There are a few points that I think you're missing or intentionally glossing over, so let's get to them:
consumers decide how much goods are worth. Always. That's how markets work.
Yes, but they do so by choosing whether or not to patronize a particular business, on the assumption that the business will either go under or find an equilibrium point with its consumers. They don't do it by taking somebody's product, thumbing their nose and saying "neener neener! Thanks for your work, it's worth nothing to me!" Ignoring the idiocy of statements that imply that something you just took isn't worth anything to you (then why the hell did you take it?), most people in rational discourse call this stealing. Dress it up as "copyright infringement" in this specific case if you prefer, but most people just see THAT as a fancy term for stealing too, regardless of whether or not the producer is down one unit of product. I don't particularly care what verbiage people settle on, but it's simply dishonest.
If you want to make a case against the existence of IP, or draconian damages like the RIAA seek or laws designed to support then like the DMCA, so be it. I might even hop on board on some of those positions. But so long as this is the system we have, we should all be playing by the rules. You don't simply get to take things that people aren't giving away. To revise your point a little bit, the market itself decides how much goods are worth, and the market is composed of many consumers. Offering up what you're willing to pay and seeing if there's any bites is an auction. It's fine, but you don't get to take it anyway if they turn you down.
If consumers have collectively decided that music and movies are worth $0.00
I don't even know what this means. What is this collective you speak of? One person? The entirety of the group of people who do something, regardless of whether there are others doing the opposite? I just saw an article that iTunes sold its five billionth song recently. Clearly there is a pretty powerful consumer presence that is well on the positive side of the $0.00 you seem to claim has been collectively decided. You can't simply exclude significant portions of a market if you're making any honest assessment of what that market's position is.
I also find it intellectually dishonest to try to compare whether consumers on average prefer to pay or get things for free. Of course they prefer getting it for free. Many are willing to do it outside the law, because the risks are so small. That doesn't mean the product is worthless. It doesn't even necessarily mean that it's overpriced at whatever its current price point is. But at best, it means the price should move lower--not disappear.
But let's cut the crap. It's useless to talk about how free markets should operate when you're talking about IP, where (1) there is both artificial scarcity and artificial and insurmountable barriers to entry, and (2) products are not perfect replacements for each other. Hell, most of the assumptions of a free market tend to be false to begin with, and even moreso with IP.
Well, that's just it, and the entire point of this interview: It was feature-complete according to the development team's plans for what features should be included in that release. That plan didn't jive with end-users' expectations.
I personally can't speak to the bugs; I tried 4.0 on a live CD for a bit when it was released, and the fact that it didn't have the things I was expecting meant I didn't spend a lot of time with it. I just booted back to my hard drive and continued merrily using 3.5.whateverIhave. I'm sure there ARE bugs, and probably some nasty ones; changes of the magnitude that the KDE team were making are nearly impossible without them. I don't, however, know how common they are.
Honestly, I think it was bad communication. If what was released was what the dev team wanted released for 4.0, I don't blame them for what was released. They just didn't manage user expectations very well.
On a side note, I do remember near the end of when 4.0 was supposed to be released hearing that a number of things I was interested in wouldn't be released until 4.1, which is a major reason why I dropped into a live CD to see what 4.0 was all about. So, it wasn't like there was NO communication about it--but perhaps dot.kde.org wasn't the best place for it, or prominent enough.
With all due respect, that was a truly awful response. For starters, you know that a "straw poll around [your] office" is not, by any stretch, what the OP meant by citing a study. It's not even a study at all; it's a survey, and not even a meaningful one since the selection process is anything but random and representative.
Second, your original post mentions some sort of "anti-violent video game lobby," but now you conclude that "it's entirely up to the parents." That's what the vast majority of people have been saying all along. Whenever a nutjob like Thompson crops up, the response is essentially "shut up and be a parent." Very few people here will argue with you that parents shouldn't be in control of the games children play or the movies children watch.
That said, if anybody DID want to argue over any specific case it's worth pointing out that children not watching The Exorcist or hard core porn or the news is conventional wisdom, but doesn't seem to have more than an emotional reaction to back it up. I wouldn't show my children porn either (though I'd have no problem with the news and would only have a problem with a horror flick if they were so young they were going to end up with nightmares--and let's be honest, in that case we're protecting ourselves from a sleepless night at least as much and probably more than we're protecting our children), but I can't justify why. With the exception of children so young that they simply imitate anything, I'm not sure what the issue is. We're stuck up about sex enough, maybe a generation of people for whom it isn't such a massive social taboo would be good for us. *shrugs*
I'm a huge fan of linux and use it regularly as my primary desktop OS, but some of the stuff you're saying about linux's advantages over Win2k is at best, misleading.
1. Out-of-the-box driver support for just about everything (only exceptions are ATI/nVidia graphics cards, but some distros now include them)
Well, let's ignore how useless a term like "out of the box" is for linux in general rather than a specific distribution. If you consider downloading, compiling and installing a software package or recompiling one's kernel to be "out of the box" then you get partial credit. Linux can do a fairly impressive amount if you know where to get the packages. It can't do nearly everything though, even if we define "everything" to mean everything that Win2k could do when it was released. Other things it can do, but does them poorly. Case in point: I have a printer that does technically work under linux in that it prints and does so in good quality. However, apparently all the work is done in driver. Printing in linux is dog slow; we're talking 45 seconds or more for a simple black-on-white text page. Yes, page, not document. Graphics can take literally minutes, and none of this counts things like the printer warming up. Printing the exact same things in Windows is essentially instantaneous.
I don't blame linux or the driver authors for this. I blame vendors who aren't interested in putting out linux drivers, or cooperating with those who do. But it's still one of a long list of things linux can't do or doesn't do nearly as well, which I'd say makes your statement pretty dubious.
2. Central package management system
For installs? Yeah, you're right, and that's certainly a great convenience to me most times. For managing post-install, most applications in Windows shove themselves in the Add/Remove Programs dialogue. There are some that don't, but that's essentially true of linux package management systems as well: They only know about programs that they've been given explicit knowledge of, either by installing through them (linux) or being told how to play nicely with them (Windows).
3. 3-D effects
As somebody else pointed out, Win2k is essentially 8 years old (more counting development time). I wouldn't even have WANTED such things on a computer from eight years ago. Beyond that, 2k was not primarily intended as a system for home use, so fancy presentation methods would be even less welcome there than, say, XP. I know somebody out there is thinking "linux isn't primarily intended for home use either!" and they would be mostly correct. However, if we're talking about linux with a GUI and visual effects I think it's also fair to assume we're taking a step away from strict server environments.
4. Support for all major filesystems out-of-the-box
Linux support for NTFS is still sketchy at best; certainly it's incomplete. Saying NTFS isn't a major filesystem would be downright dishonest. It also hinges on your definition of "major;" in terms of market share, does something like ext3 even break a 10% barrier? (That's a serious question; I have no idea.) If not, Windows supporting NTFS and FAT32 would basically satisfy this same definition.
The bigger thing, though, is who cares? Linux clearly has support for its OWN filesystems, same as Windows does. The only people interested in what else it supports are people tasked with interoperating with those other systems. Many, probably most, people with a linux box will have a desire to deal with Windows partitions, but only a very small fraction of Windows users care whether or not it can read ext3 partitions out of the box.
5. Support for all major filetypes out-of-the-box
Once again this very much depends on what box. A lot of distributions don't have default support for
Just to be clear, I think it's stupid that google has so many things in beta still. I mean, seriously, froogle and gmail are still beta? It's been what, 5 years?
They may be betas, but they're not beta quality. Hypothetically speaking if you woke up tomorrow and the "beta" tag was gone, would you think it was premature or not ready?
The "perpetual beta" thing makes for cute jokes, but if it makes Google more comfortable for some reason and user experience is not impacted either way, do the semantics of the situation really matter that much?
It may not matter to your evaluation of him in the end, but do keep in mind that Powell was a general. When you serve in the military, loyalty is paramount and obeying orders is the law. Clearly he was under no legal obligation to do what the president wanted, but he was still loyal to the administration. To this day, even with seemingly every other Bush staffer running off to write books slamming him, Powell has been mostly quiet.
In other words, there's no good solution for him if Bush told him to give that speech. Disobey his commander-in-chief? Go public, slamming his boss? Potentially get fired (uhh, I mean "resign for family reasons")? They all suck. Maybe he should have recognized his role as a public servant and stood more firmly on principles, but that's harder for a military man than it is for somebody else--and it's pretty hard for most people in general, notwithstanding the fact that in politics if he tried any of these things he probably would have been trashed. That would be hard on anybody, but perhaps especially for a guy who didn't seem to really want that sort of public life to begin with.
Perhaps it's worth noting that he almost certainly DID resign because of this; he just did it the quiet, in-the-future way of politics when you're not trying to make a scene or make your boss look bad.
I do totally agree, though, that if there is a tension between the wants of the user and the wants of the site, the user should win every time, no question.
Why? Isn't it fair for content creators to want something (ie, advertising dollars) for their time and effort? If a site is a worthless piece of crap, or requests things that are so ridiculously annoying that you just can't stand them, you're free to simply not visit. If enough people feel similarly the site will be taken down, change or be abandoned. The sense I get from some people here (not targeting you specifically) is that they feel entitled to things by whatever conditions they please, regardless of how the other parties involved feel or are affected. That attitude seems to be the basis for most peoples' pirating music and movies, complaining when ISPs try to throttle behaviors like that, and even this sense that you should be able to get a person's work--the site content--without seeing the ads they chose to place on there. Not only that, but that the browser should try to trick the website so it doesn't know you're doing so. It seems a bit much to me. There should be a give and take.
If the things that you and the OP were to be implemented, I think sites should be fully informed and be able to filter on that criteria. <meta name="disallowAdBlockers" value="true"/> or something, which the browsers would then honor and, if you chose to block advertisements for that site, present you some sort of "Nope, you can't have this because you're blocking ads; click here to enable them for this website [for this session | always]" message. Would that make the feature useless on a vast majority of sites? Yep. Would it ever happen? Nah. Would it be easy for somebody with a little technical knowledge to work around even if both website owners and browser vendors got together and agreed to implement this? Yeah. But it's a fair give and take. Both sides make their demands and if they conflict, deal's off. It would also allow you to do what some/. users purport to do: Build a white-list of sites you like enough to deal with ads so that the creators get some money, while still getting content where creator's don't mind if you block ads. It's just adding a third condition: Not getting that content where the creators do mind.
Before anybody pulls out some extreme example, there are obviously some behaviors that are simply abusive and shouldn't be allowed. while(1) { window.open('goatse.cx'); } has no legitimate uses and shouldn't be permitted. I personally think browser users should be able to choose whether or not Flash, for example, is permitted to play sound -- there's little worse than listening to music, hitting a website and all of the sudden having something strange blaring out of you speakers, screeching over your tunes. I tend to agree with the back button thing, but perhaps websites could be permitted to give a reason where if you pressed back it could say, for example, "This website has disabled your back button because: It risks re-submitting a fee to your credit card. Would you like to go back anyway?" I'm sure there are plenty more we could all agree on too, and some that would be up for debate. But like I've said a few times, it should be a give and take. I completely disagree with the mentality that the user should win every time unless you consider not getting to use some websites in order to have what you want to be a win.
Since when do people "deserve" to be paid a lot of money just because they did a lot of hard work?
They don't -- but if they put a lot of hard work into something and let you use it with the caveat that they be compensated (ie, they offer it for sale) and you choose to use that product or service, then they do deserve to be paid. And they deserve to be paid whatever price they set. If it's too high, you're free to do without.
Your two categories completely ignore the pirates in order to present two cases you can slam content creators with. I have absolutely no problem with you buying a CD and ripping it to your hard drive. I have no problem with you keeping that CD and those mp3 copies and putting another set on your iPod. I have no problem with you making copies for yourself and even your family, or selling your used CDs provided you aren't keeping any other copies for yourself. I have no problem with you removing DRM to do any of these things. To the extent that any of these behaviors are illegal today (some clearly are, some might be, some aren't,) I don't feel they should be.
I DO have a problem with you if you pirate games or movies or software or music or anything else for any other reasons, including "it costs too much!," "copyright is out of hand!," and "the RIAA suxx0rs!" And that's regardless of the fact that I strongly agree with all of those statements. Presenting it as some sort of right of yours to have things you didn't pay for because you didn't like the offer is dishonest at best; personally I think it's unfettered asshattery.
And I'm sorry, but the "who's being 'greedier?'" question is just stupid. The other guy being wrong, even more wrong, doesn't make what you're doing any more right. We learn this idiom in like second grade; it's entirely disheartening to see supposedly intelligent Slashdot readers trotting it out. It doesn't help you OR your argument.
If what you posted is complete and accurate, the declarative theory seems pretty stupid. I can seemingly satisfy requirements A-C by declaring myself dictator of JonLand, the borders of which are my property lines and the population of which is myself and my family. Am I now a country? To whom do I need to declare this? Do I have a seat on the UN now?
Without D, requiring other countries to recognize you, the only person who has to not giggle themselves stupid as they make this declaration is actually the person making it. My example may be extreme, but even applying it to present circumstances shows the problem. Ask the Palestinian government what their territory is. Then ask the Israelis what territory the Palestinian state owns. When they stop laughing, clarify by asking what territory they would own if it ever happened? Go back and try to reconcile that with the Palestinians. If you manage it, well, your Nobel peace prize is in the mail--you've just solved the major difficulty of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I suspect you'll have trouble though.
"I'm a country even though nobody else agrees!" is nice from a feel-good philosophic sense, but I think these things are complicated enough without playing the definition games that entails. I'm not a huge fan of the UN, but they seem like the best institution (given our current world setup) to determine what is or is not a country. They're free to use the first three criteria to determine it; the fourth is implied at that point, and any questions surrounding the first three would be answered, at least in the democratic "we put it to a vote" sense of the word "answered."
The fact that you have to download a third-party add-on to even resemble the original functionality shows how little respect the Mozilla Corporation has for its users.
Replacing old features with new ones has nothing to do with lacking respect for users, it's about trying to improve the user experience. Not everybody is going to like them, sure; that's true of just about any change you make. The fact that it's possible to download an extension and get pretty close to the behavior people complain they no longer have isn't a strike against Firefox, it's a sign of the robustness of the extensions and community. Apparently extensions aren't permitted to drill so deeply into the core browser that they can change how things are looked up--at least I assume that's why the extension isn't quite the old behavior. That may be good or bad depending on your perspective, but it's certainly safer.
More to the point, most of the posts seem to be: "I just downloaded Firefox and I fucking hate this new address bar!@" I thought we were supposed to be reasonable people here? What happened to giving something a chance before you spit on it and declare Mozilla to be disrespectful of its users for ever having implemented it? For that matter, if these people ever bother to actually give details about what they don't like about it it seems to be basically the order it's returning the results. For example, lots of people complain that typing "en" is no longer bringing up "en.wikipedia.org" as their first result. For one thing, this behavior can be mirror even more closely with a configuration option. It's not in the GUI; bitch about that if you want, but it's there. Beyond that, it's simply more proof that they haven't bothered to give it a chance. The search results are adaptive. The more you type "en" and select "en.wikipedia.org," the more it learns that's what you want. Sounds like a feature to me. All it takes is patience, but clearly most people have none and would prefer to rant about it on forums like this one.
Firefox without extensions is ridiculously barebones.
Or bloated, depending on who around here you ask. That alone should clue you in that it's nothing more than a matter of perspective. But let's play along and say you're right. All that goes to show is that there are two camps with regard to things like this: One who believes the best stuff should be merged in or included by default with the browser, and one that believes the browser core should stay as lean as possible and let this functionality be done with add-ons. Opera tends to the former, and Firefox is a bit of a hybrid but tends to the latter. So what? If you really can't be bothered to customize things to your liking, that's fine--use Opera or whatever else you find that suits you. That's really what it's all about in the end. That doesn't mean that the alternate perspective is wrong, though.
I'm glad I'm an Opera user.
Well, you're certainly free to use whichever browser you prefer for whatever reasons you prefer it--I just hope you have better reasons than "default Firefox is barebones," which seems to be all you said here. That smells a bit too much of zealotry to me. At the end of the day I guess it doesn't even matter what it is. *shrugs*
what makes you so sure that it is NO longer possible?
You live in a post-9/11 world. You're on a plane. Somebody gets up, pulls out a box cutter and starts threatening passengers in an attempt to get the cockpit open. Do you:
1. Open the cockpit and let him fly the plane into a building, or
2. Jump the motherfucker along with half the other passengers on the plane?
That's why he and I are so sure that it won't happen again. Like he said, policy used to be "do whatever they say" because the assumption was they just wanted to get someplace and run off. The assumption now is "they're going to fly this plane into a building," whether that's right or wrong. I don't know about you, but I assume my chances of survival to be pretty low if my plane is flown into a building, so I'm going to jump the fucks even if I do risk being spliced up potentially to the point of death. Death sucks pretty much either way for me, but I like my own odds better trying to do something to stop it and I acknowledge that if I'm a goner either way the best case is for there to be as few other deaths as manageable.
For that matter, terrorists are not stupid. 9/11 was a pretty brilliant plot: they identified weak points in a part of our country, including policy for how to react to what they were about to do and the fact that we were basically not looking; they exploited these weak points, poor policy decisions and general naiveté of the populace; and they did so in a way that made people literally terrified to use something that days before had been ingrained in our culture. They won't that round big time.
Do you really believe round two is going to be done in the same manner? In a place we've fortified, changed our policies about and are watching to the point of unhealthy obsession? They're going to look for the NEXT target where they can exploit their way to success--and I'm sure there are many of them. If I had to pick a place I felt the MOST safe from a terrorist attack post 9/11, it would be on an airplane. Hell, I'd be more afraid in the lines at the security checkpoints. If I were a terrorist, I'd detonate my bomb there.
It's not an impossibility, no; few things are when dealing with predicting human behaviors. But it's almost certainly low enough risk now that we don't need to be focusing all our energy there--and should never have been to begin with.
I believe this has already been tried... the record industry can't use downloading by themselves or their agents to establish infringement because you cant infringe your own copyright - it's a legal impossibility.
Do you have a court decision to back this up? It sounds completely backward to me.
Copyright protects, among other things, an entity's right to control distribution. If I download a song from you, you're the one distributing it, not me (ignoring things like bittorrent where I may be both uploading and downloading). Without permission to have distributed it, it seems to me that's copyright infringement even if I were authorized to distribute that exact same thing. In that scenario, I am not in the distribution role.
If MediaSentry was trying to do some sort of "sting" where they offered copyrighted materials and then tried to bust people who downloaded them, then the point would be more applicable--except that they'd have to make a bit of a legal stretch to get that one to court. (Not that it hasn't happened before; "a copy in RAM is a copy" has to be one of the worst decisions ever.)
Seriously. If they want people to slow down, why hide behind billboards and bridges and other stuff and pop out and snag people?
For starters, let me say that I agree that many tickets are written for revenue purposes and that likewise ticket revenues can be substantial to towns.
That said, one could still make a case that hiding is still a better option than being out in the open. You're right that being in the open makes people slam on their breaks. Doing so would be a really good way to force people to slow down in the area of the police car.
But not much farther. If a person knows the police cars are always painfully obvious, then they feel free to speed whenever one ISN'T in plain view. Take your example; these people were already speeding to some degree--they slammed on their breaks only when there was a possibility of getting caught.
The idea behind hiding is a hope that you get people to worry about getting caught even when they don't see a cop around; that behind every billboard and bridge and other object is a potential speeding ticket for them. It can even be related to operant conditioning; writing tickets is a form of positive punishment. A variable rate of reinforcement is the most effective means of continuing to get the desired response (in this case not speeding) even without the reinforcer (the ticket) being introduced more than sporadically. (You can see this for yourself in the chart here.)
Obviously it's not quite that cut and dry because there are other things at work such as the randomness of whether or not you're ticketed coupled with the fact that the people all around you are likely speeding as well--not only increasing the likelihood of your own speeding, but decreasing the likelihood of your being the one caught even if you run into a cop. It's also not a strictly variable ratio positive punishment situation either.
The only means of 100% or near 100% eliminating speeding is to force cars to be either technically incapable of speeding or to somehow instantly issue the driver a ticket if they did. Both have not only their technical problems, but would probably be thrown out in court and would certainly cause public outcry before and after. So, if the police really DO want to impact speeding but can't do things like that, I suppose this is their next best choice. It's probably not very effective in the long run, and hopefully anybody reading this has noted that I've never commented on whether or not I think speeding tickets are good or bad, but of the "let's do SOMETHING" approaches it's probably best to keep your speed traps operating but hidden.
The web hosting company Site5 recently moved their servers to The Planet. I'm not sure offhand how many servers they have, but I'm sure it jumps that ratio significantly.
Well, it is tough to regulate speech in the US. Not to say they don't do it quite a bit and don't try to do it more, but it's not easy.
Alternative medicine is one gigantic - and very dangerous - scam.
They're also very careful about what they say. I'm sure you've seen the disclaimer on those commercials, close to:"This product is not intended to diagnose, treat or cure any disease." No matter what the product, no matter who the producer, distributor or creator, you get that same wording on the disclaimer. That's because they're legal keywords; anything intended to diagnose, treat or cure a disease is a drug according to federal law. As a drug it would be regulated by the FDA and actually have to, you know, have some backup for its claims.
They're usually careful about SAYING it does any of those things as well. You get things like "my friend had a broken leg and chewed some XYZ root and it was fixed!" Well, that's an anecdote your honor! Stupid? Yep. But that's how the legal system works, and it's not accident these people make their infomercials and commercials the way they do. Ever wonder why HeadOn is allowed to do business, despite it being essentially a ball of wax yet strongly implying it can cures headaches? Yeah, because strongly implying and stating are different things.
What about all the food product labeling - low fat, organic, and all that meaningless garbage that is totally deceptive?
If I remember my consumer education classes correctly (though they were yeeears ago!) many of these terms ARE regulated. I'm not sure about organic, but low fat definitely was. I can't find a specific list of what is regulated and what they mean, but I did find this article which states, in part: "This means that such products as 2-percent milk, which contains about 5 grams of fat per serving, cannot be labeled "low fat" because the fat content is more than 3 grams per serving, the upper limit permitted in food products labeled 'low fat.' [. ..] Although two-percent milk, with its 5 grams of fat, may not be called "low fat," the product does qualify for a "reduced fat" claim. "Reduced fat" means that the fat content of the food has been reduced by at least 25 percent per serving compared to the full-fat food."
So, in short, at least some of that is already taken care of. Some of it is people cleverly dodging laws, and presumably getting away with it because of free speech issues.
Perhaps it doesn't, but you certainly have provided no meaningful evidence of that point.
A barber "produces" your haircut, so does that mean he owns it? A house painter "produces" the color of your house - does he own that?
Unlike anything covered by copyright law, these are services. There's no possible way that you can give your haircut to somebody else, nor the paint job on your house. There have always been a different set of rules regarding services compared to products.
If I cut a piece of paper to a precise length, maybe even a length which paper has never been cut to before, do I own that length?
Your example here is a bit too contrived to respond to properly, but the answer is: Possibly. If you've truly discovered some miracle process by which you can cut something to a length with precision never before seen, you could try for a patent for that process and probably win it. And why shouldn't you? Thousands of years of human life, hundreds of years beyond the industrial revolution, and you've suddenly found a process more precise than anything we have currently? The world deserves to know how it works, and you deserve the chance to be compensated for it. (Want to drop it in the public domain? Love ya!) Fall all its flaws, that's what the patent system is intended for. However, this example, like all the others, is still an entirely different beast than copyright.
A poem is an arrangement of words on a page. A painting is an arrangement of color on a canvas. You can't own an arrangement any more than you can own a length or a weight; the idea is ridiculous on its face.
Well that really goes to how you define ownership I suppose. If you're of the mind that nobody should be able to exert controlling authority over ("own") something that is not absolutely tangible, I suppose there's nothing wrong with that belief. The world would certainly be a different place, and I'm not sure for better or worse.
The copyright (/patent/trademark) systems are all abused, there's no doubt about that, but I still support the notion that non-tangible things have value and the concept that we should try to support creation of those things. Further, I absolutely support the idea that somebody with more money than me shouldn't be able to come along and appropriate my work and drive me out of business solely based on the fact that they have more money than me. If I write a book and there's no protections for me against a big publishing company going "thanks," paying me nothing, publishing my book, undercutting me on price and giggling all the way to the bank... I won't write that book. Hopefully not every potential author would feel the same, but I'm sure enough of them would that there would be a damage done to society as a whole. (And for the record, I'm not an author; it's simply an example.)
There are some markets that would probably not be seriously affected, maybe even some that would be improved--music is likely one of these--but not all of them are like that. Some other examples of where lack of copyright would actually help would probably be interesting to see, in fact.
Another poster already responded about the concept that spoken word is not copyrightable because it lacks tangible form, so I'll leave that angle alone. What I will say in closing, since your focus is on an issue of freedom of speech, is that those very same founders who enumerated and guaranteed those rights in the US (and which has trickled to dozens of other nations over the years), and who explicitly gave every right they didn't list to the states or to the people, saw fit to permit Congress the authority to pass copyright (and related) laws. Absolute freedom sounds good, but it seldom works well in practice. We use the word "anarchy" to describe that, and it's not looked upon favorably.
"If you give people the choice between, as an example, a $2500 Wintel PC and a $500 Wintel PC, both of which offer the same crappy Windows Experience, most people will choose to invest less of their money in a losing proposition."
Translation out of Mac-fanboi:
"If you give people the choice between a $2500 Windows PC and a $500 Windows PC, most of them realize they don't need to spend an extra $2000 because they don't need top of the line hardware."
If you truly believe the average PC buyer is sitting there and going, "Windows will suck either way, that's why I'll spend less!" then you're an idiot. And I'm being generous. As it is, I'm left to assume you're nothing but a Mac fanboi trying to sound intelligent by using the/. "translation" meme.
The people who spend $2500 on a Windows computer are power users with a need for that extra hardware that, while not necessarily always justified, they can at least explain. Gamers are usually in this category; some business users are as well depending on the nature of their use. It has nothing to do with Windows. If they hate Windows so much that they WOULD have spent $2500 but won't because it's Windows, they would just buy something else anyway. Apple has done a sufficiently good job of advertising that people know there are alternatives. If they're in that minority who just can't use anything but Windows, well, then they're still basing their purchasing decision on whether or not they need the extra $2000 hardware costs and not the OS.
For the record, I'm writing this on a linux desktop while sitting in front of a Windows PC and mulling the purchase of a Mac. I think that's about as even-handed as it gets. Perhaps you should give it a shot some time.
Possession is illegal because it is considered a continuation and extension of the original crime of sexual abuse,
Huh? Does anybody believe that who isn't just grasping for reasons that they already support making possession illegal?
Distribution I can somewhat understand, if a person feels that allowing others to see this sexual abuse is a "continuation and extension of the original crime" (personally I find it a bit of a stretch), but somebody's merely having it isn't. Whatever extra damage to their reputation or psyche or whatever we're claiming happens here when media of the abuse is distributed out has already occurred by the time it's sitting on a hard drive.
and because (like with drugs) the thought is that if you cut off demand, the suppliers will necessarily abuse fewer children
Interesting that you mention drugs since that, too, is a legal money-sink that politicians tap into at will with very little effect.
But more to the point... let's think about that argument rationally. Can anybody honestly say they envision a straight, sexually "normal" (ie, doesn't get off on kiddie porn) person sitting around going, "you know what? I bet there's a market for a video of me assfucking a 10 year old. Fuck the possibility of life in prison and being shunned by my friends and family, let's go for it?" I don't. If there are ANY such people in the world, they are a vast minority of the already relatively small number of people who are involved in such a thing.
The reality is that these people already have these inclinations of their own when they're doing this. In fact I bet many people who make such videos or take such pictures don't initially intend to distribute at all; it's intended for their own consumption at a later date. I suppose if I were about to do something I could go to jail for the rest of my life for, I'd want to maximize its value as well.
My point being, these are people overwhelmingly likely to do what they're doing regardless of how easily they can sell the product. Even severely shriveling up their market isn't likely to stop them, and these laws certainly come nowhere near that point.
Like with drugs, I think the best thing to do is to try to remove the stigma attached to this behavior as much as possible so people don't feel the need to hide their feelings from everybody, and then to direct this billion dollars and more into researching why it is that these people are attracted to children and seeing if there is anything we can do to help them become members that society deems appropriate. This is especially true for anybody actually caught possessing/creating such material, but if some people who have never done anything wrong yet but only through force of will get some help, that would be good too.
You're right in the point that you make. There's absolutely nothing wrong with works in progress. I enjoy when my favorite software gets some cool new features, or companies like Google release neat new products. I expect continual improvements from things like the Linux kernel to enhance support for new hardware.
The problem is that this isn't a "work in progress" in common usage, but rather in PR terms. This is a "work in progress" that leads people to question if it is even ready for its intended purpose yet. As other posters pointed out, this is beta-quality software at best; the bugs are getting in the way of your everyday use of the product, rather than it being ready to roll and new things and enhancements being dropped in later.
Worse, it's a "work in progress" that the company is going to force upon you, with no guarantee that it will be ready even then. The fact that people and business see so little value and/or quality in this product that a monopoly is having trouble getting it out is strong evidence that this was not "good enough" for release. Add to that the fact that they removed all of the features that would have made it interesting and still couldn't hit their release dates and there's an even stronger indication that this product was rushed to market before it was ready.
I don't like Microsoft as a company because of the things they do and the manner in which they do them, but I have no problems with XP; I use it on my laptop and linux on my desktop, so I'm not just a Microsoft hater. But this is silly, and calling Vista's shortcomings a "work in progress" is disingenuous at best.
Or RIAA pays MediaSentry to take a fall, admitting that yes, IP addresses irrefutably shows that they did a wrong thing.
It doesn't matter. Them admitting the crime and saying IPs irrefutably show something is... them admitting the crime and saying something. It is not in any way a finding of fact, presents no precedent (binding or otherwise) and it would almost certainly not be admitted in any other court case, much less listened to if they tried to slip it in someplace.
My gut tells me "the people" will reject it. Just like they did back in the 80's and 90's.
They did, and they will again.
This goes back to before the spread of the Internet at all, at least back to the telephone systems. The telephone companies did some surveys and found that customers would prefer an unlimited plan even if they could be shown definitively that they would save money by using a metered one, for exactly the reasons already mentioned: People appreciated the convenience of not being worried about the minutes. They didn't want to feel rushed on their call or like they'd better hang up on their mother because they may be low on minutes. Today, of course, nearly all phone plans are unlimited (excepting international).
It amuses me to watch this happening all over again with cell phones. Yes, there are a lot of minute plans in existence already--part of me seriously thinks to milk it for all its worth--but if you watch, more and more, all the plans are beginning to offer unlimited. Same with text messaging; there are pay-as-you-go, some bundles, but more and more "unlimited text" is being used as a selling point. Soon it'll be expected.
Analogy: A homeowner has no locks, leaves door unlocked all day long, then tries getting his or her insurance company to pay out when he or she is ripped off.
I'm not so sure she shouldn't still be paid out for that. It's clearly a stupid thing to do, but the damage to a person's life that can occur from a robbery seems like too much a punishment for it.
Nonetheless, how far do you want to take this? If I was just running to the store, didn't lock the door and got robbed, should they not have to pay out? What if I was in a rush one day and forgot to lock the door? If my kids go out and don't lock the door, does that make me screwed as well?
If the issue generically is that we're not doing what we can reasonably do to reduce our likelihood of being the victim of theft, then where's the line? Do I need video cameras? Do I have to get a security system? Would just sticking a sign in the lawn that says "Protected By SomeMadeUpSecurityCompany" do the trick, since the biggest benefit of a security system is the deterrent?
Shift all the questions over to a car for extra fun.
I just don't know. If I buy theft insurance and get robbed, they should pay. It would take pretty extreme negligence before I'd be willing to say they shouldn't, and I'm not sure not locking the doors even reaches that point.
What they should do is say that the person must make a reasonable attempt at securing their computer.
They did. But to avoid legal problems in the future, they're telling you what they consider a reasonable attempt is: AV, Anti-Spyware, firewall. I still think it's pretty stupid though.
Should not such an act as this hold a penalty of disbarment?
No.
Look, I hate the RIAA's tactics as much as anybody and this issue seems like it was taken from their playbook, but we need to very carefully consider what we're doing before we tell somebody they wasted tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars going to law school and take their livelihoods from them. At the very least, I don't think a second chance is out of line.
Further, what they seem to be citing her for is overstating the seriousness of the matter. It's unethical, but I certainly don't think it falls into the "you can't practice law" category. The money-into-a-private-account thing is a serious issue, but there doesn't seem to be an accusation of theft. If that's the case, the firm she's working for should sue her into the dirt and file a complaint -- and then she should be disbarred. If they don't feel any money is missing, well, then let's give that second chance again. If she does anything like this in the future, send her packing.
Now, on the other hand if what another poster said is true and the six month ban isn't even really in effect--then that's too light. The lapses certainly deserve a punishment, not a notification that a punishment might come next time.
I think the sticking picture of this incident was that in order to take a picture they had to go past a sign that said "Private Property" which is trespassing.
Let's concede that point for the sake of argument. The lawsuit remains bunk. Trespassing is a very specific issue of criminal law. It means you're somewhere you're not supposed to be, which is related to privacy in only a passing way (you can trespass on an empty field); the picture does not devalue their house (looking at the picture it seems their house does a good job of devaluing their house), and it certainly doesn't cause mental anguish. This is money-grubbing pure and simple.
If they want to find the specific drivers who took the picture and file a trespass complaint with their local police department, fine. I'm sure they'll be shaken to their core by the written notice that they can't go on those peoples' property anymore. A $25,000 lawsuit can only be taken as one among a growing trend of suits abusing the legal system.
Slashdot Mirror
There are a few points that I think you're missing or intentionally glossing over, so let's get to them:
Yes, but they do so by choosing whether or not to patronize a particular business, on the assumption that the business will either go under or find an equilibrium point with its consumers. They don't do it by taking somebody's product, thumbing their nose and saying "neener neener! Thanks for your work, it's worth nothing to me!" Ignoring the idiocy of statements that imply that something you just took isn't worth anything to you (then why the hell did you take it?), most people in rational discourse call this stealing. Dress it up as "copyright infringement" in this specific case if you prefer, but most people just see THAT as a fancy term for stealing too, regardless of whether or not the producer is down one unit of product. I don't particularly care what verbiage people settle on, but it's simply dishonest.
If you want to make a case against the existence of IP, or draconian damages like the RIAA seek or laws designed to support then like the DMCA, so be it. I might even hop on board on some of those positions. But so long as this is the system we have, we should all be playing by the rules. You don't simply get to take things that people aren't giving away. To revise your point a little bit, the market itself decides how much goods are worth, and the market is composed of many consumers. Offering up what you're willing to pay and seeing if there's any bites is an auction. It's fine, but you don't get to take it anyway if they turn you down.
I don't even know what this means. What is this collective you speak of? One person? The entirety of the group of people who do something, regardless of whether there are others doing the opposite? I just saw an article that iTunes sold its five billionth song recently. Clearly there is a pretty powerful consumer presence that is well on the positive side of the $0.00 you seem to claim has been collectively decided. You can't simply exclude significant portions of a market if you're making any honest assessment of what that market's position is.
I also find it intellectually dishonest to try to compare whether consumers on average prefer to pay or get things for free. Of course they prefer getting it for free. Many are willing to do it outside the law, because the risks are so small. That doesn't mean the product is worthless. It doesn't even necessarily mean that it's overpriced at whatever its current price point is. But at best, it means the price should move lower--not disappear.
But let's cut the crap. It's useless to talk about how free markets should operate when you're talking about IP, where (1) there is both artificial scarcity and artificial and insurmountable barriers to entry, and (2) products are not perfect replacements for each other. Hell, most of the assumptions of a free market tend to be false to begin with, and even moreso with IP.
Well, that's just it, and the entire point of this interview: It was feature-complete according to the development team's plans for what features should be included in that release. That plan didn't jive with end-users' expectations.
I personally can't speak to the bugs; I tried 4.0 on a live CD for a bit when it was released, and the fact that it didn't have the things I was expecting meant I didn't spend a lot of time with it. I just booted back to my hard drive and continued merrily using 3.5.whateverIhave. I'm sure there ARE bugs, and probably some nasty ones; changes of the magnitude that the KDE team were making are nearly impossible without them. I don't, however, know how common they are.
Honestly, I think it was bad communication. If what was released was what the dev team wanted released for 4.0, I don't blame them for what was released. They just didn't manage user expectations very well.
On a side note, I do remember near the end of when 4.0 was supposed to be released hearing that a number of things I was interested in wouldn't be released until 4.1, which is a major reason why I dropped into a live CD to see what 4.0 was all about. So, it wasn't like there was NO communication about it--but perhaps dot.kde.org wasn't the best place for it, or prominent enough.
With all due respect, that was a truly awful response. For starters, you know that a "straw poll around [your] office" is not, by any stretch, what the OP meant by citing a study. It's not even a study at all; it's a survey, and not even a meaningful one since the selection process is anything but random and representative.
Second, your original post mentions some sort of "anti-violent video game lobby," but now you conclude that "it's entirely up to the parents." That's what the vast majority of people have been saying all along. Whenever a nutjob like Thompson crops up, the response is essentially "shut up and be a parent." Very few people here will argue with you that parents shouldn't be in control of the games children play or the movies children watch.
That said, if anybody DID want to argue over any specific case it's worth pointing out that children not watching The Exorcist or hard core porn or the news is conventional wisdom, but doesn't seem to have more than an emotional reaction to back it up. I wouldn't show my children porn either (though I'd have no problem with the news and would only have a problem with a horror flick if they were so young they were going to end up with nightmares--and let's be honest, in that case we're protecting ourselves from a sleepless night at least as much and probably more than we're protecting our children), but I can't justify why. With the exception of children so young that they simply imitate anything, I'm not sure what the issue is. We're stuck up about sex enough, maybe a generation of people for whom it isn't such a massive social taboo would be good for us. *shrugs*
I'm a huge fan of linux and use it regularly as my primary desktop OS, but some of the stuff you're saying about linux's advantages over Win2k is at best, misleading.
Well, let's ignore how useless a term like "out of the box" is for linux in general rather than a specific distribution. If you consider downloading, compiling and installing a software package or recompiling one's kernel to be "out of the box" then you get partial credit. Linux can do a fairly impressive amount if you know where to get the packages. It can't do nearly everything though, even if we define "everything" to mean everything that Win2k could do when it was released. Other things it can do, but does them poorly. Case in point: I have a printer that does technically work under linux in that it prints and does so in good quality. However, apparently all the work is done in driver. Printing in linux is dog slow; we're talking 45 seconds or more for a simple black-on-white text page. Yes, page, not document. Graphics can take literally minutes, and none of this counts things like the printer warming up. Printing the exact same things in Windows is essentially instantaneous.
I don't blame linux or the driver authors for this. I blame vendors who aren't interested in putting out linux drivers, or cooperating with those who do. But it's still one of a long list of things linux can't do or doesn't do nearly as well, which I'd say makes your statement pretty dubious.
For installs? Yeah, you're right, and that's certainly a great convenience to me most times. For managing post-install, most applications in Windows shove themselves in the Add/Remove Programs dialogue. There are some that don't, but that's essentially true of linux package management systems as well: They only know about programs that they've been given explicit knowledge of, either by installing through them (linux) or being told how to play nicely with them (Windows).
As somebody else pointed out, Win2k is essentially 8 years old (more counting development time). I wouldn't even have WANTED such things on a computer from eight years ago. Beyond that, 2k was not primarily intended as a system for home use, so fancy presentation methods would be even less welcome there than, say, XP. I know somebody out there is thinking "linux isn't primarily intended for home use either!" and they would be mostly correct. However, if we're talking about linux with a GUI and visual effects I think it's also fair to assume we're taking a step away from strict server environments.
Linux support for NTFS is still sketchy at best; certainly it's incomplete. Saying NTFS isn't a major filesystem would be downright dishonest. It also hinges on your definition of "major;" in terms of market share, does something like ext3 even break a 10% barrier? (That's a serious question; I have no idea.) If not, Windows supporting NTFS and FAT32 would basically satisfy this same definition.
The bigger thing, though, is who cares? Linux clearly has support for its OWN filesystems, same as Windows does. The only people interested in what else it supports are people tasked with interoperating with those other systems. Many, probably most, people with a linux box will have a desire to deal with Windows partitions, but only a very small fraction of Windows users care whether or not it can read ext3 partitions out of the box.
Once again this very much depends on what box. A lot of distributions don't have default support for
They may be betas, but they're not beta quality. Hypothetically speaking if you woke up tomorrow and the "beta" tag was gone, would you think it was premature or not ready?
The "perpetual beta" thing makes for cute jokes, but if it makes Google more comfortable for some reason and user experience is not impacted either way, do the semantics of the situation really matter that much?
It may not matter to your evaluation of him in the end, but do keep in mind that Powell was a general. When you serve in the military, loyalty is paramount and obeying orders is the law. Clearly he was under no legal obligation to do what the president wanted, but he was still loyal to the administration. To this day, even with seemingly every other Bush staffer running off to write books slamming him, Powell has been mostly quiet.
In other words, there's no good solution for him if Bush told him to give that speech. Disobey his commander-in-chief? Go public, slamming his boss? Potentially get fired (uhh, I mean "resign for family reasons")? They all suck. Maybe he should have recognized his role as a public servant and stood more firmly on principles, but that's harder for a military man than it is for somebody else--and it's pretty hard for most people in general, notwithstanding the fact that in politics if he tried any of these things he probably would have been trashed. That would be hard on anybody, but perhaps especially for a guy who didn't seem to really want that sort of public life to begin with.
Perhaps it's worth noting that he almost certainly DID resign because of this; he just did it the quiet, in-the-future way of politics when you're not trying to make a scene or make your boss look bad.
Why? Isn't it fair for content creators to want something (ie, advertising dollars) for their time and effort? If a site is a worthless piece of crap, or requests things that are so ridiculously annoying that you just can't stand them, you're free to simply not visit. If enough people feel similarly the site will be taken down, change or be abandoned. The sense I get from some people here (not targeting you specifically) is that they feel entitled to things by whatever conditions they please, regardless of how the other parties involved feel or are affected. That attitude seems to be the basis for most peoples' pirating music and movies, complaining when ISPs try to throttle behaviors like that, and even this sense that you should be able to get a person's work--the site content--without seeing the ads they chose to place on there. Not only that, but that the browser should try to trick the website so it doesn't know you're doing so. It seems a bit much to me. There should be a give and take.
If the things that you and the OP were to be implemented, I think sites should be fully informed and be able to filter on that criteria. <meta name="disallowAdBlockers" value="true" /> or something, which the browsers would then honor and, if you chose to block advertisements for that site, present you some sort of "Nope, you can't have this because you're blocking ads; click here to enable them for this website [for this session | always]" message. Would that make the feature useless on a vast majority of sites? Yep. Would it ever happen? Nah. Would it be easy for somebody with a little technical knowledge to work around even if both website owners and browser vendors got together and agreed to implement this? Yeah. But it's a fair give and take. Both sides make their demands and if they conflict, deal's off. It would also allow you to do what some /. users purport to do: Build a white-list of sites you like enough to deal with ads so that the creators get some money, while still getting content where creator's don't mind if you block ads. It's just adding a third condition: Not getting that content where the creators do mind.
Before anybody pulls out some extreme example, there are obviously some behaviors that are simply abusive and shouldn't be allowed. while(1) { window.open('goatse.cx'); } has no legitimate uses and shouldn't be permitted. I personally think browser users should be able to choose whether or not Flash, for example, is permitted to play sound -- there's little worse than listening to music, hitting a website and all of the sudden having something strange blaring out of you speakers, screeching over your tunes. I tend to agree with the back button thing, but perhaps websites could be permitted to give a reason where if you pressed back it could say, for example, "This website has disabled your back button because: It risks re-submitting a fee to your credit card. Would you like to go back anyway?" I'm sure there are plenty more we could all agree on too, and some that would be up for debate. But like I've said a few times, it should be a give and take. I completely disagree with the mentality that the user should win every time unless you consider not getting to use some websites in order to have what you want to be a win.
They don't -- but if they put a lot of hard work into something and let you use it with the caveat that they be compensated (ie, they offer it for sale) and you choose to use that product or service, then they do deserve to be paid. And they deserve to be paid whatever price they set. If it's too high, you're free to do without.
Your two categories completely ignore the pirates in order to present two cases you can slam content creators with. I have absolutely no problem with you buying a CD and ripping it to your hard drive. I have no problem with you keeping that CD and those mp3 copies and putting another set on your iPod. I have no problem with you making copies for yourself and even your family, or selling your used CDs provided you aren't keeping any other copies for yourself. I have no problem with you removing DRM to do any of these things. To the extent that any of these behaviors are illegal today (some clearly are, some might be, some aren't,) I don't feel they should be.
I DO have a problem with you if you pirate games or movies or software or music or anything else for any other reasons, including "it costs too much!," "copyright is out of hand!," and "the RIAA suxx0rs!" And that's regardless of the fact that I strongly agree with all of those statements. Presenting it as some sort of right of yours to have things you didn't pay for because you didn't like the offer is dishonest at best; personally I think it's unfettered asshattery.
And I'm sorry, but the "who's being 'greedier?'" question is just stupid. The other guy being wrong, even more wrong, doesn't make what you're doing any more right. We learn this idiom in like second grade; it's entirely disheartening to see supposedly intelligent Slashdot readers trotting it out. It doesn't help you OR your argument.
If what you posted is complete and accurate, the declarative theory seems pretty stupid. I can seemingly satisfy requirements A-C by declaring myself dictator of JonLand, the borders of which are my property lines and the population of which is myself and my family. Am I now a country? To whom do I need to declare this? Do I have a seat on the UN now?
Without D, requiring other countries to recognize you, the only person who has to not giggle themselves stupid as they make this declaration is actually the person making it. My example may be extreme, but even applying it to present circumstances shows the problem. Ask the Palestinian government what their territory is. Then ask the Israelis what territory the Palestinian state owns. When they stop laughing, clarify by asking what territory they would own if it ever happened? Go back and try to reconcile that with the Palestinians. If you manage it, well, your Nobel peace prize is in the mail--you've just solved the major difficulty of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I suspect you'll have trouble though.
"I'm a country even though nobody else agrees!" is nice from a feel-good philosophic sense, but I think these things are complicated enough without playing the definition games that entails. I'm not a huge fan of the UN, but they seem like the best institution (given our current world setup) to determine what is or is not a country. They're free to use the first three criteria to determine it; the fourth is implied at that point, and any questions surrounding the first three would be answered, at least in the democratic "we put it to a vote" sense of the word "answered."
Replacing old features with new ones has nothing to do with lacking respect for users, it's about trying to improve the user experience. Not everybody is going to like them, sure; that's true of just about any change you make. The fact that it's possible to download an extension and get pretty close to the behavior people complain they no longer have isn't a strike against Firefox, it's a sign of the robustness of the extensions and community. Apparently extensions aren't permitted to drill so deeply into the core browser that they can change how things are looked up--at least I assume that's why the extension isn't quite the old behavior. That may be good or bad depending on your perspective, but it's certainly safer.
More to the point, most of the posts seem to be: "I just downloaded Firefox and I fucking hate this new address bar!@" I thought we were supposed to be reasonable people here? What happened to giving something a chance before you spit on it and declare Mozilla to be disrespectful of its users for ever having implemented it? For that matter, if these people ever bother to actually give details about what they don't like about it it seems to be basically the order it's returning the results. For example, lots of people complain that typing "en" is no longer bringing up "en.wikipedia.org" as their first result. For one thing, this behavior can be mirror even more closely with a configuration option. It's not in the GUI; bitch about that if you want, but it's there. Beyond that, it's simply more proof that they haven't bothered to give it a chance. The search results are adaptive. The more you type "en" and select "en.wikipedia.org," the more it learns that's what you want. Sounds like a feature to me. All it takes is patience, but clearly most people have none and would prefer to rant about it on forums like this one.
Or bloated, depending on who around here you ask. That alone should clue you in that it's nothing more than a matter of perspective. But let's play along and say you're right. All that goes to show is that there are two camps with regard to things like this: One who believes the best stuff should be merged in or included by default with the browser, and one that believes the browser core should stay as lean as possible and let this functionality be done with add-ons. Opera tends to the former, and Firefox is a bit of a hybrid but tends to the latter. So what? If you really can't be bothered to customize things to your liking, that's fine--use Opera or whatever else you find that suits you. That's really what it's all about in the end. That doesn't mean that the alternate perspective is wrong, though.
Well, you're certainly free to use whichever browser you prefer for whatever reasons you prefer it--I just hope you have better reasons than "default Firefox is barebones," which seems to be all you said here. That smells a bit too much of zealotry to me. At the end of the day I guess it doesn't even matter what it is. *shrugs*
You live in a post-9/11 world. You're on a plane. Somebody gets up, pulls out a box cutter and starts threatening passengers in an attempt to get the cockpit open. Do you:
1. Open the cockpit and let him fly the plane into a building, or
2. Jump the motherfucker along with half the other passengers on the plane?
That's why he and I are so sure that it won't happen again. Like he said, policy used to be "do whatever they say" because the assumption was they just wanted to get someplace and run off. The assumption now is "they're going to fly this plane into a building," whether that's right or wrong. I don't know about you, but I assume my chances of survival to be pretty low if my plane is flown into a building, so I'm going to jump the fucks even if I do risk being spliced up potentially to the point of death. Death sucks pretty much either way for me, but I like my own odds better trying to do something to stop it and I acknowledge that if I'm a goner either way the best case is for there to be as few other deaths as manageable.
For that matter, terrorists are not stupid. 9/11 was a pretty brilliant plot: they identified weak points in a part of our country, including policy for how to react to what they were about to do and the fact that we were basically not looking; they exploited these weak points, poor policy decisions and general naiveté of the populace; and they did so in a way that made people literally terrified to use something that days before had been ingrained in our culture. They won't that round big time.
Do you really believe round two is going to be done in the same manner? In a place we've fortified, changed our policies about and are watching to the point of unhealthy obsession? They're going to look for the NEXT target where they can exploit their way to success--and I'm sure there are many of them. If I had to pick a place I felt the MOST safe from a terrorist attack post 9/11, it would be on an airplane. Hell, I'd be more afraid in the lines at the security checkpoints. If I were a terrorist, I'd detonate my bomb there.
It's not an impossibility, no; few things are when dealing with predicting human behaviors. But it's almost certainly low enough risk now that we don't need to be focusing all our energy there--and should never have been to begin with.
Do you have a court decision to back this up? It sounds completely backward to me.
Copyright protects, among other things, an entity's right to control distribution. If I download a song from you, you're the one distributing it, not me (ignoring things like bittorrent where I may be both uploading and downloading). Without permission to have distributed it, it seems to me that's copyright infringement even if I were authorized to distribute that exact same thing. In that scenario, I am not in the distribution role.
If MediaSentry was trying to do some sort of "sting" where they offered copyrighted materials and then tried to bust people who downloaded them, then the point would be more applicable--except that they'd have to make a bit of a legal stretch to get that one to court. (Not that it hasn't happened before; "a copy in RAM is a copy" has to be one of the worst decisions ever.)
For starters, let me say that I agree that many tickets are written for revenue purposes and that likewise ticket revenues can be substantial to towns.
That said, one could still make a case that hiding is still a better option than being out in the open. You're right that being in the open makes people slam on their breaks. Doing so would be a really good way to force people to slow down in the area of the police car.
But not much farther. If a person knows the police cars are always painfully obvious, then they feel free to speed whenever one ISN'T in plain view. Take your example; these people were already speeding to some degree--they slammed on their breaks only when there was a possibility of getting caught.
The idea behind hiding is a hope that you get people to worry about getting caught even when they don't see a cop around; that behind every billboard and bridge and other object is a potential speeding ticket for them. It can even be related to operant conditioning; writing tickets is a form of positive punishment. A variable rate of reinforcement is the most effective means of continuing to get the desired response (in this case not speeding) even without the reinforcer (the ticket) being introduced more than sporadically. (You can see this for yourself in the chart here.)
Obviously it's not quite that cut and dry because there are other things at work such as the randomness of whether or not you're ticketed coupled with the fact that the people all around you are likely speeding as well--not only increasing the likelihood of your own speeding, but decreasing the likelihood of your being the one caught even if you run into a cop. It's also not a strictly variable ratio positive punishment situation either.
The only means of 100% or near 100% eliminating speeding is to force cars to be either technically incapable of speeding or to somehow instantly issue the driver a ticket if they did. Both have not only their technical problems, but would probably be thrown out in court and would certainly cause public outcry before and after. So, if the police really DO want to impact speeding but can't do things like that, I suppose this is their next best choice. It's probably not very effective in the long run, and hopefully anybody reading this has noted that I've never commented on whether or not I think speeding tickets are good or bad, but of the "let's do SOMETHING" approaches it's probably best to keep your speed traps operating but hidden.
The web hosting company Site5 recently moved their servers to The Planet. I'm not sure offhand how many servers they have, but I'm sure it jumps that ratio significantly.
Well, it is tough to regulate speech in the US. Not to say they don't do it quite a bit and don't try to do it more, but it's not easy.
They're also very careful about what they say. I'm sure you've seen the disclaimer on those commercials, close to:"This product is not intended to diagnose, treat or cure any disease." No matter what the product, no matter who the producer, distributor or creator, you get that same wording on the disclaimer. That's because they're legal keywords; anything intended to diagnose, treat or cure a disease is a drug according to federal law. As a drug it would be regulated by the FDA and actually have to, you know, have some backup for its claims.
They're usually careful about SAYING it does any of those things as well. You get things like "my friend had a broken leg and chewed some XYZ root and it was fixed!" Well, that's an anecdote your honor! Stupid? Yep. But that's how the legal system works, and it's not accident these people make their infomercials and commercials the way they do. Ever wonder why HeadOn is allowed to do business, despite it being essentially a ball of wax yet strongly implying it can cures headaches? Yeah, because strongly implying and stating are different things.
If I remember my consumer education classes correctly (though they were yeeears ago!) many of these terms ARE regulated. I'm not sure about organic, but low fat definitely was. I can't find a specific list of what is regulated and what they mean, but I did find this article which states, in part: "This means that such products as 2-percent milk, which contains about 5 grams of fat per serving, cannot be labeled "low fat" because the fat content is more than 3 grams per serving, the upper limit permitted in food products labeled 'low fat.' [. . .] Although two-percent milk, with its 5 grams of fat, may not be called "low fat," the product does qualify for a "reduced fat" claim. "Reduced fat" means that the fat content of the food has been reduced by at least 25 percent per serving compared to the full-fat food."
So, in short, at least some of that is already taken care of. Some of it is people cleverly dodging laws, and presumably getting away with it because of free speech issues.
Perhaps it doesn't, but you certainly have provided no meaningful evidence of that point.
Unlike anything covered by copyright law, these are services. There's no possible way that you can give your haircut to somebody else, nor the paint job on your house. There have always been a different set of rules regarding services compared to products.
Your example here is a bit too contrived to respond to properly, but the answer is: Possibly. If you've truly discovered some miracle process by which you can cut something to a length with precision never before seen, you could try for a patent for that process and probably win it. And why shouldn't you? Thousands of years of human life, hundreds of years beyond the industrial revolution, and you've suddenly found a process more precise than anything we have currently? The world deserves to know how it works, and you deserve the chance to be compensated for it. (Want to drop it in the public domain? Love ya!) Fall all its flaws, that's what the patent system is intended for. However, this example, like all the others, is still an entirely different beast than copyright.
Well that really goes to how you define ownership I suppose. If you're of the mind that nobody should be able to exert controlling authority over ("own") something that is not absolutely tangible, I suppose there's nothing wrong with that belief. The world would certainly be a different place, and I'm not sure for better or worse.
The copyright (/patent/trademark) systems are all abused, there's no doubt about that, but I still support the notion that non-tangible things have value and the concept that we should try to support creation of those things. Further, I absolutely support the idea that somebody with more money than me shouldn't be able to come along and appropriate my work and drive me out of business solely based on the fact that they have more money than me. If I write a book and there's no protections for me against a big publishing company going "thanks," paying me nothing, publishing my book, undercutting me on price and giggling all the way to the bank... I won't write that book. Hopefully not every potential author would feel the same, but I'm sure enough of them would that there would be a damage done to society as a whole. (And for the record, I'm not an author; it's simply an example.)
There are some markets that would probably not be seriously affected, maybe even some that would be improved--music is likely one of these--but not all of them are like that. Some other examples of where lack of copyright would actually help would probably be interesting to see, in fact.
Another poster already responded about the concept that spoken word is not copyrightable because it lacks tangible form, so I'll leave that angle alone. What I will say in closing, since your focus is on an issue of freedom of speech, is that those very same founders who enumerated and guaranteed those rights in the US (and which has trickled to dozens of other nations over the years), and who explicitly gave every right they didn't list to the states or to the people, saw fit to permit Congress the authority to pass copyright (and related) laws. Absolute freedom sounds good, but it seldom works well in practice. We use the word "anarchy" to describe that, and it's not looked upon favorably.
Translation out of Mac-fanboi:
"If you give people the choice between a $2500 Windows PC and a $500 Windows PC, most of them realize they don't need to spend an extra $2000 because they don't need top of the line hardware."
If you truly believe the average PC buyer is sitting there and going, "Windows will suck either way, that's why I'll spend less!" then you're an idiot. And I'm being generous. As it is, I'm left to assume you're nothing but a Mac fanboi trying to sound intelligent by using the /. "translation" meme.
The people who spend $2500 on a Windows computer are power users with a need for that extra hardware that, while not necessarily always justified, they can at least explain. Gamers are usually in this category; some business users are as well depending on the nature of their use. It has nothing to do with Windows. If they hate Windows so much that they WOULD have spent $2500 but won't because it's Windows, they would just buy something else anyway. Apple has done a sufficiently good job of advertising that people know there are alternatives. If they're in that minority who just can't use anything but Windows, well, then they're still basing their purchasing decision on whether or not they need the extra $2000 hardware costs and not the OS.
For the record, I'm writing this on a linux desktop while sitting in front of a Windows PC and mulling the purchase of a Mac. I think that's about as even-handed as it gets. Perhaps you should give it a shot some time.
Huh? Does anybody believe that who isn't just grasping for reasons that they already support making possession illegal?
Distribution I can somewhat understand, if a person feels that allowing others to see this sexual abuse is a "continuation and extension of the original crime" (personally I find it a bit of a stretch), but somebody's merely having it isn't. Whatever extra damage to their reputation or psyche or whatever we're claiming happens here when media of the abuse is distributed out has already occurred by the time it's sitting on a hard drive.
Interesting that you mention drugs since that, too, is a legal money-sink that politicians tap into at will with very little effect.
But more to the point... let's think about that argument rationally. Can anybody honestly say they envision a straight, sexually "normal" (ie, doesn't get off on kiddie porn) person sitting around going, "you know what? I bet there's a market for a video of me assfucking a 10 year old. Fuck the possibility of life in prison and being shunned by my friends and family, let's go for it?" I don't. If there are ANY such people in the world, they are a vast minority of the already relatively small number of people who are involved in such a thing.
The reality is that these people already have these inclinations of their own when they're doing this. In fact I bet many people who make such videos or take such pictures don't initially intend to distribute at all; it's intended for their own consumption at a later date. I suppose if I were about to do something I could go to jail for the rest of my life for, I'd want to maximize its value as well.
My point being, these are people overwhelmingly likely to do what they're doing regardless of how easily they can sell the product. Even severely shriveling up their market isn't likely to stop them, and these laws certainly come nowhere near that point.
Like with drugs, I think the best thing to do is to try to remove the stigma attached to this behavior as much as possible so people don't feel the need to hide their feelings from everybody, and then to direct this billion dollars and more into researching why it is that these people are attracted to children and seeing if there is anything we can do to help them become members that society deems appropriate. This is especially true for anybody actually caught possessing/creating such material, but if some people who have never done anything wrong yet but only through force of will get some help, that would be good too.
You're right in the point that you make. There's absolutely nothing wrong with works in progress. I enjoy when my favorite software gets some cool new features, or companies like Google release neat new products. I expect continual improvements from things like the Linux kernel to enhance support for new hardware.
The problem is that this isn't a "work in progress" in common usage, but rather in PR terms. This is a "work in progress" that leads people to question if it is even ready for its intended purpose yet. As other posters pointed out, this is beta-quality software at best; the bugs are getting in the way of your everyday use of the product, rather than it being ready to roll and new things and enhancements being dropped in later.
Worse, it's a "work in progress" that the company is going to force upon you, with no guarantee that it will be ready even then. The fact that people and business see so little value and/or quality in this product that a monopoly is having trouble getting it out is strong evidence that this was not "good enough" for release. Add to that the fact that they removed all of the features that would have made it interesting and still couldn't hit their release dates and there's an even stronger indication that this product was rushed to market before it was ready.
I don't like Microsoft as a company because of the things they do and the manner in which they do them, but I have no problems with XP; I use it on my laptop and linux on my desktop, so I'm not just a Microsoft hater. But this is silly, and calling Vista's shortcomings a "work in progress" is disingenuous at best.
It doesn't matter. Them admitting the crime and saying IPs irrefutably show something is... them admitting the crime and saying something. It is not in any way a finding of fact, presents no precedent (binding or otherwise) and it would almost certainly not be admitted in any other court case, much less listened to if they tried to slip it in someplace.
Bless you.
They did, and they will again.
This goes back to before the spread of the Internet at all, at least back to the telephone systems. The telephone companies did some surveys and found that customers would prefer an unlimited plan even if they could be shown definitively that they would save money by using a metered one, for exactly the reasons already mentioned: People appreciated the convenience of not being worried about the minutes. They didn't want to feel rushed on their call or like they'd better hang up on their mother because they may be low on minutes. Today, of course, nearly all phone plans are unlimited (excepting international).
It amuses me to watch this happening all over again with cell phones. Yes, there are a lot of minute plans in existence already--part of me seriously thinks to milk it for all its worth--but if you watch, more and more, all the plans are beginning to offer unlimited. Same with text messaging; there are pay-as-you-go, some bundles, but more and more "unlimited text" is being used as a selling point. Soon it'll be expected.
It's an amusing cycle.
I'm not so sure she shouldn't still be paid out for that. It's clearly a stupid thing to do, but the damage to a person's life that can occur from a robbery seems like too much a punishment for it.
Nonetheless, how far do you want to take this? If I was just running to the store, didn't lock the door and got robbed, should they not have to pay out? What if I was in a rush one day and forgot to lock the door? If my kids go out and don't lock the door, does that make me screwed as well?
If the issue generically is that we're not doing what we can reasonably do to reduce our likelihood of being the victim of theft, then where's the line? Do I need video cameras? Do I have to get a security system? Would just sticking a sign in the lawn that says "Protected By SomeMadeUpSecurityCompany" do the trick, since the biggest benefit of a security system is the deterrent?
Shift all the questions over to a car for extra fun.
I just don't know. If I buy theft insurance and get robbed, they should pay. It would take pretty extreme negligence before I'd be willing to say they shouldn't, and I'm not sure not locking the doors even reaches that point.
They did. But to avoid legal problems in the future, they're telling you what they consider a reasonable attempt is: AV, Anti-Spyware, firewall. I still think it's pretty stupid though.
No.
Look, I hate the RIAA's tactics as much as anybody and this issue seems like it was taken from their playbook, but we need to very carefully consider what we're doing before we tell somebody they wasted tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars going to law school and take their livelihoods from them. At the very least, I don't think a second chance is out of line.
Further, what they seem to be citing her for is overstating the seriousness of the matter. It's unethical, but I certainly don't think it falls into the "you can't practice law" category. The money-into-a-private-account thing is a serious issue, but there doesn't seem to be an accusation of theft. If that's the case, the firm she's working for should sue her into the dirt and file a complaint -- and then she should be disbarred. If they don't feel any money is missing, well, then let's give that second chance again. If she does anything like this in the future, send her packing.
Now, on the other hand if what another poster said is true and the six month ban isn't even really in effect--then that's too light. The lapses certainly deserve a punishment, not a notification that a punishment might come next time.
Let's concede that point for the sake of argument. The lawsuit remains bunk. Trespassing is a very specific issue of criminal law. It means you're somewhere you're not supposed to be, which is related to privacy in only a passing way (you can trespass on an empty field); the picture does not devalue their house (looking at the picture it seems their house does a good job of devaluing their house), and it certainly doesn't cause mental anguish. This is money-grubbing pure and simple.
If they want to find the specific drivers who took the picture and file a trespass complaint with their local police department, fine. I'm sure they'll be shaken to their core by the written notice that they can't go on those peoples' property anymore. A $25,000 lawsuit can only be taken as one among a growing trend of suits abusing the legal system.