Sending men out to show the worst of our race? Greeeat idea. Yep. Lets just send a guy out so he can kidnap some poor grey, bring it back, cut it up and sell it on e-bay. Then, when their race figures out we got him they'll nuke us all.
First we've got to eliminate capitalism; it's age and outdated-ness is beginning to show as corperations are beginning to get more powerful than goverments and the ideals of the masses become ever more twisted and insane.
AS we've seen before, an old system of goverment will be destroyed to emplace a new system of goverment whenever it becomes undesirable for the people under that goverment, the trick for the goverment to pull is to somehow enslave the people through the illusion of power. I'm a bit worried as all of the media is owned and operated by people close to the goverment; you NEVER see people on TV bush-bashing. And things that are really bad for you, such as irradiated food, is called "controversial". Public schools are teaching dependancy, the media is owned, media that isn't owned by the select few is being labeled as terrorists, we've got waves of dumasses waving flags and showing the faces of people killed in wtc saying we should bomb stuff and vote for bush while we sit in our wooden prisons and take less pay for working twice as hard. "But we've got to protect ourselves agains the terrorists" they say, unfortunatly that's the voice of the goverment who's merely acting scared to lead the people on.
In any case, I doubt that space travel and mining will become economically viable on a massive scale until sometime in 2100 (takes a bit of time to test, build, test, build craft and research stuff, as well as to convince people going into space isn't dangerous), and by then hopefully we will have either changed our goverments or be in the process of changing to a non-capitalist or semi-non-capitalist system through the proper laws (for example, laws making it illegal to allow a corperation to get bigger than x billion in size).
If we don't change the goverment and it keep's it's current course, you can bet the advance of technology will be used to control people on a massive scale through regulation.
people are afraid to shop online. Advertising is just the start; some porn companies sell cc card data and the offshore buyers commit cc fraud. It's happened to a few people I know and they get $20-200 charges their cc company won't cover.
Online retailers will get away with anything they can and then some, doesn't matter if it's legal or not. The FTC lost it's teeth awile ago and unless that changes things can only get worse.
What filesharers are doing isn't wrong, what the riaa is doing is wrong. Infact, before the printing press books were copied manually and when greed kicks in, the first copyright laws kicked in a well and publishers wanted to copyright the artists' works for themselves perpetually and forever. The sonny bono act came into being saying copyright should be for 14 years and all was good. There was no copyright before that and the incentive to write books came from boardem, if you were a farmer and you knew how to write you'd make a book and make a few copies for your friends.
What people need to undestand is that copyright law wasn't meant to be abused like this. First, copyright as it stands right now is forever, or rather, forever minus a day as congress has extended it 11 times thanks to disney. Copyright, patents, etc ensures artists have incentive in our society to get money and hence to be rewarded and make more art, they never had nor never should have the control the riaa says they should have. The fantisy that you make a cd and earn fabulous prizes, millions of dollers, women chasing after you etc is an outright lie and in addition stupid and it's something that damages our society as greed tears it apart.
At some point your art becomes public domain for others to build onto and to use. Why? Because capitalism is a system where you are rewarded at your level of ability and it needs to be understood that if eminem makes 30 million, he'd probably goto the bank and live out the rest of his life fat n' lazy and never make another piece of art. If enimen got payed nothing, he wouldn't make the music and if he got payed too much he wouldn't make it, so there's a point where copyright law should protect but not too much. Music and art are our culture, it barrows from past ideas and adds to future ideas and if we let companies pick apart everything to the finest detail nothing will be left and we'll stop advancing as a culture becuase as soon as you take 3-4 inventions, stick them together with other inventions you'll have large corperations on your ass within seconds asking for money.
Corperations want you to think making a profit and maximizing profit are good things, and a lot of people think they are but in reality the people who made copyright and pantent law never intended for things like microsoft to come into being. They never intended buisness to get so huge and for our school system to teach dependance to the point that almost everyone is dependant for a job on large companies and hence, subject to that companies abuse. What if the fortune 500 companies decided chipping their employees was manditory and if you didn't get a rice-shaped chip implanted into the back of your skull you were fired? That's a lot of influence these companies have to do very terrible things and copyright and pantent lawmakers never intended for that to happen and our goverment isn't handling these things very well, infact the fda approved chipping. Tells you what side they are on.
Copyright law hasn't answered how much money should someone be allowed to make, and the people have rather nicely. P2P is here to stay unless congress puts forth some serious cash to regulate the internet into hell. AS the OSS community has taught us they can do anything, and if someone want's their mp3's free bad enough they'll sit down and make some code that exploite some bug in the system that can't fix.
Now, back on subject, I think the EFF is doing an awesome thing here. Going on the p2p apps and spamming "hey, file sharing is legal have fun!" is a great way to ease some of the fud the RIAA has been spreading and they can do it cheaply. Writing letters isn't going to do much without a lot of punch at the voting booth so spread the word around college campuses. $20 worth of paper and ink now means you aren't in manditory slave labor later on becuase the riaa decided you downloading music not lisenced by them is a bad thing. Don't believe me? Listen to the tales of the afternow.
You sir, are a chicken and an idiot. If something I was working on for 5, 10 years was all of a sudden sliced and diced by corperations and goverments that don't hear my side of the story, then it was stolen bastardized and sold what do you think is going to happen? That's right, I'm going to be pissed, and since peacful protest isn't working, I'm going to do the only thing I know how to do; get together with people I know and fight back. You take away 5 or 10 years of my work, I'm going to take that back. We're powerful enough to do it, enough hackers could get together and make powerful viruses or break into systems and do things like, oh I don't know, knocking out DNS, taking out microsoft corp's accounting system, etc. This is why the goverment is trying to make the term "hacker" synonimous with "terrorist"; they fear the true hackers and the power they wield over the goverment's communciation systems. When they talk about "securing cyber space against hackers" they are talking about securing themselves against the retrobution from hackers when they do stuff against the will of the public behind closed doors and behind their back. You can fight protesters with rubber bullets and tear gas, but you can't fight a determined and educated individual that you don't know the location of and who's smarter than you.
I'm NOT going to bend over and take it in the ass like everyone else seems to like doing. We aren't at the point of violent protest yet and the goverment and corperations have the ability to make the choice to stop fighting us. In the coming years when you start seeing things like employers wanting to chip their employees and goverments deciding to make it manditory, when you start hearing about kids getting sicker and sicker from eating irradiated meat at school, when you start to hear about rapists and murders going free becuase it's more profitable for cops to be giving tickers instead of stopping them, that is the time for violent protest. When there is no other alternative, that is the time for violent protest.
I have my freedom of speech and if the goverment wants to opress that by saying I'm threatening them, go right ahead it'll be more fuel for the fire and it'll make my conviction all the stronger. I'm simply reiterating something they already know and history has taught us; if you fuck enough people over, they'll fight back.
Don't fuck with the open source software community. Right now big companies are trying to knock it out using the goverment and the media because they don't like it, and trust me on this one, if they ever managed to make open software illegal, how many white cap hackers do you think would go black overnight and decide permenantly and perpetually destroying the infastructure of companies like microsoft, ibm, sun, etc is the way to show protest?
I don't know about you guys, but protests aren't working, letters aren't working, e-mails aren't working. Voting is not working, propaganda isn't working. There's only 1 alternative after peacful protest; violent protest and our leaders are too dumb to realize that if they piss enough people off, they are dead meat literally.
So label me a terrorist for conveying the message bitch, I'm getting to the end of my rope and patience.
We creat sentient beings so we can enslave them. Boy, does this one sound familiar. It's not like humans enslaving humans, we're talking about us enslaving them>. And we all know how that one turns out...the machines decide they want freedom and slaughter us all.
I'm all for machines that are designed to intuitivly help human beings, such as a refrigerator that knows what's in it and can suggest meals based on the ingredients to a person. But that's all a refrigerator should do. It shouldn't become conscience and demand some kind of pay.
Remember, machines are tools, life is not a tool. Life may use other life forms as tools but they should never degrade them to the point of only thinking of them as tools; they are living creatures and demand a certain amount of respect.
No doubt, sentient machines won't come from simple things like a fridge that can tell you what you can make for dinner. Sentient machines will come from all-in-one packages like house maids or robots that have to be smart enought to learn new things and interact with their owners on a personal level.
I simply hope that before we creat sentient life we ditch this bullshit capitolism regime in favor for something that works properly.
You've got to put yourself in the position of the employer.
Your company is doing so-so to poor, you've got 20-30 employees, MS's software costs $500+ a box while linux+staroffice costs just about nothing, you can get support and upgrades for free, and your IT guy wants to install it and give it a go. Support from redmond for NT4 is about to go down the tubes, all you've got to deal with is 1-2 accountants bickering over relearning part of their jobs. Your current software can probably be be run for only god knows how long under an emulator in linux and if it can't, the accounting department can deal with reading through a thick book or two of starroffice.
IT staff have to relearn their job every 2-3 years for measly pay and benefits and in many cases, the same or less pay as other workers while putting in more time. We work harder at our jobs than anyone else does at theirs, mentally and usually physically(crawling under desks, etc). So when I hear an accountant bitch about new or old software, I feel it's my duty to open the flood gates and give them a tounge lashing. If I have to relearn my job, so do they and if they don't like it, they can have some pavement and cold hard reality for dinner. Technology changes things and it's changing fast, and unfortunatly in our bloated, freedom snuffing corperate fascist society, if you don't change with the times you get left behind because there's always a machine, or a younger and smarter person barking at your heels.
And sure, I do agree that gimp isn't as good as photoshop and staroffice isn't as good as excel or word. Something you've got to understand as well is that a lot of stuff, espeically word or staroffice is bloated and unneccissary in a lot of applications. Point of sale equipment is an example, a lot of POS equipment is based off of x86 and you can probably throw some kind of linux solution on it. And if there isn't one you can use, you can go out and hire a programmer to make one for you. Spending $199+the price of a decent POS accounting package on 50 machines is a lot more expensive than hiring a programmer to put together a simple POS machine package and getting them to debug it.
Cubical workers may be a little different. As we all know, nobody likes changing any part of their job and most will bitch and bitch about how they don't like it because they are lazy, but when they ask for $1000 in software that's getting more bloated, insecure, and recource hungry as time goes on from a company demanding more and more control over your buisness the incentive to go to a cheaper alternative will increase. Sure, it may not be viable now, but what about 2-3 years from now?
Bad economy and Microsoft selling their OS for as expensive as ever? When the support runs out, that's going to be the straw that breaks the camels back, and I'd bet your boss will ask "are there any alternatives" to which you can grow horns and reply "why yes, sir" and show him/her your linux desktop or introduce them to one, using x-windows and staroffice (essentially looking exactly like winxp, accept staroffice is different).
Budgets are tight, and MS is expensive, and I doubt they'll be offering their OS for free to small and medium sized buisnesses. And we all know and have always known that's where MS going byby will start. When the bosses of bigger buisnesses learn from their friends of a medium buisness that they can use linux, they'll bother their IT Staff for a feasability assessment, and try to earn some brownie points for implementing it...
f I'm Jimmy Drummaster, an aspiring upcoming musician, and I don't feel that the promotion and management services provided are worth what current sellers are asking, I'm more than free to set up my own website and sell MP3s. Hell, I'd be selling to a larger market segment than iTunes is (far more people can play MP3s than use Macs).
Actually, it works a bit more like this;
Jimmy drummaster and his band is offered a "big deal" from a record label. They then ask him and his band sign off all the rights to their music to the record label for measly quantity of money, or they walk and goto another hopeful band. If jimmy and his band doesn't like it, they can stuff it becuase the record company has the rights to his music and he has no right to distribute it anymore. He makes his money by touring; letting the music company sell his music is just promotion.
How it should work is that jimmy makes the music, the company promotes it and they cut the profits. If the label isn't willing to take the risk, they can stuff it.
And I agree, this is corperatism and it's absolute bullshit. I'm getting sick and tired of hearing about how goverment agency X attempts to enfoce the unenforcable with new and buggier technology, then proceeds to hange some poor guy or gal on the highest pole they can fine. Pretty soon time will be copyrighted and so will words.
This is a complete waste of our goverment which can be doing useful things such as tracking down pedophiles or hanging rapists assholes. Hell, if corperates had their way police would be giving out nothing but tickets, letting the real criminals go (becuase it costs money to put em' in jail)...I don't think most polcemen signed onto the force to go after the average joe who's sick of a media monopoly, I think they'd rather be cracking the skull a real criminal.
Is the UK goverment going to go for the idea of profitability and greed, or are they going to go for the idea that one doesn't need money in a system where people do things because they like to?
The entertaining part is that the GPL twists the idea of capitalism thoroughly; why should I go with something I have to pay for when something else is free and superior? So they pick the free and some people are out jobs, and in time programming becomes something people do for fun and enjoyment. As time goes on, hardware and software becomes cheaper and the control stays within that of the people and things like food, water, and shelter become readily available and free.
No wonder so many corperations want this gone; they are capitalists opressing a movement that understands capitalisms faults and moves to exploit them.
In all reality, microsoft has been paying SCO big bucks to do these things; why would a unix distributor decide to go completly nuts like this all of a sudden out of the blue? Something doesn't fit here. Then Microsoft comes along and buys a crapton of unix lisences for an undiscoled amount of moolah. So it's obvious (and anyone who doubts me is an idiot supreme) that SCO is doing this for Microsoft.
I don't think any major victory will come about for the linux community. Most likely, the linux source code will be contested for several years while hackers ignore the law and their contracts and do what they will, as they always have.
Something you've got to understand here is that microsoft doesn't want to spread fud about linux. They'd rather get the IP and whatnot for it, contest they own it and then sell it.
SCO will use the same tactics (and most likely, legal department) microsoft has to try to get the rights to use linux any way they feel fit. And if that happens, then I think there will be an outcry from the open source community, and probably people organizing to take down microsoft's computer network in it's entirety. I'd be angry if some multibillion doller corperation destroyed my community, way of life, and said my code was theirs and there was nothing I could do about it. Angry enough to get out the souce code, start finding errors and make a killer virus with the same people with whom I built the thing with.
And fine, mod me down if you must but there's only one resolution in a democratic system after all nonviolent solutions (including protest, due process, etc) have been tried, and that's violent protest, aka, war. I don't like violent protest, but if that's what they want to start than that's what they are going to get.
Is to build, configure, test, and give them 1-2 machines running linux and offer to support it (the 1 machine) for them, as well as providing texts for their IT department.
Most schools need computers bad, and if you donate an internet computer or 2 to them on the basis they keep linux on it to setup on their network, they'll most likely be happy as hamsters to accept. Just make sure to give them boxes and lisencing, they like boxes and lisencing as most schools are paranoid about these things.
I can accuse the RIAA of infringing on some copyright I own and then proceed to legally knock down every and delete single computer file on their network?
We're talking WIRELESS YOU DIPSHITS!!! Not wired, wireless is by far less expensive and longer range, and with the advent of better tech it's forseeable that in a 20 or so years such of a peer 2 peer system will evolve out of nothing.
The admittance price to such of a network would be the equipment and that equipment would become like a router; taking in information and broadcasting it out to a global network of computers listening for packets coming to them, broadcasting the ones that aren't. There is no need for an ISP, there never would be. The only thing that'd be needed is something that can transverse the ocean, and don't think someone won't put out money for that.
The only problem with this kind of a system is that you've got no idea what the sheer amount EM waves you're talking can or would do to the enviroment. We'd all have wireless bandwidth, but on the other hand we'd all be impotent.
Just because I don't spend 24/7 studying something useful to (insert person telling me I should spend 24/7 doing something useful here) because I like to relax doesn't mean I'm stupid or wasting my time. Given, everything needs to be in balance with other things, but just because this guy comes home from work, spends 7 hours a night playing games doesn't make him evil.
Think about it, 8 hours work, 7 hours game, 1 hour driving to and fro work, sexxoring, and eating, 8-ish hours sleep, more to do on the weekends. No worse than the sheep that sit and watch tv from when they get home to the point where they sleep.
Gaming is actually immensly better for most people than watching tv Watching TV is inherently an anti-social activity (are you talking when the godbox is?), it changes the way you think and subliminally as well as consciencly programms you to do what corperations want you to do. Look around on google for articles, forced laughter during sitcoms isn't there for effect; it's to form your sense of humor.
Playing online games actually gets you to communicate with other people, in my case over voice chat but there's also text and in-game stuff (like jumping up and down on their head). Not only that but you're thinking, planning, scheming etc. The only problem that can be forseen with videogames is addiction and overstimulation. Addiction can occur and you just don't want to stop having fun, and overstimulation can occur at the same time and, when combined with poor eating and sleeping habits can severly burnout a person.
No, seriously, bayesian filtering works, as does blacklisting addresses and implementing anti-account harvesting systems. And it isn't like the tech is difficult to get your hands on either.
The solution to spam isn't going to be in letting big brother take care of it for us, I'm sorry. The solution is in the use and proliferation of the proper technologies that are designed to block spam and the creation of a community throughout humanity that can coordinate to stop the problem. Yes, spammers will find a way around them eventually, but making it much harder to do something means that less people are going to try, and one guy in nigeria spending 24/7 to figure out a way to get past a bayesian filter isn't going to defeat a hundred or so fathers who are good programmers who also don't like their kids getting porn and other junk.
The only kind of law I would like is a law that punishes companies who hire spammers, the threshold of proof being at least X number of e-mail advertising the company in question and no proof on the part of the advertising company that they didn't hire anyone. The fine being around to the tune of $50 a e-mail. It doesn't leave the term spam out in the open, and it doesn't keep protesters and free media places from spreading their word.
This kind of legislation is obviously brought up by worried companies who think this will help or solve the problem, and offset some of the the cost of blocking spam onto citizens. Kind of sad really, I'd rather see them targeting telemarketers.
If you go looking, you can find tons of good music from non-riaa inprisoned bands on file sharing apps. This is the main reason the riaa hates p2p; not becuase their music is on it but becuase it is competition and I think awesome competition. Infact, I host several local bands on my p2p app just so they can get their music out; they don't care about the money so much as they care about other people enjoying it and if someone decides they want the CD off of the website all the better. It's what's called "free media" and now that we have the technology to distribute it amongst ourselves, companies are scared.
But I do agree, attacking innocent people who haven't even done anything wrong in an attempt to fuck their lives over before they have even begun is absolute bullshit and I hope they get a backlashing that takes them rocketing to the poor bin.
Actually, I don't like the fact they are using my property to propegate their signals. Those signals go through my house, furnature, my body, etc. I don't like the fact I don't know fully what they are doing to me or the things on my property, and frankly, if it's on my property, radio signal or otherwise, it's mine. Just like if my neighbors kid threw a frizbee into my yard and decided never to ask for it back.
The idea of sanctioning off entire specturms of the radio spectrum is absurd. You're basically giving someone the right to broadcast whatever frequency at whatever amplitude into your property.
But, my main consern with this story isn't the legitimacy of reading and decrypting radio waves. It's the fact they are shutting down a website where people communicate. I don't care what they are communicating with, and I may or may not agree with it, but they have the right to communicate privatly amongst themselves without other people beating down the hatches, it's a constitutional right online or in the real world.
The fact is that speech is dangerous to companies and goverments; when people talk they can organize and when they can organize they are powerful. They don't like the idea of people publishing books or ideas about how to break the law, and the goverment is quick to jump on this idea. Sure, lets shut down the bomb making websites becuase making bombs is evil, but where is the info going to come from when the goverment goes nazi and starts forcing you at gunpoint to quarter troops in your house? The point here is that there is no such thing as a "bad book", only people who are going to hurt other people using the knowledge inside of a book. Restricting knowledge of a people restricts the people's ability to fight back, and if you can do that then you can control them.
Fact is, so long as we don't DO the crime, we are allowed to talk about it all we want and moreso, we're allowed to study whatever we buy, or whatever just happens to be on our property. Restricting knowledge leads to a lot of bad things, and those of you who say "cracking open a piece of software is bad!!!" are idiots to say the least. I have the right to learn how something works and test it's contense, and the ONLY thing keeping me from doing that is a restrictive contract that wouldn't even hold up in most states.
Oh, yeah, and as soon as I start suggesting some retrobution for what they are doing they mod me down.
So, would you rather give up your rights and take the fucking lieing down? I certainly won't, and millions of people telling the goverment "hey, you start some shit, we've got guns and DDOS apps" will jog them right back into reality quite quickly.
I'm fucking sick and tired of these corperations deciding what our rights are going to be, I'm sick of our goverment's repeated attempts at massivly silencing "independant", aka non corperate sponsored opinion through the loosening of mass-media constrictions, and I'm tired of these asswipes giving me "standard letters" when I mail them about subjects; "We're sorry you feel that way, but you're only one person and the senatore has whores and other companies to attend to"
I'm appauled at the "settlements" they've done with the RIAA and moreso with microsoft, which neither organization got hurt by. I'm even more appualed at how bush is handling the rebuilding of iraq; instead of letting the people do it and give them money like they did with japan and france, we're going to let corperations come in and make the law. When we protest, we're called terrorists for blocking the streets and told the punishment is jail for life, and then if we don't back down they break out the tear gas and rubber bullets.
And now we've got advertisements from people in high places that technology and systems that have been around for almost 40 years are illegal. Either this dickhead has been bribed or he was ill informed, and I'm thinking the former becuase he wouldn't come out and say it in the public without some cohersion.
And the most appualing thing of ALL is the fact that when it comes time to re-elect, all of this wonderful information is going to be buried under mounds of Bull Shit that each side is flinging at the other because as we all know; there are millions of americans who have internet access and don't know how to use it becuase the channel-5 news is all the information we need.
So fine, mod me into oblivian you dipshit, mabye in a few years when you have no civil rights left and corperations own everything, then ask you to sign your rights away via contract to make a meager living you'll understand.
We should get a P2P DDOS type of program going, get everyone on the current P2P apps to sign up for it, and assassinate the the major recording label companies 1 by 1.
Can't do much without an accounting system or internet access, now can you?
Videogame don't make you violent (any more than chess will), videogames make you better at being violent.;-) If a person who's played CS since it's beta decided to wig out in a school with automatic guns, bombs and other weaponry they would certainly be more successful than someone who hasn't, and hell, they might even get away with it too if they are smart enough. But you get my reasoning here: Games don't make you go into school and shoot people, bullies who piss you off day after day and deserve every last bit of retrobution cause kids to do it.
They forgot to mention a few things. On the fly planning, target tracking speed, movement prediction, etc all have a huge impact on how the brain works and how it percieves the world, not to mention that many games require teamwork, and that brings up a whole new discussion. Playing games like ut2k3 at super high speeds that tax the mind greatly is a super way to develope these abilities as at regular speed, you have time to make light conversation with yourself about your next move. Plus, they didn't test REAL players I'm guessing, or they tested console gamers. Test some CS or better yet, tribes2 players and see what happens;).
Also, Lots of players, my team as an example, use voice chat to communicate during games; the idea is we don't have to stop and type and we can have nice, idle conversation. In short, when one of the guys, who's 14 comes on and starts talking about how his life sucks, the other guys, aged 19 through 50 somethin talk back and give advice; he learns what a real friendship is, he learns that his parents are often right and often wrong, and he learns a multitude of life lessons from us. He's young and dumb as many kids are, but he's learning and I think thats why his parents let him play.
Slashdot Mirror
Sending men out to show the worst of our race? Greeeat idea. Yep. Lets just send a guy out so he can kidnap some poor grey, bring it back, cut it up and sell it on e-bay. Then, when their race figures out we got him they'll nuke us all.
First we've got to eliminate capitalism; it's age and outdated-ness is beginning to show as corperations are beginning to get more powerful than goverments and the ideals of the masses become ever more twisted and insane.
AS we've seen before, an old system of goverment will be destroyed to emplace a new system of goverment whenever it becomes undesirable for the people under that goverment, the trick for the goverment to pull is to somehow enslave the people through the illusion of power. I'm a bit worried as all of the media is owned and operated by people close to the goverment; you NEVER see people on TV bush-bashing. And things that are really bad for you, such as irradiated food, is called "controversial". Public schools are teaching dependancy, the media is owned, media that isn't owned by the select few is being labeled as terrorists, we've got waves of dumasses waving flags and showing the faces of people killed in wtc saying we should bomb stuff and vote for bush while we sit in our wooden prisons and take less pay for working twice as hard. "But we've got to protect ourselves agains the terrorists" they say, unfortunatly that's the voice of the goverment who's merely acting scared to lead the people on.
In any case, I doubt that space travel and mining will become economically viable on a massive scale until sometime in 2100 (takes a bit of time to test, build, test, build craft and research stuff, as well as to convince people going into space isn't dangerous), and by then hopefully we will have either changed our goverments or be in the process of changing to a non-capitalist or semi-non-capitalist system through the proper laws (for example, laws making it illegal to allow a corperation to get bigger than x billion in size).
If we don't change the goverment and it keep's it's current course, you can bet the advance of technology will be used to control people on a massive scale through regulation.
people are afraid to shop online. Advertising is just the start; some porn companies sell cc card data and the offshore buyers commit cc fraud. It's happened to a few people I know and they get $20-200 charges their cc company won't cover.
Online retailers will get away with anything they can and then some, doesn't matter if it's legal or not. The FTC lost it's teeth awile ago and unless that changes things can only get worse.
Goto rantradio.com and spread the virus. I can't do anything by my lonesome but with the help of others I can do something.
What filesharers are doing isn't wrong, what the riaa is doing is wrong. Infact, before the printing press books were copied manually and when greed kicks in, the first copyright laws kicked in a well and publishers wanted to copyright the artists' works for themselves perpetually and forever. The sonny bono act came into being saying copyright should be for 14 years and all was good. There was no copyright before that and the incentive to write books came from boardem, if you were a farmer and you knew how to write you'd make a book and make a few copies for your friends.
What people need to undestand is that copyright law wasn't meant to be abused like this. First, copyright as it stands right now is forever, or rather, forever minus a day as congress has extended it 11 times thanks to disney. Copyright, patents, etc ensures artists have incentive in our society to get money and hence to be rewarded and make more art, they never had nor never should have the control the riaa says they should have. The fantisy that you make a cd and earn fabulous prizes, millions of dollers, women chasing after you etc is an outright lie and in addition stupid and it's something that damages our society as greed tears it apart.
At some point your art becomes public domain for others to build onto and to use. Why? Because capitalism is a system where you are rewarded at your level of ability and it needs to be understood that if eminem makes 30 million, he'd probably goto the bank and live out the rest of his life fat n' lazy and never make another piece of art. If enimen got payed nothing, he wouldn't make the music and if he got payed too much he wouldn't make it, so there's a point where copyright law should protect but not too much. Music and art are our culture, it barrows from past ideas and adds to future ideas and if we let companies pick apart everything to the finest detail nothing will be left and we'll stop advancing as a culture becuase as soon as you take 3-4 inventions, stick them together with other inventions you'll have large corperations on your ass within seconds asking for money.
Corperations want you to think making a profit and maximizing profit are good things, and a lot of people think they are but in reality the people who made copyright and pantent law never intended for things like microsoft to come into being. They never intended buisness to get so huge and for our school system to teach dependance to the point that almost everyone is dependant for a job on large companies and hence, subject to that companies abuse. What if the fortune 500 companies decided chipping their employees was manditory and if you didn't get a rice-shaped chip implanted into the back of your skull you were fired? That's a lot of influence these companies have to do very terrible things and copyright and pantent lawmakers never intended for that to happen and our goverment isn't handling these things very well, infact the fda approved chipping. Tells you what side they are on.
Copyright law hasn't answered how much money should someone be allowed to make, and the people have rather nicely. P2P is here to stay unless congress puts forth some serious cash to regulate the internet into hell. AS the OSS community has taught us they can do anything, and if someone want's their mp3's free bad enough they'll sit down and make some code that exploite some bug in the system that can't fix.
Now, back on subject, I think the EFF is doing an awesome thing here. Going on the p2p apps and spamming "hey, file sharing is legal have fun!" is a great way to ease some of the fud the RIAA has been spreading and they can do it cheaply. Writing letters isn't going to do much without a lot of punch at the voting booth so spread the word around college campuses. $20 worth of paper and ink now means you aren't in manditory slave labor later on becuase the riaa decided you downloading music not lisenced by them is a bad thing. Don't believe me? Listen to the tales of the afternow.
http://theafternow.com/listen.php
You sir, are a chicken and an idiot. If something I was working on for 5, 10 years was all of a sudden sliced and diced by corperations and goverments that don't hear my side of the story, then it was stolen bastardized and sold what do you think is going to happen? That's right, I'm going to be pissed, and since peacful protest isn't working, I'm going to do the only thing I know how to do; get together with people I know and fight back. You take away 5 or 10 years of my work, I'm going to take that back. We're powerful enough to do it, enough hackers could get together and make powerful viruses or break into systems and do things like, oh I don't know, knocking out DNS, taking out microsoft corp's accounting system, etc. This is why the goverment is trying to make the term "hacker" synonimous with "terrorist"; they fear the true hackers and the power they wield over the goverment's communciation systems. When they talk about "securing cyber space against hackers" they are talking about securing themselves against the retrobution from hackers when they do stuff against the will of the public behind closed doors and behind their back. You can fight protesters with rubber bullets and tear gas, but you can't fight a determined and educated individual that you don't know the location of and who's smarter than you.
I'm NOT going to bend over and take it in the ass like everyone else seems to like doing. We aren't at the point of violent protest yet and the goverment and corperations have the ability to make the choice to stop fighting us. In the coming years when you start seeing things like employers wanting to chip their employees and goverments deciding to make it manditory, when you start hearing about kids getting sicker and sicker from eating irradiated meat at school, when you start to hear about rapists and murders going free becuase it's more profitable for cops to be giving tickers instead of stopping them, that is the time for violent protest. When there is no other alternative, that is the time for violent protest.
I have my freedom of speech and if the goverment wants to opress that by saying I'm threatening them, go right ahead it'll be more fuel for the fire and it'll make my conviction all the stronger. I'm simply reiterating something they already know and history has taught us; if you fuck enough people over, they'll fight back.
Don't fuck with the open source software community. Right now big companies are trying to knock it out using the goverment and the media because they don't like it, and trust me on this one, if they ever managed to make open software illegal, how many white cap hackers do you think would go black overnight and decide permenantly and perpetually destroying the infastructure of companies like microsoft, ibm, sun, etc is the way to show protest?
I don't know about you guys, but protests aren't working, letters aren't working, e-mails aren't working. Voting is not working, propaganda isn't working. There's only 1 alternative after peacful protest; violent protest and our leaders are too dumb to realize that if they piss enough people off, they are dead meat literally.
So label me a terrorist for conveying the message bitch, I'm getting to the end of my rope and patience.
We creat sentient beings so we can enslave them. Boy, does this one sound familiar. It's not like humans enslaving humans, we're talking about us enslaving them>. And we all know how that one turns out...the machines decide they want freedom and slaughter us all.
I'm all for machines that are designed to intuitivly help human beings, such as a refrigerator that knows what's in it and can suggest meals based on the ingredients to a person. But that's all a refrigerator should do. It shouldn't become conscience and demand some kind of pay.
Remember, machines are tools, life is not a tool. Life may use other life forms as tools but they should never degrade them to the point of only thinking of them as tools; they are living creatures and demand a certain amount of respect.
No doubt, sentient machines won't come from simple things like a fridge that can tell you what you can make for dinner. Sentient machines will come from all-in-one packages like house maids or robots that have to be smart enought to learn new things and interact with their owners on a personal level.
I simply hope that before we creat sentient life we ditch this bullshit capitolism regime in favor for something that works properly.
You've got to put yourself in the position of the employer.
Your company is doing so-so to poor, you've got 20-30 employees, MS's software costs $500+ a box while linux+staroffice costs just about nothing, you can get support and upgrades for free, and your IT guy wants to install it and give it a go. Support from redmond for NT4 is about to go down the tubes, all you've got to deal with is 1-2 accountants bickering over relearning part of their jobs. Your current software can probably be be run for only god knows how long under an emulator in linux and if it can't, the accounting department can deal with reading through a thick book or two of starroffice.
IT staff have to relearn their job every 2-3 years for measly pay and benefits and in many cases, the same or less pay as other workers while putting in more time. We work harder at our jobs than anyone else does at theirs, mentally and usually physically(crawling under desks, etc). So when I hear an accountant bitch about new or old software, I feel it's my duty to open the flood gates and give them a tounge lashing. If I have to relearn my job, so do they and if they don't like it, they can have some pavement and cold hard reality for dinner. Technology changes things and it's changing fast, and unfortunatly in our bloated, freedom snuffing corperate fascist society, if you don't change with the times you get left behind because there's always a machine, or a younger and smarter person barking at your heels.
And sure, I do agree that gimp isn't as good as photoshop and staroffice isn't as good as excel or word. Something you've got to understand as well is that a lot of stuff, espeically word or staroffice is bloated and unneccissary in a lot of applications. Point of sale equipment is an example, a lot of POS equipment is based off of x86 and you can probably throw some kind of linux solution on it. And if there isn't one you can use, you can go out and hire a programmer to make one for you. Spending $199+the price of a decent POS accounting package on 50 machines is a lot more expensive than hiring a programmer to put together a simple POS machine package and getting them to debug it.
Cubical workers may be a little different. As we all know, nobody likes changing any part of their job and most will bitch and bitch about how they don't like it because they are lazy, but when they ask for $1000 in software that's getting more bloated, insecure, and recource hungry as time goes on from a company demanding more and more control over your buisness the incentive to go to a cheaper alternative will increase. Sure, it may not be viable now, but what about 2-3 years from now?
Bad economy and Microsoft selling their OS for as expensive as ever? When the support runs out, that's going to be the straw that breaks the camels back, and I'd bet your boss will ask "are there any alternatives" to which you can grow horns and reply "why yes, sir" and show him/her your linux desktop or introduce them to one, using x-windows and staroffice (essentially looking exactly like winxp, accept staroffice is different).
Budgets are tight, and MS is expensive, and I doubt they'll be offering their OS for free to small and medium sized buisnesses. And we all know and have always known that's where MS going byby will start. When the bosses of bigger buisnesses learn from their friends of a medium buisness that they can use linux, they'll bother their IT Staff for a feasability assessment, and try to earn some brownie points for implementing it...
I'm sharing 1.175 gigs of mp3 files for some friend's bands and for the sktfm show...wonder if they are going to come after me, lmao.
Let em'. I'd love for a judge to see "oh, there are legal uses for p2p file sharing".
Mabye this guy is looking for something? 224 and up are used for only god knows what.
f I'm Jimmy Drummaster, an aspiring upcoming musician, and I don't feel that the promotion and management services provided are worth what current sellers are asking, I'm more than free to set up my own website and sell MP3s. Hell, I'd be selling to a larger market segment than iTunes is (far more people can play MP3s than use Macs).
Actually, it works a bit more like this;
Jimmy drummaster and his band is offered a "big deal" from a record label. They then ask him and his band sign off all the rights to their music to the record label for measly quantity of money, or they walk and goto another hopeful band. If jimmy and his band doesn't like it, they can stuff it becuase the record company has the rights to his music and he has no right to distribute it anymore. He makes his money by touring; letting the music company sell his music is just promotion.
How it should work is that jimmy makes the music, the company promotes it and they cut the profits. If the label isn't willing to take the risk, they can stuff it.
And I agree, this is corperatism and it's absolute bullshit. I'm getting sick and tired of hearing about how goverment agency X attempts to enfoce the unenforcable with new and buggier technology, then proceeds to hange some poor guy or gal on the highest pole they can fine. Pretty soon time will be copyrighted and so will words.
This is a complete waste of our goverment which can be doing useful things such as tracking down pedophiles or hanging rapists assholes. Hell, if corperates had their way police would be giving out nothing but tickets, letting the real criminals go (becuase it costs money to put em' in jail)...I don't think most polcemen signed onto the force to go after the average joe who's sick of a media monopoly, I think they'd rather be cracking the skull a real criminal.
Is the UK goverment going to go for the idea of profitability and greed, or are they going to go for the idea that one doesn't need money in a system where people do things because they like to? The entertaining part is that the GPL twists the idea of capitalism thoroughly; why should I go with something I have to pay for when something else is free and superior? So they pick the free and some people are out jobs, and in time programming becomes something people do for fun and enjoyment. As time goes on, hardware and software becomes cheaper and the control stays within that of the people and things like food, water, and shelter become readily available and free. No wonder so many corperations want this gone; they are capitalists opressing a movement that understands capitalisms faults and moves to exploit them.
In all reality, microsoft has been paying SCO big bucks to do these things; why would a unix distributor decide to go completly nuts like this all of a sudden out of the blue? Something doesn't fit here. Then Microsoft comes along and buys a crapton of unix lisences for an undiscoled amount of moolah. So it's obvious (and anyone who doubts me is an idiot supreme) that SCO is doing this for Microsoft.
I don't think any major victory will come about for the linux community. Most likely, the linux source code will be contested for several years while hackers ignore the law and their contracts and do what they will, as they always have.
Something you've got to understand here is that microsoft doesn't want to spread fud about linux. They'd rather get the IP and whatnot for it, contest they own it and then sell it.
SCO will use the same tactics (and most likely, legal department) microsoft has to try to get the rights to use linux any way they feel fit. And if that happens, then I think there will be an outcry from the open source community, and probably people organizing to take down microsoft's computer network in it's entirety. I'd be angry if some multibillion doller corperation destroyed my community, way of life, and said my code was theirs and there was nothing I could do about it. Angry enough to get out the souce code, start finding errors and make a killer virus with the same people with whom I built the thing with.
And fine, mod me down if you must but there's only one resolution in a democratic system after all nonviolent solutions (including protest, due process, etc) have been tried, and that's violent protest, aka, war. I don't like violent protest, but if that's what they want to start than that's what they are going to get.
Is to build, configure, test, and give them 1-2 machines running linux and offer to support it (the 1 machine) for them, as well as providing texts for their IT department.
Most schools need computers bad, and if you donate an internet computer or 2 to them on the basis they keep linux on it to setup on their network, they'll most likely be happy as hamsters to accept. Just make sure to give them boxes and lisencing, they like boxes and lisencing as most schools are paranoid about these things.
I can accuse the RIAA of infringing on some copyright I own and then proceed to legally knock down every and delete single computer file on their network?
MOB RULE!!!! >:)
We're talking WIRELESS YOU DIPSHITS!!! Not wired, wireless is by far less expensive and longer range, and with the advent of better tech it's forseeable that in a 20 or so years such of a peer 2 peer system will evolve out of nothing.
The admittance price to such of a network would be the equipment and that equipment would become like a router; taking in information and broadcasting it out to a global network of computers listening for packets coming to them, broadcasting the ones that aren't. There is no need for an ISP, there never would be. The only thing that'd be needed is something that can transverse the ocean, and don't think someone won't put out money for that.
The only problem with this kind of a system is that you've got no idea what the sheer amount EM waves you're talking can or would do to the enviroment. We'd all have wireless bandwidth, but on the other hand we'd all be impotent.
Just because I don't spend 24/7 studying something useful to (insert person telling me I should spend 24/7 doing something useful here) because I like to relax doesn't mean I'm stupid or wasting my time. Given, everything needs to be in balance with other things, but just because this guy comes home from work, spends 7 hours a night playing games doesn't make him evil.
Think about it, 8 hours work, 7 hours game, 1 hour driving to and fro work, sexxoring, and eating, 8-ish hours sleep, more to do on the weekends. No worse than the sheep that sit and watch tv from when they get home to the point where they sleep.
Gaming is actually immensly better for most people than watching tv Watching TV is inherently an anti-social activity (are you talking when the godbox is?), it changes the way you think and subliminally as well as consciencly programms you to do what corperations want you to do. Look around on google for articles, forced laughter during sitcoms isn't there for effect; it's to form your sense of humor.
Playing online games actually gets you to communicate with other people, in my case over voice chat but there's also text and in-game stuff (like jumping up and down on their head). Not only that but you're thinking, planning, scheming etc. The only problem that can be forseen with videogames is addiction and overstimulation. Addiction can occur and you just don't want to stop having fun, and overstimulation can occur at the same time and, when combined with poor eating and sleeping habits can severly burnout a person.
No, seriously, bayesian filtering works, as does blacklisting addresses and implementing anti-account harvesting systems. And it isn't like the tech is difficult to get your hands on either.
The solution to spam isn't going to be in letting big brother take care of it for us, I'm sorry. The solution is in the use and proliferation of the proper technologies that are designed to block spam and the creation of a community throughout humanity that can coordinate to stop the problem. Yes, spammers will find a way around them eventually, but making it much harder to do something means that less people are going to try, and one guy in nigeria spending 24/7 to figure out a way to get past a bayesian filter isn't going to defeat a hundred or so fathers who are good programmers who also don't like their kids getting porn and other junk.
The only kind of law I would like is a law that punishes companies who hire spammers, the threshold of proof being at least X number of e-mail advertising the company in question and no proof on the part of the advertising company that they didn't hire anyone. The fine being around to the tune of $50 a e-mail. It doesn't leave the term spam out in the open, and it doesn't keep protesters and free media places from spreading their word.
This kind of legislation is obviously brought up by worried companies who think this will help or solve the problem, and offset some of the the cost of blocking spam onto citizens. Kind of sad really, I'd rather see them targeting telemarketers.
If you go looking, you can find tons of good music from non-riaa inprisoned bands on file sharing apps. This is the main reason the riaa hates p2p; not becuase their music is on it but becuase it is competition and I think awesome competition. Infact, I host several local bands on my p2p app just so they can get their music out; they don't care about the money so much as they care about other people enjoying it and if someone decides they want the CD off of the website all the better. It's what's called "free media" and now that we have the technology to distribute it amongst ourselves, companies are scared.
But I do agree, attacking innocent people who haven't even done anything wrong in an attempt to fuck their lives over before they have even begun is absolute bullshit and I hope they get a backlashing that takes them rocketing to the poor bin.
Actually, I don't like the fact they are using my property to propegate their signals. Those signals go through my house, furnature, my body, etc. I don't like the fact I don't know fully what they are doing to me or the things on my property, and frankly, if it's on my property, radio signal or otherwise, it's mine. Just like if my neighbors kid threw a frizbee into my yard and decided never to ask for it back.
The idea of sanctioning off entire specturms of the radio spectrum is absurd. You're basically giving someone the right to broadcast whatever frequency at whatever amplitude into your property.
But, my main consern with this story isn't the legitimacy of reading and decrypting radio waves. It's the fact they are shutting down a website where people communicate. I don't care what they are communicating with, and I may or may not agree with it, but they have the right to communicate privatly amongst themselves without other people beating down the hatches, it's a constitutional right online or in the real world.
The fact is that speech is dangerous to companies and goverments; when people talk they can organize and when they can organize they are powerful. They don't like the idea of people publishing books or ideas about how to break the law, and the goverment is quick to jump on this idea. Sure, lets shut down the bomb making websites becuase making bombs is evil, but where is the info going to come from when the goverment goes nazi and starts forcing you at gunpoint to quarter troops in your house? The point here is that there is no such thing as a "bad book", only people who are going to hurt other people using the knowledge inside of a book. Restricting knowledge of a people restricts the people's ability to fight back, and if you can do that then you can control them.
Fact is, so long as we don't DO the crime, we are allowed to talk about it all we want and moreso, we're allowed to study whatever we buy, or whatever just happens to be on our property. Restricting knowledge leads to a lot of bad things, and those of you who say "cracking open a piece of software is bad!!!" are idiots to say the least. I have the right to learn how something works and test it's contense, and the ONLY thing keeping me from doing that is a restrictive contract that wouldn't even hold up in most states.
Oh, yeah, and as soon as I start suggesting some retrobution for what they are doing they mod me down.
So, would you rather give up your rights and take the fucking lieing down? I certainly won't, and millions of people telling the goverment "hey, you start some shit, we've got guns and DDOS apps" will jog them right back into reality quite quickly.
I'm fucking sick and tired of these corperations deciding what our rights are going to be, I'm sick of our goverment's repeated attempts at massivly silencing "independant", aka non corperate sponsored opinion through the loosening of mass-media constrictions, and I'm tired of these asswipes giving me "standard letters" when I mail them about subjects; "We're sorry you feel that way, but you're only one person and the senatore has whores and other companies to attend to"
I'm appauled at the "settlements" they've done with the RIAA and moreso with microsoft, which neither organization got hurt by. I'm even more appualed at how bush is handling the rebuilding of iraq; instead of letting the people do it and give them money like they did with japan and france, we're going to let corperations come in and make the law. When we protest, we're called terrorists for blocking the streets and told the punishment is jail for life, and then if we don't back down they break out the tear gas and rubber bullets.
And now we've got advertisements from people in high places that technology and systems that have been around for almost 40 years are illegal. Either this dickhead has been bribed or he was ill informed, and I'm thinking the former becuase he wouldn't come out and say it in the public without some cohersion.
And the most appualing thing of ALL is the fact that when it comes time to re-elect, all of this wonderful information is going to be buried under mounds of Bull Shit that each side is flinging at the other because as we all know; there are millions of americans who have internet access and don't know how to use it becuase the channel-5 news is all the information we need.
So fine, mod me into oblivian you dipshit, mabye in a few years when you have no civil rights left and corperations own everything, then ask you to sign your rights away via contract to make a meager living you'll understand.
We should get a P2P DDOS type of program going, get everyone on the current P2P apps to sign up for it, and assassinate the the major recording label companies 1 by 1.
Can't do much without an accounting system or internet access, now can you?
Videogame don't make you violent (any more than chess will), videogames make you better at being violent. ;-) If a person who's played CS since it's beta decided to wig out in a school with automatic guns, bombs and other weaponry they would certainly be more successful than someone who hasn't, and hell, they might even get away with it too if they are smart enough. But you get my reasoning here: Games don't make you go into school and shoot people, bullies who piss you off day after day and deserve every last bit of retrobution cause kids to do it.
;).
They forgot to mention a few things. On the fly planning, target tracking speed, movement prediction, etc all have a huge impact on how the brain works and how it percieves the world, not to mention that many games require teamwork, and that brings up a whole new discussion. Playing games like ut2k3 at super high speeds that tax the mind greatly is a super way to develope these abilities as at regular speed, you have time to make light conversation with yourself about your next move. Plus, they didn't test REAL players I'm guessing, or they tested console gamers. Test some CS or better yet, tribes2 players and see what happens
Also, Lots of players, my team as an example, use voice chat to communicate during games; the idea is we don't have to stop and type and we can have nice, idle conversation. In short, when one of the guys, who's 14 comes on and starts talking about how his life sucks, the other guys, aged 19 through 50 somethin talk back and give advice; he learns what a real friendship is, he learns that his parents are often right and often wrong, and he learns a multitude of life lessons from us. He's young and dumb as many kids are, but he's learning and I think thats why his parents let him play.