Seriously though, why don't they try using small speakers placed along the line of the train which project anti-soundwave patterns so the two cancel each other out.
Wouldn't it make much more sense to put the speakers on the train itself? After all, the track doesn't make any noise except where the train is.
I see the point in your analogy -- I just thought that my analogy was a bit more, er... analogous.:)
The problem I see with the darwinian approach to security (and I agree that it's heading that way) is that in biological survival of the fittest, the unfit eventually die out from various causes and don't affect the rest of the gene pool. In computer security, the unfit computers are hijacked and used to attack the rest of the gene pool. Plus, I'd rather not see a lot of people ruined via identity theft, etc. before Microsoft gets their act together and deals with security.
When I talk about security being mandatory, I'm thinking along the lines of the operating system notifying the user with a message such as:
"Warning: the program foobar.scr is attempting to install itself as a keyboard handler and will be able to read all keystrokes you type on this computer, including bank account numbers, passwords, and other sensitive information. You are strongly encouraged to terminate this program immediately unless you are 100% confident in the authors of this program and desire all your keystrokes to be potentially logged and sent to a third party. Do you wish to [ Terminate (recommended) ] or [ Proceed (not recommended) ] ?"
When it become that in your face, then I think we'll start seeing some good headway against the malware problems.
Should brightly lit streets at night be banned because they allow muggers to see us more clearly?
I think that's a poor analogy. A better one would be this: Should automated tools to check whether a house's doors are locked and alarmed be banned, given that burglars can check houses to see which are vulnerable? Especially if you consider that very few people actually use the tool to check their own house?
The ideal answer is that those tools should be made available to everyone, both for houses and for securing computer systems. If everyone used them constantly they would be very secure, at least against known attack vectors. However, how many people even know what a software vulnerability is? And those who do have some inkling, how many of those even bother to check their system? The current problem is that a very high percentage of systems are insecure and people just don't know that it's something to be concerned about. Most people see computers as being complicated TV sets. Turn it on, use it, shut it down.
Until security is effectively mandatory and in-your-face obvious and intuitive even for your grandmother, I fear the tools are being put to more use by the bad guys than the good guys.
Are you kidding? I mean, If I'm reading an article, and I see part of it highlighted as a link - I'm going to assume its going to be more content for the story I am reading, maybe adding a deeper explaination or background to whatever phrase is highlighted. If I am seriously studying a story, and follow a link to somehting like "air saferty", I want to see an article on air safety, not some page with 100 flashing banner ads trying to convince me that i need to buy a 'terrorist detector 2000' for only 29.95.
The only way that I could ever see this justified AT ALL, and i still think its not cool, would be that Every ad linkd from the story is labelled "AD" somehow - either by bracketed text, or maybe the link being a different colour from normal links.
I find it very hard to see any way that this isn't a bad thing. I think it could turn in to a very bad think.
Remember - Adverts were first picked up by old paper media as a way to support the actual journalism -It would cover the costs to create and deliver the content. Now it seems we're getting closer and closer to the content being made to deliver the adverts. How long until articles are being changed to fit in certain key words from advertisers? Scary.
"QRIO has even been programmed to conduct musical orchestras. Recently, the robot was controlled remotely by computer to conduct the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra during a performance at Tokyo Opera City."
I'm sure they're not using it for the price of your purchase or anything. But how about even the last n ISBNs for books you've looked up? Sure, you could hack it to use other ISBNs but Amazon won't really care. It saves them a database query and/or server-memory storage to pull up your last viewed items and serves its purpose without compromising security in any way.
This is the story of a different kind. No melting CPU's, no screaming disc drives, just the kind of psychological torture that scars a man for life.
I had a 9:00 meeting with my sales rep. I needed to buy an entire new series 70, the works. He said it'd take about an hour. Three hours later, we'd barely got the datacomm hardware down on paper, so he invited me downstairs for lunch.
This was my first experience in an HP cafeteria. Above the service counter was a menu which began...
MMU's (Main Menu Units)
0001A Burger. Includes sesame-seed bun.
Must order comdiments 00110A separately
001 Deletes seeds.
002 Expands burger to two patties.
00020A Double cheeseburger, preconfigured. Includes cheese,
bun and condiments.
001 Add-on bacon.
002 Delete second patty.
003 Replaces second patty with extra cheese.
00021A Burger Upgrade to Double Cheeseburger
001 From Single Burger.
002 From Double Burger.
003 Return credit for bun.
00220A Burger Bundle. Includes 00010A, 00210A and 00310A
001 Substitute root beer 00311A for cola 00310A.
My eyes glazed over. I asked for a burger and a root beer. The waitress looked at me like I was an alien.
"How would you like to order that, sir?"
"Quickly, if possible. Can't I just order a sandwich and a drink?"
"No sir. All our service is menu driven. Now what would you like?"
I scanned the menu. "How big is the 00010 burger?"
"The patty is rated at eight bites."
"Well, how about the rest of it?"
"I dont have the specs on that, sir, but I think it's a bit more."
"Eight bites is too small. Give me the Double Burger Upgrade."
My sales rep interrupted. "No, you want the Single Burger option 002 'expands burger to two patties'. The double burger upgrade would give you two burgers.
"But you could get return credit on the extra bun," the waitress chimed in, trying to be helpful, "although it isn't documented."
I looked around to see if anybody was staring at me. There was a couple in line behind us. I recognized one of them, a guy who merely mowed me down in the parking lot with his cherry-red '62 Vette. He was talking to some woman who was waving her arms around and looking very excited.
"What if... we marketed the bacon cheeseburger with the vegetable option and without the burger and cheese? It'd be a BLT!"
The woman charged off in the direction of the telephone, running steeplechases over tables and chairs. My waitress tried to get my attention again. "Have you decided, sir?"
"Yeah, give me the double burger- excuse me, I mean the 00020A with the option 001. I want everything on it." She put me down for the Condiment Expansion Kit, which included mayonnaise, mustard and pickles with a option to substitute relish.
"Ketchup." I hated to ask. "I want ketchup on that, too."
"That's not a condiment, sir, it's a Tomato Product." My sales rep butted in again. "That's not a supported configuration."
"What now?" I kept my voice steady.
"Too juicy. The bun can't handle it."
"Look. Forget the ketchup, just put some lettuce and tomatoes on it."
The waitress backed away from the counter. "I'm sorry, sir, but that's not supported either, the bun can take it but the burger won't fit in the box. The sales rep defended himself. "Just not at first release." "It is being beta-tested, sir."
I checked the overhead screen. Fries, number 000210A, option 110. French followed by option 120, English. "What the hell are English Fries?" I turned to the sales rep. "Chips they call them. We sell a lot of them."
I gave up. "OK, OK just give me a plain vanilla Burger Bundle." The confused the waitress profoundly. "Sir, Vanilla as an option is configured
You must have missed the Slashdot article, File Sharing Increases CD Sales, essentially the same as this one. Now "record" sales maybe not, as hardly anyone buys vinyl anymore.:)
Wouldn't you have to catalog all the objects in the solar system to be able to do that calculation?
Given that we just discovered this, I would claim you don't know all the variables yet (unless you think this is the last undiscovered object in the solar system, galaxy, or universe).
If you're looking for 100 significant digits of precision, sure. We haven't catalogued all the objects in the Kuiper belt, for example, but the amount of mass of any uncatalogued object out there at that distance is so low and the distance so far that it doesn't meaningfully affect any calculation, such as sending a probe to successfully land on a comet.
Really interested in knowing its impact to the Earth. But my point is you have to do the analysis, first. I mean, putting rockets on the back of the Moon and pushing it into the Earth would also have negligible impact to the solar system, overall. I just don't want to be here on Earth when it lands.
Nobody has suggested crashing anything into the Earth. Nice FUD attempt.
If you haven't bothered to identify all the impacts of moving the object, and don't understand it well enough to know that there are no undesireable impacts, you haven't done your homework. Come back with the proposal after you have. Neat idea, now go work out the details.
I think moving the asteroid into an Earth orbit is a pointless waste of resources. However, the small size of the asteroid isn't going to meaningfully affect anything on Earth except perhaps the superstitious. Remember, the object is *already* moving and will come close to the Earth anyway, as many other smaller and larger objects have and will in the future. Its affect is like farting into a windstorm. You could spend years analyzing the repercussions of *that*, but why?
Big Champagne tracks P2P downloads for the marketing departments of the major record labels. This allows them to tweak their marketing programs in practically real time, unlike Arbitron ratings that take weeks to turn around.
And what does that prove, other than it helps them keep a better pulse on what music is popular? Your argument would be similar to movie producers keeping tabs on people sneaking into theatres without paying, in order to see what movies are popular because it's quicker than waiting for the sales reports to come in.
If an album is shit, admittedly advance P2P distribution means a record will be DOA when it hits the record stores. This recently happened to Madonna, and she's been publically whining about P2P. If an album is worth buying, record sales are boosted by P2P. Enimen's latest CD was unofficially pre-released over P2P a month before it hit the record stores. It immediately hit #1.
What you've demonstrated here is that a good album will sell well, while a crappy album won't. But then we already knew this. I fail to see how P2P affects this, unless you can also point to control subjects, such as many crappy albums not released on P2P yet reaching #1 in sales. With enough cases like this showing a clear relationship between quality of album, P2P availability, music consumers using/not using P2P, and resulting sales for each combination it would mean something. Two samples aren't enough to draw a general conclusion -- they might, after all, be the exceptions.
The record labels know that in effect, P2P means music lover distributing broadcast-quality copies of their musicians' music substantially identical to what they pay to get played on the radio (Google on payola) on their own bandwidth dimes.
Are you saying that because of P2P, labels no longer pay to get music played on the radio? I find that difficult to believe. In all likelihood, the practice continues regardless.
What the hell kind of theft results in the "victim" getting richer as a result?
Perhaps there's something other than what you and the RIAA define as theft going on here.
I never said it was theft. I did say that it's against the law, which is true for copyrighted material for which you don't have the rights to redistribute (unless the country you're in doesn't subscribe to the Berne Convention). For all intents and purposes, 100% of music on P2P networks shouldn't be on there if copyrights are respected.
So you are saying that minority groups with more cash to flash than possibly the majority, dictate law to an extent. Doesn't that seem wrong?
The theory is that these small groups are representative of the population as a whole, much in the same way that an elected official is chosen based on the will of the majority and, in theory, represents the views of that majority. It isn't perfect, but it reminds me of that Yogi Berra quote: "In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is." Most democracies function via representation, where a small group represents the whole. Keep in mind that the laws must also be debated and voted upon. Everyone has the opportunity to see which bills are on the table and contact their governmental representative to voice their concerns. That representative, if he/she wants to be re-elected, will tend to follow what the majority of people support. As the bill makes its way through the process of various drafts, debates, and finally voting, that representative influences the bill and causes it to be adopted, amended, or rejected. Not every new law enacted is so altrustic, for lack of a better word, (consider: PATRIOT and CAPPS) but you can chalk that up to the theory/practice difference again.
People I know who download music via P2P generally have no intention of buying the album whether they aquire the music via P2P or not. In reality this means of aquisition primarily becomes a form of advertising.
This is prevailent with movies also. Who likes 'Lord of the Rings', downloads it and then doesn't see it on the big screen or buy the dvd?
If shared music becomes a form of advertising, then you would see businesses start up to take advantage of the situation. In fact, this has already happened. That's just one example, but there's many online music sites which encourage people to experience the music and pay for it if they like it (sometimes even specifying the amount they want to pay), shareware style. Will people take to this kind of music marketing? That remains to be seen. It certainly needs a lot more exposure for it to happen. Popular music today is played on radio and you can watch music videos on TV. If you like it, you can go and purchase a CD in a store. People like products with shiny labels. One reason why alternatives haven't popped up is because it takes a lot of money to achieve that kind of recognition in the public. The RIAA/MPAA system, while flawed, has at least been proven to work.
The anti-file-sharing bill is just symptomatic of the problem. Lawmakers act without hesitation to protect the interest of corporations, and have to be practically forced to do anything to protect individual citizens.
This bill has nothing to do at all with your rights as a file sharer. You can share any files for which you have the right to do so. As new business models arise and become popular, people find a way to skirt their responsibilities and the government intervenes. This is why we have legislation concerning corporate monopolies, securities fraud, and the list goes on.
This bill has absolutely no effect at all on your life unless you choose to do something which is against the law. You may not like it because it makes something which is trivially easy (search, click, download) a criminal offence, but just because it's easy doesn't mean that it's right (to wit: knife, heart, stab).
Corporations have never had this much influence before, probably because they have enough control of the media to stifle serious discussion of the issues.
Consider what corporations are: groups of people. Some corporations represent thousands, some hundreds of thousands. A portion of the money generated from the sale of products/services goes towards lobbying the government to pass laws in favor of that particular group of people. Want to compete with this? Form a lobby group, as many have done. Get enough members together who are willing to contribute a portion of their money towards lobbying the government, and you'll have a very powerful force capable of influencing the laws as well. If your particular set of interests are common enough, you can have just as much influence as any corporation. But if they're uncommon, you won't have enough people supporting you and your ideas won't make any difference, as should be the case.
Also, by buying the products of the corporations which lobby the government, you are supplying the money for that lobbying. The solution is to convince people not to purchase from that corporation -- perhaps even start up your own corporation and sell people on the idea of the superiority of your products/services/ethics/whatever.
What it boils down to is that some people are willing to put their money (or effort) where their mouth is. Others just sit back and provide amusing commentary. Most on slashdot fall into the latter category.
Interesting idea, but we have no idea of what the consequences are of rearranging the momenta of the solar system, or any other "environmental" impacts. How would you make such a decision without adequate knowledge of the impacts?
Sure we do. The equations have already been figured out and are available from most university-level physics textbooks. It's not hard to calculate what the impact would be. However, after performing the calculations you'd likely find that the affect on the rest of the solar system to be zero, to any meaningful level of precision. The mass of this asteroid is probably no greater than 10^10 kilograms, based on its size. Wow! That's a lot. But compare this to the Moon, which has a mass of 7 * 10^22 kilograms. This asteroid has a mass of around 0.0000000000001 times that of the Moon. To compare this to the mass of the Earth, add in a couple more zeroes before the 1. Coincidentally, the mass of this asteroid is about the same mass as has entered the Earth's atmosphere (in the form of millions of tiny asteroids, dust particles, etc.) over the last 10,000 years.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously though, why don't they try using small speakers placed along the line of the train which project anti-soundwave patterns so the two cancel each other out.
Wouldn't it make much more sense to put the speakers on the train itself? After all, the track doesn't make any noise except where the train is.
The problem I see with the darwinian approach to security (and I agree that it's heading that way) is that in biological survival of the fittest, the unfit eventually die out from various causes and don't affect the rest of the gene pool. In computer security, the unfit computers are hijacked and used to attack the rest of the gene pool. Plus, I'd rather not see a lot of people ruined via identity theft, etc. before Microsoft gets their act together and deals with security.
When I talk about security being mandatory, I'm thinking along the lines of the operating system notifying the user with a message such as:
- "Warning: the program foobar.scr is attempting to install itself as a keyboard handler and will be able to read all keystrokes you type on this computer, including bank account numbers, passwords, and other sensitive information. You are strongly encouraged to terminate this program immediately unless you are 100% confident in the authors of this program and desire all your keystrokes to be potentially logged and sent to a third party. Do you wish to [ Terminate (recommended) ] or [ Proceed (not recommended) ] ?"
When it become that in your face, then I think we'll start seeing some good headway against the malware problems.Should brightly lit streets at night be banned because they allow muggers to see us more clearly?
I think that's a poor analogy. A better one would be this: Should automated tools to check whether a house's doors are locked and alarmed be banned, given that burglars can check houses to see which are vulnerable? Especially if you consider that very few people actually use the tool to check their own house?
The ideal answer is that those tools should be made available to everyone, both for houses and for securing computer systems. If everyone used them constantly they would be very secure, at least against known attack vectors. However, how many people even know what a software vulnerability is? And those who do have some inkling, how many of those even bother to check their system? The current problem is that a very high percentage of systems are insecure and people just don't know that it's something to be concerned about. Most people see computers as being complicated TV sets. Turn it on, use it, shut it down.
Until security is effectively mandatory and in-your-face obvious and intuitive even for your grandmother, I fear the tools are being put to more use by the bad guys than the good guys.
Is this the one you mean?
Are you kidding? I mean, If I'm reading an article, and I see part of it highlighted as a link - I'm going to assume its going to be more content for the story I am reading, maybe adding a deeper explaination or background to whatever phrase is highlighted. If I am seriously studying a story, and follow a link to somehting like "air saferty", I want to see an article on air safety, not some page with 100 flashing banner ads trying to convince me that i need to buy a 'terrorist detector 2000' for only 29.95.
The only way that I could ever see this justified AT ALL, and i still think its not cool, would be that Every ad linkd from the story is labelled "AD" somehow - either by bracketed text, or maybe the link being a different colour from normal links.
I find it very hard to see any way that this isn't a bad thing. I think it could turn in to a very bad think.
Remember - Adverts were first picked up by old paper media as a way to support the actual journalism - It would cover the costs to create and deliver the content. Now it seems we're getting closer and closer to the content being made to deliver the adverts. How long until articles are being changed to fit in certain key words from advertisers? Scary.
And for those who don't remember smart tags, here's an amusing writeup which hammers the point home, courtesy of ye olde archive.
I didn't know Microsoft ported IE to the Commodore 64.
From this page:
"QRIO has even been programmed to conduct musical orchestras. Recently, the robot was controlled remotely by computer to conduct the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra during a performance at Tokyo Opera City."
Remote control... doesn't exactly sound autonomous.
I'd call it simple theft.
You must be new here. Welcome. As every veteran Slashdotter knows, this isn't *theft*, it's *compensation infringement*. Thank you.
You be the judge...
Available here.
It should also come with something to fix that problem where it stalls if you let it drop below 10,000 RPM.
I'm sure they're not using it for the price of your purchase or anything. But how about even the last n ISBNs for books you've looked up? Sure, you could hack it to use other ISBNs but Amazon won't really care. It saves them a database query and/or server-memory storage to pull up your last viewed items and serves its purpose without compromising security in any way.
You must be referring to the iPod Micro Edition, previously featured here on Slashdot.
I take it you've never eaten at the HP cafe?
Lunch, the HP Way
by Stephen Harrison and Noel Magee
This is the story of a different kind. No melting CPU's, no screaming disc drives, just the kind of psychological torture that scars a man for life.
I had a 9:00 meeting with my sales rep. I needed to buy an entire new series 70, the works. He said it'd take about an hour. Three hours later, we'd barely got the datacomm hardware down on paper, so he invited me downstairs for lunch.
This was my first experience in an HP cafeteria. Above the service counter was a menu which began...
MMU's (Main Menu Units)
0001A Burger. Includes sesame-seed bun.
Must order comdiments 00110A separately
001 Deletes seeds.
002 Expands burger to two patties.
00020A Double cheeseburger, preconfigured. Includes cheese,
bun and condiments.
001 Add-on bacon.
002 Delete second patty.
003 Replaces second patty with extra cheese.
00021A Burger Upgrade to Double Cheeseburger
001 From Single Burger.
002 From Double Burger.
003 Return credit for bun.
00220A Burger Bundle. Includes 00010A, 00210A and 00310A
001 Substitute root beer 00311A for cola 00310A.
My eyes glazed over. I asked for a burger and a root beer. The waitress looked at me like I was an alien.
"How would you like to order that, sir?"
"Quickly, if possible. Can't I just order a sandwich and a drink?"
"No sir. All our service is menu driven. Now what would you like?"
I scanned the menu. "How big is the 00010 burger?"
"The patty is rated at eight bites."
"Well, how about the rest of it?"
"I dont have the specs on that, sir, but I think it's a bit more."
"Eight bites is too small. Give me the Double Burger Upgrade."
My sales rep interrupted. "No, you want the Single Burger option 002 'expands burger to two patties'. The double burger upgrade would give you two burgers.
"But you could get return credit on the extra bun," the waitress chimed in, trying to be helpful, "although it isn't documented."
I looked around to see if anybody was staring at me. There was a couple in line behind us. I recognized one of them, a guy who merely mowed me down in the parking lot with his cherry-red '62 Vette. He was talking to some woman who was waving her arms around and looking very excited.
"What if... we marketed the bacon cheeseburger with the vegetable option and without the burger and cheese? It'd be a BLT!"
The woman charged off in the direction of the telephone, running steeplechases over tables and chairs. My waitress tried to get my attention again. "Have you decided, sir?"
"Yeah, give me the double burger- excuse me, I mean the 00020A with the option 001. I want everything on it." She put me down for the Condiment Expansion Kit, which included mayonnaise, mustard and pickles with a option to substitute relish.
"Ketchup." I hated to ask. "I want ketchup on that, too."
"That's not a condiment, sir, it's a Tomato Product." My sales rep butted in again. "That's not a supported configuration."
"What now?" I kept my voice steady.
"Too juicy. The bun can't handle it."
"Look. Forget the ketchup, just put some lettuce and tomatoes on it."
The waitress backed away from the counter. "I'm sorry, sir, but that's not supported either, the bun can take it but the burger won't fit in the box. The sales rep defended himself. "Just not at first release." "It is being beta-tested, sir."
I checked the overhead screen. Fries, number 000210A, option 110. French followed by option 120, English. "What the hell are English Fries?" I turned to the sales rep. "Chips they call them. We sell a lot of them."
I gave up. "OK, OK just give me a plain vanilla Burger Bundle." The confused the waitress profoundly. "Sir, Vanilla as an option is configured
Oh, this is going to be very fun!.
You must have missed the Slashdot article, File Sharing Increases CD Sales, essentially the same as this one. Now "record" sales maybe not, as hardly anyone buys vinyl anymore. :)
Wouldn't you have to catalog all the objects in the solar system to be able to do that calculation?
Given that we just discovered this, I would claim you don't know all the variables yet (unless you think this is the last undiscovered object in the solar system, galaxy, or universe).
If you're looking for 100 significant digits of precision, sure. We haven't catalogued all the objects in the Kuiper belt, for example, but the amount of mass of any uncatalogued object out there at that distance is so low and the distance so far that it doesn't meaningfully affect any calculation, such as sending a probe to successfully land on a comet.
Really interested in knowing its impact to the Earth. But my point is you have to do the analysis, first. I mean, putting rockets on the back of the Moon and pushing it into the Earth would also have negligible impact to the solar system, overall. I just don't want to be here on Earth when it lands.
Nobody has suggested crashing anything into the Earth. Nice FUD attempt.
If you haven't bothered to identify all the impacts of moving the object, and don't understand it well enough to know that there are no undesireable impacts, you haven't done your homework. Come back with the proposal after you have. Neat idea, now go work out the details.
I think moving the asteroid into an Earth orbit is a pointless waste of resources. However, the small size of the asteroid isn't going to meaningfully affect anything on Earth except perhaps the superstitious. Remember, the object is *already* moving and will come close to the Earth anyway, as many other smaller and larger objects have and will in the future. Its affect is like farting into a windstorm. You could spend years analyzing the repercussions of *that*, but why?
Big Champagne tracks P2P downloads for the marketing departments of the major record labels. This allows them to tweak their marketing programs in practically real time, unlike Arbitron ratings that take weeks to turn around.
And what does that prove, other than it helps them keep a better pulse on what music is popular? Your argument would be similar to movie producers keeping tabs on people sneaking into theatres without paying, in order to see what movies are popular because it's quicker than waiting for the sales reports to come in.
If an album is shit, admittedly advance P2P distribution means a record will be DOA when it hits the record stores. This recently happened to Madonna, and she's been publically whining about P2P. If an album is worth buying, record sales are boosted by P2P. Enimen's latest CD was unofficially pre-released over P2P a month before it hit the record stores. It immediately hit #1.
What you've demonstrated here is that a good album will sell well, while a crappy album won't. But then we already knew this. I fail to see how P2P affects this, unless you can also point to control subjects, such as many crappy albums not released on P2P yet reaching #1 in sales. With enough cases like this showing a clear relationship between quality of album, P2P availability, music consumers using/not using P2P, and resulting sales for each combination it would mean something. Two samples aren't enough to draw a general conclusion -- they might, after all, be the exceptions.
The record labels know that in effect, P2P means music lover distributing broadcast-quality copies of their musicians' music substantially identical to what they pay to get played on the radio (Google on payola) on their own bandwidth dimes.
Are you saying that because of P2P, labels no longer pay to get music played on the radio? I find that difficult to believe. In all likelihood, the practice continues regardless.
What the hell kind of theft results in the "victim" getting richer as a result?
Perhaps there's something other than what you and the RIAA define as theft going on here.
I never said it was theft. I did say that it's against the law, which is true for copyrighted material for which you don't have the rights to redistribute (unless the country you're in doesn't subscribe to the Berne Convention). For all intents and purposes, 100% of music on P2P networks shouldn't be on there if copyrights are respected.
Jobs should get some credit. It was, after all, his reality distortion field the engineers were influenced by.
So you are saying that minority groups with more cash to flash than possibly the majority, dictate law to an extent. Doesn't that seem wrong?
The theory is that these small groups are representative of the population as a whole, much in the same way that an elected official is chosen based on the will of the majority and, in theory, represents the views of that majority. It isn't perfect, but it reminds me of that Yogi Berra quote: "In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is." Most democracies function via representation, where a small group represents the whole. Keep in mind that the laws must also be debated and voted upon. Everyone has the opportunity to see which bills are on the table and contact their governmental representative to voice their concerns. That representative, if he/she wants to be re-elected, will tend to follow what the majority of people support. As the bill makes its way through the process of various drafts, debates, and finally voting, that representative influences the bill and causes it to be adopted, amended, or rejected. Not every new law enacted is so altrustic, for lack of a better word, (consider: PATRIOT and CAPPS) but you can chalk that up to the theory/practice difference again.
People I know who download music via P2P generally have no intention of buying the album whether they aquire the music via P2P or not. In reality this means of aquisition primarily becomes a form of advertising.
This is prevailent with movies also. Who likes 'Lord of the Rings', downloads it and then doesn't see it on the big screen or buy the dvd?
If shared music becomes a form of advertising, then you would see businesses start up to take advantage of the situation. In fact, this has already happened. That's just one example, but there's many online music sites which encourage people to experience the music and pay for it if they like it (sometimes even specifying the amount they want to pay), shareware style. Will people take to this kind of music marketing? That remains to be seen. It certainly needs a lot more exposure for it to happen. Popular music today is played on radio and you can watch music videos on TV. If you like it, you can go and purchase a CD in a store. People like products with shiny labels. One reason why alternatives haven't popped up is because it takes a lot of money to achieve that kind of recognition in the public. The RIAA/MPAA system, while flawed, has at least been proven to work.
You can download it here. Quite the stunning work!
The anti-file-sharing bill is just symptomatic of the problem. Lawmakers act without hesitation to protect the interest of corporations, and have to be practically forced to do anything to protect individual citizens.
This bill has nothing to do at all with your rights as a file sharer. You can share any files for which you have the right to do so. As new business models arise and become popular, people find a way to skirt their responsibilities and the government intervenes. This is why we have legislation concerning corporate monopolies, securities fraud, and the list goes on.
This bill has absolutely no effect at all on your life unless you choose to do something which is against the law. You may not like it because it makes something which is trivially easy (search, click, download) a criminal offence, but just because it's easy doesn't mean that it's right (to wit: knife, heart, stab).
Corporations have never had this much influence before, probably because they have enough control of the media to stifle serious discussion of the issues.
Consider what corporations are: groups of people. Some corporations represent thousands, some hundreds of thousands. A portion of the money generated from the sale of products/services goes towards lobbying the government to pass laws in favor of that particular group of people. Want to compete with this? Form a lobby group, as many have done. Get enough members together who are willing to contribute a portion of their money towards lobbying the government, and you'll have a very powerful force capable of influencing the laws as well. If your particular set of interests are common enough, you can have just as much influence as any corporation. But if they're uncommon, you won't have enough people supporting you and your ideas won't make any difference, as should be the case.
Also, by buying the products of the corporations which lobby the government, you are supplying the money for that lobbying. The solution is to convince people not to purchase from that corporation -- perhaps even start up your own corporation and sell people on the idea of the superiority of your products/services/ethics/whatever.
What it boils down to is that some people are willing to put their money (or effort) where their mouth is. Others just sit back and provide amusing commentary. Most on slashdot fall into the latter category.
Interesting idea, but we have no idea of what the consequences are of rearranging the momenta of the solar system, or any other "environmental" impacts. How would you make such a decision without adequate knowledge of the impacts?
Sure we do. The equations have already been figured out and are available from most university-level physics textbooks. It's not hard to calculate what the impact would be. However, after performing the calculations you'd likely find that the affect on the rest of the solar system to be zero, to any meaningful level of precision. The mass of this asteroid is probably no greater than 10^10 kilograms, based on its size. Wow! That's a lot. But compare this to the Moon, which has a mass of 7 * 10^22 kilograms. This asteroid has a mass of around 0.0000000000001 times that of the Moon. To compare this to the mass of the Earth, add in a couple more zeroes before the 1. Coincidentally, the mass of this asteroid is about the same mass as has entered the Earth's atmosphere (in the form of millions of tiny asteroids, dust particles, etc.) over the last 10,000 years.
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