This has not been because they believe that this is the best "model" or solution, but because they have been arm twisted by the US government and it's shill the WTO. They in essence get denied "free trade" with the US unless they tow the party line.
And who's fault is that? The world is full of bullies: if you can't stand up to a bully it's your problem, not his. More to the point, however, is the fact that corporate influence is just as big an issue in other countries as it is in the U.S., and the adoption of U.S.-centric intellectal property law cannot be explained away entirely by diplomatic and trade pressure. No, the reality is that politicians anywhere can be bought, and the media outfits have just as much (or more) political influence in other countries as they do here. This is even more true when you consider that most of them aren't even U.S. corporations!
As it happens, I think that the whole concept of "intellectual property" stinks to high heaven, and if other nations have the common sense to reject it so much the better for them. Also, may I point out that your examples aren't very relevant: few Oriental nations have any respect for IP (China and Taiwan certainly don't... odd that their economies are booming in spite of that), and India and Russia aren't exactly bastions of copyright enforcement either. You would have been better off using the European Union: they've taken what we foisted upon them and have carried it past the point of absurdity.
Up to a point... legalizing murder would probably cause more problems that it would solve, even if the vast majority of the population thought it was a good idea. And copyright holders are, after all, part of those people you're talking about. It would be very shortsighted of us to ignore their needs since they create things that we want! Or at least, own the rights to things that we want. Conversely, it is equally wrong to tilt things so far in their favor that the rest of us get hurt. We had struck a pretty decent balance here, for a couple hundred years. That's what got thrown out of whack recently.
The issue (both here in the U.S. and in Australia) has less to do with the rights of the individual as it does with undue corporate influence in government. I don't know about Australia, but for a very long time the United States permitted limited duplication of copyrighted works by individuals. Fair use, and all that. Then, at the behest of some very large corporations that right was effectively nullified (oh sure, technically we still have it but in practice we don't... just encrypt your data and fair use goes right out the window.) Too bad so many otherwise civilized nations have been modelling changes to their "intellectual property" laws after the way the United States' are now, rather than how they used to be.
Well, any people that can come up with gems like "flamin' herd 'o wild brumbies!" and "transferbangle" is definitely okay with me. And for that matter, if we're concerned about nations being born from criminals, well hell... the United States has it all over Australia. We were founded by political and religious dissidents and broke away from England by starting a war (thereby pretty much criminalizing all of us so far as the Brits were concerned at the time.) And on top of that, we've spent a couple of hundred years accepting immigrants from just about everywhere, many of whom were less-than-upstanding citizens in their countries of origin (this is not always a bad thing however.) Austrialia was a prison colony once, sure, but so was America. At the very least it was a way to get rid of undesirables and put them to work, which is pretty much the same thing.
Well, I believe that terrorists have been found to be smuggling important information inside CPU chips, consequently the original "Intel Inside" slogan will still be used when marketing to CIA, NSA, FBI and other law-enforcement and surveillance agencies.
Yeah... kinda makes you think, "boxcutter knife". In any event, it's a sure bet that the Transportation Safety Administration won't allow anything with sharp edges on a plane, so best not buy Intel in your laptop.
In fact, their service people exist soley to make our lives difficult. This is especially a problem because with hundreds of machines, you can't just go out and buy a new network card from circuit city when you need one.
Which is a good reason to maintain an in-house inventory of spare parts. Also a good reason to avoid vendor lock in by requiring machines to be built with standard components, so that you can actually use that inventory when something breaks. With hundreds of systems to maintain, it may be cost effective to provide your own support.
That's true, however, if that was a Kryptonian super-virus capable of wiping out all of humanity within days to which only you had resistance, I'd say that would make you a Superman by default (there being nobody else left to make any comparisons.)
just on the off chance that you might be indicted for some crime, and you want to make sure you don't miss your court date? Wacky. But this is the kind of thing that bureaucrats (not known for deep or particularly critical thinking) are famous for inventing, the whole world over. Like the time that the Social Security Administration here in the U.S. decided to make everyone's SS records accessible simply by typing in one's SSN at their Web site. Brilliant idea that would no doubt have made perfect sense in some Sliders-style alternate universe.
We must not enter into political arrangements with countries ill-prepared to adequately protect our greatest economic assets.
Let's see... what is the nation with which America has the largest trade deficit in its history, that has been ripping off our "intellectual property" and high technology with impunity, and has the willing collusion of our elected leaders and most powerful corporations. Never mind the fact that that nation just happens to the greatest totalitarian state on the planet at the moment, and arguably should receive very little from a nominally more-principled nation such as the United States. If the **AA's of the world want a good place to start protecting their oh-so-valuable "intellectual property", I'd say forget about a has-been like Russia and start worrying about China.
And the very best of luck with that, Mr. Sherman. Let me know how it works out.
is that "having nothing to hide" is not semantically equivalent to "having nothing to lose". In fact, if you do have something to lose, then by definition you have something worth hiding.
( You want to dispute their numbers? You gotta pay a lawyer to sue them. )
No kidding. My father once disputed the valuation they made on his home one year. It was some forty thousand dollars above the market price of the house. So, this short-penised type from the assessor's office comes out, glances over the place, and adds another 40%. He then told Dad, "Maybe next time you'll think twice about complaining." Incredible... punitive taxation simply because a subject^h^h^h^h^h^h^citizen complained about an erroneous valuation. Presumably illegal, but like you said, you gotta pay a lawyer. That's Crook^h^h^h^h^hCook County for you. I am damned glad I don't live there anymore. To paraphrase another poster's sig, "they are filled with goo. Black, evil goo."
Yeah, no shit... although what they'll just say is that, sure, you can get the free stuff... but who's going to support it? That line of reasoning works well with PHBs.
Other way around... Google is paying AOL to teach AOL's people. Maybe if you just ask Google how this stuff works, they would give you one billion dollars as well.
I would disagree. The "right" of a citizen to go about his or her business without the State watching every move has shown itself, historically speaking, to be far more important than avoiding a few cracked heads. You probably don't realize this: maybe it's more obvious to me as an American, where we have protected freedoms missing in other legal systems (as well as a history of law enforcement overreaching itself and abusing people anyway... see FBI under Hoover.) By accepting this public surveillance system, you are implicitly trusting people that don't deserve it. No offense intended, but the reality is that nobody does. You are firmly on the path of incrementalism, my friend, and this will not get better.
What's being done to Britain is not much different that what was done in East Germany, except that the technology is much more advanced and requires far fewer people to run it (at its height, almost half of East Germany was involved in watching the other half.) I would not be comfortable in either situation myself, although, to be fair (one must always be fair when comparing another nation's lack of civil liberties to one's own) America is heading that way at an accelerated pace. The great city of Chicago Illinois recently announced that it would be installing a massive fiber ring with the sole purpose is to support thousands of TV cameras. Glad I don't live in Cook County: wouldn't want my taxes going for that nonsense. I guess Mayor Daley is taking a few pages out of Tony Blair's book. Thousands of smaller communities have installed so-called "red light cams" at intersections in order to "catch speeders". The reality of that situation is that local governments want more revenue from tickets, and want to give us time to get comfortable with the idea of automated public surveillance. It won't be long before cameras start popping up everywhere.
Granted, there haven't been any more terrorist attacks in the United States since 9/11. Great Britain's people, for all the money spent on their much-vaunted camera network cannot say that. And while it is true that the terrorists (who, after all, provided the rationale and rationalizations for England's camera network and our own Patriot Act, among other things) haven't won, neither have we. As a matter of fact, both nations have lost something important.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh heh ... yeah. I can think of a few and I'm sure so can you.
This has not been because they believe that this is the best "model" or solution, but because they have been arm twisted by the US government and it's shill the WTO. They in essence get denied "free trade" with the US unless they tow the party line.
... odd that their economies are booming in spite of that), and India and Russia aren't exactly bastions of copyright enforcement either. You would have been better off using the European Union: they've taken what we foisted upon them and have carried it past the point of absurdity.
And who's fault is that? The world is full of bullies: if you can't stand up to a bully it's your problem, not his. More to the point, however, is the fact that corporate influence is just as big an issue in other countries as it is in the U.S., and the adoption of U.S.-centric intellectal property law cannot be explained away entirely by diplomatic and trade pressure. No, the reality is that politicians anywhere can be bought, and the media outfits have just as much (or more) political influence in other countries as they do here. This is even more true when you consider that most of them aren't even U.S. corporations!
As it happens, I think that the whole concept of "intellectual property" stinks to high heaven, and if other nations have the common sense to reject it so much the better for them. Also, may I point out that your examples aren't very relevant: few Oriental nations have any respect for IP (China and Taiwan certainly don't
Up to a point ... legalizing murder would probably cause more problems that it would solve, even if the vast majority of the population thought it was a good idea. And copyright holders are, after all, part of those people you're talking about. It would be very shortsighted of us to ignore their needs since they create things that we want! Or at least, own the rights to things that we want. Conversely, it is equally wrong to tilt things so far in their favor that the rest of us get hurt. We had struck a pretty decent balance here, for a couple hundred years. That's what got thrown out of whack recently.
... just encrypt your data and fair use goes right out the window.) Too bad so many otherwise civilized nations have been modelling changes to their "intellectual property" laws after the way the United States' are now, rather than how they used to be.
The issue (both here in the U.S. and in Australia) has less to do with the rights of the individual as it does with undue corporate influence in government. I don't know about Australia, but for a very long time the United States permitted limited duplication of copyrighted works by individuals. Fair use, and all that. Then, at the behest of some very large corporations that right was effectively nullified (oh sure, technically we still have it but in practice we don't
Well, any people that can come up with gems like "flamin' herd 'o wild brumbies!" and "transferbangle" is definitely okay with me. And for that matter, if we're concerned about nations being born from criminals, well hell ... the United States has it all over Australia. We were founded by political and religious dissidents and broke away from England by starting a war (thereby pretty much criminalizing all of us so far as the Brits were concerned at the time.) And on top of that, we've spent a couple of hundred years accepting immigrants from just about everywhere, many of whom were less-than-upstanding citizens in their countries of origin (this is not always a bad thing however.) Austrialia was a prison colony once, sure, but so was America. At the very least it was a way to get rid of undesirables and put them to work, which is pretty much the same thing.
Well, I believe that terrorists have been found to be smuggling important information inside CPU chips, consequently the original "Intel Inside" slogan will still be used when marketing to CIA, NSA, FBI and other law-enforcement and surveillance agencies.
Yeah ... kinda makes you think, "boxcutter knife". In any event, it's a sure bet that the Transportation Safety Administration won't allow anything with sharp edges on a plane, so best not buy Intel in your laptop.
Tomorrow's technology offline today!
In fact, their service people exist soley to make our lives difficult. This is especially a problem because with hundreds of machines, you can't just go out and buy a new network card from circuit city when you need one.
Which is a good reason to maintain an in-house inventory of spare parts. Also a good reason to avoid vendor lock in by requiring machines to be built with standard components, so that you can actually use that inventory when something breaks. With hundreds of systems to maintain, it may be cost effective to provide your own support.
but in nature you cannot have a perfectly closed and useful system, unless you're a planet.
Not even then.
That's true, however, if that was a Kryptonian super-virus capable of wiping out all of humanity within days to which only you had resistance, I'd say that would make you a Superman by default (there being nobody else left to make any comparisons.)
Call me when we have bullet resistant children.
get some ill-behaved 800lb gorillas-of-industry out there, and the little guy needs some help on his team, and fast.
As apt a description of SBC's influence in the telecommunications market as I've heard anywhere.
"YOU'VE MADE BAIL!"
just on the off chance that you might be indicted for some crime, and you want to make sure you don't miss your court date? Wacky. But this is the kind of thing that bureaucrats (not known for deep or particularly critical thinking) are famous for inventing, the whole world over. Like the time that the Social Security Administration here in the U.S. decided to make everyone's SS records accessible simply by typing in one's SSN at their Web site. Brilliant idea that would no doubt have made perfect sense in some Sliders-style alternate universe.
for is "Cartel". What we're going to have here is the RIAA of the semiconductor industry. Call it the CMAN - Chip Maker's Association of Nippon.
We must not enter into political arrangements with countries ill-prepared to adequately protect our greatest economic assets.
... what is the nation with which America has the largest trade deficit in its history, that has been ripping off our "intellectual property" and high technology with impunity, and has the willing collusion of our elected leaders and most powerful corporations. Never mind the fact that that nation just happens to the greatest totalitarian state on the planet at the moment, and arguably should receive very little from a nominally more-principled nation such as the United States. If the **AA's of the world want a good place to start protecting their oh-so-valuable "intellectual property", I'd say forget about a has-been like Russia and start worrying about China.
Let's see
And the very best of luck with that, Mr. Sherman. Let me know how it works out.
is that "having nothing to hide" is not semantically equivalent to "having nothing to lose". In fact, if you do have something to lose, then by definition you have something worth hiding.
I use Thagobar Larnimisculus Verf, Borgax of Fenigwisnok. But that's just me.
( You want to dispute their numbers? You gotta pay a lawyer to sue them. )
... punitive taxation simply because a subject^h^h^h^h^h^h^citizen complained about an erroneous valuation. Presumably illegal, but like you said, you gotta pay a lawyer. That's Crook^h^h^h^h^hCook County for you. I am damned glad I don't live there anymore. To paraphrase another poster's sig, "they are filled with goo. Black, evil goo."
No kidding. My father once disputed the valuation they made on his home one year. It was some forty thousand dollars above the market price of the house. So, this short-penised type from the assessor's office comes out, glances over the place, and adds another 40%. He then told Dad, "Maybe next time you'll think twice about complaining." Incredible
Not at all ... they all just happened to set the exact same prices at the same time. Purely coincidental, you know.
More to the point, what's a "strim"?
I think you mean "Lunarians".
Yeah, no shit ... although what they'll just say is that, sure, you can get the free stuff ... but who's going to support it? That line of reasoning works well with PHBs.
Other way around ... Google is paying AOL to teach AOL's people. Maybe if you just ask Google how this stuff works, they would give you one billion dollars as well.
I would disagree. The "right" of a citizen to go about his or her business without the State watching every move has shown itself, historically speaking, to be far more important than avoiding a few cracked heads. You probably don't realize this: maybe it's more obvious to me as an American, where we have protected freedoms missing in other legal systems (as well as a history of law enforcement overreaching itself and abusing people anyway ... see FBI under Hoover.) By accepting this public surveillance system, you are implicitly trusting people that don't deserve it. No offense intended, but the reality is that nobody does. You are firmly on the path of incrementalism, my friend, and this will not get better.
What's being done to Britain is not much different that what was done in East Germany, except that the technology is much more advanced and requires far fewer people to run it (at its height, almost half of East Germany was involved in watching the other half.) I would not be comfortable in either situation myself, although, to be fair (one must always be fair when comparing another nation's lack of civil liberties to one's own) America is heading that way at an accelerated pace. The great city of Chicago Illinois recently announced that it would be installing a massive fiber ring with the sole purpose is to support thousands of TV cameras. Glad I don't live in Cook County: wouldn't want my taxes going for that nonsense. I guess Mayor Daley is taking a few pages out of Tony Blair's book. Thousands of smaller communities have installed so-called "red light cams" at intersections in order to "catch speeders". The reality of that situation is that local governments want more revenue from tickets, and want to give us time to get comfortable with the idea of automated public surveillance. It won't be long before cameras start popping up everywhere.
Granted, there haven't been any more terrorist attacks in the United States since 9/11. Great Britain's people, for all the money spent on their much-vaunted camera network cannot say that. And while it is true that the terrorists (who, after all, provided the rationale and rationalizations for England's camera network and our own Patriot Act, among other things) haven't won, neither have we. As a matter of fact, both nations have lost something important.