in a country with no constitutionally-protected civil rights
Let's see what will happen if I write about drones in an obsolete dialect of English:
"An ability to uncover crimes, incidents, disasters and dangers, being necessary to the safety of a free people, the right of the people to keep and launch surveillance drones shall not be infringed."
Makes much more sense than a certain similar passage about weapons. One person's right is another person's reason to wear a tinfoil hat (and vice versa).
but then a victor emerged and continues to dominate the industry.
What victor? What industry? In something like social networks, the victor is whatever the current fad is, and companies constantly drop out of favor. Google (as a search engine) has an advantage of technology and infrastructure, and it's still far from being a permanent monopoly on search. Facebook has nothing but "momentum", and eventually will piss off the users so they will move on to something else.
There is a separate question, how come something as amorphous as marketing information gathering from random communications, became such a valuable product in the first place. It's likely overpriced now, and with increasing monopolization of all markets it can only lose value later.
Think of it -- what does it tell us about economy when a service that can be replicated in about a year by any competent team of developers, can cost as much as 100 cities (that would be capable of housing and serving literally thousands of such teams)?
But then they would have to adapt to the local crime rate, and will probably end up with some kind of cyborg cops instead of automated power grids and traffic lights.
there is no "even though"... almost all used memory is available for use. only difference is some allocated memory is never sent to swap..
There is a fundamental difference between a throwavay buffer and everything else -- buffer can be re-used at any time except while I/O on it is in progress.
ofcource.. first you need to deal with the broken unix design of overcomiting mem in the first place.
Overcommitting is neither Unix-originated, nor mandatory in Linux.
Linux uses free memory for additional buffers, but drops them immediately if that memory is needed for anything else. This memory is counted as "used" even though it's available for allocation. The ideal system designed on this principle would never show any free memory once the total amount of data read from storage exceeds the physical RAM size.
Oh, wonderful. Did it come to anyone's mind, that housing prisoners in permanent structures instead of a bum city would improve security, hinder communications and give fewer causes for the riots?
The BBC had a show about a lawyer in the days of slavery fighting for justice... except the justice of the day was something different. Is a judge and jury who believe slavery is the right normal and correct thing to do, ruling in favor of a slaver, corrupt? Often, society is split and the other side can seem to be malicious, insane, corrupt, just interested in their own goals, hypocrites and downright evil. But the other side thinks exactly the same of you. There are few people in the world who do "evil" thinking they are doing evil.
This has nothing to do with judge having a business relationship with the plaintiff. Especially in cases when the law says nothing directly applicable, and judge ends up making decisions based entirely on his opinions and intuition.
Developing a patch, especially for three different applications, can be costly and time consuming. Developing these patches consumes development resources, then must run through a QA process, and the patch needs to be communicated and distributed to users. And for a company like Adobe with a massive customer base using its Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash Professional, the bandwidth cost alone can be substantial.
You know what is cheaper? Hiring developers with a clue, so they won't write bugs by the bucketload.
You used that IN PRISON??? It's supposed to disperse crowds, for fuck sake! In confined space such as prison yard (I hope, no one was stupid enough to place it indoors) it only pisses people off because they can't run away.
As I said before, freedom of speech protects the speaker, not the listener or redistributor. This is not the same as playing the recording without commercials because subscriber skipped them -- it's redistributor excluding them.
You toggle an option and they are skipped over, turn it off, and they play.
No viewer in his right mind would willingly enable commercials in a recorded broadcast if it was possible to disable them, so it's a moot point. Viewer really has a choice only between current broadcast with commercials, or yesterday's broadcast without commercials.
I think you'll find that you're incorrect about this - and your entire point, by the way. Affiliate stations substitute commercials from the network with local ones all the time. If you've ever seen a partial commercial that gets stuffed by another, you've seen a substitution with bad timing. Affiliate stations pay for programming just like Dish and Cable companies and they are analogous.
Are they allowed to do so without a separate license (or with the same compulsory licensing that applies to OTA rebrodcasts)?
I didn't bother to read the rest of your post/rant as it's seriously misguided. Dish is simply providing the technology for the consumer to skip watching the commercials --
Right, and this is prohibited because it involves public distribution of derivative work (copyright) or blocking a message directed to the public (freedom of speech).
as if they chose not to watch by leaving the room -- like I can do with my MythTV system.
So do I, but the use of DVR exploits a specific provision that allows time-shifting by the user. It does not extend to the service.
Why, it would be like you saying that use of ad-block, ghostery, etc in your web browser were censorship... sheesh...
It would be if ISP implemented that in their service through a proxy.
The difference is, user modifies the content that he already received.
Free Speech means the speaker can say what they want (within reason, and with the onus that they are responsible for their speech - ie punished if it incites riots, causes harm to people, etc). However, the speech right ends at my ears. I have the right (and my right ALWAYS trumps the speakers) to not listen, not watch, not read.
So if someone allows you to print a newspaper but cuts articles from it before it reaches the readers, it's not censorship?
The listener didn't state that he diddn't want to hear you. He stated that he only wants to hear a part of your message. And you ("you" as TV network) are only interested in your whole message being heard.
I really understand how this is important for political speech, education and informing the public on any issues that might happen to be relevant to anything. But COMMERCIALS??? There has to be an exception for them.
Censorship is when someone is prevented from distributing their message. That's not the case here.
Of course, it is. TV network is prevented from distributing ads to users who subscribed to the service that blocks ads. Users are paying for censorship.
This is a third party distributing a different message.
That third party can't distribute a different message based on TV network's ad-infested broadcast because it does not have copyright to the original message.
The only reason why cable and satellite networks can redistribute "Free To Air" TV programs, is that they are specifically given both right and obligation to do so as a part of TV distribution mechanism mandated by the government (I believe, as a part of TV spectrum and cable operation licensing). The expectation is, of course, that cable operators will redistribute the original broadcasts, with ads and all, so they will not compete with TV networks who will get their ad revenue regardless of the way how viewers received their broadcasts -- over the air or over the cable.
From the TV network's point of view, this is a very fair arrangement. From the viewer's point of view it's pure madness -- user pays for cable subscribtion and is still bombarded with ads. The solution is to remove ads, charge the user a subscription fee, and pass some of those charges to the TV networks. However this can't possibly work if the ad-stripping is voluntary, TV networks believe that their ads worth more than users' subscription fees. So TV network will not voluntarily provide the redistribution rights for their content unless under condition that ads stay in it. Satellite operator removed ads anyway, what formally means that he infringed the copyright of the TV network by creating a derivative work. At least this would be the position of a TV network if they had to sue. And it's perfectly reasonable. Viewer can (in theory -- technical limitations and DMCA crap aside) skip ads because he has a specific right to time-shifting, and does not copy or redistribute the content any further. Satellite operator may claim that it merely performs time-shifring on behalf of the user, however this is unlikely to be believed because clearly redistribution takes place after modification.
This means, a separate protection should exist for distributing censored content (as opposed to arbitrarily modified content -- satellite operator isn't supposed to redistribute DVDs and remixes of things it picks from the air). Only government can grant this kind of protection because otherwise it will violate either copyright or freedom of speech.
Unrelated to this, excessive advertisement is both inconvenience and a public mental health hazard. Consumer protection laws impose restrictions and obligations that determine what should and what should not be available to consumers within reasonable price ranges. They do not force providers to distribute anything for free but other restrictions and requirement to provide products and services happen all the time.
Now, if it's a consumer's right to shield himself from exposure to commercials while still being able to watch the rest of broadcast, there must be a law that protects it. This is not the same as protecting the right of cable or satellite operator to distribute censored broadcasts, it's the right of consumer to demand them for a subscription price regardless of everyone else's wishes. Government has to force the TV network to accept subscription/licensing fees and force cable or satellute provider to allow this option. And here it is, consumer protection requires a restriction on TV network's "free speech" as TV network never intended to distribute their content without commercials, and would not voluntarily transmit it in such form, leave alone license it to anyone. TV network will argue that it infringes not only on their copyright
Slashdot Mirror
And WHY would a company want to avoid GPL compiler, unless it intends to distribute a sabotaged version of the compiler?
in a country with no constitutionally-protected civil rights
Let's see what will happen if I write about drones in an obsolete dialect of English:
"An ability to uncover crimes, incidents, disasters and dangers, being necessary to the safety of a free people, the right of the people to keep and launch surveillance drones shall not be infringed."
Makes much more sense than a certain similar passage about weapons. One person's right is another person's reason to wear a tinfoil hat (and vice versa).
but then a victor emerged and continues to dominate the industry.
What victor? What industry? In something like social networks, the victor is whatever the current fad is, and companies constantly drop out of favor. Google (as a search engine) has an advantage of technology and infrastructure, and it's still far from being a permanent monopoly on search. Facebook has nothing but "momentum", and eventually will piss off the users so they will move on to something else.
There is a separate question, how come something as amorphous as marketing information gathering from random communications, became such a valuable product in the first place. It's likely overpriced now, and with increasing monopolization of all markets it can only lose value later.
It's "Potemkin village".
No, but it costs that to BUY one. What investors supposedly do at IPO.
Exactly!
And look what happened to Myspace (that was the last Facebook).
This valuation is for something less stable than the price of tulips.
Think of it -- what does it tell us about economy when a service that can be replicated in about a year by any competent team of developers, can cost as much as 100 cities (that would be capable of housing and serving literally thousands of such teams)?
But then they would have to adapt to the local crime rate, and will probably end up with some kind of cyborg cops instead of automated power grids and traffic lights.
Could be an indication that the "city" above is overpriced.
My eyes are rolling at 7200rpm.
there is no "even though"... almost all used memory is available for use. only difference is some allocated memory is never sent to swap..
There is a fundamental difference between a throwavay buffer and everything else -- buffer can be re-used at any time except while I/O on it is in progress.
ofcource.. first you need to deal with the broken unix design of overcomiting mem in the first place.
Overcommitting is neither Unix-originated, nor mandatory in Linux.
Seriously, Facebook costs the same as 100 fully-automated and instrumented cities.
Economy is doing fine, indeed...
Linux uses free memory for additional buffers, but drops them immediately if that memory is needed for anything else. This memory is counted as "used" even though it's available for allocation. The ideal system designed on this principle would never show any free memory once the total amount of data read from storage exceeds the physical RAM size.
Oh, wonderful. Did it come to anyone's mind, that housing prisoners in permanent structures instead of a bum city would improve security, hinder communications and give fewer causes for the riots?
The BBC had a show about a lawyer in the days of slavery fighting for justice... except the justice of the day was something different. Is a judge and jury who believe slavery is the right normal and correct thing to do, ruling in favor of a slaver, corrupt? Often, society is split and the other side can seem to be malicious, insane, corrupt, just interested in their own goals, hypocrites and downright evil. But the other side thinks exactly the same of you. There are few people in the world who do "evil" thinking they are doing evil.
This has nothing to do with judge having a business relationship with the plaintiff. Especially in cases when the law says nothing directly applicable, and judge ends up making decisions based entirely on his opinions and intuition.
Angela Merkel really calls herself that? I didn't know, she is that honest.
Developing a patch, especially for three different applications, can be costly and time consuming. Developing these patches consumes development resources, then must run through a QA process, and the patch needs to be communicated and distributed to users. And for a company like Adobe with a massive customer base using its Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash Professional, the bandwidth cost alone can be substantial.
You know what is cheaper? Hiring developers with a clue, so they won't write bugs by the bucketload.
You used that IN PRISON??? It's supposed to disperse crowds, for fuck sake! In confined space such as prison yard (I hope, no one was stupid enough to place it indoors) it only pisses people off because they can't run away.
Typos while editing.
As I said before, freedom of speech protects the speaker, not the listener or redistributor. This is not the same as playing the recording without commercials because subscriber skipped them -- it's redistributor excluding them.
You toggle an option and they are skipped over, turn it off, and they play.
No viewer in his right mind would willingly enable commercials in a recorded broadcast if it was possible to disable them, so it's a moot point. Viewer really has a choice only between current broadcast with commercials, or yesterday's broadcast without commercials.
I think you'll find that you're incorrect about this - and your entire point, by the way. Affiliate stations substitute commercials from the network with local ones all the time. If you've ever seen a partial commercial that gets stuffed by another, you've seen a substitution with bad timing. Affiliate stations pay for programming just like Dish and Cable companies and they are analogous.
Are they allowed to do so without a separate license (or with the same compulsory licensing that applies to OTA rebrodcasts)?
I didn't bother to read the rest of your post/rant as it's seriously misguided. Dish is simply providing the technology for the consumer to skip watching the commercials --
Right, and this is prohibited because it involves public distribution of derivative work (copyright) or blocking a message directed to the public (freedom of speech).
as if they chose not to watch by leaving the room -- like I can do with my MythTV system.
So do I, but the use of DVR exploits a specific provision that allows time-shifting by the user. It does not extend to the service.
Why, it would be like you saying that use of ad-block, ghostery, etc in your web browser were censorship... sheesh...
It would be if ISP implemented that in their service through a proxy.
The difference is, user modifies the content that he already received.
Free Speech means the speaker can say what they want (within reason, and with the onus that they are responsible for their speech - ie punished if it incites riots, causes harm to people, etc). However, the speech right ends at my ears. I have the right (and my right ALWAYS trumps the speakers) to not listen, not watch, not read.
So if someone allows you to print a newspaper but cuts articles from it before it reaches the readers, it's not censorship?
The listener didn't state that he diddn't want to hear you. He stated that he only wants to hear a part of your message. And you ("you" as TV network) are only interested in your whole message being heard.
I really understand how this is important for political speech, education and informing the public on any issues that might happen to be relevant to anything. But COMMERCIALS??? There has to be an exception for them.
No, dude. Skipping ads is not censorship.
Only when the viewer does it. If he can.
Censorship is when someone is prevented from distributing their message. That's not the case here.
Of course, it is. TV network is prevented from distributing ads to users who subscribed to the service that blocks ads. Users are paying for censorship.
This is a third party distributing a different message.
That third party can't distribute a different message based on TV network's ad-infested broadcast because it does not have copyright to the original message.
The only reason why cable and satellite networks can redistribute "Free To Air" TV programs, is that they are specifically given both right and obligation to do so as a part of TV distribution mechanism mandated by the government (I believe, as a part of TV spectrum and cable operation licensing). The expectation is, of course, that cable operators will redistribute the original broadcasts, with ads and all, so they will not compete with TV networks who will get their ad revenue regardless of the way how viewers received their broadcasts -- over the air or over the cable.
From the TV network's point of view, this is a very fair arrangement. From the viewer's point of view it's pure madness -- user pays for cable subscribtion and is still bombarded with ads. The solution is to remove ads, charge the user a subscription fee, and pass some of those charges to the TV networks. However this can't possibly work if the ad-stripping is voluntary, TV networks believe that their ads worth more than users' subscription fees. So TV network will not voluntarily provide the redistribution rights for their content unless under condition that ads stay in it. Satellite operator removed ads anyway, what formally means that he infringed the copyright of the TV network by creating a derivative work. At least this would be the position of a TV network if they had to sue. And it's perfectly reasonable. Viewer can (in theory -- technical limitations and DMCA crap aside) skip ads because he has a specific right to time-shifting, and does not copy or redistribute the content any further. Satellite operator may claim that it merely performs time-shifring on behalf of the user, however this is unlikely to be believed because clearly redistribution takes place after modification.
This means, a separate protection should exist for distributing censored content (as opposed to arbitrarily modified content -- satellite operator isn't supposed to redistribute DVDs and remixes of things it picks from the air). Only government can grant this kind of protection because otherwise it will violate either copyright or freedom of speech.
Unrelated to this, excessive advertisement is both inconvenience and a public mental health hazard. Consumer protection laws impose restrictions and obligations that determine what should and what should not be available to consumers within reasonable price ranges. They do not force providers to distribute anything for free but other restrictions and requirement to provide products and services happen all the time.
Now, if it's a consumer's right to shield himself from exposure to commercials while still being able to watch the rest of broadcast, there must be a law that protects it. This is not the same as protecting the right of cable or satellite operator to distribute censored broadcasts, it's the right of consumer to demand them for a subscription price regardless of everyone else's wishes. Government has to force the TV network to accept subscription/licensing fees and force cable or satellute provider to allow this option. And here it is, consumer protection requires a restriction on TV network's "free speech" as TV network never intended to distribute their content without commercials, and would not voluntarily transmit it in such form, leave alone license it to anyone. TV network will argue that it infringes not only on their copyright
It's as in "our masters and overlords".
Does the net really need the intervention of the Nanny State?
Yes!
Only in Europe would this blatant intervention with people's business models be tolerated. Isn't this, in effect, an uncompensated expropriation?
Yes!
And it's a good thing. Now fuck off.