Copyright law gives power to the content provider. Period.
Then why does the Constitution specifically state that copyright protection is to last for a limited time? Question mark. Carriage return.
Well, I want a full time midget to follow me around and give me backrubs, but we can't always have what we want. If the content provider doesn't want you doing that, then you are out of luck, and it shouldnt be any other way.
If I bought that midget, he's *my* midget. He damn well ought to do what *I* tell him to, not what the guy who sold him to me tells him. I don't want that guy spying on me to make sure I don't give any unauthorized orders to the midget. I shouldn't have to buy a new car so the midget salesman can rest assured that the midget will never ride in the front seat. I don't want to pay a gratuity to the midget farm every time I buy eggs at the store (in addition to being good for breakfast, fresh eggs are essential in the process of cloning midgets). And what about the people who don't even own midgets? Why should they have to put up with all this, just so the midget farm can keep raking in cash?
Man, that midget analogy's quite a stretch. My point is, content protection is fine, but the *AAs want to take it too damn far. In order to really work, DRM will have to be enabled at the hardware level, and that's going to cripple a lot of the legitimate uses of a computer, even for those of us who choose not to do business with the *AAs.
Sure you can try to do all of that, but the content producers are not obligated to help you. If you don't like it, then maybe you shouldn't be patronizing the content producers, no?
Then why should I be obligated to help the content producers? I only patronize the ones who offer deals that I find reasonable, yet the unreasonable content providers keep on getting laws passed. Their actions affect even those who are not their customers. They're protecting their monopolies, not their content. In my opinion, that's bullshit. If that makes me a hippie, then pass the patchouli oil.
The point is, obviously, that you want to go around willy nilly stealing copyrighted music, and DRM prevents you from doing that. Boo DRM! How dare they enforce copyrights! Boo! Everything should be "free as in beer"! That way we will all be equally miserable! Boo!
This isn't about theft, it's about our rights. Free as in speech, not as in beer. Copyright law is supposed to be a compromise between the content providers and the content consumers, not a grant of unlimited powers to the providers.
I'm not opposed to DRM because I want to violate copyrights, or because I think everything should be free. The reason I'm opposed to DRM is because it is a violation of my right to fair use. I want to be able to make copies for archival purposes, just in case my original copy is damaged or destroyed. I want to be able to put the music that I bought on my computer so that I can listen to it without having to swap CDs every five minutes. I want to watch DVDs on the computer so I can ignore the region settings, and fast-forward through the commercials.
I haven't stolen anything. I don't want to steal anything. I just want to keep the right to do what I want to, on my hardware, with the media that I bought. Not what some *AA fuckwits think I should be doing. Ultimately, the only way that DRM is going to work is if we give complete control of our computers to the content providers. But I'm sure that if that happens, you trust them to act in the interests of the consumer, right?
As part of the standard interviewing process, I give the applicant my laptop, with a series of programming problems that should take no more than 15 minutes to solve.
Good point. I also thought more of watching sports than playing them because I'm a little too physically inept to be out there on the field. Hm... maybe if I built a robot that I could control with a gamepad, and put a football uniform on it...
As far as I'm concerned marginalizing such serious computer gaming is just as daft as marginalinzing Wimbeldon, The PGA or the World Cup would be. They're all just "games," and all of them only draw their import from the fact that people give them import.
That's an interesting point. I think that online games have much more import than televised ones, because I can *participate* in the games online. It's entertaining to watch sports, I guess, but online, when the outcome of the game depends on me personally (and my teammates of course), it tends to get my adrenaline going a bit better.
Not many televised sports involve machine guns and rocket launchers, either. That would be pretty cool if they did, though:
Shoom... KA-BLAM!
Announcer: "Oh! And the quarterback is toast! Wait... it looks like a penalty's been called on this play..."
Ref: "Spawn camping, Number 51, Axis... fifteen yard penalty."
We have the freedom to act and think just like everyone else.
We have the freedom to unquestioningly support our glorious corporate masters.
We have the freedom to buy anything the television tells us that we want.
We have the freedom to shun anyone who thinks differently from us.
We have the freedom of choice: Coke or Pepsi? Nike or Reebok? Budweiser or Coors?
We have the freedom to believe that we have more freedom than anyone else in the world, no matter how much evidence to the contrary is presented.
America is all about freedom. My television told me so, and everyone around me told me so. How dare you question that? Are you some kinda foreign commie terrorist or something?
Basically, this would open up our very bodies to hackers. By now we should all be aware how very difficult a problem computer security is.
Keeping your computer secure is easy. Don't connect it to the Internet and the hackers can't touch it. A determined hacker could compromise your security by somehow gaining physical access to the machine, but you can prevent this by keeping an eye on the computer at all times.
This isn't always practical in the case of your home computer, but it's certainly practical in the case of a robotic limb or an enhanced liver. Why the hell would you need your liver connected to the Internet, anyway? And is it really that hard to keep track of your own limbs and organs to make sure no script kiddies are doing anything funny to them?
Compound this with the fact that probably our bodies will be running Microsoft operating systems...
Actually, our bodies all came with a pretty good operating system built into them already. I see about as much need for replacing this with Winbrain 2030 as I do of having an Internet-enabled liver.
But then again, I know how stupid the average person is. People of the future probably *will* be using Winbrain 2030 to control all their Internet-connected organs. Sigh. I can hardly wait.
If you're against the killing, could I get your support in something more of a "van Gogh" retribution? That is, take their ear off as a symbol of who these people are. Nothing quite like a reminder in the mirror every morning that pushing poor children around over music isn't the right thing to do.
Ooooh, I've got a better one! We gotta give them fair warning first, right? So we could leave a severed horse's head on their doorstep and scrawl "CEASE AND DESIST" on the door in blood. It's more due process than they'd give us.
Even better, we could use the severed head of one of those hideous pop idols they're always trying to cram down our throats--it's not like it's murder or anything, pop idols aren't really people anyway.
On a more serious note, though, it's not just the RIAA pushing people around, it's all the giant companies, who all seem to be in the same business: fucking everybody out of as much money as they possibly can. While I personally abhorr violence (outside of video games and message boards anyway), it doesn't look like anyone's being left with many other options. Who has the money to countersue these bastards? I certainly don't, and neither do any of their targets (extortion doesn't work nearly as well when your victim can fight back). The corporations, and the RIAA in particular, have forgotten a few very important things:
1) Americans are damn near the most violent and brutal people on the planet.
2) Bullets are much, much cheaper than lawsuits (they're cheaper than CDs, too).
3) Judge Lynch's court is *always* in session.
Kudos for such bold and controversial posts. America might not be the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave anymore, but it's nice to see there's still a couple of them left.
Before you realise it, the US government will make it legal for these scumbag corporations to do an anal probe on you and you will have to pay up if you want to avoid being anal probed.
If it comes to that, then maybe we should get some people together and show these corporations what *real* extortion looks like.
"Awfully nice corporate headquarters you got here, Darl. It'd be a shame if something was to happen to it...wouldn't that be a shame, Louie?"
Actually, I'd say that Ed Wood movies suck even worse. That's why they're so cool. Plan Nine from Outer Space is one of my favorite movies ever, just because it is so profoundly awful. It hits rock bottom so hard that it bounces right back into awesomeness, y'know what I'm saying?
I think that one of Hollywood's major failings lately is that they don't even put forth the effort needed to make something shitty enough to be amusing. Ed Wood's movies were exceptionally crappy, but at least he believed that he was making works of art. He didn't think he was just going through the motions so he could milk the public for another eight bucks each. It was a labor of love for good ol' Ed, and it shows in his films, in the dizzying heights of crappiness that they achieved.
Oh, wait, I just read the article. I guess I was wrong. Charging exorbitant fees for two hours of bland mediocrity isn't what's hurting the MPAA's profits. It's those damned kids with their text messages! They ought to ban them. That'll bring back all those lost profits a lot quicker than actually producing a movie that isn't a complete waste of film, I'm sure.
Who the hell do you think you are, anyway, running around and just speaking your mind whenever you feel like it? I suggest you go watch some more television, and take notes this time, because you are dangerously close to forming your own opinions.
This is America, buddy, the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free, and we didn't get like this by letting every two-bit chump in the country think for himself! If you're not with us, you're against us! So go spew your free speech Commie hogwash somewhere else, Pinko! Go USA!
I agree, air conditioning does tend to be used as refrigeration. For example, my roommate likes to keep the thermostat turned so low that you could store a side of beef in the living room, and then gets upset when I turn it back to something sane and she starts sweating under all those blankets. Fortunately, however, she is arachnophobic, and has learned that low temperatures in the apartment invite all the spiders in from outside. I can't wait for that thermostat to get turned up to 90, with a fire blazing in the fireplace, and the space heater on 24/7 once wintertime comes along.
What the hell is wrong with people? Everywhere you go in the summer, it's colder inside than it was outside in wintertime. And vice versa. Seventy-two is a fine temperature, and you can deviate from that by quite a bit before it really gets uncomfortable, but nooooooo, God forbid anyone should live at a happy medium. And then everyone wonders why their power grids can't provide enough electricity.
I think it'll be great if the diamond market crashes, but not so much for humanitarian reasons. I'm just tired of hearing "You've got a friend in the diamond business" every five minutes whenever there's a radio on.
And ladies, don't panic if diamonds suddenly become just as cheap as any other shiny rock. I'm sure some new corporate hegemony will come along with fresh ideas for ridiculous things you can require your men to buy you.
"A diamond ring? Well, if *you* really loved *me*, you'd buy me a flatscreen TV..." --famous last words
I'm not so worried about going to prison right at the moment, or all the felonies I'm supposedly guilty of (there are new ones introduced every day). What I worry about is the whole "things getting worse before they get better" bit you mentioned. I worry about that fated day when everything not forbidden is finally compulsory, and everything not compulsory is finally forbidden. If the Powers that Be keep it up, eventually they *will* push Joe Sixpack too far, to the point where not even quality television can calm him down. It's hard to keep your stock prices up when a rioting mob has burned down corporate headquarters and lynched your CEO. It's hard to enforce draconian laws when the population has realized that they outnumber the police.
And what then? Anarchy, chaos, and eventually small-time despotism as the people with the most guns set up their little regimes. Sounds like even less fun than our current Orwellian bullshit. But it's not here yet, and maybe it'll never happen. And if it does happen, maybe we'll have a chance to bring back that country that we love, the one that got lost somewhere in the paperwork. For now, though, I'll just kick back, open up a beer, and let the End Times roll.
2,000,000+. That's a hell of a lot of prisoners. But I'm not in prison, you're not in prison...there are an awful lot of people who aren't in prison, especially considering how many of us are criminals nowadays. I even know several people who were charged with drug possession who didn't get sent to prison.
Can we take the chance that the politicians will happily toss the 3.5 million users KaZaA says are online in jail too?
There's no chance of this. None. We don't even have enough room and budget for the 2M+ prisoners we have, much less 3.5M more of them. You use the War on Drugs as an example of the Man's eagerness to put everyone behind bars. True, there are a lot of people doing time for drug offenses, but those people are there for big drug offenses, like running a heroin smuggling ring, or owning a meth lab, or getting caught with a couple hundred pounds of marijuana. You'll notice there aren't too many people in there for small drug offenses. You don't do hard time for getting caught with a joint; you pay a fine and the cops smoke your doobie. Actually, you'd be surprised at the number of crimes you can commit that won't get you imprisoned. I'm sure trading copyrighted files will remain one of those crimes for quite some time.
The Powers That Be seem to be so powerfully and ignorantly set on destroying everything to protect their own little fiefdoms.
Yeah, so? It's been that way for all of recorded history. And probably all of unrecorded history as well. Sooner or later, all of those little fiefdoms finally collapsed. I'm sure that this one will fare no differently.
So, to sum up: Relax already! Maybe a little piece of the sky did fall, but so what? Just brush it out of your hair and move on.
Whoa there, Chicken Little. A couple more IP laws != Orwellian Nightmare. The good old gov't might be trying to restrict its citizens, but such things have been tried in the past and all have failed, because the masses will happily break any law that they don't agree with. The more the government undermines its credibility, the fewer people will listen to them. We're all criminals already; who cares? And more IP laws might even be a good thing for all us ruthless criminal types.
It's been said that "information wants to be free", but it's closer to reality to say that information cannot be effectively controlled. Another poster mentioned that you can put a fence around physical property to protect your rights to said property. But if enough people jump that fence, then where are your property rights? All of this legislation amounts to nothing more than a fence that can be jumped with the click of a button. The public is contesting the corporations' right to their IP by wantonly breaking whatever laws get passed concerning it. Did Prohibition stop anyone from drinking? Did the War on Drugs make it any more difficult to purchase whatever recreational chemical you desire? No and no.
This legislation will most likely accomplish the same thing that Prohibition and the War on Drugs did: It will create a thriving black market where people can buy what they want to buy at prices that they think are fair. The fact that it's illegal will stop only the tiny percentage of people who get caught. I say the IP lords should pass as many laws as they possibly can. They'll turn piracy from a small difference in quarterly profits to a booming industry that will outcompete them at every turn. The less legal piracy is, the more profitable it will become. Already in Malaysia, a pirated CD costs around one-fifth what an official copy costs, and of course the pirates have much better sales than the manufacturers.
And as far as DRM is concerned, I wouldn't worry about that either. There will be a way around it, even if the hardware required is prohibitively expensive. Nobody had any reason to spend money on a still until Prohibition came around and turned stills into profit machines. Nobody owned private chemical labs until the War on Drugs made chemistry a profitable hobby. DRM will just give hardware hackers a way to print money. I'm sure that Palladium is uncrackable in the same way that the Titanic was unsinkable.
So relax! These laws just give the industry enough rope to hang itself with, and the black marketeers a reason to start selling audio and video media. I for one am looking forward to all those cheap CDs and DVDs I'll be able to buy.
Re:False user experience level dichotomy
on
Worst Linux Annoyances?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I think that the previous poster just wants more configuration options to be available via GUI. It might threaten the exhalted status of all the CLI Ninja out there, but it probably won't, and other than that I don't see what would be so bad about it. All the more advanced options for whatever could be hidden behind a tab or button marked "Advanced" or whatever, to keep Grandma from getting too confused.
You talk about targeting the "Middle 50%" like it's going to just ruin Linux entirely for the "Ninja 10%" or whoever. But it hasn't ruined anything. Certain distros are already well on the way to that Mid-50, with lots of GUI and ease-of-use and what-have-you, but you don't have to use them. Gnome might be dumbed down, Red Hat might install with a single mouse click, but my Slackware box is still as obtuse and difficult as ever.
I know that if I could install a printer just by clicking on something instead of digging through man pages and HOWTOs and screwing around in vi for hours, I'd get miserable. Linux is the greatest text adventure game ever written, and letting some GUI play for you just isn't any fun. But I also understand that most people don't feel the same way. They just want their computers to work. Why do so many people think the needs of the Mid-50 and the needs of the Ninja are mutually exclusive? I thought Linux was all about choice and customizability, why should this issue be any different?
Why, why did you Slashdot Kuro5hin? Now my options for killing time at work have been cut in half! Oh, cruel fate, why do you torment me so?
Hm...maybe if I upload SCO-related articles to the servers here at work, then post an article on Slashdot...aw yeah, now there's an idea! I could go home early once the servers freak out! I'll run it by the IT guys, see what they think.
I was so impressed by the website that I just had to write the MPAA and let them know how I felt about it. I thought the/. crowd might be amused by the email I sent, so here it is:
Thank you so much for your website, which accuses me of being a thief, or at least an idiot unable to grasp the concept of copyright law. I enjoyed having my intelligence and my integrity insulted by the same group of geniuses who produced such timeless masterpieces as Legally Blonde, Dumb and Dumberer, Glitter, Moulin Rouge...I could go on for a while.
Would you like to know why your industry is never going to see another penny from me so long as I live? It isn't because I use file-sharing programs to steal movies. It's because I wouldn't even watch the steaming tripe your industry produces if you were paying me. Your website mentions the "magic" of the movies several times. Please explain to me what exactly is so wonderously magical about paying ten dollars to sit through half an hour of SUV ads while the smell of rancid popcorn grease works its way into your clothing and the chorus of screaming infants present in every movie theater begin their cacaphony? And that's even before the movie begins! Oh, the magic of two hours of vapid celebrities, product placement, overdone gratuitous CGI, and plotlines devised by mentally handicapped toddlers! Who wouldn't want to take some of those fond memories home with them by buying a DVD? And who would buy just buy one forty-dollar piece of plastic that cost ten cents to manufacture, when there's the Special Edition, the Extra-Special Edition, El Edition Supreme, and the Limited Gold Foil Embossed Collector's Edition to buy?
In short, people are robbing your industry because what comes around, goes around. They're stealing the silver spoons right out of your children's mouths, and instead of doing anything to justify the cost of the drivel you produce, you call all of your customers thieves and idiots. How my heart bleeds for you. Your website mentions the thousands and thousands of people who work so hard to make movies, who all get hurt when the industry gets hurt. Well I hope you all starve.
Now, instead of paying money to have my intelligence insulted by some noisy box in the living room, I can pay even more for the priviledge--but now I'll have a Microsoft-blessed user interface! Sweet! I can't wait to see the new season of Who Wants to Breed With a Mongoloid? now that I know I'll be able to click through a EULA first!
My favorite quote from the article: "Comcast's selection of Microsoft TV demonstrates the industry's desire for cost-effective, scalable software platforms that help it get the most value from its hardware and infrastructure investments."
That's just too funny, all by itself. I really can't add anything to it.
I'm really not sure how useful that would be. I know my wash load is done when the washer stops making noise. Same for the dryer, the microwave, and figuring out how long the garbage disposal's been running: "Gee, that nasty grinding noise has been going on in the kitchen for a while now..."
Maybe you're usually farther from your appliances than I am from mine. Maybe you're deaf. But you can get along without your computer telling you these things, can't you? I turned off the sound on my microwave, and even without the beep, I don't have much trouble figuring out when the food I set to cook for five minutes is going to be done (it's usually about five minutes from the time I press start).
And no, I've never lost a fridge full of food. Not only is my fridge never full of food, I'm pretty good at closing the door when I'm done with it. Actually, now that I think about it, you've got me worried. What would happen if my precious condiment collection were ruined by a simple mistake?
I really hope this catches on. Then all you have to do is send some virified email to your target before you hack it. "Sorry 'bout the thousands of dollars worth of downtime I caused you, but your network was spreading Nimda."
It's a great idea, really it is.
Slashdot Mirror
Copyright law gives power to the content provider. Period.
Then why does the Constitution specifically state that copyright protection is to last for a limited time? Question mark. Carriage return.
Well, I want a full time midget to follow me around and give me backrubs, but we can't always have what we want. If the content provider doesn't want you doing that, then you are out of luck, and it shouldnt be any other way.
If I bought that midget, he's *my* midget. He damn well ought to do what *I* tell him to, not what the guy who sold him to me tells him. I don't want that guy spying on me to make sure I don't give any unauthorized orders to the midget. I shouldn't have to buy a new car so the midget salesman can rest assured that the midget will never ride in the front seat. I don't want to pay a gratuity to the midget farm every time I buy eggs at the store (in addition to being good for breakfast, fresh eggs are essential in the process of cloning midgets). And what about the people who don't even own midgets? Why should they have to put up with all this, just so the midget farm can keep raking in cash?
Man, that midget analogy's quite a stretch. My point is, content protection is fine, but the *AAs want to take it too damn far. In order to really work, DRM will have to be enabled at the hardware level, and that's going to cripple a lot of the legitimate uses of a computer, even for those of us who choose not to do business with the *AAs.
Sure you can try to do all of that, but the content producers are not obligated to help you. If you don't like it, then maybe you shouldn't be patronizing the content producers, no?
Then why should I be obligated to help the content producers? I only patronize the ones who offer deals that I find reasonable, yet the unreasonable content providers keep on getting laws passed. Their actions affect even those who are not their customers. They're protecting their monopolies, not their content. In my opinion, that's bullshit. If that makes me a hippie, then pass the patchouli oil.
The point is, obviously, that you want to go around willy nilly stealing copyrighted music, and DRM prevents you from doing that. Boo DRM! How dare they enforce copyrights! Boo! Everything should be "free as in beer"! That way we will all be equally miserable! Boo!
This isn't about theft, it's about our rights. Free as in speech, not as in beer. Copyright law is supposed to be a compromise between the content providers and the content consumers, not a grant of unlimited powers to the providers.
I'm not opposed to DRM because I want to violate copyrights, or because I think everything should be free. The reason I'm opposed to DRM is because it is a violation of my right to fair use. I want to be able to make copies for archival purposes, just in case my original copy is damaged or destroyed. I want to be able to put the music that I bought on my computer so that I can listen to it without having to swap CDs every five minutes. I want to watch DVDs on the computer so I can ignore the region settings, and fast-forward through the commercials.
I haven't stolen anything. I don't want to steal anything. I just want to keep the right to do what I want to, on my hardware, with the media that I bought. Not what some *AA fuckwits think I should be doing. Ultimately, the only way that DRM is going to work is if we give complete control of our computers to the content providers. But I'm sure that if that happens, you trust them to act in the interests of the consumer, right?
As part of the standard interviewing process, I give the applicant my laptop, with a series of programming problems that should take no more than 15 minutes to solve.
So what are the problems?
Good point. I also thought more of watching sports than playing them because I'm a little too physically inept to be out there on the field. Hm... maybe if I built a robot that I could control with a gamepad, and put a football uniform on it...
Reminds me of Die Hard and that cheeze ball "geek/hacker" they had in there breaking into the safe.
Yep, that's it! Good guess, you get a gold star.
As far as I'm concerned marginalizing such serious computer gaming is just as daft as marginalinzing Wimbeldon, The PGA or the World Cup would be. They're all just "games," and all of them only draw their import from the fact that people give them import.
That's an interesting point. I think that online games have much more import than televised ones, because I can *participate* in the games online. It's entertaining to watch sports, I guess, but online, when the outcome of the game depends on me personally (and my teammates of course), it tends to get my adrenaline going a bit better.
Not many televised sports involve machine guns and rocket launchers, either. That would be pretty cool if they did, though:
Shoom... KA-BLAM!
Announcer: "Oh! And the quarterback is toast! Wait... it looks like a penalty's been called on this play..."
Ref: "Spawn camping, Number 51, Axis... fifteen yard penalty."
We have the freedom to act and think just like everyone else.
We have the freedom to unquestioningly support our glorious corporate masters.
We have the freedom to buy anything the television tells us that we want.
We have the freedom to shun anyone who thinks differently from us.
We have the freedom of choice: Coke or Pepsi? Nike or Reebok? Budweiser or Coors?
We have the freedom to believe that we have more freedom than anyone else in the world, no matter how much evidence to the contrary is presented.
America is all about freedom. My television told me so, and everyone around me told me so. How dare you question that? Are you some kinda foreign commie terrorist or something?
Basically, this would open up our very bodies to hackers. By now we should all be aware how very difficult a problem computer security is.
Keeping your computer secure is easy. Don't connect it to the Internet and the hackers can't touch it. A determined hacker could compromise your security by somehow gaining physical access to the machine, but you can prevent this by keeping an eye on the computer at all times.
This isn't always practical in the case of your home computer, but it's certainly practical in the case of a robotic limb or an enhanced liver. Why the hell would you need your liver connected to the Internet, anyway? And is it really that hard to keep track of your own limbs and organs to make sure no script kiddies are doing anything funny to them?
Compound this with the fact that probably our bodies will be running Microsoft operating systems...
Actually, our bodies all came with a pretty good operating system built into them already. I see about as much need for replacing this with Winbrain 2030 as I do of having an Internet-enabled liver.
But then again, I know how stupid the average person is. People of the future probably *will* be using Winbrain 2030 to control all their Internet-connected organs. Sigh. I can hardly wait.
If you're against the killing, could I get your support in something more of a "van Gogh" retribution? That is, take their ear off as a symbol of who these people are. Nothing quite like a reminder in the mirror every morning that pushing poor children around over music isn't the right thing to do.
Ooooh, I've got a better one! We gotta give them fair warning first, right? So we could leave a severed horse's head on their doorstep and scrawl "CEASE AND DESIST" on the door in blood. It's more due process than they'd give us.
Even better, we could use the severed head of one of those hideous pop idols they're always trying to cram down our throats--it's not like it's murder or anything, pop idols aren't really people anyway.
On a more serious note, though, it's not just the RIAA pushing people around, it's all the giant companies, who all seem to be in the same business: fucking everybody out of as much money as they possibly can. While I personally abhorr violence (outside of video games and message boards anyway), it doesn't look like anyone's being left with many other options. Who has the money to countersue these bastards? I certainly don't, and neither do any of their targets (extortion doesn't work nearly as well when your victim can fight back). The corporations, and the RIAA in particular, have forgotten a few very important things:
1) Americans are damn near the most violent and brutal people on the planet.
2) Bullets are much, much cheaper than lawsuits (they're cheaper than CDs, too).
3) Judge Lynch's court is *always* in session.
Kudos for such bold and controversial posts. America might not be the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave anymore, but it's nice to see there's still a couple of them left.
Before you realise it, the US government will make it legal for these scumbag corporations to do an anal probe on you and you will have to pay up if you want to avoid being anal probed.
If it comes to that, then maybe we should get some people together and show these corporations what *real* extortion looks like.
"Awfully nice corporate headquarters you got here, Darl. It'd be a shame if something was to happen to it...wouldn't that be a shame, Louie?"
"Oh, yeah, boss. A real tragedy."
Even Ed Wood movies don't suck nearly as bad.
Actually, I'd say that Ed Wood movies suck even worse. That's why they're so cool. Plan Nine from Outer Space is one of my favorite movies ever, just because it is so profoundly awful. It hits rock bottom so hard that it bounces right back into awesomeness, y'know what I'm saying?
I think that one of Hollywood's major failings lately is that they don't even put forth the effort needed to make something shitty enough to be amusing. Ed Wood's movies were exceptionally crappy, but at least he believed that he was making works of art. He didn't think he was just going through the motions so he could milk the public for another eight bucks each. It was a labor of love for good ol' Ed, and it shows in his films, in the dizzying heights of crappiness that they achieved.
Oh, wait, I just read the article. I guess I was wrong. Charging exorbitant fees for two hours of bland mediocrity isn't what's hurting the MPAA's profits. It's those damned kids with their text messages! They ought to ban them. That'll bring back all those lost profits a lot quicker than actually producing a movie that isn't a complete waste of film, I'm sure.
Who the hell do you think you are, anyway, running around and just speaking your mind whenever you feel like it? I suggest you go watch some more television, and take notes this time, because you are dangerously close to forming your own opinions.
This is America, buddy, the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free, and we didn't get like this by letting every two-bit chump in the country think for himself! If you're not with us, you're against us! So go spew your free speech Commie hogwash somewhere else, Pinko! Go USA!
Hm. Maybe I was exaggerating a bit.
I agree, air conditioning does tend to be used as refrigeration. For example, my roommate likes to keep the thermostat turned so low that you could store a side of beef in the living room, and then gets upset when I turn it back to something sane and she starts sweating under all those blankets. Fortunately, however, she is arachnophobic, and has learned that low temperatures in the apartment invite all the spiders in from outside. I can't wait for that thermostat to get turned up to 90, with a fire blazing in the fireplace, and the space heater on 24/7 once wintertime comes along.
What the hell is wrong with people? Everywhere you go in the summer, it's colder inside than it was outside in wintertime. And vice versa. Seventy-two is a fine temperature, and you can deviate from that by quite a bit before it really gets uncomfortable, but nooooooo, God forbid anyone should live at a happy medium. And then everyone wonders why their power grids can't provide enough electricity.
I think it'll be great if the diamond market crashes, but not so much for humanitarian reasons. I'm just tired of hearing "You've got a friend in the diamond business" every five minutes whenever there's a radio on.
And ladies, don't panic if diamonds suddenly become just as cheap as any other shiny rock. I'm sure some new corporate hegemony will come along with fresh ideas for ridiculous things you can require your men to buy you.
"A diamond ring? Well, if *you* really loved *me*, you'd buy me a flatscreen TV..." --famous last words
I'm not so worried about going to prison right at the moment, or all the felonies I'm supposedly guilty of (there are new ones introduced every day). What I worry about is the whole "things getting worse before they get better" bit you mentioned. I worry about that fated day when everything not forbidden is finally compulsory, and everything not compulsory is finally forbidden. If the Powers that Be keep it up, eventually they *will* push Joe Sixpack too far, to the point where not even quality television can calm him down. It's hard to keep your stock prices up when a rioting mob has burned down corporate headquarters and lynched your CEO. It's hard to enforce draconian laws when the population has realized that they outnumber the police.
And what then? Anarchy, chaos, and eventually small-time despotism as the people with the most guns set up their little regimes. Sounds like even less fun than our current Orwellian bullshit. But it's not here yet, and maybe it'll never happen. And if it does happen, maybe we'll have a chance to bring back that country that we love, the one that got lost somewhere in the paperwork. For now, though, I'll just kick back, open up a beer, and let the End Times roll.
Based on your current practices I calculate that you are more likely to be eaten by a grue than to have your ID stolen.
So is preventing identity theft just a matter of keeping a lantern handy at all times?
"It is pitch black. You are likely to have your identity stolen."
2,000,000+. That's a hell of a lot of prisoners. But I'm not in prison, you're not in prison...there are an awful lot of people who aren't in prison, especially considering how many of us are criminals nowadays. I even know several people who were charged with drug possession who didn't get sent to prison.
Can we take the chance that the politicians will happily toss the 3.5 million users KaZaA says are online in jail too?
There's no chance of this. None. We don't even have enough room and budget for the 2M+ prisoners we have, much less 3.5M more of them. You use the War on Drugs as an example of the Man's eagerness to put everyone behind bars. True, there are a lot of people doing time for drug offenses, but those people are there for big drug offenses, like running a heroin smuggling ring, or owning a meth lab, or getting caught with a couple hundred pounds of marijuana. You'll notice there aren't too many people in there for small drug offenses. You don't do hard time for getting caught with a joint; you pay a fine and the cops smoke your doobie. Actually, you'd be surprised at the number of crimes you can commit that won't get you imprisoned. I'm sure trading copyrighted files will remain one of those crimes for quite some time.
The Powers That Be seem to be so powerfully and ignorantly set on destroying everything to protect their own little fiefdoms.
Yeah, so? It's been that way for all of recorded history. And probably all of unrecorded history as well. Sooner or later, all of those little fiefdoms finally collapsed. I'm sure that this one will fare no differently.
So, to sum up: Relax already! Maybe a little piece of the sky did fall, but so what? Just brush it out of your hair and move on.
Whoa there, Chicken Little. A couple more IP laws != Orwellian Nightmare. The good old gov't might be trying to restrict its citizens, but such things have been tried in the past and all have failed, because the masses will happily break any law that they don't agree with. The more the government undermines its credibility, the fewer people will listen to them. We're all criminals already; who cares? And more IP laws might even be a good thing for all us ruthless criminal types.
It's been said that "information wants to be free", but it's closer to reality to say that information cannot be effectively controlled. Another poster mentioned that you can put a fence around physical property to protect your rights to said property. But if enough people jump that fence, then where are your property rights? All of this legislation amounts to nothing more than a fence that can be jumped with the click of a button. The public is contesting the corporations' right to their IP by wantonly breaking whatever laws get passed concerning it. Did Prohibition stop anyone from drinking? Did the War on Drugs make it any more difficult to purchase whatever recreational chemical you desire? No and no.
This legislation will most likely accomplish the same thing that Prohibition and the War on Drugs did: It will create a thriving black market where people can buy what they want to buy at prices that they think are fair. The fact that it's illegal will stop only the tiny percentage of people who get caught. I say the IP lords should pass as many laws as they possibly can. They'll turn piracy from a small difference in quarterly profits to a booming industry that will outcompete them at every turn. The less legal piracy is, the more profitable it will become. Already in Malaysia, a pirated CD costs around one-fifth what an official copy costs, and of course the pirates have much better sales than the manufacturers.
And as far as DRM is concerned, I wouldn't worry about that either. There will be a way around it, even if the hardware required is prohibitively expensive. Nobody had any reason to spend money on a still until Prohibition came around and turned stills into profit machines. Nobody owned private chemical labs until the War on Drugs made chemistry a profitable hobby. DRM will just give hardware hackers a way to print money. I'm sure that Palladium is uncrackable in the same way that the Titanic was unsinkable.
So relax! These laws just give the industry enough rope to hang itself with, and the black marketeers a reason to start selling audio and video media. I for one am looking forward to all those cheap CDs and DVDs I'll be able to buy.
I think that the previous poster just wants more configuration options to be available via GUI. It might threaten the exhalted status of all the CLI Ninja out there, but it probably won't, and other than that I don't see what would be so bad about it. All the more advanced options for whatever could be hidden behind a tab or button marked "Advanced" or whatever, to keep Grandma from getting too confused.
You talk about targeting the "Middle 50%" like it's going to just ruin Linux entirely for the "Ninja 10%" or whoever. But it hasn't ruined anything. Certain distros are already well on the way to that Mid-50, with lots of GUI and ease-of-use and what-have-you, but you don't have to use them. Gnome might be dumbed down, Red Hat might install with a single mouse click, but my Slackware box is still as obtuse and difficult as ever.
I know that if I could install a printer just by clicking on something instead of digging through man pages and HOWTOs and screwing around in vi for hours, I'd get miserable. Linux is the greatest text adventure game ever written, and letting some GUI play for you just isn't any fun. But I also understand that most people don't feel the same way. They just want their computers to work. Why do so many people think the needs of the Mid-50 and the needs of the Ninja are mutually exclusive? I thought Linux was all about choice and customizability, why should this issue be any different?
Why, why did you Slashdot Kuro5hin? Now my options for killing time at work have been cut in half! Oh, cruel fate, why do you torment me so?
Hm...maybe if I upload SCO-related articles to the servers here at work, then post an article on Slashdot...aw yeah, now there's an idea! I could go home early once the servers freak out! I'll run it by the IT guys, see what they think.
I was so impressed by the website that I just had to write the MPAA and let them know how I felt about it. I thought the /. crowd might be amused by the email I sent, so here it is:
Thank you so much for your website, which accuses me of being a thief, or at least an idiot unable to grasp the concept of copyright law. I enjoyed having my intelligence and my integrity insulted by the same group of geniuses who produced such timeless masterpieces as Legally Blonde, Dumb and Dumberer, Glitter, Moulin Rouge...I could go on for a while.
Would you like to know why your industry is never going to see another penny from me so long as I live? It isn't because I use file-sharing programs to steal movies. It's because I wouldn't even watch the steaming tripe your industry produces if you were paying me. Your website mentions the "magic" of the movies several times. Please explain to me what exactly is so wonderously magical about paying ten dollars to sit through half an hour of SUV ads while the smell of rancid popcorn grease works its way into your clothing and the chorus of screaming infants present in every movie theater begin their cacaphony? And that's even before the movie begins! Oh, the magic of two hours of vapid celebrities, product placement, overdone gratuitous CGI, and plotlines devised by mentally handicapped toddlers! Who wouldn't want to take some of those fond memories home with them by buying a DVD? And who would buy just buy one forty-dollar piece of plastic that cost ten cents to manufacture, when there's the Special Edition, the Extra-Special Edition, El Edition Supreme, and the Limited Gold Foil Embossed Collector's Edition to buy?
In short, people are robbing your industry because what comes around, goes around. They're stealing the silver spoons right out of your children's mouths, and instead of doing anything to justify the cost of the drivel you produce, you call all of your customers thieves and idiots. How my heart bleeds for you. Your website mentions the thousands and thousands of people who work so hard to make movies, who all get hurt when the industry gets hurt. Well I hope you all starve.
Now, instead of paying money to have my intelligence insulted by some noisy box in the living room, I can pay even more for the priviledge--but now I'll have a Microsoft-blessed user interface! Sweet! I can't wait to see the new season of Who Wants to Breed With a Mongoloid? now that I know I'll be able to click through a EULA first!
My favorite quote from the article: "Comcast's selection of Microsoft TV demonstrates the industry's desire for cost-effective, scalable software platforms that help it get the most value from its hardware and infrastructure investments."
That's just too funny, all by itself. I really can't add anything to it.
I'm really not sure how useful that would be. I know my wash load is done when the washer stops making noise. Same for the dryer, the microwave, and figuring out how long the garbage disposal's been running: "Gee, that nasty grinding noise has been going on in the kitchen for a while now..."
Maybe you're usually farther from your appliances than I am from mine. Maybe you're deaf. But you can get along without your computer telling you these things, can't you? I turned off the sound on my microwave, and even without the beep, I don't have much trouble figuring out when the food I set to cook for five minutes is going to be done (it's usually about five minutes from the time I press start).
And no, I've never lost a fridge full of food. Not only is my fridge never full of food, I'm pretty good at closing the door when I'm done with it. Actually, now that I think about it, you've got me worried. What would happen if my precious condiment collection were ruined by a simple mistake?
I take it all back. It is a good idea after all.
I really hope this catches on. Then all you have to do is send some virified email to your target before you hack it. "Sorry 'bout the thousands of dollars worth of downtime I caused you, but your network was spreading Nimda." It's a great idea, really it is.