With the stagnation of upper management I think anyone with even a mildly original thought is paradigm smashing. Most companies have a policy regarding former employees: refuse to answer any questions about them. Of course they're "not remembered".
Aside from that, though, I agree. A club that anyone can join has no value. My personal take on this is to cut out the middle entirely: a club has no value.
Either you'll win or you'll lose. Memberships, degrees, friends, money--none of it really matters. What matters is food, shelter, and clothing.
If your natural knee jerk response is to say "what about a house, what about a car, what about a mate, what about a family" just relax. None of it really matters. All of those things are just society playing with your head trying to get you to run in more circles and jump through more hoops and hurdles for their amusement.
I agree. I've investigated several online social networking sites and have discovered the same thing about every one of them: they promise a lot, give very little, and charge money for the next opportunity. The next opportunity rarely produces any real connection. There are always a million excuses why the last opportunity didn't work out and, for an additional $20/mo., the scheme will bump you up to the next level where the next opportunity awaits. Like that pyramid scheme that keeps holding informational meetings at the local Holiday Inn hall or business suite.
The sad part is that if enough estranged yuppies start using this it _will_ turn into the next big pyramid scheme like the.com boom. You'll have to get in on it if you want to move ahead but the only way of moving ahead will be to become personally attached to someone who's already closer to the top. If you don't already know someone then you'll be just more cannon fodder sending in your money with the dreamy hope that it'll work out.
With odds like that you can go sit at the local bar and become George Bush's best friend or buy a lottery ticket. Who needs social networking if you're connected to the top or rich?
I doubt they were benevolent. I certainly didn't (still don't) have the skill to save the suspect BIOS and then analyze it to ensure there's nothing fishy inside of it. I don't even know what processor the DI-604 runs on.
Ummmm... dialup users are screwed because PPP filtering is a completely different beast?
I'm not a kernel hacker but I would like to try and keep things straight in my head. In PCI ethernet networks, the ethernet card gets attached to kernel mem locations and a firewall attaches itself between kernel mem locations and the userspace programs that they serve. PPP, from my limited knowledge, gets attached to completely different kernel mem locations and dialup networking userspace programs are allowed to pass PPP mem locations to IP mem locations such that most userspace programs have no trouble getting the info they need from the TCP/IP environment.
So this brings up the interesting question: are there bugs in the PPP components of modern kernels which can be exploited before any commonly available firewalls can filter the packets from the IP stack?
I don't know. Feel free to correct me on the diagram.
I used to think one hardware router was enough until I noticed that my DI-604 with the original BIOS was sending out UPnP packets. The upgraded DI-604 BIOS is UPnP enabled, but the original version that shipped with the router wasn't. So this led me to believe that someone rather knowledgeable had made use of hardware exploits in my cable modem and router to reflash the BIOS.
Now I sit behind 2 hardware routers and tcpdump -vvv eth0 rarely shows any packet other than those I requested.
It sure lets me play around with LFS more and read netfilter HOWTOs less.:)
Okay. That still doesn't address the problem of circumventing hardware encryption, interfacing with a PC for custom analysis, and finding a swipe card writer.
I think Google's defense will probably be related to "Everyone on earth knows what is meant when they see the... in a Google search. There is no damage to your reputation. Without injury there's no crime."
It's the approach that the state takes when sued by private citizens: "no harm, no foul". And the state has managed to significantly broaden the definition of "no harm". Technically speaking, the guys locked up in Guatanamo without any formal charges are suffering no harm.
Now, when the state decides to run down a given citizen, then all bets are off. No harm needed, he violated the law!
Fantastic idea that I'm sure many people have thought of.
The biggest hurdle seems to be acquiring a magnetic card reader which can interface with a home PC and bit-nibble the data on a valid card and a magnetic card writer. I certainly wouldn't know where to get either of these.
One could sign up for business VISA/MC access and maybe engineer some kind of hack on the cc reader that will bit-nibble the data and send it to a PC but I imagine there are hardware encryption chips that would have to be identified and removed along with circuit board traces rewired.
One of the largest problems in American society today is that people accumulate too much clutter. Americans have been taught to become pack rats by their government. Homework papers, tests, report cards, gradebooks, all useless stuff that gets handed back in gradeschools. Some students learn how to create a proper and effective filing system. As they grow older they should learn that the most important part of the filing system is the vertical file (/dev/null).
Most people never make it to the vertical file stage, though, because the leaders of American society are obsessed with excuses on why they get to keep the majority of the benefits and why we, the common citizen, have to deal with the shizzat. The easiest way to say,"Oh, we're sorry, you don't qualify for that rebate/credit/refund/etc. because you didn't save that stub/number/receipt/whatever/etc." It's a perfect pyramid scheme.
This mentality gets transferred over to people's computers. They live in a world where they're frantically saving nearly everything they can. As such, Americans just plain flat out accumulate way too much *CRAP* that they just can't let go of.
So... yes... it's a good thing that a virus comes along and wipes their boot sectors every once in a while. Perhaps it will begin to teach them to effectively prioritize what's _really_ important. And it's _NOT_ the junk they store on their computer.
-----...get over it, it's life. ----- That's what I say to the Tipper Gore's who want to move everything to.xxx or.sex, that's what I say to the media companies, and that's what I say to ACs.
----- I mean, come on -- we all know that if you spend time randomly surfing the Web, you can hardly go an hour or two without randomly stumbling across some porn ----- Maybe these people should spend more time thinking about their children and less time randomly surfing the web? If they would monitor their children as closely as they monitor online pr0n their children wouldn't be viewing the online pr0n, now would they?
I have only on two occasions been confronted with online pr0n when I haven't been explicitly looking for it. This tells me that 1) either there really IS an online conspiracy involving DNS, ISPs, and online monitoring, or 2) the majority of the public is LYING OUT THEIR A$$ when questioned about their online usage habits.
If it's #2 then we live in a world of pr0n-surfers and even the little old lady down the hall is just too embarassed to up and admit it. If it's #1 then the CIA already knows that you've been viewing goatse.cx and, if they really wanted to pick you up, they would have a long time ago.
A price cut? I certainly don't want my tax dollars going to fund a tax cut to support pr0n. It'd just be another pyramid scheme as banks line up for all the top level contracts. Even if it were a good idea we'd lose 98%+ of it to Greenspan and his cronies.
Government offers contract for.sex and.xxx registration. In order to make it a viable alternative the government offers to back low-interest loans for bandwidth providers willing to host such things. This requires three contracts: one contract with the banks who will shell out the cash to get this ball rolling and another contract to the backbone provider hosting these domains and a third contract to the registrar who will manage it.
Tell me that's not the beginnings of a perfect pyramid scheme (as long as you're at the top level).
"Please stay within the free speech zone so that we can use less tear gas to subdue you when Tipper Gore gives the signal."
Am I cynical, enlightened, disillusioned, or just fed up with being pushed around by Washington bureaucrats? If I want to look at pr0n then, by doggammit, I'm going to. If GW Bush doesn't want me to look at pr0n then perhaps he should donate one of his daughters to my harem. For cripes' sakes. I'm 28, in good physical condition, educated, I have a libido like any other man on this planet, and I have standards which say I'm not going to screw the town nasty-mattress just to get off.
If they don't want to deal with my spooge then figure out a way to hook me up with a woman who will. It's hardly my fault that I have to spend my life locked up at work just to pay taxes so that they can continue to propagate this kind of useless b_llsh_t which costs me money even though I voted against it.
If the police state that we live in is so doggone perfect then quit hassling me about not having a suitable mate.
It's a good thing that the author of the RFC is opposed to such an idea.
If the gov't would force all sexually oriented material to a.sex or.xxx set of websites, then only the most naive people would make use of it. All of the real nasty/devent/illegal porn would be hidden in any of the usual TLDs or possibly obfuscated in the new.mob(ile) TLD.
So while we'd be busting Christian husbands and teenagers for looking at softcore pr0n we would also be happily turning a blind eye to all of the child molesters accessing fbi.gov kiddie-pr0n files.
I guess, from the gov'ts perspective, it's an easy out to say,"We're doing all that we can. Send more tax money."
This AC is 100% perfectly correct. I cannot now nor could I ever prove beyond a reasonable doubt that media companies collaborate to inflate the cost of their products in the interest of funnelling the money to the top executives.
In fact, as long as no one within the collaborative monopoly ever admits to it, it could all just be coincidence that the automobile industry, the beer industry, the media industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the steel industry, the chemical industry, and the distributorship industry, the banking industry, and the insurance industry (among others) have all conveniently coalesced into three-to-five major organizations each which own controlling shares in even the tiniest local shops. Additionally, many of the biggest players in each of these industries have significant controlling personal shares in other major players in the other industries. It'd be nothing short of conspiracy paranoia to think that these people are leveraging their position for personal gain at the expense of the working class citizens.
Maybe it's the natural order of things, maybe it's greed, maybe it's the dominance of paper printed money, or maybe I'm just spot on when I say "This world sucks my left butt-cheek."
This is a disturbing trend within our society: armchair moralists. Everyone wants to legislate their own personal interpretation of moral and good and the government is left grasping for the most acceptable edition in order to continue to win votes on artificial topics around election times.
When are people going to wake up and start taking care of their own households before they start passing gargantuan federal mandates? Watch TV with your children and monitor the viewing. Spend time with your children and don't let them play alone. Go out with your children and show them through example what proper behavior is. Expecting the government to raise your children, police your society, and walk your dog for you is only going to lead to more laws and regulations about speech, traffic, and dog-poop.
Then again... when the citizens pay close to 50% or more in taxes (12.5% social security, +federal, +state, +local, +6% sales, +gasoline, +energy, +cable, +alcohol, +tobacco, +registration fees, +school participation fees which are supposed to be funded by preexisting taxes, +real estate taxes, etc.)... shouldn't they be entitled to expect this sort of warm security blanket from their big brother?
We're going to end up with the one-size fits all security blanket if you rich yuppies and soccer moms don't get your heads out of your asses and then no one will be happy.
Don't give me any crap about voting, either. As one of the oldest forms of decision making known to civilized man, any decision (eg. election) which relies on the democratic process is inherently RIGGED.
Unless you get to be friends with everyone who's charging $9k, $8k, $7k, etc. until you all agree that, for the same ten minutes of work, you can charge $5k, get everyone hooked, and then charge them $6k for the next 5 minutes of work, and $7k for the next 2 minutes of work, and, using all of the extra money that you're making, go out, hunt down, and harass to death anyone willing to charge only a fair and reasonable amount...
Then you begin to involve politicians.
How is a collaborative monopoly indicative of fair trade?
I'm not saying anything of the sort like what you're insinuating here.
I'm saying that any company is free to sell any product for any price that they like but they should quit running to the Guido government when people pirate their overpriced software or circumvent their inconvenient registration circus hoops. At the same time the people who are pirating need to quit whining about their privacy when they get hijacked by a shady distributorship (P2P file-sharing). At the same time someone needs to be held accountable when some psychotic packet sniffing script kiddie identifies easy identity theft targets based upon the existence of a backdoor that is enabled by some vigilante's trojan or some advertiser's spyware.
All I'm preaching is for consistency. If we want consistency in accountability then vigilantes, pirates, spyware producers, media companies and legislators all share equal parts of the blame. If we want consistency in "life isn't fair" then we need to tell the media companies to take a flying leap next time they want the government to legislate about file-sharing.
Capitalism is not a crime. In a truly capitalist system the demand feedback is moderated by the price of the supply.
We do not live in a capitalist society. Get the politic-speak out of your heads, people. A capitalist system which is subject to the tens of thousands of rules, regulations, and controls that we have in the US is... anyone...?
Communism.
Communism is an economic system controlled by the government. Capitalism is an economic system controlled by the flow of capital. In the United States we have an economic system that's controlled by... anyone...? The government.
This very simple concept is proof that our government run schools are working perfectly to obscure the dominant role that our government plays in the economic conditions of our time. To most educated people this is indicative of... anyone...? Socialism. To the cynical educated people this is indicative of... anyone...? Fascism.
Just because you want to live in a capitalist republic, and just because your politicians feed your dementia to garner your votes, doesn't make it real.
12.5% social security, +federal tax, +state tax bringing it closer to 33%, then 6% sales tax, and alcohol tax, and gas tax, and electricity tax, and registration fees for the vehicle, and water tax... add it all up and you lose about 55% or better every month to taxes and government surcharges. All of that on top of a job which requires a Master's of Science in chemistry and three years of experiences but only pays just enough to keep me eating rye bread, spinach dip, and drinking water.
If it's perfectly legal to shop around for the best deal then it's perfectly legal to obtain the software from a P2P platform.
Of course, then it's also perfectly legal to accept the risk of obtaining software from a P2P service.
But that's the point. I don't agree with what the vigilantes are doing but I also don't feel that the media industry has the right to play distributor policeman. They make their money they should sit down and shut up.
Just because IP functions as a meaningless pyramid scheme doesn't validate an armed revolution. I'm anti-aggressive. Poorer developers should sit back, fold their arms, and wait until someone compensates them properly up front.
Which is what I'll probably be doing in about 2 months if I keep posting politically oriented/. articles from work.:-)
If everyone were paying nothing for the game then the company selling it wouldn't be selling it. That's ECON101.
There are always going to be people who can afford it and those who can't. Of the people who can't afford it there are always going to be some of them who will obtain it. If the company would lower the price they would increase the % of people who could afford it and, by proportion, diminish the % of people obtaining it. That's ECON101.
Attempting to recoup losses from a class of people who can't afford the product up front is going to create a cycle of crime. That's SOCIO101.
Attempting to pass laws to regulate the behaviors of the people who obtain the product is going to result in the laws being enforced on people who meet the technical letter of the violation but are outside of the spirit of the violation (eg. people using cracks for convenience even after buying the product). Laws are selectively enforced and abused in the interest of generating revenue and advancing popular causes. That's POLI101.
Your education came from a very sheltered environment. I'm giving you an education based on the real world as a whole.
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With the stagnation of upper management I think anyone with even a mildly original thought is paradigm smashing. Most companies have a policy regarding former employees: refuse to answer any questions about them. Of course they're "not remembered".
Aside from that, though, I agree. A club that anyone can join has no value. My personal take on this is to cut out the middle entirely: a club has no value.
Either you'll win or you'll lose. Memberships, degrees, friends, money--none of it really matters. What matters is food, shelter, and clothing.
If your natural knee jerk response is to say "what about a house, what about a car, what about a mate, what about a family" just relax. None of it really matters. All of those things are just society playing with your head trying to get you to run in more circles and jump through more hoops and hurdles for their amusement.
I agree. I've investigated several online social networking sites and have discovered the same thing about every one of them: they promise a lot, give very little, and charge money for the next opportunity. The next opportunity rarely produces any real connection. There are always a million excuses why the last opportunity didn't work out and, for an additional $20/mo., the scheme will bump you up to the next level where the next opportunity awaits. Like that pyramid scheme that keeps holding informational meetings at the local Holiday Inn hall or business suite.
.com boom. You'll have to get in on it if you want to move ahead but the only way of moving ahead will be to become personally attached to someone who's already closer to the top. If you don't already know someone then you'll be just more cannon fodder sending in your money with the dreamy hope that it'll work out.
The sad part is that if enough estranged yuppies start using this it _will_ turn into the next big pyramid scheme like the
With odds like that you can go sit at the local bar and become George Bush's best friend or buy a lottery ticket. Who needs social networking if you're connected to the top or rich?
I doubt they were benevolent. I certainly didn't (still don't) have the skill to save the suspect BIOS and then analyze it to ensure there's nothing fishy inside of it. I don't even know what processor the DI-604 runs on.
Ummmm... dialup users are screwed because PPP filtering is a completely different beast?
I'm not a kernel hacker but I would like to try and keep things straight in my head. In PCI ethernet networks, the ethernet card gets attached to kernel mem locations and a firewall attaches itself between kernel mem locations and the userspace programs that they serve. PPP, from my limited knowledge, gets attached to completely different kernel mem locations and dialup networking userspace programs are allowed to pass PPP mem locations to IP mem locations such that most userspace programs have no trouble getting the info they need from the TCP/IP environment.
So this brings up the interesting question: are there bugs in the PPP components of modern kernels which can be exploited before any commonly available firewalls can filter the packets from the IP stack?
I don't know. Feel free to correct me on the diagram.
I used to think one hardware router was enough until I noticed that my DI-604 with the original BIOS was sending out UPnP packets. The upgraded DI-604 BIOS is UPnP enabled, but the original version that shipped with the router wasn't. So this led me to believe that someone rather knowledgeable had made use of hardware exploits in my cable modem and router to reflash the BIOS.
:)
Now I sit behind 2 hardware routers and tcpdump -vvv eth0 rarely shows any packet other than those I requested.
It sure lets me play around with LFS more and read netfilter HOWTOs less.
Okay. That still doesn't address the problem of circumventing hardware encryption, interfacing with a PC for custom analysis, and finding a swipe card writer.
I think Google's defense will probably be related to "Everyone on earth knows what is meant when they see the ... in a Google search. There is no damage to your reputation. Without injury there's no crime."
It's the approach that the state takes when sued by private citizens: "no harm, no foul". And the state has managed to significantly broaden the definition of "no harm". Technically speaking, the guys locked up in Guatanamo without any formal charges are suffering no harm.
Now, when the state decides to run down a given citizen, then all bets are off. No harm needed, he violated the law!
Fantastic idea that I'm sure many people have thought of.
The biggest hurdle seems to be acquiring a magnetic card reader which can interface with a home PC and bit-nibble the data on a valid card and a magnetic card writer. I certainly wouldn't know where to get either of these.
One could sign up for business VISA/MC access and maybe engineer some kind of hack on the cc reader that will bit-nibble the data and send it to a PC but I imagine there are hardware encryption chips that would have to be identified and removed along with circuit board traces rewired.
It'd be an interesting project...
One of the largest problems in American society today is that people accumulate too much clutter. Americans have been taught to become pack rats by their government. Homework papers, tests, report cards, gradebooks, all useless stuff that gets handed back in gradeschools. Some students learn how to create a proper and effective filing system. As they grow older they should learn that the most important part of the filing system is the vertical file (/dev/null).
Most people never make it to the vertical file stage, though, because the leaders of American society are obsessed with excuses on why they get to keep the majority of the benefits and why we, the common citizen, have to deal with the shizzat. The easiest way to say,"Oh, we're sorry, you don't qualify for that rebate/credit/refund/etc. because you didn't save that stub/number/receipt/whatever/etc." It's a perfect pyramid scheme.
This mentality gets transferred over to people's computers. They live in a world where they're frantically saving nearly everything they can. As such, Americans just plain flat out accumulate way too much *CRAP* that they just can't let go of.
So... yes... it's a good thing that a virus comes along and wipes their boot sectors every once in a while. Perhaps it will begin to teach them to effectively prioritize what's _really_ important. And it's _NOT_ the junk they store on their computer.
----- ...get over it, it's life. .xxx or .sex, that's what I say to the media companies, and that's what I say to ACs.
-----
That's what I say to the Tipper Gore's who want to move everything to
-----
I mean, come on -- we all know that if you spend time randomly surfing the Web, you can hardly go an hour or two without randomly stumbling across some porn
-----
Maybe these people should spend more time thinking about their children and less time randomly surfing the web? If they would monitor their children as closely as they monitor online pr0n their children wouldn't be viewing the online pr0n, now would they?
I have only on two occasions been confronted with online pr0n when I haven't been explicitly looking for it. This tells me that 1) either there really IS an online conspiracy involving DNS, ISPs, and online monitoring, or 2) the majority of the public is LYING OUT THEIR A$$ when questioned about their online usage habits.
If it's #2 then we live in a world of pr0n-surfers and even the little old lady down the hall is just too embarassed to up and admit it. If it's #1 then the CIA already knows that you've been viewing goatse.cx and, if they really wanted to pick you up, they would have a long time ago.
A price cut? I certainly don't want my tax dollars going to fund a tax cut to support pr0n. It'd just be another pyramid scheme as banks line up for all the top level contracts. Even if it were a good idea we'd lose 98%+ of it to Greenspan and his cronies.
.sex and .xxx registration. In order to make it a viable alternative the government offers to back low-interest loans for bandwidth providers willing to host such things. This requires three contracts: one contract with the banks who will shell out the cash to get this ball rolling and another contract to the backbone provider hosting these domains and a third contract to the registrar who will manage it.
Government offers contract for
Tell me that's not the beginnings of a perfect pyramid scheme (as long as you're at the top level).
"Please stay within the free speech zone so that we can use less tear gas to subdue you when Tipper Gore gives the signal."
Am I cynical, enlightened, disillusioned, or just fed up with being pushed around by Washington bureaucrats? If I want to look at pr0n then, by doggammit, I'm going to. If GW Bush doesn't want me to look at pr0n then perhaps he should donate one of his daughters to my harem. For cripes' sakes. I'm 28, in good physical condition, educated, I have a libido like any other man on this planet, and I have standards which say I'm not going to screw the town nasty-mattress just to get off.
If they don't want to deal with my spooge then figure out a way to hook me up with a woman who will. It's hardly my fault that I have to spend my life locked up at work just to pay taxes so that they can continue to propagate this kind of useless b_llsh_t which costs me money even though I voted against it.
If the police state that we live in is so doggone perfect then quit hassling me about not having a suitable mate.
It's a good thing that the author of the RFC is opposed to such an idea.
.sex or .xxx set of websites, then only the most naive people would make use of it. All of the real nasty/devent/illegal porn would be hidden in any of the usual TLDs or possibly obfuscated in the new .mob(ile) TLD.
If the gov't would force all sexually oriented material to a
So while we'd be busting Christian husbands and teenagers for looking at softcore pr0n we would also be happily turning a blind eye to all of the child molesters accessing fbi.gov kiddie-pr0n files.
I guess, from the gov'ts perspective, it's an easy out to say,"We're doing all that we can. Send more tax money."
This AC is 100% perfectly correct. I cannot now nor could I ever prove beyond a reasonable doubt that media companies collaborate to inflate the cost of their products in the interest of funnelling the money to the top executives.
In fact, as long as no one within the collaborative monopoly ever admits to it, it could all just be coincidence that the automobile industry, the beer industry, the media industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the steel industry, the chemical industry, and the distributorship industry, the banking industry, and the insurance industry (among others) have all conveniently coalesced into three-to-five major organizations each which own controlling shares in even the tiniest local shops. Additionally, many of the biggest players in each of these industries have significant controlling personal shares in other major players in the other industries. It'd be nothing short of conspiracy paranoia to think that these people are leveraging their position for personal gain at the expense of the working class citizens.
Maybe it's the natural order of things, maybe it's greed, maybe it's the dominance of paper printed money, or maybe I'm just spot on when I say "This world sucks my left butt-cheek."
This is a disturbing trend within our society: armchair moralists. Everyone wants to legislate their own personal interpretation of moral and good and the government is left grasping for the most acceptable edition in order to continue to win votes on artificial topics around election times.
When are people going to wake up and start taking care of their own households before they start passing gargantuan federal mandates? Watch TV with your children and monitor the viewing. Spend time with your children and don't let them play alone. Go out with your children and show them through example what proper behavior is. Expecting the government to raise your children, police your society, and walk your dog for you is only going to lead to more laws and regulations about speech, traffic, and dog-poop.
Then again... when the citizens pay close to 50% or more in taxes (12.5% social security, +federal, +state, +local, +6% sales, +gasoline, +energy, +cable, +alcohol, +tobacco, +registration fees, +school participation fees which are supposed to be funded by preexisting taxes, +real estate taxes, etc.)... shouldn't they be entitled to expect this sort of warm security blanket from their big brother?
We're going to end up with the one-size fits all security blanket if you rich yuppies and soccer moms don't get your heads out of your asses and then no one will be happy.
Don't give me any crap about voting, either. As one of the oldest forms of decision making known to civilized man, any decision (eg. election) which relies on the democratic process is inherently RIGGED.
Ahhh... the beauty of vinyl...
Unless you get to be friends with everyone who's charging $9k, $8k, $7k, etc. until you all agree that, for the same ten minutes of work, you can charge $5k, get everyone hooked, and then charge them $6k for the next 5 minutes of work, and $7k for the next 2 minutes of work, and, using all of the extra money that you're making, go out, hunt down, and harass to death anyone willing to charge only a fair and reasonable amount...
Then you begin to involve politicians.
How is a collaborative monopoly indicative of fair trade?
I'm not saying anything of the sort like what you're insinuating here.
I'm saying that any company is free to sell any product for any price that they like but they should quit running to the Guido government when people pirate their overpriced software or circumvent their inconvenient registration circus hoops. At the same time the people who are pirating need to quit whining about their privacy when they get hijacked by a shady distributorship (P2P file-sharing). At the same time someone needs to be held accountable when some psychotic packet sniffing script kiddie identifies easy identity theft targets based upon the existence of a backdoor that is enabled by some vigilante's trojan or some advertiser's spyware.
All I'm preaching is for consistency. If we want consistency in accountability then vigilantes, pirates, spyware producers, media companies and legislators all share equal parts of the blame. If we want consistency in "life isn't fair" then we need to tell the media companies to take a flying leap next time they want the government to legislate about file-sharing.
Capitalism is not a crime. In a truly capitalist system the demand feedback is moderated by the price of the supply.
We do not live in a capitalist society. Get the politic-speak out of your heads, people. A capitalist system which is subject to the tens of thousands of rules, regulations, and controls that we have in the US is... anyone...?
Communism.
Communism is an economic system controlled by the government. Capitalism is an economic system controlled by the flow of capital. In the United States we have an economic system that's controlled by... anyone...? The government.
This very simple concept is proof that our government run schools are working perfectly to obscure the dominant role that our government plays in the economic conditions of our time. To most educated people this is indicative of... anyone...? Socialism. To the cynical educated people this is indicative of... anyone...? Fascism.
Just because you want to live in a capitalist republic, and just because your politicians feed your dementia to garner your votes, doesn't make it real.
12.5% social security, +federal tax, +state tax bringing it closer to 33%, then 6% sales tax, and alcohol tax, and gas tax, and electricity tax, and registration fees for the vehicle, and water tax... add it all up and you lose about 55% or better every month to taxes and government surcharges. All of that on top of a job which requires a Master's of Science in chemistry and three years of experiences but only pays just enough to keep me eating rye bread, spinach dip, and drinking water.
That's a rip-off. What's the difference?
If it's perfectly legal to shop around for the best deal then it's perfectly legal to obtain the software from a P2P platform.
Of course, then it's also perfectly legal to accept the risk of obtaining software from a P2P service.
But that's the point. I don't agree with what the vigilantes are doing but I also don't feel that the media industry has the right to play distributor policeman. They make their money they should sit down and shut up.
If you're really a lawyer worth his salt perhaps you'd like to contact me [/.ID]@hotmail.com.
Maybe you'd like to make some cash because I have a number of incidents like this that are supposedly easy to defend.
Just because IP functions as a meaningless pyramid scheme doesn't validate an armed revolution. I'm anti-aggressive. Poorer developers should sit back, fold their arms, and wait until someone compensates them properly up front.
/. articles from work. :-)
Which is what I'll probably be doing in about 2 months if I keep posting politically oriented
I don't care anymore...
If everyone were paying nothing for the game then the company selling it wouldn't be selling it. That's ECON101.
There are always going to be people who can afford it and those who can't. Of the people who can't afford it there are always going to be some of them who will obtain it. If the company would lower the price they would increase the % of people who could afford it and, by proportion, diminish the % of people obtaining it. That's ECON101.
Attempting to recoup losses from a class of people who can't afford the product up front is going to create a cycle of crime. That's SOCIO101.
Attempting to pass laws to regulate the behaviors of the people who obtain the product is going to result in the laws being enforced on people who meet the technical letter of the violation but are outside of the spirit of the violation (eg. people using cracks for convenience even after buying the product). Laws are selectively enforced and abused in the interest of generating revenue and advancing popular causes. That's POLI101.
Your education came from a very sheltered environment. I'm giving you an education based on the real world as a whole.