But to characterize the landscape of this issue as "Support the DMCA or support widespread, bald-faced piracy" is disingenuous.
Right on the money. Interestingly, that is exactly the same kind of (ahem) "logic" that the big copyright holders and their legal beagles (RIAA/MPAA, etc.) have been using for decades. It's always an either/or 100% polarized proposition with them (and, for that matter, most politicians.) Give us what we want or the End of Days will be upon us! Remember Jack Valenti's impassioned pleas about the VCR? He repeatedly pronounced to anyone who would listen, "It will destroy the industry!" Sure, Jack, and after billions of dollars in videocassette sales that you and your kind somehow couldn't foresee, I gotta say... it's a good thing you're dead. Not that your successors are any better in the slightest: same arrogant outlook, same lack of vision.
There's always a middle ground, and in fact, that's what copyright was supposed to be: a middle ground between the creative minds and the public domain (which was, ultimately, to be enriched by their efforts.) Copyright also wasn't supposed to be a concentrated form of politico-economic power, either: it was supposed to protect the creators, so that they could continue to create, not enrich the weasels that figured out how to cheat our best and brightest out of their rights. Consequently, I don't necessarily equate "content creator" with "rightsholder".
Most of the complaining about modern copyright you hear on Slashdot revolves around the fact that it isn't a middle ground anymore, is no longer a reasonable compromise. It's now a rightsholder's paradise... and that's too bad.
You have it just a little backwards. Most of the people here on Slashdot have had their fingers burned by Microsoft, at one time or another, and are generally far more technically ept than most. I know my fingertips are a little charred around the edges, so on those occasions when I bash Microsoft it's because I'm speaking for experience. Furthermore, I'm not particularly forgiving of defective-by-design software, no matter who the vendor. A lot of Slashdotters are like that, and the fact is, unfortunately, that Microsoft produces more DBD products than anyone else.
If Microsoft has a bad rep, after all these years of second and third chances, it's because they've earned it.
Someday, the human race will look back at copyright for what it was, a necessary step along the way from when people were focused on controlling their expressions and thinking they determined the "value". I have a dream where someday people will willingly share their creative expressions, and the value of that is not only thought in terms of financial gain, but also by the lasting value it creates in people's lives.
Why, Mr. Jefferson... fancy meeting you here. I guess the reports of your demise were exaggerated.
The United States has been toying with the idea of term limits for Congressmen for decades. They won't do it (fox, henhouse, etc.) Al Gore was once asked about that issue, and with his usual complete straight face he said, wide-eyed, "But, but... that would deny Americans the benefit of professional politicians." I'm not picking on Democrats in particular here: the Republicans are just as power-hungry.
From my perspective, the "professionals" have had their chance and blew it. Maybe we should get back to using amateurs, like the Founders intended. Serve your term, then get out and live under the very laws you created.
and locking out the (admittedly) small number of users using 95% of their network.
Is that really true, though? If current statistics which claim that Bit Torrent alone accounts for a third or more of Internet traffic are to be believed, I suspect the number of customers that are "abusing" the network is probably a lot more than Comcast wants to admit. They're paying the price for their own success: they're huge, they have a lot of customers... and those people are expecting more than Comcast wants to deliver. Well, I'm not singling Comcast out in that regard: all the ISPs would just love it if people would keep paying fifty bucks a month for email and some light browsing, with maybe a few dozen iTunes thrown in.
I have a Linksys WRT54G V4 wireless access point running the Tomato firmware. Wikipedia has a nice writeup.
It works very well: lightyears beyond the stock firmware. I've had 100% uptime since I first flashed it into the router about four months ago. Hasn't crashed, glitched, slowed down or otherwise given me any grief whatsoever. I run games, corporate VPNs, SMTP, FTP, POP3, Webmail and a bunch of other services through it. It keeps track of daily, weekly and monthly bandwidth usage, and even has an Ajax-based real-time graph, all via your browser (works great with Firefox.) Supports CIFS, and it writes out its log files to my file server. Very cool stuff.
The author is very pleasant and responsive and, honestly, Linksys should hire the guy. I tried some of the others out there (DD-WRT, HyperWRT, etc.) and found that Tomato serves my needs best. I've run Smoothwall and IPCop in the past: about the only thing I miss from those two was the transparent Web cache.
Give Tomato a shot, if you have an old WRT54G or any of the other supported routers (it supports a bunch from different vendors.)
So your argument about not receiving benefits is shaky at best.
I disagree. You have to understand that the people running the major ISPs (and the Telcos) are a breed apart. Look at how much money they took from the Feds in the past ten years or so in subsidies, to provide us with real broadband... and didn't! Go read up on Edward J. "ain't gonna use my pipes for free" Whitacre and see what he's all about, and then tell me any different. I'm not bitching about shareholders, and I'm not bitching about the profit motive and I couldn't care less about 401Ks. I do care about the level and quality of service I receive for my money. Furthermore, I am complaining about a specific group of corporate entities that have a long history of screwing their customers and anyone else they can get convince to give them money. They lie, they cheat, and they steal.
My original point stands. Don't expect the big boys to generously reduce your broadband bill, or increase your throughput, just because they find a more efficient way of hauling data, because they won't. In fact, they'll probably find a way to jack it up.
They are not clarifying anything because Comcast has not released the exact limit..and I don't know why.
That's obvious. If they issue an actual hard limit, customers would hold them to it. I know I would... I have bandwidth monitoring on my network and if they cut me off too soon I'd scream bloody murder, believe me. A few hundred thousand customers clogging their support lines is what they absolutely do not want. This way, however, they can maintain their long-term SOP of vague threats and unspecified "limits" and continue to nail anyone they want to, any time they want. All this does is create uncertainty among their customers, which is exactly what they want so people will be afraid to use their connections "too much". Let's not forget that once they say "this is how much capacity you can use" they would have a hard time justifying the promises made by their marketing department.
Unless maybe the sun is too low in the sky for solar panels to get enough power?
No idea, a lot would depend upon the time of year, of course. But when you're sending a multi-million-dollar aircraft over a few thousand square miles of ice, you would probably want a more reliable power system. I don't know how much power the radar equipment on the thing needs, but that alone would probably eliminate a solar-powered craft.
True enough, however there will never be more than a few robotic planes traveling over the ice fields, and the scientific data they return will, I'm sure, be worth any minor environmental damage. Millions upon millions of automobiles now... that's a different story.
People are making a big deal out of supposed incompetence of the German police in that they didn't even get the actual Tor server. Who cares? That's irrelevant. This is not about taking down a single Tor node. This is about sending a message... run one of these and you are at risk, and when we decide to confiscate your property we're not going to be too careful about what we take. They probably figure that will be enough to keep a bunch of nerds in line.
Except in those countries which offer their people no accountability or transparency from the outset, and consequently have no need to rationalize their self-serving behavior to said people. I don't presently live in one of those places, but as things are going, I will end up in one of those places by simply staying where I am. There's something very wrong going on here.
Whatever this is, it's not just the United States that is affected. A number of nations are going down this road... I don't know if fear of terrorism is an adequate explanation. I agree, it's being used as a template for justifying all kinds of authoritarian activities, but there's a lot of high-level multinational power mongering going on and we're not privy to the details.
The excessive desire for power (is there a medical term for it? Megalomania perhaps?) needs to be something for which politicians are regularly checked (much like high-end call-girls are regularly tested for disease), with not having it a prerequisite for holding public office.
But it doesn't seem reasonable to dismiss the system yet, when it could benefit everyone.
True, I suppose... but then again, take a look at the caliber of the people running the show here in the United States. Largely it comes down to the Telcos and Comcast, and a few other big ISPs, none of whom are interested in anything but profit maximization. I guarantee you that if they find a way to reduce their costs using this or any other technology, they will simply pass the savings on to themselves and their stockholders. We customers will never see a penny of it in terms of our monthly expenses: all we might hope for would be an improvement in service quality, but I wouldn't bank on that either.
No, it was an RCA 52" rear-projection unit... I wasn't seeing compression artifacts, although those sure are noticeable on some channels, particularly Sci-Fi channel Stargate re-runs (come on guys, I can torrent a better picture) but RF noise. The Hi-Def channels came in clear as a bell. But many of the other channels were just... noisy. I had no way to tell if it was a head-end issue or not, but I could get a better picture for my local channels with an antenna.
and it doesn't surprise me... I finally dumped cable because too many channels came in looking like fuzzy analog channels, even though they were supposed to be all digital.
Slashdot Mirror
But to characterize the landscape of this issue as "Support the DMCA or support widespread, bald-faced piracy" is disingenuous.
... it's a good thing you're dead. Not that your successors are any better in the slightest: same arrogant outlook, same lack of vision.
... and that's too bad.
Right on the money. Interestingly, that is exactly the same kind of (ahem) "logic" that the big copyright holders and their legal beagles (RIAA/MPAA, etc.) have been using for decades. It's always an either/or 100% polarized proposition with them (and, for that matter, most politicians.) Give us what we want or the End of Days will be upon us! Remember Jack Valenti's impassioned pleas about the VCR? He repeatedly pronounced to anyone who would listen, "It will destroy the industry!" Sure, Jack, and after billions of dollars in videocassette sales that you and your kind somehow couldn't foresee, I gotta say
There's always a middle ground, and in fact, that's what copyright was supposed to be: a middle ground between the creative minds and the public domain (which was, ultimately, to be enriched by their efforts.) Copyright also wasn't supposed to be a concentrated form of politico-economic power, either: it was supposed to protect the creators, so that they could continue to create, not enrich the weasels that figured out how to cheat our best and brightest out of their rights. Consequently, I don't necessarily equate "content creator" with "rightsholder".
Most of the complaining about modern copyright you hear on Slashdot revolves around the fact that it isn't a middle ground anymore, is no longer a reasonable compromise. It's now a rightsholder's paradise
You have it just a little backwards. Most of the people here on Slashdot have had their fingers burned by Microsoft, at one time or another, and are generally far more technically ept than most. I know my fingertips are a little charred around the edges, so on those occasions when I bash Microsoft it's because I'm speaking for experience. Furthermore, I'm not particularly forgiving of defective-by-design software, no matter who the vendor. A lot of Slashdotters are like that, and the fact is, unfortunately, that Microsoft produces more DBD products than anyone else.
If Microsoft has a bad rep, after all these years of second and third chances, it's because they've earned it.
Trent Reznor Says "Steal My Music"
Done.
Someday, the human race will look back at copyright for what it was, a necessary step along the way from when people were focused on controlling their expressions and thinking they determined the "value". I have a dream where someday people will willingly share their creative expressions, and the value of that is not only thought in terms of financial gain, but also by the lasting value it creates in people's lives.
... fancy meeting you here. I guess the reports of your demise were exaggerated.
Why, Mr. Jefferson
Played on iPod's what?
You really don't want to know.
Flamebait? WTF?
Well the fact is, the accountants aren't liable for any of SCO's sins.
They would be if any of those sins included some creative accounting, which is certainly a possibility.
... simply because I have a 99 character password ...
99, eh? Thank you, you've been helpful.
Russinovich works for Microsoft now, you know.
... it'll be interesting to see how he goes about releasing new music without a large distribution network that the major label gives him.
I would venture to guess that he'll be using the large distribution network that DARPA gave him, instead.
The United States has been toying with the idea of term limits for Congressmen for decades. They won't do it (fox, henhouse, etc.) Al Gore was once asked about that issue, and with his usual complete straight face he said, wide-eyed, "But, but ... that would deny Americans the benefit of professional politicians." I'm not picking on Democrats in particular here: the Republicans are just as power-hungry.
From my perspective, the "professionals" have had their chance and blew it. Maybe we should get back to using amateurs, like the Founders intended. Serve your term, then get out and live under the very laws you created.
and locking out the (admittedly) small number of users using 95% of their network.
... and those people are expecting more than Comcast wants to deliver. Well, I'm not singling Comcast out in that regard: all the ISPs would just love it if people would keep paying fifty bucks a month for email and some light browsing, with maybe a few dozen iTunes thrown in.
Is that really true, though? If current statistics which claim that Bit Torrent alone accounts for a third or more of Internet traffic are to be believed, I suspect the number of customers that are "abusing" the network is probably a lot more than Comcast wants to admit. They're paying the price for their own success: they're huge, they have a lot of customers
I have a Linksys WRT54G V4 wireless access point running the Tomato firmware. Wikipedia has a nice writeup.
It works very well: lightyears beyond the stock firmware. I've had 100% uptime since I first flashed it into the router about four months ago. Hasn't crashed, glitched, slowed down or otherwise given me any grief whatsoever. I run games, corporate VPNs, SMTP, FTP, POP3, Webmail and a bunch of other services through it. It keeps track of daily, weekly and monthly bandwidth usage, and even has an Ajax-based real-time graph, all via your browser (works great with Firefox.) Supports CIFS, and it writes out its log files to my file server. Very cool stuff.
The author is very pleasant and responsive and, honestly, Linksys should hire the guy. I tried some of the others out there (DD-WRT, HyperWRT, etc.) and found that Tomato serves my needs best. I've run Smoothwall and IPCop in the past: about the only thing I miss from those two was the transparent Web cache.
Give Tomato a shot, if you have an old WRT54G or any of the other supported routers (it supports a bunch from different vendors.)
So your argument about not receiving benefits is shaky at best.
... and didn't! Go read up on Edward J. "ain't gonna use my pipes for free" Whitacre and see what he's all about, and then tell me any different. I'm not bitching about shareholders, and I'm not bitching about the profit motive and I couldn't care less about 401Ks. I do care about the level and quality of service I receive for my money. Furthermore, I am complaining about a specific group of corporate entities that have a long history of screwing their customers and anyone else they can get convince to give them money. They lie, they cheat, and they steal.
I disagree. You have to understand that the people running the major ISPs (and the Telcos) are a breed apart. Look at how much money they took from the Feds in the past ten years or so in subsidies, to provide us with real broadband
My original point stands. Don't expect the big boys to generously reduce your broadband bill, or increase your throughput, just because they find a more efficient way of hauling data, because they won't. In fact, they'll probably find a way to jack it up.
They are not clarifying anything because Comcast has not released the exact limit..and I don't know why.
... I have bandwidth monitoring on my network and if they cut me off too soon I'd scream bloody murder, believe me. A few hundred thousand customers clogging their support lines is what they absolutely do not want. This way, however, they can maintain their long-term SOP of vague threats and unspecified "limits" and continue to nail anyone they want to, any time they want. All this does is create uncertainty among their customers, which is exactly what they want so people will be afraid to use their connections "too much". Let's not forget that once they say "this is how much capacity you can use" they would have a hard time justifying the promises made by their marketing department.
That's obvious. If they issue an actual hard limit, customers would hold them to it. I know I would
Unless maybe the sun is too low in the sky for solar panels to get enough power?
No idea, a lot would depend upon the time of year, of course. But when you're sending a multi-million-dollar aircraft over a few thousand square miles of ice, you would probably want a more reliable power system. I don't know how much power the radar equipment on the thing needs, but that alone would probably eliminate a solar-powered craft.
True enough, however there will never be more than a few robotic planes traveling over the ice fields, and the scientific data they return will, I'm sure, be worth any minor environmental damage. Millions upon millions of automobiles now ... that's a different story.
Yes indeed, but not by a measurable amount.
Okay, but I still think you took my original point.
People are making a big deal out of supposed incompetence of the German police in that they didn't even get the actual Tor server. Who cares? That's irrelevant. This is not about taking down a single Tor node. This is about sending a message ... run one of these and you are at risk, and when we decide to confiscate your property we're not going to be too careful about what we take. They probably figure that will be enough to keep a bunch of nerds in line.
it works in every country.
... I don't know if fear of terrorism is an adequate explanation. I agree, it's being used as a template for justifying all kinds of authoritarian activities, but there's a lot of high-level multinational power mongering going on and we're not privy to the details.
Except in those countries which offer their people no accountability or transparency from the outset, and consequently have no need to rationalize their self-serving behavior to said people. I don't presently live in one of those places, but as things are going, I will end up in one of those places by simply staying where I am. There's something very wrong going on here.
Whatever this is, it's not just the United States that is affected. A number of nations are going down this road
The excessive desire for power (is there a medical term for it? Megalomania perhaps?) needs to be something for which politicians are regularly checked (much like high-end call-girls are regularly tested for disease), with not having it a prerequisite for holding public office.
But it doesn't seem reasonable to dismiss the system yet, when it could benefit everyone.
... but then again, take a look at the caliber of the people running the show here in the United States. Largely it comes down to the Telcos and Comcast, and a few other big ISPs, none of whom are interested in anything but profit maximization. I guarantee you that if they find a way to reduce their costs using this or any other technology, they will simply pass the savings on to themselves and their stockholders. We customers will never see a penny of it in terms of our monthly expenses: all we might hope for would be an improvement in service quality, but I wouldn't bank on that either.
True, I suppose
No, it was an RCA 52" rear-projection unit ... I wasn't seeing compression artifacts, although those sure are noticeable on some channels, particularly Sci-Fi channel Stargate re-runs (come on guys, I can torrent a better picture) but RF noise. The Hi-Def channels came in clear as a bell. But many of the other channels were just ... noisy. I had no way to tell if it was a head-end issue or not, but I could get a better picture for my local channels with an antenna.
non-stick chewing gum would have caused a lot of grief for MacGyver.
and it doesn't surprise me ... I finally dumped cable because too many channels came in looking like fuzzy analog channels, even though they were supposed to be all digital.