Re:Shooting them down? I think there is a treaty..
on
Space Wars
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· Score: 2
I wasn't trying to imply that we wouldn't do it.:)
We just wouldn't do it publicly.
I was in the military for a time, and I can attest that we have "better stuff" though I can't tell you exactly what kind of better stuff we have now.:)
But, I saw the AC-130U (and directed some fire missions with it) long before any civilians did:)
That's just a small piece.
Re:Shooting them down? I think there is a treaty..
on
Space Wars
·
· Score: 2
Ahh yes, that looks familiar. Was this or a treaty like this ever ratified?
Thanks for the answer though.
The moron who moderated me down obviously couldn't see this subtle question in my original post. I earned my +2, damnit, whether or not some jerk thinks my post is overrated. Grrr.
Shooting them down? I think there is a treaty...
on
Space Wars
·
· Score: 1
I think there is a treaty that prevents this. I'm not sure entirely what it is called, or I'd post a link.
Unfortunately I have to go back to class, so don't have time to look just yet.
Mostly I am playing devil's advocate here to solicit responses, and yours is the one that strikes me as worth responding to:
Rather than argue terminology, let us apply your logic to some unpleasant situations that are probably not so self-advantageous to the music "pirate":
Proposed defense lines:
"Virginity is not a tangible thing. When I raped that little boy I didn't take anything from him. He's still got everything he had before I touched him."
"Since the bruises I gave her healed, my girlfriend is in exactly the same condition she was in before I hit her. Consequently, no damage was done."
"Identity is an intangible thing. Just because I used your name, and your social security number, doesn't mean you've lost anything. You still have them both."
Or, a couple of real ones that piss a lot of people off:
"Land value is an intangible thing. Just because I trashed my yard and consequently lowered the appraised value of yours doesn't mean I've done anything to you. You still have everything you had before."
"Land value is an intangible thing. Just because we regulated you out of using it for any reason doesn't mean you've lost anything. You still own the land."
Trying to play the "definition game" is a bullshit defense of obviously immoral action.
We'll use our now-agreed upon painting example. The artist put a lot of time into creating that painting. Many hours of effort. That painting has value because it is unique, that is, in limited quantity. For this example, that quantity is one. At least, it is until someone duplicates it. The mere act of duplication has now doubled the number of exact paintings in the example, and has consequently devalued the original.
The simple act of copying has devalued the painting. Even though you are correct in that the original artist has HIS copy of the painting, it is still less valuable because of the duplication.
When someone knowingly does something that reduces the value of your posessions, (and creative thought IS a posession, stealable or not), is it not akin to stealing? What about Enron? "Stock value isn't real, it's intangible and therefore it was perfectly fine of us to devalue everyone's retirement savings. It's really all little bits of paper, after all."
Now I will argue terminology:
My dictionary (Webster's New Universal Unabridged, Random House) gives the first meaning of "steal" as "to take without permission or right." I have established that by performing the act of copying, at least in regards to a painting, value is indirectly taken from the posessor of the original. Logically, this means that it almost fits the definition of "stealing."
But wait! There's more:
The second meaning is "to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgement." If this doesn't describe illegal copying, what does? Consequently, by definition (using this dictionary) piracy is stealing.
The fifteenth meaning given as an informal meaning is "acquired at a cost far below it's real value." Since I have established, and the market has established, that creative thought does indeed have real value, piracy is also theft by that definition as well.
Surprise! Seems you CAN steal the song.
I hope you can plainly see, that copyright infringement is, in fact, stealing, since we have established that at least one major dictionary seems to think so, and dictionaries reflect current usage.
You can steal the story.
You can steal the song.
You can steal the patented, fatally-flawed, decryption algorithm. (Though I can't imagine why you'd want to:)
How about, say, theft of income? What if I just say, took an hours worth of your pay away? Suppose you make burgers for a living and your boss makes you pay out of your paycheck for every one that was stolen, and I took a few?
It may not be theft of physical property, but it is still theft, and inherently wrong. Just like if I painted a painting, and you made a copy of it without my permission. And that painting IS a physical object.
Don't try this bullshit about what is "tangible" or not. The simple fact is, the result of my thinking is MY property, and I have a right to control what happens to it, be it placing it into the public domain, or selling copies of it to make money.
<html><head><title>Directory Listing Denied</title></head> <body><h1>Directory Listing Denied</h1>This Virtual Directory does not allow contents to be listed.</body></html>
Rumor has it that Paramount is claiming ownership to WheatoniX because of some obscure clause in a contract you signed over 10 years ago, and plan on closing the source after it becomes successful and popular.
Barring that, I hope you didn't use any GNU tools with it, because then we'd all be forced by the Stallmanists to call it GNU/WheatoniX, which isn't exactly easy to pronounce, and adds too many syllables for most people.
There is NOTHING... NOTHING stopping me from pointing a camcorder at the TV and running the audio outputs from my stereo into it and copying the damn thing.
Furthermore, if it can be displayed on a television, it can be copied. Just like Macrovision filters, a way to circumvent it will be found.
Even if the law requires televisions to recieve encrypted signals (which it might, you know), if I can get to the driver circuitry for the TV, I can copy it.
His bill isn't going to stop it, and, isn't even going to slow it down. All it's going to do is create another black market.
He and that scummy, child-brainwashing company called Disney... damn I wish that there was more I could do than write letters and carry picket signs.
What's worse, is that the rest of the Congress is going to buy into it, because none of them are technically savvy.
For hooking up to your local broadband, an old PCI Pentium system from the thrift store for $20 works great. Why fork out the money for this box, when you can get a cheap old box and throw Linux on it?
You can usually figure it out with the 220 greeting message. Most people don't change the message strings, and I pretty sure Domino says Lotus Domino in the 220 message, by default. It's been a long time since I talked to a server running it.
One could also try sending "HELP" which, with sendmail anyway, will give the version in the first response string.
I think that in any case, impact could have been minimized for affected Lotus Domino servers where ID could be determined.
to push an agenda driven by a bunch of hippies without much college education to back them.
There has been global warming since the last ice age. There is still no hard, firm, factual evidence saying we are making any difference in the pace.
We know that the climate of the Earth cycles between warm and cool, as it has happened many times over history.
The Earth has also gotten much warmer during the various cycles, so it only stands to reason that it will get much warmer before the next ice age.
Furthermore, there is no evidence that global warming is a bad thing. I'd like to point out that the greatest amount of fauna and flora existed during the Earth's warmest periods.
In fact, you can implement preemtive multitasking on any CPU that has a way of generating regular interrupts. Even old Apple IIcs and gs's can do it. Just because nobody did it, does not mean it's impossible.
Granted that the '386 has features that make multitasking a LOT easier.
I never said I was perfectly safe, I am just as safe as the blind "./configure ; make ; make install" type. Unless you read every line of the source, and compile the same, you still subject yourself to the same problem as installing the binary.
You are right about frequent backups and trustworthy information.
With the vendors I listed that I find trustworthy, I think you'll note that I'm a bit more discriminating in what I consider "trusted" binaries than anything remotely near the likes of Napster. Big vendors like Red Hat or SuSE would burn to the ground if they included spyware.
Even Microsoft probably wouldn't do that without informing the user, because of the crap they've taken in the past over similar things (registration wizard, etc), which is why I trust their patches and updates.
The bottom line is, unless you inspected every line of source code for the software that runs on your computer, from the BIOS up to user-land programs off the Internet, you are vulnerable.
Your mention of Napster brings me to another point: Trusting stuff like that is bad news. My sister is into all the P2P trading crap (napster, morpheus, etc.), and her machine has nothing but problems. I've never installed any, and I don't think that my Windows machine has BSOD'd for months. There's definitely something to be said about being careful what you install.
On a side note, commercial software isn't safe, either. I found a copy of the Timesink ad/spyware on my fiancee's machine a few days ago. It was installed with a game she bought. We plan on asking for our money back.
P.S. It's nice to know someone else gets good Windows uptimes, too. Everyone accuses me of being a liar. I'm probably just lucky. After all, my Linux box is a K6-3 and haven't had any problems with that, either, even though others do.
RPMs are not nearly as bad. You can always do rpm -qp -l name.arch.rpm to find out what exactly it plans on installing, substitute the following for -l to do other stuff:
--info to see information --scripts list config scripts that may run --triggers list trigger scripts that may run
You have the option to extract scripts and check them yourself. You can also see the services and deps that the package provide, etc. All without installing it.
I know, you never install binaries, and of course, a binary may have something in there that shouldn't be there.
But then again, I imagine you rarely, if ever, read 100% of the source code you just compiled and installed, read the makefile, or keep track of where exactly it put things. You probably just trust it because you have the source, not because you READ the source.
Then again, I might be wrong, and you do.
Personally, I install binary RPMs from trusted sites. (Red Hat, SuSE, KDE, a couple others), and from source tarballs when I think there might be a trust issue.
A good, reputable, signed RPM is a good way to determine trust.
Oh there would be politics involved, but it would be a MUCH different kind of politics.
As appointed positions, there wouldn't be as much need for "party politics" because more than likely, the legislature would pick people who's party is the same as the majority in the state legislature.
There would still be no campaigning, and there would still be no "soft money", and there wouldn't be huge corparate campaign finance donations.
Okay, the Constitution, before that was written, stated "The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof..."
You see, before the 17th Amendment, Senators were chose by state legistlating bodies, thus, the state legislature could choose people who would represent the interests of that individual state.
The idea being, that there would be two opposing houses, and both would need to be in agreement to pass a law. This is a check, and was designed to prevent needless law that wasn't in the interest of both the People (House of Representatives) and the States (Senate).
Now, that check is entirely removed, and the people elect both the Senators and the Representatives, and the people tend to choose like-minded people for both. Thus, it is now easy for too much law to be passed, and there is nobody in the federal government that is the direct representation of the state government. That is, nobody in the three branches of the federal government is chosen by ANY of the individual states.
Furthermore, since Senators have to campaign because of the 17th Amendment, they have to get money, in the form of contributions, thus, they can be bought.
With Senators appointed by the state legislature, they wouldn't need to be "bought", and they would not be in the hands of big contributors. Imagine the kind of campaign finance reform you'd get with the repeal of the 17th Amendment!
The brilliant minds who wrote the Constitution would be apalled at what we did to it when the 17th Amendment was passed.
I guess the alternative is to amend the Constitution to eliminate State rights.
Already (mostly) happened. Ever looked at the 17th Amendment to the Constitution? All state voice in federal goverment is gone.
The alternative in your view, is that anyone should be able to destroy wetlands whenever they wanted to. Under that strategy, no one would have clean water to drink
That is NOT what I am advocating. What I am advocating is that when you buy land, you should have the right to use it the way you could have when you bought it. If some law is enacted that changes this, you should be compensated for the value that was lost. Not being able to build a house takes away a lot of the value.
I'm not saying to let people pollute as much as they want, or fill in as much pond as they want, just that they should be able to USE what they paid for, in a responsible way.
We can't even put ONE house on the aforementioned 7 acres. They won't even budge 1 bit. The footprint of a house and driveway wouldn't possibly exceed 3000 square feet, which is a far cry from 304,920 square feet that is 7 acres. They won't let you fill and build on 0.09% of it.
If we could just put one single little cabin there, we'd make it a vacation home. But we can't even do that.
Furthermore, it is taxed as if it had the full value of land that was unrestricted. Figure that one.
And, as far as use of the lake goes, it's 16 feet deep. There are no natural fish in it, and it isn't any human's water source. There are no natural fish because every few years the entire lake freezes and everything in the water dies, because it freezes all the way to the bottom. (Winter kill.)
Buying land and later being told you can't put a house on it is like buying a computer and later being told you can't put a hard drive in it.
Slashdot Mirror
I wasn't trying to imply that we wouldn't do it. :)
:)
:)
We just wouldn't do it publicly.
I was in the military for a time, and I can attest that we have "better stuff" though I can't tell you exactly what kind of better stuff we have now.
But, I saw the AC-130U (and directed some fire missions with it) long before any civilians did
That's just a small piece.
Ahh yes, that looks familiar. Was this or a treaty like this ever ratified?
Thanks for the answer though.
The moron who moderated me down obviously couldn't see this subtle question in my original post. I earned my +2, damnit, whether or not some jerk thinks my post is overrated. Grrr.
I think there is a treaty that prevents this. I'm not sure entirely what it is called, or I'd post a link.
Unfortunately I have to go back to class, so don't have time to look just yet.
Mostly I am playing devil's advocate here to solicit responses, and yours is the one that strikes me as worth responding to:
:)
Rather than argue terminology, let us apply your logic to some unpleasant situations that are probably not so self-advantageous to the music "pirate":
Proposed defense lines:
"Virginity is not a tangible thing. When I raped that little boy I didn't take anything from him. He's still got everything he had before I touched him."
"Since the bruises I gave her healed, my girlfriend is in exactly the same condition she was in before I hit her. Consequently, no damage was done."
"Identity is an intangible thing. Just because I used your name, and your social security number, doesn't mean you've lost anything. You still have them both."
Or, a couple of real ones that piss a lot of people off:
"Land value is an intangible thing. Just because I trashed my yard and consequently lowered the appraised value of yours doesn't mean I've done anything to you. You still have everything you had before."
"Land value is an intangible thing. Just because we regulated you out of using it for any reason doesn't mean you've lost anything. You still own the land."
Trying to play the "definition game" is a bullshit defense of obviously immoral action.
We'll use our now-agreed upon painting example. The artist put a lot of time into creating that painting. Many hours of effort. That painting has value because it is unique, that is, in limited quantity. For this example, that quantity is one. At least, it is until someone duplicates it. The mere act of duplication has now doubled the number of exact paintings in the example, and has consequently devalued the original.
The simple act of copying has devalued the painting. Even though you are correct in that the original artist has HIS copy of the painting, it is still less valuable because of the duplication.
When someone knowingly does something that reduces the value of your posessions, (and creative thought IS a posession, stealable or not), is it not akin to stealing? What about Enron? "Stock value isn't real, it's intangible and therefore it was perfectly fine of us to devalue everyone's retirement savings. It's really all little bits of paper, after all."
Now I will argue terminology:
My dictionary (Webster's New Universal Unabridged, Random House) gives the first meaning of "steal" as "to take without permission or right." I have established that by performing the act of copying, at least in regards to a painting, value is indirectly taken from the posessor of the original. Logically, this means that it almost fits the definition of "stealing."
But wait! There's more:
The second meaning is "to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgement." If this doesn't describe illegal copying, what does? Consequently, by definition (using this dictionary) piracy is stealing.
The fifteenth meaning given as an informal meaning is "acquired at a cost far below it's real value." Since I have established, and the market has established, that creative thought does indeed have real value, piracy is also theft by that definition as well.
Surprise! Seems you CAN steal the song.
I hope you can plainly see, that copyright infringement is, in fact, stealing, since we have established that at least one major dictionary seems to think so, and dictionaries reflect current usage.
You can steal the story.
You can steal the song.
You can steal the patented, fatally-flawed, decryption algorithm. (Though I can't imagine why you'd want to
How about, say, theft of income? What if I just say, took an hours worth of your pay away? Suppose you make burgers for a living and your boss makes you pay out of your paycheck for every one that was stolen, and I took a few?
It may not be theft of physical property, but it is still theft, and inherently wrong. Just like if I painted a painting, and you made a copy of it without my permission. And that painting IS a physical object.
Don't try this bullshit about what is "tangible" or not. The simple fact is, the result of my thinking is MY property, and I have a right to control what happens to it, be it placing it into the public domain, or selling copies of it to make money.
Yeah, you'd think M$ could configure their own servers. If the creators can't do it, who can?
And they think they have the way out? At least I know I can configure Apache.
$ lynx -mime-header http://www.wehavethewayout.com/
HTTP/1.1 403 Access Forbidden
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002 02:22:14 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 172
<html><head><title>Directory Listing Denied</title></head>
<body><h1>Directory Listing Denied</h1>This Virtual Directory does not allow contents to be listed.</body></html>
Going to lose a karma point for this one...
Just reciprocating, grammar nazi to grammar nazi.
That sentence lacks a subject.
I, however, do not think of myself as a nazi at all.
Rumor has it that Paramount is claiming ownership to WheatoniX because of some obscure clause in a contract you signed over 10 years ago, and plan on closing the source after it becomes successful and popular.
Barring that, I hope you didn't use any GNU tools with it, because then we'd all be forced by the Stallmanists to call it GNU/WheatoniX, which isn't exactly easy to pronounce, and adds too many syllables for most people.
if they'd planned it further so that the links didn't take you to the regular CPAN pages, but to more fakes.
:)
They could have had the "DISCLAIMER" link go to the original site.
Actually, it's just a lot easier to state the algorithm as ((summation of digits) + n) mod 10 = 0, where n is the check digit.
You can see it here.
I think the person you were replying to was trying to give an equation in the form of n= and got a bit twisted.
You still have to give him credit for attention to detail in a weird stalker-like way!
Now OTOH, (at least with the older versions) if I power off a RH Ext2 box hard, I have to reinstall the distro.
I've done a few hard reboots in the past with ext2, and never had a problem like that.
Incidentally, I use ext3 now, and it's great!
After all, the website has a decoder in "Pearl", but not "Perl."
... if I can hear it... I can damn well copy it!
There is NOTHING... NOTHING stopping me from pointing a camcorder at the TV and running the audio outputs from my stereo into it and copying the damn thing.
Furthermore, if it can be displayed on a television, it can be copied. Just like Macrovision filters, a way to circumvent it will be found.
Even if the law requires televisions to recieve encrypted signals (which it might, you know), if I can get to the driver circuitry for the TV, I can copy it.
His bill isn't going to stop it, and, isn't even going to slow it down. All it's going to do is create another black market.
He and that scummy, child-brainwashing company called Disney... damn I wish that there was more I could do than write letters and carry picket signs.
What's worse, is that the rest of the Congress is going to buy into it, because none of them are technically savvy.
Sigh...
Simple. Because it requires no change in software on the host PC
Is that too easy or what?
No new drivers to install, it looks to the computer just like any other standard ATA interface.
For hooking up to your local broadband, an old PCI Pentium system from the thrift store for $20 works great. Why fork out the money for this box, when you can get a cheap old box and throw Linux on it?
You can usually figure it out with the 220 greeting message. Most people don't change the message strings, and I pretty sure Domino says Lotus Domino in the 220 message, by default. It's been a long time since I talked to a server running it.
One could also try sending "HELP" which, with sendmail anyway, will give the version in the first response string.
I think that in any case, impact could have been minimized for affected Lotus Domino servers where ID could be determined.
to push an agenda driven by a bunch of hippies without much college education to back them.
There has been global warming since the last ice age. There is still no hard, firm, factual evidence saying we are making any difference in the pace.
We know that the climate of the Earth cycles between warm and cool, as it has happened many times over history.
The Earth has also gotten much warmer during the various cycles, so it only stands to reason that it will get much warmer before the next ice age.
Furthermore, there is no evidence that global warming is a bad thing. I'd like to point out that the greatest amount of fauna and flora existed during the Earth's warmest periods.
True... it's very nice to keep rogue processes away from other areas of memory.
The virtual 86 mode of the 386+ CPUs is quite interesting, and useful for things like dosemu!
In fact, you can implement preemtive multitasking on any CPU that has a way of generating regular interrupts. Even old Apple IIcs and gs's can do it. Just because nobody did it, does not mean it's impossible.
Granted that the '386 has features that make multitasking a LOT easier.
I never said I was perfectly safe, I am just as safe as the blind "./configure ; make ; make install" type. Unless you read every line of the source, and compile the same, you still subject yourself to the same problem as installing the binary.
:)
You are right about frequent backups and trustworthy information.
With the vendors I listed that I find trustworthy, I think you'll note that I'm a bit more discriminating in what I consider "trusted" binaries than anything remotely near the likes of Napster. Big vendors like Red Hat or SuSE would burn to the ground if they included spyware.
Even Microsoft probably wouldn't do that without informing the user, because of the crap they've taken in the past over similar things (registration wizard, etc), which is why I trust their patches and updates.
The bottom line is, unless you inspected every line of source code for the software that runs on your computer, from the BIOS up to user-land programs off the Internet, you are vulnerable.
Your mention of Napster brings me to another point: Trusting stuff like that is bad news. My sister is into all the P2P trading crap (napster, morpheus, etc.), and her machine has nothing but problems. I've never installed any, and I don't think that my Windows machine has BSOD'd for months. There's definitely something to be said about being careful what you install.
On a side note, commercial software isn't safe, either. I found a copy of the Timesink ad/spyware on my fiancee's machine a few days ago. It was installed with a game she bought. We plan on asking for our money back.
P.S. It's nice to know someone else gets good Windows uptimes, too. Everyone accuses me of being a liar. I'm probably just lucky. After all, my Linux box is a K6-3 and haven't had any problems with that, either, even though others do.
Or perhaps they are all wrong
RPMs are not nearly as bad. You can always do rpm -qp -l name.arch.rpm to find out what exactly it plans on installing, substitute the following for -l to do other stuff:
--info to see information
--scripts list config scripts that may run
--triggers list trigger scripts that may run
You have the option to extract scripts and check them yourself. You can also see the services and deps that the package provide, etc. All without installing it.
I know, you never install binaries, and of course, a binary may have something in there that shouldn't be there.
But then again, I imagine you rarely, if ever, read 100% of the source code you just compiled and installed, read the makefile, or keep track of where exactly it put things. You probably just trust it because you have the source, not because you READ the source.
Then again, I might be wrong, and you do.
Personally, I install binary RPMs from trusted sites. (Red Hat, SuSE, KDE, a couple others), and from source tarballs when I think there might be a trust issue.
A good, reputable, signed RPM is a good way to determine trust.
Oh there would be politics involved, but it would be a MUCH different kind of politics.
As appointed positions, there wouldn't be as much need for "party politics" because more than likely, the legislature would pick people who's party is the same as the majority in the state legislature.
There would still be no campaigning, and there would still be no "soft money", and there wouldn't be huge corparate campaign finance donations.
Okay, the Constitution, before that was written, stated "The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof..."
You see, before the 17th Amendment, Senators were chose by state legistlating bodies, thus, the state legislature could choose people who would represent the interests of that individual state.
The idea being, that there would be two opposing houses, and both would need to be in agreement to pass a law. This is a check, and was designed to prevent needless law that wasn't in the interest of both the People (House of Representatives) and the States (Senate).
Now, that check is entirely removed, and the people elect both the Senators and the Representatives, and the people tend to choose like-minded people for both. Thus, it is now easy for too much law to be passed, and there is nobody in the federal government that is the direct representation of the state government. That is, nobody in the three branches of the federal government is chosen by ANY of the individual states.
Furthermore, since Senators have to campaign because of the 17th Amendment, they have to get money, in the form of contributions, thus, they can be bought.
With Senators appointed by the state legislature, they wouldn't need to be "bought", and they would not be in the hands of big contributors. Imagine the kind of campaign finance reform you'd get with the repeal of the 17th Amendment!
The brilliant minds who wrote the Constitution would be apalled at what we did to it when the 17th Amendment was passed.
I guess the alternative is to amend the Constitution to eliminate State rights.
Already (mostly) happened. Ever looked at the 17th Amendment to the Constitution? All state voice in federal goverment is gone.
The alternative in your view, is that anyone should be able to destroy wetlands whenever they wanted to. Under that strategy, no one would have clean water to drink
That is NOT what I am advocating. What I am advocating is that when you buy land, you should have the right to use it the way you could have when you bought it. If some law is enacted that changes this, you should be compensated for the value that was lost. Not being able to build a house takes away a lot of the value.
I'm not saying to let people pollute as much as they want, or fill in as much pond as they want, just that they should be able to USE what they paid for, in a responsible way.
We can't even put ONE house on the aforementioned 7 acres. They won't even budge 1 bit. The footprint of a house and driveway wouldn't possibly exceed 3000 square feet, which is a far cry from 304,920 square feet that is 7 acres. They won't let you fill and build on 0.09% of it.
If we could just put one single little cabin there, we'd make it a vacation home. But we can't even do that.
Furthermore, it is taxed as if it had the full value of land that was unrestricted. Figure that one.
And, as far as use of the lake goes, it's 16 feet deep. There are no natural fish in it, and it isn't any human's water source. There are no natural fish because every few years the entire lake freezes and everything in the water dies, because it freezes all the way to the bottom. (Winter kill.)
Buying land and later being told you can't put a house on it is like buying a computer and later being told you can't put a hard drive in it.