You seem to be implying that depriving someone of something doesn't make them a victim as long as it doesn't leave them struggling to survive.
Perhaps I implied that, but it wasn't my point. How would you describe the RIAA's way of calculating damages, or estimating "losses" due to piracy? I hope you would again use the phrase "complete and utter bullshit"
If you point to a popular artist whose songs are being traded --- are they actually losing money? Can you prove it? In my personal case, artists I've pirated fall into two categories: Artists I don't like, and artists whose CDs I have subsequently bought. If I couldn't try before I buy, I would have been much more conservative and probably not bought any of those artists anyway.
But if you can point to someone whose songs are popular and who is obviously not earning as much money as they should, then I would accept them as an indisputable victim of music piracy.
The Warrior's bland acronym, MMI, obscures the true horror of this monstrosity. Its inventors promise a new era of genius, but meanwhile unscrupulous power brokers use its forcible installation to violate the sanctity of unwilling human minds. They are creating their own private army of demons.
-- Commissioner Pravin Lal, "Report on Human Rights"
I think, and my thoughts cross the barrier into the synapses of the machine, just as the good doctor intended. But what I cannot shake, and what hints at things to come, is that thoughts cross back. In my dreams, the sensibility of the machine invades the periphery of my consciousness: dark, rigid, cold, alien. Evolution is at work here, but just what is evolving remains to be seen.
1. Set up giant skyward-pointing laser.
2. Connect to mad-scientist-style lightning rod.
3. Wait for thunderstorm.
4. Profit!!!
We use the lightning to drive the laser, and syphon off the excess energy into big batteries. The process is self-sustaining until the storm runs out of juice, when it ends naturally. Free electricity for us and no lightning damage to the surrounding area 'cause we're sucking down all the bolts ourselves. It's win-win!
(of course, now all the America-hating greenies will come out of the woodwork, claiming that we're exploiting the world's natural lightning resources, and warning of grave consequences once we reach "peak storm" or other such nonsense)
So, all I need to do to be successful is go back to the drawing board and quickly create an excellent new type product specially designed for specific types of customers! It's so simple!
Huh? A local retailer, Dick Smith's --- they're a big chain with stores throughout Australasia --- is selling EeePCs with XP preinstalled already. Are they rolling their own?
more people died prior to the year 2000 than any other time in history
Now, for bonus points, assume the current rate of exponential growth holds indefinitely for the future, and held throughout human history. Then figure out: how long before that ceases to be true?
nowadays the only countries which still have an agriculture are those who subsidize it.
New Zealand doesn't subsidise agriculture, nor (AFAIK) do we have tariffs on imports. And that's our single biggest export sector.
(in particular, our dairy farmers are making vast amounts of money right now, and Fonterra, a dairy co-op, has about a third of the global dairy market)
Poor African farmers could probably make plenty of money without government support, if America and the EU would just let them sell without paying huge import tariffs..
There's a problem with banks and credit cards: with many online merchants, all you need to make a purchase is the card number and expiry date. That wouldn't be too bad, except that most banks issue credit cards in contiguous blocks with the same expiry date. So if you start with a known-good credit card, you can increment or decrement the card number (modulo the Luhn algorithm), keeping the expiry date the same, and get a lot of hits.
You could keep your card in a lead-sealed box buried under your house and never use it, and still be hit by an attack like that...
Quoting from Martin Gardner's _Collosal Book of Mathematics_:
In Peter Michelmore's biography of Einstein, he tells us that "Einstein's bedroom was monkish. There were no pictures on the wall, no carpet on the floor.... He shaved roughly with bar soap. He often went barefoot around the house. Only once every few months he would allow Elsa [his wife] to lop off swatches of his hair.... Most days he did not find underwear necessary. He also dispensed with pajamas and, later, with socks. 'What use are socks?' he asked. 'They only produce holes.' Elsa put her foot down when she saw him chopping off the sleeve of a new shirt from the elbow down. He explained that cuffs had to be buttoned or studded and washed frequently -- all a waste of time."
Methane production from stock is definitely a big part of climate change. Here in NZ, cows are one of our biggest carbon emitters (since our electricity is almost all renewables). It's gonna be a big cost to us when the next phase of Kyoto kicks in, but there's no political will to address the problem:-(
Consider this hypothetical situation: I'm running Windows XP with no firewall and no antivirus. I'm on broadband and my ADSL modem/router does NAT with no port-forwarding rules set up. I'm fully patched and run out-of-the-box firefox. I don't run executables from untrusted sources, I understand how to treat email attachments, and I'm smart enough not to get caught by phishing.
How vulnerable am I? How likely is it that I will get compromised?
Does the answer change if I'm running fully-patched IE7?
Re:You need to clarify your question
on
Ethics In IT
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The free-market economist would say: you buy your car from the company that makes the best cars that you can afford.
The companies, realising that they need to sell cars in order to achieve their goal (making money), set about making their cars better or cheaper.
A better example might be: You are choosing between Car Company A and Car Company B. Both companies make good cars -- you can't choose between them on technical grounds. Car Company A's cars are about 10% cheaper than Car Company B's. Car Company B pays its employees 10% more than Car Company A. Which car do you buy?
The closest thing I know of to an official way of disabling autorun is to install Microsoft's powertoy TweakUI. As you might guess from the name, it gives you a GUI to tweak various aspects of the Windows user interface, including letting you turn off autorun. I've never had a problem with it.
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You seem to be implying that depriving someone of something doesn't make them a victim as long as it doesn't leave them struggling to survive.
Perhaps I implied that, but it wasn't my point. How would you describe the RIAA's way of calculating damages, or estimating "losses" due to piracy? I hope you would again use the phrase "complete and utter bullshit"
If you point to a popular artist whose songs are being traded --- are they actually losing money? Can you prove it? In my personal case, artists I've pirated fall into two categories: Artists I don't like, and artists whose CDs I have subsequently bought. If I couldn't try before I buy, I would have been much more conservative and probably not bought any of those artists anyway.
But if you can point to someone whose songs are popular and who is obviously not earning as much money as they should, then I would accept them as an indisputable victim of music piracy.
Here you go: China rolling modern infrastructure over human rights.
Anyone know any victims? Artists or creators whose works are widely pirated but who struggle to make a living?
The Warrior's bland acronym, MMI, obscures the true horror of this monstrosity. Its inventors promise a new era of genius, but meanwhile unscrupulous power brokers use its forcible installation to violate the sanctity of unwilling human minds. They are creating their own private army of demons.
-- Commissioner Pravin Lal,
"Report on Human Rights"
I think, and my thoughts cross the barrier into the synapses of the machine, just as the good doctor intended. But what I cannot shake, and what hints at things to come, is that thoughts cross back. In my dreams, the sensibility of the machine invades the periphery of my consciousness: dark, rigid, cold, alien. Evolution is at work here, but just what is evolving remains to be seen.
-- Commissioner Pravin Lal
"Man and Machine"
(eh, I always preferred the University anyway)
1. Set up giant skyward-pointing laser.
2. Connect to mad-scientist-style lightning rod.
3. Wait for thunderstorm.
4. Profit!!!
We use the lightning to drive the laser, and syphon off the excess energy into big batteries. The process is self-sustaining until the storm runs out of juice, when it ends naturally. Free electricity for us and no lightning damage to the surrounding area 'cause we're sucking down all the bolts ourselves. It's win-win!
(of course, now all the America-hating greenies will come out of the woodwork, claiming that we're exploiting the world's natural lightning resources, and warning of grave consequences once we reach "peak storm" or other such nonsense)
So, all I need to do to be successful is go back to the drawing board and quickly create an excellent new type product specially designed for specific types of customers! It's so simple!
Huh? A local retailer, Dick Smith's --- they're a big chain with stores throughout Australasia --- is selling EeePCs with XP preinstalled already. Are they rolling their own?
Hardly..
Which of the following would you be most willing to do without in your home?
I know my answer...
Get the laptop case laser-engraved with goatse. Who's gonna steal it then?
To hell with benchmarks -- "seem" is what matters.
Now, for bonus points, assume the current rate of exponential growth holds indefinitely for the future, and held throughout human history. Then figure out: how long before that ceases to be true?
He can just tell people that he didn't compile..
New Zealand doesn't subsidise agriculture, nor (AFAIK) do we have tariffs on imports. And that's our single biggest export sector.
(in particular, our dairy farmers are making vast amounts of money right now, and Fonterra, a dairy co-op, has about a third of the global dairy market)
Poor African farmers could probably make plenty of money without government support, if America and the EU would just let them sell without paying huge import tariffs..
Well, duh -- it's homeopathic gravity!
Imagine if God had used reincarnate instead of resurrect -- Jesus could have come back as a badger!
So, what, you want to start testing judges with the gom jabbar?
There's a problem with banks and credit cards: with many online merchants, all you need to make a purchase is the card number and expiry date. That wouldn't be too bad, except that most banks issue credit cards in contiguous blocks with the same expiry date. So if you start with a known-good credit card, you can increment or decrement the card number (modulo the Luhn algorithm), keeping the expiry date the same, and get a lot of hits.
You could keep your card in a lead-sealed box buried under your house and never use it, and still be hit by an attack like that...
Quoting from Martin Gardner's _Collosal Book of Mathematics_:
Methane production from stock is definitely a big part of climate change. Here in NZ, cows are one of our biggest carbon emitters (since our electricity is almost all renewables). It's gonna be a big cost to us when the next phase of Kyoto kicks in, but there's no political will to address the problem :-(
..Convention on fundamental human rights and freedoms. If you don't remember what these are.. Ho. Ho. Ho.
Really? How many real terrorists have you seen?
Consider this hypothetical situation: I'm running Windows XP with no firewall and no antivirus. I'm on broadband and my ADSL modem/router does NAT with no port-forwarding rules set up. I'm fully patched and run out-of-the-box firefox. I don't run executables from untrusted sources, I understand how to treat email attachments, and I'm smart enough not to get caught by phishing.
How vulnerable am I? How likely is it that I will get compromised?
Does the answer change if I'm running fully-patched IE7?
The free-market economist would say: you buy your car from the company that makes the best cars that you can afford.
The companies, realising that they need to sell cars in order to achieve their goal (making money), set about making their cars better or cheaper.
A better example might be: You are choosing between Car Company A and Car Company B. Both companies make good cars -- you can't choose between them on technical grounds. Car Company A's cars are about 10% cheaper than Car Company B's. Car Company B pays its employees 10% more than Car Company A. Which car do you buy?
There's basically two kinds of DRM in the world: DRM that's been broken and DRM that no one has cared to break.
So, that said, here's some python DRM you can use which I am releasing into the public domain:
(replace _ with spaces)
The closest thing I know of to an official way of disabling autorun is to install Microsoft's powertoy TweakUI. As you might guess from the name, it gives you a GUI to tweak various aspects of the Windows user interface, including letting you turn off autorun. I've never had a problem with it.