No. If we need to learn anything from the American Revolution, it would be that guerrilla tactics are much more effective than traditional warfare against slow-moving targets like [Colonial Britain|the RIAA, MPAA, etc]. The Boston Tea Party is happening all around us - people using, and yes, abusing, their rights to fair use. Mashups, cutups, parodies, public displays... we just need to keep doing what we're already doing, and not back down. If you want to do something, go remix something and get people to download it. Double points if you get sued.;)
There are times when I voluntarily turn off AdBlock for particular sites, so that the people producing the content there will get deserved money. http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale comes to mind, particularly.
It's unlikely I'd do that for (non-browser-based) games, though, as they're generally designed to be more immersive than, say, a blog.
It's all about the tarrasque - a D&D monster created solely for the purpoe of killing high-level adventurers. Really. There's only one, and it has no other purpose in the world, but to wander around the world, eating epic-leveled adventurers. Plus, if you do manage to kill it, you have to go through some pointlessly complicated (and expensive!) ritual, or it'll just come right back to life!
Hehe... I know that one. Granted, I never had people think I was proving myself guilty with that sort of thing, but I definitely, a number of times growing up, got into further trouble for "not appreciating the severity of the situation".
Even better: use a tool like Virtual CD, that will let you fake your system into believing that an ISO is a cd-r. Burn to that, rip from it, then erase the iso. No cd required.
Come on - you post to slashdot, and you voluntarily miss a perfect opportunity to reference HGttG? You even had your choice of references - either "Please enjoy your trip through this door", or "You don't have to pretend to be interested in me you know, I know perfectly well I'm only a menial robot".
Sounds like some pretty epic machinima! I suggest, in all seriousness, that you should make this - it'll see millions of youtube hits if it's any good. I know I'd grab a copy.
Re:Irrelevant, since he never really meant to win
on
Has Ron Paul Quit?
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· Score: 1
At the same time, it's certainly the case that this increased his name recognition orders of magnitude. I certainly hadn't heard of him before this, nor, most likely, had any of my friends, except possibly the one who's a huge government nerd. Now I'm actually sort of curious about the guy's past. Maybe I'll even read one of those books you mentioned he's written.
Now, do I think he ran because of that? No, but it's a nice side-benefit for him. I do agree with the original poster that he certainly didn't run because he thought he had a snowball's chance in hell of actually winning.
"It makes me think that human brains are either hard-wired from birth for language and cognition, or have an astounding amount of capability compared to *anything* in computing, even on the distant horizon."
By the way: most reasonable linguists (not all, but most) would be willing to argue that it's the former. Of course, it still takes an incredible amount of computation to separate the data from the noise, and figure out what goes where... but it seems pretty dang clear that the algorithms the developing brain uses (and by god, linguists would give anything to know how they worked!) evolved quite specifically for the development of language understanding specifically.
* Mashup artists take entirely from existing music, to create new music. I happen to be a huge fan of the genre, and would not hesitate for a second to call what they do art.
* The vast majority of the music that goes into such works, however, is not owned by the artists who made it! Case in point: one of the best full mashup albums ever made, in my opinion, was Dean Gray's American Edit, mixing, of course, Green Day's American Idiot with dozens of other songs. Green Day's lead singer actually came right out and said that the album was really cool. Nonetheless, 10 days after its release, Warner Records shut the album down (of course, it still exists in torrents all the hell over the place, but that's beside the point).
Now, I'd be perfectly happy if people like Timbaland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbaland#Plagiarism_controversy) were to fall off the face of the earth, but don't generalize that sort of thing to all sample-based art.
So they go to a friend's house, or the local library, or an internet cafe. I know that's what I would have done, if I had had parents like you. I never did anything "bad", either (unless you count downloading NES roms, perhaps, but I have a feeling that's not what they're talking about) - I just wouldn't have wanted to be forced to be in a public space if I wanted to use the internet.
You do realize the original "information wants to be free" quote refers to free-as-in-speech, not as in beer, right? Not that I disagree with your opinion, nor your prognostication. Merely your reference.
And both are true. We do care about security, but at the same time, the most secure way to keep your data secure is, of course, not to put it on an internet-connected computer.
Barring that, just not putting it on a web server whose programming has been demonstrated frequently to be mediocre at best.
Granted, I've only been in the workforce for a couple days, but I'm at a very Windows-centric place, and I certainly haven't been dealing with maintaining my machine instead of working... of course, I *have* learned all about how MMC isn't very fun to code in, but that's a different story.
On the other hand, I once got paid for a full 3 weeks one summer during college just trying to get openLDAP to compile and run properly on a school Red Hat server. That was no fun. I'm not going to deny, linux is often much better than Windows for server-related activities, but it's also often a bitch and a half to configure, compared to Windows-equivalents (when they exist, of course, which is by no means a certainty).
Yeah, but cuddling can lead to other things, which are known for burning calories. Not that the average user of slashdot (and I include myself here) is very knowledgeable about that area...
And now, furthering the insane meta-ness of this whole thing, the number of hits for the phrase has increased even more dramatically since this was slashdotted, with many hits being blog posts about how it's amusing that this happened. So now, in addition to a bunch of posts about the comic itself, we have a bunch of posts discussing the comic's effect on google, thus continuing to further effect the results. Next, we need a bunch of posts pointing this out.
I agree with your conclusions, generally, but completely disagree with your premise. "Those critical thinking and abstract skills you mention do not magically develop, the brain is a learning machine and it starts as a fairly empty slate, it self programs to learn and understand more efficiently"? I suggest you read Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, and then see if you still think that.
Reason why this is utterly wrong: if you buy a cd, and you want to play it on your iPod, or your turntable, or your cassette player, you can buy the right tools (which, in the case of an iPod, is simply a computer), and you can then quickly, easily and legally (at least for now) convert the cd into the appropriate format. That's pretty much the entire point of the argument against DRM. We buy cds because the data isn't locked into the format you bought it in.
In fact, to make your argument even more ridiculous... I do occasionally buy songs from iTunes, but only because I know there's an easy way to bypass th DRM, and get the data into a freer format (though not legally). The way: burn the songs to a cd, then rip them back off. As much as I like open formats, I'm not going to complain that loudly against proprietary ones (I use MS Word just like everyone else). I complain only about formats that try their damndest to lock you into using only that format, and thus, require you to use that data only on supported devices. By contrast, even Word will let you save into a number of other formats, and third-party extensions can increase the number of formats supported.
Slashdot Mirror
No. If we need to learn anything from the American Revolution, it would be that guerrilla tactics are much more effective than traditional warfare against slow-moving targets like [Colonial Britain|the RIAA, MPAA, etc]. The Boston Tea Party is happening all around us - people using, and yes, abusing, their rights to fair use. Mashups, cutups, parodies, public displays... we just need to keep doing what we're already doing, and not back down. If you want to do something, go remix something and get people to download it. Double points if you get sued. ;)
There are times when I voluntarily turn off AdBlock for particular sites, so that the people producing the content there will get deserved money. http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale comes to mind, particularly. It's unlikely I'd do that for (non-browser-based) games, though, as they're generally designed to be more immersive than, say, a blog.
"That said, this incident is highly irresponsible. If the hackers are in the US, I hope they get the full brunt of an FBI investigation."
Given the likelihood that it was actually driven by the CoS, I'd like nothing more than that, as well.
Then again, if it actually was a bunch of hooligans appropriating the convenient Anon label, I'd be happy to see the FBI on their trail, too.
It's all about the tarrasque - a D&D monster created solely for the purpoe of killing high-level adventurers. Really. There's only one, and it has no other purpose in the world, but to wander around the world, eating epic-leveled adventurers. Plus, if you do manage to kill it, you have to go through some pointlessly complicated (and expensive!) ritual, or it'll just come right back to life!
Hehe... I know that one. Granted, I never had people think I was proving myself guilty with that sort of thing, but I definitely, a number of times growing up, got into further trouble for "not appreciating the severity of the situation".
Even better: use a tool like Virtual CD, that will let you fake your system into believing that an ISO is a cd-r. Burn to that, rip from it, then erase the iso. No cd required.
Come on - you post to slashdot, and you voluntarily miss a perfect opportunity to reference HGttG? You even had your choice of references - either "Please enjoy your trip through this door", or "You don't have to pretend to be interested in me you know, I know perfectly well I'm only a menial robot".
Sounds like some pretty epic machinima! I suggest, in all seriousness, that you should make this - it'll see millions of youtube hits if it's any good. I know I'd grab a copy.
At the same time, it's certainly the case that this increased his name recognition orders of magnitude. I certainly hadn't heard of him before this, nor, most likely, had any of my friends, except possibly the one who's a huge government nerd. Now I'm actually sort of curious about the guy's past. Maybe I'll even read one of those books you mentioned he's written.
Now, do I think he ran because of that? No, but it's a nice side-benefit for him. I do agree with the original poster that he certainly didn't run because he thought he had a snowball's chance in hell of actually winning.
"It makes me think that human brains are either hard-wired from birth for language and cognition, or have an astounding amount of capability compared to *anything* in computing, even on the distant horizon."
By the way: most reasonable linguists (not all, but most) would be willing to argue that it's the former. Of course, it still takes an incredible amount of computation to separate the data from the noise, and figure out what goes where... but it seems pretty dang clear that the algorithms the developing brain uses (and by god, linguists would give anything to know how they worked!) evolved quite specifically for the development of language understanding specifically.
* Mashup artists take entirely from existing music, to create new music. I happen to be a huge fan of the genre, and would not hesitate for a second to call what they do art.
* The vast majority of the music that goes into such works, however, is not owned by the artists who made it! Case in point: one of the best full mashup albums ever made, in my opinion, was Dean Gray's American Edit, mixing, of course, Green Day's American Idiot with dozens of other songs. Green Day's lead singer actually came right out and said that the album was really cool. Nonetheless, 10 days after its release, Warner Records shut the album down (of course, it still exists in torrents all the hell over the place, but that's beside the point).
Now, I'd be perfectly happy if people like Timbaland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbaland#Plagiarism_controversy) were to fall off the face of the earth, but don't generalize that sort of thing to all sample-based art.
So they go to a friend's house, or the local library, or an internet cafe. I know that's what I would have done, if I had had parents like you. I never did anything "bad", either (unless you count downloading NES roms, perhaps, but I have a feeling that's not what they're talking about) - I just wouldn't have wanted to be forced to be in a public space if I wanted to use the internet.
You do realize the original "information wants to be free" quote refers to free-as-in-speech, not as in beer, right? Not that I disagree with your opinion, nor your prognostication. Merely your reference.
And both are true. We do care about security, but at the same time, the most secure way to keep your data secure is, of course, not to put it on an internet-connected computer.
Barring that, just not putting it on a web server whose programming has been demonstrated frequently to be mediocre at best.
Step 1: Eat rats.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit.
In other news, Coca-Cola just released a press statement to the effect that Coca-Cola is cheaper, and tastes better, than other leading soda brands.
Hey, don't insult Whackers. The CEO of the company I'm working at right now has that last name, and she seems a perfectly intelligent person.
Granted, I've only been in the workforce for a couple days, but I'm at a very Windows-centric place, and I certainly haven't been dealing with maintaining my machine instead of working... of course, I *have* learned all about how MMC isn't very fun to code in, but that's a different story.
On the other hand, I once got paid for a full 3 weeks one summer during college just trying to get openLDAP to compile and run properly on a school Red Hat server. That was no fun. I'm not going to deny, linux is often much better than Windows for server-related activities, but it's also often a bitch and a half to configure, compared to Windows-equivalents (when they exist, of course, which is by no means a certainty).
But then people would want to calculate the shortest total trip... and you'd be left trying to solve the tsp again.
Yeah, but cuddling can lead to other things, which are known for burning calories. Not that the average user of slashdot (and I include myself here) is very knowledgeable about that area...
And now, furthering the insane meta-ness of this whole thing, the number of hits for the phrase has increased even more dramatically since this was slashdotted, with many hits being blog posts about how it's amusing that this happened. So now, in addition to a bunch of posts about the comic itself, we have a bunch of posts discussing the comic's effect on google, thus continuing to further effect the results. Next, we need a bunch of posts pointing this out.
To be fair, browsing windows file shares is kinda broken in XP, too.
I think you both mispelled pico. :P
I agree with your conclusions, generally, but completely disagree with your premise. "Those critical thinking and abstract skills you mention do not magically develop, the brain is a learning machine and it starts as a fairly empty slate, it self programs to learn and understand more efficiently"? I suggest you read Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, and then see if you still think that.
Reason why this is utterly wrong: if you buy a cd, and you want to play it on your iPod, or your turntable, or your cassette player, you can buy the right tools (which, in the case of an iPod, is simply a computer), and you can then quickly, easily and legally (at least for now) convert the cd into the appropriate format. That's pretty much the entire point of the argument against DRM. We buy cds because the data isn't locked into the format you bought it in.
In fact, to make your argument even more ridiculous... I do occasionally buy songs from iTunes, but only because I know there's an easy way to bypass th DRM, and get the data into a freer format (though not legally). The way: burn the songs to a cd, then rip them back off. As much as I like open formats, I'm not going to complain that loudly against proprietary ones (I use MS Word just like everyone else). I complain only about formats that try their damndest to lock you into using only that format, and thus, require you to use that data only on supported devices. By contrast, even Word will let you save into a number of other formats, and third-party extensions can increase the number of formats supported.