My right to make backup copies of material I own.
Never had it. I will again invite you to cite any code saying otherwise.
Copyright law places no limits on the number of additional copies I can make for personal use (other than requiring that if I transfer any copy I have to transfer or destroy all other copies).
Wrong. Sony v Disney explicitly pointed out that it is an infringement to even timeshift video against the wishes of the owner. The betamax case was settled as it was because, while Disney vehemently objected to such use of its work (and the Justices acknowledged this) others, like Mr. Rogers, said they condoned such reuse of their work.
In other words: the only rights you had were those the owners of the material chose not to reserve to themselves. DRM doesn't change any of that, it just gives those rights owners who do object more ability to inhibit such repurposing - a right they already have.
If you object to this then your argument is not against DRM, but against allowing creators of works the right to say "you cannot make backups of this material, timeshift, or in any way copy the work in its entirety."
My right to convert material I own a copy of into other forms.
See above: never had it. You again confuse ability with right.
My right to time-shift over-the-air broadcasts.
Third time you have said essentially the same thing. Never had the right to copy works in their entirety against the wishes of the copyright owner.The right of teachers to make multiple copies for use in the classroom.
This isn't even a right. SCOTUS repeatedly points out that "fair use" requires looking at ALL the guidelines. If I as a publisher offer classroom materials to schools at a fair price such use is still an infringement. if this were not true there would be no need for schools to even buy textbooks - they could just buy one and send Jenny off to the xerox machine every day. Sure, some schools actually might do that - doesn't make them right, only makes them infringers.
They want to impose restrictions on things that copyright law says copy owners can legally do, and they want to give the enforcement of those restrictions the force of law without actually changing copyright law.
Although you seem to agree with me in part, I have to say it seems you have swallowed the kool-aid as well. What are these things protected in law that DRM prohibits? Making "backup copies?" Never protected in law. Remixing protected works against the wishes of the rights holders? Only in a minimal "fair use" context - not at all on the "Grey Album" scale. Criticizing works? Parodying works? No DRM can prevent it. Actually, no DRM can really prevent the other stuff since, as many have pointed out, you can always just point a camera at the screen. Until they outlaw film cameras and scanners, that hole is always going to exist.
You cannot say "DRM will allow them to do these things and they will" because a meaningful DRM system doesn't yet even exist.
Copyright changes to adapt to every new technology. Old "rights" that we never actually had fall by the wayside. Weaking copyright isn't going to prevent the coming of DRM, only hasten it - and with every weakening of copyright the "lockdown" is going to increase simply because they can and outlawing DRM protected works means censorship. I realize censorship has been de rigeure since the 90s when billy boy's supreme court said it's "ok so long as it's to protect the children," but I frankly think we need to be worrying a hell of a lot more about that slippery slope than what we might do in a world with fewer chances to download free mariah carey cds.
They're certainly entitled to want stuff without any strings attached, but we aren't obligated to give it to them just because they want it.
Are you talking about the anti-gpl crowd or the anti-drm crowd? It seems unclear due to your inexact usage of "them" and the fact that what you say above could be applied every bit as well to those who insist "all data must be freely available upon publication to do anything with it I damn well please, no restrictions and no questions."
Isn't what you say every bit as applicable to every p2p user squirreling away free corporate pop music and hollywood blockbusters as it is to those big mean and nasty corporate purveyors of proprietary software? So who's the bad guy here?
I question how YOU got modded "insightful." You didn't refute a thing I said, you just drew question to it without making any argument at all. Then you added a punchline - wow! If that's what it takes to get modded "insightful" no wonder my post got 40% overrated!
Well shucks, I still don't have a punchline.
Wait.. how's this? I never said solar energy would cook us - I said exogenous solar energy - that "beamed in from space" via those imaginary "free energy" powerplants that get bandied about form time to time - would only help cook us. You think it's funny? I suggest you take a minute to engage in logical thought: our planet gets a certain amount of energy from the sun based upon the atmosphere, the size of the planet, and the orbit of the planet relative to the sun. If you beam in more power from space, even if it's just a giant mirror concentrating sunlight on a solar collector in the australian outback, you are introducing new solar energy that we would not otherwise have in this atmosphere - it's no different at all than if we just put giant rocket motors on one side of the planet and nudged it a little closer to the sun.
Nuclear materials have been stored in the ground and naturally decay over millenia. We are taking these reserves from under the ground and releasing that stored energy into out atmosphere over decades. That heat constributes to a spike in global atmospheric temperature. How much? I'm not going to make any claims because I don't care to engage in such sophisticated mathematical studies and I'm not going to make assertions without having done so. Note that I may be alone in this, however, since some of our residents seem well prepared to pull virtually any "fact" out of their butts and peddle it on our neighborhood e-corner.
Cattle farts and decaying plant matter contribute enormous amounts of greenhouse gasses. In fact, if you will study your natural history you will see this mentioned as a contributing factor to the global tropical climate that fostered the enormous plant life we now find in fossils. The plants might balance out in the end, but the cattle populations are unnaturally inflated by all that cattle farming. Again, if you will look around you will find some numbers based on scientific evaluation that make clear the contribution by cattle farming to our global heatwave is not trivial.
ICBMs are also a tremendous problem. But making nuclear energy a socially acceptable energy source only makes it that much harder to deny such socially acceptable development opportunities to underfed countries around the world... this is exactly the argument Iran is making now. So what do we do? Tell them to burn all that oil themselves instead of using nuclear energy? How does that help lower greenhouse gas emissions?
Nuclear power is both safer and cleaner than coal. Anybody who rejects nuclear in favor of coal plants out of "environmental" concerns is either badly informed or deliberately lying.
Uh huh...
Nuclear power is still a fossil fuel in that it relies on underground energy sources which are unrefined, then releases this energy via concentrated local energy plants. When the fuel is "spent" it is every bit as toxic as millions of pounds of coal, it's just easier for us to handle (sort of) and transport to storage facilities. Meanwhile the spent fuel presents a HUGE security risk and even after it has been squirreled away it is still a huge security risk that we will have to defend for at least hundreds of years.
What happens when the US becomes unstable? Who is going to defend those plants when the military has become disorganized, undisciplined, and possibly split into competing sides? What's to prevent one side or the other from making use of their stores, especially if one of those new regimes is led by a fundamentalist zealot?
Nothing lasts forever - including governments. We are being irresponsible to future generations. The real kick in the head is that it still contributes to an overall heating of our atmosphere because creation of all that energy requires cooling via water which is then dumped back into the rivers and lakes. Around Oak Ridge it's not uncommon to see steam rising from certain streams and rivers as well as warning signs not to fish or swim in the area. The energy produced AGAIN contributes to heating of our atmosphere as it is "consumed" one appliance at a time - every toaster, tv and computer emits more heat into the atmosphere. This is energy that has been stored in the ground and built up over millenia, and it is being released into our atmosphere over decades - you think that's not heating our environment?
By making use of solar power we are releasing back into the atmosphere heat which has already been provided by the sun on a daily basis - it's a net dead heat. Even those imaginary gadgets that would beam infinite amounts of energy down to us from space would likewise contribute to an overall warming of the planet because it would be new heat energy released into our atmosphere not naturally present. Unless we figure out how to sink that heat energy back into space as quickly as it comes in we're still slowly cooking ourselves to death like so many frogs in a pot.
There's also potential in geysers and volcanos and other such "natural" underground stores of heat energy, but those aren't present everywhere and the seismic instabilities that accompany their presence might make actually tapping into that energy impractical for most parts of our planet. But the only sustainable long term energy source we can employ without introducing some sort of "global warming" is the sun. Wind, solar heat and electric conversion, oceanic tidal movements - doesn't matter, that's where we need to focus our efforts.
I'm pretty sure transputer predates IBM's multicore POWER. Furthermore, transputer was inherently multi - up to four cores on a die and they could be interconnected easily via into larger arrays.
CHB is a rag. It's complete trash and they've been known to ouright fabricate stories and sources. If it's got CHB behind it I don't even trust the people mentioned in the story actually exist.
Don't stop at this story if you doubt it. Click over a few and be amazed... these folks well and truly do make FOX look "fair and balanced" - emphasis on the "balance" part.
But most of the free riders are too blinded by self interest to see it. In fact, this law is seriously misguided and I hope the good people of france gain he foresight to see through it. The license fees ultimately paid in any such exchange would go directly to the movie and music industries, and inevitably straight to the top of that food chain. This would allow the industry itself the potential to take greater risks in signing acts, but that's a fundamentally flawed model in that it only further sustains their power and control of the channels of communications.
The internet and home computers make it incredibly easy to share data. These machines practically beg us to share with others. We don't need laws that further incentivize sharing data, that part is already handled.
What we need are laws that encourage creation. And the way you do that is you protect, as much as possible, everyone's ability to profit from those creations as they see fit. I'm a commonsists myself - I believe we have a fundamental duty to foster a "commons" of work which anyone, anywhere, may employ in their own creative expressions - to provide a common culture and a "leg up" of works from which may be derived new creativity. But coopting the legacy works of those who do not share these beliefs actually denies the commons much potential because it discourages new embodiments of creativity.
Protect intellecual property rights; feed the commons.
I'm a middle age man, and even I think these studies are nothing but bullshit. Boys tend to be aggressive, and it is boys who mostly play violent videogames. It's also mostly boys who play football, snap each other with towels, and pound each other on the limbs and body in sport and game. This is not fucking abnormal behaviour, it's how we are wired from birth.
Watermark all the thumbnails. Google could put a big "Gooogle" watermark across every one of its thumbnails and it would not degrade the usability of the image search itself. It would, however, pretty much destroy the value of the thumbnails as cellphone wallpaper.
For irony on slashdot. Hitler could not have done what he did without the popular support of the people. His popularity is a matter of historical record, so I would likewise suggest you try overcoming a bit of that ignorance of your own... you might try, oh, I dunno... using google with the words "hitler popularity."...whether to help people under repressive governments and in what way. If you were under such regime, would you like others to help you or at minimum show some sympathy?
Well, gee, let's think.. would I want some other country invading my own while claiming to be 'freeing" me? Barring outright invasion, would I want them helping the people of the US overcome the current "reich" running this asylum? Depends on what you mean by "help." I know that if a Russian company wants to offer information or knowledge that is banned in the US, they do not "help us" by removing that content from the internet. If they offer a "tainted" version of their content that constrains itself to our laws and regulations, that will help their message attain popularity. On the contrary, removing themselves from a western presence completely only serves to marginalize any message they might offer, which means they do nothing at all to help us by being idealists.
Google is no demon. The largest search engine in china is a public corporation that made huge gains in worth after western (US) investors gobbled up stock, but Congress has had nothing at all to say about all those American investors supporting this "evil." The largest retailer in the fucking world is an Arkansas company that sustains its fortune selling barbie dolls and sneakers made by people who can fairly be described as endentured servants of the state and yet congress has been notably silent on that one as well... gee, wonder why?
Again, you accuse another of lacking something that is obviously not part of your character - Jefferson's arguments point out why public education is absolutely not an example of "socialism." Liberty depends entirely upon a certain minimum level of education among the people. Without that education, there is no liberty - and no room for libertarians (even of the bastardized contemporary version, the type of which you apparently are).
How ironic you should imply someone not knowing what that're talking about in the context of your own misguided arguments. Maintaining a free republic is the duty of its citizens, and an informed public is the cornerstone of that democracy, and you can't be well informed or independant in thought if you can't fucking read. Get rid of the public schools and they end up replaced by theistic institutions fostering religious dogma - not exactly the cornerstone of a free society.
This isn't just my opinion, it's what Jefferson said in the context of maintaining a public school system. He never intended it to be federalized or even compulsory, but he pointed out how having a competent public school system to educate the citizenry is as necessary to maintaining the free republic as a standing army.
A half century ago illiteracy was a tremendous problem. Thirty years before that, it was even greater. Even in the eighties and nineties it's supposedly been a problem.
Now anyone can have a computer in their home. Even if you're dirt poor, odds are someone you know has an old computer and they "trickle down" into the deepest cracks in rural areas. Every one of those computers brings with it certain requisites.. like being able to communicate in written form.
So what if someone writes "loose" instead of "lose?" A few decades ago that person likely would have had neither incentive nor opportunity to improve themselves in such a manner as to even become aware of the difference, or how to spell "lose" at all - at least now they have a tool that allows them (encourages them) to expand their vocabulary.
And don't forget english adoption is on the rise worldwide as a secondary language. All those people who have never spoken english before now appear online in discussion areas, but in most cases we have no way of knowing where participants are actually located or of their background. Likewise, many of us have opportunities to learn other languages in the same way - by picking up the basics online and "practicing" in foreign language discussion areas. This isn't a unique "problem" - see other comments here illustrating the iniversality of this perception among people in france, denmark, beligium... and god help the russian speakers, as that's what I personally am now studying. So, how's your mandarin?
The people of Germany elected the nazis to power. Hitler was a populist and the people elected him, and apparently by a pretty good margin. The people got what they wanted and deserved and it is not our right to decide for them what sort of government they should choose... just as it is not our right to decide for china how to run their nation... not that that has ever stopped us before.
The problem with instant communication, like chat and SMS, is that by encouraging this abbreviated slang it encourages ambiguity and incoherence as well.
yes, things were so much better in the days of the telegraph, when people were charged by the letter or word and so made every effort to ABBREVIATE their message to the recipient.
Oh, wait... the telegraph is still around! And still in wide use on the amateur radio bands! People having been using the ancestor of SMS for decades now, so how is this problem (allegedly) suddenly on the rise?
Oh, that's right... it isn't. This is just more quacking from unfed ducks. At least once a decade we get articles like this from some mumble-mumble know it all professor somewhere ranting about how literacy is on the decline.
The reason all those tools are windows based is because it's windows. There's no reason at all we cannot have open source DRM, open sourced TCPA platforms, and open source kernels running on them.
Oh, wait.. there is that one thing: the OSS dogmatists are so busy screaming about how this is evil and going to "destroy the desktop" no one has time to actually develop some code that might make these things possible in the linux realm.
Someone else ALREADY decides. If a manufacturer does not make a piece of equipment, you do not run it - period. If a manufacturer does not offer a driver or specifications, in most cases you are locked into windows are a hack that incorporates bits of windows code. If a manufacturer only releases a game for playstation 3 and all you have is an xbox, you're screwed. How is this any different?
You run whatever software you want. If the terms someone makes you agree to say "we can isntall whatever the hell we want on your machine at any time" then the simple solution is you tell them to go fuck themselves.
It's sad to see so much ignorance and fear regarding this issue. There is no reason at all (except one - we refuse to have a voice in the technology) we cannot have open source software running on trusted platforms. By the time the platform even means anything we'll have multicore cpus that support ring 0 virtualization anyway, which means most of the way we think about operating systems will be obsolete. When you can have windows and linux and a dozen other operating systems all running in their own sandboxes and sharing screen realestate and exchanging data via encrypted pipes, who cares if someone wants you to run their own media platform in order to view their movies? If the movies are good enough you watch, if not you - again - tell them to go stuff themselves.
You're right: this can *eventually* change the way we think about data and the way we interact with computers.
But not yet. This is just a "chip on a motherboard." So what if the adobe doc requires all this authentication? It's ultimately passing unencypted over a bus in a machine of otherwise conventional design. No core level encryption, no encrypted root level executable. That means all the "security" in the world is just so much appendage waiting to be hacked off by the first experienced coder to come along.
Such a platform CAN change the way we think about things, though. Ad denough encryption and it gets awfully damn hard to remove attributes form data. This is *not* a bad thing. Once we can give data attributes that canot be easily removed we enter into the realm of being able to move *things* across the internet. Want to move your World of Warcraft *things* into your new Sims pad? It can be done, if the game designers adopt the new standards for "trusted object model data."
This is not just about recording your biometrics every time you listen to maria carey. The possibilities this opens up can literally change the world economy - when the tools of production are in the hands of the proletariat, and the only raw material needed to supply that production is *knowledge,* a lot of people suddenly have a lot of new opportunities to better their lives.
But "supercharging" spreadsheets won't really be providing power to the people that need it. The people that most need power over large amounts of data have hundreds of people working in their IT departments.
Your last sentence summed it up very well: companies presently pay a LOT of people simply to move data from app to app. A collaborative spreadsheet could change workflows in significant ways that we, having never before used such an app, cannot readily predict.
I think it's a bloody fantastic idea, and so simple and obvious it seems odd to think such an app doesn't yet exist.
So what happens if the person who you gave access to does something illegal (child porn for example)?
If the person is in china and attempting to access information that has been censored by the chinese government it doesn't matter if it's kiddie porn or pictures of last year's freedom rally, that person is already breaking the law.
You either accept that censorship of speech is tantamount to enforcement of thought crimes - and resist such tyranny in all its forms even when it offends your delicate western christofeminazi mindset, or you don't really believe in individual liberty at all. If you run an open proxy like this, then you accept that mindset and are prepared to defend yourself if/when it causes the MIB to come knockin'.
The people of china live under chinese law. I can see merit in helping them overcome opression, but this constant durge about china not "censoring the internet" for its citizens and the US being all squeaky clean on this matter is complete bullshit. The greater problem is when it's something that pisses off ma and pa kettle thet politicos in washington drag out threats of trade tarrifs and that "offensive" speech largely ends up being censored across the whole goddamned motherfucking world.
But Linux has gained in popluarity on it's own merits, not as a public response to Microsoft/Windows.
It had little merit before it reached a critical mass of development contributions. before that it was a kernel and a collection of moslty unevolved gnu programs. And from where did that gnu community come? RMS and his ilk were begat from *another* reaction to even *more* copyrighted and closed source programs.
I base this opinion on my own knowledge and experiences
IOW, your proof is your assertion and your anecdotes and has nothing to do with historical evidence outside the chair which now contains you.
This is a myth, perpetuated by the un-informed, and the ignorant.
While we're all re-reading, you might want to take another look at what *I* said. I did not say linux was *created* as a responseto windows. What I said (repeatedly) is that it has reached the popularity it has today in large part because of a public response to windows. If you doubt this, you haven't been reading/. very long... or ANY of the various linux support fora. anti-MS zealotry seems to be part and parcel of the linux landscape. It ain't universal, but that's only because it is now shrinking a bit. In the early days it was much more universal dogma, and that is what drove the initial developments to make linux a good enough solution to appeal to those of lesser zeal.
So, how could the production company have earned that kind of revenue? Without copyright. Yep, you read that right. Here's the details:
Blah blah blah. Copyright is not something one is forced to enforce. There is nothign stopping saomeone from dumping millions of dollars into something pof value and then giving it away (see: ubuntu). There is nothing stopping the producers from doing this now, because no one is forcing anyone to enforce their rights of copy.
So put up the website and get crackin'. No one's stopping you from trying.
Slashdot Mirror
My right to make backup copies of material I own. Never had it. I will again invite you to cite any code saying otherwise. Copyright law places no limits on the number of additional copies I can make for personal use (other than requiring that if I transfer any copy I have to transfer or destroy all other copies). Wrong. Sony v Disney explicitly pointed out that it is an infringement to even timeshift video against the wishes of the owner. The betamax case was settled as it was because, while Disney vehemently objected to such use of its work (and the Justices acknowledged this) others, like Mr. Rogers, said they condoned such reuse of their work. In other words: the only rights you had were those the owners of the material chose not to reserve to themselves. DRM doesn't change any of that, it just gives those rights owners who do object more ability to inhibit such repurposing - a right they already have. If you object to this then your argument is not against DRM, but against allowing creators of works the right to say "you cannot make backups of this material, timeshift, or in any way copy the work in its entirety." My right to convert material I own a copy of into other forms. See above: never had it. You again confuse ability with right. My right to time-shift over-the-air broadcasts. Third time you have said essentially the same thing. Never had the right to copy works in their entirety against the wishes of the copyright owner. The right of teachers to make multiple copies for use in the classroom. This isn't even a right. SCOTUS repeatedly points out that "fair use" requires looking at ALL the guidelines. If I as a publisher offer classroom materials to schools at a fair price such use is still an infringement. if this were not true there would be no need for schools to even buy textbooks - they could just buy one and send Jenny off to the xerox machine every day. Sure, some schools actually might do that - doesn't make them right, only makes them infringers.
They want to impose restrictions on things that copyright law says copy owners can legally do, and they want to give the enforcement of those restrictions the force of law without actually changing copyright law.
Although you seem to agree with me in part, I have to say it seems you have swallowed the kool-aid as well. What are these things protected in law that DRM prohibits? Making "backup copies?" Never protected in law. Remixing protected works against the wishes of the rights holders? Only in a minimal "fair use" context - not at all on the "Grey Album" scale. Criticizing works? Parodying works? No DRM can prevent it. Actually, no DRM can really prevent the other stuff since, as many have pointed out, you can always just point a camera at the screen. Until they outlaw film cameras and scanners, that hole is always going to exist.
You cannot say "DRM will allow them to do these things and they will" because a meaningful DRM system doesn't yet even exist.
Copyright changes to adapt to every new technology. Old "rights" that we never actually had fall by the wayside. Weaking copyright isn't going to prevent the coming of DRM, only hasten it - and with every weakening of copyright the "lockdown" is going to increase simply because they can and outlawing DRM protected works means censorship. I realize censorship has been de rigeure since the 90s when billy boy's supreme court said it's "ok so long as it's to protect the children," but I frankly think we need to be worrying a hell of a lot more about that slippery slope than what we might do in a world with fewer chances to download free mariah carey cds.
They're certainly entitled to want stuff without any strings attached, but we aren't obligated to give it to them just because they want it.
Are you talking about the anti-gpl crowd or the anti-drm crowd? It seems unclear due to your inexact usage of "them" and the fact that what you say above could be applied every bit as well to those who insist "all data must be freely available upon publication to do anything with it I damn well please, no restrictions and no questions."
Isn't what you say every bit as applicable to every p2p user squirreling away free corporate pop music and hollywood blockbusters as it is to those big mean and nasty corporate purveyors of proprietary software? So who's the bad guy here?
Hmmmm....
I question how YOU got modded "insightful." You didn't refute a thing I said, you just drew question to it without making any argument at all. Then you added a punchline - wow! If that's what it takes to get modded "insightful" no wonder my post got 40% overrated!
Well shucks, I still don't have a punchline.
Wait.. how's this? I never said solar energy would cook us - I said exogenous solar energy - that "beamed in from space" via those imaginary "free energy" powerplants that get bandied about form time to time - would only help cook us. You think it's funny? I suggest you take a minute to engage in logical thought: our planet gets a certain amount of energy from the sun based upon the atmosphere, the size of the planet, and the orbit of the planet relative to the sun. If you beam in more power from space, even if it's just a giant mirror concentrating sunlight on a solar collector in the australian outback, you are introducing new solar energy that we would not otherwise have in this atmosphere - it's no different at all than if we just put giant rocket motors on one side of the planet and nudged it a little closer to the sun.
Nuclear materials have been stored in the ground and naturally decay over millenia. We are taking these reserves from under the ground and releasing that stored energy into out atmosphere over decades. That heat constributes to a spike in global atmospheric temperature. How much? I'm not going to make any claims because I don't care to engage in such sophisticated mathematical studies and I'm not going to make assertions without having done so. Note that I may be alone in this, however, since some of our residents seem well prepared to pull virtually any "fact" out of their butts and peddle it on our neighborhood e-corner.
Cattle farts and decaying plant matter contribute enormous amounts of greenhouse gasses. In fact, if you will study your natural history you will see this mentioned as a contributing factor to the global tropical climate that fostered the enormous plant life we now find in fossils. The plants might balance out in the end, but the cattle populations are unnaturally inflated by all that cattle farming. Again, if you will look around you will find some numbers based on scientific evaluation that make clear the contribution by cattle farming to our global heatwave is not trivial.
ICBMs are also a tremendous problem. But making nuclear energy a socially acceptable energy source only makes it that much harder to deny such socially acceptable development opportunities to underfed countries around the world... this is exactly the argument Iran is making now. So what do we do? Tell them to burn all that oil themselves instead of using nuclear energy? How does that help lower greenhouse gas emissions?
Nuclear power is both safer and cleaner than coal. Anybody who rejects nuclear in favor of coal plants out of "environmental" concerns is either badly informed or deliberately lying.
Uh huh...
Nuclear power is still a fossil fuel in that it relies on underground energy sources which are unrefined, then releases this energy via concentrated local energy plants. When the fuel is "spent" it is every bit as toxic as millions of pounds of coal, it's just easier for us to handle (sort of) and transport to storage facilities. Meanwhile the spent fuel presents a HUGE security risk and even after it has been squirreled away it is still a huge security risk that we will have to defend for at least hundreds of years.
What happens when the US becomes unstable? Who is going to defend those plants when the military has become disorganized, undisciplined, and possibly split into competing sides? What's to prevent one side or the other from making use of their stores, especially if one of those new regimes is led by a fundamentalist zealot?
Nothing lasts forever - including governments. We are being irresponsible to future generations. The real kick in the head is that it still contributes to an overall heating of our atmosphere because creation of all that energy requires cooling via water which is then dumped back into the rivers and lakes. Around Oak Ridge it's not uncommon to see steam rising from certain streams and rivers as well as warning signs not to fish or swim in the area. The energy produced AGAIN contributes to heating of our atmosphere as it is "consumed" one appliance at a time - every toaster, tv and computer emits more heat into the atmosphere. This is energy that has been stored in the ground and built up over millenia, and it is being released into our atmosphere over decades - you think that's not heating our environment?
By making use of solar power we are releasing back into the atmosphere heat which has already been provided by the sun on a daily basis - it's a net dead heat. Even those imaginary gadgets that would beam infinite amounts of energy down to us from space would likewise contribute to an overall warming of the planet because it would be new heat energy released into our atmosphere not naturally present. Unless we figure out how to sink that heat energy back into space as quickly as it comes in we're still slowly cooking ourselves to death like so many frogs in a pot.
There's also potential in geysers and volcanos and other such "natural" underground stores of heat energy, but those aren't present everywhere and the seismic instabilities that accompany their presence might make actually tapping into that energy impractical for most parts of our planet. But the only sustainable long term energy source we can employ without introducing some sort of "global warming" is the sun. Wind, solar heat and electric conversion, oceanic tidal movements - doesn't matter, that's where we need to focus our efforts.
I'm pretty sure transputer predates IBM's multicore POWER. Furthermore, transputer was inherently multi - up to four cores on a die and they could be interconnected easily via into larger arrays.
I still right a couple times a day. Doesn't mean you trust it to tell the time.
Duuuuuhhh...
Oh gee, I wonder what they'll come up with next?
CHB is a rag. It's complete trash and they've been known to ouright fabricate stories and sources. If it's got CHB behind it I don't even trust the people mentioned in the story actually exist.
Don't stop at this story if you doubt it. Click over a few and be amazed... these folks well and truly do make FOX look "fair and balanced" - emphasis on the "balance" part.
But most of the free riders are too blinded by self interest to see it. In fact, this law is seriously misguided and I hope the good people of france gain he foresight to see through it. The license fees ultimately paid in any such exchange would go directly to the movie and music industries, and inevitably straight to the top of that food chain. This would allow the industry itself the potential to take greater risks in signing acts, but that's a fundamentally flawed model in that it only further sustains their power and control of the channels of communications.
The internet and home computers make it incredibly easy to share data. These machines practically beg us to share with others. We don't need laws that further incentivize sharing data, that part is already handled.
What we need are laws that encourage creation. And the way you do that is you protect, as much as possible, everyone's ability to profit from those creations as they see fit. I'm a commonsists myself - I believe we have a fundamental duty to foster a "commons" of work which anyone, anywhere, may employ in their own creative expressions - to provide a common culture and a "leg up" of works from which may be derived new creativity. But coopting the legacy works of those who do not share these beliefs actually denies the commons much potential because it discourages new embodiments of creativity.
Protect intellecual property rights; feed the commons.
You need a study for that?
I'm a middle age man, and even I think these studies are nothing but bullshit. Boys tend to be aggressive, and it is boys who mostly play violent videogames. It's also mostly boys who play football, snap each other with towels, and pound each other on the limbs and body in sport and game. This is not fucking abnormal behaviour, it's how we are wired from birth.
Watermark all the thumbnails. Google could put a big "Gooogle" watermark across every one of its thumbnails and it would not degrade the usability of the image search itself. It would, however, pretty much destroy the value of the thumbnails as cellphone wallpaper.
For irony on slashdot. Hitler could not have done what he did without the popular support of the people. His popularity is a matter of historical record, so I would likewise suggest you try overcoming a bit of that ignorance of your own... you might try, oh, I dunno... using google with the words "hitler popularity." ...whether to help people under repressive governments and in what way. If you were under such regime, would you like others to help you or at minimum show some sympathy?
Well, gee, let's think.. would I want some other country invading my own while claiming to be 'freeing" me? Barring outright invasion, would I want them helping the people of the US overcome the current "reich" running this asylum? Depends on what you mean by "help." I know that if a Russian company wants to offer information or knowledge that is banned in the US, they do not "help us" by removing that content from the internet. If they offer a "tainted" version of their content that constrains itself to our laws and regulations, that will help their message attain popularity. On the contrary, removing themselves from a western presence completely only serves to marginalize any message they might offer, which means they do nothing at all to help us by being idealists.
Google is no demon. The largest search engine in china is a public corporation that made huge gains in worth after western (US) investors gobbled up stock, but Congress has had nothing at all to say about all those American investors supporting this "evil." The largest retailer in the fucking world is an Arkansas company that sustains its fortune selling barbie dolls and sneakers made by people who can fairly be described as endentured servants of the state and yet congress has been notably silent on that one as well... gee, wonder why?
Again, you accuse another of lacking something that is obviously not part of your character - Jefferson's arguments point out why public education is absolutely not an example of "socialism." Liberty depends entirely upon a certain minimum level of education among the people. Without that education, there is no liberty - and no room for libertarians (even of the bastardized contemporary version, the type of which you apparently are).
Your argument is mere assertion.
Public schools are not an example of socialism.
There, now I'm the one who's right.
How ironic you should imply someone not knowing what that're talking about in the context of your own misguided arguments. Maintaining a free republic is the duty of its citizens, and an informed public is the cornerstone of that democracy, and you can't be well informed or independant in thought if you can't fucking read. Get rid of the public schools and they end up replaced by theistic institutions fostering religious dogma - not exactly the cornerstone of a free society.
This isn't just my opinion, it's what Jefferson said in the context of maintaining a public school system. He never intended it to be federalized or even compulsory, but he pointed out how having a competent public school system to educate the citizenry is as necessary to maintaining the free republic as a standing army.
A half century ago illiteracy was a tremendous problem. Thirty years before that, it was even greater. Even in the eighties and nineties it's supposedly been a problem.
Now anyone can have a computer in their home. Even if you're dirt poor, odds are someone you know has an old computer and they "trickle down" into the deepest cracks in rural areas. Every one of those computers brings with it certain requisites.. like being able to communicate in written form.
So what if someone writes "loose" instead of "lose?" A few decades ago that person likely would have had neither incentive nor opportunity to improve themselves in such a manner as to even become aware of the difference, or how to spell "lose" at all - at least now they have a tool that allows them (encourages them) to expand their vocabulary.
And don't forget english adoption is on the rise worldwide as a secondary language. All those people who have never spoken english before now appear online in discussion areas, but in most cases we have no way of knowing where participants are actually located or of their background. Likewise, many of us have opportunities to learn other languages in the same way - by picking up the basics online and "practicing" in foreign language discussion areas. This isn't a unique "problem" - see other comments here illustrating the iniversality of this perception among people in france, denmark, beligium... and god help the russian speakers, as that's what I personally am now studying. So, how's your mandarin?
The people of Germany elected the nazis to power. Hitler was a populist and the people elected him, and apparently by a pretty good margin. The people got what they wanted and deserved and it is not our right to decide for them what sort of government they should choose... just as it is not our right to decide for china how to run their nation... not that that has ever stopped us before.
The problem with instant communication, like chat and SMS, is that by encouraging this abbreviated slang it encourages ambiguity and incoherence as well.
yes, things were so much better in the days of the telegraph, when people were charged by the letter or word and so made every effort to ABBREVIATE their message to the recipient.
Oh, wait... the telegraph is still around! And still in wide use on the amateur radio bands! People having been using the ancestor of SMS for decades now, so how is this problem (allegedly) suddenly on the rise?
Oh, that's right... it isn't. This is just more quacking from unfed ducks. At least once a decade we get articles like this from some mumble-mumble know it all professor somewhere ranting about how literacy is on the decline.
The reason all those tools are windows based is because it's windows. There's no reason at all we cannot have open source DRM, open sourced TCPA platforms, and open source kernels running on them.
Oh, wait.. there is that one thing: the OSS dogmatists are so busy screaming about how this is evil and going to "destroy the desktop" no one has time to actually develop some code that might make these things possible in the linux realm.
Maybe it's time for me to buy that Apple...
Someone else ALREADY decides. If a manufacturer does not make a piece of equipment, you do not run it - period. If a manufacturer does not offer a driver or specifications, in most cases you are locked into windows are a hack that incorporates bits of windows code. If a manufacturer only releases a game for playstation 3 and all you have is an xbox, you're screwed. How is this any different?
You run whatever software you want. If the terms someone makes you agree to say "we can isntall whatever the hell we want on your machine at any time" then the simple solution is you tell them to go fuck themselves.
It's sad to see so much ignorance and fear regarding this issue. There is no reason at all (except one - we refuse to have a voice in the technology) we cannot have open source software running on trusted platforms. By the time the platform even means anything we'll have multicore cpus that support ring 0 virtualization anyway, which means most of the way we think about operating systems will be obsolete. When you can have windows and linux and a dozen other operating systems all running in their own sandboxes and sharing screen realestate and exchanging data via encrypted pipes, who cares if someone wants you to run their own media platform in order to view their movies? If the movies are good enough you watch, if not you - again - tell them to go stuff themselves.
You're right: this can *eventually* change the way we think about data and the way we interact with computers.
But not yet. This is just a "chip on a motherboard." So what if the adobe doc requires all this authentication? It's ultimately passing unencypted over a bus in a machine of otherwise conventional design. No core level encryption, no encrypted root level executable. That means all the "security" in the world is just so much appendage waiting to be hacked off by the first experienced coder to come along.
Such a platform CAN change the way we think about things, though. Ad denough encryption and it gets awfully damn hard to remove attributes form data. This is *not* a bad thing. Once we can give data attributes that canot be easily removed we enter into the realm of being able to move *things* across the internet. Want to move your World of Warcraft *things* into your new Sims pad? It can be done, if the game designers adopt the new standards for "trusted object model data."
This is not just about recording your biometrics every time you listen to maria carey. The possibilities this opens up can literally change the world economy - when the tools of production are in the hands of the proletariat, and the only raw material needed to supply that production is *knowledge,* a lot of people suddenly have a lot of new opportunities to better their lives.
But "supercharging" spreadsheets won't really be providing power to the people that need it. The people that most need power over large amounts of data have hundreds of people working in their IT departments.
Your last sentence summed it up very well: companies presently pay a LOT of people simply to move data from app to app. A collaborative spreadsheet could change workflows in significant ways that we, having never before used such an app, cannot readily predict.
I think it's a bloody fantastic idea, and so simple and obvious it seems odd to think such an app doesn't yet exist.
So what happens if the person who you gave access to does something illegal (child porn for example)?
If the person is in china and attempting to access information that has been censored by the chinese government it doesn't matter if it's kiddie porn or pictures of last year's freedom rally, that person is already breaking the law.
You either accept that censorship of speech is tantamount to enforcement of thought crimes - and resist such tyranny in all its forms even when it offends your delicate western christofeminazi mindset, or you don't really believe in individual liberty at all. If you run an open proxy like this, then you accept that mindset and are prepared to defend yourself if/when it causes the MIB to come knockin'.
The people of china live under chinese law. I can see merit in helping them overcome opression, but this constant durge about china not "censoring the internet" for its citizens and the US being all squeaky clean on this matter is complete bullshit. The greater problem is when it's something that pisses off ma and pa kettle thet politicos in washington drag out threats of trade tarrifs and that "offensive" speech largely ends up being censored across the whole goddamned motherfucking world.
But Linux has gained in popluarity on it's own merits, not as a public response to Microsoft/Windows.
It had little merit before it reached a critical mass of development contributions. before that it was a kernel and a collection of moslty unevolved gnu programs. And from where did that gnu community come? RMS and his ilk were begat from *another* reaction to even *more* copyrighted and closed source programs.
I base this opinion on my own knowledge and experiences
IOW, your proof is your assertion and your anecdotes and has nothing to do with historical evidence outside the chair which now contains you.
This is a myth, perpetuated by the un-informed, and the ignorant.
said the man without a mirror...
While we're all re-reading, you might want to take another look at what *I* said. I did not say linux was *created* as a responseto windows. What I said (repeatedly) is that it has reached the popularity it has today in large part because of a public response to windows. If you doubt this, you haven't been reading /. very long... or ANY of the various linux support fora. anti-MS zealotry seems to be part and parcel of the linux landscape. It ain't universal, but that's only because it is now shrinking a bit. In the early days it was much more universal dogma, and that is what drove the initial developments to make linux a good enough solution to appeal to those of lesser zeal.
So, how could the production company have earned that kind of revenue? Without copyright. Yep, you read that right. Here's the details:
Blah blah blah. Copyright is not something one is forced to enforce. There is nothign stopping saomeone from dumping millions of dollars into something pof value and then giving it away (see: ubuntu). There is nothing stopping the producers from doing this now, because no one is forcing anyone to enforce their rights of copy.
So put up the website and get crackin'. No one's stopping you from trying.