It is more like you have the license plate number of the car, and can see an arm sticking out and keying your car as it drives by on the surveillance camera. You make the assumption that the car was being drive by the person to whom it is registered, and get a subpoena to get the name of the registrant from the institution that assigned license plates to people.
Imagine your company writes a piece of software. Should the first person to buy it be allowed to start giving it away to everybody else? Imagine your company makes a widget. Should the first person to buy it be allowed to start duplicating it and selling it for just above the cost of production, which you cannot do because you have to cover the R&D that went into it? The whole economy breaks down if you get rid of intangible property rights.
It is not a witch hunt. A witch hunt is going after people who have not committed a crime and no crime has been committed. This is going after people who broke the law. Yes, they may have gone after a few innocent people, which is why we have a court system to determine if the defendants are guilty or innocent.
The laws may be bad. The courts may be broken. The judges may be corrupt. The juries may be ignorant and stupid. The plaintiff may be abusing the system and bullying. The lawyers may be . . . lawyers. But all of that does not justify the actions of those who are guilty, and there are many of them.
Should the copyright holders and their representatives just stand by idly while their copyrights are being violated?
Should open source developers just stand by idly if companies take their code and distribute binaries in a manner that constitutes copyright violation?
Democracy can fix this at this stage. It would just requiring the majority of the people voting for good candidates.
A question (not rhetorical): Has a society ever gotten upset with a government overstepping its bounds and turning on its people early enough to vote for a good government? Or do they always get upset too late, and the government collapses by other means?
Another question: Has anybody ever used a major party to get elected with the subvert goal of turning against the party once elected, or can it be reasonably assumed that nobody running for a major party is going to fix the system.
It isn't at all the fault of the people who actually broke the law?
These people distributed copyrighted material that they had no right nor authorization to distribute. Representatives of the copyright holders found out about it, and are suing. Unless the representatives found out about it in an illegal way (read: non-admissible in court), they are fully within their rights to sue.
That the representatives may be ripping off the copyright holders, engaging in questionable business practices, producing garbage, and contributing nothing to society is entirely beside the point as far as these cases go. If anything they do is illegal, sue/prosecute them independently. If you don't like the laws, stop voting for Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, move to another country, or overthrow the government.
But let us not forget that that there is evidence that the people being sued have broken the law and that the plaintiffs are completely within their rights to sue, and to use the facilities granted to them by law (i.e. warrants and subpoenas).
They are providing what the customers demand instead of providing what the customers want. The distinction is significant. Customers want a lot of things, but they only demand a few.
Non-monopolies focus on supplying as much of the demands as they can, with a few of the wants. That way they can keep throwing in a few wants here and there as upgrades to keep the money coming in.
Monopolies (usually) focus on maintaining the monopoly, customer wants and demands notwithstanding.
Their brains might be able to figure out that it is a load of shit, but thinking is so 20th century. Now, we know with our guts. And their guts know that they need to track every movement of your and your money, to protect you from yourself.
"why won't the OS auto-save each document I'm working on every 1-5 minutes so I can recover from mistakenly overwriting a file or saving it when I intended to discard changes?"
Because the OS has no idea which chunk of memory corresponds to which chunk of which file and how to convert the memory chunk to the file chunk. That is what the application that you are working on the document with knows; thus it is the application's job to save it.
If you wrote an OS that provided a way to have the applications let the OS handle saving documents, I promise you that most application developers would ignore it entirely, as they know better how to deal with their documents than the operating system does.
1) Car comes to a complete stop at a stop sign, then hits the gas and runs into me (on my bike). Cause: not paying attention. 2) Accident ahead. Guy swerves inches in front of me (we're both 10mph _under_ the limit) and slams on the brakes. Cause: not paying attention. 3) Lady in minivan backs into my (non-moving) car in parking lot. Admits to being on cell phone. Cause: not paying attention. 4) Guy rear-ends me when I am stopped at a stop sign, because he was looking up the intersecting road to see if he had to actually stop instead of looking right in front of him. Cause: not paying attention. 5) Lady in minivan backs into my (non-moving) car in parking lot. Admits to being on cell phone. Cause: not paying attention. 6) Bus doing 10mph _under_ the speed limit runs me (on my bike) off the road. Cause: not paying attention.
6/6 not paying attention 0/6 speed related
No amount of pigs and cameras is going to prevent accidents as long as people don't pay attention.
The code may be closed, but the standards are open. Google uses properly formed HTML and CSS. Google uses IMAP. Google uses XMPP. Google releases their applications for multiple platforms. Google does not use broken or undocumented formats to force you to use their products.
"I've never understood why I pay 20k a year for internet not even as good as a cable modem."
So why don't you drop your current ISP and switch to your local cable provider? Oh, right. Because you aren't paying 20k/yr for internet, you're paying 20k/yr for college.
Federal elections: It doesn't matter who I vote for, the NY electoral votes go to the Democrats. State elections: It doesn't matter who I vote for, the NY assembly wastes all the money and asks for more. Local elections: It doesn't matter who I vote for, everything is dictated by the federal and state governments, except how much money my town wastes on doomed projects.
I'd like a Ritter Sport, but would settle for a few Hershey's Kisses.
The laughable part is not the strength of the encryption, but that he is assuming that you are breaking the law and trying to trick somebody else into breaking a law to catch you.
Why he is assuming that I am breaking the law, I do not know.
You, just like the RIAA, are assuming (incorrectly) that I am doing something illegal. I am not proposing sharing artwork with their copyrighted works, I am proposing sharing artwork with data that I am legally allowed to distribute (i.e. GPL code, public domain art, non-copyrightable data).
If I am doing something completely legal and somebody else breaks the letter of the (DMCA) law, will that not pass the laugh test?
"And I accept no actual private email without it either..."
How did that go? I have considered configuring my system to reject any unencrypted email. (It would surely cut down on spam for a while, though that is not the primary goal.) However, after talking to my friends and family about it, I concluded that none of my family and few of my friends would ever email me again, and my phone bill would go way up.
Somebody should create a file sharing program that has the user create a small copyrightable piece of art, and encrypt it along with the data to be transfered. Any attempt to decrypt the data is also (illegally) decrypting your copyrighted art.
In the Massachusetts, adults may serve alcohol to their own children or underage spouse in a private setting (i.e. Not in a bar). It is probably the same in many, if not all, other states.
Slashdot Mirror
It is more like you have the license plate number of the car, and can see an arm sticking out and keying your car as it drives by on the surveillance camera. You make the assumption that the car was being drive by the person to whom it is registered, and get a subpoena to get the name of the registrant from the institution that assigned license plates to people.
Imagine your company writes a piece of software. Should the first person to buy it be allowed to start giving it away to everybody else? Imagine your company makes a widget. Should the first person to buy it be allowed to start duplicating it and selling it for just above the cost of production, which you cannot do because you have to cover the R&D that went into it? The whole economy breaks down if you get rid of intangible property rights.
I already stated that some of the people are innocent, and [hopefully] will be found so by the legal system.
By "these people" I was referring to those who are, in fact, guilty.
It would be pretty silly to say "The people innocent of doing X did X." wouldn't it?
It is not a witch hunt. A witch hunt is going after people who have not committed a crime and no crime has been committed. This is going after people who broke the law. Yes, they may have gone after a few innocent people, which is why we have a court system to determine if the defendants are guilty or innocent.
The laws may be bad. The courts may be broken. The judges may be corrupt. The juries may be ignorant and stupid. The plaintiff may be abusing the system and bullying. The lawyers may be . . . lawyers. But all of that does not justify the actions of those who are guilty, and there are many of them.
Should the copyright holders and their representatives just stand by idly while their copyrights are being violated?
Should open source developers just stand by idly if companies take their code and distribute binaries in a manner that constitutes copyright violation?
Democracy can fix this at this stage. It would just requiring the majority of the people voting for good candidates.
A question (not rhetorical):
Has a society ever gotten upset with a government overstepping its bounds and turning on its people early enough to vote for a good government? Or do they always get upset too late, and the government collapses by other means?
Another question:
Has anybody ever used a major party to get elected with the subvert goal of turning against the party once elected, or can it be reasonably assumed that nobody running for a major party is going to fix the system.
It isn't at all the fault of the people who actually broke the law?
These people distributed copyrighted material that they had no right nor authorization to distribute. Representatives of the copyright holders found out about it, and are suing. Unless the representatives found out about it in an illegal way (read: non-admissible in court), they are fully within their rights to sue.
That the representatives may be ripping off the copyright holders, engaging in questionable business practices, producing garbage, and contributing nothing to society is entirely beside the point as far as these cases go. If anything they do is illegal, sue/prosecute them independently. If you don't like the laws, stop voting for Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, move to another country, or overthrow the government.
But let us not forget that that there is evidence that the people being sued have broken the law and that the plaintiffs are completely within their rights to sue, and to use the facilities granted to them by law (i.e. warrants and subpoenas).
Testing (Lenny) still defaults to sysv init.
They are providing what the customers demand instead of providing what the customers want. The distinction is significant. Customers want a lot of things, but they only demand a few.
Non-monopolies focus on supplying as much of the demands as they can, with a few of the wants. That way they can keep throwing in a few wants here and there as upgrades to keep the money coming in.
Monopolies (usually) focus on maintaining the monopoly, customer wants and demands notwithstanding.
Their brains might be able to figure out that it is a load of shit, but thinking is so 20th century. Now, we know with our guts. And their guts know that they need to track every movement of your and your money, to protect you from yourself.
Singapore?! The you-must-register-to-buy-chewing-gum country? I don't think so.
"why won't the OS auto-save each document I'm working on every 1-5 minutes so I can recover from mistakenly overwriting a file or saving it when I intended to discard changes?"
Because the OS has no idea which chunk of memory corresponds to which chunk of which file and how to convert the memory chunk to the file chunk. That is what the application that you are working on the document with knows; thus it is the application's job to save it.
If you wrote an OS that provided a way to have the applications let the OS handle saving documents, I promise you that most application developers would ignore it entirely, as they know better how to deal with their documents than the operating system does.
I have been involved in 6 car accidents.
1) Car comes to a complete stop at a stop sign, then hits the gas and runs into me (on my bike). Cause: not paying attention.
2) Accident ahead. Guy swerves inches in front of me (we're both 10mph _under_ the limit) and slams on the brakes. Cause: not paying attention.
3) Lady in minivan backs into my (non-moving) car in parking lot. Admits to being on cell phone. Cause: not paying attention.
4) Guy rear-ends me when I am stopped at a stop sign, because he was looking up the intersecting road to see if he had to actually stop instead of looking right in front of him. Cause: not paying attention.
5) Lady in minivan backs into my (non-moving) car in parking lot. Admits to being on cell phone. Cause: not paying attention.
6) Bus doing 10mph _under_ the speed limit runs me (on my bike) off the road. Cause: not paying attention.
6/6 not paying attention
0/6 speed related
No amount of pigs and cameras is going to prevent accidents as long as people don't pay attention.
The code may be closed, but the standards are open. Google uses properly formed HTML and CSS. Google uses IMAP. Google uses XMPP. Google releases their applications for multiple platforms. Google does not use broken or undocumented formats to force you to use their products.
"I've never understood why I pay 20k a year for internet not even as good as a cable modem."
So why don't you drop your current ISP and switch to your local cable provider? Oh, right. Because you aren't paying 20k/yr for internet, you're paying 20k/yr for college.
Federal elections: It doesn't matter who I vote for, the NY electoral votes go to the Democrats.
State elections: It doesn't matter who I vote for, the NY assembly wastes all the money and asks for more.
Local elections: It doesn't matter who I vote for, everything is dictated by the federal and state governments, except how much money my town wastes on doomed projects.
I'd like a Ritter Sport, but would settle for a few Hershey's Kisses.
You have no sense of humor. Your ./ privileges have been revoked. Please go post on YouTube.
All W has to do is claim that the StupidFilter deleted them. Nobody will argue the point.
The laughable part is not the strength of the encryption, but that he is assuming that you are breaking the law and trying to trick somebody else into breaking a law to catch you.
Why he is assuming that I am breaking the law, I do not know.
You, just like the RIAA, are assuming (incorrectly) that I am doing something illegal. I am not proposing sharing artwork with their copyrighted works, I am proposing sharing artwork with data that I am legally allowed to distribute (i.e. GPL code, public domain art, non-copyrightable data).
If I am doing something completely legal and somebody else breaks the letter of the (DMCA) law, will that not pass the laugh test?
"And I accept no actual private email without it either..."
How did that go? I have considered configuring my system to reject any unencrypted email. (It would surely cut down on spam for a while, though that is not the primary goal.) However, after talking to my friends and family about it, I concluded that none of my family and few of my friends would ever email me again, and my phone bill would go way up.
Somebody should create a file sharing program that has the user create a small copyrightable piece of art, and encrypt it along with the data to be transfered. Any attempt to decrypt the data is also (illegally) decrypting your copyrighted art.
Your California link is not a law, but a bill. Was it passed?
No. The correct solution is to arrest anybody who posts videos on YouTube.
In the Massachusetts, adults may serve alcohol to their own children or underage spouse in a private setting (i.e. Not in a bar). It is probably the same in many, if not all, other states.
Reference: http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/138-34.htm
So when are we going to replace email with Internet Mail 2000?