Everyone says p2p is evil, but in a case like this it can really shine. Download it, put it on your favorite P2P app properly named, and bandwidth will come. There's no stopping half a million netizens who are hosting it off of their boxen.
Accuse me of trolling and mod me down if you must, but you've always got to look into the future.
Well, lez see, I'd bet Microsoft will use their OS monopoly to get a monopoly on selling music online...then I can also see since media formats have always been proprietary cept' for ogg of course, I can see the windows DRM being used with media player to restirct which formats windows can utilize. So in the distant future, we'll see that microsoft's WMA format becoming the de-facto standard amongst windows users. Stupid people will have to buy their media and probably can't rip their CD's, while smart people will use something else like linux or mac.
Combine microsoft deciding they don't like competition from p2p apps or other formats with their autoupdating patch system and you've got them eliminating windows machines from the p2p scene altogether. Heck, they might even be brazen enough to do something like brilliant did awhile ago and use users machines as nodes in the network so they don't have to pay for bandwidth to host their website, patches, or anything else for that matter. Mmmm..viral microsoft patches....
I don't trust apple either, they've done their share of stupid monopolistic stuff too, so it'll be interesting to see MS and apple fight.
Which from the complaint's I'v been hearing is an absolute bitch. Apparently, it likes to install buggy core windows components, provided helpfully by microsoft, to administer the DRM and when it's uninstalled, leaves them behind with a large number of (as it appears, but it could be something microsoft breaking them) broken, modified drivers; most people can't burn CD's of any kind anymore. In short, if you're going to completly uninstall Itunes, prepare to completly reinstall windows if you want to get all the functionality back.
AS for the DRM, this is how they get you with it; first with the "it's ALMOST non existant" then it's "Slightly constrictive but most people can deal with it" then it turns into "I don't burn cd's and nobody needs to anyway" then on with the glowing review.
And of course, I have to add in the obglitoary part about them needing more and more and more control over users machines becuase users have been converting their Itunes to a format which isn't policed by their program. So, when it installs, it'll just uninstall any recording software on your computer of any kind it finds.
Ya know and then they just say "well, our application is installed on so many computers, why can't we just say all recording applications are illegal for non-corperate use?".
I'm still waiting for the listeners lisence; The listeners lisence works like this; the recording companies offer you really cheap media, cd's that were $20 are now $1, but, the catch is you have to have a liseners lisence which the corperation uses to impose a contract on you which restricts your ability to do anything. This is put on all their media, so when you go down to the store, everything is $1-$5 USD but has a listeners lisence attached. Everyone flocks to the store, buys the media, then the RIAA/MPAA says about 10 years later "ok, we have these sales numbers here, and they say that just about everyone in a given country has a listeners lisence, so, we'll just get the goverment to pass a law outlawing any media not ours". Boom, recorders are illegal, if you so much as blab into a microphone, record it, and throw it onto the internet you're violating your listeners lisence, which is promptly revoked, and you're access to all the media the big 5 produce, that's books, television, music, radio, etc is revoked.
So, if you're so much caught with as much as reading a textbook on say, calclulus you're put in jail for a federal crime. It's a doublewhammy; they wipe out their competition and all of a sudden unregulated information is pornagraphy.
Goto www.theafternow.com , download and listen, about 1 gig of free mp3's (free as in beer, copyable as in everyone is free to copy it) about a guy wandering in a post-apoptyliptic future where corperations have won and you get to hear about the way they got their. It's a very interesting and enlightening listen if you're bored, otherwise, light your candles and sit back, and enjoy.
Why can't people like you get it through your heads that the only way to change the law is through civil disobediance? If we let them take music away because it's the law then we don't deserve the music, do we?
We need someone to come up with a GPL'd project that is an OS that does ballots on the x86 platform which is open source and workable, freely downloadable and testable then get people together to demand that it be put on election systems instead of using questionable ones.
W0000, so I do. This is how I envision the future systems working;
Every country runs it's own DNS root server, which is hooked into a distributed system across all the countries with their own domain names. Each server can only register domain names unique to that country, for instance, www.slashdot.usa or www.slashdot.uk etc..Com's should then become www.slashdot.com.usa whereas if I'm in america, and I type in www.slashdot.com, it'll automatically take me to www.slashdot.com.usa and if I'm in the uk it'll take me to www.slashdot.com.uk. Persay that in www.slashdot.com.bz was not registered, then the server will request a wildcard for all www.slashdot.com's and at the software level give the user a selection..gov's are handled the exact same way.
.Nets are given only to ISP's(includes hosting providers, e-mail providers, telco's, connection services, voip, etc), standards bodies (such as icann.net), etc. www.slashdot.net would have to be an ISP or something to have the.net, and would have to register with a UN body to get the domain name..Org's would work the same way, only non-for-profit organizations would be able to have.org names.
Likewise, each country gets an even cut of IPv6 addresses to give out to it's citizens (should be so many we'll never even need to get nitpicky about them, then again, they said that about ipv4 so I dunno). This may make it easier for countries to block spam from others and to make others play nice with the connections or they lose it. The randomness of IP's and DNS entries is one of the internets great strengths and great weaknesses, but having an ordered system is going to be necissary for the future.
Aside from that, I smell a P2P DNS system based on a system such as kazaa coming up relativally soon. Preferably with a voting system like slashdot's, automatic and free registration, automatic and free voting to take down a site or buisness who's abusive off of the DNS system. So, for example, if netster has hijacked www.slashdto.com, we can vote to have their lisence revoked for cybersquatting and get their registies deleted off of the internet if enough registered people vote.
3: Music companies want $1 a song, then $2 a song, then they want exclusive access to the network, then they want $5 a song since they have a monopoly, then we get the listeners lisence coming in (www.talesoftheafternow.com), and so on and so on and so on. Nice in principle, but it completly needs for reality to be thrown out the window to work.
The first public edition of the long awaited Red Orchestra mod for Unreal Tournament 2003 has been released. 'Red Orchestra brings you in-depth infantry combat on the Eastern Front of WWII. With the emphasis on realism and authenticity; Germains being the well equiped nazi's they are, and the soviets being equiped to fight with sticks and dig trenches with their bare hands. The Soviet Red Army meets the German Army on the ground across battlefields from Kiev through Stalingrad and on to the Reichstag in Berlin. Real battles. Real soldiers. Real Sticks
"Your DVD player is readily and easily modifyable to illegally recieve our signal, decrypt it, and use it as a replacement for our and other recievers. Your buisness is illegal, we'll sue.".
The cards are on the table, lets see if they bluff or if they throw down their hand.
and on that planet, people ran around after little green pieces of paper which were supposed to make those people happy. The irony of the situation, however, is that much of the time vast majority of the people were unhappy while they ran around after the green pieces of paper. -Hitchikers guide.
Capitalism, like other governing systems, will fail if those leading the system become corrupt. It then becomes our responsability to revolt and take our life, liberty and freedom back.
The power system has failed because other systems failed. Our goverment had to fail before our electricity can fail; the US goverment has some redundancy built into it, however, it doesn't recognize the fundemental fact that if you screw people over they will revolt, the bottom of the pyramid will dispurse and the higher you are up on the top, the farther you've got to fall.
Sure, any way the money flies, things must add up. A corperation promises the goverment they can run the power companies more efficiently, then they turn around, understaff them, let generation plants crumble as demand rises, let the system's redundancy instead be used to fill the new demand, and all the money we're paying them goes straight to stockholders instead of into the power system.
And even then, if the goverment is corrupt while handling it, they will decide it's a good idea to cut cut cut the taxes down and let the machines crumble and eventually reach critical mass, and we've got a mini chernoyble on our hands. All so the politicans look good.
And thanks to our corperate culture, we've been bred to believe that cheaper means better quality.
My question then becomes this; will we revolt when kids start mutating and catching cancer becuase the waste is dumped near towns? When the first plant explodes coating millions of acre's with radioactive dus killing thousands and possibly millions? Will we revolt when the goverment rolls the tanks down the street to keep the violent, or peaceful protesters infront of the power company buildings and govermental buildings angry at theri miserable failure. Will the corpoliticals, in a completed coup, be able to control us?
When do we make a stand? In the voting booths electronically controlled with voting machines and run by corperations which are run by republicans? I don't think we'll be able to. Many states are switching over all to quickly to the new system for which there is no open source, open schematic, or open box. Do we stand in the streets to be sprayed by rubber bullets and tear gas or mowed down by machine guns when someone throws a molotof cocktail? On the internet with our continueous hacking of goverment computers to liberate information on what our goverment's been doing? The incredible truth is this; We're already at this point, why are they desperatly trying to deploy electronic voting machines? Why are they keeping nader off of national television? Why is the flow of major information so incredibly centralized? The quesstion now is when the few who've woken up and taken fighting positions find themselves surrouded by hungry wolves, and bah to wake up more, will they wake up or continue sleeping peacefully, and when they finally do wake up, will they find themselves in a cage on the way to the meat packing plant, or standing among the other sheep surrounding the wolves and preparing to pounce.
I'd hate to think what'd happen if one of those plants blew, they're already unsafe and most need fixing. 3 mile island was a big enough loss of life I believe. But just think if one blew in an urban area, killing 20,000 people. Do you people have ANY idea how angry people would be? There would be rioting in the streets and people demanding the ceo's of the power companies heads on a silver platter, and when they got it, will the be dumb enough to stop their only to let another one blow? Will we be dumb enough to believe what Murdoch or the rest of them have to say or will we say a resounding "No".
7 mile island
That is my patriotic bullshit spcheel, I hope you enjoyed it.
Since by pressing the shift key you keep autorun from installing an application, by NOT installing a piece of software on my computer, I am breaking the law?
This case will answer the question; if you uninstall something, or refuse to install something, does that constitute as a circumvention of the security of digital media (meaning, if you don't view it with a certain app), and hence, is it a felony? This could go as far as to say that by opening a Game cd with the explore function in windows that you are circunventing the copy protection schemes of the game by viewing the raw content, such as movies, without agreeing to the eula (generally, a 2nd time around thanks to package lisencing). Could Trillian be considered circumvention of MS's MSN messanger service? How rediculously far do they want to take this?
This case is different than skylov's case. Skylov went ahead and (I believe this is the one) broke Adobe's encryption schemes and published the weakness. This is a direct, purposful circumvention. Now we're extending the law to accidental and really nitpicky issues, and forcing the user to do certain things without even really telling them.
And just think of what corperations like microsoft will do with stuff like this. "Since they had linux installed and since linux ignores autorun, they circumvented the cd copy protection." Can we say "Fok me"? They're getting so far away from what people think is right and wrong. It's getting real ugly now, I'm curious if they'll set a precident for or against the people and how far they'll go with this before they start outright revoltes. Pretty soon cd's will have all kinds of protection schemes, and users won't buy them because they can't do what they want with them. They'll still go for the indie cd's and stuff their friends burn for em'. For those who aren't interent savvy, I hope they have internet savvy friends to teach them.
Remember this guys, help your buddies, get them setup with p2p apps and talk with them. Teach them how to use a computer.
Becuase any other way would be mad.
on
Why Only Music?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
The REASON we have free media is becuase we have free ideas. This centers around a single arguement, how free do we want our ideas? Music, computers, programming, machinery, etc are ALL versions of the same principle; the idea. Who can exploite them is answered by pantents and copyright, and those are in place to ensure the benefit of society, not the indivudal making the music.
We have come to a crux in our developement. Do we realize our best hope for survival is with eachother, stop fighting and start working and trusting eachother, or do we break up into nitpicky intrest groups and rip eachother apart? It's seeming a lot like the ladder of the 2, although most would prefer the primer of the 2 and go with the first one. The whole reason our goverment prosecutes [insert thing here] is becuase they don't trust them. I for one trust most people and most people trust me. We don't ened this bullshit. All they're trying to do with this is tear us up into little nitpicky groups and while we're all distracted by briteny spears' new album they'll fuck us over some more. When we finally awake, we'll find our headphones blank and useless, the computer moniter black, and the books in our houses turned to ashes. Read 1984, you'll get the idea of what I'm talking about.
If we give up free media now, we give up our human right to communicate and to freely share ideas. If we give that up, we lose our humanity. What makes a person robust is their experiences, their ideas, aspirations and ideas. Without stimulation in the form of books, beauty, music, logic, and others we won't be anything but sacks of useless robotic meat. I for one refuse to become like that, and I'll start blowing shit up before I let it happen as would most hackers.
I'm a fucking human dammit and I'm not going to just let you take away the ideas I thrive on. Fuck your system, fuck your way of thinking, and damn the lawers to hell who actually fight for this. I'd figure there'd be a point where any human would think "you know, mabye I'm going a little too far". These people are psychopaths, there seriously needs to be a mental condition for excessive greed so we can lock these assholes in a mental institution so they can't do anything to us.
***MS gives a discount if they only install Windows on all their machines and refuses to sell any without OS's on them** Ok, I can deal with that, there aren't any alternatives right now and if they come up in the future, we can always renegotiate.
(Competition is completly decimated as all the large manufacturers do this)
*Bigger discount if you don't include the CD or documentation.* Sounds good to me.
(More money for redmond.)
*We'll also give you a discount on microsoft brand keyboards and mice which you can rebrand and we'll sell them to you for cheaper than you normally make them. We'll also give you a great discount on office if you promise not to carry anything else* Sounds good.
(Gets your company locked into microsoft products even more.)
*All of your machines require this BIOS in order to run windows, we'll give you another discount if you install them.* Sure, I can go with that, more money for me, w00p. I can always pull out of the agreement later.
(More lockin to windows products, now you've got to change your company somewhat in order to throw them in. At first it's inexpensive, they give a discount, and after a year or 3, they jack up the prices)
*Windows now requires that you use these cheap, fritz chipped celeron processors.* Sure, I spose I can since all my stuff is based off of windows anyway and at this point changing my company will cost millions.
(Microsoft now implements DRM on computers and a lot of bullshit like changing the hardware config requires a call-in to microsoft, opening your files from a different OS is more difficult, etc.)
*Windows will only work with windows-based chipsets, which only we sell and lisence now, they're cheaper than other motherboards.* Er..ok...sure I guess. Makes sense, and the corperate people like it so ok.
(At this point, microsoft will eliminate the motherboard market, giving them control over everything prettymuch. Processers can be dealt with, but motherboards can't. They at this point start eliminating manufacturers 1 by 1, accusing them of bogus bullshit and infringing on their patents on the motherboards now proprietary buses)
*The motherboards can now only run microsoft parts in a microsoft case. You need to buy microsoft parts and microsoft cases, but unfortunatly, they'll cost you 5 times as much as it costs us.)
Fsck...where's linux? Where's unlocked fritz'd processors? Motherboard manufacturers? Help meee...
(Microsoft now has complete control over the PC market. And since they have so much more control, they become even more powerful and eventually take control over world goverments since windows is running on everything. They use blackops to take over the goverment using nazi-like tactics, accept they just assassinate anyone who they don't like and twist the media their own uses)
Hackers, at this point, being driven far underground and forced to be a very militant breed (think gattica), exploit bugs in the now somewhat secure Microsoft windows systems which are a modified version of linux in order to eat and live and help their communities. The roaming poor people, unable to find food or shelter and thrown out into the streets because all of the manufacturing and distrobution is done by robots and machines(Think of all the chain stores becoming automated), turn to these hackers for help and education. The black market thrives throughout an underground wireless network which uses wireless devices long ago banned by the goverment. Hackers are persecuted as is thought crime.
The normal people live as slaves in archeologies and are never allowed to go outside but are terrified of all the violent evil people who regularily kill cops and hurt people, a war is regularily burning overseas with china or some other distant country. In 2-3 generations, the archeologies have become full of loyal sheep, while the hackers have become extremly hard
"Customers need to know" and "it could let cheaters cheat better". You all do realize, of course, that if halflife 2 comes out and the source code is real, there'll be no stopping cheaters? This isn't an OSS project here nor is it going to turn into one, this is a corperate made corperate owned game. If at the time of release the game is completly ridden with cheaters and cracks I'm certainly not going to buy it. Heck, the cheating in UT2K3 was enough to make me stop playing, and forget games like starcraft and the like.
Sure, the situation is interesting and potentially profitable for valve, but we're going to see all kinds of supposedly illegal stuff surrounding HL2 now. HL2 is probably going to be a modders and cheaters paradise, so if you're buying for the online experience, just forget it. For firstplayer and mod experience, w00p just so long as the mods don't get too big.
I switch on the tele, all the news stations state the same things. Newspapers, magazines, etc are all tabloids or similar now, as stated by a most excellent first post.
The only difference between the internet and your basic tabloid big-4 owned media of choice is that internet sources are usually smaller and more needy of advertising, and many get their information from other sources instead of doing their own journalism or they'll publish someone elses journalism (hyperlinking is a form of publishing). Many websites won't post things that their advertisers don't like and this is true for newspapers and tv, but many websites can make a living and keep running without the need for big end corperate sponsorship, they get their funding from smaller companies. Heck, I'v seen microsoft advertising on theregister.co.uk several times, and they still throw up anti-microsoft stuff (for which the advertising is pulled for a few weeks, then it's back, then it's gone, same for hardocp). Many websites only use advertising to pay the bandwidth costs and the reporters have dayjobs. That's another huge difference.
Plus, you're seeing a lot of 3rd party news sources (such as the one in my sig, www.rantradio.com llamas) pop up where crazy people decide they hate the news, scounge and scour, read the e-mail their fans send and make a news show out of it. As jello biafra says, "don't hate the media, become the media". I personally prefer sean kennedys ranting or the phreaking antics of RFA more than friends or some other show. You don't laugh at the telepromted time, you laugh with them becuase it is funny.
For me, it isn't that the news isn't important, it's that all the other sources accept the internet are the same thing; sports, fud, fud, fud, bush's colon, traffic, weather, fud fud fud, commercial, and mabye a breaking story on something unimportant. Essentially, bullshit. You never see slashdot stories about celeberties every single day comprising much of the news, plus with slashdot I can go ahead and bitch all I want here and I can get more opinions and information.
Other people get the news off of the internet becuase they're lazy or cheap; it's cheaper to get cnn off of the internet or goto x websites a day and get news that way than to buy newspapers and watch TV. Then again, who doesn't mind replacing an hour or two of reading magazines with 30 mins of surfing?
First we take away their privelage to send us ad's via phone, next we're going to take away their privelage to advertise on TV, and if they decide product placement is the way to go, well, I'll just turn to the likes of rant radio and the whole bunch, or 3rd party entertainment entities; TV that's actually funny or dramatic, most of the time well done. What we get now is bullshit and more bullshit, so much so that I'v completly stopped watching TV in favor of a computer and gaming.
If this keeps up, we're going to take away even more of their privelage until the corperate right to free speech is done in completly and then, we can get some laws passed to keep bribes out of congress and after that the rest of their rights go out the window in favor of new ones. Keep it going, it's like a thumb war; you pin the other guy's thumb down hard enough to see who says uncle first.
Forget destroying them, I'm more worried about...
on
NYT on RFID
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Well, it makes sense that they will be resistant to a number of different attacks; radiation, static electricity, liquid corrosion, software or hardware corruption, reprogramming via other inputs, etc. They have to be, or else stuff will break.
I'm not so much worried about getting past and deactivating the tags, I'm more worried about;
1: radiation from the tags in my neighbors houses getting into mine and helping to contaminate food (energize particles, break them apart, they form new ones which are called free radicals, I eat them, get cancer or the same radiation breaks apart my dna creating cancer). Just think, if everything in your house was putting off a radio frequency that could be read at ~5 feet, that's a lot of radiation even in a room. If you go onto a train in Tokyo around midday it's like a microwave. Sure, RFID tags aren't as bad but still, everything in your house is getting exposed to it.
2: What happens on a day when there's some solar flare activity? RFID purchases are going to be affected one way or another aren't they? Eccess radiation in an area from other sources will show up on a scanner and may screw with equipment.
3: What happens if I go through the checkout with someone behind me and the reader picks up my bag, and their bag and charges me for all the groceries? How do I get my money back?
4: What happens when the stores decide paper money is antequated and require credit cards only? Don't tell me it won't happen either. When you use money your buying habits can't be checked but when you use credit they can track you. I prefer not to be profiled at all, but they're going to find one way or another to do it and make the vast and dumb majority think it's for their own protection against thiefs.
5: Did someone mention theifs wardriving with a scanner, figuring out what people have in their houses and also figuring out when they are there and when they aren't?
6: What do you want to bet that they're going to require people to get this imbedded in their bodies as well? There's already a rice-sized tag people can get that holds all kinds of information about them. And if you don't do it, they'll just make it difficult for you or impossible to not have one. Forget cash or credit card, we only accept RFID identification at the registers now. Oh, you're a criminal? Sorry, we don't sell food to criminals. Oh, your a hacker? You can't use that computer there. Then think about the real hackers who'll go waRFIDing. "Hey, lets make this sorry bastard a child molester." How many incarcerated or military personell are going to be required to get it manditorily?
Seriously, this is -1 flamebait. Not so much because of the "microsoft is on a PR bullshitting spree again" angle, that has gotten old. More along the lines of "Maybe we should all start to think about jumping ship?" that makes it flamebait. It's akin to saying;
"Hey, microsoft is giving us bullshit again, we should accept that bullshit, trust microsoft as a responsable, upstanding corperation and buy whatever they want us to hook+line and sinker!"
Slashdot is indeed filled to the brim with windows lovers and, more often than not, outspoken linuxlubbers. There is a duality to this situation, namely, if Redhat came out with a study saying that since their release of xyz package that sales have skyrocketed and gave us the same kind of statistics, we'd probably buy it and the windows users would be annoyed especially if at the end of the article it said the same thing.
Mod me into oblivian if you must, but that's the truth.
before he tumbles down. 1 peasant, 2 peasent, 3 peasant 4. Perhaps we should get Jack and David to help us in military strategy? I'v heard they've dealt with this problem before. Jack says the best way is to grow a giiiigantic vine, piss off the giant, have him try to climb down and then cut the plant at it's root so he falls. David says too many people will get hurt, and equiping all the nerds with slingshots and rocks would work better, even though Jack is worried about crossfire.
Looks like this'll be SCO #2. I'v got my bag of buttered and parmigan cheezed popcorn, some non-msg's-to-hell soda and a reclining computer chair to boot. I think I'm well prepared to watch this one. Are you?
Just remember 1 thing, if the show goes awry, make sure you've got something to poke the dancing CEO or judge with so he squirms more(electric cattle prods are best, but a broom near the buttox will suffice). It's always entertaining to see what bullshit they come up with next. "Corperations have rights" or "We think the site finder is great even though we don't know a damn thing about the internet and virtually everyone who's running says it's crappy" or even "We of the bush administration feel that verisign is trying to be innovative with the industry and that the industry is only trying to hold them back".
MSNBC, firstly, is not a trusty news source. They have their own agenda, and I for one think it's absolute bullshit.
With that said, they are restructuring, not eliminating, the program. America's had black op's since the turn of the century, it's just now we have black op's teams in every town police department (they're called swat teams btw) and they have the right to do just about anything they want to you. Just be glad most are incompetant and poorly equiped. They know we don't like the idea and they think if they go farther underground and don't announce their programs so proudly we won't notice.
TIA goes away, something else takes it's place. The goverment has already been engauging in black op's against it's own people and there's ample evidence of that. More often than not, they'll break into someone's house and shoot a poor guy full of holes for sitting up in their bed (or they'll claim they tried to shoot first, plant a gun, etc). If you've read any cia manuals on the subject you'd get a good idea of how they engauge in black op's against people and how a TIA system would be able to find possible ursurpers/targets. All of these manuals, handily enough, are available on p2p apps (they are useful for more than music and pr0n you know).
They've been clamping down and in some cases outright killing ufo crazies who aren't so crazy, high art makers are getting screwed as well. Ex-military nuts who eat rations and have plenty of weapons are having all of those weapons confiscated overnight, with the nuts being thrown into prison or descretly eliminated or, better yet, thrown into insane asylums since they can't charge him with a crime. Same goes for anyone with a record of having excellent computer skills that may have the skills to potentially compromise sensative files in goverment databases.
In otherwords, anyone who's a threat by themselves is being eliminated without the news media picking up on it. All the media we get in the US is owned either by MSNBC, General Electric, Aol Time Warner, or 1 other I can't remember the name of.
They all own stock in eachother, anlthough AOL Time Warner will occasionally publish a story about, for example, GE's frankencrops being picketed in france. We've got a lot of smaller publications on the internet, thankfully, and there's still a number of local newspapers around, but still, a good 90% of the media is owned and operated by these corperations which means we don't get the information that really matters. Goverment is going to spy on it's citizenry? Who cares, Briteny spears' new album has sold more copys than any other in history!!!
Call me crazy, it keeps me on my toes. It's going to be interesting to see if the US goverment can pull this off but somehow I don't think they'll be able to do it. If 50 million americans can pull together to support the do not call list, they can do the same to screw the goverment. People are not in general as stupid as the US school system makes us out to be.
"Kill the congressman who voted against it!!! Slashdot bomb their phones with dusguist!!!"
or
"Telemarketers should have their guts pullsed out bit by bit, inch by inch in a painful manner until they die!!!"
Seriously, most of the telemarketers who are working in telemarketing jobs are in the pits. I know someone who is working in one, she absolutely hates it but it's one of the only jobs she can find in the area. Taking out your anger at them on the phone when they call you at dinner time only makes them more depressed and hateful.
It's not the telemarketers who's fault this is; anyone who's desperate enough will do anything. If you were out on the street, no job and no home and someone came upto you and said they'd hire you if you did telemarketing for them, would you refuse?
Anyone with an education should be able to get a decent job, unfortunatly the price education has gone up quite a bit in the past couple years. I know that my parents are shelling out an arm and a leg for my education and it's at a local college. Some universities want $20,000 or more a year to educate people.
Point here is, most of our senators and representatives are old bags who know nothing of us; their best conseption of the american family comes from TV. When they see 50 million people decide something, they see it as their job to make sure it gets done.
Am I going to say they are right? Yes, most certainly. This is the beginning of ensuring marketing and avertising doesn't go too far. If we don't stop them at telephones and e-mail they'll come up with more and more intrusive ways to advertise and after awhile, marketers who thought those ways were wrong will soon think they are right and then you've got a problem on your hands. Telemarketers waste my time and I hate them vehemently for doing that because I only get so much. I'd rather be gaming or learning than handling a telemarketer. Some telemarketing departments can even be considered instances of organized crime.
Marketer: "Hey, would you like cable tv"
Person: "Fuck off" *hangs up*
Marketer: *Signs them up for cable tv anyway, charges mysteriously end up on the CC data they got from XYZ inc*
Now what we've got to focus on is creating new jobs for these desperate people, preferably ones where they can get some kind of an education through the goverment using goverment funds at local colleges. Killing their welfare is absolutely stupid, it's akin to throwing them on the street. Increasing welfare and requiring them to take classes to earn a degree at local colleges that have been approved on goverment money is a far better idea. Give a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.
And tell me I'm wrong here. You invest $100,000 (if even that) in someone over 4 years, they pass all their classes and get a degree, start working and earning $30,000 per year at an entry level position. 1/3 of that, $10,000 goes to the goverment, in 10 years they've payed off their "debt" just by goverment taxation on their paycheck; this doesn't include other factors such as taxation on their groceries or other taxes. Get my point?
When we've eliminated desperate people, people who are absolute assholes who will exploit others for profit will loose thier main crop of victoms to take advantage of. Guess where they go?
The reason people have problems with any information gathering system is because the more information you have on a person, the more power you have over them.
If I know all kinds of things about you I can then engauge in, for example, black ops to eliminate you if you do something I don't like. Slip some cianide into your food while you leave it in your car or the like.
Point here is, nobody trusts the goverment and rightly so. More often than not the law is abused horribly. Plus, if a new law is passed and the goverment has computers than can instantly tell what you've been doing, and can then launch a lawsuit against you, what is going to happen to the rapists and real killers? The system's going to be so swamped it isn't even funny plus what if they decide they'll just abduct people at random without trial and throw them into prison labor camps?
All you're going to do with this kind of system is creat criminals who are smarter and better equiped to fight the law. Plus, with the shotty record of large corperations; communisum failed becuase nobody was motivated to make good stuff, capitalism will fail becuase damn near everybody is so greedy they're trying to essentially bait and switch everybody into buying crap. What's more profitable? Selling you a watch that is a good one or selling you one that'll break in 6 months, is inexpensive to manufacture but looks expensive on the outside?
So what do you want to bet that whever you're buying from goverment agencies is crap?
The whole reason the can call and harass us is because corperations have been given constitutional rights over the years. What we as an american public have to do is take these constitutional rights away from corperations.
This case tests their right to free speech. Corperations have no right to free speech, buisnesses do (the difference being, a corperation has stock, a buisness doesn't because a buisness is run by an owner and hence, derives it's rights from the owner. Read gangs of america, it's free in pdf if you search google.
The reason I didn't sign up is becuase of 1 simple reason. If the list is made useless in this sense meaning nobody can uphold it, guess where it's gonna be sent or rather sold to? It has names, addresses, and phone numbers all ripe for the plucking. Normally they have to go through a phone book or some other service, but this database can be added to other databases to make the databases even more complete. Whupdefucking do.
Plus, the whole "you havta send it in NOW NOW NOW!!!" smelled of all kinds of bullshit. I'll believe it and sign up when I see it.
Verisign just lost it's monopoly over DNS with this stunt methinks. They pised off ICANN, EFF, Slashdot, 99% of the tech industry, and instead of putting their foot in to test the water and going "oh, the shark that just bit my foot off might be a problem" they say "eh, it's just a foot". Everyone is justifyable angry about this.
So, they took of their glove, slapped a couple million people in the face, threw the glove to the ground and drew their sword, to have a mideval analogy.
I say we blacklist their entire domain of advertising websites. A form of blackmail and protest; if nobody can get to their website to register, then they can't very well do buisness effectivly now can they? Sure, people'll get angry about how they can't reregister. The whole point is to show verisign what happens when you piss us off. Lets make a mess so big out of this that they'll never recover!
Middle aged pundit: I can't play this on my dvd player, I think it's broken.
Salesperson: *looks at DVD* oh, that's one of those new DRM protected dvd's.
Middle aged pundit: Drmwhazit?
Salesperson: It's a security measure to keep people from copying the DVD.
Middle aged pundit: Ok, well why won't it play on the player then?
Salesperson: Becuase you have to have a DRM enabled DVD player to run it.
Middle aged pundit: *runs through mind, looks over at shelf, sees an expensive $300 player for the DVD, becomes slightly irritated* Can I get a refund then?
Salesperson: Sorry, it's store policy not to give refunds on CD's or DVD's.
Middle aged pundit: Why?
Salesperson: Because a lot of people copy them and try to return them. If we allowed for refunds we'd go out of buisness.
Middle aged pundit: *now very irritated* But I didn't copy this, hell, it has copy protection on it! I want my money back.
Salesperson: Sorry, can't do it.
Middle aged pundit: Ok then. *runs off to look at the non-drm'd dvd section or out of the store very angry to return and look at the non-drm's dvd section*.
This is how DRM is going to effect most people. The youngin's and technically adept are going to know about it and not even get caught up in that. Plus, with their system it looks like it needs an internet connection which is even more expensive.
Only when it's cheap will it catch on. Remember that folks.
Intel's going to have to put some money investment into a fritz chip. Unless they are getting some profit out of this it ain't gonna happen. The whole idea for the corperations is to gouge people on the media they by and if that fails then the entire scheme will fail.
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone says p2p is evil, but in a case like this it can really shine. Download it, put it on your favorite P2P app properly named, and bandwidth will come. There's no stopping half a million netizens who are hosting it off of their boxen.
Accuse me of trolling and mod me down if you must, but you've always got to look into the future.
Well, lez see, I'd bet Microsoft will use their OS monopoly to get a monopoly on selling music online...then I can also see since media formats have always been proprietary cept' for ogg of course, I can see the windows DRM being used with media player to restirct which formats windows can utilize. So in the distant future, we'll see that microsoft's WMA format becoming the de-facto standard amongst windows users. Stupid people will have to buy their media and probably can't rip their CD's, while smart people will use something else like linux or mac.
Combine microsoft deciding they don't like competition from p2p apps or other formats with their autoupdating patch system and you've got them eliminating windows machines from the p2p scene altogether. Heck, they might even be brazen enough to do something like brilliant did awhile ago and use users machines as nodes in the network so they don't have to pay for bandwidth to host their website, patches, or anything else for that matter. Mmmm..viral microsoft patches....
I don't trust apple either, they've done their share of stupid monopolistic stuff too, so it'll be interesting to see MS and apple fight.
Which from the complaint's I'v been hearing is an absolute bitch. Apparently, it likes to install buggy core windows components, provided helpfully by microsoft, to administer the DRM and when it's uninstalled, leaves them behind with a large number of (as it appears, but it could be something microsoft breaking them) broken, modified drivers; most people can't burn CD's of any kind anymore. In short, if you're going to completly uninstall Itunes, prepare to completly reinstall windows if you want to get all the functionality back.
AS for the DRM, this is how they get you with it; first with the "it's ALMOST non existant" then it's "Slightly constrictive but most people can deal with it" then it turns into "I don't burn cd's and nobody needs to anyway" then on with the glowing review.
And of course, I have to add in the obglitoary part about them needing more and more and more control over users machines becuase users have been converting their Itunes to a format which isn't policed by their program. So, when it installs, it'll just uninstall any recording software on your computer of any kind it finds.
Ya know and then they just say "well, our application is installed on so many computers, why can't we just say all recording applications are illegal for non-corperate use?".
I'm still waiting for the listeners lisence; The listeners lisence works like this; the recording companies offer you really cheap media, cd's that were $20 are now $1, but, the catch is you have to have a liseners lisence which the corperation uses to impose a contract on you which restricts your ability to do anything. This is put on all their media, so when you go down to the store, everything is $1-$5 USD but has a listeners lisence attached. Everyone flocks to the store, buys the media, then the RIAA/MPAA says about 10 years later "ok, we have these sales numbers here, and they say that just about everyone in a given country has a listeners lisence, so, we'll just get the goverment to pass a law outlawing any media not ours". Boom, recorders are illegal, if you so much as blab into a microphone, record it, and throw it onto the internet you're violating your listeners lisence, which is promptly revoked, and you're access to all the media the big 5 produce, that's books, television, music, radio, etc is revoked.
So, if you're so much caught with as much as reading a textbook on say, calclulus you're put in jail for a federal crime. It's a doublewhammy; they wipe out their competition and all of a sudden unregulated information is pornagraphy.
Goto www.theafternow.com , download and listen, about 1 gig of free mp3's (free as in beer, copyable as in everyone is free to copy it) about a guy wandering in a post-apoptyliptic future where corperations have won and you get to hear about the way they got their. It's a very interesting and enlightening listen if you're bored, otherwise, light your candles and sit back, and enjoy.
Why can't people like you get it through your heads that the only way to change the law is through civil disobediance? If we let them take music away because it's the law then we don't deserve the music, do we?
We need someone to come up with a GPL'd project that is an OS that does ballots on the x86 platform which is open source and workable, freely downloadable and testable then get people together to demand that it be put on election systems instead of using questionable ones.
W0000, so I do. This is how I envision the future systems working; Every country runs it's own DNS root server, which is hooked into a distributed system across all the countries with their own domain names. Each server can only register domain names unique to that country, for instance, www.slashdot.usa or www.slashdot.uk etc. .Com's should then become www.slashdot.com.usa whereas if I'm in america, and I type in www.slashdot.com, it'll automatically take me to www.slashdot.com.usa and if I'm in the uk it'll take me to www.slashdot.com.uk. Persay that in www.slashdot.com.bz was not registered, then the server will request a wildcard for all www.slashdot.com's and at the software level give the user a selection. .gov's are handled the exact same way.
.Nets are given only to ISP's(includes hosting providers, e-mail providers, telco's, connection services, voip, etc), standards bodies (such as icann.net), etc. www.slashdot.net would have to be an ISP or something to have the .net, and would have to register with a UN body to get the domain name. .Org's would work the same way, only non-for-profit organizations would be able to have .org names.
Likewise, each country gets an even cut of IPv6 addresses to give out to it's citizens (should be so many we'll never even need to get nitpicky about them, then again, they said that about ipv4 so I dunno). This may make it easier for countries to block spam from others and to make others play nice with the connections or they lose it. The randomness of IP's and DNS entries is one of the internets great strengths and great weaknesses, but having an ordered system is going to be necissary for the future.
Aside from that, I smell a P2P DNS system based on a system such as kazaa coming up relativally soon. Preferably with a voting system like slashdot's, automatic and free registration, automatic and free voting to take down a site or buisness who's abusive off of the DNS system. So, for example, if netster has hijacked www.slashdto.com, we can vote to have their lisence revoked for cybersquatting and get their registies deleted off of the internet if enough registered people vote.
until
3: Music companies want $1 a song, then $2 a song, then they want exclusive access to the network, then they want $5 a song since they have a monopoly, then we get the listeners lisence coming in (www.talesoftheafternow.com), and so on and so on and so on. Nice in principle, but it completly needs for reality to be thrown out the window to work.
The first public edition of the long awaited Red Orchestra mod for Unreal Tournament 2003 has been released. 'Red Orchestra brings you in-depth infantry combat on the Eastern Front of WWII. With the emphasis on realism and authenticity; Germains being the well equiped nazi's they are, and the soviets being equiped to fight with sticks and dig trenches with their bare hands. The Soviet Red Army meets the German Army on the ground across battlefields from Kiev through Stalingrad and on to the Reichstag in Berlin. Real battles. Real soldiers. Real Sticks
"Your DVD player is readily and easily modifyable to illegally recieve our signal, decrypt it, and use it as a replacement for our and other recievers. Your buisness is illegal, we'll sue.".
The cards are on the table, lets see if they bluff or if they throw down their hand.
and on that planet, people ran around after little green pieces of paper which were supposed to make those people happy. The irony of the situation, however, is that much of the time vast majority of the people were unhappy while they ran around after the green pieces of paper. -Hitchikers guide.
Capitalism, like other governing systems, will fail if those leading the system become corrupt. It then becomes our responsability to revolt and take our life, liberty and freedom back.
The power system has failed because other systems failed. Our goverment had to fail before our electricity can fail; the US goverment has some redundancy built into it, however, it doesn't recognize the fundemental fact that if you screw people over they will revolt, the bottom of the pyramid will dispurse and the higher you are up on the top, the farther you've got to fall.
Sure, any way the money flies, things must add up. A corperation promises the goverment they can run the power companies more efficiently, then they turn around, understaff them, let generation plants crumble as demand rises, let the system's redundancy instead be used to fill the new demand, and all the money we're paying them goes straight to stockholders instead of into the power system.
And even then, if the goverment is corrupt while handling it, they will decide it's a good idea to cut cut cut the taxes down and let the machines crumble and eventually reach critical mass, and we've got a mini chernoyble on our hands. All so the politicans look good.
And thanks to our corperate culture, we've been bred to believe that cheaper means better quality.
My question then becomes this; will we revolt when kids start mutating and catching cancer becuase the waste is dumped near towns? When the first plant explodes coating millions of acre's with radioactive dus killing thousands and possibly millions? Will we revolt when the goverment rolls the tanks down the street to keep the violent, or peaceful protesters infront of the power company buildings and govermental buildings angry at theri miserable failure. Will the corpoliticals, in a completed coup, be able to control us?
When do we make a stand? In the voting booths electronically controlled with voting machines and run by corperations which are run by republicans? I don't think we'll be able to. Many states are switching over all to quickly to the new system for which there is no open source, open schematic, or open box. Do we stand in the streets to be sprayed by rubber bullets and tear gas or mowed down by machine guns when someone throws a molotof cocktail? On the internet with our continueous hacking of goverment computers to liberate information on what our goverment's been doing? The incredible truth is this; We're already at this point, why are they desperatly trying to deploy electronic voting machines? Why are they keeping nader off of national television? Why is the flow of major information so incredibly centralized? The quesstion now is when the few who've woken up and taken fighting positions find themselves surrouded by hungry wolves, and bah to wake up more, will they wake up or continue sleeping peacefully, and when they finally do wake up, will they find themselves in a cage on the way to the meat packing plant, or standing among the other sheep surrounding the wolves and preparing to pounce.
I'd hate to think what'd happen if one of those plants blew, they're already unsafe and most need fixing. 3 mile island was a big enough loss of life I believe. But just think if one blew in an urban area, killing 20,000 people. Do you people have ANY idea how angry people would be? There would be rioting in the streets and people demanding the ceo's of the power companies heads on a silver platter, and when they got it, will the be dumb enough to stop their only to let another one blow? Will we be dumb enough to believe what Murdoch or the rest of them have to say or will we say a resounding "No". 7 mile island That is my patriotic bullshit spcheel, I hope you enjoyed it.
Since by pressing the shift key you keep autorun from installing an application, by NOT installing a piece of software on my computer, I am breaking the law?
This case will answer the question; if you uninstall something, or refuse to install something, does that constitute as a circumvention of the security of digital media (meaning, if you don't view it with a certain app), and hence, is it a felony? This could go as far as to say that by opening a Game cd with the explore function in windows that you are circunventing the copy protection schemes of the game by viewing the raw content, such as movies, without agreeing to the eula (generally, a 2nd time around thanks to package lisencing). Could Trillian be considered circumvention of MS's MSN messanger service? How rediculously far do they want to take this?
This case is different than skylov's case. Skylov went ahead and (I believe this is the one) broke Adobe's encryption schemes and published the weakness. This is a direct, purposful circumvention. Now we're extending the law to accidental and really nitpicky issues, and forcing the user to do certain things without even really telling them.
And just think of what corperations like microsoft will do with stuff like this. "Since they had linux installed and since linux ignores autorun, they circumvented the cd copy protection." Can we say "Fok me"? They're getting so far away from what people think is right and wrong. It's getting real ugly now, I'm curious if they'll set a precident for or against the people and how far they'll go with this before they start outright revoltes. Pretty soon cd's will have all kinds of protection schemes, and users won't buy them because they can't do what they want with them. They'll still go for the indie cd's and stuff their friends burn for em'. For those who aren't interent savvy, I hope they have internet savvy friends to teach them.
Remember this guys, help your buddies, get them setup with p2p apps and talk with them. Teach them how to use a computer.
The REASON we have free media is becuase we have free ideas. This centers around a single arguement, how free do we want our ideas? Music, computers, programming, machinery, etc are ALL versions of the same principle; the idea. Who can exploite them is answered by pantents and copyright, and those are in place to ensure the benefit of society, not the indivudal making the music.
We have come to a crux in our developement. Do we realize our best hope for survival is with eachother, stop fighting and start working and trusting eachother, or do we break up into nitpicky intrest groups and rip eachother apart? It's seeming a lot like the ladder of the 2, although most would prefer the primer of the 2 and go with the first one. The whole reason our goverment prosecutes [insert thing here] is becuase they don't trust them. I for one trust most people and most people trust me. We don't ened this bullshit. All they're trying to do with this is tear us up into little nitpicky groups and while we're all distracted by briteny spears' new album they'll fuck us over some more. When we finally awake, we'll find our headphones blank and useless, the computer moniter black, and the books in our houses turned to ashes. Read 1984, you'll get the idea of what I'm talking about.
If we give up free media now, we give up our human right to communicate and to freely share ideas. If we give that up, we lose our humanity. What makes a person robust is their experiences, their ideas, aspirations and ideas. Without stimulation in the form of books, beauty, music, logic, and others we won't be anything but sacks of useless robotic meat. I for one refuse to become like that, and I'll start blowing shit up before I let it happen as would most hackers.
I'm a fucking human dammit and I'm not going to just let you take away the ideas I thrive on. Fuck your system, fuck your way of thinking, and damn the lawers to hell who actually fight for this. I'd figure there'd be a point where any human would think "you know, mabye I'm going a little too far". These people are psychopaths, there seriously needs to be a mental condition for excessive greed so we can lock these assholes in a mental institution so they can't do anything to us.
I'm a PC maker, MS comes to me with deals.
***MS gives a discount if they only install Windows on all their machines and refuses to sell any without OS's on them** Ok, I can deal with that, there aren't any alternatives right now and if they come up in the future, we can always renegotiate.
(Competition is completly decimated as all the large manufacturers do this)
*Bigger discount if you don't include the CD or documentation.* Sounds good to me.
(More money for redmond.)
*We'll also give you a discount on microsoft brand keyboards and mice which you can rebrand and we'll sell them to you for cheaper than you normally make them. We'll also give you a great discount on office if you promise not to carry anything else* Sounds good.
(Gets your company locked into microsoft products even more.)
*All of your machines require this BIOS in order to run windows, we'll give you another discount if you install them.* Sure, I can go with that, more money for me, w00p. I can always pull out of the agreement later.
(More lockin to windows products, now you've got to change your company somewhat in order to throw them in. At first it's inexpensive, they give a discount, and after a year or 3, they jack up the prices)
*Windows now requires that you use these cheap, fritz chipped celeron processors.* Sure, I spose I can since all my stuff is based off of windows anyway and at this point changing my company will cost millions.
(Microsoft now implements DRM on computers and a lot of bullshit like changing the hardware config requires a call-in to microsoft, opening your files from a different OS is more difficult, etc.)
*Windows will only work with windows-based chipsets, which only we sell and lisence now, they're cheaper than other motherboards.* Er..ok...sure I guess. Makes sense, and the corperate people like it so ok.
(At this point, microsoft will eliminate the motherboard market, giving them control over everything prettymuch. Processers can be dealt with, but motherboards can't. They at this point start eliminating manufacturers 1 by 1, accusing them of bogus bullshit and infringing on their patents on the motherboards now proprietary buses)
*The motherboards can now only run microsoft parts in a microsoft case. You need to buy microsoft parts and microsoft cases, but unfortunatly, they'll cost you 5 times as much as it costs us.) Fsck...where's linux? Where's unlocked fritz'd processors? Motherboard manufacturers? Help meee...
(Microsoft now has complete control over the PC market. And since they have so much more control, they become even more powerful and eventually take control over world goverments since windows is running on everything. They use blackops to take over the goverment using nazi-like tactics, accept they just assassinate anyone who they don't like and twist the media their own uses)
Hackers, at this point, being driven far underground and forced to be a very militant breed (think gattica), exploit bugs in the now somewhat secure Microsoft windows systems which are a modified version of linux in order to eat and live and help their communities. The roaming poor people, unable to find food or shelter and thrown out into the streets because all of the manufacturing and distrobution is done by robots and machines(Think of all the chain stores becoming automated), turn to these hackers for help and education. The black market thrives throughout an underground wireless network which uses wireless devices long ago banned by the goverment. Hackers are persecuted as is thought crime.
The normal people live as slaves in archeologies and are never allowed to go outside but are terrified of all the violent evil people who regularily kill cops and hurt people, a war is regularily burning overseas with china or some other distant country. In 2-3 generations, the archeologies have become full of loyal sheep, while the hackers have become extremly hard
"Customers need to know" and "it could let cheaters cheat better". You all do realize, of course, that if halflife 2 comes out and the source code is real, there'll be no stopping cheaters? This isn't an OSS project here nor is it going to turn into one, this is a corperate made corperate owned game. If at the time of release the game is completly ridden with cheaters and cracks I'm certainly not going to buy it. Heck, the cheating in UT2K3 was enough to make me stop playing, and forget games like starcraft and the like.
Sure, the situation is interesting and potentially profitable for valve, but we're going to see all kinds of supposedly illegal stuff surrounding HL2 now. HL2 is probably going to be a modders and cheaters paradise, so if you're buying for the online experience, just forget it. For firstplayer and mod experience, w00p just so long as the mods don't get too big.
I switch on the tele, all the news stations state the same things. Newspapers, magazines, etc are all tabloids or similar now, as stated by a most excellent first post.
The only difference between the internet and your basic tabloid big-4 owned media of choice is that internet sources are usually smaller and more needy of advertising, and many get their information from other sources instead of doing their own journalism or they'll publish someone elses journalism (hyperlinking is a form of publishing). Many websites won't post things that their advertisers don't like and this is true for newspapers and tv, but many websites can make a living and keep running without the need for big end corperate sponsorship, they get their funding from smaller companies. Heck, I'v seen microsoft advertising on theregister.co.uk several times, and they still throw up anti-microsoft stuff (for which the advertising is pulled for a few weeks, then it's back, then it's gone, same for hardocp). Many websites only use advertising to pay the bandwidth costs and the reporters have dayjobs. That's another huge difference.
Plus, you're seeing a lot of 3rd party news sources (such as the one in my sig, www.rantradio.com llamas) pop up where crazy people decide they hate the news, scounge and scour, read the e-mail their fans send and make a news show out of it. As jello biafra says, "don't hate the media, become the media". I personally prefer sean kennedys ranting or the phreaking antics of RFA more than friends or some other show. You don't laugh at the telepromted time, you laugh with them becuase it is funny.
For me, it isn't that the news isn't important, it's that all the other sources accept the internet are the same thing; sports, fud, fud, fud, bush's colon, traffic, weather, fud fud fud, commercial, and mabye a breaking story on something unimportant. Essentially, bullshit. You never see slashdot stories about celeberties every single day comprising much of the news, plus with slashdot I can go ahead and bitch all I want here and I can get more opinions and information.
Other people get the news off of the internet becuase they're lazy or cheap; it's cheaper to get cnn off of the internet or goto x websites a day and get news that way than to buy newspapers and watch TV. Then again, who doesn't mind replacing an hour or two of reading magazines with 30 mins of surfing?
First we take away their privelage to send us ad's via phone, next we're going to take away their privelage to advertise on TV, and if they decide product placement is the way to go, well, I'll just turn to the likes of rant radio and the whole bunch, or 3rd party entertainment entities; TV that's actually funny or dramatic, most of the time well done. What we get now is bullshit and more bullshit, so much so that I'v completly stopped watching TV in favor of a computer and gaming.
If this keeps up, we're going to take away even more of their privelage until the corperate right to free speech is done in completly and then, we can get some laws passed to keep bribes out of congress and after that the rest of their rights go out the window in favor of new ones. Keep it going, it's like a thumb war; you pin the other guy's thumb down hard enough to see who says uncle first.
Well, it makes sense that they will be resistant to a number of different attacks; radiation, static electricity, liquid corrosion, software or hardware corruption, reprogramming via other inputs, etc. They have to be, or else stuff will break.
I'm not so much worried about getting past and deactivating the tags, I'm more worried about;
1: radiation from the tags in my neighbors houses getting into mine and helping to contaminate food (energize particles, break them apart, they form new ones which are called free radicals, I eat them, get cancer or the same radiation breaks apart my dna creating cancer). Just think, if everything in your house was putting off a radio frequency that could be read at ~5 feet, that's a lot of radiation even in a room. If you go onto a train in Tokyo around midday it's like a microwave. Sure, RFID tags aren't as bad but still, everything in your house is getting exposed to it.
2: What happens on a day when there's some solar flare activity? RFID purchases are going to be affected one way or another aren't they? Eccess radiation in an area from other sources will show up on a scanner and may screw with equipment.
3: What happens if I go through the checkout with someone behind me and the reader picks up my bag, and their bag and charges me for all the groceries? How do I get my money back?
4: What happens when the stores decide paper money is antequated and require credit cards only? Don't tell me it won't happen either. When you use money your buying habits can't be checked but when you use credit they can track you. I prefer not to be profiled at all, but they're going to find one way or another to do it and make the vast and dumb majority think it's for their own protection against thiefs.
5: Did someone mention theifs wardriving with a scanner, figuring out what people have in their houses and also figuring out when they are there and when they aren't?
6: What do you want to bet that they're going to require people to get this imbedded in their bodies as well? There's already a rice-sized tag people can get that holds all kinds of information about them. And if you don't do it, they'll just make it difficult for you or impossible to not have one. Forget cash or credit card, we only accept RFID identification at the registers now. Oh, you're a criminal? Sorry, we don't sell food to criminals. Oh, your a hacker? You can't use that computer there. Then think about the real hackers who'll go waRFIDing. "Hey, lets make this sorry bastard a child molester." How many incarcerated or military personell are going to be required to get it manditorily?
Seriously, this is -1 flamebait. Not so much because of the "microsoft is on a PR bullshitting spree again" angle, that has gotten old. More along the lines of "Maybe we should all start to think about jumping ship?" that makes it flamebait. It's akin to saying;
"Hey, microsoft is giving us bullshit again, we should accept that bullshit, trust microsoft as a responsable, upstanding corperation and buy whatever they want us to hook+line and sinker!"
Slashdot is indeed filled to the brim with windows lovers and, more often than not, outspoken linuxlubbers. There is a duality to this situation, namely, if Redhat came out with a study saying that since their release of xyz package that sales have skyrocketed and gave us the same kind of statistics, we'd probably buy it and the windows users would be annoyed especially if at the end of the article it said the same thing.
Mod me into oblivian if you must, but that's the truth.
before he tumbles down. 1 peasant, 2 peasent, 3 peasant 4. Perhaps we should get Jack and David to help us in military strategy? I'v heard they've dealt with this problem before. Jack says the best way is to grow a giiiigantic vine, piss off the giant, have him try to climb down and then cut the plant at it's root so he falls. David says too many people will get hurt, and equiping all the nerds with slingshots and rocks would work better, even though Jack is worried about crossfire.
Looks like this'll be SCO #2. I'v got my bag of buttered and parmigan cheezed popcorn, some non-msg's-to-hell soda and a reclining computer chair to boot. I think I'm well prepared to watch this one. Are you?
Just remember 1 thing, if the show goes awry, make sure you've got something to poke the dancing CEO or judge with so he squirms more(electric cattle prods are best, but a broom near the buttox will suffice). It's always entertaining to see what bullshit they come up with next. "Corperations have rights" or "We think the site finder is great even though we don't know a damn thing about the internet and virtually everyone who's running says it's crappy" or even "We of the bush administration feel that verisign is trying to be innovative with the industry and that the industry is only trying to hold them back".
*munch munch, poke poke, munch munch*
MSNBC, firstly, is not a trusty news source. They have their own agenda, and I for one think it's absolute bullshit.
With that said, they are restructuring, not eliminating, the program. America's had black op's since the turn of the century, it's just now we have black op's teams in every town police department (they're called swat teams btw) and they have the right to do just about anything they want to you. Just be glad most are incompetant and poorly equiped. They know we don't like the idea and they think if they go farther underground and don't announce their programs so proudly we won't notice.
TIA goes away, something else takes it's place. The goverment has already been engauging in black op's against it's own people and there's ample evidence of that. More often than not, they'll break into someone's house and shoot a poor guy full of holes for sitting up in their bed (or they'll claim they tried to shoot first, plant a gun, etc). If you've read any cia manuals on the subject you'd get a good idea of how they engauge in black op's against people and how a TIA system would be able to find possible ursurpers/targets. All of these manuals, handily enough, are available on p2p apps (they are useful for more than music and pr0n you know).
They've been clamping down and in some cases outright killing ufo crazies who aren't so crazy, high art makers are getting screwed as well. Ex-military nuts who eat rations and have plenty of weapons are having all of those weapons confiscated overnight, with the nuts being thrown into prison or descretly eliminated or, better yet, thrown into insane asylums since they can't charge him with a crime. Same goes for anyone with a record of having excellent computer skills that may have the skills to potentially compromise sensative files in goverment databases.
In otherwords, anyone who's a threat by themselves is being eliminated without the news media picking up on it. All the media we get in the US is owned either by MSNBC, General Electric, Aol Time Warner, or 1 other I can't remember the name of. They all own stock in eachother, anlthough AOL Time Warner will occasionally publish a story about, for example, GE's frankencrops being picketed in france. We've got a lot of smaller publications on the internet, thankfully, and there's still a number of local newspapers around, but still, a good 90% of the media is owned and operated by these corperations which means we don't get the information that really matters. Goverment is going to spy on it's citizenry? Who cares, Briteny spears' new album has sold more copys than any other in history!!!
Call me crazy, it keeps me on my toes. It's going to be interesting to see if the US goverment can pull this off but somehow I don't think they'll be able to do it. If 50 million americans can pull together to support the do not call list, they can do the same to screw the goverment. People are not in general as stupid as the US school system makes us out to be.
"Kill the congressman who voted against it!!! Slashdot bomb their phones with dusguist!!!"
or
"Telemarketers should have their guts pullsed out bit by bit, inch by inch in a painful manner until they die!!!"
Seriously, most of the telemarketers who are working in telemarketing jobs are in the pits. I know someone who is working in one, she absolutely hates it but it's one of the only jobs she can find in the area. Taking out your anger at them on the phone when they call you at dinner time only makes them more depressed and hateful.
It's not the telemarketers who's fault this is; anyone who's desperate enough will do anything. If you were out on the street, no job and no home and someone came upto you and said they'd hire you if you did telemarketing for them, would you refuse?
Anyone with an education should be able to get a decent job, unfortunatly the price education has gone up quite a bit in the past couple years. I know that my parents are shelling out an arm and a leg for my education and it's at a local college. Some universities want $20,000 or more a year to educate people.
Point here is, most of our senators and representatives are old bags who know nothing of us; their best conseption of the american family comes from TV. When they see 50 million people decide something, they see it as their job to make sure it gets done.
Am I going to say they are right? Yes, most certainly. This is the beginning of ensuring marketing and avertising doesn't go too far. If we don't stop them at telephones and e-mail they'll come up with more and more intrusive ways to advertise and after awhile, marketers who thought those ways were wrong will soon think they are right and then you've got a problem on your hands. Telemarketers waste my time and I hate them vehemently for doing that because I only get so much. I'd rather be gaming or learning than handling a telemarketer. Some telemarketing departments can even be considered instances of organized crime.
Marketer: "Hey, would you like cable tv" Person: "Fuck off" *hangs up* Marketer: *Signs them up for cable tv anyway, charges mysteriously end up on the CC data they got from XYZ inc*
Now what we've got to focus on is creating new jobs for these desperate people, preferably ones where they can get some kind of an education through the goverment using goverment funds at local colleges. Killing their welfare is absolutely stupid, it's akin to throwing them on the street. Increasing welfare and requiring them to take classes to earn a degree at local colleges that have been approved on goverment money is a far better idea. Give a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.
And tell me I'm wrong here. You invest $100,000 (if even that) in someone over 4 years, they pass all their classes and get a degree, start working and earning $30,000 per year at an entry level position. 1/3 of that, $10,000 goes to the goverment, in 10 years they've payed off their "debt" just by goverment taxation on their paycheck; this doesn't include other factors such as taxation on their groceries or other taxes. Get my point?
When we've eliminated desperate people, people who are absolute assholes who will exploit others for profit will loose thier main crop of victoms to take advantage of. Guess where they go?
The reason people have problems with any information gathering system is because the more information you have on a person, the more power you have over them.
If I know all kinds of things about you I can then engauge in, for example, black ops to eliminate you if you do something I don't like. Slip some cianide into your food while you leave it in your car or the like.
Point here is, nobody trusts the goverment and rightly so. More often than not the law is abused horribly. Plus, if a new law is passed and the goverment has computers than can instantly tell what you've been doing, and can then launch a lawsuit against you, what is going to happen to the rapists and real killers? The system's going to be so swamped it isn't even funny plus what if they decide they'll just abduct people at random without trial and throw them into prison labor camps?
All you're going to do with this kind of system is creat criminals who are smarter and better equiped to fight the law. Plus, with the shotty record of large corperations; communisum failed becuase nobody was motivated to make good stuff, capitalism will fail becuase damn near everybody is so greedy they're trying to essentially bait and switch everybody into buying crap. What's more profitable? Selling you a watch that is a good one or selling you one that'll break in 6 months, is inexpensive to manufacture but looks expensive on the outside?
So what do you want to bet that whever you're buying from goverment agencies is crap?
The whole reason the can call and harass us is because corperations have been given constitutional rights over the years. What we as an american public have to do is take these constitutional rights away from corperations.
This case tests their right to free speech. Corperations have no right to free speech, buisnesses do (the difference being, a corperation has stock, a buisness doesn't because a buisness is run by an owner and hence, derives it's rights from the owner. Read gangs of america, it's free in pdf if you search google.
The reason I didn't sign up is becuase of 1 simple reason. If the list is made useless in this sense meaning nobody can uphold it, guess where it's gonna be sent or rather sold to? It has names, addresses, and phone numbers all ripe for the plucking. Normally they have to go through a phone book or some other service, but this database can be added to other databases to make the databases even more complete. Whupdefucking do.
Plus, the whole "you havta send it in NOW NOW NOW!!!" smelled of all kinds of bullshit. I'll believe it and sign up when I see it.
WAR!
Lauch the blacklists!!!
Verisign just lost it's monopoly over DNS with this stunt methinks. They pised off ICANN, EFF, Slashdot, 99% of the tech industry, and instead of putting their foot in to test the water and going "oh, the shark that just bit my foot off might be a problem" they say "eh, it's just a foot". Everyone is justifyable angry about this.
So, they took of their glove, slapped a couple million people in the face, threw the glove to the ground and drew their sword, to have a mideval analogy.
I say we blacklist their entire domain of advertising websites. A form of blackmail and protest; if nobody can get to their website to register, then they can't very well do buisness effectivly now can they? Sure, people'll get angry about how they can't reregister. The whole point is to show verisign what happens when you piss us off. Lets make a mess so big out of this that they'll never recover!
Middle aged pundit: I can't play this on my dvd player, I think it's broken.
Salesperson: *looks at DVD* oh, that's one of those new DRM protected dvd's.
Middle aged pundit: Drmwhazit?
Salesperson: It's a security measure to keep people from copying the DVD.
Middle aged pundit: Ok, well why won't it play on the player then?
Salesperson: Becuase you have to have a DRM enabled DVD player to run it.
Middle aged pundit: *runs through mind, looks over at shelf, sees an expensive $300 player for the DVD, becomes slightly irritated* Can I get a refund then?
Salesperson: Sorry, it's store policy not to give refunds on CD's or DVD's.
Middle aged pundit: Why?
Salesperson: Because a lot of people copy them and try to return them. If we allowed for refunds we'd go out of buisness.
Middle aged pundit: *now very irritated* But I didn't copy this, hell, it has copy protection on it! I want my money back.
Salesperson: Sorry, can't do it.
Middle aged pundit: Ok then. *runs off to look at the non-drm'd dvd section or out of the store very angry to return and look at the non-drm's dvd section*.
This is how DRM is going to effect most people. The youngin's and technically adept are going to know about it and not even get caught up in that. Plus, with their system it looks like it needs an internet connection which is even more expensive.
Only when it's cheap will it catch on. Remember that folks.
Intel's going to have to put some money investment into a fritz chip. Unless they are getting some profit out of this it ain't gonna happen. The whole idea for the corperations is to gouge people on the media they by and if that fails then the entire scheme will fail.