"If the world were "fair" every single human would have as an inalienable right free access to decent food, housing, healthcare, and security and working beyond that would be an optional choice to better their life."
Are you kidding? You actually believe that everyone should have have free food, a free place to live, free healthcare and free 'security' (whatever you mean by that - presumably stop people stealing your stuff, but if everyone has everything who'd bother)? What kind of idiotic head in the clouds (can't be bothered to think about reality) thinking is that? People need food, people need shelter, healthcare you can live without (in general, for a while). But what you need isn't what you should get for free. Charity is a choice, a different matter, but you're not talking about the many giving to the few, you're talking about nobody giving to everyone.
It's a fundamental law of physics that everything costs something. Food and housing costs energy, time, space, materials etc, but as you say, to be fair everyone gets it. It doesn't matter if you work for it or not, you get it anyway. Regardless of the cost, you don't have to exert yourself to break even with that cost.
Which is an absolutely perfect plan for total societal destruction - congratulations! Your fair world is the apocalypse, where nobody eats, nobody has shelter and everyone dies, genius! Why would anyone work if they have all the food they want, a nice place to live, free healthcare, 'security' etc. You're fundamentally turning the world upside down and destroying it.
To be a fair world everyone needs to be held responsible for their actions, you don't need free food, housing or healthcare - this is all removal of responsibility. Afterall you can do what you want all day, no matter how much it harms someone else and go home to a house, food, healthcare and security, not only can you drain the world through eating and comfort, you can actively go out and damage it! Yay!
The reality is: if you want to eat, work! if you want to live somewhere, work! if you want healthcare, work! You either grow your own food, or find some way of bartering for someone else to do it for you, you want a house, find some land and build one, or find some way of bartering for one, you either become a doctor and operate on yourself, or find some way of bartering for someone else to it for you.
If you want the world to be a fair place then give people opportunities, give them freedom and give them responsibility. If you can always work, even if the work is boring or unpleasant then everyone has the opportunity to have decent food, housing, healthcare etc. Don't give them handouts, handouts aren't at all fair.
I really dislike people who think that everyone is entitled to lots of stuff. In reality (nuts and bolts, fully understanding where everything comes from reality, not supermarkets make food idiocy) you're not entitled to anything - there's no magical law or special place in the universe that will give you this stuff, all of the stuff you're "entitled to" for free has to come from somewhere, and from someone and of course you've got no issue with that, afterall it won't be you having to provide it.
Somewhere someone has to work for all the stuff you're entitled to, so what if everyone just wants their free house, free food, free healthcare - who will provide it? How many people are necessary working full time to provide what you decree as the bare minimum - and how many of them will choose to do that job even if they don't have to. Afterall working in a sewage plant isn't going to a fun career, but necessary, sweeping the streets, again not fun but necessary, taking away garbage, necessary but not fun... There are millions of necessary jobs that need doing that people aren't going to elect to do, especially if they don't need to. You'll always get some who realise it's necessary and do it out of sheer civic mindedness but never enough, so the healthcare goes to hell, decent food becomes 'enough' food and then an
Interesting - so you're posting on a social website about the fact that you don't like social games?
Seems odd, maybe it's just me but anyone who really didn't like to interact probably wouldn't be posting on slashdot.. I mean if slashdot isn't a social site what is? Isn't 99% of the content user generated, the vast bulk of it effectively a giant chat room? As in almost 100% social?
I suspect that the issue you have with games isn't the social side, although you're decided it is, I suspect there's something else you don't like about it - maybe you don't react very fast, maybe you don't come across well when speaking to other players. I've met many people who if they're not good at something they 'hate' it, but something they're good at they like - and it's so rare to have them convert that hate to motivation, to try harder... If I'd never seen this post by you, I might believe you, but since you posted, socially, about your hate of social games I just can't believe that's the case - if you hated social interaction that much then you wouldn't be on slashdot.
But regardless of that paradox (and looking at how many items you've posted it appears to be one heck of a paradox) I don't quite understand the point of the post...
Are you suggesting that games developers spend a disproportionately large amount of time writing code to simulate a lot of NPCs to the level you desire for total immersion with the self confessed issue that price is certainly always a consideration and that you're amongst a non-interacting minority that would have to be pretty much directly advertised to? Or are you saying that your ultimate game is tetris? Or what exactly?
If you truly are as you describe (and I'm pretty sure that whilst you might think you are, the truth is likely different - most people seem to get answers before they even know what the question is) then why would any game developer really care? I mean you're not social so there's not going to be any word of mouth to boost sales of the game, you're going to play the same game a lot and find bugs that others don't see, and you're not that interested in paying a premium to get at that content.
Designing and creating a game for such a minority just isn't really a paying prospect, what I really don't understand is why you think it should be?
Why do you feel you're more evolved than the rest of us "Do they think evolution just stopped with the invention of language?" "some of us aren't hardwired the same as those monkeys you studied"? Isn't being different enough? Or does it have to be 'better' different?
I'm not meaning to have a go, or be mean (although I'm sure it'll look that way) but I always find it to be a very odd attitude people hold, regardless of how you define yourself - that your time (and therefore money) is valuable, but other peoples' time (and therefore money) isn't. You want the game, but you don't want to pay for it, you want a very specific and small niche but again aren't willing to pay for it. I don't know where people get this 'entitlement' attitude from but it seems very out of whack.
Of course the downloaded files are on a computer hard-drive, not known for their very long term survivability. Eventually they break, accidentally formatted etc.
You can take care of them, like you can LPs (and you can even use laser pickups to prevent physical wear). You can transfer to a new storage medium, but eventually, somewhere and somewhen you will lose that file, at that point, buy it again. It's just statistics, you will lose the file eventually. They may not like the way the statistics are trending, but it's been obvious for a very very long time and it's affecting everything and everyone.
Each time the item was re-purchased, from LP to Cassette to CD, to download etc the media lifetime supposedly got longer, now it's potentially very very long, they knew that when they sold it. I don't see how they can really make the argument, not to say they won't, and not to say it won't be successfull, but I don't think it should be.
Actually, the RIAA et al want you to think that it's just the media that is yours - nobody could successfully argue that you willingly bought little disc of plastic for that much. I mean, if the 'content' (which by the way, isn't divorced from the media) isn't yours then why not just buy blank disks? I mean it's makes much better economic sense, they're a fraction of the cost - of course there's no reason to buy blank disks, because what you're really buying is the exact shape of the disk, which carries information.
It's like arguing that a car crushed into a cube is still a car, the form, right down to the pits on optical surface of the disk is what you are buying. A crushed car isn't a car anymore, a melted CD isn't a CD. Copyright law says you can't reproduce that 'form' for others but when you buy a CD, you are buying the CD.
It's the same with books, you aren't just buying a block of paper, you're buying the ink in that format on the paper. Copyright Law prevents you from taking a book you bought and reproducing it for others, but nobody would accept buying a book that was blank (some artsy stuff aside).
The media companies, publishers etc want you to think that you haven't bought anything other than a shiny bit of plastic, that somehow it would be as valuable if the disk was melted into a puddle. Because you bought a license, but that's their words and wishes, not the facts of it - and were they so confident they'd simply say, upfront, they they are renting this to you.
Don't get me wrong, the size of the corporations and the relative differences in financial situations means that enforcing any of this is akin to the snowball in hell, but that doesn't mean you should necessarily parrot what they want you to think back. It's like second hand books being piracy, or 'grey imports' being piracy, what the corporation wants and says is so, isn't always the truth.
It's interesting that you say that when you buy a CD you get a license, and that the license lasts for the life of the media. But then you say later that a license only lasts as long as company who licensed it to you is around etc. So you appear to be saying that downloads and CDs are the same, and that licenses are for the life of the CD media unless they are revoked... I mean you actually expect that a court would sign an order permitting all your CDs to be taken and destroyed because the company no longer has the right to that license and so it's revoked? Seriously?
Digital media is easier to revoke, especially if it constantly phones home to let you play the media they can kill that service. But how many times have you heard that a court ordered legally downloaded MP3s deleted because a license was revoked? Do you believe that non DRM'd music without the authentication server will be removed from people's machines if amazon got out of the business (and by your standards the license was revoked)? I'm pretty sure the answer's no...
The thing that implies a 'perpetual right to content' is the purchasing of it, as any customer expects.
I agree to an extent.. I don't think it should be the only information however all of this doesn't kill a true man in the middle attack - it's actually very difficult to stop.
In the man in the middle attack you think you're signing in to your bank when you're actually signing in to a website somewhere else, and it signs in to the bank in realtime.
So it asks the attacker the password, who then asks you the password. It provides images to the attacker to verify your password etc and the attacker provides them to you..
Effectively you really can't tell you're talking to a different machine (SSL can help, but it's not perfect)..
Even things like SMS are vulnerable to this as you would enter the SMS code which the attacker would forward to your bank.. Giving them access.
Exactly, you can't determine that a password is correct unless you are attempting to login to the bank / website - and if they can code at all they should notice.
The goal, from a hackers point of view would be to be able to login without either yourself or the bank knowing and quietly transfer your cash. Spamming the site isn't a way to achieve this.
Effectively how this or a one time pad works is that the item you are trying to decode can be decoded into many many different correct answers. There's no way to know an answer is correct.
So a book could be encoded via OTP_A to be the bible, or OTP_B to be a romance novel, the one time pad defines the output and that's what you're trying to guess. The reason one time pads are 100% secure is that if they are only ever used once you cannot decode it.
Knowing that the same 'one time pad' (not one time if it solves more than one) has to correctly resolve more than one number means that you have a solution set that is defined by being able to resolve the numbers/image pairs you know reduces the solution set, eventually it becomes a set of 1 and you know it, before then it is a set of hundreds of thousands, or millions (depending on lots of factors - so hundreds of millions is just a guess but I believe it's got to be in the 10's of thousands at least).
It should be mathmatically provable how many points of information you would require to be able to deduce the key/card, and in that case it can maintain security by assuming it's monitored every single time and replacing the key before that number of points of information is reached.
Having said that, this does absolutely nothing for man in the middle attacks, and infact makes them more valuable since the login will be trusted and there's no processing requirement to slow down an attacker..
Nope, because the nature of it's quasi-one time pad means that you can generate hundreds of false positives, it's easy to get a result but the value, however, is only in the correct result.
You're trying to determine the contents of the PAD, the image is given to you for free. Once you have the PAD you can login at will.
But you can generate hundreds of PADs from an image, even from an image and the number you're looking for. It's only when there are 2 or more number/image pairs that you can start to guess. Since the same PAD has to resolve the correct numbers from the image.
The video wasn't bad.. And I agree it could be made to work, and I don't think it's as insecure as others mention, camera wouldn't work but a photo of the card would allow you to very easily work it out (it has location marks).
What most don't seem to realise is that not all of the pass key is used every time and the image fakes some chars too.
Having said that it's not a one time pad... By it's very definition you use it more than once..
The more you use it, the less valuable it is.. Which is unfortunate as it's a pretty decent low tech solution which means in general it's pretty reliable, although I didn't like the demonstration that the card was slotted on the screen and fit perfectly, as screen surrounds are always different, as are browser window locations - in reality you'd have to manually line up the card pressed against your screen - not as user friendly as mentioned.
You could process the image, but unfortunately it would merely tell you that there are a large number of card geometries that could generate the number (you would require key capture as well) each new use and number/image pair would help you deduce the configuration of the card but I suspect it's mathmatically provable how many iterations that would take - and as long as they were happy providing new cards before that time it could be secure (unless it was physically compromised of course). Of course if you didn't know that a card had been replaced then it would be much harder as you'd not know what data was linked with which card.
Hmm, I think the only way it would work effectively is if the card is replaced now and then and randomly and you have an overlap period when you send patterns that would resolve into different PINs depending on the card (and allow both pins but use the new pin to disable the old card) - and ensure the old card is destroyed.
All posts are HTML. You've got to use HTML formatting. Welcome to slashdot.:P
Nah, I was using Plain Old Text in the options, and oddly enough the newlines didn't appear in gthe preview but did in the actual submit... Not exactly WYSIWYG but it'll do.
I've been playing L4D since shortly after it came out...
I've not noticed the bugs you're talking about. Nor have any of the people I play with..
I presume you're talking about the PC version, since you mention the console as working... And yet, I play the PC version.
Not meaning to evangalise the game, the lobby can be annoying.. But to refute a few things:
Not having a mode for a map, is not a bug. You might not like it, but it's stupid to call it a bug. I admit to not worrying about the servers - I used them a few times but once they shut down midway through an expert campaign doing well I just host games with my friends myself. I've not yet had a single crash from the game.
Playing versus I must have just been lucky, having used the sponsored servers without a problem.
The worst bugs I've seen have been a couple of times our tank didn't appear in versus and sometimes when starting the level some characters levitate, the odd zombie stuck in a wall... That's pretty much it.
If you've had rubbish servers, that's a problem, but since if you host the servers yourself it's not an issue it would seem to imply that it's potentially a hardware, internet connection etc issue.. If you connect to some guys machine and he shuts it down that's the end of the server.
And finally you've barely given any examples, I mean servers dumping and freezing up, unless you control the hardware it's wrong to entirely blame the software. Sounds more like you're just trolling rather than having actual specific issues.
If your clan is having issues with matches and servers, sort out your own server, it solves the issue being reliant on random servers that might get switched off, or crash, or pause etc.
Back to the lobby, I'd much prefer a list of games, and some controls, since you can't stop anyone on your friends list joining even with local servers. And joining blind isn't my favourite option but it works well enough for a random game, other than that I mostly use invites.. The main problem with the lobby function is the 'game is already full' race condition that occurs.. It's not exactly a bug but it isn't great design.
Z.
P.S. What's with plain old text ripping out newlines in the preview (and possibly submitted comment)?
I have to agree with you on the general purpose PC being a real problem... Especially with people who use it for a number of tiny operations..
You are an idiot. All bot-net attacks worth anything at all are automated, the number of PCs thus compromised is not dependant on the hacker's endurance! Manually guided operations are practical exclusively against large-scale targets, such as banks and are very limited in number. Where does this idiotic premise, that if you harden the PCs all attacks must now be magically forced to be individually, manually guided, come from?!
An idiot? Bit harsh, allow me to quote you...
The pros use targeted attacks involving just a few precision packets and the box is theirs.
Now you may not have meant targetted attacks, you might have meant massive spamming of all IPs they can resolve with a newly found exploit, but what you said was targeted attacks. I'd hate for you to be in the military if you think nuking a single machine gun emplacement is a targeted attack.
No, they do not hide in the "crowd", unless by "crowd" you mean various relays and proxies. There is no relationship between the safety of a pro and a number of amateurs out there. His security depends solely on his ability to prevent a backtracking trace to his location from occurring.
Actually any action you perform remotely to a machine requires that the machine you're performing the action on have a mechanism to reply back. Yes you can use proxies, use a botnet to hack other machines and hide your back trail, but how much of traffic on the net is malicious? If spam counts for 95% of email, you'd also expect that malicious traffic is a huge percentage of normal traffic, making finding the smaller 'pros' easier. They do hide in the noise, if there were no other traffic they wouldn't be able to hide, but reducing the background 'noise' makes tracking them easier.
None of this is particularly difficult to understand, and yet.....
See above. Sure the pros would use whatever is available, easier the better. That has no bearing however on the fact that they are not dependent on the easy hacks, like the script-kiddies are.
Just so I'm clear here, you're advocating keeping it easy for the 'pros'? And since you also mentioned the 'thousands' of bot-nets (and I'm not arguing with the numbers) it's not worth trying to remove or make it harder for the script kiddies? Is it better to have 2000 bot nets or 500 botnets? or 100? or 50? I mean, what do you think the ratio of 'pros' to script kiddie botnets are there?
Says you. Strangely enough, just a few hours after you post this drivel, there is this [slashdot.org] on Slashdot. I will leave the exercise of removing your footwear from your mouth to... your Grandma perhaps. You sure won't do it. I expect you back full of bluster and spewing froth imminently after I hit the "Submit" button.
Mmmm froth.. Well here I go:) I had a quick look at that story, and your counter example appears to be that an anti-virus firm has increased massively the number of signatures they use to find malware... Am I missing something? Only it doesn't reference the number of PCs with malware on them, it doesn't even mean a damned thing other than they have increased massively their number of signatures.
To help you out, it could be because there are millions more machines infected with viruses and malware... Which appears to be what you were suggesting, but it doesn't really fit the facts. I mean the mere fact that an ANTI-VIRUS company has signatures for that malware means it was found, wasn't 'uber' in pretty much anyway, and is nothing to do with your 'pros'. And, as some cream on top, it doesn't mention the mechanism by which the malware got onto the machine, so it doesn't even hurt my argument since it could be 99.999% soci
This statement alone disqualifies you from this discussion. The methods you described merely stop low-grade, cookie-cutter, script-kiddie assailants. Pros use undisclosed vulnerabilities, that no one but them knows about, long before the vendors get around to plugging them (usually after some bot-net conquers millions of PCs)!
So, the apparent security professional returns:) What you appear to be saying is that it's pointless stopping 95% of attacks because of the few that will still get through? Of the billions of internet connected devices, how many machines did conficker, the 'super-botnet' infect? Oh yes, a few tens of millions apparently.. Maybe even up to 100, and that would be around say 2.5% of machines. And how did conficker spread? Autorun, social engineering and some zero-day stuff - which was more effective? Who knows, but two of those three have a relatively simple solution.
If you can stop 95% of problems you will find it much easier to deal with the other 5%..
And again, back to making Grandma into an IT professional... you are deluded.
I'm deluded? Crikey.. Actually you're the one having a problem keeping things clear. We're talking about *grandma* here, not corporations... Real 'pros' as you call them don't give a damn about grandma, and her 512k broadband and P133, they care about numbers, a bot net of 2 million is good, a bot net of 50 isn't. Using the ninja approach you fear so much isn't wholesale, it's retail.. If they analyze and attack each and every machine in their botnet, yes they will assemble it, but at what cost? Machines die, get reinstalled, upgraded etc - and that's not even those who realise and fix it. Churn in a botnet is pretty big, you have to add new machines all the time else it'll dwindle away and die - not exactly cost and time effective with the individual approach you're so fearful of.
And what is the point of bot nets again? Oh yes, money, as in the cost effectiveness of the time, effort and risk invested in creating the botnet vs its payoff. Most of the botnets that you fear that are sending spam etc are created through, simple, cheap, economy of scale easy to block low hanging fruit.
True, there is a lot of amateurs out there using kits, but all you are talking about is a method to separate them from the pros. And the pros, although they are much smaller in number, are quite capable of creating vast bot-nets and sending amounts of spam in volumes no different then a large number of constantly churning script kiddies with much smaller volume each.
It's not just a lot... It's most... The 'pros' aren't very many, and they hide in the crowd... It's harder to hide in a tiny group than a sea of script kiddies.
You know nothing about how the spammers operate. These days no (or at least very few) scammers actually create their own bot-nets. You rent them from the pros for the particular scam you are running. You are thinking early 1990s where amateurs when running the show. Exploitation of PC vulnerabilities is now a big business, where there are multiple tears of specialized criminals, and a whole fucking marketplace for different kinds of "services" and there are real-life, heavy-duty gangsters involved, not just pimply-faced 12 year-old nerds.
Sigh, even 'pros' use social engineering tactics... They have to, as I've mentioned before it's economies of scale. It's a business, not a personal vendetta, they want money... Sheesh.
These things are pointless from the point of view of professional attackers. Spoofing return IP addresses is usually employed by script kiddies who try to scan some remote system for holes. The pros use targeted attacks involving just a few precision packets and the box is theirs.
And who cares? For almost everyone on the net this will never be a problem? I mean seriously, you think there's some uber l33t hacker o
Nonsense. No amount of incentive will get Grandma to start running (and understanding the output of) packet sniffers, traffic analyzers and the like. This has nothing whatsoever to do with "locking down" computers as automated countermeasures are only very superficially effective against a very adaptable enemy.
Grandma doesn't need to do packet sniffing, traffic analysis and the like. She simply needs to alter her behaviour slightly. To maintain your machine(s) free of malware you simply need to be careful, maintain your anti-virus etc and be alert for odd changes in your machine.
Again, since you do not run frequent, in-depth manual checks on your system, you do not even know if you are not already owned by a deep seated root-kit. Everything you described is insufficient do defend, or to even detect such an attack. Also you already perform things that average user is not likely to do, even with incentives, as the whole idea of choosing where not to go on the Internet is the anathema of Internet use to them. You might as well kick 80% of people off the Internet by some legislation.
Sorry, but do you actually know how almost all things like root-kits etc are installed on a users machine? Solcial engineering.. It might be cooler to think that someone somewhere is attacking your machine directly and you can't prevent it, but mostly it's tricking someone into installing some software that is lying to you.
It is relatively rare that something is automatically installed on your machine via a zero day exploit, mostly it's down to someone click yes when they shouldn't, or a patch they should have installed a year ago.
No, it is impossible to implement, without some frighteningly radical changes in home computer usage, like for example demanding that no PC is connected to the Internet that is not continuously monitored by a security expert...
Nope, you don't need at all to demand that a security expert is required 24x7, all you need to do is stop insulating people from their own decisions.
If they don't want to protect themselves, fine, connect through an ISP that is happy to protect them from themselves (and this is possible, just expensive) if you want to take responsibility then just connect to the internet.
If I was able to give my mum a few simple rules and pointers that have managed to keep her virus and trojan free for years I don't understand anyone else having an issue.
You appear to either be totally paranoid about attacks, or a security professional drumming up additional business because (to me at least) you appear to be seriously overstating the issue.
The reason for most modern malware is money, people do this to make money, and most of them feed off the low hanging fruit of the people who do nothing to protect themselves.. If you 'raise' the barrier to entry such that most scams and trojans etc don't even get off the ground, if you fix the social engineering problem, you will kill most, if not all, of the market and no matter how good the zero-day exploit is, if you seriously restrict the bread and butter of the malware industry you'll effectively kill it other than the truely malicious.
A few changes to all ISPs would be good too, things like removing the ability to packet source spoof would be good since it's relatively trivial to ensure the sender IP is correct, and that gets rid of most of the attacks other than bot nets and makes it much easier to clean things up.
There's a myth going around africa, or at least some of the countries in africa (and having found a link it appears a lot more than just africa) that sex with a virgin will cure AIDs... As a result of this there are many many young women who have been raped by an AIDs suffered who have subsequently contracted the disease.
Does compute perfectly, just because it hasn't happened to you does not mean it hasn't happened.
Nope, soz. Computing the hash for an item varies in cost according to what you want out (and what you put in, but assume that averages out). If you want 10,000 distinct states it will be quicker than if you want 10,000,000 distinct states.
Therefore one of two things happens:
1) You have a constant hashing cost and have ~1000 collisions per entry with the 10,000,000 hash table. 2) You have additional hashing cost but have no collisions.
So a larger hash table would take longer to access than a smaller one.
You won't normally see this because the hashing algorithms don't tend to change much, and 1000 entries or 10,000 entries they tend to use the same hashing (simply because to reduce collisions you must have a much larger hashing range - plus re-hashing everything is expensive).
"It is not given, the life +70 has to do with the duration not with copyrights themselves." - Sigh, show me the point where copyright stops doing harm. If you are arguing that it is a discreet set, that at 14 years it is not harmful and at life+70 it is harmful then there must be a crossover point.
Where is that point? And you can't point it out because it does not exist.....
The problem is that you are refusing to acknowledge the fact that copyright causes harm - regardless of the duration, a 30 second copyright causes harm, a 200 year copyright causes harm, copyright causes harm no matter what.
For some reason you won't see the sum just the outcome, as far as I can tell your argument boils down to:
copyright at 14 or 7 years causes no harm, copyright at life+70 causes harm.
Whereas the sum is:
benefit of copyright - harm of copyright = value of copyright.
And at 14 or 7 years long the result of the sum may be positive - but don't blind yourself to the fact that the harm still occurs, and indeed occurs to people other than those who benefit from the copyright.
Copyright always causes harm, copyright always causes benefit. There is an optimal point where the benefit outweighs the harm, and I'd have to agree that is around the 14 / 7 years area...
"Perhaps you don't understand the differences, but there is one. Then again I suppose you don't think there's a difference between killing when your life is threatened and when it's not." - Wow, and now that's a little too far... If copyright does not cause any harm (not that the harm is outweighed by the benefit) then infinite copyright would be fine, in fact infinite copyright would be infinitely beneficial - which you agree is wrong, and thus copyright must always cause harm...
I would kill to defend myself, and despite the baseless attack, which I assume means you are outclassed I don't beat on or kill random people for no reason.
Since you appear to wish to turn this personal, so be it. Frankly you are wrong, and something of an idiot in this respect - being wrong is not bad, in fact it's the best way to learn. Being wrong may not feel good, you get embarassed, feel stupid, something nobody wishes to feel - but you fail at the point, LEARN from being wrong don't just stick your head in the sand. If you argue a position you know to be wrong continually because you are afraid of admitting the truth you only hurt yourself more, you make yourself appear more and more stupid, closeminded and frankly you never learn - you try and convince yourself and end up twisted and useless. Reality does not care about your feelings....
Once you become mature enough to accept that you're not always going to be right then you might be a worthwhile person..
"That has nothing to do with copyright, that's about legal maneuvering." - Actually it has 100% to do with copyright, without copyright there would be no legal threat. Without copyright this situation would not arise because it would be impossible to sue someone since there would be nothing actionable.
"It is not given." - Yes it is. You even admit it when you say that life+ 70 years is too long... If copyright never causes any harm then inifinte would be fine. You say it doesn't cause any harm at 14 years when in reality you mean the harm is outweighed by the benefit.
"I agree copyright cause benefits but disagree it causes harm." - once again I believe that what you've said shows you believe it causes harm, but that it is balanced against the benefit that it also brings.
"Agreed!!! In the UK copyright is life +95? That's worse than it is in the US, and I thought the US was bad." - most copyright in the UK is fixed at 50 years, admittedly there are some perpetual exceptions such as peter pan has infinite copyright assigned to St Almonds Street hospital (I think). I have heard the life+95 term banded around but that may have just been people trying for that.. Mostly in the US I believe, but not too up on exactly where...
"Actually that backs up my position, most is rubbish." - Doesn't matter, it merely proves my point. Copyright does not provide quality control, in fact a lot of the 'commercial' content creation that you argue would disappear frankly wouldn't be a loss. A lot of commercial films are really bad, a lot of books would have been better unwritten.. Yes a lot of the user stuff is rubbish, but not all...
"As for the good ones, how many of those creators hope that what they post on YouTube will lead to an employment offer? " - I can understand what you mean, and yes some of them will be for that reason (and would also be true in a world without copyright).. A lot of them aren't for the potential future money, but who really knows. Not all open source is about potential future jobs - I know people with full and high paying careers who contribute to open source for the fun of it..
This isn't something we can ever really prove, since it's not happened we can only guess and our guesses are different...
"Ah, the rub. Who gets to decide what progress is?" - Yeah, I agree. If you define starwars as progress, that's up to you. I personally don't, it doesn't heal anyone, feed anyone, do anything but allow a person to escape from their life for a while. I've never thought escapism to be progress, but that's me.
"You don't think your life would be worse if you had to work as a slave and didn't have any entertainment?" - Ok, I'm not sure where the slave came from - I would never work as a slave, I would have died long before. Secondly entertainment existed long before copyright and would exist long after copyright. Growing up as I did below the poverty line I didn't have movies and music and all this commercial entertainment, we couldn't afford it - and yet we managed to entertain ourselves. Entertainment never needed to be commercially spoonfed to you, it has always existed within you....
"In college, though my major was engineering, I was involved with dance and theatre." - My issue was with the oddness of the 'hope' you break a leg, from my experience it was always 'break a leg'. But then, I always try and read between the lines...
"I enjoyed it some, but I also tend to take things too personal." - glad you enjoy it, and sorry that it got too personal...
Ahh hardware - it is a pain in the neck a lot of the time... Have to admit I've always prefered canon hardware.. But no idea how they'd work with Macs...
"So only the rich can be artists then." - No. If that's what you believe, fine. But it simply isn't true. I don't know your background, I don't know what you've overcome to get to where you are now, but I do know what I overcame to get to where I am now, and frankly if that's what you believe I feel sorry for you. I literally cannot imagine the self defeating aspect of believing you can't achieve something.
I believe that people who want (truely want) to be artists would find a way of doing it without needing the shackle the planet. The people who can't do it are those that don't really want to do it - drive and passion are what matter.
"And who are these people, other than those who signed an NDA, Non Disclosure Agree, or a non compeat agreement? Perhaps someone who was paid by one business then took what they wrote to another?" - No, I work at a major multinational company, I have not signed a non-compete nor would it be enforceable in the UK (where I live). And yet copyright does harm me, I have to be careful about what code I see, I can't work on certain projects because of other projects I have worked on. Because it can establish liability without any evidence for a copyright infringement suit. Fundamentally my thoughts are impinged on by copyright, and if you can't see that that is an appalling violation of a person then it's tough for me to convince you.
That harm occurs is a given, that I can't make you see it is a problem, but life.
"But I can't see how a 14 year term, or 7 years today, harms anyone." - Ok, so what you're saying is that copyright of 70 years hurts people and copyright of 14 years doesn't? So copyright of 15 years would hurt people?
Copyright causes harm no matter how short or long - copyright causes benefits no matter how short or long.
Since I don't believe it would be entirely fair to remove all copyright, I would happily accept a copyright of 14 years (It's still a massively long time) but it lessens the harm. It balances it.
Unfortunately I've always been discussing the situation as it is now. Copyrights are going as far as life + 95 years... I mean seriously? Life is long enough, too long in fact, but more than the average human lifespan after your death?
"What reasons have you given? I don;t recall any." - just go back and read the comments, there are plenty in there. I know you may not or do not agree with them, but they are there.
"Without a market little would be created." - Circular again, it kinda hints that you can't see a way to create without immediate financial recompense...
Reality shows you're not entirely correct - there are billions of video-clips on the web, all created for no financial gain. Most are rubbish, true, but some are brilliant.
People create for the joy of creating, to show their friends, for the fleeting fame when ten thousand people view their video.. It's not all crass and commercial.
"Do you think George Lucas would have spend millions of dollars to make "Star Wars" without copyrights?" - I'm sorry, yes I liked starwars, and no, I agree he would not - nor would he have made his killing with the merchandise which is where he really made the money - but I don't consider starwars to be progress for the human race.
Would my life have been worse off if I had never seen Starwars... I'm sorry but the answer is no - it's entertainment and not at all life altering for most.
"Hellboy may never of been created without copyrights." - I agree 100% with this, in fact I'd go so far as to say that neither Hellboy the film, nor it's sequel would have been created without copyrights.. Again, yes I liked them, yes I own the DVDs, no I wouldn't have been at all harmed if they had never existed.
"Because of copyright those 6 billion can listen to, read, or watch something now." - somewhat western centric isn't it? The vast majority of the 6.5 billion people on this planet can't afford movies, or books, or music other than that they create themselves. I personally gain nothing from copyrigh
Sorry about the time taken to reply - I've been ill.
Righty, and to continue this fun topic:)
Not sure why there are two posts? Seems like a slight change in the second so I'll reply to that...
"I will make the argument the lack of copyright can cost lives, without copyright an artist may not be able to feed their family." - I agree with you here, that not having copyright might cause an artist to not be able to feed his or her family, and true it might cost lives in that scenario. My counter would have to be that the artist decided to be an artist, it was not forced on them - they made the choice to starve (yes changing the rules mid game would kill that argument, but in a perfect theoretical world...).
If X works in another industry that does not require copyrights to exist then lack of copyright would mean nothing. But what if that industry was actively harmed by copyright, then copyright would cause that person to not be able to feed their family.
My contention is that copyright does help some people, yes, but it harms others in order to help those people. If you agree with this (and saying that copyright harms nobody is a little hard to swallow) - Numerous IT employees are shafted in their job seeking ability due to the fact that the area they've spent years gaining experience in they can't work in, because they've seen the source code of a competitor... These people are directly harmed by copyright, they may not be able to feed their families... Sure they could work at a fast food place, but why should they have to work a different fulltime job instead of what they love doing.....
An artificial restriction in another's liberties (and that is what copyright is) is fundamentally a benefit for one and a penalty for another. You don't actually believe that copyright is victimless? Or is it that (as you say) copyright only harms "free loading copiers" - which appears to be your dismissing some obvious victims (and yes I find them to sanctamonious idiots and don't consider them victims myself..) even if you don't agree with them you have to accept that they do receive harm - anything else is not being honest.
"And I said there I didn't think patents were needed. That's it, nothing else. You had to dig out one sentence, at the end of my post, where I said anything about patents." - No offence intended but you said "Now where did I say anything about patents in my post?". I took you literally, and also since my reply was directly after that section in your post it was related to it.
The reason I assumed you were talking about patents, despite the indications that you were saying patents were pointless was that I do not believe that copyright has done anything to promote progress. I gave reasons for this, and unfortunately you've not yet provided counter arguments to how copyright promotes progress.
Thanks for looking up the quote fron the US constitution, I half remembered it but couldn't find it easily. I have to admit that I must be interpreting it in a different way to you, useful arts would be items around science and engineering, right? I mean a painting or MP3 whilst pleasant etc isn't really useful in a practical sense...
As an aside from the argument - the business sounds like a good idea, especially the providing a service to others. I too am starting businesses and as part of that I extend the tools and services I've written for myself to others - it helps recover the costs of creating the system. Seriously, good luck with it, I hope it does well.
Back to the point:)
I don't find it disgusting that an artist can make money from their art - that's slightly twisted from what I said.. I think it's disgusting that anyone (no matter what they are doing) should get a subsidy (and providing a legal mechanism to create a market where no market exists at the expense of the rest of society is a subsidy) - when everyone else does not get the subsidy...
Copyright and patents are literally a subsidy from soci
"There's a big difference between an artist and being a consumer of said art." - Not so sure I agree. For example there are people who make sculptures out of their own excrement - frankly I'd be happier supporting the TV watcher than them. You may disagree, but you have to realise that what you define as art may not encompass the whole of the reality. My argument was simply that if you think it is a good thing warp and distort reality, to provide constraints, additional costs and barriers to entry for billions of people just to support a few thousand / million then you may have your priorities a little messed up. You don't think it's ok to stab a kid so you can get a laugh, right? But copyright is just a matter of degree and scale - you could make the argument for copyright actually costing lives...
I never said people shouldn't be able to buy or sell their art, I disagreed that society should be set up to harm the many for the good of the few.
I disagree that it is beneficial to society as a whole to have copyright as it is - in fact if you look at my prior posts on this topic you'd see I (and some others) proposed a different way to do based more around reality than the current wish it were so legislation.
I never said it should be free, and do not mistake what I am saying for what I am doing. I have bought all of the films I have, all of the music, all of the games. I do not pirate (or violate copyright as it should be called). The innuendo that I pirated all my stuff wasn't exactly fair...
I do not think it should all be free, I am aware of the cost of creating. I disagree that just because you created something means you should be able to control it once you've told the world about it. That is far far too high a price to pay - and I accept that for some things lack of copyright would be harmful, current pop music would likely die and only the people who truely love their music would continue.
And as for you mentioning patents in your post, well let me quote what you said: "Yes, it does sound harsh. What sounds harsher, at least to me, is there being no or little progress. While I believe there will still be progress with no patents" - Maybe it's just me but it appears the word patent appeared in there at least.
No, as for me being an ass and assuming you support patents - well you did say that there will be little or no progress, and then mentioned patents. Since it seems pretty obvious that copyright (aside from in the computing industry) does nothing to 'promote progress' (I mean when did you last hear of a copyrighted drug, or the copyright on a new type of car brake) you could only really have been saying that no patents means no progress.
I suppose I could be generous and stretch as far as you believing that new paintings constitute progress, or a sculpture in crap or that of an animatronic zebra shagging a woman (yes all in a recent and major London gallery). But I don't agree with that, paintings have cured no diseases, not measurably improved the quality of life for anyone, not done anything but potentially provide some artificial aesthetic pleasure. Something you'd be hard pressed to get anyone to believe is 'progress'.
And yes, computer programs operate under copyright, so yes some argument could be made there. But I'd have to say Linux is my response to that. Yes I know that the GPL uses copyright, but I also am of the opinion that Linux would exist without copyright.
My argument is, and was, that copyright and patents are both unnatural and harmful. Fundamental reality is that you may only keep a secret in your head, once you tell it to others you don't have it anymore. Work around it, don't try and damage society for your benefit.
If you want to continue I'm happy to discuss (in part I agree with you, at least emotionally, I think the world would be a worse off place without art but I know it is a bad place with what we have now), but it's not really worth acting up and as you say 'making an ass of yourself' because you didn't bother to r
"At the same tyme if you read through my posts on this subject I believe a person shouldn't also have to have a full time job doing something else when they want to play or sing music, write, or be another artist."
Are you as happy to personally support someone who wishes to watch TV all day? Or someone who only wants to run naked through the streets, or... well you get the picture. It boils down to money / time / etc from you to support them..
If you are then that's fine, and I accept that's your opinion (I disagree obviously), but if you're not then it's a little hipocritical..
I believe that a healthy society should reflect reality rather than make up what it wants. People don't have the right to be supported by society just because they want to do something, be it sing, paint picutres write books, or run around hitting people. If they want to make their life around 'play or sing music, write, or be another artist' then they need to make that make money, one way or another.
I think the best way to look at it is purely in a cost effective manner. How much does society get today for effectively and artificially supporting certain parasitic members. Does the benefit outweigh the cost??
"What sounds harsher, at least to me, is there being no or little progress." - This is particularly circular in it's logic. You are presupposing that there is no advancement without patents, that patents are beneficial to advancement rather than hindering it (and of course that there was no progress before patents). There is evidence to show the opposite:
- Sweden??? (I think) moderately recently (pre-world war one maybe?) didn't have any patent protection for a number of years, and during this time their economy & inventiveness completely outshone the rest of the world - they then implemented patents and they fell into line with the rest of the countries.
Patents don't help anyone but the owner. As I recall in the American Constitution (or some such thing) the definition for patents was 'to secure to the inventor certain rights for the public disclosure of inventions'. (and no, I couldn't quickly find the reference annoyingly..). I personally have a number of patents, and I was dismayed to find out how much my clear concise idea was turned into this hideous beast that only vaguely resembled the original (used a patent attorny to draft it etc). I've searched through patent databases many many times but not once has anything valuable come from it. No designs I could use, no principles etc, all these things exist but twisted and made as broad and generic as possible so as not to provide any value at all. Patents no longer provide any value for anyone except in a 'defensive' manner.
You just try being a small inventor with a world changing invention stopping a multinational from stomping all over you. Courts can, have and will be manipulated to up the costs astronomically so only the large companies can afford it. Your only real bet is a get a big company in on your side (ie really cheap licensing) with an agreement to defend the patent.
Whilst I feel bad for your injury, and understand that you wish to protect yourself it's a little sad that you can't look beyond yourself to society as a whole and see how what might be good for you is bad for everyone else - It's exactly the same attitude of those firmly entrenched in patents and copyright, those million and billionaires with the most to lose.
I'm also a little surprised that you can get into photography and not IT.. Working in the industry myself I've seen quadraplegics, aspergers, blind people, very bad rsi etc doing fine... I would have to say it is one of the most flexible industries since input and output can be anything from tactile, visual, audible, eyelids etc.. If the brain is ok (and you typed this post so you can get that far) then you can pretty much manage it...
Yes there is a significant delta V separating us, but it's not unsurmountable. Orbital slingshots, solar sails, ion drives all of these (given enough time) will get something to the asteroid belt. Orbital mechanics in this case is a tradeoff between time and thrust/payload. It might take 10 years, but we could get something there to achieve our purpose. Then using the available solar power we could use a simple thruster that consumes part of the asteroid itself (again over a long period of time) to thrust it into near eath orbit and then a bit more work and we have the materials.
Obviously there's a problem with needing the rare minerals to make the robot or spaceship to get the rare minerals. But if there's enough left to do that and a 20 year investment makes sense (or however long it's scheduled to take) someone is likely to do it.
And yes, I mentioned the moon because I'd seen your sig:) What I would actually use to demonstrate the point is the mars exploration craft and the voyager spacecraft. Getting to mars isn't the same as getting to the asteroid belt, but it's only 1 stop away... And leaving the solar system is excessively beyond the asteroid belt.
Fundamentally there is no reason why this couldn't work, either physics or finances but the risk is high and the payoff a long way in the future so most don't even think of it... Until the payoff becomes so astronomical (because of a lot of depleted resources) that it's worth the risk.
I have to admit to being something of an optimist about this, but also since it's not impossible, just difficult (and I don't doubt it will be damned difficult) it may (actually I predict it is pretty much guaranteed barring some amazing molecular manipulation technology) happen at some point in the future.
Asteroid mining to supply earth with materials is, and always will be, a ridiculous proposal. It is simply a question of how much energy involved, and once again that is a matter of physics.
Sorry but that's not right.
There is very little energy cost to retrieving materials from asteroids.
It could take something as small as the mars lander to initiate mining from the asteroid belt.
We live at the bottom of a gravity well, getting mass into orbit costs a lot. But getting mass out of orbit doesn't cost very much. Even if we wanted to move the entire asteroid / asteroids into Earth orbit we could do it with some smartly designed robots. Especially simplistic self replicating robots (and if we couldn't manage fully self replicating robots just supply the electronics we couldn't make in situ). The cost to return is microscopic.
You could easily setup solar furnaces to melt and start separating the materials before foaming them and dropping them into the ocean, where they should float and can be recovered by ship. (Not my idea, nicked from a book).
It's an incredibly old idea that we could do today if we chose to. Economics merely dictates when we do this.
Power requirements are amply solved by the freely available solar power, either directly via photovoltaics or indirect via thermal difference engines (stirling, turbine etc). You can start small and work your way up.
Suggesting that it is a 'ridiculous proposal' is pretty stupid. If we can put a man on the moon, we can put a small robot in the asteroid belt, it's just a matter of the duration of the mission - since energy is freely available (and reaction mass once you get to an asteroid) it's just a question of how long would it take to achieve.
This new law actually does criminalise thought to a greater extent than the mere action - it has moved beyond what you have done that is harmful to what some ignorant people (and I'd have to include you in this group) assume that a person might do in the future, and not even based on foresight, precognition or any other non-existant but future predicting technology or spiritual power just based on what they want the world to be.
All you are basing your victimisation of some people on is the fact that if YOU were in this situation with the sick drives you imagine you would not be strong enough to control yourself or live within the law.
But from what you have said, there is no way to treat pathological pedophiles right? So there is no sense attempting to treat them through the criminalisation of cartoons. Computer generated cartoons from actual images are easy enough to deal with, since you figure the original has to be around at some point, and most computer processes are not as one way as people would like to believe.
So when considering criminalising hentai, manga, lots of things, let's consider the potential benefits of your actions (ABSOLUTELY NONE AS YOU ALREADY STATED - IT WON'T HELP WITH THE HOPELESS BATTLE) and the potential damage of randomly criminalising art - some of it is art, some sick, I'm not going to judge - (INCALCULABLE DAMAGE COULD OCCUR). Literally the sky is the limit as to how much harm could end up from your ignorant position.
And people mention the slippery slope argument many many times - mostly I ignore them since laws like this go against my principles anyhow, but when it's there in front of your face....
I would say it starts with the criminalisation of photo's of extreme imagry, but it didn't, many laws before this erode constantly at rights and impinge onto people's lives for no reason. Religious hate crimes - somewhat overbroad although I do wish all the religions would just shut up and act like adults. Extreme porn images (where you can be convicted for having photos of something that you can legally do - and you can be convicted for having a tame non extreme photo that happens to have come from a set of extreme photos, even if you don't have any extreme photos - something of a case for being convicted of a crime without having commited one). Now cartoons are to be banned (and yes, direct conversions from kiddie porn videos should be dealt with, but sorry no, tentacle rape by a demon - whilst not my cup of tea - isn't and shouldn't be banned).
And as for your, "my two childhood friends, victims of a pedophile? who also suicided" I have to say you're not all that convincing, and I wouldn't put it past someone to simple make those unverifiable facts to try and make their point. And should they be real people who really suffered, then I feel sorry for them, but that doesn't change my opinion, people can and do rise above their situations, but more will be lost than saved through ignorance like yours than stupid, political knee jerk reactions to a manufactured media frenzy.
And to help my point along, I dated a girl at school who'd been abused as a child, and no it's not easy and yes there are scars, and she's still alive and now happily married, and no I don't know if the pedophile was arrested etc, but considering the country she came from it's unlikely. And unlike your two friends who decided death was preferable to life she's still around - she wasn't beaten by the abuser, she beat him.
Finally, just to really vent - suicide, whilst I feel bad for the family, friends and loved ones I can only see the suicidee as an idiot. You can sugar coat it, but frankly they exceeded their mental capacity for the world and bowed out - some of them are even selfish enough to take other's with them, by say driving down the wrong side of a motorway and smashing into an oncoming car (as did a fellow office worker where I work).
It is never that bad, there are absolutely millions of examples of people who have it so much
Slashdot Mirror
What?
"If the world were "fair" every single human would have as an inalienable right free access to decent food, housing, healthcare, and security and working beyond that would be an optional choice to better their life."
Are you kidding? You actually believe that everyone should have have free food, a free place to live, free healthcare and free 'security' (whatever you mean by that - presumably stop people stealing your stuff, but if everyone has everything who'd bother)? What kind of idiotic head in the clouds (can't be bothered to think about reality) thinking is that? People need food, people need shelter, healthcare you can live without (in general, for a while). But what you need isn't what you should get for free. Charity is a choice, a different matter, but you're not talking about the many giving to the few, you're talking about nobody giving to everyone.
It's a fundamental law of physics that everything costs something. Food and housing costs energy, time, space, materials etc, but as you say, to be fair everyone gets it. It doesn't matter if you work for it or not, you get it anyway. Regardless of the cost, you don't have to exert yourself to break even with that cost.
Which is an absolutely perfect plan for total societal destruction - congratulations! Your fair world is the apocalypse, where nobody eats, nobody has shelter and everyone dies, genius! Why would anyone work if they have all the food they want, a nice place to live, free healthcare, 'security' etc. You're fundamentally turning the world upside down and destroying it.
To be a fair world everyone needs to be held responsible for their actions, you don't need free food, housing or healthcare - this is all removal of responsibility. Afterall you can do what you want all day, no matter how much it harms someone else and go home to a house, food, healthcare and security, not only can you drain the world through eating and comfort, you can actively go out and damage it! Yay!
The reality is: if you want to eat, work! if you want to live somewhere, work! if you want healthcare, work! You either grow your own food, or find some way of bartering for someone else to do it for you, you want a house, find some land and build one, or find some way of bartering for one, you either become a doctor and operate on yourself, or find some way of bartering for someone else to it for you.
If you want the world to be a fair place then give people opportunities, give them freedom and give them responsibility. If you can always work, even if the work is boring or unpleasant then everyone has the opportunity to have decent food, housing, healthcare etc. Don't give them handouts, handouts aren't at all fair.
I really dislike people who think that everyone is entitled to lots of stuff. In reality (nuts and bolts, fully understanding where everything comes from reality, not supermarkets make food idiocy) you're not entitled to anything - there's no magical law or special place in the universe that will give you this stuff, all of the stuff you're "entitled to" for free has to come from somewhere, and from someone and of course you've got no issue with that, afterall it won't be you having to provide it.
Somewhere someone has to work for all the stuff you're entitled to, so what if everyone just wants their free house, free food, free healthcare - who will provide it? How many people are necessary working full time to provide what you decree as the bare minimum - and how many of them will choose to do that job even if they don't have to. Afterall working in a sewage plant isn't going to a fun career, but necessary, sweeping the streets, again not fun but necessary, taking away garbage, necessary but not fun... There are millions of necessary jobs that need doing that people aren't going to elect to do, especially if they don't need to. You'll always get some who realise it's necessary and do it out of sheer civic mindedness but never enough, so the healthcare goes to hell, decent food becomes 'enough' food and then an
Interesting - so you're posting on a social website about the fact that you don't like social games?
Seems odd, maybe it's just me but anyone who really didn't like to interact probably wouldn't be posting on slashdot.. I mean if slashdot isn't a social site what is? Isn't 99% of the content user generated, the vast bulk of it effectively a giant chat room? As in almost 100% social?
I suspect that the issue you have with games isn't the social side, although you're decided it is, I suspect there's something else you don't like about it - maybe you don't react very fast, maybe you don't come across well when speaking to other players. I've met many people who if they're not good at something they 'hate' it, but something they're good at they like - and it's so rare to have them convert that hate to motivation, to try harder... If I'd never seen this post by you, I might believe you, but since you posted, socially, about your hate of social games I just can't believe that's the case - if you hated social interaction that much then you wouldn't be on slashdot.
But regardless of that paradox (and looking at how many items you've posted it appears to be one heck of a paradox) I don't quite understand the point of the post...
Are you suggesting that games developers spend a disproportionately large amount of time writing code to simulate a lot of NPCs to the level you desire for total immersion with the self confessed issue that price is certainly always a consideration and that you're amongst a non-interacting minority that would have to be pretty much directly advertised to? Or are you saying that your ultimate game is tetris? Or what exactly?
If you truly are as you describe (and I'm pretty sure that whilst you might think you are, the truth is likely different - most people seem to get answers before they even know what the question is) then why would any game developer really care? I mean you're not social so there's not going to be any word of mouth to boost sales of the game, you're going to play the same game a lot and find bugs that others don't see, and you're not that interested in paying a premium to get at that content.
Designing and creating a game for such a minority just isn't really a paying prospect, what I really don't understand is why you think it should be?
Why do you feel you're more evolved than the rest of us "Do they think evolution just stopped with the invention of language?" "some of us aren't hardwired the same as those monkeys you studied"? Isn't being different enough? Or does it have to be 'better' different?
I'm not meaning to have a go, or be mean (although I'm sure it'll look that way) but I always find it to be a very odd attitude people hold, regardless of how you define yourself - that your time (and therefore money) is valuable, but other peoples' time (and therefore money) isn't. You want the game, but you don't want to pay for it, you want a very specific and small niche but again aren't willing to pay for it. I don't know where people get this 'entitlement' attitude from but it seems very out of whack.
Odd.
Z.
Yeah I can understand that defence...
Of course the downloaded files are on a computer hard-drive, not known for their very long term survivability. Eventually they break, accidentally formatted etc.
You can take care of them, like you can LPs (and you can even use laser pickups to prevent physical wear). You can transfer to a new storage medium, but eventually, somewhere and somewhen you will lose that file, at that point, buy it again. It's just statistics, you will lose the file eventually. They may not like the way the statistics are trending, but it's been obvious for a very very long time and it's affecting everything and everyone.
Each time the item was re-purchased, from LP to Cassette to CD, to download etc the media lifetime supposedly got longer, now it's potentially very very long, they knew that when they sold it. I don't see how they can really make the argument, not to say they won't, and not to say it won't be successfull, but I don't think it should be.
Z.
Actually, the RIAA et al want you to think that it's just the media that is yours - nobody could successfully argue that you willingly bought little disc of plastic for that much. I mean, if the 'content' (which by the way, isn't divorced from the media) isn't yours then why not just buy blank disks? I mean it's makes much better economic sense, they're a fraction of the cost - of course there's no reason to buy blank disks, because what you're really buying is the exact shape of the disk, which carries information.
It's like arguing that a car crushed into a cube is still a car, the form, right down to the pits on optical surface of the disk is what you are buying. A crushed car isn't a car anymore, a melted CD isn't a CD. Copyright law says you can't reproduce that 'form' for others but when you buy a CD, you are buying the CD.
It's the same with books, you aren't just buying a block of paper, you're buying the ink in that format on the paper. Copyright Law prevents you from taking a book you bought and reproducing it for others, but nobody would accept buying a book that was blank (some artsy stuff aside).
The media companies, publishers etc want you to think that you haven't bought anything other than a shiny bit of plastic, that somehow it would be as valuable if the disk was melted into a puddle. Because you bought a license, but that's their words and wishes, not the facts of it - and were they so confident they'd simply say, upfront, they they are renting this to you.
Don't get me wrong, the size of the corporations and the relative differences in financial situations means that enforcing any of this is akin to the snowball in hell, but that doesn't mean you should necessarily parrot what they want you to think back. It's like second hand books being piracy, or 'grey imports' being piracy, what the corporation wants and says is so, isn't always the truth.
It's interesting that you say that when you buy a CD you get a license, and that the license lasts for the life of the media. But then you say later that a license only lasts as long as company who licensed it to you is around etc. So you appear to be saying that downloads and CDs are the same, and that licenses are for the life of the CD media unless they are revoked... I mean you actually expect that a court would sign an order permitting all your CDs to be taken and destroyed because the company no longer has the right to that license and so it's revoked? Seriously?
Digital media is easier to revoke, especially if it constantly phones home to let you play the media they can kill that service. But how many times have you heard that a court ordered legally downloaded MP3s deleted because a license was revoked? Do you believe that non DRM'd music without the authentication server will be removed from people's machines if amazon got out of the business (and by your standards the license was revoked)? I'm pretty sure the answer's no...
The thing that implies a 'perpetual right to content' is the purchasing of it, as any customer expects.
Z.
I agree to an extent.. I don't think it should be the only information however all of this doesn't kill a true man in the middle attack - it's actually very difficult to stop.
In the man in the middle attack you think you're signing in to your bank when you're actually signing in to a website somewhere else, and it signs in to the bank in realtime.
So it asks the attacker the password, who then asks you the password. It provides images to the attacker to verify your password etc and the attacker provides them to you..
Effectively you really can't tell you're talking to a different machine (SSL can help, but it's not perfect)..
Even things like SMS are vulnerable to this as you would enter the SMS code which the attacker would forward to your bank.. Giving them access.
It's a challenge indeed this security malarky :)
Z.
Exactly, you can't determine that a password is correct unless you are attempting to login to the bank / website - and if they can code at all they should notice.
The goal, from a hackers point of view would be to be able to login without either yourself or the bank knowing and quietly transfer your cash. Spamming the site isn't a way to achieve this.
Effectively how this or a one time pad works is that the item you are trying to decode can be decoded into many many different correct answers. There's no way to know an answer is correct.
So a book could be encoded via OTP_A to be the bible, or OTP_B to be a romance novel, the one time pad defines the output and that's what you're trying to guess. The reason one time pads are 100% secure is that if they are only ever used once you cannot decode it.
Knowing that the same 'one time pad' (not one time if it solves more than one) has to correctly resolve more than one number means that you have a solution set that is defined by being able to resolve the numbers/image pairs you know reduces the solution set, eventually it becomes a set of 1 and you know it, before then it is a set of hundreds of thousands, or millions (depending on lots of factors - so hundreds of millions is just a guess but I believe it's got to be in the 10's of thousands at least).
It should be mathmatically provable how many points of information you would require to be able to deduce the key/card, and in that case it can maintain security by assuming it's monitored every single time and replacing the key before that number of points of information is reached.
Having said that, this does absolutely nothing for man in the middle attacks, and infact makes them more valuable since the login will be trusted and there's no processing requirement to slow down an attacker..
Z.
Nope, because the nature of it's quasi-one time pad means that you can generate hundreds of false positives, it's easy to get a result but the value, however, is only in the correct result.
You're trying to determine the contents of the PAD, the image is given to you for free. Once you have the PAD you can login at will.
But you can generate hundreds of PADs from an image, even from an image and the number you're looking for. It's only when there are 2 or more number/image pairs that you can start to guess. Since the same PAD has to resolve the correct numbers from the image.
Z.
Not *every* poster ;)
The video wasn't bad.. And I agree it could be made to work, and I don't think it's as insecure as others mention, camera wouldn't work but a photo of the card would allow you to very easily work it out (it has location marks).
What most don't seem to realise is that not all of the pass key is used every time and the image fakes some chars too.
Having said that it's not a one time pad... By it's very definition you use it more than once..
The more you use it, the less valuable it is.. Which is unfortunate as it's a pretty decent low tech solution which means in general it's pretty reliable,
although I didn't like the demonstration that the card was slotted on the screen and fit perfectly, as screen surrounds are always different, as are browser window locations - in reality you'd have to manually line up the card pressed against your screen - not as user friendly as mentioned.
You could process the image, but unfortunately it would merely tell you that there are a large number of card geometries that could generate the number (you would require key capture as well) each new use and number/image pair would help you deduce the configuration of the card but I suspect it's mathmatically provable how many iterations that would take - and as long as they were happy providing new cards before that time it could be secure (unless it was physically compromised of course). Of course if you didn't know that a card had been replaced then it would be much harder as you'd not know what data was linked with which card.
Hmm, I think the only way it would work effectively is if the card is replaced now and then and randomly and you have an overlap period when you send patterns that would resolve into different PINs depending on the card (and allow both pins but use the new pin to disable the old card) - and ensure the old card is destroyed.
Still, it's a hassle.
Z.
All posts are HTML. You've got to use HTML formatting. Welcome to slashdot. :P
Nah, I was using Plain Old Text in the options, and oddly enough the newlines didn't appear in gthe preview but did in the actual submit... Not exactly WYSIWYG but it'll do.
Z.
I've been playing L4D since shortly after it came out...
I've not noticed the bugs you're talking about. Nor have any of the people I play with..
I presume you're talking about the PC version, since you mention the console as working... And yet, I play the PC version.
Not meaning to evangalise the game, the lobby can be annoying.. But to refute a few things:
Not having a mode for a map, is not a bug. You might not like it, but it's stupid to call it a bug.
I admit to not worrying about the servers - I used them a few times but once they shut down midway through an expert campaign doing well I just host games with my friends myself. I've not yet had a single crash from the game.
Playing versus I must have just been lucky, having used the sponsored servers without a problem.
The worst bugs I've seen have been a couple of times our tank didn't appear in versus and sometimes when starting the level some characters levitate, the odd zombie stuck in a wall... That's pretty much it.
If you've had rubbish servers, that's a problem, but since if you host the servers yourself it's not an issue it would seem to imply that it's potentially a hardware, internet connection etc issue.. If you connect to some guys machine and he shuts it down that's the end of the server.
And finally you've barely given any examples, I mean servers dumping and freezing up, unless you control the hardware it's wrong to entirely blame the software. Sounds more like you're just trolling rather than having actual specific issues.
If your clan is having issues with matches and servers, sort out your own server, it solves the issue being reliant on random servers that might get switched off, or crash, or pause etc.
Back to the lobby, I'd much prefer a list of games, and some controls, since you can't stop anyone on your friends list joining even with local servers. And joining blind isn't my favourite option but it works well enough for a random game, other than that I mostly use invites..
The main problem with the lobby function is the 'game is already full' race condition that occurs.. It's not exactly a bug but it isn't great design.
Z.
P.S. What's with plain old text ripping out newlines in the preview (and possibly submitted comment)?
Hello again :)
I have to agree with you on the general purpose PC being a real problem... Especially with people who use it for a number of tiny operations..
You are an idiot. All bot-net attacks worth anything at all are automated, the number of PCs thus compromised is not dependant on the hacker's endurance! Manually guided operations are practical exclusively against large-scale targets, such as banks and are very limited in number. Where does this idiotic premise, that if you harden the PCs all attacks must now be magically forced to be individually, manually guided, come from?!
An idiot? Bit harsh, allow me to quote you...
The pros use targeted attacks involving just a few precision packets and the box is theirs.
Now you may not have meant targetted attacks, you might have meant massive spamming of all IPs they can resolve with a newly found exploit, but what you said was targeted attacks. I'd hate for you to be in the military if you think nuking a single machine gun emplacement is a targeted attack.
No, they do not hide in the "crowd", unless by "crowd" you mean various relays and proxies. There is no relationship between the safety of a pro and a number of amateurs out there. His security depends solely on his ability to prevent a backtracking trace to his location from occurring.
Actually any action you perform remotely to a machine requires that the machine you're performing the action on have a mechanism to reply back. Yes you can use proxies, use a botnet to hack other machines and hide your back trail, but how much of traffic on the net is malicious? If spam counts for 95% of email, you'd also expect that malicious traffic is a huge percentage of normal traffic, making finding the smaller 'pros' easier. They do hide in the noise, if there were no other traffic they wouldn't be able to hide, but reducing the background 'noise' makes tracking them easier.
None of this is particularly difficult to understand, and yet.....
See above. Sure the pros would use whatever is available, easier the better. That has no bearing however on the fact that they are not dependent on the easy hacks, like the script-kiddies are.
Just so I'm clear here, you're advocating keeping it easy for the 'pros'? And since you also mentioned the 'thousands' of bot-nets (and I'm not arguing with the numbers) it's not worth trying to remove or make it harder for the script kiddies? Is it better to have 2000 bot nets or 500 botnets? or 100? or 50? I mean, what do you think the ratio of 'pros' to script kiddie botnets are there?
Says you. Strangely enough, just a few hours after you post this drivel, there is this [slashdot.org] on Slashdot. I will leave the exercise of removing your footwear from your mouth to ... your Grandma perhaps. You sure won't do it. I expect you back full of bluster and spewing froth imminently after I hit the "Submit" button.
Mmmm froth.. Well here I go :)
I had a quick look at that story, and your counter example appears to be that an anti-virus firm has increased massively the number of signatures they use to find malware... Am I missing something? Only it doesn't reference the number of PCs with malware on them, it doesn't even mean a damned thing other than they have increased massively their number of signatures.
To help you out, it could be because there are millions more machines infected with viruses and malware... Which appears to be what you were suggesting, but it doesn't really fit the facts. I mean the mere fact that an ANTI-VIRUS company has signatures for that malware means it was found, wasn't 'uber' in pretty much anyway, and is nothing to do with your 'pros'. And, as some cream on top, it doesn't mention the mechanism by which the malware got onto the machine, so it doesn't even hurt my argument since it could be 99.999% soci
This statement alone disqualifies you from this discussion. The methods you described merely stop low-grade, cookie-cutter, script-kiddie assailants. Pros use undisclosed vulnerabilities, that no one but them knows about, long before the vendors get around to plugging them (usually after some bot-net conquers millions of PCs)!
So, the apparent security professional returns :)
What you appear to be saying is that it's pointless stopping 95% of attacks because of the few that will still get through? Of the billions of internet connected devices, how many machines did conficker, the 'super-botnet' infect? Oh yes, a few tens of millions apparently.. Maybe even up to 100, and that would be around say 2.5% of machines. And how did conficker spread? Autorun, social engineering and some zero-day stuff - which was more effective? Who knows, but two of those three have a relatively simple solution.
If you can stop 95% of problems you will find it much easier to deal with the other 5%..
And again, back to making Grandma into an IT professional ... you are deluded.
I'm deluded? Crikey.. Actually you're the one having a problem keeping things clear. We're talking about *grandma* here, not corporations... Real 'pros' as you call them don't give a damn about grandma, and her 512k broadband and P133, they care about numbers, a bot net of 2 million is good, a bot net of 50 isn't. Using the ninja approach you fear so much isn't wholesale, it's retail.. If they analyze and attack each and every machine in their botnet, yes they will assemble it, but at what cost? Machines die, get reinstalled, upgraded etc - and that's not even those who realise and fix it. Churn in a botnet is pretty big, you have to add new machines all the time else it'll dwindle away and die - not exactly cost and time effective with the individual approach you're so fearful of.
And what is the point of bot nets again? Oh yes, money, as in the cost effectiveness of the time, effort and risk invested in creating the botnet vs its payoff. Most of the botnets that you fear that are sending spam etc are created through, simple, cheap, economy of scale easy to block low hanging fruit.
True, there is a lot of amateurs out there using kits, but all you are talking about is a method to separate them from the pros. And the pros, although they are much smaller in number, are quite capable of creating vast bot-nets and sending amounts of spam in volumes no different then a large number of constantly churning script kiddies with much smaller volume each.
It's not just a lot... It's most... The 'pros' aren't very many, and they hide in the crowd... It's harder to hide in a tiny group than a sea of script kiddies.
You know nothing about how the spammers operate. These days no (or at least very few) scammers actually create their own bot-nets. You rent them from the pros for the particular scam you are running. You are thinking early 1990s where amateurs when running the show. Exploitation of PC vulnerabilities is now a big business, where there are multiple tears of specialized criminals, and a whole fucking marketplace for different kinds of "services" and there are real-life, heavy-duty gangsters involved, not just pimply-faced 12 year-old nerds.
Sigh, even 'pros' use social engineering tactics... They have to, as I've mentioned before it's economies of scale. It's a business, not a personal vendetta, they want money... Sheesh.
These things are pointless from the point of view of professional attackers. Spoofing return IP addresses is usually employed by script kiddies who try to scan some remote system for holes. The pros use targeted attacks involving just a few precision packets and the box is theirs.
And who cares? For almost everyone on the net this will never be a problem? I mean seriously, you think there's some uber l33t hacker o
Nonsense. No amount of incentive will get Grandma to start running (and understanding the output of) packet sniffers, traffic analyzers and the like. This has nothing whatsoever to do with "locking down" computers as automated countermeasures are only very superficially effective against a very adaptable enemy.
Grandma doesn't need to do packet sniffing, traffic analysis and the like. She simply needs to alter her behaviour slightly. To maintain your machine(s) free of malware you simply need to be careful, maintain your anti-virus etc and be alert for odd changes in your machine.
Again, since you do not run frequent, in-depth manual checks on your system, you do not even know if you are not already owned by a deep seated root-kit. Everything you described is insufficient do defend, or to even detect such an attack. Also you already perform things that average user is not likely to do, even with incentives, as the whole idea of choosing where not to go on the Internet is the anathema of Internet use to them. You might as well kick 80% of people off the Internet by some legislation.
Sorry, but do you actually know how almost all things like root-kits etc are installed on a users machine? Solcial engineering.. It might be cooler to think that someone somewhere is attacking your machine directly and you can't prevent it, but mostly it's tricking someone into installing some software that is lying to you.
It is relatively rare that something is automatically installed on your machine via a zero day exploit, mostly it's down to someone click yes when they shouldn't, or a patch they should have installed a year ago.
No, it is impossible to implement, without some frighteningly radical changes in home computer usage, like for example demanding that no PC is connected to the Internet that is not continuously monitored by a security expert ...
Nope, you don't need at all to demand that a security expert is required 24x7, all you need to do is stop insulating people from their own decisions.
If they don't want to protect themselves, fine, connect through an ISP that is happy to protect them from themselves (and this is possible, just expensive) if you want to take responsibility then just connect to the internet.
If I was able to give my mum a few simple rules and pointers that have managed to keep her virus and trojan free for years I don't understand anyone else having an issue.
You appear to either be totally paranoid about attacks, or a security professional drumming up additional business because (to me at least) you appear to be seriously overstating the issue.
The reason for most modern malware is money, people do this to make money, and most of them feed off the low hanging fruit of the people who do nothing to protect themselves.. If you 'raise' the barrier to entry such that most scams and trojans etc don't even get off the ground, if you fix the social engineering problem, you will kill most, if not all, of the market and no matter how good the zero-day exploit is, if you seriously restrict the bread and butter of the malware industry you'll effectively kill it other than the truely malicious.
A few changes to all ISPs would be good too, things like removing the ability to packet source spoof would be good since it's relatively trivial to ensure the sender IP is correct, and that gets rid of most of the attacks other than bot nets and makes it much easier to clean things up.
Z.
There's a myth going around africa, or at least some of the countries in africa (and having found a link it appears a lot more than just africa) that sex with a virgin will cure AIDs... As a result of this there are many many young women who have been raped by an AIDs suffered who have subsequently contracted the disease.
Does compute perfectly, just because it hasn't happened to you does not mean it hasn't happened.
http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2002/april/virgin.htm
Nope, soz. Computing the hash for an item varies in cost according to what you want out (and what you put in, but assume that averages out). If you want 10,000 distinct states it will be quicker than if you want 10,000,000 distinct states.
Therefore one of two things happens:
1) You have a constant hashing cost and have ~1000 collisions per entry with the 10,000,000 hash table.
2) You have additional hashing cost but have no collisions.
So a larger hash table would take longer to access than a smaller one.
You won't normally see this because the hashing algorithms don't tend to change much, and 1000 entries or 10,000 entries they tend to use the same hashing (simply because to reduce collisions you must have a much larger hashing range - plus re-hashing everything is expensive).
"It is not given, the life +70 has to do with the duration not with copyrights themselves." - Sigh, show me the point where copyright stops doing harm. If you are arguing that it is a discreet set, that at 14 years it is not harmful and at life+70 it is harmful then there must be a crossover point.
Where is that point? And you can't point it out because it does not exist.....
The problem is that you are refusing to acknowledge the fact that copyright causes harm - regardless of the duration, a 30 second copyright causes harm, a 200 year copyright causes harm, copyright causes harm no matter what.
For some reason you won't see the sum just the outcome, as far as I can tell your argument boils down to:
copyright at 14 or 7 years causes no harm, copyright at life+70 causes harm.
Whereas the sum is:
benefit of copyright - harm of copyright = value of copyright.
And at 14 or 7 years long the result of the sum may be positive - but don't blind yourself to the fact that the harm still occurs, and indeed occurs to people other than those who benefit from the copyright.
Copyright always causes harm, copyright always causes benefit. There is an optimal point where the benefit outweighs the harm, and I'd have to agree that is around the 14 / 7 years area...
"Perhaps you don't understand the differences, but there is one. Then again I suppose you don't think there's a difference between killing when your life is threatened and when it's not." - Wow, and now that's a little too far... If copyright does not cause any harm (not that the harm is outweighed by the benefit) then infinite copyright would be fine, in fact infinite copyright would be infinitely beneficial - which you agree is wrong, and thus copyright must always cause harm...
I would kill to defend myself, and despite the baseless attack, which I assume means you are outclassed I don't beat on or kill random people for no reason.
Since you appear to wish to turn this personal, so be it. Frankly you are wrong, and something of an idiot in this respect - being wrong is not bad, in fact it's the best way to learn. Being wrong may not feel good, you get embarassed, feel stupid, something nobody wishes to feel - but you fail at the point, LEARN from being wrong don't just stick your head in the sand. If you argue a position you know to be wrong continually because you are afraid of admitting the truth you only hurt yourself more, you make yourself appear more and more stupid, closeminded and frankly you never learn - you try and convince yourself and end up twisted and useless. Reality does not care about your feelings....
Once you become mature enough to accept that you're not always going to be right then you might be a worthwhile person..
Z.
"That has nothing to do with copyright, that's about legal maneuvering." - Actually it has 100% to do with copyright, without copyright there would be no legal threat. Without copyright this situation would not arise because it would be impossible to sue someone since there would be nothing actionable.
"It is not given." - Yes it is. You even admit it when you say that life+ 70 years is too long... If copyright never causes any harm then inifinte would be fine. You say it doesn't cause any harm at 14 years when in reality you mean the harm is outweighed by the benefit.
"I agree copyright cause benefits but disagree it causes harm." - once again I believe that what you've said shows you believe it causes harm, but that it is balanced against the benefit that it also brings.
"Agreed!!! In the UK copyright is life +95? That's worse than it is in the US, and I thought the US was bad." - most copyright in the UK is fixed at 50 years, admittedly there are some perpetual exceptions such as peter pan has infinite copyright assigned to St Almonds Street hospital (I think). I have heard the life+95 term banded around but that may have just been people trying for that.. Mostly in the US I believe, but not too up on exactly where...
"Actually that backs up my position, most is rubbish." - Doesn't matter, it merely proves my point. Copyright does not provide quality control, in fact a lot of the 'commercial' content creation that you argue would disappear frankly wouldn't be a loss. A lot of commercial films are really bad, a lot of books would have been better unwritten.. Yes a lot of the user stuff is rubbish, but not all...
"As for the good ones, how many of those creators hope that what they post on YouTube will lead to an employment offer? " - I can understand what you mean, and yes some of them will be for that reason (and would also be true in a world without copyright).. A lot of them aren't for the potential future money, but who really knows. Not all open source is about potential future jobs - I know people with full and high paying careers who contribute to open source for the fun of it..
This isn't something we can ever really prove, since it's not happened we can only guess and our guesses are different...
"Ah, the rub. Who gets to decide what progress is?" - Yeah, I agree. If you define starwars as progress, that's up to you. I personally don't, it doesn't heal anyone, feed anyone, do anything but allow a person to escape from their life for a while. I've never thought escapism to be progress, but that's me.
"You don't think your life would be worse if you had to work as a slave and didn't have any entertainment?" - Ok, I'm not sure where the slave came from - I would never work as a slave, I would have died long before. Secondly entertainment existed long before copyright and would exist long after copyright. Growing up as I did below the poverty line I didn't have movies and music and all this commercial entertainment, we couldn't afford it - and yet we managed to entertain ourselves. Entertainment never needed to be commercially spoonfed to you, it has always existed within you....
"In college, though my major was engineering, I was involved with dance and theatre." - My issue was with the oddness of the 'hope' you break a leg, from my experience it was always 'break a leg'. But then, I always try and read between the lines...
"I enjoyed it some, but I also tend to take things too personal." - glad you enjoy it, and sorry that it got too personal...
Ahh hardware - it is a pain in the neck a lot of the time... Have to admit I've always prefered canon hardware.. But no idea how they'd work with Macs...
Z.
"So only the rich can be artists then." - No. If that's what you believe, fine. But it simply isn't true. I don't know your background, I don't know what you've overcome to get to where you are now, but I do know what I overcame to get to where I am now, and frankly if that's what you believe I feel sorry for you. I literally cannot imagine the self defeating aspect of believing you can't achieve something.
I believe that people who want (truely want) to be artists would find a way of doing it without needing the shackle the planet. The people who can't do it are those that don't really want to do it - drive and passion are what matter.
"And who are these people, other than those who signed an NDA, Non Disclosure Agree, or a non compeat agreement? Perhaps someone who was paid by one business then took what they wrote to another?" - No, I work at a major multinational company, I have not signed a non-compete nor would it be enforceable in the UK (where I live). And yet copyright does harm me, I have to be careful about what code I see, I can't work on certain projects because of other projects I have worked on. Because it can establish liability without any evidence for a copyright infringement suit. Fundamentally my thoughts are impinged on by copyright, and if you can't see that that is an appalling violation of a person then it's tough for me to convince you.
That harm occurs is a given, that I can't make you see it is a problem, but life.
"But I can't see how a 14 year term, or 7 years today, harms anyone." - Ok, so what you're saying is that copyright of 70 years hurts people and copyright of 14 years doesn't? So copyright of 15 years would hurt people?
Copyright causes harm no matter how short or long - copyright causes benefits no matter how short or long.
Since I don't believe it would be entirely fair to remove all copyright, I would happily accept a copyright of 14 years (It's still a massively long time) but it lessens the harm. It balances it.
Unfortunately I've always been discussing the situation as it is now. Copyrights are going as far as life + 95 years... I mean seriously? Life is long enough, too long in fact, but more than the average human lifespan after your death?
"What reasons have you given? I don;t recall any." - just go back and read the comments, there are plenty in there. I know you may not or do not agree with them, but they are there.
"Without a market little would be created." - Circular again, it kinda hints that you can't see a way to create without immediate financial recompense...
Reality shows you're not entirely correct - there are billions of video-clips on the web, all created for no financial gain. Most are rubbish, true, but some are brilliant.
People create for the joy of creating, to show their friends, for the fleeting fame when ten thousand people view their video.. It's not all crass and commercial.
"Do you think George Lucas would have spend millions of dollars to make "Star Wars" without copyrights?" - I'm sorry, yes I liked starwars, and no, I agree he would not - nor would he have made his killing with the merchandise which is where he really made the money - but I don't consider starwars to be progress for the human race.
Would my life have been worse off if I had never seen Starwars... I'm sorry but the answer is no - it's entertainment and not at all life altering for most.
"Hellboy may never of been created without copyrights." - I agree 100% with this, in fact I'd go so far as to say that neither Hellboy the film, nor it's sequel would have been created without copyrights.. Again, yes I liked them, yes I own the DVDs, no I wouldn't have been at all harmed if they had never existed.
"Because of copyright those 6 billion can listen to, read, or watch something now." - somewhat western centric isn't it? The vast majority of the 6.5 billion people on this planet can't afford movies, or books, or music other than that they create themselves. I personally gain nothing from copyrigh
Just a quick addition:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=235457&cid=19221069
I proposed / brainstormed with another use in this thread a relatively decent halfway house on copyright and patents.
I've since written it up a bit and hope to publish it a bit better than an embedded slashdot comment :)
Just FYI
Sorry about the time taken to reply - I've been ill.
Righty, and to continue this fun topic :)
Not sure why there are two posts? Seems like a slight change in the second so I'll reply to that...
"I will make the argument the lack of copyright can cost lives, without copyright an artist may not be able to feed their family." - I agree with you here, that not having copyright might cause an artist to not be able to feed his or her family, and true it might cost lives in that scenario. My counter would have to be that the artist decided to be an artist, it was not forced on them - they made the choice to starve (yes changing the rules mid game would kill that argument, but in a perfect theoretical world...).
If X works in another industry that does not require copyrights to exist then lack of copyright would mean nothing. But what if that industry was actively harmed by copyright, then copyright would cause that person to not be able to feed their family.
My contention is that copyright does help some people, yes, but it harms others in order to help those people. If you agree with this (and saying that copyright harms nobody is a little hard to swallow) - Numerous IT employees are shafted in their job seeking ability due to the fact that the area they've spent years gaining experience in they can't work in, because they've seen the source code of a competitor... These people are directly harmed by copyright, they may not be able to feed their families... Sure they could work at a fast food place, but why should they have to work a different fulltime job instead of what they love doing.....
An artificial restriction in another's liberties (and that is what copyright is) is fundamentally a benefit for one and a penalty for another. You don't actually believe that copyright is victimless? Or is it that (as you say) copyright only harms "free loading copiers" - which appears to be your dismissing some obvious victims (and yes I find them to sanctamonious idiots and don't consider them victims myself..) even if you don't agree with them you have to accept that they do receive harm - anything else is not being honest.
"And I said there I didn't think patents were needed. That's it, nothing else. You had to dig out one sentence, at the end of my post, where I said anything about patents." - No offence intended but you said "Now where did I say anything about patents in my post?". I took you literally, and also since my reply was directly after that section in your post it was related to it.
The reason I assumed you were talking about patents, despite the indications that you were saying patents were pointless was that I do not believe that copyright has done anything to promote progress. I gave reasons for this, and unfortunately you've not yet provided counter arguments to how copyright promotes progress.
Thanks for looking up the quote fron the US constitution, I half remembered it but couldn't find it easily. I have to admit that I must be interpreting it in a different way to you, useful arts would be items around science and engineering, right? I mean a painting or MP3 whilst pleasant etc isn't really useful in a practical sense...
As an aside from the argument - the business sounds like a good idea, especially the providing a service to others. I too am starting businesses and as part of that I extend the tools and services I've written for myself to others - it helps recover the costs of creating the system. Seriously, good luck with it, I hope it does well.
Back to the point :)
I don't find it disgusting that an artist can make money from their art - that's slightly twisted from what I said.. I think it's disgusting that anyone (no matter what they are doing) should get a subsidy (and providing a legal mechanism to create a market where no market exists at the expense of the rest of society is a subsidy) - when everyone else does not get the subsidy...
Copyright and patents are literally a subsidy from soci
"There's a big difference between an artist and being a consumer of said art." - Not so sure I agree. For example there are people who make sculptures out of their own excrement - frankly I'd be happier supporting the TV watcher than them. You may disagree, but you have to realise that what you define as art may not encompass the whole of the reality. My argument was simply that if you think it is a good thing warp and distort reality, to provide constraints, additional costs and barriers to entry for billions of people just to support a few thousand / million then you may have your priorities a little messed up. You don't think it's ok to stab a kid so you can get a laugh, right? But copyright is just a matter of degree and scale - you could make the argument for copyright actually costing lives...
I never said people shouldn't be able to buy or sell their art, I disagreed that society should be set up to harm the many for the good of the few.
I disagree that it is beneficial to society as a whole to have copyright as it is - in fact if you look at my prior posts on this topic you'd see I (and some others) proposed a different way to do based more around reality than the current wish it were so legislation.
I never said it should be free, and do not mistake what I am saying for what I am doing. I have bought all of the films I have, all of the music, all of the games. I do not pirate (or violate copyright as it should be called). The innuendo that I pirated all my stuff wasn't exactly fair...
I do not think it should all be free, I am aware of the cost of creating. I disagree that just because you created something means you should be able to control it once you've told the world about it. That is far far too high a price to pay - and I accept that for some things lack of copyright would be harmful, current pop music would likely die and only the people who truely love their music would continue.
And as for you mentioning patents in your post, well let me quote what you said:
"Yes, it does sound harsh. What sounds harsher, at least to me, is there being no or little progress. While I believe there will still be progress with no patents" - Maybe it's just me but it appears the word patent appeared in there at least.
No, as for me being an ass and assuming you support patents - well you did say that there will be little or no progress, and then mentioned patents. Since it seems pretty obvious that copyright (aside from in the computing industry) does nothing to 'promote progress' (I mean when did you last hear of a copyrighted drug, or the copyright on a new type of car brake) you could only really have been saying that no patents means no progress.
I suppose I could be generous and stretch as far as you believing that new paintings constitute progress, or a sculpture in crap or that of an animatronic zebra shagging a woman (yes all in a recent and major London gallery). But I don't agree with that, paintings have cured no diseases, not measurably improved the quality of life for anyone, not done anything but potentially provide some artificial aesthetic pleasure. Something you'd be hard pressed to get anyone to believe is 'progress'.
And yes, computer programs operate under copyright, so yes some argument could be made there. But I'd have to say Linux is my response to that. Yes I know that the GPL uses copyright, but I also am of the opinion that Linux would exist without copyright.
My argument is, and was, that copyright and patents are both unnatural and harmful. Fundamental reality is that you may only keep a secret in your head, once you tell it to others you don't have it anymore. Work around it, don't try and damage society for your benefit.
If you want to continue I'm happy to discuss (in part I agree with you, at least emotionally, I think the world would be a worse off place without art but I know it is a bad place with what we have now), but it's not really worth acting up and as you say 'making an ass of yourself' because you didn't bother to r
"At the same tyme if you read through my posts on this subject I believe a person shouldn't also have to have a full time job doing something else when they want to play or sing music, write, or be another artist."
Are you as happy to personally support someone who wishes to watch TV all day? Or someone who only wants to run naked through the streets, or... well you get the picture. It boils down to money / time / etc from you to support them..
If you are then that's fine, and I accept that's your opinion (I disagree obviously), but if you're not then it's a little hipocritical..
I believe that a healthy society should reflect reality rather than make up what it wants. People don't have the right to be supported by society just because they want to do something, be it sing, paint picutres write books, or run around hitting people. If they want to make their life around 'play or sing music, write, or be another artist' then they need to make that make money, one way or another.
I think the best way to look at it is purely in a cost effective manner. How much does society get today for effectively and artificially supporting certain parasitic members. Does the benefit outweigh the cost??
"What sounds harsher, at least to me, is there being no or little progress." - This is particularly circular in it's logic. You are presupposing that there is no advancement without patents, that patents are beneficial to advancement rather than hindering it (and of course that there was no progress before patents). There is evidence to show the opposite:
- Sweden??? (I think) moderately recently (pre-world war one maybe?) didn't have any patent protection for a number of years, and during this time their economy & inventiveness completely outshone the rest of the world - they then implemented patents and they fell into line with the rest of the countries.
Patents don't help anyone but the owner. As I recall in the American Constitution (or some such thing) the definition for patents was 'to secure to the inventor certain rights for the public disclosure of inventions'. (and no, I couldn't quickly find the reference annoyingly..). I personally have a number of patents, and I was dismayed to find out how much my clear concise idea was turned into this hideous beast that only vaguely resembled the original (used a patent attorny to draft it etc). I've searched through patent databases many many times but not once has anything valuable come from it. No designs I could use, no principles etc, all these things exist but twisted and made as broad and generic as possible so as not to provide any value at all. Patents no longer provide any value for anyone except in a 'defensive' manner.
You just try being a small inventor with a world changing invention stopping a multinational from stomping all over you. Courts can, have and will be manipulated to up the costs astronomically so only the large companies can afford it. Your only real bet is a get a big company in on your side (ie really cheap licensing) with an agreement to defend the patent.
Whilst I feel bad for your injury, and understand that you wish to protect yourself it's a little sad that you can't look beyond yourself to society as a whole and see how what might be good for you is bad for everyone else - It's exactly the same attitude of those firmly entrenched in patents and copyright, those million and billionaires with the most to lose.
I'm also a little surprised that you can get into photography and not IT.. Working in the industry myself I've seen quadraplegics, aspergers, blind people, very bad rsi etc doing fine... I would have to say it is one of the most flexible industries since input and output can be anything from tactile, visual, audible, eyelids etc.. If the brain is ok (and you typed this post so you can get that far) then you can pretty much manage it...
Z.
Yes there is a significant delta V separating us, but it's not unsurmountable. Orbital slingshots, solar sails, ion drives all of these (given enough time) will get something to the asteroid belt. Orbital mechanics in this case is a tradeoff between time and thrust/payload. It might take 10 years, but we could get something there to achieve our purpose. Then using the available solar power we could use a simple thruster that consumes part of the asteroid itself (again over a long period of time) to thrust it into near eath orbit and then a bit more work and we have the materials.
Obviously there's a problem with needing the rare minerals to make the robot or spaceship to get the rare minerals. But if there's enough left to do that and a 20 year investment makes sense (or however long it's scheduled to take) someone is likely to do it.
And yes, I mentioned the moon because I'd seen your sig :) What I would actually use to demonstrate the point is the mars exploration craft and the voyager spacecraft. Getting to mars isn't the same as getting to the asteroid belt, but it's only 1 stop away... And leaving the solar system is excessively beyond the asteroid belt.
Fundamentally there is no reason why this couldn't work, either physics or finances but the risk is high and the payoff a long way in the future so most don't even think of it... Until the payoff becomes so astronomical (because of a lot of depleted resources) that it's worth the risk.
I have to admit to being something of an optimist about this, but also since it's not impossible, just difficult (and I don't doubt it will be damned difficult) it may (actually I predict it is pretty much guaranteed barring some amazing molecular manipulation technology) happen at some point in the future.
Asteroid mining to supply earth with materials is, and always will be, a ridiculous proposal. It is simply a question of how much energy involved, and once again that is a matter of physics.
Sorry but that's not right.
There is very little energy cost to retrieving materials from asteroids.
It could take something as small as the mars lander to initiate mining from the asteroid belt.
We live at the bottom of a gravity well, getting mass into orbit costs a lot. But getting mass out of orbit doesn't cost very much. Even if we wanted to move the entire asteroid / asteroids into Earth orbit we could do it with some smartly designed robots. Especially simplistic self replicating robots (and if we couldn't manage fully self replicating robots just supply the electronics we couldn't make in situ). The cost to return is microscopic.
You could easily setup solar furnaces to melt and start separating the materials before foaming them and dropping them into the ocean, where they should float and can be recovered by ship. (Not my idea, nicked from a book).
It's an incredibly old idea that we could do today if we chose to. Economics merely dictates when we do this.
Power requirements are amply solved by the freely available solar power, either directly via photovoltaics or indirect via thermal difference engines (stirling, turbine etc). You can start small and work your way up.
Suggesting that it is a 'ridiculous proposal' is pretty stupid. If we can put a man on the moon, we can put a small robot in the asteroid belt, it's just a matter of the duration of the mission - since energy is freely available (and reaction mass once you get to an asteroid) it's just a question of how long would it take to achieve.
Got to disagree.
This new law actually does criminalise thought to a greater extent than the mere action - it has moved beyond what you have done that is harmful to what some ignorant people (and I'd have to include you in this group) assume that a person might do in the future, and not even based on foresight, precognition or any other non-existant but future predicting technology or spiritual power just based on what they want the world to be.
All you are basing your victimisation of some people on is the fact that if YOU were in this situation with the sick drives you imagine you would not be strong enough to control yourself or live within the law.
But from what you have said, there is no way to treat pathological pedophiles right? So there is no sense attempting to treat them through the criminalisation of cartoons. Computer generated cartoons from actual images are easy enough to deal with, since you figure the original has to be around at some point, and most computer processes are not as one way as people would like to believe.
So when considering criminalising hentai, manga, lots of things, let's consider the potential benefits of your actions (ABSOLUTELY NONE AS YOU ALREADY STATED - IT WON'T HELP WITH THE HOPELESS BATTLE) and the potential damage of randomly criminalising art - some of it is art, some sick, I'm not going to judge - (INCALCULABLE DAMAGE COULD OCCUR). Literally the sky is the limit as to how much harm could end up from your ignorant position.
And people mention the slippery slope argument many many times - mostly I ignore them since laws like this go against my principles anyhow, but when it's there in front of your face....
I would say it starts with the criminalisation of photo's of extreme imagry, but it didn't, many laws before this erode constantly at rights and impinge onto people's lives for no reason. Religious hate crimes - somewhat overbroad although I do wish all the religions would just shut up and act like adults. Extreme porn images (where you can be convicted for having photos of something that you can legally do - and you can be convicted for having a tame non extreme photo that happens to have come from a set of extreme photos, even if you don't have any extreme photos - something of a case for being convicted of a crime without having commited one). Now cartoons are to be banned (and yes, direct conversions from kiddie porn videos should be dealt with, but sorry no, tentacle rape by a demon - whilst not my cup of tea - isn't and shouldn't be banned).
And as for your, "my two childhood friends, victims of a pedophile? who also suicided" I have to say you're not all that convincing, and I wouldn't put it past someone to simple make those unverifiable facts to try and make their point. And should they be real people who really suffered, then I feel sorry for them, but that doesn't change my opinion, people can and do rise above their situations, but more will be lost than saved through ignorance like yours than stupid, political knee jerk reactions to a manufactured media frenzy.
And to help my point along, I dated a girl at school who'd been abused as a child, and no it's not easy and yes there are scars, and she's still alive and now happily married, and no I don't know if the pedophile was arrested etc, but considering the country she came from it's unlikely. And unlike your two friends who decided death was preferable to life she's still around - she wasn't beaten by the abuser, she beat him.
Finally, just to really vent - suicide, whilst I feel bad for the family, friends and loved ones I can only see the suicidee as an idiot. You can sugar coat it, but frankly they exceeded their mental capacity for the world and bowed out - some of them are even selfish enough to take other's with them, by say driving down the wrong side of a motorway and smashing into an oncoming car (as did a fellow office worker where I work).
It is never that bad, there are absolutely millions of examples of people who have it so much