The problem with Libertarianism is that it's the exact polar opposite of Social Utopian philosophy. Social Utopians believe the perfect society will exist if everybody works the betterment of the group, not themselves. As we all know, this goes against human nature and the likely result is Communism.
Libertarians believe the exact opposite: A perfect society will be created if everybody works for themselves (no government rules). This also goes against human nature. Most humans will choose short-term gain at the expense of long-term benefit and so a Libertarian society quickly degenerates into fascism or aristocracy as a few people amass large amounts of money and power and use this influence to prevent others from doing the same.
The best solution to date is the one the Constitutional guys came up with. A group of people get together and set some ground rules that everybody agrees to play by. They set up an enforcement body (government) to monitor and change the rules as necessary. They split the government up between different branches with checks and balances to limit the abuse of power. And now you have a pretty fair system of government.
Sorry for the Constituional history lesson but I think people have forgotten why we had to make a Democratic government in the first place. Libertarianism has been around for 10,000 years. It starts with a bunch of people doing whatever they want with no rules. It always degenerates into some sort of dictatorship because, without rules or oversight, one side or the other quickly obtains an uneven amount of resources and exploits that to their advantage. A society must have rules and the rulemakers must be overseen as well.
If you want an example of Libertarianism in action, just go to Mexico. There are no environmental regulations, no enforced corruption laws, no labor laws, nothing to stop you from running your company any way you like. It's an extreme free market system and it's also corrupt as hell.
1. Realize exploitation of 3rd-world labor resources is 10 times cheaper than employing domestic workers 2. Rationalize bypassing 100 years of labor rights progress by saying free market benefits everybody 3. Reap short-term profits at expense of nation 4. Profit!!!
Unlike a lot of parents, when I went off to college my folks didn't tell me to look for the best career path or the most profitable industry. They said, "Find what you love to do and do it. If you love your work, the money will come." I've been very happy with my life and career ever since - and the money did come.
I'm always amazed at the number of people in engineering who hate engineering. They did it for the money and they hate their jobs even more because they don't advance in their career. They don't advance because they don't have the passion for the job.
So find your own path, travel the world on a dime, meet interesting people, try new things - new careers even. Well-behaved people rarely change the world.
Having done driver development for both Windows and Linux, each OS has their plus's and minus's:
Windows good: With some effort, my USB networking driver is binary compatible with Win98 through WinXP. This is really awesome because I don't have to spend a lot of time re-writing and re-compiling drivers. For the customer, it just works.
Windows bad: Writing drivers for Windows is like working on your car with the hood welded shut with only a 12-inch diameter hole cut into the top. Driver writing is EXTREMELY complex on Windows. MS tries to hide everything from you with convoluted callbacks and opaque data structures. My first USB networking driver took me two months just to get a basic skeleton running. On Linux, the same driver took me two weeks to completely finish and I'd never written a driver for Linux before.
Linux good: Driver writing is soooo much easier and intuitive (at least for the 2.2/2.4 kernels). One.c file pretty much does it all
Linux bad: Having to recompile for every kernel just bites. I understand and agree with Linus's reasoning for encouraging open source driver development. Alas, the company I work for doesn't.
So overall, I'd say the Linux driver model is superior for developers but ease of use is what drives mass-adoption of a product. I guess it just depends on your target audience. Our Linux user base, while vocal, is insignficant compared to Windows and even Mac so guess which driver I spend most of my time working on?
Everyone here has completely forgotten two things: Healthcare and Retirement. One broken leg and you're bankrupt and if you think Social Security will pay your rent in 2040, you're fooling yourself.
We should be working to bring other countries UP to our standards, not lowering our living conditions to 3rd-world subsistance levels and thinking, "That's ok. I can eat Ramen and still survive." We do this by advocating for worker's rights on a global scale. Let Chinese workers form unions. Force American and European companies to adhere to uniform labor practices on a global scale and make them liable for their sub-contractors' practices. The marvelous labor policies we have in the U.S. and Europe have made these countries great even if they make things cost a few more dollars.
U.S./Europe is supposed to be an enlightened group of democratic nations working for the betterment of the human race, not a bunch of Feudal overlords exploiting the peasant masses.
Freedom of speech means just that--you are free to say what you want without fear of arrest.It does not guarantee that you will be able to say it, or a medium on which to broadcast it, or an audience to hear it.
You have incorrectly interpreted the Constitution. The Bill or Rights states that Congress can not pass laws that abridge freedom of speech. Abridge means to curtail.
We are not talking about private property like your house. We're talking about businesses. A business is a semi-public establishment with an agreement between the government and the owner. A business open to the public can not deny access to a person based on race just because he owns the business. Just the same, a business (especially a limited monopoly) that provides a basic medium of expression should not be allowed to curtail free speech along that medium.
How would you feel if you were writing/publishing your own book and could only buy paper from one company in your town? Then that company decided that it would only sell paper to people who didn't say anything bad about the company.
The "My Property" argument has been used for decades by businesses to deny basic civil rights to indivuals. And freedom of speech is the single most important civil right we have - It's number one on the Bill of Rights right alongside freedom of religion.
Should a cable or telephone company be able to disconnect my line if I say a "dirty" word over "their" networks? No, because they are carriers of data, not enforcers. They also have limited monopolies which further limit their private status and they most likely took some sort of government subsidy to build their networks (money, land grants, tax abatements, rights of way).
I know cable companies have wiggled out of some of the government regulations but I'm talking about the constitutional ethics of free speech, not legal loopholes. If private enterprise owns all of the vessels of speech (telephone, Internet, newspapers, TV) then how is there really any free speech left in this country?
Here are some snippets from Comcast's AUP. Say farewell to free speech:
(ii) post, store, send, transmit, or disseminate any information or material which a reasonable person could deem to be objectionable, offensive, indecent, pornographic, harassing, threatening, embarrassing, distressing, vulgar, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive, or otherwise inappropriate, regardless of whether this material or its dissemination is unlawful;
>>If we don't like you or your opinions, we can pull the plug.
You must ensure that your activity (including, but not limited to, use made by you or others of any Personal Web Features) does not improperly restrict, inhibit, or degrade any other user's use of the Service, nor represent (in the sole judgment of Comcast) an unusually large burden on the network.
>>BitTorrent? You're one of those hackerz aren't you? *Snip*
Full link is here: http://www.comcast.net/terms/use.jsp
I was not trying to say that the Democrats are the saviors of the human race. Only that in this upcoming election, we have two choices: D or R. And I think most of us here realize that R is a really bad choice to make. If you think things are bad now, just wait until you have Bush in a second term with no re-election to worry about.
We can work on fixing the money/corporate problem after the election when at least some of the major donors are altruistic non-profits. Vote R and welcome to the new corporate plutocracy.
I'll probably get moderated down and ruin my good karma but what the hell:
Like it or not. It's time to choose a side. You may think Democrats are tree-huggers, welfare moms or whatever but there is no way Al Gore would have done the things Bush/Cheney/Ashcroft/et al have done in the name of "security." Pre-emptive war! WTF! Back in my history class they called that an invasion. This is a grab by people who have all the money they'll ever need and now want power to go along with it. How many more example do you need: Diebold, Patriot II, Enemy Combatants, Trireme Partners? Wake up!
Republicans want it all and they don't play fair. Look at re-districting in Texas. They carved up Austin, dammit! That's the most liberal city in the SW and now it's owned by five Republicans! Democrats are certainly not saints but much of their money comes from non-profit and far more well-intentioned organizations like the Sierra Club, ACLU, Planned Parenthood, etc. Remember when we used to debate the ethics of a situation like using sweatshop labor in China. Now the debate is on profit/loss and how by exploiting these people we will encourage their economic growth. That is a bunch of horseshit and we all know it. Unions fought tooth and nail to get 40-hour work weeks, weekends, and minimum wage and that was in a free democracy. What chances do you think the workers in a communist dictatorship have? None.
If you live in a city where Diebold or any other electronic voting machine is used for an election, contact the election committee for your city, explain your concerns about the lack of a paper trail and closed source software, and then give them the link to the Wired article. Then CC your local newspaper and television stations. If half the Slashdotters do this in their own city, I bet you'll start seeing this topic in the mainstream media.
I'm still not sure about Diebold's intentions, but I think the situation with states turning to these electronic voting machines is more ignorance than malice. Most people just don't have a clue as to how computers work. As experts, it's our job to educate the computer-illiterate. Pushing for an auditable paper trail is a common sense solution that most people will understand.
So stop complaining on Slashdot (I get the irony) and contact your election boards and local media outlets. Make a real-world Slashdot effect.
I beg to differ. ID theft is one of the fastest rising crimes in the nation. It's easy, low-risk, and quite lucrative. Right now your odds of getting hit are about the same as being sued by the RIAA but that's sure to rise as the criminals start scripting their thefts from online databases using their PC's. I think there are two ways to stop ID theft:
1) Pass laws stopping the profileration of personal data between Corps without your consent
2) Hold companies accountable if they mishandle your personal data
I think #2 is the big one. It is unbelievable to me that TRW, Equifax, et al can compile massive databases on people without our consent that governs whether or not you can even rent an apartment and then disavow all accountability when that data is inaccurate or misappropriated.
IANAL (yet) but unless the guy selling the equipment on EBay signed a contract agreeing not to resell the equipment or software, First Sale applies here (First Sale = It's ok to sell the copyrighted thing you legally acquired). The one caveat is if the seller lives in a state where UCITA has been enacted, in which case he is bound by the shrinkwrap license agreement inlcuded with the software. So chances are the buyer got a nice router on the cheap that he can legally use as is which is what you would expect when buying something from EBay.
Unfortunately, the poor buyer is still screwed for the maintenance contract because Cisco can refuse to do business with him for just about any reason under the sun. This is one of the big caveats when you buy directly from corporations and not through retail outlets. You may get a cheaper price up front but those tricky Corps will make you sign all sorts of invasive/restrictive contracts to lock you in to their wares.
My advice is to buy all of the used hardware/software you want from EBay, just don't go expecting Uber Corps to help you out afterwards.
The average Indian programmer costs $20/hr in wages and benefits while the average American programmer costs $65/hr.* Therefore you would need to take a 69% paycut in order to be competitive. You would be better off moving to your favorite part of the country and waiting tables.
Suppose you have a wireless LAN behind a firewall and the IP address in question is that of the firewall device and not the actual PC? Can you invoke the DMCA "carrier" provision since anybody is free to logon to your LAN and use your network? What if the firewall belonged to a company? Is the company liable for one employee running Kazaa on its network?
I think there is no way the RIAA can prove who did the actual downloading. The only problem is going to be prohibitive lawyer costs on the defendents' side.
If the RIAA downloads a Brit Spear MP3 using Freenet, they can tell which IP they got the MP3 from. Can't they just sue the person at that IP address? Will the judge care if the user claims he didn't know the mp3 was on his system? The user might try and invoke the DMCA carrier provision but no user is going to have the cash to defend himself anyway.
You'll note that globalism only seems to work one way. Why can't I buy shoes directly from Indonesia for $5? Why can't I get a PC from China for $100? If American companies really want to compete globally then let's open the door both ways and see how they fare when I can buy a DVD player online for a fiver + shipping.
At first glance, protectionism seems "old school" and unrestricted free trade looks like the logical way to keep a free-trade economy growing. This would be true if all countries were on a level playing field and the entire world was the market place. The reality is that the U.S. consumer is the one doing most of the purchasing from U.S. companies and if you ship U.S. jobs overseas and drive wages down then the very person you're trying to sell to won't be able to afford your product.
The end result will be a decreased standard of living for all but the richest Americans because once you start outsourcing whitecollar work to other countries, you lower the wage-base for the majority of Americans. This creates a nice big insurmountable gap between rich and poor, and great dichotomies of wealth are the stuff of revolutions.
While I'm sad to see the only other real competitor to Tivo go under, my personal experience with SonicBlue was abysmal:
I bought the Rio 600 when it first came out and it's a piece of junk. On the hardware side, the device stopped working after about a week and I had to return it. Also, the batteries constantly discharge even if you don't have the device turned on so after a week of sitting in my workout bag, I still have to recharge the darn thing. The little cassette adapter they sell that you plug into your car stereo has also quit working. On the software side, you're forced to use this horrible, non-intuitive download app to load MP3 files. Luckily, I found the Linux variant and I use that now.
After a few months, I realized 32 MB was nowhere near what I needed so I broke down and ordered the PROPRIETARY memory expansion module - no CompactFlash memory slots here. SonicBlue's online web site ordering mechanism failed to inform me that they were out of stock when I placed my order. Two weeks later I decide to call and only then did they tell me that the device was out of stock. So I canceled my order, or so I thought. I found another web site and ordered the expansion and forgot about SonicBlue for awhile, that is, until four months later when I received a memory expansion box from SonicBlue and my credit card was debited $80 or so.
So I call up Sonic again - believe me you don't want to sit on hold with this company - and finally got the charge reversed and returned the item. And thankfully, that has been the last dealing I've had with SonicBlue.
If Sonic's Replay service was anything like their web ordering and MP3 player divisions, I think it's safe to assume that this company needed to go.
On the lessons learned side of things, always research your tech and open standards can mean the difference between paying $40 for an generic add-on and $80 for the proprietary version.
So you're saying that if I steal $50 from a million people and then give 10% of my "earnings" to charity I should not be prosecuted because I've helped a lot of people with that money?
A charitable contribution does not negate the fact that I'm a thief and need to be held accountable to the victims of my crime.
If I were to lose my job, I'd join the Peace Corps in a split second. Everything's paid for and you get a little scratch in the end (about $10k or so). Plus, you get to help build a nation, learn a language, travel to exotic locales, meet cool people, and ride out the crap economy in style.
It sure beats working for some souless company for free.
Sony is tryng to cover up the fact that their game model essentially sucks. First, there are two things being sold: accounts and items. Every account is tied to a credit card so this issue is easily fixed by preventing accounts from being transferred to different names (duh!). With items, the problem can be fixed in the game. Sony could easily make all of the cool items "nodrop" and non-transferrable. Or, even better, would be to set level restrictions on items. Seeing a 3rd level bard running around in full lambent armor was the final straw for me.
And while I'm on a rant, let me say that Everquest is one of the poorest excuses for a online rpg I have ever seen. The entire game can be summed up as camp/kill. The only thing that ever changes is the bitmap of the mob.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with Libertarianism is that it's the exact polar opposite of Social Utopian philosophy. Social Utopians believe the perfect society will exist if everybody works the betterment of the group, not themselves. As we all know, this goes against human nature and the likely result is Communism.
Libertarians believe the exact opposite: A perfect society will be created if everybody works for themselves (no government rules). This also goes against human nature. Most humans will choose short-term gain at the expense of long-term benefit and so a Libertarian society quickly degenerates into fascism or aristocracy as a few people amass large amounts of money and power and use this influence to prevent others from doing the same.
The best solution to date is the one the Constitutional guys came up with. A group of people get together and set some ground rules that everybody agrees to play by. They set up an enforcement body (government) to monitor and change the rules as necessary. They split the government up between different branches with checks and balances to limit the abuse of power. And now you have a pretty fair system of government.
Sorry for the Constituional history lesson but I think people have forgotten why we had to make a Democratic government in the first place. Libertarianism has been around for 10,000 years. It starts with a bunch of people doing whatever they want with no rules. It always degenerates into some sort of dictatorship because, without rules or oversight, one side or the other quickly obtains an uneven amount of resources and exploits that to their advantage. A society must have rules and the rulemakers must be overseen as well.
If you want an example of Libertarianism in action, just go to Mexico. There are no environmental regulations, no enforced corruption laws, no labor laws, nothing to stop you from running your company any way you like. It's an extreme free market system and it's also corrupt as hell.
X
1. Realize exploitation of 3rd-world labor resources is 10 times cheaper than employing domestic workers
2. Rationalize bypassing 100 years of labor rights progress by saying free market benefits everybody
3. Reap short-term profits at expense of nation
4. Profit!!!
Unlike a lot of parents, when I went off to college my folks didn't tell me to look for the best career path or the most profitable industry. They said, "Find what you love to do and do it. If you love your work, the money will come." I've been very happy with my life and career ever since - and the money did come.
I'm always amazed at the number of people in engineering who hate engineering. They did it for the money and they hate their jobs even more because they don't advance in their career. They don't advance because they don't have the passion for the job.
So find your own path, travel the world on a dime, meet interesting people, try new things - new careers even. Well-behaved people rarely change the world.
X
Having done driver development for both Windows and Linux, each OS has their plus's and minus's:
.c file pretty much does it all
Windows good:
With some effort, my USB networking driver is binary compatible with Win98 through WinXP. This is really awesome because I don't have to spend a lot of time re-writing and re-compiling drivers. For the customer, it just works.
Windows bad:
Writing drivers for Windows is like working on your car with the hood welded shut with only a 12-inch diameter hole cut into the top. Driver writing is EXTREMELY complex on Windows. MS tries to hide everything from you with convoluted callbacks and opaque data structures. My first USB networking driver took me two months just to get a basic skeleton running. On Linux, the same driver took me two weeks to completely finish and I'd never written a driver for Linux before.
Linux good:
Driver writing is soooo much easier and intuitive (at least for the 2.2/2.4 kernels). One
Linux bad:
Having to recompile for every kernel just bites. I understand and agree with Linus's reasoning for encouraging open source driver development. Alas, the company I work for doesn't.
So overall, I'd say the Linux driver model is superior for developers but ease of use is what drives mass-adoption of a product. I guess it just depends on your target audience. Our Linux user base, while vocal, is insignficant compared to Windows and even Mac so guess which driver I spend most of my time working on?
X
Everyone here has completely forgotten two things: Healthcare and Retirement. One broken leg and you're bankrupt and if you think Social Security will pay your rent in 2040, you're fooling yourself.
We should be working to bring other countries UP to our standards, not lowering our living conditions to 3rd-world subsistance levels and thinking, "That's ok. I can eat Ramen and still survive." We do this by advocating for worker's rights on a global scale. Let Chinese workers form unions. Force American and European companies to adhere to uniform labor practices on a global scale and make them liable for their sub-contractors' practices. The marvelous labor policies we have in the U.S. and Europe have made these countries great even if they make things cost a few more dollars.
U.S./Europe is supposed to be an enlightened group of democratic nations working for the betterment of the human race, not a bunch of Feudal overlords exploiting the peasant masses.
X
I challenge you to honestly name one thing that you'd seen Patrick Stewart in before TNG.
"If a boy has been chosen a boy shall be king!"
X
Freedom of speech means just that--you are free to say what you want without fear of arrest.It does not guarantee that you will be able to say it, or a medium on which to broadcast it, or an audience to hear it.
You have incorrectly interpreted the Constitution. The Bill or Rights states that Congress can not pass laws that abridge freedom of speech. Abridge means to curtail.
We are not talking about private property like your house. We're talking about businesses. A business is a semi-public establishment with an agreement between the government and the owner. A business open to the public can not deny access to a person based on race just because he owns the business. Just the same, a business (especially a limited monopoly) that provides a basic medium of expression should not be allowed to curtail free speech along that medium.
How would you feel if you were writing/publishing your own book and could only buy paper from one company in your town? Then that company decided that it would only sell paper to people who didn't say anything bad about the company.
The "My Property" argument has been used for decades by businesses to deny basic civil rights to indivuals. And freedom of speech is the single most important civil right we have - It's number one on the Bill of Rights right alongside freedom of religion.
Should a cable or telephone company be able to disconnect my line if I say a "dirty" word over "their" networks? No, because they are carriers of data, not enforcers. They also have limited monopolies which further limit their private status and they most likely took some sort of government subsidy to build their networks (money, land grants, tax abatements, rights of way).
I know cable companies have wiggled out of some of the government regulations but I'm talking about the constitutional ethics of free speech, not legal loopholes. If private enterprise owns all of the vessels of speech (telephone, Internet, newspapers, TV) then how is there really any free speech left in this country?
X
Here are some snippets from Comcast's AUP. Say farewell to free speech:
(ii) post, store, send, transmit, or disseminate any information or material which a reasonable person could deem to be objectionable, offensive, indecent, pornographic, harassing, threatening, embarrassing, distressing, vulgar, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive, or otherwise inappropriate, regardless of whether this material or its dissemination is unlawful;
>>If we don't like you or your opinions, we can pull the plug.
You must ensure that your activity (including, but not limited to, use made by you or others of any Personal Web Features) does not improperly restrict, inhibit, or degrade any other user's use of the Service, nor represent (in the sole judgment of Comcast) an unusually large burden on the network.
>>BitTorrent? You're one of those hackerz aren't you? *Snip*
Full link is here:
http://www.comcast.net/terms/use.jsp
I was not trying to say that the Democrats are the saviors of the human race. Only that in this upcoming election, we have two choices: D or R. And I think most of us here realize that R is a really bad choice to make. If you think things are bad now, just wait until you have Bush in a second term with no re-election to worry about.
We can work on fixing the money/corporate problem after the election when at least some of the major donors are altruistic non-profits. Vote R and welcome to the new corporate plutocracy.
I'll probably get moderated down and ruin my good karma but what the hell:
Like it or not. It's time to choose a side. You may think Democrats are tree-huggers, welfare moms or whatever but there is no way Al Gore would have done the things Bush/Cheney/Ashcroft/et al have done in the name of "security." Pre-emptive war! WTF! Back in my history class they called that an invasion. This is a grab by people who have all the money they'll ever need and now want power to go along with it. How many more example do you need: Diebold, Patriot II, Enemy Combatants, Trireme Partners? Wake up!
Republicans want it all and they don't play fair. Look at re-districting in Texas. They carved up Austin, dammit! That's the most liberal city in the SW and now it's owned by five Republicans! Democrats are certainly not saints but much of their money comes from non-profit and far more well-intentioned organizations like the Sierra Club, ACLU, Planned Parenthood, etc. Remember when we used to debate the ethics of a situation like using sweatshop labor in China. Now the debate is on profit/loss and how by exploiting these people we will encourage their economic growth. That is a bunch of horseshit and we all know it. Unions fought tooth and nail to get 40-hour work weeks, weekends, and minimum wage and that was in a free democracy. What chances do you think the workers in a communist dictatorship have? None.
End of rant,
X
I thought Klingons already had the rights to Uranus.
If you live in a city where Diebold or any other electronic voting machine is used for an election, contact the election committee for your city, explain your concerns about the lack of a paper trail and closed source software, and then give them the link to the Wired article. Then CC your local newspaper and television stations. If half the Slashdotters do this in their own city, I bet you'll start seeing this topic in the mainstream media.
I'm still not sure about Diebold's intentions, but I think the situation with states turning to these electronic voting machines is more ignorance than malice. Most people just don't have a clue as to how computers work. As experts, it's our job to educate the computer-illiterate. Pushing for an auditable paper trail is a common sense solution that most people will understand.
So stop complaining on Slashdot (I get the irony) and contact your election boards and local media outlets. Make a real-world Slashdot effect.
X
I beg to differ. ID theft is one of the fastest rising crimes in the nation. It's easy, low-risk, and quite lucrative. Right now your odds of getting hit are about the same as being sued by the RIAA but that's sure to rise as the criminals start scripting their thefts from online databases using their PC's. I think there are two ways to stop ID theft:
1) Pass laws stopping the profileration of personal data between Corps without your consent
2) Hold companies accountable if they mishandle your personal data
I think #2 is the big one. It is unbelievable to me that TRW, Equifax, et al can compile massive databases on people without our consent that governs whether or not you can even rent an apartment and then disavow all accountability when that data is inaccurate or misappropriated.
X
IANAL (yet) but unless the guy selling the equipment on EBay signed a contract agreeing not to resell the equipment or software, First Sale applies here (First Sale = It's ok to sell the copyrighted thing you legally acquired). The one caveat is if the seller lives in a state where UCITA has been enacted, in which case he is bound by the shrinkwrap license agreement inlcuded with the software. So chances are the buyer got a nice router on the cheap that he can legally use as is which is what you would expect when buying something from EBay.
Unfortunately, the poor buyer is still screwed for the maintenance contract because Cisco can refuse to do business with him for just about any reason under the sun. This is one of the big caveats when you buy directly from corporations and not through retail outlets. You may get a cheaper price up front but those tricky Corps will make you sign all sorts of invasive/restrictive contracts to lock you in to their wares.
My advice is to buy all of the used hardware/software you want from EBay, just don't go expecting Uber Corps to help you out afterwards.
X
The average Indian programmer costs $20/hr in wages and benefits while the average American programmer costs $65/hr.* Therefore you would need to take a 69% paycut in order to be competitive. You would be better off moving to your favorite part of the country and waiting tables.
*Source: Arizona Republic, July 14 2003
Suppose you have a wireless LAN behind a firewall and the IP address in question is that of the firewall device and not the actual PC? Can you invoke the DMCA "carrier" provision since anybody is free to logon to your LAN and use your network? What if the firewall belonged to a company? Is the company liable for one employee running Kazaa on its network?
I think there is no way the RIAA can prove who did the actual downloading. The only problem is going to be prohibitive lawyer costs on the defendents' side.
1. To divide and parcel out in shares; apportion.
2. To participate in, use, enjoy, or experience jointly or in turns.
3. To relate (a secret or experience, for example) to another or others.
4. To accord a share in (something) to another or others: shared her chocolate bar with a friend.
Somebody needs to buy a dictionary.
More specific to your question is this:
If the RIAA downloads a Brit Spear MP3 using Freenet, they can tell which IP they got the MP3 from. Can't they just sue the person at that IP address? Will the judge care if the user claims he didn't know the mp3 was on his system? The user might try and invoke the DMCA carrier provision but no user is going to have the cash to defend himself anyway.
X
You'll note that globalism only seems to work one way. Why can't I buy shoes directly from Indonesia for $5? Why can't I get a PC from China for $100? If American companies really want to compete globally then let's open the door both ways and see how they fare when I can buy a DVD player online for a fiver + shipping.
At first glance, protectionism seems "old school" and unrestricted free trade looks like the logical way to keep a free-trade economy growing. This would be true if all countries were on a level playing field and the entire world was the market place. The reality is that the U.S. consumer is the one doing most of the purchasing from U.S. companies and if you ship U.S. jobs overseas and drive wages down then the very person you're trying to sell to won't be able to afford your product.
The end result will be a decreased standard of living for all but the richest Americans because once you start outsourcing whitecollar work to other countries, you lower the wage-base for the majority of Americans. This creates a nice big insurmountable gap between rich and poor, and great dichotomies of wealth are the stuff of revolutions.
While I'm sad to see the only other real competitor to Tivo go under, my personal experience with SonicBlue was abysmal:
I bought the Rio 600 when it first came out and it's a piece of junk. On the hardware side, the device stopped working after about a week and I had to return it. Also, the batteries constantly discharge even if you don't have the device turned on so after a week of sitting in my workout bag, I still have to recharge the darn thing. The little cassette adapter they sell that you plug into your car stereo has also quit working. On the software side, you're forced to use this horrible, non-intuitive download app to load MP3 files. Luckily, I found the Linux variant and I use that now.
After a few months, I realized 32 MB was nowhere near what I needed so I broke down and ordered the PROPRIETARY memory expansion module - no CompactFlash memory slots here. SonicBlue's online web site ordering mechanism failed to inform me that they were out of stock when I placed my order. Two weeks later I decide to call and only then did they tell me that the device was out of stock. So I canceled my order, or so I thought. I found another web site and ordered the expansion and forgot about SonicBlue for awhile, that is, until four months later when I received a memory expansion box from SonicBlue and my credit card was debited $80 or so.
So I call up Sonic again - believe me you don't want to sit on hold with this company - and finally got the charge reversed and returned the item. And thankfully, that has been the last dealing I've had with SonicBlue.
If Sonic's Replay service was anything like their web ordering and MP3 player divisions, I think it's safe to assume that this company needed to go.
On the lessons learned side of things, always research your tech and open standards can mean the difference between paying $40 for an generic add-on and $80 for the proprietary version.
X
So you're saying that if I steal $50 from a million people and then give 10% of my "earnings" to charity I should not be prosecuted because I've helped a lot of people with that money?
A charitable contribution does not negate the fact that I'm a thief and need to be held accountable to the victims of my crime.
X
If I were to lose my job, I'd join the Peace Corps in a split second. Everything's paid for and you get a little scratch in the end (about $10k or so). Plus, you get to help build a nation, learn a language, travel to exotic locales, meet cool people, and ride out the crap economy in style.
It sure beats working for some souless company for free.
X
Now where did the U.S. put that super conducting super collider - Doh!
Blame Canada!
Sony is tryng to cover up the fact that their game model essentially sucks. First, there are two things being sold: accounts and items. Every account is tied to a credit card so this issue is easily fixed by preventing accounts from being transferred to different names (duh!). With items, the problem can be fixed in the game. Sony could easily make all of the cool items "nodrop" and non-transferrable. Or, even better, would be to set level restrictions on items. Seeing a 3rd level bard running around in full lambent armor was the final straw for me.
And while I'm on a rant, let me say that Everquest is one of the poorest excuses for a online rpg I have ever seen. The entire game can be summed up as camp/kill. The only thing that ever changes is the bitmap of the mob.