And these people (the USA and NZ governments) are right behind moves to overthrow despots in other nations.
Hang on... isn't a despot someone who places themselves and their accomplices above the laws that regular citizens must obey (and are often severely punished for if they don't)?
Kettle black pot -- use these words to create a sentence that describes this situation.
Copyright infringers can't absolve themselves of guilt or legal liability simply by including the original copyright statement or acknowledging the copyright owner -- it's still against the law to use someone else's intellectual property without their expressed (by way of license) permission.
Just try posting a popular movie from Sony or Warner to YouTube and see how you get on when you try to claim "but I left the copyright statement in".
Confession may be good for the soul but it doesn't eliminate the crime.
I'm in the same boat -- didn't vote because I felt that none of them were worthy of my endorsement.
Choosing the "least bad" is not the same as choosing "the best".
I really can't believe we're still using a political system designed hundreds of years before the internet was invented -- when, thanks to modern technology, we could create a system that introduced the checks and balances essential to real democracy.
Never one to criticize without offering a better solution, I came up with this political system which I call Recoverable Proxy.
It ensures that the people can always have the last word -- but only when necessary. On a day-to-day basis, the political system remains unchanged, except for the fact that the people can stop a wayward government (ie: most of them) from usurping their right to democracy.
It is worth noting that law only prescribes the *maximum* term of copyright protection that applies.
There is no reason why the creator of intellectual property can't define a shorter term if they choose.
The book I'll be releasing shortly will have a clearly stated copyright term of just five years.
I'm hoping that by being *sensible* about the term of protection, those who might otherwise have opted to simply download a copy (it won't be DRMed) without paying the paltry sum being asked, will think again about doing so.
We're not talking a literary work on the scale of Dickens -- but I do expect that it is something which the public domain will benefit from in a few years time (whether it sells in quantity or not) so I'm not going to be stupid about my use of copyright protection.
Copyright is measure of protection - not a weapon!
How long before "the great unwashed" finally wake up to the fact that their governments are selling out their rights to the big corporations of the world?
Who keeps an eye on the post-political careers of these "negotiators" and reports on how many of them get "honorary directorships" of the companies they are selling the public's rights in favor of?
Surely, sooner or later, even the half of the population who are below the median IQ will have to wake up to the fact that governments and corporations are working in concert to strip them of their rights and their money.
Or have we devolved to the point where we no longer care -- so long as their is food on the table and a roof (however shabby) over our heads?
If that's all it is -- then why have Swedish prosecutors refused to interview Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy as was offered?
If they wish to arrest him -- then issue an arrest warrant.
If the wish to question him -- go to the Ecuadorian Embassy and question him.
While you're suggesting that "a cigar is just a cigar" -- I'm suggesting that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck... chances are -- it's a duck!
When will countries like the USA and UK realize that they really don't need any more enemies than they already have.
Invading a sovereign nation's embassy with armed force is effectively a declaration of war.
Now Ecuador isn't going to send an armada of naval vessels or a wave of bombers to strike back at the UK -- but you can bet that a good number of terrorists will use this as justification for making more strikes against both the UK and the USA.
Is this what the UK and USA really want?
Well I'm sorry to say but it probably is.
If the UK seize Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy, he's extradited to Sweden and from there back to the USA, I have absolutely *no* doubt at all that there will be a new wave of terror attacks against both nations -- as retribution.
This will give the UK and USA governments just what they want -- an ability to say "see, Assange was evil and probably working with these terrorists to destabilize the West -- the proof is here in these new attacks".
Of course, like typical politicians, they won't care that hundreds or possibly thousands of innocent souls may lose their lives to attacks that could make 9/11 look like a childrens' tea-party.
I'm starting to think that this world is going to hell in a handbasket. I just hope that the great-unwashed public wise-up to the way they're being used and abused by politicians right across the globe.
Rob the public blind to the tune of billions (like the bankers have) and you get away with it -- in fact, governments will even pay your debts for you.
Steal a can of beans from a supermarket because you are hungry can't afford a meal and they'll lock you up.
The TRS80 model 1 was my first store-bought computer -- I'd built my own "microcomputers" up until that stage.
Compared to the Apple it had some real strengths: A BASIC with double-precision math, a Z80 processor (the 6502 is wicked-good but once Page 0 is used up you lose so many of those cool addressing modes so the Z80 works better in a "store-bought" machine with ROM firmware), plenty of support in magazines, and later, a brilliant disk OS in the form of NewDOS80
I had most of the Tandy micros: The Model 1, the Model 2 (with 8" drives and later, CP/M), the Tandy 100, the Model III and later, the seldom mentioned Tandy 2000 with its Intel 80186 processor at 8MHz. That thing just blitzed all the 4.77MHz 8088-based PC clones that were around at the time.
But those were different days.
Before the advent of the IBM PC, every machine was wildly different and exciting. Once the "PC-compatible" virus hit, hardware became rather undistinctive and "samey".
Back in the early 1990s (when I was working for a company that had more money than sense), we took the top off a 20MB Seagate HD and ran it for a day with no protection from dust, moisture or whatever.
Everyone in the building came past to watch the heads move and the platters spin.
It performed faultlessly.
Quite surprising -- considering the weight given to clean-rooms and the supposed risk of head-crash that even the tiniest speck of dust was supposed to produce.
We didn't put the drive back into proper service but it was enlightening.
Don't forget that the public generally only knows about the things the media tells them about and -- in the list of SOPA sponsors there are a huge number of big media players -- all eager to use it to protect their content.
Hence, we've seen very little (if any) objective mainstream media coverage of SOPA and what it will mean to the average joe citizen.
Unfortunately, the real power to shape the minds and opinions of the masses lies in the hands of the likes of Rupert Murdoch and the other media barons.
What a shame it is that 90% of the public are so complacent and unwilling to take action to protect their rights from the goose-stepping content cartels.
Imagine if, even if just for a month, *nobody* bought any music from members of the RIAA, nobody went to any theatres to watch movies from the MPAA, or bought their DVDs or even hired their DVDs.
Can you just see the look of absolute fear that would envelope them?
Even if we could find enough people to reduce their sales and rentals by 50%, that would send a very strong message that perhaps, when it comes to copyright "it's better the devil you know [filesharing] than the devil you don't [boycotts]"
Unfortunately, any move to organize a campaign of abstinence or a boycott would be doomed to failure -- because most people just don't give a damn anyway.
We get the government (and the storm-trooper tactics) we deserve they say. Maybe they're right:-(
This seems to be a big (and getting much bigger) problem with YouTube as it tries to suck-up to the big content owners in a way that is starting to seriously impact other original content creators.
people are beginning to recognize that the U.S is not safe
It's not just on the internet anymore...
NOWHERE is safe. Just look at how easily the US administration got the NZ authorities to do their bidding in the case of Kim Dotcom and MegaUpload.
Even though there is a basic tenet in US (and NZ) law that "a person is considered innocent until proven guilty), they still broke down his doors, terrorized his pregnant wife, took all his assets and threw him in prison.
He *may* be guilty of the charges leveled against him -- but until those charges are proven, he ought to be treated as an innocent man -- surely?
The obvious moral of this story is that the USA is still acting like it is *the* global policeman who is entitled to take whatever action it sees fit, wherever it wants to, anywhere in the world.
And the USA wonders why it has so many enemies?
Even the most reserved and tolerant peoples will rise up against the USA if it keeps beating them with a stick in the way it seems to be doing of late.
We're told that copyright crime is bad because it funds terrorism... well maybe it's the copyright holders who are helping create terrorism by giving an increasing number of people good reason to see the USA as an evil empire.
I'm not against copyright -- hell, I rely on copyright protection to ensure I can pay the bills. However, I despise the way that the MPAA/RIAA etc have corrupted the US legal and democratic systems to their own ends.
Wake up America -- these corporations are rapidly becoming *your* worst enemy!
When I presented with a chronic sinus infection the doctor told me that antibiotics were pretty much useless against infections in this part of the body because it was mainly in the mucus and there was no blood-flow in mucus so the ABs couldn't properly permeate that medium.
Never the less, he gave me a course of ciprofloxacin which, I'm told, is one of the "least ineffective" ABs for this kind of infection -- and one with some nasty side-effects.
The infection did abate for a while but (despite the fact I took a 2-week course) it came back.
With nothing to lose, I decided to try a natural remedy which is an "over the counter" supplement containing garlic and horseradish.
Voila!
It hasn't totally killed the infection but keeps it at such a very low level that you wouldn't know it was there. However, if I stop taking the pills I can feel the infection returning so I just pop a pill every couple of days and my quality of life is restored - with no side effects (it's odorless garlic).
I'm not one of these "save the planet hippy fad anti-establishment alternative therapy" types -- but sometimes I think we are just too quick to accept that hi-tech drugs are the only answer to problems.
I'm posting this from the future -- it's already 2012 in this part of the world (woohoo!)
I wrote my first column for 2012 today and in it I speculate that SOPA, if it's passed into law, might just be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
While governments all over the world seek to control, regulate, restrict and constrain the internet so as to protect their own power to impose ideologies on those who elect them to power, I have a feeling that SOPA could be just one step too far and might act as a catalyst for the kind of uprising they are trying to suppress.
2012 could be a watershed year and the byte may finally become more powerful than the bullet -- or the ballot.
As outlined here, only the completely stupid will be caught by this law.
More important should be a closer look at the raison d'etre for originally creating copyright laws and how that's been corrupted by the movie studios and recording labels with their fat lobbying wallets.
As described in the linked article, it's time copyright protection was scaled back to recognize that if the rights-owner refuses to sell their product to a particular market then there can be no losses associated with its unauthorized distribution. To allow rights-owners to prosecute people for copying that which they would otherwise be happy to pay for but aren't allowed to is a license to extort!
My first "computer" was a hand-built 2650-based system with just 1Kbyte of RAM and the only programming language available was machine code (hand-coded from assembler and) entered through a hex keypad and debug ROM monitor.
You kids with your BASIC, Ruby, Javascript etc, you don't know how good you've got it:-)
How do they determine the mass of their 1Kg reference?
Is it simply by measuring the force it exerts when influenced by a gravitational force of 1G?
If so, how do they measure to ensure that 1G is still the same acceleration that it was when the standard was introduced?
Do they also allow for the fact that it is displacing a certain amount of air -- and therefore is subject to the forces of buoyancy that will tend to make it lighter, depending on air density, humidity, etc?
While the predominant factor is the mass of the earth, what about other factors such as the gravitational field of the moon (large enough to induce tides of several meters in magnitude) and other celestial bodies?
Trying to measure an absolute through the use of a another absolute is fine -- but how do you factor in the variables that also have an effect?
Slashdot Mirror
And these people (the USA and NZ governments) are right behind moves to overthrow despots in other nations.
Hang on... isn't a despot someone who places themselves and their accomplices above the laws that regular citizens must obey (and are often severely punished for if they don't)?
Kettle black pot -- use these words to create a sentence that describes this situation.
Copyright infringers can't absolve themselves of guilt or legal liability simply by including the original copyright statement or acknowledging the copyright owner -- it's still against the law to use someone else's intellectual property without their expressed (by way of license) permission.
Just try posting a popular movie from Sony or Warner to YouTube and see how you get on when you try to claim "but I left the copyright statement in".
Confession may be good for the soul but it doesn't eliminate the crime.
I'm in the same boat -- didn't vote because I felt that none of them were worthy of my endorsement.
Choosing the "least bad" is not the same as choosing "the best".
I really can't believe we're still using a political system designed hundreds of years before the internet was invented -- when, thanks to modern technology, we could create a system that introduced the checks and balances essential to real democracy.
Never one to criticize without offering a better solution, I came up with this political system which I call Recoverable Proxy.
It ensures that the people can always have the last word -- but only when necessary. On a day-to-day basis, the political system remains unchanged, except for the fact that the people can stop a wayward government (ie: most of them) from usurping their right to democracy.
It is worth noting that law only prescribes the *maximum* term of copyright protection that applies.
There is no reason why the creator of intellectual property can't define a shorter term if they choose.
The book I'll be releasing shortly will have a clearly stated copyright term of just five years.
I'm hoping that by being *sensible* about the term of protection, those who might otherwise have opted to simply download a copy (it won't be DRMed) without paying the paltry sum being asked, will think again about doing so.
We're not talking a literary work on the scale of Dickens -- but I do expect that it is something which the public domain will benefit from in a few years time (whether it sells in quantity or not) so I'm not going to be stupid about my use of copyright protection.
Copyright is measure of protection - not a weapon!
I signed up *months* ago with RS components to be on the "waiting list" for my Raspberry Pi.
Weeks and months ticked by and eventually I got my "invitation to place an order", complete with the number needed to do so.
Off I went and paid my money with a promised "up to 9 weeks" lead-time.
No worries.
That was about 11 weeks ago -- and still no notification of shipment.
Meanwhile, for the past month or so, friends have been buying them from Element14 and they've been shipped within the week.
WTF?
I emailed RS for an update -- no reply.
Looks like those of us ordering from RS got suckered big-time!
How long before "the great unwashed" finally wake up to the fact that their governments are selling out their rights to the big corporations of the world?
Who keeps an eye on the post-political careers of these "negotiators" and reports on how many of them get "honorary directorships" of the companies they are selling the public's rights in favor of?
Surely, sooner or later, even the half of the population who are below the median IQ will have to wake up to the fact that governments and corporations are working in concert to strip them of their rights and their money.
Or have we devolved to the point where we no longer care -- so long as their is food on the table and a roof (however shabby) over our heads?
If that's all it is -- then why have Swedish prosecutors refused to interview Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy as was offered?
If they wish to arrest him -- then issue an arrest warrant.
If the wish to question him -- go to the Ecuadorian Embassy and question him.
While you're suggesting that "a cigar is just a cigar" -- I'm suggesting that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck... chances are -- it's a duck!
And to think... if he'd kept his dick in his trousers he'd be home and free right now.
Testosterone has a lot to answer for! :-)
When will countries like the USA and UK realize that they really don't need any more enemies than they already have.
Invading a sovereign nation's embassy with armed force is effectively a declaration of war.
Now Ecuador isn't going to send an armada of naval vessels or a wave of bombers to strike back at the UK -- but you can bet that a good number of terrorists will use this as justification for making more strikes against both the UK and the USA.
Is this what the UK and USA really want?
Well I'm sorry to say but it probably is.
If the UK seize Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy, he's extradited to Sweden and from there back to the USA, I have absolutely *no* doubt at all that there will be a new wave of terror attacks against both nations -- as retribution.
This will give the UK and USA governments just what they want -- an ability to say "see, Assange was evil and probably working with these terrorists to destabilize the West -- the proof is here in these new attacks".
Of course, like typical politicians, they won't care that hundreds or possibly thousands of innocent souls may lose their lives to attacks that could make 9/11 look like a childrens' tea-party.
I'm starting to think that this world is going to hell in a handbasket. I just hope that the great-unwashed public wise-up to the way they're being used and abused by politicians right across the globe.
Rob the public blind to the tune of billions (like the bankers have) and you get away with it -- in fact, governments will even pay your debts for you.
Steal a can of beans from a supermarket because you are hungry can't afford a meal and they'll lock you up.
This crap has to end soon -- doesn't it?
Do we really care?
What's this FaceBook thing anyway?
Does it compile into native code or P-code?
The TRS80 model 1 was my first store-bought computer -- I'd built my own "microcomputers" up until that stage.
Compared to the Apple it had some real strengths: A BASIC with double-precision math, a Z80 processor (the 6502 is wicked-good but once Page 0 is used up you lose so many of those cool addressing modes so the Z80 works better in a "store-bought" machine with ROM firmware), plenty of support in magazines, and later, a brilliant disk OS in the form of NewDOS80
I had most of the Tandy micros: The Model 1, the Model 2 (with 8" drives and later, CP/M), the Tandy 100, the Model III and later, the seldom mentioned Tandy 2000 with its Intel 80186 processor at 8MHz. That thing just blitzed all the 4.77MHz 8088-based PC clones that were around at the time.
But those were different days.
Before the advent of the IBM PC, every machine was wildly different and exciting. Once the "PC-compatible" virus hit, hardware became rather undistinctive and "samey".
Good days!
Back in the early 1990s (when I was working for a company that had more money than sense), we took the top off a 20MB Seagate HD and ran it for a day with no protection from dust, moisture or whatever.
Everyone in the building came past to watch the heads move and the platters spin.
It performed faultlessly.
Quite surprising -- considering the weight given to clean-rooms and the supposed risk of head-crash that even the tiniest speck of dust was supposed to produce.
We didn't put the drive back into proper service but it was enlightening.
Yep, you're still alive and unharmed -- and now you're on the Homeland Security and CIA watchlist.
Ah, the land of the free! :-)
Don't forget that the public generally only knows about the things the media tells them about and -- in the list of SOPA sponsors there are a huge number of big media players -- all eager to use it to protect their content.
Hence, we've seen very little (if any) objective mainstream media coverage of SOPA and what it will mean to the average joe citizen.
Unfortunately, the real power to shape the minds and opinions of the masses lies in the hands of the likes of Rupert Murdoch and the other media barons.
We're stuffed mate!
What a shame it is that 90% of the public are so complacent and unwilling to take action to protect their rights from the goose-stepping content cartels.
Imagine if, even if just for a month, *nobody* bought any music from members of the RIAA, nobody went to any theatres to watch movies from the MPAA, or bought their DVDs or even hired their DVDs.
Can you just see the look of absolute fear that would envelope them?
Even if we could find enough people to reduce their sales and rentals by 50%, that would send a very strong message that perhaps, when it comes to copyright "it's better the devil you know [filesharing] than the devil you don't [boycotts]"
Unfortunately, any move to organize a campaign of abstinence or a boycott would be doomed to failure -- because most people just don't give a damn anyway.
We get the government (and the storm-trooper tactics) we deserve they say. Maybe they're right :-(
Here are my experiences with YouTube and content owners attempts to defraud me of my own original content. I posted this a week ago:
The US recording industry is stealing from ME!
This seems to be a big (and getting much bigger) problem with YouTube as it tries to suck-up to the big content owners in a way that is starting to seriously impact other original content creators.
people are beginning to recognize that the U.S is not safe
It's not just on the internet anymore...
NOWHERE is safe. Just look at how easily the US administration got the NZ authorities to do their bidding in the case of Kim Dotcom and MegaUpload.
Even though there is a basic tenet in US (and NZ) law that "a person is considered innocent until proven guilty), they still broke down his doors, terrorized his pregnant wife, took all his assets and threw him in prison.
He *may* be guilty of the charges leveled against him -- but until those charges are proven, he ought to be treated as an innocent man -- surely?
The obvious moral of this story is that the USA is still acting like it is *the* global policeman who is entitled to take whatever action it sees fit, wherever it wants to, anywhere in the world.
And the USA wonders why it has so many enemies?
Even the most reserved and tolerant peoples will rise up against the USA if it keeps beating them with a stick in the way it seems to be doing of late.
We're told that copyright crime is bad because it funds terrorism... well maybe it's the copyright holders who are helping create terrorism by giving an increasing number of people good reason to see the USA as an evil empire.
I'm not against copyright -- hell, I rely on copyright protection to ensure I can pay the bills. However, I despise the way that the MPAA/RIAA etc have corrupted the US legal and democratic systems to their own ends.
Wake up America -- these corporations are rapidly becoming *your* worst enemy!
When I presented with a chronic sinus infection the doctor told me that antibiotics were pretty much useless against infections in this part of the body because it was mainly in the mucus and there was no blood-flow in mucus so the ABs couldn't properly permeate that medium.
Never the less, he gave me a course of ciprofloxacin which, I'm told, is one of the "least ineffective" ABs for this kind of infection -- and one with some nasty side-effects.
The infection did abate for a while but (despite the fact I took a 2-week course) it came back.
With nothing to lose, I decided to try a natural remedy which is an "over the counter" supplement containing garlic and horseradish.
Voila!
It hasn't totally killed the infection but keeps it at such a very low level that you wouldn't know it was there. However, if I stop taking the pills I can feel the infection returning so I just pop a pill every couple of days and my quality of life is restored - with no side effects (it's odorless garlic).
I'm not one of these "save the planet hippy fad anti-establishment alternative therapy" types -- but sometimes I think we are just too quick to accept that hi-tech drugs are the only answer to problems.
I'm posting this from the future -- it's already 2012 in this part of the world (woohoo!)
I wrote my first column for 2012 today and in it I speculate that SOPA, if it's passed into law, might just be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
While governments all over the world seek to control, regulate, restrict and constrain the internet so as to protect their own power to impose ideologies on those who elect them to power, I have a feeling that SOPA could be just one step too far and might act as a catalyst for the kind of uprising they are trying to suppress.
2012 could be a watershed year and the byte may finally become more powerful than the bullet -- or the ballot.
Read it if you're interested. 2012, the year of the cyber-rebel?
As outlined here, only the completely stupid will be caught by this law.
More important should be a closer look at the raison d'etre for originally creating copyright laws and how that's been corrupted by the movie studios and recording labels with their fat lobbying wallets.
As described in the linked article, it's time copyright protection was scaled back to recognize that if the rights-owner refuses to sell their product to a particular market then there can be no losses associated with its unauthorized distribution. To allow rights-owners to prosecute people for copying that which they would otherwise be happy to pay for but aren't allowed to is a license to extort!
At least they didn't just have a drone fire a hellfire missile into his apartment.
No, Lulzsec are doing that, now that they have control of the drone craft by way of their carefully crafted virus ;-)
My first "computer" was a hand-built 2650-based system with just 1Kbyte of RAM and the only programming language available was machine code (hand-coded from assembler and) entered through a hex keypad and debug ROM monitor.
You kids with your BASIC, Ruby, Javascript etc, you don't know how good you've got it :-)
And, in other news, Microsoft has released Windows 95 to rapturous applause.
Is there a difference?
How many people (perhaps apart from malware writers) will really be affected by this disclosure of the source for some 4-year-old software?
But a balance requires you to have a reference weight -- and I'm asking, how do you determine that the reference weight *is* 1Kg itself?
How do they determine the mass of their 1Kg reference?
Is it simply by measuring the force it exerts when influenced by a gravitational force of 1G?
If so, how do they measure to ensure that 1G is still the same acceleration that it was when the standard was introduced?
Do they also allow for the fact that it is displacing a certain amount of air -- and therefore is subject to the forces of buoyancy that will tend to make it lighter, depending on air density, humidity, etc?
While the predominant factor is the mass of the earth, what about other factors such as the gravitational field of the moon (large enough to induce tides of several meters in magnitude) and other celestial bodies?
Trying to measure an absolute through the use of a another absolute is fine -- but how do you factor in the variables that also have an effect?
I'm sure they know what they're doing.