Get a clue -- the American public is very heavily armed last time I checked
Deer Season begins around Thanksgiving. Each year we bury another Elmer Fudd. The gun does not make you a "well-regulated" milita or a disciplined guerilla force.
To Microsoft, security is about protecting the machine from everyone, including the owner and admin.
To Microsoft, security is about protecting someone's data (not necessarily the user's) from everyone (perhaps including the user).
the population of the US is 300 million.
at any given moment there must be millions of users running a PC without advanced skills or technical support. no help desk. no system adminstrator. no geek living next door with a clue to what has gone wrong and how to fix it.
in that context, protecting the user from himself makes perfect sense.
And then the IE7 install checks if your computer is a legal XP copy. But most of desktop users just don't own a legal copy
You seem mighty sure about that.
But XP has been the default OEM system install for five years. The gold standard for end users. XP upgrade bundles haven't slipped far down the software sales charts.
The truth, I suspect, is that there are a lot more legit XP installs out there than the Geek is willing to admit.
Take Two and Rockstar were victims of nothing more than their own inbred conceit.
"Kill the Haitians." That the gangster game genre is not greatly loved or trusted outside the hardcore gaming community comes as a surprise only to the gamer himself.
fucking stupidos doofus cretins
The speech and language of a pre-adolescent Rush Limbaugh does not make the best case for Grand Theft Auto.
Here is a thought. Always buy used drives: never new. Then, if one has to surrender a drive for discovery, point out that deleted files could have been created and deleted by the prior owner of the drive.
Here is another thought:
Federal judges are not known for their humerous indulgence of the Geek. You make a game of the discovery process, you get caught in a lie, you are going to find yourself in a world of hurt.
I just created a fake bill of sale for a car. I have committed no crime, because I have not proffered it as genuine to anybody.
Fraud is a crime of intent.
I have written a program to fake a boarding pass and published it on the web. I am now in bigger trouble than if I had been charged with fraud:
The charge might be framed as a from of criminal facilitation. The only intent required might be defined simply as a reckless disregard of the consequences of your actions.
What follows is a model statute that suggsts the possibilites:
__
1002. Criminal Facilitation.
(1) Offense. A person is guilty of criminal facilitation if he knowingly provides substantial assistance to a person intending to commit a felony, and that person, in fact, commits the crime contemplated, or a like or related felony, employing the assistance so provided. The ready lawful availability from others of the goods or services provided by a defendant is a factor to be considered in determining whether or not his assistance was substantial. This section does not apply to a person who is either expressly or by implication made not accountable by the statute defining the felony facilitated or related statutes.
(2) Defense Precluded. Except as otherwise provided, it is no defense to a prosecution under this section that the person whose conduct the defendant facilitated has been acquitted, has not been prosecuted or convicted, has been convicted of a different offense, is immune from prosecution, or is otherwise not subject to justice.
(3) Grading. Facilitation of a Class A felony is a Class C felony. Facilitation of a Class B or Class C felony is a Class A misdemeanor.
(4) Jurisdiction. There is federal jurisdiction over an offense defined in this section when the felony facilitated is a federal felony Proposed New Federal Code
1) I see no need to send someone to jail for copyright infringement. The punishment does not fit the crime, and its not helping society, by removing a danger, nor do I suspect it will be useful in rehabilitating.
2) I hope he stocked up on torrents of stuff to watch/listen/play during house arrest.
Economic crimes are still crimes.
You want to see the Enron exec go to jail. Fine. But don't start whining when the smaller fry have to serve their time as well.
Uh.. this raises a question: Would he go to federal pound me in the ass prison, or white-collar resort prison? (did you know they have conjugal visits there?!)
The federal prison system does not allow conjugal visits. Conjugal Visits
I hope it goes in front of the jury and we get Jury Nullification
What part of "pleading guilty" don't you understand?
In an ordinary criminal case an American jury votes only on the defendant's guilt or innocence. The appropriate punishment on conviction is for the judge to decide, based on his interpretation of the law.
Guilty of what? Guilty of to 'conspiracy to commit corporate greed infringement' and 'criminal moneygrabing infringement'?
Copyright law defines a constitutionally protected right to distribute and profit from a copyrighted work. You want to go into the business of distributing copyrighted works? Fine. Do what Apple did. Get yourself a license.
Although Bach's work may not be covered by copyright, the particular printing you're copying probably is. Yes, that's right, the actual way the printing company formats the score and arranges it on the page is copyrightable. So what are you going to do, track down an ancient piece of parchment and scan that? No. The only sane thing you could do is get out your favourite paint program (not score program, they probably copyright the output of it) and draw your own score, preferably from memory, then put it under a permissive license. Just be sure to note that you're not claiming copyright over the public domain work.
You are assuming that there have been no changes in musical notation since Bach and that there are no other significant problems in preparing a score suitable for modern performance.
If you are listening to a performance of Bach, it is almost certainly an orchestra's unique (and copyrighted?) interpretation of the work, and not an attempt at a mechanical, note-by-note, transcription of the score in manuscript.
That means I'm spending around $1500 for this "experience" they're peddling, all told.
The experience for most buyers will be:
Their first wide screen set.
Their first with multichannel digital sound.
Their first experience with very large screen direct view or projection TV
---the big screen sells HD and HD sells the big screen
Their first replacement of a CRT as their primary television. Once you make this choice, you don't look back.
When color TV was introduced in the U.S. in 1954, the price tag was $1000 for a 21 inch screen and only NBC was broadcasting in color, a few hours of special event programming a week.Television History - The First 75 Years
It would take ten years for color to become mass market, with no significant technological improvements other than the first tentative moves into the use of circuit boards and transistors.
The simplest way for Walmart to become pro-active is to stop stocking games that are likely to bring it nothing but grief. GTA could disappear from its shelves tomorrow without having the slightest impact on the bottom-line.
The new Entertainment Consumers Association has announced that it has acquired the GamePolitics.com website [CC], as part of its mission 'to give gaming consumers a voice and ensure that state and local politicians hear their concerns and appreciate their demographic power'.
The only demographic that matters to the politician is that of the voters in his district.
But even then he must make choices.
The Evangelical Protestant is active and organized and the issues which excite him resonate far beyond his own community.
The gamer in politics runs the risk of looking adolescent and frivolous in comparison and usually stands very much alone.
The fact is media producers are vastly overstating the damage they suffer, in an effort to steal limited police services from other, more deserving crime victims. There is no way that the Media apologists can get around it, so they resort so stuff like this, and downplay any statistics they don't like.
Economic crimes are still crimes. The Enron exec goes to jail.
The white collar criminal does not get a bye because his victims, individual or corporate, are somehow less "deserving."
In the U.S., P2P is policed through private civil actions. There is no significant diversion of resources from ordinary criminal investigations.
I'm not saying Sean Connery shouldn't make more than I do, but should he make fifty times what I do? Five hundred? Ten thousand times my salary?
Because his fees are backed by fifty years of experience in film and television? Because his voice radiates sophistication and class like none other since Cary Grant?
Producers have always known that stars are bankable. When Jenny Lind was touring the states for P.T. Barnum in the 1950s the best seats sold for $100 in gold.
Just because you dislike porn doesn't mean you can tell other people whether or not they should be allowed to watch it. That's what freedom's about. You know, that thing America's founded upon but the government keeps trying to quash? Yeah, that.
Freedom is about many things.
Including the freedom of a community to take collective action against conduct it regards as profoundly anti-social.
Freedom of Speech in American constitutional law is rooted in a shared democratic faith in unconstrained political debate.
It is not and never has been an license to make of every public forum a distribution center for pornography.
It is not and never has been a license to draw children into the production of pornography or into the market for pornography,
Slashdot Mirror
Deer Season begins around Thanksgiving. Each year we bury another Elmer Fudd. The gun does not make you a "well-regulated" milita or a disciplined guerilla force.
To Microsoft, security is about protecting someone's data (not necessarily the user's) from everyone (perhaps including the user).
the population of the US is 300 million.
at any given moment there must be millions of users running a PC without advanced skills or technical support. no help desk. no system adminstrator. no geek living next door with a clue to what has gone wrong and how to fix it.
in that context, protecting the user from himself makes perfect sense.
You seem mighty sure about that.
But XP has been the default OEM system install for five years. The gold standard for end users. XP upgrade bundles haven't slipped far down the software sales charts.
The truth, I suspect, is that there are a lot more legit XP installs out there than the Geek is willing to admit.
Take Two and Rockstar were victims of nothing more than their own inbred conceit.
"Kill the Haitians." That the gangster game genre is not greatly loved or trusted outside the hardcore gaming community comes as a surprise only to the gamer himself.
fucking stupidos doofus cretins
The speech and language of a pre-adolescent Rush Limbaugh does not make the best case for Grand Theft Auto.
Here is another thought:
Federal judges are not known for their humerous indulgence of the Geek. You make a game of the discovery process, you get caught in a lie, you are going to find yourself in a world of hurt.
Fraud is a crime of intent.
I have written a program to fake a boarding pass and published it on the web. I am now in bigger trouble than if I had been charged with fraud:
The charge might be framed as a from of criminal facilitation. The only intent required might be defined simply as a reckless disregard of the consequences of your actions.
What follows is a model statute that suggsts the possibilites:
__
1002. Criminal Facilitation.
(1) Offense. A person is guilty of criminal facilitation if he knowingly provides substantial assistance to a person intending to commit a felony, and that person, in fact, commits the crime contemplated, or a like or related felony, employing the assistance so provided. The ready lawful availability from others of the goods or services provided by a defendant is a factor to be considered in determining whether or not his assistance was substantial. This section does not apply to a person who is either expressly or by implication made not accountable by the statute defining the felony facilitated or related statutes.
(2) Defense Precluded. Except as otherwise provided, it is no defense to a prosecution under this section that the person whose conduct the defendant facilitated has been acquitted, has not been prosecuted or convicted, has been convicted of a different offense, is immune from prosecution, or is otherwise not subject to justice. (3) Grading. Facilitation of a Class A felony is a Class C felony. Facilitation of a Class B or Class C felony is a Class A misdemeanor.
(4) Jurisdiction. There is federal jurisdiction over an offense defined in this section when the felony facilitated is a federal felony Proposed New Federal Code
The Geek: Wah! Activation!
The User: Click Yes to Install. Click. Click Yes to Activate. Click. Done.
it seems appropriate to insert a small reminder here that a federal criminal record can have long term consequences.
2) I hope he stocked up on torrents of stuff to watch/listen/play during house arrest.
Economic crimes are still crimes.
You want to see the Enron exec go to jail. Fine. But don't start whining when the smaller fry have to serve their time as well.
The federal prison system does not allow conjugal visits. Conjugal Visits
What part of "pleading guilty" don't you understand?
In an ordinary criminal case an American jury votes only on the defendant's guilt or innocence. The appropriate punishment on conviction is for the judge to decide, based on his interpretation of the law.
Guilty of what? Guilty of to 'conspiracy to commit corporate greed infringement' and 'criminal moneygrabing infringement'?
Copyright law defines a constitutionally protected right to distribute and profit from a copyrighted work. You want to go into the business of distributing copyrighted works? Fine. Do what Apple did. Get yourself a license.
The population of the U.S. alone is 300 million. There are about 1 million unique Slashdot IDs.
The Geek is rarely in a position to speak for the masses.
You are assuming that there have been no changes in musical notation since Bach and that there are no other significant problems in preparing a score suitable for modern performance.
If you are listening to a performance of Bach, it is almost certainly an orchestra's unique (and copyrighted?) interpretation of the work, and not an attempt at a mechanical, note-by-note, transcription of the score in manuscript.
The experience for most buyers will be:
Their first wide screen set.
Their first with multichannel digital sound.
Their first experience with very large screen direct view or projection TV
---the big screen sells HD and HD sells the big screen
Their first replacement of a CRT as their primary television. Once you make this choice, you don't look back.
When color TV was introduced in the U.S. in 1954, the price tag was $1000 for a 21 inch screen and only NBC was broadcasting in color, a few hours of special event programming a week.Television History - The First 75 Years
It would take ten years for color to become mass market, with no significant technological improvements other than the first tentative moves into the use of circuit boards and transistors.
There is a world of difference between the would-be astronaut and the astronaut qualified for EVA and repair of the Hubble.
It is for NASA to decide when and where to put its people at risk.
The simplest way for Walmart to become pro-active is to stop stocking games that are likely to bring it nothing but grief. GTA could disappear from its shelves tomorrow without having the slightest impact on the bottom-line.
The only demographic that matters to the politician is that of the voters in his district.
But even then he must make choices.
The Evangelical Protestant is active and organized and the issues which excite him resonate far beyond his own community.
The gamer in politics runs the risk of looking adolescent and frivolous in comparison and usually stands very much alone.
No.
But neither do you have to be an academic to understand what is distinctive about a John Ford western or a Hitchcock thriller.
HDTV will run in 32-bit Vista using third-party drivers. MS got tired of waiting for the rival HD camps to agree on DRM standards for HD media.
Economic crimes are still crimes. The Enron exec goes to jail.
The white collar criminal does not get a bye because his victims, individual or corporate, are somehow less "deserving."
In the U.S., P2P is policed through private civil actions. There is no significant diversion of resources from ordinary criminal investigations.
Because his fees are backed by fifty years of experience in film and television? Because his voice radiates sophistication and class like none other since Cary Grant?
Producers have always known that stars are bankable. When Jenny Lind was touring the states for P.T. Barnum in the 1950s the best seats sold for $100 in gold.
Character animation is acting. Vocal performance is acting.
The technology of speech synthesis may become a new means of expression for the artist but it is not the art itself.
Freedom is about many things.
Including the freedom of a community to take collective action against conduct it regards as profoundly anti-social.
Freedom of Speech in American constitutional law is rooted in a shared democratic faith in unconstrained political debate.
It is not and never has been an license to make of every public forum a distribution center for pornography. It is not and never has been a license to draw children into the production of pornography or into the market for pornography,
There are editions of Shakespeare in the public domain.
Many of them censored. Many of them useless for casual reading or amateur performance.
There are reasons why the modern editions of the Penguin Classics have been assigned reading for over fifty years.
You'll find it on eBay or Amazon on DVD starting at around $10-$15.
Eight minutes of silent era sight gags held together by a thin narrative thread and a synchronized sound track.