The FCC appears to care about the consumer a bit, as they are the ones that have recently refused to allow use of the broadcast flag and analog disabling flag.
The FCC approved the broadcast flag. It was defeated in court as beyond the FCCs authority.
The tuner cards I use are perfectly happy to "respect" the broadcast flag. They pass it in the MPEG stream, to MythTV... which then faithfully records it. Bad MythTV, bad:-)
It's entirely true that free speech means that you can say anything you want; however, people don't understand that there can be repercussions for their speech.
Just like in Soviet Russia, you are free to say anything you want. However, repercussions can range from a less than friendly visit from your local party goons Ivan and Ivan, to life in the gulag, to a bullet in the back of the head. But you have free speech, really.
Free speech is meaningless unless it also includes freedom from official consequences.
The United States Enrichment Corporation, a private company spun off from the Department of Energy in the 1990s, is the treaty-designated agent on the Russian imports. It, in turn, sells the fuel to utilities at prevailing market prices, an arrangement that at times has angered the Russians.
So the most likely thing to happen will be that instead of a bunch of US government-connected fatcats reaping a windfall, some Russian government-connected fatcats will reap a windfall (or at least the balance shifts their way), but the fuel keeps flowing.
Wrong! The feds won't get involved for anything less than $50,000. My company called them once and got turned down flat. They had to wildly exaggerate the amount of losses to get them to investigate.
Unfortunately, as Kevin Mitnick found out, such lying about the amount of losses results in additional penalties for the accused, not for the liar.
Attack the problem at the root of its source and work to show that piracy really isn't a big deal, that's your only choice. Fundamentally, DRM is the only other alternative the market has to offer right now.
You're assuming that piracy is the reason behind DRM. It's not. As the content producers have shown time and time again by validating the most absurd extrapolations of their positions, it's about control. And always has been. They wanted to ban the VCR, remember, and not because of piracy. They tried to ban the MP3 player. They've said that skipping commercials is stealing and came up just short of claiming using the bathroom during one is too, acting as if this was some magnanimous exception to the rule.
They want DRM on broadcasts for the sake of control, and for the _illegitimate_ reasons like preventing time-shifting and skipping commercials. Piracy is merely an excuse.
Your body isn't just a black box. Eating some amount of calories in oatmeal and eating the same amount in breakfast cereal will have different results: your body works harder to digest the oatmeal so your metabolism is higher, resulting in lower total calories; the added fiber changes how your body digests the other food in your digestive system.
They have different short term results, but the same long term results; the rate at which the food is metabolized will be quite different, but total calories will be nearly the same; the additional effort of digestion is very small.
Cutting calories is a myth. In fact, while losing about 20kg of fat and putting on the same amount in muscle, I ate more than I had eaten before I started the program.
Of course you did. You increased calorie consumption and increased your burn rate. Note that building muscle requires calories; far more calories than can be had by metabolizing the same mass of fat.
Oh, please, Slashdotters and IT people in general may be fond of acronyms and backronyms, but we're not even the worst offender The worst offender is the military. Nobody laughs at them. Ever wonder why? Because they have weapons, that's why.
(Do I have a point? Hell no. But if you make a graph of armament versus ridicule and re-label it with random businessy-sounding terms, the executives might love it)
(they forget to mention the *EXTRA* fuel expense for the leading vehicle that is basically towing the others..)
This is not always the case. In some cases, the reduction of the drag from turbulence off the rear means that the leading vehicle also gets a benefit, though not as much as the following ones. This is true in stock car racing and in skating; I don't know about cycling.
Re:Just to start us off with a car analogy...
on
Lulu Introduces DRM
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· Score: 1
DRM is not the devil. It is a tool.
Sure, it's a tool. A tool with the power of the largest governments in the world behind it. Without the DMCA and its cousins around the world, DRM would be revealed as the scam that it is, even to those now using it. And the DMCA _is_ evil.
Re:Why complain about choice?
on
Lulu Introduces DRM
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I don't generally. It's actually really fucking annoying how many evil companies there are and how little punishment our society gives them. I'm always amazed that non-smokers are willing to buy items from cigarette companies.
Eh? If they want to supply suicide sticks to others, that's fine with me.
Or the number of people who bring that chocolate bar up to the cash register after I say "You should get Fair Trade chocolate instead since that one is made with slave labor.
Maybe they just don't believe you. Me, I figure they're both made with slave labor, and the Fair Trade schtick is just a way to get suckers to pay the slavemasters more, but I'm a wee bit cynical.
If the machine was clearly marked as having a $99K max payout, he should get the $99K. If it didn't, he should get the $166 million and if the Seminoles won't pay, they should end up in jail as racketeers.
And to solve the piracy problem: Stop releasing stuff in forms that can be easily pirated. Stop releasing DVD box sets, stop releasing individual episodes on iTunes, and stop letting the media slip out of your control.
Also stop broadcasting the shows. Best just to keep them in a vault somewhere, where no one can see them. Perhaps as a compromise some sort of peep show type interface could be used, with armed guards and strip searches to make sure no one brings a camera or microphone near the viewer.
I already cut the cord. And no downloading (legal or otherwise) was responsible. Why? I realized that every show I watched was on the broadcast channels. So why pay $50/month (up to $60 now) for the broadcast channels (available over the air), plus a load of cable channels with nothing I watched on them. There's some good shows on the premium channels, but those few I can get later on a (rented) DVD, at far lower cost.
The notion that freedom must masquerade as anarchy is stupid and destructive. There is absolutely no reason why ISPs, registrars, etc should be allows to serve/host known scam sites or CnC servers.
Most opponents of freedom like to call that state "anarchy". If I go to a registrar and buy reclaimed-cash.com, the registrar has no idea what I'm doing with it, and it's anti-freedom to require him to find out upon penalty of great liability. Similarly, when I go to a hosting provider and set up my web site reclaimed-cash.com, the ISP has no idea what I'm doing with that site and shouldn't be required to find out. Furthermore, if someone later alleges that "reclaimed-cash.com" is a scam site, it's not the ISP's (or the registrar's) job to be judge, jury, and executioner and pull the plug on the site; that's inherently anti-freedom as well. If I'm committing fraud, let the government get an injunction, in an adversarial proceeding.
And this law goes further. This law says that if some person accesses alleged scam site reclaimed-cash.com, not only is the ISP hosting that site due for liability, but so is the victim's ISP. So are all the transit providers in-between. Essentially everyone who carries traffic becomes liable for its content. That's anti-freedom too.
I mean, sure, the law states that when an intersection has traffic lights, and the lights are out, it's an all-way stop. But in practice, I rarely see other drivers actually give a fuck that they are supposed to stop.
I believe in Maryland, the rule is that traffic on major thoroughfares has the right of way with all lights out. So where Podunk Road intersects Route 650, you're supposed to treat a light which is out as a flashing yellow for 650 and a flashing red (or stop sign) for Podunk. I've driven on 650 (New Hampshire Avenue) with all lights out during the rush, and it works OK, but Rockville Pike is much more heavily travelled and would be a disaster.
There are people who don't listen to music? That's probably the saddest thing I've ever heard.
You need to get out more. Or watch international news. Or local news in any large city. Or those Christian's Children Fund commercials with Sally Struthers. There's far sadder out there than not listening to music. Some of us just don't enjoy it.
As for the rest of it, that's the nature of Taxation. Everyone pays because everyone can benefit, and it's up to them if they choose to.
And the case for using taxation for specific forms of entertainment is...?
Looking at the wording of the law, I think the idea was to make the scammer's own ISP liable, not every ISP in the country. But that's not what it says; the law ends up covering every ISP from the scammer to the customer, including transit providers. Hopefully this thing will get killed.
That might be so, but I can't say, a Brit living in the US, that I'm especially enamoured by the little sparks that I tend to see now and then when plugging devices into the wall. When I explain to my American friends that we have little switches on the sockets to turn them off and on, they can't seem to understand the point of them.
The little switches just mean you don't see the sparks. They're still there when you flip the switch, at the switch contacts rather than between the plug and socket contacts. Unless those things are so overengineered they're actually a switch with a relay and zero-crossing detector.
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The FCC approved the broadcast flag. It was defeated in court as beyond the FCCs authority. The tuner cards I use are perfectly happy to "respect" the broadcast flag. They pass it in the MPEG stream, to MythTV... which then faithfully records it. Bad MythTV, bad :-)
Really? So the judge isn't a government official?
Just like in Soviet Russia, you are free to say anything you want. However, repercussions can range from a less than friendly visit from your local party goons Ivan and Ivan, to life in the gulag, to a bullet in the back of the head. But you have free speech, really.
Free speech is meaningless unless it also includes freedom from official consequences.
They don't. According to the article, IP addresses are not recorded and other records are kept only for a few weeks.
So the most likely thing to happen will be that instead of a bunch of US government-connected fatcats reaping a windfall, some Russian government-connected fatcats will reap a windfall (or at least the balance shifts their way), but the fuel keeps flowing.
Unfortunately, as Kevin Mitnick found out, such lying about the amount of losses results in additional penalties for the accused, not for the liar.
You're assuming that piracy is the reason behind DRM. It's not. As the content producers have shown time and time again by validating the most absurd extrapolations of their positions, it's about control. And always has been. They wanted to ban the VCR, remember, and not because of piracy. They tried to ban the MP3 player. They've said that skipping commercials is stealing and came up just short of claiming using the bathroom during one is too, acting as if this was some magnanimous exception to the rule.
They want DRM on broadcasts for the sake of control, and for the _illegitimate_ reasons like preventing time-shifting and skipping commercials. Piracy is merely an excuse.
How about I don't eat chocolate bars at all?
No, that doesn't work, the plantation owners just cut the rations of the slaves to compensate, right?
They have different short term results, but the same long term results; the rate at which the food is metabolized will be quite different, but total calories will be nearly the same; the additional effort of digestion is very small.
Of course you did. You increased calorie consumption and increased your burn rate. Note that building muscle requires calories; far more calories than can be had by metabolizing the same mass of fat.
Oh, please, Slashdotters and IT people in general may be fond of acronyms and backronyms, but we're not even the worst offender The worst offender is the military. Nobody laughs at them. Ever wonder why? Because they have weapons, that's why. (Do I have a point? Hell no. But if you make a graph of armament versus ridicule and re-label it with random businessy-sounding terms, the executives might love it)
This is not always the case. In some cases, the reduction of the drag from turbulence off the rear means that the leading vehicle also gets a benefit, though not as much as the following ones. This is true in stock car racing and in skating; I don't know about cycling.
Sure, it's a tool. A tool with the power of the largest governments in the world behind it. Without the DMCA and its cousins around the world, DRM would be revealed as the scam that it is, even to those now using it. And the DMCA _is_ evil.
Eh? If they want to supply suicide sticks to others, that's fine with me.
Maybe they just don't believe you. Me, I figure they're both made with slave labor, and the Fair Trade schtick is just a way to get suckers to pay the slavemasters more, but I'm a wee bit cynical.
If the machine was clearly marked as having a $99K max payout, he should get the $99K. If it didn't, he should get the $166 million and if the Seminoles won't pay, they should end up in jail as racketeers.
Also stop broadcasting the shows. Best just to keep them in a vault somewhere, where no one can see them. Perhaps as a compromise some sort of peep show type interface could be used, with armed guards and strip searches to make sure no one brings a camera or microphone near the viewer.
But what about their suppliers? Won't somebody think of the drug dealers?
I already cut the cord. And no downloading (legal or otherwise) was responsible. Why? I realized that every show I watched was on the broadcast channels. So why pay $50/month (up to $60 now) for the broadcast channels (available over the air), plus a load of cable channels with nothing I watched on them. There's some good shows on the premium channels, but those few I can get later on a (rented) DVD, at far lower cost.
WOLF! WOLF!
Most opponents of freedom like to call that state "anarchy". If I go to a registrar and buy reclaimed-cash.com, the registrar has no idea what I'm doing with it, and it's anti-freedom to require him to find out upon penalty of great liability. Similarly, when I go to a hosting provider and set up my web site reclaimed-cash.com, the ISP has no idea what I'm doing with that site and shouldn't be required to find out. Furthermore, if someone later alleges that "reclaimed-cash.com" is a scam site, it's not the ISP's (or the registrar's) job to be judge, jury, and executioner and pull the plug on the site; that's inherently anti-freedom as well. If I'm committing fraud, let the government get an injunction, in an adversarial proceeding.
And this law goes further. This law says that if some person accesses alleged scam site reclaimed-cash.com, not only is the ISP hosting that site due for liability, but so is the victim's ISP. So are all the transit providers in-between. Essentially everyone who carries traffic becomes liable for its content. That's anti-freedom too.
I believe in Maryland, the rule is that traffic on major thoroughfares has the right of way with all lights out. So where Podunk Road intersects Route 650, you're supposed to treat a light which is out as a flashing yellow for 650 and a flashing red (or stop sign) for Podunk. I've driven on 650 (New Hampshire Avenue) with all lights out during the rush, and it works OK, but Rockville Pike is much more heavily travelled and would be a disaster.
Whoa there, no need for Willis for that one. I'll do it. And if she objects, tell her the next choice is Shatner.
You need to get out more. Or watch international news. Or local news in any large city. Or those Christian's Children Fund commercials with Sally Struthers. There's far sadder out there than not listening to music. Some of us just don't enjoy it.
And the case for using taxation for specific forms of entertainment is...?
No, of course not. They form a government, and things go on as always.
Looking at the wording of the law, I think the idea was to make the scammer's own ISP liable, not every ISP in the country. But that's not what it says; the law ends up covering every ISP from the scammer to the customer, including transit providers. Hopefully this thing will get killed.
The little switches just mean you don't see the sparks. They're still there when you flip the switch, at the switch contacts rather than between the plug and socket contacts. Unless those things are so overengineered they're actually a switch with a relay and zero-crossing detector.