Consensus is not science. I can go down south in the US and find a strong consensus that evolution is a fraud, but is it?
Of course, you're about to tell me that those people aren't scientists. True. So shall we discuss the Eugenics movement prevelant throughout the 1920s? Eugenics theories were widely upheld by scientific consensus, to the point where over 45,000 "mental defectives" were forcibly sterilized. Of course, after WWII no one admitted to being an Eugenicist.
How about the scientific communities' "consensus" in the 60s and 70s that we where in the midst of a global cooling trend. So alarmed we should be, it was said, that we should immediately consider spreading millions of acres of soot over the snowfall in the artic.
I'm not debating global warming, you understand, but merely indicating that we need real science and not beliefs and opinions, and that counting noses is rarely the proper way to determine anything...
"... why should we wreck our economy over something that not everyone can agree on..."
Who says it would wreck the economy? Automakers cried wolf in the same fashion in the 70's and 80's when rasied MPG requirements and imposed the environmental standards that required catalytic converters and cleaner fuels. "Oh," said they, "it will cause the collapse of the industry as we know it and cause irreparable harm to the US economy."
Didn't happen.
At worst cleaning up our act and imposing higher CAFE standards "might" impact corporate profits for a quarter or two. But in return we get a cleaner environment, less polution, and less dependence on foreign oil imports. Not to mention spawning new industries to provide those solutions and technologies.
Now you've gone and done it. By publicizing the fact that they're using commercial off-the-shelf equipment you've opened the door to someone higher up mandating a "military-grade" system costing 100x as much.
Actually, I'm not sure what legal assistance they're supposed to be giving. I mean, what brain-dead college student doesn't know that downloading copywritten music and movies is legally wrong? Who hasn't been told? Who didn't get the memo?
Or is using the school's network the determinant factor? If I commit a crime on the school's streets or property, can I assume that I automatically should get "legal assistance" too?
4) Packets involved in general real-time web use (e.g. loading web pages) 5) Packets involved in non-real-time communication (e.g. email, voicemail, videomail, etc.) 6) File downloads/FTP 7) P2P services
P2P services rate last because they tend to suck up a disproportionate share of network resources, and because people tend to leave them running for long periods of time. And because a disproportionate share of the traffic is illegal file-swapping anyway.
I know someone is now going to popup and tell me that there are plenty of legal uses for P2P, and that's true. But most traffic studies of actual content indicate otherwise. Complain to the leeches, not the ISPs.
Well, you are going to leave a trace in all of the traffic cameras as you leave. "Mr. Smith, what were you and your car doing on the west side of town near the missing person's house at 2:00 AM on the night in question?"
Look at the most common reasons for robbery, and you'll usually find one thing at the core: desperation. They don't have or can't get a job, and they need money for food, rent, sometimes drugs, and so they make a stupid choice.
So your logic doesn't hold. Desperate people will always do desperate things, deterent or not. They think they don't have a choice.
Where deterents do have an effect is where you do have a choice, when they chance of getting caught is small but still significant, and when the risk isn't worth the reward. You proabably don't speed down the highway at twice the legal limit. You don't toss the trash out of your car's window onto the highway. You don't boost DVDs from Best Buy.
But when a kid downloads a movie from the depths of his parent's basement, the reward is there, and the chance of being caught and/or punished is slim. Increase those risks, however, and like shoplifting many will find that it's just not worth it.
Someone can't download a movie it took millions to make for free, and the "social contract" is crumbling? They can't wait, in an instand gratification frenzy, for it to be on cable or TV and see it for free then, and as such the "social contract" is crumbling?
Here in the US nearly all forms of crime (violent, theft, rape) are at all-time lows. Some, like kidnapping, have essentially disappeared completely. That, and the "social contract" is crumbling?
I hate to tell you this, but the answer to most of our problems is simply to work on fixing them, and not engage in some fantasy that some benevolent force is going to tear down the government and fix everything for you. Do a little reading, and I'll think you'll find that statistically most governmental overthrows do NOT benefit the citizenry.
Bottom line: Don't like the way something works? Then get off your ass and work to change it.
One could argue that this is a case for raising the standard of living there (and elsewhere) such that he CAN afford it. Doing so also solves a whole host of other problems.
Boost a copy of a DVD in a store and you've basically stolen something worth $15 plus you stand a fairly good chance of being caught: hence most people don't do it. The risk/reward proposition sucks.
Put a copy of SM3 on your torrent server, and you're going to enable thousands of such "thefts". (Try seeing what the punishment is after you're caught boosting thousands of DVDs from a warehouse.) Further, currently your chances of being caught are low. Hence higher fines and punishments as deterents, much the same as those places where tossing trash out of the window of your car can net you a $1,000 fine for littering.
You probably won't get caught... but the is the risk worth it?
"There is already enough capacity to stream in 15 hours worth of DVD quality TV over the course of one week to your hard disk over simple broadband."
So? It would still be much, much, much more efficient to multicast a stream at a given time and have your system record it if it's one you want to watch. You may WATCH it at any time, but content is still produced and released to a schedule.
When CDs came out about two decades ago they were, what, $25-$30 at first? Now, after two decades of inflation, you can buy most of 'em at WalMart for $12-$16.
The price did come down. The price stayed down when the price of nearly everything else doubled or tripled.
Try again: Make a miniServe that holds a couple of full size HDs and supports 802.11n FOR THE SAME PRICE.
Buying a bunch of cables, hubs, and external drives adds quite a bit to the price. Especially when I'm overpaying for expensive 2.5" notebook drives that are far too small for any serious server-type work.
Apple NEEDS to make a home server. A Mac mini with an 80GB notebook HD does not a server make. Make a miniServe that holds a couple of full size HDs and supports 802.11n for the same price and MAYBE we can talk...
"... it is impossible to rule law abiding people."
Non-sequitur. By definition, law-abiding people are obeying whatever laws (rules) that have been put in place. It's when, for whatever reason (rebellion, personal gain, etc.), they don't obey them that you need enforcement.
Slashdot Mirror
"The consensus approach is the right approach."
Consensus is not science. I can go down south in the US and find a strong consensus that evolution is a fraud, but is it?
Of course, you're about to tell me that those people aren't scientists. True. So shall we discuss the Eugenics movement prevelant throughout the 1920s? Eugenics theories were widely upheld by scientific consensus, to the point where over 45,000 "mental defectives" were forcibly sterilized. Of course, after WWII no one admitted to being an Eugenicist.
How about the scientific communities' "consensus" in the 60s and 70s that we where in the midst of a global cooling trend. So alarmed we should be, it was said, that we should immediately consider spreading millions of acres of soot over the snowfall in the artic.
I'm not debating global warming, you understand, but merely indicating that we need real science and not beliefs and opinions, and that counting noses is rarely the proper way to determine anything...
"... why should we wreck our economy over something that not everyone can agree on..."
Who says it would wreck the economy? Automakers cried wolf in the same fashion in the 70's and 80's when rasied MPG requirements and imposed the environmental standards that required catalytic converters and cleaner fuels. "Oh," said they, "it will cause the collapse of the industry as we know it and cause irreparable harm to the US economy."
Didn't happen.
At worst cleaning up our act and imposing higher CAFE standards "might" impact corporate profits for a quarter or two. But in return we get a cleaner environment, less polution, and less dependence on foreign oil imports. Not to mention spawning new industries to provide those solutions and technologies.
And that's a bad thing... how?
Actually, knowing how to spell hinders typing Linux commands...
Now you've gone and done it. By publicizing the fact that they're using commercial off-the-shelf equipment you've opened the door to someone higher up mandating a "military-grade" system costing 100x as much.
Actually, I'm not sure what legal assistance they're supposed to be giving. I mean, what brain-dead college student doesn't know that downloading copywritten music and movies is legally wrong? Who hasn't been told? Who didn't get the memo?
Or is using the school's network the determinant factor? If I commit a crime on the school's streets or property, can I assume that I automatically should get "legal assistance" too?
And if you have to have it, a used cd is often only $4 or so on half.com.
"... although it looks like they managed that by not putting an optical drive on there and filling up half of the case with battery."
Flash-based HDD and probably LED backlighting for the screen.
Flash HDD + LED Backlight - Optical Drive = Doesn't need a big battery.
Reordered:
4) Packets involved in general real-time web use (e.g. loading web pages)
5) Packets involved in non-real-time communication (e.g. email, voicemail, videomail, etc.)
6) File downloads/FTP
7) P2P services
P2P services rate last because they tend to suck up a disproportionate share of network resources, and because people tend to leave them running for long periods of time. And because a disproportionate share of the traffic is illegal file-swapping anyway.
I know someone is now going to popup and tell me that there are plenty of legal uses for P2P, and that's true. But most traffic studies of actual content indicate otherwise. Complain to the leeches, not the ISPs.
"... exit the town and then dump the evidence."
Well, you are going to leave a trace in all of the traffic cameras as you leave. "Mr. Smith, what were you and your car doing on the west side of town near the missing person's house at 2:00 AM on the night in question?"
Look at the most common reasons for robbery, and you'll usually find one thing at the core: desperation. They don't have or can't get a job, and they need money for food, rent, sometimes drugs, and so they make a stupid choice.
So your logic doesn't hold. Desperate people will always do desperate things, deterent or not. They think they don't have a choice.
Where deterents do have an effect is where you do have a choice, when they chance of getting caught is small but still significant, and when the risk isn't worth the reward. You proabably don't speed down the highway at twice the legal limit. You don't toss the trash out of your car's window onto the highway. You don't boost DVDs from Best Buy.
But when a kid downloads a movie from the depths of his parent's basement, the reward is there, and the chance of being caught and/or punished is slim. Increase those risks, however, and like shoplifting many will find that it's just not worth it.
"... while the social contract crumbles ..."
Someone can't download a movie it took millions to make for free, and the "social contract" is crumbling? They can't wait, in an instand gratification frenzy, for it to be on cable or TV and see it for free then, and as such the "social contract" is crumbling?
Here in the US nearly all forms of crime (violent, theft, rape) are at all-time lows. Some, like kidnapping, have essentially disappeared completely. That, and the "social contract" is crumbling?
I hate to tell you this, but the answer to most of our problems is simply to work on fixing them, and not engage in some fantasy that some benevolent force is going to tear down the government and fix everything for you. Do a little reading, and I'll think you'll find that statistically most governmental overthrows do NOT benefit the citizenry.
Bottom line: Don't like the way something works? Then get off your ass and work to change it.
One could argue that this is a case for raising the standard of living there (and elsewhere) such that he CAN afford it. Doing so also solves a whole host of other problems.
"... but the guy's real crime is being in the wrong place, at the wrong time."
Well, that and he made the choice to comit the crime in the first place.
Boost a copy of a DVD in a store and you've basically stolen something worth $15 plus you stand a fairly good chance of being caught: hence most people don't do it. The risk/reward proposition sucks.
Put a copy of SM3 on your torrent server, and you're going to enable thousands of such "thefts". (Try seeing what the punishment is after you're caught boosting thousands of DVDs from a warehouse.) Further, currently your chances of being caught are low. Hence higher fines and punishments as deterents, much the same as those places where tossing trash out of the window of your car can net you a $1,000 fine for littering.
You probably won't get caught... but the is the risk worth it?
Ethanol? Diesel?
;)
Or just convert. How many electrons are in a gallon, anyway....
"There is already enough capacity to stream in 15 hours worth of DVD quality TV over the course of one week to your hard disk over simple broadband."
So? It would still be much, much, much more efficient to multicast a stream at a given time and have your system record it if it's one you want to watch. You may WATCH it at any time, but content is still produced and released to a schedule.
As you say, more than one test case is needed. In particluar, try driving an obstacle course one-handed.
I'm not sure I'd count "Mythbusters" as proof.
When CDs came out about two decades ago they were, what, $25-$30 at first? Now, after two decades of inflation, you can buy most of 'em at WalMart for $12-$16.
The price did come down. The price stayed down when the price of nearly everything else doubled or tripled.
Stop whinning.
Try again: Make a miniServe that holds a couple of full size HDs and supports 802.11n FOR THE SAME PRICE.
Buying a bunch of cables, hubs, and external drives adds quite a bit to the price. Especially when I'm overpaying for expensive 2.5" notebook drives that are far too small for any serious server-type work.
Apple NEEDS to make a home server. A Mac mini with an 80GB notebook HD does not a server make. Make a miniServe that holds a couple of full size HDs and supports 802.11n for the same price and MAYBE we can talk...
"... it is impossible to rule law abiding people."
Non-sequitur. By definition, law-abiding people are obeying whatever laws (rules) that have been put in place. It's when, for whatever reason (rebellion, personal gain, etc.), they don't obey them that you need enforcement.
Now run w/o torrenting for six months.
"hermetically sealed"
I don't think those words mean what you think they mean...