If you think economic concerns (DMCA/Software Patents) are more important civil rights (Patriot Act)
I didn't say that. I said, "So let's not push the DMCA out of our consciousnesses just because there are worse laws." And if you would like Americans to continue to have a "right" to clean drinking water, a plentiful and safe food supply, reliable electric power and everything else our industrial economy has brought us, it's best not to forget about what it takes to maintain them. If we don't take steps (big ones, and soon!) to prevent it, a major economic collapse is inevitable. It will be one that will make the Great Depression appear a mere transient blip in comparison, and when that happens civil rights will go right out the window.
Beggars can't be choosers, and they usually get the short end of the civil liberties stick.
Kinda like Linksys did with their WRT54-series WAPs. Fortunately, they had to good sense to realize they were costing themselves money, and put out a hacker-friendly version. I understand that the PSP/X-Box business model of selling the hardware at a loss with the intent to recoup losses in software sales really motivates manufacturers to keep their products from being purchased for other purposes. I mean, if you buy an X-Box and put Linux on it and never buy a game, you just got yourself a cheap computer at Microsoft's expense (not that I have any particular problem with that... it's your property, and they chose to sell it to you at a loss.) But there's no real reason for a vendor whose profit comes from hardware sales to attempt to predetermine what software runs on that hardware. Well, not in the $50 consumer-grade market anyway.
Unless, of course, you're an Apple Computer with the obvious intent of becoming the 21st century king of content distribution. You probably wouldn't want people hacking into your real-time swarming video distribution system getting movies and TV shows for free. This apparent friendliness to the hacker underground may just be a ploy to get as many of the things out there as possible, by eliminating complaints that were common to late-generation Tivos and Dish Network products. They can always lock it up later.
If they made it a more generic media centre box, they could probably kill off the windows media center market before it even gets noticed by most people.
I have the feeling that Apple (probably correctly) figures that Microsoft will do that all by itself without Apple having to lift a finger.
As others here have pointed out, the Internet will, at some point, be unavoidable in the context of our daily lives. We won't be able to pay our bills by mailing checks, or any other form of non-electronic payment. There are just too many economies that are to be had from networked communication: look how many utilities and other providers want you to sign up for online-only invoicing. I will refuse to do that as long as possible, since there have been too many times where having that hardcopy saved my ass.
However, that doesn't mean that everyone will have a PC with a broadband connection. Oh sure, they'll need that connection, although they probably won't know they have one. It'll be part of their phone bill. There will be simplified interfaces in every household to perform common tasks such as paying bills or checking bank balances. They'll be required by law, just like having a circuit-breaker panel is required.
The point is, we're all going to be "using the Internet" sooner or later, and by the time that happens a lot of us won't even know it... or care.
No, he's pretty much correct. The Internet has been around for a long time, but it was a military/academic tool until fairly recently. It wasn't opened to the public until many years after its inception.
If you mean, did it make fair use illegal, I'd say no. It just made fair use potentially impractical, because trafficking in the tools to remove encryption became illegal.
I assume you're referring to Macrovision. Macrovision was easily removed by a $30 device. Of course, CSS is easily disabled by free software, so I'm not sure that either really did anything for the content producers.
Lehman lay much of the blame at the feet of the recording industry for their failure to adapt to the online marketplace in the mid-1990s.
Not to defend the likes of the RIAA, but big business has always tried to influence government at all levels. That's nothing new, it happens all the time, in every nation on the planet. Much of the blame (well, all of it really) can be laid at the feet of Congress for permitting the recording industry to exert undue influence upon them. Once, just once, I'd like to see a Congressperson call the cops and have a lobbyist hauled off to jail for trying to buy a law or other favor.
Well, when your nation is suffering from out-and-out economic warfare on all sides, any law that damages the ability of your nation to compete is very bad. For everyone. So let's also not push the DMCA out of our consciousnesses just because there are worse laws. China is going ahead full-steam building and selling stuff, something we used to do very well, while we're using the DMCA and other such laws to keep each other from building and selling stuff. The DMCA is one of the worst laws to come out of Washington in a long, long time. I wouldn't care so much if the effects of that legislation were limited to only the music and movie industries. But they're not, they've proven to be much more far-reaching.
Yes, he was. I watched it on television at the time, and I was more than a little amused. Clinton was indeed flustered, because those allowed to be present at those "Town Meetings" were very carefully screened for the proper political bias, but apparently a ringer got in. Clinton was blindsided.
Here's the relevant portion:
President Clinton, I believe that you were elected largely on the basis of your promise of a middle-class tax cut. But for the last 90 days or so, we've seen both you and the Congress transforming that promised middle-class tax cut into an unprecedented round of more taxes and new spending. Our county has been in a deepening recession for the last three years. There's no end in sight, and a malaise is beginning to set in our county, like the Carter era. Please understand, Mr. President, San Diegans just don't have any more money to contribute to the coffers of government.
My question is, can you name one country that has ever taxed and spent itself back into prosperity? Thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: The answer to your question is, I can't. But you can't fairly characterize my program as that.
Clinton went on from there with an extended rendition of his accomplishments, but I trust you take my point. I'm not disagreeing with your evaluation of President Clinton's ability to dissemble, but he was indeed asked that question and he did not have an answer.
True... but "better" is relative for the supercomputer owner. Anyone with a conventional supercomputer pays for the power himself. In the PS3 Folding@Home project, not only the processing is highly distributed: the electric bill is as well.
No, what's really sad (and the root of much of our difficulty in so many areas) is that the public mass mind is simply incapable of dealing with more than a single "crisis" at any given time. Every time something comes up that sorely needs to be dealt with (as in "applying tourniquets to Congressional throats") that the government would rather we forgot about, they conveniently manufacture a new "crisis" to distract us. Alternatively, they find another existing "crisis" and publicize it heavily. Either way, we generally lose interest in the previous "crisis" and focus on the new one, which was carefully selected to cause the minimum damage to whatever political agenda is currently being threatened.
Well, according to Thomas Jefferson, all copyright is a loan from the public domain. We do own all published creative works, it's just that the copyright holder is the only one allowed to profit by them for a while. Jefferson actually did not want copyrights (or patents, for that matter) because he felt that such would ultimately damage the public domain. As usual he was right.
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If you think economic concerns (DMCA/Software Patents) are more important civil rights (Patriot Act)
I didn't say that. I said, "So let's not push the DMCA out of our consciousnesses just because there are worse laws." And if you would like Americans to continue to have a "right" to clean drinking water, a plentiful and safe food supply, reliable electric power and everything else our industrial economy has brought us, it's best not to forget about what it takes to maintain them. If we don't take steps (big ones, and soon!) to prevent it, a major economic collapse is inevitable. It will be one that will make the Great Depression appear a mere transient blip in comparison, and when that happens civil rights will go right out the window.
Beggars can't be choosers, and they usually get the short end of the civil liberties stick.
Kinda like Linksys did with their WRT54-series WAPs. Fortunately, they had to good sense to realize they were costing themselves money, and put out a hacker-friendly version. I understand that the PSP/X-Box business model of selling the hardware at a loss with the intent to recoup losses in software sales really motivates manufacturers to keep their products from being purchased for other purposes. I mean, if you buy an X-Box and put Linux on it and never buy a game, you just got yourself a cheap computer at Microsoft's expense (not that I have any particular problem with that ... it's your property, and they chose to sell it to you at a loss.) But there's no real reason for a vendor whose profit comes from hardware sales to attempt to predetermine what software runs on that hardware. Well, not in the $50 consumer-grade market anyway.
Unless, of course, you're an Apple Computer with the obvious intent of becoming the 21st century king of content distribution. You probably wouldn't want people hacking into your real-time swarming video distribution system getting movies and TV shows for free. This apparent friendliness to the hacker underground may just be a ploy to get as many of the things out there as possible, by eliminating complaints that were common to late-generation Tivos and Dish Network products. They can always lock it up later.
Time will tell.
If they made it a more generic media centre box, they could probably kill off the windows media center market before it even gets noticed by most people.
I have the feeling that Apple (probably correctly) figures that Microsoft will do that all by itself without Apple having to lift a finger.
jo(e) public buys it so (s)he
One of the most compact examples of political correctness I think I have ever seen.
As others here have pointed out, the Internet will, at some point, be unavoidable in the context of our daily lives. We won't be able to pay our bills by mailing checks, or any other form of non-electronic payment. There are just too many economies that are to be had from networked communication: look how many utilities and other providers want you to sign up for online-only invoicing. I will refuse to do that as long as possible, since there have been too many times where having that hardcopy saved my ass.
... or care.
However, that doesn't mean that everyone will have a PC with a broadband connection. Oh sure, they'll need that connection, although they probably won't know they have one. It'll be part of their phone bill. There will be simplified interfaces in every household to perform common tasks such as paying bills or checking bank balances. They'll be required by law, just like having a circuit-breaker panel is required.
The point is, we're all going to be "using the Internet" sooner or later, and by the time that happens a lot of us won't even know it
No, he's pretty much correct. The Internet has been around for a long time, but it was a military/academic tool until fairly recently. It wasn't opened to the public until many years after its inception.
Interleaving can help out there.
Is the general population afraid of computers?
Yes.
Or do they like to put their mind into coast mode and have content spoon fed to them.
Yes.
If you mean, did it make fair use illegal, I'd say no. It just made fair use potentially impractical, because trafficking in the tools to remove encryption became illegal.
I assume you're referring to Macrovision. Macrovision was easily removed by a $30 device. Of course, CSS is easily disabled by free software, so I'm not sure that either really did anything for the content producers.
Lehman lay much of the blame at the feet of the recording industry for their failure to adapt to the online marketplace in the mid-1990s.
Not to defend the likes of the RIAA, but big business has always tried to influence government at all levels. That's nothing new, it happens all the time, in every nation on the planet. Much of the blame (well, all of it really) can be laid at the feet of Congress for permitting the recording industry to exert undue influence upon them. Once, just once, I'd like to see a Congressperson call the cops and have a lobbyist hauled off to jail for trying to buy a law or other favor.
Well, when your nation is suffering from out-and-out economic warfare on all sides, any law that damages the ability of your nation to compete is very bad. For everyone. So let's also not push the DMCA out of our consciousnesses just because there are worse laws. China is going ahead full-steam building and selling stuff, something we used to do very well, while we're using the DMCA and other such laws to keep each other from building and selling stuff. The DMCA is one of the worst laws to come out of Washington in a long, long time. I wouldn't care so much if the effects of that legislation were limited to only the music and movie industries. But they're not, they've proven to be much more far-reaching.
Yes, he was. I watched it on television at the time, and I was more than a little amused. Clinton was indeed flustered, because those allowed to be present at those "Town Meetings" were very carefully screened for the proper political bias, but apparently a ringer got in. Clinton was blindsided.
Here's the relevant portion:
President Clinton, I believe that you were elected largely on the basis of your promise of a middle-class tax cut. But for the last 90 days or so, we've seen both you and the Congress transforming that promised middle-class tax cut into an unprecedented round of more taxes and new spending. Our county has been in a deepening recession for the last three years. There's no end in sight, and a malaise is beginning to set in our county, like the Carter era. Please understand, Mr. President, San Diegans just don't have any more money to contribute to the coffers of government.
My question is, can you name one country that has ever taxed and spent itself back into prosperity? Thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: The answer to your question is, I can't. But you can't fairly characterize my program as that.
Clinton went on from there with an extended rendition of his accomplishments, but I trust you take my point. I'm not disagreeing with your evaluation of President Clinton's ability to dissemble, but he was indeed asked that question and he did not have an answer.
True ... but "better" is relative for the supercomputer owner. Anyone with a conventional supercomputer pays for the power himself. In the PS3 Folding@Home project, not only the processing is highly distributed: the electric bill is as well.
Or is it "oligopoly"?
No, what's really sad (and the root of much of our difficulty in so many areas) is that the public mass mind is simply incapable of dealing with more than a single "crisis" at any given time. Every time something comes up that sorely needs to be dealt with (as in "applying tourniquets to Congressional throats") that the government would rather we forgot about, they conveniently manufacture a new "crisis" to distract us. Alternatively, they find another existing "crisis" and publicize it heavily. Either way, we generally lose interest in the previous "crisis" and focus on the new one, which was carefully selected to cause the minimum damage to whatever political agenda is currently being threatened.
Well, according to Thomas Jefferson, all copyright is a loan from the public domain. We do own all published creative works, it's just that the copyright holder is the only one allowed to profit by them for a while. Jefferson actually did not want copyrights (or patents, for that matter) because he felt that such would ultimately damage the public domain. As usual he was right.
We really should listen the Founders more often.
That's some of Seinfeld's best work.
Won't matter ... he'll eventually dissolve the Imperial Senate, uh, I mean Congress anyway.
In the immortal words of Princess Leia, "It's not over yet."
Because then the car will automatically take you to where the hookers are.
Of course, that isn't necessarily a bad thing.
stuck against some wall.
Stuck against some wall is Microsoft market-speak for "crashed and burned."
RIAA Caught in Tough Legal Situation
Replace "Tough" with "Well-Deserved" and I'll buy it.
Not vultures, because the companies Oracle has taken over weren't necessarily carrion. I'd say "bloodsucking leeches" might be more appropriate.
I think means "Secondary Audio Program", implies that one is an idiot, or is a substance that leaks out of trees. Other than that, I'm not sure.