The bank balance is an artificial construct, as is money, but i would quite happily be paid in gold or other physical goods. On the other hand, the bank is merely guarding the money for you...
Salary isn't so much, it's a motivation to do work and stops being paid when you stop doing the work. The only unnatural thing is using tokens (ie money) as the payment, instead of a more natural commodity... Tribes thousands of years ago would have some people who hunted, some who raised kids, some who cooked etc, by doing your area of work you were rewarded by the others, basic and natural concept - one person has something the other wants and is willing to trade for it.
Both of these concepts are based on a natural scarcity (the work you do, whatever it is.. the money in your bank balance etc).. In fact, the size of your salary is based on scarcity, if you do a job thats trivially easy for anyone to do then you won't be paid very much because there are a lot of candidates to choose from.
You can't really compare these 2 situations directly to copyright.. Copyright tries to create an artificial scarcity to give the information value, in the natural order of things information is not scarce and is easily shared, and thus has little or no value.
The physical tokens used to represent money are an artificial scarcity, thats why it's profitable to counterfeit them, that's why everyone used to trade with goods or rare items like gold and diamonds etc. If money was physically worth it's face value (some of the low value coins are now that the cost of metal has gone up) then it wouldn't get counterfeited.
People pay a lot more for the original painting, prints are often relatively cheap, and i doubt anyone pays anything for digital scans of a painting... You could conceivably print your own, but if you want an especially high quality print or a large one its cheaper to buy it than the equipment necessary to produce your own.
The obvious solution, is that copyright is an artificial construct, thus the problem is entirely one of an artificial and self inflicted nature. Therefore, abolishing it would return to the original and more natural state, no more problem and resources could be spent instead on more serious issues.
Chances are when you pirate it, you're using a cisco network at least in some capacity... Mass piracy of video is likely to drive sales of networking gear, good for Cisco.
PC games were pirated too, just as much if not more than Amiga games... There were still plenty of games coming out, they just weren't as good as other platforms any more... The other platforms had caught up and surpassed the Amiga. Piracy had very little to do with it, although the rampant anti-piracy brigade did a lot to drive what few Amiga users had internet access away from the platform....
Pay for a TCP stack... Pay for a (pretty crap) telnet client... Pay for a (massively inferior to other platforms) web browser... Pay for an IRC client
I mean come on, what other platform did quite so much to discourage uptake of the internet? And if you did pirate any of those apps, you could expect to be shunned from any amiga related forums. The IRC client especially had a backdoor allowing people to see if it was pirated or not, if you went on irc to an amiga related channel with a pirated client you would get banned.
I recently tried setting up an old amiga i had in my loft, i was unable to acquire any of the software aside from demo versions... Even if i was willing to pay for it, none of the sites which sold it are still up, the only versions available are crippleware which crash out after 30 minutes.
The hardware companies are greedy companies who are perfectly content to screw anyone or look the other way so long as it will improve profits... Software companies are just the same...
The difference is that hardware companies have more competitors, and much smaller margins, while copyright infringement is much easier than duplicating hardware.
Do you really think that if it was possible to download hardware for free, the software companies wouldn't be doing exactly the same thing trying to get more sales?
Well, Itanium was a good idea, and getting away from the legacy cruft of x86 would be a good thing, but in this case competition and closed source software are stifling progress...
Competition because people won't migrate until there is a clear cut case to do so, or they are forced... Apple were able to transition their users from m68k to ppc and then to x86 because there was no other way forward... Had a third party been producing clones, people would have chosen the path of least resistance and stuck with the clones. The same is true of x86 with AMD and Via still producing compatible chips, Intel were eventually forced to follow AMD and implement their 64bit extensions.
Same with closed source software, existing binary software won't run on a new architecture (or will run poorly through emulation) thus users won't buy the new architecture since it doesn't run their programs, and vendors won't want to port their software to an architecture that hasn't got enough users to make it profitable. What little closed source software has been ported to IA64 was mostly due to deals with HP and Intel.
The idea is that the cores will scale independently of each other, so that if you are running a single threaded app on a quad core cpu 3 cores will shut down and the remaining core will overclock itself... Most multi core cpus are clocked lower than single core chips can be, so this is a way of recovering some single thread performance.
You can buy webhosting for trivial amounts these days, like $2-$3... You can even buy your own virtual private server with root access for $5/month, and it's perfectly adequate for a relatively small site.. Imagine the scenario...
Register a domain ($10/year for easy calculation) - i have seen even lower prices (http://www.websitespot.com/ $6.95) Buy a VPS ($5/month, $60/year) (http://www.bsdshellz.net) Total cost $70/year
Host email with a web frontend over HTTPS for a few friends so you all don't have to use public email services...
Add an SSL cert at $150/year, total cost now becomes $220/year, more than triple the cost
Yes, the best way to respond to #2 is to tell them you'll contact the gas company directly...
Aside from that, there are multiple gas suppliers here, it's funny when such a scammer gets the company wrong. Some of them also turn up claiming to work for a rival company and trying to get you to sign up to their service instead of the one you already use. Some of these are genuine (but still shady) salesmen, while some are out and out frauds...
I have had some pretty nasty salesmen recently, they turn up trying to get me to sign up to some kind of supposedly "cheaper" service, and then either respond with derision or downright insults about how "stupid" i must be to keep using my "expensive" provider. And most of the time their offers aren't actually cheaper, they simply have the costs more hidden, like the per unit charge for gas will be lower, but that only applies to the first X units after which it is higher, and the service charge is much higher too.
But a good way to get rid of the salesmen trying to sell you home broadband, is to ask for things like ipv6... Some will downright lie and claim they can supply it, but none will be willing to put it down in writing.
Well, that and the fact macs are more common among people working in creative industries, so the people building the sets and such are more likely to have macs available to them.
Because I, like far too many others, have to commute back and forth to work on the train, and there often isn't anywhere to sit so you need to stand up and hold on to something.
There are probably other examples too, but this is the one that affects me the most.
My god you're persistent, have you nothing better to do?
Firstly, it was a massive VMware bug that shuts systems down, it doesn't open them up to vulnerability, but this is totally irrelevant to our earlier discussion anyway.
Second, the CIS tool does not perform any checks pertinent to running on a VM or not, the results it returns when running on vmware would be identical to the same install running directly on hardware.
Third, i never claimed vmware was more secure or even on a par with running on native hardware, i claimed that for the purposes of running the cis test vmware is entirely equivalent to native hardware, and therefore i ran it on a vmware image for convenience and so that i could upload the image for you to verify (which i assume you didn't do).
So, if you want your claims to carry any weight whatsoever then show me:
1, where i claimed that vmware itself rendered the OS it's running more secure 2, where the cis tool performs any checks pertinent to the security aspects of running on a vm or not
You harassed people trying to get them to run this worthless cis test and score higher than you, I was the only one that could actually be bothered, i assume other people realised how ridiculous it was and didn't want to waste the time... I scored higher than you simply by following the recommendations returned in the output report, and created a vmware image as proof, so now that it has been proven that...
1, the cis test is pretty worthless when it comes to actual security (i documented multiple examples of flaws in it) 2, it's easy to get a high score, but doing so often does not improve security 3, you were somehow incompetent enough so as to be unable to get a higher score
Having been proven wrong, you come back with new claims that are even more baseless and only very tenuously linked to the original claims, for what? as an attempt to save face?
So come on, show me some proof, show me something i actually said, rather than trying to put words in my mouth.
Actually, SSL certificate signing is more about making money than security... It's a way for a few select players to create an artificial market and keep their monopoly cartel in the name of "security".
Most of their checks are as rudimentary as "do you have an email at the domain? yes? ok then you can have a cert".
What would be better, is if organizations you do business with (banks especially) issue you a certificate out of band (ie they give you it on physical media when you go to a branch or when they send your cc), that way you can be certain that cert is owned by the bank.
Banks are also giving out little keypads these days to be used in conjunction with your card to identify you, couldn't they also be used to identify the bank so that users can be certain they're dealing with the correct organization?
Exactly... You have you "professionally" designed interface there by default, and which most people will use...
But there is still choice for those people with different requirements, some people may choose to use the phone for things the original interface developers never thought of, others may be handicapped and need a special interface, leaving the choice available is a good thing even if most users will just stick to the default.
As for so called "professional" interface designers, how many phones have you used with utterly horrendous interfaces? All of the windows mobile phones i've used had terrible interfaces that were more suited to a PDA than a phone... And then there's interfaces which are just great for some people and some tasks, but useless for others, like the iphone which is the best phone interface i've ever used for web browsing, but is pretty useless when you want to type a text message one handed.
Amsterdam has some permanent stone constructions called "urinors" aswell, they are basically a stone wall with a hole at around the right height to piss through, and a canal is on the other side... Not very pleasant for anyone who happens to be in a passing boat.
Well, I use rsync over SSH (so the network traffic and authentication is encrypted)... You could potentially use an encrypted disk locally, and rsync the encrypted disk image over (it should still only xfer the changes), assuming you don't trust the target host.
Slashdot Mirror
The bank balance is an artificial construct, as is money, but i would quite happily be paid in gold or other physical goods. On the other hand, the bank is merely guarding the money for you...
Salary isn't so much, it's a motivation to do work and stops being paid when you stop doing the work. The only unnatural thing is using tokens (ie money) as the payment, instead of a more natural commodity... Tribes thousands of years ago would have some people who hunted, some who raised kids, some who cooked etc, by doing your area of work you were rewarded by the others, basic and natural concept - one person has something the other wants and is willing to trade for it.
Both of these concepts are based on a natural scarcity (the work you do, whatever it is.. the money in your bank balance etc).. In fact, the size of your salary is based on scarcity, if you do a job thats trivially easy for anyone to do then you won't be paid very much because there are a lot of candidates to choose from.
You can't really compare these 2 situations directly to copyright.. Copyright tries to create an artificial scarcity to give the information value, in the natural order of things information is not scarce and is easily shared, and thus has little or no value.
The physical tokens used to represent money are an artificial scarcity, thats why it's profitable to counterfeit them, that's why everyone used to trade with goods or rare items like gold and diamonds etc. If money was physically worth it's face value (some of the low value coins are now that the cost of metal has gone up) then it wouldn't get counterfeited.
People pay a lot more for the original painting, prints are often relatively cheap, and i doubt anyone pays anything for digital scans of a painting...
You could conceivably print your own, but if you want an especially high quality print or a large one its cheaper to buy it than the equipment necessary to produce your own.
The obvious solution, is that copyright is an artificial construct, thus the problem is entirely one of an artificial and self inflicted nature. Therefore, abolishing it would return to the original and more natural state, no more problem and resources could be spent instead on more serious issues.
Reduce the scope, leaving more resources to pursue that reduced scope.
Less hostile anti piracy measures would reduce people's hostility towards the industry... And would reduce the legitimate uses of copying mechanisms.
Chances are when you pirate it, you're using a cisco network at least in some capacity... Mass piracy of video is likely to drive sales of networking gear, good for Cisco.
The thing is...
Most people have limited budgets...
You can't get up to date hardware for free.
So you have a choice...
A slower computer and a small set of paid software
A faster computer and a large set of pirated or free software
There's really no comparison is there.
PC games were pirated too, just as much if not more than Amiga games...
There were still plenty of games coming out, they just weren't as good as other platforms any more... The other platforms had caught up and surpassed the Amiga. Piracy had very little to do with it, although the rampant anti-piracy brigade did a lot to drive what few Amiga users had internet access away from the platform....
Pay for a TCP stack...
Pay for a (pretty crap) telnet client...
Pay for a (massively inferior to other platforms) web browser...
Pay for an IRC client
I mean come on, what other platform did quite so much to discourage uptake of the internet? And if you did pirate any of those apps, you could expect to be shunned from any amiga related forums.
The IRC client especially had a backdoor allowing people to see if it was pirated or not, if you went on irc to an amiga related channel with a pirated client you would get banned.
I recently tried setting up an old amiga i had in my loft, i was unable to acquire any of the software aside from demo versions... Even if i was willing to pay for it, none of the sites which sold it are still up, the only versions available are crippleware which crash out after 30 minutes.
The hardware companies are greedy companies who are perfectly content to screw anyone or look the other way so long as it will improve profits...
Software companies are just the same...
The difference is that hardware companies have more competitors, and much smaller margins, while copyright infringement is much easier than duplicating hardware.
Do you really think that if it was possible to download hardware for free, the software companies wouldn't be doing exactly the same thing trying to get more sales?
Which is why some compilers generate profiles from runtime execution of a program, and can optimize based on feedback from how the program ran.
It can't possibly be faster, unless you are using an inefficient compiler to compile the C code.
Well, Itanium was a good idea, and getting away from the legacy cruft of x86 would be a good thing, but in this case competition and closed source software are stifling progress...
Competition because people won't migrate until there is a clear cut case to do so, or they are forced... Apple were able to transition their users from m68k to ppc and then to x86 because there was no other way forward... Had a third party been producing clones, people would have chosen the path of least resistance and stuck with the clones. The same is true of x86 with AMD and Via still producing compatible chips, Intel were eventually forced to follow AMD and implement their 64bit extensions.
Same with closed source software, existing binary software won't run on a new architecture (or will run poorly through emulation) thus users won't buy the new architecture since it doesn't run their programs, and vendors won't want to port their software to an architecture that hasn't got enough users to make it profitable. What little closed source software has been ported to IA64 was mostly due to deals with HP and Intel.
The idea is that the cores will scale independently of each other, so that if you are running a single threaded app on a quad core cpu 3 cores will shut down and the remaining core will overclock itself...
Most multi core cpus are clocked lower than single core chips can be, so this is a way of recovering some single thread performance.
The EEE 901 seems to draw somewhat less than 20 watts when running from AC...
You can buy webhosting for trivial amounts these days, like $2-$3...
You can even buy your own virtual private server with root access for $5/month, and it's perfectly adequate for a relatively small site.. Imagine the scenario...
Register a domain ($10/year for easy calculation) - i have seen even lower prices (http://www.websitespot.com/ $6.95)
Buy a VPS ($5/month, $60/year) (http://www.bsdshellz.net)
Total cost $70/year
Host email with a web frontend over HTTPS for a few friends so you all don't have to use public email services...
Add an SSL cert at $150/year, total cost now becomes $220/year, more than triple the cost
Yes, the best way to respond to #2 is to tell them you'll contact the gas company directly...
Aside from that, there are multiple gas suppliers here, it's funny when such a scammer gets the company wrong. Some of them also turn up claiming to work for a rival company and trying to get you to sign up to their service instead of the one you already use. Some of these are genuine (but still shady) salesmen, while some are out and out frauds...
I have had some pretty nasty salesmen recently, they turn up trying to get me to sign up to some kind of supposedly "cheaper" service, and then either respond with derision or downright insults about how "stupid" i must be to keep using my "expensive" provider.
And most of the time their offers aren't actually cheaper, they simply have the costs more hidden, like the per unit charge for gas will be lower, but that only applies to the first X units after which it is higher, and the service charge is much higher too.
But a good way to get rid of the salesmen trying to sell you home broadband, is to ask for things like ipv6... Some will downright lie and claim they can supply it, but none will be willing to put it down in writing.
Because not all of these sites are questionable...
All it does is force these sites to buy certificates from the existing ssl certificate cartel.
Well, that and the fact macs are more common among people working in creative industries, so the people building the sets and such are more likely to have macs available to them.
Yeah, i guess i have fat thumbs... I've seen other people typing perfectly well that way too, i just find that i hit the wrong key far too often.
Because I, like far too many others, have to commute back and forth to work on the train, and there often isn't anywhere to sit so you need to stand up and hold on to something.
There are probably other examples too, but this is the one that affects me the most.
My god you're persistent, have you nothing better to do?
Firstly, it was a massive VMware bug that shuts systems down, it doesn't open them up to vulnerability, but this is totally irrelevant to our earlier discussion anyway.
Second, the CIS tool does not perform any checks pertinent to running on a VM or not, the results it returns when running on vmware would be identical to the same install running directly on hardware.
Third, i never claimed vmware was more secure or even on a par with running on native hardware, i claimed that for the purposes of running the cis test vmware is entirely equivalent to native hardware, and therefore i ran it on a vmware image for convenience and so that i could upload the image for you to verify (which i assume you didn't do).
So, if you want your claims to carry any weight whatsoever then show me:
1, where i claimed that vmware itself rendered the OS it's running more secure
2, where the cis tool performs any checks pertinent to the security aspects of running on a vm or not
You harassed people trying to get them to run this worthless cis test and score higher than you, I was the only one that could actually be bothered, i assume other people realised how ridiculous it was and didn't want to waste the time... I scored higher than you simply by following the recommendations returned in the output report, and created a vmware image as proof, so now that it has been proven that...
1, the cis test is pretty worthless when it comes to actual security (i documented multiple examples of flaws in it)
2, it's easy to get a high score, but doing so often does not improve security
3, you were somehow incompetent enough so as to be unable to get a higher score
Having been proven wrong, you come back with new claims that are even more baseless and only very tenuously linked to the original claims, for what? as an attempt to save face?
So come on, show me some proof, show me something i actually said, rather than trying to put words in my mouth.
And do please read the post you linked to:
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=261457&cid=20165843
Not one mention of vmware, this posting points out flaws in the CIS test and poses questions to you... why have you still not answered them?
Does that post say something else in your own little fantasy world?
Actually, SSL certificate signing is more about making money than security...
It's a way for a few select players to create an artificial market and keep their monopoly cartel in the name of "security".
Most of their checks are as rudimentary as "do you have an email at the domain? yes? ok then you can have a cert".
What would be better, is if organizations you do business with (banks especially) issue you a certificate out of band (ie they give you it on physical media when you go to a branch or when they send your cc), that way you can be certain that cert is owned by the bank.
Banks are also giving out little keypads these days to be used in conjunction with your card to identify you, couldn't they also be used to identify the bank so that users can be certain they're dealing with the correct organization?
Exactly... You have you "professionally" designed interface there by default, and which most people will use...
But there is still choice for those people with different requirements, some people may choose to use the phone for things the original interface developers never thought of, others may be handicapped and need a special interface, leaving the choice available is a good thing even if most users will just stick to the default.
As for so called "professional" interface designers, how many phones have you used with utterly horrendous interfaces? All of the windows mobile phones i've used had terrible interfaces that were more suited to a PDA than a phone...
And then there's interfaces which are just great for some people and some tasks, but useless for others, like the iphone which is the best phone interface i've ever used for web browsing, but is pretty useless when you want to type a text message one handed.
Amsterdam has some permanent stone constructions called "urinors" aswell, they are basically a stone wall with a hole at around the right height to piss through, and a canal is on the other side... Not very pleasant for anyone who happens to be in a passing boat.
Well, I use rsync over SSH (so the network traffic and authentication is encrypted)...
You could potentially use an encrypted disk locally, and rsync the encrypted disk image over (it should still only xfer the changes), assuming you don't trust the target host.