The issue of wardriving is a grey area, in the sense that if you leave your front door open, intruders might not be considered to be committing a crime if they walk through it.
Erm, no. If it's not a public place, that's called trespassing. In some states, it's also called breaking and entering (even without the need to actually break anything; I believe Massachusetts is such a state).
And more to the point, unauthorized access of a computer network is a felony in the United States and Australia at least, and probably many other countries as well. Somebody not taking a step to prevent you is not an authorization, even if it is a fairly decent defense. Some laws codify this, others leave it to the court to work out.
I'm not equating legality and morality, but it's fairly clear that this is not a legally gray area. It's illegal, and so was the activity in your analogy.
I don't personally care very much about the Google thing. They opened up an API to use the service, so in that sense they're responsible for their own success. The only part of it I don't care for is the fact that somebody made money writing a tiny little program that does nothing but use that API, leaving Google to foot the bill while they roll around in their piles of money. It's not illegal, it's probably not even amoral, but it's pretty scummy too.
These are working sessions, and getting a zillion people ranting and raving about a casual word or phrase here or there is counter productive.
I can agree with this; there's no reason for people to work themselves up over every word of every draft of an agreement that hasn't been reached yet --
The writers of the Constitution worked mostly in secret too.
-- but at the same time, these people are under a legal obligation to give these documents up. The founders of the Constitution certainly weren't.
Maybe FOIA is a bad law, maybe it's poorly implemented, maybe its exceptions are lacking, maybe there really should be some provision that they can deny access to draft documents to gather up all the bitching at one, more manageable point in time. However none of these are true. All there is, is a legal obligation to turn over documents upon request if such documents do not meet one of a handful of exceptions.
If there is any sort of national security issue involved in a copyright treaty, the treaty is wildly exceeding its bounds. That not terribly likely, so the reasonable assumption is they're simply lying. Personally I think lying to avoid a legal requirement to do something you just dun wanna should be treated the same as perjury. In fact I hope whatever they have to do to officially deny a FOIA request DOES carry the pains and penalties of perjury, but I doubt it. Until they change the law or start heftin' people into jail for lying though, they deserve every bit of ridicule and crap they get for it. They brought it on themselves by clearly unethical and borderline illegal behavior.
I honestly don't think them streaming video is at all relevant. Courtrooms are open to the public, and often open to cameras -- unless there is a compelling reason that what is said in the courtroom needs to be kept secret from the public. Child (sex abuse) victims are one fairly common example of when judges typically don't believe the public needs to know.
You're right that this court has already seemingly determined that there's nothing wrong with the actual act of streaming court arguments, as evidenced by them doing so themselves. That doesn't mean they can't impartially hear arguments over whether or not there is something specific to this case that would deserve that protection.
As far as changing venue, I'm pretty sure that's not an option for an appeal. Changes of venue are for when they don't feel they can get a fair trial--and since they're the plaintiffs and brought suit in this particular jurisdiction themselves, I'd say that argument flies out the window pretty immediately. That said, this isn't a trial -- this is an appeal of a particular order made by the trial judge. The best I could see them doing is recusing themselves, but I've also never heard any precedent of an entire court recusing itself from a decision. It would be highly unlikely if it's even possible.
That doesn't mean those services are worth anything and they don't need to be paid for unless somebody is feeling charitable.
Nor does it mean that the services are worthless, nor does it mean that they cost nothing to provide. As you so glibly point out, people are paying for their bits coming in -- but somebody, somewhere is also paying for the bits going out.
The bottom line is this: If they are putting ads on their websites, their intention is that you look at the ads in exchange for the information or services they are providing you. You're clearly interested in this information or service, since you're using it, but you're unwilling to pay for it according to the exchange they're offering. That's perfectly fine. How you feel taking it anyway and not giving them their ad revenue isn't unethical is rather beyond me, particularly when we're talking about something as unobtrusive as the textual Google Ads.
The window washers are a terrible analogy. They practically jump on your car in hopes you give them money, when you neither sought out nor wanted their service. You DID specifically seek out the website you're visiting, which is pretty damn clear considering the web works on a request-response model. The horrible analogy leads me to believe you're simply one of those people who already made up his mind and is grasping at anything they can to rationalize it later.
Unfortunately, corporate management very rarely works in the best interests of the stockholder and trying to get them fired is pretty much impossible without buying the company outright.
All Icahn wants is to have the company sold. By that logic, whoever buys it would be just as likely to not work in the best interests of the stockholder and their only recourse will be to try to get the company sold. Over and over and over ad nauseum.
Boon to stockholders? Probably. Then again I think we're living with the consequences of pretending money comes out of thin air to reward people for something that doesn't actually change anything. Things can appreciate, but not instantly, not merely on speculation, and not just because the stockholders would like some quick cash please.
I've had many discussions with atheists where I am consistently asked to defend literal interpretations of the bible, when in fact I don't consider literal interpretations correct or useful.
I think the problem is that people tend to use "religion" in place of "Christianity" or even a specific Christian religion in a lot of there arguments. I know I'm guilty of that sometimes myself. There are certainly arguments to be made against religion itself and many of those I subscribe to, but my specific beefs tend to be with Christianity in general and Catholicism specifically. (This is, undoubtedly, because my family was Catholic; I ended up going to Sunday school for eight years and doing the confirmation nonsense despite realizing I don't believe in sixth grade or so.)
I don't personally believe in a god, because I don't feel I have any reason to believe in a god and feel that simply not knowing everything (how did the universe begin?) is not reason enough to believe. That said, I'd be infinitely more likely to believe in A god than I would to believe in the Christian god. There's just too many contradictions, too many things in the Bible that don't make sense for me. To paraphrase Gene Roddenberry, there's something wrong with the story logic.
Taking the bible non-literally is a step in the right direction I think, but it just seems like it's too selective. Are you saying you don't take it literally, except for all the parts of the Bible that "prove" (please admit it's not actually proof!) the Bible is in fact the word of god? If we're taking it as life lessons, cool -- I'm on board with some of it. I've always been interested in religion the same way I'm interested in what we now call mythology. Picking and choosing what we think is god and what we think is Mad Roman Emperors With Axes To Grind feels like devaluing it into nothingness though.
In other words, I guess, it's a separation of religion and belief. I hate most religions for various reasons not worth getting into in this context; I don't necessarily have a problem with somebody having a belief in a god/higher power/what have you. In my mind, the more generic the belief the better. Specifics are where I start to see contradictions and get frustrated that others don't seem to see them too.
This is all predicated on an assumption that he has a legitimate record label and that Metallica isn't the sole owner of their copyrights. That said --
So being the creator and performer, I would say he'd be at the top of this imaginary list of people who should be allowed to download the album for free.
-- why? If he has a label who is providing some services to him, then he's preventing them from getting paid by pirating a CD just the same as anybody else pirating the CD does. I'm glad he feels like as long as HE gets paid it's all good, but it's nothing but hypocrisy. As somebody on the leading edge of the anti-piracy fight, if there is ANYBODY who's not receiving money as a result of what he did, and they didn't all give express permission to do this, then he's just as bad as every other pirate out there he rails against. Worse, since he's also a hypocrite.
I know this is akin to telling a battered spouse that she should leave her husband, but seriously, do you need to be a tool all your life? You do have a choice.
It's not exactly bad advice, nor is what the article's author has to say. It is somewhat poorly timed though, with the economic downturn.
Do you need to be a tool all your life? It all depends. How in demand is your profession? How in demand are you in particular? What is your financial situation (ie, can you go a few months looking for a better job if all you have is offers from assholes)?
The real issue is the balance of power between employers and employees. Employers wouldn't do that if 1) potential employees made it clear they didn't care for it and 2) doing so meant that they had trouble filling their positions with qualified applicants. Only half of that equation is within the control of the potential employees, and as the economy gets worse it makes it removes even more power from them by increasing the number of people seeking a smaller number of positions. The irony is that the people with the most power--the best skills, the best financial situations--are the ones who least need the particular job.
So do people need to be tools all their lives? A lot of them do, yeah. It would be nice if that weren't the case, and they can probably do something to increase their ability to avoid it somewhat, but ultimately it's a balancing act between them, employers, and circumstances.
You mean, it's better to have an electronic system arbitrarily choose a candidate quickly, than a paper system slowly choose a candidate based on actual votes?
I think what he means is that months after the elections, people in Minnesota are still arguing over what votes actually count and coming up with different tallies every time they count, tallies that are different enough to swing the election even if they're counted 100% accurately according to their criteria. And, that the inclusion or exclusion of ballots is being driven by the candidates themselves who are each trying to "rig" the election to come out in their favor. None of that is all that much different than the machines on a bad day.
If these truly are errors, I don't mind them that much. Let's get the accuracy up some more and move on. The thing that scares me about electronic voting machines is the potential for massive election rigging by intentionally faulty software. With Diebold's history I'm not sure they can ever quell those fears for me, but maybe that's why it's best for a more independent body to decide.
As soon as it's a standard perhaps that would be a valid criticism. That's not the case right now. According to the document itself, it's not even in the candidate stage.
I love and use linux, so please don't take this as a criticism of it or trolling of any kind. (For full disclosure I also use Windows; I'm really not a zealot on either side.)
That said, linux is currently a bigger competitor than OS X because it's the only choice in the same ballpark. People just about anywhere could choose to use linux over Windows, and if they don't already have an OEM copy they could actually save money doing so. OS X isn't a competitor in that same vein; the option is to buy a cheapy few-hundred-dollar computer with Windows or Linux on it, or pay $1000+ for a Mac with OS X. For a lot of people, that's really not a choice--particularly with the tough economy.
If OS X were made available on non-Mac, cheaper machines it would instantly be a bigger competitor than linux, and chances are it would take a big bite out of Windows' market share. Tying it to expensive hardware is an artificial limitation on its market, and thus on its level of competition for the entrenched giant. Yes, it's hard to compete with free, but people are used to paying something for their operating system already, either directly or tied to their computer purchase, so I don't think that's as huge of a selling point as many other people do. If it were, linux's market share would be much higher and Windows' much lower. Open up OS X to everybody and I think Microsoft's view of its biggest competition does a 180 by the next morning. And perhaps most disheartening, a large portion of OS X's new success may come from leeching linux client installations.
If we move to a paid model, will I finally get what I'm paying for - real actual news about what's going on in the world?
No. If we move to a paid model, you will finally get what everybody else is paying for. You will only get "real actual news about what's going on in the world" insofar as that may match up with what other people want.
That said...
As it is, news is largely vapid, telling people what they want to hear (celebrity X, outrage Y, cuteness Z)
I hear this all the time, and I certainly agree there's more than enough celebrity news going on for my taste -- but at the same time, I've never had trouble finding out what's going on in parts of the world I care about. The problem is you can't expect every news entity to be interested in every piece of news from around the world. NBC Chicago (my local affiliate) is simply not going to care about most stories going on in Australia, where I have a number of friends and like to stay at least moderately informed. Even NBC the national entity isn't likely to care unless the story rises to something akin to the arson-induced wildfires going on recently.
You need a variety of sources, and you need to find sources local to areas that you care about. Otherwise all you will get is the biggest stories from the most interesting (to its local audience) areas of the world, and that won't change whether the reporting is paid for by advertisers or out of your own pocket.
Maybe it's kind of pointless, but in my head I make a distinction between reporting and journalism.
To me, reporting is exactly that. "In his press conference today, President Obama said..." or "a car hit a tree in Some Suburb today, killing three." That's best served by a combination of small, local teams like those from TV news stations who are able to quickly cover things important to locals but completely uninteresting to everybody else, and large, national/international corporations like the Associated Press who have a reporter everywhere to quickly cover everything with a bigger scope. There's really very little need to have 35 reporters jamming microphones up into a podium if what you're doing is reporting on what somebody said or what just happened. Reporting should be essentially unbiased. Something happened, and this is what it was.
Then there's journalism, which would be in-depth coverage of a topic. Maybe it's an in-depth discussion of the particular policies the president proposed, getting expert opinions and boiling it down. Maybe it's stating disbelief that what was actually reported on is reality. Investigative journalism, going undercover, things like that -- but always with depth, or you're merely reporting what happened. This area will, of course, be greatly subject to bias, and it's where hearing a multitude of voices is helpful. Naturally there's going to be good journalism and bad journalism; pretty much everything condensed into a cable TV news program is bad journalism, in my mind. But that's why you can flip from Fox to CNN and get a different analysis, then hop over and see what people on your favorite blogs are saying about it.
In that sense, I can see two different models for "downstream" news providers to follow. One is to just re-post the reporting, where their goal is to strive to present that information in the best way they can using the techologies at their disposal. In other words, since all of these little companies have the exact same stories their only competitive disparity is in the user-friendliness and presentation of such stories--both of which strongly favor online ventures over print. On the other hand would be organizations that re-print/post all of that stuff alongside their own in-depth reporting on topics, where their competitive advantages are based on the quality of their independent journalism relative to others doing the same. In some cases these may be mixed into the same article to a greater degree; in other cases (particularly with news that just broke), it would tend mostly toward the re-hash reporting style. I believe that would have an appeal online and in print.
I kind of envision AP like a stock ticker. At any given moment you can grab that piece of paper (I know, I know!) and have the latest headlines--but depth, commentary, expert opinions et al are on you. There's definite value in that, since it essentially forms the basis of all the rest, but their market would be news agencies and not individual readers.
It depends on how you define "newspaper". Yes, the physical news sheet with printed text that arrives every morning may die.
Erm -- not to be a smartass, but isn't that how everybody defines a newspaper?
I don't think anybody is trying to claim that news or reporting is ever going to die out, and as such there will always be organizations that pool those resources. Of course people are talking about the print aspect of it.
I don't have any strong evidence, but it sounded more to me like their methods for calculating what a person should be paid was just discovered to be faulty. If it really were some sort of entry error into their payment systems it seems like it should be one or two very isolated cases. When combined with that line that "some laid off employees were also undercompensated," it paints a picture for me of a broken formula. The fact that they call it an "administrative error" rather than "accounting error" also points me in that direction.
As such, these people probably agreed to the package that they ultimately received. If Microsoft actually had any right to collect the over-payments, they probably would have said so in the letter to ensure greater initial compliance--even if they ultimately had no intention to go after the money with the lawyers.
A better analogy would be you pay somebody to come in and clean your kitchen, and find out they've left you a new phone that speed-dials out to re-hire them. You invited them in for a task and they left something behind unrelated to the task but to their benefit while they were there.
It's not entirely clear to me from the summary when the poster could "opt out of it." If it was during the standard "accept license/click okay/blah blah blah" procedure the analogy gets even stupider. If he just means he can uninstall it later I guess it'll do.
On a mostly unrelated point, why the bloody hell is a link to an old/. article, some fairly worthless bitching and a screenshot of soembody's Firefox add-on list considered front page news? Is it to cut down on the "RTFA" replies by not actually having an article? If so, kudos on streamlining our reading processes for us--but I think we all know the editors aren't that clever.
So, basically, here's a just saying, point blank, that he's not in the business of justice
Why? Because he said exactly the same thing repeated day in and day out on slashdot? For saying what is not only conventional wisdom, but unarguably true? It would cost an absolute fortune to defend--even successfully--against this lawsuit. That's simple fact. After all, they're thinking about fighting a law firm. While the/. crowd loves people to expend hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight the good fight on their behalf, reality isn't nearly so kind. As it stands, they "settled" for only linking to this idiot company using its name. (In reality they'll probably just elect to not bother with them anymore.) Other than/. karma, what exactly do these guys win by financially ruining themselves to be able to do otherwise? The crapshoot chance of recovering some of that money in lawyers fees afterward? Underwhelming.
As far as the amicus brief issue is concerned, if Ars' one-line explanation of the situation was entirely accurate then that was indeed bogus. As is so often the case, however, the reality of the situation likely can't be wrapped up quite so tidily--if for no other reason than we can't know the judge's mind. This is a preliminary hearing; a lawsuit was filed, BlockShopper asked it be tossed out, and the judge said no. *shrugs* I don't like the ruling, but I fail to see the justification in attacking the judge like that. The entire legal system is fucked up and biased toward rich litigants, and courts more often than not choose to let cases actually play out rather than tossing them right at the start. It's just the way the legal profession goes. Based on that article, we don't even know what the specific lawsuit claims were. If you dig into the settlement agreement you can see that it was "for service mark infringement, service mark dilution, false designation of origin and deceptive trade practices." All the judge has said so far is "yes, this is permitted to go to trial" and "are you really sure this is worth it to you?"
Maybe he's a horribly biased, awful judge. Maybe he makes consistently horrible decisions. I really have no idea. There's damn sure not enough in this article for a reasonable person to make any of those claims though. If Slashdot wants to let loose the dogs of war, direct them at the party making the claims you find ridiculous. It seems to me THEY deserve the derision.
Almost certainly, it's a backhanded attempt to say "no see, we really do have this power!" After all, Congress clearly has the power to regulate interstate commerce.
Insofar as the existence of the site itself would constitute "assistance," it's fairly clear that they intentionally provided assistance to someone who was infringing on a copyright. What is not so clear is whether they intended to assist the act of copyright infringement.
More to the point though, I think the "head in the sand" approach is of dubious defensive value. If we could simply claim that we're not responsible for anything because we weren't aware of specific cases of it, very few people would ever be responsible for anything. Particularly since I don't think it would be hard to demonstrate in this case that the majority of the torrents on TPB appear to be copyrighted material. Obviously there's no way to know for sure short of actually downloading them all, but it goes toward the idea that they really couldn't have not known what was going on. I agree with the OP in that regard; at some point, evidence to the contrary has to overtake a vague, unbelievable and obviously self-serving (even if true!) denial.
I don't think TPB is guilty; I certainly don't think they SHOULD be guilty. But if the only way they're not guilty is "duhh, we didn't know!" then I think they're screwed and they should be screwed. Either what they're doing is illegal or it's not according to Swedish laws. Claiming they're too stupid to know what every other user of their site knows easily is a lame defense that shouldn't stand up to legal scrutiny, even if it ultimately goes to a decision I would like.
Yes, it's great for me to see blogs with embedded videos saying "FUCK OFF IF YOU'RE NOT AMERICAN".
It sucks for you -- nobody is arguing with that. I think you'd find very few people arguing that they'd rather have non-US viewers excluded than included, but that doesn't mean it's a choice we realistically have right now, nor does it mean the people who aren't included should actively wish failure on a product that millions of other people use and enjoy.
Whether we like it or not, there are a lot of tricky issues involved when streaming things internationally. For starters, there's a fairly good chance they've sub-licensed their content out to other providers in some parts of the world. There's national and world-wide syndication issues. Then there are things like DVD box sets which they almost certainly sub-license out to foreign manufacturers again. Plus the obvious things like where the advertisements come from, how much they pay, and on and on. That's just off the top of my head, and is only from the perspectives of the content owners without regard to anybody else who might be getting hurt and raising a stink.
We may not particularly give two hoots about the content providers making money, but they sure as hell do; they're out to make money, and they're the ones who control the content. Even if we were to include the entire world among their potential viewership, I'd struggle to believe they could make as much money through the ads because of increased viewership than they do with syndication and sub-licensing, at least right now. It's tough to convince themselves they should shoot themselves in the foot, even if they have to do so long-term. If your boss told you your salary was going to be cut in half starting next year, would you say "okay fuck it, let's cut it right now since it's getting cut anyway?" They're going to milk what they have for as long as they can.
Unfortunately these parties have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the party in every technological iteration, but eventually things get better. The fact that they're interested enough in Hulu to give it any sort of chance--interested enough to fork out money to Alec Baldwin and run a Superbowl Ad--is a positive development, even if they continue to make exclusionary or outright dumb choices for a while. Hulu with no content but open to everybody isn't going to change a thing. Hulu with millions of relatively happy viewers and a proven revenue stream is something the content providers can work with.
If you're truly interested in ad-supported media content, you should applaud Hulu's successes and be patient with its failures. Raise a stink if you want, but don't wish for its failure. Your perfect alternative will not crop up in its place. Maybe wishing for such overreaching worldwide copyright reform that they can't control content so tightly is the right thing (though I'm not convinced), but it's patently obvious they're moving in the exact opposite direction right now.
Be pissed. I would too. But little victories still mean a lot, and Hulu is one of those little victories even with this recent step backward.
Remember: Not accused or suspected of breaking any law, or of intent to break any law.
This may or may not be true. Part of me is uncertain, and part of it will obviously vary by the particular school, state and jurisdiction involved, but:
Public schools are generally considered to be government entities. It's why, for example, students do have some free speech rights on a public school campus, whereas they would have few-to-none in a business or a private school. Though their rights are highly restricted, that's a different can of worms.
So then, since a school is a government entity, it's entirely possible that their rules within their "jurisdiction" is considered administrative law: Rules made by an executive-branch government entity granted legal authority within their domain by the legislature, and having the full force and effect of a law enacted by that legislature. If that were the case, it could be argued she was indeed breaking the law by violating their rules.
If you don't believe this happens, think about college. They have a whole laundry list of things they can fine you for (fire hazards, drinking in a dorm even if you're of legal drinking age, etc etc etc) and they don't need to drag you to criminal court. They're almost certainly granted some administrative law powers for controlling behavior on their campuses.
Was that the case in this school with this girl? Who knows. It's a possibility though.
Are they entitled to call the police to strip the kid and prove that the kid was lying?
It's really an entirely different scenario. Nothing would be stopping those parents from physically searching their child (whether or not its an overreaction). Nothing would stop those parents from destroying that magazine right in front of the kids' face after they found it, then turning him around and paddling him--within reasonable limits that prevent it from crossing into assault or child abuse--or whatever other punishment they deemed appropriate. They have no need of the police at all.
On the other hand, the school teacher certainly can't lay a hand on this student and the school security officer probably can't either. They almost certainly can't pat her down, and they surely can't be groping around her ass in hopes of finding this phone. They probably couldn't even look inside of her bag had she slipped it inside of there instead.
So once she refuses to stop and then denies having a phone the teacher knows she has, and lies to the security guard who was called as the first escalation of the situation, their only choices are to completely drop the matter, ignore all of the behavior after not stopping texting and simply pushing her for what the teacher saw, or find somebody who DOES have the authority to look for the phone. We can argue whether or not it was the correct choice, but their decision was the latter -- and if this girl is the abrasive little bitch she sounds like, she probably deserved that. Whether or not she deserves a disorderly conduct charge rather than a suspension (and yes, she deserved a suspension once she escalated the situation to where the police were called) is debatable, but not something I'm going to lose sleep over one way or another.
You seem to be suggesting that electing the judges is a bad idea, but forgetting that the people doing the appointing were elected in the first place?
I'm not the grandparent poster, but am going to chime in.
We do two different styles of that for judges in Cook County, Illinois. I'm not entirely sure how a judge ends up in a particular category; maybe it's the presence or absense of a challenger, but that seems hard for me to believe. Anyway:
1. An actual vote. "Vote Jones!" You have a candidate and an opponent and you pick one. There was maybe five or six of these on the last ballot in Cook County.
2. Retain/Fire. Those are your options and you choose one for every judge under this section. There were PAGES AND PAGES AND PAGES of them; all told, it was probably something like 50.
The theory of voting on judges is okay; I'm not sure if it's better or worse than appointing them, but there's certainly something to it. That said, how many people do you know who even know who their state senator or representative is? Hell, I'd bet most people in the US don't know who their US representative is. They may know their senators, though I suspect that ratio would be depressing as well. On the state level? Good luck.
How many people who voted alongside me do you think know anything at all about any of these 62 judges they're voting on? I consider myself fairly politically knowledgable, and I didn't even recognize most of the names much less have any particular opinion on them.
Most of us have no experience whatsoever with a judge. Those who do are typically either on a jury or hauled in front of one (I don't think any of these judges were civil judges). If you're hauled in front of a judge, your opinion of him/her is likely to mirror the favorability of the outcome, though that has nothing to do with their job performance. Jurors probably get a decent look, but unfortunately they're not the only ones allowed to vote.
At least if it's an appointment, you have a better chance of knowing something about the person you're voting for, who's ultimately voting on the judges. It's still going to be a stretch for most people, but to think that any significant number of people are going to invest time into researching even one of those 60+ judges they're about to vote on seem like folly to me.
You're right about the real cause of these problems being parents though. It wasn't very long ago at all that a situation like this would have ended when the teacher said "put the phone away." It's somewhat puzzling for people in my generation (born in the early 80s) and later to understand that talking back to teachers like that was once nearly unthinkable. I'm not sure why the change or what it would take to get back to that era though.
All other issues with regard to things like limitations of content aside...
I think the AOL system was pretty much what the op is suggesting--a gated, fee-driven system that is safe for the kids and spam-free.
Unfortunately if you create a system where kids congregate to be safe and fools congregate to avoid having to protect themselves, you just create a massive incentive for pedophiles, fishers, spammers and malware artists to attack there. You're providing them a ready-built community they'd just die to infiltrate, and I'm not convinced any attempts at a "new Internet" would be able to fully address the problems. That may be worse than not trying at all.
Being somewhere you know is unsafe is bad, but isn't being somewhere that you think is safe but isn't that much worse?
That's why I advise friends and family to invest in a dog or two and a gun for defending their home, not a security system that can usually be defeated by a serious criminal.
The gun doesn't help if they're not home, which people usually are not when they're being robbed. The dogs may or may not help, but most breeds are as likely to play with the burglars as bite them, and whether or not they barked at all much less enough to alert the neighbors is really up in the air depending on the dog, neighbors and the circumstances.
The fact that security systems can be defeated by a serious criminal is irrelevant. Most robberies aren't perpetuated by serious criminals like we see on TV, for starters. And more to the point, the mere act of putting that little "Secured by ADT [or whatever]" sign in your lawn makes your house instantly more secure -- even if you never did install ANY sort of system or hook it up with a security company. It doesn't say "I have great shit, rob me!" If anything it says you're more paranoid of being robbed, which most robbers won't care about.
What it really does say is "this is a harder target." You're not likely to have vastly greater things than your neighbors, since your neighbors almost certainly share a similar income bracket with you, but suddenly they have to contend with an alarm in your house and nothing next door. The vast, vast majority of burglars are going to go "naw, fuck that" and move on to a softer target. They're not out for petty thrills, they're out to steal shit and make money. It's kind of like claiming there's no point to closing your door since a determined burglar can just break a back window. Well, yeah, but you also don't need to go out of your way to make yourself a target. Or in this case, there's nothing wrong with doing things that make you less of a target. Shooting a robber in the face or having your dog rip his penis off is a good consolation prize, but the ultimate victory is them not trying to rob you at all. That's the biggest benefit of (the illusion of) a security system.
I'm all for buying dogs; giving a dog a loving home is a win even if you ultimately get robbed and the dog doesn't help one bit, and it has a similar "keep walking" benefit as the alarm. I don't necessarily have a problem with guns either. Let's just not claim that security systems are worthless because the guys from Oceans 11 could get by them no problem. That was never the point.
Slashdot Mirror
Erm, no. If it's not a public place, that's called trespassing. In some states, it's also called breaking and entering (even without the need to actually break anything; I believe Massachusetts is such a state).
And more to the point, unauthorized access of a computer network is a felony in the United States and Australia at least, and probably many other countries as well. Somebody not taking a step to prevent you is not an authorization, even if it is a fairly decent defense. Some laws codify this, others leave it to the court to work out.
I'm not equating legality and morality, but it's fairly clear that this is not a legally gray area. It's illegal, and so was the activity in your analogy.
I don't personally care very much about the Google thing. They opened up an API to use the service, so in that sense they're responsible for their own success. The only part of it I don't care for is the fact that somebody made money writing a tiny little program that does nothing but use that API, leaving Google to foot the bill while they roll around in their piles of money. It's not illegal, it's probably not even amoral, but it's pretty scummy too.
I can agree with this; there's no reason for people to work themselves up over every word of every draft of an agreement that hasn't been reached yet --
-- but at the same time, these people are under a legal obligation to give these documents up. The founders of the Constitution certainly weren't.
Maybe FOIA is a bad law, maybe it's poorly implemented, maybe its exceptions are lacking, maybe there really should be some provision that they can deny access to draft documents to gather up all the bitching at one, more manageable point in time. However none of these are true. All there is, is a legal obligation to turn over documents upon request if such documents do not meet one of a handful of exceptions.
If there is any sort of national security issue involved in a copyright treaty, the treaty is wildly exceeding its bounds. That not terribly likely, so the reasonable assumption is they're simply lying. Personally I think lying to avoid a legal requirement to do something you just dun wanna should be treated the same as perjury. In fact I hope whatever they have to do to officially deny a FOIA request DOES carry the pains and penalties of perjury, but I doubt it. Until they change the law or start heftin' people into jail for lying though, they deserve every bit of ridicule and crap they get for it. They brought it on themselves by clearly unethical and borderline illegal behavior.
Prattle on, conspiracy nuts!
I honestly don't think them streaming video is at all relevant. Courtrooms are open to the public, and often open to cameras -- unless there is a compelling reason that what is said in the courtroom needs to be kept secret from the public. Child (sex abuse) victims are one fairly common example of when judges typically don't believe the public needs to know.
You're right that this court has already seemingly determined that there's nothing wrong with the actual act of streaming court arguments, as evidenced by them doing so themselves. That doesn't mean they can't impartially hear arguments over whether or not there is something specific to this case that would deserve that protection.
As far as changing venue, I'm pretty sure that's not an option for an appeal. Changes of venue are for when they don't feel they can get a fair trial--and since they're the plaintiffs and brought suit in this particular jurisdiction themselves, I'd say that argument flies out the window pretty immediately. That said, this isn't a trial -- this is an appeal of a particular order made by the trial judge. The best I could see them doing is recusing themselves, but I've also never heard any precedent of an entire court recusing itself from a decision. It would be highly unlikely if it's even possible.
Nor does it mean that the services are worthless, nor does it mean that they cost nothing to provide. As you so glibly point out, people are paying for their bits coming in -- but somebody, somewhere is also paying for the bits going out.
The bottom line is this: If they are putting ads on their websites, their intention is that you look at the ads in exchange for the information or services they are providing you. You're clearly interested in this information or service, since you're using it, but you're unwilling to pay for it according to the exchange they're offering. That's perfectly fine. How you feel taking it anyway and not giving them their ad revenue isn't unethical is rather beyond me, particularly when we're talking about something as unobtrusive as the textual Google Ads.
The window washers are a terrible analogy. They practically jump on your car in hopes you give them money, when you neither sought out nor wanted their service. You DID specifically seek out the website you're visiting, which is pretty damn clear considering the web works on a request-response model. The horrible analogy leads me to believe you're simply one of those people who already made up his mind and is grasping at anything they can to rationalize it later.
I take it you've never heard of "loss leaders?"
All Icahn wants is to have the company sold. By that logic, whoever buys it would be just as likely to not work in the best interests of the stockholder and their only recourse will be to try to get the company sold. Over and over and over ad nauseum.
Boon to stockholders? Probably. Then again I think we're living with the consequences of pretending money comes out of thin air to reward people for something that doesn't actually change anything. Things can appreciate, but not instantly, not merely on speculation, and not just because the stockholders would like some quick cash please.
I think the problem is that people tend to use "religion" in place of "Christianity" or even a specific Christian religion in a lot of there arguments. I know I'm guilty of that sometimes myself. There are certainly arguments to be made against religion itself and many of those I subscribe to, but my specific beefs tend to be with Christianity in general and Catholicism specifically. (This is, undoubtedly, because my family was Catholic; I ended up going to Sunday school for eight years and doing the confirmation nonsense despite realizing I don't believe in sixth grade or so.)
I don't personally believe in a god, because I don't feel I have any reason to believe in a god and feel that simply not knowing everything (how did the universe begin?) is not reason enough to believe. That said, I'd be infinitely more likely to believe in A god than I would to believe in the Christian god. There's just too many contradictions, too many things in the Bible that don't make sense for me. To paraphrase Gene Roddenberry, there's something wrong with the story logic.
Taking the bible non-literally is a step in the right direction I think, but it just seems like it's too selective. Are you saying you don't take it literally, except for all the parts of the Bible that "prove" (please admit it's not actually proof!) the Bible is in fact the word of god? If we're taking it as life lessons, cool -- I'm on board with some of it. I've always been interested in religion the same way I'm interested in what we now call mythology. Picking and choosing what we think is god and what we think is Mad Roman Emperors With Axes To Grind feels like devaluing it into nothingness though.
In other words, I guess, it's a separation of religion and belief. I hate most religions for various reasons not worth getting into in this context; I don't necessarily have a problem with somebody having a belief in a god/higher power/what have you. In my mind, the more generic the belief the better. Specifics are where I start to see contradictions and get frustrated that others don't seem to see them too.
This is all predicated on an assumption that he has a legitimate record label and that Metallica isn't the sole owner of their copyrights. That said --
-- why? If he has a label who is providing some services to him, then he's preventing them from getting paid by pirating a CD just the same as anybody else pirating the CD does. I'm glad he feels like as long as HE gets paid it's all good, but it's nothing but hypocrisy. As somebody on the leading edge of the anti-piracy fight, if there is ANYBODY who's not receiving money as a result of what he did, and they didn't all give express permission to do this, then he's just as bad as every other pirate out there he rails against. Worse, since he's also a hypocrite.
It's not exactly bad advice, nor is what the article's author has to say. It is somewhat poorly timed though, with the economic downturn.
Do you need to be a tool all your life? It all depends. How in demand is your profession? How in demand are you in particular? What is your financial situation (ie, can you go a few months looking for a better job if all you have is offers from assholes)?
The real issue is the balance of power between employers and employees. Employers wouldn't do that if 1) potential employees made it clear they didn't care for it and 2) doing so meant that they had trouble filling their positions with qualified applicants. Only half of that equation is within the control of the potential employees, and as the economy gets worse it makes it removes even more power from them by increasing the number of people seeking a smaller number of positions. The irony is that the people with the most power--the best skills, the best financial situations--are the ones who least need the particular job.
So do people need to be tools all their lives? A lot of them do, yeah. It would be nice if that weren't the case, and they can probably do something to increase their ability to avoid it somewhat, but ultimately it's a balancing act between them, employers, and circumstances.
I think what he means is that months after the elections, people in Minnesota are still arguing over what votes actually count and coming up with different tallies every time they count, tallies that are different enough to swing the election even if they're counted 100% accurately according to their criteria. And, that the inclusion or exclusion of ballots is being driven by the candidates themselves who are each trying to "rig" the election to come out in their favor. None of that is all that much different than the machines on a bad day.
If these truly are errors, I don't mind them that much. Let's get the accuracy up some more and move on. The thing that scares me about electronic voting machines is the potential for massive election rigging by intentionally faulty software. With Diebold's history I'm not sure they can ever quell those fears for me, but maybe that's why it's best for a more independent body to decide.
As soon as it's a standard perhaps that would be a valid criticism. That's not the case right now. According to the document itself, it's not even in the candidate stage.
I love and use linux, so please don't take this as a criticism of it or trolling of any kind. (For full disclosure I also use Windows; I'm really not a zealot on either side.)
That said, linux is currently a bigger competitor than OS X because it's the only choice in the same ballpark. People just about anywhere could choose to use linux over Windows, and if they don't already have an OEM copy they could actually save money doing so. OS X isn't a competitor in that same vein; the option is to buy a cheapy few-hundred-dollar computer with Windows or Linux on it, or pay $1000+ for a Mac with OS X. For a lot of people, that's really not a choice--particularly with the tough economy.
If OS X were made available on non-Mac, cheaper machines it would instantly be a bigger competitor than linux, and chances are it would take a big bite out of Windows' market share. Tying it to expensive hardware is an artificial limitation on its market, and thus on its level of competition for the entrenched giant. Yes, it's hard to compete with free, but people are used to paying something for their operating system already, either directly or tied to their computer purchase, so I don't think that's as huge of a selling point as many other people do. If it were, linux's market share would be much higher and Windows' much lower. Open up OS X to everybody and I think Microsoft's view of its biggest competition does a 180 by the next morning. And perhaps most disheartening, a large portion of OS X's new success may come from leeching linux client installations.
No. If we move to a paid model, you will finally get what everybody else is paying for. You will only get "real actual news about what's going on in the world" insofar as that may match up with what other people want.
That said...
I hear this all the time, and I certainly agree there's more than enough celebrity news going on for my taste -- but at the same time, I've never had trouble finding out what's going on in parts of the world I care about. The problem is you can't expect every news entity to be interested in every piece of news from around the world. NBC Chicago (my local affiliate) is simply not going to care about most stories going on in Australia, where I have a number of friends and like to stay at least moderately informed. Even NBC the national entity isn't likely to care unless the story rises to something akin to the arson-induced wildfires going on recently.
You need a variety of sources, and you need to find sources local to areas that you care about. Otherwise all you will get is the biggest stories from the most interesting (to its local audience) areas of the world, and that won't change whether the reporting is paid for by advertisers or out of your own pocket.
Maybe it's kind of pointless, but in my head I make a distinction between reporting and journalism.
To me, reporting is exactly that. "In his press conference today, President Obama said..." or "a car hit a tree in Some Suburb today, killing three." That's best served by a combination of small, local teams like those from TV news stations who are able to quickly cover things important to locals but completely uninteresting to everybody else, and large, national/international corporations like the Associated Press who have a reporter everywhere to quickly cover everything with a bigger scope. There's really very little need to have 35 reporters jamming microphones up into a podium if what you're doing is reporting on what somebody said or what just happened. Reporting should be essentially unbiased. Something happened, and this is what it was.
Then there's journalism, which would be in-depth coverage of a topic. Maybe it's an in-depth discussion of the particular policies the president proposed, getting expert opinions and boiling it down. Maybe it's stating disbelief that what was actually reported on is reality. Investigative journalism, going undercover, things like that -- but always with depth, or you're merely reporting what happened. This area will, of course, be greatly subject to bias, and it's where hearing a multitude of voices is helpful. Naturally there's going to be good journalism and bad journalism; pretty much everything condensed into a cable TV news program is bad journalism, in my mind. But that's why you can flip from Fox to CNN and get a different analysis, then hop over and see what people on your favorite blogs are saying about it.
In that sense, I can see two different models for "downstream" news providers to follow. One is to just re-post the reporting, where their goal is to strive to present that information in the best way they can using the techologies at their disposal. In other words, since all of these little companies have the exact same stories their only competitive disparity is in the user-friendliness and presentation of such stories--both of which strongly favor online ventures over print. On the other hand would be organizations that re-print/post all of that stuff alongside their own in-depth reporting on topics, where their competitive advantages are based on the quality of their independent journalism relative to others doing the same. In some cases these may be mixed into the same article to a greater degree; in other cases (particularly with news that just broke), it would tend mostly toward the re-hash reporting style. I believe that would have an appeal online and in print.
I kind of envision AP like a stock ticker. At any given moment you can grab that piece of paper (I know, I know!) and have the latest headlines--but depth, commentary, expert opinions et al are on you. There's definite value in that, since it essentially forms the basis of all the rest, but their market would be news agencies and not individual readers.
Erm -- not to be a smartass, but isn't that how everybody defines a newspaper?
I don't think anybody is trying to claim that news or reporting is ever going to die out, and as such there will always be organizations that pool those resources. Of course people are talking about the print aspect of it.
I don't have any strong evidence, but it sounded more to me like their methods for calculating what a person should be paid was just discovered to be faulty. If it really were some sort of entry error into their payment systems it seems like it should be one or two very isolated cases. When combined with that line that "some laid off employees were also undercompensated," it paints a picture for me of a broken formula. The fact that they call it an "administrative error" rather than "accounting error" also points me in that direction.
As such, these people probably agreed to the package that they ultimately received. If Microsoft actually had any right to collect the over-payments, they probably would have said so in the letter to ensure greater initial compliance--even if they ultimately had no intention to go after the money with the lawyers.
A better analogy would be you pay somebody to come in and clean your kitchen, and find out they've left you a new phone that speed-dials out to re-hire them. You invited them in for a task and they left something behind unrelated to the task but to their benefit while they were there.
It's not entirely clear to me from the summary when the poster could "opt out of it." If it was during the standard "accept license/click okay/blah blah blah" procedure the analogy gets even stupider. If he just means he can uninstall it later I guess it'll do.
On a mostly unrelated point, why the bloody hell is a link to an old /. article, some fairly worthless bitching and a screenshot of soembody's Firefox add-on list considered front page news? Is it to cut down on the "RTFA" replies by not actually having an article? If so, kudos on streamlining our reading processes for us--but I think we all know the editors aren't that clever.
Why? Because he said exactly the same thing repeated day in and day out on slashdot? For saying what is not only conventional wisdom, but unarguably true? It would cost an absolute fortune to defend--even successfully--against this lawsuit. That's simple fact. After all, they're thinking about fighting a law firm. While the /. crowd loves people to expend hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight the good fight on their behalf, reality isn't nearly so kind. As it stands, they "settled" for only linking to this idiot company using its name. (In reality they'll probably just elect to not bother with them anymore.) Other than /. karma, what exactly do these guys win by financially ruining themselves to be able to do otherwise? The crapshoot chance of recovering some of that money in lawyers fees afterward? Underwhelming.
As far as the amicus brief issue is concerned, if Ars' one-line explanation of the situation was entirely accurate then that was indeed bogus. As is so often the case, however, the reality of the situation likely can't be wrapped up quite so tidily--if for no other reason than we can't know the judge's mind. This is a preliminary hearing; a lawsuit was filed, BlockShopper asked it be tossed out, and the judge said no. *shrugs* I don't like the ruling, but I fail to see the justification in attacking the judge like that. The entire legal system is fucked up and biased toward rich litigants, and courts more often than not choose to let cases actually play out rather than tossing them right at the start. It's just the way the legal profession goes. Based on that article, we don't even know what the specific lawsuit claims were. If you dig into the settlement agreement you can see that it was "for service mark infringement, service mark dilution, false designation of origin and deceptive trade practices." All the judge has said so far is "yes, this is permitted to go to trial" and "are you really sure this is worth it to you?"
Maybe he's a horribly biased, awful judge. Maybe he makes consistently horrible decisions. I really have no idea. There's damn sure not enough in this article for a reasonable person to make any of those claims though. If Slashdot wants to let loose the dogs of war, direct them at the party making the claims you find ridiculous. It seems to me THEY deserve the derision.
Almost certainly, it's a backhanded attempt to say "no see, we really do have this power!" After all, Congress clearly has the power to regulate interstate commerce.
Insofar as the existence of the site itself would constitute "assistance," it's fairly clear that they intentionally provided assistance to someone who was infringing on a copyright. What is not so clear is whether they intended to assist the act of copyright infringement.
More to the point though, I think the "head in the sand" approach is of dubious defensive value. If we could simply claim that we're not responsible for anything because we weren't aware of specific cases of it, very few people would ever be responsible for anything. Particularly since I don't think it would be hard to demonstrate in this case that the majority of the torrents on TPB appear to be copyrighted material. Obviously there's no way to know for sure short of actually downloading them all, but it goes toward the idea that they really couldn't have not known what was going on. I agree with the OP in that regard; at some point, evidence to the contrary has to overtake a vague, unbelievable and obviously self-serving (even if true!) denial.
I don't think TPB is guilty; I certainly don't think they SHOULD be guilty. But if the only way they're not guilty is "duhh, we didn't know!" then I think they're screwed and they should be screwed. Either what they're doing is illegal or it's not according to Swedish laws. Claiming they're too stupid to know what every other user of their site knows easily is a lame defense that shouldn't stand up to legal scrutiny, even if it ultimately goes to a decision I would like.
It sucks for you -- nobody is arguing with that. I think you'd find very few people arguing that they'd rather have non-US viewers excluded than included, but that doesn't mean it's a choice we realistically have right now, nor does it mean the people who aren't included should actively wish failure on a product that millions of other people use and enjoy.
Whether we like it or not, there are a lot of tricky issues involved when streaming things internationally. For starters, there's a fairly good chance they've sub-licensed their content out to other providers in some parts of the world. There's national and world-wide syndication issues. Then there are things like DVD box sets which they almost certainly sub-license out to foreign manufacturers again. Plus the obvious things like where the advertisements come from, how much they pay, and on and on. That's just off the top of my head, and is only from the perspectives of the content owners without regard to anybody else who might be getting hurt and raising a stink.
We may not particularly give two hoots about the content providers making money, but they sure as hell do; they're out to make money, and they're the ones who control the content. Even if we were to include the entire world among their potential viewership, I'd struggle to believe they could make as much money through the ads because of increased viewership than they do with syndication and sub-licensing, at least right now. It's tough to convince themselves they should shoot themselves in the foot, even if they have to do so long-term. If your boss told you your salary was going to be cut in half starting next year, would you say "okay fuck it, let's cut it right now since it's getting cut anyway?" They're going to milk what they have for as long as they can.
Unfortunately these parties have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the party in every technological iteration, but eventually things get better. The fact that they're interested enough in Hulu to give it any sort of chance--interested enough to fork out money to Alec Baldwin and run a Superbowl Ad--is a positive development, even if they continue to make exclusionary or outright dumb choices for a while. Hulu with no content but open to everybody isn't going to change a thing. Hulu with millions of relatively happy viewers and a proven revenue stream is something the content providers can work with.
If you're truly interested in ad-supported media content, you should applaud Hulu's successes and be patient with its failures. Raise a stink if you want, but don't wish for its failure. Your perfect alternative will not crop up in its place. Maybe wishing for such overreaching worldwide copyright reform that they can't control content so tightly is the right thing (though I'm not convinced), but it's patently obvious they're moving in the exact opposite direction right now.
Be pissed. I would too. But little victories still mean a lot, and Hulu is one of those little victories even with this recent step backward.
This may or may not be true. Part of me is uncertain, and part of it will obviously vary by the particular school, state and jurisdiction involved, but:
Public schools are generally considered to be government entities. It's why, for example, students do have some free speech rights on a public school campus, whereas they would have few-to-none in a business or a private school. Though their rights are highly restricted, that's a different can of worms.
So then, since a school is a government entity, it's entirely possible that their rules within their "jurisdiction" is considered administrative law: Rules made by an executive-branch government entity granted legal authority within their domain by the legislature, and having the full force and effect of a law enacted by that legislature. If that were the case, it could be argued she was indeed breaking the law by violating their rules.
If you don't believe this happens, think about college. They have a whole laundry list of things they can fine you for (fire hazards, drinking in a dorm even if you're of legal drinking age, etc etc etc) and they don't need to drag you to criminal court. They're almost certainly granted some administrative law powers for controlling behavior on their campuses.
Was that the case in this school with this girl? Who knows. It's a possibility though.
It's really an entirely different scenario. Nothing would be stopping those parents from physically searching their child (whether or not its an overreaction). Nothing would stop those parents from destroying that magazine right in front of the kids' face after they found it, then turning him around and paddling him--within reasonable limits that prevent it from crossing into assault or child abuse--or whatever other punishment they deemed appropriate. They have no need of the police at all.
On the other hand, the school teacher certainly can't lay a hand on this student and the school security officer probably can't either. They almost certainly can't pat her down, and they surely can't be groping around her ass in hopes of finding this phone. They probably couldn't even look inside of her bag had she slipped it inside of there instead.
So once she refuses to stop and then denies having a phone the teacher knows she has, and lies to the security guard who was called as the first escalation of the situation, their only choices are to completely drop the matter, ignore all of the behavior after not stopping texting and simply pushing her for what the teacher saw, or find somebody who DOES have the authority to look for the phone. We can argue whether or not it was the correct choice, but their decision was the latter -- and if this girl is the abrasive little bitch she sounds like, she probably deserved that. Whether or not she deserves a disorderly conduct charge rather than a suspension (and yes, she deserved a suspension once she escalated the situation to where the police were called) is debatable, but not something I'm going to lose sleep over one way or another.
I'm not the grandparent poster, but am going to chime in.
We do two different styles of that for judges in Cook County, Illinois. I'm not entirely sure how a judge ends up in a particular category; maybe it's the presence or absense of a challenger, but that seems hard for me to believe. Anyway:
1. An actual vote. "Vote Jones!" You have a candidate and an opponent and you pick one. There was maybe five or six of these on the last ballot in Cook County.
2. Retain/Fire. Those are your options and you choose one for every judge under this section. There were PAGES AND PAGES AND PAGES of them; all told, it was probably something like 50.
The theory of voting on judges is okay; I'm not sure if it's better or worse than appointing them, but there's certainly something to it. That said, how many people do you know who even know who their state senator or representative is? Hell, I'd bet most people in the US don't know who their US representative is. They may know their senators, though I suspect that ratio would be depressing as well. On the state level? Good luck.
How many people who voted alongside me do you think know anything at all about any of these 62 judges they're voting on? I consider myself fairly politically knowledgable, and I didn't even recognize most of the names much less have any particular opinion on them.
Most of us have no experience whatsoever with a judge. Those who do are typically either on a jury or hauled in front of one (I don't think any of these judges were civil judges). If you're hauled in front of a judge, your opinion of him/her is likely to mirror the favorability of the outcome, though that has nothing to do with their job performance. Jurors probably get a decent look, but unfortunately they're not the only ones allowed to vote.
At least if it's an appointment, you have a better chance of knowing something about the person you're voting for, who's ultimately voting on the judges. It's still going to be a stretch for most people, but to think that any significant number of people are going to invest time into researching even one of those 60+ judges they're about to vote on seem like folly to me.
You're right about the real cause of these problems being parents though. It wasn't very long ago at all that a situation like this would have ended when the teacher said "put the phone away." It's somewhat puzzling for people in my generation (born in the early 80s) and later to understand that talking back to teachers like that was once nearly unthinkable. I'm not sure why the change or what it would take to get back to that era though.
All other issues with regard to things like limitations of content aside...
Unfortunately if you create a system where kids congregate to be safe and fools congregate to avoid having to protect themselves, you just create a massive incentive for pedophiles, fishers, spammers and malware artists to attack there. You're providing them a ready-built community they'd just die to infiltrate, and I'm not convinced any attempts at a "new Internet" would be able to fully address the problems. That may be worse than not trying at all.
Being somewhere you know is unsafe is bad, but isn't being somewhere that you think is safe but isn't that much worse?
The gun doesn't help if they're not home, which people usually are not when they're being robbed. The dogs may or may not help, but most breeds are as likely to play with the burglars as bite them, and whether or not they barked at all much less enough to alert the neighbors is really up in the air depending on the dog, neighbors and the circumstances.
The fact that security systems can be defeated by a serious criminal is irrelevant. Most robberies aren't perpetuated by serious criminals like we see on TV, for starters. And more to the point, the mere act of putting that little "Secured by ADT [or whatever]" sign in your lawn makes your house instantly more secure -- even if you never did install ANY sort of system or hook it up with a security company. It doesn't say "I have great shit, rob me!" If anything it says you're more paranoid of being robbed, which most robbers won't care about.
What it really does say is "this is a harder target." You're not likely to have vastly greater things than your neighbors, since your neighbors almost certainly share a similar income bracket with you, but suddenly they have to contend with an alarm in your house and nothing next door. The vast, vast majority of burglars are going to go "naw, fuck that" and move on to a softer target. They're not out for petty thrills, they're out to steal shit and make money. It's kind of like claiming there's no point to closing your door since a determined burglar can just break a back window. Well, yeah, but you also don't need to go out of your way to make yourself a target. Or in this case, there's nothing wrong with doing things that make you less of a target. Shooting a robber in the face or having your dog rip his penis off is a good consolation prize, but the ultimate victory is them not trying to rob you at all. That's the biggest benefit of (the illusion of) a security system.
I'm all for buying dogs; giving a dog a loving home is a win even if you ultimately get robbed and the dog doesn't help one bit, and it has a similar "keep walking" benefit as the alarm. I don't necessarily have a problem with guns either. Let's just not claim that security systems are worthless because the guys from Oceans 11 could get by them no problem. That was never the point.