The reason is that despite what Amazon.com and the others want to tell you, the web is a less efficient way to shop than in a major store.
Why is this? Shipping. It makes a lot more sense to ship 1000 items to the store and have individuals pick them up than it does to have 1000 items shipped to 800 different locations in 900 different packages.
Once real-world stores start having online shopping and real-world pick-up, the prices will fall again.
To play many baught DVDs on a linux system, you have to crack it, and under the DMCA you could go to jail for several years for that.
No, cracking CSS for private home use is fair use, and even if it weren't you can only go to jail for infringing the DMCA for commercial purposes.
And IMO, the federal government should make laws to stop the states from making laws against various victimless crimes, like same sex sex.
Sam sex sex may already fall under the 14th ammendment... But I'm unsure whether the federal government should get involved in stopping the states from passing laws in some of the more controversial issues, such as prostitution or drug use. If so it would have to be an ammendment to the constituion, as the federal government right now has no jurisdiction over prostitution or drug use when it does not affect interstate commerce.
I'd much rather see the protections of intrastate victimless "crimes" handled at the state constitutional level.
Here is my signature on the Windows XP EULA... Oh, that's right, I never signed it. For that reason, and the reason that the contract lacks consideration (they don't give me any right that I don't already have), it is not an enforcible contract.
Has it? Last time I checked, when a huge corporation tried to go after someone for practicing free speech there was a huge public outcry and the case was dropped. This is the difference between democracy and totalitarianism, which is what the original poster was trying to point out.
The difference between a democracy and totalitarianism is that in totalitarianism everyone who isn't like the dictator gets screwed, whereas in a democracy everyone who isn't like the majority gets screwed. Fortunately the United States is neither.
Take a look at the polls taken on 9/11 and 9/12. If we lived in a democracy we'd probably have nuked Afghanistan out of existance (not to mention Iraq), arrested all people of Middle Eastern descent and implemented martial law. But hey, at least the government run TV stations broadcasting "Friends" all day would be free.
Examples of criminals under US law (in various states): breaking the speed limit by 1mph.
Move to a state where speeding is not criminal law, and/or the speed limits are reasonable.
Having sex with a married person to whom you are not married.
Good. This should be enforced more often. I doubt it's a law in most states, and indeed in any state by the definition you gave.
Same sex sex.
That law is probably not constitutional, and is not present in all the states.
Watching a bought DVD on a Linux system.
Not illegal.
The problem with "it's OK, they're only interested in criminals" is that in practical terms everyone is a criminal.
All that being said, I do agree with your point that we're all criminals. Two more big ones to add to your list are buying through mail order without paying use tax, and copyright violations including shareware.
But all of the examples except copyright violations are state law, and not everyone violates copyright law (in fact, most shareware licenses likely fall under state law since they attempt to regulate use, not copying). The tenth ammendment does a pretty good job of stopping the federal government from getting involved in non-commercial victimless crimes. Clean up the interstate commerce clause and you could even get the government out of most commercial intrastate crimes.
My number one concern is getting state constitutions to look more like the U.S. constition in terms of enumerated government powers. Privacy laws in the constition work somewhat well to stop the government from breaking and entering (physically or electronically), but do little to nothing to stop the government from passively monitoring. Nor should they, in my opinion. If there are simple technological procedures which can render a law moot, it makes much more sense economically and security-wise to use those procedures instead of the law.
But that's just my opinion. If my enemies can find out my personal information, I want my friends to know it too. I guess that's why I post under my real name.
the AOL software could be configured to override Windows and launch a version of Red Hat's Linux operating system
Though technically possible, this would be illegal, and marketing suicide. Wipe your hard drive clean with new AOL 2.4.11!
Who said anything about wiping the hard drive? Create a big ol' file in the windows partition, put redhat in it, and change the bootloader. Or perhaps even better, just use cygwin.
Perhaps it's a precedent for telling sys admins to stick to their jobs and keep the best interests of their employers in mind when installing software.
Considering that the $2100 probably didn't even pay for the university's legal fees, this actually sends a message to universities that if they make such spurious lawsuits they'll lose more money than they make. Maybe the university will think twice next time, and reprimand and/or fire the kid without going through the legal system.
That would justify the phrase "one person of Middle Eastern acestry was a suspect", not "anyone of swarthy appearance or Middle Eastern ancestry is a suspect".
I highly doubt that inspiring terror was the purpose of the attack which occurred on 9/11. It more likely was just a means by which to reach another goal.
The government has spent $60B so far on this "war" with almost nothing to show for it
Most of the money which was spent went into U.S. companies, so this is hardly a real loss for the U.S.
there has been mayhem in the airline and travel industy (companies going out of business)
Which decreases the surplus population of airlines.
various civil rights are being abbrogated
To some extent, but this can hardly compete with the negative of having your entire network devestated (assuming of course that Al Queda was behind the attacks; if they weren't then this is the work of an evil genius).
anyone of swarthy appearance or Middle Eastern ancestry is a suspect
You exaggerate. I know people of Middle Eastern ancestry, and the worst incident I've heard is that one person's shoes were searched (the day before the shoe bomber was caught, at that). I think that's reasonable suspicion. Yes, there are counter-examples, but your use of the word anyone is an exaggeration.
And it's not clear what good it is actually doing.
The shoe-bomber's rights were abbrogated when he was detained for simply lighting a match, and that saved the lives of many people. Overall the government has done a much better job than I had expected. There are certainly places where I have disagreed (bailing out the airlines, the holding of some of the detainees without making a charge or starting deportation proceedings, the patriot act), but it could have been a lot worse (no national ID card, a watered down patriot act, less government harassment of foreign-decent citizens than I had feared, a better run military campaign than I expected, fewer Afghan civilian casualties than I expected, little panic in the stock market).
The entire broadcast TV spectrum should be allocated to Ham radio operators that want to do video.
Personally I'd allocate a big chunk of it to 802.11ish space with the caveat that every receiver must also broadcast its GPS location and act as an open router by request. Add in a few bandwidth-sharing restrictions, and in a few months we'll see free high bandwidth internet in much of the country.
But if all TVs contain decryption devices, then you can't tap into the decrypted version without breaking into the TV. If someone breaks into the TV for you, and then gives you the TV, they've trafficked in a circumvention device (the modified TV). If you break into the TV yourself, you're fine, but not many people are going to want to do that.
That's where the DMCA comes in. Sure, those of you who want to buy items on the black market, or make your own can get away with it, but most people won't, and that's all "they" care about.
Sure they can prevent it - all they have to do is stop radiating unencrypted UHF and VHF signals
Sounds good to me, since by law they must broadcast unencrypted UHF and VHF signals or they lose their broadcast license. I'd much rather have someone other than "them" using the airwaves.
Enhancements include anti-aliased text and first class internationalisation support, new accessibility features for disabled users, and many improvements throughout GNOME's highly regarded user interface.
Anything useful? Or is it just more bugs, more memory footprint, more disk space, more trouble porting to windows?
How well does QT run on Windows? This isn't meant to be a rhetorical question. I've been using GTK for windows/linux development and haven't run into a platform specific bug yet.
Even on the internet, domain names were never important. Think about it, who is the best-known web-based book retailer, bookstore.com or Amazon? The biggest ISP isn't isp.com, it's AOL or MSN. Even Google or Yahoo, not search.com.
People use hotmail.com, not inbox.org...:) But seriously, domain names aren't the most important, but they are important to some extent. Can you imagine a major website for non-geeks names/.? People would still be screwing it up. It makes sense for a company to pay a few thousand dollars for an easy to spell and relatively short domain name, which ends with.com. Paying millions for news.com or download.com, that's stupid.
Slashdot Mirror
The reason is that despite what Amazon.com and the others want to tell you, the web is a less efficient way to shop than in a major store.
Why is this? Shipping. It makes a lot more sense to ship 1000 items to the store and have individuals pick them up than it does to have 1000 items shipped to 800 different locations in 900 different packages.
Once real-world stores start having online shopping and real-world pick-up, the prices will fall again.
To play many baught DVDs on a linux system, you have to crack it, and under the DMCA you could go to jail for several years for that.
No, cracking CSS for private home use is fair use, and even if it weren't you can only go to jail for infringing the DMCA for commercial purposes.
And IMO, the federal government should make laws to stop the states from making laws against various victimless crimes, like same sex sex.
Sam sex sex may already fall under the 14th ammendment... But I'm unsure whether the federal government should get involved in stopping the states from passing laws in some of the more controversial issues, such as prostitution or drug use. If so it would have to be an ammendment to the constituion, as the federal government right now has no jurisdiction over prostitution or drug use when it does not affect interstate commerce.
I'd much rather see the protections of intrastate victimless "crimes" handled at the state constitutional level.
I've used VMWare before. You can create a single ISO and mount it as a read-only volume on every VM.
Is it cheaper to run 10 VM's on one 10 times faster machine than just 10 slower machines?
Depends how much you pay for rack space.
Here are some quotes from Windows XP EULA
Here is my signature on the Windows XP EULA... Oh, that's right, I never signed it. For that reason, and the reason that the contract lacks consideration (they don't give me any right that I don't already have), it is not an enforcible contract.
Now, 1000 copies of Windows on a machine would cost...
Exactly the same as 1 "copy" of Windows, if you run them all from the same physical code. Shrinkwrap licenses are not enforcible.
Has it? Last time I checked, when a huge corporation tried to go after someone for practicing free speech there was a huge public outcry and the case was dropped. This is the difference between democracy and totalitarianism, which is what the original poster was trying to point out.
The difference between a democracy and totalitarianism is that in totalitarianism everyone who isn't like the dictator gets screwed, whereas in a democracy everyone who isn't like the majority gets screwed. Fortunately the United States is neither.
Take a look at the polls taken on 9/11 and 9/12. If we lived in a democracy we'd probably have nuked Afghanistan out of existance (not to mention Iraq), arrested all people of Middle Eastern descent and implemented martial law. But hey, at least the government run TV stations broadcasting "Friends" all day would be free.
Anonymously? You think the government can't find out who is posting what by the IP address? Or you just don't think they are?
Examples of criminals under US law (in various states): breaking the speed limit by 1mph.
Move to a state where speeding is not criminal law, and/or the speed limits are reasonable.
Having sex with a married person to whom you are not married.
Good. This should be enforced more often. I doubt it's a law in most states, and indeed in any state by the definition you gave.
Same sex sex.
That law is probably not constitutional, and is not present in all the states.
Watching a bought DVD on a Linux system.
Not illegal.
The problem with "it's OK, they're only interested in criminals" is that in practical terms everyone is a criminal.
All that being said, I do agree with your point that we're all criminals. Two more big ones to add to your list are buying through mail order without paying use tax, and copyright violations including shareware.
But all of the examples except copyright violations are state law, and not everyone violates copyright law (in fact, most shareware licenses likely fall under state law since they attempt to regulate use, not copying). The tenth ammendment does a pretty good job of stopping the federal government from getting involved in non-commercial victimless crimes. Clean up the interstate commerce clause and you could even get the government out of most commercial intrastate crimes.
My number one concern is getting state constitutions to look more like the U.S. constition in terms of enumerated government powers. Privacy laws in the constition work somewhat well to stop the government from breaking and entering (physically or electronically), but do little to nothing to stop the government from passively monitoring. Nor should they, in my opinion. If there are simple technological procedures which can render a law moot, it makes much more sense economically and security-wise to use those procedures instead of the law.
But that's just my opinion. If my enemies can find out my personal information, I want my friends to know it too. I guess that's why I post under my real name.
Who said anything about wiping the hard drive? Create a big ol' file in the windows partition, put redhat in it, and change the bootloader. Or perhaps even better, just use cygwin.
Perhaps it's a precedent for telling sys admins to stick to their jobs and keep the best interests of their employers in mind when installing software.
Considering that the $2100 probably didn't even pay for the university's legal fees, this actually sends a message to universities that if they make such spurious lawsuits they'll lose more money than they make. Maybe the university will think twice next time, and reprimand and/or fire the kid without going through the legal system.
That would justify the phrase "one person of Middle Eastern acestry was a suspect", not "anyone of swarthy appearance or Middle Eastern ancestry is a suspect".
Although he got off relatively light, the precident set here is that sysadmins can no longer choose to install software at will.
The case was settled out of court. Absolutely no precedent was set.
Facing 30 years in prison for installing harmless software?
Actually if the software was found to be harmless he would have been found not guilty.
I highly doubt that inspiring terror was the purpose of the attack which occurred on 9/11. It more likely was just a means by which to reach another goal.
The government has spent $60B so far on this "war" with almost nothing to show for it
Most of the money which was spent went into U.S. companies, so this is hardly a real loss for the U.S.
there has been mayhem in the airline and travel industy (companies going out of business)
Which decreases the surplus population of airlines.
various civil rights are being abbrogated
To some extent, but this can hardly compete with the negative of having your entire network devestated (assuming of course that Al Queda was behind the attacks; if they weren't then this is the work of an evil genius).
anyone of swarthy appearance or Middle Eastern ancestry is a suspect
You exaggerate. I know people of Middle Eastern ancestry, and the worst incident I've heard is that one person's shoes were searched (the day before the shoe bomber was caught, at that). I think that's reasonable suspicion. Yes, there are counter-examples, but your use of the word anyone is an exaggeration.
And it's not clear what good it is actually doing.
The shoe-bomber's rights were abbrogated when he was detained for simply lighting a match, and that saved the lives of many people. Overall the government has done a much better job than I had expected. There are certainly places where I have disagreed (bailing out the airlines, the holding of some of the detainees without making a charge or starting deportation proceedings, the patriot act), but it could have been a lot worse (no national ID card, a watered down patriot act, less government harassment of foreign-decent citizens than I had feared, a better run military campaign than I expected, fewer Afghan civilian casualties than I expected, little panic in the stock market).
Every receiver which has the ability to transmit. Receive-only devices are legal if not attached to a non-compliant sender.
The entire broadcast TV spectrum should be allocated to Ham radio operators that want to do video.
Personally I'd allocate a big chunk of it to 802.11ish space with the caveat that every receiver must also broadcast its GPS location and act as an open router by request. Add in a few bandwidth-sharing restrictions, and in a few months we'll see free high bandwidth internet in much of the country.
But if all TVs contain decryption devices, then you can't tap into the decrypted version without breaking into the TV. If someone breaks into the TV for you, and then gives you the TV, they've trafficked in a circumvention device (the modified TV). If you break into the TV yourself, you're fine, but not many people are going to want to do that.
That's where the DMCA comes in. Sure, those of you who want to buy items on the black market, or make your own can get away with it, but most people won't, and that's all "they" care about.
Sure they can prevent it - all they have to do is stop radiating unencrypted UHF and VHF signals
Sounds good to me, since by law they must broadcast unencrypted UHF and VHF signals or they lose their broadcast license. I'd much rather have someone other than "them" using the airwaves.
Is cygwin necessary?
Enhancements include anti-aliased text and first class internationalisation support, new accessibility features for disabled users, and many improvements throughout GNOME's highly regarded user interface.
Anything useful? Or is it just more bugs, more memory footprint, more disk space, more trouble porting to windows?
How well does QT run on Windows? This isn't meant to be a rhetorical question. I've been using GTK for windows/linux development and haven't run into a platform specific bug yet.
This has already been tested in New York City. They call the cars "taxicabs".
Even on the internet, domain names were never important. Think about it, who is the best-known web-based book retailer, bookstore.com or Amazon? The biggest ISP isn't isp.com, it's AOL or MSN. Even Google or Yahoo, not search.com.
People use hotmail.com, not inbox.org... :) But seriously, domain names aren't the most important, but they are important to some extent. Can you imagine a major website for non-geeks names /.? People would still be screwing it up. It makes sense for a company to pay a few thousand dollars for an easy to spell and relatively short domain name, which ends with .com. Paying millions for news.com or download.com, that's stupid.