Maybe this is a bit out there, but I would venture to say that the Second Amendment guarantees our ability to protect all the rights reserved by the people in the U.S. Constitution, including the bit about how "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech...".
The Second Amendment was put into place to allow a seriously pissed-off populace to seek relief for their government's breach of the social contract. If the government does not respect the rights of the people, the people will in all likelyhood use force of arms to replace them with one that does.
The Second Amendment to the Constitution does indeed guarantee the people's right to free speech. Without the ability to preserve "the security of a free State", all the rights outlined in the Constitution become meaningless, their very existance reliant upon the whims of government.
I hope that Verizon decides to start kicking the spammers off their network, because I shudder to think what one of them could do with that sort of bandwidth. That's not the only problem, either. I can only imagine the fun kiddies will have with armies of cracked computers on Fios connections. Verizon certainly doesn't care. Perhaps the damaged caused by drone armies on higher speed connections will result in enough backlash to make Verizon become part of the solution for a change...
Microsoft apologist? What does that mean, exactly?
I didn't see the grandparent poster defending their formerly illegal monopolistic practices, or anything like that. In fact, they sound like they're in the same boat as I. I've been running Windows 2000 since it came out, and I moved onto Windows XP after w2k decided it didn't like my SATA drive. I've not had stability issues (or any others for that matter) with either of them.
For the most part, you'll be fine as long as you exercise some clue. Keep up to date on OS and application patches, run a good antivirus program, stay behind a firewall, and don't use insecure software (such as IE/Outlook); these procedures apply to all operating systems, and they've kept both my Windows and Linux computers running happily for years. I certainly don't consider myself to be a Microsoft apologist, though.
The entire purpose of free speech is to ensure that somebody can put forth the most disgusting and unpopular viewpoints. I agree that the grandparent post was pretty worthless, but if you don't like what they've got to say, then add them to your enemies list and get over it. It's a fact of life that people will say things that you don't like to hear, and if that's the case then you ought to ignore it. You're stepping over the line by calling for the removal of users who post things that you don't like to read (though i feel you have every right to suggest such a thing).
Besides, how would such a decision be made? By karma level? What about people who are victims of abuse of the moderation system (mod-bombings of -1, Overrated and the like)? Who gets to decide which user accounts are worthwhile and which aren't? And who would watch those decisions to prevent abuse? What about people who don't agree with the Slashdot Party Line(TM)? Should their accounts be removed because they disagree with all the *nix/Apple/OSS/anti-copyright zealots? It's quite the can of worms you're trying to open...
Re:Your point is totally irrelevant
on
LokiTorrent vs. MPAA
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
My point is that we cannot expect free food, water, or other rights. Why would justice be any different? It should not be.
1. Are you suggesting there should be no justice system? Then why bother having civilization? A justice system is a necessary part of a civilized nation, but all citizens should have equal access. The poorest person in the country ought to have the same ability to defend their legal rights as the mightiest corporation.
2. Are you suggesting that people should mete out their own justice? Then the one with the most money always wins, because he can afford the biggest guns. Isn't this how our current justice system works? I find it disturbing that many lawsuits seem to turn into wars of attrition where the first party to run out of money loses.
3. Are you suggesting that I should pay for EVERYONE's justice? All lawyers would have to be government employees. Do you want government employees protecting your civil rights from the government that pays them? There is nothing wrong with people hiring private lawyers to help them exercise or defend their legal rights. There is something wrong with a legal system that makes it possible for a person to lose a dispute even when they're in the right because they can't afford to pay the legal fees associated with an extended court battle.
4. Perhaps you're suggesting lawyers get paid too much? How much should a person who goes through 7 gruelling years of post-secondary education get paid? I don't have a problem with lawyers, I have a problem with our legal system. Lawyers deserve to be well paid for their knowledge and ability, but should not be used as a means of driving a person to financial ruin should they wish to defend their legal rights.
5. But I think you're suggesting that you want all of the benefits of our justice system, but without any cost to you. I'm suggesting that every single person in this nation ought to have the ability to defend their legal rights, and that our current legal system does not make this possible.
Maybe Viperlair should take some of the money they make from using slashdot as their free advertising platform and buy a non-shitty digital camera+tripod, so they don't look like a hardware review site ran out of some teenager's basement...
If he was just sending unsolicited email advertising a real product that actually worked, then 9 years would indeed be too harsh. Creating an annoyance, even to many people, should not be punished more harshly than some murders and rapes.
Except that spamming isn't just an annoyance, it's outright theft. Sending spam is a relatively inexpensive thing to do because the majority of the cost of spam is borne by the recepient. Every time a spammer performs a spam run, they deprive the recepients of bandwidth, CPU cycles, disc space, and time. Such actions fall under a tort known as "trespass to chattels", which Compuserve sucessfully argued in its lawsuit against Cyber Promotions back in 1997. Most spammers don't bother with filtering out invalid e-mail addresses (or the e-mail addresses of people who didn't ask for their e-mail), which means that every time they send spam, it gets blasted to hundreds of thousands of e-mail addresses (many of which are users that do not exist), leaving thousands of other people's e-mail servers to process it, which means that whoever owns or runs that e-mail server is deprived of their bandwidth/CPU cycles/disc space, which they should be using for their own purposes.
Let's not forget the final recepient of the spam, either. They've got to sort through their inbox and seperate legitimated, desired e-mail from the unsolicited bulk e-mail. Their time is wasted, and if they're doing it at work, their employer loses money from lost productivity, etc etc. Spamming is such a great industry (for spammers) because the recipient (or their ISP) pays the costs.
I have that written in the signature box of my credit card, and I'm surprised at the number of cashiers that don't bother even looking at the back of the card to see if a signature exists. Most of them simply swipe the card and go about the transaction. About a quarter of the cashiers I encounter look for a signature, notice the 'check id' and wind up asking me for a second, or even third form of ID (liquor store). I'm not one to lose my wallet, but I hope that if it were ever lost/stolen it'd give somebody trying to use my credit card a harder time doing so. I've never had anybody try and confiscate my credit card because of the 'check id', though. Then again I'm willing to bet that the most minimum wage drones aren't trained/didn't read the merchant agreement/couldn't give two shits anyway.
Perhaps you should take a look at magnatune Album prices start at $5, and you can pay up to $18, knowing that 50% of the sale price will go directly to the artist. You can get the music in any form, from mp3 to ogg to flac, and even the perfect quality wav! Best of all, once you've paid for the music, you can re-download it whenever you like! I've bought some albums myself, and while they may not have the artists you'll see on MTV (no big loss there), they've got some pretty good stuff available. They've even got a business plan that doesn't include pissing off their customer base.
You really should check them out if you're looking for a resonable alternative to the RIAA's music.
PS: I use an older version of AIM (5.2.3292), so YMMV with the hosts file. If the servers have changed any, I've found it's pretty easy to figure out where AIM's getting adverts from with this nifty utility.
I decided to look through the AIM EULA to see if there was any section regarding acceptance of advertisements, when I noticed something far more irritating than the little advert box I haven't seen for the past few years: the latest version of AIM (5.9.3690) installs WeatherBug for you by default! Granted, you can uncheck the box very easily, but I personally dislike the idea of having to opt-out of software "extras" (another example being that Macromedia Shockwave installs Yahoo! Companion by default).
Also, if you're tired of the ads, just add the following to your hosts file:
Installing OS X on an ancient piece of hardware would be a neat hack...but whoop de do, they found the slowest box they could run linux on, and emulated OS X. That's kind of neat, but certainly not something that belongs on the front page of slashdot.
If they're making money just from the game being played, there's no real legal precedent that allows them to shut down P2P networks for carrying software.
Not quite sure where the hell you got that bright idea, but (at least here in the US of A) copyright infringement is still copyright infringement, whether the rights holder(s) make money off it or not.
Perhaps you mean that the software industry propaganda will be harder to swallow, because the average joe will think to himself "well, if they get paid ad revenues for my playing the game, how can they claim that software piracy is causing them to lose money?"
You make some interesting points, thanks for your response. I agree with your feelings regarding the laugh tracks, and I feel that the whole 'mob rule' thing is really hurting televised entertainment by lowering its quality to a level that'll be accepted by the lowest common denominator (which is why I no longer watch television (going on three years now)).
Whenever I want to watch a television show that I used to enjoy, I'll either go buy the DVD releases (Seinfeld, The Office, etc), or go download episodes that I can't buy DVDs for (Iron Chef).
I would love to see a feature on television show DVDs that allowed one to turn the laugh track OFF. Am I the only person who finds those to be irritating and degrading? I'm quite capable of deciding when I find something amusing, and reacting accordingly; I don't see a need to be prompted to laugh. Incidentally, I got a kick out of most of the "situations" that the characters of Seinfeld got into; but found a good portion of the banter to be kind of annoying after the first few seasons...
Also, I don't think that the grandparent meant that personally, and I too am curious as to what you find funny.
I've found the best way to deal with friends who want free tech support is to explain to them that your time is valuable, and because they're your friends you'll take payment in the form of (drugs|alcohol|sexual favors) (YMMV on the last one, though). At best you'll get (a few rounds of drinks|good and stoned|laid) for your troubles, at worst they'll get pissed off and you'll stop having to provide support to people who think your time is worthless. Most people will jump at the chance to have a geek work on their PC for the cost of a few rounds.
I've been using Steam since the beta, and I've been playing Counter-Sstrike for years now, since 1.0. I personally find Steam to be a huge pain in the ass to run on my system. I used to run Windows 2000, and the only stability problems I've had were caused by Steam (lock-ups, etc). Otherwise the system ran rock solid. I currently use Windows XP, and have had better luck, but still have to deal with the annoying bugs that valve doesn't give a rat's ass about (the game stealing focus in window mode during a round restart of CS, the audio input always being switched to microphone when hl.exe launches (I use a livedrive), the friends list rarely working, being unable to cut/copy/paste from/to the console, I could go on and on).
I have a good knowledge of both Microsoft and free operating systems (the only Windows based pc I own is the one I play videogames on), and consider myself to be far from "stupid as hell". I'm glad Steam works for you, you're one of the lucky ones.
Why don't you give Magnatune a try? They have a decent selection of music, you can download the albums as many times as you like in quite a few formats (including FLAC and straight up WAV), and best of all...they're not the RIAA.
WON has been shutdown by VALVe, so unless you have the rumored patches for hlds that allow you to have sv_lan set to 1 without the IP check enabled; you're gonna be playing single player, on LAN, or on Steam. Also: fuck valve, thanks for ruining CS, dicks.
Slashdot Mirror
The Second Amendment was put into place to allow a seriously pissed-off populace to seek relief for their government's breach of the social contract. If the government does not respect the rights of the people, the people will in all likelyhood use force of arms to replace them with one that does.
The Second Amendment to the Constitution does indeed guarantee the people's right to free speech. Without the ability to preserve "the security of a free State", all the rights outlined in the Constitution become meaningless, their very existance reliant upon the whims of government.
I hope that Verizon decides to start kicking the spammers off their network, because I shudder to think what one of them could do with that sort of bandwidth. That's not the only problem, either. I can only imagine the fun kiddies will have with armies of cracked computers on Fios connections. Verizon certainly doesn't care. Perhaps the damaged caused by drone armies on higher speed connections will result in enough backlash to make Verizon become part of the solution for a change...
I made a key fob out of an old IBM Token Ring PCMCIA card. My keys are impossible to lose :)
I didn't see the grandparent poster defending their formerly illegal monopolistic practices, or anything like that. In fact, they sound like they're in the same boat as I. I've been running Windows 2000 since it came out, and I moved onto Windows XP after w2k decided it didn't like my SATA drive. I've not had stability issues (or any others for that matter) with either of them.
For the most part, you'll be fine as long as you exercise some clue. Keep up to date on OS and application patches, run a good antivirus program, stay behind a firewall, and don't use insecure software (such as IE/Outlook); these procedures apply to all operating systems, and they've kept both my Windows and Linux computers running happily for years. I certainly don't consider myself to be a Microsoft apologist, though.
By the way - your analogy was terrible.
Besides, how would such a decision be made? By karma level? What about people who are victims of abuse of the moderation system (mod-bombings of -1, Overrated and the like)? Who gets to decide which user accounts are worthwhile and which aren't? And who would watch those decisions to prevent abuse? What about people who don't agree with the Slashdot Party Line(TM)? Should their accounts be removed because they disagree with all the *nix/Apple/OSS/anti-copyright zealots? It's quite the can of worms you're trying to open...
It should not be.
1. Are you suggesting there should be no justice system? Then why bother having civilization?
A justice system is a necessary part of a civilized nation, but all citizens should have equal access. The poorest person in the country ought to have the same ability to defend their legal rights as the mightiest corporation.
2. Are you suggesting that people should mete out their own justice? Then the one with the most money always wins, because he can afford the biggest guns.
Isn't this how our current justice system works? I find it disturbing that many lawsuits seem to turn into wars of attrition where the first party to run out of money loses.
3. Are you suggesting that I should pay for EVERYONE's justice? All lawyers would have to be government employees. Do you want government employees protecting your civil rights from the government that pays them?
There is nothing wrong with people hiring private lawyers to help them exercise or defend their legal rights. There is something wrong with a legal system that makes it possible for a person to lose a dispute even when they're in the right because they can't afford to pay the legal fees associated with an extended court battle.
4. Perhaps you're suggesting lawyers get paid too much? How much should a person who goes through 7 gruelling years of post-secondary education get paid?
I don't have a problem with lawyers, I have a problem with our legal system. Lawyers deserve to be well paid for their knowledge and ability, but should not be used as a means of driving a person to financial ruin should they wish to defend their legal rights.
5. But I think you're suggesting that you want all of the benefits of our justice system, but without any cost to you.
I'm suggesting that every single person in this nation ought to have the ability to defend their legal rights, and that our current legal system does not make this possible.
Hi, I'd like you to meet my friend, Basic Economics; he's here to explain something called "supply and demand" to you...
Maybe Viperlair should take some of the money they make from using slashdot as their free advertising platform and buy a non-shitty digital camera+tripod, so they don't look like a hardware review site ran out of some teenager's basement...
"He's TIMESHIFTING OUR RIGHTS!!!!" nearly made me spew a mouthfull of water all over my keyboard. thanks for the laughs
Except that spamming isn't just an annoyance, it's outright theft. Sending spam is a relatively inexpensive thing to do because the majority of the cost of spam is borne by the recepient. Every time a spammer performs a spam run, they deprive the recepients of bandwidth, CPU cycles, disc space, and time. Such actions fall under a tort known as "trespass to chattels", which Compuserve sucessfully argued in its lawsuit against Cyber Promotions back in 1997. Most spammers don't bother with filtering out invalid e-mail addresses (or the e-mail addresses of people who didn't ask for their e-mail), which means that every time they send spam, it gets blasted to hundreds of thousands of e-mail addresses (many of which are users that do not exist), leaving thousands of other people's e-mail servers to process it, which means that whoever owns or runs that e-mail server is deprived of their bandwidth/CPU cycles/disc space, which they should be using for their own purposes.
Let's not forget the final recepient of the spam, either. They've got to sort through their inbox and seperate legitimated, desired e-mail from the unsolicited bulk e-mail. Their time is wasted, and if they're doing it at work, their employer loses money from lost productivity, etc etc. Spamming is such a great industry (for spammers) because the recipient (or their ISP) pays the costs.
I have that written in the signature box of my credit card, and I'm surprised at the number of cashiers that don't bother even looking at the back of the card to see if a signature exists. Most of them simply swipe the card and go about the transaction. About a quarter of the cashiers I encounter look for a signature, notice the 'check id' and wind up asking me for a second, or even third form of ID (liquor store). I'm not one to lose my wallet, but I hope that if it were ever lost/stolen it'd give somebody trying to use my credit card a harder time doing so. I've never had anybody try and confiscate my credit card because of the 'check id', though. Then again I'm willing to bet that the most minimum wage drones aren't trained/didn't read the merchant agreement/couldn't give two shits anyway.
Perhaps you should take a look at magnatune
Album prices start at $5, and you can pay up to $18, knowing that 50% of the sale price will go directly to the artist. You can get the music in any form, from mp3 to ogg to flac, and even the perfect quality wav! Best of all, once you've paid for the music, you can re-download it whenever you like! I've bought some albums myself, and while they may not have the artists you'll see on MTV (no big loss there), they've got some pretty good stuff available. They've even got a business plan that doesn't include pissing off their customer base. You really should check them out if you're looking for a resonable alternative to the RIAA's music.
PS: I use an older version of AIM (5.2.3292), so YMMV with the hosts file. If the servers have changed any, I've found it's pretty easy to figure out where AIM's getting adverts from with this nifty utility.
Also, if you're tired of the ads, just add the following to your hosts file:
Poof! Ads all gone.Installing OS X on an ancient piece of hardware would be a neat hack...but whoop de do, they found the slowest box they could run linux on, and emulated OS X. That's kind of neat, but certainly not something that belongs on the front page of slashdot.
Not quite sure where the hell you got that bright idea, but (at least here in the US of A) copyright infringement is still copyright infringement, whether the rights holder(s) make money off it or not.
Perhaps you mean that the software industry propaganda will be harder to swallow, because the average joe will think to himself "well, if they get paid ad revenues for my playing the game, how can they claim that software piracy is causing them to lose money?"
Whenever I want to watch a television show that I used to enjoy, I'll either go buy the DVD releases (Seinfeld, The Office, etc), or go download episodes that I can't buy DVDs for (Iron Chef).
Also, I don't think that the grandparent meant that personally, and I too am curious as to what you find funny.
I've found the best way to deal with friends who want free tech support is to explain to them that your time is valuable, and because they're your friends you'll take payment in the form of (drugs|alcohol|sexual favors) (YMMV on the last one, though). At best you'll get (a few rounds of drinks|good and stoned|laid) for your troubles, at worst they'll get pissed off and you'll stop having to provide support to people who think your time is worthless. Most people will jump at the chance to have a geek work on their PC for the cost of a few rounds.
hahhaha, i saw that; thanks for the laughs. i figured when i saw the story about halo 2 at work this morning i'd go for it
I have a good knowledge of both Microsoft and free operating systems (the only Windows based pc I own is the one I play videogames on), and consider myself to be far from "stupid as hell". I'm glad Steam works for you, you're one of the lucky ones.
see how he uses a spanner to tighten that nut!
It'd been known early on from Microsoft legal that they would "rather see Sender ID die than back down on their patent claims". Sender ID is going nowhere.
Why don't you give Magnatune a try? They have a decent selection of music, you can download the albums as many times as you like in quite a few formats (including FLAC and straight up WAV), and best of all...they're not the RIAA.
WON has been shutdown by VALVe, so unless you have the rumored patches for hlds that allow you to have sv_lan set to 1 without the IP check enabled; you're gonna be playing single player, on LAN, or on Steam.
Also: fuck valve, thanks for ruining CS, dicks.