Re:Open Standards and Closed Failures
on
DIVX is dead
·
· Score: 1
Pardon my ignorance on the matter, I was but a wee tot when Betamax entered and left the home market... I ask only out of genuine curiosity and ignorance:
I thought BetaMax died primarily because of Sony's reluctance to license the technology to other competitors, similar to IBM's MCA bus in the PS/2s. You could buy a VHS from *anybody* but a BetaMax could only be had from Sony.
I stand a pretty good chance of being wrong, of course...
I beleive that if you remove the alias rm='rm -i' alias cp='cp -i' alias mv='mv -i' lines from your/root/.bashrc, you'll be in good shape. A very annoying 'feature', indeed!:)
(For the pickers of nits: That will remove the prompting from both mv and cp, as well as the requested rm. But I figure that if you want to loose it for one, you're ready to rid yourself of it entirely.)
My initial reaction to this is to denouce it as a not very well thought out concept that someone needs to get a clue about. And, without any clue on what the legal environment is like in the United Kingdom right now, I guess I'll have to stand by that feeling.
However, if we can assume for the moment that things are similar in the UK as they are in the US (specifically a highly litigous society that is grasping at straws trying to shoehorn emerging technologies into outdated laws very inconsitantly) it makes perfect sense. If I was the owner of a company like that, and knew that there was a really good chance that someone would file a lawsuit against me for some outrageous amount of money becuase someone posted something through my services, I'd be prohibiting that kind of activity as much as a 'reasonable man' would be able to.
I agree that this new medium of the Internet should be treated in many ways like a phone system -- that is, the carrier can't be held responsible for the message that other people send -- but so far, that issue is mired in controversy as far as the courts are concerned. While putting up a test case and fighting for our rights is a very admirable goal, it's also a good way to speed up financial ruin -- lawyers are expensive and loosing a lawsuit would probably be enough to shut down a company due to the outrageous sums that get awarded. If I was running such a business, I'd let someone else take the fight and protect my investment by following the old 'reasonable man' standard of what I filter, simply so I can stay in business.
Cowardly? Absolutely! But principles of fighting for freedom don't apply too much when talking about the dollars and cents (or pounds) involved in a business. If, of course, people leave filtering and deleting ISPs in droves, there will be a similar economic impact -- the only thing a business really responds to. Of course, no matter what the customers want, if an ISP is sued for not filtering or deleting a post or whatever, they run a good chance of being litigated out of business. If the customers, however, sucessfully petition the government to change the legal environment -- get it officially ruled into law that an ISP should be treated like a LEC, in regards to content responsiblity -- then an ISP has little to be concerned about in that regard.
It is a parent's responsibilty to raise his children. Implied in that is that the children should be raised with a suitable value system -- suitable is (at least in this country) left to be defined mostly by the parent. This responsiblity, then, gives the parent a wide berth in determining what they can and can not allow their children to do. And if the parent decides that viewing pr0n is not something that meshes with the values they are trying to impart on their spawn, they have the right and responsiblity to limit their child's access to it. To make a comparison: Saying they don't have a right to deny their child pr0n, is the same as saying that an Amish parent doesn't have the right to deny their child access to electricity. Yes, there is a limit to what a parent can do to/for their child, but you'd be hard pressed to prove that not letting underaged persons have pr0n was abusive. In this country, it's not even legal.
And, re: Darwin and spanking: That's so far gone and irrelavant, I'm not even going to bother.
Think about it: How many corporations, libraries, parents etc.pp. have started filtering already? Censorship all around...
There is a difference here, though: A corporation or a parent can filter, without it being censorship.
If I am a parent, I have every legal and moral right to filter what my kids watch and read -- television, books, magazines, newspapers, and yes, the Internet. That's an important point, because if you say that a parent can't do that, then there is more fuel for the people in Gubbmint to say that they're going to protect the children and filter it for everyone. But, there's an even bigger argument to support that, if you'll bear with me for my second point.
As a corporation providing computers and Internet access to my employees, I have the right to tell them what they can and can not use my computers and Internet access for. I own the physical computers, I pay for the network connection. And I'm also paying for their time. If I have hired them to, for example, use my computer, and my internet connection to create memos about widgets for me, then there is nothing keeping me from restricting their use of the computer (no games, personal finance, whatever) and the internet access (no porn, no slashdot (*gasp!*, no non-widget-related sites). By telling me that I cannot do that, you are infringing on my own property rights.
The same could be said for a parent and their child's use of the family computer/ISP account.
And beyond all that, censorship involves more of a systematic blocking of access to material, not the blocking by individual companies or persons.
Don't get me wrong: I think that the governmental blocking is censorship in the first degree and should be shot down whenever it rears its ugly head. But, don't confuse corporate/parental filtering (which is legal and ethical) with government censorship (which is illegal in America and on dangerous ethical ground).
I think the most frightening part is that you're absolutely right when you say that "Australia is not alone in...this type of behaviour".
Another poster made reference to "knee-jerk reactions" by politicians and how dangerous they are, and I think that there is a bad epidemic of that raging around the globe. Look at what's happening here in the US:
Some kids build some bombs, plant them in a school and then go nuts, killing their classmates. There were two knee-jerk reactions to that:
First, we started to push new gun legislation. And no matter what your position on gun control, I think that it doesn't take a member of the Jedi counsel to tell you that this is a fear- and shock - induced reaction that we should probably step back and think about a little bit after we get our emotional repsonse to such a story in check.
Second, there's a lot of rumblings saying that 'the internet has bomb building instructions, ergo , we must ban the internet, or ban kid's access to the internet,' etc. etc. etc. Another fear-induced reaction that, so far, has been resisted.
It's not a logical jump, really, to say that if we can use fear to cause the abridgement of some constitutional rights, we can have more rights that flow from the same source trampled on. The lesson from.au is that we need to remain vigilant , lest the same thing happen here. And it could.
People, I think, forget how precious freedom is, and what we all sacrifice for it. Security comes at the price of liberty, and I think that is too high of a price to pay. Just ask the folks that died in Tiennemen Square.
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I thought BetaMax died primarily because of Sony's reluctance to license the technology to other competitors, similar to IBM's MCA bus in the PS/2s. You could buy a VHS from *anybody* but a BetaMax could only be had from Sony.
I stand a pretty good chance of being wrong, of course...
alias rm='rm -i'
alias cp='cp -i'
alias mv='mv -i'
lines from your
(For the pickers of nits: That will remove the prompting from both mv and cp, as well as the requested rm. But I figure that if you want to loose it for one, you're ready to rid yourself of it entirely.)
However, if we can assume for the moment that things are similar in the UK as they are in the US (specifically a highly litigous society that is grasping at straws trying to shoehorn emerging technologies into outdated laws very inconsitantly) it makes perfect sense. If I was the owner of a company like that, and knew that there was a really good chance that someone would file a lawsuit against me for some outrageous amount of money becuase someone posted something through my services, I'd be prohibiting that kind of activity as much as a 'reasonable man' would be able to.
I agree that this new medium of the Internet should be treated in many ways like a phone system -- that is, the carrier can't be held responsible for the message that other people send -- but so far, that issue is mired in controversy as far as the courts are concerned. While putting up a test case and fighting for our rights is a very admirable goal, it's also a good way to speed up financial ruin -- lawyers are expensive and loosing a lawsuit would probably be enough to shut down a company due to the outrageous sums that get awarded. If I was running such a business, I'd let someone else take the fight and protect my investment by following the old 'reasonable man' standard of what I filter, simply so I can stay in business.
Cowardly? Absolutely! But principles of fighting for freedom don't apply too much when talking about the dollars and cents (or pounds) involved in a business. If, of course, people leave filtering and deleting ISPs in droves, there will be a similar economic impact -- the only thing a business really responds to. Of course, no matter what the customers want, if an ISP is sued for not filtering or deleting a post or whatever, they run a good chance of being litigated out of business. If the customers, however, sucessfully petition the government to change the legal environment -- get it officially ruled into law that an ISP should be treated like a LEC, in regards to content responsiblity -- then an ISP has little to be concerned about in that regard.
It is a parent's responsibilty to raise his children. Implied in that is that the children should be raised with a suitable value system -- suitable is (at least in this country) left to be defined mostly by the parent. This responsiblity, then, gives the parent a wide berth in determining what they can and can not allow their children to do. And if the parent decides that viewing pr0n is not something that meshes with the values they are trying to impart on their spawn, they have the right and responsiblity to limit their child's access to it. To make a comparison: Saying they don't have a right to deny their child pr0n, is the same as saying that an Amish parent doesn't have the right to deny their child access to electricity. Yes, there is a limit to what a parent can do to/for their child, but you'd be hard pressed to prove that not letting underaged persons have pr0n was abusive. In this country, it's not even legal.
And, re: Darwin and spanking: That's so far gone and irrelavant, I'm not even going to bother.
There is a difference here, though: A corporation or a parent can filter, without it being censorship.
If I am a parent, I have every legal and moral right to filter what my kids watch and read -- television, books, magazines, newspapers, and yes, the Internet. That's an important point, because if you say that a parent can't do that, then there is more fuel for the people in Gubbmint to say that they're going to protect the children and filter it for everyone. But, there's an even bigger argument to support that, if you'll bear with me for my second point.
As a corporation providing computers and Internet access to my employees, I have the right to tell them what they can and can not use my computers and Internet access for. I own the physical computers, I pay for the network connection. And I'm also paying for their time. If I have hired them to, for example, use my computer, and my internet connection to create memos about widgets for me, then there is nothing keeping me from restricting their use of the computer (no games, personal finance, whatever) and the internet access (no porn, no slashdot (*gasp!*, no non-widget-related sites). By telling me that I cannot do that, you are infringing on my own property rights.
The same could be said for a parent and their child's use of the family computer/ISP account.
And beyond all that, censorship involves more of a systematic blocking of access to material, not the blocking by individual companies or persons.
Don't get me wrong: I think that the governmental blocking is censorship in the first degree and should be shot down whenever it rears its ugly head. But, don't confuse corporate/parental filtering (which is legal and ethical) with government censorship (which is illegal in America and on dangerous ethical ground).
Another poster made reference to "knee-jerk reactions" by politicians and how dangerous they are, and I think that there is a bad epidemic of that raging around the globe. Look at what's happening here in the US:
Some kids build some bombs, plant them in a school and then go nuts, killing their classmates. There were two knee-jerk reactions to that:
First, we started to push new gun legislation. And no matter what your position on gun control, I think that it doesn't take a member of the Jedi counsel to tell you that this is a fear- and shock - induced reaction that we should probably step back and think about a little bit after we get our emotional repsonse to such a story in check.
Second, there's a lot of rumblings saying that 'the internet has bomb building instructions, ergo , we must ban the internet, or ban kid's access to the internet,' etc. etc. etc. Another fear-induced reaction that, so far, has been resisted.
It's not a logical jump, really, to say that if we can use fear to cause the abridgement of some constitutional rights, we can have more rights that flow from the same source trampled on. The lesson from .au is that we need to remain vigilant , lest the same thing happen here. And it could.
People, I think, forget how precious freedom is, and what we all sacrifice for it. Security comes at the price of liberty, and I think that is too high of a price to pay. Just ask the folks that died in Tiennemen Square.