies, corruption scandals, a punishing business cycle, old folks living in poverty, failing banks, Boss Tweed, gunboat diplomacy..."
I'm not suggesting for a second we're much better off at this present date... but, "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me." I suppose it's too much to ask of our enlightened future America to think of the mistakes of the past ;)
Separation of "business" and State in this manner, as you describe it, is also self-contradictory-- how precisely do you plan on separating the two one the one hand, when we've just gone ahead and given business an unlimited license to act as it pleases on the other? We need to think this through a little more clearly-- we should perhaps start looking at the actual sources of distress and poverty in our society (yea, in our World) and address those issues on a more fundamental level. Perhaps we need to rethink our concepts of economics, of labour, of government-- and build a more free and more fair system from the ground up.
Just my two cents...
BRx.