Re:Intresting, but impractical for general web use
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You Are What You Click
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· Score: 2
There are some fascinating potential developments that could come about. Evil to society, but still fascinating.
For instance: schizophrenics track moving objects differently with their eyes. The eye makes many small overcorrections (James Gleik, 'Chaos'). Supposing other motor actions are affected- schizophrenics might use the mouse differently- in a way that can be distinguished.
An insurance company could pay for this data in order to determine who not to sell insurance to. At some future time, this information could be mined to determine what people should be culled from society- or what people are within a certain statistical deviation of schizophrenia and therefore barred from public office.
The most recent FCC rulings have made metaphors for sex (or other body functions, like farting) ILLEGAL!
So you'd better pick up Led Zeppelin II if you ever want to hear 'The Lemon Song' again! (I am NOT making this up. Monty Python's "Sit On My Face" and Howard Stern talking about farting were _specifically_ cited as illegal.)
Well, indies depend utterly on the exact same alternative avenues being squashed that you speak of. So they have everything to do with the topic. The RIAA are basically trying to nuke every means of distribution they don't themselves completely control.
Whether indies are superior or not (and I have to wonder- is your acceptance of the majors historical or current? Major label artist development is down 15%), they still deserve a shot at a vaguely free market. I don't see what the benefit is in shutting them down completely.
Re:Assassination Politics, not just for politician
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Launchcast Sued
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· Score: 2
It's really cute how this Libertarian relies on the fact that "this is at least nominally supposed to be a "free country," which should mean that police and other authorities aren't able to
punish behavior just because they don't like it." and at the same time is quite happy to arrange the assassination of police and authorities simply because _he_ doesn't like them.
Cuts both ways, friend. I would consider it a peculiar sort of moral justice if some appalled police officer or authority figure quietly arranged for this Libertarian's execution- how would that be different? The answer is easy- the police and authorities are real-world, and this guy is proposing something very wrong, something that isn't practical and doesn't exist. It's not reasonable to execute someone for being a loony. If he puts this into _practice_ he is utterly shattering the most basic rules of existing in a society- and, I think, to some extent waives protections of that society. He, evidently, wishes to be able to kill whoever he wants _while_ being protected by society.
The one situation where I can see his notion making sense in a vague way is revolution and war. Perhaps that is where things will come to a head- if people become sufficiently convinced that they are in fact being ruled by corporations through puppet governments, you might see declared war against the corporations- after a lot of Bhopals and other acts that can be pinned on a guilty but unreachable corporation. In that situation, the only thing that _would_ work is terrorism and assasination, because the thing about a corporation is it's everywhere. The only possible attack is to demolish the local arms of it, like the way people in India demolished a McDonalds upon being told that Mickey D's was putting beef flavoring in the french fries and then selling 'em to Hindus without bothering to mention the fact (and whose word, exactly, is it that they are NOT doing this? Which corporate mouthpiece do _you_ consider unequivocally truthful?).
This is a far cry from private vengeance. If there is to be war it ought to be declared- that way, anyone working for the corporation that's had war declared on it would have the opportunity to quit and get the hell out of the way! That is indispensable- you have to give people a chance to surrender or flee.
Oddly enough I could see corporations like Verisign or organisations like ICANN being closer to this sort of war than the RIAA labels. The RIAA are effectively fighting a holding action over 'territory' they think they own. ICANN has been seizing new territory and building an aristocracy, a ruling class answerable to nobody. You _can_ choose not to buy RIAA records, and there's tons of indie music out there on the net good enough that you'll never notice a loss. You can't choose not to be ruled by ICANN.
Why not? Why would IE be _entitled_ to someone's third party plugins just for existing? I see no problem with the position that if they want to play proprietary software, it should be possible to make a license for stuff they _cannot_ take advantage of, and therefore they must reverse-engineer and/or separately develop anything from scratch.
What is so wrong with that scenario? It's not like _we_ are allowed to use _IE_ code anytime we want. GPL ain't public domain in intentions. GPL is a _protected_ _area_. It makes perfect sense to exclude some. If you want to be more inclusive, use LGPL- that is what it is FOR. If it bugs you that GPLed stuff is out there teasing you but you can't have it without giving up your old ways- aw poor baby:P
Isn't that a marvellous statement of a failure to have a clue about open source development? The whole concept of a 'key killing point' is irrelevant to OSS- if something doesn't suit a task, it'll sit around until somebody needs it- especially w.r.t Free software, which has basically infinite shelf life- if you EVER need routines that were once GPLed, they will be there for you to use.
"Key killing point" is only applicable in an either/or, winner/loser code environment, namely proprietary software, where code competes for relevancy and that which loses is lost to the world. Which hardly leaves much 'successful proprietary software' to compete with the OSS ideabase...
Could still be worse. Fast forward to 'Gattaca' or some similar dystopia and the kid could be painlessly destroyed- or subjected to a course of medication to correct defectives. One where there is risk of death or permanent brain damage, but hey, if the subject is already defective what's the diff?
*g* something wrong with the program all right- forgot what less-than does in HTML O_O
Serves me right for gettin' fancy. Use your imagination for what the 'code' might have been- with the guidelines of "removing mercury costs money", "fighting customer lawsuits costs money" and "lobbying for relaxation of mercury limits in food costs money". The proper algorithm should end up as "remove all limits, and then cut costs as much as possible until the lawsuits from people you're poisoning begin to cut into the profits earned by not controlling mercury content in food".
You understate the case, Von Rex- perhaps because you're not familiar with fiduciary duty?
while (food_profits food_profits - removing_mercury)
remove_less_mercury
relax_legislation
wend
//if we get here, there is something wrong with the program
Fiduciary duty is not about _feelings_. It is impassive and rational. If a corporation can more cheaply lobby for legislation to relax any requirements (like not being allowed to have more than a certain amount of poisonous byproducts in their food products) than to remove the poison, by law it MUST lobby to be allowed to have more poisonous byproducts, and of course does so. This is not exactly through malice- it's just the way the program runs.
I think it is axiomatic that for an _individual_ it's always more beneficial to steal, cheat, and murder to get what you want. That is why we have _society_ in the first place, because the good of the whole outweighs the will of the individual, and because cooperative effort accomplishes more than 10 million rugged individualists trying to smelt copper to build PCs and house wiring by themselves, only to go 'darn it!' when there's no electricity to run through the wiring.
The trick is, for a corporation that's legally an individual which has _no_ rule but fiduciary duty but also has the capacity to alter and suggest legislation, the only possible outcome is stealing, cheating, and murder. There _are_ no other constraints on the corp, it has the capacity to amend or veto the laws that apply to it through lobbying and soft-money bribes, and it does so because unlike bipedal organisms IT DOES NOT HAVE FREE WILL.
If corporations had free will, we wouldn't have this problem, but they don't. They don't have the capacity to go 'but that would be wrong'. If it's technically illegal they're formally blocked from that course of action. If it's legal and earns more money they have to do it- and if they can lobby and _make_ things legal in order to earn more money, they are compelled to do _that_. They are like computer programs or viruses, not like people.
Maybe what we need is corporate suffrage- give 'em the right to not earn money? "Here you go- fiduciary duty no longer applies to you, now your shareholders must prove criminality to fire your board of directors- merely failing to profit isn't enough to get you in trouble anymore"? How interestingly socialist and yet weirdly libertarian or something- by what right do we legally give companies the death penalty for _failing_ to profit? If we are to give them freedom shouldn't we also be giving them security, freedom from fear? >:)
Hell, I agree completely that Clinton was corrupt. I voted for the guy the first time he ran (was a case of 'voting against') and still feel suckered.
The difference is, Bush is every bit as corrupt and possibly more shameless about it- not that Clinton has any shame either, but Clinton is corrupt like a criminal, and Bush is corrupt like a disease culture- there is nothing else to the man but corruption, where at least Clinton has lust and vanity to make him vaguely human.
I voted Nader. If he wasn't available, I would have voted Socialist. I'm sorry, _both_ the Democrats and Republicans are hopeless at this point. It's time to take stock of what humans are still left in the Senate and House, in case they can do anything- and failing that, buy guns. _Nobody_ is willing to give a damn about society anymore, and when we're stuck in a dystopia that's a weird combination of corpocracy and traditional government lossage, with the wishes of the corporations backed up by the guns of the puppet government, it's going to be a little bit perplexing figuring out where to point the Arms we theoretically still get to Bear.
I wouldn't wish times this 'interesting' on anyone- just hope I can look back on it in my old age and go 'My God, was that a mess!' rather than 'And that was how it all started'...
Bingo- the economic libertarians ought to be dancing in the streets- Harry Browne might as well have one if this is representative of who does Bush's thinking.
Thankfully, it is the conservatives who tend to oppose gun control- so once they have turned power completely over to the multinationals and the whole world is like Santiago, Chile, we may not be able to shoot the boards of the multinationals (private police security forces, don't you know) but we CAN at least shoot the conservatives:)
Which will not help, but it'll make some people feel better;)
"yet the thing that makes this possible--the DMCA--was an act of Congress."
Oh yeah, right- Congress sat around going, "Gee, what should we do now? Well, we could give ourselves another pay raise, but wait, for no reason at all let's make up some laws to allow big corporations to throw our own constituents in prison for years! That might be good."
What on earth is in your brain, that you can characterize this as an act of Congress? _Abuse_ of Congress might be a more appropriate term. "Puppet Congress" would also be suitable, though in fairness the poor saps are so buried in 700-page papers and proposals and bills that it's hardly surprising they tend not to care anymore.
I cannot comprehend the mentality that encourages corporations to do this sort of thing, and then turns around and blames the Government. You are insane if you think Congress gives a rat's ass about this sort of thing- they mostly want more money and long vacations, and sometimes to represent their constituencies. Get rid of them, get rid of Government, and you will have _nothing_ but the corporations making more and more DMCAs (how about prison sentences for possession of computer hacking tools, like, oh, decompilers?) with no intermediary at all.
I really _hate_ economic libertarians sometimes... anarchocapitalists don't deserve the name of anarchist, fascist is more the size of it..:P
Mind if I consider that a tenet of religious faith?
You see, there seems to be no _practical_ basis for such a belief. It arises only as a logical conclusion of your value system and other axioms which you have taken on faith, but which are not ubitiquous.
When you _do_ have a chip in your ass and are marked to be made into Soylent Green because you have the creeping troll plague and it's not economically viable to produce medicine for poor bastards like you, I will concede that you will go to your death waving tiny flags and cheering, 'hooray for the free market!'. However, would it be okay if those of us with a clue choose to consider you a dangerous lunatic rather than a libertarian prophet?;)
You are, however, right about Clinton, and you're correct that either Bush or the Democrats are turning the reins of global power over to, as you put it, the 'mega-corps'. Your only failing is in failing to realise that this _makes_ the mega-corps into Government.
As amusing as it would be to see the look on your face when you realise what's happened, I think it would be better to keep fighting this tooth and nail.
Quick question: what is more profitable, controlling your 'customer' completely, or letting them do things like not pay you? Thank you, drive through...
...which is to say Microsoft is demoing their stuff on hardware that is _better_ than the final product is going to be? I don't remember anyone saying XBox was going to be gigahertz athlons...
I got a $25 PIM (actually more of a $30 PIM). It had a little calculator-button keyboard, weak LCD character-based screen, and (!) green backlighting.
It _also_ had a very annoying interface for entering notes and things, text handling and flow that was horrible, and though it runs on watch batteries it manages to drain them in a couple weeks with the PIM _off_- and since the batteries are not rechargeable... oh, and did I mention it is just slightly too big to fit comfortably in even a pants pocket?
After the stupid thing ran out of batteries _again_, I left it alone. And if I _ever_ get another PIM, it's gonna be a simple B/W screen Palm, period. Something where the interface hassles are at least vaguely justified, something that'll fit nicely in a pocket, something where the batteries don't run out like that! To hell with backlighting and the whole 'play like it's a tiny laptop' scene.
What I'd really like to see is Palm figuring this out and coming up with some sort of minimal Palm Pilot that's extra tiny and extra long battery life- really pushing the limits of that, with the smallest amount of RAM people have found practicable in Palms (256, 512K? a meg?), perhaps with a underclocked CPU, say 8Mhz. Let's see something that'll go for _years_ on a battery, and fit in the change pocket of your wallet...
It's just post-bubble corporate capitalism. That's all. The natural course of events is for the companies to knife each other until they are all horribly wounded or dead, and then collapse, leaving no goods or services and a minefield of patents.
Yeah, but if you made a tiny turbine for a bike that could only go 100 mph and needed more gears, you'd have a monster high-efficiency vehicle. Turbines can be optimised to run at the single most efficient speed possible:)
The question that remains is this: given that they can forcibly transition their own artists to a 'rental music' basis, what steps do they intend to take to block others from competing with them?
I know nothing they do alters _my_ intention of putting my music out there for the widest possible distribution, preferably using P2P networks to supplement ordinary web sites.
So, in the long run, in order to be able to compete with a rent-music model, the music industry has to be able to literally suppress me and take away my ability to legally put my music out there for people to have- because there are loads of people in my position, including a lot of the skilled musicians of decades past who are out of fashion now.
In order for this 'rental' nonsense to really work, the biz has to _suppress_ other music in much the same way Microsoft has to suppress open source software to hang onto its monopoly.
I'm curious to see what they'll try to do. Besides crushing all P2P mediums and changing the consumer media format to something where you need a $200,000 license for the encryption key to produce media for the players, that is. o_O
I can document that I, as an independent musician, wished my stuff traded on Napster earlier than August 2000.
I'd been hosting on mp3.com as well, and earning money through the combination of P2P and mp3.com. On August 31, 2000 I learned mp3.com was changing their contract (yes, I have dates and references..) and I pulled my stuff off mp3.com, so for a period of time my _only_ authorized means of distribution was Napster (and other P2P).
I found other hosting, but currently my best option for full services and a good contract is Ampcast, which is now a for-pay hosting service. I can easily see a situation where there _is_ no fair hosting available except for pay, which further legitimises Napster as a free alternative.
If I came up with some tune that became the next 'Macarena', only Napster could scale to handle that degree of demand- scale to the extent that if I was trying to provide the files through centralised web hosting, it would cost thousands of dollars a month. Even music hosting services aren't immune from being overwhelmed with demand. Napster effectively is immune, because it is not centralised, and that is the only way an independent like me _could_ have a 'fad hit' like 'macarena' while retaining commercial rights to the material.
I've covered all this in the letter. If they want me to come say it or a summary of it in person, and can get me there, I will go. I consider nothing more important than helping EFF, at this point, in whatever way I can. And I'm a damned good cold-reader/speaker;)
"Do you want to make money or not?"
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Mundie Responds
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· Score: 2
This rather assumes you are in the business of selling software, doesn't it? I mean, if you're a shoe salesman, you probably don't care whether you're able to make money selling software as well. You might want software, but it'd be to run your shoe selling business, or to do net searches for shoe supply houses or something.
In that context the question becomes "Do you want to spend your money on software or get it for nothing?". And it is a similarly 'duh!' level question, but for almost everyone in the world it points the _other_ way...
Indeed. It's very similar to saying, "We cost more and deliver less- but PLEASE continue to support us anyhow in spite of cheaper alternatives, because we are the Good Guys!"
Worked great for Apple...;P
It looks pretty indisputable that Microsoft doesn't have an answer for how they're being undersold by 'cheap-n-cheerful' Linux installations. It doesn't matter much that this is not overwhelming yet- they are shrewd enough to anticipate, and what they are expecting is to be steadily marginalised by Linux dists that have dubious support, decent interoperability, pretty but klugey eyecandy... and CHEAPNESS.
He who lives by the 'good enough, and cheaper' dies by the 'good enough, and cheaper'. I really, really, REALLY don't think they will be able to reposition as a high-end expensive luxury item like MacOSX... so all that remains is for them to slooooowly whine off into the distance while trying to make everyone feel guilty for, eventually, deserting them...
Since "Sit On My Face" has been deemed illegal for broadcast by the FCC in a ruling that clearly also makes "I Bet You They Won't Play This Song On The Radio" also illegal (because it clearly implies obscene words are being _intended_), I would like to see the Pythons get together for a new 'song'...
Cleese: Good evening. Upon learning of the new FCC ruling in America that made our classic piece of musical mayhem, Sound Effects: *bleep* Cleese:...on my... Sound Effects: *bleep* Cleese:...illegal for broadcast, we of Python decided to rise stiffly to the occasion through the release of a new song. After much debate and Welsh argument, we have triumphantly settled on a musical performance of great historical importance, which we bring to you today. Cleese: And so, we are proud to present- John Cage's 4'33"- the unexpurgated version. Cleese: This famous piano piece caused a scandal when first performed, as it consists entirely of rests, with no sounds in it at all. But that's nothing to the recently unearthed unexpurgated version! Until recently, this version was deemed too naughty for public consumption- and thanks to our Yank friends, it still is, to which we at Python say: 'nuts to them!'. Cleese: For those wondering how a piano piece composed entirely of silences can be naughty- the pianist is showing. And, in an even bolder gesture of defiance to social mores, the unexpurgated version of 4'33"s score specifies that he is thinking of fondling a tit during the performance. Cleese: I see our musical artiste is ready to perform, so without further ado- John Cage's 4'33", the unexpurgated version.
Sound Effects: *a bit over thirty seconds of silence*
Sound Effects: *approaching siren, car stops, door opening and closing, whispering*
Cleese: What do you mean, copyrighted work? Wait, stop, let go of me, I can explain!
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For instance: schizophrenics track moving objects differently with their eyes. The eye makes many small overcorrections (James Gleik, 'Chaos'). Supposing other motor actions are affected- schizophrenics might use the mouse differently- in a way that can be distinguished.
An insurance company could pay for this data in order to determine who not to sell insurance to. At some future time, this information could be mined to determine what people should be culled from society- or what people are within a certain statistical deviation of schizophrenia and therefore barred from public office.
Not on the radio it's not!
The most recent FCC rulings have made metaphors for sex (or other body functions, like farting) ILLEGAL!
So you'd better pick up Led Zeppelin II if you ever want to hear 'The Lemon Song' again! (I am NOT making this up. Monty Python's "Sit On My Face" and Howard Stern talking about farting were _specifically_ cited as illegal.)
Whether indies are superior or not (and I have to wonder- is your acceptance of the majors historical or current? Major label artist development is down 15%), they still deserve a shot at a vaguely free market. I don't see what the benefit is in shutting them down completely.
Cuts both ways, friend. I would consider it a peculiar sort of moral justice if some appalled police officer or authority figure quietly arranged for this Libertarian's execution- how would that be different? The answer is easy- the police and authorities are real-world, and this guy is proposing something very wrong, something that isn't practical and doesn't exist. It's not reasonable to execute someone for being a loony. If he puts this into _practice_ he is utterly shattering the most basic rules of existing in a society- and, I think, to some extent waives protections of that society. He, evidently, wishes to be able to kill whoever he wants _while_ being protected by society.
The one situation where I can see his notion making sense in a vague way is revolution and war. Perhaps that is where things will come to a head- if people become sufficiently convinced that they are in fact being ruled by corporations through puppet governments, you might see declared war against the corporations- after a lot of Bhopals and other acts that can be pinned on a guilty but unreachable corporation. In that situation, the only thing that _would_ work is terrorism and assasination, because the thing about a corporation is it's everywhere. The only possible attack is to demolish the local arms of it, like the way people in India demolished a McDonalds upon being told that Mickey D's was putting beef flavoring in the french fries and then selling 'em to Hindus without bothering to mention the fact (and whose word, exactly, is it that they are NOT doing this? Which corporate mouthpiece do _you_ consider unequivocally truthful?).
This is a far cry from private vengeance. If there is to be war it ought to be declared- that way, anyone working for the corporation that's had war declared on it would have the opportunity to quit and get the hell out of the way! That is indispensable- you have to give people a chance to surrender or flee.
Oddly enough I could see corporations like Verisign or organisations like ICANN being closer to this sort of war than the RIAA labels. The RIAA are effectively fighting a holding action over 'territory' they think they own. ICANN has been seizing new territory and building an aristocracy, a ruling class answerable to nobody. You _can_ choose not to buy RIAA records, and there's tons of indie music out there on the net good enough that you'll never notice a loss. You can't choose not to be ruled by ICANN.
What is so wrong with that scenario? It's not like _we_ are allowed to use _IE_ code anytime we want. GPL ain't public domain in intentions. GPL is a _protected_ _area_. It makes perfect sense to exclude some. If you want to be more inclusive, use LGPL- that is what it is FOR. If it bugs you that GPLed stuff is out there teasing you but you can't have it without giving up your old ways- aw poor baby :P
Nonsense. Both are dead or dying and we have a standard desktop: Motif. Don't you read Slashdot? ;)
Isn't that a marvellous statement of a failure to have a clue about open source development? The whole concept of a 'key killing point' is irrelevant to OSS- if something doesn't suit a task, it'll sit around until somebody needs it- especially w.r.t Free software, which has basically infinite shelf life- if you EVER need routines that were once GPLed, they will be there for you to use.
"Key killing point" is only applicable in an either/or, winner/loser code environment, namely proprietary software, where code competes for relevancy and that which loses is lost to the world. Which hardly leaves much 'successful proprietary software' to compete with the OSS ideabase...
Could still be worse. Fast forward to 'Gattaca' or some similar dystopia and the kid could be painlessly destroyed- or subjected to a course of medication to correct defectives. One where there is risk of death or permanent brain damage, but hey, if the subject is already defective what's the diff?
Serves me right for gettin' fancy. Use your imagination for what the 'code' might have been- with the guidelines of "removing mercury costs money", "fighting customer lawsuits costs money" and "lobbying for relaxation of mercury limits in food costs money". The proper algorithm should end up as "remove all limits, and then cut costs as much as possible until the lawsuits from people you're poisoning begin to cut into the profits earned by not controlling mercury content in food".
Fiduciary duty is not about _feelings_. It is impassive and rational. If a corporation can more cheaply lobby for legislation to relax any requirements (like not being allowed to have more than a certain amount of poisonous byproducts in their food products) than to remove the poison, by law it MUST lobby to be allowed to have more poisonous byproducts, and of course does so. This is not exactly through malice- it's just the way the program runs.
I think it is axiomatic that for an _individual_ it's always more beneficial to steal, cheat, and murder to get what you want. That is why we have _society_ in the first place, because the good of the whole outweighs the will of the individual, and because cooperative effort accomplishes more than 10 million rugged individualists trying to smelt copper to build PCs and house wiring by themselves, only to go 'darn it!' when there's no electricity to run through the wiring.
The trick is, for a corporation that's legally an individual which has _no_ rule but fiduciary duty but also has the capacity to alter and suggest legislation, the only possible outcome is stealing, cheating, and murder. There _are_ no other constraints on the corp, it has the capacity to amend or veto the laws that apply to it through lobbying and soft-money bribes, and it does so because unlike bipedal organisms IT DOES NOT HAVE FREE WILL.
If corporations had free will, we wouldn't have this problem, but they don't. They don't have the capacity to go 'but that would be wrong'. If it's technically illegal they're formally blocked from that course of action. If it's legal and earns more money they have to do it- and if they can lobby and _make_ things legal in order to earn more money, they are compelled to do _that_. They are like computer programs or viruses, not like people.
Maybe what we need is corporate suffrage- give 'em the right to not earn money? "Here you go- fiduciary duty no longer applies to you, now your shareholders must prove criminality to fire your board of directors- merely failing to profit isn't enough to get you in trouble anymore"? How interestingly socialist and yet weirdly libertarian or something- by what right do we legally give companies the death penalty for _failing_ to profit? If we are to give them freedom shouldn't we also be giving them security, freedom from fear? >:)
The difference is, Bush is every bit as corrupt and possibly more shameless about it- not that Clinton has any shame either, but Clinton is corrupt like a criminal, and Bush is corrupt like a disease culture- there is nothing else to the man but corruption, where at least Clinton has lust and vanity to make him vaguely human.
I voted Nader. If he wasn't available, I would have voted Socialist. I'm sorry, _both_ the Democrats and Republicans are hopeless at this point. It's time to take stock of what humans are still left in the Senate and House, in case they can do anything- and failing that, buy guns. _Nobody_ is willing to give a damn about society anymore, and when we're stuck in a dystopia that's a weird combination of corpocracy and traditional government lossage, with the wishes of the corporations backed up by the guns of the puppet government, it's going to be a little bit perplexing figuring out where to point the Arms we theoretically still get to Bear.
I wouldn't wish times this 'interesting' on anyone- just hope I can look back on it in my old age and go 'My God, was that a mess!' rather than 'And that was how it all started'...
Thankfully, it is the conservatives who tend to oppose gun control- so once they have turned power completely over to the multinationals and the whole world is like Santiago, Chile, we may not be able to shoot the boards of the multinationals (private police security forces, don't you know) but we CAN at least shoot the conservatives :)
Which will not help, but it'll make some people feel better ;)
Oh yeah, right- Congress sat around going, "Gee, what should we do now? Well, we could give ourselves another pay raise, but wait, for no reason at all let's make up some laws to allow big corporations to throw our own constituents in prison for years! That might be good."
What on earth is in your brain, that you can characterize this as an act of Congress? _Abuse_ of Congress might be a more appropriate term. "Puppet Congress" would also be suitable, though in fairness the poor saps are so buried in 700-page papers and proposals and bills that it's hardly surprising they tend not to care anymore.
I cannot comprehend the mentality that encourages corporations to do this sort of thing, and then turns around and blames the Government. You are insane if you think Congress gives a rat's ass about this sort of thing- they mostly want more money and long vacations, and sometimes to represent their constituencies. Get rid of them, get rid of Government, and you will have _nothing_ but the corporations making more and more DMCAs (how about prison sentences for possession of computer hacking tools, like, oh, decompilers?) with no intermediary at all.
I really _hate_ economic libertarians sometimes... anarchocapitalists don't deserve the name of anarchist, fascist is more the size of it.. :P
You see, there seems to be no _practical_ basis for such a belief. It arises only as a logical conclusion of your value system and other axioms which you have taken on faith, but which are not ubitiquous.
When you _do_ have a chip in your ass and are marked to be made into Soylent Green because you have the creeping troll plague and it's not economically viable to produce medicine for poor bastards like you, I will concede that you will go to your death waving tiny flags and cheering, 'hooray for the free market!'. However, would it be okay if those of us with a clue choose to consider you a dangerous lunatic rather than a libertarian prophet? ;)
You are, however, right about Clinton, and you're correct that either Bush or the Democrats are turning the reins of global power over to, as you put it, the 'mega-corps'. Your only failing is in failing to realise that this _makes_ the mega-corps into Government.
As amusing as it would be to see the look on your face when you realise what's happened, I think it would be better to keep fighting this tooth and nail.
Quick question: what is more profitable, controlling your 'customer' completely, or letting them do things like not pay you? Thank you, drive through...
...which is to say Microsoft is demoing their stuff on hardware that is _better_ than the final product is going to be? I don't remember anyone saying XBox was going to be gigahertz athlons...
It _also_ had a very annoying interface for entering notes and things, text handling and flow that was horrible, and though it runs on watch batteries it manages to drain them in a couple weeks with the PIM _off_- and since the batteries are not rechargeable... oh, and did I mention it is just slightly too big to fit comfortably in even a pants pocket?
After the stupid thing ran out of batteries _again_, I left it alone. And if I _ever_ get another PIM, it's gonna be a simple B/W screen Palm, period. Something where the interface hassles are at least vaguely justified, something that'll fit nicely in a pocket, something where the batteries don't run out like that! To hell with backlighting and the whole 'play like it's a tiny laptop' scene.
What I'd really like to see is Palm figuring this out and coming up with some sort of minimal Palm Pilot that's extra tiny and extra long battery life- really pushing the limits of that, with the smallest amount of RAM people have found practicable in Palms (256, 512K? a meg?), perhaps with a underclocked CPU, say 8Mhz. Let's see something that'll go for _years_ on a battery, and fit in the change pocket of your wallet...
Note how I'm not really contradicting you here...
Yeah, but if you made a tiny turbine for a bike that could only go 100 mph and needed more gears, you'd have a monster high-efficiency vehicle. Turbines can be optimised to run at the single most efficient speed possible :)
I know nothing they do alters _my_ intention of putting my music out there for the widest possible distribution, preferably using P2P networks to supplement ordinary web sites.
So, in the long run, in order to be able to compete with a rent-music model, the music industry has to be able to literally suppress me and take away my ability to legally put my music out there for people to have- because there are loads of people in my position, including a lot of the skilled musicians of decades past who are out of fashion now.
In order for this 'rental' nonsense to really work, the biz has to _suppress_ other music in much the same way Microsoft has to suppress open source software to hang onto its monopoly.
I'm curious to see what they'll try to do. Besides crushing all P2P mediums and changing the consumer media format to something where you need a $200,000 license for the encryption key to produce media for the players, that is. o_O
I've covered all this in the letter. If they want me to come say it or a summary of it in person, and can get me there, I will go. I consider nothing more important than helping EFF, at this point, in whatever way I can. And I'm a damned good cold-reader/speaker
In that context the question becomes "Do you want to spend your money on software or get it for nothing?". And it is a similarly 'duh!' level question, but for almost everyone in the world it points the _other_ way...
Worked great for Apple... ;P
It looks pretty indisputable that Microsoft doesn't have an answer for how they're being undersold by 'cheap-n-cheerful' Linux installations. It doesn't matter much that this is not overwhelming yet- they are shrewd enough to anticipate, and what they are expecting is to be steadily marginalised by Linux dists that have dubious support, decent interoperability, pretty but klugey eyecandy... and CHEAPNESS.
He who lives by the 'good enough, and cheaper' dies by the 'good enough, and cheaper'. I really, really, REALLY don't think they will be able to reposition as a high-end expensive luxury item like MacOSX... so all that remains is for them to slooooowly whine off into the distance while trying to make everyone feel guilty for, eventually, deserting them...
So does armed robbery, but you still deserve to go to jail for it.