But you are incorrect in saying I said "power is stored in the junction and that creates heat." I made it clear that it was just the opposite, in fact.. did you miss that part?
I've had two Vaios and they both died due to inadequate heat dissipation. Not enough cooling on the CPU = heat destroyed capacitors = flaky, dying laptops that cost more than the laptop is worth for repair.
Not to mention they came with the slowest hard drives of any preassembled computer I ever bought. I didn't pay for either of'em, and I'm glad. No way would I spend my pennies on ANYTHING labelled Sony.
If it's got a 15" screen then it's considerably larger than a T600, which barely is large enough for the 13.3" TFT. It's not thin enough to cut in half with scissors, but it's still about the compactness (well, and the general adaptability - spare parts are plentiful and cheap).
The thinkpad also has full size keys but the layout isn't "full size" and having everything cramped together makes typing on any laptop, for me, feel claustrophobic.
the cpu isn't a static device - those transistors switching is what causes the heat, and from a power perspective those are teeny little capacitors each and every one. Doubling the voltage will cause a relative quadrupling of power stored in the junction. This is why jacking up core coltage just a tenth of a volt when overclocking can cause such dramatic heat increases inside the box.
No way would I pay $1000 or more for a laptop computer. No matter what you do it's still going to have one of those cramped keyboards and limited expansion without carrying aroound a bag of USB goodies. And if you drop it then what? Yeah you can get an expensive new system with one of those "oops I dropped it" warranties, but that same money would buy a LOT of spare parts for an older, well built machine.
For $1500 I can have, like, 6 or 7 T600 stinkpads. Or maybe just one or two and a sack of batteries to keep it running 12 hours or more. Gets the job done, and if I drop it I don't care so much. "No one will ever need more than 500MHz and 512MB of memory."
I've had a lot of laptops and they all sucked compared to my (relatively) light, compact little thinkpad. They work great with linux and they feel so soft and squishy - if batman carried a laptop, he'd carry a classic thinkpad.
In the US the "complete" newsgroup providers I know of have begun either denying posting access to certain groups, or just filtering out binary content altogether. Easynews especially seems to have been hit hard since that virus made its debut from one of their accounts. Every now and then you see a complaint from someone in the support forum because godzilla deleted binary content - their response is almost always "get over it, things have changed." That old paradigm about carriers of content not being responsible for the actual content seems to have gone out the window - lots of "police," self appointed and otherwise, sending in complaints. Once the complaint is made, the carriers have no choice but to delete it.
I use easynews and regularly READ (important note there) several of the "shady" groups. There's plenty of music and movies and stuff, but the kiddie fans and site crackers have ALL gone underground. LOTS of groups now flooded with PGP posts and encrypted RARs, locked away from everyone but the cliques that communicate elsewhere and use the groups as massive file stores. All that's left in the clear are stories about arrests and rumors of arrests - those folks are all running scared and getting busted even in places like Finland and Singapore. Even many of the bigger MP3 posters have left the building.
I do believe usenet is about to "grow up" the way the web did. Except newsgroups are useless to businesses for anything except support forums, so how this is going to affect things in the future remains to be seen.
Even most of the stuff in the DVD rip groups is intentionally mislabelled and you often hear about folks having their accounts cancelled due to their posts in the music and video groups. The only reason none of this affects me is because I don't post ripped movies or pop music (or illegal shit) - all my trading is done in the "international" and techno music groups where artists are more independant and copyright coverage a bit murkier.
That said, I think these folks must be late to the party. I'm sure there are plenty of newbs on IRC doing illegal shit, but nobody with more than half a brain would be doing it in the open on IRC where your IP can be grabbed in realtime. I'd say the NYT is, as usual, arriving VERY late to this party.
thisa nx bit allows developers to flag areas of memory "no execute" so that buffer overflows cannot be exploited. So (in theory) you could tell the system to flag the area you're using for the heap "no execute" and then overflows could not be exploited by dumping the program counter back into this area of memory.
Sounds well and good, but I can think of at least two questions: has anyone in the linux community looked into making use of this and, if not, why not?
As another poster in this thread so proudly pointed out, there have been seven exploits for Apache in the wild. Is this accurate? I don't keep track of such numbers, but I'll point out that if true this points out exactly what I said: fewer exploits, fewer attacks.
MS has a "windows update" feature. It doesn't take a genius to enable it. Now, granted this feature can cause headaches if you have a large number of systems to update, but you can also perform similar processes under your own control (if you are an admin) and yet this wasn't done. Turn off all those ports? It doesn't take a genius to download the shavlik lockdown tool linked to by MS itself that will "audit" your system and close any unused ports. It also doesn't take a genius to click to e-eye for an external audit.
There are so many ways to fix these systems it's nuts. Yeah, they require a tiny bit of effort - one would think that's why the British taxpayers pay these administrator's salaries.
I'm no shill. I run both windows and linux, although I've been using windows a LOT longer and am, therefore, more able to exploit it. So are a lot of people, which makes it that much more vulnerable. And yet my own linux firewall was hacked one time because... tada... I was running a version of Smoothwall, didn't know the distro or what I was doing, and in the setup config the SSL port was left open and the service running and no explanation was made of the significance of this. As a result my "firewall" was owned within days, zone alarm disabled on one of my (unpatched) windows boxen, and (in short) the entire network became owned. I migrated to IPCOP then reloaded and patched the windows box, just a little wiser and smarter.
Just as so many here are fond of saying "slashdot doesn't have just one mind" I'll remind others who are dumping on MS over this there have been and are plenty of linux distros, and not all of them uniformly secure or stable "out of the box."
Holding the software maker responsible for something like this is as stupid as holding the coca-cola company responsible when some idiot pulls one of their vending machines over onto himself. Would you be so quick to call for heads on a stake if this were a network of Redhat boxes? How about a few dozen Suse desktops? It doesn't matter what OS you are using, problems like this almost always come down to one thing: PEBKAC.
Yup, it comes down to everyone. It's easy to say "MS sucks, look at this proof" but the fact is MANY systems are vulnerable to malicious intent and the free solutions escape much of this attention simply because fewer people seem to be - for now - writing exploits.
A solution to this problem has been around for weeks now, yet one or more of these system were left unpatched. So yeah, the virus writer surely bears some responsibility, but then again so does the coast guard. And even if an MS OS did not exist at all and these folks had been running linux, if there were a similar exploit floating around in the wild would the admins who left this door open have fared any better then?
You can't hold MS responsible for the incompetence of the coast guard admins. Yeah, their software had an exploit - but they also had a solution available and it's not like this was any kind of secret. I hate to be this trite, but it's appropo here to remind everyone what "mama" always said: stupid is as stupid does...
and twice the present "average" memory. Two or more years down the road.
Uhhh... So?
Did they also mention the motherboard chipset cryptographic engince, the always-on internet connection for "authentication" or even what kind of sound cards these new systems will have? Or are they still going to offer "analog holes" on top of all that (ahem) "security?"
IBM did all it could to lock out other makers - clones - but ultimately lost once that final nail (the cleanroom BIOS) became available. Before that the system was already more popular than the Apple of the time, which had a reputation as being "not a business system."
Anyway, the point being: the IBM "clone" became the standard because it was, essentially, open. IBM actually encouraged others to make PCs thinking they would have to license the BIOS. Once the BIOS was out of their control, that came back to haunt them but it allowed the PC to become the standard bearer for the next two decades.
In the 25 years since, the Mac has always been there, but always a tiny part of the market. Apple keeps a tight reign on the system which means no clones and no competition. It also has generally meant second class status when it came to public perception because "everyone uses pcs."
If Longhorn really goes down the avenue everyone has been talking it will require new hardware, a new OS, likely giving up many old programs people know and use, and (most of all) it will mean complete lockin in a way the public will easily perceive. That means for a time it will have all the same perception problems as the Mac PLUS it will have Microsoft behind it - a name no one I know trusts, and that doesn't just mean IT professionals.
This is a fantastic opportunity, and I still say it's only up to "the linux community" to blow it.
I think Bill's finally lost that grasp. And I don't think anyone here should let this be a concern - in fact, it's an ultimately good thing.
Longhorn is still two years away. Linux is getting better and better and the endless virus plagues are beginning to get to mom and joe user. If Longhorn comes on the market with an entirely new, relatively backwards incompatible system (like XP was - the XP "emulation" engine doesn't even work as well as WINE on, for example, Am. McGee's "Alice") all this lockdown is going to come back to haunt them. Does no one remember the early PC wars and two little computer companies named Apple and IBM? Yeah, they're both still around - but I don't think I need to tell you which one became the standard bearer. Does no one remember why?
Microsoft is making the exact same mistakes IBM made twenty five years ago. So just shut up with the complaints lest you reopen that crack uncle bill is fixing in his door...
I went in at 6AM, got knocked out, woke up about 1 in recovery and by 4 I was on my way home. Slept until the next day and that was that. I've had an infection in my sinus for about 6 months now and my ear has been filled with fluid the whole time - I went to the doctor expecting to get surgery. My hearing is most important to me and after suffering with this nonsense for ten years I just want to get the damn thing fixed.
The post-op anitbiotic is worse than the operation, but it only lasts seven days. There was no pain from the surgery unless I bumped my nose, and the relief in my breathing was immediate from the moment I left the hospital. I had a deviated septum that's had the right side of my head plugged up most of my life - I'd do the entire operation again in a heartbeat and, in fact, if my ear doesn't empty of fluid on its own in another month or so I'll get a tube put in there to drain it.
I've had sinus problems my entire life. I don't think people who don't have chronic sinus problems can understand what a miserable experience it can be, getting infection after infection every time you get a stupid cold. Repeated infections cause polyps (not to mention resistant strains from all the antibiotics) which just plugs it all up worse - that's how they know about the staph. Kinda silly to be second guessing now, as I already made clear I've HAD the surgery.
People who HAVE had chronic sinus problems their entire lives also cannot know what a relief it is to be rid of it. Modern technology is a wonderful thing and, in the long run, the operation was less than all the rest of the money I've spent over the years on doctor visits and lost work.
But I think a "geek" would realize that a fire safe might protect paper - which burns at a relatively high temp - but might not protect CDs which can melt and warp at a much lower temp. I doubt the fire safe would do much good if the house were to burn down completely, as the fire would probably last long enough to heat the inside of the safe to a very high temp.
From a parallel universe comes that will complete a set of tasks automatically if you forget to "reset" it peridically. And I know it works, as one fellow forgot to reset it and delivered an unexpected last will and testament top the discussion board one day. That said, this same community recently lost a member to suicide, and it's interesting to see how that person's online data becomes a virtual meeting place for the mourners.
It's already happening. The only new US release I've bought in years came from one of the Creative Commons websites, and I don't doubt I'll be buying more. I downloaded the songs from usenet, liked them so much I went looking for the artist's website, then was pleasantly surprised to find the release offered on Magnatune. For eight bucks I "upgraded" my 192kbps MP3s to FLAC and contributed four bucks to the artist - likely a lot more than he would have received from Sony or EMI.
I don't really have issues with people posting older music, but if we would practice what we preach we could get a lot more attention for "good" artists rather than continuing to post and share mainstream pop releases. And look at the other discussion here recently on "gaming engines" - "machinima" is destined to become more realistic, the day when we have "klans" competing through releases of original movies on usenet and irc is coming... and their move into "popular culture" will surely not be far behind.
Yeah, people lived before pasteurization and mouthwash and clean community water - but lots MORE of them didn't. Scores of Napoleon's men were lost to canned goods that had gone bad, and even today tens of thousands die every year when the monsoons bring cholera outbreaks.
I'm sick as a dog right now because I'm on day four of a seven day course of some disgusting antibiotic that leaves me nauseous and physically in pain, but it's all that's available to me now because, thanks to abuse of these medicines by our own medical system, this infection in my sinus (that had to be surgically removed) is immune to everything else.
Yeah, "humankind" may adapt, but in the process legions will become sick and die. FYI the infection in my sinus is a staph, and staph can live a very long time on things like shower curtains. So dismiss it if you care, just hope it's not your leg that has to be cut off when you contract a treatment resistant staph from simply brushing against your shower curtain after having scratched that mosquito bite you got last night...
Not to sound completely cold hearted, but so what if "Millions of children are exploited for sexual purposes every year?" This was happening before the internet - if anything, the internet makes it EASIER to find the people doing the exploitation. If the law had any logic to it at all, posting trophy shots would be protected speech - encourage the sick fuckers to share their images and make themselves vulnerable.
There is no valid legal reason to take a camcorder into a movie theater and post the video for download. It might fun. It might be easy. But, it's not defensible as a liberty.
Except only ONE person took that camcorder into the theatre. It was posted and shared and the act of sharing it is different than the act of camming it - again, even the law says so. Your argument in this case is moot, as sharing those files is the issue here, not creating them. As in child molestation images, the creation of the material represents the real crime - what comes of the material after that creation should, quite arguably, not be a crime at all.
Has anyone read some of the (English language) forum comments? I find it interesting these featured quotes from people such as Ben Franklin. My knowledge of politics is limited to conflicting ideals espoused by various agenda laden news organizations, so I honestly don't know: are there no mideastern/Egyptian icons of Liberty? Or are "American ideals" truly as strong internationally (or at least in Egypt) as american rhetoric would have us believe?
We have the freedom to live LEGAL lives.
At what point does it step past "freedom" and into illegal?
It doesn't matter. Freedom is about responsibility as much as liberty. Choosing to violate the law does not negate our freedom so long as we are likewise held responsible. Problem is, corporations like this are increasingly held less responsible for their ever-expandig freedoms.
Do I have the right to shoot the noise dog next door to be "free" of the noise?
Damn skippy. A dog is property - if my neighbor won't take care of the fucker and the police won't help, you damn betcha I'll resolve the matter myself. I won't use a gun (that's illegal in most cities) but I've done it before using other, quieter, means. It didn't result in a civil action but I was fully prepared for it: I'm sure he knew who did it, as I had spoken with him before and warned him of the end effect of failure to comply with his neighbor's (polite) request. If more people would have the guts to do this, there'd be a lot fewer barking dogs annoying entire neighborhoods of people.
Why not?
I just told you why - you tell me why not.
When our "freedoms" and illegal cross steps have to be taken. By supporting the illegal actions regardless of the cause or ideal behind it you bolster the RIAA's arguments.
The RIAA's argument is it's illegal - your argument then is just another circular validation of theirs.
The fact is we are in the process of redefining fair use - fundamentally that is ALL this boils down to. The SCOTUS has repeatedly defended certain "liberties" because of the impracticalities of enforcement, often relating to the substantial loss of privacy such enforcement would entail. We, therefore, have a responsibility (there's that word again) as technically competent developers to create as many technological means of defending our "rights" as we are able. The more able we are to prove the impracticalities of defending these laws, the better served we will be in the end - when these ridiculously overreaching laws are finally challenged in the courts.
Because the studios are ALREADY there. They ALREADY own the radio and tv channels, they ALREADY control the commercial outlets, they ALREADY have all the book distributors. The "e-outlets" that exist now would have to compete with them still, except without ANY copyright it would be perfectly legal for those mega-outlets to make use of anything that might accidentally become popular WITHOUT their blessing.
Destroying copyright doesn't destroy the outlets. It still takes an expensive FCC license to get a tv station and even more money to keep it running. You think without copyright MTV is going to be any quicker to put you into rotation? The Britney Spears and Jessica Simpsons would stll dominate because they have the money behind them. No copyright would change the kind of deals those people get, but for indie artists all it would do is leave them vulnerable to exploitation without ANY means of recourse; your band's underground music website becomes popular? Great! We'll use your music to sell pepsi... and you won't get a fucking thing - thanks so much for breaking down those "monopolies on popular culture."
Russia has just about zero enforcement of what little copyright protection exists in their laws. So, do you think MTV Russia is some sort of free range of Russian indie artists? Hmmmm... p diddy, Britney, Elton, Jessica... sure doesn't look that much different. And what Russian lables are those Russian artists on who DO get played on mtv.ru? EMI, Warner, Sony...
Without copyright protection indie artists don't suddenly become more marketable - they just become even easier to exploit.
We WOULD still have both Microsoft and the Matrix. Those aren't going away even if Copyright were stripped away tomorrow.
But MP3.com did not use any osrt of GPL model. And, in fact, in the end they co-opted lots of "old school" label music without getting permission from the owners of those copyrights, ultimately putting all those garage bands who trusted them in direct competition with Madonna and Eminem. This didn't help those garage artists AND it led to their ultimate demise.
Without any copyright every indie artist would have even less chance to compete with megastudios. It's easy to talk about them as plantation owners, but the fact is these are not physical goods we're talking about - and those "plantations" would have their place with or without laws protecting them. Remember Pat Boone? Little Richard? Elvis? All those white boys taking the music from black boys and making money for those "plantation owners" without giving the creators their due? With no copyright protection at all EVERY garage band in the country striving for fame and/or fortune become subjects of those plantation owners.
We may not all have an equal chance at fame with the system as it is, but stripping away all copyright protections would make it even harder - not to mention all that GPL protected code that would end up in Windows uber-release XP2005. I don't know about you, but I don't contribute to GPL projects so that my work can go into the back pockets of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
Slashdot Mirror
But you are incorrect in saying I said "power is stored in the junction and that creates heat." I made it clear that it was just the opposite, in fact.. did you miss that part?
Not to mention they came with the slowest hard drives of any preassembled computer I ever bought. I didn't pay for either of'em, and I'm glad. No way would I spend my pennies on ANYTHING labelled Sony.
The thinkpad also has full size keys but the layout isn't "full size" and having everything cramped together makes typing on any laptop, for me, feel claustrophobic.
Q=CV^2
For $1500 I can have, like, 6 or 7 T600 stinkpads. Or maybe just one or two and a sack of batteries to keep it running 12 hours or more. Gets the job done, and if I drop it I don't care so much. "No one will ever need more than 500MHz and 512MB of memory."
I've had a lot of laptops and they all sucked compared to my (relatively) light, compact little thinkpad. They work great with linux and they feel so soft and squishy - if batman carried a laptop, he'd carry a classic thinkpad.
In the US the "complete" newsgroup providers I know of have begun either denying posting access to certain groups, or just filtering out binary content altogether. Easynews especially seems to have been hit hard since that virus made its debut from one of their accounts. Every now and then you see a complaint from someone in the support forum because godzilla deleted binary content - their response is almost always "get over it, things have changed." That old paradigm about carriers of content not being responsible for the actual content seems to have gone out the window - lots of "police," self appointed and otherwise, sending in complaints. Once the complaint is made, the carriers have no choice but to delete it.
I use easynews and regularly READ (important note there) several of the "shady" groups. There's plenty of music and movies and stuff, but the kiddie fans and site crackers have ALL gone underground. LOTS of groups now flooded with PGP posts and encrypted RARs, locked away from everyone but the cliques that communicate elsewhere and use the groups as massive file stores. All that's left in the clear are stories about arrests and rumors of arrests - those folks are all running scared and getting busted even in places like Finland and Singapore. Even many of the bigger MP3 posters have left the building.
I do believe usenet is about to "grow up" the way the web did. Except newsgroups are useless to businesses for anything except support forums, so how this is going to affect things in the future remains to be seen.
Even most of the stuff in the DVD rip groups is intentionally mislabelled and you often hear about folks having their accounts cancelled due to their posts in the music and video groups. The only reason none of this affects me is because I don't post ripped movies or pop music (or illegal shit) - all my trading is done in the "international" and techno music groups where artists are more independant and copyright coverage a bit murkier.
That said, I think these folks must be late to the party. I'm sure there are plenty of newbs on IRC doing illegal shit, but nobody with more than half a brain would be doing it in the open on IRC where your IP can be grabbed in realtime. I'd say the NYT is, as usual, arriving VERY late to this party.
They'll be supporting the thigns that get them the most MONEY. The votes are easy - they'll just lie about it later...
Sounds well and good, but I can think of at least two questions: has anyone in the linux community looked into making use of this and, if not, why not?
MS has a "windows update" feature. It doesn't take a genius to enable it. Now, granted this feature can cause headaches if you have a large number of systems to update, but you can also perform similar processes under your own control (if you are an admin) and yet this wasn't done. Turn off all those ports? It doesn't take a genius to download the shavlik lockdown tool linked to by MS itself that will "audit" your system and close any unused ports. It also doesn't take a genius to click to e-eye for an external audit.
There are so many ways to fix these systems it's nuts. Yeah, they require a tiny bit of effort - one would think that's why the British taxpayers pay these administrator's salaries.
I'm no shill. I run both windows and linux, although I've been using windows a LOT longer and am, therefore, more able to exploit it. So are a lot of people, which makes it that much more vulnerable. And yet my own linux firewall was hacked one time because... tada... I was running a version of Smoothwall, didn't know the distro or what I was doing, and in the setup config the SSL port was left open and the service running and no explanation was made of the significance of this. As a result my "firewall" was owned within days, zone alarm disabled on one of my (unpatched) windows boxen, and (in short) the entire network became owned. I migrated to IPCOP then reloaded and patched the windows box, just a little wiser and smarter.
Just as so many here are fond of saying "slashdot doesn't have just one mind" I'll remind others who are dumping on MS over this there have been and are plenty of linux distros, and not all of them uniformly secure or stable "out of the box."
Holding the software maker responsible for something like this is as stupid as holding the coca-cola company responsible when some idiot pulls one of their vending machines over onto himself. Would you be so quick to call for heads on a stake if this were a network of Redhat boxes? How about a few dozen Suse desktops? It doesn't matter what OS you are using, problems like this almost always come down to one thing: PEBKAC.
A solution to this problem has been around for weeks now, yet one or more of these system were left unpatched. So yeah, the virus writer surely bears some responsibility, but then again so does the coast guard. And even if an MS OS did not exist at all and these folks had been running linux, if there were a similar exploit floating around in the wild would the admins who left this door open have fared any better then?
You can't hold MS responsible for the incompetence of the coast guard admins. Yeah, their software had an exploit - but they also had a solution available and it's not like this was any kind of secret. I hate to be this trite, but it's appropo here to remind everyone what "mama" always said: stupid is as stupid does...
Uhhh... So?
Did they also mention the motherboard chipset cryptographic engince, the always-on internet connection for "authentication" or even what kind of sound cards these new systems will have? Or are they still going to offer "analog holes" on top of all that (ahem) "security?"
Anyway, the point being: the IBM "clone" became the standard because it was, essentially, open. IBM actually encouraged others to make PCs thinking they would have to license the BIOS. Once the BIOS was out of their control, that came back to haunt them but it allowed the PC to become the standard bearer for the next two decades.
In the 25 years since, the Mac has always been there, but always a tiny part of the market. Apple keeps a tight reign on the system which means no clones and no competition. It also has generally meant second class status when it came to public perception because "everyone uses pcs."
If Longhorn really goes down the avenue everyone has been talking it will require new hardware, a new OS, likely giving up many old programs people know and use, and (most of all) it will mean complete lockin in a way the public will easily perceive. That means for a time it will have all the same perception problems as the Mac PLUS it will have Microsoft behind it - a name no one I know trusts, and that doesn't just mean IT professionals.
This is a fantastic opportunity, and I still say it's only up to "the linux community" to blow it.
I think Bill's finally lost that grasp. And I don't think anyone here should let this be a concern - in fact, it's an ultimately good thing.
Longhorn is still two years away. Linux is getting better and better and the endless virus plagues are beginning to get to mom and joe user. If Longhorn comes on the market with an entirely new, relatively backwards incompatible system (like XP was - the XP "emulation" engine doesn't even work as well as WINE on, for example, Am. McGee's "Alice") all this lockdown is going to come back to haunt them. Does no one remember the early PC wars and two little computer companies named Apple and IBM? Yeah, they're both still around - but I don't think I need to tell you which one became the standard bearer. Does no one remember why?
Microsoft is making the exact same mistakes IBM made twenty five years ago. So just shut up with the complaints lest you reopen that crack uncle bill is fixing in his door...
The post-op anitbiotic is worse than the operation, but it only lasts seven days. There was no pain from the surgery unless I bumped my nose, and the relief in my breathing was immediate from the moment I left the hospital. I had a deviated septum that's had the right side of my head plugged up most of my life - I'd do the entire operation again in a heartbeat and, in fact, if my ear doesn't empty of fluid on its own in another month or so I'll get a tube put in there to drain it.
I've had sinus problems my entire life. I don't think people who don't have chronic sinus problems can understand what a miserable experience it can be, getting infection after infection every time you get a stupid cold. Repeated infections cause polyps (not to mention resistant strains from all the antibiotics) which just plugs it all up worse - that's how they know about the staph. Kinda silly to be second guessing now, as I already made clear I've HAD the surgery.
People who HAVE had chronic sinus problems their entire lives also cannot know what a relief it is to be rid of it. Modern technology is a wonderful thing and, in the long run, the operation was less than all the rest of the money I've spent over the years on doctor visits and lost work.
But I think a "geek" would realize that a fire safe might protect paper - which burns at a relatively high temp - but might not protect CDs which can melt and warp at a much lower temp. I doubt the fire safe would do much good if the house were to burn down completely, as the fire would probably last long enough to heat the inside of the safe to a very high temp.
I don't really have issues with people posting older music, but if we would practice what we preach we could get a lot more attention for "good" artists rather than continuing to post and share mainstream pop releases. And look at the other discussion here recently on "gaming engines" - "machinima" is destined to become more realistic, the day when we have "klans" competing through releases of original movies on usenet and irc is coming... and their move into "popular culture" will surely not be far behind.
Uh...yeah...like did you read the part where I said "thanks to abuse of these medicines by our own medical system?"
Duh. -1, pointless.
I'm sick as a dog right now because I'm on day four of a seven day course of some disgusting antibiotic that leaves me nauseous and physically in pain, but it's all that's available to me now because, thanks to abuse of these medicines by our own medical system, this infection in my sinus (that had to be surgically removed) is immune to everything else.
Yeah, "humankind" may adapt, but in the process legions will become sick and die. FYI the infection in my sinus is a staph, and staph can live a very long time on things like shower curtains. So dismiss it if you care, just hope it's not your leg that has to be cut off when you contract a treatment resistant staph from simply brushing against your shower curtain after having scratched that mosquito bite you got last night...
There is no valid legal reason to take a camcorder into a movie theater and post the video for download. It might fun. It might be easy. But, it's not defensible as a liberty.
Except only ONE person took that camcorder into the theatre. It was posted and shared and the act of sharing it is different than the act of camming it - again, even the law says so. Your argument in this case is moot, as sharing those files is the issue here, not creating them. As in child molestation images, the creation of the material represents the real crime - what comes of the material after that creation should, quite arguably, not be a crime at all.
Are you Egyptian? Are ALL Egyptians rude assholes like yourself?
Has anyone read some of the (English language) forum comments? I find it interesting these featured quotes from people such as Ben Franklin. My knowledge of politics is limited to conflicting ideals espoused by various agenda laden news organizations, so I honestly don't know: are there no mideastern/Egyptian icons of Liberty? Or are "American ideals" truly as strong internationally (or at least in Egypt) as american rhetoric would have us believe?
It doesn't matter. Freedom is about responsibility as much as liberty. Choosing to violate the law does not negate our freedom so long as we are likewise held responsible. Problem is, corporations like this are increasingly held less responsible for their ever-expandig freedoms.
Do I have the right to shoot the noise dog next door to be "free" of the noise?
Damn skippy. A dog is property - if my neighbor won't take care of the fucker and the police won't help, you damn betcha I'll resolve the matter myself. I won't use a gun (that's illegal in most cities) but I've done it before using other, quieter, means. It didn't result in a civil action but I was fully prepared for it: I'm sure he knew who did it, as I had spoken with him before and warned him of the end effect of failure to comply with his neighbor's (polite) request. If more people would have the guts to do this, there'd be a lot fewer barking dogs annoying entire neighborhoods of people.
Why not?
I just told you why - you tell me why not.
When our "freedoms" and illegal cross steps have to be taken. By supporting the illegal actions regardless of the cause or ideal behind it you bolster the RIAA's arguments.
The RIAA's argument is it's illegal - your argument then is just another circular validation of theirs.
The fact is we are in the process of redefining fair use - fundamentally that is ALL this boils down to. The SCOTUS has repeatedly defended certain "liberties" because of the impracticalities of enforcement, often relating to the substantial loss of privacy such enforcement would entail. We, therefore, have a responsibility (there's that word again) as technically competent developers to create as many technological means of defending our "rights" as we are able. The more able we are to prove the impracticalities of defending these laws, the better served we will be in the end - when these ridiculously overreaching laws are finally challenged in the courts.
Destroying copyright doesn't destroy the outlets. It still takes an expensive FCC license to get a tv station and even more money to keep it running. You think without copyright MTV is going to be any quicker to put you into rotation? The Britney Spears and Jessica Simpsons would stll dominate because they have the money behind them. No copyright would change the kind of deals those people get, but for indie artists all it would do is leave them vulnerable to exploitation without ANY means of recourse; your band's underground music website becomes popular? Great! We'll use your music to sell pepsi... and you won't get a fucking thing - thanks so much for breaking down those "monopolies on popular culture."
Russia has just about zero enforcement of what little copyright protection exists in their laws. So, do you think MTV Russia is some sort of free range of Russian indie artists? Hmmmm... p diddy, Britney, Elton, Jessica... sure doesn't look that much different. And what Russian lables are those Russian artists on who DO get played on mtv.ru? EMI, Warner, Sony...
Without copyright protection indie artists don't suddenly become more marketable - they just become even easier to exploit.
And so do programmers.
But MP3.com did not use any osrt of GPL model. And, in fact, in the end they co-opted lots of "old school" label music without getting permission from the owners of those copyrights, ultimately putting all those garage bands who trusted them in direct competition with Madonna and Eminem. This didn't help those garage artists AND it led to their ultimate demise.
Without any copyright every indie artist would have even less chance to compete with megastudios. It's easy to talk about them as plantation owners, but the fact is these are not physical goods we're talking about - and those "plantations" would have their place with or without laws protecting them. Remember Pat Boone? Little Richard? Elvis? All those white boys taking the music from black boys and making money for those "plantation owners" without giving the creators their due? With no copyright protection at all EVERY garage band in the country striving for fame and/or fortune become subjects of those plantation owners.
We may not all have an equal chance at fame with the system as it is, but stripping away all copyright protections would make it even harder - not to mention all that GPL protected code that would end up in Windows uber-release XP2005. I don't know about you, but I don't contribute to GPL projects so that my work can go into the back pockets of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.