> 'troll' ratings are coming from the fact that any time anyone expresses an unpopular opinion on/. they are immediately marked as a 'troll.' [...] You can make the foulest, most uninformed, insulting post in the world, and as long as it ultimately says that Apple is the greatest company on earth, OSS software will kill MS, and DRM is evil, you will be marked as an insightful, welcome part of the community. However, the most civil mention of anything that throws any of those conclusions in doubt, and you are instantly a mindless troll.
Haha -- that said, this does seem kinda trollish what with the flagrant disregard for facts (i.e., "only by the virtue of the DMCA that putting something up on a web page is considered 'publication' at all!", in light of first publication being irrelevant for the last 30 years) and the syrupy condecension. Aren't you just trolling me to respond, "the DMCA was a flawed bill that shouldn't have been passed in the first place because it regulates behavior that has historically and of right ought not to be regulated by the State"? Well it did, and I have, so I'd consider the moderation fair.:-D
Don't get me wrong though -- moderation often rewards groupthink. I don't dispute that at all. That's what the friend/foe system is supposed to mitigate. If someone is a groupthinker, you just foe them (or friend all the people that aren't asshats) and dec/inc them accordingly. Same for meta-modding. I know I know, who meta-mods the meta-modders?
> The DMCA is a large act, it contains a lot of provisions, and many of them are provisions that other countries required to continue recognizing U.S. copyrights. To boil it down to a pithy summation of one section, and some example of how that one section has been used in a questionable fashion by a few companies, is not only simplistic, but bordering on propaganda.
I agree, and I've said as much elsewhere. I still stand by the assertion that it shouldn't have been passed. Inaction is always preferable to bad action, right? 1201 has a lot of crap in it that we've had to live with for 8 years or so that should have never become law. Stuff that will remain law for years to come with all the chilling effects, cease and desists, expensive and ultimately futile law suits, reinventions and reimplimentations, and finally damages to fair use (including time- and format-shifting as well as excerpting for commentary, personal backup, even the things the 'computer maintenance' provisions allow!) and damages to the public domain (criminalization of even inadvertant circumvention even when the copyright of work has expired or deliberately been gifted to the public domain).
You and ISPs may like the the safe harbour provisions -- and maybe that makes it on balance a win for you -- but we didn't need a new law for that either. We only needed one ruling to cement ISPs' positions as common carriers, just as Ma Bell and Xerox were never held accountable for the infringements of others with the aid of their products.
The attitude that new legislation is the answer to everything is short-sighted. (And there's no shortage of the side effects: http://chillingeffects.org/)
So no, I'm not advocating throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I'm saying the baby shouldn't have ever been in that bath. I was against it then. I wrote my rep, I did the ineffectual crap you're supposed to do; but we all knew it wasn't going to be stopped.
I'll check to see if you've answered this else where (so pardon me if you have), but what's the story with this:
> Before the DMCA had I planned on Internet distribution [...] I would have been in a very tenuous position had someone infringed on the material, and I had not found out about the infringing property until after it was published.
Why? What section of the DMCA is even relevant? A movie is a movie. 17-USC-201 is pretty straight forward about ownership -- how would it be any different if it was fixed on a hard disk or on film? I mean even the characters are copyright the first time you ink or model their likeness...? With copyright by default every subversion carries your life plus 70 (or more).
Anyway, I'm really hoping you can show me some utterly necessary, superbly shiny silver-lining.
> By your argument, there was no reason at all for the WCT, because everything contained within it was part of the Berne Convention. Of course you seem to be taking the rather odd position that in fact even that, and as far as I can tell most of our copyright system, needs to be struck down, because you think it does not protect your interests, and therefore doesn't protect anyone's interest.
Then you disingenuously represent my position. Copyright by default is unnecessary. Life plus 50, while a limited term, arguably does not serve to incent creation more than once in a lifetime (and therefore hardly promotes the public domain, the reason Congress is permitted to protect copyrights at all). If the term continues to be extended every 20 years, then for all intents and purposes the Copyright Act as it stands is unconstitutional. However, that is irrelevant. I have no problem with the existance of copyright in so far as it is outlined in the Constitution. What I do have a problem with is the DMCA sections that affect what I can do with my own property in my own home. And again, the DMCA permits (and criminalizes the circumvention of) "DRM" that is unconstitutional (i.e., all mechanisms that don't permit excerpting or expiration). It's absurd to believe that I am against reasonable refinements to the code (e.g., expanding works that can be copyrighted to include architecture, although hull designs is a stretch given that dress patterns can't be) based solely on whether they benefit me. You have a strange sense of snap judgement.
Now, with the unpleasantries out of the way...
> Spoken like someone who read about how the law works, rather than learning about it in court.
That's fair and true. I am not a lawyer. I made no such claim of course. However, is it fair to paint me as the enemy (ad hominem) and my point of view irrelevant when my knowledge of the code is academic rather than practical?
> You can say that "copyright by default" has been the law since '76 all you want, [...]
Nevermind that it's a fact?
> [...] but when it comes time to try to get damages for infringement on an unpublished piece of work, you find out really quickly that is not the case. I have been through several fights on this issue, being an artists who has worked for some pretty unethical clients [...]
What are you saying? That somehow your lawyer couldn't protect your work with the fact that every work created since 1976 was copyright at the time of its creation? I imagine you aren't giving me the full story... maybe you produced a work for hire, or under a contract? I have to reserve judement of course.
> Before the DMCA, if you walked into court and tried to claim infringement of artwork that was only ever published on the web, and the infringing artwork had been published in a traditional format like a newspaper or television ad, you were sunk. You did not have a leg to stand on unless you had filed for a copyright.
This is false. Can I read the decision in your case? I'm sure first publication had no bearing on ownership, since first publication doesn't determine copyright. 201 through 205. If I understand correctly, your veiled hypothetical (which presumably isn't hypothetical at all?) is that you produced some graphic and 'published' it on a web page and then a newspaper copied that graphic and published it in print, upon which you filed an infringement suit and subsequently a judge determined that the newspaper therefor owned the graphic? I await your response, but in this scenario the DMCA does not apply.
> No, but I certainly wouldn't have spent the last two years of my life (not to mention somewhere in the neighborhood of $60,000) producing and directing an animated film if I didn't have legal recourse to protect my material once I distributed it on the Internet.
Would you still have created this film under the 1909 copyright of 56 years?
> It is clear to me that you are just one of these people who thinks that anything you can load on your harddrive you should now have absolute rights to do whatever you want with, up to and including reverse engineering it for whatever purpose you choose.
Incidentally... the DMCA has an exception for just this case:) reverse engineering for the purposes of interoperability is legal under the DMCA. I.e., using my data in my ways with my software is still legal, and reverse engineering protection schemes for that purpose is still legal. However, that wheel has to be reinvented every time because there is no exception for the 'trafficing of a circumvention device'.
Further, current law doesn't stipulate what you can do with "anything you load on your harddrive". So in this regard "one of these people" is everyone. Copyright is not concerned with what you do in your own home (or on your own harddrive). Unfortunately, the DMCA is -- and that's why it's a problem to... freedom-lovers? Libertarians? Whatever you want to call us.
The DMCA should have never been passed, there is no point to making copyright infringement illegaler. The Act is just a givaway to the copy-protectors. It doesn't help "artists" or "invetors" in any meaningful way (which seems to be your premise in other posts where you mock DMCA opponents). In fact, if the artists are programmers and the inventors are systems-integrators it actually hurts them.
I know some artists/craftsmen don't consider engineering an art. In that regard we'll have to aggree to disagree.
Again, nothing personal; you seem like a reasonale gent on other threads. It just sounds like you are willfully uninformed about the DMCA and what the world was like both before and after it. That's where the friction and the 'troll' ratings are coming from.
So, on-topic and concisely: Nikon can't stop you from reverse engineering their "raw" format. Nikon can't stop Adobe from reverse engineering their "raw" format. But, the DMCA makes it illegal for Adobe to distribute that that 'device'. Further, the illegal circumvention device may infringe a Nikon patent, which would make such software illegal even without the DMCA. This is how it was with film (the films and processes were patented, as I'm sure you know). The DMCA is a red-herring in all discussions about digital camera raw formats. I don't see any argument for the camera manufacturer having any rights above those of the camera operator. (Imagine if in the 60s Kodak decided that they owned every shot taken on Kodak film, incredible!)
The parent post is incorrect in almost all regards.
I like this passage in particular, for its incredible irony: "In fact, most people railing against the DMCA don't know the first thing about copyright law, because they have never had to deal with it in the slightest."
Aparently that includes you. 'Copyright by default' was a change made in the 76 Act to bring the U.S. into compliance with the Berne Convention.
With that correction made, we can now rephrase your entire argument as "omg thank gods for teh Copyright Act of 1976 for making these terrible bloggers blogging possible on the intarwebs thanks to all of these are huge changes that pretty much made the viability of commercial intarweb pages a reality!" Of course this argument is absurd on its face, as there existed mass publication for 100s of years prior to the 76 Act (e.g., pampleteers, federalist papers, through to civil rights organization).
Do you post more on Slashdot because you know your novel turn of phrase will be protected for nearly 200 years? Would you post less if it wasn't? 'Copyright by default' is a nearly useless feature of the Berne Convention (we already had laws for trust and honesty -- er, that is to say -- contracts, plagarism and fraud).
In my opinion the Berne Convention and the requisite re-writes of our laws and the continual term extensions don't uphold the bargian made in Article 1.8.8 of our Constitution.
In fact, the DMCA does undermine fair use and does undermine the public domain. This makes the DMCA counter to the exact reason why congress was given the power to establish copyright in the first place: to promote the growth of the public domain.
This is nothing personal though -- I just wanted to make it clear that you're muddying the waters, you aren't helping.
Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.
Believing there's no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don't travel in circles where people say, "I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith." That's just a long-winded religious way to say, "shut up," or another two words that the FCC likes less. But all obscenity is less insulting than, "How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do." So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that's always fun. It means I'm learning something.
I generally agree with what you've said. Even though it's an editor's job to edit, the words weren't the editor's. Just because they are lazy and don't want to do "their jobs" doesn't mean they (necessarily) endorse the language of the submitter.
But that aside. Commentary on one's appearances goes against the very grain of our culture. I say our to mean the fundemental meritocracy of nerds, "geeks", hackers, etc.
This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.
I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto.
+++The Mentor+++, excerpted from "The Conscience of a Hacker" (1986)
(emphasis my own)
That's why the article submission was offensive to me (maybe offensive is too strong a word). I believe that's why it's sparked this discussion.
> * SMB can't network share anything but user directory (what about mounted disk images, CD's, single folders?)
This is false. You have serveral options beyond the the sharing pane in System Preferences. If you only know how to use Microsoft Windows you can investigate software like Sharepoints, you can use OS X Server which has sharepoint management built into its amazingly great administration tools, or if you are old school Linux user you can just edit your samba.conf by hand, which seems pretty painless to me.
For "command prompt here" I just wrote a tiny Applescript and dropped it in the Finder's tray (something like "tell application "finder" set mypath to (folder of the front window as string); end tell; tell application "terminal" activate; do script "cd " & mypath in front window; end tell;"). Pardon me if I got any of that syntax wrong, I rarely write applescipts:-p
So yeah. Short version: sharepoints or OS X Server will solve your GUI smb/ftp admin needs (easier than cli netinfo or editing confs), and you can use applescripts to customize your interface.
> While "intellectual property" can't be removed from the owner, except by actions that are far more illegal than petit theft [...]
Like mind-reading? "Intellectual property" can never be removed from the "owner". How many times does it have to be said? There are no property rights in ideas or expressions. The very act of expression, by definition, is a giving act -- there is no way to 'steal' what is not expressed (cyberpunk/science-fiction ignored). That said, let's move on to the continuing farce:
> To download a film or album without the author's consent is to remove an instance of his rights as the creator, and that instance holds definite value.
No. It holds potential value. There is no removal of rights, instances or otherwise. There is an infringement on his monopoly though. Potential value is not property. Copyrights (and the other "intellectual properties" such as patents) are, understand this, artificial, time-limited state-granted distribution monopolies.
State Granted Monopolies. State Granted Monopolies. There is no inalienable copy right. If you choose to express something you have just given it away with the one exception that the State will not permit me to give it away again for a limited amount of time.
Now, why does one submit to this coercion -- the coercion of not being able to express an idea previously expressed to them? We give up that inalienable right of expression as a trade-off to recieve a richer public domain down the road (see Article 1.8.8 of the Constitution).
There is no right to potential revenue. State granted monopoly rights are a grant to artists and inventors for the sole purpose of growing the materials that future artists and inventors will be able to exploit (the public domain). This monopoly is not granted to make artists rich (potential income). It's granted to make more artists (wider foundation for creativity).
Sorry for the repititious rant:) This comes up weekly on Slashdot and yet, readers still make this fallacious argument. Read more at my journal, if you want. I don't mean to be inflammatory or to bait you.
Jesus help me. I can't believe I'm going to reply to your flaggrantly inflammatory follow-up. (I'll reply in kind!)
> It seems YOU missed the point. You are comparing keeping a $2 light bulb for two years to keeping a $200+ audio player for 2 years. This is a 2 orders of magnatude price difference.
In either case they are a fraction of 1% of my yearly income. If a $2 lightbulb is disposable, then so is an iPod. I didn't miss "the point". I ignored it. But let's go with it -- let's go with your fallacious argument that the "order of magnitude" you keep harping about is even relevant. Let's say you keep your totally worthless, non-user upgradeable iPod for 2 years (only 2!) and that you spent $300 on it (so you could hold a couple hundred hours of audio). The cost of an iPod (even the horribly busted planned obsolescence model) costs you 41 goddamn cents a day. That isn't disposable?! I waste more than that on sugarless beverages, and probaby get much less enjoyment (keep in mind, I didn't spend $300 on my iPod).
Let's continue on to the next vagary!
> Amost every person I know considers product that cost $2 and are disposable within a couple of years to be an acceptable value. I know very few people that consider products that cost $200 and are disposable within a couple of years to be acceptable.
Holy shit, you know some weird people then. 41 cents a day! Is it fair to say that most people don't scrimp and save and penny-pinch? In my experience that's the case (e.g. average Americans have debt and have barely any savings). "Almost every person you know" is budgetting down to that last dime. Depressing.
> Very few people I have talked to, even realize that their ipods will 'expire'. Using your car analogy, and the fact that you consider a 2 order of magnatude price difference to be comparable, you should be applauding all those people who still actaully drive their 2004 Toyota Corolla. Given the absurdity of your light bulb ipod analogy, let move on to your car ipod analogy.
You're still disputing that people prefer cheap, fallible cars to very expensive ultra-reliable cars? Keep it up! Only a tiny, tiny portion of Americans believe when they buy a car that they will keep it for their lifetimes. It seems on average that they migrate every 5 years.
> You praise people that kept thier '62 Lincoln. Well, the '62 Lincoln didn't have the hood welded shut, and you are talking about keeping an item that take dramatically more physical abuse for 43 years. Yes 43 years! I wouldn't complain if the ipod lasted 43 years. I wouldn't complain if it lasted 10 years. It would not be considered unusal for the ipod to fail in 2 years though. Again, you are using an absurd analogy.
Again, hyperbole. All you need to replace an iPod's battery is a sharp plastic wedge and a small screwdriver. Then again, I don't even change my own oil anymore. In fact, I happily let my mechanic replace my car bettery while the car was in for service. I'm happy to pay for such services because my car costs significantly more to own and operate than 41 cents a day.
> [ad hominem blah blah] Trying to imply that a two pin header and a battary door would add even $10 to the cost, or would cause a significant loss of reliablity, you are as far off as you were with comparing a light bulb and car to an ipod.
I'm not implying that at all. All I stated is that the 'hidden costs' of engineering, manufacturing and servicing additionally complex components are real additional costs. I didn't quantify them. I only stated that for your supposition to be true the trade off would have to be beneficial -- would an iPod be better (simpler, more usable, more convenient, more desirable, less expensive, etc.) if the additional costs for your feature (engineering, manufacture, servicing, replacement) were included? I see no tennable position that increasing product complexity lowers the cost
> Also, back when he was on the Daily Show and Viggo Mortensen was on, they had Colbert backstage reading Aragorn's family history and list of aliases in a total geeky way, it was pretty funny.
It should be pointed out that he wasn't reading it -- he really is that much of a geek. He knew it. (At least, that's what feels true to me, given the evidence. Ha!)
But I'll second the parent post, Colbert is a genius.
I don't know what your primary language is, but in English there is no semantic difference between portion and percentage. The later is merely used to describe portions (fractions) in terms of parts per hundred.
Analogies are always imperfect, but let me clarify:
First, we have cheap cars because they are made with fallible parts and acceptable imprecision. They could be made with much more expensive parts that don't fail. Common, consumer autos are built today with managed obsolescence. This is indisputable.
Second, we have cheap light bulbs because it's easier to make cheap filaments inside cheap glass bulbs, rather than use exotic elements for filaments that last 10s of years and transparent non-brittle bulbs to replace the glass. The cheap to manufacture, cheap to produce products have won in the marketplace.
> The non-replacable battery can not have lowered the manufacturing price by more than $0.05-$0.10.
This may be an obvious cost to you -- but here's some more costs you forgot: More contacts, leads, mounts, and plugs means more points of failure. Also battery doors (cheap plastic, or invisible polished steel latches) provide more points of failure. More points of failure increase the cost of the product to the manufacturer and the retailer (in both insurance, service and replacement, and yield volumes), that cost is passed on to the user in higher prices. So while ten cents (times however many iPods manufactured) may seem like a small amount to you, the cost in components, manufacturing, and service for every replacement door, hinge, battery, battery lead, battery contact, etc. would all need to add up to less than your hypothetical production cost for even including it in the design.
Anyway, the market does move fast. I praise every soul who has a kept their first generation iPod to the point of battery failure, despite that today -- for less money -- you could get a Nano with nearly the same storage for a fraction of the cost, size and weight, while enjoying new features.
I also praise every soul who has kept driving their '62 Lincoln, even though they could have a much safer and more reliable car today for a similar fraction (or portion or percentage) of their income.
> Given that we see devices that cost less than $10 on a regular bases that can somehow afford to put in a replacable battary AND sell with a margin that is obviously less than $10, we can conclude that Apple did this on purpose.
Of course they did it on purpose. That's the whole point. This fact was never disputed. No battery door is a feature, a feature you don't like, that is expressed to the owners of iPods in unit cost and product usability/simplicity. The only point to which I take exception is that this feature is somehow hurting iPod sales: that there is some vast untapped market that consists of you and the 4 mods that upped you all clamoring for that iPod that includes a battery door!
Thanks for taking the time to reply, although it seems you missed the point. Cheers.
> [lack of user replaceable rechargeable batteries] is certainly a problem for a very large portion of the population.
What percentage is a "very large portion", 33%? I think 33% would be a very generous definition for 'very large portion of the population'. I'll bet the percentage of the [audio player buying] population that needs user replaceable rechargeable batteries is more like 1% -- and it would be an outright lie to call that "a very large portion".
How is the parent comment insightful? Because 4 moderators on Slashdot (an exceedingly small sample of the market) agreed that they should be able to change the batteries themselves. What a complete waste.
Would we all give up cheap cars and cheap light-bulbs just so they would last forever? No. Any other answer is bullshit. Non-replaceable batteries lowers cost.
> The simplest way to kill off the dangerous home meth labs overnight is to allow (and regulate) its production by legitimate sources. [...] That will also simultaneously defund the gangs, mobs, and cartels that distribute this stuff [...]
I agree, and this was essentially my point when I said "Why shouldn't free citizens be able to make their own cold medicine at home?! How can possession of any chemical infringe the rights of others and therefore necessitate State intervention?!".
However, that said, buying cold medicine OTC instead of off the shelf, again, does not infringe anyone's right to possess a chemical.:) What it does do is make a known vector (smurfing) for the dangerous production of crystal meth in a home-lab less economically viable (it's a market solution). I mean c'mon, the possession of meth is already illegal, and so is the production of it, so it's apparent that these laws aren't stopping the problem, but by affecting the economics (the supply and demand for meth) the problem (destruction and theft of third-party citizens' property due to home-lab fires/explosions and the high costs of black market drugs) can be solved. I encourage you to watch the Frontline episode about meth from my original post. (Fixing the meth epidemic isn't about making meth illegaler.;)
Anyhow yeah, if a charity could give away meth for free we could solve the theft problem without this law. If a pharmaceutical could safely and profitably create meth for sale to charities then we could solve the "home-lab exploding and burning" problem without this law.
Whether or not free narcotics for all who desire them contributes to a sustainable society is another debate.
Then in the same vein, is it a reasonable assertion that a catastrophic WMD attack will happen every year? I'm saying that historically WMD attacks are superbly rare, regardless of the death toll, and catastrohpic terrorist attacks while demonstrably more frequent than WMD attacks are also exceedingly rare. It is an undeniable assertion that an American is more likely to die while in a car than she is in a plane or any other terrorist affected target.
The ellipsis covered an assertion that is irrelevant to the quotation because stateless-terrorist attacks with WMDs only take place in the movies (i.e., it is "provided the risk of a WMD-based attack on the US is sufficiently small").
We're gonna have to start losing upwards of 50,000 a year due to domestic terrorism before it even starts competing with driving. Is that possible? Sure it is. Someone could (as in, it's not entirely impossible) drop a reasonably large airblast nuke on a population-dense city, but every year? Every year? My only argument is that your human calculus seems like hyperbole. If we're going to lie with numbers how about:
(Roughly) Deaths in America due to terrorism since 1968: 4,000 (rounded up) Deaths in America due to traffic accidents since 1968: 1,000,000 (200k through 1980, 300k through 1990, 500k through today -- and I bet that's a conservative estimate, given that the average since 1990 is like 43000/yr.)
Executive summary: More people have died on the road this year than have died in terrorist attacks in 40 years (and we're only like 60 days in!).
So in my "lying with statistics" terrorism deaths are a rounding error compared to traffic deaths. I wonder if we're spending more in dollars and liberities fighting terrorists than we are improving traffic safety.
Finally, this is not an arugment to say that we should spend more money on traffic safety than terrorism safety. I'm just saying that for the average citizen, worrying about terrorism is pointless (you should be worrying about who's running the next redlight).
> Of course, it's clearly a matter of debate as to how likely such a threat is and what tools are appropriate to combat it. I personally prefer to err on the side of protecting civil liberties, which I believe are fundamental to our society and thus worth protecting.
It wasn't a father/daughter, it was a couple. Man has leg damage but will keep both legs. Woman lost both legs at the knee, only one found. Couple's vehicle was struck by young female drunk driver. Ew.
> 2,986 * 365 = 1,089,890, or approximately 26 times the number of automotive fatalities.
Is it a reasonable assertion that a catastrophic terrorist attack could be executed every single day of every year? I'll tell you what does happen every single day of every year: millions of Americans drive to work. The DHSMV numbers for deaths on the road in 2005 exceed 3000 persons, in my state alone. I work for the DOT today. I work three 12-hour shifts a week. During every shift at least one persion gets killed in my district (3 counties in north east Florida). In fact, right now FHP is covering an accident involving two trauma flights (father and daughter with multiple dismemberments; they might live, but regardless we've already had a possible fatality tonight, and we're only halfway through the shift, we could still top 4 deaths tonight).
This is a long way to say, I agree: "The average person appears much more likely [...] to be killed in a car accident than be killed by a terrorist attack."
What's cool is, most of that aid is tied-aid, which means that it is dispursed on the condition that it will be spent in the ways we choose -- i.e., it is spent buying goods and services from American companies. It's hardly charitable in the normal sense of the word, or if it is charitable it isn't altruistic. Maybe it's not supposed to be -- PR costs money after all. I don't argue that one cannot do some secondary good while acting in one's own self-interest. We can get some good rep and win some hearts and minds, syphon deficit (tax money) into corporate profits (reinvested into our reelection) and at the same time a third world village gets a bridge, desal plant, highway or medicine (you can have aid, but not to buy Indian generics, only for authentic American/Brittish pharmaceuticals).
Anyhow, what tied-aid actually does for us, tax-payers, is shift our money to influential corporations via over-priced, non-local public projects in foriegn countries.
Often, tied-aid doesn't even pay for local labor (i.e., there isn't even trickle-down into the local economy, as even the aid-money to pay for labor is shipped back to a non-local economy:-). Everybody does it though, so it's not just us looking for the kickbacks.
I don't claim to know whether we would be better off spending this money at home...:-\
Just google for "tied-aid" if you'd like to learn more.
> How is treating ordinary people like criminals going to solve your particular problem, just because they have a cold or flu and want over the counter medicine?
The parent post mischaracterizes the issue (the change is to sell previously off the shelf cold medicine over the counter). The inconvenience of getting non-prescription cold medicine OTC instead of off the shelf is inconsequential compared to the amount of good it does to stem 'smurfing' for home-lab production of meth. Getting cold medicine from a pharmacist isn't treating ordinary people like criminals. Your freedom is not being abridged. Warrantless wiretaps abridge your freedom (to freely associate and to be secure in your personal affects), buying cold medicine over the counter without a prescription doesn't. However, if you are against the control of all substances, then I guess your position is tenable (e.g.: Why shouldn't free citizens be able to make their own cold medicine at home?! How can possession of any chemical infringe the rights of others and therefore necessitate State intervention?!). This also goes for each sibling reply about how hard it is to get Sudafed. Give me a break.
Wow, did you read my post or the links? It appears not. Here is the salient point from the post above that was bolded and that you didn't read:
Having looked at all of the evidence that was available to us, we find it impossible to confirm the State Department's claim that gas was used in this instance. To begin with there were never any victims produced. International relief organizations who examined the Kurds -- in Turkey where they had gone for asylum -- failed to discover any. Nor were there ever any found inside Iraq. The claim rests solely on testimony of the Kurds who had crossed the border into Turkey, where they were interviewed by staffers of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
We would have expected, in a matter as serious as this, that the Congress would have exercised some care. However, passage of the sanctions measure through the Congress was unusually swift -- at least in the Senate where a unanimous vote was secured within 24 hours. Further, the proposed sanctions were quite draconian (and will be discussed in detail below). Fortunately for the future of Iraqi-U.S. ties, the sanctions measure failed to pass on a bureaucratic technicality (it was attached as a rider to a bill that died before adjournment).
It appears that in seeking to punish Iraq, the Congress was influenced by another incident that occurred five months earlier in another Iraqi-Kurdish city, Halabjah. In March 1988, the Kurds at Halabjah were bombarded with chemical weapons, producing a great many deaths. Photographs of the Kurdish victims were widely disseminated in the international media. Iraq was blamed for the Halabjah attack, even though it was subsequently brought out that Iran too had used chemicals in this operation, and it seemed likely that it was the Iranian bombardment that had actually killed the Kurds.
All of your photos and evidence etc. regarding the March 1988 attack is useless, since the attack was (most likely) perpetrated by the Iranians during the course of warfare. That was the whole point of my very non-confrontational posting. The fact is, the State Dept. had a vested interested in you, Congress and everyone else believing that Hussein gassed the Kurds to get its sanctions in play.
Your Slashdot bio doesn't mention whether or not you are a member of the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. War College at Carlisle or in the employ Pentagon, so you'll pardon me if I take more stock in their report than your drummed up sensationalism. I wish you'd provided a link that wasn't to a news source, since the very point that I was making is that news of the incident in question was misreported and then used for propaganda.
Be more critical. I am not making an argument that Saddam Hussein wasn't a bad man or that he didn't employ bad men and women; he most certainly did. There's plenty of evidence. The Baathist government did all kinds of bad shit, but to mention "he gassed his own people!" in every single breath that mentions Hussein is inappropriate, and arguably jingoistic bullshit.
I'd like us to have a more informed debate, and it seems you would too, so I applaud your efforts in detailing the other bad stuff and bad actors that existed in post-88 Iraq.
So, even if "Ali" wanted "His most infamous outrage [to be] the use of poison gas to kill thousands of Kurds at Halabja in 1988," the fact is there is no evidence that he did. That doesn't mean he wasn't a bad man and didn't do lots of other bad stuff (there's physical evidence for that other stuff, right? the petrol drinking and the lamp-making from the flesh of prisoners, etc., I'm just taking you and the reporters on faith there).
No need to Rumsfield me with the "absence of proof is not proof of absence" line. It's simply inappropriate to pass of as facts that which doesn't have evidence. That's called conjecture.
> Ripping a DVD is a rather different problem than H.264 encoding.
No kidding? Maybe I wasn't clear:
This image http://download.m0k.org/handbrake/images/HandBrake -2006011800.jpg clearly depicts a 2 hour, 25 minute piece of video being ripped from a CD and transcoded into H.264 and that the time it will take to rip, decode and re-encode this piece of video is 2 hours, 13 minutes.
Slashdot Mirror
> 'troll' ratings are coming from the fact that any time anyone expresses an unpopular opinion on /. they are immediately marked as a 'troll.' [...] You can make the foulest, most uninformed, insulting post in the world, and as long as it ultimately says that Apple is the greatest company on earth, OSS software will kill MS, and DRM is evil, you will be marked as an insightful, welcome part of the community. However, the most civil mention of anything that throws any of those conclusions in doubt, and you are instantly a mindless troll.
:-D
:-)
Haha -- that said, this does seem kinda trollish what with the flagrant disregard for facts (i.e., "only by the virtue of the DMCA that putting something up on a web page is considered 'publication' at all!", in light of first publication being irrelevant for the last 30 years) and the syrupy condecension. Aren't you just trolling me to respond, "the DMCA was a flawed bill that shouldn't have been passed in the first place because it regulates behavior that has historically and of right ought not to be regulated by the State"? Well it did, and I have, so I'd consider the moderation fair.
Don't get me wrong though -- moderation often rewards groupthink. I don't dispute that at all. That's what the friend/foe system is supposed to mitigate. If someone is a groupthinker, you just foe them (or friend all the people that aren't asshats) and dec/inc them accordingly. Same for meta-modding. I know I know, who meta-mods the meta-modders?
Cheers again
> The DMCA is a large act, it contains a lot of provisions, and many of them are provisions that other countries required to continue recognizing U.S. copyrights. To boil it down to a pithy summation of one section, and some example of how that one section has been used in a questionable fashion by a few companies, is not only simplistic, but bordering on propaganda.
I agree, and I've said as much elsewhere. I still stand by the assertion that it shouldn't have been passed. Inaction is always preferable to bad action, right? 1201 has a lot of crap in it that we've had to live with for 8 years or so that should have never become law. Stuff that will remain law for years to come with all the chilling effects, cease and desists, expensive and ultimately futile law suits, reinventions and reimplimentations, and finally damages to fair use (including time- and format-shifting as well as excerpting for commentary, personal backup, even the things the 'computer maintenance' provisions allow!) and damages to the public domain (criminalization of even inadvertant circumvention even when the copyright of work has expired or deliberately been gifted to the public domain).
You and ISPs may like the the safe harbour provisions -- and maybe that makes it on balance a win for you -- but we didn't need a new law for that either. We only needed one ruling to cement ISPs' positions as common carriers, just as Ma Bell and Xerox were never held accountable for the infringements of others with the aid of their products.
The attitude that new legislation is the answer to everything is short-sighted. (And there's no shortage of the side effects: http://chillingeffects.org/)
So no, I'm not advocating throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I'm saying the baby shouldn't have ever been in that bath. I was against it then. I wrote my rep, I did the ineffectual crap you're supposed to do; but we all knew it wasn't going to be stopped.
I'll check to see if you've answered this else where (so pardon me if you have), but what's the story with this:
> Before the DMCA had I planned on Internet distribution [...] I would have been in a very tenuous position had someone infringed on the material, and I had not found out about the infringing property until after it was published.
Why? What section of the DMCA is even relevant? A movie is a movie. 17-USC-201 is pretty straight forward about ownership -- how would it be any different if it was fixed on a hard disk or on film? I mean even the characters are copyright the first time you ink or model their likeness...? With copyright by default every subversion carries your life plus 70 (or more).
Anyway, I'm really hoping you can show me some utterly necessary, superbly shiny silver-lining.
> By your argument, there was no reason at all for the WCT, because everything contained within it was part of the Berne Convention. Of course you seem to be taking the rather odd position that in fact even that, and as far as I can tell most of our copyright system, needs to be struck down, because you think it does not protect your interests, and therefore doesn't protect anyone's interest.
Then you disingenuously represent my position. Copyright by default is unnecessary. Life plus 50, while a limited term, arguably does not serve to incent creation more than once in a lifetime (and therefore hardly promotes the public domain, the reason Congress is permitted to protect copyrights at all). If the term continues to be extended every 20 years, then for all intents and purposes the Copyright Act as it stands is unconstitutional. However, that is irrelevant. I have no problem with the existance of copyright in so far as it is outlined in the Constitution. What I do have a problem with is the DMCA sections that affect what I can do with my own property in my own home. And again, the DMCA permits (and criminalizes the circumvention of) "DRM" that is unconstitutional (i.e., all mechanisms that don't permit excerpting or expiration). It's absurd to believe that I am against reasonable refinements to the code (e.g., expanding works that can be copyrighted to include architecture, although hull designs is a stretch given that dress patterns can't be) based solely on whether they benefit me. You have a strange sense of snap judgement.
Now, with the unpleasantries out of the way...
> Spoken like someone who read about how the law works, rather than learning about it in court.
That's fair and true. I am not a lawyer. I made no such claim of course. However, is it fair to paint me as the enemy (ad hominem) and my point of view irrelevant when my knowledge of the code is academic rather than practical?
> You can say that "copyright by default" has been the law since '76 all you want, [...]
Nevermind that it's a fact?
> [...] but when it comes time to try to get damages for infringement on an unpublished piece of work, you find out really quickly that is not the case. I have been through several fights on this issue, being an artists who has worked for some pretty unethical clients [...]
What are you saying? That somehow your lawyer couldn't protect your work with the fact that every work created since 1976 was copyright at the time of its creation? I imagine you aren't giving me the full story... maybe you produced a work for hire, or under a contract? I have to reserve judement of course.
> Before the DMCA, if you walked into court and tried to claim infringement of artwork that was only ever published on the web, and the infringing artwork had been published in a traditional format like a newspaper or television ad, you were sunk. You did not have a leg to stand on unless you had filed for a copyright.
This is false. Can I read the decision in your case? I'm sure first publication had no bearing on ownership, since first publication doesn't determine copyright. 201 through 205. If I understand correctly, your veiled hypothetical (which presumably isn't hypothetical at all?) is that you produced some graphic and 'published' it on a web page and then a newspaper copied that graphic and published it in print, upon which you filed an infringement suit and subsequently a judge determined that the newspaper therefor owned the graphic? I await your response, but in this scenario the DMCA does not apply.
> No, but I certainly wouldn't have spent the last two years of my life (not to mention somewhere in the neighborhood of $60,000) producing and directing an animated film if I didn't have legal recourse to protect my material once I distributed it on the Internet.
Would you still have created this film under the 1909 copyright of 56 years?
> It is clear to me that you are just one of these people who thinks that anything you can load on your harddrive you should now have absolute rights to do whatever you want with, up to and including reverse engineering it for whatever purpose you choose.
:) reverse engineering for the purposes of interoperability is legal under the DMCA. I.e., using my data in my ways with my software is still legal, and reverse engineering protection schemes for that purpose is still legal. However, that wheel has to be reinvented every time because there is no exception for the 'trafficing of a circumvention device'.
... freedom-lovers? Libertarians? Whatever you want to call us.
Incidentally... the DMCA has an exception for just this case
Further, current law doesn't stipulate what you can do with "anything you load on your harddrive". So in this regard "one of these people" is everyone. Copyright is not concerned with what you do in your own home (or on your own harddrive). Unfortunately, the DMCA is -- and that's why it's a problem to
The DMCA should have never been passed, there is no point to making copyright infringement illegaler. The Act is just a givaway to the copy-protectors. It doesn't help "artists" or "invetors" in any meaningful way (which seems to be your premise in other posts where you mock DMCA opponents). In fact, if the artists are programmers and the inventors are systems-integrators it actually hurts them.
I know some artists/craftsmen don't consider engineering an art. In that regard we'll have to aggree to disagree.
Again, nothing personal; you seem like a reasonale gent on other threads. It just sounds like you are willfully uninformed about the DMCA and what the world was like both before and after it. That's where the friction and the 'troll' ratings are coming from.
So, on-topic and concisely: Nikon can't stop you from reverse engineering their "raw" format. Nikon can't stop Adobe from reverse engineering their "raw" format. But, the DMCA makes it illegal for Adobe to distribute that that 'device'. Further, the illegal circumvention device may infringe a Nikon patent, which would make such software illegal even without the DMCA. This is how it was with film (the films and processes were patented, as I'm sure you know). The DMCA is a red-herring in all discussions about digital camera raw formats. I don't see any argument for the camera manufacturer having any rights above those of the camera operator. (Imagine if in the 60s Kodak decided that they owned every shot taken on Kodak film, incredible!)
Anyhow, cheers.
The parent post is incorrect in almost all regards.
I like this passage in particular, for its incredible irony: "In fact, most people railing against the DMCA don't know the first thing about copyright law, because they have never had to deal with it in the slightest."
Aparently that includes you. 'Copyright by default' was a change made in the 76 Act to bring the U.S. into compliance with the Berne Convention.
With that correction made, we can now rephrase your entire argument as "omg thank gods for teh Copyright Act of 1976 for making these terrible bloggers blogging possible on the intarwebs thanks to all of these are huge changes that pretty much made the viability of commercial intarweb pages a reality!" Of course this argument is absurd on its face, as there existed mass publication for 100s of years prior to the 76 Act (e.g., pampleteers, federalist papers, through to civil rights organization).
Do you post more on Slashdot because you know your novel turn of phrase will be protected for nearly 200 years? Would you post less if it wasn't? 'Copyright by default' is a nearly useless feature of the Berne Convention (we already had laws for trust and honesty -- er, that is to say -- contracts, plagarism and fraud).
In my opinion the Berne Convention and the requisite re-writes of our laws and the continual term extensions don't uphold the bargian made in Article 1.8.8 of our Constitution.
In fact, the DMCA does undermine fair use and does undermine the public domain. This makes the DMCA counter to the exact reason why congress was given the power to establish copyright in the first place: to promote the growth of the public domain.
This is nothing personal though -- I just wanted to make it clear that you're muddying the waters, you aren't helping.
Ew, your troll's comment reminded me to turn "show link domains" back on. Gross. I guess he "won" over me too.
:-p
Just in case: everyone else, don't click on the sibling's link for flaming powerbooks
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor
An excerpt:
But that aside. Commentary on one's appearances goes against the very grain of our culture. I say our to mean the fundemental meritocracy of nerds, "geeks", hackers, etc.
(emphasis my own)
That's why the article submission was offensive to me (maybe offensive is too strong a word). I believe that's why it's sparked this discussion.
In addition to the other advice given:
:-p
/ 12512 looked it up for you too!
> * SMB can't network share anything but user directory (what about mounted disk images, CD's, single folders?)
This is false. You have serveral options beyond the the sharing pane in System Preferences. If you only know how to use Microsoft Windows you can investigate software like Sharepoints, you can use OS X Server which has sharepoint management built into its amazingly great administration tools, or if you are old school Linux user you can just edit your samba.conf by hand, which seems pretty painless to me.
For "command prompt here" I just wrote a tiny Applescript and dropped it in the Finder's tray (something like "tell application "finder" set mypath to (folder of the front window as string); end tell; tell application "terminal" activate; do script "cd " & mypath in front window; end tell;"). Pardon me if I got any of that syntax wrong, I rarely write applescipts
So yeah. Short version: sharepoints or OS X Server will solve your GUI smb/ftp admin needs (easier than cli netinfo or editing confs), and you can use applescripts to customize your interface.
Here, http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx
> In a war of "anything goes", "save my ass first" law comes before "save my constitutional right" law.
Hey, quick question: When will the war be over so I can have my freedom back?
> While "intellectual property" can't be removed from the owner, except by actions that are far more illegal than petit theft [...]
:) This comes up weekly on Slashdot and yet, readers still make this fallacious argument. Read more at my journal, if you want. I don't mean to be inflammatory or to bait you.
Like mind-reading? "Intellectual property" can never be removed from the "owner". How many times does it have to be said? There are no property rights in ideas or expressions. The very act of expression, by definition, is a giving act -- there is no way to 'steal' what is not expressed (cyberpunk/science-fiction ignored). That said, let's move on to the continuing farce:
> To download a film or album without the author's consent is to remove an instance of his rights as the creator, and that instance holds definite value.
No. It holds potential value. There is no removal of rights, instances or otherwise. There is an infringement on his monopoly though. Potential value is not property. Copyrights (and the other "intellectual properties" such as patents) are, understand this, artificial, time-limited state-granted distribution monopolies.
State Granted Monopolies. State Granted Monopolies. There is no inalienable copy right. If you choose to express something you have just given it away with the one exception that the State will not permit me to give it away again for a limited amount of time.
Now, why does one submit to this coercion -- the coercion of not being able to express an idea previously expressed to them? We give up that inalienable right of expression as a trade-off to recieve a richer public domain down the road (see Article 1.8.8 of the Constitution).
There is no right to potential revenue. State granted monopoly rights are a grant to artists and inventors for the sole purpose of growing the materials that future artists and inventors will be able to exploit (the public domain). This monopoly is not granted to make artists rich (potential income). It's granted to make more artists (wider foundation for creativity).
Sorry for the repititious rant
Jesus help me. I can't believe I'm going to reply to your flaggrantly inflammatory follow-up. (I'll reply in kind!)
> It seems YOU missed the point. You are comparing keeping a $2 light bulb for two years to keeping a $200+ audio player for 2 years. This is a 2 orders of magnatude price difference.
In either case they are a fraction of 1% of my yearly income. If a $2 lightbulb is disposable, then so is an iPod. I didn't miss "the point". I ignored it. But let's go with it -- let's go with your fallacious argument that the "order of magnitude" you keep harping about is even relevant. Let's say you keep your totally worthless, non-user upgradeable iPod for 2 years (only 2!) and that you spent $300 on it (so you could hold a couple hundred hours of audio). The cost of an iPod (even the horribly busted planned obsolescence model) costs you 41 goddamn cents a day. That isn't disposable?! I waste more than that on sugarless beverages, and probaby get much less enjoyment (keep in mind, I didn't spend $300 on my iPod).
Let's continue on to the next vagary!
> Amost every person I know considers product that cost $2 and are disposable within a couple of years to be an acceptable value. I know very few people that consider products that cost $200 and are disposable within a couple of years to be acceptable.
Holy shit, you know some weird people then. 41 cents a day! Is it fair to say that most people don't scrimp and save and penny-pinch? In my experience that's the case (e.g. average Americans have debt and have barely any savings). "Almost every person you know" is budgetting down to that last dime. Depressing.
> Very few people I have talked to, even realize that their ipods will 'expire'. Using your car analogy, and the fact that you consider a 2 order of magnatude price difference to be comparable, you should be applauding all those people who still actaully drive their 2004 Toyota Corolla. Given the absurdity of your light bulb ipod analogy, let move on to your car ipod analogy.
You're still disputing that people prefer cheap, fallible cars to very expensive ultra-reliable cars? Keep it up! Only a tiny, tiny portion of Americans believe when they buy a car that they will keep it for their lifetimes. It seems on average that they migrate every 5 years.
> You praise people that kept thier '62 Lincoln. Well, the '62 Lincoln didn't have the hood welded shut, and you are talking about keeping an item that take dramatically more physical abuse for 43 years. Yes 43 years! I wouldn't complain if the ipod lasted 43 years. I wouldn't complain if it lasted 10 years. It would not be considered unusal for the ipod to fail in 2 years though. Again, you are using an absurd analogy.
Again, hyperbole. All you need to replace an iPod's battery is a sharp plastic wedge and a small screwdriver. Then again, I don't even change my own oil anymore. In fact, I happily let my mechanic replace my car bettery while the car was in for service. I'm happy to pay for such services because my car costs significantly more to own and operate than 41 cents a day.
> [ad hominem blah blah] Trying to imply that a two pin header and a battary door would add even $10 to the cost, or would cause a significant loss of reliablity, you are as far off as you were with comparing a light bulb and car to an ipod.
I'm not implying that at all. All I stated is that the 'hidden costs' of engineering, manufacturing and servicing additionally complex components are real additional costs. I didn't quantify them. I only stated that for your supposition to be true the trade off would have to be beneficial -- would an iPod be better (simpler, more usable, more convenient, more desirable, less expensive, etc.) if the additional costs for your feature (engineering, manufacture, servicing, replacement) were included? I see no tennable position that increasing product complexity lowers the cost
> Also, back when he was on the Daily Show and Viggo Mortensen was on, they had Colbert backstage reading Aragorn's family history and list of aliases in a total geeky way, it was pretty funny.
It should be pointed out that he wasn't reading it -- he really is that much of a geek. He knew it. (At least, that's what feels true to me, given the evidence. Ha!)
But I'll second the parent post, Colbert is a genius.
I don't know what your primary language is, but in English there is no semantic difference between portion and percentage. The later is merely used to describe portions (fractions) in terms of parts per hundred.
Analogies are always imperfect, but let me clarify:
First, we have cheap cars because they are made with fallible parts and acceptable imprecision. They could be made with much more expensive parts that don't fail. Common, consumer autos are built today with managed obsolescence. This is indisputable.
Second, we have cheap light bulbs because it's easier to make cheap filaments inside cheap glass bulbs, rather than use exotic elements for filaments that last 10s of years and transparent non-brittle bulbs to replace the glass. The cheap to manufacture, cheap to produce products have won in the marketplace.
> The non-replacable battery can not have lowered the manufacturing price by more than $0.05-$0.10.
This may be an obvious cost to you -- but here's some more costs you forgot: More contacts, leads, mounts, and plugs means more points of failure. Also battery doors (cheap plastic, or invisible polished steel latches) provide more points of failure. More points of failure increase the cost of the product to the manufacturer and the retailer (in both insurance, service and replacement, and yield volumes), that cost is passed on to the user in higher prices. So while ten cents (times however many iPods manufactured) may seem like a small amount to you, the cost in components, manufacturing, and service for every replacement door, hinge, battery, battery lead, battery contact, etc. would all need to add up to less than your hypothetical production cost for even including it in the design.
Anyway, the market does move fast. I praise every soul who has a kept their first generation iPod to the point of battery failure, despite that today -- for less money -- you could get a Nano with nearly the same storage for a fraction of the cost, size and weight, while enjoying new features.
I also praise every soul who has kept driving their '62 Lincoln, even though they could have a much safer and more reliable car today for a similar fraction (or portion or percentage) of their income.
> Given that we see devices that cost less than $10 on a regular bases that can somehow afford to put in a replacable battary AND sell with a margin that is obviously less than $10, we can conclude that Apple did this on purpose.
Of course they did it on purpose. That's the whole point. This fact was never disputed. No battery door is a feature, a feature you don't like, that is expressed to the owners of iPods in unit cost and product usability/simplicity. The only point to which I take exception is that this feature is somehow hurting iPod sales: that there is some vast untapped market that consists of you and the 4 mods that upped you all clamoring for that iPod that includes a battery door!
Thanks for taking the time to reply, although it seems you missed the point. Cheers.
In addition to these comments: http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=179394&
> [lack of user replaceable rechargeable batteries] is certainly a problem for a very large portion of the population.
What percentage is a "very large portion", 33%? I think 33% would be a very generous definition for 'very large portion of the population'. I'll bet the percentage of the [audio player buying] population that needs user replaceable rechargeable batteries is more like 1% -- and it would be an outright lie to call that "a very large portion".
How is the parent comment insightful? Because 4 moderators on Slashdot (an exceedingly small sample of the market) agreed that they should be able to change the batteries themselves. What a complete waste.
Would we all give up cheap cars and cheap light-bulbs just so they would last forever? No. Any other answer is bullshit. Non-replaceable batteries lowers cost.
> The simplest way to kill off the dangerous home meth labs overnight is to allow (and regulate) its production by legitimate sources. [...] That will also simultaneously defund the gangs, mobs, and cartels that distribute this stuff [...]
:) What it does do is make a known vector (smurfing) for the dangerous production of crystal meth in a home-lab less economically viable (it's a market solution). I mean c'mon, the possession of meth is already illegal, and so is the production of it, so it's apparent that these laws aren't stopping the problem, but by affecting the economics (the supply and demand for meth) the problem (destruction and theft of third-party citizens' property due to home-lab fires/explosions and the high costs of black market drugs) can be solved. I encourage you to watch the Frontline episode about meth from my original post. (Fixing the meth epidemic isn't about making meth illegaler. ;)
I agree, and this was essentially my point when I said "Why shouldn't free citizens be able to make their own cold medicine at home?! How can possession of any chemical infringe the rights of others and therefore necessitate State intervention?!".
However, that said, buying cold medicine OTC instead of off the shelf, again, does not infringe anyone's right to possess a chemical.
Anyhow yeah, if a charity could give away meth for free we could solve the theft problem without this law. If a pharmaceutical could safely and profitably create meth for sale to charities then we could solve the "home-lab exploding and burning" problem without this law.
Whether or not free narcotics for all who desire them contributes to a sustainable society is another debate.
Then in the same vein, is it a reasonable assertion that a catastrophic WMD attack will happen every year? I'm saying that historically WMD attacks are superbly rare, regardless of the death toll, and catastrohpic terrorist attacks while demonstrably more frequent than WMD attacks are also exceedingly rare. It is an undeniable assertion that an American is more likely to die while in a car than she is in a plane or any other terrorist affected target.
The ellipsis covered an assertion that is irrelevant to the quotation because stateless-terrorist attacks with WMDs only take place in the movies (i.e., it is "provided the risk of a WMD-based attack on the US is sufficiently small").
We're gonna have to start losing upwards of 50,000 a year due to domestic terrorism before it even starts competing with driving. Is that possible? Sure it is. Someone could (as in, it's not entirely impossible) drop a reasonably large airblast nuke on a population-dense city, but every year? Every year? My only argument is that your human calculus seems like hyperbole. If we're going to lie with numbers how about:
(Roughly)
Deaths in America due to terrorism since 1968: 4,000 (rounded up)
Deaths in America due to traffic accidents since 1968: 1,000,000 (200k through 1980, 300k through 1990, 500k through today -- and I bet that's a conservative estimate, given that the average since 1990 is like 43000/yr.)
Executive summary: More people have died on the road this year than have died in terrorist attacks in 40 years (and we're only like 60 days in!).
So in my "lying with statistics" terrorism deaths are a rounding error compared to traffic deaths. I wonder if we're spending more in dollars and liberities fighting terrorists than we are improving traffic safety.
Finally, this is not an arugment to say that we should spend more money on traffic safety than terrorism safety. I'm just saying that for the average citizen, worrying about terrorism is pointless (you should be worrying about who's running the next redlight).
> Of course, it's clearly a matter of debate as to how likely such a threat is and what tools are appropriate to combat it. I personally prefer to err on the side of protecting civil liberties, which I believe are fundamental to our society and thus worth protecting.
Anyhow, in principle we still agree, liberty is more important than the illusion of security.
Non authoritative update reference earlier post:
It wasn't a father/daughter, it was a couple. Man has leg damage but will keep both legs. Woman lost both legs at the knee, only one found. Couple's vehicle was struck by young female drunk driver. Ew.
> 2,986 * 365 = 1,089,890, or approximately 26 times the number of automotive fatalities.
Is it a reasonable assertion that a catastrophic terrorist attack could be executed every single day of every year? I'll tell you what does happen every single day of every year: millions of Americans drive to work. The DHSMV numbers for deaths on the road in 2005 exceed 3000 persons, in my state alone. I work for the DOT today. I work three 12-hour shifts a week. During every shift at least one persion gets killed in my district (3 counties in north east Florida). In fact, right now FHP is covering an accident involving two trauma flights (father and daughter with multiple dismemberments; they might live, but regardless we've already had a possible fatality tonight, and we're only halfway through the shift, we could still top 4 deaths tonight).
This is a long way to say, I agree: "The average person appears much more likely [...] to be killed in a car accident than be killed by a terrorist attack."
What's cool is, most of that aid is tied-aid, which means that it is dispursed on the condition that it will be spent in the ways we choose -- i.e., it is spent buying goods and services from American companies. It's hardly charitable in the normal sense of the word, or if it is charitable it isn't altruistic. Maybe it's not supposed to be -- PR costs money after all. I don't argue that one cannot do some secondary good while acting in one's own self-interest. We can get some good rep and win some hearts and minds, syphon deficit (tax money) into corporate profits (reinvested into our reelection) and at the same time a third world village gets a bridge, desal plant, highway or medicine (you can have aid, but not to buy Indian generics, only for authentic American/Brittish pharmaceuticals).
:-). Everybody does it though, so it's not just us looking for the kickbacks.
:-\
Anyhow, what tied-aid actually does for us, tax-payers, is shift our money to influential corporations via over-priced, non-local public projects in foriegn countries.
Often, tied-aid doesn't even pay for local labor (i.e., there isn't even trickle-down into the local economy, as even the aid-money to pay for labor is shipped back to a non-local economy
I don't claim to know whether we would be better off spending this money at home...
Just google for "tied-aid" if you'd like to learn more.
> How is treating ordinary people like criminals going to solve your particular problem, just because they have a cold or flu and want over the counter medicine?
The parent post mischaracterizes the issue (the change is to sell previously off the shelf cold medicine over the counter). The inconvenience of getting non-prescription cold medicine OTC instead of off the shelf is inconsequential compared to the amount of good it does to stem 'smurfing' for home-lab production of meth. Getting cold medicine from a pharmacist isn't treating ordinary people like criminals. Your freedom is not being abridged. Warrantless wiretaps abridge your freedom (to freely associate and to be secure in your personal affects), buying cold medicine over the counter without a prescription doesn't. However, if you are against the control of all substances, then I guess your position is tenable (e.g.: Why shouldn't free citizens be able to make their own cold medicine at home?! How can possession of any chemical infringe the rights of others and therefore necessitate State intervention?!). This also goes for each sibling reply about how hard it is to get Sudafed. Give me a break.
Here's a great one-stop resource to get you started: Frontline episode about the meth epidemic.
All of your photos and evidence etc. regarding the March 1988 attack is useless, since the attack was (most likely) perpetrated by the Iranians during the course of warfare. That was the whole point of my very non-confrontational posting. The fact is, the State Dept. had a vested interested in you, Congress and everyone else believing that Hussein gassed the Kurds to get its sanctions in play.
Your Slashdot bio doesn't mention whether or not you are a member of the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. War College at Carlisle or in the employ Pentagon, so you'll pardon me if I take more stock in their report than your drummed up sensationalism. I wish you'd provided a link that wasn't to a news source, since the very point that I was making is that news of the incident in question was misreported and then used for propaganda.
Be more critical. I am not making an argument that Saddam Hussein wasn't a bad man or that he didn't employ bad men and women; he most certainly did. There's plenty of evidence. The Baathist government did all kinds of bad shit, but to mention "he gassed his own people!" in every single breath that mentions Hussein is inappropriate, and arguably jingoistic bullshit.
I'd like us to have a more informed debate, and it seems you would too, so I applaud your efforts in detailing the other bad stuff and bad actors that existed in post-88 Iraq.
So, even if "Ali" wanted "His most infamous outrage [to be] the use of poison gas to kill thousands of Kurds at Halabja in 1988," the fact is there is no evidence that he did. That doesn't mean he wasn't a bad man and didn't do lots of other bad stuff (there's physical evidence for that other stuff, right? the petrol drinking and the lamp-making from the flesh of prisoners, etc., I'm just taking you and the reporters on faith there).
No need to Rumsfield me with the "absence of proof is not proof of absence" line. It's simply inappropriate to pass of as facts that which doesn't have evidence. That's called conjecture.
Conjecture is a powerful propaganda tool.
Thanks again for your time.
piece of video being ripped from a CD and transcoded into H.264
Man, I'm being careless tonight, ripped from a DVD of course.
> Ripping a DVD is a rather different problem than H.264 encoding.
e -2006011800.jpg clearly depicts a 2 hour, 25 minute piece of video being ripped from a CD and transcoded into H.264 and that the time it will take to rip, decode and re-encode this piece of video is 2 hours, 13 minutes.
No kidding? Maybe I wasn't clear:
This image http://download.m0k.org/handbrake/images/HandBrak