I think the problem is that we're talking more than a few extra bucks, we're in the tens of millions of dollars. There are hundreds of thousands of establishments nationwide that play music in public. Grab an extra $500 or a thousand from each year after year, and you're talking real money. Worse, that kind of cash flow attracts con artists and scammers (well, I should say additional con artists and scammers) who play off a small business owner's natural fear of lawyers and big money.
But yeah, you're otherwise pretty much on target. The world of entertainment is a sleazy one at best. I'm glad I have no part in it.
What I believe in, and my morals are not subject to compromise.
That's good. Stay with it, you have the right idea. You just need to convince fifty or sixty million other citizens to think the same way. If you can, why, we'll have a genuine movement on our hands.
Making changes to the way a government works is less a matter of general principle (most Americans believe in what you're saying, I know I do) but of motivation and a willingness to take measured risks. You need to get people en-masse to get up off their collective asses and take a chance at improving their governance. That is not an easy thing to do. Just getting people to write their Congressman in useful numbers is hard: nobody wants to get involved. Let someone else do it. Me, I've written my Congresscritters on numerous occasions: even received some nice form letters in return, but that's as far as I've gone.
So then, once you've got people all riled up... what comes next? Not everyone's moral compass points in the same direction. Not everyone will want the same kind of changes made that you do: many will think you're full of hooey. The issues may be simple but people are not... like I said, this is going to be expensive. I don't think we're going to have much choice though, not if we don't want to lose everything our ancestors built for us.
I was watching some crime drama with my father one evening some years ago (it was about a woman that got raped, I've long since forgotten the plot) but as the credits scrolled by at the end, some "statistics" appeared at the end, claiming that rape was an enormous social problem and that some ridiculous number of women were raped in the U.S. every second. I didn't pay it much attention, but my father (who was a physicist and electronics engineer) blinked and said, "If that were true, every man, woman and child in the United States would be raped three times every year." I blinked and said, "Really." Maybe it was just a mistake, but I have the feeling somebody had an agenda.
So much for facts. Personally, I think that every such "fact" presented by mainstream media should be required, by law, to be accompanied with cites to whatever studies were used to support them. Let us judge whether you're full of it or not.
Maybe then there'd be a lot less bullshit on the airwaves. Of course, studies can be faked... but that's a lot harder to cover up.
And you especially say "No!" if you happen to have anything in your encrypted storage that would put you in jail anyway.
Of course, the government response to such reasoning would probably be to make withholding encryption keys a crime of such magnitude that you'll gladly give in to avoid more time in the pen than any ordinary criminal activity would land you. They justify that kind of abuse because, obviously, if you won't give them your keys you have something to hide, and the more you resist the more serious your "crime" must be.
The problem with all forms of social protest is that they are costly to the protesters. Social protest can be valuable to society as a whole (and sometimes not, think about how we treated Viet Nam veterans, and the popular reactions against nuclear power and science in general) but it frequently results in the instigators flushing themselves down the tubes. Think Tianamen Square. Think War of Independence. A lot of those people died.
I agree that what you're saying is the right thing, the correct thing, the proper thing to do to keep government in line. However, if you force someone to make a choice between the good of all, and the good of themselves and their immediate family... it's not at all clear which is the best option. It's easy to say to someone, "do what's right no matter what the cost." It's a lot harder to do it yourself. What it really comes down to is that we had a chance to put our collective foot down after World War II, before things got too far out of whack, but it was easier to do nothing. Now things are so far out of hand that any attempt at correction is going to be very expensive indeed.
No kidding. I doubt they'll be able to block it too effectively (all those work-at-home types using corporate VPNS would be royally pissed off and so would their employers) but they can sure make it illegal. That way, anyone using encryption would have to register with their ISP (and thus with the Feds) and if you aren't registered you're presumed to be doing something illegal. An extension of the morally-bankrupt "if you've nothing to hide..." principle.
I can't see Comcast or AT&T telling the Feds to screw off. They might tell the customer that he's been squealed upon... but then again, they might not. Probably not, now that I think about it.
I don't know what idiot modded you "Flamebait", because you're right. However, it's not really "efficiency" that we're talking about. What is efficient law enforcement? That's when the cops catch bad guys with a minimum of fuss and a minimum of disruption to the lives of the ordinary citizenry. What our government is doing now is not efficient: the cultural and economic impact of their activities is already significant, and increasing with every poor legal decision that gets handed down.
It's going to be decades before robots are able to stand up to a human bare handed, never mind with something as simple as a stick.
I think what you're saying is that robots aren't intelligent enough to stand up to an unarmed, or nearly unarmed, human being. Now that's true, if you put them on nearly equal terms physically. On the other hand, there's no reason to do that, just like in a video game where the machine's AI offsets it's own relative stupidity by creating opponents that shoot faster or more accurately than you can, or by just using more of them.
Taking an extreme case, suppose you took an M-1 Abrams Main Battle Tank and set it up to run autonomously (or fitted it out for remote control.) Hell, you'd have something resembling one of Keith Laumer's Bolos if you did that. In any event, a bare-handed human wouldn't stand much of a chance as the robot ground him up beneath its treads. Human beings have physical limits, but you can scale up a machine as far as you like.
But, okay. Take a simple radio-controlled mobile platform like we're discussing in this thread. Replace that Taser with a solenoid-operated.45 caliber automatic. Stick or not, if you saw that thing coming, what would you do? I'll tell you what you'd do... you'd run and hide. I'm in good health (no heart conditions or pacemakers or anything like that yet) so I might stand up to a Taser if I was sufficiently motivated. But if I was facing real bullets I'd be a lot less likely to take on that robot.
So, robots don't need to be durable, or particularly smart. Hell, people aren't durable or particularly smart either. If you want people to do what you tell them, you simply have to be deadly. And that's not hard at all.
You need one of the Mobile Infantry's Powered Suits from Heinlein's original Starship Troopers (not the tripe that passed for a movie, since they didn't show them in it.) That was a man amplifier for you.
They don't have adult users in mind, period. We ordered three phones from those screwups in January, for a total of $350 in rebates. We're still waiting for the $150 one (Web site says "in progress") and nobody in their "customer disservice" department can do a damn thing. Oh, they'll give you a number for the rebate processing department, but all they'll say is that the check was already sent. I point out that according to their own Web site the check hasn't been sent, but they say they don't know anything about that, they'll have to wait until the check "expires" and they can send me a new one. That takes at least six months... of course, it's been seven months now and we still haven't seen our hundred and fifty.
That's not all, naturally. I didn't order any Internet services with my phone (wasn't really interested in Web access on a 2" screen) but I did regularly check my minutes. Most providers I know don't have a problem with your checking your remaining minutes with the phone, but Sprint does. I got a $30 charge on my first bill: apparently if you don't have a "data plan" it's seven cents per kilobyte! Just to check my account. Pretty high priced bandwidth (and I thought Comcast was bad.) So now I don't do that: I wait 'til I'm home and check it there.
No, they're more than welcome to do that... nobody here is up in arms about someone running a honeypot. That's pretty basic technique in these parts. Most of us here also know better than to download an illegal torrent from any old Web site anyway, and certainly wouldn't install a proprietary download program. What is wrong about their action is the same as what was wrong with the Sony rootkit. They downloaded and installed a client application without informing the user as to its full capabilities. If it turns out that the software was only what it said it was, a download tool: no harm done. If it did anything else along the lines of reporting copyright violations to the MPAA (and given Media Defender's business model and reputation it's likely it did something untoward)... well. They would deserve to be burnt at the stake and I'd light the fire.
Bottom line is: jesus, they aren't even TRYING to fool us. Idiots.
Which indicates (as others have said here) that this outfit is either a. run by fools or b. into something a bit more devious. Personally, given the caliber of their employers, I'd vote for the latter.
Slashdot Mirror
... because TFA is filtered through a layer of ignorance and sensationalism ...
Which means it is in no way different from the bulk of Slashdot submissions.
just put them in an autoclave.
The microbes, or the patients?
Just ask the jews. They had nothing to hide at all.
... but those two lines ought to give anyone pause. Especially if you're in the "I've nothing to hide so I'm safe" camp.
And not too long afterwards they also had nowhere to hide.
I'm not Jewish, as it happens
I'm in the minority because I like the Bush administration ...
... I'm sorry.
Oh
what happens when the bugs become resistant to these two drugs as well?
I don't care which side of the copyright/patent/intellectual-property fence you're on, please Please PLEASE stop saying "rampant piracy".
Gagh.
Believe me, I'd much rather start work at 11 ... I'm a confirmed night person.
I think the problem is that we're talking more than a few extra bucks, we're in the tens of millions of dollars. There are hundreds of thousands of establishments nationwide that play music in public. Grab an extra $500 or a thousand from each year after year, and you're talking real money. Worse, that kind of cash flow attracts con artists and scammers (well, I should say additional con artists and scammers) who play off a small business owner's natural fear of lawyers and big money.
But yeah, you're otherwise pretty much on target. The world of entertainment is a sleazy one at best. I'm glad I have no part in it.
But my company insists I work 10-6 anyway, rather than 12-8)
Ten? Hell, you get to sleep in every day. My company insists on 7:30 to 4.
These assholes need to be put against a wall and shot.
Make that "in the kneecaps" and I'll buy it.
What I believe in, and my morals are not subject to compromise.
... what comes next? Not everyone's moral compass points in the same direction. Not everyone will want the same kind of changes made that you do: many will think you're full of hooey. The issues may be simple but people are not ... like I said, this is going to be expensive. I don't think we're going to have much choice though, not if we don't want to lose everything our ancestors built for us.
That's good. Stay with it, you have the right idea. You just need to convince fifty or sixty million other citizens to think the same way. If you can, why, we'll have a genuine movement on our hands.
Making changes to the way a government works is less a matter of general principle (most Americans believe in what you're saying, I know I do) but of motivation and a willingness to take measured risks. You need to get people en-masse to get up off their collective asses and take a chance at improving their governance. That is not an easy thing to do. Just getting people to write their Congressman in useful numbers is hard: nobody wants to get involved. Let someone else do it. Me, I've written my Congresscritters on numerous occasions: even received some nice form letters in return, but that's as far as I've gone.
So then, once you've got people all riled up
I found the blurb about Al Gore's kid interesting ... I didn't know a Prius could do 100 MPH.
I was watching some crime drama with my father one evening some years ago (it was about a woman that got raped, I've long since forgotten the plot) but as the credits scrolled by at the end, some "statistics" appeared at the end, claiming that rape was an enormous social problem and that some ridiculous number of women were raped in the U.S. every second. I didn't pay it much attention, but my father (who was a physicist and electronics engineer) blinked and said, "If that were true, every man, woman and child in the United States would be raped three times every year." I blinked and said, "Really." Maybe it was just a mistake, but I have the feeling somebody had an agenda.
... but that's a lot harder to cover up.
So much for facts. Personally, I think that every such "fact" presented by mainstream media should be required, by law, to be accompanied with cites to whatever studies were used to support them. Let us judge whether you're full of it or not.
Maybe then there'd be a lot less bullshit on the airwaves. Of course, studies can be faked
And you especially say "No!" if you happen to have anything in your encrypted storage that would put you in jail anyway.
... it's not at all clear which is the best option. It's easy to say to someone, "do what's right no matter what the cost." It's a lot harder to do it yourself. What it really comes down to is that we had a chance to put our collective foot down after World War II, before things got too far out of whack, but it was easier to do nothing. Now things are so far out of hand that any attempt at correction is going to be very expensive indeed.
Of course, the government response to such reasoning would probably be to make withholding encryption keys a crime of such magnitude that you'll gladly give in to avoid more time in the pen than any ordinary criminal activity would land you. They justify that kind of abuse because, obviously, if you won't give them your keys you have something to hide, and the more you resist the more serious your "crime" must be.
The problem with all forms of social protest is that they are costly to the protesters. Social protest can be valuable to society as a whole (and sometimes not, think about how we treated Viet Nam veterans, and the popular reactions against nuclear power and science in general) but it frequently results in the instigators flushing themselves down the tubes. Think Tianamen Square. Think War of Independence. A lot of those people died.
I agree that what you're saying is the right thing, the correct thing, the proper thing to do to keep government in line. However, if you force someone to make a choice between the good of all, and the good of themselves and their immediate family
No kidding. I doubt they'll be able to block it too effectively (all those work-at-home types using corporate VPNS would be royally pissed off and so would their employers) but they can sure make it illegal. That way, anyone using encryption would have to register with their ISP (and thus with the Feds) and if you aren't registered you're presumed to be doing something illegal. An extension of the morally-bankrupt "if you've nothing to hide ..." principle.
... but then again, they might not. Probably not, now that I think about it.
I can't see Comcast or AT&T telling the Feds to screw off. They might tell the customer that he's been squealed upon
I don't know what idiot modded you "Flamebait", because you're right. However, it's not really "efficiency" that we're talking about. What is efficient law enforcement? That's when the cops catch bad guys with a minimum of fuss and a minimum of disruption to the lives of the ordinary citizenry. What our government is doing now is not efficient: the cultural and economic impact of their activities is already significant, and increasing with every poor legal decision that gets handed down.
Encryption. Learn it. Love it. Live it.
Until they illegalize it. Or, as I understand England has done, simply make it illegal to withhold your keys from government agents.
It's going to be decades before robots are able to stand up to a human bare handed, never mind with something as simple as a stick.
.45 caliber automatic. Stick or not, if you saw that thing coming, what would you do? I'll tell you what you'd do ... you'd run and hide. I'm in good health (no heart conditions or pacemakers or anything like that yet) so I might stand up to a Taser if I was sufficiently motivated. But if I was facing real bullets I'd be a lot less likely to take on that robot.
I think what you're saying is that robots aren't intelligent enough to stand up to an unarmed, or nearly unarmed, human being. Now that's true, if you put them on nearly equal terms physically. On the other hand, there's no reason to do that, just like in a video game where the machine's AI offsets it's own relative stupidity by creating opponents that shoot faster or more accurately than you can, or by just using more of them.
Taking an extreme case, suppose you took an M-1 Abrams Main Battle Tank and set it up to run autonomously (or fitted it out for remote control.) Hell, you'd have something resembling one of Keith Laumer's Bolos if you did that. In any event, a bare-handed human wouldn't stand much of a chance as the robot ground him up beneath its treads. Human beings have physical limits, but you can scale up a machine as far as you like.
But, okay. Take a simple radio-controlled mobile platform like we're discussing in this thread. Replace that Taser with a solenoid-operated
So, robots don't need to be durable, or particularly smart. Hell, people aren't durable or particularly smart either. If you want people to do what you tell them, you simply have to be deadly. And that's not hard at all.
You need one of the Mobile Infantry's Powered Suits from Heinlein's original Starship Troopers (not the tripe that passed for a movie, since they didn't show them in it.) That was a man amplifier for you.
No, it was there ... but at that point I was tired of cutting & pasting.
Nah ... some Web site had already copied it ... cut & paste.
They don't have adult users in mind, period. We ordered three phones from those screwups in January, for a total of $350 in rebates. We're still waiting for the $150 one (Web site says "in progress") and nobody in their "customer disservice" department can do a damn thing. Oh, they'll give you a number for the rebate processing department, but all they'll say is that the check was already sent. I point out that according to their own Web site the check hasn't been sent, but they say they don't know anything about that, they'll have to wait until the check "expires" and they can send me a new one. That takes at least six months ... of course, it's been seven months now and we still haven't seen our hundred and fifty.
That's not all, naturally. I didn't order any Internet services with my phone (wasn't really interested in Web access on a 2" screen) but I did regularly check my minutes. Most providers I know don't have a problem with your checking your remaining minutes with the phone, but Sprint does. I got a $30 charge on my first bill: apparently if you don't have a "data plan" it's seven cents per kilobyte! Just to check my account. Pretty high priced bandwidth (and I thought Comcast was bad.) So now I don't do that: I wait 'til I'm home and check it there.
SBC sucks, sure, but I'd say Sprint sucks more.
No, they're more than welcome to do that ... nobody here is up in arms about someone running a honeypot. That's pretty basic technique in these parts. Most of us here also know better than to download an illegal torrent from any old Web site anyway, and certainly wouldn't install a proprietary download program. What is wrong about their action is the same as what was wrong with the Sony rootkit. They downloaded and installed a client application without informing the user as to its full capabilities. If it turns out that the software was only what it said it was, a download tool: no harm done. If it did anything else along the lines of reporting copyright violations to the MPAA (and given Media Defender's business model and reputation it's likely it did something untoward) ... well. They would deserve to be burnt at the stake and I'd light the fire.
If this does end up in court (not real likely, when you get down to it) you can bet the discovery phase will be veeerrrry interesting.
Bottom line is: jesus, they aren't even TRYING to fool us. Idiots.
Which indicates (as others have said here) that this outfit is either a. run by fools or b. into something a bit more devious. Personally, given the caliber of their employers, I'd vote for the latter.