Let me tell you that having a third option is really not such a good idea. Where I live (Costa Rica) we used to have two dominant parties (PLN and PUSC). On the last elections the PLN won by a small margin, a new party was a very close second, another new party (Libertarian) was a more distant third. The other traditional party ended VERY badly. But it cpuld be worse because of it. We have a very varied legislature thats paralyzed, a president making promises and trying to increase taxes. I'm not saying that having a third option is bad, I'm just saying that it's no magic pill. In fact I think the best option is to give more focus to local government (and I mean VERY local, my country is smaller than most states). And get people involved on the issues that are close to them.
This new page is just comming online. You can check if your info was stolen. You just need to type your full name, SSN, birthdate, and address. It's really useful. US Goverment Identity Theft Agency Homepage
I don't think you can keep the goverment in check just by using guns. It worked with the American Revolution. But technology is much more advanced now. Even if you could stock pile AK-47 bought from WalMart, you wouldn't have chance against the goverment. But bombs, that's where the answer is. Look at Irak, the insurgents are fighting it out with IEDs, not with guns. Well, some insurgents DO use guns, it has more glamour than IEDs, but those are the ones that don't make it back after the first fire fight. The ones that plant IEDs tend to have longer lifespans.
Re:That's true, but...
on
DRM and Democracy
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Sure there are lots and lots blogs and other political discussion going on. You and I and a lot of people are doing it in this particular story. But that's a small minority, and sadly it shows on election day.
the issue is that most people (in the US at least) don't care about democracy. They use the Internet to search for thinds that require little actual thinking. Right now top searches for Google are: the omen, french open, and father's day. The issue is that people just don't care. People don't care that their liberties are taken away as long as the can watch the game on tv and look for porn on the net.
You right, that's very relative. For example, "an international organization lead by a military power to protect Europe from Communism"... would it be NATO ?? No, I'm talking about the time frame before 1945. So that description will best fit... the Waffen-SS. That's right, a "criminal organization" uniting countries against the advance of communism. Of course at that time the Communists were fighting for freedom. The day after V-E, they were fighting against it. Incredible how a whole country can change from "good" to "evil" overnight...
One of the jobs of the CIA is basically peacetime war activities. As simple like that. Trying to stop a war. Trying to start a war. It really all depends on the time of day.
Original bits are scarce. The problem is there is no good economic method yet to reconcile high costs to create with low cost to reproduce.
That cost is now cheaper than ever. The thing is that it's now possible to create a professional sounding CD very cheap. Equipment is cheap, the software is cheap. This is specially true for electronic music. The companies behind the RIAA held the funds to enable artists to create music which otherwise they couldn't. Now they can. What's left? Control of the distribution channels. And they're fighting to their last breath to keep them. Artist make little money from CDs (unless it's a huge seller). They make much more on tours and with merchandise. There's a way to pay back to the artist. Look at iTunes. Why does the RIAA want different prices? To keep the control of the distribution channel, and therefore keep control of the artist.
the government elected by the people
We can narrow it down even more to the US Government. The US has pushed for more and more global copyright. And for longer and longer terms. And for less and less importance to public domain.
a reflection of an apathetic voting populace who only cares about which politician is on TV most (if they even vote at all).
That's a different problem. I did vote on my last chance (not in the US, but my in Costa Rica). I voted for the Libertarian Party. We lost the the presidential race ending up third but got 6 senators elected (out of a total of 47). The US democracy has huge problems, but that's another topic.
I don't agree that copyright is completely bad for society
Neither do I. It's a noble idea. Just like Marxism. But taken to extremes it gets to what we have now. Do any DRM system revert to unDRM once copyright exprires and the work goes into public domain ? No. Are any courts interested in hearing about it? No, since it'll probably get extended to "forever less one day" as Jack Valenti wants.
artificially raises the number of suppliers
That's good, but the RIAA group still controls airways, retail distribution channels, and they want to control Internet distribution channels as well. To put up a larger barrier of entry, to keep new players out. They were just trying to regulate podcasts. So I'm not sure that the number of suppliers is going up as fast as it could/should.
Talent on the other hand IS scarse, but that's hardly the issue here.
What I mean here is that there are fewer people that can create "original" bits compared to those that can duplicate existing ones. I don't mean that RIAA protected music sucks. I'm willing to pay for music, in the past month I've bought to CDs. One I had already downloaded, but I went and bought it any way ("Clone your lover" by Zeromancer) The other one was the new Tool CD, basically the only band that I blindly buy CDs from nowadays.
The issue is NOT "theft" or not. It's economics. In economics, things have value because they are scarse. Bits are not scarse. So the RIAA puts special limitations to make it scarse. This artificially raises the prices, and as anyone who has taken a basic economics course, is not efficient. ANY artificial restriction to a market makes it less efficient than free trade. So yes, copyright is an anti free trade aberration. Talent on the other hand IS scarse, but that's hardly the issue here.
Well, I remember seeing four of my friends (nicknamed the Teletubbies by the way) playing pokemon in an emulator that allowed up to four instances of GB games. All four at the same time. All eight hands on a single keyboard. I think I understand what that article is about.
That might be a bigger problem than you think. For MS only really big business are worth the effort, and it's hard to find those business. Look at the XBox and the ammount of money they are pouring into it.
Crashes in NetWare? I've seen two or three of those, and completely related to hardware. I'm just comming off the phone with someone that wants me to do some NetWare (6.5) consulting, and tells me that they have been without a NetWare support person for years, because it's zero maintenance. Sure, it's a dying platform, but not because of lack of stability.
And they'll ditch the Java language and only support PHP in the JVM of Java 6. Of course, since MS follows closely the development of Java to chart their own roadmap, will revert to basic BASIC (the one with out "objects" from the MS-DOS days) as the only language of.Net for version 3 just to stay one step ahead of Sun. Meanwhile the rest of OSS languages will converge to a single language running on Parrot. Eventually (about 10 years down the road), OSS historians will realize that they have rediscovered the holy grail of languages: FORTRAN.
Shortly after, the whole universe will crash on one huge dive by zero exception.
Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week with more forecasts...
there is a difference between sending astronauts up in space when the issue is fully known, and between some disaster happening as a result of some unforseen consequence
Yes, the issue is known. But the "fix" might be worse than the known issue. The only way to make sure that fix is "safer" is to test, and by that I mean lots of test. This particular foam has cause failures in a percentage that might be considered statistical noise.
There was a known issue with the o-rings at low temperature that eventually failed
I'm sure that there were, and probably still are, a lot more of known issues. None have failed in such great ways as the o-rings and the foam. Again, each failed only once. Believe me, it's easier to point out a critical issue when it fails, than before it fails. A lot of things can go wrong with the shuttle, only two of those have done so with the tragic lose of life. Space travel is dangerous. Riding a car is dangerous. People have died while riding a car, but you don't see everybody wearing five point seat belts and helmets like race car drivers. It's an issue of risk management. I'm sure that if they send a shuttle up with the potential of foam damage, the foam will work ok. It something happens (and I sure hope it won't) it will be something completly different.
Would it be feasable to create a giant peer to peer network based off wireless access points? Something that's more organic than the current net where a few carriers can make or brake the whole net. A net that's not under the control of the FCC (at least for the time). A net that least in some form can survive the war against Eurasia^H^H^H^H^H^H^H terror.
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Let me tell you that having a third option is really not such a good idea. Where I live (Costa Rica) we used to have two dominant parties (PLN and PUSC). On the last elections the PLN won by a small margin, a new party was a very close second, another new party (Libertarian) was a more distant third. The other traditional party ended VERY badly. But it cpuld be worse because of it. We have a very varied legislature thats paralyzed, a president making promises and trying to increase taxes. I'm not saying that having a third option is bad, I'm just saying that it's no magic pill. In fact I think the best option is to give more focus to local government (and I mean VERY local, my country is smaller than most states). And get people involved on the issues that are close to them.
This new page is just comming online. You can check if your info was stolen. You just need to type your full name, SSN, birthdate, and address. It's really useful. US Goverment Identity Theft Agency Homepage
I don't think you can keep the goverment in check just by using guns. It worked with the American Revolution. But technology is much more advanced now. Even if you could stock pile AK-47 bought from WalMart, you wouldn't have chance against the goverment. But bombs, that's where the answer is. Look at Irak, the insurgents are fighting it out with IEDs, not with guns. Well, some insurgents DO use guns, it has more glamour than IEDs, but those are the ones that don't make it back after the first fire fight. The ones that plant IEDs tend to have longer lifespans.
Sure there are lots and lots blogs and other political discussion going on. You and I and a lot of people are doing it in this particular story. But that's a small minority, and sadly it shows on election day.
the issue is that most people (in the US at least) don't care about democracy. They use the Internet to search for thinds that require little actual thinking. Right now top searches for Google are: the omen, french open, and father's day. The issue is that people just don't care. People don't care that their liberties are taken away as long as the can watch the game on tv and look for porn on the net.
You right, that's very relative. For example, "an international organization lead by a military power to protect Europe from Communism" ... would it be NATO ?? No, I'm talking about the time frame before 1945. So that description will best fit ... the Waffen-SS. That's right, a "criminal organization" uniting countries against the advance of communism. Of course at that time the Communists were fighting for freedom. The day after V-E, they were fighting against it. Incredible how a whole country can change from "good" to "evil" overnight...
You're new around here, aren't you?
One of the jobs of the CIA is basically peacetime war activities. As simple like that. Trying to stop a war. Trying to start a war. It really all depends on the time of day.
Original bits are scarce. The problem is there is no good economic method yet to reconcile high costs to create with low cost to reproduce. That cost is now cheaper than ever. The thing is that it's now possible to create a professional sounding CD very cheap. Equipment is cheap, the software is cheap. This is specially true for electronic music. The companies behind the RIAA held the funds to enable artists to create music which otherwise they couldn't. Now they can. What's left? Control of the distribution channels. And they're fighting to their last breath to keep them. Artist make little money from CDs (unless it's a huge seller). They make much more on tours and with merchandise. There's a way to pay back to the artist. Look at iTunes. Why does the RIAA want different prices? To keep the control of the distribution channel, and therefore keep control of the artist. the government elected by the people We can narrow it down even more to the US Government. The US has pushed for more and more global copyright. And for longer and longer terms. And for less and less importance to public domain. a reflection of an apathetic voting populace who only cares about which politician is on TV most (if they even vote at all). That's a different problem. I did vote on my last chance (not in the US, but my in Costa Rica). I voted for the Libertarian Party. We lost the the presidential race ending up third but got 6 senators elected (out of a total of 47). The US democracy has huge problems, but that's another topic. I don't agree that copyright is completely bad for society Neither do I. It's a noble idea. Just like Marxism. But taken to extremes it gets to what we have now. Do any DRM system revert to unDRM once copyright exprires and the work goes into public domain ? No. Are any courts interested in hearing about it? No, since it'll probably get extended to "forever less one day" as Jack Valenti wants. artificially raises the number of suppliers That's good, but the RIAA group still controls airways, retail distribution channels, and they want to control Internet distribution channels as well. To put up a larger barrier of entry, to keep new players out. They were just trying to regulate podcasts. So I'm not sure that the number of suppliers is going up as fast as it could/should. Talent on the other hand IS scarse, but that's hardly the issue here. What I mean here is that there are fewer people that can create "original" bits compared to those that can duplicate existing ones. I don't mean that RIAA protected music sucks. I'm willing to pay for music, in the past month I've bought to CDs. One I had already downloaded, but I went and bought it any way ("Clone your lover" by Zeromancer) The other one was the new Tool CD, basically the only band that I blindly buy CDs from nowadays.
The issue is NOT "theft" or not. It's economics. In economics, things have value because they are scarse. Bits are not scarse. So the RIAA puts special limitations to make it scarse. This artificially raises the prices, and as anyone who has taken a basic economics course, is not efficient. ANY artificial restriction to a market makes it less efficient than free trade. So yes, copyright is an anti free trade aberration. Talent on the other hand IS scarse, but that's hardly the issue here.
Well, I remember seeing four of my friends (nicknamed the Teletubbies by the way) playing pokemon in an emulator that allowed up to four instances of GB games. All four at the same time. All eight hands on a single keyboard. I think I understand what that article is about.
That might be a bigger problem than you think. For MS only really big business are worth the effort, and it's hard to find those business. Look at the XBox and the ammount of money they are pouring into it.
Crashes in NetWare? I've seen two or three of those, and completely related to hardware. I'm just comming off the phone with someone that wants me to do some NetWare (6.5) consulting, and tells me that they have been without a NetWare support person for years, because it's zero maintenance. Sure, it's a dying platform, but not because of lack of stability.
GroupWise is something completely different. It's comparable with Exchange/Outlook
It's not like they haven't tried...and failed before.
They are piping everything to /dev/null. It's also quite fast.
Square didn't do very well with Final Fantasy and Aki Ross, so I'm not sure we're there yet.
sorry, Linux is not supported. but if you install windows on the other hand...
Tried it from Costa Rica and got the exact same results with 'Falun Gong'
And they'll ditch the Java language and only support PHP in the JVM of Java 6. Of course, since MS follows closely the development of Java to chart their own roadmap, will revert to basic BASIC (the one with out "objects" from the MS-DOS days) as the only language of .Net for version 3 just to stay one step ahead of Sun. Meanwhile the rest of OSS languages will converge to a single language running on Parrot. Eventually (about 10 years down the road), OSS historians will realize that they have rediscovered the holy grail of languages: FORTRAN.
Shortly after, the whole universe will crash on one huge dive by zero exception.
Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week with more forecasts...
new business?? this is older than the habit of shitting sitting down !
there is a difference between sending astronauts up in space when the issue is fully known, and between some disaster happening as a result of some unforseen consequence
Yes, the issue is known. But the "fix" might be worse than the known issue. The only way to make sure that fix is "safer" is to test, and by that I mean lots of test. This particular foam has cause failures in a percentage that might be considered statistical noise.
There was a known issue with the o-rings at low temperature that eventually failed
I'm sure that there were, and probably still are, a lot more of known issues. None have failed in such great ways as the o-rings and the foam. Again, each failed only once. Believe me, it's easier to point out a critical issue when it fails, than before it fails. A lot of things can go wrong with the shuttle, only two of those have done so with the tragic lose of life. Space travel is dangerous. Riding a car is dangerous. People have died while riding a car, but you don't see everybody wearing five point seat belts and helmets like race car drivers. It's an issue of risk management. I'm sure that if they send a shuttle up with the potential of foam damage, the foam will work ok. It something happens (and I sure hope it won't) it will be something completly different.
Piracy has only one reason to exist: to fund terrorism. But it's not like *I* said it. Alberto Gonzales said it: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/article_displ ay.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001477589.
So I guess it can be put under the umbrella of war on terror.
Would it be feasable to create a giant peer to peer network based off wireless access points? Something that's more organic than the current net where a few carriers can make or brake the whole net. A net that's not under the control of the FCC (at least for the time). A net that least in some form can survive the war against Eurasia^H^H^H^H^H^H^H terror.
1 - Request job at company X
2 - Sue company X
3 - Get hired by company X
How the hell does this get through the editors?
Love the "spanglish" ... That's something else OS X is years ahead of Windows and Linux, i18n.