I'm tired of people proudly justifying morally bankrupt actions based on wordplay.
And I'm tired of people assuming that the only possible reason anyone might want to insist on using precise terminology is in the mistaken belief that this might justify morally bankrupt actions.
Where in the post you replied to did it say "it's okay because it's not stealing"?
Where in the post you replied to did it say "copyright infringement is not wrong"?
Nowhere.
Why are you incapable of understanding that people might view copyright infringement as morally wrong, and yet still desire people to use the correct name for it, instead of calling it stealing, which it isn't? Why are you incapable of understanding that there is a reason why we have different laws on different subjects, with different penalties for different crimes?
Copyright infringement and theft are both illegal, but they are illegal under different laws, are judged on different criteria, and are punished in different ways. They affect the victim in different ways and harm the economy in different ways. They are no more the same thing than rape and murder are the same thing.
That is why you should use different names for them. Not because one is any less illegal than the other. Not because one is any more moral than the other. Merely because while both are wrong and both are illegal, they are nevertheless not the same thing.
BitTorrent and the like score quite badly on the first two points - most BT traffic is illegitimate, and there are plenty of legal ways to distribute files.
Are you serious?! BitTorrent is frequently used for distributing large, legitimate files - in fact, I use it on a weekly basis, and I do not infringe copyright with it. BitTorrent is now the standard way of distributing many files that it is legal to distribute, from Linux distributions through to demos of commercial games, and banning it would therefore affect a huge range of legitimate activities.
Sorry, but while there ARE systems it would make sense to ban, based on your argument - such as other P2P systems like Kazaa and ED2K - I'm afraid BitTorrent is actually the one example of a P2P system that has been embraced by legitimate users and is widely used for legal purposes. It is the one P2P system that it would be MOST stupid to ban.
Incidentally, you win today's prize for the most careless use of language. "There are plenty of legal ways to distribute files", you said. There sure are - and BitTorrent is one of them.
By the way, if you think bananas are normally used for peaceful purposes, you can't have watched many cartoons. A banana skin is a very common weapon.:P
Sony has [had] the last two leading consoles. With thousands of titles. Selling hundreds of millions of consoles worldwide. At this point, SCE has what's called benefit of the doubt. They, unlike "one party," have delivered two top consoles and seem to be well on their way to a third.
With due respect, history does not support your argument.
In the early 80s, Atari had literally created the home computer gaming market. They had the leading consoles, with thousands of titles, etc. Then the 7800 bombed. Then the Lynx and Jaguar, which promised so much, were laughing-stocks. Where's Atari now?
In the early 90s, Sega was a major player in the hardware business - Nintendo had a slight edge, but Sega's previous two consoles had sold solidly and had a fanatical following, and Sega was first to market in both subsequent generations, with consoles that promised the world. And we all know where that got them.
Even Nintendo used to be preeminent. The NES practically created the modern videogame market after the 80s crash. The SNES was unstoppable, making even Sega's excellent sales look paltry. Nobody had ever been as successful as Nintendo, and they showed every sign of being on their way to a third hit with Project Reality - hell, they were even partnering with SGI on it! And where are they now? Everyone's first choice for a second console - solid third place.
On a slight tangent, what about PC graphics cards? Remember 3DFX? The Voodoo was the first serious consumer graphics accelerator - it trashed the competition. The Voodoo2 consolidated their hold on the market: it was ubiquitous enough that some companies felt it was safe to develop games exclusively for it. They had delivered two top graphics cards, and seemed to be well on their way to a third. Then NVidia happened.
How does the saying go? Oh yes...
Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
I have no objection to them cracking down on commercial pirates. What people who sell pirated DVDs do is totally immoral. I mean, how dare they charge for something you can get for free?:P
the idea that something free can be sold perplexes me.
Why?
Are you saying that if someone gives me a present, and for whatever reason I want to sell it instead of keeping it, you can't understand why I should be allowed to?
Re:I thought we settled this with hyperlinking?
on
Razorback2 Servers Seized
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· Score: 4, Informative
While you have a valid point, your language is sloppy, and I'm going to pull you up on it, because using sloppy language on subjects like this plays into the hands of those who seek to restrict legitimate fair use as well as illegal copyright infringement.
But when the _only_ purpose of a server is to link to illegal content, you have to be retarded to think it's just for research, or study or for the sake that it's not illegal.
Illegal content wasn't the only purpose of Razorback 2. They linked to some legal content too.
Now, I don't deny that illegal content was the primary purpose. And it's perfectly legitimate to argue about where the cut-off should be, how much illegal use there needs to be before the technology should be banned; in the case of Razorback 2, you might even find that the vast majority of people agree that the illegal use so overwhelmed the legal use that the takedown was justified. But you should not just ignore the legal users - you should acknowledge them and present an argument that the authorities are acting in the common good when they act in a way that restricts those legal activities.
This intent of this server's owners is clear: they wanted to exploit a legal loop to provide copyrighted content.
This is the big mistake. You must not say "copyrighted" when you mean "unlicensed".
This post is copyrighted content. I own the copyright to it. But you are not infringing my copyright if you read this post, and you could email this post to everyone in the world if you like without infringing my copyright, because you have my permission to do that.
Similarly, if I compose a song, and record myself singing it, and give you a copy under a suitable Creative Commons license, you can upload that onto any P2P network you like - you will then be sharing copyrighted music that you don't own over a P2P network, and you will not be breaking any laws or infringing any copyright.
When you use "copyrighted" to mean "unlicensed", you strengthen the dangerous myth that copyright is a special thing that only protects commercial works, and that it's illegal to share copyrighted materials with your friends. The record companies want you to believe that, because they damn well don't want you to find out that there's free music out there that it's legal to copy and share, because that threatens their business.
It may sound like I'm nitpicking, but we live in a world where words have power. Words shape the world we live in. And if you let someone else define your words, you can only talk about the world they want to live in. You mentioned 1984 yourself: if you're familiar with the book, you're presumably familiar with Orwell's concept of the Party redefining words to make concepts like "freedom" and "democracy" literally inexpressible. We might not be heading quite that way yet, but we soon will be if we don't use words carefully rather than lazily.
Fortunately, we have an amazing technology which allows us to determine with 99% confidence whether a filter is working correctly. It's called the human brain.
For example, instead of banning a suspicious username outright, you say "Warning: our filters have identified this as a username that might be offensive. You can still create an account with this name, but it will be checked by a moderator, and if it violates our policies then you will be forced to choose a different name. If you don't think we are likely to accept this username, please change it now to save trouble later."
If you then have problems with people signing up offensive usernames, using them to offend people while they're in the moderation queue, and then deleting the account and starting again, then you could even quarantine suspicious usernames and not allow them to be used until they've been checked out. So people who want inoffensive names will be able to use them, if they really want to - but you still won't see any banned usernames slipping through the cracks.
Of course, that would require hiring someone (probably a student, working part-time) to actually check the usernames. And I'm sure the average company would much rather add that $5,000/yr to their shareholders' pocket-linings (my, a whole cent each!) than spend it on increasing goodwill with the public...
For example if I asked a collection of programmers to write a function to sum the elements of an array it would inevitably look like [example snipped]. There would be variations but everyone would essentially write the same code.
Your example only works because you chose a very, very low-level example. Let's consider something a bit more interesting.
Suppose I asked a collection of programmers to write a program to translate C++ source code into ELF/x86 object files. I guarantee you, I would not get back two remotely similar programs. Almost certainly, I wouldn't even get two identical approaches to parsing the code, let alone identical optimisation and code generation phases. Some of the programs would run very fast, some very slowly. Some of them would generate efficient code, some inefficient. They would all be doing something functionally equivalent - taking the same input, and producing output that satisfied certain specifications - but there would be very little overlap in their implementation.
When writing literature, writers are restricted by the language, but for some they are extremely flexible and the same concepts can be written about and result in a completely different book.
When writing source code, programmers are restricted by the specification, but for some they are extremely flexible and the same specifications can be implemented and result in a completely different program.
So how are the two cases different?
At it's extreme source code is a mathematical description of an algorithm. It's either write or wrong.
So, of GNU's C++ compiler and Intel's C++ compiler, which perform the same task but have practically nothing in common internally, which is right and which is wrong?
Come on - if source code is "either write or wrong", then since they produce different (though equivalent) results, presumably one of them must be "wrong" - so which is it? If it's a simple black-and-white issue, surely you're able to give a snap answer to a trivial question like this!
Alternatively, we could try admitting that source code does, in fact, contain a significant amount of creative expression - that exact quality which copyright is intended to protect.
No, I'm more amused that you persist in making the incorrect and insulting assumption that the only possible reason why someone might want to run OS X on generic hardware would be so they could pirate it.
Two things you're missing:
1. A lot of people do actually have a code of ethics. Some of them want to pay for OS X and then run it on generic hardware. In order to do this, they will have to violate Apple's license agreement, which may or may not be illegal depending on jurisdiction, but will not be black-and-white morally wrong in the same way that literally out-and-out stealing the OS would be.
2. OS X is ALREADY being pirated like there's no tomorrow. It's trivial to find any PowerPC version you like floating around on any P2P network you check. And people can even run that on generic PC hardware using an emulator. So, in fact, cracking it to run on generic PC hardware won't change anything - the status quo will be just as it was before: a handful of more ethical geeks will continue to pay for the software they use (but violate Apple's EULA), and a handful of less ethical geeks will continue to steal OS X, and everyone else will use whatever OS came with their computer.
Double standards don't come into it. Hackers just like to be free to hack.
This would suck! All my pron is over 18 (as thier sites say) but i'm not sure if some bible thumping do gooder would belive me if I associated with known petafiles.
See? THIS is why it's so important to speak with a British accent, where the two words are clearly distinct (nobody's going to mistake [pEt@faIlz] for [pi:d@faIlz]).
Uh, they might lynch you anyway if you're a paediatrician, though.
An easy way to determine what will happen on a double click without having to be aware of the extension is right-clicking the file and checking for the bold entry in the context menu.
I just tried this, and on Win2k, at least, it just says "Open" for.exe,.bat, and.jpg. So, no, that's not a foolproof approach for everyone, even if by some chance it's different in XP.
Yeah, they bought the product and continue to this day to pay a team of programmers to develop it. Microsoft Visual FoxPro 9 Service Pack 1 was released just two months ago.
Uh, wait, I was supposed to say that they did something nasty, wasn't I? Sorry, but when a company has released four major versions of a product in 8 years, and is committed to supporting the current release through to 2015, it's really rather hard to say that they've evilly crushed the competition like a bug beneath their iron boots.
Try finding bomberman generations, not on ebay, and you'll see what I mean.
And remember, you mustn't buy it second-hand, because that's stealing from the people who wrote it, who won't see a penny from the sale.
So instead of buying the product you want, why not consider buying a new game (that you don't want) instead? That way you can support people who are not making products that interest you, and - as a bonus - you are also helping to protect America from terrorist pedophile pirates!
Leaving aside the question of how the US government is going to make a law that forces the Russian government to imprison Russian citizens for sending spam to Americans, I'll point out that AOL users already regularly cause legitimate mailing lists to be blocked by reporting them as spam because they'd forgotten that they had really, genuinely, consciously and deliberately made a personal request to be added to the list.
Under your proposal, those same stupid AOL users would actually be getting people arrested and charged with a crime for sending them emails that they had said they wanted to receive.
I'm sure you can spot the minor problem with this scenario.
So, where does your server go? Well, clearly it has to be based in the USA, because Americans will not accept it being anywhere else.
So... how do you propose to convince Europe and China to use a single central server based in the USA? How do you plan to persuade every ISP in Africa to pay $25 for an account on a server based in the USA? How do you plan to "test" servers in Russia and India to ensure that they meet your standards - and even if you manage to come up with a way to verify them upon registration, how do you intend to ensure that they continue to meet your standards after you've given them the certificate? Block any server that is exploited to send spam, thereby punishing innocent users for flaws in your verification process?
Here's a hint: the "Inter" in "Internet" is not short for "internal", and the first two W's of "WWW" do not stand for "Wild West". Your suggestion is totally unworkable. Sorry.
I couldn't see anything in the TMDA FAQ about joe-jobs. How do they avoid creating the situation where YOU are spamming hundreds of other people with "authentication requests" for emails they never tried to send you?
You support a spamming ISP, you get blocked. If you don't like it, vote with your money.
Absolutely: it's clearly right to punish people for being associated with wrongdoers, even though the people in question may have no way to determine what wrong is being done or why they are being punished. In addition, it's clearly right to punish people for associating indirectly with wrongdoers, such as by being the customers of the same ISP as someone whose computer is hacked and used to send spam. Obviously every customer of that ISP has a shared responsibility for failing to ensure that every other customer of that ISP is taking sensible security precautions on their computer.
No, wait, actually that's the stupidest comment I've ever read. You might as well say that when someone commits murder, you should execute everyone who worked for the same company, because they shouldn't have been employed by a company that employs murderers.
So tell me, how did the phishers manage to gain control of amazon.com?
You don't mean to say that you actually click on links in your email without checking that they go to the domain you always use in your existing business relationship, do you? I find it hard to believe that anyone technically proficient could be so foolish.
Even if you do click on links, a system like Firefox's petname extension can ensure that it's obvious whether the link you've followed has led to the right place or not.
Exactly the same here. Was it #9 you got wrong? It was a bit unfair for them not to include vital information like whether the account details in the email were actually supposed to be accurate...
I'm from the UK... I think it's about time we had some official sanctioned game ratings with more teeth. When the graphics were poor it was fair enough to have no ratings or industry imposed rates but modern games are getting to the point where some of the content is quite disturbing.
Um, did you not realise that we do have official sanctioned game ratings in the UK? Violent games are rated by the BBFC, the same statutory body who rate films, and their ratings are enforced by law - it is illegal for a shop assistant to sell an 18-rated game to an under-18.
All Rockstar's games, for example, carry proper BBFC "18" ratings, exactly the same rating with exactly the same logo and exactly the same legal implications as the 18 rating on a violent or sexually-explicit movie.
I'm sorry but I can't be supportive of any game that encourages breaking the law.
So, do you think this game should be banned? It encourages kids to take the roles of 19th century slaves illegally running away and depriving their masters of their lawfully-owned property!
And what about this game, where players are encouraged to steal a continent from its indigenous people, and then to commit high treason against their monarch? Clearly it should be banned! Won't somebody think of the children?!
Sorry, but breaking the law is not always wrong. I would far rather our children were being taught to think for themselves and to actually consider the moral implications of various acts, than that they were being brainwashed into a black-and-white "Obey the laws because the State Knows Best" worldview.
If there is hope, it lies with the proles. Let's educate them.
let's be clear..."it's not theft" is more of a rationalization than a legitimate excuse.
No, it's not a rationalisation, any more than it's an excuse. "Copyright infringement is not theft" is a statement of fact, just like "a chair is not a table". It makes no claim as to the relative goodness or badness or morality or immorality of copyright infringement: it says nothing whatsoever about whether it should or shouldn't be illegal, or whether it can or can't be justified. It merely states that it is not the same thing as theft. You yourself admit that this is true. So why are you arguing against making this valid and useful distinction?
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I'm tired of people proudly justifying morally bankrupt actions based on wordplay.
And I'm tired of people assuming that the only possible reason anyone might want to insist on using precise terminology is in the mistaken belief that this might justify morally bankrupt actions.
Where in the post you replied to did it say "it's okay because it's not stealing"?
Where in the post you replied to did it say "copyright infringement is not wrong"?
Nowhere.
Why are you incapable of understanding that people might view copyright infringement as morally wrong, and yet still desire people to use the correct name for it, instead of calling it stealing, which it isn't? Why are you incapable of understanding that there is a reason why we have different laws on different subjects, with different penalties for different crimes?
Copyright infringement and theft are both illegal, but they are illegal under different laws, are judged on different criteria, and are punished in different ways. They affect the victim in different ways and harm the economy in different ways. They are no more the same thing than rape and murder are the same thing.
That is why you should use different names for them. Not because one is any less illegal than the other. Not because one is any more moral than the other. Merely because while both are wrong and both are illegal, they are nevertheless not the same thing.
BitTorrent and the like score quite badly on the first two points - most BT traffic is illegitimate, and there are plenty of legal ways to distribute files.
:P
Are you serious?! BitTorrent is frequently used for distributing large, legitimate files - in fact, I use it on a weekly basis, and I do not infringe copyright with it. BitTorrent is now the standard way of distributing many files that it is legal to distribute, from Linux distributions through to demos of commercial games, and banning it would therefore affect a huge range of legitimate activities.
Sorry, but while there ARE systems it would make sense to ban, based on your argument - such as other P2P systems like Kazaa and ED2K - I'm afraid BitTorrent is actually the one example of a P2P system that has been embraced by legitimate users and is widely used for legal purposes. It is the one P2P system that it would be MOST stupid to ban.
Incidentally, you win today's prize for the most careless use of language. "There are plenty of legal ways to distribute files", you said. There sure are - and BitTorrent is one of them.
By the way, if you think bananas are normally used for peaceful purposes, you can't have watched many cartoons. A banana skin is a very common weapon.
Sony has [had] the last two leading consoles. With thousands of titles. Selling hundreds of millions of consoles worldwide.
At this point, SCE has what's called benefit of the doubt. They, unlike "one party," have delivered two top consoles and seem to be well on their way to a third.
With due respect, history does not support your argument.
In the early 80s, Atari had literally created the home computer gaming market. They had the leading consoles, with thousands of titles, etc. Then the 7800 bombed. Then the Lynx and Jaguar, which promised so much, were laughing-stocks. Where's Atari now?
In the early 90s, Sega was a major player in the hardware business - Nintendo had a slight edge, but Sega's previous two consoles had sold solidly and had a fanatical following, and Sega was first to market in both subsequent generations, with consoles that promised the world. And we all know where that got them.
Even Nintendo used to be preeminent. The NES practically created the modern videogame market after the 80s crash. The SNES was unstoppable, making even Sega's excellent sales look paltry. Nobody had ever been as successful as Nintendo, and they showed every sign of being on their way to a third hit with Project Reality - hell, they were even partnering with SGI on it! And where are they now? Everyone's first choice for a second console - solid third place.
On a slight tangent, what about PC graphics cards? Remember 3DFX? The Voodoo was the first serious consumer graphics accelerator - it trashed the competition. The Voodoo2 consolidated their hold on the market: it was ubiquitous enough that some companies felt it was safe to develop games exclusively for it. They had delivered two top graphics cards, and seemed to be well on their way to a third. Then NVidia happened.
How does the saying go? Oh yes...
Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
I have no objection to them cracking down on commercial pirates. What people who sell pirated DVDs do is totally immoral. I mean, how dare they charge for something you can get for free? :P
the idea that something free can be sold perplexes me.
Why?
Are you saying that if someone gives me a present, and for whatever reason I want to sell it instead of keeping it, you can't understand why I should be allowed to?
While you have a valid point, your language is sloppy, and I'm going to pull you up on it, because using sloppy language on subjects like this plays into the hands of those who seek to restrict legitimate fair use as well as illegal copyright infringement.
But when the _only_ purpose of a server is to link to illegal content, you have to be retarded to think it's just for research, or study or for the sake that it's not illegal.
Illegal content wasn't the only purpose of Razorback 2. They linked to some legal content too.
Now, I don't deny that illegal content was the primary purpose. And it's perfectly legitimate to argue about where the cut-off should be, how much illegal use there needs to be before the technology should be banned; in the case of Razorback 2, you might even find that the vast majority of people agree that the illegal use so overwhelmed the legal use that the takedown was justified. But you should not just ignore the legal users - you should acknowledge them and present an argument that the authorities are acting in the common good when they act in a way that restricts those legal activities.
This intent of this server's owners is clear: they wanted to exploit a legal loop to provide copyrighted content.
This is the big mistake. You must not say "copyrighted" when you mean "unlicensed".
This post is copyrighted content. I own the copyright to it. But you are not infringing my copyright if you read this post, and you could email this post to everyone in the world if you like without infringing my copyright, because you have my permission to do that.
Similarly, if I compose a song, and record myself singing it, and give you a copy under a suitable Creative Commons license, you can upload that onto any P2P network you like - you will then be sharing copyrighted music that you don't own over a P2P network, and you will not be breaking any laws or infringing any copyright.
When you use "copyrighted" to mean "unlicensed", you strengthen the dangerous myth that copyright is a special thing that only protects commercial works, and that it's illegal to share copyrighted materials with your friends. The record companies want you to believe that, because they damn well don't want you to find out that there's free music out there that it's legal to copy and share, because that threatens their business.
It may sound like I'm nitpicking, but we live in a world where words have power. Words shape the world we live in. And if you let someone else define your words, you can only talk about the world they want to live in. You mentioned 1984 yourself: if you're familiar with the book, you're presumably familiar with Orwell's concept of the Party redefining words to make concepts like "freedom" and "democracy" literally inexpressible. We might not be heading quite that way yet, but we soon will be if we don't use words carefully rather than lazily.
Consider this. "Pen" is an ok word, "Island" is ok too. So I want to celebrate Pen Island with a domain name... penisland.com? Oops?
The classic real-world example of that being when the Italian company Powergen created a website with the perfectly obvious name of "PowergenItalia".
Fortunately, we have an amazing technology which allows us to determine with 99% confidence whether a filter is working correctly. It's called the human brain.
For example, instead of banning a suspicious username outright, you say "Warning: our filters have identified this as a username that might be offensive. You can still create an account with this name, but it will be checked by a moderator, and if it violates our policies then you will be forced to choose a different name. If you don't think we are likely to accept this username, please change it now to save trouble later."
If you then have problems with people signing up offensive usernames, using them to offend people while they're in the moderation queue, and then deleting the account and starting again, then you could even quarantine suspicious usernames and not allow them to be used until they've been checked out. So people who want inoffensive names will be able to use them, if they really want to - but you still won't see any banned usernames slipping through the cracks.
Of course, that would require hiring someone (probably a student, working part-time) to actually check the usernames. And I'm sure the average company would much rather add that $5,000/yr to their shareholders' pocket-linings (my, a whole cent each!) than spend it on increasing goodwill with the public...
For example if I asked a collection of programmers to write a function to sum the elements of an array it would inevitably look like [example snipped]. There would be variations but everyone would essentially write the same code.
Your example only works because you chose a very, very low-level example. Let's consider something a bit more interesting.
Suppose I asked a collection of programmers to write a program to translate C++ source code into ELF/x86 object files. I guarantee you, I would not get back two remotely similar programs. Almost certainly, I wouldn't even get two identical approaches to parsing the code, let alone identical optimisation and code generation phases. Some of the programs would run very fast, some very slowly. Some of them would generate efficient code, some inefficient. They would all be doing something functionally equivalent - taking the same input, and producing output that satisfied certain specifications - but there would be very little overlap in their implementation.
When writing literature, writers are restricted by the language, but for some they are extremely flexible and the same concepts can be written about and result in a completely different book.
When writing source code, programmers are restricted by the specification, but for some they are extremely flexible and the same specifications can be implemented and result in a completely different program.
So how are the two cases different?
At it's extreme source code is a mathematical description of an algorithm. It's either write or wrong.
So, of GNU's C++ compiler and Intel's C++ compiler, which perform the same task but have practically nothing in common internally, which is right and which is wrong?
Come on - if source code is "either write or wrong", then since they produce different (though equivalent) results, presumably one of them must be "wrong" - so which is it? If it's a simple black-and-white issue, surely you're able to give a snap answer to a trivial question like this!
Alternatively, we could try admitting that source code does, in fact, contain a significant amount of creative expression - that exact quality which copyright is intended to protect.
always "iterate rather than recurse when ever possible" to save stack space.
Bah. Get a decent compiler that knows about tail-call optimisation, and you can recurse to your heart's desire in constant stack space.
No, I'm more amused that you persist in making the incorrect and insulting assumption that the only possible reason why someone might want to run OS X on generic hardware would be so they could pirate it.
Two things you're missing:
1. A lot of people do actually have a code of ethics. Some of them want to pay for OS X and then run it on generic hardware. In order to do this, they will have to violate Apple's license agreement, which may or may not be illegal depending on jurisdiction, but will not be black-and-white morally wrong in the same way that literally out-and-out stealing the OS would be.
2. OS X is ALREADY being pirated like there's no tomorrow. It's trivial to find any PowerPC version you like floating around on any P2P network you check. And people can even run that on generic PC hardware using an emulator. So, in fact, cracking it to run on generic PC hardware won't change anything - the status quo will be just as it was before: a handful of more ethical geeks will continue to pay for the software they use (but violate Apple's EULA), and a handful of less ethical geeks will continue to steal OS X, and everyone else will use whatever OS came with their computer.
Double standards don't come into it. Hackers just like to be free to hack.
This would suck! All my pron is over 18 (as thier sites say) but i'm not sure if some bible thumping do gooder would belive me if I associated with known petafiles.
See? THIS is why it's so important to speak with a British accent, where the two words are clearly distinct (nobody's going to mistake [pEt@faIlz] for [pi:d@faIlz]).
Uh, they might lynch you anyway if you're a paediatrician, though.
An easy way to determine what will happen on a double click without having to be aware of the extension is right-clicking the file and checking for the bold entry in the context menu.
.exe, .bat, and .jpg. So, no, that's not a foolproof approach for everyone, even if by some chance it's different in XP.
I just tried this, and on Win2k, at least, it just says "Open" for
Remember what Microsoft did to Foxpro?
Yeah, they bought the product and continue to this day to pay a team of programmers to develop it. Microsoft Visual FoxPro 9 Service Pack 1 was released just two months ago.
Uh, wait, I was supposed to say that they did something nasty, wasn't I? Sorry, but when a company has released four major versions of a product in 8 years, and is committed to supporting the current release through to 2015, it's really rather hard to say that they've evilly crushed the competition like a bug beneath their iron boots.
Try finding bomberman generations, not on ebay, and you'll see what I mean.
And remember, you mustn't buy it second-hand, because that's stealing from the people who wrote it, who won't see a penny from the sale.
So instead of buying the product you want, why not consider buying a new game (that you don't want) instead? That way you can support people who are not making products that interest you, and - as a bonus - you are also helping to protect America from terrorist pedophile pirates!
Citizen, you know your duty!
Leaving aside the question of how the US government is going to make a law that forces the Russian government to imprison Russian citizens for sending spam to Americans, I'll point out that AOL users already regularly cause legitimate mailing lists to be blocked by reporting them as spam because they'd forgotten that they had really, genuinely, consciously and deliberately made a personal request to be added to the list.
Under your proposal, those same stupid AOL users would actually be getting people arrested and charged with a crime for sending them emails that they had said they wanted to receive.
I'm sure you can spot the minor problem with this scenario.
So, where does your server go? Well, clearly it has to be based in the USA, because Americans will not accept it being anywhere else.
So... how do you propose to convince Europe and China to use a single central server based in the USA? How do you plan to persuade every ISP in Africa to pay $25 for an account on a server based in the USA? How do you plan to "test" servers in Russia and India to ensure that they meet your standards - and even if you manage to come up with a way to verify them upon registration, how do you intend to ensure that they continue to meet your standards after you've given them the certificate? Block any server that is exploited to send spam, thereby punishing innocent users for flaws in your verification process?
Here's a hint: the "Inter" in "Internet" is not short for "internal", and the first two W's of "WWW" do not stand for "Wild West". Your suggestion is totally unworkable. Sorry.
I couldn't see anything in the TMDA FAQ about joe-jobs. How do they avoid creating the situation where YOU are spamming hundreds of other people with "authentication requests" for emails they never tried to send you?
You support a spamming ISP, you get blocked. If you don't like it, vote with your money.
Absolutely: it's clearly right to punish people for being associated with wrongdoers, even though the people in question may have no way to determine what wrong is being done or why they are being punished. In addition, it's clearly right to punish people for associating indirectly with wrongdoers, such as by being the customers of the same ISP as someone whose computer is hacked and used to send spam. Obviously every customer of that ISP has a shared responsibility for failing to ensure that every other customer of that ISP is taking sensible security precautions on their computer.
No, wait, actually that's the stupidest comment I've ever read. You might as well say that when someone commits murder, you should execute everyone who worked for the same company, because they shouldn't have been employed by a company that employs murderers.
So tell me, how did the phishers manage to gain control of amazon.com?
You don't mean to say that you actually click on links in your email without checking that they go to the domain you always use in your existing business relationship, do you? I find it hard to believe that anyone technically proficient could be so foolish.
Even if you do click on links, a system like Firefox's petname extension can ensure that it's obvious whether the link you've followed has led to the right place or not.
Exactly the same here. Was it #9 you got wrong? It was a bit unfair for them not to include vital information like whether the account details in the email were actually supposed to be accurate...
I'm from the UK...
I think it's about time we had some official sanctioned game ratings with more teeth. When the graphics were poor it was fair enough to have no ratings or industry imposed rates but modern games are getting to the point where some of the content is quite disturbing.
Um, did you not realise that we do have official sanctioned game ratings in the UK? Violent games are rated by the BBFC, the same statutory body who rate films, and their ratings are enforced by law - it is illegal for a shop assistant to sell an 18-rated game to an under-18.
All Rockstar's games, for example, carry proper BBFC "18" ratings, exactly the same rating with exactly the same logo and exactly the same legal implications as the 18 rating on a violent or sexually-explicit movie.
So where, exactly, is the problem?
Don't you believe the acronym for Federal Attorney General is an accident?
What, you mean he's in the pay of Big Tobacco?
I'm sorry but I can't be supportive of any game that encourages breaking the law.
So, do you think this game should be banned? It encourages kids to take the roles of 19th century slaves illegally running away and depriving their masters of their lawfully-owned property!
And what about this game, where players are encouraged to steal a continent from its indigenous people, and then to commit high treason against their monarch? Clearly it should be banned! Won't somebody think of the children?!
Sorry, but breaking the law is not always wrong. I would far rather our children were being taught to think for themselves and to actually consider the moral implications of various acts, than that they were being brainwashed into a black-and-white "Obey the laws because the State Knows Best" worldview.
If there is hope, it lies with the proles. Let's educate them.
let's be clear..."it's not theft" is more of a rationalization than a legitimate excuse.
No, it's not a rationalisation, any more than it's an excuse. "Copyright infringement is not theft" is a statement of fact, just like "a chair is not a table". It makes no claim as to the relative goodness or badness or morality or immorality of copyright infringement: it says nothing whatsoever about whether it should or shouldn't be illegal, or whether it can or can't be justified. It merely states that it is not the same thing as theft. You yourself admit that this is true. So why are you arguing against making this valid and useful distinction?