I think Bush has managed to invent a whole new direction to move in. The man has pissed away an obscene surplus projection, put rocket boosters on the deficit, instituted a recovery plan that would make a first year economist trainee weep, started two wars, failed to justify one of them, shoved a law that puts Orwell's work to shame through a pants-pissing Congress, attempted to revitalize the career of the man who defined "creepy Big Brother" with a program that can only be described as "conceived from the bowels of hell", can't do anything without Ashcroft, Cheney, or Rice holding his dick to guide him...
All this and he managed to stonewall an investigation into one of the biggest intelligence disasters in history, roll back a dozen years of progress on diplomacy, environmental issues, and civil rights, AND he took more vacation time his first year in office than any healthy president in history.
Yes... I think Bush has redefined the political spectrum.... in a very bad way. I have never cared about politics before, but I am now a registered voter and I've looked deeper into the issues in the last few months than I had in all my previous years on this planet combined. Way to go Georgey....
That's not evidence, that's your interpretation. And it's based on assumption and an inadequate consideration of what the colonies actually were (why on Earth would a colonized portion of land have its own standing army anyway? The country wasn't as old as *I* am when that amendment was written, of COURSE it didn't have a standing army).
Are you beginning to see the problem with stating a position on the issue as unequivocal fact yet?
If you'd like some context, remember this: the colonists weren't fighting a foreign invader, they had just wrapped up fighting their OWN GOVERNMENT. Why should they be assumed to be considering protection from an invading force when they wrote the amendment?
Why is carrying a gun unjustifiable? That's just another wild, emotional statement. You're not basing this on fact. I can respect that you have a position, but I'm not going to think it has any merit if you can't produce hard evidence for it.
You have your position. Now back it up, please. Just because you say it, doesn't make it so, and I'd be interested in hearing what you know that all those people who have wrestled with it for so many years don't.
In fact, I'd be interested in knowing why you believe the first amendment (I'm assuming this as a matter of course, mind you... I have no reason to think you're a total idiot and feel otherwise on the issue) would apply to individual people, but the second amendment only applies to government approved collectives?
I would argue that since the ACLU is an integral part of the story, discussion on the ACLU is perfectly valid. Also, just because a post is curt or uses sarcasm to make the point, that does NOT automatically make it a troll.
The ACLU has refused to take a position on the 2nd amendment. They need to take a position on this one if they're going to take a position on the other nine in the bill of rights. They can't legitimately pick and choose their level of participation and claim to be a "Civil Liberties" union. I think that point is perfectly valid, and I think that the poster is perfectly within the bounds of good etiquette and taste for bringing it up for discussion, if in a sarcastic and wry manner.
I maintain that it's not offtopic because it discusses, if on a tangent, an integral player in the story. If Slashdotters want to discuss such things, why should the mods say they can't? It was only at two. The neurotic people who set the threshhold to +4 will never see it, and anyone at a measly 2 can simply ignore it. I also maintain it's not a troll just because it uses sarcasm to make a point.
Those are just my views on moderation, however. YMMV.
Parent is not a troll, mods just didn't get it or disagreed... either don't mod things you don't understand, or leave them alone. You're here to mod for the benefit of discussion, not your own personal agenda.
I keep hoping it's temporary. Congress ran a bill through on fear and faux patriotism, and now we, the people, are paying for it. You have to expect that every now and then a huge, lumbering, monolothic entity like the U.S. government is going to fuck things up. That's why people challenge them.
It's not time to panic yet. When we can't challenege them anymore (and the gag was a BIG step in that direction) or court cases like this start being lost, then we panic.
Yes, yes. You sound brilliant pointing out the most well-known of the fallacies. Congratulations, you're intellect is truly staggering and I am awe-inspired by your ability to look up information on Google.
Okay, whatever, I've lost your make-believe argument. You can assign whatever bizarre belief you want to me and it's infallible truth. Please, feel free to rename me while you're putting words in my mouth and assigning me positions I didn't take on my own.
In addition, copyright violaters are truly patriots saving us all from the Evil Empire. They are wresting our daily lives from its horrible grasp, and there is no other way to stop them. We should find all of these people and award them Congressional Medals of Honor for their sacrfices. They will truly be remembered for their heroic stands against these horrible people who force us to overpay for our music.
Please, feel free to lavish your pals with any additional praise I may have missed in my concession. I'm sure if you can assign me beliefs and make up positions for me, you can think of all the other things I may have forgotten.
Oh good.. yet another moron for me to play with. You ought to go fight with this dumbass. Maybe you could flame each other to death and spare us all of your presence. He thinks that he's doing some great, wonderful thing for consumers everywhere by ripping off music. You think that everyone that gets subpeonaed is guilty. Go butt heads. You're equally stupid, hopefully you'll take each other out.
PIRACY. That AC that posted wants to talk word games? Let's talk mind games, shall we? Let's talk bullshit propaganda wars, shall we? Let's talk about swashbuckling rapists and 12 year old music listeners, and how they're the same thing, shall we? Or, in short: fuck off, dumbass. You wouldn't know a credible post if it bit your dick off and spit it in your face (here's a hint though: since you're post wasn't one, this one isn't one either).
And, let's talk about stuipd people who don't know what an IP address is, or how they get assigned. Morons like yourself. Let's talk about DHCP, IP spoofing, proxies, wifi hot spots, and the accuracy of logging mechanisms. Let's talk about race conditions while we're at it. Let's not even bother to consider that there is no way in Hell you can actually say that a specific person was sitting at a specific computer with a specific IP address at a specific time unless you're psychic or have witnesses.
Let's also talk about the cost of proving your innocence in a civil suit. First, however, let's talk about dumbasses who don't realize that these are CIVIL suits and not CRIMINAL suits and therefore you DO have to defend yourself from the allegations, even if the person making them has only the most meager of evidence (unlike a criminal suit where you have to PROVE that the accusations are true "beyond a reasonable doubt"). Let's talk about court dockets and filings. Let's talk about the cost of hiring a lawyer and how showing up in court without one is legal suicide no matter how innocent you are. Let's talk about risk/reward ratios and how the risk of losing a suit or getting tied up in a time and money trap with the court is something that RIAA probably takes into consideration when it picks a target, sends a nasty letter, and then offers "relief" in the form of a settlement. Let's talk about how you'd have to be crazy, stupid, or rich to fight them even if you ARE innocent.
And, incidentally, the most famous of the folks who found themselves on the wrong end of the lawsuit was that nice older lady that had a fucking Mac. Even though it was IMPOSSIBLE for her to be the culprit, the RIAA only grudgingly dropped the suit and basically said "we're gonna keep an eye on you anyway." This story is full of references and links to it. Go find one yourself.
Finally, let's talk about dipshits like yourself who think that getting a subpeona based on IP address is proof of guilt. If you weren't such a dipshit, and you actually knew something about IP addresses or the legal process, you'd realize you were a dipshit, and you'd stop being such a dipshit. However, I don't expect this to happen, which is why I'm treating you like a dipshit rather than responding at least somewhat respectably. Before you get all sanctimonious on me and try to discredit me for my "ad hominem" (as if every other fucking slashdotter who sees this post wouldn't realize that themself), bear in mind that you would simply be reiterating what I already said about my own post.
Being that you're a dipshit, I felt the need to point that out to you to save you some time and typing.
Are you a troll, or are you really this stupid? Inquiring minds want to know, and I'm fed up with spoonfeeding you information that you don't want to hear:
Thus, your viewpoint says that Rosa should have behaved differently.
This is patently false. You only believe it to be true because you are obviously an imbecile. Your own quotation of my statement shows that your statement is patently false. MY viewpoint SPECIFICALLY STATES:
This is acceptable behavior only when the illegitimate action in question is the only recourse you have.
YOU could simply stop listening to RIAA-sponsored music and you would suffer no adverse affects except, possibly, you'd have a slightly smaller pool of media to choose from for recreational purposes. THAT is how intelligent buyers send messages. Rosa Parks' situation is SO far removed from yours, that not only is it totally irrelvant to your case (ESPECIALLY since you used as an example that "disproves" a school of thought I don't even lend credence to and specifically stated that I don't), you look like a complete idiot even bringing it up.
You... are... an... idiot. I NEVER said that you should never break the law. I said YOU are not justified in doing it. How the FUCK those two things are the same is beyond me, unless everything that's ever done is done by you.
You people are so fucking braindead that you can't even hold a discussion in your mind without morphing it into some bizarre perception of what you WANT me to be saying. Get it through that thick haze: YOU are not justified in YOUR action. You have NOTHING to do with Rosa Parks. You have NOTHING to do with civil rights. YOU are ripping off music. YOUR action is not justified. My statement that YOUR action is unjustified in NO WAY means that ALL ILLEGAL ACTIONS BY OTHER PEOPLE are also unjustified. How the fuck you made the connection between those two things is simply too much for me to even CONSIDER contemplating.
Fucking... idiots... god, Slashdotters can be so goddamn stupid... I feel that much dumber for having participated in this pathetic display. You're at the point now where you're not even in REALITY anymore. You're applying bizarre systems of belief to me that I've never once in this or any other discussion espoused, just because I said something specifically about what copyright infringers are doing. I'm half inclined to start supporting the RIAA just because you've shined so poorly in this situation. At LEAST have the decency to not start making shit up and acting like it's true.
Un... fucking... believable...
And, incidentally, if you don't like me insulting you, feel free to use your foes list. You have it for a reason.
You're not listening now, you weren't listening before, and I have no reason to believe you will listen in the future. Due to the fact that you have conveniently rejected my acknowledgements of the legitimacy of civil disobedience as if I had never made them, and you have ignored the fact that I have merely dismissed YOUR use of it under THE CURRENT circumstances, I can only conclude that you're either a child who's pissed off that it's becoming harder to rip off music, or just a moron who actually believes you're in the right. You are not arguing with me, you're just trying to legitamize your own criminal behavior. You are nothing like Rosa Parks, you are just a common, lightweight criminal. Get over it.
In the future, I suggest you also make an attempt at discussion that doesn't involve pretending the other party didn't say something. I suppose, however, that I should not be surprised that a person who thinks copyright violation is better than participating in a consumer market intelligently would stick their fingers in their ears and shout "LA LA LA" in order to avoid hearing things he or she does not want to hear.
In addition, this statement:
It's an easy example that proves why your philosophy of always working within the system arises from an oversimplistic view of the world.
is so logically baseless that I can't even imagine what was going through your mind when you wrote it. Rosa Parks' actions prove nothing about my philosophy, and this problem is compounded by the fact that the philosophy you're referencing isn't even one that I hold.
Yes, yes... go ahead. Respond. Continue, please, attempting to call bullshit on me. Every two months or so someone comes along who thinks they can weasle their way around what I'm saying and make me look like a moron by twisting the issue in knots. Nobody has succeeded in it yet. Please, do try, however.
A boycott, dipshit. A boycott happened, not "rosa parks DID get up". Rather than misquoting me, perhaps you could have taken the time to read the text on the page of the goddamn link you posted:
Ah, yes. Strong words from a poster too afraid to attach a name to their thoughts. There's nothing quite like hiding your beliefs and ideas behind the cloak of anonymity and then expecting to have any credibility or force in what you say about them, hmm?
I suppose the ideas of rational discussion and intelligent discourse escape you, however, given the emphasis you put on an integer field in a database.
Anyone too stupid to Google or too pompous to just ask for clarification is nothing more than an ignorant prick too insecure in their own knowledge to admit that there are things they don't know.
Run off and play now, child. I'm sure you need to go off and concern yourself with someone else's "Karma" to provide some meaning in your vapid, barren life.
Why are people modding these idiots up? It would take all of 10 seconds to Google the information, who the fuck cares WHAT name they posted in reference to 1984? If you're too dumb to use Google, you're not smart enough to read 1984 and understand it anyway.
They're not insightful, they're just trolling. Or ignorant.
But there is nothing wrong going on here. And yes, piracy is wrong.
It's all I can do to keep from calling you nasty names.... so I'll just assume you haven't considered that maybe you WOULDN'T fight if you really knew what was happening, and I'll make my point.
If the RIAA sues you, and you were making the files available (UPLOADING people.. they're suing people who are making the files available, not necessarily the ones who download them), then settling would be the smart option, yes.
However, if the RIAA comes at ME with a lawsuit, I can't AFFORD to fight them. They can tie me up in court until my pockets are drained, and I didn't do a single goddamn thing wrong. I'm not sharing a fucking thing except code that I wrote myself. Funny thing about big, faceless organizations that can browbeat you with lawyers, huh? Oh, wait. I forgot... you can just walk right into a court and that's that, right? No, wrong. Some people have gotten off because their is no way in Hell they could've been sharing anything. I'm not one of those people. One of the systems on my network is a Windows box, and it's connected. It's also being fed an IP address by a local DHCP server which is picking up an IP address from the ISP's DHCP server. I'd have to show that I'm NOT that IP address, and that would cost me time and money. I can't afford it. If the RIAA decided to try and tie the thing up rather than lose, they could easily keep the case suspended with bullshit filings and amendments for the short period of time it would take me to go into the poorhouse. And then I'd STILL have to settle.
So, why don't you wake up and join the rest of us in the real world? If the RIAA starts filing it's cases on some actual evidence, fine. An IP address is WAY too variable to count as evidence. No, I'm NOT a lawyer. I have been on the nasty end of a civil suit though, and even that simple little proceeding was NOWHERE near as simple as you're painting this.
And yes, piracy IS wrong. Now, if you find any swashbuckling swordsman with parrots on their shoulders stealing crates of CDs, or pressers selling illegitimate copies of discs, let me know. Otherwise, I have no idea why you're bringing up piracy during a discussion of copyright infringement. If you're going to shoot your mouth off about it, you could at least get the situation and the terminology correct.
And this doesn't even bring in the moral objections to using the court system to send miscellaneous J. Does threatening letters talking about potentially enormous fines and lord knows what else in preperation of extending a "settlement".
You're talking about the concept of a personal proof. You can convince yourself that looking straight at the sun is healthy just because you say so and you've satisfied the burden of personal proof without satisfying any other proofs. I'm not talking about that. Personal proofs only matter to the person who has them, not to anyone else. Religions don't get confined to a single person, so the concept of personal proof is irrelevant when discussing religion not targetted at oneself.
So you're saying Rosa Parks should have just quit riding the bus?
Uh.. that's exactly what happened. And it worked. Look up the Montgomery bus boycott. 1956, I believe.
We're done arguing and I wash my hands of this entire argument. You are part of the problem, and if you're too blind, greedy, dumb, or any combination of the above to see that, then the best I can do is bemoan the unfortunately ignorant path you've taken in this matter. I weep for a culture that is so full of people that don't understand the basic premise of a capitalist system and how it can be controlled by the consumers. Your actions are no better than those of the people who don't know they're getting ripped off, and it's all a very sad commentary on how poorly the people in this nation in particular make buying decisions.
Did you know people are stupid enough to buy bottled water when they have clean tap water? I'll bet you could double your profits with those dumb people by selling the bottle with a lock on it, then licensing out the schematic for the key and suing anyone you just broke the lock off.
Some people are smart enough to realize they can just break the lock since they already bought the bottle. Other people are infinitely denser and suggest that the problem is that nobody is buying licenses to the lock and selling a key.
But, don't worry... maybe that just means you travel at the speed of light.. or something... or maybe you just don't see the inherent problem in criminalizing the activity of using something the consumer already paid for.
I'm not going to continue arguing with you about this, because the simple fact is that you're trying justify an illegitimate action by saying that you're using it to stop another illegitimate action. This is acceptable behavior only when the illegitimate action in question is the only recourse you have. However, you can simply stop participating in the music trade the RIAA oversees altogether. That fact that you *want* that music is not justification for ignoring this legitimate process. You cannot just do illegal things when you have legal means to achieve the same ends just because you think you should be able to have your cake and eat it too.
Your attitude is like that of a small, spoiled child on playground. You don't want to follow the rules, but you still want to play the game. Maybe the rules ARE unfair, maybe the people on the other team ARE cheating, but you have the option of not playing with them. You cannot just have things your way just because you don't like the way they are. Spend some time trying to positively change the situation. Stop sitting there arguing with me that your illegal activity is in any way justified. It's not, and you're only making the situation worse for everyone else.
Close.... nutters in the music thing say "Copyright is... uh.. FLEXIBLE because.. I.. uh.. um... I don't want to pay the price that they ask, but I don't want to stop listening to their music... er.. no.. wait.. uh.. THE RIAA IS CHARGING TOO MUCH MONEY SO I'M HELPING TO DESTROY AN EVIL EMPIRE BY IGNORING COPYRIGHT LAW AND RIPPING OFF COPIES OF THEIR SONGS!!!!"
Especially since science is not at all about finding an absolute truth and is forever seeking to discredit its own work as a means to either strengthen the position, or destroy it by replacing it with a new, stronger idea. After all, at one time, Ether was a good explanation for the gap between heavenly bodies. Now, we know better. But, we have things like dark matter that are just kind of stop gap solutions to problems we haven't solved yet. It's a pretty good bet that will be debunked eventually and replaced with a better explanation for extra gravity.
Science doesn't require anymore faith than you have in humanity anyway. The fact is, any goober with a degree in some "scientific" field can come out with a wild theory. That's why other scientists set out to discredit it. If they can't discredit it, you have a pretty good reason to believe it... for now.
The difference between real science and psuedo-science or religion, of course, is that those two things require you to simply have faith in the "truth" that an individual is speaking. Whereas science says, "here, I believe this and I can back it up! Come and get me!", religion says "Uh... here... I believe this, but you just have to believe me, because there's no way to prove what I'm saying".
Big difference in the type of faith science requires and the type of faith religion requires.
...or you need a word processor that reads and writes Office document format PERFECTLY.
Yes, and my point is that you can't blame OOo for being "inadequate" just because you had this need and chose it. If you need perfect Microsoft Office compatibility, you need Microsoft Office. There's nothing except niche functions that MS Office can do that OOo can't, but if you need that magical "perfect compatibility", then you know right up front you want Office. This guy's office chose OOo for some bizarre reason, and now he's making outrageous statements about it ("it doesn't do things right", "it's a load of frustration", "it's inferior in all areas except price") based on the fact that they chose the wrong tool. That's like complaining that a hammer is faulty because it can't drive a screw properly. If you knew you needed a screwdriver, why'd you pick a hammer, and why are you blaming the mess you made on that hammer? Maybe the hammer DOES have defects, but you can't support them based on the fact that you chose the wrong tool to begin with. This is no different - they need Office compatibility, they needed Office. They chose OOo. Now, this guy is saying it's faulty based on his experience with it AFTER they made a stupid decision.
If you're going to pick on a software application's shortcomings, fine. Just don't blame the software for your failure to pick the right tool for the job.
You switched back to Office because that's what you wanted in the first place?
You just "evaluated" Open Office based on the fact that you wanted to use Microsoft Office all along.... that's just wierd. It's not a load of frustration, you guys just weren't smart enough to evaluate your needs before you decided on your tool, that's all. You can't blame OOo for the fact that it's not Office. That's like blaming a Lincoln Continental for not being a Corvette. You can't just compare two things that happen to be in the same general category but do different things and then blame one of them for not being the other just because you didn't pick the one you really wanted to begin with.
It's not just a political issue, but I guess if you have political issues with operating systems, that's a conveniently ignorant view to take of the situation. This driver is surreptitiously loading itself as non-GPL code while telling us that it is GPL. This effects the way Linux hackers treat bug reports that are tainted with this module. This is accomplished by loading that "GPL" flag and enabling helpers that prevent bugs reports from being flagged as tainted.
Therefore, not only does it complicate bug reports, it complicates bug reports by loading pieces of code that it's not allowed to. I'd say that makes it malware, rather than a political issue.
Slashdot Mirror
I think Bush has managed to invent a whole new direction to move in. The man has pissed away an obscene surplus projection, put rocket boosters on the deficit, instituted a recovery plan that would make a first year economist trainee weep, started two wars, failed to justify one of them, shoved a law that puts Orwell's work to shame through a pants-pissing Congress, attempted to revitalize the career of the man who defined "creepy Big Brother" with a program that can only be described as "conceived from the bowels of hell", can't do anything without Ashcroft, Cheney, or Rice holding his dick to guide him...
All this and he managed to stonewall an investigation into one of the biggest intelligence disasters in history, roll back a dozen years of progress on diplomacy, environmental issues, and civil rights, AND he took more vacation time his first year in office than any healthy president in history.
Yes... I think Bush has redefined the political spectrum.... in a very bad way. I have never cared about politics before, but I am now a registered voter and I've looked deeper into the issues in the last few months than I had in all my previous years on this planet combined. Way to go Georgey....
That's not evidence, that's your interpretation. And it's based on assumption and an inadequate consideration of what the colonies actually were (why on Earth would a colonized portion of land have its own standing army anyway? The country wasn't as old as *I* am when that amendment was written, of COURSE it didn't have a standing army).
Are you beginning to see the problem with stating a position on the issue as unequivocal fact yet?
If you'd like some context, remember this: the colonists weren't fighting a foreign invader, they had just wrapped up fighting their OWN GOVERNMENT. Why should they be assumed to be considering protection from an invading force when they wrote the amendment?
Why is carrying a gun unjustifiable? That's just another wild, emotional statement. You're not basing this on fact. I can respect that you have a position, but I'm not going to think it has any merit if you can't produce hard evidence for it.
Elaborate. Evidence. Please. Now.
Evidence. Now. Please.
You have your position. Now back it up, please. Just because you say it, doesn't make it so, and I'd be interested in hearing what you know that all those people who have wrestled with it for so many years don't.
In fact, I'd be interested in knowing why you believe the first amendment (I'm assuming this as a matter of course, mind you... I have no reason to think you're a total idiot and feel otherwise on the issue) would apply to individual people, but the second amendment only applies to government approved collectives?
Cite more examples, please.
I would argue that since the ACLU is an integral part of the story, discussion on the ACLU is perfectly valid. Also, just because a post is curt or uses sarcasm to make the point, that does NOT automatically make it a troll.
The ACLU has refused to take a position on the 2nd amendment. They need to take a position on this one if they're going to take a position on the other nine in the bill of rights. They can't legitimately pick and choose their level of participation and claim to be a "Civil Liberties" union. I think that point is perfectly valid, and I think that the poster is perfectly within the bounds of good etiquette and taste for bringing it up for discussion, if in a sarcastic and wry manner.
I maintain that it's not offtopic because it discusses, if on a tangent, an integral player in the story. If Slashdotters want to discuss such things, why should the mods say they can't? It was only at two. The neurotic people who set the threshhold to +4 will never see it, and anyone at a measly 2 can simply ignore it. I also maintain it's not a troll just because it uses sarcasm to make a point.
Those are just my views on moderation, however. YMMV.
Parent is not a troll, mods just didn't get it or disagreed... either don't mod things you don't understand, or leave them alone. You're here to mod for the benefit of discussion, not your own personal agenda.
I keep hoping it's temporary. Congress ran a bill through on fear and faux patriotism, and now we, the people, are paying for it. You have to expect that every now and then a huge, lumbering, monolothic entity like the U.S. government is going to fuck things up. That's why people challenge them.
It's not time to panic yet. When we can't challenege them anymore (and the gag was a BIG step in that direction) or court cases like this start being lost, then we panic.
If it bothers you that they both have print statements, you could always use printf() and pretend you're mimicing C....
Yes, yes. You sound brilliant pointing out the most well-known of the fallacies. Congratulations, you're intellect is truly staggering and I am awe-inspired by your ability to look up information on Google.
Okay, whatever, I've lost your make-believe argument. You can assign whatever bizarre belief you want to me and it's infallible truth. Please, feel free to rename me while you're putting words in my mouth and assigning me positions I didn't take on my own.
In addition, copyright violaters are truly patriots saving us all from the Evil Empire. They are wresting our daily lives from its horrible grasp, and there is no other way to stop them. We should find all of these people and award them Congressional Medals of Honor for their sacrfices. They will truly be remembered for their heroic stands against these horrible people who force us to overpay for our music.
Please, feel free to lavish your pals with any additional praise I may have missed in my concession. I'm sure if you can assign me beliefs and make up positions for me, you can think of all the other things I may have forgotten.
Oh good.. yet another moron for me to play with. You ought to go fight with this dumbass. Maybe you could flame each other to death and spare us all of your presence. He thinks that he's doing some great, wonderful thing for consumers everywhere by ripping off music. You think that everyone that gets subpeonaed is guilty. Go butt heads. You're equally stupid, hopefully you'll take each other out.
PIRACY. That AC that posted wants to talk word games? Let's talk mind games, shall we? Let's talk bullshit propaganda wars, shall we? Let's talk about swashbuckling rapists and 12 year old music listeners, and how they're the same thing, shall we? Or, in short: fuck off, dumbass. You wouldn't know a credible post if it bit your dick off and spit it in your face (here's a hint though: since you're post wasn't one, this one isn't one either).
And, let's talk about stuipd people who don't know what an IP address is, or how they get assigned. Morons like yourself. Let's talk about DHCP, IP spoofing, proxies, wifi hot spots, and the accuracy of logging mechanisms. Let's talk about race conditions while we're at it. Let's not even bother to consider that there is no way in Hell you can actually say that a specific person was sitting at a specific computer with a specific IP address at a specific time unless you're psychic or have witnesses.
Let's also talk about the cost of proving your innocence in a civil suit. First, however, let's talk about dumbasses who don't realize that these are CIVIL suits and not CRIMINAL suits and therefore you DO have to defend yourself from the allegations, even if the person making them has only the most meager of evidence (unlike a criminal suit where you have to PROVE that the accusations are true "beyond a reasonable doubt"). Let's talk about court dockets and filings. Let's talk about the cost of hiring a lawyer and how showing up in court without one is legal suicide no matter how innocent you are. Let's talk about risk/reward ratios and how the risk of losing a suit or getting tied up in a time and money trap with the court is something that RIAA probably takes into consideration when it picks a target, sends a nasty letter, and then offers "relief" in the form of a settlement. Let's talk about how you'd have to be crazy, stupid, or rich to fight them even if you ARE innocent.
And, incidentally, the most famous of the folks who found themselves on the wrong end of the lawsuit was that nice older lady that had a fucking Mac. Even though it was IMPOSSIBLE for her to be the culprit, the RIAA only grudgingly dropped the suit and basically said "we're gonna keep an eye on you anyway." This story is full of references and links to it. Go find one yourself.
Finally, let's talk about dipshits like yourself who think that getting a subpeona based on IP address is proof of guilt. If you weren't such a dipshit, and you actually knew something about IP addresses or the legal process, you'd realize you were a dipshit, and you'd stop being such a dipshit. However, I don't expect this to happen, which is why I'm treating you like a dipshit rather than responding at least somewhat respectably. Before you get all sanctimonious on me and try to discredit me for my "ad hominem" (as if every other fucking slashdotter who sees this post wouldn't realize that themself), bear in mind that you would simply be reiterating what I already said about my own post.
Being that you're a dipshit, I felt the need to point that out to you to save you some time and typing.
Are you a troll, or are you really this stupid? Inquiring minds want to know, and I'm fed up with spoonfeeding you information that you don't want to hear:
Thus, your viewpoint says that Rosa should have behaved differently.
This is patently false. You only believe it to be true because you are obviously an imbecile. Your own quotation of my statement shows that your statement is patently false. MY viewpoint SPECIFICALLY STATES:
This is acceptable behavior only when the illegitimate action in question is the only recourse you have.
YOU could simply stop listening to RIAA-sponsored music and you would suffer no adverse affects except, possibly, you'd have a slightly smaller pool of media to choose from for recreational purposes. THAT is how intelligent buyers send messages. Rosa Parks' situation is SO far removed from yours, that not only is it totally irrelvant to your case (ESPECIALLY since you used as an example that "disproves" a school of thought I don't even lend credence to and specifically stated that I don't), you look like a complete idiot even bringing it up.
You ... are ... an ... idiot. I NEVER said that you should never break the law. I said YOU are not justified in doing it. How the FUCK those two things are the same is beyond me, unless everything that's ever done is done by you.
You people are so fucking braindead that you can't even hold a discussion in your mind without morphing it into some bizarre perception of what you WANT me to be saying. Get it through that thick haze: YOU are not justified in YOUR action. You have NOTHING to do with Rosa Parks. You have NOTHING to do with civil rights. YOU are ripping off music. YOUR action is not justified. My statement that YOUR action is unjustified in NO WAY means that ALL ILLEGAL ACTIONS BY OTHER PEOPLE are also unjustified. How the fuck you made the connection between those two things is simply too much for me to even CONSIDER contemplating.
Fucking... idiots... god, Slashdotters can be so goddamn stupid... I feel that much dumber for having participated in this pathetic display. You're at the point now where you're not even in REALITY anymore. You're applying bizarre systems of belief to me that I've never once in this or any other discussion espoused, just because I said something specifically about what copyright infringers are doing. I'm half inclined to start supporting the RIAA just because you've shined so poorly in this situation. At LEAST have the decency to not start making shit up and acting like it's true.
Un... fucking... believable...
And, incidentally, if you don't like me insulting you, feel free to use your foes list. You have it for a reason.
You're not listening now, you weren't listening before, and I have no reason to believe you will listen in the future. Due to the fact that you have conveniently rejected my acknowledgements of the legitimacy of civil disobedience as if I had never made them, and you have ignored the fact that I have merely dismissed YOUR use of it under THE CURRENT circumstances, I can only conclude that you're either a child who's pissed off that it's becoming harder to rip off music, or just a moron who actually believes you're in the right. You are not arguing with me, you're just trying to legitamize your own criminal behavior. You are nothing like Rosa Parks, you are just a common, lightweight criminal. Get over it.
In the future, I suggest you also make an attempt at discussion that doesn't involve pretending the other party didn't say something. I suppose, however, that I should not be surprised that a person who thinks copyright violation is better than participating in a consumer market intelligently would stick their fingers in their ears and shout "LA LA LA" in order to avoid hearing things he or she does not want to hear.
In addition, this statement:
It's an easy example that proves why your philosophy of always working within the system arises from an oversimplistic view of the world.is so logically baseless that I can't even imagine what was going through your mind when you wrote it. Rosa Parks' actions prove nothing about my philosophy, and this problem is compounded by the fact that the philosophy you're referencing isn't even one that I hold.
Yes, yes... go ahead. Respond. Continue, please, attempting to call bullshit on me. Every two months or so someone comes along who thinks they can weasle their way around what I'm saying and make me look like a moron by twisting the issue in knots. Nobody has succeeded in it yet. Please, do try, however.
A boycott, dipshit. A boycott happened, not "rosa parks DID get up". Rather than misquoting me, perhaps you could have taken the time to read the text on the page of the goddamn link you posted:
Ah, yes. Strong words from a poster too afraid to attach a name to their thoughts. There's nothing quite like hiding your beliefs and ideas behind the cloak of anonymity and then expecting to have any credibility or force in what you say about them, hmm?
I suppose the ideas of rational discussion and intelligent discourse escape you, however, given the emphasis you put on an integer field in a database.
Anyone too stupid to Google or too pompous to just ask for clarification is nothing more than an ignorant prick too insecure in their own knowledge to admit that there are things they don't know.
Run off and play now, child. I'm sure you need to go off and concern yourself with someone else's "Karma" to provide some meaning in your vapid, barren life.
Why are people modding these idiots up? It would take all of 10 seconds to Google the information, who the fuck cares WHAT name they posted in reference to 1984? If you're too dumb to use Google, you're not smart enough to read 1984 and understand it anyway.
They're not insightful, they're just trolling. Or ignorant.
But there is nothing wrong going on here. And yes, piracy is wrong.
It's all I can do to keep from calling you nasty names.... so I'll just assume you haven't considered that maybe you WOULDN'T fight if you really knew what was happening, and I'll make my point.
If the RIAA sues you, and you were making the files available (UPLOADING people.. they're suing people who are making the files available, not necessarily the ones who download them), then settling would be the smart option, yes.
However, if the RIAA comes at ME with a lawsuit, I can't AFFORD to fight them. They can tie me up in court until my pockets are drained, and I didn't do a single goddamn thing wrong. I'm not sharing a fucking thing except code that I wrote myself. Funny thing about big, faceless organizations that can browbeat you with lawyers, huh? Oh, wait. I forgot... you can just walk right into a court and that's that, right? No, wrong. Some people have gotten off because their is no way in Hell they could've been sharing anything. I'm not one of those people. One of the systems on my network is a Windows box, and it's connected. It's also being fed an IP address by a local DHCP server which is picking up an IP address from the ISP's DHCP server. I'd have to show that I'm NOT that IP address, and that would cost me time and money. I can't afford it. If the RIAA decided to try and tie the thing up rather than lose, they could easily keep the case suspended with bullshit filings and amendments for the short period of time it would take me to go into the poorhouse. And then I'd STILL have to settle.
So, why don't you wake up and join the rest of us in the real world? If the RIAA starts filing it's cases on some actual evidence, fine. An IP address is WAY too variable to count as evidence. No, I'm NOT a lawyer. I have been on the nasty end of a civil suit though, and even that simple little proceeding was NOWHERE near as simple as you're painting this.
And yes, piracy IS wrong. Now, if you find any swashbuckling swordsman with parrots on their shoulders stealing crates of CDs, or pressers selling illegitimate copies of discs, let me know. Otherwise, I have no idea why you're bringing up piracy during a discussion of copyright infringement. If you're going to shoot your mouth off about it, you could at least get the situation and the terminology correct.
And this doesn't even bring in the moral objections to using the court system to send miscellaneous J. Does threatening letters talking about potentially enormous fines and lord knows what else in preperation of extending a "settlement".
You're talking about the concept of a personal proof. You can convince yourself that looking straight at the sun is healthy just because you say so and you've satisfied the burden of personal proof without satisfying any other proofs. I'm not talking about that. Personal proofs only matter to the person who has them, not to anyone else. Religions don't get confined to a single person, so the concept of personal proof is irrelevant when discussing religion not targetted at oneself.
So you're saying Rosa Parks should have just quit riding the bus?
Uh.. that's exactly what happened. And it worked. Look up the Montgomery bus boycott. 1956, I believe.
We're done arguing and I wash my hands of this entire argument. You are part of the problem, and if you're too blind, greedy, dumb, or any combination of the above to see that, then the best I can do is bemoan the unfortunately ignorant path you've taken in this matter. I weep for a culture that is so full of people that don't understand the basic premise of a capitalist system and how it can be controlled by the consumers. Your actions are no better than those of the people who don't know they're getting ripped off, and it's all a very sad commentary on how poorly the people in this nation in particular make buying decisions.
Did you know people are stupid enough to buy bottled water when they have clean tap water? I'll bet you could double your profits with those dumb people by selling the bottle with a lock on it, then licensing out the schematic for the key and suing anyone you just broke the lock off.
Some people are smart enough to realize they can just break the lock since they already bought the bottle. Other people are infinitely denser and suggest that the problem is that nobody is buying licenses to the lock and selling a key.
But, don't worry... maybe that just means you travel at the speed of light.. or something... or maybe you just don't see the inherent problem in criminalizing the activity of using something the consumer already paid for.
I'm not going to continue arguing with you about this, because the simple fact is that you're trying justify an illegitimate action by saying that you're using it to stop another illegitimate action. This is acceptable behavior only when the illegitimate action in question is the only recourse you have. However, you can simply stop participating in the music trade the RIAA oversees altogether. That fact that you *want* that music is not justification for ignoring this legitimate process. You cannot just do illegal things when you have legal means to achieve the same ends just because you think you should be able to have your cake and eat it too.
Your attitude is like that of a small, spoiled child on playground. You don't want to follow the rules, but you still want to play the game. Maybe the rules ARE unfair, maybe the people on the other team ARE cheating, but you have the option of not playing with them. You cannot just have things your way just because you don't like the way they are. Spend some time trying to positively change the situation. Stop sitting there arguing with me that your illegal activity is in any way justified. It's not, and you're only making the situation worse for everyone else.
Close.... nutters in the music thing say "Copyright is... uh.. FLEXIBLE because.. I.. uh.. um... I don't want to pay the price that they ask, but I don't want to stop listening to their music... er.. no.. wait.. uh.. THE RIAA IS CHARGING TOO MUCH MONEY SO I'M HELPING TO DESTROY AN EVIL EMPIRE BY IGNORING COPYRIGHT LAW AND RIPPING OFF COPIES OF THEIR SONGS!!!!"
Especially since science is not at all about finding an absolute truth and is forever seeking to discredit its own work as a means to either strengthen the position, or destroy it by replacing it with a new, stronger idea. After all, at one time, Ether was a good explanation for the gap between heavenly bodies. Now, we know better. But, we have things like dark matter that are just kind of stop gap solutions to problems we haven't solved yet. It's a pretty good bet that will be debunked eventually and replaced with a better explanation for extra gravity.
Science doesn't require anymore faith than you have in humanity anyway. The fact is, any goober with a degree in some "scientific" field can come out with a wild theory. That's why other scientists set out to discredit it. If they can't discredit it, you have a pretty good reason to believe it... for now.
The difference between real science and psuedo-science or religion, of course, is that those two things require you to simply have faith in the "truth" that an individual is speaking. Whereas science says, "here, I believe this and I can back it up! Come and get me!", religion says "Uh... here... I believe this, but you just have to believe me, because there's no way to prove what I'm saying".
Big difference in the type of faith science requires and the type of faith religion requires.
Yes, and my point is that you can't blame OOo for being "inadequate" just because you had this need and chose it. If you need perfect Microsoft Office compatibility, you need Microsoft Office. There's nothing except niche functions that MS Office can do that OOo can't, but if you need that magical "perfect compatibility", then you know right up front you want Office. This guy's office chose OOo for some bizarre reason, and now he's making outrageous statements about it ("it doesn't do things right", "it's a load of frustration", "it's inferior in all areas except price") based on the fact that they chose the wrong tool. That's like complaining that a hammer is faulty because it can't drive a screw properly. If you knew you needed a screwdriver, why'd you pick a hammer, and why are you blaming the mess you made on that hammer? Maybe the hammer DOES have defects, but you can't support them based on the fact that you chose the wrong tool to begin with. This is no different - they need Office compatibility, they needed Office. They chose OOo. Now, this guy is saying it's faulty based on his experience with it AFTER they made a stupid decision.
If you're going to pick on a software application's shortcomings, fine. Just don't blame the software for your failure to pick the right tool for the job.
Or, to sum up what you just said:
You switched back to Office because that's what you wanted in the first place?
You just "evaluated" Open Office based on the fact that you wanted to use Microsoft Office all along.... that's just wierd. It's not a load of frustration, you guys just weren't smart enough to evaluate your needs before you decided on your tool, that's all. You can't blame OOo for the fact that it's not Office. That's like blaming a Lincoln Continental for not being a Corvette. You can't just compare two things that happen to be in the same general category but do different things and then blame one of them for not being the other just because you didn't pick the one you really wanted to begin with.
It's not just a political issue, but I guess if you have political issues with operating systems, that's a conveniently ignorant view to take of the situation. This driver is surreptitiously loading itself as non-GPL code while telling us that it is GPL. This effects the way Linux hackers treat bug reports that are tainted with this module. This is accomplished by loading that "GPL" flag and enabling helpers that prevent bugs reports from being flagged as tainted.
Therefore, not only does it complicate bug reports, it complicates bug reports by loading pieces of code that it's not allowed to. I'd say that makes it malware, rather than a political issue.