"among the groups attacking the Act, why do so few of them bring up Echelon? It already gives the government much of the surveillance ability they claim they're lacking, and without congressional oversight."
While Echelon is problematic, its purpose and use appears limited to threat analysis and corporate espionage. The potential for abuse is absolutely astounding, but it isn't something that's legal, and it isn't something that (so far as we know) has been used to gather evidence against anyone for a court case. Echelon is a difficult and touchy issue to bring up, partly because it would appear so integral to the member-nations' security, but mostly because so little is known about it.
What it comes down to is this: you can't attack every single problem at once. You go after the big stuff first, and then you come back for the rest as you can deal with it. Echelon is blatantly unconstitutional and violates so many international laws and treaties, it would take a pack of lawyers years to determine the totality of its illegality. The main problem these people have is the 'legal' (as per current law) violations of individuals' rights, or the potential thereof. If the FBI were illegally searching peoples' homes or records, or were illegally seizing all sorts of objects or information without probable cause, then it would be up to government oversight to reign them in. In this case, agents of the government are legally doing these things, and that's why these groups are jumping all over it.
" I think it really is possible to go through life without breaking any laws at all. It's just highly exasperating."
Assuming you live in the US, how many federal, state, and local laws do you honestly think you've broken today so far? I'd bet $1,000 if we had a video tape of your day so far and a group of lawyers to view it, we'd get at least a dozen infractions. I'm guessing you're a decent human being, yet you've broken more laws than you can count on two hands in half a day. Don't feel bad, I've probably broken more so far today. What's that say to you about our society?
"These scientists are from Japan so don't worry about your petty tax dollars."
And you truly don't think the USPS or some other US governmental body isn't about to, or perhaps already, using tax dollars to explore the feasability of such a system for use with US mail? Good Lord, I wish I could have such child-like innocence again.
"Next time RTFA so you don't start talking out of the wrong orifice"
Oh, well you're a bright one, aren't you... How old are you? Or more importantly, how many other slashdot accounts do you have so you can troll and flame without consequences? Freud would have all sorts of interesting ideas as to what your motivations are.:)
More of my tax dollars spent on projects designed to help my government go on 'fishing expiditions' to see whether or not I need to be jailed. I truly don't understand why the youth of this nation is so untrusting of government. After all, the true purpose of all governments is to vet society for undesirables, yes?
We already put more people in jail than any other country on Earth, proportionately; this apparently isn't enough for some people. When your government starts hunting for reasons to jail you, you know it's gone too far. I once read a very interesting thought on why something like this is done. The author expressed the idea that since governments cannot control totally law-abiding persons (as in moral laws), it must create enough sufficiently complex laws such that no person can possibly go through life without breaking one.
Ask a lawyer how many laws they've broken by lunchtime, if they wanted to get really technical, and I think you'll find the results extremely interesting.
"The intent of communism is that everyone is equal and should be treated fairly,"
That is partially accurate. In actuality, that's what Marxism preaches. Communism holds that everyone is not only equal, but that everyone is the same; as in an exact duplicate of one another. That's the real problem with Communism - we're not all the same. Maybe I don't like bright white houses(a), so I want mine to be brick. But this is Communism, so your house will be white, just like everyone else's. It'll have three rooms(a), a slightly sloping roof(a), and contain a one-car garage(a) for your single standard vehicle; which is also the same as everyone else's.
(a) - An arbitrary attribute meant soley for illustration purposes.
Not specifically, though you've already talked about replacing the thermal compound and modifying the bridges of an AthlonXP for use in a dual-CPU system.
"Now if replacing a dying fan (was making bad bearing noises), does that constitute "modifying" in your book?"
In my book, I would say it depends whether the heatsink and fan you're using as a replacement are reasonably similar in design and cooling ability to the stock cooling unit. If you're replacing a stock HSF with a goofy looking Golden Orb, then yes, I'd say that's a significant modification. That being said, the warranty specifically states that you void it when you use a cooling unit not provided. Intel's warranty has similar language. Basically, they don't want to be held responsible for decisions that are out of their control. If you stuck a Socket 7 cooling device on your Athlon, do you still think AMD should be held responsible for what happens to it?
"As for the oil thing, hell no, but if Ford voids the warranty for me using non-Ford motor oil (quakerstate or penzoil or royal purple for that matter), even if the specs match the owner's manual, then there's an issue."
In this case, "Ford" is providing (free of charge) motor oil which lasts longer than the 'car' and is specifically tested to function properly with that particular engine. Ford cannot be held responsible for what an untested, unapproved oil does to their engine. This is why they tell you that the warranty exists only so long as you use the provided materials to maintain the product. You're saying that having specifically ignored the warranty conditions, you're upset that the warranty was void as per the warranty itself. Basically, you're angry that the warranty did what it said. Check your Intel warranty - it's essentially the same thing.
"And no, I myself have not had any cpus, AMD or otherwise, recent or in the past die because of a crushed core but the possibility of it is there, more so if the ceramic core is exposed."
So you're complaining about a theoretical possibility which you've never experienced? On that note, I'm pretty upset with my car's manufacturer, because my car won't start up if a meteorite slams into the engine. What kind of shoddy workmanship is that?! Seriously though, I have never figured out how it is that so many people have damaged their CPUs. It's not exactly rocket science, and there's no real skill to it at all. Put the CPU in, put the HSF on top, push the metal clamp down. I honestly don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that a monkey could be trained to perform this task without causing damage (following training, not during). The real complaint here is that AMD didn't protect its CPUs from the masses of ignorant and stupid people who are jacks of all trades; masters of none. For that, AMD, like Intel, is guilty. Between bent pins, overheated CPUs, globs of conductive thermal grease connecting random bridges, and people who still don't have a surge protector and continue using the computer during thunderstorms, no CPU is truly safe, regardless of its engineering. On this front, I'd have to say that VIA's C3 embedded CPUs offer the best protection. Basically, with the CPU embedded and the HSF already mounted by a non-moron, there's not a whole lot left for the user to screw up.
"the thermal throttling; that's simply good engineering."
It would be good engineering if there were an unignorable (as in very annoying) warning regarding the overheating problem. As it stands, the user goes on about their business with no idea there's a problem. I mispoke when I said it was a lousy idea. My problem is less with the idea or the technology than with the implementation.
"Perhaps it could pop-up a scary warning message to tell you what's happening (I think there's software that will do it, and the computer inept/fearful will always listen to any sort of scary message), "
Perhaps making the system speaker go nuts, or, with the new voice-enabled BIOSs, having a message that reads something like: "CPU's too hot, fix it now or I'll kill you" - something to that effect - would present a far tastier feature. An improvement would be to temporary shut down parts of the CPU (pipelines, registers, etc) that are most severely overheated. Even at the lower clock frequency, you're going to cook some silicon seeing as the CPU was overheated to begin with.
Someone using a temperature monitor will have little use for throttling. If your fan is dying and your CPU begins to overheat, you'll see the warning long before the computer crashes and have the opportunity to fix the problem. My problem with simply throttling without a built-in warning of some sort is that most users will simply go on about their business without ever knowing their CPU has a problem. In the mean time, they're burning up the silicon and seeing a slowdown in computing speed. If I were a paranoid conspiracy theorist, I'd surmise that Intel was using this to sell CPU upgrades.
I've installed hundreds without having damaged a single one. The ones I've seen die in the several years I've worked with them were always due to fan failure or power problems. I've seen at least two Celerons suffer heat death also.
" what good is performance if it's more fragile than a paper chain tethering a bull in a china shop? If it's dead, performance....well... is non-existent."
That's quite the large 'if'. Are you installing your CPUs with a hammer? I've had plenty of mishaps installing CPUs before, but never had one damaged because of it. I'm truly at a loss as to just what it is you could possibly be doing to have so many problems.
"And the warranty policy about thermal grease and non-stock heatsinks, well...that's just bs."
This is like saying that Ford should warranty repair the engine in your 2003 Mustang after you replaced the motor oil with Diet Coke following a reading from some website. The warranty states that the product will perform correctly under normal operating conditions. That you have altered said conditions inately voids any warranty. Any warranty work provided thereafter is simply a curtousy. Your misuse of AMD's (or anyone else's) product is not AMD's problem. Either adhere to the warranty conditions or do not expect to receive warranty work; it's that simple.
"Besides, I like my P4 that has thermal throttling that works and responds fast to the temp."
This is such a lousy idea. Let me ask you this: when your CPU is overheating, what will you do to correct it? The correct answer is: nothing. Why? Because your CPU gives no indications of overheating. Assuming you have an issue with your CPU fan, your computer will simply seem slower and slower over time, making you think it's time for an upgrade. On an AMD or PIII system, the computer crashes when there is a problem. This is known as a 'symptom'. If you do not have any symptoms, chances are that you will never solve the problem because you simply won't know about it. I'd rather have chronic crashing which leads me to the source of the problem than to have some vague problem such as: 'it's running slowly'.
"Of course, I don't plan to abandon AMD cpus forever; I'm just more cautious and less enthused about new products. (I still have my dual athlon XP->MP (Barton core) project in the works but it's been slow)."
Again with your CPU modification. You expect to be able to modify the product yet continue to receive warranty assurance on it. Let me let you in on a little secret: if you modify your P4 in any way, you will void your warranty - just like an Athlon.
"Hell, I've love to have that P4 3.2 with the 2MB of L2 cache."
I'd love to have one as well, if such a creature existed. Unfortunately, if it did, it would cost an enormous amount of money. Thus, Intel's compromise was to remark a Xeon with 2MB L3 as a run-of-the-mill Pentium 4 EE (Extremely Expensive). On the other hand, I could buy an Athlon64 FX-51 for about $150 less and get far better performance which will increase over time as applications are better optimized.
And just so you don't think I won't address the quality issue, I'd be happy to do so. Just take a look here. Recall after recall, bug after bug, Intel proves beyond any doubt that good marketing erases years of ineptitude.
It would set 1,000-year mandatory jail sentences for members of congress who become pawns for multi-national mega-corps, spouting out ignorant and inflamatory propaganda to please their campaign-financing Masters.
For the genius moderators who keep sending this down the flamebait trail, the person is simply pointing out the fact that the article is non-sequitur. Taking a high-end SCSI disk on a high-end bus and benchmarking it against a low-end IDE disk for one specific task gives you virtually no usable information regarding the performance differences between SCSI and IDE drives. This is like taking a Ferrari filled with jet fuel, timing a 50 mile run on a race track, then taking a Ford Taurus, timing a 50 mile run on a dirt road, and then using the results to say that the Ferrari must be 200 times faster.
And thus, we finally see the problem with setting up an experiment to prove what you think you already know. I'll bet I could find a test where the Taurus wins out if I tried hard enough. I'm not saying SCSI isn't faster; I'm saying this test was so completely skewed that the 'results' are much like a psychic hotline: for entertainment purposes only.
So mods, lay off the parent post with the flamebaits and such. The non-sequitur argument is dead-on, if not well explained prior to now.
"The Pentium 4 was not designed to compeate against the AMD64 or the G5"
The AMD Athlon was not designed to compete with the Pentium 4; it was designed to compete with the Pentium 3. You don't compare processors to their intended competition. You compare processors to that with which they're actually competing. If I'm building a workstation, I might use a pair of Opterons, a single Opteron, an AthlonFX, a G5, or a Pentium 4/Xeon. I suppose you could call this the 'under $5000' workstation market. If I wanted to throw a $15,000 Itanium box in there, I might as well put it up against a cluster of 3 or 4 Opterons.
"the P4 2.4 GHz (800MHz) held it's own against the new AMD chip, and the 3.2 beat it in alot of areas, especially games"
It's amazing what happens when you optimize your software for a particular architecture, isn't it? Now, that's not to say that we should ignore performance gained from optimizations; merely that we've only seen how the Athlon64 chips run generic, largely unoptimized (from its perspective) software. Aside from the fact that the software market will shortly begin optimizing for A64 performance, you're also looking at the first yields of the Athlon64. When we look at the first yields of the P4 chips, it looked like we were moving backwards. AthlonMP 1.2s were thrashing 1.8GHz P4 Xeons, in dual and single CPU mode. Pentium 3 chips were, quite frankly, producing embarassingly well compared with early Pentium 4 chips. Give the architecture time to mature, and you'll see more and more improvements. Aside from that, the sheer scalability of the A64 makes it appear as though we could see extraordinary gains at higher clock speeds. One of the reasons is the integrated memory controller. The fact that it runs at core speeds means that it becomes more and more efficient as the A64 chips come out with ramped up frequencies. Intel's ramped up FSB speed, hyperthreading, and other optimizations make a huge performance difference, and will soon do the same for A64. Should AMD decide to throw multiple cores on the A64s (as the spec allows for), we will probably see incredible performance gains.
" If AMD 64 is so great why is the first chip on the market slower than the P4 which it was compeating against?"
It's slower? Really? I think what you mean to say is that the Pentium 4 performs faster on applications which are heavily optimized for its instruction set and hyperthreading. On everything that isn't specifically optimized for P4, the A64 chips do outperform it. Aside from that, the same complaint could be lodged against the Pentium 4, which was outperformed by both Pentium 3 and Athlon for a long, long time after its initial launch. I'm not saying it's a rocketship on the launchpad, I'm just saying we should wait and see before we either rejoice over it or condemn it.
"Any chip maker willing to name a chip after an OS created by Microsoft should be shot IMHO"
Regardless of AMD's motivations regarding CPU branding, I think that it was a catchier tagname than simply Athlon. I also think that their performance rating system was their only possible move. There's no way you could explain to the average consumer that the AMD chips running at 2GHz perform better than Intel chips running at 2.4, 2.6, etc. It's not a question of quality; merely a consequence of architectual differences and different philisophies between Intel and AMD regarding frequency ramping vs core improvements.
"With their new Athlon XP marketing stratigy they outright lied to customers. The Athlon XP 3200 hardley compeates with a P4 2.4 GHz (800) let alone the P4 3.2GHz (which it's name implies it is comparable to)."
Why is it that people continue to ignore what has been plainly explained time and time again since day 1 at AMD? I didn't see you people complaining when the AthlonXP 1800+ was outperforming the P4 2.0GHz Willamette. As AMD has said since day 1, the AMD rating system is based on the performance of a
"Made compulsory, such a pledge is worthless, meaningless and a supression of intellectual activity. It represents a repudiation of Jeffersonian ideals, as embodied in the Declaration of Independance and U.S. Constitution."
Which is essentially what Justice Jackson wrote for the majority in West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette. (1943). Compulsory flag salutes and pledges of allegiance of any sort are simply not legal in these united states. Your argument, impassioned though it may be, is essentially 60 years after the fact.
"You may not have to recite the pledge (although in this case, I believe pledging was compulsory; please correct me if I'm wrong)"
Ask and ye shall receive. No person may be compelled by any public official (this would include a public school teacher) to recite any sort of pledge of allegiance. The case in question is West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette(1943). The Supreme Court held that
"[i]f there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."
My personal opinion of this case was most heavily influenced by the simple fact that no student can, in any way, shape, or form, be compelled to participate in either the salute to the flag or the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. My understanding, limited though it may be, is that no student could be punished for reciting the original pledge (written by a socialist, no less) which did not contain any reference to God. Some have made reference to possible "peer pressure" or other social pressures which could be brought to bear on a student who refuses to salute or recite the 'official' Pledge of Allegiance. I fail to see where in any law it is said that it is the responsibility of the government to ensure that no decision or policy is ever put into effect which may indirectly cause one or more of its citizens to experience social pressure due to their chosen cooperation, or lack thereof, with said decision or policy. Such an absurd concept would bring the entire government to a screeching halt and invalidate each and every law, policy, and decision ever put forth by our current government (as in the one that began with the ratification of the Constitution).
"Using school property to communicate a message with a distinctly theistic slant ("one nation, under God") is unconstitutional (again, see the Santa Fe v. Doe ruling)."
This assumes that any and all appearances of the word 'God' intrinsically convey a specific religious message. The phrase, taken out of context, could even be interpreted as meaning that we live under a theocratic rule. While some elements of religious morality have found their way into our laws throughout our history, most are quite simply commonly understood moral features which appear in just about every law; secular or religious. Theft, murder, rape; all of these things are against virtually every modern religion, and are all illegal in just about every modern society. Enacting a law prohibiting murder is not an endorsement of any religion; merely an expression of the rights of each individual to live.
My point here is one that the Supreme Court has made many times, and one with which I completely agree. The word 'God', along with many of the teachings of major religions can be used within a social or historical context without any sort of large religious connotation. Were this pledge compulsory, I would probably scrutinize it further, but with things being the way they are, I'm quite satisfied with the explaination that the phrase 'under God' carries more of a historical and social context than a religious one. Quite honestly, I don't believe that the phrase has any influence whatsoever in how those who recite it think or feel about any given religion, or even religion itself. The difficulty in this case is that our mostly Christian society, coming from Christian ancestry, has integrated the word 'God' in our language in such a way that it simply refers to a generalized higher power when used in a social context. That the word 'God' is used by Christians to describe their specific higher power is simply a consequence of historical and social culture. Thus, 'God', the higher power, can be Allah for a Muslim child, Yahweh for a Jewish teacher, or it could be a
And you know, I don't really mind seeing this article on The Inquirer. Not that they're some sort of BS rag like the National Enquirer, but they tend to post anything they hear from their 'moles' inside large companies. I don't have a problem with that because I know when I'm on their page that any information needs to be vetted for believability. I find it very unfortunate for the more rumor-millesque stories to find their way onto a site like Slashdot. Usually on Slashdot, I only have to correct for Pro-Linux/Anti-Microsoft/Pro-OSS bias, rather than outright misinformation.
Why do you guys run this stuff? I mean, come on, everything from the title to the content is completely misleading in this story. First, the title:
"New Pentium 5 Details - 5-7ghz?"
Now, when I read this, I read "Pentium 5" as all-inclusive of the assumed PV cores, which would include Prescott. A Prescott core at 5GHz probably would not be seen on shelves until mid to late 2004 at the very earliest. Personally, I think Prescott simply won't scale to 5GHz before they dump it for a newer core. Starting at 3.2/3.4 and later hitting 5 without changing a number of things in between simply isn't how Intel generally does business. No, this article mentions nothing of Prescott; it talked about Tejas, something that isn't even sampling yet.
Now some of the content (a word I use sparingly in this case):
" It will have 64 bit extensions"
Unlikely as hell. At least, it's very unlikely that it will have said extensions actually enabled. First of all, it's not news at all. Prescott is long since known to have 64-bit disabled extensions. Why are they disabled? Well, simply put, Microsoft probably wont support it, and it would annihilate Itanium's chances of any sort of large-scale adoption. Gee, there goes about 13 years of research down the drain. Why? Because Intel's customers simply aren't that stupid, and will demand 64-bit extensions for any Xeons if they're released in stock P5s, which will make the Itanium all but worthless. Secondly, with Microsoft already supporting a 32-bit Windows for the masses, a 64-bit Windows for the Itanium crowd (all three of you please raise your hands), and a 64-bit version for Opteron/Athlon64 users, having to throw yet more money into making the same OS run on another platform would make them start to feel like the NetBSD folks. Microsoft has long told Intel what, when, and how, without giving a damn about the why, so I doubt Intel would do forward with 64-bit extensions any time before Longhorn, which we can't expect until late 2005 or so.
"and maybe a 4000 mhz frontside bus."
And maybe? It almost sounds like you're taking a rough guess. Have you ever seen CNN come up with a story that reads: "And maybe 300 people were killed in a planecrash in Brazil"? Please leave the "maybe" stuff for speculative sites such as The Register and The Inquirer. I think I speak for a great many Slashdot readers when I say that I expect maybes from those sites; NOT from Slashdot.
And for further clues to the editors for why this story should never have made it past the submission cutting room floor:
" Quote from the article,'The Pentium V is likely to fly along at between 5GHz to 7GHz, have 2MB plus of level two cache, be built on a 90 nanometer process, and have a stackable design."
Aside from the fact that the only reasonable claim of that entire sentence is the process size, it's filled with likelies, 'or mores', and a design which probably won't be implemented until 2006 in Itanium, which will have long since been dead according to this 'article'. Then when you factor in that Intel's roadmaps have shown Tejas to not be around for about a year after the first Pentium 5s hit the shelves, the claims look even more farfetched.
Quite frankly, this is sensationalist journalism at its worst. I may as well submit an article that says, "New AMD chip to hit 90 TFlops" and then reference some article talking about an AMD CPU scheduled for 2008. It's misleading, unconfirmed rumors (according to the article itself), and quite frankly belongs nowhere near any news site that isn't understood to have entrusted its stories to sources that are at times, inaccurate, at other times completely wrong, and a bit less often, misleading or lying.
So editors, please stop posting speculation and rumor. If I want that, I'll go to the sites that publish it regularly. If you don't stop posting it here, then it gets mixed in with the real news and gets far too much credence mixed in with it.
"Most of us don't even use 5GB, much less 90GB (90GB!!!)."
And you know, Comcast didn't bother me while I was using 120 - 150GB per month. But that month it went over 220GB (total up/down) I got a letter. I don't think they found that one amusing. According to the friendly fellow at the local office, I was in the top 1% of all Comcast's internet users. All of them. Oh well, I've managed to bring my bandwidth usage down to around 15 - 20GB per month for now.
As a side note, I do have a "pro" account, which basically means marginally faster speeds for twice the monthly price. Why would I pay double for only a slight improvement in bandwidth? Well, I felt it only right that since I am a very heavy bandwidth user, I ought to pay a bit extra. Basically, I felt that $100/mo was a fair price for truly unlimited usage. Comcast, obviously, disagreed. I'll most likely be transfering my account to a regular residential line for now, while I complain to Covad to hurry up and make DSL service available to me. Nice going, Comcast. $100/mo down the drain.
In case you're wondering how on Earth someone can use that much bandwidth, try using Freenet (unlimited) + a good amount of gaming + getting some old TV shows that no one feels fit to run anymore. I don't really have an interest in music (sorry RIAA folks), and my porn downloads are quite limited as well. Frankly, my upstream tops my downstream most of the time. At softcapped 384kbps up, you can easily top 4GB per day. Times 30. You do the math.
" if you RTFA you'll see that it isn't actually a fusion reactor or reaction at all. What it is is a deuterium ion plasma generator."
Errr, yeah; what kind of stupid bastard mistakes a deu... deuterium... ion plas*cough*aarghph*cough* for a fusion reactor? Hey Rob, what kind of Mickey Mouse show are you runnin' here?
" Correct me if I'm wrong, but that would mean that only a federal prosecutor, i.e. the DOJ, could initiate a RICO action against the RIAA. But the DOJ, along with most of the rest of the federal government, is Own3d by the RIAA and its friends (hence the easy passage of the DMCA), so no RICO action will ever be brought against them by the only people who can bring such action."
I'm not talking about bringing action against the RIAA, though my understanding is that civil action may be brought by an individual. What I'm actually talking about is for one of those being sued to defend themselves on the grounds that the RIAA may not use the courts to continue their illegal actions as part of a corrupt organization.
To me, this seems like a man suing someone for theft because they took his gun away while he was shooting into a crowd. The answer is, "Yes, I took your gun away, but your misuse of said gun nullified your right to possess it." Or something to that effect. On the other hand, a counter-suit filed by one of the 261 (260 now? -1 12yo girl?) aledging RICO violations might make sense if it's part of the defense.
My question was more along the lines of why this hasn't been discussed. The general word from every lawyer involved in the defense of these accused folks is fairly close to, "my client didn't know what they were doing was illegal." Well gee, Fred, my client didn't know it was illegal to sell crack to children in the park. Does he get to go free too? I'm just wondering why it is we haven't seen anyone actually defend their client. Is this a simple matter of no one yet having the resources to mount an actual defense perhaps? Or is my concept of RICO so far removed from reality that such a defense is just as meaningless as the ones we're seeing now?
"If my memory serves me correctly, it was the attorney general of Indiana or Ohio or some state like that that initiated and won (settled or outright won) the case! Would someone please find this issue and put a scanned copy of it for/.ers to look at?"
"The suit... charges that the RIAA's program is deceptive and fraudulent business practice."
Which brings us one step closer to my idea. If there are any real lawyers here, could you please tell me why no one has bothered to attack the RIAA's charges using the Federal RICO Act? The RIAA and member organizations have engaged in a pattern of corrupt business practices for over 50 years, and are now using the law to intimidate individuals, companies, and universities to further their interests.
From my (admittedly limited) understanding of RICO, you must prove that the organization has engaged in a pattern of criminal activity, and is using illegal means, especially under cover of authority (court actions, copyright law, etc) to further their interests. Now, the ongoing illegal activity is really two-fold. That being, the RIAA's member companies have illegally maintained an effective distribution monopoly by engaging in anti-competitive acts, and have conspired to defraud consumers with a massive price-fixing scheme which caused consumers to be overcharged by more than $480 million (USD) since 1997 alone, according to the former head of the FTC. This scheme was labled "Minimum-Advertised Pricing", or MAP by the Attorneys General who investigated and eventually brought about a settlement. With regard to the anti-competitive acts, the RIAA and member companies have engaged in such practices as "payola", in which radio stations were paid money in order to ensure that music not controlled by the RIAA's members was never played, and therefore never heard by the public at large. Thus, their only competition, the independent artist/label, continues to struggle to get by, while the RIAA monopoly takes in billions each year.
So I ask again, why is it that no one has attacked the RIAA on RICO grounds. A corrupt organization cannot use the legal system to facilitate its illegal activities. The lack of legal online modes of music distribution is but more evidence of the RIAA's desperate struggle to maintain its distribution monopoly with an iron fist. It would seem to me that showing these lawsuits to be nothing more than tactics designed to further the interests of a corrupt organization is a far better defense than, "my client didn't know it was illegal".
""Adrian negotiated the terms of his surrender, which included the charges in the warrant issued against him being disclosed." "So if they never tell him what he's charged with, can he get a reduced punishment?"
I should think a better tactic would be to make one of the terms of his surrender that he's never read his miranda rights. At which point, he can then confess to the police, laugh about it on TV, then walk into court and say, "Holy shit, my statements can be used against me in a court of law?! But nobody told me that!"
"What the RIAA is doing may or may not be good business sense, but what were they supposed to do?"
Stop price fixing? Stop illegally maintaining their monopoly on distribution? Start providing their customers with a product worth buying? Start selling said product at a reasonable price?
It's been said that folks wont pay for what they can get for free, yet Apple's music service claims to have sold over 10 million songs. Isn't is amazing what happens when you actually offer the product to the consumer at a reasonable price, delivered in "packaging" (online download) the consumer likes?
It's easy to blame this on those who are downloading content by saying they're breaking the law. But the truth is that this is what's known as consumer backlash. For too long, the major media companies have controlled the pricing, distribution, and availability of content to the detriment of the average Joe. This is a consumer backlash 20+ years in the making, and major media's only hope is to carefully win back consumers by adhering to classic business and economic principles. Basically, if you offer a product people want at a price they consider reasonable, and it's packaged/delivered in a manner/format that's acceptable to them, you're going to make money. Otherwise, you're going to fail.
Slashdot Mirror
The parent is absolutely correct and should be modded up as soon as possible. This is an excellent idea.
"among the groups attacking the Act, why do so few of them bring up Echelon? It already gives the government much of the surveillance ability they claim they're lacking, and without congressional oversight."
While Echelon is problematic, its purpose and use appears limited to threat analysis and corporate espionage. The potential for abuse is absolutely astounding, but it isn't something that's legal, and it isn't something that (so far as we know) has been used to gather evidence against anyone for a court case. Echelon is a difficult and touchy issue to bring up, partly because it would appear so integral to the member-nations' security, but mostly because so little is known about it.
What it comes down to is this: you can't attack every single problem at once. You go after the big stuff first, and then you come back for the rest as you can deal with it. Echelon is blatantly unconstitutional and violates so many international laws and treaties, it would take a pack of lawyers years to determine the totality of its illegality. The main problem these people have is the 'legal' (as per current law) violations of individuals' rights, or the potential thereof. If the FBI were illegally searching peoples' homes or records, or were illegally seizing all sorts of objects or information without probable cause, then it would be up to government oversight to reign them in. In this case, agents of the government are legally doing these things, and that's why these groups are jumping all over it.
" I think it really is possible to go through life without breaking any laws at all. It's just highly exasperating."
Assuming you live in the US, how many federal, state, and local laws do you honestly think you've broken today so far? I'd bet $1,000 if we had a video tape of your day so far and a group of lawyers to view it, we'd get at least a dozen infractions. I'm guessing you're a decent human being, yet you've broken more laws than you can count on two hands in half a day. Don't feel bad, I've probably broken more so far today. What's that say to you about our society?
" Did you read the article?"
:)
Skimmed it.
"These scientists are from Japan so don't worry about your petty tax dollars."
And you truly don't think the USPS or some other US governmental body isn't about to, or perhaps already, using tax dollars to explore the feasability of such a system for use with US mail? Good Lord, I wish I could have such child-like innocence again.
"Next time RTFA so you don't start talking out of the wrong orifice"
Oh, well you're a bright one, aren't you... How old are you? Or more importantly, how many other slashdot accounts do you have so you can troll and flame without consequences? Freud would have all sorts of interesting ideas as to what your motivations are.
More of my tax dollars spent on projects designed to help my government go on 'fishing expiditions' to see whether or not I need to be jailed. I truly don't understand why the youth of this nation is so untrusting of government. After all, the true purpose of all governments is to vet society for undesirables, yes?
We already put more people in jail than any other country on Earth, proportionately; this apparently isn't enough for some people. When your government starts hunting for reasons to jail you, you know it's gone too far. I once read a very interesting thought on why something like this is done. The author expressed the idea that since governments cannot control totally law-abiding persons (as in moral laws), it must create enough sufficiently complex laws such that no person can possibly go through life without breaking one.
Ask a lawyer how many laws they've broken by lunchtime, if they wanted to get really technical, and I think you'll find the results extremely interesting.
"The intent of communism is that everyone is equal and should be treated fairly,"
That is partially accurate. In actuality, that's what Marxism preaches. Communism holds that everyone is not only equal, but that everyone is the same; as in an exact duplicate of one another. That's the real problem with Communism - we're not all the same. Maybe I don't like bright white houses(a), so I want mine to be brick. But this is Communism, so your house will be white, just like everyone else's. It'll have three rooms(a), a slightly sloping roof(a), and contain a one-car garage(a) for your single standard vehicle; which is also the same as everyone else's.
(a) - An arbitrary attribute meant soley for illustration purposes.
"Did I say I modified the said dead cpus?"
Not specifically, though you've already talked about replacing the thermal compound and modifying the bridges of an AthlonXP for use in a dual-CPU system.
"Now if replacing a dying fan (was making bad bearing noises), does that constitute "modifying" in your book?"
In my book, I would say it depends whether the heatsink and fan you're using as a replacement are reasonably similar in design and cooling ability to the stock cooling unit. If you're replacing a stock HSF with a goofy looking Golden Orb, then yes, I'd say that's a significant modification. That being said, the warranty specifically states that you void it when you use a cooling unit not provided. Intel's warranty has similar language. Basically, they don't want to be held responsible for decisions that are out of their control. If you stuck a Socket 7 cooling device on your Athlon, do you still think AMD should be held responsible for what happens to it?
"As for the oil thing, hell no, but if Ford voids the warranty for me using non-Ford motor oil (quakerstate or penzoil or royal purple for that matter), even if the specs match the owner's manual, then there's an issue."
In this case, "Ford" is providing (free of charge) motor oil which lasts longer than the 'car' and is specifically tested to function properly with that particular engine. Ford cannot be held responsible for what an untested, unapproved oil does to their engine. This is why they tell you that the warranty exists only so long as you use the provided materials to maintain the product. You're saying that having specifically ignored the warranty conditions, you're upset that the warranty was void as per the warranty itself. Basically, you're angry that the warranty did what it said. Check your Intel warranty - it's essentially the same thing.
"And no, I myself have not had any cpus, AMD or otherwise, recent or in the past die because of a crushed core but the possibility of it is there, more so if the ceramic core is exposed."
So you're complaining about a theoretical possibility which you've never experienced? On that note, I'm pretty upset with my car's manufacturer, because my car won't start up if a meteorite slams into the engine. What kind of shoddy workmanship is that?! Seriously though, I have never figured out how it is that so many people have damaged their CPUs. It's not exactly rocket science, and there's no real skill to it at all. Put the CPU in, put the HSF on top, push the metal clamp down. I honestly don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that a monkey could be trained to perform this task without causing damage (following training, not during). The real complaint here is that AMD didn't protect its CPUs from the masses of ignorant and stupid people who are jacks of all trades; masters of none. For that, AMD, like Intel, is guilty. Between bent pins, overheated CPUs, globs of conductive thermal grease connecting random bridges, and people who still don't have a surge protector and continue using the computer during thunderstorms, no CPU is truly safe, regardless of its engineering. On this front, I'd have to say that VIA's C3 embedded CPUs offer the best protection. Basically, with the CPU embedded and the HSF already mounted by a non-moron, there's not a whole lot left for the user to screw up.
"the thermal throttling; that's simply good engineering."
It would be good engineering if there were an unignorable (as in very annoying) warning regarding the overheating problem. As it stands, the user goes on about their business with no idea there's a problem. I mispoke when I said it was a lousy idea. My problem is less with the idea or the technology than with the implementation.
"Perhaps it could pop-up a scary warning message to tell you what's happening (I think there's software that will do it, and the computer inept/fearful will always listen to any sort of scary message), "
Perhaps making the system speaker go nuts, or, with the new voice-enabled BIOSs, having a message that reads something like: "CPU's too hot, fix it now or I'll kill you" - something to that effect - would present a far tastier feature. An improvement would be to temporary shut down parts of the CPU (pipelines, registers, etc) that are most severely overheated. Even at the lower clock frequency, you're going to cook some silicon seeing as the CPU was overheated to begin with.
"never heard of MBM?"
Someone using a temperature monitor will have little use for throttling. If your fan is dying and your CPU begins to overheat, you'll see the warning long before the computer crashes and have the opportunity to fix the problem. My problem with simply throttling without a built-in warning of some sort is that most users will simply go on about their business without ever knowing their CPU has a problem. In the mean time, they're burning up the silicon and seeing a slowdown in computing speed. If I were a paranoid conspiracy theorist, I'd surmise that Intel was using this to sell CPU upgrades.
"how many AMD cpus have you killed?"
....well... is non-existent."
I've installed hundreds without having damaged a single one. The ones I've seen die in the several years I've worked with them were always due to fan failure or power problems. I've seen at least two Celerons suffer heat death also.
" what good is performance if it's more fragile than a paper chain tethering a bull in a china shop? If it's dead, performance
That's quite the large 'if'. Are you installing your CPUs with a hammer? I've had plenty of mishaps installing CPUs before, but never had one damaged because of it. I'm truly at a loss as to just what it is you could possibly be doing to have so many problems.
"And the warranty policy about thermal grease and non-stock heatsinks, well...that's just bs."
This is like saying that Ford should warranty repair the engine in your 2003 Mustang after you replaced the motor oil with Diet Coke following a reading from some website. The warranty states that the product will perform correctly under normal operating conditions. That you have altered said conditions inately voids any warranty. Any warranty work provided thereafter is simply a curtousy. Your misuse of AMD's (or anyone else's) product is not AMD's problem. Either adhere to the warranty conditions or do not expect to receive warranty work; it's that simple.
"Besides, I like my P4 that has thermal throttling that works and responds fast to the temp."
This is such a lousy idea. Let me ask you this: when your CPU is overheating, what will you do to correct it? The correct answer is: nothing. Why? Because your CPU gives no indications of overheating. Assuming you have an issue with your CPU fan, your computer will simply seem slower and slower over time, making you think it's time for an upgrade. On an AMD or PIII system, the computer crashes when there is a problem. This is known as a 'symptom'. If you do not have any symptoms, chances are that you will never solve the problem because you simply won't know about it. I'd rather have chronic crashing which leads me to the source of the problem than to have some vague problem such as: 'it's running slowly'.
"Of course, I don't plan to abandon AMD cpus forever; I'm just more cautious and less enthused about new products. (I still have my dual athlon XP->MP (Barton core) project in the works but it's been slow)."
Again with your CPU modification. You expect to be able to modify the product yet continue to receive warranty assurance on it. Let me let you in on a little secret: if you modify your P4 in any way, you will void your warranty - just like an Athlon.
"Hell, I've love to have that P4 3.2 with the 2MB of L2 cache."
I'd love to have one as well, if such a creature existed. Unfortunately, if it did, it would cost an enormous amount of money. Thus, Intel's compromise was to remark a Xeon with 2MB L3 as a run-of-the-mill Pentium 4 EE (Extremely Expensive). On the other hand, I could buy an Athlon64 FX-51 for about $150 less and get far better performance which will increase over time as applications are better optimized.
And just so you don't think I won't address the quality issue, I'd be happy to do so. Just take a look here. Recall after recall, bug after bug, Intel proves beyond any doubt that good marketing erases years of ineptitude.
I think that's the funniest thing I've read in weeks.
It would set 1,000-year mandatory jail sentences for members of congress who become pawns for multi-national mega-corps, spouting out ignorant and inflamatory propaganda to please their campaign-financing Masters.
Anyone care to sponsor?
For the genius moderators who keep sending this down the flamebait trail, the person is simply pointing out the fact that the article is non-sequitur. Taking a high-end SCSI disk on a high-end bus and benchmarking it against a low-end IDE disk for one specific task gives you virtually no usable information regarding the performance differences between SCSI and IDE drives. This is like taking a Ferrari filled with jet fuel, timing a 50 mile run on a race track, then taking a Ford Taurus, timing a 50 mile run on a dirt road, and then using the results to say that the Ferrari must be 200 times faster.
And thus, we finally see the problem with setting up an experiment to prove what you think you already know. I'll bet I could find a test where the Taurus wins out if I tried hard enough. I'm not saying SCSI isn't faster; I'm saying this test was so completely skewed that the 'results' are much like a psychic hotline: for entertainment purposes only.
So mods, lay off the parent post with the flamebaits and such. The non-sequitur argument is dead-on, if not well explained prior to now.
"The Pentium 4 was not designed to compeate against the AMD64 or the G5"
The AMD Athlon was not designed to compete with the Pentium 4; it was designed to compete with the Pentium 3. You don't compare processors to their intended competition. You compare processors to that with which they're actually competing. If I'm building a workstation, I might use a pair of Opterons, a single Opteron, an AthlonFX, a G5, or a Pentium 4/Xeon. I suppose you could call this the 'under $5000' workstation market. If I wanted to throw a $15,000 Itanium box in there, I might as well put it up against a cluster of 3 or 4 Opterons.
"the P4 2.4 GHz (800MHz) held it's own against the new AMD chip, and the 3.2 beat it in alot of areas, especially games"
It's amazing what happens when you optimize your software for a particular architecture, isn't it? Now, that's not to say that we should ignore performance gained from optimizations; merely that we've only seen how the Athlon64 chips run generic, largely unoptimized (from its perspective) software. Aside from the fact that the software market will shortly begin optimizing for A64 performance, you're also looking at the first yields of the Athlon64. When we look at the first yields of the P4 chips, it looked like we were moving backwards. AthlonMP 1.2s were thrashing 1.8GHz P4 Xeons, in dual and single CPU mode. Pentium 3 chips were, quite frankly, producing embarassingly well compared with early Pentium 4 chips. Give the architecture time to mature, and you'll see more and more improvements. Aside from that, the sheer scalability of the A64 makes it appear as though we could see extraordinary gains at higher clock speeds. One of the reasons is the integrated memory controller. The fact that it runs at core speeds means that it becomes more and more efficient as the A64 chips come out with ramped up frequencies. Intel's ramped up FSB speed, hyperthreading, and other optimizations make a huge performance difference, and will soon do the same for A64. Should AMD decide to throw multiple cores on the A64s (as the spec allows for), we will probably see incredible performance gains.
" If AMD 64 is so great why is the first chip on the market slower than the P4 which it was compeating against?"
It's slower? Really? I think what you mean to say is that the Pentium 4 performs faster on applications which are heavily optimized for its instruction set and hyperthreading. On everything that isn't specifically optimized for P4, the A64 chips do outperform it. Aside from that, the same complaint could be lodged against the Pentium 4, which was outperformed by both Pentium 3 and Athlon for a long, long time after its initial launch. I'm not saying it's a rocketship on the launchpad, I'm just saying we should wait and see before we either rejoice over it or condemn it.
"Any chip maker willing to name a chip after an OS created by Microsoft should be shot IMHO"
Regardless of AMD's motivations regarding CPU branding, I think that it was a catchier tagname than simply Athlon. I also think that their performance rating system was their only possible move. There's no way you could explain to the average consumer that the AMD chips running at 2GHz perform better than Intel chips running at 2.4, 2.6, etc. It's not a question of quality; merely a consequence of architectual differences and different philisophies between Intel and AMD regarding frequency ramping vs core improvements.
"With their new Athlon XP marketing stratigy they outright lied to customers. The Athlon XP 3200 hardley compeates with a P4 2.4 GHz (800) let alone the P4 3.2GHz (which it's name implies it is comparable to)."
Why is it that people continue to ignore what has been plainly explained time and time again since day 1 at AMD? I didn't see you people complaining when the AthlonXP 1800+ was outperforming the P4 2.0GHz Willamette. As AMD has said since day 1, the AMD rating system is based on the performance of a
"Made compulsory, such a pledge is worthless, meaningless and a supression of intellectual activity. It represents a repudiation of Jeffersonian ideals, as embodied in the Declaration of Independance and U.S. Constitution."
Which is essentially what Justice Jackson wrote for the majority in West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette. (1943). Compulsory flag salutes and pledges of allegiance of any sort are simply not legal in these united states. Your argument, impassioned though it may be, is essentially 60 years after the fact.
"Do we get to wear armbands, too?"
If you'd like to, I suppose.
"You may not have to recite the pledge (although in this case, I believe pledging was compulsory; please correct me if I'm wrong)"
Ask and ye shall receive. No person may be compelled by any public official (this would include a public school teacher) to recite any sort of pledge of allegiance. The case in question is West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette(1943). The Supreme Court held that
"[i]f there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."
My personal opinion of this case was most heavily influenced by the simple fact that no student can, in any way, shape, or form, be compelled to participate in either the salute to the flag or the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. My understanding, limited though it may be, is that no student could be punished for reciting the original pledge (written by a socialist, no less) which did not contain any reference to God. Some have made reference to possible "peer pressure" or other social pressures which could be brought to bear on a student who refuses to salute or recite the 'official' Pledge of Allegiance. I fail to see where in any law it is said that it is the responsibility of the government to ensure that no decision or policy is ever put into effect which may indirectly cause one or more of its citizens to experience social pressure due to their chosen cooperation, or lack thereof, with said decision or policy. Such an absurd concept would bring the entire government to a screeching halt and invalidate each and every law, policy, and decision ever put forth by our current government (as in the one that began with the ratification of the Constitution).
"Using school property to communicate a message with a distinctly theistic slant ("one nation, under God") is unconstitutional (again, see the Santa Fe v. Doe ruling)."
This assumes that any and all appearances of the word 'God' intrinsically convey a specific religious message. The phrase, taken out of context, could even be interpreted as meaning that we live under a theocratic rule. While some elements of religious morality have found their way into our laws throughout our history, most are quite simply commonly understood moral features which appear in just about every law; secular or religious. Theft, murder, rape; all of these things are against virtually every modern religion, and are all illegal in just about every modern society. Enacting a law prohibiting murder is not an endorsement of any religion; merely an expression of the rights of each individual to live.
My point here is one that the Supreme Court has made many times, and one with which I completely agree. The word 'God', along with many of the teachings of major religions can be used within a social or historical context without any sort of large religious connotation. Were this pledge compulsory, I would probably scrutinize it further, but with things being the way they are, I'm quite satisfied with the explaination that the phrase 'under God' carries more of a historical and social context than a religious one. Quite honestly, I don't believe that the phrase has any influence whatsoever in how those who recite it think or feel about any given religion, or even religion itself. The difficulty in this case is that our mostly Christian society, coming from Christian ancestry, has integrated the word 'God' in our language in such a way that it simply refers to a generalized higher power when used in a social context. That the word 'God' is used by Christians to describe their specific higher power is simply a consequence of historical and social culture. Thus, 'God', the higher power, can be Allah for a Muslim child, Yahweh for a Jewish teacher, or it could be a
And you know, I don't really mind seeing this article on The Inquirer. Not that they're some sort of BS rag like the National Enquirer, but they tend to post anything they hear from their 'moles' inside large companies. I don't have a problem with that because I know when I'm on their page that any information needs to be vetted for believability. I find it very unfortunate for the more rumor-millesque stories to find their way onto a site like Slashdot. Usually on Slashdot, I only have to correct for Pro-Linux/Anti-Microsoft/Pro-OSS bias, rather than outright misinformation.
Why do you guys run this stuff? I mean, come on, everything from the title to the content is completely misleading in this story. First, the title:
"New Pentium 5 Details - 5-7ghz?"
Now, when I read this, I read "Pentium 5" as all-inclusive of the assumed PV cores, which would include Prescott. A Prescott core at 5GHz probably would not be seen on shelves until mid to late 2004 at the very earliest. Personally, I think Prescott simply won't scale to 5GHz before they dump it for a newer core. Starting at 3.2/3.4 and later hitting 5 without changing a number of things in between simply isn't how Intel generally does business. No, this article mentions nothing of Prescott; it talked about Tejas, something that isn't even sampling yet.
Now some of the content (a word I use sparingly in this case):
" It will have 64 bit extensions"
Unlikely as hell. At least, it's very unlikely that it will have said extensions actually enabled. First of all, it's not news at all. Prescott is long since known to have 64-bit disabled extensions. Why are they disabled? Well, simply put, Microsoft probably wont support it, and it would annihilate Itanium's chances of any sort of large-scale adoption. Gee, there goes about 13 years of research down the drain. Why? Because Intel's customers simply aren't that stupid, and will demand 64-bit extensions for any Xeons if they're released in stock P5s, which will make the Itanium all but worthless. Secondly, with Microsoft already supporting a 32-bit Windows for the masses, a 64-bit Windows for the Itanium crowd (all three of you please raise your hands), and a 64-bit version for Opteron/Athlon64 users, having to throw yet more money into making the same OS run on another platform would make them start to feel like the NetBSD folks. Microsoft has long told Intel what, when, and how, without giving a damn about the why, so I doubt Intel would do forward with 64-bit extensions any time before Longhorn, which we can't expect until late 2005 or so.
"and maybe a 4000 mhz frontside bus."
And maybe? It almost sounds like you're taking a rough guess. Have you ever seen CNN come up with a story that reads: "And maybe 300 people were killed in a planecrash in Brazil"? Please leave the "maybe" stuff for speculative sites such as The Register and The Inquirer. I think I speak for a great many Slashdot readers when I say that I expect maybes from those sites; NOT from Slashdot.
And for further clues to the editors for why this story should never have made it past the submission cutting room floor:
" Quote from the article,'The Pentium V is likely to fly along at between 5GHz to 7GHz, have 2MB plus of level two cache, be built on a 90 nanometer process, and have a stackable design."
Aside from the fact that the only reasonable claim of that entire sentence is the process size, it's filled with likelies, 'or mores', and a design which probably won't be implemented until 2006 in Itanium, which will have long since been dead according to this 'article'. Then when you factor in that Intel's roadmaps have shown Tejas to not be around for about a year after the first Pentium 5s hit the shelves, the claims look even more farfetched.
Quite frankly, this is sensationalist journalism at its worst. I may as well submit an article that says, "New AMD chip to hit 90 TFlops" and then reference some article talking about an AMD CPU scheduled for 2008. It's misleading, unconfirmed rumors (according to the article itself), and quite frankly belongs nowhere near any news site that isn't understood to have entrusted its stories to sources that are at times, inaccurate, at other times completely wrong, and a bit less often, misleading or lying.
So editors, please stop posting speculation and rumor. If I want that, I'll go to the sites that publish it regularly. If you don't stop posting it here, then it gets mixed in with the real news and gets far too much credence mixed in with it.
"Most of us don't even use 5GB, much less 90GB (90GB!!!)."
And you know, Comcast didn't bother me while I was using 120 - 150GB per month. But that month it went over 220GB (total up/down) I got a letter. I don't think they found that one amusing. According to the friendly fellow at the local office, I was in the top 1% of all Comcast's internet users. All of them. Oh well, I've managed to bring my bandwidth usage down to around 15 - 20GB per month for now.
As a side note, I do have a "pro" account, which basically means marginally faster speeds for twice the monthly price. Why would I pay double for only a slight improvement in bandwidth? Well, I felt it only right that since I am a very heavy bandwidth user, I ought to pay a bit extra. Basically, I felt that $100/mo was a fair price for truly unlimited usage. Comcast, obviously, disagreed. I'll most likely be transfering my account to a regular residential line for now, while I complain to Covad to hurry up and make DSL service available to me. Nice going, Comcast. $100/mo down the drain.
In case you're wondering how on Earth someone can use that much bandwidth, try using Freenet (unlimited) + a good amount of gaming + getting some old TV shows that no one feels fit to run anymore. I don't really have an interest in music (sorry RIAA folks), and my porn downloads are quite limited as well. Frankly, my upstream tops my downstream most of the time. At softcapped 384kbps up, you can easily top 4GB per day. Times 30. You do the math.
" if you RTFA you'll see that it isn't actually a fusion reactor or reaction at all. What it is is a deuterium ion plasma generator."
... ion plas*cough*aarghph*cough* for a fusion reactor? Hey Rob, what kind of Mickey Mouse show are you runnin' here?
Errr, yeah; what kind of stupid bastard mistakes a deu... deuterium
*darts eyes back and forth*
" Correct me if I'm wrong, but that would mean that only a federal prosecutor, i.e. the DOJ, could initiate a RICO action against the RIAA. But the DOJ, along with most of the rest of the federal government, is Own3d by the RIAA and its friends (hence the easy passage of the DMCA), so no RICO action will ever be brought against them by the only people who can bring such action."
I'm not talking about bringing action against the RIAA, though my understanding is that civil action may be brought by an individual. What I'm actually talking about is for one of those being sued to defend themselves on the grounds that the RIAA may not use the courts to continue their illegal actions as part of a corrupt organization.
To me, this seems like a man suing someone for theft because they took his gun away while he was shooting into a crowd. The answer is, "Yes, I took your gun away, but your misuse of said gun nullified your right to possess it." Or something to that effect. On the other hand, a counter-suit filed by one of the 261 (260 now? -1 12yo girl?) aledging RICO violations might make sense if it's part of the defense.
My question was more along the lines of why this hasn't been discussed. The general word from every lawyer involved in the defense of these accused folks is fairly close to, "my client didn't know what they were doing was illegal." Well gee, Fred, my client didn't know it was illegal to sell crack to children in the park. Does he get to go free too? I'm just wondering why it is we haven't seen anyone actually defend their client. Is this a simple matter of no one yet having the resources to mount an actual defense perhaps? Or is my concept of RICO so far removed from reality that such a defense is just as meaningless as the ones we're seeing now?
"If my memory serves me correctly, it was the attorney general of Indiana or Ohio or some state like that that initiated and won (settled or outright won) the case! Would someone please find this issue and put a scanned copy of it for /.ers to look at?"
How about this instead?
"The suit ... charges that the RIAA's program is deceptive and fraudulent business practice."
Which brings us one step closer to my idea. If there are any real lawyers here, could you please tell me why no one has bothered to attack the RIAA's charges using the Federal RICO Act? The RIAA and member organizations have engaged in a pattern of corrupt business practices for over 50 years, and are now using the law to intimidate individuals, companies, and universities to further their interests.
From my (admittedly limited) understanding of RICO, you must prove that the organization has engaged in a pattern of criminal activity, and is using illegal means, especially under cover of authority (court actions, copyright law, etc) to further their interests. Now, the ongoing illegal activity is really two-fold. That being, the RIAA's member companies have illegally maintained an effective distribution monopoly by engaging in anti-competitive acts, and have conspired to defraud consumers with a massive price-fixing scheme which caused consumers to be overcharged by more than $480 million (USD) since 1997 alone, according to the former head of the FTC. This scheme was labled "Minimum-Advertised Pricing", or MAP by the Attorneys General who investigated and eventually brought about a settlement. With regard to the anti-competitive acts, the RIAA and member companies have engaged in such practices as "payola", in which radio stations were paid money in order to ensure that music not controlled by the RIAA's members was never played, and therefore never heard by the public at large. Thus, their only competition, the independent artist/label, continues to struggle to get by, while the RIAA monopoly takes in billions each year.
So I ask again, why is it that no one has attacked the RIAA on RICO grounds. A corrupt organization cannot use the legal system to facilitate its illegal activities. The lack of legal online modes of music distribution is but more evidence of the RIAA's desperate struggle to maintain its distribution monopoly with an iron fist. It would seem to me that showing these lawsuits to be nothing more than tactics designed to further the interests of a corrupt organization is a far better defense than, "my client didn't know it was illegal".
""Adrian negotiated the terms of his surrender, which included the charges in the warrant issued against him being disclosed."
"So if they never tell him what he's charged with, can he get a reduced punishment?"
I should think a better tactic would be to make one of the terms of his surrender that he's never read his miranda rights. At which point, he can then confess to the police, laugh about it on TV, then walk into court and say, "Holy shit, my statements can be used against me in a court of law?! But nobody told me that!"
"What the RIAA is doing may or may not be good business sense, but what were they supposed to do?"
Stop price fixing? Stop illegally maintaining their monopoly on distribution? Start providing their customers with a product worth buying? Start selling said product at a reasonable price?
It's been said that folks wont pay for what they can get for free, yet Apple's music service claims to have sold over 10 million songs. Isn't is amazing what happens when you actually offer the product to the consumer at a reasonable price, delivered in "packaging" (online download) the consumer likes?
It's easy to blame this on those who are downloading content by saying they're breaking the law. But the truth is that this is what's known as consumer backlash. For too long, the major media companies have controlled the pricing, distribution, and availability of content to the detriment of the average Joe. This is a consumer backlash 20+ years in the making, and major media's only hope is to carefully win back consumers by adhering to classic business and economic principles. Basically, if you offer a product people want at a price they consider reasonable, and it's packaged/delivered in a manner/format that's acceptable to them, you're going to make money. Otherwise, you're going to fail.