"But aren't customs, immigration and taxes always the most powerful and least accountable forms of government?"
The Department of State is a pussycat compared to the Treasury Department. Note two of the three you listed falls into their department.
You've got the Secret Service, the IRS, the BATF... No matter what you do in the US, do not mess with the Treasury Department. These are the guys who brought down Capone, after all!
As soon as I buy a Betamax VCR, a laserdisc player, a DAT player, a MiniDisc player, a digital television, and all those other formats that have "better reproduction quality" while also charging me 2x-3x as much and limiting my options in purchasing media and/or recording.
"Many people don't seem to understand that many people who advocate free software consider this like a slap in the face."
Their problem, not mine. Deal with it.
"You might want to recall 150 yrs ago when some were saying "if you don't like slavery - don't own slaves, otherwise mind your own business. it's all up to whoever chooses" , there problem was that there was no equivalency relationship back then and there is none now."
OK, you just took "information wants to be free" to an undefensable extreme.
First off, until software starts contemplating "cognito ergo sum," it's just a bunch of 1's and 0's to me. Comparing it to slavery is not a proper metaphor.
Secondly, if you're trying to call those of us who choose to use "enslaved software" the slaves, guess what: I can wipe Windows off my hard drive and give Mandrake more room whenever I damned well please. My decision not to is not an invitation for you and your ilk to "liberate" me against my will.
At any rate, IMO the Confederacy was saying the right things in the wrong way for the wrong reasons. And, ultimately, you're not attacking the "Let me keep my slaves!" part of the argument as much as the "Leave me alone!" part.
"Copyrights are abusing peoples right to copy,"
As practiced in the United States today? Yes. As a concept? No. As a concept it is the fair exchange of rights between the producer and the consumer. It gives the producer compensation for their work wile ultimately giving the consumer new public domain works.
"Mixing, matching, and choosing is not the answer, because people are using copyrights to controll me even if I don't wish to exercise them myself."
WTF?! How is my decision to use non-GPL software infringe on your right to use GPL software? Should I also be prevented from writing this post lest I hurt your feelings?
"It is very harmfull to try and promote some type of equivalency relationship, and IMHO this is a great example of why."
The more vehemently you GPL sheep denounce the evils of EULA software the more you end up sounding like Steve Ballmer. Or do you enjoy becoming that which you claim you hate?
And how can you argue against equivalency? The BitKeeper license is over-broad in preventing you from using it to work on a competing product (you have to pay money to get out of that requirement). The GPL is over-broad in preventing you from using GPL software on a competing product (you have to agree to GPL your own code to get out of that requirement). Both of them serve to restrict the public domain by applying terms not only to their own works but to derivative works as well. Not even plain ol' vanilla copyrights do that ("Sorry Wierd Al, you can't release that parody unless you agree to publish through Sony.")
Want to write free software? Waive your Title 17 rights. You use what software you want, I'll use mine.
"Second Linux is not his project, and he is not managing it. Torvalds has expressed his opinions on the Free Software movement. He doesn't believe in Free Software as an all important political idea, thus he has not don anything wrong by using Bitkeeper."
So how much longer until Leon^H^H^Hinus Trotsky^H^H^H^H^H^Horvalds flees to Mexico only to be killed by a a good squad sent by Stalin^H^Hman?
1.) OS/2 in general is not dead. We currently call Microsoft's hideous mutation of the original core "Windows XP" (we can call it "Microsoft OS/2 5.1" if you'd like).
2.) OS/2 Warp is not dead. It's called eCommStation now, remember?:)
Um... in case you haven't noticed, referendums aren't decided upon by what voting technology you have but how many signatures you can get on a petition. I fail to see how the two are connected.
Voting commissioners have a hard enough time as it is trying to help voters with the silly punch cards they have in Florida. And you expect them to learn how to maintain a particular software suite? After all, these are going to be the people in charge of trying to figure out why a particular voting booth crashed.
And that's even before we get into how much easier you'd be making it for vote fraud. First rule of network security: If you want to keep your information secure, don't put it on the @#$% network!
A few decades back, Louisiana standardized on voting machines. You go in, pull the lever, flick some switches, pull the lever again, and you're done. And it works. No hanging chads, no unstable operating systems, no Slashdotting. It may be nineteenth century technology, but it works! Why can't you just use those instead? Why does everybody insist on adding more complexity?
Of course, I'm willing to bet officials who are looking for computerized voting are some of the same people who put in the broken punch card system to begin with.
So you're saying that it's more civilized to lock a person up, stuck with the same four walls for however many decades it takes for them to finish their natural lives in such an unnatural environment?
Forget the "who's going to pay for it?" question, that in and of itself seems more "cruel and unusual" than simply ending their life.
"In response to this market pressure, all major print dailies will target a 1st grade reading level. Headlines such as "Lame Senator Says He's Rubber, Opponent Is Glue" and "Superfund Site Smells Like Total Ass" will abound."
In other words, US Congress will turn into UK Parliament?
"Satellite based radio's would die and we'd see some nice shows on the sky when they fall out (just like the Iradium). This means Sirrus and XM. The cause for this would be better compression technologies and the recent opening of a spread spectrum by FCC that lets higher bandwith be sent over the airwaves. Stations would start to pump out studio (not cd as a/. story mentioned) quality audio out soon."
I call BS on this one. Crap is crap is crap no matter how you encode it. Satellite radio is popular for two reasons:
Fewer commercials
More variety
Anybody that's ever driven more than 100 miles knows that Clear Channel and the rest of the oligopoly has the exact same playlist in each and every one of their different markets. People flock to Sirius and XM because they're tired of hearing the same three songs over and over and over again on long road trips. Or hearing "The best of today's music!" when for some reason "today" happens to be 1991 ("Into the Wayback Machine, Sherman!").
If anything, this will increase the sales of satellite radio, as the stations pay for the new broadcasting equipment by whoring themselves out even more to advertisers and RIAA members (expect smaller playlists).
"Those who make these software would be out of harms way."
Like those who wrote Napster?
"We'd see a decline in movie goers... DVD's would be released region free, but with hardware copyright devices."
Dream on. DVD-CCA will fight that tooth and nail for the forseeable future and the MPAA wants people to go to the movie theater and pay unholy movie ticket prices.
Digital radio? What's the point in shelling out extra $$$ just to hear the latest Clear Channel tripe with slightly better sound quality? Crap is crap, no matter how it's encoded.
If public radio stations installed this equipment, the cost may be justified. If not, I'll save my cash for Sirius.
Silly question: How about a digital radio with a digital audio out interface?
(I can hear the RIAA rolling in the aisles now...)
"The Federal Communications Commission has voted 4-0 to reject a $26 billion merger between satellite TV providers Echostar Communications and Hughes Electronics."
Hughes and Echostar were saying that such a merger would give them the hardware to give more areas access to local stations through the satellite signals. Now that that's fallen through, it seems the only way I'll get decent reception for Enterprise is by paying ~$12 a month to Cox for their lifeline service.
Or does anybody know of a decent low-profile VHF/UHF antenna?
"The guy was unemployed, and likely depressed, and he spent the last 86 hours of his life playing a pointless game, that he coudn't escape from."
That he consciously chose not to escape from. When people don't leave their homes, 99+ times out of 100 the reason is that they didn't feel like leaving, not because they were physically locked in.
"Think about what his friends and family must feel like right now."
Obviously not a whole heck of a lot if they allowed this to happen to begin with.
"I'll probably be modded down as a troll or something, but I don't think death is a joking matter."
There are schools of thought that suggest that perhaps you don't have a sufficiently developed sense of humor.
I'm probably shooting myself in the foot for bringing this up but I think Heinlein had a point in Stranger in a Strange Land: All humor revolves around the misfortunes of others. If anything laughing at something can be described as a human coping mechanism. In a world increasingly hostile to those of us who partake in electronic gaming, everybody here now has an example they can point to and say "At least I'm not this guy!"
"If someone you knew died, even in a pathetic manner like that, you would not be joking about it. "
If one of my friends died in such a manner I'd be laughing if for no other reason than I know my friend would be laughing at themselves for dying that way.
"I think all the jokes here are completly tasteless."
"And I do think the games are _partly_ to blame. (Note that I said partly, not completly.)"
No, not even. Nobody can say that until there is solid scientific proof demonstrating a link. But in several decades of research on the subject, nobody has yet to publish "games=death" without somebody else soundly refuting it. These aren't cigarettes we're talking about here.
If there's anybody else beside the gamer that bears any of the responsiblity for this, it is the people directly around him and ignored the way he collapsed unconscious several hours before. Especially the owners of the property.
"Some games are very addictive,"
Some people are more susceptible to addictions to just about anything than other people. And until someone can solidly publish "games=addicting," I cannot and will not hold the games responsible for flaws in the gamer's personality and psyche.
"I've had my school mark drop because I've wasted my time on pointless games."
Thanks for demonstrating my "increasingly hostile" comment above. We're supposed to believe that you'd have done much better if it weren't for the games? Do you know for a fact (or can you at least say with a straight face) that you'd have done better in school if there were no games in your life? Why are we to believe that you wouldn't have found some other external vent? You're one of those people that wants to sue gun companies over murder rates, aren't you?
I've tried it both ways: School with and without games. Guess what: Without games, I just ended up finding another vent anyway (and they're called "internet chat rooms"). The problem wasn't Nintendo's, it was mine and my inability to cope with the world around me without a crutch.
And on the other hand games have actually helped me find better ways to cope. I wouldn't have all the friends I have now if it weren't for those C&C Red Alert and StarCraft LAN parties.
"Federal legislation is often broad-brushed and implemented with big clumsy fists. Sometimes it's not enough. Sometimes it is enough. Sometimes it's a little too much but it's tolerated. And sometimes, it really stops something that "outta be allowed"."
Except I believe that Congress is going overboard, relying on the Supreme Court almost exclusively to figure out whether a law is good for the citizens or not. We see legislation like the USA PATRIOT Act that seeems to have so much that is unconstitutional on its face that I'm left thinking that Congress' intent was to violate the constitution and then do a mad scramble to use/abuse their new powers as much as possible before the Supreme Court can catch up with them.
And it's not like the legislators themselves face any real recourse for passing such flagrantly bad laws other than having their pet laws struck down (Would the same members of Congress that passed such legislation actually impeach themselves? Hah!). They usually don't even have to worry about being voted out of office as these things are often carried out by voice vote (like with the DMCA) where there is no record of who supported it and who remained silent (which I think is a travesty of a representative democracy in its own right).
"Given the relatively few cases the Supreme Court takes up,"
If Congress spent just a little bit of time policing themselves as they wrote new legislation, the Supreme Court may have more time to hear the cases that wouldn't have been heard otherwise.
I remember one of my physics teachers talking about sticking his hands into mercury as he made a barometer. From what I recall, he said that the trick was that mercury itself isn't all that toxic, just all the compounds that it can easily become a part of.
Slashdot Mirror
"But aren't customs, immigration and taxes always the most powerful and least accountable forms of government?"
The Department of State is a pussycat compared to the Treasury Department. Note two of the three you listed falls into their department.
You've got the Secret Service, the IRS, the BATF... No matter what you do in the US, do not mess with the Treasury Department. These are the guys who brought down Capone, after all!
Aw, man, just another story about Power PC chips... When will we start seeing stories about particle projection cannons?!?
As soon as I buy a Betamax VCR, a laserdisc player, a DAT player, a MiniDisc player, a digital television, and all those other formats that have "better reproduction quality" while also charging me 2x-3x as much and limiting my options in purchasing media and/or recording.
"Many people don't seem to understand that many people who advocate free software consider this like a slap in the face."
Their problem, not mine. Deal with it.
"You might want to recall 150 yrs ago when some were saying "if you don't like slavery - don't own slaves, otherwise mind your own business. it's all up to whoever chooses" , there problem was that there was no equivalency relationship back then and there is none now."
OK, you just took "information wants to be free" to an undefensable extreme.
First off, until software starts contemplating "cognito ergo sum," it's just a bunch of 1's and 0's to me. Comparing it to slavery is not a proper metaphor.
Secondly, if you're trying to call those of us who choose to use "enslaved software" the slaves, guess what: I can wipe Windows off my hard drive and give Mandrake more room whenever I damned well please. My decision not to is not an invitation for you and your ilk to "liberate" me against my will.
At any rate, IMO the Confederacy was saying the right things in the wrong way for the wrong reasons. And, ultimately, you're not attacking the "Let me keep my slaves!" part of the argument as much as the "Leave me alone!" part.
"Copyrights are abusing peoples right to copy,"
As practiced in the United States today? Yes. As a concept? No. As a concept it is the fair exchange of rights between the producer and the consumer. It gives the producer compensation for their work wile ultimately giving the consumer new public domain works.
"Mixing, matching, and choosing is not the answer, because people are using copyrights to controll me even if I don't wish to exercise them myself."
WTF?! How is my decision to use non-GPL software infringe on your right to use GPL software? Should I also be prevented from writing this post lest I hurt your feelings?
"It is very harmfull to try and promote some type of equivalency relationship, and IMHO this is a great example of why."
The more vehemently you GPL sheep denounce the evils of EULA software the more you end up sounding like Steve Ballmer. Or do you enjoy becoming that which you claim you hate?
And how can you argue against equivalency? The BitKeeper license is over-broad in preventing you from using it to work on a competing product (you have to pay money to get out of that requirement). The GPL is over-broad in preventing you from using GPL software on a competing product (you have to agree to GPL your own code to get out of that requirement). Both of them serve to restrict the public domain by applying terms not only to their own works but to derivative works as well. Not even plain ol' vanilla copyrights do that ("Sorry Wierd Al, you can't release that parody unless you agree to publish through Sony.")
Want to write free software? Waive your Title 17 rights. You use what software you want, I'll use mine.
"Second Linux is not his project, and he is not managing it. Torvalds has expressed his opinions on the Free Software movement. He doesn't believe in Free Software as an all important political idea, thus he has not don anything wrong by using Bitkeeper."
So how much longer until Leon^H^H^Hinus Trotsky^H^H^H^H^H^Horvalds flees to Mexico only to be killed by a a good squad sent by Stalin^H^Hman?
Oh, wait, wrong revolution...
"And burgers?? Don't want tomato or pickle?"
On the other hand, the GNU license prevents you from adding secret sauce without disclosing the ingredients.
1.) OS/2 in general is not dead. We currently call Microsoft's hideous mutation of the original core "Windows XP" (we can call it "Microsoft OS/2 5.1" if you'd like).
:)
2.) OS/2 Warp is not dead. It's called eCommStation now, remember?
Um... in case you haven't noticed, referendums aren't decided upon by what voting technology you have but how many signatures you can get on a petition. I fail to see how the two are connected.
Voting commissioners have a hard enough time as it is trying to help voters with the silly punch cards they have in Florida. And you expect them to learn how to maintain a particular software suite? After all, these are going to be the people in charge of trying to figure out why a particular voting booth crashed.
And that's even before we get into how much easier you'd be making it for vote fraud. First rule of network security: If you want to keep your information secure, don't put it on the @#$% network!
A few decades back, Louisiana standardized on voting machines. You go in, pull the lever, flick some switches, pull the lever again, and you're done. And it works. No hanging chads, no unstable operating systems, no Slashdotting. It may be nineteenth century technology, but it works! Why can't you just use those instead? Why does everybody insist on adding more complexity?
Of course, I'm willing to bet officials who are looking for computerized voting are some of the same people who put in the broken punch card system to begin with.
So you're saying that it's more civilized to lock a person up, stuck with the same four walls for however many decades it takes for them to finish their natural lives in such an unnatural environment?
Forget the "who's going to pay for it?" question, that in and of itself seems more "cruel and unusual" than simply ending their life.
"Are you trying to mix in Metallica with your "only helping local indie bands" stream?"
Probably not, but you forget that nowadays all that matters is that you could...
"It has been 4 years since Slashdot posted it's first story containing the phrase "RIAA""
So maybe it's high time to give them (or at least the *AAs in general) their own category?
"In response to this market pressure, all major print dailies will target a 1st grade reading level. Headlines such as "Lame Senator Says He's Rubber, Opponent Is Glue" and "Superfund Site Smells Like Total Ass" will abound."
In other words, US Congress will turn into UK Parliament?
I call BS on this one. Crap is crap is crap no matter how you encode it. Satellite radio is popular for two reasons:
- Fewer commercials
- More variety
Anybody that's ever driven more than 100 miles knows that Clear Channel and the rest of the oligopoly has the exact same playlist in each and every one of their different markets. People flock to Sirius and XM because they're tired of hearing the same three songs over and over and over again on long road trips. Or hearing "The best of today's music!" when for some reason "today" happens to be 1991 ("Into the Wayback Machine, Sherman!").If anything, this will increase the sales of satellite radio, as the stations pay for the new broadcasting equipment by whoring themselves out even more to advertisers and RIAA members (expect smaller playlists).
"Those who make these software would be out of harms way."
Like those who wrote Napster?
"We'd see a decline in movie goers... DVD's would be released region free, but with hardware copyright devices."
Dream on. DVD-CCA will fight that tooth and nail for the forseeable future and the MPAA wants people to go to the movie theater and pay unholy movie ticket prices.
"The closer we are to when it died, by a long shot the more accurate the dating is."
Lay off the Yoda-ese you should.
"... a reminder about your chance (well, if you're an American) to tell your elected representatives what you think about mandated DRM technology"
Yes, it's coming up this November 5th. Here's how to get involved.
If you're going to write your Congresscritter about DRM, be sure to also write his/her/its opponents in the upcoming election.
Digital radio? What's the point in shelling out extra $$$ just to hear the latest Clear Channel tripe with slightly better sound quality? Crap is crap, no matter how it's encoded.
If public radio stations installed this equipment, the cost may be justified. If not, I'll save my cash for Sirius.
Silly question: How about a digital radio with a digital audio out interface?
(I can hear the RIAA rolling in the aisles now...)
"The Federal Communications Commission has voted 4-0 to reject a $26 billion merger between satellite TV providers Echostar Communications and Hughes Electronics."
Hughes and Echostar were saying that such a merger would give them the hardware to give more areas access to local stations through the satellite signals. Now that that's fallen through, it seems the only way I'll get decent reception for Enterprise is by paying ~$12 a month to Cox for their lifeline service.
Or does anybody know of a decent low-profile VHF/UHF antenna?
Not wanting to leave the house doesn't automatically make one agoraphobic just as sneezing doesn't automatically mean you have a cold.
"The guy was unemployed, and likely depressed, and he spent the last 86 hours of his life playing a pointless game, that he coudn't escape from."
That he consciously chose not to escape from. When people don't leave their homes, 99+ times out of 100 the reason is that they didn't feel like leaving, not because they were physically locked in.
"Think about what his friends and family must feel like right now."
Obviously not a whole heck of a lot if they allowed this to happen to begin with.
"I'll probably be modded down as a troll or something, but I don't think death is a joking matter."
There are schools of thought that suggest that perhaps you don't have a sufficiently developed sense of humor.
I'm probably shooting myself in the foot for bringing this up but I think Heinlein had a point in Stranger in a Strange Land: All humor revolves around the misfortunes of others. If anything laughing at something can be described as a human coping mechanism. In a world increasingly hostile to those of us who partake in electronic gaming, everybody here now has an example they can point to and say "At least I'm not this guy!"
"If someone you knew died, even in a pathetic manner like that, you would not be joking about it. "
If one of my friends died in such a manner I'd be laughing if for no other reason than I know my friend would be laughing at themselves for dying that way.
"I think all the jokes here are completly tasteless."
But jokes about hypothetical deaths are alright? Or what about jokes about people getting genuinely angry at each other? What about a particular person's sexual tastes? Or how about the way you mock something hundreds of people have been working on for dozens of years? Where do you get the moral high ground to decide for everybody else what is "tasteless" and what isn't?
"And I do think the games are _partly_ to blame. (Note that I said partly, not completly.)"
No, not even. Nobody can say that until there is solid scientific proof demonstrating a link. But in several decades of research on the subject, nobody has yet to publish "games=death" without somebody else soundly refuting it. These aren't cigarettes we're talking about here.
If there's anybody else beside the gamer that bears any of the responsiblity for this, it is the people directly around him and ignored the way he collapsed unconscious several hours before. Especially the owners of the property.
"Some games are very addictive,"
Some people are more susceptible to addictions to just about anything than other people. And until someone can solidly publish "games=addicting," I cannot and will not hold the games responsible for flaws in the gamer's personality and psyche.
"I've had my school mark drop because I've wasted my time on pointless games."
Thanks for demonstrating my "increasingly hostile" comment above. We're supposed to believe that you'd have done much better if it weren't for the games? Do you know for a fact (or can you at least say with a straight face) that you'd have done better in school if there were no games in your life? Why are we to believe that you wouldn't have found some other external vent? You're one of those people that wants to sue gun companies over murder rates, aren't you?
I've tried it both ways: School with and without games. Guess what: Without games, I just ended up finding another vent anyway (and they're called "internet chat rooms"). The problem wasn't Nintendo's, it was mine and my inability to cope with the world around me without a crutch.
And on the other hand games have actually helped me find better ways to cope. I wouldn't have all the friends I have now if it weren't for those C&C Red Alert and StarCraft LAN parties.
"why wasn't this story called "Go to the toilet... and die!?""
Because we all should have learned that lesson by now with Elvis.
Nah, the geek way of dying is saying the 1337-speak equivalent of "Hey, y'all! Watch this!" while chucking 3.5 lbs. of sodium into a lake.
"Federal legislation is often broad-brushed and implemented with big clumsy fists. Sometimes it's not enough. Sometimes it is enough. Sometimes it's a little too much but it's tolerated. And sometimes, it really stops something that "outta be allowed"."
Except I believe that Congress is going overboard, relying on the Supreme Court almost exclusively to figure out whether a law is good for the citizens or not. We see legislation like the USA PATRIOT Act that seeems to have so much that is unconstitutional on its face that I'm left thinking that Congress' intent was to violate the constitution and then do a mad scramble to use/abuse their new powers as much as possible before the Supreme Court can catch up with them.
And it's not like the legislators themselves face any real recourse for passing such flagrantly bad laws other than having their pet laws struck down (Would the same members of Congress that passed such legislation actually impeach themselves? Hah!). They usually don't even have to worry about being voted out of office as these things are often carried out by voice vote (like with the DMCA) where there is no record of who supported it and who remained silent (which I think is a travesty of a representative democracy in its own right).
"Given the relatively few cases the Supreme Court takes up,"
If Congress spent just a little bit of time policing themselves as they wrote new legislation, the Supreme Court may have more time to hear the cases that wouldn't have been heard otherwise.
I remember one of my physics teachers talking about sticking his hands into mercury as he made a barometer. From what I recall, he said that the trick was that mercury itself isn't all that toxic, just all the compounds that it can easily become a part of.
"virus scanners or personal firewall software; things that shouldn't be totally integrated into the installed OS to begin with."
My old Pentium 90 came with WFW 3.11 and a copy of Microsoft Anti-Virus. (They got out of that market real fast, didn't they?)
My current copy of XP claims to have an integrated personal firewall.
Too late!