if i own a house, i have something unique. it has doors, windows. if you break into my house, and take my television, i am now without a television
meanwhile, if i copy an mp3, have i deprived anyone of anything? ostensibly, i've deprived the owners of the mp3 from control of how it is distributed, and theoretically, i've deprived some artist $. but in reality, i've increased the exposure of that artist, he'll fill more seats at concerts, and the only people i've deprived economically is the distributor, whom isn't even needed anymore, since the internet has replaced their function
the problem is you believe a logical falsehood: that taking a car, or a television, or a diamond ring, something material with concrete value, is somehow anything like copying a file, which is effortless, and without cost. but that you equate these obviously conceptually different things that a kindergartener could correctly compare and contrast, means you are either not very bright or a victim of propaganda
in fact, the little scenario i outlined above has a well-conceived strong capitalist model: radio. on radio, they give songs out for free. why? to attract interest, and they use that interest to sell advertising. again: this is completely valid capitalist principles at work. on the internet, an artist can give his tracks out for free. why? to attract interest, and sell warm butts in concert halls. solid capitalism at work. no one loses out. well, except for one party: the recently made redundant and useless: old school distributors
and that's really what this is all about: corporatism, not capitalism. what i am talking about is not some hippie socialist "information wants to be free man" bullshit, its merely a new capitalist landscape enabled by new technology, the internet. but you have these old school distributors, now suddenly redundant and useless, angry that the world has changed and they are now defunct
so what do they do? they do what any good corporatist would do: they manipulate the market. the greatest enemy capitalism has ever known is not socialism or communism, it is corporatism. study your economic history with monopolies and oligopolies from the turn of the century: you use your size and heft to crush the little players in the marketplace, you buy off the government that is supposed to keep the market fair with rules, to make rules that instead artificially preserve the status quo with you on top. so what you are seeing with intellectual property is not capitalists versus anarchists or thieves, but corporatists versus new capitalist models
unfortunately, people like you, who aren't very bright, easily buy the obviously logically unsound propaganda of the corporatists, who describe intellectual property as if it were owning a house or a television. its obviously not the same thing
consider this a little intellectual charity for you today. try to grow a little intelectually, and see that you are far from understanding the subject matter you are currently ignorantly commenting on
the problem with vigilantism is it is not accountable, except to the vigilante, whose principles may be quite out of whack
you can complain about the abuses of the police all you want, but the police, at least in theory, serve the people. of course they can be corrupt, but this is a structural failure that can be remedied by the government. if the government is unwilling or unable to control the police, then your country is screwed anyways, so start building molotov cocktails
vigilantism can never be reviewed, criticized, or policy changed. plus, the usual guys who like the idea of vigilantism and are attracted to the idea are of a sort of personality that has serious psychological issues with control and power and dominance, and are therefore exactly the wrong kind of person you want to be enforcing anything. yes, people with the same sort of psychological issues are also attracted to becoming cops, but at least with the police, there exists (again, at least in theory, where it doesn't exists its a failure of policy and execution of the government) a feedback system that can weed out such people
i'm sorry, but vigilantism sucks, and is not a solution to anything. the only valid solution is to kick your government in the ass to fix the failures in your society that make the idea of vigilantism seem remotely appealing at all
scientology copyrights their religious scripture
on
Medieval Copy Protection
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
naive impressionable fools shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of their lives... to find out the next exciting chapter in the riveting saga of xenu and the thetans
if these people knew up front that they were sacrificing all of their money and years of their lives for bad science fiction, they wouldn't join the stupid cult
whenever someone leaks their nonsense, they try to sue the leaker into oblivion and insist on erasing the treasured revelations from any appearance outside the cult
the tactics of scientology, and medieval monks, are a cautionary tale. they actually represent the end game of intellectual property: i control all the information, so i control you, you are my slave. corporations don't call it a religion, but they do the same tactics, with the same end game, whether they realize it or not. relentlessly, they buy off our legislators, and convince them to pass yet stricter and stricter controls on the flow of information
for the sake of all of the noble principles that have arisen out of the enlightenment and so many of us cherish so dearly, and have been codified into such things as the constitution and the declaration of independence, you must do your best in your life to sabotage and destroy the effectiveness of intellectual property. intellectual property is a flawed philosophical premise, but its enforcement works because it creates flows of money, that create power bases, that can be invested in further toll booths on the flow of information, until the whole thing is jammed up, strangled, and controlled. the only antidote is enough of us realizing the threat, and sabotaging it. the idea of fighting intellectual property is actually the fight for the continues enjoyment of our freedoms, ultimately, this is the crux of the clash
and we can do that, with the internet
intellectual property is the ultimate enemy of the freedoms you enjoy and cherish. the internet is the greatest thing since the printing press to challenge the notion. it's a long, ongoing struggle, pitting the highest principles of mankind, versus the lowest, basest forms of control over your life, for the sake of cash. but if you don't wish you or your children to be slaves to corporations, you will do your best to make intellectual property law unenforceable on the internet. it won't be easy, it won't be done in a day, but its one of the most important struggles of our lives, involving the highest principles you believe in
so the only way to comply with your complaint in order to protect from all future such lawsuits would be to destroy the potential for anything to be enjoyable that might be sold
what an awesome world that would be
in short, i hope that your wood is not so small that you still can't choke on it, you asshole
i have tried in my life to be lucid, coherent, and persuasive in what i say
little did i know all you have to do is say "kiddie porn", and whatever you are trying to argue for, people instantly flock to you sympathetically
so, in that spirit, instead of making a rational argument here, i will simply say
kiddie porn kiddie porn kiddie porn
kiddie porn kiddie porn kiddie porn
kiddie porn kiddie porn kiddie porn
kiddie porn kiddie porn kiddie porn
kiddie porn kiddie porn kiddie porn
there!
now i may rest assured that whatever your opinion before reading my comment, i have now inexorably swayed you to believe as i do, simply by reciting the magic words that trumps all debate, argument and rhetoric
Okay, then you tell me: how would you describe someone who believes bicycles are a united nations plot, or the us govt is going to set up death panels, or the president is a "secret muslim".
If my terminology offends you, you provide me with the superior terminology you have in mind to describe people who believe such things. I'm waiting
And those witch hunters in salem did a good job of getting all the witches and "fellow travellers"
Yeah sure, the lynch mob hysteria destroyed a lot of lives, but someone had a magic list, and they must have been "fellow travellers" so they deserved having there lives destroyed
All sarcasm aside, sometimes I wish I were a more diplomatic person, but not at times like this, when I get to call someone like you exactly what you are: an ignorant asshole
i think, psychologically, it has to do with fear of change
some people have a real problem with change. it makes sense evolutionarily: don't change what works. when you live in hunter gatherer societies, what works can work for thousands of years. but modern times has constant technological and social change washing over society, such that minds with this "fear change" gene creates theses inane nitwits
"we wear red face paint at the start of every hunting season, and now this guy says its not necessary?" (insert paranoid schiziophrenia, fear, etc.) i think this innate inertia about social change in some people has been with us forever: some people have a brain condition, that, at some point in our evolution, gave them a survival advantage, but now, is a detriment in their ability to reason
mccarthyism was an era of fear of "secret communists" everywhere, and joe mccarthy successfully inserted himself as demagogue in chief of the wave of fear and hysteria sweeping the land in the time of sputnik and soviets with an atom bomb. strangely, it was also an era when 3D movies were all the rage... spin that observation into your own paranoid schizophrenic conspiracy theory
one of the up and coming tea party types will be the next joe mccarthy. they will use this sort of paranoid schizophrenic break with reality to describe "secret muslims" (that's what obama is, ya know), "secret socialists", "secret fascists", etc. taken on their own, theses hysterical creative inventions are like a farcical hollywood movie. but so many actually and truly believe this crap
there's just a certain panicky low iq kind of human, in the usa and other countries, who is apparently about as gullible as a toddler in a carnival haunted house ride, and for whatever reason, they only believe the most fantastical fearful propaganda they encounter. i guess reality is too mundane and boring? i don't know what to do about these people, they have these coordinated waves of fear throughout history, and i don't know if there is an effective way to defuse their delusional problems before they damage our societies
its the same as the salem witch trials: she dresses funny, and floats, so she's a witch, so kill her before she hurts us. in the era of joe mccarthy, it was fluoridated water (fluoridated water was not to strengthen teeth, but to turn you into a communist). later there were "chemtrails": jet airplanes contrails were seeding the atmosphere with mind control chemicals. people really and truly believed and believe this nonsense. its alternatively hilarious and frightening. it tells you the mentality of how lynch mobs form, its a sad phenomenon of human sociology
and this manipulated fearmongered hysteria is the mentality that is sweeping the land right now. sad
people started to piling into cities. cities are the ideal for a social species
"Cities are in no way efficient, pretty much everything about them is inefficient."
uh... what? if you pile everyone together, all communication and transport is minimized between people. yes, you have to move food and water in... why do you believe this is the most important or the most intensive form of communication/ transportation? the obvious truth is that cities are the ideal for efficiency (what's inefficient is the suburbs, but this is a quirk of the last century when oil was cheap, the suburbs will die as energy becomes more expensive)
look: people prefer to live in cities. as of 2005, 81% of americans live in the city or the suburbs
does that factoid mean anything to your bizarre anti-city bias?
cities are the ideal environment for mankind, by choice, and by design. we invented them, we overwhelmingly choose to live in them. all other species adapt to their environment, but homo sapiens adapts its environment to itself. and what we have chosen to make, and prefer to be born, to live, and to die in, are cities, as point of historical and contemporary objective fact
we issue expensive highly industry specific reports behind a login on our website
i did an audit after some unusual login activity, and noticed a completely unrelated transgression: we boneheadedly forgot to remove an ex-employee's login, and he was systematically downloading all of these reports. tying the geolocated ip address of his login with the access times in the web log, we could see he used his new employer's computer and his home computer to go through folder after folder, and download thousands of documents, one after the other. i could tell he was actually doing this manually rather than some screen scraper, because the download times were too variable, and included obvious 15 minute coffee breaks. took him days
we did some snooping of our own, and it turns out he got a job in journalism, and was passing these reports off as his own research. so we contacted his new employer, and disclosed the plagiarism. i think he's an ex-journalist now
Slashdot Mirror
if i own a house, i have something unique. it has doors, windows. if you break into my house, and take my television, i am now without a television
meanwhile, if i copy an mp3, have i deprived anyone of anything? ostensibly, i've deprived the owners of the mp3 from control of how it is distributed, and theoretically, i've deprived some artist $. but in reality, i've increased the exposure of that artist, he'll fill more seats at concerts, and the only people i've deprived economically is the distributor, whom isn't even needed anymore, since the internet has replaced their function
the problem is you believe a logical falsehood: that taking a car, or a television, or a diamond ring, something material with concrete value, is somehow anything like copying a file, which is effortless, and without cost. but that you equate these obviously conceptually different things that a kindergartener could correctly compare and contrast, means you are either not very bright or a victim of propaganda
in fact, the little scenario i outlined above has a well-conceived strong capitalist model: radio. on radio, they give songs out for free. why? to attract interest, and they use that interest to sell advertising. again: this is completely valid capitalist principles at work. on the internet, an artist can give his tracks out for free. why? to attract interest, and sell warm butts in concert halls. solid capitalism at work. no one loses out. well, except for one party: the recently made redundant and useless: old school distributors
and that's really what this is all about: corporatism, not capitalism. what i am talking about is not some hippie socialist "information wants to be free man" bullshit, its merely a new capitalist landscape enabled by new technology, the internet. but you have these old school distributors, now suddenly redundant and useless, angry that the world has changed and they are now defunct
so what do they do? they do what any good corporatist would do: they manipulate the market. the greatest enemy capitalism has ever known is not socialism or communism, it is corporatism. study your economic history with monopolies and oligopolies from the turn of the century: you use your size and heft to crush the little players in the marketplace, you buy off the government that is supposed to keep the market fair with rules, to make rules that instead artificially preserve the status quo with you on top. so what you are seeing with intellectual property is not capitalists versus anarchists or thieves, but corporatists versus new capitalist models
unfortunately, people like you, who aren't very bright, easily buy the obviously logically unsound propaganda of the corporatists, who describe intellectual property as if it were owning a house or a television. its obviously not the same thing
consider this a little intellectual charity for you today. try to grow a little intelectually, and see that you are far from understanding the subject matter you are currently ignorantly commenting on
the problem with vigilantism is it is not accountable, except to the vigilante, whose principles may be quite out of whack
you can complain about the abuses of the police all you want, but the police, at least in theory, serve the people. of course they can be corrupt, but this is a structural failure that can be remedied by the government. if the government is unwilling or unable to control the police, then your country is screwed anyways, so start building molotov cocktails
vigilantism can never be reviewed, criticized, or policy changed. plus, the usual guys who like the idea of vigilantism and are attracted to the idea are of a sort of personality that has serious psychological issues with control and power and dominance, and are therefore exactly the wrong kind of person you want to be enforcing anything. yes, people with the same sort of psychological issues are also attracted to becoming cops, but at least with the police, there exists (again, at least in theory, where it doesn't exists its a failure of policy and execution of the government) a feedback system that can weed out such people
i'm sorry, but vigilantism sucks, and is not a solution to anything. the only valid solution is to kick your government in the ass to fix the failures in your society that make the idea of vigilantism seem remotely appealing at all
naive impressionable fools shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of their lives... to find out the next exciting chapter in the riveting saga of xenu and the thetans
if these people knew up front that they were sacrificing all of their money and years of their lives for bad science fiction, they wouldn't join the stupid cult
whenever someone leaks their nonsense, they try to sue the leaker into oblivion and insist on erasing the treasured revelations from any appearance outside the cult
including yours truly here, slashdot:
http://slashdot.org/yro/01/03/16/1256226.shtml
the tactics of scientology, and medieval monks, are a cautionary tale. they actually represent the end game of intellectual property: i control all the information, so i control you, you are my slave. corporations don't call it a religion, but they do the same tactics, with the same end game, whether they realize it or not. relentlessly, they buy off our legislators, and convince them to pass yet stricter and stricter controls on the flow of information
for the sake of all of the noble principles that have arisen out of the enlightenment and so many of us cherish so dearly, and have been codified into such things as the constitution and the declaration of independence, you must do your best in your life to sabotage and destroy the effectiveness of intellectual property. intellectual property is a flawed philosophical premise, but its enforcement works because it creates flows of money, that create power bases, that can be invested in further toll booths on the flow of information, until the whole thing is jammed up, strangled, and controlled. the only antidote is enough of us realizing the threat, and sabotaging it. the idea of fighting intellectual property is actually the fight for the continues enjoyment of our freedoms, ultimately, this is the crux of the clash
and we can do that, with the internet
intellectual property is the ultimate enemy of the freedoms you enjoy and cherish. the internet is the greatest thing since the printing press to challenge the notion. it's a long, ongoing struggle, pitting the highest principles of mankind, versus the lowest, basest forms of control over your life, for the sake of cash. but if you don't wish you or your children to be slaves to corporations, you will do your best to make intellectual property law unenforceable on the internet. it won't be easy, it won't be done in a day, but its one of the most important struggles of our lives, involving the highest principles you believe in
you greenlighted this story simply because of the clever pun in the title. it's ok, it was funny, just admit it
anything enjoyable is addictive
so the only way to comply with your complaint in order to protect from all future such lawsuits would be to destroy the potential for anything to be enjoyable that might be sold
what an awesome world that would be
in short, i hope that your wood is not so small that you still can't choke on it, you asshole
because "Shrinking Like Steve Jobs With Liver Disease" is just mean
i have tried in my life to be lucid, coherent, and persuasive in what i say
little did i know all you have to do is say "kiddie porn", and whatever you are trying to argue for, people instantly flock to you sympathetically
so, in that spirit, instead of making a rational argument here, i will simply say
there!
now i may rest assured that whatever your opinion before reading my comment, i have now inexorably swayed you to believe as i do, simply by reciting the magic words that trumps all debate, argument and rhetoric
Okay, then you tell me: how would you describe someone who believes bicycles are a united nations plot, or the us govt is going to set up death panels, or the president is a "secret muslim".
If my terminology offends you, you provide me with the superior terminology you have in mind to describe people who believe such things. I'm waiting
if the tea party wins a lot legislative seats, then the zombie outbreak will have succeeded
"Yep. And if you dislike Obama's policies, you must be a racist."
If you dislike obama's policies because he's a "secret muslim", yes you are a racist
"And if you subscribe to the views of the "Tea Party", you must be an ignorant redneck."
If you subscribe to the tea party because the govt is going to set up death panels and take away your guns, yes, you are an ignorant redneck
"Yep. Lots of fear-mongering going on."
With the qualifications to your statements I just made, its not fearmongering, its accurate and realistic description
I agree, the damage proposed by bike seats is dubious
I was actually just trying to set up my tin foil jock strap joke, but I failed miserably
Yup
And those witch hunters in salem did a good job of getting all the witches and "fellow travellers"
Yeah sure, the lynch mob hysteria destroyed a lot of lives, but someone had a magic list, and they must have been "fellow travellers" so they deserved having there lives destroyed
All sarcasm aside, sometimes I wish I were a more diplomatic person, but not at times like this, when I get to call someone like you exactly what you are: an ignorant asshole
i think, psychologically, it has to do with fear of change
some people have a real problem with change. it makes sense evolutionarily: don't change what works. when you live in hunter gatherer societies, what works can work for thousands of years. but modern times has constant technological and social change washing over society, such that minds with this "fear change" gene creates theses inane nitwits
"we wear red face paint at the start of every hunting season, and now this guy says its not necessary?" (insert paranoid schiziophrenia, fear, etc.) i think this innate inertia about social change in some people has been with us forever: some people have a brain condition, that, at some point in our evolution, gave them a survival advantage, but now, is a detriment in their ability to reason
it prefers to congregate
it is not a solitary animal
it has been conjectured that long term male bicyclists have damaged prostates, erectile dysfunction, and reduced fertility
the ergonomics of vigorous bike riding basically means you are constantly punching yourself in the perineum with a bike seat
so score one for the delusional paranoid schizophrenics: bicycle use IS population control
delusional paranoid schizophrenics take note: now you need a tin foil jockstrap too
mccarthyism was an era of fear of "secret communists" everywhere, and joe mccarthy successfully inserted himself as demagogue in chief of the wave of fear and hysteria sweeping the land in the time of sputnik and soviets with an atom bomb. strangely, it was also an era when 3D movies were all the rage... spin that observation into your own paranoid schizophrenic conspiracy theory
one of the up and coming tea party types will be the next joe mccarthy. they will use this sort of paranoid schizophrenic break with reality to describe "secret muslims" (that's what obama is, ya know), "secret socialists", "secret fascists", etc. taken on their own, theses hysterical creative inventions are like a farcical hollywood movie. but so many actually and truly believe this crap
there's just a certain panicky low iq kind of human, in the usa and other countries, who is apparently about as gullible as a toddler in a carnival haunted house ride, and for whatever reason, they only believe the most fantastical fearful propaganda they encounter. i guess reality is too mundane and boring? i don't know what to do about these people, they have these coordinated waves of fear throughout history, and i don't know if there is an effective way to defuse their delusional problems before they damage our societies
its the same as the salem witch trials: she dresses funny, and floats, so she's a witch, so kill her before she hurts us. in the era of joe mccarthy, it was fluoridated water (fluoridated water was not to strengthen teeth, but to turn you into a communist). later there were "chemtrails": jet airplanes contrails were seeding the atmosphere with mind control chemicals. people really and truly believed and believe this nonsense. its alternatively hilarious and frightening. it tells you the mentality of how lynch mobs form, its a sad phenomenon of human sociology
and this manipulated fearmongered hysteria is the mentality that is sweeping the land right now. sad
the creation of the moron particle
it was those quant assholes who got us into this mess
they used formulas extrapolating from cherry picked models to suggest that the economic universe could just go on inflating forever. big bang indeed
http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748704509704575019032416477138.html
i don't know about unifying electromagnetism and gravity, but it seems like someone just unified economics and quantum mechanics
just tell us how to avoid the deflaton particle for the next few years
"Corporate Dollars Reprogram Voters To Elect PACmen"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee
rail makes sense in high density populated areas
therefore, the east coast: yes. the west coast: yes. the middle of the country: no
this is why the usa lags in high speed rail from countries like germany (dense), france (dense), japan (dense), china (dense), etc
on a national basis, rail makes no sense, due to our overall low population density
but in isolated sections, like the california coast and the northeast: its a no-brainer yes
people started to piling into cities. cities are the ideal for a social species
"Cities are in no way efficient, pretty much everything about them is inefficient."
uh... what? if you pile everyone together, all communication and transport is minimized between people. yes, you have to move food and water in... why do you believe this is the most important or the most intensive form of communication/ transportation? the obvious truth is that cities are the ideal for efficiency (what's inefficient is the suburbs, but this is a quirk of the last century when oil was cheap, the suburbs will die as energy becomes more expensive)
look: people prefer to live in cities. as of 2005, 81% of americans live in the city or the suburbs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
does that factoid mean anything to your bizarre anti-city bias?
cities are the ideal environment for mankind, by choice, and by design. we invented them, we overwhelmingly choose to live in them. all other species adapt to their environment, but homo sapiens adapts its environment to itself. and what we have chosen to make, and prefer to be born, to live, and to die in, are cities, as point of historical and contemporary objective fact
get word out that some site is streaming hd 3d porn, only available over ipv6, and whether its true or not, ipv6 adoption will go through the roof
porn always leads the way in the adoption of new high tech, every nerd worth their salt knows that
we issue expensive highly industry specific reports behind a login on our website
i did an audit after some unusual login activity, and noticed a completely unrelated transgression: we boneheadedly forgot to remove an ex-employee's login, and he was systematically downloading all of these reports. tying the geolocated ip address of his login with the access times in the web log, we could see he used his new employer's computer and his home computer to go through folder after folder, and download thousands of documents, one after the other. i could tell he was actually doing this manually rather than some screen scraper, because the download times were too variable, and included obvious 15 minute coffee breaks. took him days
we did some snooping of our own, and it turns out he got a job in journalism, and was passing these reports off as his own research. so we contacted his new employer, and disclosed the plagiarism. i think he's an ex-journalist now
(i am joking)