The Commission, on the other hand, has warned against alarmist scenarios. It emphasises that ACTA is about tackling large scale criminal activity, not about limiting civil or consumer rights.
I really, really hate stuff like this. Why doesn't anyone call the industry on this? Whenever I hear "but it won't be used against small-scale infringers" I want to shout at them THEN FUCKING PUT IT IN THERE! Put it in writing, in the treaty / law / whatever, that it can't be used if fewer than 200 files are shared. Spell it out that you won't prosecute anyone who possesses less than a quarter of his whole movie collection as illegal downloads.
Two reasons why we should not accept wishy-washy talk like this:
This will have the force of a law, and I want to be able to interpret laws myself, so I know if / when I'm breaking them.
The other one is to show the disconnect between what the media industry thinks is acceptable, and what the average citizen thinks is acceptable; I'd bet if forced to define their limits honestly the media conglomerates would have to explain their definitions as "non-commercial infringer: person with one or two illegally acquired mp3-files, either through downloads or by format conversion from a cd; large-scale commercial infringer: everything beyond that, including redistributing even a fraction of a file when downloading from a P2P service".
Why can people like that get away with blatant lies like that time and time again?
That's correct - we seem to have legislation like this in Germany already. If you have, for example, a disposable toothbrush with an electric vibration motor and battery built in you have to allow the consumer to remove the battery and dispose of it separately (all stores that sell products with batteries in them have to take them back, and most often you'll find large collection boxes near the entrance). In the case of this toothbrush you break off the lower half containing the battery compartment to get the battery out; the toothbrush is ruined in the process.
Yeah, that's a really good point - I'd want a netbook (or any laptop for that matter) to be modular. If I can swap out parts (or blocks of parts) upgrades can be done gradually, repairs are made much easier, and reconfiguring your system would be that much less of a chore; imagine being able to swap out processors with a couple of actions, doubling the running time! Or swapping out a color, "gaming" display with a very high res grayscale "reading" display for work or ebooks...
The spotted owl became a shibboleth. Anyone who said "save the endangered owls!" was likely to be a Democrat, and anyone who said "to hell with the owls!" was a Democrat.
Trying to have it both ways, eh? Tricky, those Democrats...
I just tried one single word and got very odd results: I used "Banane" (the German word for "banana") and got exactly 0 (zero!!!) results. Google yields ~10.500.000 hits.
"Banana" on the other hand gives 15.600.000 results in Cuil (~89.500.000 in Google)... oh, and if you turn "safe search" off (which is by default enabled in Cuil), then you get 1.600.000 hits.
Is there something inherently unsafe about German bananas ("pornography or other objectionable material" - are there really only pages about banana porn online?)? Does Cuil only cover the English-speaking internet by default? If Cuil indexes three times as many pages, why is the number of hits an order of magnitude smaller?
Ok, I'm normally a peaceful person, but if someone invents a way to trap me on a page and disable my back button I'll hunt that guy down and kill him. Seriously. I understand that AJAX doesn't play well with the back button, but if this cancellation of functionality is implemented so that every site can deploy it easily it will break the web as we know it.
[...]this is a quasi-socialist ISP environment, people who barely use their connections are paying for those who use the connection all the time.
I'm sorry, but I'd say asking for as much money from your customers while delivering as little of your resource as possible is capitalism, not socialism.
Do correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember that the problem with lipophilic substances is that they can lead to poisoning easier because they tend to accumulate in the fatty tissues of the body and cannot be excreted easily; an excess of water soluble vitamins on the other hand would be flushed out the next time you urinate.
Disclaimer: I'm not even a little bit of a doctor, so this might be completely wrong or misremembered...:)
The openness of the new system could pave the way for a.xxx domain name, after more than half a decade of wrangling between its backers and Icann.
Yeah, and it will surely work now... Look, guys, moving all the "smut" into an isolated corner of the internet will not work because a) nothing is isolated on the internet (if it exists, I can link to it) and b) no one will be able to define "smut" in any meaningful way. Oh, and I smell "think of the children" arguments approaching...
That said - if this is implemented as written I also foresee a rush towards all short words of the English language and a subsequent loss of all mnemonic devices I use to remember websites: Now: "Hey, I want to go to Amazon. That's amazon.com, right?" Then: "I want to go to Newbookstore. That's newbookstore.books - no, wait, newbookstore.cheapbooks - or newbookstore.bestbookstore? Newbookstore.isgreat? Newbookstore.all? Newbookstore.shopping? Newbookstore.AAA?"
Granted, the current TLD system kinda sucks, but opening up all kinds of words as possible TLDs will certainly bring no improvement (one thing I like to do when I browse for a product's availability here in Germany is enter the search term into google with the added restriction "site:.de". When German online presences will end in dozens if not hundreds of different words this easy way to identify them will be lost...).
I'm sorry, but I can't comment on Hulu's model; the reason? Their overzealous country-restrictions: none of their clips are available outside of the US. I guess I could trick the server by using a proxy, but if a site makes me jump through hoops like this I go to the competition; especially since this sort of country-selective blocking is something I can't remember seing on YouTube, Revver or any of the other streaming video sites.
Why have an internationally accessible website at all, if you won't even show (short, low-quality, low resolution) videos except for US-Americans? Why should, say, bloggers even bother to embed those videos on the world-wide web, if they can't reach an world-wide audience? Although I guess it could make embedding targeted ads easier, since you know your audience...
I've been using Bookmarks Sync and Sort for quite a while now - all you need is a FTP/WebDAV server on which you have an account, which I guess every slashdotter should have...
The extension does everything I need, and it works like a charm; the only problem is that is not (currently) FF3 compatible.
"Yes, truecrypt.org DOES contain child porn, so does wikileaks.org"
"Do you have proof?"
"Why are you asking? You must be looking for child porn! STONE HIM!" There, fixed it for you. Even better:
"Yes, truecrypt.org DOES contain child porn, so does wikileaks.org"
"Do you have proof?"
"Of course! Why don't you visit the sites and check yourself? Oh, sorry. Guess you can't. But for trying to access a blacklisted site you'll now be on permanent watch as a potential pedophile."
As another European I can only agree that it seems a particularly American idea that capital-S Science is waging a "war on religion". Most people here seem to be of the opinion that Christian beliefs don't interfere with an scientific approach to most subjects (granted, when ethical decisions come into play religion often tries to dictate a position, but that wouldn't affect the age of the earth or evolutionary explanations). Most religious persecutions happened ages ago, the Enlightenment changed the stance of the general populace a whole freaking lot.
As an aside: if you really want to see how typically American the problem with Bible-thumping Christians is - just look at the book they take their beliefs from. It won't be the Aramaic original, it won't be one of the early Greek or Latin translations, it will be a comparatively recent translation that has all the biases, word choices and mistranslations from latter centuries built in ("Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" or "camel through the eye of a needle" come to mind). If those people really cared about their Holy Book, their writings giving to them from a divine being, they'd surely try to get as close to the original, the source, as possible, wouldn't you think?
The one thing Social Engineers/Con Men fear most is challenges - and by challenges, I mean challenges of authority.
Unfortunately, in the current climate of fear and obedience, it is very hard to get people to challenge authority - especially if even the government takes refuge in FUD and secrets. "On whose authority are you doing this?" "Sorry, can't tell you. Terrorism, you know. You could call the CIA, but they would deny ever having heard of me."
The sound could also be used as a weapon, to damage enemy morale. The German StuKa bombers had sometimes air-powered sirens attached to their planes, to scare and frighten the civilians. This is also used in many computer games - you can't see the enemy, but you hear a whirring or buzzing sound and you know he's somewhere close.
And to add to your idea: don't use thousands of robots; just use thousands of tape recorders. Seriously: if those things can't be made stealthy, just hide the noise of the real one by using secondary sound sources.
As of January 1, 2000, children born in Germany to foreign parents acquire German citizenship at birth if at least one parent has lived legally in Germany for a minimum of eight years. Children who acquire German citizenship under this provision will be allowed to hold dual citizenship until they reach adulthood; they will be required to choose between their German and foreign citizenship by the age of 23 at the latest. Children born to foreign parents before the enactment of the new law who are under the age of ten will also be able to claim German citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany, if the above named conditions (time of legal residence) apply.
If you're so woefully underinformed, just keep from commenting, ok?
Good point, but I suppose that's because Yahoo! doesn't own a crappy machine translation subsidiary. When they partnered with Opera Mini (the browser version for mobile devices) they removed Google not only as the default search engine but also as an option from the drop-down - and then put Yahoo! Search in its place. I wouldn't complain if they replaced stuff with something of equal or better value, but this "it's ours, so you have to use it no matter how crappy it is" attitude kinda pisses me off.
Slashdot Mirror
Even better, imagine making short clips of those creepy pale black-eyed children from Japanese horror movies and projecting them at random...
I really, really hate stuff like this. Why doesn't anyone call the industry on this? Whenever I hear "but it won't be used against small-scale infringers" I want to shout at them THEN FUCKING PUT IT IN THERE! Put it in writing, in the treaty / law / whatever, that it can't be used if fewer than 200 files are shared. Spell it out that you won't prosecute anyone who possesses less than a quarter of his whole movie collection as illegal downloads.
Two reasons why we should not accept wishy-washy talk like this:
Why can people like that get away with blatant lies like that time and time again?
So persocoms aren't far off? Sweet!
That's correct - we seem to have legislation like this in Germany already. If you have, for example, a disposable toothbrush with an electric vibration motor and battery built in you have to allow the consumer to remove the battery and dispose of it separately (all stores that sell products with batteries in them have to take them back, and most often you'll find large collection boxes near the entrance). In the case of this toothbrush you break off the lower half containing the battery compartment to get the battery out; the toothbrush is ruined in the process.
And we know that the world, with its flailing economy, will certainly needs cheaper beer.
Sorry to be the one to break it to you, but America != The World.
Yeah, that's a really good point - I'd want a netbook (or any laptop for that matter) to be modular. If I can swap out parts (or blocks of parts) upgrades can be done gradually, repairs are made much easier, and reconfiguring your system would be that much less of a chore; imagine being able to swap out processors with a couple of actions, doubling the running time! Or swapping out a color, "gaming" display with a very high res grayscale "reading" display for work or ebooks...
The spotted owl became a shibboleth. Anyone who said "save the endangered owls!" was likely to be a Democrat, and anyone who said "to hell with the owls!" was a Democrat.
Trying to have it both ways, eh? Tricky, those Democrats...
I just tried one single word and got very odd results: I used "Banane" (the German word for "banana") and got exactly 0 (zero!!!) results. Google yields ~10.500.000 hits.
"Banana" on the other hand gives 15.600.000 results in Cuil (~89.500.000 in Google)... oh, and if you turn "safe search" off (which is by default enabled in Cuil), then you get 1.600.000 hits.
Is there something inherently unsafe about German bananas ("pornography or other objectionable material" - are there really only pages about banana porn online?)? Does Cuil only cover the English-speaking internet by default? If Cuil indexes three times as many pages, why is the number of hits an order of magnitude smaller?
Would it really be too much to ask to at least link to a page that explains what a "Genius Bar" actually is? I never encountered this term before...
Ok, I'm normally a peaceful person, but if someone invents a way to trap me on a page and disable my back button I'll hunt that guy down and kill him. Seriously. I understand that AJAX doesn't play well with the back button, but if this cancellation of functionality is implemented so that every site can deploy it easily it will break the web as we know it.
[...]this is a quasi-socialist ISP environment, people who barely use their connections are paying for those who use the connection all the time.
I'm sorry, but I'd say asking for as much money from your customers while delivering as little of your resource as possible is capitalism, not socialism.
Do correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember that the problem with lipophilic substances is that they can lead to poisoning easier because they tend to accumulate in the fatty tissues of the body and cannot be excreted easily; an excess of water soluble vitamins on the other hand would be flushed out the next time you urinate. :)
Disclaimer: I'm not even a little bit of a doctor, so this might be completely wrong or misremembered...
That said - if this is implemented as written I also foresee a rush towards all short words of the English language and a subsequent loss of all mnemonic devices I use to remember websites:
Now: "Hey, I want to go to Amazon. That's amazon.com, right?"
Then: "I want to go to Newbookstore. That's newbookstore.books - no, wait, newbookstore.cheapbooks - or newbookstore.bestbookstore? Newbookstore.isgreat? Newbookstore.all? Newbookstore.shopping? Newbookstore.AAA?"
Granted, the current TLD system kinda sucks, but opening up all kinds of words as possible TLDs will certainly bring no improvement (one thing I like to do when I browse for a product's availability here in Germany is enter the search term into google with the added restriction "site:.de". When German online presences will end in dozens if not hundreds of different words this easy way to identify them will be lost...).
I'm sorry, but I can't comment on Hulu's model; the reason? Their overzealous country-restrictions: none of their clips are available outside of the US. I guess I could trick the server by using a proxy, but if a site makes me jump through hoops like this I go to the competition; especially since this sort of country-selective blocking is something I can't remember seing on YouTube, Revver or any of the other streaming video sites.
Why have an internationally accessible website at all, if you won't even show (short, low-quality, low resolution) videos except for US-Americans? Why should, say, bloggers even bother to embed those videos on the world-wide web, if they can't reach an world-wide audience?
Although I guess it could make embedding targeted ads easier, since you know your audience...
I've been using Bookmarks Sync and Sort for quite a while now - all you need is a FTP/WebDAV server on which you have an account, which I guess every slashdotter should have...
The extension does everything I need, and it works like a charm; the only problem is that is not (currently) FF3 compatible.
"Do you have proof?"
"Why are you asking? You must be looking for child porn! STONE HIM!" There, fixed it for you. Even better:
"Yes, truecrypt.org DOES contain child porn, so does wikileaks.org"
"Do you have proof?"
"Of course! Why don't you visit the sites and check yourself? Oh, sorry. Guess you can't. But for trying to access a blacklisted site you'll now be on permanent watch as a potential pedophile."
As another European I can only agree that it seems a particularly American idea that capital-S Science is waging a "war on religion". Most people here seem to be of the opinion that Christian beliefs don't interfere with an scientific approach to most subjects (granted, when ethical decisions come into play religion often tries to dictate a position, but that wouldn't affect the age of the earth or evolutionary explanations). Most religious persecutions happened ages ago, the Enlightenment changed the stance of the general populace a whole freaking lot.
As an aside: if you really want to see how typically American the problem with Bible-thumping Christians is - just look at the book they take their beliefs from. It won't be the Aramaic original, it won't be one of the early Greek or Latin translations, it will be a comparatively recent translation that has all the biases, word choices and mistranslations from latter centuries built in ("Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" or "camel through the eye of a needle" come to mind). If those people really cared about their Holy Book, their writings giving to them from a divine being, they'd surely try to get as close to the original, the source, as possible, wouldn't you think?
The sound could also be used as a weapon, to damage enemy morale. The German StuKa bombers had sometimes air-powered sirens attached to their planes, to scare and frighten the civilians. This is also used in many computer games - you can't see the enemy, but you hear a whirring or buzzing sound and you know he's somewhere close.
And to add to your idea: don't use thousands of robots; just use thousands of tape recorders. Seriously: if those things can't be made stealthy, just hide the noise of the real one by using secondary sound sources.
Relevant quote: If you're so woefully underinformed, just keep from commenting, ok?
Good point, but I suppose that's because Yahoo! doesn't own a crappy machine translation subsidiary. When they partnered with Opera Mini (the browser version for mobile devices) they removed Google not only as the default search engine but also as an option from the drop-down - and then put Yahoo! Search in its place. I wouldn't complain if they replaced stuff with something of equal or better value, but this "it's ours, so you have to use it no matter how crappy it is" attitude kinda pisses me off.