The following summary is not prepared by the sponsors of the
measure and is not a part of the body thereof subject to
consideration by the Legislative Assembly. It is an editor's
brief statement of the essential features of the measure as
introduced.
Why on earth should I give any credence to the text that follows this disclaimer?
No one should ever expect deference when attempting to provide commentary from a position of total ignorance. It is still the responsibility of consumers to put some reasonable effort into researching their purchasing decisions.
Even if you are a genuine knowledge seeker, you should at least bother to do as much as type "Linux Games" into a search engine.
Fair enough. But perhaps you should type "commentary definition" and "opinion definition" into a search engine before you berate someone in a public message board environment. All the same, thanks for the info.
Given your gross ignorance of the Linux gaming scene, you are in absolutely no position to comment.
Thanks, jed. You provide an answer, and then insult my intelligence for asking the question.
People with your attitude are a barrier to the education of the masses of sold-out non-geek computer users. Stop being a holier-than-thou priest and try being a teacher. It's much more rewarding.
--K.
Re:What is the best software techinical solution n
on
Cornucopia of Spam
·
· Score: 2, Funny
If you're on an earthlink account, you should be using spaminator.
I've been pretty much spam-free since I activated it for my account. Good luck!
1) Linux already has standardized game API's. They include OpenGL and SDL.
Great, so where are the games? I'm not talking about games that can only be run with Wine, I mean games that are as easy to install and use out-of-the-box as their Windows brethren. I'm not trolling here, I'm honestly curious: What do I, as a GNU/Linux gamer, need to do to encourage game developers to release games I can play?
2) DirectX interfaces change so often that they give Win32 game developers fits. Trying to clone this sort of environment and stay current is simply not viable.
So it's a chicken-egg problem. Game developers are going to continue to have "fits" until their customers switch to an OpenGL environment? Good point. I wonder how this cycle will be broken.
I didn't mean to imply that we reverse-engineer DirectX and reimplement it; rather, we should build upon OpenGL and SDL and make it easier for game coders to write for the GNU/Linux platform so that they can avoid those "fits". (And Raven's post below is also relevant to this discussion.)
I use a Sun Sparc 5 workstation running Solaris (I forget the version) at work every day and then come home and use GNU/Linux every night. At first, I experienced "shell shock" because my Sun at work uses the Korn shell, but bash was easy to learn and even easier to use once I got used to it.
All the tools I use at work seem to be present on my home Linux system, but I'll admit that I do more Perl-hacking than shell-scripting so I'm probably not aware of all the best UNIX power tools out there. I'm also not a sysadmin for any of the UNIX boxen at work so again, I might be missing something. I'm just speaking from an end-user programmer-type amoeba's perspective.:)
The most noticeable gap that I see in GNU/Linux implementations to date is not the lack of a UNIX tool, it's the lack of a really well-defined Windows tool: DirectX. If we can develop a GNU/Linux (or *BSD or BeOS) implementation of DirectX, we can lower the barrier to entry for game and multimedia developers which will result in more games like UT2003 being released which will hopefully attract more users to the desktop. I think Apple could really help us out here while at the same time providing another reason to use their Mac OS X. If anyone can produce a rock-solid multimedia interface that is portable, I think Apple's Darwin developers are in the best position to do so.
Now the jury trial, originally scheduled for April 7, 2003, has been pushed back to December 1.
One can only hope that the jury in this case will have as much common sense as the jury in the ElcomSoft case. If they do allow Microsoft to trademark the word "windows", I'm going to start up a company (employing lawyers primarily) called "a" and sue any company with an "a" in its name.
That this case wasn't immediately thrown out of court really makes me begrudge every tax dollar I pay. Sheesh.
I know you have been saving that "Customer" rant for a long time (which I agree with the general thought), but I think you should shelve it for this discussion and wait a bit longer...
So we agree about the general misuse of the term "consumer", but you believe that that distinction should not be applied to the scenario of airlines collecting data and using data about their customers? (Please correct me if I'm mistaken.)
In this context "consumer" is exactly the right word. To the airline you are a customer, but in terms of profiling security risk what they are really looking for (at least partially) is, literally, what kind of consumer you have been - in terms of what debts you have accumulated (and paid off) through the years. If they find no evidence that you have been a consumer of any sort (no credit cards, no mortgages, etc) with no monetary history to speak of, then they would be a lot more likely to find you odd (you have to admit an American with no monetary history is like a cat without fur) and flag you the customer for extra searching, much as I was flagged because I was on a one way flight that I had purchased only days before. That's what profiling is all about, finding patterns that deviate from the norm and looking at them carefully.
Those are excellent points because they introduce the third dimension to this debate: I'm also a citizen of the United States and, as such, I am entitled to privacy until an agent of the government has probable cause to invade that privacy. Which brings us to...
It's a crappy way to treat a Customer, but then if the searches affect fewer customers there will also be fewer complaints overall - which is exactly why profiling comes about, because so many people are rigorously searched right now that make no sense to search that they are considering using profiling of some sort to reduce the set of people who have something to complain about and reduce the headache that air travel has become (so that airlines can get back to going bankrupt every ten years instead of every five).
Herein lies the problem: how much privacy should I have to concede and how much benefit would that concession really provide me? Or, to put it another way, should the privacy and freedoms of the citizens of the US be infringed upon because of the risk of terrorism? That's a very subjective question, and one which deserves its own time on the shelf before any heavy-handed governmental "protections" are implemented.
Sadly, the other option (to simply bring searching back to where it was pre911) would never occur to anyone (in the airline industry and government), even though it makes the most sense for everyone and offers an insignificant extra security risk.
You nailed it here, SK.:) From what I have read and percieved, the reason nobody (in the airline industry or in the government) has considered this trivial option is because the airlines see customers as consumers and the government sees citizens as criminals. Separately, these views seem innocent enough but when they intersect, the effects are damning to the fundamental pillars which support our society.
Ben said it best: Those willing to give up a little liberty for a little security deserve neither security nor liberty.
The elements of surprise and shock made 9/11 happen, and even then a few brave Americans managed to foil the efforts of one of the terrorist teams. I dare the cowardly pricks to try it again. In the meantime, I oppose those who would restrict my freedom in the name of homeland security and I resent being classified as a "consumer" under any context.
So what you should really be railing against is that people who aren't good consumers (in that they make use of credit and thus build up a record) will be hassled.
I tend to take issue with people that use the term "consumer" to classify me. Stop doing that. I am not a "consumer", I am a customer. The distinction is important. In our current culture, the term "consumer" implies mindless automatons that make purchasing decisions based upon advertising, and clueless people in high places make decisions based upon flawed marketing statistics because they don't understand that we're not "consumers" anymore.
I'm a CUSTOMER now, because I don't need companies to push their wares or services at me via TV commercials or pop-up ads. Thanks to the Net, I can go find whatever I need. So I don't need or want the in-your-face marketers anymore. It's just one more way that Internet is a disruptive technology. If your business is shoving a commercial in my face, I have sad news for you: you're obsolete. I recommend finding a new profession asap.
Who moderated danheskett's post as Flamebait? C'mon people. Disagreement with a post does not make that post flamebait. (Thanks to the more objective, sane, moderators that fixed this while I was typing this response.)
"Many of the tactics that BSA employs would actually be illegal if the law was applied in an even-handed approach."
You misunderstand what a cease-and-desist letter is all about. But regardless, if you are doing nothing wrong there is no harm. The BSA works under the premise that they gather evidence and contact offenders. If the offenders do not comply they get law enforcement involved.
Whats wrong with that? Do you prefer they eliminate the middle step and go straight to the FBI when you learn about your illegal copy of Office?
Perhaps someone can clarify what a cease-and-desist order really implies, but I've always considered them a thinly-veiled legal threat which, financially speaking, could be considered analogous to a mob thug showing up at my business demanding "protection" money. Even if I'm doing nothing wrong, I still have to pay a lawyer to prove it...which I think the BSA is entirely aware of. I don't believe that RICO could be applied to the BSA's strongarming tactics, but their methods certainly underscore a severe need for an Anti-Barratry Act.
When are the MPAA and the RIAA going to realize that while they may be losing money, is isn't close to that magnitude?
I'm still wondering when they're going to be forced to deal with reality and answer the real question: How much do they stand to GAIN from decentralized digital distribution?
That they're putting up this much of a fight is very interesting. One would think that they would have learned something from the VCR fights in the 80s. It appears that they're (over?)confident that having lawyers and politicians in their pockets will be enough to overcome the desire for fair use among their worldwide customer-base.
I agree that patenting "concepts" is generally a bad thing, but there's a big difference between "intellectual property" and "concept". As an example, If I write a book, about concept X, the contents of that book are my intellectual property, and copying or distributing it without my permission is wrong (except for fair use). However, nothing is stopping anyone else from writing a different book about the same concept.
True.
If I choose to share some software I wrote, and open source it, that is my decision, but if I don't, that code represents my hard work, and I deserve to reap the benefits.
Also true, but to fully complete your analogy and make it applicable, how would you feel about someone reverse-engineering your closed-source app and releasing their own open-source version? Applying the views you expressed about book authors writing about concepts, I would tend to think that you would have no problem with this practice. Right?
The point he was making is that corperations will hijack certain demands, holding the 'blackmail' if they can use that to maintain higher profits in other areas.
Of course they will...that's the job of corporate leadership: to generate revenue for their shareholders. For this debate, let's call corporations the "right-wing" of the American economic scale.
Then there is you and I, the customer. Ideally, we'd like to have everything for free and never have to work again. Let's call this the extreme "left-wing" of the American economy.
The role of the government is to keep this scale balanced. Corporations (and companies, I'm using the term "corporations" interchangeably here) must be able to make money (so that you and I can have jobs) but customers need choices and the lower prices fueled by competition among corporations.
The balance is threatened not because corporations are pursuing their best interests with the government, but because our elected government officials have lost sight of their role in the process...many of them don't give a shit about the people that elected them.
It might feel good to rant and rave about the companies that are doing exactly what they're designed to do but that won't change anything. If you really want to change things, educate your representatives and hold them accountable. They don't respond well to/. type flames, but they will listen to an honestly concerned citizen whose goal is to inform them about an issue. The next "killer-app" probably won't be written in any software language that we know; it'll be a bill written in plaintext by the first politician that doesn't sell out. Boucher is a sign of hope in this political evolution, but without public support, he (and his potential progeny) are doomed.
Bottom line: If even half of us here lit a candle instead of complaining about the darkness...we'd probably burn down the Capitol.:)
Since the interests of a business aren't necessarily aligned with those of buyers, and those of a monopoly even less so, MS computing will be about as trusworthy as the rest of the business world.
That's a particularly insightful comment, especially if you take a walk down Google's Executive Indictment Lane.
Enron, Qwest, Worldcom...even if it wasn't Microsoft (convicted monopolist), there's no way I'd trust a big company to provide me a "trustworthy" system.
"The students involved in this found the opportunity themselves - they were not contacted by the company directly," says Tolman, who adds that the software likely was downloaded via FTP or some other file-sharing protocol.
Oh great, just wait until someone from one of the entertainment cartels reads that. Coming soon from a congresscritter near you: HR 34235, The Federal Ban of the File Transfer Protocol Act of 2003.
Also, while many of the legislative staff writing tech legislation would not know linux from dos or... well I can't come up with anything good right now, does not immediately call into question the legislation they produce (that sound you hear is the mass of/.ers guffawing.)
Lessig mentions Orrin Hatch in the final chapter of The Future of Ideas (too lazy to link it this time). However one feels about an old codger like Hatch, and whatever his motivations might be, he has been an important ally against two reviled/. enemies: Microsoft and the *AAs.
It's a bit comforting to know that there are some techno-savvy staffers, and I can imagine how difficult it must be for them to work within the constraints of "the system". Oh well, at least I can dream of an army of staffers armed with 3-foot long 2x4s (with "ClueX4" engraved upon them) invading the Offices of our reps.:)
Perhaps the bill seemed like a good idea until Hollywood saw how many times the RIAA website was hacked after the bill was proposed. I imagine that the last thing the *AAs want to see is all out war between themselves and the Hacker community -- I wonder who would win?;)
Little wonder there, eh? hehe
While I see little reason to hope that the entertainment industry will ever get a technological clue, their failure to get a sociological clue is utterly astounding. How can they fail to recognize that the people they tend to persecute are the people that make computers and networks work for the rest of the world? How can they fail to realize that, in a wired world, these people have the best chance of alerting their peers to the persecution? Basically, how can they fail to see the future that they're creating for themselves?
It's understandable (though not forgivable after this much time) that they can't wrap their minds around the technological issues they're up against. But it's incredible that they have yet to grasp the sociological ramifications of their actions. After all, success in the entertainment industry is dependent upon understanding sociology as a function of the current cultural environment. Cluelessness of this magnitude deserves its inevitable fate.
how is this different from P2P users taking the law into their own hands? P2P users should NOT have safety in numbers like the nazis, the kkk, and the catholic priests.
I believe the difference is in the scope of the "crime" being committed. While the entertainment cartels love to spout how many billions of dollars they are "losing" to "theft", they have never once proven any harm to their business. Indeed, they can't because their knee-jerk lawsuits and injunctions prevent any possibility for any data to be gathered that might prove otherwise!
Lessig said it best in The Future of Ideas (a book I highly recommend to anyone with a desire to understand these topics):
We are a democracy increasingly ruled by judges. We elect a Congress that is increasingly chained by lobbyists. And we are a culture that deep down believes in this counterrevolution: that strangely thinks that this increase in control makes sense.
This is not about "theft", "piracy" or even "crime". It is about control and the unproven, possibly mistaken, belief by the entertainment cartels that control of distribution == profit and their unwillingness to allow for the possibility that P2P == profit.
In order to prevent a Senator from using the Senate resources to develop a national e-mail list of supporters they are directed to only reply to e-mails from their own state. This prevents the use of a (unfortunately limited due to the sorry state of senate technology) resource meant for constituent contact for other purposes.
Thanks, HB. Now, if you're up for a follow-up question, how "sorry" is the state of senate technology? Just curious.
I wanted to send Senator Wyden an email lending my support for his bill, so I encountered his contact page.
Under the Senate e-mail system, it is only possible for me to respond to messages from Oregonians. If you are traveling or on active duty, please fill out the form with an Oregon address and provide your current address within the message. If you are not from Oregon, I urge you to contact one of the Senators from your home state.
I sent my support along even though I don't live in Oregon, but I'm left wondering what this "Senate e-mail system" is and why it restricts him from replying to any out-of-state emails. It's perfectly understandable (and admirable) that he puts his constituents first, but is he forbidden to correspond with citizens that he doesn't directly represent?
Loved your post...that's probably the best summation of our current dilemna that I've seen. Sure beats the hell out of what I read in Telephony magazine.
You can go ahead and split ILECs into hardware ownership and service providing corporations, but that division of functions between the two will be all but gone in thirty years, leaving us exactly where we started back in the 1960's: A corporation abusing it's monopoly powers in one field to stifle competition in another, with the ultimate losers being the customers.
I have the very same fear, and the only reason I suggested that I'd prefer splitting over governmental control is because splitting (IMHO) would be the better of two evils. What I failed to mention was that if splitting were indeed the option chosen, the last-mile companies should be closely monitored (and perhaps regulated) by the FCC in order to prevent the exact scenario you presented. Of course even that solution makes the assumption that our government acts in the best interests of the people and not large companies...which is a specious assumption at best in today's environment.
Excellent reply, thanks!
--K.
Re:What ??? Impopular, me ???? No way.... linux ro
on
Why Nerds Are Unpopular
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I believe you have a very valid, very scary point, nomadic.
From the article:
In almost any group of people you'll find hierarchy. Whatever the group's purpose, the top dogs will be those who are best at it.
There are many questionable conclusions drawn in the essay, but I find this one to be the most questionable. I believe that most tech-geeks that are working for some of the very largest techno companies/corps would tell you that the Peter Principle is very shockingly real. This isn't necessarily a bad thing for geeks working in non-tech firms (I imagine their geekiness is probably great job security) but when the revenues of a company directly relate to technology and innovation...the results can be devastating. (I mean, look at the tech sector in the US today. *shrug*)
It has been proposed by many of the Baby Bells' competitors that the government could solve this problem (and all of the fighting) if it would split the ILECs: one company "owns" the last mile and sells access while the other new company offers serives over those wires. Naturally, the Baby Bells have been fighting this proposal tooth-and-nail.
I honestly don't know if that proposal is the best solution, but if it comes down to splitting the Bells versus local governments seizing control of the last mile...as a customer, I'd prefer the former over the latter.
Slashdot Mirror
Why on earth should I give any credence to the text that follows this disclaimer?
--K.
Fair enough. But perhaps you should type "commentary definition" and "opinion definition" into a search engine before you berate someone in a public message board environment. All the same, thanks for the info.
--K.
Thanks, jed. You provide an answer, and then insult my intelligence for asking the question.
People with your attitude are a barrier to the education of the masses of sold-out non-geek computer users. Stop being a holier-than-thou priest and try being a teacher. It's much more rewarding.
--K.
If you're on an earthlink account, you should be using spaminator.
I've been pretty much spam-free since I activated it for my account. Good luck!
--K.
I guess YMMV.
Great, so where are the games? I'm not talking about games that can only be run with Wine, I mean games that are as easy to install and use out-of-the-box as their Windows brethren. I'm not trolling here, I'm honestly curious: What do I, as a GNU/Linux gamer, need to do to encourage game developers to release games I can play?
So it's a chicken-egg problem. Game developers are going to continue to have "fits" until their customers switch to an OpenGL environment? Good point. I wonder how this cycle will be broken.
I didn't mean to imply that we reverse-engineer DirectX and reimplement it; rather, we should build upon OpenGL and SDL and make it easier for game coders to write for the GNU/Linux platform so that they can avoid those "fits". (And Raven's post below is also relevant to this discussion.)
--K.
I use a Sun Sparc 5 workstation running Solaris (I forget the version) at work every day and then come home and use GNU/Linux every night. At first, I experienced "shell shock" because my Sun at work uses the Korn shell, but bash was easy to learn and even easier to use once I got used to it.
:)
All the tools I use at work seem to be present on my home Linux system, but I'll admit that I do more Perl-hacking than shell-scripting so I'm probably not aware of all the best UNIX power tools out there. I'm also not a sysadmin for any of the UNIX boxen at work so again, I might be missing something. I'm just speaking from an end-user programmer-type amoeba's perspective.
The most noticeable gap that I see in GNU/Linux implementations to date is not the lack of a UNIX tool, it's the lack of a really well-defined Windows tool: DirectX. If we can develop a GNU/Linux (or *BSD or BeOS) implementation of DirectX, we can lower the barrier to entry for game and multimedia developers which will result in more games like UT2003 being released which will hopefully attract more users to the desktop. I think Apple could really help us out here while at the same time providing another reason to use their Mac OS X. If anyone can produce a rock-solid multimedia interface that is portable, I think Apple's Darwin developers are in the best position to do so.
--K.
One can only hope that the jury in this case will have as much common sense as the jury in the ElcomSoft case. If they do allow Microsoft to trademark the word "windows", I'm going to start up a company (employing lawyers primarily) called "a" and sue any company with an "a" in its name.
That this case wasn't immediately thrown out of court really makes me begrudge every tax dollar I pay. Sheesh.
--K.
So we agree about the general misuse of the term "consumer", but you believe that that distinction should not be applied to the scenario of airlines collecting data and using data about their customers? (Please correct me if I'm mistaken.)
Those are excellent points because they introduce the third dimension to this debate: I'm also a citizen of the United States and, as such, I am entitled to privacy until an agent of the government has probable cause to invade that privacy. Which brings us to...
Herein lies the problem: how much privacy should I have to concede and how much benefit would that concession really provide me? Or, to put it another way, should the privacy and freedoms of the citizens of the US be infringed upon because of the risk of terrorism? That's a very subjective question, and one which deserves its own time on the shelf before any heavy-handed governmental "protections" are implemented.
You nailed it here, SK.
Ben said it best: Those willing to give up a little liberty for a little security deserve neither security nor liberty.
The elements of surprise and shock made 9/11 happen, and even then a few brave Americans managed to foil the efforts of one of the terrorist teams. I dare the cowardly pricks to try it again. In the meantime, I oppose those who would restrict my freedom in the name of homeland security and I resent being classified as a "consumer" under any context.
--K.
I tend to take issue with people that use the term "consumer" to classify me. Stop doing that. I am not a "consumer", I am a customer. The distinction is important. In our current culture, the term "consumer" implies mindless automatons that make purchasing decisions based upon advertising, and clueless people in high places make decisions based upon flawed marketing statistics because they don't understand that we're not "consumers" anymore.
I'm a CUSTOMER now, because I don't need companies to push their wares or services at me via TV commercials or pop-up ads. Thanks to the Net, I can go find whatever I need. So I don't need or want the in-your-face marketers anymore. It's just one more way that Internet is a disruptive technology. If your business is shoving a commercial in my face, I have sad news for you: you're obsolete. I recommend finding a new profession asap.
--K.
Perhaps someone can clarify what a cease-and-desist order really implies, but I've always considered them a thinly-veiled legal threat which, financially speaking, could be considered analogous to a mob thug showing up at my business demanding "protection" money. Even if I'm doing nothing wrong, I still have to pay a lawyer to prove it...which I think the BSA is entirely aware of. I don't believe that RICO could be applied to the BSA's strongarming tactics, but their methods certainly underscore a severe need for an Anti-Barratry Act.
--K.
I'm still wondering when they're going to be forced to deal with reality and answer the real question: How much do they stand to GAIN from decentralized digital distribution?
That they're putting up this much of a fight is very interesting. One would think that they would have learned something from the VCR fights in the 80s. It appears that they're (over?)confident that having lawyers and politicians in their pockets will be enough to overcome the desire for fair use among their worldwide customer-base.
--K.
True.
Also true, but to fully complete your analogy and make it applicable, how would you feel about someone reverse-engineering your closed-source app and releasing their own open-source version? Applying the views you expressed about book authors writing about concepts, I would tend to think that you would have no problem with this practice. Right?
--K.
Of course they will...that's the job of corporate leadership: to generate revenue for their shareholders. For this debate, let's call corporations the "right-wing" of the American economic scale.
Then there is you and I, the customer. Ideally, we'd like to have everything for free and never have to work again. Let's call this the extreme "left-wing" of the American economy.
The role of the government is to keep this scale balanced. Corporations (and companies, I'm using the term "corporations" interchangeably here) must be able to make money (so that you and I can have jobs) but customers need choices and the lower prices fueled by competition among corporations.
The balance is threatened not because corporations are pursuing their best interests with the government, but because our elected government officials have lost sight of their role in the process...many of them don't give a shit about the people that elected them.
It might feel good to rant and rave about the companies that are doing exactly what they're designed to do but that won't change anything. If you really want to change things, educate your representatives and hold them accountable. They don't respond well to
Bottom line: If even half of us here lit a candle instead of complaining about the darkness...we'd probably burn down the Capitol.
--K.
That's a particularly insightful comment, especially if you take a walk down Google's Executive Indictment Lane.
Enron, Qwest, Worldcom...even if it wasn't Microsoft (convicted monopolist), there's no way I'd trust a big company to provide me a "trustworthy" system.
--K.
Oh great, just wait until someone from one of the entertainment cartels reads that. Coming soon from a congresscritter near you:
HR 34235, The Federal Ban of the File Transfer Protocol Act of 2003.
--K.
Lessig mentions Orrin Hatch in the final chapter of The Future of Ideas (too lazy to link it this time). However one feels about an old codger like Hatch, and whatever his motivations might be, he has been an important ally against two reviled
It's a bit comforting to know that there are some techno-savvy staffers, and I can imagine how difficult it must be for them to work within the constraints of "the system". Oh well, at least I can dream of an army of staffers armed with 3-foot long 2x4s (with "ClueX4" engraved upon them) invading the Offices of our reps.
--K.
Little wonder there, eh? hehe
While I see little reason to hope that the entertainment industry will ever get a technological clue, their failure to get a sociological clue is utterly astounding. How can they fail to recognize that the people they tend to persecute are the people that make computers and networks work for the rest of the world? How can they fail to realize that, in a wired world, these people have the best chance of alerting their peers to the persecution? Basically, how can they fail to see the future that they're creating for themselves?
It's understandable (though not forgivable after this much time) that they can't wrap their minds around the technological issues they're up against. But it's incredible that they have yet to grasp the sociological ramifications of their actions. After all, success in the entertainment industry is dependent upon understanding sociology as a function of the current cultural environment. Cluelessness of this magnitude deserves its inevitable fate.
--K.
I believe the difference is in the scope of the "crime" being committed. While the entertainment cartels love to spout how many billions of dollars they are "losing" to "theft", they have never once proven any harm to their business. Indeed, they can't because their knee-jerk lawsuits and injunctions prevent any possibility for any data to be gathered that might prove otherwise!
Lessig said it best in The Future of Ideas (a book I highly recommend to anyone with a desire to understand these topics):
This is not about "theft", "piracy" or even "crime". It is about control and the unproven, possibly mistaken, belief by the entertainment cartels that control of distribution == profit and their unwillingness to allow for the possibility that P2P == profit.
--K.
Ye gods, it's worse than I thought. I hope your response is modded to +5 Informative because people need to know this.
It is scary to contemplate government regulation of technology when the government is so behind the technological curve.
Thanks for the info!
--K.
Thanks, HB. Now, if you're up for a follow-up question, how "sorry" is the state of senate technology? Just curious.
--K.
I sent my support along even though I don't live in Oregon, but I'm left wondering what this "Senate e-mail system" is and why it restricts him from replying to any out-of-state emails. It's perfectly understandable (and admirable) that he puts his constituents first, but is he forbidden to correspond with citizens that he doesn't directly represent?
--K.
SEGWAY...when you need a solution but you're not quite sure what the problem is!
(Sorry, Dean)
--K.
I have the very same fear, and the only reason I suggested that I'd prefer splitting over governmental control is because splitting (IMHO) would be the better of two evils. What I failed to mention was that if splitting were indeed the option chosen, the last-mile companies should be closely monitored (and perhaps regulated) by the FCC in order to prevent the exact scenario you presented. Of course even that solution makes the assumption that our government acts in the best interests of the people and not large companies...which is a specious assumption at best in today's environment.
Excellent reply, thanks!
--K.
From the article:
There are many questionable conclusions drawn in the essay, but I find this one to be the most questionable. I believe that most tech-geeks that are working for some of the very largest techno companies/corps would tell you that the Peter Principle is very shockingly real. This isn't necessarily a bad thing for geeks working in non-tech firms (I imagine their geekiness is probably great job security) but when the revenues of a company directly relate to technology and innovation...the results can be devastating. (I mean, look at the tech sector in the US today. *shrug*)
--K.
It has been proposed by many of the Baby Bells' competitors that the government could solve this problem (and all of the fighting) if it would split the ILECs: one company "owns" the last mile and sells access while the other new company offers serives over those wires. Naturally, the Baby Bells have been fighting this proposal tooth-and-nail.
I honestly don't know if that proposal is the best solution, but if it comes down to splitting the Bells versus local governments seizing control of the last mile...as a customer, I'd prefer the former over the latter.
--K.