I *absolutely* don't think The Tin Drum should be in any way illegal, but this is not a case of "virtual" child porn, it's a little more complicated.
The story follows a young kid who does something to himself so that he won't grow older. So for the rest of the movie he is supposed to look like a child, even though he is getting older (through adulthood).
In the movie, the character is played by a child. So there are scenes where there is implied sex, but in the movie it's between two adults, while the actual actor is actually a kid. Of course the child actor doesn't really do any sex acts, but it skirts right along the border.
Anyway, I just think this is a slightly different thing... sort of reversed.
You're obviously not a shareware author. Given the choice between free and cheap, people will choose free.
That's true, I've heard about shareware woes. And I could end up wrong about it. But I think an MP3 service could have an edge over "illegal" MP3 trading that might make it a good buy.
Shareware is freely and widely distributed. It is easy to download and install, and completely legal. But then when it comes to paying, there's trouble. I see the major blocks to be:
- It's already on their computer, so they don't feel like they are getting anything by paying for it.
- It's easy to put off paying for "later".
I know it's more complicated than that, but I would see an MP3 service as not having these tough problems.
With the MP3 service, you pay, and then get a song. The song is of high quality, quickly downloaded, is not mislabeled, distorted, or cut off early.
Yes, there is the credit card issue, which some people might not like. But I do think this service could be easier in all other ways than illegal trading. If they did it right.
If the service tried to cripple the MP3, make it proprietary, or price it too high ($2.00 or something), then no way will it work. And maybe it wouldn't work anyway. But I think it's possible, thinking about it this way.
Actually, I was more annoyed at it being full screen (I think it is reasonable to expect a warning of "this will take over your screen", which may have been the fault of the person who posted the story or whatever for linking right to it).
And then I was more arguing the principle of the matter in terms of doing unexpected things, which many other sites do. The post I was replying to suggested that if you are making their computer do things, don't complain if they do things to your computer. And I was pointing out how it's different.
I wasn't trying to say that this site here was actually so terrible, because it wasn't that bad.
People keep mentioning that if people can get the music for free, then they are going to do that instead of paying for it. Maybe among the/. crowd this might be true.
Right now, with no structure, pretty much the only way to get MP3s off the Internet is from Kazaa or some other illegal source. So, you don't feel guilty or obliged to pay... this is how everybody does it and it's the only way.
Think about if there was really a well-known structure in place. Everybody knows, this is where you go to get MP3s, and it costs 25/50/whatever cents per track. And think about Joe Average consumer. He would probably use this service without a second thought. The interface would be nice. He could find any song quickly, probably with a 15/30-second sample so he knows he's got the right song. And then he'd get a guaranteed speedy, uninterrupted download, and without those little blips, or a cut off end to the track, etc.
If he could then burn that song to a CD or put it in his MP3 player just like the "free" versions, I honestly think that Joe Average is almost certainly going to do this!
If the same tracks were available free then people would still rip them off.
Yes, there are always people who don't pay for things. But if they were truly reasonably-priced, of high quality, were easy to get, and had no strings attached, I think you'd be surprised how many people *would* pay.
Somehow if it uses *your* CPU it's different, but when Google's machines do all the work it's somehow OK.
I'm fairly certain that Google is inviting people to use their machines. If the original poster was doing something like SETI@home, and got mad because his CPU was bogged down, then yes, that is silly. But as that is not the case, and the behavior of that site was not in line with most (considerate) websites, it is reasonable that the poster would be annoyed.
I mean, it's like if someone tried to borrow $100 from you, and you got annoyed, and they said "oh, so when banks lend out money it's supposed to be okay, but if I want to borrow money from you, suddenly *that* isn't ok." Darn right it isn't!
If you say that the person should just not visit the site... well, I guess we can defend any crappy website that throws ettiquite to the wind with that line of thought (not that this site was that bad).
Well, I agree that whatever stance they take, hydrogen will win in the end if it gets the edge over oil. I was just thinking about what kind of resistance they might put up *before* they either grudgingly accept hydrogen or go under.
They are a private company, not your personal tool for serving poetry.
I agree. Imagine if this was a common and popular thing to do. You run a search, and come up with a whole bunch of irrelevant crap. Yeah, maybe it's fun when there's just one ad and you didn't expect it. But it would quickly be a major nuisance, and would make Google a worse site as a result.
Maybe if I search for "poetry" or "happenings" or something along those lines, then poetry like that could come up. That is fine, as I am actually looking for poetry.
I'm not sure if the actual impact was intentional, and to give them credit, once they saw how seriously the government took the situation, they dropped the case. It was the government's decision to continue prosecuting.
Possible, but it is equally possible that they brought this to the attention of the FBI, and then once it appeared that the FBI was going to pursue the case stopped endorsing the prosecution, so that they could wash their hands of it but still have it happen.
I'm not saying big oil isn't evil, I'm jsut saying that I fear it much less than I fear the RIAA or the MPAA.
Yeah, the analogy is kind of flimsy. Although I never meant to indicate that big oil companies need to be feared like the music industry folk. I just meant that even if hydrogen becomes a very good option, I think the oil companies will move grudgingly, and might resist at first in some ways. I mean, if the oil companies move to hydrogen instead of oil, it's a pretty fundamental change. But it's probably just a matter of time.
Yes, they're different. That's just the closest analogy I could think of.
I guess the situation with big oil companies now would be (the way I see it) music companies around 1996. Back when ripping music from CDs wasn't as practical because the Internet wasn't as widespread, memory wasn't quite as cheap, MP3 compression might not yet have been fully developed (I can't remember). Starting then, the big music companies could have starting working on this MP3 stuff as well, and moving the industry in that direction. But they ignored it until it was wildly popular. I dunno, maybe it's still not the same thing.
I still think that if hydrogen fuel *does* become efficient, oil companies will still be resistant to the upheaval it would cause to convert everything. Just my theory.
Of course, just because the music industry is being extremely ignorant doesn't mean big oil has to do the same.
Yes, but often it seems like big companies want stability if at all possible, and this would shake things up a bit.
I think of it as similar to the big music companies. They would probably be in the best position to move things to MP3 (or in addition to CDs). But that would really shake things up, so they are hanging on to what's worked for a long time.
Do you not think that there would just be a new group of powerful companies selling hydrogen instead?
No doubt about that. But the current powerful oil companies would not be very excited about that unless they could ensure that THEY would be the powerful hydrogen companies as well.
Yeah, so the FBI is "putting a slant" on the information by claiming that at least 200,000 violent crimes a year are prevented by the fact that the intended victims are armed? That's a good one.
Yes, I am saying that is subjective. How many of those violent crimes would have never happened in the first place without guns involved? What qualifies as having a violent crime "prevented" with guns? These are rhetorical questions. Do not answer them.
And you would trade 1500 accidental deaths for an additional 200,000 to 800,000 violent crimes. If so, your priorities are completely whacked.
I'm saying it's not black and white, one or the other, trading off. Why couldn't there be a way to reduce both of these things?
But, most importantly, why is this suddenly a gun discussion? You obviously have very strong opinions about guns, but this was supposed to be about viruses.
And then you really missed what I said in the last post by giving me more statistics. I am not interested in having a gun-laws debate.
The only reason those links were from a Brady site is because that's the first thing that came up in a Google search. It's funny that you assume I must believe foolishly in some grand conspiracy about faked statistics 1) without really knowing my stance on guns and 2) while at the same time indicating the the Brady supporters *do* have a conspiracy.
Really, you should calm down. I'm really not nearly as interested in this as you. I was only pointing out grey area so that you could perhaps realize that such a grey area exists. My conclusion is that you can't see this. Up until now I thought this was at least in some way relating to viruses.
It seems like you wish you could have a good argument about guns, I really can't find another reason. I'm not interested.
I was hoping to get across that no matter what you believe, with an inability to listen, you won't be convincing any new people.
I remember loving this game. One of my friends discovered it, and we never knew this was a remake of a classic computer game. I had the NES Satellite, so we could take advantage of the 4-player fun (along with Kings of the Beach, Super Off-Road, Gauntlet 2, etc). The M.U.L.E. graphics were pretty basic, but they were enjoyable anyway. The game itself was what was so great.
It was a great change of pace, very different from the NES games at the time... good to see the game living on.
If 1500 accidental deaths per year is an acceptable amount, then your opinion differs from mine. My point was that having stricter gun laws doesn't only stop the good guys from defending themselves, as you said. It's very complicated, and it's not black and white. Again, you don't see any leeway.
I'm not even for treating computer viruses like biological viruses, it's just important to think about both sides of the issue. And I thought it was an interesting approach. I don't think it's just something to totally discard without even considering it on any level whatsoever.
This is the same sort of argument used by the anti-gun freaks. Banning guns only disarms honest citizens; it doesn't do a thing to deny guns to criminals. The same applies to virus source code.
How often do gun-toting citizens actually defend themselves in a hold-up? And then how does that number compare to the number of accidental deaths involving children and guns?
I don't think making guns/viruses hard to get keeps them away from the hardcore bad guys, but I do think it keeps it away from those who are too foolish or naive to know the harm they can do.
You wanted to know why we should use my opinion to form the laws and not yours. So I was just saying that the only thing that might give my side more weight is that I'm probably in the majority. If a majority of people have some idea, then odds in favor of a given person having that idea.
Obviously there's a ton of details to the whole thing, and it might not really work. But I thought it was an interesting way to look at it, especially since computers seem to be more and more vital all the time, sometimes even life-and-death important.
The net isn't a democracy, and the petty laws passed in America can't be enforced elsewhere. So Americans can ban themselves the source code, like fools sticking their heads into the sand, without having any effect at all on any other nation on the planet.
Of course, if only the USA were to implement this, it would be pretty useless.
Well, I see you are against this idea completely, even though there's absolutely no detail to it and there is a huge range of possibility as to how it could be implemented and what it could mean. So, you aren't really interested in discussing it.
You'll find that if you don't give any leeway at all, you might end up left out of the decision process.
Nor have you said anything remotely defensible as to who this study should be restricted to, and why we should think your personal opinion on the matter is worthy of a law.
That's because I don't claim to have an answer to that.
Slashdot Mirror
I *absolutely* don't think The Tin Drum should be in any way illegal, but this is not a case of "virtual" child porn, it's a little more complicated.
The story follows a young kid who does something to himself so that he won't grow older. So for the rest of the movie he is supposed to look like a child, even though he is getting older (through adulthood).
In the movie, the character is played by a child. So there are scenes where there is implied sex, but in the movie it's between two adults, while the actual actor is actually a kid. Of course the child actor doesn't really do any sex acts, but it skirts right along the border.
Anyway, I just think this is a slightly different thing... sort of reversed.
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Sorry about that, I was talking more in general, and I didn't mean that this particular site necessarily fell into the "annoying" category.
I was thinking of other sites that just assume things, like that you want to go full screen or something like that.
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That's true, I've heard about shareware woes. And I could end up wrong about it. But I think an MP3 service could have an edge over "illegal" MP3 trading that might make it a good buy.
Shareware is freely and widely distributed. It is easy to download and install, and completely legal. But then when it comes to paying, there's trouble. I see the major blocks to be:
- It's already on their computer, so they don't feel like they are getting anything by paying for it.
- It's easy to put off paying for "later".
I know it's more complicated than that, but I would see an MP3 service as not having these tough problems.
With the MP3 service, you pay, and then get a song. The song is of high quality, quickly downloaded, is not mislabeled, distorted, or cut off early.
Yes, there is the credit card issue, which some people might not like. But I do think this service could be easier in all other ways than illegal trading. If they did it right.
If the service tried to cripple the MP3, make it proprietary, or price it too high ($2.00 or something), then no way will it work. And maybe it wouldn't work anyway. But I think it's possible, thinking about it this way.
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Actually, I was more annoyed at it being full screen (I think it is reasonable to expect a warning of "this will take over your screen", which may have been the fault of the person who posted the story or whatever for linking right to it).
And then I was more arguing the principle of the matter in terms of doing unexpected things, which many other sites do. The post I was replying to suggested that if you are making their computer do things, don't complain if they do things to your computer. And I was pointing out how it's different.
I wasn't trying to say that this site here was actually so terrible, because it wasn't that bad.
mark
People keep mentioning that if people can get the music for free, then they are going to do that instead of paying for it. Maybe among the /. crowd this might be true.
Right now, with no structure, pretty much the only way to get MP3s off the Internet is from Kazaa or some other illegal source. So, you don't feel guilty or obliged to pay... this is how everybody does it and it's the only way.
Think about if there was really a well-known structure in place. Everybody knows, this is where you go to get MP3s, and it costs 25/50/whatever cents per track. And think about Joe Average consumer. He would probably use this service without a second thought. The interface would be nice. He could find any song quickly, probably with a 15/30-second sample so he knows he's got the right song. And then he'd get a guaranteed speedy, uninterrupted download, and without those little blips, or a cut off end to the track, etc.
If he could then burn that song to a CD or put it in his MP3 player just like the "free" versions, I honestly think that Joe Average is almost certainly going to do this!
mark
Yes, there are always people who don't pay for things. But if they were truly reasonably-priced, of high quality, were easy to get, and had no strings attached, I think you'd be surprised how many people *would* pay.
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H-Dog, is that you?
Maybe you should bust out tha Letta Opener of Death!
I'm fairly certain that Google is inviting people to use their machines. If the original poster was doing something like SETI@home, and got mad because his CPU was bogged down, then yes, that is silly. But as that is not the case, and the behavior of that site was not in line with most (considerate) websites, it is reasonable that the poster would be annoyed.
I mean, it's like if someone tried to borrow $100 from you, and you got annoyed, and they said "oh, so when banks lend out money it's supposed to be okay, but if I want to borrow money from you, suddenly *that* isn't ok." Darn right it isn't!
If you say that the person should just not visit the site... well, I guess we can defend any crappy website that throws ettiquite to the wind with that line of thought (not that this site was that bad).
mark
Well, I agree that whatever stance they take, hydrogen will win in the end if it gets the edge over oil. I was just thinking about what kind of resistance they might put up *before* they either grudgingly accept hydrogen or go under.
I meant that I wasn't interested in debating about guns. I was interested in talking about the topic, viruses.
If you think trying to return the discussion to the topic at hand is trolling, I disagree.
That's fine, it just seems like a lot of extra typing that nobody will read.
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I agree. Imagine if this was a common and popular thing to do. You run a search, and come up with a whole bunch of irrelevant crap. Yeah, maybe it's fun when there's just one ad and you didn't expect it. But it would quickly be a major nuisance, and would make Google a worse site as a result.
Maybe if I search for "poetry" or "happenings" or something along those lines, then poetry like that could come up. That is fine, as I am actually looking for poetry.
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Possible, but it is equally possible that they brought this to the attention of the FBI, and then once it appeared that the FBI was going to pursue the case stopped endorsing the prosecution, so that they could wash their hands of it but still have it happen.
Who knows what the real reason was.
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Yeah, the analogy is kind of flimsy. Although I never meant to indicate that big oil companies need to be feared like the music industry folk. I just meant that even if hydrogen becomes a very good option, I think the oil companies will move grudgingly, and might resist at first in some ways. I mean, if the oil companies move to hydrogen instead of oil, it's a pretty fundamental change. But it's probably just a matter of time.
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Interesting link, thanks.
Hopefully the oil companies do prove to be different from the record companies and don't follow my little analogy.
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Yes, they're different. That's just the closest analogy I could think of.
I guess the situation with big oil companies now would be (the way I see it) music companies around 1996. Back when ripping music from CDs wasn't as practical because the Internet wasn't as widespread, memory wasn't quite as cheap, MP3 compression might not yet have been fully developed (I can't remember). Starting then, the big music companies could have starting working on this MP3 stuff as well, and moving the industry in that direction. But they ignored it until it was wildly popular. I dunno, maybe it's still not the same thing.
I still think that if hydrogen fuel *does* become efficient, oil companies will still be resistant to the upheaval it would cause to convert everything. Just my theory.
Of course, just because the music industry is being extremely ignorant doesn't mean big oil has to do the same.
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Yes, but often it seems like big companies want stability if at all possible, and this would shake things up a bit.
I think of it as similar to the big music companies. They would probably be in the best position to move things to MP3 (or in addition to CDs). But that would really shake things up, so they are hanging on to what's worked for a long time.
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That's Freund, not Freud.
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No doubt about that. But the current powerful oil companies would not be very excited about that unless they could ensure that THEY would be the powerful hydrogen companies as well.
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Yes, I am saying that is subjective. How many of those violent crimes would have never happened in the first place without guns involved? What qualifies as having a violent crime "prevented" with guns? These are rhetorical questions. Do not answer them.
I'm saying it's not black and white, one or the other, trading off. Why couldn't there be a way to reduce both of these things?
But, most importantly, why is this suddenly a gun discussion? You obviously have very strong opinions about guns, but this was supposed to be about viruses.
And then you really missed what I said in the last post by giving me more statistics. I am not interested in having a gun-laws debate.
The only reason those links were from a Brady site is because that's the first thing that came up in a Google search. It's funny that you assume I must believe foolishly in some grand conspiracy about faked statistics 1) without really knowing my stance on guns and 2) while at the same time indicating the the Brady supporters *do* have a conspiracy.
Really, you should calm down. I'm really not nearly as interested in this as you. I was only pointing out grey area so that you could perhaps realize that such a grey area exists. My conclusion is that you can't see this. Up until now I thought this was at least in some way relating to viruses.
It seems like you wish you could have a good argument about guns, I really can't find another reason. I'm not interested.
I was hoping to get across that no matter what you believe, with an inability to listen, you won't be convincing any new people.
This has been odd.
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I remember loving this game. One of my friends discovered it, and we never knew this was a remake of a classic computer game. I had the NES Satellite, so we could take advantage of the 4-player fun (along with Kings of the Beach, Super Off-Road, Gauntlet 2, etc). The M.U.L.E. graphics were pretty basic, but they were enjoyable anyway. The game itself was what was so great.
It was a great change of pace, very different from the NES games at the time... good to see the game living on.
mark
If 1500 accidental deaths per year is an acceptable amount, then your opinion differs from mine. My point was that having stricter gun laws doesn't only stop the good guys from defending themselves, as you said. It's very complicated, and it's not black and white. Again, you don't see any leeway.
I could find other statistics to compare with what you've said (like "In 1994, however, coinciding with the implementation of Brady, the trend reversed and gun-related crime has been dropping faster than the violent crime rate ever since." or "More telling is this continuing trend where crime fell faster in states that have strict carrying concealed weapons (CCW) laws or that do not allow the carrying of concealed weapons at all than in states which have lax CCW laws."), it's just who puts the right slant on the information.
I'm not even for treating computer viruses like biological viruses, it's just important to think about both sides of the issue. And I thought it was an interesting approach. I don't think it's just something to totally discard without even considering it on any level whatsoever.
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How often do gun-toting citizens actually defend themselves in a hold-up? And then how does that number compare to the number of accidental deaths involving children and guns?
I don't think making guns/viruses hard to get keeps them away from the hardcore bad guys, but I do think it keeps it away from those who are too foolish or naive to know the harm they can do.
It just isn't so black and white like you think.
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You wanted to know why we should use my opinion to form the laws and not yours. So I was just saying that the only thing that might give my side more weight is that I'm probably in the majority. If a majority of people have some idea, then odds in favor of a given person having that idea.
Obviously there's a ton of details to the whole thing, and it might not really work. But I thought it was an interesting way to look at it, especially since computers seem to be more and more vital all the time, sometimes even life-and-death important.
Of course, if only the USA were to implement this, it would be pretty useless.
Well, I see you are against this idea completely, even though there's absolutely no detail to it and there is a huge range of possibility as to how it could be implemented and what it could mean. So, you aren't really interested in discussing it.
You'll find that if you don't give any leeway at all, you might end up left out of the decision process.
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That's because I don't claim to have an answer to that.
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Only because I'm probably in the majority.
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