If someone went back 30 years to Texas and killed George W, then he simply wouldn't have existed now. Time as we know it in this branch of reality would have changed.
Just as if I killed your dog 2 years ago, you wouldn't find yourself dragging an empty leash around (unless you were mentally unstable). Your dog would have died 2 years ago, and your life would have adapted accordingly.
The problem with the idea of changing the past, especially through violence, is that it can be rather disturbing. If you killed George W. 30 years ago, then Salem Bin Laden may not have died in 1988. Many questionable happenings may not have happened.
Ok, but maybe the Bush family would have a vendetta against the killer. Maybe CIA Director George Bush Sr. would have something done about this. Maybe another country would be blamed for this assassination. Maybe your own family (with similiar DNA) would be fingered. Maybe you as a teenager (depending on your current age, obviously) would be convicted of the crime. Maybe the current terrorist laws would have been put into place 30 years earlier because of this.
Someone posed the question to me once, what if you went back in time and killed a key creature in the evolution of a modern species? Like, what if it was the missing link monkey? What if it was the only roach which developed the urge to eat garbage?:) It simply wouldn't exist. What if you introduced bacteria thousands of years more evolved in a prior time? Maybe the bacteria hanging out on your clothes was enough to kill off any more advanced creatures of the more primitive times (i.e., birds, mammals). Is the "fun" of time travel really worth the risk of improving or destroying everything?
This goes on the assumption that time is a single threaded linear model working at a fixed speed.
If you go back in time, and kill your grandfather, then you are never created, therefore you can never go back and kill your grandfather.
If the "past" model is "protected", blah, blah, divine intervention, blah, blah, intelligent design, blah, blah, blah.
Someone mentioned something to the effect of "If I had a gun to shoot my grandfather, would it misfire?". Sure, maybe divine intervention made it misfire. Does that mean a knife, rock, stick, or whatever would still not work? Beliving in some greater plan that would protect the past would also believe that we have no possibility for changing the future.
I, for one, know positively that you can change the future. Don't ask, unless you want a really long response.
If time were a multi-threaded linear model, by going back in time and making a change, it would effectively branch the timeline. Your branch (that you came from) would remain unchanged, because it's already happened. A new timeline, caused by the difference in history, would now be new. You would never exist in the changed timeline.
Maybe neither time nor space are linear. Have you ever experienced precognition or deja vu? 90% of the people who say they have, may be nutjobs, but there are some people who can see things outside of our concept of space or time. That is, space would be "remove viewing", and time would be precognition (future) or deja vu (past).
Space and time are concepts that we live with, and have been reinforced in us since childhood, based on potentially flawed observations of our elders. Don't forget, these are the same elders that believed: we are the center of the universe; the world is flat (~1640); space travel is impossible (~1930); "Everything that can be invented has been invented" (1899); and we are alone in the universe.
We will find that we are completely wrong in many of these concepts, and in a few thousand years (assuming humanity survives) will be laughed at for some of them.
I'm not going to say by any stretch of the imagination that I should be right, but don't take any explanation as fact until you're very sure.
Well, if they're going to X86 Intel's, then it wouldn't be limited to those builds. They'd just have to work around whatever limitation Apple puts in (if any) that may only allow Apple's OS to run on it.
I'm thinking like X-Box. But hey, we'll find out when the time comes.
I strongly suspect there will be a whole bunch of Linux distros "ported" over to Apple machines.:)
A whole new world of anyone who can afford the boxes putting Linux on prettier machines.. That's the only real advantage I've ever seen in Apple machines anyways.
[ducking from all the MacFans]
Ok, for the MS fans, I'm sure someone will put together something to make Windows work.
I would have prefered to see them go to AMD64.. That would have been a seriously impressive jump.
I wonder if maybe it's just a rumor. Or maybe someone at Apple leaked the word they were going to X86 compatible. I know there were plenty of rumors Apple and AMD talking in the past.
Ahhh, FidoNet, and all those other networks that I can't even remember the names of.. Door games...
Of course, this was before I was into *nix (Hmmm, just about the time Linus had the Linux twinkle in his eye).. I used DesqView, on my 486/33 packed with a whopping 4Mb ram (that cost about $150 per meg), and had 3 nodes. One was on a nice US Robotics Courier Dual Standard, and a couple cheapie ones.
I considered setting one back up, but then was like "why?".:)
I do agree that the ??AA are screwing the artists. I can't argue it any other way.
**BUT**
If the artists didn't like it, they'd start dealing in other ways.
Back to real-world examples. If I'm manufacturing widgets (ahhh, the famous economics class product), which my cost is $0.25 per unit, which I expect 0.75 profit. If the nice Mafia gentlemen in the black-on-black suits are going to tag on $14 to the price of my widget, I'll sell through somewhere else.
But, if I have to stay with the black-on-black suit men, to ensure my widget will be sold in 99.9% of the outlets, that's what I have to do.
I don't know what the numbers are like for movies, but if I remember correctly, recording artists rarely even see $1 of every CD sale. That's something the movie and recording industries need to work out for themselves.
If I remember correctly, when I was close with the regional manager of a theater, the theaters themselves don't make anything on ticket sales. Their profit comes from concessions. Of course, where most couples spend $20 on concessions, where their cost is all of $0.25, that's a nice profit.:)
You go to a friend, and make an exact duplicate of what I'm selling for $15, and then share duplicates of that with thousands of people.
Why did you do it? Because there is no such thing as property? The $10 million dollars I put into the creation of that object, which each copy I sell for $15 means nothing?
That's why we have patents and copyrights. You can't produce something just like mine, if I have a patent on it. Likewise, you can't copy my work (book, picture, movie, song, etc), because I still have the rights to it.
Let me ask the question. Why do you think that the product I spent $10 million dollars creating is yours to give away as many copies of as you'd like? It's not yours. If I wanted to give it away for free, I would.
No, I'm not affiliated with Star Wars, or any movie company at all. I'm just familiar with what it's like to find my work stolen.
That would make you the exception. There can always be someone in the group who will say "I wouldn't have paid anyways"
But, that doesn't mean thousands of the other people who downloaded it are the same as you. THey may, or may not, have paid to see it.
Some people argued on this thread that I don't get it.. It's not stealing, because it's a copy, and they didn't "take" the original product.
But, if I write a program, and I decide that I will charge for it, and then someone takes it, and puts it up on P2P, I think I have the right to be upset. It was my work, and my ideas. Why should everyone get it for free?
If I spend two years working on something, that doesn't make it yours.
You had nothing to do with the creation of that movie. You have no rights to that movie, why do you think that if you want to see it for free, you can do that? It's not yours.
Espeically in the case of Star Wars, there were costs. Lots and lots of costs. If someone wants to make a movie for free release, well cool. Do it.
I know if I started making a movie today, I've already incurred expenses. I have a $1500 video camera. I have a $3000 PC that can handle editing. Even if I spent the next 3 years working on it, there's no way I'm going to have anything close to the quality of a hollywood movie.
> 3. Stealing $100 from me means I'm losing $100. Downloading illegal > movies means they are not getting extra $xx. Little difference, but > still, a difference.
This argument has been played out, but can't ever been proven. It's been used by software "pirates" for years. The regular argument is, "I'll use it if it's free, but if I have to pay, I'm not interested."
I'm sure there are more than a fair share of Linux users out there, who used the older versions of Windows, and now that it's more difficult (but not impossible) to acquire a free copy, they find it easier to use the free solution.
That's not to say Linux users are theives. I'm a Linux user and administrator, with over 150 boxes. I use it because it's better (IMHO).
Back to the question at hand.. Do the people downloading this movie intend to watch it at the theater? Maybe, maybe not. I didn't pre-buy my ticket. I didn't wait in long lines. I didn't see it, and have no intention to kill myself doing it. Now, if someone handed me a DVD with a pirated copy burned on it, and I watched that, did it make a financial difference to MPAA, or the Star Wars enterprise? Nope, not in the freakin' least. **BUT** they'll scream piracy if they found out.
I'd be more than willing to say, a good number of the people (Errr, immoral bastards, in MPAA terms) who are downloading it, not only already spent the money on a ticket and watched it in the theater, but they're the big fans. They have VHS, DVD, and Laser Disc copies of every Star Wars movie ever released. They have an action figure collection dating back to when they were 5 years old. They can say "Luke, I'm your father", with a straight face.:) They'd want it for their personal (and now more complete) collection. To them, this is one of those "you can't buy it in stores" items.
But yes, it's still stealing. Even if it doesn't apply to you, the fact that this commercial product (yes, Star Wars is a commercial product), because they are only offering it as a *PAY* product, it is only a pay product, and it is not up to the general public to make the decisions for them.
Lets twist this for you. Think sexuality.
People like having sex. Most people love having sex.
Some people charge for having sex.
If a woman charges $200/hr to have sex with her. This is her commercial product.
If you see this same woman, is not working at a particular moment, due to not having a paying client, should you be allowed to take a free romp? Sure, why not, that's what she does, and she's just sitting there.
I think the same of Ferarri's. I go down to a dealership twice a week, and when I see a Ferarri just sitting there, all lonely, with no owner, I steal the car, and drive it around. It wants to be driven, right?
So, the movie wants to be watched, right? No. You want to watch it, and if you're going to watch it, you're going to pay for the product, just like you would with the whore, or you would in buying the Fererri.
Myself, I'm happy without having a whore, without having a Fererri, and without seeing this particular episode of Star Wars. I may have one of each someday, I won't make any decisions quite yet.:)
I'd bet your email has been filed in the "conspiracy nut says our pictures are fake" file.
I'm sure you're familiar with the file. It's commonly marked "Trash"..:)
If you're right, and you think it should have been 3 times to get the right alignment, then maybe you are 100% correct. Maybe the second time around, it wasn't quite in the frame.
I have my own theories on fake pictures with NASA, but under my ideas, this one would be real.
My thoughts on 'em are that, any really pretty, clear, colorful, photo that looks like it was shot in a studio, probably was.
For example, This photo of Buzz Aldrin on the moon. Perfectly focused, high resolution, everything in it's place, except.....
There are no stars in the background. There are no stars in any of the moon photos. NASA explains it in great detail, and anti-conspiracy-nut-nuts continue explaining it. **BUT** there are two reflecting in his helmet shield. And, they kinda mangled their shadows. The ones behind Aldrin go left to right. The ones in the reflection in his visor go up and down, except for a stray shadow going left to right from the landing gear..
This was a fake photo.
There are other instances. Like, there's one of the lunar rover, where the alignment crosses are a bit messed up. The line, which is part of the optics of the camera, goes under the rover, instead of over it.:)
But, I will say there are plenty of real ones too. All the ugly ones. Well, I'm sure some relatively good ones, but not a lot.
People ask me, after I say something like that, "why would they fake some?" For public opinion. Everyone knows we spent a freakin' fortune going to the moon. If we sent a couple guys all the way to the moon, and they came back with a bunch of pictures that looked like snapshots by a kid (missing heads, shots of the ground and nothing else. you get the idea), people would be outraged. Well, maybe not outraged, but at least they wouldn't feel satisfied in the government spending.
Now, with not only the crappy photos, but some of these beautiful photos, that are used for posters, banners, murals, etc, etc, and everyone *LOVES* to see them, I don't think there's anyone saying the cost of the space program was a waste.
They have to keep popular opinion up on something like that, or the budget gets lots. The real truth to the space race wasn't for popular opinion, it was to beat the Russians, in something that shouldn't have been a competition. If we had worked together, we could have gotten a lot farther.
Are you sure one should have been inverted? I didn't consider spin or anything, but if it was just passing from left to right, the position should have remained the same.
Ya, where the people are footing the bill, it sucks.
It still sucks in the private sector too. When you see the bosses spend mad money on crap, and can't get budgeting for things that you feel are important for the company, it just leaves you pissed off.
For example, what's more important for an Internet company? Upgrading a bunch of 5+ year old servers, or flying the boss first class to and from Europe once a month? Or spending mad money on something that won't make money (and everyone knows it), or upgrading the equipment for your flagship site.
I know someone that deals with the VA a lot. They're always having buildings built or renovated, for millions a shot. One case in particular was a building that was completely renovated for a nice 7 figure number, which once they're done renovating, they will be basically giving away to a private sector company for pennies on the dollar. Meanwhile, they're trying to give vets the shaft. Ask any vet who's been jumping through the hoops for disability for several years, and still being screwed.
That's one of my biggest problems with Gentoo, and most distributions. It makes people so dependant on what *THEY* have put together. That's why I *LOVE* slackware. It's generally assumed with Slackware that you're going to install the base system, and then start installing whatever else you want from source. It's all included, and all works, but then I'll go download the currect (as current as I want) source from the author's site, and install it myself.
I love building stuff from source myself.:)
Even with Gentoo, (I have it on my AMD64 machine), I still install from sources, but.....
I'd assume it's a focus problem. It's probably set up to focus at the surface, not at an object at that distance. They can probably change the focus, but it probably wasn't worth it.
I'm thinking someone did this for fun. I would have.:)
"Hey Bob, spin the satellite around, I wanna see if we can catch a picture of the other one! Look! It worked!":)
They read their imaging array one line at a time. It saw the Odyssey once, which is the image you see on the left (I think). It continued to move, and then caught it again on the right. For the complete logistics of how it happened, we'd have to know more about their imaging array, and the relative speeds. Ya, I'd think there should be a blur in there somewhere, but aparently there isn't.
Think of a flat top copy machine. With the top open, put your hand at the left (if it scans from that side). After it passes your hand, put it on the right side. It'll see your hand again.
When I was in middle school, we took at trip to Washington DC. They did a panoramic picture of the class. The photographer had the girl on the left side of the picture move, as soon as she was out of the shot, and run around to the right side. She showed up twice, like twins. It was easier than editing her in later, or at least then it was. Now, it's a piece of cake in Photoshop.:)
Well, now that you mention it, I have noticed a lot of executives with the blackberry's, and executive wanna-be's with their other cell-phone/PDA/messaging toys.:)
I had my iPaq on with ministumbler running a few days ago. I almost drove off the road when I saw one SSID. It was an ASCII art drawing of a penis and a vagina..:)
Actually, I was doing it a couple years ago, when I wanted to hide on random wireless networks, but still be blatently obvious that I was there.:)
I found myself without an Internet connection someplace I was staying. I found a point to point network about 4 miles across, with two high gain antennas pointing at each other. I happened to be sitting right between them, so I stuck up my low gain antenna, and got online with no problem. No MAC filtering, they had DHCP on, and I stayed online for a week. I did find it was a business later on. They didn't seem to mind, since I wasn't really doing much (checking mail, through a little PPPoverSSH tunnel)
I was describing both switched and non-switched environments, where I'd make my machine identical to another (same IP and MAC).
I just saw the error on a Cisco switch on Sunday, regarding the STP loops. Lots of fun, especially since they were coming in on an impossible port. Level3 had screwed up. I still haven't figured out how they did it. The only GigE line coming in from them was throwing the error, even after I unplugged everything else.
I think I'm going to play with it a bit more, so I'll have some real-world analysis in hand. What I have is a bit limited, because I've only done it from the "Lets see what we can break" side.:)
I knew a guy who did that on a network of just 20 workstations. He was anal, and wouldn't give anyone else access to authorize MAC addresses. The other techs got rather irate, when they'd change a NIC, add a new machine, or whatever.
Moreover, when the boss brought in his new laptop and couldn't get online, that was the end of MAC address filtering.
You haven't been in a uber-cool office, have you? Executive types always want to show off that they got a $5000 laptop on the company's dime (or in the case, the gov't), so they want to be able to carry it around to various desks, ad nauseum. They want to sit down in the conference room, and/or move to their desk, without reconnecting wires.
Government suits are just as bad as business suits.
Lets not forget all the other associated uber-cool equipment they could have, like PDA's. I'm sure other folks can flesh out the uber-cool list from here.:)
On a switched network, it could be a problem. Switches don't like seeing the same MAC address on two different ports. It would indicate a loop, in which case STP will shut down one of the ports. 50/50 chance of killing off the person you intended to duplicate.
In a wireless or hubbed environment, it's a radio broadcast.. Both MAC's would receive the signal as if they were the same machine. If you **REPLY** to them, that's a different matter.
If two machines were 192.168.1.10 with HW Addr 01:01:01:01:01:01, a ping would have a duplicate response, if both machines responded to ICMP.
If you, as the good little hacker, had your happy little firewall running to drop any incoming packets that you weren't expecting, then you'd remain invisible. You'd get extra noise coming towards you, that your machine isn't expecting, but hey, we get that on the Internet all the time anyways.:)
My girlfriend's cablemodem took a dump while I was trying to do something, so I fired up Kismet, and found 6 access points within listening range.
4 were encrypted, named "2wire###", where ### is a 3 digit number. I've been informed that those are SBC DSL routers, which *ALL* have the wireless enabled but encrypted by default.
1 was a very weak signal
1 was a moderately strong signal (60% to 70%), unencrypted, named "DEFAULT". Kismet said it was a DLink (if I remember right).
I asked for an IP by DHCP, and I was on. I didn't do anything but started up ethereal, and logged everything for a few minutes.. I was trying to show my girlfriend the problems with unencrypted traffic on the Internet, and how important network security is.
There are two machines on their network, which were both sending SMB traffic with their machine names (or descriptions). I got their Yahoo! Messenger username. I know they have weatherbug running, and saw he specific zip code. They didn't browse the net, but in one of the rare instances that my girlfriend's own cablemodem was working, I sent a message by Yahoo! Messenger, and she saw it go by in clear text. Based on the information I gathered, I knew exactly which apartment it was.
At an unnamed casino in Vegas, I saw everything about their display boards. It would have been trivial for me to pretend to be their host, and change all the boards (winners, potential winnings, etc). I didn't though. I just emailed them when I got home, with the logs. They thanked me for pointing out the oversight. They were very good about it, so I won't say the name.
Once in a while, I'll fire up Kismet, and go driving. Not really wardriving, just to get an idea of what the area looks like. I can see about 200 AP's from my house with a high gain antenna (24db). I can pick up about 300 driving about 10 miles with a low gain antenna (4db) stuck to the back of my laptop screen. In both cases, more than half of the AP's found are unencrypted. Random samplings showed I could get online with no problems.
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If someone went back 30 years to Texas and killed George W, then he simply wouldn't have existed now. Time as we know it in this branch of reality would have changed.
Just as if I killed your dog 2 years ago, you wouldn't find yourself dragging an empty leash around (unless you were mentally unstable). Your dog would have died 2 years ago, and your life would have adapted accordingly.
The problem with the idea of changing the past, especially through violence, is that it can be rather disturbing. If you killed George W. 30 years ago, then Salem Bin Laden may not have died in 1988. Many questionable happenings may not have happened.
Ok, but maybe the Bush family would have a vendetta against the killer. Maybe CIA Director George Bush Sr. would have something done about this. Maybe another country would be blamed for this assassination. Maybe your own family (with similiar DNA) would be fingered. Maybe you as a teenager (depending on your current age, obviously) would be convicted of the crime. Maybe the current terrorist laws would have been put into place 30 years earlier because of this.
Someone posed the question to me once, what if you went back in time and killed a key creature in the evolution of a modern species? Like, what if it was the missing link monkey? What if it was the only roach which developed the urge to eat garbage?
Sure you could. It would just make a branch of the timeline.
In one branch, someone killed you.
In the other branch, no one killed you.
The fork would be at the point before doing the killing. I just hope you know how to get back to the branch that you belonged in.
This goes on the assumption that time is a single threaded linear model working at a fixed speed.
If you go back in time, and kill your grandfather, then you are never created, therefore you can never go back and kill your grandfather.
If the "past" model is "protected", blah, blah, divine intervention, blah, blah, intelligent design, blah, blah, blah.
Someone mentioned something to the effect of "If I had a gun to shoot my grandfather, would it misfire?". Sure, maybe divine intervention made it misfire. Does that mean a knife, rock, stick, or whatever would still not work? Beliving in some greater plan that would protect the past would also believe that we have no possibility for changing the future.
I, for one, know positively that you can change the future. Don't ask, unless you want a really long response.
If time were a multi-threaded linear model, by going back in time and making a change, it would effectively branch the timeline. Your branch (that you came from) would remain unchanged, because it's already happened. A new timeline, caused by the difference in history, would now be new. You would never exist in the changed timeline.
Maybe neither time nor space are linear. Have you ever experienced precognition or deja vu? 90% of the people who say they have, may be nutjobs, but there are some people who can see things outside of our concept of space or time. That is, space would be "remove viewing", and time would be precognition (future) or deja vu (past).
Space and time are concepts that we live with, and have been reinforced in us since childhood, based on potentially flawed observations of our elders. Don't forget, these are the same elders that believed: we are the center of the universe; the world is flat (~1640); space travel is impossible (~1930); "Everything that can be invented has been invented" (1899); and we are alone in the universe.
We will find that we are completely wrong in many of these concepts, and in a few thousand years (assuming humanity survives) will be laughed at for some of them.
I'm not going to say by any stretch of the imagination that I should be right, but don't take any explanation as fact until you're very sure.
Well, if they're going to X86 Intel's, then it wouldn't be limited to those builds. They'd just have to work around whatever limitation Apple puts in (if any) that may only allow Apple's OS to run on it.
I'm thinking like X-Box. But hey, we'll find out when the time comes.
I strongly suspect there will be a whole bunch of Linux distros "ported" over to Apple machines. :)
A whole new world of anyone who can afford the boxes putting Linux on prettier machines.. That's the only real advantage I've ever seen in Apple machines anyways.
[ducking from all the MacFans]
Ok, for the MS fans, I'm sure someone will put together something to make Windows work.
I would have prefered to see them go to AMD64.. That would have been a seriously impressive jump.
I wonder if maybe it's just a rumor. Or maybe someone at Apple leaked the word they were going to X86 compatible. I know there were plenty of rumors Apple and AMD talking in the past.
Ahhh, FidoNet, and all those other networks that I can't even remember the names of.. Door games...
:)
Of course, this was before I was into *nix (Hmmm, just about the time Linus had the Linux twinkle in his eye).. I used DesqView, on my 486/33 packed with a whopping 4Mb ram (that cost about $150 per meg), and had 3 nodes. One was on a nice US Robotics Courier Dual Standard, and a couple cheapie ones.
I considered setting one back up, but then was like "why?".
Well
I do agree that the ??AA are screwing the artists. I can't argue it any other way.
**BUT**
If the artists didn't like it, they'd start dealing in other ways.
Back to real-world examples. If I'm manufacturing widgets (ahhh, the famous economics class product), which my cost is $0.25 per unit, which I expect 0.75 profit. If the nice Mafia gentlemen in the black-on-black suits are going to tag on $14 to the price of my widget, I'll sell through somewhere else.
But, if I have to stay with the black-on-black suit men, to ensure my widget will be sold in 99.9% of the outlets, that's what I have to do.
I don't know what the numbers are like for movies, but if I remember correctly, recording artists rarely even see $1 of every CD sale. That's something the movie and recording industries need to work out for themselves.
If I remember correctly, when I was close with the regional manager of a theater, the theaters themselves don't make anything on ticket sales. Their profit comes from concessions. Of course, where most couples spend $20 on concessions, where their cost is all of $0.25, that's a nice profit.
What I'm saying is...
I have something, that I say is $15.
You go to a friend, and make an exact duplicate of what I'm selling for $15, and then share duplicates of that with thousands of people.
Why did you do it? Because there is no such thing as property? The $10 million dollars I put into the creation of that object, which each copy I sell for $15 means nothing?
That's why we have patents and copyrights. You can't produce something just like mine, if I have a patent on it. Likewise, you can't copy my work (book, picture, movie, song, etc), because I still have the rights to it.
Let me ask the question. Why do you think that the product I spent $10 million dollars creating is yours to give away as many copies of as you'd like? It's not yours. If I wanted to give it away for free, I would.
No, I'm not affiliated with Star Wars, or any movie company at all. I'm just familiar with what it's like to find my work stolen.
That would make you the exception. There can always be someone in the group who will say "I wouldn't have paid anyways"
But, that doesn't mean thousands of the other people who downloaded it are the same as you. THey may, or may not, have paid to see it.
Some people argued on this thread that I don't get it.. It's not stealing, because it's a copy, and they didn't "take" the original product.
But, if I write a program, and I decide that I will charge for it, and then someone takes it, and puts it up on P2P, I think I have the right to be upset. It was my work, and my ideas. Why should everyone get it for free?
If I spend two years working on something, that doesn't make it yours.
You had nothing to do with the creation of that movie. You have no rights to that movie, why do you think that if you want to see it for free, you can do that? It's not yours.
Espeically in the case of Star Wars, there were costs. Lots and lots of costs. If someone wants to make a movie for free release, well cool. Do it.
I know if I started making a movie today, I've already incurred expenses. I have a $1500 video camera. I have a $3000 PC that can handle editing. Even if I spent the next 3 years working on it, there's no way I'm going to have anything close to the quality of a hollywood movie.
> 3. Stealing $100 from me means I'm losing $100. Downloading illegal
:) They'd want it for their personal (and now more complete) collection. To them, this is one of those "you can't buy it in stores" items.
:)
> movies means they are not getting extra $xx. Little difference, but
> still, a difference.
This argument has been played out, but can't ever been proven. It's been used by software "pirates" for years. The regular argument is, "I'll use it if it's free, but if I have to pay, I'm not interested."
I'm sure there are more than a fair share of Linux users out there, who used the older versions of Windows, and now that it's more difficult (but not impossible) to acquire a free copy, they find it easier to use the free solution.
That's not to say Linux users are theives. I'm a Linux user and administrator, with over 150 boxes. I use it because it's better (IMHO).
Back to the question at hand.. Do the people downloading this movie intend to watch it at the theater? Maybe, maybe not. I didn't pre-buy my ticket. I didn't wait in long lines. I didn't see it, and have no intention to kill myself doing it. Now, if someone handed me a DVD with a pirated copy burned on it, and I watched that, did it make a financial difference to MPAA, or the Star Wars enterprise? Nope, not in the freakin' least. **BUT** they'll scream piracy if they found out.
I'd be more than willing to say, a good number of the people (Errr, immoral bastards, in MPAA terms) who are downloading it, not only already spent the money on a ticket and watched it in the theater, but they're the big fans. They have VHS, DVD, and Laser Disc copies of every Star Wars movie ever released. They have an action figure collection dating back to when they were 5 years old. They can say "Luke, I'm your father", with a straight face.
But yes, it's still stealing. Even if it doesn't apply to you, the fact that this commercial product (yes, Star Wars is a commercial product), because they are only offering it as a *PAY* product, it is only a pay product, and it is not up to the general public to make the decisions for them.
Lets twist this for you. Think sexuality.
People like having sex. Most people love having sex.
Some people charge for having sex.
If a woman charges $200/hr to have sex with her. This is her commercial product.
If you see this same woman, is not working at a particular moment, due to not having a paying client, should you be allowed to take a free romp? Sure, why not, that's what she does, and she's just sitting there.
I think the same of Ferarri's. I go down to a dealership twice a week, and when I see a Ferarri just sitting there, all lonely, with no owner, I steal the car, and drive it around. It wants to be driven, right?
So, the movie wants to be watched, right? No. You want to watch it, and if you're going to watch it, you're going to pay for the product, just like you would with the whore, or you would in buying the Fererri.
Myself, I'm happy without having a whore, without having a Fererri, and without seeing this particular episode of Star Wars. I may have one of each someday, I won't make any decisions quite yet.
I'd bet your email has been filed in the "conspiracy nut says our pictures are fake" file.
:)
:)
I'm sure you're familiar with the file. It's commonly marked "Trash"..
If you're right, and you think it should have been 3 times to get the right alignment, then maybe you are 100% correct. Maybe the second time around, it wasn't quite in the frame.
I have my own theories on fake pictures with NASA, but under my ideas, this one would be real.
My thoughts on 'em are that, any really pretty, clear, colorful, photo that looks like it was shot in a studio, probably was.
For example, This photo of Buzz Aldrin on the moon. Perfectly focused, high resolution, everything in it's place, except.....
There are no stars in the background. There are no stars in any of the moon photos. NASA explains it in great detail, and anti-conspiracy-nut-nuts continue explaining it. **BUT** there are two reflecting in his helmet shield. And, they kinda mangled their shadows. The ones behind Aldrin go left to right. The ones in the reflection in his visor go up and down, except for a stray shadow going left to right from the landing gear..
This was a fake photo.
There are other instances. Like, there's one of the lunar rover, where the alignment crosses are a bit messed up. The line, which is part of the optics of the camera, goes under the rover, instead of over it.
But, I will say there are plenty of real ones too. All the ugly ones. Well, I'm sure some relatively good ones, but not a lot.
People ask me, after I say something like that, "why would they fake some?" For public opinion. Everyone knows we spent a freakin' fortune going to the moon. If we sent a couple guys all the way to the moon, and they came back with a bunch of pictures that looked like snapshots by a kid (missing heads, shots of the ground and nothing else. you get the idea), people would be outraged. Well, maybe not outraged, but at least they wouldn't feel satisfied in the government spending.
Now, with not only the crappy photos, but some of these beautiful photos, that are used for posters, banners, murals, etc, etc, and everyone *LOVES* to see them, I don't think there's anyone saying the cost of the space program was a waste.
They have to keep popular opinion up on something like that, or the budget gets lots. The real truth to the space race wasn't for popular opinion, it was to beat the Russians, in something that shouldn't have been a competition. If we had worked together, we could have gotten a lot farther.
Are you sure one should have been inverted? I didn't consider spin or anything, but if it was just passing from left to right, the position should have remained the same.
Ya, where the people are footing the bill, it sucks.
It still sucks in the private sector too. When you see the bosses spend mad money on crap, and can't get budgeting for things that you feel are important for the company, it just leaves you pissed off.
For example, what's more important for an Internet company? Upgrading a bunch of 5+ year old servers, or flying the boss first class to and from Europe once a month? Or spending mad money on something that won't make money (and everyone knows it), or upgrading the equipment for your flagship site.
I know someone that deals with the VA a lot. They're always having buildings built or renovated, for millions a shot. One case in particular was a building that was completely renovated for a nice 7 figure number, which once they're done renovating, they will be basically giving away to a private sector company for pennies on the dollar. Meanwhile, they're trying to give vets the shaft. Ask any vet who's been jumping through the hoops for disability for several years, and still being screwed.
No, I'm not the vet, I just know quite a few.
That's one of my biggest problems with Gentoo, and most distributions. It makes people so dependant on what *THEY* have put together. That's why I *LOVE* slackware. It's generally assumed with Slackware that you're going to install the base system, and then start installing whatever else you want from source. It's all included, and all works, but then I'll go download the currect (as current as I want) source from the author's site, and install it myself.
I love building stuff from source myself.
Even with Gentoo, (I have it on my AMD64 machine), I still install from sources, but
I'd assume it's a focus problem. It's probably set up to focus at the surface, not at an object at that distance. They can probably change the focus, but it probably wasn't worth it.
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I'm thinking someone did this for fun. I would have.
"Hey Bob, spin the satellite around, I wanna see if we can catch a picture of the other one! Look! It worked!"
They read their imaging array one line at a time. It saw the Odyssey once, which is the image you see on the left (I think). It continued to move, and then caught it again on the right. For the complete logistics of how it happened, we'd have to know more about their imaging array, and the relative speeds. Ya, I'd think there should be a blur in there somewhere, but aparently there isn't.
Think of a flat top copy machine. With the top open, put your hand at the left (if it scans from that side). After it passes your hand, put it on the right side. It'll see your hand again.
When I was in middle school, we took at trip to Washington DC. They did a panoramic picture of the class. The photographer had the girl on the left side of the picture move, as soon as she was out of the shot, and run around to the right side. She showed up twice, like twins. It was easier than editing her in later, or at least then it was. Now, it's a piece of cake in Photoshop.
Well, now that you mention it, I have noticed a lot of executives with the blackberry's, and executive wanna-be's with their other cell-phone/PDA/messaging toys.
I had my iPaq on with ministumbler running a few days ago. I almost drove off the road when I saw one SSID. It was an ASCII art drawing of a penis and a vagina.. :)
I've done it with an Orinoco Gold card too. I just didn't have it with me last night to try it.
Actually, I was doing it a couple years ago, when I wanted to hide on random wireless networks, but still be blatently obvious that I was there.
I found myself without an Internet connection someplace I was staying. I found a point to point network about 4 miles across, with two high gain antennas pointing at each other. I happened to be sitting right between them, so I stuck up my low gain antenna, and got online with no problem. No MAC filtering, they had DHCP on, and I stayed online for a week. I did find it was a business later on. They didn't seem to mind, since I wasn't really doing much (checking mail, through a little PPPoverSSH tunnel)
I was describing both switched and non-switched environments, where I'd make my machine identical to another (same IP and MAC).
I just saw the error on a Cisco switch on Sunday, regarding the STP loops. Lots of fun, especially since they were coming in on an impossible port. Level3 had screwed up. I still haven't figured out how they did it. The only GigE line coming in from them was throwing the error, even after I unplugged everything else.
I think I'm going to play with it a bit more, so I'll have some real-world analysis in hand. What I have is a bit limited, because I've only done it from the "Lets see what we can break" side.
That's a maintaince nightmare. Trust me.
I knew a guy who did that on a network of just 20 workstations. He was anal, and wouldn't give anyone else access to authorize MAC addresses. The other techs got rather irate, when they'd change a NIC, add a new machine, or whatever.
Moreover, when the boss brought in his new laptop and couldn't get online, that was the end of MAC address filtering.
You haven't been in a uber-cool office, have you? Executive types always want to show off that they got a $5000 laptop on the company's dime (or in the case, the gov't), so they want to be able to carry it around to various desks, ad nauseum. They want to sit down in the conference room, and/or move to their desk, without reconnecting wires.
Government suits are just as bad as business suits.
Lets not forget all the other associated uber-cool equipment they could have, like PDA's. I'm sure other folks can flesh out the uber-cool list from here.
On a switched network, it could be a problem. Switches don't like seeing the same MAC address on two different ports. It would indicate a loop, in which case STP will shut down one of the ports. 50/50 chance of killing off the person you intended to duplicate.
In a wireless or hubbed environment, it's a radio broadcast.. Both MAC's would receive the signal as if they were the same machine. If you **REPLY** to them, that's a different matter.
If two machines were 192.168.1.10 with HW Addr 01:01:01:01:01:01, a ping would have a duplicate response, if both machines responded to ICMP.
If you, as the good little hacker, had your happy little firewall running to drop any incoming packets that you weren't expecting, then you'd remain invisible. You'd get extra noise coming towards you, that your machine isn't expecting, but hey, we get that on the Internet all the time anyways.
My girlfriend's cablemodem took a dump while I was trying to do something, so I fired up Kismet, and found 6 access points within listening range.
4 were encrypted, named "2wire###", where ### is a 3 digit number. I've been informed that those are SBC DSL routers, which *ALL* have the wireless enabled but encrypted by default.
1 was a very weak signal
1 was a moderately strong signal (60% to 70%), unencrypted, named "DEFAULT". Kismet said it was a DLink (if I remember right).
I asked for an IP by DHCP, and I was on. I didn't do anything but started up ethereal, and logged everything for a few minutes.. I was trying to show my girlfriend the problems with unencrypted traffic on the Internet, and how important network security is.
There are two machines on their network, which were both sending SMB traffic with their machine names (or descriptions). I got their Yahoo! Messenger username. I know they have weatherbug running, and saw he specific zip code. They didn't browse the net, but in one of the rare instances that my girlfriend's own cablemodem was working, I sent a message by Yahoo! Messenger, and she saw it go by in clear text. Based on the information I gathered, I knew exactly which apartment it was.
At an unnamed casino in Vegas, I saw everything about their display boards. It would have been trivial for me to pretend to be their host, and change all the boards (winners, potential winnings, etc). I didn't though. I just emailed them when I got home, with the logs. They thanked me for pointing out the oversight. They were very good about it, so I won't say the name.
Once in a while, I'll fire up Kismet, and go driving. Not really wardriving, just to get an idea of what the area looks like. I can see about 200 AP's from my house with a high gain antenna (24db). I can pick up about 300 driving about 10 miles with a low gain antenna (4db) stuck to the back of my laptop screen. In both cases, more than half of the AP's found are unencrypted. Random samplings showed I could get online with no problems.