If you injure someone, you're in the shit, simple as that.
That is simply not true. Self-defence, and defending someone else that you believe is in immediate danger, *is* a recognised defence in English law.
That's not to say that you won't have to prove that you were acting in self-defence in a court, but no-one is going to lock you up for using reasonable force to defend yourself or anyone else.
The only case I can think of where someone has been jailed for defending themselves or their property was the one involving the farmer (whose name escapes me - Tony something?). In that case what really lead to him being jailed, even ignoring the traps in his house, was the fact that he shot one of the burglars in the back as he was fleeing, killing him. That's not exactly self-defence - he was in no immediate danger. It's also not exactly reasonable force, using a shotgun on an unarmed intruder.
You assume that because we're both meant to be democracies, that the general public knows what is good and right, and that they will vote accordingly.
Vote? What vote?
This proposed legislation won't be put up for a referendum, it'll be voted on by MPs. True, we voted for the MPs, but that was what 2 years ago? I don't suppose any of them campaigned on a platform of not enacting a DMCA-equivalent...
Obviously, the whole point of an elected government is that it's impractical for everyone with a vote to vote on every last issue. It does mean, however, that most of the time it really doesn't matter whether the public knows what is good or bad, as they won't directly have a say anyway.
The extensions to the agencies able to request data under the RIP Act was withdrawn after David Blunkett's *son* explained to him that it was a bad idea. See for example this BBC article, paragraph 13 or so.
I'm not saying that we can't make a difference, but I remember the outcry about the RIP Act when it was first proposed. That got us nowhere.
By all means, make your voice heard - I will be. Just don't expect it to make any difference - Tony et al are too much in thrall to the US and US big business.
Conversely, what's to stop me producing my own buggy, insecure distribution, and selling that as Red Hat Linux 7.3? What protection does the consumer have from people trying to rip them off?
Simple - Red Hat owns the trademark on "Red Hat Linux", and can tell me to stop, on pain of being sued.
They can only do that if they prevent people from using their trademark - you know that a company must defend their trademark, or risk losing it.
I half agree with you, and half with the original poster.
I bought my first 3D acclerator (a PowerVR) because I'd seen how utterly gorgeuos Quake looked in GL mode compared to software. No, the software mode wasn't bad, but the GL mode was much nicer (unless this is just nostalgia talking).
TombRaider, on the other hand, was one of the games that made me glad that I had done so. Another was Dungeon Keeper - that was much, much prettier when Bullfrog released the D3D versions.
you get faster I/O at the cost of greater instability, a tradeoff most sysadmins are quick to take.
That may be true in your experience, but I very much doubt if any of our systems team would be willing to make that trade. Our SLAs guarantee 24/7 support, which means that if one of the servers goes down at 3am (even if the others are okay) someone will be woken up by a pager, and they will be expected to make a best effort to fix it.
Perhaps if I/O performance is absolutely critical, and your hardware is creaking under the load at the best of times, and you can afford to throw so much iron at it that one or two dropping out for a few hours doesn't matter, then it might be worth it. (Of course, if you can throw that much hardware at the problem, then I/O can't be that critical...) On the other hand, if the required level of performance is realistic but the system as a whole must be available 24/7, then I really can't see that this is a good idea.
I admit that I've barely looked at it (I'm not exactly a huge p2p user anyway), but from what I saw the whole idea is that you connect directly to (a group of) computer(s), then see what's being shared on them.
So, how do I find a specific song/video/document/whatever? Do you really have to connect to every computer on the network in turn, hoping that what you're after will be on them? Or is it only intended for people who don't particularly care what they find, as long as they find something?
I don't know what any of these people think they gain by trying to lock users out of P2P networks with closed protocols.
Ah, but they're not trying to lock users out, they're trying to lock competitors out.
There are only three ways (that I can think of) that any company can makle money from this sort of p2p service:
1) Charge for the software 2) Charge for access to the service 3) Charge for people to advertise on the service
If the protocol is open, then any half-way competent programmer could throw together a compatible client. That harms 1) directly. As the whole point of p2p apps is that there is no central server, except maybe for storing a list of known "super nodes", 2) only works if you can force people to pay for access to this list. However, if the protocol is open, it can be extended to include some sort of broadcast mechanism to discover nodes, or a different, free list can be provided on another server. That harms method 2).
Finally, any competing, compatible clients could easily be written to ignore the adverts (or substitute ads from another source), reducing the value of 3).
This is why these people are using closed protocols - not to keep users out, but to keep programmers from harming their potential revenue streams.
a whole mini soap-opera to promote a brand of instant coffee
Yeah, I remember that ad campaign - there was even minor interest in it from the press and TV news programmes at the time.
The only trouble is, whilst I can still more-or-less remember what the couple looked like, I'm having trouble remembering what brand of coffee was being advertised...
(A co-worker is pretty sure it was Nescafe, incidently)
Well, the konqueror that came with the KDE3.0 install on my machine displays.gifs just fine, so I suspect that it may just be an installation/compilation issue.
Did you download a set of binaries, or compile from source?
For some people (myself included), even 2-3 per day is too many.
I generally detest any software that attempts to do something that I haven't asked it to, such as popup windows, steal input focus, etc (in fact, that is my all time computing pet hate, and one of the things that pushed me to start playing with Linux).
That's my only real reason for using Galeon - I still allow popups, but they open in new tabs, so they aren't anywhere near as "in your face" as normal ones. I'd use Mozilla, but I find it to be too slow under Linux (especially on my aging work PC).
Right now, software makers can get away with selling products that have defects in them on the order of ones that if they were in cars, would send Ford or GM into receivership.
That's because in the case of Ford or GM, defects like that would cost people their health or their lives. I very much doubt that anyone has ever been killed by an email virus or worm.
Has anyone ever had an audio/data CD stop working on them?
Yes, I have, and that's not including the ones that my 2 year old daughter has managed to get her hands on (one or two of which have ended up scratched or even snapped). Besides which, I have even lost one or two CDs in my time.
Incidently, the important things in life (heating, shelter, food) most certainly are not free:-)
Possibly, or maybe they'll use the copy of Windows that came with the PC that this is replacing, and leave the old one to gather dust.
Most people buy new PCs as replacements for, not supplements to, their old one. It's just the "geeky few" that recycle the old one as a firewall or similar.
You are correct. OEM copies of Windows at least are prominently marked "For sale only with a new PC". Iirc, it's also mentioned in the EULA, but most importantly, it is on the CD and the Certificate of Authenticity.
Now, whether that should be legally enforceable or not is a different story.
Yes, it hurts the labels, and yes it hurts the artists, and yes that is wrong, but that doesn't make it theft. From Merriam-Webster, theft is
1 a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property 2 obsolete : something stolen 3 : a stolen base in baseball
Clearly, copying information of any kind (be it a song, movie, book, etc) is not theft, as I am not depriving the rightful owner of their property.
The people who create the information that I desire a copy of deserve to be paid for their time and effort in creating it. The people who facillitate my obtaining it deserve paying for their time and effort in getting it to me. That is the system we have currently - the artist makes the music, and the label distributes it, hence, they both deserve a share of what I pay for it. If a system could be put in place whereby I could obtain the music I want directly from the artist, the need for the middlemen would go away, and so should they. They would no longer deserve any of my money.
To answer your sarcastic analogy, if I as a programmer work for you, you pay me to produce code. You do not pay me to be able to copy the code that I produce for you - once I have produced it, and have been paid, it is yours to do with as you wish. You can keep it to yourself, sell it to people, or distribute it for free via your favourite p2p app. This is possible precisely because intellectual property is not the same as physical property. I only have to create it once, and you can produce as many copies as you like, without my help, and for little or no cost. To my mind, it therefore makes little sense to pay me more than once for it.
Copyright is an artificial concept, created so that companies such as yours can make money selling things that are easily reproduced, and so can give people like me, who create things that are easily reproduced, a job. I support copyright (but not the ways in which it can be and is abused), as it helps keep me in a job, and keeps others producing stuf I like, but to suggest that intellectual and physical property are the same is just plain wrong.
I understand your paranoia, but let me ask you this: how do you know that the spyware itself isn't backdoored and/or trojaned to high heaven?
Just because it's being created by a "reputable" company (after all, all companies are 100% trustworthy, right?), and not some backroom hacker, doesn't make it guaranteed to be 100% on the level. After all, they kept pretty quiet about it being there at all, who's to say they're beinghonest about what it does?
I hate to burst your bubble, but I've had 3.5MB/sec and more downloading from microsoft.com at work, here in the UK. I've even had about 4.5MB/sec downloading from the UK kernel mirror site. High speed internet connections are not limited to.edus on Internet2.
That's one of the good things about working here - my machine is on a 100Mbps LAN that's hanging off a 100Mbps connection to Globix:-)
This way bnetd would get control over blizzard's games.
How so? This is just a server we're talking about, a means to facillitate communication between what are essentially fat clients.
bnetd can't do anything, as they have no way of supplying (or creating) updates to the software being used by the end users. Blizzard will still retain complete control over that, no matter who writes the server software.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft loses money on every X-Box sold
:-)
That's true, but don't forget that they lose even more money on every XBox produced that isn't sold, and it costs you nothing
If you injure someone, you're in the shit, simple as that.
That is simply not true. Self-defence, and defending someone else that you believe is in immediate danger, *is* a recognised defence in English law.
That's not to say that you won't have to prove that you were acting in self-defence in a court, but no-one is going to lock you up for using reasonable force to defend yourself or anyone else.
The only case I can think of where someone has been jailed for defending themselves or their property was the one involving the farmer (whose name escapes me - Tony something?). In that case what really lead to him being jailed, even ignoring the traps in his house, was the fact that he shot one of the burglars in the back as he was fleeing, killing him. That's not exactly self-defence - he was in no immediate danger. It's also not exactly reasonable force, using a shotgun on an unarmed intruder.
You assume that because we're both meant to be democracies, that the general public knows what is good and right, and that they will vote accordingly.
Vote? What vote?
This proposed legislation won't be put up for a referendum, it'll be voted on by MPs. True, we voted for the MPs, but that was what 2 years ago? I don't suppose any of them campaigned on a platform of not enacting a DMCA-equivalent...
Obviously, the whole point of an elected government is that it's impractical for everyone with a vote to vote on every last issue. It does mean, however, that most of the time it really doesn't matter whether the public knows what is good or bad, as they won't directly have a say anyway.
The extensions to the agencies able to request data under the RIP Act was withdrawn after David Blunkett's *son* explained to him that it was a bad idea. See for example this BBC article, paragraph 13 or so.
I'm not saying that we can't make a difference, but I remember the outcry about the RIP Act when it was first proposed. That got us nowhere.
By all means, make your voice heard - I will be. Just don't expect it to make any difference - Tony et al are too much in thrall to the US and US big business.
Conversely, what's to stop me producing my own buggy, insecure distribution, and selling that as Red Hat Linux 7.3? What protection does the consumer have from people trying to rip them off?
Simple - Red Hat owns the trademark on "Red Hat Linux", and can tell me to stop, on pain of being sued.
They can only do that if they prevent people from using their trademark - you know that a company must defend their trademark, or risk losing it.
Gee, I wonder what kind of computer you'll be reading this with?
Like you, he'd be reading it on a computer descended from one that was reverse engineered from an IBM original.
I do hope that you don't ever get seriously ill.
I hope that you never find yourself seriously ill and unable to afford the licencing-fee-inflated cost of the medication that you require.
I half agree with you, and half with the original poster.
I bought my first 3D acclerator (a PowerVR) because I'd seen how utterly gorgeuos Quake looked in GL mode compared to software. No, the software mode wasn't bad, but the GL mode was much nicer (unless this is just nostalgia talking).
TombRaider, on the other hand, was one of the games that made me glad that I had done so. Another was Dungeon Keeper - that was much, much prettier when Bullfrog released the D3D versions.
you get faster I/O at the cost of greater instability, a tradeoff most sysadmins are quick to take.
That may be true in your experience, but I very much doubt if any of our systems team would be willing to make that trade. Our SLAs guarantee 24/7 support, which means that if one of the servers goes down at 3am (even if the others are okay) someone will be woken up by a pager, and they will be expected to make a best effort to fix it.
Perhaps if I/O performance is absolutely critical, and your hardware is creaking under the load at the best of times, and you can afford to throw so much iron at it that one or two dropping out for a few hours doesn't matter, then it might be worth it. (Of course, if you can throw that much hardware at the problem, then I/O can't be that critical...) On the other hand, if the required level of performance is realistic but the system as a whole must be available 24/7, then I really can't see that this is a good idea.
How do you search for files on DirectConnect?
I admit that I've barely looked at it (I'm not exactly a huge p2p user anyway), but from what I saw the whole idea is that you connect directly to (a group of) computer(s), then see what's being shared on them.
So, how do I find a specific song/video/document/whatever? Do you really have to connect to every computer on the network in turn, hoping that what you're after will be on them? Or is it only intended for people who don't particularly care what they find, as long as they find something?
I'm very curious how Lucas is going to top himself.
So, bad film, then? Even so, I don't think it's necessary for the guy to commit suicide...
I don't know what any of these people think they gain by trying to lock users out of P2P networks with closed protocols.
Ah, but they're not trying to lock users out, they're trying to lock competitors out.
There are only three ways (that I can think of) that any company can makle money from this sort of p2p service:
1) Charge for the software
2) Charge for access to the service
3) Charge for people to advertise on the service
If the protocol is open, then any half-way competent programmer could throw together a compatible client. That harms 1) directly. As the whole point of p2p apps is that there is no central server, except maybe for storing a list of known "super nodes", 2) only works if you can force people to pay for access to this list. However, if the protocol is open, it can be extended to include some sort of broadcast mechanism to discover nodes, or a different, free list can be provided on another server. That harms method 2).
Finally, any competing, compatible clients could easily be written to ignore the adverts (or substitute ads from another source), reducing the value of 3).
This is why these people are using closed protocols - not to keep users out, but to keep programmers from harming their potential revenue streams.
a whole mini soap-opera to promote a brand of instant coffee
Yeah, I remember that ad campaign - there was even minor interest in it from the press and TV news programmes at the time.
The only trouble is, whilst I can still more-or-less remember what the couple looked like, I'm having trouble remembering what brand of coffee was being advertised...
(A co-worker is pretty sure it was Nescafe, incidently)
The source to the viruses and worms is a form of speech, and so should be afforded the same protection.
Using that source, compiled or interpreted, is not, that is an act of "computer vandalism", if you will, and should be prosecuted appropriately.
Yes, but the average /. reader hasn't heard of it... ;-)
Well, the konqueror that came with the KDE3.0 install on my machine displays .gifs just fine, so I suspect that it may just be an installation/compilation issue.
Did you download a set of binaries, or compile from source?
For some people (myself included), even 2-3 per day is too many.
I generally detest any software that attempts to do something that I haven't asked it to, such as popup windows, steal input focus, etc (in fact, that is my all time computing pet hate, and one of the things that pushed me to start playing with Linux).
That's my only real reason for using Galeon - I still allow popups, but they open in new tabs, so they aren't anywhere near as "in your face" as normal ones. I'd use Mozilla, but I find it to be too slow under Linux (especially on my aging work PC).
Right now, software makers can get away with selling products that have defects in them on the order of ones that if they were in cars, would send Ford or GM into receivership.
That's because in the case of Ford or GM, defects like that would cost people their health or their lives. I very much doubt that anyone has ever been killed by an email virus or worm.
Has anyone ever had an audio/data CD stop working on them?
:-)
Yes, I have, and that's not including the ones that my 2 year old daughter has managed to get her hands on (one or two of which have ended up scratched or even snapped). Besides which, I have even lost one or two CDs in my time.
Incidently, the important things in life (heating, shelter, food) most certainly are not free
I see that sort of attitude a lot in CTF Q3 online, which is why this made me chuckle so much :-)
Possibly, or maybe they'll use the copy of Windows that came with the PC that this is replacing, and leave the old one to gather dust.
Most people buy new PCs as replacements for, not supplements to, their old one. It's just the "geeky few" that recycle the old one as a firewall or similar.
You are correct. OEM copies of Windows at least are prominently marked "For sale only with a new PC". Iirc, it's also mentioned in the EULA, but most importantly, it is on the CD and the Certificate of Authenticity.
Now, whether that should be legally enforceable or not is a different story.
Yes, it hurts the labels, and yes it hurts the artists, and yes that is wrong, but that doesn't make it theft. From Merriam-Webster, theft is
Clearly, copying information of any kind (be it a song, movie, book, etc) is not theft, as I am not depriving the rightful owner of their property.
The people who create the information that I desire a copy of deserve to be paid for their time and effort in creating it. The people who facillitate my obtaining it deserve paying for their time and effort in getting it to me. That is the system we have currently - the artist makes the music, and the label distributes it, hence, they both deserve a share of what I pay for it. If a system could be put in place whereby I could obtain the music I want directly from the artist, the need for the middlemen would go away, and so should they. They would no longer deserve any of my money.
To answer your sarcastic analogy, if I as a programmer work for you, you pay me to produce code. You do not pay me to be able to copy the code that I produce for you - once I have produced it, and have been paid, it is yours to do with as you wish. You can keep it to yourself, sell it to people, or distribute it for free via your favourite p2p app. This is possible precisely because intellectual property is not the same as physical property. I only have to create it once, and you can produce as many copies as you like, without my help, and for little or no cost. To my mind, it therefore makes little sense to pay me more than once for it.
Copyright is an artificial concept, created so that companies such as yours can make money selling things that are easily reproduced, and so can give people like me, who create things that are easily reproduced, a job. I support copyright (but not the ways in which it can be and is abused), as it helps keep me in a job, and keeps others producing stuf I like, but to suggest that intellectual and physical property are the same is just plain wrong.
I understand your paranoia, but let me ask you this: how do you know that the spyware itself isn't backdoored and/or trojaned to high heaven?
Just because it's being created by a "reputable" company (after all, all companies are 100% trustworthy, right?), and not some backroom hacker, doesn't make it guaranteed to be 100% on the level. After all, they kept pretty quiet about it being there at all, who's to say they're beinghonest about what it does?
I hate to burst your bubble, but I've had 3.5MB/sec and more downloading from microsoft.com at work, here in the UK. I've even had about 4.5MB/sec downloading from the UK kernel mirror site. High speed internet connections are not limited to .edus on Internet2.
:-)
That's one of the good things about working here - my machine is on a 100Mbps LAN that's hanging off a 100Mbps connection to Globix
This way bnetd would get control over blizzard's games.
How so? This is just a server we're talking about, a means to facillitate communication between what are essentially fat clients.
bnetd can't do anything, as they have no way of supplying (or creating) updates to the software being used by the end users. Blizzard will still retain complete control over that, no matter who writes the server software.