Operation Bandwidth: On December 11, 2001, the longest-running of the undercover operations culminated with the execution of over 30 search warrants across the United States and Canada. This undercover operation, code-named Bandwidth,' was a two-year covert investigation established as a joint investigative effort to gather evidence to support identification and prosecution of entities and individuals involved with illegal access to computer systems and the piracy of proprietary software utilizing 'warez' storage sites on the Internet. Bandwidth, through the joint efforts of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), the Environmental Protection Agency Office of Inspector General (EPA-OIG), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), supervised by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Nevada, created a 'warez' site, controlled and monitored by the undercover operation, as a means of attracting predicated targets involved with the distribution of pirated software. The undercover 'warez' site has been accessed to transfer over
100,000 files, including over 12,000 separate software programs, movies and games. Over 200 different individuals participated in the software pirating efforts.
Those individuals were able to attain first-run movies, the latest computer games, and versions of notable software products even before they were publicly introduced. As a result of Operation Bandwidth, thousands of copies of pirated software are expected to be removed from circulation, as well as the seizure and forfeiture of the computer hardware and servers used to facilitate the crimes.
--
Is it just me or did the DOJ just say that they conspired, along with quite a list of other government agencies (including the EPA of all people) to pirate massive quantities of software? Isn't that illegal? Should we all start our own "sting" operations? Then the software market would be completely dried up. I wonder how much these agencies now owe in fines for software piracy and how long the individual agents involved will spend in jail.
Thanks for the free shit, though!
.
>but these things would not have reached their current level of development if they had depended on the work of amateurs rather than companies with lawyers and bankers.
>
Just like you will never reach a very high level of intellectual, because you are an amateur at thought.
You overestimate the usefulness to society of lawyers and bankers, I think.
That's interesting. I was unaware of the Microcredit thing going on. Brilliant idea. It's refreshing to see that someone finally got on the ball enough to see that a strong nation and strong economy is built from the ground up. In situations where control is enforced from above, too often, much of the benefit of any loans given a country will be wasted before it ever has a chance to reach the bottom. My contention is that large scale organized capitalism breeds corruption and slavery. On the other hand, individual conscious and contientious capitalism breeds strong vibrant economic growth, because the resources are not wasted. You have hundreds of thousands of parallel processing units (people) trying to build society and provide for each other, rather than a single buggy CPU attempting push people to fall in line with THE PLAN (as well intentioned as the plan may be in some cases).
I say that when people have the resources to build and the autonomy to allow them to execute their own decisions on local truth, they will eventually begin to prosper.
Yes, exactly. In the olden days, they called that slavery. These days it's much more politically convenient to call things by a new name. It makes it more difficult for the average dimwit to learn from history.
Of course, some would argue that these people are not slaves, because they "have better living conditions", "are subject to their own rule of law, not ours", etc., etc. But when these countries' leaders become their pimps, these people certainly ARE slaves. And our corporations make deals with their corrupt leadership to supply the corporate food chain with fresh slaves. It's not really very complicated to understand.
Maybe I'm ignorant, but that sounds exactly like capitalism to me. Those who were able to sieze opportunities at the right time, have been able to profit greatly. Meanwhile, those with no power, who had no opportunity, or who were too moral to take it, have suffered.
I'm not seeing what the rule of law or fair trials have to do with capitalism. Those are ideals of fair government. Equal opportunity is a false promise of those who promote capitalism, because they are in a good position to take advantage of the system. Yeah, equal opportunity is a nice dream, but if you look around you will see that not since the beginning of time have individuals had what could truly be called EQUAL opportunity. The world just does not work that way. Some people have some advantages, some have others and, others have neither. So, taking that starting point and applying capitalism, you get what you see in the former USSR. That is unregulated capitalism. What regulates capitalism so that those situations don't arrise? Ohh, governments do. Who else is going to put a check on rampant brutal capitalism. No one.
The problem then is, what do you do if the greediest capitalists also control the government? You either bend over and take it, fight for control of your government, or you scratch and claw your way to the top.
If you have a broadband connection, devian installation is a breezed. As far as I know, it's VERY difficult to do a first install for any other distro, due to the need for an ISO. With debian, all I need is a fat32 partition (which I have because I'm dual booting with 'doze), a partition set aside for Linux root and swap, and a couple of floppies. The rest is simple: install the base system using the floppies and a base.tgz and driver.tgz (which are sitting on my fat32 driver)... Five minutes later, I'm sitting at a root prompt. I can then install whatever packages I want or update to woody or sid. It's really quite simple. Of course, like everything in Linux, it's something you have to learn by doing.
All you have to do is make sure that non-free is in your sources list. Also, with debian it's easy to install a base system from a couple of tgz's, then use dselect to grab X and it's dependencies along with your favorite WM and any extras. This makes for a nice uncluttered selection of software tailored to your individual needs. I think it's great.
In business, it's not necessary to tell yourself that you will be losing customers by not supporting Win95. In fact, making the decision NOT to support Win95 will save you money in the long run, because you are not dealing with the support issues dredged up by these anachronistic idiots and the ridiculous incompatibilities of old ass Winblows operating systems. Meaning, you don't have to develop with an eye to how your code will work (or not work) on Win95, because you have made it a policy to ridicule the dumbasses that still run it.
That's ignorant. Removing intellectual property rights removes the NEED for the GPL. This is because it naturally enforces the exact letter of the GPL: If I make this and release it to the community, you can't take it, change it, and distribute it without releasing it back to the community. Wow, similarly, when there are no IP rights, no one can take anything from the community, because they were never given the artifical right to keep it from the community in the first place. Get it?
Gnome, being under the GNU GPL will never be a "product" in the usual sense unless something pretty wacky is done to change the licensing in the future. Therefore, any companies that dumped large sums of money into the project should have made sure their eyes were open when they opened their pocketbooks. If these companies get some other benefit from having invested in Gnome, then great, but pouring money into the development of GPL software does not give these companies the right to co-opt the project from the community.
Re:Globalization Vs Americanization ?
on
Defining Globalism
·
· Score: 1
Well, those two are hard to separate, because they are both relatively meaningless without some kind of implied shared definition. In other words, they don't mean anything. They are both terms that can be used to mean a variety of things depending on who is using the word. And, for this reason, are easily used to mislead people into thinking that you mean one thing, while actually meaning another. The latter is how politicians use these words. That is why these words were created and given to the politicians to use.
Both are very likely. The future of backwaters like Rwanda must be planned, because, in tomorrow's centrally controlled global corporate empire, the future of everything will be planned.
And, people do tend to like Levi's and Star Wars, but do they like being exterminated?
Meanwhile, the corporation continues to operate at a profit. How do you send a corporation to jail? Ahh, you can't. So, the financial incentive to continue to try to get away with bad things is pretty good. Most of the time, you can get away with it, at least nobody puts you in jail. And, every now and then you get sued, but that may be cheaper than actually doing what's right. And, since the corporate heads are only responsible for making the corporation operate at a profit, and not for the criminal actions of the corporation, they don't care.
Well said. Finally a voice of reason. I'm still pissed you called me a cowboy, though. Even if I am from Texas.;)
Re:Planning to fight against the US army, are we?
on
Defining Globalism
·
· Score: 1
No. I was saying that a law-abiding citizen might use it for that purpose. I am not a law-abiding citizen, so would never raise arms against my government.
However, it's interesting that you say I should only use guns against my fellow citizens. That's kind of mean, isn't it?
What a waste of time. The reason the word globalization has so many interpretations is because it is a word that was designed to give no inherent indication of it's intended meaning. Those who defined it know EXACTLY what it means. The rest of us are supposed to think it means something else. Globalization is a plan to organize the world under centralized control. This is meant to be a non-representative form of government. Just look at what they say:
Globalization is coming whether we like it or not.
Hmm, really. Does that sound like free government to you? I don't think so. They are preparing to shackle the world.
But, what you're meant to understand by the word "globalization" is that it is a plan for a new era of peace and profit for all. This is bullshit. Many wars will need to be fought to wrest control of all of the little countries that don't want to be under centralized control. The rush to globalization is an attempt to force centralized control, so that it is in the hands of those who are currently in a position to profit by it. The idea is similar to what is happening with IP law right now: The entrenched IP monopolists are scared to death of the Internet and the threat that ubiquitous unregulated digital communication poses to their ability to profit. Similarly, the world is on its way to becoming a "global village" based on the sovereignty of all of the worlds individuals (their governments being responsible as agents of that sovereignty). If this is allowed to happen, the people will have, through their governments, the ability to restrict the free reign of the current global elite. So, if they are to maintain their grasp on world power, they must rush to grasp it all, before the world's people realize it is rightfully theirs.
Re:Globalism is not the problem: Government is
on
Defining Globalism
·
· Score: 1
In addition to these point, is a company's crime always a bad product? Can't you make good products while simultaneously polluting both public and private lands. And who owns the air? This whole thing about putting all the land, etc. into private hands is silly. I should be able to sue a megacorp for dumping toxic waste on ANY land, whether I personally own it or not. What stops a megacorp from buying up all the land in an area, using it as a toxic waste dump, then building a subdivision on top of it to sell to unsuspecting families.
That is the kind of shit that they do. The problem is that, even if those families find out and attempt to sue the corporation, the corporation is not even a real entity. Sure it's "possible" to win that court battle. But then those families just get a slice of the corporate profits and business continues as usual. The corporate executives are not criminally liable for their actions. I say they should be.
Yes. A law-abiding citizen might get some use out of an Uzi when the American gestapo comes by to take his guns. A citizenry is a whole lot more unpredictable and the cost of controlling them much higher when they are armed. That's why oppressive governments disarm their people. They don't see their citizens as the resource of national defense, but rather the enemy of state control.
Re:It means the US has taken over the world
on
Defining Globalism
·
· Score: 1
Exactly. My point is that our government props up other governments based on their convenience to the purposes of those who control our government. We do not act as a defender of freedom, but as a defender of monied self-interest. Do we care about freedom, or not. Is our "freedom" bought at the expense of enslaving others? Are we even really free? Or are we just upper-class slaves? I'm not sure, but it seems like nobody thinks these are rational questions to ask. Why?
Re:It means the US has taken over the world
on
Defining Globalism
·
· Score: 1
This is not a war. It's a farce. The US and other countries are maintaining control of the Middle East and have been doing so for years. When the first Americans finally got pissed off enough to deny Britain the "right" to control us, we probably seemed much like these Middle Eastern upstarts to the British. Rag-tag groups of fanatics who just would not submit to enslavement by foreign empire. My point is that you can't claim to value your freedom if you don't support the freedom of others. Continue to stick your head in the sand. Sure it's like all those other "wars". The question is why do we fight them? What is our purpose? And is it OUR purpose or our master's purpose?
Re:It means the US has taken over the world
on
Defining Globalism
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Bullshit. Who the fuck are you to say what constitutes an "official" government of a foreign people. What their people accept as a government, unstable as it may be, is their government. Remember all that "For the people, by the people" stuff? It's right for us, but not for them? Is America the land of the free? Do we encourage others to be free as well? Or are we an empire that uses subjugates other nations as our slaves?
I think we're an empire. And it's not long before you will see that it's not an American empire. It has become the global empire of the oligarchy. We are it's slaves, no matter how comfortable we may be. The American people are the Uncle Toms of global slavery. Not because of capitalism, but because the soveriegnty of the people in every country is being systematically destroyed, along with our own.
Re:Globalism is not the problem: Government is
on
Defining Globalism
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Your logic is kindof weird. Our government has done these things at the behest of corporate interests. Yet you believe that we should remove our government from the picture in order to allow corporate interests to reign freely. How is the cause of a problem going to be the solution as well?
Slashdot Mirror
Damnit!!!!!!!!!!!!
Do I look like I have time to be fuckin around with your stupid ass html SHIAT!@
Operation Bandwidth: On December 11, 2001, the longest-running of the undercover operations culminated with the execution of over 30 search warrants across the United States and Canada. This undercover operation, code-named Bandwidth,' was a two-year covert investigation established as a joint investigative effort to gather evidence to support identification and prosecution of entities and individuals involved with illegal access to computer systems and the piracy of proprietary software utilizing 'warez' storage sites on the Internet. Bandwidth, through the joint efforts of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), the Environmental Protection Agency Office of Inspector General (EPA-OIG), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), supervised by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Nevada, created a 'warez' site, controlled and monitored by the undercover operation, as a means of attracting predicated targets involved with the distribution of pirated software. The undercover 'warez' site has been accessed to transfer over 100,000 files, including over 12,000 separate software programs, movies and games. Over 200 different individuals participated in the software pirating efforts. Those individuals were able to attain first-run movies, the latest computer games, and versions of notable software products even before they were publicly introduced. As a result of Operation Bandwidth, thousands of copies of pirated software are expected to be removed from circulation, as well as the seizure and forfeiture of the computer hardware and servers used to facilitate the crimes. -- Is it just me or did the DOJ just say that they conspired, along with quite a list of other government agencies (including the EPA of all people) to pirate massive quantities of software? Isn't that illegal? Should we all start our own "sting" operations? Then the software market would be completely dried up. I wonder how much these agencies now owe in fines for software piracy and how long the individual agents involved will spend in jail. Thanks for the free shit, though! .
>but these things would not have reached their current level of development if they had depended on the work of amateurs rather than companies with lawyers and bankers.
>
Just like you will never reach a very high level of intellectual, because you are an amateur at thought.
You overestimate the usefulness to society of lawyers and bankers, I think.
.
That's interesting. I was unaware of the Microcredit thing going on. Brilliant idea. It's refreshing to see that someone finally got on the ball enough to see that a strong nation and strong economy is built from the ground up. In situations where control is enforced from above, too often, much of the benefit of any loans given a country will be wasted before it ever has a chance to reach the bottom. My contention is that large scale organized capitalism breeds corruption and slavery. On the other hand, individual conscious and contientious capitalism breeds strong vibrant economic growth, because the resources are not wasted. You have hundreds of thousands of parallel processing units (people) trying to build society and provide for each other, rather than a single buggy CPU attempting push people to fall in line with THE PLAN (as well intentioned as the plan may be in some cases).
I say that when people have the resources to build and the autonomy to allow them to execute their own decisions on local truth, they will eventually begin to prosper.
.
Yes, exactly. In the olden days, they called that slavery. These days it's much more politically convenient to call things by a new name. It makes it more difficult for the average dimwit to learn from history.
Of course, some would argue that these people are not slaves, because they "have better living conditions", "are subject to their own rule of law, not ours", etc., etc. But when these countries' leaders become their pimps, these people certainly ARE slaves. And our corporations make deals with their corrupt leadership to supply the corporate food chain with fresh slaves. It's not really very complicated to understand.
Maybe we DO need to rework much of modern economics.. Think outside of the box, please.
Maybe I'm ignorant, but that sounds exactly like capitalism to me. Those who were able to sieze opportunities at the right time, have been able to profit greatly. Meanwhile, those with no power, who had no opportunity, or who were too moral to take it, have suffered.
I'm not seeing what the rule of law or fair trials have to do with capitalism. Those are ideals of fair government. Equal opportunity is a false promise of those who promote capitalism, because they are in a good position to take advantage of the system. Yeah, equal opportunity is a nice dream, but if you look around you will see that not since the beginning of time have individuals had what could truly be called EQUAL opportunity. The world just does not work that way. Some people have some advantages, some have others and, others have neither. So, taking that starting point and applying capitalism, you get what you see in the former USSR. That is unregulated capitalism. What regulates capitalism so that those situations don't arrise? Ohh, governments do. Who else is going to put a check on rampant brutal capitalism. No one.
The problem then is, what do you do if the greediest capitalists also control the government? You either bend over and take it, fight for control of your government, or you scratch and claw your way to the top.
All hail the holy ideal of capitalism!!
If you have a broadband connection, devian installation is a breezed. As far as I know, it's VERY difficult to do a first install for any other distro, due to the need for an ISO. With debian, all I need is a fat32 partition (which I have because I'm dual booting with 'doze), a partition set aside for Linux root and swap, and a couple of floppies. The rest is simple: install the base system using the floppies and a base.tgz and driver.tgz (which are sitting on my fat32 driver)... Five minutes later, I'm sitting at a root prompt. I can then install whatever packages I want or update to woody or sid. It's really quite simple. Of course, like everything in Linux, it's something you have to learn by doing.
All you have to do is make sure that non-free is in your sources list. Also, with debian it's easy to install a base system from a couple of tgz's, then use dselect to grab X and it's dependencies along with your favorite WM and any extras. This makes for a nice uncluttered selection of software tailored to your individual needs. I think it's great.
In business, it's not necessary to tell yourself that you will be losing customers by not supporting Win95. In fact, making the decision NOT to support Win95 will save you money in the long run, because you are not dealing with the support issues dredged up by these anachronistic idiots and the ridiculous incompatibilities of old ass Winblows operating systems. Meaning, you don't have to develop with an eye to how your code will work (or not work) on Win95, because you have made it a policy to ridicule the dumbasses that still run it.
That's the funniest shit I've ever heard! I'm gonna patent that.
That's ignorant. Removing intellectual property rights removes the NEED for the GPL. This is because it naturally enforces the exact letter of the GPL: If I make this and release it to the community, you can't take it, change it, and distribute it without releasing it back to the community. Wow, similarly, when there are no IP rights, no one can take anything from the community, because they were never given the artifical right to keep it from the community in the first place. Get it?
Gnome, being under the GNU GPL will never be a "product" in the usual sense unless something pretty wacky is done to change the licensing in the future. Therefore, any companies that dumped large sums of money into the project should have made sure their eyes were open when they opened their pocketbooks. If these companies get some other benefit from having invested in Gnome, then great, but pouring money into the development of GPL software does not give these companies the right to co-opt the project from the community.
Well, those two are hard to separate, because they are both relatively meaningless without some kind of implied shared definition. In other words, they don't mean anything. They are both terms that can be used to mean a variety of things depending on who is using the word. And, for this reason, are easily used to mislead people into thinking that you mean one thing, while actually meaning another. The latter is how politicians use these words. That is why these words were created and given to the politicians to use.
Both are very likely. The future of backwaters like Rwanda must be planned, because, in tomorrow's centrally controlled global corporate empire, the future of everything will be planned.
And, people do tend to like Levi's and Star Wars, but do they like being exterminated?
Meanwhile, the corporation continues to operate at a profit. How do you send a corporation to jail? Ahh, you can't. So, the financial incentive to continue to try to get away with bad things is pretty good. Most of the time, you can get away with it, at least nobody puts you in jail. And, every now and then you get sued, but that may be cheaper than actually doing what's right. And, since the corporate heads are only responsible for making the corporation operate at a profit, and not for the criminal actions of the corporation, they don't care.
Well said. Finally a voice of reason. I'm still pissed you called me a cowboy, though. Even if I am from Texas.
No. I was saying that a law-abiding citizen might use it for that purpose. I am not a law-abiding citizen, so would never raise arms against my government.
However, it's interesting that you say I should only use guns against my fellow citizens. That's kind of mean, isn't it?
What a waste of time. The reason the word globalization has so many interpretations is because it is a word that was designed to give no inherent indication of it's intended meaning. Those who defined it know EXACTLY what it means. The rest of us are supposed to think it means something else. Globalization is a plan to organize the world under centralized control. This is meant to be a non-representative form of government. Just look at what they say:
Globalization is coming whether we like it or not.
Hmm, really. Does that sound like free government to you? I don't think so. They are preparing to shackle the world.
But, what you're meant to understand by the word "globalization" is that it is a plan for a new era of peace and profit for all. This is bullshit. Many wars will need to be fought to wrest control of all of the little countries that don't want to be under centralized control. The rush to globalization is an attempt to force centralized control, so that it is in the hands of those who are currently in a position to profit by it. The idea is similar to what is happening with IP law right now: The entrenched IP monopolists are scared to death of the Internet and the threat that ubiquitous unregulated digital communication poses to their ability to profit. Similarly, the world is on its way to becoming a "global village" based on the sovereignty of all of the worlds individuals (their governments being responsible as agents of that sovereignty). If this is allowed to happen, the people will have, through their governments, the ability to restrict the free reign of the current global elite. So, if they are to maintain their grasp on world power, they must rush to grasp it all, before the world's people realize it is rightfully theirs.
In addition to these point, is a company's crime always a bad product? Can't you make good products while simultaneously polluting both public and private lands. And who owns the air? This whole thing about putting all the land, etc. into private hands is silly. I should be able to sue a megacorp for dumping toxic waste on ANY land, whether I personally own it or not. What stops a megacorp from buying up all the land in an area, using it as a toxic waste dump, then building a subdivision on top of it to sell to unsuspecting families.
That is the kind of shit that they do. The problem is that, even if those families find out and attempt to sue the corporation, the corporation is not even a real entity. Sure it's "possible" to win that court battle. But then those families just get a slice of the corporate profits and business continues as usual. The corporate executives are not criminally liable for their actions. I say they should be.
Yes. A law-abiding citizen might get some use out of an Uzi when the American gestapo comes by to take his guns. A citizenry is a whole lot more unpredictable and the cost of controlling them much higher when they are armed. That's why oppressive governments disarm their people. They don't see their citizens as the resource of national defense, but rather the enemy of state control.
Exactly. My point is that our government props up other governments based on their convenience to the purposes of those who control our government. We do not act as a defender of freedom, but as a defender of monied self-interest. Do we care about freedom, or not. Is our "freedom" bought at the expense of enslaving others? Are we even really free? Or are we just upper-class slaves? I'm not sure, but it seems like nobody thinks these are rational questions to ask. Why?
This is not a war. It's a farce. The US and other countries are maintaining control of the Middle East and have been doing so for years. When the first Americans finally got pissed off enough to deny Britain the "right" to control us, we probably seemed much like these Middle Eastern upstarts to the British. Rag-tag groups of fanatics who just would not submit to enslavement by foreign empire. My point is that you can't claim to value your freedom if you don't support the freedom of others. Continue to stick your head in the sand. Sure it's like all those other "wars". The question is why do we fight them? What is our purpose? And is it OUR purpose or our master's purpose?
Bullshit. Who the fuck are you to say what constitutes an "official" government of a foreign people. What their people accept as a government, unstable as it may be, is their government. Remember all that "For the people, by the people" stuff? It's right for us, but not for them? Is America the land of the free? Do we encourage others to be free as well? Or are we an empire that uses subjugates other nations as our slaves?
I think we're an empire. And it's not long before you will see that it's not an American empire. It has become the global empire of the oligarchy. We are it's slaves, no matter how comfortable we may be. The American people are the Uncle Toms of global slavery. Not because of capitalism, but because the soveriegnty of the people in every country is being systematically destroyed, along with our own.
Your logic is kindof weird. Our government has done these things at the behest of corporate interests. Yet you believe that we should remove our government from the picture in order to allow corporate interests to reign freely. How is the cause of a problem going to be the solution as well?
Maybe I just don't get it.