Science has no explanation for how everthing began, and yet a teacher can't say "A large number of people believe that a higher power had a role in the overall design of everthing, this is not to say that they don't believe in evolution, but that a higher power had a role in the overall design".
You may be missing some subtlties of the ruling.
First, this is not about the actions of a teacher, but the actions of a School Board.
Second, the judge did not say Intelligent Design could not be taught. The judge said it could not be taught as a part of a science cirriculum.
Third, the judge specifically cited the hidden agenda of the school board in promoting Intelligent Design as a stand-in for promoting Creationism.
The Constitution does not ban the teaching of religious principles in public school, it bans the State from the establishment of a religion. I don't think there would be a problem with having Intelligent Design taught in a public school, but it seems like the only people with an interest in having Intelligent Design taught in the public schools are religious zealots who disagree with the concept of a State allowing religious freedom.
I would then like a question like "what are most people hypothosis on this subject?"
Are you familiar with the concept of a tyranny of the majority? You speak highly of free speech, but seem entirely unfamiliar with the works of John Stuart Mill.
In order for something to qualify as a scientific theory, it must be predictive, must be testable, and (of course) must avoid falsification.
Intelligent Design, the belief that the creation of certain things was by intent, is not predictive. It does not allow us to predict anything. It is not testable, and therefore cannot be falsified.
This does not say anything about it's value as part of a system of belief. But it does clearly say that such a concept has no place in a science cirriculum.
I'm sorry but this is forcing religious belief on the students - the belief that those that believe in a creator are wrong is a religious belief.
If we take the contemporary Western definition of a Religion as only including those beliefs which include the worship of a diety, then atheism, or "the belief that those that believe in a creator are wrong" would not be considered a religious belief, and therefore would be considered acceptable in a public school system. But I don't think this definition of Religion would hold up to Supreme Court scrutiny. (Of couse my opinion ain't worth squat here...)
The more traditional definition of Religion relates to all beliefs which cannot be substantiated by science, which is (I think) the view the Supreme Court would take. In this case, a public school directive to teach athesim might well be found to violate the First Amendment prohibitions against the establishment of a religion.
Prove beyond a doubt that Evolution is the way we got here and we can all call if fact - until you can do that, Evolution requires every bit as much faith as ID.
Science is not about proving anything; perhaps you're thinking about mathematics? Everyone agrees that evolution is a theory, everyone expects the theory to be imperfect, but nonetheless useful. No one is requiring any public school student to believe (or, to have faith in) evolution, only that they be able to pass a standardized test on the subject.
How do the ISP's block or attenuate traffic speeds for certain services? Do they actually look at the contents of packets or is it simply by port?
In a nutshell, once you've passed the packet off to their network, they can treat it based on any criteria they choose. Current products allow traffic shaping based on protocol, port, source or destination, arrival rate (how much bandwidth you're using), claimed protocol, Quality-Of-Service (QOS) agreements, etc.
And, yes, you can 'tunnel' your data or encrypt it, but that's not really a solution in all cases (as you point out) and they can easily work around that by appropriate language in their terms-of-service.
The ultimate model, however, is to create a network where the endpoints are their own hardware. This is the model followed by cell-phone companies, and the X-Box, for example.
... other customers, like myself, will opt to move over to ISPs who refuse to act in such an evil manner.
Which means, first, that you will be paying more for the freedom from such "evil".
And second, that you will find yourself in the company of spammers and bandwidth hogs, and other sorts of people who are unable to use such an 'evil' ISP,
and third, that you may find your IP address blacklisted by the larger, "evil" ISP's, leaving you completely free to use any service, but unable to get a packet off your beloved "non-evil" ISP>
And, yes, those "evil" ISP have already thought this through completely.
True deregulation means getting rid of ALL laws that affect communication, including ones that were set up over a hundred years ago that we still have to follow.
For the most part, communication is naturally deregulated, meaning there are no natural laws which prevent you from saying anything you want. For cases where political pressure could be exerted to restrict your freedom to communicate, the first amendment applys.
But the kind of communication we're talking about here (the kind the FCC was established to regulate) is not naturally deregulated. When you telecommunicate, that is to say, communicate over a distance, using wires, or radio waves, etc. you are making use of a public resource. This is not to say the infrastructure (wires, routers, etc) are public, they aren't; they're private. But you're either using the airwaves (held jointly by us all) or communicating over wires which are strung on poles and buried in the ground on the public right-of-way. You need to begin by understanding that.
I'll grudgingly accept the argument for the regulation up to maybe 1995, but after that, we saw an unregulated quantity of computers magically connect without major subsidies...
The "Internet" that we have today is not the result of something that happened around 1995 or so. It took nearly 150 years of raising poles and stringiing copper to get a world-wide communication network. The only part of the Internet that happened within a decade of 1995 was the cost reduction in computers and modems which made them available to the average joe. The Internet was built (and is still being built) on top of the Telephone system. And the Telephone system would never have evolved to the state it did without regulation.
But probably not the kind of regulation you are thinking of.
The key regulation which made the phone system work was the Common Carrier regulations (yup, courtsey of our very own FCC) which brutally forced those who wanted to provide telecommunication services (AT&T) to treat every connection as equal to every other connection, regardless of the potential profit to the carrier. The freedom to communicate (to call whoever you want, talk as long as you want, about whatever topic you want) you believe exists in the telephone network (and was carried over culturally to the Internet) exists only because of the Common Carrier laws.
Internet leads me to believe that the best form of our beloved Internet IS anarchy (not chaos).
Is that a freedom from or a freedom to kind of anarchy?
My speech is free to go where I sent it. For Congress to say that 2 or 5 or 10 big companies know better than thousands of little ones is typical nannyism. Who knows best? The People. We choose ISps that meet our needs. The system works. Some ISPs go under. Some combine into one ISP. Some fall apart into seperate smaller ISPs. This is how the free market works.
It's also how anarchy works. Your speech is already free to go as far as you send it. But just as soon as it crosses onto property which is partially mine, I'm free to stop it, or jack up the price. In this case, your vaunted free-market-economics combined with Metcalfe's law will ensure you have only one telecommunications provider, since whoever gains 51% first will be able to cut off every other compettitor.
Some ISPs go under. Some combine into one ISP. Some fall apart into seperate smaller ISPs. This is how the free market works. We're going to see more free WiFi ISPs (my small town has 3!). We're going to see faster cell phone bandwidth (my EDGE network gets
I don't. I can understand why people would want to download a clean FLAC or high bitrate MP3 rip instead of paying for a CD loaded with crapware. Either way as the artist does not receive fair payment, from my point of view both are receiving stolen goods. Why give money to theives?
We may have to disagree here on several points.
Suppose a publisher chose to offer a low-bitrate copy for $1.00 and a higher-bit rate copy for $2.00. Should purchasers of the low-bit rate copy consider themselves entitled to download a higher bit-rate copy? Does their entitlement change if the publisher is the artist herself? What if the publisher is the artist's husband? A close friend?
We can characterize all music publishers as evil, and such a characterization might be true for all I know. But we must acknowledge that the artists themselves selected that mechanism for the publishing of their work. Maybe they made a stupid chioce; if so, it is their responsibility to fix the problem. For us to arbitrarily decide for them what constitutes a "fair payment", or charge their publisher as a thief, or decide what they intended when they signed on with a publisher is disrespectful to to the artist, to say the least.
It's also in direct conflict with your original argument: that if a publisher increased the quality (I assume the offering of "...a clean FLAC or high bitrate MP3 rip..." constitutes an improvement over "...a CD loaded with crapware..." in your opinion) you might be willing to pay more. You comment here seems to indicate that you don't consider there to be anything wrong with people receiving the higher quality product wether they have or have not purchased the lower quality one. It almost sounds as if the mere offering of a lower-quality product stands as justification to steal the higher quality one. Was this what you were intending to say?
Or are you saying the act of selling a CD is a crime comparable to that of theft, and as punishemnt, the perpretrator should be subject to having anything he owns, wether offered for sale or not, stolen by the online community with impunity?
In that case don't buy from the majors.
"Who said i did?"
Downloading music doesn't generate revenue but it helps the smaller guy get noticed.
If I am the artist, and I'm offering a free download from my website simply to drive web-ad revenue then downloading does generate revenue for me. How much? Maybe enough; that's for me to decide, isn't it? If anyone thinks they have a way for me to get significantly more value out of my works without losing anything important to me, they should give me a call. If it's really a good deal, I'll cut them in on a share of the profits. But for them to decide they know better than I do how my stuff should be distributed, without respecting my wishes, is inconcievable.
Early on it became apparent that the DRM and Region locking on DVDs are worthless. Full length DVD images are available on the net as well as album rips. The difference is that the bonus material has been stripped from the DVD images. If you love the film and want the extras then you have to buy the Disc.
There's a side to this you're missing:
I know someone who's hearing was injured in an accident. He has no hearing in one ear and his hearing in the other is moderately damaged. He still likes to listen to music, but it has to be in mono (as opposed to stereo, otherwise listening on headphones is like listening to a stereo with one speaker wire clipped) and he can't tell the difference between a high bit rate encoding and a low bit rate one. For him, the highest value recording is a mono, low bit rate, highly compressed MP3 so he can fit the widest selection on the MP3 player. Now we can argue about the morality of an artist charging more for a low
At least with respect to music, yes. Keyword: Analog Hole.
The word analog, originally analogue or the Greek original analogos is defined to mean something that is analogous or similar to something else according to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.
Contrast to the word duplicate.
So something pulled through the "analog hole" can never be a 100% perfect copy. And yes, that is by definition.
But the original question was not wether DRM could be 100% effective at preventing copies, but wether it would ever be 100% ineffective at preventing copies. Even a DRM system that can be bypassed by holding down the shift key as you insert the disk isn't 100% ineffective as it forces the user to hold the shift key.
My point was that by forcing the use of DRM, even 99% ineffective DRM, we are creating a lose-lose situation.
I still believe that a CD is vastly overpriced for what it is...
Then don't buy it.
You criticize me for downloading!
I don't recall doing that. I criticize anyone who downloads illegally.
I can't remember the last time I even wanted to download an album.
Then I presume you don't download illegally. Nothing to criticize here.
It does bother me that the money from people who do choose to download legally or buy CD's go straight to the labels and very little if any goes to the artist.
Most artists are adults. They can decide for themselves wether a deal offered by a label is right for them. I'd feel sorry for the artists if their options for exploiting their talent is limited by unfair practices by the labels. But illegally downloading their label-sponsored music does not seem to help expand their options much.
I'd rather work to expand their options.
My point is they should provide 'Service' to their customers not 'Crap' to consumers.
With all due respect, you are apparently not one of their customers (or at least not a very profitable one, it would seem), so why should they listen to you? More to the point: how can they listen to you?
The movie industry seem to get this a lot better than the music industry. I'm not a great fan of the movie industry either, because of their copyright lobbying, but guises what I've spent $80 on DVD's this month. That's $80 more than I've spent on CD's over the last 5 years.
Oh the music industry gets it, alright. Not for a second do they miss the relationship between CD and $0, between DRM'd DVD and $80. Your point here makes it clear. It's easy to rip a track off a CD, and share it across the internet, and you spend nothing on CD's over 5 years. Their profit=$0. Not so with DVD's. Their profit=some portion of $80. It doesn't matter to the music industry (because it's not visible to them) whether your actions and their profit are related. They don't know what it takes to get your money, because you're not one of their customers. But they do know if you wanted their product you wouldn't have to buy it, because you could download it off the Internet. And they do know they're not getting your dollars. You can't blame them for making this connection: it's the only data they have.
If you couldn't (for whatever reason) get their stuff except through them, and you still didn't buy, they'd start looking at price, or quality, or whatever. But you can, so thinking along these lines is pointless.
The music industry realizes they missed the ball by not finding a way to keep their stuff off the Internet. The movie industry is thankful movie sharing is not as big (they don't think) as music sharing. They attribute this partially to file size/bandwidth, and partially to the DRM'd nature of DVD's. Both the music industry and the movie industry want to be sure they have some other fallback to protect themselves besides a horrible bandwidth infrastructure.
If broadband rollout goes as most people would like it to, in 5 years it will be no more difficult to send a DVD across the Internet than an MP3. Both the music industry and the movie industry want to be sure they have as good a DRM solution in place as they can get. Or, they want to make sure broadband rollout does not go as most people would like it to. Which is why the actions of illegal downloaders hurt both you and I (as well as the rest of the legal download and non-download communities).
Still stuck at 384Kbps up? Welcome to America: Most populous 3rd World Nation on the Internet.
And your point with the GPL. It has been argued on Slashdot before. A world without copyright would indeed ma
The real cause of music piracy is because a CD with 12 tracks isn't worth the money the labels are asking.
So ask yourself this: How many "CD with 12 tracks" worth of music which aren't "worth the money the labels are asking" do you keep around?
Remember that Copyright isn't about money. Copyright is about control. That's by design.
I'm betting, by your above statement, that you can at least understand the viewpoint of a 'music pirate' who downloads music rather than paying for it. Perhaps you've downloaded yourself?
If copyright control were perfect, meaning that if the record labels could enforce their copy right and prevent a music pirate from downloading the music for less, do you suspect most music pirates would be more likely to pay the price (and get the music) or not pay the price (and forgo the music)?
In each case where the former occurs, we can conclude you are wrong: people do feel the music is worth the money, and this is just a simple case of people breaking the law to steal music just because they can get away with it. They are deluding themselves with talk about how it costs too much.
In each case where the latter occurs, we can conclude that the record labels are trying to sell a product beyond it's price point (as you claim). Were it not for illegal downloaders, the music labels would quickly realize this (from lack of sales) and either lower their price point, or get better quality product.
But the reality is that illegal downloaders do exist. But it's a farce for them to claim their actions somehow serve the community. In the former case, they are clearly acting in their own monetary interest, and in the latter, they are masking the lack of quality product and forcing those who choose not to download illegally to accept a higher priced, and inferior product.
At least we can conclude that illegal downloaderd are at odds with legal downloaders.
We can expect such a situation to continue to exist until either a) all illegal downloads become impossible (the dream of DRM) or b) 'illegal' downloads become legal.
Those who advocate against the former (DRM) are therefore advocates for the latter. We should examine this more closely...
Does anyone here believe that even the complete elimination of copyright protection for musical works would mean the record labels would be prohibited from employing DRM? Clearly we aren't advocating that musicians must make their music available for free in an easy-to copy format. So it doesn't really matter what happens with copyright law, we are going to start seeing label-music DRM'd.
And while many believe that DRM can never be 100% effective, is anyone willing to say that DRM can be made 100% ineffective? We have already seen that DRM can make things messy. The best you can hope for here is a reduction (or elimination of) the labels themselves.
We could imagine a farsical world where, by law, if you have a Grateful Dead recording you can share it on the Internet with impunity, but where in order to get into a Grateful Dead concert, you'd have to contractually agree (which is to say enter into an agreement to abide by a private copy right law) not to record the concert, submit to searches for recording equipment, etc. And because the sharing of music on the Internet could not be prevented, the music companies would refuse to publish it in any form that might possibly make it onto the Internet, meaning their choosing not to sell their music in any format which is not DRM protected.
Look, if you want to be anti-label, that's your own call. All I'm saying is if you're just stealing (whoops, I meant downloading illegally) in your own self interest, you're not fooling anyone and you're not making any friends. And if you're downloading illegally to try to make a political point or force the industry into change, you'd be better off working with those of
I just can't understand why I seem to be the only one who recognizes events like these as opportunity.
Never before in the history of mankind have the custodians of one culture so clearly, unambiguously, and intentionally pulled their own culture aside to make way for a replacement. This is an opportunity pummeling us across the face. Why can't we see it?
Or maybe they've just got us so figured-out; if they tell us we can't have their lame-as-hell, out-dated, chocolate-fluff culture, we'll just want it all the more.
Peoples, please.
If the Guardians of Culture Past have decreed that we are not to share in the culture they created, let it be so. We need to create our own culture, and share it among ourselves in a way that the previous culture could only dream of. If they themselves have decreed that their culture is to be shared only by a few deserving, privleged, wealthy individuals, why do we argue so? Why do we keep complaining that they need to get a new business model; one that allows us to share in their culture. Have we no culture of our own?
Let their culture die, on 8-track tape and 78RPM vinyl, locked away in DRM-protected artifacts for DRM-protected artifacts that aren't even worth keeping in the attic for the grandkids. They are insisting we must. Surely they know the point of writing it down is to pass it along. Clearly they know something about their own culture they know shouldn't be passed along to the next generation. Perhaps we should be polite, and just not ask.
I might even miss some of their culture a bit. From what I heard, Glen Miller was pretty good. But I refuse to give up my culture for the opportunity to buy, borrow, or steal a piece of theirs. And it's not healthy for you to relinquish yours either.
Then how do you explain business' that act ethically (Google, Ben & Jerry's, etc) without external forces? Could it just be that ethics can be profitable too?
Civiculture Institutions (in this context we would include Religions, Governments, Corporations, Labor Unions, etc.) which destroy the civilization in which they exist do not survive that destruction. It is only by placing the survival of the civilization ahead of the survival of any individual entity within that civilization that civilization (and collectively, the individuals within it) can survive at all.
If we translate "ethics" so as to view ethical behavior as behavior which is beneficial to the civilization as a whole, and thus transitively beneficial to the individual (me) individually, then it's easy to see how any such institution, given a long-term focus, not only could but would make ethical choices.
On the other hand, it's only one species on this planet (and not every member of that species by a long shot) that is focused on building a civilization. Most of the creatures we know about subscribe to Kipling's Law Of The Jungle and view their own personal survival (and the survival of their direct genetic descendents) as of primary importance.
It has worked well for thousands of species over a couple hunderd million years or so. But it doesn't produce things like sustainable agriculture, Pioneer 11, or indoor plumbing.
I'll neither agree or disagree with your assertion that Google represents an "ethical" organization in this respect; I think it's way too early to make that call. But I would observe the following:
Google clearly needs an environment like the Internet for it's own survival. Long term. If you too would like to see the Internet survive, then you share a common goal with Google, and would likely view Google's actions which benefit the Internet to benefit you as well.
Google's actions indicate that it does not perceive itself to be immediately threatened by it's environment. If it did, it might be more stingy about where it spread the benefits of it's actions, and you might become one of those who would no longer be a beneficiary.
Bell South, in contrast, seems to be signalling very clearly that they perceive their own survival to be threatened. For them, this has become a Law Of The Jungle situation. Their actions may improve their own chance of survival as opposed to their peers, but it almost guarantees any such survival will be in a less civil, more jungle-like environment.
Clearly there's not enough entropy on a UPC label to endode a serial number, but many marginally expensive products are now being sold with a combination UPC code and RFID tag sticker which is not 'printed' onto the box but rather applied afterward. These tags do contain hundred-bit serial identifiers.
And while current applications for these are for inventory tracking alone, it would not be impossible or even unreasonable to combine a visual reader (for the UPC code) with an RFID reader to facilitate both ingress and egress inventory tracking.
The best they could do is identify which store the item was shipped to.
Manufacturers commonly track the production of non-commodity products (a laser printer would qualify) to the point where knowing the serial number of a unit would allow one to track which assembly line created it, which workers were on-shift during production, which loading dock, pallet, truvk, purchase order, and shipping number it would have been shipped under. That would likely not only get you to the store, but also give a timeframe.
If you honestly think that companies have the time and money to track things to that ability, you are crazy.
I may be crazy, but they sure are paying me well to be crazy, aren't they?
It would cost them *millions*, and benefit them zero. They would be fighting tooth and nail against any request by the government to do that.
Actually, it isn't the goverment requesting this tracking, it's Walmart (well, and others too). And it might be crazy, but that think it will give them a buck or two price advantage to be able to know, as they say, whether packaging style A sells better in Deluth than packaging style B.
That is it. Unless you file a warranty claim a company has no way to correltate that back to you, and really, they have no reason to waste money on that either.
It's correct that once they have your money, they usually don't care about you any more. Unless they have an opportunity to get more of your money (toner/ink cartridges), or there's some way you can get some of your money back from them (warranty service, device driver updates, recalls), or someone else with money gets involved. You might be surprised how expensive it can get to tell the Feds you won't cooperate with them.
The people that do not want their houses randomly searched must be hiding something, after all, why would they not want searched? I know, point taken to the extreme but where do you draw the line?
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
That seems like a reasonable place to draw one, if you ask me.
Why do you hold such disdain for someone who is successful, who has worked smarter or harder, or planned better than someone else?
You are promoting a pure meritocracy, which has some flaws you might not have considered.
Being successful does not always mean someone works smarter, or harder, or plans better, although there is a correlation. To the extent that someone can be considered more succseeful without working smarter or harder (generally without exhibiting any trait which we could classify as a merit) such a system fails. We see many such failures these days. Among them would be people who inherited their wealth, or gained it through illegal means, or were the beneficiary of illegal acts made by others. We might include lottery winners, and others who 'just got lucky', but I won't dispute that here as we could I suppose define 'lucky' as a merit.
And even when we agree someone performs with more merit, (works harder or smarter) we have to ask what they are working for. I think we'd agree a smart, hard-working and well plannning axe murderer would still gather our disdain. Even if a person is successful at making themselves rich (or prosperous, or successful, choose your term), why shouldn't I hold them in disdain if their actions don't serve to make me rich as well? After all, aren't I suppose to be looking for way's to make myself rich, just like everyone else?
Or, if that sounds just to blatantly selfish, perhaps I should ask "shouldn't we hold them in disdain if their actions don't serve to make everyone rich?"
Can you not reserve some of your disrespect for those poor people that neglected their educations, have never worked hard, have come to rely on the teat of the government instead of themselves, their family and friends?
First, call me a contrarian, but I view the very existence of one of these people to be a failure of the social structure itself. Should our first priority be to eliminate laziness and ingorance? Or should we start by eliminating hunger, homelessness and oppression? How do we go about eliminating laziness and ignorance without first eliminating hunger, homelessness and oppression? Do you really think anyone who is hungry, homeless, or oppressed and has the opportunity to escape by just giving up laziness and ignorance would choose to remain lazy or ignorant as well as hungry, homeless, or oppressed?
Second, we know a good education is often associated with both 'being successful' and 'improving the lives of others but it's still not a one-to-one correlation. Not everyone needs to have a 'good education' in order to contribute to a society. Should we force everyone to "get a good education"? I wonder how many improvements have been lost to the world through the forced 'education' of individuals according to the agenda of the day.
Third, it's not always "the teat of the government" being relied upon. In some parts of the world, where "government services" don't exist, it's the teat of a local religion which is er...um...providing the nourishment.
(But what I find very interesting is that you seem to feel it's not okay to sponge off the government, you're silent about sponging from charity, but it is okay to sponge off one's own family. This probably feels completely natural to you. I'll explain why next.)
Simply working "hard" doesn't mean you will -- or even deserve -- to strike it rich. That's lunacy. That's not the American dream. The American Dream is that the only one stopping you from being successful in America is yourself. That, and the bureaucrats.
In the true 'meritocracy' sense of Kiplings "Law of the Jungle", why isn't it considered fair game for me to be successful by means of stopping you from being successful? Or am I supposed to allow you to suck at the teat of success at my own expense, while my talent (s
Rejoice that your data can be "liberated" from the confines of your PC or iPod!
What do you mean your data?
Why can't you hear the message being sent? The content cartel is admitting the culture they created was a mistake and doing the best job they can to clear the way for the culture we are to create ourselves.
Create your own culture, and don't buy into the rules they setup for their own stuff. Then all the DRM and content control technology will just fall into history's dustbin with the old fogies who created it.
Precisely. Elections are not about which way an particular county leans. They're (supposed to be) about how the sum of the individuals actually voted. In another world, you'd tell me to go count the votes myself or shut the @#$@ up, and dismiss me as some paranoid loony until I can come back with evidence of fraud more convincing than the boxes of paper ballots themselves. But that option isn't available when all we have to discuss are speculation and assertion.
If it bugs you to have someone suggest that a candidate was either elected or defeated under fraudulent circumstances, your strategy should be clear; ensure that you can offer assertive proof (in the form of hard evidence) that it did not occur. We used to have that, we don't anymore.
The fact that Bush nearly carried a county that was heavily Democratic doesn't surprise me in the least bit. Factor in the fact that he was the incumbent and that NC is one of the reddest of the red states. It's not that big of a leap, hell, it's not a leap at all.
No, of course not. Completely reasonable. Absolutely to be expected. Happens every day. Why, I'm surprised the margin of victory wasn't even closer, we should have expected Bush to get even more votes than he did. Why, I would have expectd the vote spread to be no greater than four votes. Three even; yeah, I'll go so far as to say three votes.
Nothing to see here, just move along. Go back to sleep, nothing to see....
This doesn't surprise me much. It fits right in with TV 2.0.
The FEC is focusing on money not speech. They want to limit the amount of money which gets spent of promoting (or teashing) a candidate. For most of us (slashdot-freeloader-types) this won't mean anything, since you're posting on someone elses blog.
If you're running the blog, then the amount you spend to run it will be subject to the election regulations.
Thus it gets billed as a "anyone can say whatever they want to" non-infringing program, while the blogging sites become rarer, more tightly controlled, and (eventually) wind up being something only a major-party candidate can afford.
Second order effect: it becomes cheaper to trass the opponent on his site than to promote yourself on your own site, reinforcing the trend toward negative campaigning.
You misunderstand the problem. You are asking for proof of a rigged election, and I agree a rigged election is damaging to a democracy, but a rigged election is not the only thing which can damage a democracy. A voting populous which has lost confidence in the reliability of the voting process is as damaging to a democracy as the rigging of the election itself. And you don't need anyone to offer you proof that our confidence is shaken; your response to the orginal poster stands as that.
...there are a lot of good people running elections on the state and local level and they would be horrified and outraged if it was ever discovered that a vendor was rigging votes.
I'm sure they would be. I'm hoping they would be horrified and outraged even if it were their favored candidate who won. But you're putting an awful lot of reliance onto a system which appears to have been set up for the purpose of creating a riggable system. Electronic voting systems replace the evidence of a ballot with the testimony of a machine. And I for one cannot understand why we've suddenly decided, where voting is concerned, that testimony should be trusted as much as hard evidence. Consider:
This is a summary of voter registrations for 2004 in Chatham county North Carolina. It shows about 16K registered Democrats, about 9K registered Republicans, and about 6K unaffiliated or independent voters.
A reasonable person would conclude from these public records that Chatham county leans Democratic. Some might say heavily.
It wouldn't surprise anyone, then, when John Kerry carried the county, and the resultsfrom the election (forgive their broken HTML) show this to be the case. What's interesting is the vote summary. Kerry beat Bush by 5 votes.
Game theory teaches us that if you're planning to rig an election, you don't add votes in precincts where you will win, but rather in precincts where you will lose, with the goal of making the race close but still a loss. Your opponent is not going to ask for a recount in places where he won, especially if he only won by a small margin.
In the national election, it doesn't matter squat that John Kerry won Chatham county North Carolina, (except perhaps to placate those Dems living in Chatham); the only thing that matters in the presidental election is who had the overall greatest vote.
Why don't you go out in the World and try to convince the half of your neighbors that don't bother to vote that it would be worthwhile.
I applaude you sentiment, but perhaps now you can understand how even a plan such as this is dependent on a trustable balloting system. Perhaps the non-voting half were convinced in the last election, and we're where we are today anyway.
But as for proof, I can no more offer evidence that the vote was rigged than I can offer evidence that it wasn't. And that should concen both the winners and the losers.
But, seriously, does the car run if the On Star stuff is disconnected or disabled, or is there an anti-theft measure there to keep you from disabling it?
I don't know, as I haven't seen one myself. But I suspect they wouldn't implement it like that anyway.
More likely, they'd tie other functions of the car into the Onstar system in a way more difficult to disconnct than just a power wire.
For example, they could "save money" by using the same microporcessor for the On Star stuff as they use for the ignition control or the anti-lock brakes. Or put the On Star box in control of the audio system; you'd be welcome to disable the On Star, but you lose the sound system.
They could link it through the financial layer by requiring continued subscription to On Star in order to keep your warranty in place, saying that they have to spy on the maintenance state of your car in order to protect their interests.
Or, give it the force of law by tying it into the emmisions system.
The old way of 'securing' something (in this case, we're presuming they have an interest in securing the continued operation of their equipment in your car, but the theory is more generally applicable) involved building inpenetratable walls at the edges. The new way is to tie things you care about to things they care about; sell "integrated systems" and make the operation of everything unstable if the piece you care about gets excluded.
The analogies to Microsoft's practices with their operating system and applications are left to the reader.
Pity the fool who puts extra-strong locks on his door, then gets mugged in the park.
More correct to say, if you don't pay, they are no longer obligated to maintain the service. Unlike your phone-line analogy, there doesn't seem to be a way to 'pull the plug' on their connectivity.
Who then decides how this money gets doled out to the artists, for one thing? And how does this model work for movies, when they cost millions of dollars to produce?
The suggestion (a 'connection' tax to reimburse artists) is not well thought-out. I'd go so far as to say it's dangerous to the GPL itself.
One of the few classes of 'authors and artists' who are not granted full control of their work through copyright law are musicians. Their control is subordinated through a compulsory license, whereby anyone who pays this 'compulsory fee' is free to use their creations in limited ways, even against their wishes.
A 'connection tax to reimburse artists' would quickly morph into a compulsory license for all types of digital content on the Internet, including graphic images, web pages, java applets, and finally code.
At that point, licensing restrictions like those in the GPL would have no legal backing: copyright law (on which the strength of the GPL is dependent) offers no control to a copyright holder once a compulsory license comes into effect. A certain company in Redmond would be as free to use Free Software as anyone else, once they've paid the compulsory license. Of course the reverse would also be true: you'd be free (having paid the mandatory 'connection tax' to redistribute copies of (DRM-protected, and therefore useless without a seperate license key) Windows and DRM-protected movie files all you want, and the copyright holders will only thank you for reducing their distribution costs.
That someone from the Free Software Foundation Europe would even suggest this gives me the shivvers. Any creation which becomes covered by a compulsory license is beyond help from something like the GPL, because the GPL depends on the control copyright law grants to the author.
I recommend we all think very carefully before buying into any plan which takes control away from the creators in exchange for payment. Free software is not a payment game, and the moment it becomes one is the moment it dies.
In a free society the public domain will never die. It's part of our culture. There will come a point when things get so bad that people will just stop caring about the lawyers and self-righteous extremism.
I have to agree with you. You are right, despite the fact you don't really understand what you're talking about.
In a truly free society, nobody cares about things like laws, which, after all, are just restrictions we place on people's freedoms to maintain order. In a free society, copying will occur whereever it can, and will be stopped only where the copyright owner can muster enough brute force (through things like DRM) to keep it from happening. People will take what they need from whatever and whereever they can geti it, and probably still complain that the people who insist on owning their works are not creating enough, charging too much, not making what is available in a format they want, and so on.
Although, things aren't so great right now, and will probably get worse before they get better.
Case in point: New Orleans. Talk about a free society. I hear you don't have to care about such silly things like lawyers and self-righteous extremism down there. You're welcome to take whatever you want from whomever you want. (Well, unless the rightful owner can muster enough brute force to stop you.) And like I've predicted, people are complaining that what is available isn't enough, or costs too much, or isn't available in the time or place where they want it. Mind you, they're all free to move whatever they can get to whereever they want, and they likely won't even get slapped with C&D order for doing so.
Yup. If you're looking for a truly free society, New Orleans is truly the land of the free. Anybody up for a road trip?
There is a difference between freedom and liberty. Freedom is something every creature on this planet is born with; the freedom live, to defend oneself, to shiver in the cold, or to die of starvation when food runs out. It is not something we fight for, or earn, or even have to defend. And contrary to the popular saying, freedom is free.
Liberty, on the other hand, is not something we have, it is something we grant to others. It's a concept which exists only within the context of civilization, and thus is what makes (some of) us humans unique among the creatures on this planet.
So you are correct, in a free society the public domain will never die, but now I'm not so sure I'd want to live in that kind of free society. I think I'd rather live in a liberated society, where copyright owners grant me the ability to make copies of their works (even though they could prevent me from doing so) and in return I choose to not spill copies of those works onto KaZaA, even though I have the freedom to do so.
And I agree that things are likely going to have to get much worse before people realize that it isn't really freedom they're after, but liberty. And the road to liberty lies not in being stronger or smarter or richer or better armed than the next guy, but in being more committed to his liberty in hopes he will in turn be comitted to yours.
Then again, this civilization thing really is a fairly new and untried concept. Maybe some people would prefer to live like animals.
Slashdot Mirror
You may be missing some subtlties of the ruling.
First, this is not about the actions of a teacher, but the actions of a School Board.
Second, the judge did not say Intelligent Design could not be taught. The judge said it could not be taught as a part of a science cirriculum.
Third, the judge specifically cited the hidden agenda of the school board in promoting Intelligent Design as a stand-in for promoting Creationism.
The Constitution does not ban the teaching of religious principles in public school, it bans the State from the establishment of a religion. I don't think there would be a problem with having Intelligent Design taught in a public school, but it seems like the only people with an interest in having Intelligent Design taught in the public schools are religious zealots who disagree with the concept of a State allowing religious freedom.
Are you familiar with the concept of a tyranny of the majority? You speak highly of free speech, but seem entirely unfamiliar with the works of John Stuart Mill.
Agreed, but remember that science does not deal with truth; the truth is something only believers can possess.
But now we're getting way too deep into philosophy, even for Slashdot.
This is incorrect.
In order for something to qualify as a scientific theory, it must be predictive, must be testable, and (of course) must avoid falsification.
Intelligent Design, the belief that the creation of certain things was by intent, is not predictive. It does not allow us to predict anything. It is not testable, and therefore cannot be falsified.
This does not say anything about it's value as part of a system of belief. But it does clearly say that such a concept has no place in a science cirriculum.
If we take the contemporary Western definition of a Religion as only including those beliefs which include the worship of a diety, then atheism, or "the belief that those that believe in a creator are wrong" would not be considered a religious belief, and therefore would be considered acceptable in a public school system. But I don't think this definition of Religion would hold up to Supreme Court scrutiny. (Of couse my opinion ain't worth squat here...)
The more traditional definition of Religion relates to all beliefs which cannot be substantiated by science, which is (I think) the view the Supreme Court would take. In this case, a public school directive to teach athesim might well be found to violate the First Amendment prohibitions against the establishment of a religion.
Science is not about proving anything; perhaps you're thinking about mathematics? Everyone agrees that evolution is a theory, everyone expects the theory to be imperfect, but nonetheless useful. No one is requiring any public school student to believe (or, to have faith in) evolution, only that they be able to pass a standardized test on the subject.
In a nutshell, once you've passed the packet off to their network, they can treat it based on any criteria they choose. Current products allow traffic shaping based on protocol, port, source or destination, arrival rate (how much bandwidth you're using), claimed protocol, Quality-Of-Service (QOS) agreements, etc.
And, yes, you can 'tunnel' your data or encrypt it, but that's not really a solution in all cases (as you point out) and they can easily work around that by appropriate language in their terms-of-service.
The ultimate model, however, is to create a network where the endpoints are their own hardware. This is the model followed by cell-phone companies, and the X-Box, for example.
Which means, first, that you will be paying more for the freedom from such "evil".
And second, that you will find yourself in the company of spammers and bandwidth hogs, and other sorts of people who are unable to use such an 'evil' ISP,
and third, that you may find your IP address blacklisted by the larger, "evil" ISP's, leaving you completely free to use any service, but unable to get a packet off your beloved "non-evil" ISP>
And, yes, those "evil" ISP have already thought this through completely.
Was this an intentional play on words?
For the most part, communication is naturally deregulated, meaning there are no natural laws which prevent you from saying anything you want. For cases where political pressure could be exerted to restrict your freedom to communicate, the first amendment applys.
But the kind of communication we're talking about here (the kind the FCC was established to regulate) is not naturally deregulated. When you telecommunicate, that is to say, communicate over a distance, using wires, or radio waves, etc. you are making use of a public resource. This is not to say the infrastructure (wires, routers, etc) are public, they aren't; they're private. But you're either using the airwaves (held jointly by us all) or communicating over wires which are strung on poles and buried in the ground on the public right-of-way. You need to begin by understanding that.
The "Internet" that we have today is not the result of something that happened around 1995 or so. It took nearly 150 years of raising poles and stringiing copper to get a world-wide communication network. The only part of the Internet that happened within a decade of 1995 was the cost reduction in computers and modems which made them available to the average joe. The Internet was built (and is still being built) on top of the Telephone system. And the Telephone system would never have evolved to the state it did without regulation.
But probably not the kind of regulation you are thinking of.
The key regulation which made the phone system work was the Common Carrier regulations (yup, courtsey of our very own FCC) which brutally forced those who wanted to provide telecommunication services (AT&T) to treat every connection as equal to every other connection, regardless of the potential profit to the carrier. The freedom to communicate (to call whoever you want, talk as long as you want, about whatever topic you want) you believe exists in the telephone network (and was carried over culturally to the Internet) exists only because of the Common Carrier laws.
Is that a freedom from or a freedom to kind of anarchy?
It's also how anarchy works. Your speech is already free to go as far as you send it. But just as soon as it crosses onto property which is partially mine, I'm free to stop it, or jack up the price. In this case, your vaunted free-market-economics combined with Metcalfe's law will ensure you have only one telecommunications provider, since whoever gains 51% first will be able to cut off every other compettitor.
Seconded.
We may have to disagree here on several points.
Suppose a publisher chose to offer a low-bitrate copy for $1.00 and a higher-bit rate copy for $2.00. Should purchasers of the low-bit rate copy consider themselves entitled to download a higher bit-rate copy? Does their entitlement change if the publisher is the artist herself? What if the publisher is the artist's husband? A close friend?
We can characterize all music publishers as evil, and such a characterization might be true for all I know. But we must acknowledge that the artists themselves selected that mechanism for the publishing of their work. Maybe they made a stupid chioce; if so, it is their responsibility to fix the problem. For us to arbitrarily decide for them what constitutes a "fair payment", or charge their publisher as a thief, or decide what they intended when they signed on with a publisher is disrespectful to to the artist, to say the least.
It's also in direct conflict with your original argument: that if a publisher increased the quality (I assume the offering of "...a clean FLAC or high bitrate MP3 rip..." constitutes an improvement over "...a CD loaded with crapware..." in your opinion) you might be willing to pay more. You comment here seems to indicate that you don't consider there to be anything wrong with people receiving the higher quality product wether they have or have not purchased the lower quality one. It almost sounds as if the mere offering of a lower-quality product stands as justification to steal the higher quality one. Was this what you were intending to say?
Or are you saying the act of selling a CD is a crime comparable to that of theft, and as punishemnt, the perpretrator should be subject to having anything he owns, wether offered for sale or not, stolen by the online community with impunity?
If I am the artist, and I'm offering a free download from my website simply to drive web-ad revenue then downloading does generate revenue for me. How much? Maybe enough; that's for me to decide, isn't it? If anyone thinks they have a way for me to get significantly more value out of my works without losing anything important to me, they should give me a call. If it's really a good deal, I'll cut them in on a share of the profits. But for them to decide they know better than I do how my stuff should be distributed, without respecting my wishes, is inconcievable.
There's a side to this you're missing:
I know someone who's hearing was injured in an accident. He has no hearing in one ear and his hearing in the other is moderately damaged. He still likes to listen to music, but it has to be in mono (as opposed to stereo, otherwise listening on headphones is like listening to a stereo with one speaker wire clipped) and he can't tell the difference between a high bit rate encoding and a low bit rate one. For him, the highest value recording is a mono, low bit rate, highly compressed MP3 so he can fit the widest selection on the MP3 player. Now we can argue about the morality of an artist charging more for a low
The word analog, originally analogue or the Greek original analogos is defined to mean something that is analogous or similar to something else according to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.
Contrast to the word duplicate.
So something pulled through the "analog hole" can never be a 100% perfect copy. And yes, that is by definition.
But the original question was not wether DRM could be 100% effective at preventing copies, but wether it would ever be 100% ineffective at preventing copies. Even a DRM system that can be bypassed by holding down the shift key as you insert the disk isn't 100% ineffective as it forces the user to hold the shift key.
My point was that by forcing the use of DRM, even 99% ineffective DRM, we are creating a lose-lose situation.
Then don't buy it.
I don't recall doing that. I criticize anyone who downloads illegally.
Then I presume you don't download illegally. Nothing to criticize here.
Most artists are adults. They can decide for themselves wether a deal offered by a label is right for them. I'd feel sorry for the artists if their options for exploiting their talent is limited by unfair practices by the labels. But illegally downloading their label-sponsored music does not seem to help expand their options much.
I'd rather work to expand their options.
With all due respect, you are apparently not one of their customers (or at least not a very profitable one, it would seem), so why should they listen to you? More to the point: how can they listen to you?
Oh the music industry gets it, alright. Not for a second do they miss the relationship between CD and $0, between DRM'd DVD and $80. Your point here makes it clear. It's easy to rip a track off a CD, and share it across the internet, and you spend nothing on CD's over 5 years. Their profit=$0. Not so with DVD's. Their profit=some portion of $80. It doesn't matter to the music industry (because it's not visible to them) whether your actions and their profit are related. They don't know what it takes to get your money, because you're not one of their customers. But they do know if you wanted their product you wouldn't have to buy it, because you could download it off the Internet. And they do know they're not getting your dollars. You can't blame them for making this connection: it's the only data they have.
If you couldn't (for whatever reason) get their stuff except through them, and you still didn't buy, they'd start looking at price, or quality, or whatever. But you can, so thinking along these lines is pointless.
The music industry realizes they missed the ball by not finding a way to keep their stuff off the Internet. The movie industry is thankful movie sharing is not as big (they don't think) as music sharing. They attribute this partially to file size/bandwidth, and partially to the DRM'd nature of DVD's. Both the music industry and the movie industry want to be sure they have some other fallback to protect themselves besides a horrible bandwidth infrastructure.
If broadband rollout goes as most people would like it to, in 5 years it will be no more difficult to send a DVD across the Internet than an MP3. Both the music industry and the movie industry want to be sure they have as good a DRM solution in place as they can get. Or, they want to make sure broadband rollout does not go as most people would like it to. Which is why the actions of illegal downloaders hurt both you and I (as well as the rest of the legal download and non-download communities).
Still stuck at 384Kbps up? Welcome to America: Most populous 3rd World Nation on the Internet.
So ask yourself this: How many "CD with 12 tracks" worth of music which aren't "worth the money the labels are asking" do you keep around?
Remember that Copyright isn't about money. Copyright is about control. That's by design.
I'm betting, by your above statement, that you can at least understand the viewpoint of a 'music pirate' who downloads music rather than paying for it. Perhaps you've downloaded yourself?
If copyright control were perfect, meaning that if the record labels could enforce their copy right and prevent a music pirate from downloading the music for less, do you suspect most music pirates would be more likely to pay the price (and get the music) or not pay the price (and forgo the music)?
In each case where the former occurs, we can conclude you are wrong: people do feel the music is worth the money, and this is just a simple case of people breaking the law to steal music just because they can get away with it. They are deluding themselves with talk about how it costs too much.
In each case where the latter occurs, we can conclude that the record labels are trying to sell a product beyond it's price point (as you claim). Were it not for illegal downloaders, the music labels would quickly realize this (from lack of sales) and either lower their price point, or get better quality product.
But the reality is that illegal downloaders do exist. But it's a farce for them to claim their actions somehow serve the community. In the former case, they are clearly acting in their own monetary interest, and in the latter, they are masking the lack of quality product and forcing those who choose not to download illegally to accept a higher priced, and inferior product.
At least we can conclude that illegal downloaderd are at odds with legal downloaders.
We can expect such a situation to continue to exist until either a) all illegal downloads become impossible (the dream of DRM) or b) 'illegal' downloads become legal.
Those who advocate against the former (DRM) are therefore advocates for the latter. We should examine this more closely...
Does anyone here believe that even the complete elimination of copyright protection for musical works would mean the record labels would be prohibited from employing DRM? Clearly we aren't advocating that musicians must make their music available for free in an easy-to copy format. So it doesn't really matter what happens with copyright law, we are going to start seeing label-music DRM'd.
And while many believe that DRM can never be 100% effective, is anyone willing to say that DRM can be made 100% ineffective? We have already seen that DRM can make things messy. The best you can hope for here is a reduction (or elimination of) the labels themselves.
We could imagine a farsical world where, by law, if you have a Grateful Dead recording you can share it on the Internet with impunity, but where in order to get into a Grateful Dead concert, you'd have to contractually agree (which is to say enter into an agreement to abide by a private copy right law) not to record the concert, submit to searches for recording equipment, etc. And because the sharing of music on the Internet could not be prevented, the music companies would refuse to publish it in any form that might possibly make it onto the Internet, meaning their choosing not to sell their music in any format which is not DRM protected.
Look, if you want to be anti-label, that's your own call. All I'm saying is if you're just stealing (whoops, I meant downloading illegally) in your own self interest, you're not fooling anyone and you're not making any friends. And if you're downloading illegally to try to make a political point or force the industry into change, you'd be better off working with those of
Never before in the history of mankind have the custodians of one culture so clearly, unambiguously, and intentionally pulled their own culture aside to make way for a replacement. This is an opportunity pummeling us across the face. Why can't we see it?
Or maybe they've just got us so figured-out; if they tell us we can't have their lame-as-hell, out-dated, chocolate-fluff culture, we'll just want it all the more.
Peoples, please.
If the Guardians of Culture Past have decreed that we are not to share in the culture they created, let it be so. We need to create our own culture, and share it among ourselves in a way that the previous culture could only dream of. If they themselves have decreed that their culture is to be shared only by a few deserving, privleged, wealthy individuals, why do we argue so? Why do we keep complaining that they need to get a new business model; one that allows us to share in their culture. Have we no culture of our own?
Let their culture die, on 8-track tape and 78RPM vinyl, locked away in DRM-protected artifacts for DRM-protected artifacts that aren't even worth keeping in the attic for the grandkids. They are insisting we must. Surely they know the point of writing it down is to pass it along. Clearly they know something about their own culture they know shouldn't be passed along to the next generation. Perhaps we should be polite, and just not ask.
I might even miss some of their culture a bit. From what I heard, Glen Miller was pretty good. But I refuse to give up my culture for the opportunity to buy, borrow, or steal a piece of theirs. And it's not healthy for you to relinquish yours either.
Civiculture Institutions (in this context we would include Religions, Governments, Corporations, Labor Unions, etc.) which destroy the civilization in which they exist do not survive that destruction. It is only by placing the survival of the civilization ahead of the survival of any individual entity within that civilization that civilization (and collectively, the individuals within it) can survive at all.
If we translate "ethics" so as to view ethical behavior as behavior which is beneficial to the civilization as a whole, and thus transitively beneficial to the individual (me) individually, then it's easy to see how any such institution, given a long-term focus, not only could but would make ethical choices.
On the other hand, it's only one species on this planet (and not every member of that species by a long shot) that is focused on building a civilization. Most of the creatures we know about subscribe to Kipling's Law Of The Jungle and view their own personal survival (and the survival of their direct genetic descendents) as of primary importance.
It has worked well for thousands of species over a couple hunderd million years or so. But it doesn't produce things like sustainable agriculture, Pioneer 11, or indoor plumbing.
I'll neither agree or disagree with your assertion that Google represents an "ethical" organization in this respect; I think it's way too early to make that call. But I would observe the following:
Google clearly needs an environment like the Internet for it's own survival. Long term. If you too would like to see the Internet survive, then you share a common goal with Google, and would likely view Google's actions which benefit the Internet to benefit you as well.
Google's actions indicate that it does not perceive itself to be immediately threatened by it's environment. If it did, it might be more stingy about where it spread the benefits of it's actions, and you might become one of those who would no longer be a beneficiary.
Bell South, in contrast, seems to be signalling very clearly that they perceive their own survival to be threatened. For them, this has become a Law Of The Jungle situation. Their actions may improve their own chance of survival as opposed to their peers, but it almost guarantees any such survival will be in a less civil, more jungle-like environment.
Identifying a business as being "smaller" and "more ethical" than "big evil corporations" doesn't really add that much to the conversation.
It's not a questiuon of wether a business is better than the worst, but rather a question of "good enough"
How ethical should a business be before we grant it continued existence in our society? How ethical a person?
This is true. But it's also very misleading.
Have you ever seen one of these?
Clearly there's not enough entropy on a UPC label to endode a serial number, but many marginally expensive products are now being sold with a combination UPC code and RFID tag sticker which is not 'printed' onto the box but rather applied afterward. These tags do contain hundred-bit serial identifiers.
And while current applications for these are for inventory tracking alone, it would not be impossible or even unreasonable to combine a visual reader (for the UPC code) with an RFID reader to facilitate both ingress and egress inventory tracking.
Manufacturers commonly track the production of non-commodity products (a laser printer would qualify) to the point where knowing the serial number of a unit would allow one to track which assembly line created it, which workers were on-shift during production, which loading dock, pallet, truvk, purchase order, and shipping number it would have been shipped under. That would likely not only get you to the store, but also give a timeframe.
I may be crazy, but they sure are paying me well to be crazy, aren't they?
Actually, it isn't the goverment requesting this tracking, it's Walmart (well, and others too). And it might be crazy, but that think it will give them a buck or two price advantage to be able to know, as they say, whether packaging style A sells better in Deluth than packaging style B.
It's correct that once they have your money, they usually don't care about you any more. Unless they have an opportunity to get more of your money (toner/ink cartridges), or there's some way you can get some of your money back from them (warranty service, device driver updates, recalls), or someone else with money gets involved. You might be surprised how expensive it can get to tell the Feds you won't cooperate with them.
That seems like a reasonable place to draw one, if you ask me.
You are promoting a pure meritocracy, which has some flaws you might not have considered.
Being successful does not always mean someone works smarter, or harder, or plans better, although there is a correlation. To the extent that someone can be considered more succseeful without working smarter or harder (generally without exhibiting any trait which we could classify as a merit) such a system fails. We see many such failures these days. Among them would be people who inherited their wealth, or gained it through illegal means, or were the beneficiary of illegal acts made by others. We might include lottery winners, and others who 'just got lucky', but I won't dispute that here as we could I suppose define 'lucky' as a merit.
And even when we agree someone performs with more merit, (works harder or smarter) we have to ask what they are working for. I think we'd agree a smart, hard-working and well plannning axe murderer would still gather our disdain. Even if a person is successful at making themselves rich (or prosperous, or successful, choose your term), why shouldn't I hold them in disdain if their actions don't serve to make me rich as well? After all, aren't I suppose to be looking for way's to make myself rich, just like everyone else?
Or, if that sounds just to blatantly selfish, perhaps I should ask "shouldn't we hold them in disdain if their actions don't serve to make everyone rich?"
First, call me a contrarian, but I view the very existence of one of these people to be a failure of the social structure itself. Should our first priority be to eliminate laziness and ingorance? Or should we start by eliminating hunger, homelessness and oppression? How do we go about eliminating laziness and ignorance without first eliminating hunger, homelessness and oppression? Do you really think anyone who is hungry, homeless, or oppressed and has the opportunity to escape by just giving up laziness and ignorance would choose to remain lazy or ignorant as well as hungry, homeless, or oppressed?
Second, we know a good education is often associated with both 'being successful' and 'improving the lives of others but it's still not a one-to-one correlation. Not everyone needs to have a 'good education' in order to contribute to a society. Should we force everyone to "get a good education"? I wonder how many improvements have been lost to the world through the forced 'education' of individuals according to the agenda of the day.
Third, it's not always "the teat of the government" being relied upon. In some parts of the world, where "government services" don't exist, it's the teat of a local religion which is er...um...providing the nourishment.
(But what I find very interesting is that you seem to feel it's not okay to sponge off the government, you're silent about sponging from charity, but it is okay to sponge off one's own family. This probably feels completely natural to you. I'll explain why next.)
In the true 'meritocracy' sense of Kiplings "Law of the Jungle", why isn't it considered fair game for me to be successful by means of stopping you from being successful? Or am I supposed to allow you to suck at the teat of success at my own expense, while my talent (s
What do you mean your data?
Why can't you hear the message being sent? The content cartel is admitting the culture they created was a mistake and doing the best job they can to clear the way for the culture we are to create ourselves.
Create your own culture, and don't buy into the rules they setup for their own stuff. Then all the DRM and content control technology will just fall into history's dustbin with the old fogies who created it.
Precisely. Elections are not about which way an particular county leans. They're (supposed to be) about how the sum of the individuals actually voted. In another world, you'd tell me to go count the votes myself or shut the @#$@ up, and dismiss me as some paranoid loony until I can come back with evidence of fraud more convincing than the boxes of paper ballots themselves. But that option isn't available when all we have to discuss are speculation and assertion.
If it bugs you to have someone suggest that a candidate was either elected or defeated under fraudulent circumstances, your strategy should be clear; ensure that you can offer assertive proof (in the form of hard evidence) that it did not occur. We used to have that, we don't anymore.
No, of course not. Completely reasonable. Absolutely to be expected. Happens every day. Why, I'm surprised the margin of victory wasn't even closer, we should have expected Bush to get even more votes than he did. Why, I would have expectd the vote spread to be no greater than four votes. Three even; yeah, I'll go so far as to say three votes.
Nothing to see here, just move along. Go back to sleep, nothing to see....
The FEC is focusing on money not speech. They want to limit the amount of money which gets spent of promoting (or teashing) a candidate. For most of us (slashdot-freeloader-types) this won't mean anything, since you're posting on someone elses blog.
If you're running the blog, then the amount you spend to run it will be subject to the election regulations.
Thus it gets billed as a "anyone can say whatever they want to" non-infringing program, while the blogging sites become rarer, more tightly controlled, and (eventually) wind up being something only a major-party candidate can afford.
Second order effect: it becomes cheaper to trass the opponent on his site than to promote yourself on your own site, reinforcing the trend toward negative campaigning.
You misunderstand the problem. You are asking for proof of a rigged election, and I agree a rigged election is damaging to a democracy, but a rigged election is not the only thing which can damage a democracy. A voting populous which has lost confidence in the reliability of the voting process is as damaging to a democracy as the rigging of the election itself. And you don't need anyone to offer you proof that our confidence is shaken; your response to the orginal poster stands as that.
I'm sure they would be. I'm hoping they would be horrified and outraged even if it were their favored candidate who won. But you're putting an awful lot of reliance onto a system which appears to have been set up for the purpose of creating a riggable system. Electronic voting systems replace the evidence of a ballot with the testimony of a machine. And I for one cannot understand why we've suddenly decided, where voting is concerned, that testimony should be trusted as much as hard evidence. Consider:
This is a summary of voter registrations for 2004 in Chatham county North Carolina. It shows about 16K registered Democrats, about 9K registered Republicans, and about 6K unaffiliated or independent voters.
A reasonable person would conclude from these public records that Chatham county leans Democratic. Some might say heavily.
It wouldn't surprise anyone, then, when John Kerry carried the county, and the resultsfrom the election (forgive their broken HTML) show this to be the case. What's interesting is the vote summary. Kerry beat Bush by 5 votes.
Game theory teaches us that if you're planning to rig an election, you don't add votes in precincts where you will win, but rather in precincts where you will lose, with the goal of making the race close but still a loss. Your opponent is not going to ask for a recount in places where he won, especially if he only won by a small margin.
In the national election, it doesn't matter squat that John Kerry won Chatham county North Carolina, (except perhaps to placate those Dems living in Chatham); the only thing that matters in the presidental election is who had the overall greatest vote.
I applaude you sentiment, but perhaps now you can understand how even a plan such as this is dependent on a trustable balloting system. Perhaps the non-voting half were convinced in the last election, and we're where we are today anyway.
But as for proof, I can no more offer evidence that the vote was rigged than I can offer evidence that it wasn't. And that should concen both the winners and the losers.
I don't know, as I haven't seen one myself. But I suspect they wouldn't implement it like that anyway.
More likely, they'd tie other functions of the car into the Onstar system in a way more difficult to disconnct than just a power wire.
For example, they could "save money" by using the same microporcessor for the On Star stuff as they use for the ignition control or the anti-lock brakes. Or put the On Star box in control of the audio system; you'd be welcome to disable the On Star, but you lose the sound system.
They could link it through the financial layer by requiring continued subscription to On Star in order to keep your warranty in place, saying that they have to spy on the maintenance state of your car in order to protect their interests.
Or, give it the force of law by tying it into the emmisions system.
The old way of 'securing' something (in this case, we're presuming they have an interest in securing the continued operation of their equipment in your car, but the theory is more generally applicable) involved building inpenetratable walls at the edges. The new way is to tie things you care about to things they care about; sell "integrated systems" and make the operation of everything unstable if the piece you care about gets excluded.
The analogies to Microsoft's practices with their operating system and applications are left to the reader.
Pity the fool who puts extra-strong locks on his door, then gets mugged in the park.
More correct to say, if you don't pay, they are no longer obligated to maintain the service. Unlike your phone-line analogy, there doesn't seem to be a way to 'pull the plug' on their connectivity.
The suggestion (a 'connection' tax to reimburse artists) is not well thought-out. I'd go so far as to say it's dangerous to the GPL itself.
One of the few classes of 'authors and artists' who are not granted full control of their work through copyright law are musicians. Their control is subordinated through a compulsory license, whereby anyone who pays this 'compulsory fee' is free to use their creations in limited ways, even against their wishes.
A 'connection tax to reimburse artists' would quickly morph into a compulsory license for all types of digital content on the Internet, including graphic images, web pages, java applets, and finally code.
At that point, licensing restrictions like those in the GPL would have no legal backing: copyright law (on which the strength of the GPL is dependent) offers no control to a copyright holder once a compulsory license comes into effect. A certain company in Redmond would be as free to use Free Software as anyone else, once they've paid the compulsory license. Of course the reverse would also be true: you'd be free (having paid the mandatory 'connection tax' to redistribute copies of (DRM-protected, and therefore useless without a seperate license key) Windows and DRM-protected movie files all you want, and the copyright holders will only thank you for reducing their distribution costs.
That someone from the Free Software Foundation Europe would even suggest this gives me the shivvers. Any creation which becomes covered by a compulsory license is beyond help from something like the GPL, because the GPL depends on the control copyright law grants to the author.
I recommend we all think very carefully before buying into any plan which takes control away from the creators in exchange for payment. Free software is not a payment game, and the moment it becomes one is the moment it dies.
I have to agree with you. You are right, despite the fact you don't really understand what you're talking about.
In a truly free society, nobody cares about things like laws, which, after all, are just restrictions we place on people's freedoms to maintain order. In a free society, copying will occur whereever it can, and will be stopped only where the copyright owner can muster enough brute force (through things like DRM) to keep it from happening. People will take what they need from whatever and whereever they can geti it, and probably still complain that the people who insist on owning their works are not creating enough, charging too much, not making what is available in a format they want, and so on.
Case in point: New Orleans. Talk about a free society. I hear you don't have to care about such silly things like lawyers and self-righteous extremism down there. You're welcome to take whatever you want from whomever you want. (Well, unless the rightful owner can muster enough brute force to stop you.) And like I've predicted, people are complaining that what is available isn't enough, or costs too much, or isn't available in the time or place where they want it. Mind you, they're all free to move whatever they can get to whereever they want, and they likely won't even get slapped with C&D order for doing so.
Yup. If you're looking for a truly free society, New Orleans is truly the land of the free. Anybody up for a road trip?
There is a difference between freedom and liberty. Freedom is something every creature on this planet is born with; the freedom live, to defend oneself, to shiver in the cold, or to die of starvation when food runs out. It is not something we fight for, or earn, or even have to defend. And contrary to the popular saying, freedom is free.
Liberty, on the other hand, is not something we have, it is something we grant to others. It's a concept which exists only within the context of civilization, and thus is what makes (some of) us humans unique among the creatures on this planet.
So you are correct, in a free society the public domain will never die, but now I'm not so sure I'd want to live in that kind of free society. I think I'd rather live in a liberated society, where copyright owners grant me the ability to make copies of their works (even though they could prevent me from doing so) and in return I choose to not spill copies of those works onto KaZaA, even though I have the freedom to do so.
And I agree that things are likely going to have to get much worse before people realize that it isn't really freedom they're after, but liberty. And the road to liberty lies not in being stronger or smarter or richer or better armed than the next guy, but in being more committed to his liberty in hopes he will in turn be comitted to yours.
Then again, this civilization thing really is a fairly new and untried concept. Maybe some people would prefer to live like animals.