If the Linux people truly valued the sharing of code, there would be a real effort to provide changes/improvements back up to the BSD pool when they borrowed code... i.e. treat it as THOUGH it was under the GPL? Why? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you...
Riiiiight. A different set of standards for GPL coders as compared to proprietary coders? Here's a shovel, you're already hip-deep in bullshit.
By specifying that you don't want anyone to lock it down, you do exercise some form of control on your code. You put some restrictions on your very code, to ensure it will always stay GPL. Nothing else.
My question would be "so the fuck what?" It's my code and the only freedom of worth or value is MY choice over what I'm going to do with it. Whether public domain, GPL, or proprietary, true freedom starts with the creator - everyone else can fuck off and write their own code if they don't like the license I choose.
Freedom begins with the creator. It can also end there if that's what the creator chooses, at least until copyright runs out. This is a good thing.
Me neither, but it's not exactly groundbreaking: RMS believes that every single line of code on your computer should be Free Software, as a moral imperative, and he's explained why he feels that way.
Not caring, of course, that I don't think the same way that he does and don't agree with his reasoning. Thank the gods he isn't king!
Max
Re:Dictionary shows GPL is less free (as in freedo
on
PHP Not Moving To The GPL
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
As much as I despise socialism...
GPL maximizes the collective benefit to society at large at the expense of individual liberty. This is, by definition, a socalist philosophy....this is a load of crap. A truly libertarian philosophy puts sole control of the work in the hands of the person who creates it, to distribute as they please, under whatever license they wish. The GPL is a perfect example of libertarianism: control of the work rests in the hands of creator, and no one else. If you don't like it, you don't use it - that's where *your* choice begins and ends.
The standards set by the U.N. come with a distinct political bias leaning very heavily towards socialism. Worse, but some of these 'standards' don't actually mean anything; e.g., the worth of education is measured by dollars spent per capita, but there's no reliable correlation between dollars spent and education delivered beyond a certain point (far less than what any First World nation spends, by the way). And no one questions whether or not the 'education' inflicted upon our children is actually of any value in the real world, or if less-but-more-practical education, for fewer dollars, would be of much greater worth to the individual in real, measurable terms, e.g., average salaries after graduation.
Some U.N. measures are good, solid, scientifically-based ones. Others are just a bunch of socialist horse shit.
While in New York City, I have NEVER, NOT ONCE, seen a gun in the hands of anyone except a NYC cop. NYC is currently one of the safest cities in North America
And this would be what we call 'a crock of shit'. NYC isn't particularly distinguished by a low crime rate, and in any event crime has NEVER been associated with rates of ownership of private firearms.
Where I live we have one of the highest gun ownership percentages in the entire United States. And yet, we also have one of the lowest violent crime rates as well. Far, far lower than New York city, now matter how you massage the figures. Should we then conclude that higher gun ownership percentages result in greater personal safety?
I once went to a sporting goods store in the US, and found stacks and stacks of bullets sitting on the floor without any sort of security with a sign marks "On sale, 25% off all calibre bullets and shotgun shells". Don't they lock up dangerous goods behind secure areas???
I once walked into a Canadian supermarket and found bags of nitrogen-based fertilizer and cleaning ammonia just sitting around on the shelves, without any sort of security. Don't they lock up dangerous goods behind secure areas there???
I agree, though. This is why I'm so strenuously against flat taxes. They benefit the rich and shaft the poor.
If a person makes $25,000 a year and has a 10% 'flat' tax - not really flat, as we'll see - that person pays out $2,500 in taxes a year. If a person makes $250,000 a year, then a 10% tax means that he'll pay out $25,000 to the government in a year - TEN TIMES what the poorer person does.
How, exactly, is that unfair to the poor person? The rich guy pays ten times the amount in taxes, but does he use ten times the infrastructure that the poor person does? Do the police, fire, and emergency services respond ten times faster to a call by a rich person? Will damaged sewer, electrical and phone lines be repaired with ten times the speed? I don't think so.
This 'flat' tax isn't at all flat. The more you make the more you pay, and you don't get anything more for your taxes than anyone else does. In fact, with each additional dollar you pay out in taxes the return to you in government services becomes smaller and smaller.
I've never heard a decent argument for why the rich should pay vastly greater taxes than those who aren't rich. Most of the arguments I have heard are from liberal loons who think that being wealthy is a criminal offense, and would like nothing better than to institute a socialist state where everyone is equally destitute.
You said it right there, in total ignorance. It has nothing to do with being an American and everything to do with being a foreigner in someone else's back yard. Generally it's very easy to pick out ANY foreigner just by their mannerisms and way of speaking, even if they know the language and have no distinguishing accent. Often a lack of understanding, or a misunderstanding, between the foreigner and locals will result in the conclusion that the foreigner is 'rude'.
This has NOTHING to do with being American, although typically enough you bought right into the stereotype (or perhaps you've decided to join the Euro-trolls on their daily American-bashing parade). If you're laboring under the delusion that Americans are a special case, go to Greece in the summer and see what the locals have to say about Italian tourists. Or what folks in neighboring European states say about visiting Germans. Or what just about anyone says about the French. Etc. It has nothing to do with being American and everything to do with being a foreigner.
(Well, excepting the Japanese. I don't think a people can get any politer than the Japanese and still remain human.)
By the way, I'm not going to say that all US aid money is bad; the Marshall plan after WWII was one of the best examples of enlightened self-interest in recent times. The recent stuff I'm not so impressed with.
It's too bad I'm not President then, because if I were I'd put an end to all foreign aid of any kind, for any reason. Not a single U.S. tax dollar would be spent on foreign aid during my administration.
If private U.S. citizens wished to VOLUNTARILY donate to charities and npo's of their own accord, then more power to them. But forcing people to donate whether they wish to or not, at the point of a gun, is spitting in the face of personal liberty and choice.
Of course, I'd just LOVE to see what the rest of the world would say once the U.S. gravy train came to a dead halt....
Care to point out where Bobby Fischer was arrested for what he said? Or was he arrested for what he did?
Which was what, precisely? Telling the President to fuck off and mind his own business, when the executive order issued had absolutely no legal, Constitutional grounding?
Yeah, I'd tell the President to fuck himself too. Since Bush II seems to be looking into ways to call off the November elections, I might just get my chance.
He wasn't told that he couldn't play chess in that country, merely that he could not play in a sanctioned tournament in that country. It's a bit of a distinction.
I see. And somehow that's supposed to make the whole thing less absurd?
The man is being charged with playing in a chess tournament when his fuckwit government ordered him not to. As insane as the son-of-a-bitch is, the government had no business pulling this totalitarian temper tantrum in the first place.
It doesn't matter what his views are. It doesn't matter if Hitler is his hero. All that matters is that the government over-extended it's authority and attempted to illegally shackle one of it's own citizens. For try as I might, I see no Constitutional authority granting the government the right to command it's citizens as to which countries they might go to, and what they might do while they're there.
Galahad, Lancelot, Mordred and Gawain, as well as the other Knights of the Round Table - assuming they aren't just myth - were never knighted by English royalty of any line.
In case you missed the history lesson Arthur lived in the time of the Britons, who lost their fight against German invaders - Angles and Saxons - and were eventually destroyed. The Angles and Saxons had something of a reputation for genocide, and it's rather certain that if any Briton blood survives in the modern-day British people it's very, very weak indeed. The modern British are primarily descended from these German barbarians (hence the term 'anglosaxon'), along with a liberal dose of Norse (Norman) from 1066 on.
Those knights you refer to would've been the enemies of the modern British and their royalty, not their lapdogs. If Arthur ever returned from the dead to lead his knights, as legend has it, he'd start by wiping out just about every Englishman living today, leaving only the northern Welsh (his closest relatives) to inherit the island.
What he meant, was that he was instrumental in the funding of ARPANET. So, in a sense, you can say that the internet probably wouldn't exist, or at least would have taken longer to come into existence, had it not been for Al Gore.
Yeah, right. If not Arpanet it would've been something else, and we'd still have the internet today. Gore just happened to be in the right place at the right time, nothing more.
And in any event, Gore's still an idiot for saying that in the first place. But then no one ever said the man lacked for ego.
Apparently reading comprehension is something you failed in high school.
but the fact remains that the member companies hold the rights to their repsective publications, and have the right to dictate how they will be distributed.
Not surprisingly, you also missed the point. The only 'rights' these companies have are the ones we grant them. Nothing more. At least, that's how it's supposed to work in a representative democracy, but in our American one the companies can buy these 'rights' regardless of whether or not the laws that grant them are good for the American public.
They are freeloaders groping for any lame justification for their illegal activities, and they are doing at least as much to destroy my personal liberties as any "megacorp" because they lend credibility to the RIAA's cries of widespread copyright abuses.
Yada yada. Blather on all you like. It's fucks like you - yes, you - who tacitly support the activities of these corporations with your 'don't rock the boat' philosophies. Go cower in a corner, you spineless wretch.
Distributing copyrighted music is not your right, and as long as you keep doing it, you are contributing to the perception, right or wrong, that the problem is so overwhelming that draconian legislation is the only solution.
What bullshit. The perception exists because the RIAA, MPAA, Disney and others make goddamn sure it exists. They would do so regardless of how widespread pirating is because they need some excuse - any excuse - to get the laws passed they need to shore up their business model and squash all attempts at competition.
This isn't new, although I suspect you have as little grasp of history as you do economics. It's an age-old trick, even here in America; the only difference today is that the technology exists to enforce, control, and dictate the personal lives and choices of Americans everywhere, whereas previously this was an extremely hard thing to do. Power is needed for control, control to maintain the status quo, the status quo to keep the power structure from changing. That's as old as the human race.
If you want to keep technology legally unencumbered, demonstrate that you are responsible enough to handle it
You've bought the crap, hook, line, and sinker. The only way to keep technology in the hands of Joe Public is for Joe Public to remember that HE makes the rules, not corporations, not the wealthy, not his congress critters. If Joe Public says that copyright exists only for a year, then that's the way it is. If he says it lasts for a century, then that's also the way it is. This is assuming that Joe Public actually controls his republic, and in this case it appears that he doesn't.
It doesn't help that cowards like yourself yammer on about not upsetting the powers that be, all the while admitting that you aren't a power and never will be. You are part of the problem, not the solution.
I personally do not want to lose the ability to operate my hardware and software as I please
You already have, you witless shit. You don't 'own' any for-profit software, you merely rent it under whatever terms the company who leases it to you decides to grant you. You personally have no say and no control over those terms. If you think otherwise you're not only hopelessly confused, but deluded as well.
Bend over and grab your ankles; it appears it's a position you're already familiar with. But don't think I'll be joining you for the reaming you so obviously think you deserve.
Oh, and please don't download illegally using Kazaa or whatever.:) You're not helping.
And you're missing the point. It's readily apparent to anyone who spends a few minutes thinking about it that the business models of RIAA/MPAA are no longer valid in the 21st century. When that happens in a true capitalism the business either adopts a new model or it gets destroyed by competition that does. Here we have a business buying laws in an attempt to sustain a position which would otherwise be untenable in our changing market - a market we *know* is changing because so many folks are downloading music, and the movie crowd is quickly catching up.
There are those who blindly assert that each and every one of these folks is a 'criminal', and refuse to acknowledge that laws concerning copyright and business models are neither immutable nor exempt from repeal. But in a real free market and free society rational people don't subscribe to that sort of knee-jerk bullshit and instead see this for what it is: a market that's moving away from an outmoded model *despite threats of violence, in the form of laws passed, designed to chain them to the old one*.
The 'piracy' will get worse because the RIAA/MPAA refuse not only to change, but to allow any other company to supplant them. And because the U.S. is neither a truly free market nor a truly free society, they can buy the threats of violence they need to strike fear into those who might otherwise ignore them. Even so, for all their purchased laws more and more folks, with each passing year, spit in their eye and take the only alternative available.
I say, pirate more. Pirate until the RIAA/MPAA buys some law that makes even the average American angry enough to threaten his politician unless something is done. Pirate until the entire house of cards implodes. Once the RIAA/MPAA are gone, or at least emasculated, *then* we'll get the new business models which will make online piracy a thing of the past, except for that tiny minority of the population who will engage in it regardless.
if government was run the way slashdot thinks it is, then why are we all still using computers? remember the SSSCA?
Remember the DMCA? Didn't help Joe Voter one single bit, and yet it still became law - and has been expanded on since. Law bought and paid for, by entities that have no vote.
Better watch what you say. The Euro-trolls will be along soon to mod you down to -1 Flamebait in an attempt to suppress anything negative you might have to say about the EU. Seems that they despise free speech with a passion - no doubt because they don't have it anymore, and are jealous of those who do.
Really, I do. And I think it should be enforced on the population as a whole, with something that can't easily be removed, like an injectable microchip.
As a professional assassin, it'd make my job a hell of a lot easier in terms of tracking the movements of the mark and hitting him with the best chance of escaping undetected. And since I often need to be technically savvy in order to do my job with the least amount of risk, I'm quite sure I'll be able to disable my own tag while the hit goes down - or even better, spoof someone else's tag.
So long as it remains the choice of the individual, I don't give a shit either. But if my neighbors demand that I tag my child 'for their own safety', they can suck my dick. *I* make that decision, not a bunch of privacy-invading assholes who don't understand that it's not up to them to decide that for me or my kid.
Go ahead and tag your child, or yourself. But don't even think for a hot second you have any business telling me and mine that we have to follow your lead. You might not give a shit, but I do, and that's all that matters.
Slashdot Mirror
If the Linux people truly valued the sharing of code, there would be a real effort to provide changes/improvements back up to the BSD pool when they borrowed code... i.e. treat it as THOUGH it was under the GPL? Why? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you...
Riiiiight. A different set of standards for GPL coders as compared to proprietary coders? Here's a shovel, you're already hip-deep in bullshit.
Max
GPL forces people to make their contributions free
The GPL doesn't "force" anyone to do anything, other than to stop their fucking whining and write their own code if they don't like the license.
Max
By specifying that you don't want anyone to lock it down, you do exercise some form of control on your code. You put some restrictions on your very code, to ensure it will always stay GPL. Nothing else.
My question would be "so the fuck what?" It's my code and the only freedom of worth or value is MY choice over what I'm going to do with it. Whether public domain, GPL, or proprietary, true freedom starts with the creator - everyone else can fuck off and write their own code if they don't like the license I choose.
Freedom begins with the creator. It can also end there if that's what the creator chooses, at least until copyright runs out. This is a good thing.
Max
Me neither, but it's not exactly groundbreaking: RMS believes that every single line of code on your computer should be Free Software, as a moral imperative, and he's explained why he feels that way.
Not caring, of course, that I don't think the same way that he does and don't agree with his reasoning. Thank the gods he isn't king!
Max
As much as I despise socialism...
...this is a load of crap. A truly libertarian philosophy puts sole control of the work in the hands of the person who creates it, to distribute as they please, under whatever license they wish. The GPL is a perfect example of libertarianism: control of the work rests in the hands of creator, and no one else. If you don't like it, you don't use it - that's where *your* choice begins and ends.
GPL maximizes the collective benefit to society at large at the expense of individual liberty. This is, by definition, a socalist philosophy.
That's also libertarian.
Max
The standards set by the U.N. come with a distinct political bias leaning very heavily towards socialism. Worse, but some of these 'standards' don't actually mean anything; e.g., the worth of education is measured by dollars spent per capita, but there's no reliable correlation between dollars spent and education delivered beyond a certain point (far less than what any First World nation spends, by the way). And no one questions whether or not the 'education' inflicted upon our children is actually of any value in the real world, or if less-but-more-practical education, for fewer dollars, would be of much greater worth to the individual in real, measurable terms, e.g., average salaries after graduation.
Some U.N. measures are good, solid, scientifically-based ones. Others are just a bunch of socialist horse shit.
Max
While in New York City, I have NEVER, NOT ONCE, seen a gun in the hands of anyone except a NYC cop. NYC is currently one of the safest cities in North America
And this would be what we call 'a crock of shit'. NYC isn't particularly distinguished by a low crime rate, and in any event crime has NEVER been associated with rates of ownership of private firearms.
Where I live we have one of the highest gun ownership percentages in the entire United States. And yet, we also have one of the lowest violent crime rates as well. Far, far lower than New York city, now matter how you massage the figures. Should we then conclude that higher gun ownership percentages result in greater personal safety?
Max
I once went to a sporting goods store in the US, and found stacks and stacks of bullets sitting on the floor without any sort of security with a sign marks "On sale, 25% off all calibre bullets and shotgun shells". Don't they lock up dangerous goods behind secure areas???
I once walked into a Canadian supermarket and found bags of nitrogen-based fertilizer and cleaning ammonia just sitting around on the shelves, without any sort of security. Don't they lock up dangerous goods behind secure areas there???
Max
the roads are fixed
And a good thing, given that you people drive like maniacs.
Max
I agree, though. This is why I'm so strenuously against flat taxes. They benefit the rich and shaft the poor.
If a person makes $25,000 a year and has a 10% 'flat' tax - not really flat, as we'll see - that person pays out $2,500 in taxes a year. If a person makes $250,000 a year, then a 10% tax means that he'll pay out $25,000 to the government in a year - TEN TIMES what the poorer person does.
How, exactly, is that unfair to the poor person? The rich guy pays ten times the amount in taxes, but does he use ten times the infrastructure that the poor person does? Do the police, fire, and emergency services respond ten times faster to a call by a rich person? Will damaged sewer, electrical and phone lines be repaired with ten times the speed? I don't think so.
This 'flat' tax isn't at all flat. The more you make the more you pay, and you don't get anything more for your taxes than anyone else does. In fact, with each additional dollar you pay out in taxes the return to you in government services becomes smaller and smaller.
I've never heard a decent argument for why the rich should pay vastly greater taxes than those who aren't rich. Most of the arguments I have heard are from liberal loons who think that being wealthy is a criminal offense, and would like nothing better than to institute a socialist state where everyone is equally destitute.
Max
What should you do with drunk drivers and pedophiles?
Why not execution? It'll deter that particular criminal from committing a crime ever again. Of this I'm fairly certain.
Max
Okay, let's qualify it: Canada is vastly superior to the shit-hole known as "India". Is that clear enough for you?
Max
As a stereotype
You said it right there, in total ignorance. It has nothing to do with being an American and everything to do with being a foreigner in someone else's back yard. Generally it's very easy to pick out ANY foreigner just by their mannerisms and way of speaking, even if they know the language and have no distinguishing accent. Often a lack of understanding, or a misunderstanding, between the foreigner and locals will result in the conclusion that the foreigner is 'rude'.
This has NOTHING to do with being American, although typically enough you bought right into the stereotype (or perhaps you've decided to join the Euro-trolls on their daily American-bashing parade). If you're laboring under the delusion that Americans are a special case, go to Greece in the summer and see what the locals have to say about Italian tourists. Or what folks in neighboring European states say about visiting Germans. Or what just about anyone says about the French. Etc. It has nothing to do with being American and everything to do with being a foreigner.
(Well, excepting the Japanese. I don't think a people can get any politer than the Japanese and still remain human.)
Max
Now tell me it's total bullshit.
It's total bullshit. Now tell me where the Constitution grants the President the right to issue an executive order of this nature.
Max
By the way, I'm not going to say that all US aid money is bad; the Marshall plan after WWII was one of the best examples of enlightened self-interest in recent times. The recent stuff I'm not so impressed with.
It's too bad I'm not President then, because if I were I'd put an end to all foreign aid of any kind, for any reason. Not a single U.S. tax dollar would be spent on foreign aid during my administration.
If private U.S. citizens wished to VOLUNTARILY donate to charities and npo's of their own accord, then more power to them. But forcing people to donate whether they wish to or not, at the point of a gun, is spitting in the face of personal liberty and choice.
Of course, I'd just LOVE to see what the rest of the world would say once the U.S. gravy train came to a dead halt....
Max
Care to point out where Bobby Fischer was arrested for what he said? Or was he arrested for what he did?
Which was what, precisely? Telling the President to fuck off and mind his own business, when the executive order issued had absolutely no legal, Constitutional grounding?
Yeah, I'd tell the President to fuck himself too. Since Bush II seems to be looking into ways to call off the November elections, I might just get my chance.
Max
He wasn't told that he couldn't play chess in that country, merely that he could not play in a sanctioned tournament in that country. It's a bit of a distinction.
I see. And somehow that's supposed to make the whole thing less absurd?
The man is being charged with playing in a chess tournament when his fuckwit government ordered him not to. As insane as the son-of-a-bitch is, the government had no business pulling this totalitarian temper tantrum in the first place.
It doesn't matter what his views are. It doesn't matter if Hitler is his hero. All that matters is that the government over-extended it's authority and attempted to illegally shackle one of it's own citizens. For try as I might, I see no Constitutional authority granting the government the right to command it's citizens as to which countries they might go to, and what they might do while they're there.
Max
Galahad, Lancelot, Mordred and Gawain, as well as the other Knights of the Round Table - assuming they aren't just myth - were never knighted by English royalty of any line.
In case you missed the history lesson Arthur lived in the time of the Britons, who lost their fight against German invaders - Angles and Saxons - and were eventually destroyed. The Angles and Saxons had something of a reputation for genocide, and it's rather certain that if any Briton blood survives in the modern-day British people it's very, very weak indeed. The modern British are primarily descended from these German barbarians (hence the term 'anglosaxon'), along with a liberal dose of Norse (Norman) from 1066 on.
Those knights you refer to would've been the enemies of the modern British and their royalty, not their lapdogs. If Arthur ever returned from the dead to lead his knights, as legend has it, he'd start by wiping out just about every Englishman living today, leaving only the northern Welsh (his closest relatives) to inherit the island.
Max
What he meant, was that he was instrumental in the funding of ARPANET. So, in a sense, you can say that the internet probably wouldn't exist, or at least would have taken longer to come into existence, had it not been for Al Gore.
Yeah, right. If not Arpanet it would've been something else, and we'd still have the internet today. Gore just happened to be in the right place at the right time, nothing more.
And in any event, Gore's still an idiot for saying that in the first place. But then no one ever said the man lacked for ego.
Max
Apparently reading comprehension is something you failed in high school.
but the fact remains that the member companies hold the rights to their repsective publications, and have the right to dictate how they will be distributed.
Not surprisingly, you also missed the point. The only 'rights' these companies have are the ones we grant them. Nothing more. At least, that's how it's supposed to work in a representative democracy, but in our American one the companies can buy these 'rights' regardless of whether or not the laws that grant them are good for the American public.
They are freeloaders groping for any lame justification for their illegal activities, and they are doing at least as much to destroy my personal liberties as any "megacorp" because they lend credibility to the RIAA's cries of widespread copyright abuses.
Yada yada. Blather on all you like. It's fucks like you - yes, you - who tacitly support the activities of these corporations with your 'don't rock the boat' philosophies. Go cower in a corner, you spineless wretch.
Distributing copyrighted music is not your right, and as long as you keep doing it, you are contributing to the perception, right or wrong, that the problem is so overwhelming that draconian legislation is the only solution.
What bullshit. The perception exists because the RIAA, MPAA, Disney and others make goddamn sure it exists. They would do so regardless of how widespread pirating is because they need some excuse - any excuse - to get the laws passed they need to shore up their business model and squash all attempts at competition.
This isn't new, although I suspect you have as little grasp of history as you do economics. It's an age-old trick, even here in America; the only difference today is that the technology exists to enforce, control, and dictate the personal lives and choices of Americans everywhere, whereas previously this was an extremely hard thing to do. Power is needed for control, control to maintain the status quo, the status quo to keep the power structure from changing. That's as old as the human race.
If you want to keep technology legally unencumbered, demonstrate that you are responsible enough to handle it
You've bought the crap, hook, line, and sinker. The only way to keep technology in the hands of Joe Public is for Joe Public to remember that HE makes the rules, not corporations, not the wealthy, not his congress critters. If Joe Public says that copyright exists only for a year, then that's the way it is. If he says it lasts for a century, then that's also the way it is. This is assuming that Joe Public actually controls his republic, and in this case it appears that he doesn't.
It doesn't help that cowards like yourself yammer on about not upsetting the powers that be, all the while admitting that you aren't a power and never will be. You are part of the problem, not the solution.
I personally do not want to lose the ability to operate my hardware and software as I please
You already have, you witless shit. You don't 'own' any for-profit software, you merely rent it under whatever terms the company who leases it to you decides to grant you. You personally have no say and no control over those terms. If you think otherwise you're not only hopelessly confused, but deluded as well.
Bend over and grab your ankles; it appears it's a position you're already familiar with. But don't think I'll be joining you for the reaming you so obviously think you deserve.
Max
Oh, and please don't download illegally using Kazaa or whatever. :) You're not helping.
And you're missing the point. It's readily apparent to anyone who spends a few minutes thinking about it that the business models of RIAA/MPAA are no longer valid in the 21st century. When that happens in a true capitalism the business either adopts a new model or it gets destroyed by competition that does. Here we have a business buying laws in an attempt to sustain a position which would otherwise be untenable in our changing market - a market we *know* is changing because so many folks are downloading music, and the movie crowd is quickly catching up.
There are those who blindly assert that each and every one of these folks is a 'criminal', and refuse to acknowledge that laws concerning copyright and business models are neither immutable nor exempt from repeal. But in a real free market and free society rational people don't subscribe to that sort of knee-jerk bullshit and instead see this for what it is: a market that's moving away from an outmoded model *despite threats of violence, in the form of laws passed, designed to chain them to the old one*.
The 'piracy' will get worse because the RIAA/MPAA refuse not only to change, but to allow any other company to supplant them. And because the U.S. is neither a truly free market nor a truly free society, they can buy the threats of violence they need to strike fear into those who might otherwise ignore them. Even so, for all their purchased laws more and more folks, with each passing year, spit in their eye and take the only alternative available.
I say, pirate more. Pirate until the RIAA/MPAA buys some law that makes even the average American angry enough to threaten his politician unless something is done. Pirate until the entire house of cards implodes. Once the RIAA/MPAA are gone, or at least emasculated, *then* we'll get the new business models which will make online piracy a thing of the past, except for that tiny minority of the population who will engage in it regardless.
Max
if government was run the way slashdot thinks it is, then why are we all still using computers? remember the SSSCA?
Remember the DMCA? Didn't help Joe Voter one single bit, and yet it still became law - and has been expanded on since. Law bought and paid for, by entities that have no vote.
Max
Better watch what you say. The Euro-trolls will be along soon to mod you down to -1 Flamebait in an attempt to suppress anything negative you might have to say about the EU. Seems that they despise free speech with a passion - no doubt because they don't have it anymore, and are jealous of those who do.
Max
Really, I do. And I think it should be enforced on the population as a whole, with something that can't easily be removed, like an injectable microchip.
As a professional assassin, it'd make my job a hell of a lot easier in terms of tracking the movements of the mark and hitting him with the best chance of escaping undetected. And since I often need to be technically savvy in order to do my job with the least amount of risk, I'm quite sure I'll be able to disable my own tag while the hit goes down - or even better, spoof someone else's tag.
Max
I personal don't give a sh*t.
So long as it remains the choice of the individual, I don't give a shit either. But if my neighbors demand that I tag my child 'for their own safety', they can suck my dick. *I* make that decision, not a bunch of privacy-invading assholes who don't understand that it's not up to them to decide that for me or my kid.
Go ahead and tag your child, or yourself. But don't even think for a hot second you have any business telling me and mine that we have to follow your lead. You might not give a shit, but I do, and that's all that matters.
Max