If we want to have privacy and cryptography, DRM is just an extension of it.
It isn't really the same thing, though.
Privacy and cryptography: Alice uses Alice's computer to securely communicate with Bob's computer (and presumably Bob on the other end), without Eve listening in on the conversation. For example, the goal of key-based cryptography is that only Bob can understand Alice's messages and be sure they're from Alice, while only Alice understands Bob's messages and is sure they're from Bob.
DRM: Bob uses Alice's computer to securely talk to Bob's computer, without Alice listening in on the conversation. To completely prevent Alice from listening in, Bob has to cooperate with the hardware manufacturer and OS author to prevent Alice from knowing or controlling what her own computer is doing.
It's that last part that makes DRM a problem. And to make it even more of a problem: What could be used by MediaCorp to force Alice's computer to communicate information to them about her computer's activities could just as easily be used by Russian mobsters to do the same thing.
Why? It's their own kids that will suffer. If the parents want their kids to be ignorant of science let them.
What about the ignorance-pushing parent's neighbors, who are in the minority but don't want their kids to be ignorant?
If you don't want your kids exposed to it, put them in private school or move out of state.
Why should they be penalized by having to move or pay extra for private schools? They aren't doing anything wrong, they're just wanting their own kids to be properly educated.
Education should be a local issue.
What if there was a state that was teaching, as proven scientific fact, that white people are better than everyone else? Are you OK with that being a local issue?
It's kinda like this: "Gentlemen, our MP saw the PM this AM and the PM wants more LSD from the PIB by tomorrow AM or PM at the latest. I told the PM's PPS that AM was NBG so tomorrow PM it is for the PM."
However, to be really pedantic, these aren't acronyms, they're initialisms.
And I really hope that whatever judge gets this case, tosses it out for stupidity reasons, and bitch slaps the educational establishment for this travesty.
If not, a jury could always find her not guilty for the same reasons. I'm not a big fan of jury nullification, but in this case it sure seems like it might be an appropriate response.
Of course, the real "war on drugs" logic is: "We need to find a way to ensure as many black and Latino people as possible have to go through their adult life with drug convictions on their record, so we can use that to legally discriminate against them (preventing them from voting, not hiring them, etc)."
Which makes this kind of prosecution right in line with that goal.
Actually, what it really comes down to is that recycling sucks, and reusing is much much better. For instance, if you're the sort of person who buys bottled water regularly, try just refilling the same bottle from the tap periodically instead of buying new bottles all the time.
The best "decision" we could make as a society is to get rid of all the government distortions in the market.
There has never been a society with both a functional government and no government distortions in the market. That's because *any* government action distorts the marketplace.
If the government has a police force to enforce laws, suddenly there's a demand for cruisers, tasers, nightsticks, pepper-spray, etc that wasn't there before, distorting the market. If the government has a fire department (with a very real government interest that its cities don't burn down), there's a demand for hoses, trucks, pumps, hydrants, etc that wasn't there before, distorting the market. If the government builds a road (to ensure that its police and fire departments can get to where they're needed), that distorts the property values around the road (e.g. look at what happens at nearly every exit ramp of major highways). If the government fights a war, that causes major distortions in the markets for clothing, weapons, ships, fuel, food, and just about everything else. If the government sets up any kind of court system, then that creates an entirely new market for people who know how to navigate that court system (a.k.a. lawyers). And of course any kind of tax or fee system set up to pay for the government's existence also distorts the market.
And that's just the basic functions of what we typically see has government.
There's a legitimate question of whether a government should have specific involvement in the energy sector. But the idea that there can be no government distortion of the free market is simply wrong.
On some issues, they have some good points. For instance, I agree that self-restraint and moderation are good principles of personal behavior, and while I don't think the government needs to force people into following them, it's a wise course of action for any individual. I agree that religious groups can be and sometimes are a force for civic and personal improvement. I agree that children do best in stable families. I agree that government can be overly restrictive at times.
Did you know fox news actually does carry news?
Yes, of course it does. I never said it didn't. I said that it encouraged anti-intellectualism.
One thing I am sure of is getting grants, military, SS, education spending under control ASAP should be the #1 priority of all these guys.
And why are you sure of that? Is it because you think that a certain debt-to-GDP ratio will lead to economic disaster? Because you should know that the key research suggesting that has, in the last week, been proven to be faked. Is it because you think that government spending has been increasing massively over the last couple of years? Because that's not true either - spending has been decreasing steadily since 2009. Is it because other countries have cut spending on science and social welfare and reaped big economic rewards? Because that's not what actually is going on.
And for what it's worth, I've never been a member of a political party, and have voted for candidates with 4 different party affiliations.
For some politicians (and grassroots conservatives), they oppose some of the actual research being done.
And that right there is one of America's biggest problems: A significant number of people, spurred on by a certain television network and their religious organizations, actively do everything they can to remain ignorant of the world around them.
Some other research they really don't want to fund: pretty much all paleontology, non-fossil fuel energy sources, and what various industrial chemicals do to people.
From what I remember in the news, one of the reasons why so many of the young were unemployed was that because of the free education they all went to University for free and all got PhDs and all have a dream to get a government job that they can't get fired from. They won't take anything less.
No, the reason many of the young are unemployed in Greece is the same reason the young are unemployed in the US: When there's a recession, nobody is hiring. When nobody hires for years running, new graduates (at whatever level, including high school) can't get into the job market. Normally, new graduates compete with older more experienced workers by accepting a lower wage, but in bad times experienced workers will take the lower wage instead of being unemployed, and the new graduates can't compete effectively.
You missed one: a significant beneficiary are the consumers of the goods, who now get better products cheaper than they ever could before.
Not necessarily. Let's say you introduce new technology for manufacturing widgets that will cut the cost of manufacturing the widget by 50%. Your competitors don't have this technology yet (and yes, there are really only a handful of players in this market). Do you: A. Cut your prices by 50%? B. Cut your prices by 5% so you're slightly cheaper than the competition, and take the remaining 45% as increased profits?
Unless you are in an extremely competitive market, you know for a fact the market will bear the higher price, and rationally choose B. And you do everything you can to prevent your competitors from either learning about (via trade secrets) or implementing (via patents) the same improvements to the process you made so you can keep making that extra profit. So you now have normal economic incentives pushing for sub-optimal processes (by your competitors) and sub-optimal pricing (by you).
The interesting question is "What happens to people we just don't need anymore?" What do they do?
Unfortunately, the answer, at least from some quarters in the US, seems to be really simple: let them die of neglect. For instance, the obvious effect of drastically cutting Social Security and Medicare (which is a major goal of the current Republican Party) is to kill old and disabled people through starvation, neglect, lack of medical care, etc. After all, they can't work, so they're economically useless, so why bother keeping them alive?
I should mention that as far as your trucking scenario goes, having a whole bunch of automated trucks travel coast-to-coast is far less efficient than having a single (potentially automated) freight train travel coast-to-coast.
aren't suddenly going to be able to become successful in a "creative class" job
And what's more, there is a massive surplus of people in the "creative class" jobs: The number of reasonably competent musicians, authors, artists, poets, etc far outnumbers the market for the arts. For every Brian May there are dozens if not hundreds of really talented and skilled guitarists that you've never heard of. For every Jackson Pollack there are many many good painters that you've never heard of. For every JK Rowling there are many many good authors toiling away in obscurity.
The completely fraudulent idea that has been pushed for the last 20 years is that if you give everyone in America a PhD, everyone will earn what a tenured professor makes. What actually happens is that if you give everyone in America a PhD, you have PhDs mopping floors for a living.
cthulhu style evil and wish our destruction / consumption
Cthulhu doesn't wish our destruction or consumption. He just doesn't care how many people get stomped on or consumed, because people are utterly insignificant and unimportant in the grand scheme of things.
- It's one thing to see plans for cool technology we might want to trade, it's another thing to actually have the object in question exactly as the other group designed it. - Just to prove we can. That's why we went to the moon, it's a major reason we'll eventually go to Mars and beyond. - Green-skinned Orion slave girls. - Cultural exchange. It's one thing to see pictures and films and other information about a place, it's another thing to actually experience it.
Even if the aliens are far more technologically advanced than we are, or vice versa, there are benefits to this kind of trade.
NYPD has one mission and one mission alone: To protect the capitalist businesses in NYC from attack, most importantly of all Wall Street.
That's not the only mission: They also have a mission of constantly harassing every non-white man in town, whether or not they're breaking any kind of law, to help keep them in their place. Otherwise, they might notice that the non-white people are in the majority and wonder why their elected officials are all white guys.
Not all "20%"'s are created equal. For instance, if the temperature outside increases from 5C to 6C, you probably don't even notice. If it goes from 35C to 42C, you probably are rather unhappy about that.
Israel does have a right to do what it is doing as a UN Member State. That's why it cannot be touched on legal grounds (despite the rantings of the genocidal OIC-bloc in the UN).
The "genocidal OIC-bloc" includes everyone on the UN Security Council except the United States. Those Brits and French must really be full of anti-Semites, right?
Slashdot Mirror
If it's pointed right at us, I say we do the only sensible thing and shoot back!
If we want to have privacy and cryptography, DRM is just an extension of it.
It isn't really the same thing, though.
Privacy and cryptography: Alice uses Alice's computer to securely communicate with Bob's computer (and presumably Bob on the other end), without Eve listening in on the conversation. For example, the goal of key-based cryptography is that only Bob can understand Alice's messages and be sure they're from Alice, while only Alice understands Bob's messages and is sure they're from Bob.
DRM: Bob uses Alice's computer to securely talk to Bob's computer, without Alice listening in on the conversation. To completely prevent Alice from listening in, Bob has to cooperate with the hardware manufacturer and OS author to prevent Alice from knowing or controlling what her own computer is doing.
It's that last part that makes DRM a problem. And to make it even more of a problem: What could be used by MediaCorp to force Alice's computer to communicate information to them about her computer's activities could just as easily be used by Russian mobsters to do the same thing.
Why? It's their own kids that will suffer. If the parents want their kids to be ignorant of science let them.
What about the ignorance-pushing parent's neighbors, who are in the minority but don't want their kids to be ignorant?
If you don't want your kids exposed to it, put them in private school or move out of state.
Why should they be penalized by having to move or pay extra for private schools? They aren't doing anything wrong, they're just wanting their own kids to be properly educated.
Education should be a local issue.
What if there was a state that was teaching, as proven scientific fact, that white people are better than everyone else? Are you OK with that being a local issue?
It's kinda like this:
"Gentlemen, our MP saw the PM this AM and the PM wants more LSD from the PIB by tomorrow AM or PM at the latest. I told the PM's PPS that AM was NBG so tomorrow PM it is for the PM."
However, to be really pedantic, these aren't acronyms, they're initialisms.
In Soviet Russia, nuclear program develop you!
I tried to start that movement, but soon everyone was at lagerheads.
And I really hope that whatever judge gets this case, tosses it out for stupidity reasons, and bitch slaps the educational establishment for this travesty.
If not, a jury could always find her not guilty for the same reasons. I'm not a big fan of jury nullification, but in this case it sure seems like it might be an appropriate response.
Of course, the real "war on drugs" logic is: "We need to find a way to ensure as many black and Latino people as possible have to go through their adult life with drug convictions on their record, so we can use that to legally discriminate against them (preventing them from voting, not hiring them, etc)."
Which makes this kind of prosecution right in line with that goal.
Actually, what it really comes down to is that recycling sucks, and reusing is much much better. For instance, if you're the sort of person who buys bottled water regularly, try just refilling the same bottle from the tap periodically instead of buying new bottles all the time.
The best "decision" we could make as a society is to get rid of all the government distortions in the market.
There has never been a society with both a functional government and no government distortions in the market. That's because *any* government action distorts the marketplace.
If the government has a police force to enforce laws, suddenly there's a demand for cruisers, tasers, nightsticks, pepper-spray, etc that wasn't there before, distorting the market. If the government has a fire department (with a very real government interest that its cities don't burn down), there's a demand for hoses, trucks, pumps, hydrants, etc that wasn't there before, distorting the market. If the government builds a road (to ensure that its police and fire departments can get to where they're needed), that distorts the property values around the road (e.g. look at what happens at nearly every exit ramp of major highways). If the government fights a war, that causes major distortions in the markets for clothing, weapons, ships, fuel, food, and just about everything else. If the government sets up any kind of court system, then that creates an entirely new market for people who know how to navigate that court system (a.k.a. lawyers). And of course any kind of tax or fee system set up to pay for the government's existence also distorts the market.
And that's just the basic functions of what we typically see has government.
There's a legitimate question of whether a government should have specific involvement in the energy sector. But the idea that there can be no government distortion of the free market is simply wrong.
They actually have good points.
On some issues, they have some good points. For instance, I agree that self-restraint and moderation are good principles of personal behavior, and while I don't think the government needs to force people into following them, it's a wise course of action for any individual. I agree that religious groups can be and sometimes are a force for civic and personal improvement. I agree that children do best in stable families. I agree that government can be overly restrictive at times.
Did you know fox news actually does carry news?
Yes, of course it does. I never said it didn't. I said that it encouraged anti-intellectualism.
One thing I am sure of is getting grants, military, SS, education spending under control ASAP should be the #1 priority of all these guys.
And why are you sure of that? Is it because you think that a certain debt-to-GDP ratio will lead to economic disaster? Because you should know that the key research suggesting that has, in the last week, been proven to be faked. Is it because you think that government spending has been increasing massively over the last couple of years? Because that's not true either - spending has been decreasing steadily since 2009. Is it because other countries have cut spending on science and social welfare and reaped big economic rewards? Because that's not what actually is going on.
And for what it's worth, I've never been a member of a political party, and have voted for candidates with 4 different party affiliations.
For some politicians (and grassroots conservatives), they oppose some of the actual research being done.
And that right there is one of America's biggest problems: A significant number of people, spurred on by a certain television network and their religious organizations, actively do everything they can to remain ignorant of the world around them.
Some other research they really don't want to fund: pretty much all paleontology, non-fossil fuel energy sources, and what various industrial chemicals do to people.
From what I remember in the news, one of the reasons why so many of the young were unemployed was that because of the free education they all went to University for free and all got PhDs and all have a dream to get a government job that they can't get fired from. They won't take anything less.
No, the reason many of the young are unemployed in Greece is the same reason the young are unemployed in the US: When there's a recession, nobody is hiring. When nobody hires for years running, new graduates (at whatever level, including high school) can't get into the job market. Normally, new graduates compete with older more experienced workers by accepting a lower wage, but in bad times experienced workers will take the lower wage instead of being unemployed, and the new graduates can't compete effectively.
You missed one: a significant beneficiary are the consumers of the goods, who now get better products cheaper than they ever could before.
Not necessarily. Let's say you introduce new technology for manufacturing widgets that will cut the cost of manufacturing the widget by 50%. Your competitors don't have this technology yet (and yes, there are really only a handful of players in this market). Do you:
A. Cut your prices by 50%?
B. Cut your prices by 5% so you're slightly cheaper than the competition, and take the remaining 45% as increased profits?
Unless you are in an extremely competitive market, you know for a fact the market will bear the higher price, and rationally choose B. And you do everything you can to prevent your competitors from either learning about (via trade secrets) or implementing (via patents) the same improvements to the process you made so you can keep making that extra profit. So you now have normal economic incentives pushing for sub-optimal processes (by your competitors) and sub-optimal pricing (by you).
The interesting question is "What happens to people we just don't need anymore?" What do they do?
Unfortunately, the answer, at least from some quarters in the US, seems to be really simple: let them die of neglect. For instance, the obvious effect of drastically cutting Social Security and Medicare (which is a major goal of the current Republican Party) is to kill old and disabled people through starvation, neglect, lack of medical care, etc. After all, they can't work, so they're economically useless, so why bother keeping them alive?
I should mention that as far as your trucking scenario goes, having a whole bunch of automated trucks travel coast-to-coast is far less efficient than having a single (potentially automated) freight train travel coast-to-coast.
aren't suddenly going to be able to become successful in a "creative class" job
And what's more, there is a massive surplus of people in the "creative class" jobs: The number of reasonably competent musicians, authors, artists, poets, etc far outnumbers the market for the arts. For every Brian May there are dozens if not hundreds of really talented and skilled guitarists that you've never heard of. For every Jackson Pollack there are many many good painters that you've never heard of. For every JK Rowling there are many many good authors toiling away in obscurity.
The completely fraudulent idea that has been pushed for the last 20 years is that if you give everyone in America a PhD, everyone will earn what a tenured professor makes. What actually happens is that if you give everyone in America a PhD, you have PhDs mopping floors for a living.
And New Hampshire has a population of 1 million and a House of 435 representatives.
Areas with strong democratic traditions tend to have fewer constituents per politician. And Iceland has a very very long tradition of democracy.
cthulhu style evil and wish our destruction / consumption
Cthulhu doesn't wish our destruction or consumption. He just doesn't care how many people get stomped on or consumed, because people are utterly insignificant and unimportant in the grand scheme of things.
- It's one thing to see plans for cool technology we might want to trade, it's another thing to actually have the object in question exactly as the other group designed it.
- Just to prove we can. That's why we went to the moon, it's a major reason we'll eventually go to Mars and beyond.
- Green-skinned Orion slave girls.
- Cultural exchange. It's one thing to see pictures and films and other information about a place, it's another thing to actually experience it.
Even if the aliens are far more technologically advanced than we are, or vice versa, there are benefits to this kind of trade.
It's not just a river with sources in Kenya.
NYPD has one mission and one mission alone: To protect the capitalist businesses in NYC from attack, most importantly of all Wall Street.
That's not the only mission: They also have a mission of constantly harassing every non-white man in town, whether or not they're breaking any kind of law, to help keep them in their place. Otherwise, they might notice that the non-white people are in the majority and wonder why their elected officials are all white guys.
Not all "20%"'s are created equal. For instance, if the temperature outside increases from 5C to 6C, you probably don't even notice. If it goes from 35C to 42C, you probably are rather unhappy about that.
You Brits also have pensioners, instead of the "Let your mum die" plan advocated by one of the two major political parties in the US.
Israel does have a right to do what it is doing as a UN Member State. That's why it cannot be touched on legal grounds (despite the rantings of the genocidal OIC-bloc in the UN).
The "genocidal OIC-bloc" includes everyone on the UN Security Council except the United States. Those Brits and French must really be full of anti-Semites, right?
No, it's more like a competitor of classic Yoko Ono works like Cut Piece.