The business side may have played hardball, but nowhere do I see MS being accused of assaulting, maiming, or killing anyone.
That depends. If you're operating on the level of companies, doesn't Be count as a murder victim?Perhaps even an infant murder victim, after all we'll never know what Be could have been now.
And Be's death is at least partially attributable to Microsoft smothering it with its monopoly maintaining restrictive OEM licenses.
The absolute best MS could hope for in that case is a charge of CorpSlaughter, with the possibility of Murder One being fairly strong.
/.ers should be focused on what needs to be done to keep Microsoft from further maintaining its monopoly, not on simple punishment.
We could tell them to simply obey the law.. it has everything in it already to keep them from maintaining an illegal monopoly.
Unfortunately, they've already shown that the law doesn't mean anything to them (see consent decree). So in civi^H^H^H^H our society we put people who repeatedly refuse to obey the law in jail or to death.
So how do we kill Microsoft? Easy - break up or revoke corporate charter, but the prosecution has shown it doesn't want to pursue that matter any further. (Note appeals never ruled it out completely, just said that the evidence/arguments presented so far were not enough to merit that kind of punishment - the DOJ has chosen not to pursue other arguments (like the consent decree) that might show it's warranted.)
So how do we jail Microsoft? Well, the jail metaphor doesn't really work since people can continue to live separately from society, but corporations can't. Let's go instead with a guard metaphor; some group with the express purpose of watching all of Microsofts actions to ensure they don't break the law again. The settlement provides for this in a very limited way, but gives the guards far too little power, and Microsoft too much influence over them.
Methods:
1. The inmates don't choose their keepers. Microsoft should have *no* input into the selection of the review committee. They've shown a willingness to break the law, they've shown they can not be trusted, so they forfeit any input into the selection process. They get the guard that the people appoint - just like in any jail.
2. Visitors are limited. No mergers, no buy-outs. They develop their technology on their own. They can contract work from other companies if required, but they can not take any IP rights of that work, and cannot require NDA's of those companies involved.
3. Cell-checks. The guards must have the ability to check on what Microsoft is doing. This means technically competent people must be employed (paid for by MS), and if a complaint is recieved those people review the products in question to ensure no monopoly leveraging things (hidden APIs, competition breaking behavior, etc) are present.
This doesn't require that the complainant have any access to the Windows source code whatsoever, but does require that those who think that Windows is engaging in anti-competitive behavior be ready to provide their source and their reasoning as to what they think is going on. The independant reviewers take it from there.
Also note that this requires that all future versions of Windows maintain full backward compatibility. The third party application package (or MS application) you buy today should run perfectly on whatever version of Windows is released (with appropriate MS provided patches) at the end of the settlement period.
4. No contraband. No exceptions for "security protocols" Inmates aren't (or shouldn't be) able to hide stuff in their underwear and claim privacy restrictions. Microsoft shouldn't be able to either.
Okay. And what happens now? What measures are you counting on to work around these problems? What measures are you hoping will let you make things better and vanquish the problems? What's your plan?
I hope your plan isn't getting the evil media over to your side by smashing windows.
Obviously I'm not being clear. Let's use analogy.
The citizenry has been deafened by media that shout down voices arguing for change, hamstrung by a corporate/judicial/governmental system that primarily values money rather than people, and tied into this system by economic pressures felt only by those who do not maintain the system.
So we're deaf, hamstrung, and tied into it, and your response from across the waters is, "Wow, sounds pretty bad. So what are you going to do about it? Just make sure it doesn't involve hitting anyone." Can you make any other suggestions?
Perhaps we should boycott the corporations and.. uh.. starve. Good plan.
Perhaps we should petition the government to stop taking money from corporations. At which point they realize if they don't take money, they can't campaign, and if they can't campaign, they lose. The person who takes the money wins unless we manage to inform and convince more than 50% of the voters.
Aha! So we should inform the voters, gather groups.. except for that we need the media, which by and large aren't interested in the story as it works against their interests. Okay, we need to get our own media - except that media is expensive to produce for a large audience, and more than 50% of the voters is definitely a large audience, especially when we need to convince them in spite of the efforts of the much better funded, better established media institution.
Aha! We need money then.. except to do that very well we need to start up a corporation.. at which point, in order to survive/compete with those corporations which are taking advantage of/depend upon the system, we'll need to take advantage of/depend upon the current system as well, which means that fighting the system is the best way to defeat our own goal of.. well.. fighting the system.
So now you tell me, what can we do about it? But not in your idealistic world where everybody is a fully aware and active citizen, but in the real world where things cost money. Where people work for a living, get home dog-tired, want to eat, sleep, and go to bed, and not have to deal with these bigger issues tonight cause they have to worry about getting the utilities paid first.
Does breaking store windows do a lot? Probably not. Does it do more than not breaking store windows? You tell me.. when did this issue really start to hit the general consciousness of the population? When the violence happened here at home.
There was a revolution in 1776 about this exact kind of thing. It was bloody, it was violent, and the saddest part is, it was necessary as it was the only means that the system didn't have under control. What is most frightening is that these days, we've gotten a lot better at controlling those means as well.
Never argued that we don't get as many of the gizmos.. argued that what we get we seem to take up pretty quick.
Of course the company's making the newest gizmos don't sell here first.. we're a smaller market. Big pickings are in the states, plus there's less to deal with there in terms of transport, duties, etc.
Oh.. and you were looking for household services we had first beyond the debit card? I'm not entirely sure about this, but I think that the house-hold voice-mail/multi-line/caller-id packages were in wide usage here before down in the states.
As for products, oddly, the water-bed.
But you are right about the one thing, for the absolute newest in geek-toys, you're better off shopping in the states..
istartedi wrote: Why, oh why, would anybody want to use a debit card?
and in response, istartedi wrote: If you've got a credit card... [emphasis added]
The other reason is simple convenience. My paycheque goes straight into my bank account. Most of my bills come out automatically, and those that don't I pay via the 'net. When I go to the store I can pay via credit or debit. So I can go for months without even seeing cash. I never worry about whether I have any or not.
Typically though, if I find I'm short of cash at the store, I'll use debit and ask them to give me an extra twenty or forty dollars on it. They don't mind since they don't have to deal with the credit-card's 3% cut on it, and then I have a bit of cash on me which I can use for vending machines.
Now once they wire up the dang chocolate bar machine to the net, I probably won't bother getting cash out at all.
It's called strict liability for criminal offenses. Corporate officers can be and are held liable, and sent to jail, for crimes they commit, or for crimes which they should have prevented.
Like putting so much pollution into rivers the fish literally dissolve? No wait - Monsanto did that and nobody got sent to jail.. hmm..
I know, how about perjury? No wait, Bill G. and Cronies are still free.
Uhmm.. murder then? Surely if a company discards so much effluvia that people become sick and die someone will be prosecuted, right? Well.. unless they happen to manage Dow chemicals in the making of PCBs..
So what criminal offenses committed by a company have people been sent to jail for? The only ones that come to my mind involve fraud, and even then, only after the company has crashed and burned, leaving only the individuals standing when the crime comes to light.
In the US the government is controlled by the corporations so democracy is no longer a check on capitalism.
Nothing is stopping us from having this discussion.
You completely fail to address the point. Yes it's true that nothing is stopping us from having this discussion, but this discussion is not where power is created or democracy is wielded.
Nothing is stopping you or anyone else from creating real, effective, meaningful political movements that could effectively correct flaws.
Well, nothing other than police who don't discriminate between violent and non-violent protestors, an apathetic electorate who feels they have no power to make change, a corporate-government system that sees no point in educating people to the fact that they can effect change, a corporate system that requires the vast majority of people to spend the majority of their energy and time just working to survive (never mind 'get ahead') so leaving no time for activism, a well-funded two-party system that is supported by media conglomerates who typically wave third party concerns to the side (eg, televised debates where third party candidates aren't even invited), laws that increasingly muzzle free speech when it is critical of the corporations, electoral finance funding laws that benefit law-makers and corporations far more than the democratic citizen, an economic system that places more value on paper-profit than real people and very often encourages the former at the expense of the latter, a judicial system where money can purchase increased time to re-try the cases, a judicial system that considers corporations to have all the rights of personhood while having none of the duties, and in short, an entire system devoted to the idea that money=power, as opposed to the idea that voices=power, which is the corner-stone of democracy.
I'm not belittling your comment that we must stand for our views, you're absolutely right and there is nothing more important. But really, to say that there is nothing stopping people from having their views become power is ignoring the realities of the system currently in place and maintained by those who derive their power from that system.
Ok, I'm not very technical, but can't one simply come up with a device that takes the video and audio out and burn it back onto disc?
Sure.
But how much time and money do you want to spend with an oscillascope recording electrical inputs and outputs in order to defeat the cryptography running over the wires?
This is part of what the SSSCA wants to do. Basically, the *only* time it gets decrypted is at the computer chip that is inside the monitor/speakers.
Get or reverse engineer those chips and certainly you could use it to record unencrypted data. But..but..but.. there's this little thing called the DMCA that's already been made into law and now reverse engineering is illegal. So if you make one of these for yourself, you're probably okay. If you make one of these and try to sell it? Bad move.. unless you go black market.
Which means that people are either forced to the black market or have to do it themselves. More trouble than average law-abiding citizens will bother with.
So who's the face of a company like Monsanto? If the company does something illegal, say, poison rivers - does that person get sent to jail?
The reason we call them faceless is because nobody is actually held responsible for the actions of said company. The company may be fined or sued, but the individuals within it are protected for all but the most blatant of federal offences - and not even all of those.
You can't sue the owners of a company for something the company does. All they stand to lose is a company - the profits of any crimes the company committed that they've already spent are still theirs to enjoy.
If a company has a case against a person, a person can lose everything - their job, their possessions, their freedom.
If a person has a case against a company, the the people who caused the company to do the action lose at very worst.. their job.
The *only* thing that money gets you in the legal system is better lawyers, who can raise precedents and theories that underpaid and overworked public defenders could never do.
Untrue. Money also grants you more access to "expert" witnesses, and allows an entity to press their case further - if you have money, you can continue to appeals, if you do not, then typically, you cannot. (Pro bono work being the exception to the rule)
Large amounts of money also grant more access to legislators who make the law in the first place. While there are non-selfish parts of American society, America is primarily based on the notion of "me first - you if there's something left."
Given how large corporations are rapidly becoming, it's of little wonder that there seems to be less and less left for those not accepted by the system.
Re:CSI - Crummy Science for Idiots
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The Rise of CSI
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· Score: 2
Considering I watch the show for entertainment value and not a science lesson, what do I care?
You wanna watch Bill Nye the science guy, go ahead. But why bitch when his show doesn't have a significant plot.. hmm.. maybe because that's not the point.
Re:Media Coverage in SC
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SSSCA Hearing
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· Score: 2
Just wait til you dig a little bit deeper and start finding the reasons to really be scared.
Remember that most news agencies are now owned by content creators.. they have a vested interest in making sure the public doesn't get riled up about this.
I just place my browsing windows in one desktop, and my taskbar in that desktop is equivalent to your browser tab. In other desktops, those windows are not visible.
Linux using elitist.:-)
Some of us don't have the luxury of multiple desktops - in which case Opera's ability to have multi-tabbed windows is a mind saver.
Lots of technology comes out later in Canada (wireless Palms) or not at all (TiVo.)
Yet at the same time, the tech that does come out in Canada tends to get adopted a lot more quickly than it does in the States. The debit card is the classic example. Even our small convenience stores were accepting them almost 10 years ago.
Of course, it could also be set up so that one of the benefits of paying is that you're put into the moderation and meta-moderation pool. If you don't pay, no opportunity to mod or meta-mod.
That way, the people who are paying are the ones who wind up controlling the content - they get what they pay for.
As to submitting comments that's a fairly easy hack. This reply page and the preview or comment submitted pages simply don't count against paid page-views ever.
If you want to change your prefs to see comments in a different style, that strikes me as requiring bandwidth/processing power and isn't contributing anything to the system as a whole, so should have to be paid for like normal. (Where normal is choose what you will and won't pay for)
Oddly, given that they seem to be reaching the saturation point here in North America, and given that India/Asia etc. is a huge market that is just starting to computerize.. this might work out to be a win-win situation.
Microsoft could be like the industrial age of the computing industry - horrible conditions where it exists, but it really gets things moving there for a while.:)
bnetd seems to be the master key, and maybe Blizzard has the right to revoke usage of that master key. I don't necessarily agree with Blizzard's tactics per se, but I can at least see where they are coming from on this issue.
From what I've read, bnetd itself didn't work directly with WC3 - the cheaters first had to hack the bnetd creation before it would.
Now if this is the case, it would make the bnetd guys more equivalent to the people who sell the blank keys than those who made/used the master key.
All the talk about DMCA and fair use and everything else is a very good thing but i think missing a very important point, what happened to old fashioned right and wrong ?
Nobody's ignoring right and wrong..
The bnetd folks haven't done anything wrong.
The beta-cheaters are doing wrong with their use of bnetd.
Blizzard is doing wrong to bnetd because of the beta-cheaters.
What we need is some way to cut out the middle-man. Let Blizzard go after the beta-cheaters directly and not stomp on the bnetd guys. After all, they're about as much at fault for this as a crowbar manufacturer is for someone breaking into a house using that crowbar.
is it right to take someone elses property and use it without paying ?
Absolutely not. But is bnetd taking Battle.net away from Blizzard? The only thing they could be argued taking is a number of the users, and last I checked, people are nobody's property.
is it right to ignore licenses and other agreements because you 'dont care for them' ? Absolutely not. They should never be ignored. However ignorance, lack of a real 'agreement', and civil disobedience are all different things. The key to remember is that if you engage in civil disobedience, you'd best be prepared for the consequences, and if you think there's a lack of a real agreement, you'd best be prepared to defend that position.
Is it right to damage a companies profits and endanger jobs for people ? people with families to feed ? Morality has no connection to a company's profits. I as a human being have absolutely no responsibility to support a company. In fact, if a company is engaged in immoral acts, it is my moral obligation to help stop them, and the employees moral obligation to help stop the practices, or quit and help stop the company.
Is it right to defend anyone who comes along and finds a way around 'iritating things' like security? Finding a way around security is not an immoral act, so yes, it is right to defend a moral person who has done so - especially if they are then made targets of immoral acts, such as the harrassment, or suppression of expression.
I'm skeptical. I don't think that circuit boards are so particularly dangerous. I doubt that they could do much of anything with them on their side of the planet that would have an impact on our side of the planet. I don't care if they litter square miles of their countryside with old motherboards. It's their countryside. They can litter it if they want.
Quick FYI: Circuit boards are made using industrial processes that incorporate large amounts of nasty trace elements and PCBs that aren't generally found in nature.
These get dumped onto Chinese soil, start to decompose, except for the manmade crap - which doesn't decompose because there's no natural agent that can use the stuff. So the manmade crap ends up seeping down into the soil and groundwater, or worse, running directly into the rivers.
Plants pick up this stuff from the soil, algae & plankton from the river when it hits the water, each time concentrating it in their cells.
Animals eat the plants, fish eat the plankton, also concentrating it because it's not natural, so their bodies don't know what to do with it.
Bigger animals eat smaller, bigger fish eat smaller, farmers/hunters harvest the animals, fisherman harvest the fish and sell the concentrated circuit-boards to you as meat.
Mmm-nummy.
Sure, it's their country - but it's MY freaking food supply.
For two months before the strike, all we heard about was "salaries, salaries, salaries! We want more money!".. so the government offered enough money to make them the highest paid teachers in the country, which the teachers REJECTED.
And if you dig even deeper, you find out that the reason that offer was rejected was that the money the government offered was to be pulled from funding previously earmarked for the classrooms.
Do they want more money? Damn straight. After all, the nurses got a 20-25% pay raise - conveniently just before election time, doctors got a 20-25% pay raise - conveniently just before election time, and the government even gave themselves a nice 15%-20% pay raise - conveniently just after election time. (They claim 10% but remember that MLA pay isn't taxable). The teachers see that and want some of that action. Who can really blame them? Personally, I don't think they're worth that much more either, but I can see their point.
But they don't want it at the expense of the classroom - unlike King Klein.
Because how do you fund-raise to purchase several thousand kilometres of fiber-optic cable in a population base smaller than New York City? The percentage of people who contribute to fund-raising efforts, even for such "real" causes as a children's hospital is ludicrously small. You're doing well if you get 5% of the population to contribute.
Setting up your own generator is one thing. Running a fiber-optic cable through 800 km of field and bush is something else entirely.
Slashdot Mirror
The business side may have played hardball, but nowhere do I see MS being accused of assaulting, maiming, or killing anyone.
That depends. If you're operating on the level of companies, doesn't Be count as a murder victim?Perhaps even an infant murder victim, after all we'll never know what Be could have been now.
And Be's death is at least partially attributable to Microsoft smothering it with its monopoly maintaining restrictive OEM licenses.
The absolute best MS could hope for in that case is a charge of CorpSlaughter, with the possibility of Murder One being fairly strong.
/.ers should be focused on what needs to be done to keep Microsoft from further maintaining its monopoly, not on simple punishment.
We could tell them to simply obey the law.. it has everything in it already to keep them from maintaining an illegal monopoly.
Unfortunately, they've already shown that the law doesn't mean anything to them (see consent decree). So in civi^H^H^H^H our society we put people who repeatedly refuse to obey the law in jail or to death.
So how do we kill Microsoft? Easy - break up or revoke corporate charter, but the prosecution has shown it doesn't want to pursue that matter any further. (Note appeals never ruled it out completely, just said that the evidence/arguments presented so far were not enough to merit that kind of punishment - the DOJ has chosen not to pursue other arguments (like the consent decree) that might show it's warranted.)
So how do we jail Microsoft? Well, the jail metaphor doesn't really work since people can continue to live separately from society, but corporations can't. Let's go instead with a guard metaphor; some group with the express purpose of watching all of Microsofts actions to ensure they don't break the law again. The settlement provides for this in a very limited way, but gives the guards far too little power, and Microsoft too much influence over them.
Methods:
1. The inmates don't choose their keepers. Microsoft should have *no* input into the selection of the review committee. They've shown a willingness to break the law, they've shown they can not be trusted, so they forfeit any input into the selection process. They get the guard that the people appoint - just like in any jail.
2. Visitors are limited. No mergers, no buy-outs. They develop their technology on their own. They can contract work from other companies if required, but they can not take any IP rights of that work, and cannot require NDA's of those companies involved.
3. Cell-checks. The guards must have the ability to check on what Microsoft is doing. This means technically competent people must be employed (paid for by MS), and if a complaint is recieved those people review the products in question to ensure no monopoly leveraging things (hidden APIs, competition breaking behavior, etc) are present.
This doesn't require that the complainant have any access to the Windows source code whatsoever, but does require that those who think that Windows is engaging in anti-competitive behavior be ready to provide their source and their reasoning as to what they think is going on. The independant reviewers take it from there.
Also note that this requires that all future versions of Windows maintain full backward compatibility. The third party application package (or MS application) you buy today should run perfectly on whatever version of Windows is released (with appropriate MS provided patches) at the end of the settlement period.
4. No contraband. No exceptions for "security protocols" Inmates aren't (or shouldn't be) able to hide stuff in their underwear and claim privacy restrictions. Microsoft shouldn't be able to either.
One other factor that I haven't seen mentioned yet is more colleges and universities are getting larger numbers of public access computers.
Students don't steal the software because there's no need to. They can just go down to the PA machines and use what's there.
Okay. And what happens now? What measures are you counting on to work around these problems? What measures are you hoping will let you make things better and vanquish the problems? What's your plan?
I hope your plan isn't getting the evil media over to your side by smashing windows.
Obviously I'm not being clear. Let's use analogy.
The citizenry has been deafened by media that shout down voices arguing for change, hamstrung by a corporate/judicial/governmental system that primarily values money rather than people, and tied into this system by economic pressures felt only by those who do not maintain the system.
So we're deaf, hamstrung, and tied into it, and your response from across the waters is,
"Wow, sounds pretty bad. So what are you going to do about it? Just make sure it doesn't involve hitting anyone." Can you make any other suggestions?
Perhaps we should boycott the corporations and.. uh.. starve. Good plan.
Perhaps we should petition the government to stop taking money from corporations. At which point they realize if they don't take money, they can't campaign, and if they can't campaign, they lose. The person who takes the money wins unless we manage to inform and convince more than 50% of the voters.
Aha! So we should inform the voters, gather groups.. except for that we need the media, which by and large aren't interested in the story as it works against their interests. Okay, we need to get our own media - except that media is expensive to produce for a large audience, and more than 50% of the voters is definitely a large audience, especially when we need to convince them in spite of the efforts of the much better funded, better established media institution.
Aha! We need money then.. except to do that very well we need to start up a corporation.. at which point, in order to survive/compete with those corporations which are taking advantage of/depend upon the system, we'll need to take advantage of/depend upon the current system as well, which means that fighting the system is the best way to defeat our own goal of.. well.. fighting the system.
So now you tell me, what can we do about it? But not in your idealistic world where everybody is a fully aware and active citizen, but in the real world where things cost money. Where people work for a living, get home dog-tired, want to eat, sleep, and go to bed, and not have to deal with these bigger issues tonight cause they have to worry about getting the utilities paid first.
Does breaking store windows do a lot? Probably not. Does it do more than not breaking store windows? You tell me.. when did this issue really start to hit the general consciousness of the population? When the violence happened here at home.
There was a revolution in 1776 about this exact kind of thing. It was bloody, it was violent, and the saddest part is, it was necessary as it was the only means that the system didn't have under control. What is most frightening is that these days, we've gotten a lot better at controlling those means as well.
Never argued that we don't get as many of the gizmos.. argued that what we get we seem to take up pretty quick.
:)
Of course the company's making the newest gizmos don't sell here first.. we're a smaller market. Big pickings are in the states, plus there's less to deal with there in terms of transport, duties, etc.
Oh.. and you were looking for household services we had first beyond the debit card? I'm not entirely sure about this, but I think that the house-hold voice-mail/multi-line/caller-id packages were in wide usage here before down in the states.
As for products, oddly, the water-bed.
But you are right about the one thing, for the absolute newest in geek-toys, you're better off shopping in the states..
..but real geeks shop on-line anyway.
istartedi wrote:
... [emphasis added]
Why, oh why, would anybody want to use a debit card?
and in response, istartedi wrote:
If you've got a credit card
The other reason is simple convenience. My paycheque goes straight into my bank account. Most of my bills come out automatically, and those that don't I pay via the 'net. When I go to the store I can pay via credit or debit. So I can go for months without even seeing cash. I never worry about whether I have any or not.
Typically though, if I find I'm short of cash at the store, I'll use debit and ask them to give me an extra twenty or forty dollars on it. They don't mind since they don't have to deal with the credit-card's 3% cut on it, and then I have a bit of cash on me which I can use for vending machines.
Now once they wire up the dang chocolate bar machine to the net, I probably won't bother getting cash out at all.
It's called strict liability for criminal offenses. Corporate officers can be and are held liable, and sent to jail, for crimes they commit, or for crimes which they should have prevented.
Like putting so much pollution into rivers the fish literally dissolve? No wait - Monsanto did that and nobody got sent to jail.. hmm..
I know, how about perjury? No wait, Bill G. and Cronies are still free.
Uhmm.. murder then? Surely if a company discards so much effluvia that people become sick and die someone will be prosecuted, right? Well.. unless they happen to manage Dow chemicals in the making of PCBs..
So what criminal offenses committed by a company have people been sent to jail for? The only ones that come to my mind involve fraud, and even then, only after the company has crashed and burned, leaving only the individuals standing when the crime comes to light.
In the US the government is controlled by the corporations so democracy is no longer a check on capitalism.
Nothing is stopping us from having this discussion.
You completely fail to address the point. Yes it's true that nothing is stopping us from having this discussion, but this discussion is not where power is created or democracy is wielded.
Nothing is stopping you or anyone else from creating real, effective, meaningful political movements that could effectively correct flaws.
Well, nothing other than police who don't discriminate between violent and non-violent protestors, an apathetic electorate who feels they have no power to make change, a corporate-government system that sees no point in educating people to the fact that they can effect change, a corporate system that requires the vast majority of people to spend the majority of their energy and time just working to survive (never mind 'get ahead') so leaving no time for activism, a well-funded two-party system that is supported by media conglomerates who typically wave third party concerns to the side (eg, televised debates where third party candidates aren't even invited), laws that increasingly muzzle free speech when it is critical of the corporations, electoral finance funding laws that benefit law-makers and corporations far more than the democratic citizen, an economic system that places more value on paper-profit than real people and very often encourages the former at the expense of the latter, a judicial system where money can purchase increased time to re-try the cases, a judicial system that considers corporations to have all the rights of personhood while having none of the duties, and in short, an entire system devoted to the idea that money=power, as opposed to the idea that voices=power, which is the corner-stone of democracy.
I'm not belittling your comment that we must stand for our views, you're absolutely right and there is nothing more important. But really, to say that there is nothing stopping people from having their views become power is ignoring the realities of the system currently in place and maintained by those who derive their power from that system.
Ok, I'm not very technical, but can't one simply come up with a device that takes the video and audio out and burn it back onto disc?
Sure.
But how much time and money do you want to spend with an oscillascope recording electrical inputs and outputs in order to defeat the cryptography running over the wires?
This is part of what the SSSCA wants to do. Basically, the *only* time it gets decrypted is at the computer chip that is inside the monitor/speakers.
Get or reverse engineer those chips and certainly you could use it to record unencrypted data.
But..but..but.. there's this little thing called the DMCA that's already been made into law and now reverse engineering is illegal. So if you make one of these for yourself, you're probably okay. If you make one of these and try to sell it? Bad move.. unless you go black market.
Which means that people are either forced to the black market or have to do it themselves. More trouble than average law-abiding citizens will bother with.
Faceless companies are a myth, folks.
So who's the face of a company like Monsanto? If the company does something illegal, say, poison rivers - does that person get sent to jail?
The reason we call them faceless is because nobody is actually held responsible for the actions of said company. The company may be fined or sued, but the individuals within it are protected for all but the most blatant of federal offences - and not even all of those.
You can't sue the owners of a company for something the company does. All they stand to lose is a company - the profits of any crimes the company committed that they've already spent are still theirs to enjoy.
If a company has a case against a person, a person can lose everything - their job, their possessions, their freedom.
If a person has a case against a company, the the people who caused the company to do the action lose at very worst.. their job.
The *only* thing that money gets you in the legal system is better lawyers, who can raise precedents and theories that underpaid and overworked public defenders could never do.
Untrue.
Money also grants you more access to "expert" witnesses, and allows an entity to press their case further - if you have money, you can continue to appeals, if you do not, then typically, you cannot. (Pro bono work being the exception to the rule)
Large amounts of money also grant more access to legislators who make the law in the first place. While there are non-selfish parts of American society, America is primarily based on the notion of "me first - you if there's something left."
Given how large corporations are rapidly becoming, it's of little wonder that there seems to be less and less left for those not accepted by the system.
Considering I watch the show for entertainment value and not a science lesson, what do I care?
You wanna watch Bill Nye the science guy, go ahead. But why bitch when his show doesn't have a significant plot.. hmm.. maybe because that's not the point.
Just wait til you dig a little bit deeper and start finding the reasons to really be scared.
Remember that most news agencies are now owned by content creators.. they have a vested interest in making sure the public doesn't get riled up about this.
Check out http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/ for more information.
I just place my browsing windows in one desktop, and my taskbar in that desktop is equivalent to your browser tab. In other desktops, those windows are not visible.
:-)
Linux using elitist.
Some of us don't have the luxury of multiple desktops - in which case Opera's ability to have multi-tabbed windows is a mind saver.
Lots of technology comes out later in Canada (wireless Palms) or not at all (TiVo.)
Yet at the same time, the tech that does come out in Canada tends to get adopted a lot more quickly than it does in the States. The debit card is the classic example. Even our small convenience stores were accepting them almost 10 years ago.
Did you even read the article you link to?
The points system is based on language skills, education, and work experience.
Tech people from America can rightfully lay claim to all three.
Of course, it could also be set up so that one of the benefits of paying is that you're put into the moderation and meta-moderation pool. If you don't pay, no opportunity to mod or meta-mod.
That way, the people who are paying are the ones who wind up controlling the content - they get what they pay for.
As to submitting comments that's a fairly easy hack. This reply page and the preview or comment submitted pages simply don't count against paid page-views ever.
If you want to change your prefs to see comments in a different style, that strikes me as requiring bandwidth/processing power and isn't contributing anything to the system as a whole, so should have to be paid for like normal. (Where normal is choose what you will and won't pay for)
Oddly, given that they seem to be reaching the saturation point here in North America, and given that India/Asia etc. is a huge market that is just starting to computerize.. this might work out to be a win-win situation.
:)
Microsoft could be like the industrial age of the computing industry - horrible conditions where it exists, but it really gets things moving there for a while.
Your campus IT store is full of it.
. asp
Check out this page:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/howtobuy/academic
It's not as cheap as it was in 97, ($199US for Office XP Pro, $149 for Office XP standard), but it's still a deal off the normal pricing.
bnetd seems to be the master key, and maybe Blizzard has the right to revoke usage of that master key. I don't necessarily agree with Blizzard's tactics per se, but I can at least see where they are coming from on this issue.
From what I've read, bnetd itself didn't work directly with WC3 - the cheaters first had to hack the bnetd creation before it would.
Now if this is the case, it would make the bnetd guys more equivalent to the people who sell the blank keys than those who made/used the master key.
All the talk about DMCA and fair use and everything else is a very good thing but i think missing a very important point, what happened to old fashioned right and wrong ?
Nobody's ignoring right and wrong..
The bnetd folks haven't done anything wrong.
The beta-cheaters are doing wrong with their use of bnetd.
Blizzard is doing wrong to bnetd because of the beta-cheaters.
What we need is some way to cut out the middle-man. Let Blizzard go after the beta-cheaters directly and not stomp on the bnetd guys. After all, they're about as much at fault for this as a crowbar manufacturer is for someone breaking into a house using that crowbar.
is it right to take someone elses property and use it without paying ?
Absolutely not. But is bnetd taking Battle.net away from Blizzard? The only thing they could be argued taking is a number of the users, and last I checked, people are nobody's property.
is it right to ignore licenses and other agreements because you 'dont care for them' ?
Absolutely not. They should never be ignored. However ignorance, lack of a real 'agreement', and civil disobedience are all different things. The key to remember is that if you engage in civil disobedience, you'd best be prepared for the consequences, and if you think there's a lack of a real agreement, you'd best be prepared to defend that position.
Is it right to damage a companies profits and endanger jobs for people ? people with families to feed ?
Morality has no connection to a company's profits. I as a human being have absolutely no responsibility to support a company. In fact, if a company is engaged in immoral acts, it is my moral obligation to help stop them, and the employees moral obligation to help stop the practices, or quit and help stop the company.
Is it right to defend anyone who comes along and finds a way around 'iritating things' like security?
Finding a way around security is not an immoral act, so yes, it is right to defend a moral person who has done so - especially if they are then made targets of immoral acts, such as the harrassment, or suppression of expression.
Go with Opera.
The new 6.0 version does CSS like a dream, and easy on the clock-cycles too.
I'm skeptical. I don't think that circuit boards are so particularly dangerous. I doubt that they could do much of anything with them on their side of the planet that would have an impact on our side of the planet. I don't care if they litter square miles of their countryside with old motherboards. It's their countryside. They can litter it if they want.
Quick FYI:
Circuit boards are made using industrial processes that incorporate large amounts of nasty trace elements and PCBs that aren't generally found in nature.
These get dumped onto Chinese soil, start to decompose, except for the manmade crap - which doesn't decompose because there's no natural agent that can use the stuff. So the manmade crap ends up seeping down into the soil and groundwater, or worse, running directly into the rivers.
Plants pick up this stuff from the soil, algae & plankton from the river when it hits the water, each time concentrating it in their cells.
Animals eat the plants, fish eat the plankton, also concentrating it because it's not natural, so their bodies don't know what to do with it.
Bigger animals eat smaller, bigger fish eat smaller, farmers/hunters harvest the animals, fisherman harvest the fish and sell the concentrated circuit-boards to you as meat.
Mmm-nummy.
Sure, it's their country - but it's MY freaking food supply.
For two months before the strike, all we heard about was "salaries, salaries, salaries! We want more money!".. so the government offered enough money to make them the highest paid teachers in the country, which the teachers REJECTED.
And if you dig even deeper, you find out that the reason that offer was rejected was that the money the government offered was to be pulled from funding previously earmarked for the classrooms.
Do they want more money? Damn straight. After all, the nurses got a 20-25% pay raise - conveniently just before election time, doctors got a 20-25% pay raise - conveniently just before election time, and the government even gave themselves a nice 15%-20% pay raise - conveniently just after election time. (They claim 10% but remember that MLA pay isn't taxable). The teachers see that and want some of that action. Who can really blame them? Personally, I don't think they're worth that much more either, but I can see their point.
But they don't want it at the expense of the classroom - unlike King Klein.
Because how do you fund-raise to purchase several thousand kilometres of fiber-optic cable in a population base smaller than New York City? The percentage of people who contribute to fund-raising efforts, even for such "real" causes as a children's hospital is ludicrously small. You're doing well if you get 5% of the population to contribute.
Setting up your own generator is one thing. Running a fiber-optic cable through 800 km of field and bush is something else entirely.