I want my stuff back more then anything else, and community service might get something usefull accomplished. Think of all the elderly persons who cannot afford to pay, but could get their laws cut and their driveways shoveld by persons doing community service. Think of all the trash that could get picked up. Consturction work for local schools and libraries(obviously just the most menial stuff like digging foundations and such). Point is community service is a good idea. Even with violent criminals. I would rather pay a gaurd to stand over a chain gange doing work, with a shoot gun then make sure prisoners come back from the cafeteria on time.
While, I think IP patents are major BS and using them this way is dirty pool, I myself would never be a participant in, the parent has a point. There does exist a possibility that if Eolas wins others will follow. Maybe then people would recognize these patents to be the nuclear wepons they are. The one good thing that could come of a few of these types of cases is that, even entities with big patent portfolios like M$ or IBM, Novell, SCO, et al will learn that its not portfolio size that matters one rogue corporation with even a single signifigant patent could screw their business over royal. It might prompt the 800 pound gorrillas to stop playing their cross licenseing games and do something about the systems, if only to save themselves from the North Koreas' of the software world.
No, because in all likelyhood, that car you boght five years later will break down at some point and you will be very happy you saved that $1000 because that will fix the car and not create a cash flow issue for you.
Well, there is no reason a Virus can't infect a bacterium, and if we thing there are bacteria on Mars then there is no reason why Virii can't be there too. So no not impossible.
Which is why you have a limits.conf, so that users don't can't do that sorta thing. Linux might not have a fairness emplementation, but there are plenty of tools to manage users in all but the most trying situations.
I think I will just keep my littlle sports car
on
Spies Riding Shotgun
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Makes my glad to drive an 1985 Alfa Spider. I highly doubt the computer has enough memory to store that kinda information. Infact I think the performance would see big imporvement if could retain information for a longer period the Variable Valve timeing control might be allot smarter if it could keep track of conditions for at least 5 min. I wish the car did* know I was in a race and could keep thing adjusted according rather then droping the cam back to normal just becase I got out of the throtel to take a curve.
I don't like not being able to skip commercials and the like, and I realize we have always been able to skip objectionable content. This law is bad because like always it just spells out what the gov can or can't do and does not say much about us or corporations.
Our criminal law is based on the idea the we are supposed to let he government protect us for certain things, the social contract implies we wave the right to protech ourselves in those instances with the assurance someone else will. If some punk kit runs his ricer down my street at 90mph everyday nearly killing me when I am trying to get my mail, its a matter for the police and the procecuter not for me to shoot out his tires or even have standing to sue neccecarily.
If we give the Government power to enfoce copyright as a criminal matter then the *IAA should have to give up their right to do investigations, in most instances to sue violators who were not selling boot legs, and to attempt in most ways to enfoce the rules themselves. It should be a strict matter for the prosecuter. This would be good for most people because 1.The county prosecuter most certainly has bigger fish to fry then your copying a dvd from block buster, the chances of you being investigated and especially charged are nil. 2. You would have all your civil rights. Nobody seems to be doing much of anything to stop record companies from embeding software on auto run cds that call home. The government could do no such thing without a warrant. In short I think criminalizing copyright is probably the best way to give "fair use" back to the un-informed masses.
What is total BS is if both media giants and the gov get to do it which is how its shapeing up now.
Yes, but from the prespective of a retailer do I care. If there is a correlation between huricans and Pop Tart sales, then when there is huricane I know to beef up my pop tart stock so I can meet demand, and gain the maximum profit. I don't care why people want the pop tarts just, how many they want and when.
Who will dilligently protect the Americans who would be murdered otherwise? Don't think unborn children are lives; then I guess a misscarriage would be a noneven in your family?
Who will protect a terminally-ill patient who really wants to live out their remaining days from being pressered into giving them up by greedy relatives or physicians with a social agenda?
Is it your suposition that Atheist students are so unsure of their quote faith that whitnessing others expressing this will shake it. Its it bad for someone born to an Atheist family to whitness others practing perhaps enjoinging their faith thus provinging opertunity to understand and perhaps decide personally if it might be for them?
Even those in Camp X-ray are being given due process which since they are not citizens IMHO gives them no right to even that. The Constitution starts out "We the people of the United States... secure the blessings of Liberty to Ourselves and our posterity" Yes its nice to give those rights to other and we should do that when we can but our founding document certainly does not demand it and instead says "secure to ourselves" I and most would take that to mean us first then everyone else.
I don't even know where your going with that last one.
We were lucky to have Ascroft, when you consider the stupid curpt bitch he replaced.
If your going to make the suposition allowing for an inductive leap the Greenhouse gases are bad then.
Before anyone knew better the US and EU did all sorts of bad.
Now we know better, therefore we should stop doing what we know is bad.
China is actually doing doing the same now only worse then we are.
China knows better, therfore China should stop too.
My reasons for feeling Kyoto is unfair is that if anyone is expected to sacrifice then they should see some benifet toward the stated goal of the sacrifice. If we have to cut or CO/CO2 emmisions we should see a "greener world" as a result, but we won't get that because we are infact at present time a minority contributor to the problem. We will get no gain only economic loss, the goal will not be advanced in anyway. China and others just like the plan becuase they see some economic advancement. As to us paying some penance for our "evil" ways it does not fly in my book. I think if anything we are allot less guilty because when we were doing our harm to get where we wanted to be we really were not fully aware of how harmful it was(if you buy it was harmful) we were at best wreckless. Now others like China are perposefully because they do know better. Its not an excuse but its does mean we are no more culpable if not in fact less then anyone else. If we are going to sacrifice to make Kyoto work then everybody should because as it stands now we would only see about a 1 degree less then the projected increase in temperatures over the next 40 years, to really impact the planets health we need more like 6 degrees and that will only come if others actually cut emmissions too.
Where are you getting these "facts". Its a fact that China is buring more coal per day then the US has ever done. Its a fact that China is quickly becoming one of the largest importers of oil, rivaled only by the U.S. Its a fact the 3rd wrold accounts for almost 75% of green house gas emmisions even though the our county uses almost 75% of the fule. The reality is China and India simply would never submit to a fair shake, its contrary to their cultures of nationalism. China would have to do a great deal of modernization of equipment and tightening of pollution controls and that would slow their extreemy rapid expansion, their policy is one of extreemly rapid industrial development they would not accept Kyoto if it stifled that in any way. They would love us to do it though because dispite the fact we are doing LESS damage then they are we do it more as individuals with cars and boats and law mowers, the rules wich make unfairly higher demands of us would leave nothing left for manufacturers and guess who gets to the manufacturing then THEY DO***. It aint Bush that sending the manufaturing to China, its the green party.
How can any sane person call this a waste imagine an army that does not have to penetrate defense or break lines, but simply appears in the ememies capital building an wipes out all their officals. No more messy battle field campains. Someone Clearly out numbered? easy just beam the enitre division off the field to some safe location, or better yet right behind the enimes back.
Oh wait this is reality you say? shoot so much for all my big plans then,.
Its not solely the U.S. Although we subsidize everyone elses energy since we BOTHER to stablilize the middle east and then don't FORCE them to sell to us. Ever considered what the middle east would be like without OIL revenue? That's all they got. They would return to the stone age in large parts of that region if not for oil. Yes we do sepend lots of money to stabilize it mostly so we can ensure a steady flow of oil out of the region for us to buy. Frankly I think we should send most of Europe, and China a bill for our protective services. I got news for you all, the war lords are bad their now. Put the serious economic hurt on them of the west and China no longer buying thir oil and conditions would get worse their not better. Westerners and others would not stop dieing to keep stability in the region either, the rest of the world needs that oil and if we stoped protecting it somebody else would. The risk there is that someone else might not let those nations decide who they do business with and we might find ourselves cut off.
Right, becuase China has not been mass importing oil and building oil and coal power plants at a faster rate then anywher else in the world, or anything like that. No clearly their policy shows they are headed for alternative fules. I don't know what you all are smokeing but it must be good stuff, I want some.
The facts are clear, China is growing very fast because its not hard to grow from manual laybor to mechanized. Its especially easy when you do it with decades and certuries old tech from other places. China is paying no development costs. They are not even getting envolved with technologies still expensive to produce and use. They are just doing more of it faster. We have all these technologies mentioned in the article in the use for 20 years and more now. Just not in the same place and not as broadly deployed. Becase there has never been any reason too. They stuff from 40 years ago has been "good enough" such that this tech only got used to replace whats broken and in new installations. Now tech newer and better then that is being put in those places. Do you fools really think that China is gonna scrap these smart lights for city wide traffic control systems accross their entire nations as soon as one is developed, not likely they will live with this stuff longe then we would. They only reason that backwards commie government is doing it now is they finally reached a point where they need to do something in those areas and even they are not stupid enough not to pick the state of the art.
The U.S. Birth rate is actually not much higher then the replacement rate all the expected population growth projections are largely due to naturalizing new citizens from elsewhere. Closeing the boarders is a much more likely senerio then limmiting current citizens right to have children. It should also be noted that one of the reasons our economy and other pay as you go systems work, such as social security operate only because the population always grows. Infact becase the population has not grown enough is why SS is in such trouble. More then 60% percent of the inhabitable space here in the US is still green field. We don't have any popualtion issues and won't for a long time. Especially if we start to limit imegration. I more fear the reverse, you need only look Germany's economic forcasts to see what could happen to a nation with a similar social-economic system if the population grows to slow or ages to much.
Your ignorate too. I am not a lawyer but a crime has five material elements, and with a few exceptions all must be well defined and all must happen for the crime to be complete. I am not certain but I think IP theft is the result of legal precedent claiming it is a form of larceny. Precedent can be over turned.
Lets look at some Larceny elements as the pretain to IP theft:
Actus Reus: The takeing and carring away of anothers property, permenantly.
First what is the property is it the money you would have paid for the IP or the IP itself. If its the money you never gave it or title to it to them, they never had possetion or proximate possesion in anycase so you could not take it from them. Cleary no complete act. If its the IP then is it possible to deprive them over it "permenantely" they still have copies that they can still use/sell and you are going to delete it at some point, right even if it is years later?
the other releveant element as I see it is the Harm: loss of property.
Well they never had the money so could not loose it. It can be argued they stil have their property so there is no loss of property. I am not saying there is not loss, there is a loss of opertunity to collect money from the pirate but the law says loss of property and I think we might resonabl say there is no such loss, if we say an oppertunity is not property.
As to the definition being out data well tough luck. We have a right to due process of law and that means you have to follow the law as it is writen, even if that means acts we really feel are criminal can not be punished. That is a case where we need to change the law then, not invent some streched interpretation to suit the situation. There either needs to be new laws or elements of larceny specifically relating to electronic property or their does not, that is something for society as a whole to decide with the legislature not some judge to invent. Hopefully some day some case will make it high enough up and get this stuiped and I feel incorrect precedent over turned. Then we can create new law or decide not to do so.
Publishers simply must lean to live with supply and demand every other producer of anything does. Publishers need to understand they are NOT SPECIAL. If they are goning to charge more then there is demand for the product people won't buy the supply. They will do without or steal it(now I think IP in modern society is major BS and the law should say its inpossible to steal it but...) Its supposed to be a free market. We hold free trade to be a good idea. So their choices are lower the price enough to take the insentive away to pirate it in Russia, effectively lowering the price in the US as well, since we can reimport it, therefore sacrificing the profit margin in the US, or stop selling to Russia because they can't afford to pay, and lose that profit but stop the piracy, or deal with the situation as it is, but I suspect that things will change and they can't count on IP law protecting them forever.
Then there is the region codeing concept with DVDs that I wonder if we tried a few cases could not get the *IAA to shoot themselves in the foot over it. INAL but it seems to me there are trying a two way street thing again. We can legaly buy somethig from overseas, somehting is not illegal unless the law says it is and in this case our free trade treaties mostly explicitly state it is leagal. The region codeing is done on the specific media, not the data. If I downloaded a "prirated" work they would argue that the work was the product not the media it was delivered on and I stole the work. That means the media has only an extreemly minimal value of its own. Then the *IAAs deals with manufactures and each other to control the availibility or only hardware to play certain media, and certain formats of the media in a given region amounts to coluding and price fixing of the data!
The law is the law, and should be followed, or changed not simply broken unless its done in organized protest for the perpose of changeing the law. So its wrong for someone to just pirate a bunch of movies off the internet, but a National Pirate some IP day would fine with me, as it would be a protest.
What I find even more amazing is that the people who refuse to hear a slippery slope argument in this country(America) are usually the first to jump on a "broken glass/windows theroy" or invent one. I strongly think both follow.
Well, its really simple you look out for your own first, then your friends, then everybody else. There is nothing wrong or immoral about that when I do it, there is nothing wrong with it when my government does it, on the international scale. I expect, no demand that any global action my government can take to make me and my family/fellow Americans safer be done, I don't care what the price tag is, even if its human life. Next I want them to look out for our Alies, our real ones sorry France and Germany, you can't provide arms and bank passports to a country we are at war with claim to be our friends, this is again selfish there are power in numbers I am safer if we have other friendly nations who will fight with us. Finally I don't think we should just sit by while others are suffering and dieing. We should help where we can because its just right to do so, but I understand and accept that sometimes we are gonna be the cause as well, in the name of our own safety.
Wallmart is hardley a monopoly in the CD market I don't think an sane person can argue that 1/5 market share constitutes an monopoly, but you have to love slashdot editors for trying right....
I am no Wallmart apologist though. I think they are one of the worst things to happen to commerce in this country in a long time. They are the worst example of corporate wellfare. Wallmart pays people next nothing offers even many management level positions no benifets. They can do this becase it of Liberal Government aid programs that allow their employees to afford continueing to work there. Then the take in may cases obsene advantage of conserivative tax policy and employee overtime rules. When those arn't sweet enought they just higher illegal aliens. Then some how manage to worm off the hook through a conservative administration not wanted to do more then slap their risks for fear of hurting the economy or just as likely if different people were in office get off because of some human rights mumbo jumbo and feeling bad about putting illegal aliens out of work. In short not matter what your pollitics are if your at all mainstream Wallmart can and will take advantage. Maybe a good libritarian system with a crime/punishment bent could fix it.... well not really the point.
The point is Wallmart is now big enough to pressure others be it their employees or their suppiers into doing what they want. They are able to drop prices low enought to drive most better corporate citizens or small shops out of bussiness. Walmart and Sam's Club are fast becoming the only game in town in lots of places. They are not responsible nor are they charitable and really they don't represent the capitalist values this country is built on. Walmart lacks a sense of fair play and decency. They are not becoming domonate through being inovative and shurde but are simply takeing well know long practiced bussiness strategies and carring them to a point were they are simple willing to sink to levels nobody else is. Which is not to say they are the first organization to do this, after all its for these kinds of practices unions and consumer groups were created. The trouble is modern government has erroded the need and the effectiveness of these groups (government can't help us only personal action and responsibility can). Wallmart is so big it can push around these groups and much like Redmond is almost on a level were they can participate in a power strugle with government, and not come away to bloodied.
What I find facinating about this news is it shows a real fearlessness. The Entertainment industry owns enough people in government and is litigious enough, that a law suit can't be far off. Wallmart would not do this unless they think they can win. If they thing they can spar with *AA then they probably think they can spar with anyone one and we should all be scared. Given that they have sold Linux PCs in the past(do they still) I wounder if they won't attempt to bully M$ to spare give them a bigger pice of the end user software pie. Imagine if Wallmart could sell Office pro for $100. That could really hurt Online retailers and the office stores alike.
Ah, and thats where the EULA coupled with the DMCA come it. With that gap closed the implementation is as closed as ever even with the specs wide open.
Say what you want about Bill's ethics, appearance, attitude, etc, but I think its hardly fair to say he knows little about computer science. He got his start selling a full BASIC implementation that he wrote. Historicly it was not a bad version of basic either its regarded as reasonably efficent compared with the other offerings. IIRC he wrote an Altair boot loader on a plane headed to a sale, without any docs and it worked when he got there. Gates does know he computerscience fundamentals, if not in the academic sense in the practicle sense. Who cares if you know that its called "big O" if you recognize whats happening and can make descisions based on it. I hate Bill as much as the next one of us, but I don't think for a seccond he is not capeable in the CS field, he might not be among the best but neither are most of us and he IS a clever bussiness man to boot. I also bet the code coming out of M$ would be much better if Bill was writing it personally.
These people need to excep the subversives will win. The RIAA et all, need to understand that the least damange will be if they just play ball with what people want. If they keep buying bay laws. Then us citizens will stop respecting the laws, its that simple. Bigbussiness/Gov just needs to learn that you give citizens the laws they really want or you get criminals. The other thing is no you can't jail everyone. Look at interstate speed limits. Clearly the majority of general public favors higher speed limits. My evidence most peoplle are doing 5-10 over. Now if everyone is breaking the law(speed limit) then why have the law? Well police pull over people at random and issue tickets the rest of us get away with it. So its partial negative enfocement whic psycologicly casues us to feel we will continue to get away with it, we tend to go even fast the next time. If they just set the speed for passenger cars to 80 I bet most people would comply, which means you could take care of all the violators. People would then respect the speed law and obey even when it inconviences them. So now if you make stuip laws like "though shall not reccord stuffs with a broadcast flag set" if I want to reccord it I sure as hell with find away as will most people. Just like most people don't reall pay to have the city inspector out if they remodle the basement. They know is dumb and just a veiled tax and therfore say "screw it". I'll bet again if you rewrote that ordinace to say "You onlyl need to be inspected if you change a loaded portion of the structure" people would obey and we'd all be safer.
Look at the history of our first revolution. Here is the scary part noone are thinking about. If you keep makeing stupid laws and by extention keep makeing averge joes who were once well behaived citizen criminals and subversives then you only have criminals and subversives. People don't like to feel that way about themselves forever. Eventually that emotional stage starts to work really good for revolutionary reasoning. Then you get a revolution. I am not saying its gonna be a bloody revolution or anything, but sooner or later people are gonna toss out the current power brokers, they simply will not play ball any more. People are gonna say, forigen policy be damned I don't think think my neighbor Ted is really fit to lead this nation on the national stage but if I elect him at least I will be able to live my life like I used to for awhile I am gonna do it. I think the future is bright domesticly but its gonna ruin our place in the world when it happens, and its all because the current powers that be are two blind to stike a ballance.
So, someone creates a stable as in abi/api HAL for linux. Then all sorts of manufaturers start releasing binary only drivers. Hypotheticly these are of good quality and we don't wind up with the windows BSOD type problems, this is very unlikely. We still get lots of binary only drivers with wierd licensing that limits distribution and what you can do with the hardware. Because drivers for stuff are avalible noone have interest in maintaining open drivers. Linux becomes as encombered as windows when you want to do anthing with it besides desktop PC. Forget having a cheep OS with lots of hardware support to build and sell your custom solutions with. Now since the hardware support will still probably be better and more complete on that M$ os all those little embeded things are gonna end up with winCE/pocketPc200X/XPembeded or whatever. This will kill the one market where Linux is begging to become the player to beat rather then the other option. If this takes off linux is gonna end up where it was five years ago on the desks of us geeks, rather then were it is now on half of the little and BIG network appliences out there even if it is unknow to the user. Once that happens we will lose lots of the corporte support and contributes to the kernel as well. Linus made the right call to not stabilize the ABI and force vendors to either make open drivers or at least have to put up with a wrapper.
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I want my stuff back more then anything else, and community service might get something usefull accomplished. Think of all the elderly persons who cannot afford to pay, but could get their laws cut and their driveways shoveld by persons doing community service. Think of all the trash that could get picked up. Consturction work for local schools and libraries(obviously just the most menial stuff like digging foundations and such). Point is community service is a good idea. Even with violent criminals. I would rather pay a gaurd to stand over a chain gange doing work, with a shoot gun then make sure prisoners come back from the cafeteria on time.
While, I think IP patents are major BS and using them this way is dirty pool, I myself would never be a participant in, the parent has a point. There does exist a possibility that if Eolas wins others will follow. Maybe then people would recognize these patents to be the nuclear wepons they are. The one good thing that could come of a few of these types of cases is that, even entities with big patent portfolios like M$ or IBM, Novell, SCO, et al will learn that its not portfolio size that matters one rogue corporation with even a single signifigant patent could screw their business over royal. It might prompt the 800 pound gorrillas to stop playing their cross licenseing games and do something about the systems, if only to save themselves from the North Koreas' of the software world.
No, because in all likelyhood, that car you boght five years later will break down at some point and you will be very happy you saved that $1000 because that will fix the car and not create a cash flow issue for you.
Well, there is no reason a Virus can't infect a bacterium, and if we thing there are bacteria on Mars then there is no reason why Virii can't be there too. So no not impossible.
Which is why you have a limits.conf, so that users don't can't do that sorta thing. Linux might not have a fairness emplementation, but there are plenty of tools to manage users in all but the most trying situations.
Makes my glad to drive an 1985 Alfa Spider. I highly doubt the computer has enough memory to store that kinda information. Infact I think the performance would see big imporvement if could retain information for a longer period the Variable Valve timeing control might be allot smarter if it could keep track of conditions for at least 5 min. I wish the car did* know I was in a race and could keep thing adjusted according rather then droping the cam back to normal just becase I got out of the throtel to take a curve.
I don't like not being able to skip commercials and the like, and I realize we have always been able to skip objectionable content. This law is bad because like always it just spells out what the gov can or can't do and does not say much about us or corporations.
Our criminal law is based on the idea the we are supposed to let he government protect us for certain things, the social contract implies we wave the right to protech ourselves in those instances with the assurance someone else will. If some punk kit runs his ricer down my street at 90mph everyday nearly killing me when I am trying to get my mail, its a matter for the police and the procecuter not for me to shoot out his tires or even have standing to sue neccecarily.
If we give the Government power to enfoce copyright as a criminal matter then the *IAA should have to give up their right to do investigations, in most instances to sue violators who were not selling boot legs, and to attempt in most ways to enfoce the rules themselves. It should be a strict matter for the prosecuter. This would be good for most people because 1.The county prosecuter most certainly has bigger fish to fry then your copying a dvd from block buster, the chances of you being investigated and especially charged are nil. 2. You would have all your civil rights. Nobody seems to be doing much of anything to stop record companies from embeding software on auto run cds that call home. The government could do no such thing without a warrant. In short I think criminalizing copyright is probably the best way to give "fair use" back to the un-informed masses.
What is total BS is if both media giants and the gov get to do it which is how its shapeing up now.
Yes, but from the prespective of a retailer do I care. If there is a correlation between huricans and Pop Tart sales, then when there is huricane I know to beef up my pop tart stock so I can meet demand, and gain the maximum profit. I don't care why people want the pop tarts just, how many they want and when.
Who will dilligently protect the Americans who would be murdered otherwise? Don't think unborn children are lives; then I guess a misscarriage would be a noneven in your family?
... secure the blessings of Liberty to Ourselves and our posterity" Yes its nice to give those rights to other and we should do that when we can but our founding document certainly does not demand it and instead says "secure to ourselves" I and most would take that to mean us first then everyone else.
Who will protect a terminally-ill patient who really wants to live out their remaining days from being pressered into giving them up by greedy relatives or physicians with a social agenda?
Is it your suposition that Atheist students are so unsure of their quote faith that whitnessing others expressing this will shake it. Its it bad for someone born to an Atheist family to whitness others practing perhaps enjoinging their faith thus provinging opertunity to understand and perhaps decide personally if it might be for them?
Even those in Camp X-ray are being given due process which since they are not citizens IMHO gives them no right to even that. The Constitution starts out "We the people of the United States
I don't even know where your going with that last one.
We were lucky to have Ascroft, when you consider the stupid curpt bitch he replaced.
If your going to make the suposition allowing for an inductive leap the Greenhouse gases are bad then.
Before anyone knew better the US and EU did all sorts of bad.
Now we know better, therefore we should stop doing what we know is bad.
China is actually doing doing the same now only worse then we are.
China knows better, therfore China should stop too.
My reasons for feeling Kyoto is unfair is that if anyone is expected to sacrifice then they should see some benifet toward the stated goal of the sacrifice. If we have to cut or CO/CO2 emmisions we should see a "greener world" as a result, but we won't get that because we are infact at present time a minority contributor to the problem. We will get no gain only economic loss, the goal will not be advanced in anyway. China and others just like the plan becuase they see some economic advancement. As to us paying some penance for our "evil" ways it does not fly in my book. I think if anything we are allot less guilty because when we were doing our harm to get where we wanted to be we really were not fully aware of how harmful it was(if you buy it was harmful) we were at best wreckless. Now others like China are perposefully because they do know better. Its not an excuse but its does mean we are no more culpable if not in fact less then anyone else. If we are going to sacrifice to make Kyoto work then everybody should because as it stands now we would only see about a 1 degree less then the projected increase in temperatures over the next 40 years, to really impact the planets health we need more like 6 degrees and that will only come if others actually cut emmissions too.
Where are you getting these "facts". Its a fact that China is buring more coal per day then the US has ever done. Its a fact that China is quickly becoming one of the largest importers of oil, rivaled only by the U.S. Its a fact the 3rd wrold accounts for almost 75% of green house gas emmisions even though the our county uses almost 75% of the fule. The reality is China and India simply would never submit to a fair shake, its contrary to their cultures of nationalism. China would have to do a great deal of modernization of equipment and tightening of pollution controls and that would slow their extreemy rapid expansion, their policy is one of extreemly rapid industrial development they would not accept Kyoto if it stifled that in any way. They would love us to do it though because dispite the fact we are doing LESS damage then they are we do it more as individuals with cars and boats and law mowers, the rules wich make unfairly higher demands of us would leave nothing left for manufacturers and guess who gets to the manufacturing then THEY DO***. It aint Bush that sending the manufaturing to China, its the green party.
How can any sane person call this a waste imagine an army that does not have to penetrate defense or break lines, but simply appears in the ememies capital building an wipes out all their officals. No more messy battle field campains. Someone Clearly out numbered? easy just beam the enitre division off the field to some safe location, or better yet right behind the enimes back.
Oh wait this is reality you say? shoot so much for all my big plans then,.
Its not solely the U.S. Although we subsidize everyone elses energy since we BOTHER to stablilize the middle east and then don't FORCE them to sell to us. Ever considered what the middle east would be like without OIL revenue? That's all they got. They would return to the stone age in large parts of that region if not for oil. Yes we do sepend lots of money to stabilize it mostly so we can ensure a steady flow of oil out of the region for us to buy. Frankly I think we should send most of Europe, and China a bill for our protective services. I got news for you all, the war lords are bad their now. Put the serious economic hurt on them of the west and China no longer buying thir oil and conditions would get worse their not better. Westerners and others would not stop dieing to keep stability in the region either, the rest of the world needs that oil and if we stoped protecting it somebody else would. The risk there is that someone else might not let those nations decide who they do business with and we might find ourselves cut off.
Right, becuase China has not been mass importing oil and building oil and coal power plants at a faster rate then anywher else in the world, or anything like that. No clearly their policy shows they are headed for alternative fules. I don't know what you all are smokeing but it must be good stuff, I want some.
The facts are clear, China is growing very fast because its not hard to grow from manual laybor to mechanized. Its especially easy when you do it with decades and certuries old tech from other places. China is paying no development costs. They are not even getting envolved with technologies still expensive to produce and use. They are just doing more of it faster. We have all these technologies mentioned in the article in the use for 20 years and more now. Just not in the same place and not as broadly deployed. Becase there has never been any reason too. They stuff from 40 years ago has been "good enough" such that this tech only got used to replace whats broken and in new installations. Now tech newer and better then that is being put in those places. Do you fools really think that China is gonna scrap these smart lights for city wide traffic control systems accross their entire nations as soon as one is developed, not likely they will live with this stuff longe then we would. They only reason that backwards commie government is doing it now is they finally reached a point where they need to do something in those areas and even they are not stupid enough not to pick the state of the art.
The U.S. Birth rate is actually not much higher then the replacement rate all the expected population growth projections are largely due to naturalizing new citizens from elsewhere. Closeing the boarders is a much more likely senerio then limmiting current citizens right to have children. It should also be noted that one of the reasons our economy and other pay as you go systems work, such as social security operate only because the population always grows. Infact becase the population has not grown enough is why SS is in such trouble. More then 60% percent of the inhabitable space here in the US is still green field. We don't have any popualtion issues and won't for a long time. Especially if we start to limit imegration. I more fear the reverse, you need only look Germany's economic forcasts to see what could happen to a nation with a similar social-economic system if the population grows to slow or ages to much.
Your ignorate too. I am not a lawyer but a crime has five material elements, and with a few exceptions all must be well defined and all must happen for the crime to be complete. I am not certain but I think IP theft is the result of legal precedent claiming it is a form of larceny. Precedent can be over turned.
Lets look at some Larceny elements as the pretain to IP theft:
Actus Reus: The takeing and carring away of anothers property, permenantly.
First what is the property is it the money you would have paid for the IP or the IP itself. If its the money you never gave it or title to it to them, they never had possetion or proximate possesion in anycase so you could not take it from them. Cleary no complete act. If its the IP then is it possible to deprive them over it "permenantely" they still have copies that they can still use/sell and you are going to delete it at some point, right even if it is years later?
the other releveant element as I see it is
the Harm: loss of property.
Well they never had the money so could not loose it. It can be argued they stil have their property so there is no loss of property. I am not saying there is not loss, there is a loss of opertunity to collect money from the pirate but the law says loss of property and I think we might resonabl say there is no such loss, if we say an oppertunity is not property.
As to the definition being out data well tough luck. We have a right to due process of law and that means you have to follow the law as it is writen, even if that means acts we really feel are criminal can not be punished. That is a case where we need to change the law then, not invent some streched interpretation to suit the situation. There either needs to be new laws or elements of larceny specifically relating to electronic property or their does not, that is something for society as a whole to decide with the legislature not some judge to invent. Hopefully some day some case will make it high enough up and get this stuiped and I feel incorrect precedent over turned. Then we can create new law or decide not to do so.
Publishers simply must lean to live with supply and demand every other producer of anything does. Publishers need to understand they are NOT SPECIAL. If they are goning to charge more then there is demand for the product people won't buy the supply. They will do without or steal it(now I think IP in modern society is major BS and the law should say its inpossible to steal it but...) Its supposed to be a free market. We hold free trade to be a good idea. So their choices are lower the price enough to take the insentive away to pirate it in Russia, effectively lowering the price in the US as well, since we can reimport it, therefore sacrificing the profit margin in the US, or stop selling to Russia because they can't afford to pay, and lose that profit but stop the piracy, or deal with the situation as it is, but I suspect that things will change and they can't count on IP law protecting them forever.
Then there is the region codeing concept with DVDs that I wonder if we tried a few cases could not get the *IAA to shoot themselves in the foot over it. INAL but it seems to me there are trying a two way street thing again. We can legaly buy somethig from overseas, somehting is not illegal unless the law says it is and in this case our free trade treaties mostly explicitly state it is leagal. The region codeing is done on the specific media, not the data. If I downloaded a "prirated" work they would argue that the work was the product not the media it was delivered on and I stole the work. That means the media has only an extreemly minimal value of its own. Then the *IAAs deals with manufactures and each other to control the availibility or only hardware to play certain media, and certain formats of the media in a given region amounts to coluding and price fixing of the data!
The law is the law, and should be followed, or changed not simply broken unless its done in organized protest for the perpose of changeing the law. So its wrong for someone to just pirate a bunch of movies off the internet, but a National Pirate some IP day would fine with me, as it would be a protest.
What I find even more amazing is that the people who refuse to hear a slippery slope argument in this country(America) are usually the first to jump on a "broken glass/windows theroy" or invent one. I strongly think both follow.
Well, its really simple you look out for your own first, then your friends, then everybody else. There is nothing wrong or immoral about that when I do it, there is nothing wrong with it when my government does it, on the international scale. I expect, no demand that any global action my government can take to make me and my family/fellow Americans safer be done, I don't care what the price tag is, even if its human life. Next I want them to look out for our Alies, our real ones sorry France and Germany, you can't provide arms and bank passports to a country we are at war with claim to be our friends, this is again selfish there are power in numbers I am safer if we have other friendly nations who will fight with us. Finally I don't think we should just sit by while others are suffering and dieing. We should help where we can because its just right to do so, but I understand and accept that sometimes we are gonna be the cause as well, in the name of our own safety.
Wallmart is hardley a monopoly in the CD market I don't think an sane person can argue that 1/5 market share constitutes an monopoly, but you have to love slashdot editors for trying right....
I am no Wallmart apologist though. I think they are one of the worst things to happen to commerce in this country in a long time. They are the worst example of corporate wellfare. Wallmart pays people next nothing offers even many management level positions no benifets. They can do this becase it of Liberal Government aid programs that allow their employees to afford continueing to work there. Then the take in may cases obsene advantage of conserivative tax policy and employee overtime rules. When those arn't sweet enought they just higher illegal aliens. Then some how manage to worm off the hook through a conservative administration not wanted to do more then slap their risks for fear of hurting the economy or just as likely if different people were in office get off because of some human rights mumbo jumbo and feeling bad about putting illegal aliens out of work. In short not matter what your pollitics are if your at all mainstream Wallmart can and will take advantage. Maybe a good libritarian system with a crime/punishment bent could fix it.... well not really the point.
The point is Wallmart is now big enough to pressure others be it their employees or their suppiers into doing what they want. They are able to drop prices low enought to drive most better corporate citizens or small shops out of bussiness. Walmart and Sam's Club are fast becoming the only game in town in lots of places. They are not responsible nor are they charitable and really they don't represent the capitalist values this country is built on. Walmart lacks a sense of fair play and decency. They are not becoming domonate through being inovative and shurde but are simply takeing well know long practiced bussiness strategies and carring them to a point were they are simple willing to sink to levels nobody else is. Which is not to say they are the first organization to do this, after all its for these kinds of practices unions and consumer groups were created. The trouble is modern government has erroded the need and the effectiveness of these groups (government can't help us only personal action and responsibility can). Wallmart is so big it can push around these groups and much like Redmond is almost on a level were they can participate in a power strugle with government, and not come away to bloodied.
What I find facinating about this news is it shows a real fearlessness. The Entertainment industry owns enough people in government and is litigious enough, that a law suit can't be far off. Wallmart would not do this unless they think they can win. If they thing they can spar with *AA then they probably think they can spar with anyone one and we should all be scared. Given that they have sold Linux PCs in the past(do they still) I wounder if they won't attempt to bully M$ to spare give them a bigger pice of the end user software pie. Imagine if Wallmart could sell Office pro for $100. That could really hurt Online retailers and the office stores alike.
Ah, and thats where the EULA coupled with the DMCA come it. With that gap closed the implementation is as closed as ever even with the specs wide open.
Now that would be a hell of a restoration project! I thought classic cars were a joy to work on imagine, having a classic nuke in the garage!
Say what you want about Bill's ethics, appearance, attitude, etc, but I think its hardly fair to say he knows little about computer science. He got his start selling a full BASIC implementation that he wrote. Historicly it was not a bad version of basic either its regarded as reasonably efficent compared with the other offerings. IIRC he wrote an Altair boot loader on a plane headed to a sale, without any docs and it worked when he got there. Gates does know he computerscience fundamentals, if not in the academic sense in the practicle sense. Who cares if you know that its called "big O" if you recognize whats happening and can make descisions based on it. I hate Bill as much as the next one of us, but I don't think for a seccond he is not capeable in the CS field, he might not be among the best but neither are most of us and he IS a clever bussiness man to boot. I also bet the code coming out of M$ would be much better if Bill was writing it personally.
These people need to excep the subversives will win. The RIAA et all, need to understand that the least damange will be if they just play ball with what people want. If they keep buying bay laws. Then us citizens will stop respecting the laws, its that simple. Bigbussiness/Gov just needs to learn that you give citizens the laws they really want or you get criminals. The other thing is no you can't jail everyone. Look at interstate speed limits. Clearly the majority of general public favors higher speed limits. My evidence most peoplle are doing 5-10 over. Now if everyone is breaking the law(speed limit) then why have the law? Well police pull over people at random and issue tickets the rest of us get away with it. So its partial negative enfocement whic psycologicly casues us to feel we will continue to get away with it, we tend to go even fast the next time. If they just set the speed for passenger cars to 80 I bet most people would comply, which means you could take care of all the violators. People would then respect the speed law and obey even when it inconviences them. So now if you make stuip laws like "though shall not reccord stuffs with a broadcast flag set" if I want to reccord it I sure as hell with find away as will most people. Just like most people don't reall pay to have the city inspector out if they remodle the basement. They know is dumb and just a veiled tax and therfore say "screw it". I'll bet again if you rewrote that ordinace to say "You onlyl need to be inspected if you change a loaded portion of the structure" people would obey and we'd all be safer.
Look at the history of our first revolution. Here is the scary part noone are thinking about. If you keep makeing stupid laws and by extention keep makeing averge joes who were once well behaived citizen criminals and subversives then you only have criminals and subversives. People don't like to feel that way about themselves forever. Eventually that emotional stage starts to work really good for revolutionary reasoning. Then you get a revolution. I am not saying its gonna be a bloody revolution or anything, but sooner or later people are gonna toss out the current power brokers, they simply will not play ball any more. People are gonna say, forigen policy be damned I don't think think my neighbor Ted is really fit to lead this nation on the national stage but if I elect him at least I will be able to live my life like I used to for awhile I am gonna do it. I think the future is bright domesticly but its gonna ruin our place in the world when it happens, and its all because the current powers that be are two blind to stike a ballance.
So, someone creates a stable as in abi/api HAL for linux. Then all sorts of manufaturers start releasing binary only drivers. Hypotheticly these are of good quality and we don't wind up with the windows BSOD type problems, this is very unlikely. We still get lots of binary only drivers with wierd licensing that limits distribution and what you can do with the hardware. Because drivers for stuff are avalible noone have interest in maintaining open drivers. Linux becomes as encombered as windows when you want to do anthing with it besides desktop PC. Forget having a cheep OS with lots of hardware support to build and sell your custom solutions with. Now since the hardware support will still probably be better and more complete on that M$ os all those little embeded things are gonna end up with winCE/pocketPc200X/XPembeded or whatever. This will kill the one market where Linux is begging to become the player to beat rather then the other option. If this takes off linux is gonna end up where it was five years ago on the desks of us geeks, rather then were it is now on half of the little and BIG network appliences out there even if it is unknow to the user. Once that happens we will lose lots of the corporte support and contributes to the kernel as well. Linus made the right call to not stabilize the ABI and force vendors to either make open drivers or at least have to put up with a wrapper.