Since the government wouldn't interfere, anyone would be able to practice medicine. There goes your freedom from pertinent information about such situations.
Just because the government doesn't regulate something doesn't mean you have to go in blind. The computer industry is largely unregulated but there are plenty of sources offering reviews and certifications.
Public schools, public roads, federally inspected food and drugs, career licensing (doctors, lawyers, hairdressers, etc.) are all socialistic in nature.
Yes, and none of the work very well. Private schools consistently outperform public schools while spending less money, privately owned roads cost less and are better maintained, and FDA delays in approving drugs have resulted in thousands of deaths. Capitalism isn't perfect, but it's usually better than the alternatives.
The only *real* differences between the two are that the Lombard has SCSI and the Pismo comes with Firewire and is slightly faster.
Another possibly relevant difference is that the Lombard uses an ATI Rage Pro graphics chipset while the Pismo uses the Rage Mobility, which has much better performance for 3d, games, and Mac OS X.
It looks like the proposed bill would exempt specific online music services from more odious portions of copyright law. That may be a good thing, but it does nothing to solve the fundamental problems of laws like the DMCA which allow the content industry to remove the customer's rights using technology, while criminalizing the customer's attempt to use technology to restore those rights.
Re:Random bits that are in Pi somewhere
on
Share The Pi!
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· Score: 2
You've proven that if pi is normal, than for any positive integer N the first N digits of e are in pi. But that doesn't prove that e itself is in pi, because the first N digits of e are not equal to e no matter what N is.
Do I not have a right to say what can and cannot be done with my creative works?
You do not. You have copyright on your works, which prevents me from distributing copies without your permission. But it does not prevent me from locally modifying your content for personal use, either manually or via an agent such as TopText or Junkbuster.
So, in other words, if the recording industry enters into a "mutually satisfying consensual agreement" with an encryption company that keeps you from being able to copy your music for your own personal use, you have no problem with that?
The problem is that the recording industry relies on immoral and unconstitutional laws to forcibly remove your rights. TopText isn't remotely similar; your fair use rights are not threatened by Slashdot requesting to opt out.
Slashdot is interfering with that relationship, and it's none of their business if I decide to use their page with their technology.
So take a Slashdot page, stick it on your local web server, and view it in its TopText-enhanced glory. Better yet, use a proxy to automatically do this. Unlike the recording industry, Slashdot will not sue you or have you arrested.
I commend your action; the EFF will get a cut of my rebate as well. However, I should point out that there is no "social security fund". Social security benefits are paid out of payroll taxes, and excess payroll taxes are spent on general expenditures; with the baby boomers nearing retirement this pyramid scheme is about to collapse. It is extremely important (especially for those in the average Slashdot demographic) that we move from a pay-as-you-go system to a system where you can accumulate actual assets instead of promises from the government to tax the hell out of future generations.
However it's a bit hard to think about a model to replace copyright
Try the Street Performer Protocol (http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_6/kelsey/ ). The author gets paid, the public gets what they want, no draconian copyright laws needed.
Ok, so we've established that Bush inherited a lousy economy from Clinton, but that's not relevant here. In answer to the original question, the government cannot successfully ban a protocol, but that doesn't mean that can't try. See the encryption battles of the last decade as an example. (And it's worth noting that Democrats were the major proponents of the unconstitutional encryption restrictions, while Republicans generally opposed them.)
Do you consider region coding on DVD's ethical? Do you consider keeping you from using a given media item such as a book or record being explicitly controlled by someone else ethical? I don't.
Nor do I. But it isn't Time Warner that is eliminating our fair use rights, it's the United States Congress. The MPAA can bitch all they want about evil "hackers" watching movies in ways they don't approve of, but it takes the coercive power of government to make it illegal. Unfortunately, ever we seem to have collectively decided that the government can ignore the Constitution if it has a "compelling interest", so it should come as no surprise that our rights are slowly being eroded.
Yeah, the internet isn't capitilistic. Tough. Get over it. Move on. Same with the GPL. It doesn't suprise me one bit that MS and others would call the GPL "un-American". It IS un-American insofar as it's not capitalistic.
The Internet is entirely capitalistic, which is exactly why many established corporations don't like it. Since the barriers to entry are so much lower than in meatspace, they have a lot more competition. It is not surprising at all that they would like a less open system that would stifle their competitors, but that is not "capitalism".
Same with the GPL. It doesn't suprise me one bit that MS and others would call the GPL "un-American". It IS un-American insofar as it's not capitalistic.
Sure it is. Capitalism is just the voluntary exchange of goods and services in a free market (not to be confused with corporatism, which occurs when those with political power forcibly restrict certain goods and services and rig the marketplace, see RIAA). The GPL is a voluntary agreement, and is in no way inconsistent with capitalism.
Re:Good News, the only problem is...
on
Adobe Backs Down
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· Score: 2
The 2600 and Felten cases are still progressing. Felten is probably the best shot because he can't be vilified as an evil "hacker" (yeah, I know), as 2600 and Dmitri have been.
What will ammount to a few hundred dollars to me (and everyone else) could have been put to better use in education.
Look at how much money the federal government has poured into education in the last few decades, and then look at the declining average SAT scores or any other metric of student performance. In education, overbearing government bureaucracy is far more of a problem than lack of funds.
Unless you plan to "save" the money by sticking under your mattress, it will eventually be used to buy stuff. If you deposit the money in your bank, they will lend it out or invest it, and it will ultimately end up stimulating the economy. If you really believe that the tax cut is a bad idea, your only course of action is to return your refund to the government. Saving it or donating it to charity only goes to show that you believe you can use it better than the government can.
I fully support capitalism and have no animosity toward corporations or the rich. I also recognize that what the music companies are doing has very little to do with stopping piracy and everything to do with destroying fair use rights. If they wanted to be honest, they should have consumers sign a contract every time they buy a CD stating that they give up their rights to space-shift or make backups. Of course they won't do that because the last thing they want is for consumers to be aware of how they are being screwed.
Better forms of energy would be bad for the economy. It has to go towards something almost totaly useless that doesn't displace something that is already producing revenue.
By this reasoning development of the telephone, light bulb, and computer should have harmed the economy. You're using the broken window fallacy, which says that deliberately breaking a window is good for the economy, because then somebody gets paid to fix it. The error is that the window not been broken, the money used to fix it would have been spent on something more productive. Likewise, if we develop cheaper energy, maybe it will hurt Enron's profits for awhile, but all the money that consumers save would be spent more productively and would benefit the overall economy.
You're right, we need to support liberal defenders of free expression and opponents of censorship like James Exon, Joe Lieberman, Tipper Gore, and Hillary Clinton.
There are just as many would-be censors on the left as on the right. The right-wing extremists want to ban "obscenity" and "pornography", the left-wing extremists want to ban "hate speech" and "intolerance" (and now "violence"). Their motives are different, but both groups agree that they know better than you what you should be allowed to see, and both should be opposed.
Re:Oh crap -- data with priority flags
on
Internet2 Update
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· Score: 2
If I were a spammer, I wouldn't care whether the million emails I just sent took 3 seconds or 3 hours to reach their destinations, as long as they did. I certainly wouldn't want to pay for increased priority, given the only reason spammers can make money is that their costs are nearly zero.
Free Market Capitalism cannot co-exist with Democratic and Free people
Freedom can only exist with capitalism. Capitalism is simply free people voluntarily exchanging goods and services. If you forbid such transactions, you have substantially reduced freedom. Abuses such as the DMCA are not failures of capitalism, they are failures of government. Corporations can whine all they want about hackers or libraries daring to exercise their fair use rights, but it takes Congress and the President to enforce their will.
Check out the Lyttle Lytton Contest, where the objective is to produce the worst beginning sentence using a maximum of 25 words. The entries can't use long streams of overblown descriptions and metaphors, so they're terrible in new and creative ways.
You don't have to fill out any of that stuff. Press Command-Q on the form where it asks you all those questions and you can exit out of it and still continue with the installation. (Of course, lying is also a reasonable choice). Yes, it's annoying and there should be an easier way to bypass it, but Apple is not using this information to try to take control of your computer like MS is. To put this in perspective, which company has deliberately crippled MP3 encoding in their products, and which company uses "Rip, Mix, Burn" as a slogan?
Sites just might start resorting to putting 'I Agree'/'I Disagree' links on their index pages (shudder!) as the only legal way to get their audience to agree with their terms of use.
That might actually be a good thing. If a company wants to screw you, then they can at least be honest about it. Likewise, if a software manufacturer wants to make an abusive EULA binding, then they should require you to sign a contract to that effect before you buy. Making consumers realize how preposterous the terms of these "contracts" are might be a good way of getting them eliminated.
Re:Sick of hearing about "such a great design"
on
Apple Dumps the Cube
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· Score: 1
consumer-centered (read:fucking pathetic and offensive) priorities... the ones who are destorying the environment based on branding and appearance and not utility
While I disagree with this outlook (and insulting people who don't share your stoic preferences is counterproductive), I find it amusing that a poster at maccentral.com used almost the same argument to defend the cube.
That might be true if posted speed limits had any relationship to the maximum safe speed, but they don't. See here, for example. The purpose of speed limits is primarily to raise revenue and probably also to give the police an excuse to pull over anyone at any time (remember, always driving under the speed limit is "suspicious behavior").
I'm going to need a specific source before I'll buy that. If everyone else is driving at 60 mph, you're telling me I'm safer if I'm going at 30 than at 50? I can believe that you might be safer if you're driving slightly slower than the average speed, but driving substantially slower has to be more dangerous; if not for you, than for the other people trying to dodge you.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because the government doesn't regulate something doesn't mean you have to go in blind. The computer industry is largely unregulated but there are plenty of sources offering reviews and certifications.
Public schools, public roads, federally inspected food and drugs, career licensing (doctors, lawyers, hairdressers, etc.) are all socialistic in nature.
Yes, and none of the work very well. Private schools consistently outperform public schools while spending less money, privately owned roads cost less and are better maintained, and FDA delays in approving drugs have resulted in thousands of deaths. Capitalism isn't perfect, but it's usually better than the alternatives.
Another possibly relevant difference is that the Lombard uses an ATI Rage Pro graphics chipset while the Pismo uses the Rage Mobility, which has much better performance for 3d, games, and Mac OS X.
It looks like the proposed bill would exempt specific online music services from more odious portions of copyright law. That may be a good thing, but it does nothing to solve the fundamental problems of laws like the DMCA which allow the content industry to remove the customer's rights using technology, while criminalizing the customer's attempt to use technology to restore those rights.
You've proven that if pi is normal, than for any positive integer N the first N digits of e are in pi. But that doesn't prove that e itself is in pi, because the first N digits of e are not equal to e no matter what N is.
You do not. You have copyright on your works, which prevents me from distributing copies without your permission. But it does not prevent me from locally modifying your content for personal use, either manually or via an agent such as TopText or Junkbuster.
The problem is that the recording industry relies on immoral and unconstitutional laws to forcibly remove your rights. TopText isn't remotely similar; your fair use rights are not threatened by Slashdot requesting to opt out.
Slashdot is interfering with that relationship, and it's none of their business if I decide to use their page with their technology.
So take a Slashdot page, stick it on your local web server, and view it in its TopText-enhanced glory. Better yet, use a proxy to automatically do this. Unlike the recording industry, Slashdot will not sue you or have you arrested.
I commend your action; the EFF will get a cut of my rebate as well. However, I should point out that there is no "social security fund". Social security benefits are paid out of payroll taxes, and excess payroll taxes are spent on general expenditures; with the baby boomers nearing retirement this pyramid scheme is about to collapse. It is extremely important (especially for those in the average Slashdot demographic) that we move from a pay-as-you-go system to a system where you can accumulate actual assets instead of promises from the government to tax the hell out of future generations.
Try the Street Performer Protocol (http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_6/kelsey/ ). The author gets paid, the public gets what they want, no draconian copyright laws needed.
Ok, so we've established that Bush inherited a lousy economy from Clinton, but that's not relevant here. In answer to the original question, the government cannot successfully ban a protocol, but that doesn't mean that can't try. See the encryption battles of the last decade as an example. (And it's worth noting that Democrats were the major proponents of the unconstitutional encryption restrictions, while Republicans generally opposed them.)
Nor do I. But it isn't Time Warner that is eliminating our fair use rights, it's the United States Congress. The MPAA can bitch all they want about evil "hackers" watching movies in ways they don't approve of, but it takes the coercive power of government to make it illegal. Unfortunately, ever we seem to have collectively decided that the government can ignore the Constitution if it has a "compelling interest", so it should come as no surprise that our rights are slowly being eroded.
The Internet is entirely capitalistic, which is exactly why many established corporations don't like it. Since the barriers to entry are so much lower than in meatspace, they have a lot more competition. It is not surprising at all that they would like a less open system that would stifle their competitors, but that is not "capitalism".
Same with the GPL. It doesn't suprise me one bit that MS and others would call the GPL "un-American". It IS un-American insofar as it's not capitalistic.
Sure it is. Capitalism is just the voluntary exchange of goods and services in a free market (not to be confused with corporatism, which occurs when those with political power forcibly restrict certain goods and services and rig the marketplace, see RIAA). The GPL is a voluntary agreement, and is in no way inconsistent with capitalism.
The 2600 and Felten cases are still progressing. Felten is probably the best shot because he can't be vilified as an evil "hacker" (yeah, I know), as 2600 and Dmitri have been.
Look at how much money the federal government has poured into education in the last few decades, and then look at the declining average SAT scores or any other metric of student performance. In education, overbearing government bureaucracy is far more of a problem than lack of funds.
Unless you plan to "save" the money by sticking under your mattress, it will eventually be used to buy stuff. If you deposit the money in your bank, they will lend it out or invest it, and it will ultimately end up stimulating the economy. If you really believe that the tax cut is a bad idea, your only course of action is to return your refund to the government. Saving it or donating it to charity only goes to show that you believe you can use it better than the government can.
I fully support capitalism and have no animosity toward corporations or the rich. I also recognize that what the music companies are doing has very little to do with stopping piracy and everything to do with destroying fair use rights. If they wanted to be honest, they should have consumers sign a contract every time they buy a CD stating that they give up their rights to space-shift or make backups. Of course they won't do that because the last thing they want is for consumers to be aware of how they are being screwed.
By this reasoning development of the telephone, light bulb, and computer should have harmed the economy. You're using the broken window fallacy, which says that deliberately breaking a window is good for the economy, because then somebody gets paid to fix it. The error is that the window not been broken, the money used to fix it would have been spent on something more productive. Likewise, if we develop cheaper energy, maybe it will hurt Enron's profits for awhile, but all the money that consumers save would be spent more productively and would benefit the overall economy.
There are just as many would-be censors on the left as on the right. The right-wing extremists want to ban "obscenity" and "pornography", the left-wing extremists want to ban "hate speech" and "intolerance" (and now "violence"). Their motives are different, but both groups agree that they know better than you what you should be allowed to see, and both should be opposed.
If I were a spammer, I wouldn't care whether the million emails I just sent took 3 seconds or 3 hours to reach their destinations, as long as they did. I certainly wouldn't want to pay for increased priority, given the only reason spammers can make money is that their costs are nearly zero.
Freedom can only exist with capitalism. Capitalism is simply free people voluntarily exchanging goods and services. If you forbid such transactions, you have substantially reduced freedom. Abuses such as the DMCA are not failures of capitalism, they are failures of government. Corporations can whine all they want about hackers or libraries daring to exercise their fair use rights, but it takes Congress and the President to enforce their will.
As usual, the Street Performer Protocol would solve this problem without oppressive copyright laws.
Check out the Lyttle Lytton Contest, where the objective is to produce the worst beginning sentence using a maximum of 25 words. The entries can't use long streams of overblown descriptions and metaphors, so they're terrible in new and creative ways.
You don't have to fill out any of that stuff. Press Command-Q on the form where it asks you all those questions and you can exit out of it and still continue with the installation. (Of course, lying is also a reasonable choice). Yes, it's annoying and there should be an easier way to bypass it, but Apple is not using this information to try to take control of your computer like MS is. To put this in perspective, which company has deliberately crippled MP3 encoding in their products, and which company uses "Rip, Mix, Burn" as a slogan?
That might actually be a good thing. If a company wants to screw you, then they can at least be honest about it. Likewise, if a software manufacturer wants to make an abusive EULA binding, then they should require you to sign a contract to that effect before you buy. Making consumers realize how preposterous the terms of these "contracts" are might be a good way of getting them eliminated.
While I disagree with this outlook (and insulting people who don't share your stoic preferences is counterproductive), I find it amusing that a poster at maccentral.com used almost the same argument to defend the cube.
That might be true if posted speed limits had any relationship to the maximum safe speed, but they don't. See here, for example. The purpose of speed limits is primarily to raise revenue and probably also to give the police an excuse to pull over anyone at any time (remember, always driving under the speed limit is "suspicious behavior").
I'm going to need a specific source before I'll buy that. If everyone else is driving at 60 mph, you're telling me I'm safer if I'm going at 30 than at 50? I can believe that you might be safer if you're driving slightly slower than the average speed, but driving substantially slower has to be more dangerous; if not for you, than for the other people trying to dodge you.