Not Bloody Likely. Motivated students, and trust me they ARE motivated, are far more effective than the MAFIAA leaning on the government leaning on schools.
The students may be motivated. But their tuition is subsidized - their school is subsidized - and the Bank of Mom and Dad is overdrawn - and its back to flipping burgers at McDonalds.
But really, if a law is unjust and violates natural rights, you have every right to break it, some may say you even have a responsibility to break it because by not breaking it you in essence prop the law up.
Tunneling under the firewall may be an act of rebellion but is not civil disobedience as Thoreau or Gandhi or Martin Luther would have understood it.
Civil disobedience is open and public.
Civil disobedience means paying the price of disobedience - no matter how high.
Civil disobedience means nothing to a regime that operates in secret and fundamentally does not care how many people have to die to achieve its objectives.
The lone tourist might be ignored - but he could go to trial.
The repeat visitor who routinely breaks the rules begins to look like more like a spy, a courier or agent provocateur.
In which case, he might meet with an unfortunate accident.
Yeah, because we all know that money goes directly to the people you want to help... (yes, there are some good charities but the vast majority puts most of the money in administrative fees or gets hung up somewhere) I know I got my start in computers by playing with old hardware then figuring out what made them work and changing it, chances are someone poor can do that too
Hardware that has be repaired, re-packaged and shipped thousands of miles.
Hardware that has to clear customs.
Hardware that is heavy-weight, bulky, fragile and power hungry.
Processing the geek's cast-off junk has very real costs in legal expenses, administration, labor, transport, storage, etc.
But Freenet covers the anonymous distribution angle.
How many nodes or super-nodes would you need to control to compromise Freenet's security? It strikes me that the more pieces you have on the table, the easier it is to solve the jigsaw puzzle.
It's the corporations that are most harmful to your freedom
The pirate distributor is also a corporate enterprise.
The only difference is that he pays nothing for the product he sells.
The geek's notion of "freedom" intriques me.
The budget for Star Trek was $140 million. The Dark Knight $185 million.
High School Musical $4 million.
The instant franchise product for amatuer production, theme parks and ice shows. Money in the bank for Disney and not a penny spent on fan service for the geek.
It never occurs to the geek that each dollar he spends at the Red Box gives him a vote on what films will be produced.
Don't survey a subset of the users and then generalize that to all users. It's inherently unfair.
It's not a survey at all - but just another meaningless on-line poll:
We aren't trying to capture a demographically representative sample of all iPad owners and we didn't normalize the results. The opinions you're about to read reflect only the experiences of the folks who took our survey-readers of Technologizer and other sites (such as Daring Fireball) that linked to it.The State of iPad Satisfaction
if it's a site devoted to Windows or OSX, having content that's not particularly well available beyond those platforms is possibly acceptable. If it's general interest like Youtube is having it be restricted artificially to a couple platforms is clearly not acceptable
Windows and OSX, Flash and H.264, have as close to 100% of the mass consumer market - YouTube's market - as makes no difference.
Your cell phone, tablet, HDTV, Blu-Ray Player, video game console, or set top box with its embedded OS supports H.264 and quite likely Flash as well.
MP3 became the de facto standard despite the existence of far better quality formats for the exact same reason.
WinAmp was released in 1997.
The iPod in 2001.
The 1.0 reference standard for Ogg Vorblis wasn't available until July '02.
"Better quality" is of little real consequence when you are talking about PC audio or portable music players in the late nineties and beyond. Microsoft's USB Digital Sound System 80 [1998] with its 44 watt Philips subwoofer and twin 16 watt speakers was the exception, not the rule.
But you cannot give a disruptive tech like MP3 a five year head start and expect to accomplish more than play catch-up:
If you search on Google for Ogg files, you'll see that more than 80% of all the Ogg files on the web are from Wikimedia related sitesVorbis
A search of Google Videos for "MP4" returns 6,800,000 hits.
Tesla's model is new to the auto industry: manufacturer sells direct to consumer, and also owns the distribution network and the service departments. That's nothing new in high tech: Apple's made a fortune using that model.
One difference is that Apple's exposure in a recall is limited to the replacement cost of a small household appliance.
It doesn't have to "service" anything.
Tesla has a $100K Roadster and a $65K Model S sedan in the works.
That implies a full-scale luxury dealer showroom and auto repair garage. Not a niche in the Galleria Mall.
Firefox will still be used so long as Chrome maintains its policy of not really allowing any major customizations. Firefox lets you customize -EVERYTHING-, seriously, type in about:config in Firefox...
Used.
But by how many?
about:config returns hundreds of lines that are not easily understood by anyone but a geek.
Microsoft Messenger? Oh you mean that thing i don't have installed on this computer? The thing i specifically removed from the silent install disc i made?
Relevancy is best seen from the view outside the basement.
Messenger has 330 million users and is available in 50 languages. Windows Live Messenger
No, see a couple of years ago the smarter internet users started installing Firefox for their computer-illiterate friends and family to get them away from IE. THOSE are the type of people that play FarmVille.
There are about a billion PC users - 900 million or so running Windows.
But only a million Slashdot geeks.
For the alternative browser to maintain traction, the momentum has to come from ordinary users, not the evangelist with his forced conversions.
The evangelist doesn't have that many friends, he meets resistance, he hits a wall, he stalls out.
I dunno what's more shocking, that the government thinks ICQ has any relevance with anything anymore or that someone thought the network was worth $186 MILLION dollars. That's just insane.
It's not insane for a Russian buyer to be interested in a service has 50 million users in its core markets of Israel and eastern Europe.
Slashdot Mirror
Not Bloody Likely. Motivated students, and trust me they ARE motivated, are far more effective than the MAFIAA leaning on the government leaning on schools.
The students may be motivated. But their tuition is subsidized - their school is subsidized - and the Bank of Mom and Dad is overdrawn - and its back to flipping burgers at McDonalds.
All get together and agree to do nothing. Watch as the government doesn't withdraw federal funding for all schools.
Watch as the schools turn off the P2P tap.
You think the bloke who pays for the keg believes in free beer?
The government doesn't have to cut funding to all schools. It only has to make examples of a few to demonstrate that it means business.
But really, if a law is unjust and violates natural rights, you have every right to break it, some may say you even have a responsibility to break it because by not breaking it you in essence prop the law up.
Tunneling under the firewall may be an act of rebellion but is not civil disobedience as Thoreau or Gandhi or Martin Luther would have understood it.
Civil disobedience is open and public.
Civil disobedience means paying the price of disobedience - no matter how high.
Civil disobedience means nothing to a regime that operates in secret and fundamentally does not care how many people have to die to achieve its objectives.
The lone tourist might be ignored - but he could go to trial.
The repeat visitor who routinely breaks the rules begins to look like more like a spy, a courier or agent provocateur.
In which case, he might meet with an unfortunate accident.
But who is filling these vacancies?
Yeah, because we all know that money goes directly to the people you want to help... (yes, there are some good charities but the vast majority puts most of the money in administrative fees or gets hung up somewhere)
I know I got my start in computers by playing with old hardware then figuring out what made them work and changing it, chances are someone poor can do that too
Hardware that has be repaired, re-packaged and shipped thousands of miles.
Hardware that has to clear customs.
Hardware that is heavy-weight, bulky, fragile and power hungry.
Processing the geek's cast-off junk has very real costs in legal expenses, administration, labor, transport, storage, etc.
But Freenet covers the anonymous distribution angle.
How many nodes or super-nodes would you need to control to compromise Freenet's security? It strikes me that the more pieces you have on the table, the easier it is to solve the jigsaw puzzle.
It's the corporations that are most harmful to your freedom
The pirate distributor is also a corporate enterprise.
The only difference is that he pays nothing for the product he sells.
The geek's notion of "freedom" intriques me.
The budget for Star Trek was $140 million. The Dark Knight $185 million.
High School Musical $4 million.
The instant franchise product for amatuer production, theme parks and ice shows. Money in the bank for Disney and not a penny spent on fan service for the geek.
It never occurs to the geek that each dollar he spends at the Red Box gives him a vote on what films will be produced.
Don't survey a subset of the users and then generalize that to all users. It's inherently unfair.
It's not a survey at all - but just another meaningless on-line poll:
We aren't trying to capture a demographically representative sample of all iPad owners and we didn't normalize the results. The opinions you're about to read reflect only the experiences of the folks who took our survey-readers of Technologizer and other sites (such as Daring Fireball) that linked to it. The State of iPad Satisfaction
I've got nothing good to say about D-Star until the voice CODEC is free-to-use. That's not amateur radio.
It's the ham operator's choice to make - as it would be in any other sport or hobby.
I don't think there is an actual composer or author left in the group
Then you would be wrong
ASCAP held its 25th Anniversary Film and Television Music Awards on the 24th - the first to include an award for video game music:
Call of Duty 2: Modern Warfare 2, score by Hans Zimmer (The Lion King) and Lorne Balfe.
That video game production can attract - and pay for - talents like Zimmer is something the geek ought to know.
Among the many familiar names receiving awards were Michael Giacchino, Randy Newman, Nicholas Hooper, Alan Silvestri, and James Horner.
Collectively, these composers have an audience that could quite plausibly be counted in the billions.
if it's a site devoted to Windows or OSX, having content that's not particularly well available beyond those platforms is possibly acceptable. If it's general interest like Youtube is having it be restricted artificially to a couple platforms is clearly not acceptable
Windows and OSX, Flash and H.264, have as close to 100% of the mass consumer market - YouTube's market - as makes no difference.
Your cell phone, tablet, HDTV, Blu-Ray Player, video game console, or set top box with its embedded OS supports H.264 and quite likely Flash as well.
yes. the "choice is easy to make" because *you* arent creating content. only consuming it.
Oh, really:
Users upload 24 hours of video every minute to YouTube Flash and the HTML5 tag
There are of course many special-interest websites like The Weather Channel that invite submissions from amateurs.
MP3 became the de facto standard despite the existence of far better quality formats for the exact same reason.
WinAmp was released in 1997.
The iPod in 2001.
The 1.0 reference standard for Ogg Vorblis wasn't available until July '02.
"Better quality" is of little real consequence when you are talking about PC audio or portable music players in the late nineties and beyond. Microsoft's USB Digital Sound System 80 [1998] with its 44 watt Philips subwoofer and twin 16 watt speakers was the exception, not the rule.
But you cannot give a disruptive tech like MP3 a five year head start and expect to accomplish more than play catch-up:
If you search on Google for Ogg files, you'll see that more than 80% of all the Ogg files on the web are from Wikimedia related sites Vorbis
A search of Google Videos for "MP4" returns 6,800,000 hits.
VP8, 1,410.
The Tesla Roadster has a transmission - only one forward gear - but still a transmission.
Tesla's model is new to the auto industry: manufacturer sells direct to consumer, and also owns the distribution network and the service departments. That's nothing new in high tech: Apple's made a fortune using that model.
One difference is that Apple's exposure in a recall is limited to the replacement cost of a small household appliance.
It doesn't have to "service" anything.
Tesla has a $100K Roadster and a $65K Model S sedan in the works.
That implies a full-scale luxury dealer showroom and auto repair garage. Not a niche in the Galleria Mall.
The fact that Mozilla still gets the majority of money from Google doesn't mean they're not looking for other sources of income.
The Moz Foundation hasn't published a financial report since 2008. Tax Returns and Financial Information
It is really, really, tough to get good, hard numbers on the financial state of the Mozilla Corporation and the Mozilla Foundation
Firefox will still be used so long as Chrome maintains its policy of not really allowing any major customizations. Firefox lets you customize -EVERYTHING-, seriously, type in about:config in Firefox...
Used.
But by how many?
about:config returns hundreds of lines that are not easily understood by anyone but a geek.
What's more valuable? 1.5 billion consumers with a very limited purchasing power or developed countries where eyeballs are actually worth paying for?
Not all of China is poor and undeveloped.
1/3 of 1.5 billion is 500 million. Roughly the same as the population of North America.
Microsoft Messenger? Oh you mean that thing i don't have installed on this computer? The thing i specifically removed from the silent install disc i made?
Relevancy is best seen from the view outside the basement.
Messenger has 330 million users and is available in 50 languages. Windows Live Messenger
THOSE are the type of people that play FarmVille.
There are about a billion PC users - 900 million or so running Windows.
But only a million Slashdot geeks.
For the alternative browser to maintain traction, the momentum has to come from ordinary users, not the evangelist with his forced conversions.
The evangelist doesn't have that many friends, he meets resistance, he hits a wall, he stalls out.
I can say it's pretty short sighted of them. What do they plan to tell the people who buy Chrome OS Netbooks in the near future?
The netbook is down-market, the iPhone is up-market. Which do you think is more important to JP Morgan Chase?
"Traditional" businesses don't understand technology at all, especially "consumer" technology trends.
Net Applications tracks 40 browser versions:
IE 8.0 25%
IE 6.0 17%
FFX 3.6 16%
IE 7.0 12%
FFX 3.5 5%
Chrome 4.1 5%
Safari 4%
Opera 10.x 2%
Chrome 5.0 1%
Browser Version Market Share
These are global webstats, not Chase's internal webstats - there can be a difference and a difference that matters.
However "trend-forward" Opera and Chrome may appear to the geek, they really aren't all that significant in the mass consumer market.
It's not insane for a Russian buyer to be interested in a service has 50 million users in its core markets of Israel and eastern Europe.
Do people still use ICQ? I thought it was a dying technology in 2000
ICQ is based in Israel and has always had strong regional loyalties. Bids are in for AOL's sale of ICQ--it's down to 'UN' of 4 buyers [Feb 8]
So I can "invent" the shovel today?
Of course you can.
If you have something new to offer.
Perhaps a wheeled snow shovel for seniors. Sno Wovel - Snow Shovel