I thought making fun of religions was not allowed because it was insensitive and intolerant ?
Or perhaps it's just one religion that can't be made fun of... the really insensitive and intolerant one... and you're in denial about that fact so saying that all religions can't be made fun of feels good. So as to disguise your complete cowardice, you invent this tolerance principle, and then fail to uphold it. Given the score on your post, many people her suffer from this delusion.
Do you know how muslims measure religious sentiment ? With the bodycount.
There can be a reasonable balance between transparency and privacy. Trade secrets, proprietary processes, and national secrets, I agree, should be undisclosed, but should things like financial records, safety/environmental studies, and so on should be publicly available. If businesses don't like that, then they could easily remain private, un-incorporated entities.
Financial records of the government will necessarily expose national secrets. Safety/environmental studies need to be limited for exposure. Unreleased products are always trade secrets, as are some aspects of released products that apply to safety (e.g. the full inner workings of a virus scanner software obviously relate to the safety of the user).
In short, you did not sufficiently indicate where to draw a line...
The exact same argument goes for piracy as well. You can have one of 2 things : privacy or piracy. Privacy OR thepiratebay.org.
Just killing the privacy of "the rich" (like e.g. the riaa currently is) will unfortunately cause the elimination of everyone's privacy (and this is not "Bush's fault", not even China's, and not anyone's, it's a somewhat-less-obvious truth of the world we live in, like gravity is). Enforcing everyone's privacy rights, including the right of "the rich" to keep their ideas limited to whoever they choose (and profit by that mechanism), will indeed protect everyone's privacy, but obviously will enforce copyright to a rather extreme degree.
(and the same thing goes for "racism", either you allow racism, and it's consequences, or you disallow it, including any racist ideologies (like islam and communism), you can't have it both ways, muslims or tolerance, choose ONE)
I forgot to mention that the sliding scale is also based upon how big an asshole the patron is. In other words, you couldn't afford me.
Don't worry. I have, several years ago already, promised myself I'd kill myself before I hire a marketeer. Unlike you, I have a speciality companies can't do without.
Yeah the difference between china and america - freedom you know (including, obviously, the freedom to be a conservative christian or an atheist by choice), is a real hurdle to development. Let's kill it !
Let's get one thing straight... you're a marketeer, not an artist. And as you say, you don't put your works in the public domain, in fact you don't even exercize the basic rights that copyright guarantees an author (such as authorship for example, or demonstration).
The post was obviously about working to create... for free. Nothing, nada, zilch.
And your pricing practices range somewhere between "discriminatory" and outright "racist". I bet you were one of those guys screaming bloody murder when amazon did the same (pricing based on ideology). But obviously doing it yourself is... just normal.
Obviously, as it's currently not possible to really prove things one way or the other. So the correct scientific answer is "we don't know". But they really hate that answer, and it doesn't provide as good an excuse to implement global communism.
What *is* a certainty is that the next twelve years will be a LOT colder than the previous ten years. Perhaps people will actually stop to think.
Besides, it's quite obvious that the climate changes. It's been in constant flux since life commenced on this planet. Currently photosynthetic plants are everywhere, causing the current co2-o2 balance with the animals (incuding humans), and fires (who are still beating the crap out of humans in co2 production).
What they also neglect to mention is that plants do best in co2 levels about 8000 times the current level. In short, IF global warming happens (it won't), it will increase harvests in poor countries 5-fold, which would be a great thing to happen.
I thought democrats would be in favor of change. Well the world constantly changes around us. Apparently obama wants to change it (back, he isn't very clear on what he wants to change, but hey nihilism is easyer to defend than any other policy for obvious reasons ?), so you'd think he'd be very much in favor of global warming. But hey, you're a populist for a reason I guess.
No you see following the scientific process would obviously make DOUBTING global warming mandatory (doubt... the basis of science you know)... And as you know, this is the UN, also called dictators anonymous (except they don't intend to actually cure the dictatorships, in fact they're working a lot harder to cure the non-dictatorships), they are not interested in discussion, and not interested in doubt. So we know exactly how this will go (in short they'll make the kids blame their parents so they can get more socialist policies to pass)
They probably make "socialism" mandatory next. "Anti-racism" is already mandatory.
While you might be correct that single-player games are not about competition per se, they certainly force you to compete with someone. In concrete, with the computer (such as, oh say single-player starcraft), with the world itself (most mathematical games), or with yourself (most physical single player games).
They are equally about competition and can create a much more pronounced difference in skill than multiplayer games tend to do. In football teams are basically equal, and generally minute differences, and luck, determine the winner. Otherwise it's "not a good game". In mathematical single-player games, the better someone becomes, the more fun the game becomes (to watch a game by an expert player is very good, e.g. all the chess "endgames", they are basically single player games).
A price. That cannot be avoided (ie piracy kills the value of objects and ideas).
Wait you probably think I'm joking, but I'm not. How do people think about value ? Well simple, they think in terms of opportunity costs. All other value estimates are derivatives of this basic principle. That it generates jealousy for example, is a good thing. In 1905 a car that went 40 km/h was an object that had no equal in value. In 2005 a car that goes 120 is worth basically nothing (what... a 10-year old one that does this goes for... $500 ?)
"Wikipedia is no saint, and there are plenty of problems with regard to inherent bias, POV campaigns, unreliable information and cabal editing - but the one thing that can't be levelled at it as you have done is that it is some "nobody cares about copyright" site, quite the opposite is the case."
Most of this could be all but solved by simply allowing content forks, and while not allowing outright spamming, allowing any and all viewpoints (if they're willing to spend the time) to create an alternative page.
2/14/2008 Iraq Baghdad 7 36 Jihadis bomb a crowded marketplace, killing at least seven Iraqis. 2/14/2008 Iraq Awja 9 0 Freedom Fighters shoot a family of nine to death in their home, including children. 2/14/2008 Somalia Mogadishu 1 4 Islamic militants hurl a grenade into a crowd, killing a school headmaster. 2/14/2008 Thailand Yala 1 0 A laborer is shot to death in front of his wife by militant Muslims. 2/14/2008 Thailand Narathiwat 2 1 Two villagers are murdered by Islamic gunmen. 2/14/2008 Pakistan Bajaur 3 3 Three local soldiers are killed by a Taliban roadside blast as they return from guard duty.
I think this illustrates my point beyond any reasonable doubt. But hey, as I said, if sticking your head in the sand after insulting me makes you feel safe, makes you feel superior, be my guest.
As someone who doesn't believe in victimless crimes, I am sure that you are aware that the value of something is defined by it's scarcity. Thus, obviously by duplicating an item you are depriving the owner of a certain (if probably small) amount of value. But as we both know slashdotters don't download 1 mp3 illegally but several thousand (or... at least I did) without any recompensation (and yes some exceptions, but these exceptions are again a small minority).
I suppose that piracy is also self-defeating, because we are truly wired that way. The value of something IS IT'S SCARCITY. In short, piracy will destroy the music industry, not on the supply side but on the consumer side. You (or your kids) will lose intrest in music due to piracy. And in software, and... it's unfortunately the way we're wired. Allow me to illustrate:
A VERY rich man in 1905 had ONE car, who could go (maybe) 30 km/h, and had a large house, which needed constant maintenance by several dozen staff. Generally this process of keeping the house was so complicated it took almost full-time attention by his wife to make sure the house stayed maintained. Despite all of his money, the range of travel was limited, even for the exceptionally wealthy to maybe one intercontinental trip was possible per lifetime. Transmission of imagery was basically hiring a painter, and having a person on a horse carry it across the distance (or steal it, there was no real way to check in less than a few weeks' time).
A VERY poor man in Belgium these days has 2 cars, several tv's, a digital camera. He and his wife don't really have to do anything, and the appartment (half the size of the house of the very rich man) doesn't need any staff, and only basic cleaning. Every 2 years they take 2 weeks holiday, generally in another continent.
car:
1905 : incalculable (completely out of any reasonable range for all but the extremely wealthy)
2005 : $3000 (second-hand)
image transmission over 200 kilometer:
1905 : 6 days wages for 3 people
2005 : too small to reasonably measure
And obviously mp3's follow the same value pattern...
mp3-equivalent in 1995 : $12 ($20 for a good album) mp3 in 2007 : $1 ($8-10 for a good album)
This is because of downloading, because the scarcity of the item is gone. Note that what they're selling is artificially scarce : they're not so much selling the songs themselves these days, but the professionalism in the delivery of the songs (that's why apple's mp3 store is such a success). And in reality the $1 price is on the very high end (most students pay... say 100 songs per month, making up 5% of their internet use, which costs $30, $30/2000 = 0,015$ per song, and that's it's real value. It isn't nil yet, but it's getting close.
(additional illustration : remember the story about plate firm bosses inviting kids to pick out cd's for free, and none of them wanted even a single cd ?)
So while you might indeed argue that one download doesn't make the difference, the presence of piracy is rapidly causing irreparable damage to the entire music scene. Music used to be scarce, and everybody took the time enjoying plays that took 50 exceptional people to even play, in the middle ages, to music having no value at all, since today.
(additional illustration : know anyone buying an operating system recently ? Firms are buying legal immunity, not the software itself, in case you're trying to argue that one. That's obviously the real reason for microsoft's monopoly. In the pre-pc and pre-piracy days there were lots of OS'es. MS-DOS, DR-DOS, UNIX (i
In other words I don't believe in victim-less crimes.
So you are pro-riaa ? Because mostly the contra-riaa articles on slashdot are attempts to prevent them from locating thieves* and using legal recourse against them...
* if the definition of theft is taking something without permission of the legal owner, and if you don't believe in victimless crimes, it certainly is
Suffice it to say that, if the above is true, you belong to a tiny minority on slashdot. And a silent one at that.
You really do not understand anything about humans, now do you. Which ideologies (currently) have terrorism ? Simple answer : socialism and islam.
They are both disproven (to say the least), and the terrorists know this (they are over 90% educated people, not country simpletons). So what is a terror attack ? Simple : it's an attempt to use violence to force reality to conform to their vision of it (then again, so is most of what the democratic party does these days). Other ideologies, like capitalism and christianity are the exact opposite : they allow reality in, and encourage people to "play their cards right". This is what lead to the formation of science in the first place (predicting nature obviously has large payouts, and the christian authoroties of the age were prepared to compromise, at least for the duration of the investigation, mostly longer, values. E.g. the theory of geocentrism was discredited by the vatican almost 100 years before Galileo was born, I hope this bold truth can make you go and check the history of his execution thoroughly)
Back to terrorists. They use violence to make reality conform. They will not let sanity intervene in their scheme. So why do terror attacks succeed ? If you check this you will not find what you like. It's terror organisers that are kept out of reach of our justice system (why do you think palestinians want a state ? So nobody can imprison them for killing Jews) that succeed on the xx'th attempt. These days xx is in the several hundreds. What makes terror succeed ? Trial and error. Laws that operate on absolutes instead of principles, and attempt to compromise with the intolerant. (e.g. the only correct response to any minimal number of parents forcing a hijab on their daughters is to outlaw it for all until the girl comes of age*, and enforcing this ban with stiff penalties, and, eventually prison sentences).
* this is china's policy, the result, surprise, surprise, is no hijabs in view anywhere
Terrorists find holes in our security, like 9/11, not through smarts, not through divine intervention, but through a simple little trick : trial and error. As long as we're playing catch-and-release and denying the root cause (it's the ideology) terror attacks will continue to succeed, and our civil liberties will be curtailed further and further.
What helps against terror ? Tougher sentences, leading to death penalty (life is not enough, unless you cut off communication with inmates), before they get xx attempts at terrorism. Not letting anyone escape judgement - alive.
People wishing others harm... is exactly why these devices are proposed in the first place. I don't know if you've walked around in a European city anytime recently, but to say the athmosphere's dismal is a *slight* understatement. Obviously it's a specific type of youngsters that need banning, but God forbid anyone actually calls the cow by it's name.
If these devices can't be located, they're the perfect solution to the problem, for the people buying them. They're not attempting to secure shopping districts but living districts. There are very few youngsters in these type of districts anyway, and, as I've said already, a certain type of youngster (hint : they beat people up over cartoons) is extremely problematic.
For some people, who aren't allowed to defend themselves or their property in any way, even by calling the police ("prison/police makes the problem worse" you know, and it's "racist" and they have the "right to face your accuser", which these youngsters do... afterwards... with a large wooden club). Remember when France was shut down for three weeks because a few youngsters ON THE RUN FROM THE POLICE... BROKE IN TO AN ELECTRICITY CABIN... and managed to kill themselves in the process... to say these criminals deserved every volt they unleashed upon themselves for robbery, damage, vandalism and shear stupidity is an understatement.
But it's been decided by these "victims" (who just blame anyone who believes differently from them, but this isn't racism you see, it's in their holy book) : This was obviously the fault of the police, and more than 100 police officers had to be killed in revenge. Tens of thousands of cars torched...
That is the problem. Now you suggest a solution (other than "kick them all out", or punishing them in any way, or attacking their convictions or political (AND religious) ideology in any way).
And if you wish to accuse me of racism and stick your head back into the sand, be my guest. I'm not alone in thinking this.
You might be interested to know that there is a good reason EMP generators tend to include an atom bomb as a power source. Just a little detail. How many do you have lying around ?
(just calculate the required magnetic flux to generate 5V on a.1 mm copper wire at, calculate necessary field strength at, say, 10 meters, and start calculating how many (millions of) ultracapacitors you're going to need)
But don't let me stop you, heh, if you can make it work, I'd be most interested.
Which is, obviously, the real reason civil liberties are being eroded. It is not, in other words, Bush's fault. But wait, blaming Bush means you don't have any blame. Isn't this supposed to be what you people had against previous authoritarian governments ? They at the very least defended *some* civil liberties, while today most people can't even be bothered to defend other's right to live.
If I'm wrong, who's gunning up and coming to kill muslims in darfur with me ?
Let's make a small addendum. If other people (NOT: you yourself) DON'T stop paying for music, then accept these laws. But I guess that isn't an option for you. Democracy only for your ideas, and damn the potential cost of it, right ?
"This is a technological device, and you can't outlaw it !", right ? It's a "hack", and cool. Only it affects many people who read this site, as opposed to (mostly) rich people, like authors.
But I fear we will get a shameful demonstration of human nature, making "noble" excuses to force whatever suits the individual making the excuse.
You can sure write long posts that don't contain even a single letter of information. I mean just writing "no" would have contained exactly the same amount of information.
In case that you do actually believe this "no" of yours... let's look at the list of "socialist" countries, like the democrats try to make the US into : USSR, China, Vietnam, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Cuba and now Venezuela. They are all failures, or failing.
Science is *NOT* a consensus thing. Science is the discipline of attempting to model the real world in a simplified mathematical model.
Consensus is a useful tool, in some cases (then again the consensus about science in politics generally has nothing to do with science. I don't know about global warning, but I know the IPCC claims are bogus*).
Furthermore the "wisdom of the crowds" is totally bogus. Especially slashdot "crowd" wisdom, or social "crowds" wisdom. I tend to take a slashdot or social consensus as a strong indication the direct opposite is the truth. And of course there's the titanic's "unsinkable" consensus, to illustrate that is stupid. Or the "WOI was the last war ever to be fought" consensus that existed in 20's and 30's. Or the "WOII was the last war ever" consensus in Europe, when even 8 year olds start realizing there's "something going wrong".
* I'm not saying the earth isn't warming, (I doubt it, like any scientist SHOULD, there are indications it is, there are indications it isn't, neither side absolutely trumps the other, although I would agree the "it's warming" crowd is making a slightly stronger case, however they don't have any data that will get anywhere near acceptable proof any time soon. The "it's warming because of humans" crowd has a laughably weak case though, but heavy sponsorship of the IPCC and these are the people getting caught falsifying data these days. Therefore I would currently support the "null" hypothesis that the earth isn't doing anything abnormal, and certainly nothing drastic) but it most certainly isn't warming 1% as fast as the IPCC is claiming, and they keep getting caught at straight falsifying data. IPCC is just the currently most effective tool to introduce a worldwide (and totalitarian) government, and the more one looks at it the more one starts thinking that the "environmentalist" crowd is perfectly aware that the IPCC's claims are bullshit, and that they have some other purpose, but I also hate conspiracy theories, so I don't go there. I don't believe there's a conspiracy, but something is making them support the IPCC and it isn't global warming.
Exactly. Obviously the mere point that's holding the democrats together is anti-science. Economics say that both hillary and obama's plans for social services are dumb ideas. They won't work, and they might even bankrupt the state.
So accusing the republicans of not sponsoring science enough is hypocritical in the extreme, when the democrats want to do something that science says will blow up financially.
It's just that these people are what you might call fundamentalists. They won't compromise at all, so they think there is nothing wrong with extreme bias. As long as it's for their candidate. This, obviously, is just about as anti-science as you can get, because it is in essence denying the very basis of science (that reality is right always, and trumps any ideological conviction).
The problem with the democratic candidates is that their politics are letting a disproved ideology trump reality. It won't work. In fact the result will be very painful.
1) the destination address will have very clear patterns (obviously) 2) the bandwidth 3) put you behind nat
Furthermore... this would require YOU to redesign (and market) a successfull p2p application... every month orso (or every day once symantec starts paying people to update their filters)
Slashdot Mirror
I thought making fun of religions was not allowed because it was insensitive and intolerant ?
... the really insensitive and intolerant one ... and you're in denial about that fact so saying that all religions can't be made fun of feels good. So as to disguise your complete cowardice, you invent this tolerance principle, and then fail to uphold it. Given the score on your post, many people her suffer from this delusion.
Or perhaps it's just one religion that can't be made fun of
Do you know how muslims measure religious sentiment ? With the bodycount.
There can be a reasonable balance between transparency and privacy. Trade secrets, proprietary processes, and national secrets, I agree, should be undisclosed, but should things like financial records, safety/environmental studies, and so on should be publicly available. If businesses don't like that, then they could easily remain private, un-incorporated entities.
...
Financial records of the government will necessarily expose national secrets.
Safety/environmental studies need to be limited for exposure. Unreleased products are always trade secrets, as are some aspects of released products that apply to safety (e.g. the full inner workings of a virus scanner software obviously relate to the safety of the user).
In short, you did not sufficiently indicate where to draw a line
The exact same argument goes for piracy as well. You can have one of 2 things : privacy or piracy. Privacy OR thepiratebay.org.
Just killing the privacy of "the rich" (like e.g. the riaa currently is) will unfortunately cause the elimination of everyone's privacy (and this is not "Bush's fault", not even China's, and not anyone's, it's a somewhat-less-obvious truth of the world we live in, like gravity is). Enforcing everyone's privacy rights, including the right of "the rich" to keep their ideas limited to whoever they choose (and profit by that mechanism), will indeed protect everyone's privacy, but obviously will enforce copyright to a rather extreme degree.
(and the same thing goes for "racism", either you allow racism, and it's consequences, or you disallow it, including any racist ideologies (like islam and communism), you can't have it both ways, muslims or tolerance, choose ONE)
I forgot to mention that the sliding scale is also based upon how big an asshole the patron is. In other words, you couldn't afford me.
Don't worry. I have, several years ago already, promised myself I'd kill myself before I hire a marketeer. Unlike you, I have a speciality companies can't do without.
Yeah the difference between china and america - freedom you know (including, obviously, the freedom to be a conservative christian or an atheist by choice), is a real hurdle to development. Let's kill it !
Let's get one thing straight ... you're a marketeer, not an artist. And as you say, you don't put your works in the public domain, in fact you don't even exercize the basic rights that copyright guarantees an author (such as authorship for example, or demonstration).
... for free. Nothing, nada, zilch.
... just normal.
The post was obviously about working to create
And your pricing practices range somewhere between "discriminatory" and outright "racist". I bet you were one of those guys screaming bloody murder when amazon did the same (pricing based on ideology). But obviously doing it yourself is
Obviously, as it's currently not possible to really prove things one way or the other. So the correct scientific answer is "we don't know". But they really hate that answer, and it doesn't provide as good an excuse to implement global communism.
What *is* a certainty is that the next twelve years will be a LOT colder than the previous ten years. Perhaps people will actually stop to think.
Besides, it's quite obvious that the climate changes. It's been in constant flux since life commenced on this planet. Currently photosynthetic plants are everywhere, causing the current co2-o2 balance with the animals (incuding humans), and fires (who are still beating the crap out of humans in co2 production).
What they also neglect to mention is that plants do best in co2 levels about 8000 times the current level. In short, IF global warming happens (it won't), it will increase harvests in poor countries 5-fold, which would be a great thing to happen.
I thought democrats would be in favor of change. Well the world constantly changes around us. Apparently obama wants to change it (back, he isn't very clear on what he wants to change, but hey nihilism is easyer to defend than any other policy for obvious reasons ?), so you'd think he'd be very much in favor of global warming. But hey, you're a populist for a reason I guess.
No you see following the scientific process would obviously make DOUBTING global warming mandatory (doubt ... the basis of science you know) ... And as you know, this is the UN, also called dictators anonymous (except they don't intend to actually cure the dictatorships, in fact they're working a lot harder to cure the non-dictatorships), they are not interested in discussion, and not interested in doubt. So we know exactly how this will go (in short they'll make the kids blame their parents so they can get more socialist policies to pass)
They probably make "socialism" mandatory next. "Anti-racism" is already mandatory.
While you might be correct that single-player games are not about competition per se, they certainly force you to compete with someone. In concrete, with the computer (such as, oh say single-player starcraft), with the world itself (most mathematical games), or with yourself (most physical single player games).
They are equally about competition and can create a much more pronounced difference in skill than multiplayer games tend to do. In football teams are basically equal, and generally minute differences, and luck, determine the winner. Otherwise it's "not a good game". In mathematical single-player games, the better someone becomes, the more fun the game becomes (to watch a game by an expert player is very good, e.g. all the chess "endgames", they are basically single player games).
A price. That cannot be avoided (ie piracy kills the value of objects and ideas).
... a 10-year old one that does this goes for ... $500 ?)
Wait you probably think I'm joking, but I'm not. How do people think about value ? Well simple, they think in terms of opportunity costs. All other value estimates are derivatives of this basic principle. That it generates jealousy for example, is a good thing. In 1905 a car that went 40 km/h was an object that had no equal in value. In 2005 a car that goes 120 is worth basically nothing (what
Let's just all insult people who don't agree with us ! Because that's how informed discussion is made ! For the children !
"Wikipedia is no saint, and there are plenty of problems with regard to inherent bias, POV campaigns, unreliable information and cabal editing - but the one thing that can't be levelled at it as you have done is that it is some "nobody cares about copyright" site, quite the opposite is the case."
Most of this could be all but solved by simply allowing content forks, and while not allowing outright spamming, allowing any and all viewpoints (if they're willing to spend the time) to create an alternative page.
Terror attacks today :
2/14/2008 Iraq Baghdad 7 36 Jihadis bomb a crowded marketplace, killing at least seven Iraqis.
2/14/2008 Iraq Awja 9 0 Freedom Fighters shoot a family of nine to death in their home, including children.
2/14/2008 Somalia Mogadishu 1 4 Islamic militants hurl a grenade into a crowd, killing a school headmaster.
2/14/2008 Thailand Yala 1 0 A laborer is shot to death in front of his wife by militant Muslims.
2/14/2008 Thailand Narathiwat 2 1 Two villagers are murdered by Islamic gunmen.
2/14/2008 Pakistan Bajaur 3 3 Three local soldiers are killed by a Taliban roadside blast as they return from guard duty.
I think this illustrates my point beyond any reasonable doubt. But hey, as I said, if sticking your head in the sand after insulting me makes you feel safe, makes you feel superior, be my guest.
blah blah blah
... at least I did) without any recompensation (and yes some exceptions, but these exceptions are again a small minority).
... it's unfortunately the way we're wired. Allow me to illustrate :
: :
:
:
...
... say 100 songs per month, making up 5% of their internet use, which costs $30, $30/2000 = 0,015$ per song, and that's it's real value. It isn't nil yet, but it's getting close.
As someone who doesn't believe in victimless crimes, I am sure that you are aware that the value of something is defined by it's scarcity. Thus, obviously by duplicating an item you are depriving the owner of a certain (if probably small) amount of value. But as we both know slashdotters don't download 1 mp3 illegally but several thousand (or
I suppose that piracy is also self-defeating, because we are truly wired that way. The value of something IS IT'S SCARCITY. In short, piracy will destroy the music industry, not on the supply side but on the consumer side. You (or your kids) will lose intrest in music due to piracy. And in software, and
A VERY rich man in 1905 had ONE car, who could go (maybe) 30 km/h, and had a large house, which needed constant maintenance by several dozen staff. Generally this process of keeping the house was so complicated it took almost full-time attention by his wife to make sure the house stayed maintained. Despite all of his money, the range of travel was limited, even for the exceptionally wealthy to maybe one intercontinental trip was possible per lifetime. Transmission of imagery was basically hiring a painter, and having a person on a horse carry it across the distance (or steal it, there was no real way to check in less than a few weeks' time).
A VERY poor man in Belgium these days has 2 cars, several tv's, a digital camera. He and his wife don't really have to do anything, and the appartment (half the size of the house of the very rich man) doesn't need any staff, and only basic cleaning. Every 2 years they take 2 weeks holiday, generally in another continent.
Value
intercontinental travel
1905 : incalculable
2005 : $400 ?
car
1905 : incalculable (completely out of any reasonable range for all but the extremely wealthy)
2005 : $3000 (second-hand)
image transmission over 200 kilometer
1905 : 6 days wages for 3 people
2005 : too small to reasonably measure
And obviously mp3's follow the same value pattern
mp3-equivalent in 1995 : $12 ($20 for a good album)
mp3 in 2007 : $1 ($8-10 for a good album)
This is because of downloading, because the scarcity of the item is gone. Note that what they're selling is artificially scarce : they're not so much selling the songs themselves these days, but the professionalism in the delivery of the songs (that's why apple's mp3 store is such a success). And in reality the $1 price is on the very high end (most students pay
(additional illustration : remember the story about plate firm bosses inviting kids to pick out cd's for free, and none of them wanted even a single cd ?)
So while you might indeed argue that one download doesn't make the difference, the presence of piracy is rapidly causing irreparable damage to the entire music scene. Music used to be scarce, and everybody took the time enjoying plays that took 50 exceptional people to even play, in the middle ages, to music having no value at all, since today.
(additional illustration : know anyone buying an operating system recently ? Firms are buying legal immunity, not the software itself, in case you're trying to argue that one. That's obviously the real reason for microsoft's monopoly. In the pre-pc and pre-piracy days there were lots of OS'es. MS-DOS, DR-DOS, UNIX (i
In other words I don't believe in victim-less crimes.
...
So you are pro-riaa ? Because mostly the contra-riaa articles on slashdot are attempts to prevent them from locating thieves* and using legal recourse against them
* if the definition of theft is taking something without permission of the legal owner, and if you don't believe in victimless crimes, it certainly is
Suffice it to say that, if the above is true, you belong to a tiny minority on slashdot. And a silent one at that.
You really do not understand anything about humans, now do you. Which ideologies (currently) have terrorism ? Simple answer : socialism and islam.
They are both disproven (to say the least), and the terrorists know this (they are over 90% educated people, not country simpletons). So what is a terror attack ? Simple : it's an attempt to use violence to force reality to conform to their vision of it (then again, so is most of what the democratic party does these days). Other ideologies, like capitalism and christianity are the exact opposite : they allow reality in, and encourage people to "play their cards right". This is what lead to the formation of science in the first place (predicting nature obviously has large payouts, and the christian authoroties of the age were prepared to compromise, at least for the duration of the investigation, mostly longer, values. E.g. the theory of geocentrism was discredited by the vatican almost 100 years before Galileo was born, I hope this bold truth can make you go and check the history of his execution thoroughly)
Back to terrorists. They use violence to make reality conform. They will not let sanity intervene in their scheme. So why do terror attacks succeed ? If you check this you will not find what you like. It's terror organisers that are kept out of reach of our justice system (why do you think palestinians want a state ? So nobody can imprison them for killing Jews) that succeed on the xx'th attempt. These days xx is in the several hundreds. What makes terror succeed ? Trial and error. Laws that operate on absolutes instead of principles, and attempt to compromise with the intolerant. (e.g. the only correct response to any minimal number of parents forcing a hijab on their daughters is to outlaw it for all until the girl comes of age*, and enforcing this ban with stiff penalties, and, eventually prison sentences).
* this is china's policy, the result, surprise, surprise, is no hijabs in view anywhere
Terrorists find holes in our security, like 9/11, not through smarts, not through divine intervention, but through a simple little trick : trial and error. As long as we're playing catch-and-release and denying the root cause (it's the ideology) terror attacks will continue to succeed, and our civil liberties will be curtailed further and further.
What helps against terror ? Tougher sentences, leading to death penalty (life is not enough, unless you cut off communication with inmates), before they get xx attempts at terrorism. Not letting anyone escape judgement - alive.
People wishing others harm ... is exactly why these devices are proposed in the first place. I don't know if you've walked around in a European city anytime recently, but to say the athmosphere's dismal is a *slight* understatement. Obviously it's a specific type of youngsters that need banning, but God forbid anyone actually calls the cow by it's name.
... afterwards ... with a large wooden club). Remember when France was shut down for three weeks because a few youngsters ON THE RUN FROM THE POLICE ... BROKE IN TO AN ELECTRICITY CABIN ... and managed to kill themselves in the process ... to say these criminals deserved every volt they unleashed upon themselves for robbery, damage, vandalism and shear stupidity is an understatement.
...
If these devices can't be located, they're the perfect solution to the problem, for the people buying them. They're not attempting to secure shopping districts but living districts. There are very few youngsters in these type of districts anyway, and, as I've said already, a certain type of youngster (hint : they beat people up over cartoons) is extremely problematic.
For some people, who aren't allowed to defend themselves or their property in any way, even by calling the police ("prison/police makes the problem worse" you know, and it's "racist" and they have the "right to face your accuser", which these youngsters do
But it's been decided by these "victims" (who just blame anyone who believes differently from them, but this isn't racism you see, it's in their holy book) : This was obviously the fault of the police, and more than 100 police officers had to be killed in revenge. Tens of thousands of cars torched
That is the problem. Now you suggest a solution (other than "kick them all out", or punishing them in any way, or attacking their convictions or political (AND religious) ideology in any way).
And if you wish to accuse me of racism and stick your head back into the sand, be my guest. I'm not alone in thinking this.
You might be interested to know that there is a good reason EMP generators tend to include an atom bomb as a power source. Just a little detail. How many do you have lying around ?
.1 mm copper wire at, calculate necessary field strength at, say, 10 meters, and start calculating how many (millions of) ultracapacitors you're going to need)
(just calculate the required magnetic flux to generate 5V on a
But don't let me stop you, heh, if you can make it work, I'd be most interested.
Which is, obviously, the real reason civil liberties are being eroded. It is not, in other words, Bush's fault. But wait, blaming Bush means you don't have any blame. Isn't this supposed to be what you people had against previous authoritarian governments ? They at the very least defended *some* civil liberties, while today most people can't even be bothered to defend other's right to live.
If I'm wrong, who's gunning up and coming to kill muslims in darfur with me ?
Let's make a small addendum. If other people (NOT: you yourself) DON'T stop paying for music, then accept these laws. But I guess that isn't an option for you. Democracy only for your ideas, and damn the potential cost of it, right ?
"This is a technological device, and you can't outlaw it !", right ? It's a "hack", and cool. Only it affects many people who read this site, as opposed to (mostly) rich people, like authors.
But I fear we will get a shameful demonstration of human nature, making "noble" excuses to force whatever suits the individual making the excuse.
You can sure write long posts that don't contain even a single letter of information. I mean just writing "no" would have contained exactly the same amount of information.
... let's look at the list of "socialist" countries, like the democrats try to make the US into : USSR, China, Vietnam, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Cuba and now Venezuela. They are all failures, or failing.
In case that you do actually believe this "no" of yours
Science is *NOT* a consensus thing. Science is the discipline of attempting to model the real world in a simplified mathematical model.
Consensus is a useful tool, in some cases (then again the consensus about science in politics generally has nothing to do with science. I don't know about global warning, but I know the IPCC claims are bogus*).
Furthermore the "wisdom of the crowds" is totally bogus. Especially slashdot "crowd" wisdom, or social "crowds" wisdom. I tend to take a slashdot or social consensus as a strong indication the direct opposite is the truth. And of course there's the titanic's "unsinkable" consensus, to illustrate that is stupid. Or the "WOI was the last war ever to be fought" consensus that existed in 20's and 30's. Or the "WOII was the last war ever" consensus in Europe, when even 8 year olds start realizing there's "something going wrong".
* I'm not saying the earth isn't warming, (I doubt it, like any scientist SHOULD, there are indications it is, there are indications it isn't, neither side absolutely trumps the other, although I would agree the "it's warming" crowd is making a slightly stronger case, however they don't have any data that will get anywhere near acceptable proof any time soon. The "it's warming because of humans" crowd has a laughably weak case though, but heavy sponsorship of the IPCC and these are the people getting caught falsifying data these days. Therefore I would currently support the "null" hypothesis that the earth isn't doing anything abnormal, and certainly nothing drastic) but it most certainly isn't warming 1% as fast as the IPCC is claiming, and they keep getting caught at straight falsifying data. IPCC is just the currently most effective tool to introduce a worldwide (and totalitarian) government, and the more one looks at it the more one starts thinking that the "environmentalist" crowd is perfectly aware that the IPCC's claims are bullshit, and that they have some other purpose, but I also hate conspiracy theories, so I don't go there. I don't believe there's a conspiracy, but something is making them support the IPCC and it isn't global warming.
Exactly. Obviously the mere point that's holding the democrats together is anti-science. Economics say that both hillary and obama's plans for social services are dumb ideas. They won't work, and they might even bankrupt the state.
So accusing the republicans of not sponsoring science enough is hypocritical in the extreme, when the democrats want to do something that science says will blow up financially.
It's just that these people are what you might call fundamentalists. They won't compromise at all, so they think there is nothing wrong with extreme bias. As long as it's for their candidate. This, obviously, is just about as anti-science as you can get, because it is in essence denying the very basis of science (that reality is right always, and trumps any ideological conviction).
The problem with the democratic candidates is that their politics are letting a disproved ideology trump reality. It won't work. In fact the result will be very painful.
Easy ... using stuff you can't change :
... this would require YOU to redesign (and market) a successfull p2p application ... every month orso (or every day once symantec starts paying people to update their filters)
1) the destination address will have very clear patterns (obviously)
2) the bandwidth
3) put you behind nat
Furthermore
Good luck