I keep dreaming of a network that communicates via quantumly entangled particles, undetectable and unstoppable. Your IP address would finally be completely divorced from the land lines. As drastic and unimaginable as it might seem, it is still possible for the government to shut down the internet by shutting down all the physical connections.
They managed to establish a quantum connection during an experiment in Geneva a few years ago. It would be cool if one of you Slashdot Uebergeeks out there had a do it yourself hack we could implement.
Nagasaki was chosen because it was a major port and military-industrial base. In fact, ground zero in that city was the steel & material factories in the southern arm of the valley it sits in. If terror had been the sole aim of that bomb, they would probably chosen a different target like Fukuoka because of the large foreign population in Nagasaki. Hiroshima was actually a secondary target that they turned to because Shimonoseki (also a major port and military/industrial base) was clouded over.
Conspiracy theories and racist motivations are often cited as the reason why the US dropped atomic bombs on Japan (and certainly the war had heavily racist overtones--on both sides), but the primary reason was because the invasion of Okinawa had been so costly. nearly half a million civilians and Japanese soldiers were killed, and Allied casualties were high as well. That campaign took months and was so bloody, that the US opted to use the bombs rather than stage a full-scale conventional invasion of the home islands. The US fire-bombings of Dresden and Tokyo can be called terror bombings, but the evidence for Hiroshima & Nagasaki argues differently.
The poster your responded to was obviously being sarcastic when he referred to US actions in WWII. Hint: at the end, he said "Go back to Saigon, Jane."
If CCTV-like measures are implemented here, it could spawn a whole slew of new games for disaffected teenagers to play. Me? I figure I'd go in for camera baseball (a close cousin to mailbox baseball) and urban skeet shooting.
The RIAA is intent on suing our rights out of existence, so why aren't we suing them into the ground? Is there a class action suit against them out there? If not, can one be begun? According to new sites online there are millions of users who are affected by this, and it seems to me that if even half of those people donated $10 to a legal effort we'd have a real war chest. Clearly the EFF is not going to do this, so we need to find someone/thing who will. If you know of one, please pipe up.
And the second thing I wonder about is how can we build an alternative to the record companies and their business model for the musicians? The fans and consumers are pissed off, but as long as the musicians largely stay with the record companies, then the RIAA and its ilk will still act like they control the music supply. If the musicians believe they'll starve without the record companies, then they sure won't be on our side. We need a real plan to convince the musicians that there is a better way to reach their fans.
Sigh. My skin is crawling, but I sacrificed hard drive space to download this crap off LimeWire. First Michael Jackson's new album and now this. Maybe it's an RIAA plot to fill our disks with bad *cough* music.
Viva La Revoluccion and all that. Ugh.
Re:General Blustering and Posturing
on
Sklyarov Indicted
·
· Score: 1
... they would probably just hire some of the thousands of laid-off dot-com workers out there.
Just how many of them do you think got root now?
Besides, what makes you think all sysadmins and programmers are against the DMCA? Who do you think works at Adobe, just a bunch of lawyers? It's programmers who created this monster in the first place.
Not all of them are. Some of them might think the DMCA's a great idea. But damn few. There are plenty of us who hate it and that's all that's necessary to make a serious statement.
As for Adobe, I'm betting most of the programmers there just wanted to write great software, but also had very little say in what the company did (and does). As for the guys that did the encryption for the e-book, perhaps the fact that they used ROT13 speaks volumes about how they really felt about it. The PHB said, "Make me a copy protection scheme for the e-Book to guard our value drivers!" and they said "sir, yes sir!" and proceeded to implement it with the flimsiest piece of crap possible.
In fact, I would bet most of the programmers at Adobe hate this law as much as we do and that they read Slashdot as religiously as the rest of us and are seething about Dmitri's indictment as much as the rest of us are, but that they're afraid of losing their jobs and not being able to feed their families. In fact, I would love to hear how they see this situation, if they're reading this. Post anonymously of course, guys, but pipe up!
I would think there would be at least 100 people working in Midtown alone who participate in a Manhattan protest. With all the dot-commers between jobs it could easily swell into the thousands. If anyone knows of protests being organized for NYC, please post the info.
Yes, why don't we shut down the servers and walk off the job? Or even just stage a nationwide sickout? A million geeks can post a billion messages on slashdot for a trillion years and nobody else will pay the slightest bit of attention. But if even half of the sysadmins, programmers and other fauna reading this site DID something, well, that would be entirely different. If Wall Street systems stopped trading, Banking systems stopped transacting, Phone systems stopped routing, then you better believe politicians, judges, RIAA jerks and other amoebal life would sit up and take notice in a fat hurry. The economy can no longer function without computers and they cannot function without us. Therefore it seems to me that geeks are powerfully positioned to stop this DMCA crap dead in its tracks, if they'll only get some gumption.
Not to get Katzian or anything, but are you guys gonna stay the cringeing bullied nerds you were in junior high forever? You're like these bears with claws and these teeth, and you keep thinking, 'How do I kill the bunny? How do I kill the bunny?' Just kill the damn bunny!
this is apologist academic crap. "So, the Taliban are certainly misguided, IMHO, but we must forgive them and recognize our own shortcomings in what we perceive as theirs. They are trying to force with law and government what they really wish would happen as a result of a transformation in the hearts and minds of people."
beating women to death for reading books is not misguided, it's sick and barbaric. blowing up thousand year old buddhist statues is not a "shortcoming," it's ruthless bigotry of the worst sort and a crime against history. having been born in afghanistan does not excuse this kind of craven refusal to condemn monsters like the taliban.
quote izetbegovic and edward said and kropotkin and marx all you like, what the taliban are doing to our fellow human beings should be condemned in the strongest possible terms, period.
...to different people, and different things to the same people in different circumstances. I never eat McDonald's in the U.S. It's too mundane. But in China, I ate there every chance I got because I knew that at least the food there wouldn't make me sick. For the Chinese in the McDonald's, however, it seemed to be a social statement, an expression of modernity.
So, while I wholeheartedly agree with Jon about corporatization vis-a-vis government, for the consumer market it's not necessarily a bad thing or the end of the world. Obviously, if there wasn't a demand for the product and services the multinationals provide, then they wouldn't do very well. Of course a portion of the demand for said products and services is manufactured, but even without advertising and monopolistic behavior there are times when all you want is a burger, fries, and a coke, and when you go to McDonald's you know you can get exactly that.
It does mean that the McDonald's, Fords, and Targets of the world will continue to spread worldwide, but the region- and cultural specific companies will continue to exist and thrive because no mass chain can satisfy all needs. Sure, McDonald's in Bordeaux might someday offer pate, but I wouldn't recommend it and the natives probably wouldn't buy it.
Lastly, who are we to stand in the way of the world's demand for choice? Think of the poor schmuck in China wondering what to have for dinner. He can have Chinese food again, or, go for something really exotic like...Kentucky Fried Chicken!
As far as rights online go, this is what we are. Most people are oblivious to what the RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft and others are doing, so it's up to us to get the word out and help turn the tide. A lot of posters have suggested we write representatives, boycott CDs & DVDs, or educate the non-technical people around us. I think we should do all these things. But for all our numbers, relative affluence, and intelligence I can't help but feel we could be much more effective. Writing new file sharing programs and supporting the EFF are a start; We should also be doing what every other successful movement has had to do: showing up, in numbers.
I went to the recent 2600 hearing in Manhattan and was glad to see others wearing DeCSS t-shirts. But there was only a handful of us. After all the furor on Slashdot I was hoping there'd be an overflow crowd. Justices are supposed to ignore such things, but they would have taken note of a crowd of 2600 supporters, guaranteed.
Now, a million geek march on Washington singing "We Shall Overcome" is beyond the realm of fantasy (how's that for an image;-). But showing up in force for the town meetings politicians love to hold now and such would get noticed. Yeah it's very 60's, but I'm tired of complaining and reading complaints without anyone doing anything about it. I'm certain this is the only way we can really be heard.
Slashdot Mirror
I keep dreaming of a network that communicates via quantumly entangled particles, undetectable and unstoppable. Your IP address would finally be completely divorced from the land lines. As drastic and unimaginable as it might seem, it is still possible for the government to shut down the internet by shutting down all the physical connections.
They managed to establish a quantum connection during an experiment in Geneva a few years ago. It would be cool if one of you Slashdot Uebergeeks out there had a do it yourself hack we could implement.
Nagasaki was chosen because it was a major port and military-industrial base. In fact, ground zero in that city was the steel & material factories in the southern arm of the valley it sits in. If terror had been the sole aim of that bomb, they would probably chosen a different target like Fukuoka because of the large foreign population in Nagasaki. Hiroshima was actually a secondary target that they turned to because Shimonoseki (also a major port and military/industrial base) was clouded over.
Conspiracy theories and racist motivations are often cited as the reason why the US dropped atomic bombs on Japan (and certainly the war had heavily racist overtones--on both sides), but the primary reason was because the invasion of Okinawa had been so costly. nearly half a million civilians and Japanese soldiers were killed, and Allied casualties were high as well. That campaign took months and was so bloody, that the US opted to use the bombs rather than stage a full-scale conventional invasion of the home islands. The US fire-bombings of Dresden and Tokyo can be called terror bombings, but the evidence for Hiroshima & Nagasaki argues differently.
The poster your responded to was obviously being sarcastic when he referred to US actions in WWII. Hint: at the end, he said "Go back to Saigon, Jane."
If CCTV-like measures are implemented here, it could spawn a whole slew of new games for disaffected teenagers to play. Me? I figure I'd go in for camera baseball (a close cousin to mailbox baseball) and urban skeet shooting.
The RIAA is intent on suing our rights out of existence, so why aren't we suing them into the ground? Is there a class action suit against them out there? If not, can one be begun? According to new sites online there are millions of users who are affected by this, and it seems to me that if even half of those people donated $10 to a legal effort we'd have a real war chest. Clearly the EFF is not going to do this, so we need to find someone/thing who will. If you know of one, please pipe up.
And the second thing I wonder about is how can we build an alternative to the record companies and their business model for the musicians? The fans and consumers are pissed off, but as long as the musicians largely stay with the record companies, then the RIAA and its ilk will still act like they control the music supply. If the musicians believe they'll starve without the record companies, then they sure won't be on our side. We need a real plan to convince the musicians that there is a better way to reach their fans.
Yes, the thrice protected CD is out there on Gnutella. Twitching in agony, I downloaded it. Now all you 'N Sync fans can grab it when you want.
Sigh. My skin is crawling, but I sacrificed hard drive space to download this crap off LimeWire. First Michael Jackson's new album and now this. Maybe it's an RIAA plot to fill our disks with bad *cough* music.
Viva La Revoluccion and all that. Ugh.
Just how many of them do you think got root now?
Besides, what makes you think all sysadmins and programmers are against the DMCA? Who do you think works at Adobe, just a bunch of lawyers? It's programmers who created this monster in the first place.
Not all of them are. Some of them might think the DMCA's a great idea. But damn few. There are plenty of us who hate it and that's all that's necessary to make a serious statement.
As for Adobe, I'm betting most of the programmers there just wanted to write great software, but also had very little say in what the company did (and does). As for the guys that did the encryption for the e-book, perhaps the fact that they used ROT13 speaks volumes about how they really felt about it. The PHB said, "Make me a copy protection scheme for the e-Book to guard our value drivers!" and they said "sir, yes sir!" and proceeded to implement it with the flimsiest piece of crap possible.
In fact, I would bet most of the programmers at Adobe hate this law as much as we do and that they read Slashdot as religiously as the rest of us and are seething about Dmitri's indictment as much as the rest of us are, but that they're afraid of losing their jobs and not being able to feed their families. In fact, I would love to hear how they see this situation, if they're reading this. Post anonymously of course, guys, but pipe up!
I would think there would be at least 100 people working in Midtown alone who participate in a Manhattan protest. With all the dot-commers between jobs it could easily swell into the thousands. If anyone knows of protests being organized for NYC, please post the info.
Not to get Katzian or anything, but are you guys gonna stay the cringeing bullied nerds you were in junior high forever? You're like these bears with claws and these teeth, and you keep thinking, 'How do I kill the bunny? How do I kill the bunny?' Just kill the damn bunny!
this is apologist academic crap. "So, the Taliban are certainly misguided, IMHO, but we must forgive them and recognize our own shortcomings in what we perceive as theirs. They are trying to force with law and government what they really wish would happen as a result of a transformation in the hearts and minds of people." beating women to death for reading books is not misguided, it's sick and barbaric. blowing up thousand year old buddhist statues is not a "shortcoming," it's ruthless bigotry of the worst sort and a crime against history. having been born in afghanistan does not excuse this kind of craven refusal to condemn monsters like the taliban. quote izetbegovic and edward said and kropotkin and marx all you like, what the taliban are doing to our fellow human beings should be condemned in the strongest possible terms, period.
...to different people, and different things to the same people in different circumstances. I never eat McDonald's in the U.S. It's too mundane. But in China, I ate there every chance I got because I knew that at least the food there wouldn't make me sick. For the Chinese in the McDonald's, however, it seemed to be a social statement, an expression of modernity.
So, while I wholeheartedly agree with Jon about corporatization vis-a-vis government, for the consumer market it's not necessarily a bad thing or the end of the world. Obviously, if there wasn't a demand for the product and services the multinationals provide, then they wouldn't do very well. Of course a portion of the demand for said products and services is manufactured, but even without advertising and monopolistic behavior there are times when all you want is a burger, fries, and a coke, and when you go to McDonald's you know you can get exactly that.
It does mean that the McDonald's, Fords, and Targets of the world will continue to spread worldwide, but the region- and cultural specific companies will continue to exist and thrive because no mass chain can satisfy all needs. Sure, McDonald's in Bordeaux might someday offer pate, but I wouldn't recommend it and the natives probably wouldn't buy it.
Lastly, who are we to stand in the way of the world's demand for choice? Think of the poor schmuck in China wondering what to have for dinner. He can have Chinese food again, or, go for something really exotic like...Kentucky Fried Chicken!
As far as rights online go, this is what we are. Most people are oblivious to what the RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft and others are doing, so it's up to us to get the word out and help turn the tide. A lot of posters have suggested we write representatives, boycott CDs & DVDs, or educate the non-technical people around us. I think we should do all these things. But for all our numbers, relative affluence, and intelligence I can't help but feel we could be much more effective. Writing new file sharing programs and supporting the EFF are a start; We should also be doing what every other successful movement has had to do: showing up, in numbers. I went to the recent 2600 hearing in Manhattan and was glad to see others wearing DeCSS t-shirts. But there was only a handful of us. After all the furor on Slashdot I was hoping there'd be an overflow crowd. Justices are supposed to ignore such things, but they would have taken note of a crowd of 2600 supporters, guaranteed. Now, a million geek march on Washington singing "We Shall Overcome" is beyond the realm of fantasy (how's that for an image ;-). But showing up in force for the town meetings politicians love to hold now and such would get noticed. Yeah it's very 60's, but I'm tired of complaining and reading complaints without anyone doing anything about it. I'm certain this is the only way we can really be heard.