As mrpeebles has already noted, evolution is no different from any scientific theory. The Theory of Evolution is just as scientific as the Theory of Relativity, or electromagnetism, or Atomic Theory. Indeed, it's one of the most well-established scientific theories we have, having come under heavy fire, yet surviving unscathed for over a century.
We breed dogs with all sorts of other types of dogs, sometimes wolves, coyotes, and even Jackals and Hyenas (all in the "canis" family) and we always get offspring that are DOGS!
Speciation is the technical term for one species diverging into two, and it has been observed to have happened to macroscopic animals a number of times. It's a fact that one species can diverge into two, so the argument that the offspring of a dog can never be anything but a dog is an argument that has been put to rest some time ago.
Generally speaking, all convincing arguments against evolution have already been voice, and have already been invalidated. The arguments in your post are no exception.
1. verify your data, i have a bunch of asp functions that each convert any input into a string/int/decimal/bool,date that return ""/0/0.0/false/(now) upon chocking on their inputs, simple
I'm not too familiar with ASP, but wouldn't exceptions be a better choice instead of returning null input?
The easiest way to validate input I've found, is to just grab a decent web framework with a validation system built in. There's plenty around.
3. generate unique ids. easy way: generate a long random number, and then add the date and time of the request to the end. sure the right hand half is somewhat guessable but it ensures uniqueness*, which is always handy.
Running the numbers through an MD5/SHA1 hash is also often used. But surely session handling is mostly automatic in this day and age? I can't remember the last time I had to think about manually constructing a session cookie and session ID.
6. dont use "UPDATE" or "INSERT" or "DELETE" querys
This author of this article does not seem to properly comprehend security issues. He rambles on for several pages, but doesn't actually propose anything novel or indeed anything particularly useful.
Using POST instead of GET and checking for User Agents and Referer headers won't do much to make your web application anymore secure. It's the web equivalent of hiding the keys under the doormat. Sure, it's better than leaving your door wide open, but it's not security in any meaningful sense of the word.
The way to secure AJAX is the same way classic CGI transactions are secured; through sessions, passwords and SSL.
All the OP said is that copyright infringment is not the same as stealing. He made no reference to downloaded material having no value. You seem to be setting up something of a straw man here.
It's likely they mean the "pay as you go" schemes, where you buy credit when you need it. For those of us who don't use their phones a lot, this generally works out a lot cheaper. You also don't need a credit card, or even a bank account, to use a phone, which can be advantageous to the young.
What? A default Windows XP install uses about 70MB doing nothing.
Measuring memory usage on Linux isn't a simple business. Frequently memory usage appears much greater than it is, due to a number of reasons. For instance, if 10M of libraries was shared between 10 processes, then a process manager would report 90M more memory than was actually being used.
Flying costs are a small proportion of $500'000, but I can see how the living expenses of several people would quickly reach that sum; I wasn't aware the hijackers were unemployed. In addition, I didn't read your original post carefully enough the first time, and got the wrong 'gist'. If I understand you right, you were pointing out that $500'000 was a relatively small amount of money for such large scale devestation. At first, I thought your point was the opposite.
but the frightening fact remains that 9/11 cost about $500,000 to plan and carry out
What's your source for this? Box-cutters and flying lessons alone wouldn't add up to that amount of money, which rather leads me to suspect that the majority of that $500'000 is just a figure plucked out of the air to scare people.
I have an unlimited account with a DSL provider. OK what is unlimited? How long I can be signed on for.
I'm afraid this argument wouldn't, and hasn't, cut it in court. The ISPs advertise "unlimited broadband"; by definition, this means broadband without limits. If the ISPs set download limits, then clearly it is not broadband without limits, and thus is is certainly not "unlimited broadband". QED, it's false and misleading advertising.
Likewise, I couldn't claim that my restaurant offered a free meal if only the service was free and the food was not. I couldn't claim that a car was "all red" if it had a big blue stripe down the side. If the ISPs want to sell their product on the merit of being able to stay online indefinitely, then they have to be more specific. They cannot falsely claim that their product is unlimited, if it indeed has limits.
If you sell an unlimited product, and then find you don't have the capacity to deliver on it, it's your own damn fault; not Bittorrent's, not the user's, but yours. The ISPs have no-one to blame but themselves.
ISPs shouldn't offer "unlimited" services if they don't intend to give their customers unlimited bandwidth. If I have a 200MB/s pipe, and I promise each of my 1000 subscribers 2MB/s, then clearly I'm promising more than I can deliver. It's no use advertising an unlimited internet service, and then complaining when your customers take you up on your offer.
The only thing Bittorrent impacts is ISPs overpromising. That's it. It's not going to kill the internet. It's not a menace that should be stamped out. Bittorrent doesn't magically use more bandwidth than the ISP allows you. It's just another protocol.
The problem lies at the door of ISPs, not Bittorrent.
And despite the fact that people routinely say "everything gets cracked," there is evidence to contradict that. DRM is going to get "Good Enough" that for all practical purposes it will not be crackable.
Whilst it's not wise to take anything for granted, it should be noted that the DRM that has not been cracked offers no new content over formats that have less protection (e.g. CDs, DVDs). With the weakest link in the chain broken, there's less incentive for people to try and crack the stronger links. Once (if?) the chain is whole again, I suspect we'll see an upsurge of people hunting for the next weak link.
All that trusted computing does, is allowing the OS to protect memory, protect hd space, protect network connecitivity, printer connectivity, monitor, usb devices, basically all input and output devices.
And what's to stop certain companies extending this by making sure that only signed software can be run? Nothing, technically speaking, and economically speaking, if a company wishes to retain dominance over the market, this would be a very profitable thing to do. I work by the mantra: if a technology can be abused, it will be abused.
The hardware manufacturers are not stupid to lock themselves into a specific propriatory OS
Because no-one's ever locked themselves into a specific proprietary system, before. It's happened in the past; it'll happen in the future.
No, the job of the hardware manufacturers would be to ensure that the OS has full control over all resource permissions. That's it.
The sole job of hardware manufacturers, as with any corporation, is to make money at the cost of the competition. And Trusted Computing is a marvellous opportunity for them to do that at the cost of the consumer.
and as a content provider I am telling you that this does not actually matter. From my personal point of view this is the matter of a principle.
I'm not sure that's a point of view I understand. If content holders aren't losing money through copyright infringement, then what's the point of creating restrictive technologies that have a huge potential for abuse, to control a problem that has no economic cost?
Even moving away from the RIAA and other similar organisations, doesn't allow one to escape their shadow. DRM is useless without Trusted Computing, as without Trusted Computer the key is hidden in software, and relatively trivial to discover. Likewise, Trusted Computing will only be effective if the majority of users have Trusted hardware; only then does it become profitable to exclude those who don't/refuse to have it.
And here the problem arises. With Trusted Computing, the control is taken away from the user and placed in the hands of the company that produced the hardware. This eliminates free market economies in the tech sector, effectively preventing any real competition. If, say, Microsoft controls the hardware of your computer, they're only going to allow Microsoft vetoed hardware to run on it - for 'security reasons' of course. Anyone wanting to run software on such a machine would have to get it digitally signed by Microsoft. Economically, that's the most profitable option for them to pursue, and historically, companies like Microsoft have aggressively tried to crush competition using any means necessary. No wonder Trusted Computing is so attractive an idea to such people!
Trusted Computing means no less than the gradual, but eventually complete, removal of competition in the software industry. In my opinion, this is the worst possible scenario for digital rights, and far worse than having the occassional piece of software or music illegally downloaded.
And as I've also pointed out, just because a person illegally downloads files, doesn't make him less likely to purchase content. As the BVI found out, people who download movies illegally buy just as many DVDs as the average person. Copyright infringement doesn't mean the end of paid-for content, but Trusted Computing does spell the end for a free software industry. I'll take the lesser of the two evils, myself.
you mean it is now time for the music industry to reevaluate the prices, now that p2p exists and there is no technology that really stops copying copyrighted stuff?
I don't mean that at all. The members of an RIAA buy music rights off musicians, spend a lot of money marketing these pieces of music, the reap the revenues that the music brings in. They're publishers and promoters; they'll get your music onto CD and into the shops, and onto the radio and onto the TV.
But the business of publishing and promoting music is in danger of becoming obsolete. The first of these, publishing, is the most easy trend to spot, as it's happening right now. More and more music is being sold over the net, distributing music over the net, at least compared to traditional CD mass manufacture, costs virtually nothing.
Okay, so publishing doesn't matter. The next part, promoting, is slightly more complex. With products such as cars, houses or computers, the buyer can't experience every feature of the product before buying it, so salemen have an opportunity to selectively summarise for the customer. With music, there's no need; you can listen to the entire song on the radio, on a friend's CD, online, or using those headphones at highstreet music stores. When people buy music, they already pretty much know whether they'll like it or not. You can't convince a person to buy music that he thinks sounds awful, no matter how much you promote it.
Thus, the job of the RIAA is not to selectively summarise the good points of their artist's albums, but to tell people about them, to put the music on the radio, in stores, etc. etc. The more people they expose the music to, the more people they'll find who like the music, and the more people will buy the music. So the RIAA's job boils down to matching up music with people, finding out what music people like, and then giving it to them.
Whilst that may have been a big help in the past, now we have relational databases and bayesian algorithms that can do a far better job. A user tells his player what tracks he likes, and the player works out from what everyone else likes, what music he is most likely to buy. Combine that with word-of-mouth, and you get a far more efficient distribution channel. Hence, the RIAA's days are numbered.
But we are talking about a government monopoly on the laws. You are not in a position to change the laws at your will, you can do it in mass, if you get together a few millions of people with the same views.
To quote Churchill: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
Governments are always monopolies - unless you put up no barriers to (im)migration, which has it's own problems. Monopolies are always bad, but sometimes the alternative is worse. I don't believe that's the case with DRM.
For example, Apple has a monopoly on iPods and their computers. All it means is that noone else sees a business case to get into the same product niche as Apple. Expensive but trendy mp3 players? More expensive hardware with no x86 compatibility for personal computing?
Apple are a niche player; whilst you could make an argument that they have a monopoly over iPods, because this is a relatively small proportion of the industry as a whole, their monopoly is only going to affect this small proportion. A large player, such as Microsoft, has the capability to do far more damage, and has done so, in terms of interoperability, web standards, and IM protocol dispersion.
You are saying you are a content producer? Well, if you create content, you have a monopoly on that content. Is that bad?
My most of my content is bespoke, custom made for the customer, and thus my monopoly isn't vital to my existance. But even on the content which benefits from a monopoly, I can't see myself needing that monopoly for
Majority of people cannot be trusted to abide by the terms of the license on easily copiable materials, because they consider these materials worthless, since it doesn't take any effort or money to download/upload these materials without any legal consequences.
Maybe it's time to re-evaluate the worth of these materials, then. The recording industry claims that online music is no cheaper than CDs because the distribution cost is small in comparison to the total cost. The majority of the cost of music, apparently, goes toward promoting it. According to the executive chairman of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI):
"The costs you lose in manufacturing, packaging and distribution are insignificant in comparison to the major costs in bringing an album to market - namely A&R, business affairs, recording, touring support, radio & TV plugging, marketing, promotion, taxes and all the other business overheads."
It's common knowledge that the music publishers get the lion's share of the revenue. If they're removed from the distribution chain, and I think it's really only a matter of time before they are, I suspect music will get a lot cheaper. It's artificially high priced right now, and the recording industry want to keep it high priced.
I don't have any illusions about the honesty of most people, it exists as long, as there are witnesses and consequences are severe.
And why do those laws exist? Because politicians, representing a majority, put them in place.
being a producer, I'd rather see people not infringe on my copyrights, but they will do so if given any chance at all, so if I was in a position to actually affect the laws or better yet, the technology to prevent this from happening, I would.
I'm a professional content producer myself. I make my living off copyrighted material I produce. But that doesn't change the fact that Trusted Computing and DRM is the worst idea ever to crawl out of the depths of the tech industry. There needs to be a balance between the needs of content producers, and the public at large. DRM and Trusted Computing short-circuit the normal legal proceedings. They prevent copyrighted material from falling into the public domain, turning a temporary lease into a permanent one.
DRM can ensure that a piece of data is forever kept from the public domain. The public are lending their metaphorical lawnmower to these large corporations, and these same corporations are planning never to return it. Copyright infringement may not satify the definition of theft, but Trusted Computing certainly does.
I would like to see how long YOU would last manufacturing microchips without the DRM built in, when all other devices would have DRM and you would have pressure coming at you from politicians, content and other technology manufacturers to put DRM into your products as well.
This is why monopolies are bad. Ordinarily, DRM and Trusted Computing would be a non-issue. These are devices that remove economic value, after all. Thus, a Trusted Computer is inherently less valuable than one without. In a market devoid of monopolies, with educated consumers, the idea of Trusted Computing would never get off the ground. Why would anyone buy a computer that does less than those of its competitor?
But, alas, consumers are often lacking in knowledge about technology, and the hardware, software and publishing monopolies seek to expand their own wealth at the expense of society. The only thing for me to do is to vote with my feet, and encourage others to do the same. In the end, it's in society's best interests to stop this Trusted Computing scam before it gets off the ground, so I remain hopeful.
I don't understand, are you telling me that the company, hyping up its product, but releasing in stages is a good enough reason for people to steal?
No, I'm saying that releasing a movie in stages whilst simultaneously trying to convince people they should have it as soon as possible encourages copyright infringement. I said nothing about this being right or not.
Well, see, this is why I am for DRM. People can't be trusted.
This is a ridiculous statement. Any group of entities has to have a trustworthy majority, otherwise group cohesion breaks down. Prisoner's dilemma, tragedy of the commons, etc. etc. A society wouldn't be able to function without the majority being honest the majority of the time.
This is business and the companies are in it not from the goodnes of their hearts.
Of course. And they'll fight to preserve their business. But this will come at the expense of consumers. Being a consumer myself, I'd rather see organisations like the RIAA adapt or die, rather than try and erode my legal rights in an attempt to prop up their outdated business model. Let's be honest, a sufficiently large relational database could do a far better job at selling music to consumers.
Your option is not to buy, but when you chose to steal (writing out copyright infringement takes too long, I prefer the short form: steal,) in mass, when hundreds of millions decide to steal, don't act surprised when the corporations start fighting back politically and technologically.
Why stop at "steal"? Why not "terrorism"? It's an equally inaccurate word to use, but rather more forceful. Copyright infringement isn't stealing, because it doesn't deprive the author of their content.
Nor am I surprised that these corporations are fighting back, but they're protecting their bottom line by trying to remove our digital rights, both through laws like the DMCA, EUCD, and through technology, such as Trusted Computing. Personally, I rather like the rights I have, and I'll vote accordingly.
If I release something, I don't even necessarily would do it for money, I could release stuff for free, provided that I alone will have the distribution rights. To me the issue is this simple: it doesn't matter what your actions really mean to thea actual business, you have no right to those actions.
Only because it was agreed that, by law, authors should have a temporary monopoly over their work. You have these rights not because they are natural and self-evident, but because they are granted to encourage creativity and reward artists.
Most of the music and movies etc., that are copied today are not of the dead artists and other content creators, but of quite alive ones.
Even if we restrict the argument to recent creations, the issue is still muddied. For instance, Hollywood spends millions promoting a movie in the weeks up until its release, the goal being to ensure people will really, really want to see the movie. Hollywood then delays the release of the movie outside the US, and is somehow surprised that people, eager to see the film, resort to illegal distribution channels. What did they think would happen?
And then we have the cost of music and MP3s. The record industry releases WMAs and AACs for the same price as songs on a CD, at a lower, lossy bitrate, with DRM that prevents them from playing their music on their MP3 player. With such an offering what did they expect people would do?
These large content holders have consistantly taken decisions that, economically, encourage copyright infringement. Psychologically, the RIAA and MPAA's immoral behaviour means that they find it difficult to then appeal to people's sense of morality.
I'm not saying that copyright infringement is right, of course, just that it comes as no particular surprise given the actions of the major content holders. Traditionally, one solves these problems by adapting to the market and giving consumers what they want. The RIAA/MPAA are instead taking the Knut approach of trying to turn back the tide.
Further, it's debatable whether this mass copyright infringement is actually harming the content industry by any significant amount. In a recent interview by the BBC, a representative from the British Video Association was asked the question "Why have the anti-piracy trailers at the beginning of DVDs?". Their reply:
"UK research shows that, on average, downloaders are film fans who view the same number of legitimate films (cinema, rented and bought DVDs) as the average active DVD consumer (24)."
I feel I must jump in here. Copyright is a temporary monopoly granted by the government, that allows authors to make money off their work before it enters the public domain. Patents are another such device which temporarily grants the inventor a monopoly over their design.
It's important to distinguish between the illegal, the immoral, and the economic costs. If I copy a Britney Spears album without paying for it, then this is very likely illegal. But if I had no intention of buying the album, then the economic costs to the author are zero. The morality of copying is more complicated, and I'd hesitate to make a firm judgement.
How long copyrights should exist is a further problem. Copyrights should promote the maximum amount of creative endevours, without constraining future artists. The ideal copyright will allow an author to recoup his development costs, if without copyrights he would not.
I can't quite see the benefit of having copyrights lasting 70 years after an author's death. Once the author is dead, what money he makes is of little issue, and thus this extra 70 years adds no extra content and deprives the public domain of 70 years of creativity. Copyrights are clearly longer than it would make sense for them to be.
Is it immoral to illegally copy a dead artist's work? Is it immoral to illegally copy an out-of-print work? Is it immoral to illegally copy a piece of work you would not have bought at full price? Where is the line drawn?
True but then again they didn't suffer through two decades of crushing occupation either.
It depends who you talk to - the IRA saw Britain's control of Northern Ireland as an occupation. However, this wasn't really a view connected with reality, and I'll agree that the Palestinian situation is quite a bit worse.
I figure the palestenians would welcome a change.
"Two decades of crushing occupation" is going to breed more hatred, and make it more difficult to change.
Either way the situation was settled when sein fein became a political party and england sat down and negotiated with the "terrorists". That's how problems are solved, you sit down and negotiate in good faith.
Certainly. But that doesn't mean that it's an easy solution. Just giving Palestinians citizenship and voting rights won't stop the violence. Doing this and setting up years of negotiation and cease fires and diplomacy will work, eventually. But it'll take a lot of work.
You make it sound like israel wants a solution to the problem that is just and fair and the only thing that stands in the way of progress is palestine.
Both sides are as bad as each other.
The problem here is that god is telling these people contradictory things and they are listening.
I'd prefer to go a step further, and say that the problem is unreasoning faith, and by implication, religion itself.
This gets rid of the palestine problem once and for all. Once palestenians have voting rights they can then fully participate in the israeli democratic process and will not resort to violence. Being full israeli citizens they will also have rights to benefits like all other israeli citizens and their standard of living will increase.
This strikes me as a hopelessly naive point of view. Northern Irish militant republicans had full voting rights, and full British citizenship, but that alone didn't prevent them from resorting to violence. Palestinian terrorists hold a more extreme view than the IRA ever did - the IRA never called for the destruction of Britain, for instance - so what makes you think that Palestinian terrorist organisations will be content with pursuing their goals democratically?
Get this in perspective: worldwide, roughly 200,000 people have protested the Muhammad caricatures - that makes less than 0.02% of Muslims.
Whilst it's easy to say that only of Muslims are extremists, I'm curious as to what proportion of Christians, Buddhists or Hindus hold similar extreme views.
but whast going to happen when those systems start being hit in a very large way by criminals?
Security will get better, just like it did with physical banking.
I say an extremely bad movie that had an interesting premise. Banks had been attacked and compromised so much, they they did away with electronic banking, and went back to cash.
Not going to happen. Electronic funds are easier to secure than physical ones. I can encrypt a piece of data such that no-one can feasibly decrypt it before the heat death of the Universe. I can't secure a physical item that well.
Currently, 12% of the Japanese population don't use physical money anymore, according to the Japan Research Institute. That's expected to rise to 33% by 2008. Whilst I agree that paper money is going to be around for quite some time, perhaps not as long as one might think.
Has it occurred to you that neither approach is terribly efficient, and that simply exposing yourself to more of the state of the art would result in your learning more on your way to such insight?
Not at all. Whilst I've read up on language design and theory, and considered the relationship between types and inheritance, closures and functions, classes and objects; I had never before considered the connection between classes and read-write lexical scoping. Whilst I might be able to glean such insight by spending a few weeks reading code written by Haskall gurus, with an argument I gained such insight in an hour of posting. That's pretty efficient in my book.
Arguments are for time wasting.
No they aren't. Science itself is one big argument. Scientists propose new theories, and other scientists argue against them. Without Darwin arguing that maybe all creatures on Earth weren't created 6000 years ago, and Einstein arguing that maybe the ether was a stupid idea, and Galileo arguing the Earth went around the sun, and without Schrödinger arguing how silly quantum physics was, because that would mean a cat would be both alive and dead - where would we be now?
Arguments are the best way of learning, assuming that they're not argued blindly without paying heed to the opposing side. Without argument, without debate, everyone would blindly agree and there'd be no technological progress. The very computers we use to communicate are a product, nay, a triumph of the human ability to argue.
Frankly, the ability to argue and question and debate seems, to me, to be the single most important trait human beings have. If only it were exercised more.
And if arguments are for time wasting - why are you involved in one now?
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As mrpeebles has already noted, evolution is no different from any scientific theory. The Theory of Evolution is just as scientific as the Theory of Relativity, or electromagnetism, or Atomic Theory. Indeed, it's one of the most well-established scientific theories we have, having come under heavy fire, yet surviving unscathed for over a century.
Speciation is the technical term for one species diverging into two, and it has been observed to have happened to macroscopic animals a number of times. It's a fact that one species can diverge into two, so the argument that the offspring of a dog can never be anything but a dog is an argument that has been put to rest some time ago.
Generally speaking, all convincing arguments against evolution have already been voice, and have already been invalidated. The arguments in your post are no exception.
I'm not too familiar with ASP, but wouldn't exceptions be a better choice instead of returning null input?
The easiest way to validate input I've found, is to just grab a decent web framework with a validation system built in. There's plenty around.
Running the numbers through an MD5/SHA1 hash is also often used. But surely session handling is mostly automatic in this day and age? I can't remember the last time I had to think about manually constructing a session cookie and session ID.
Eh? What do you mean by this?
This author of this article does not seem to properly comprehend security issues. He rambles on for several pages, but doesn't actually propose anything novel or indeed anything particularly useful.
Using POST instead of GET and checking for User Agents and Referer headers won't do much to make your web application anymore secure. It's the web equivalent of hiding the keys under the doormat. Sure, it's better than leaving your door wide open, but it's not security in any meaningful sense of the word.
The way to secure AJAX is the same way classic CGI transactions are secured; through sessions, passwords and SSL.
All the OP said is that copyright infringment is not the same as stealing. He made no reference to downloaded material having no value. You seem to be setting up something of a straw man here.
It's likely they mean the "pay as you go" schemes, where you buy credit when you need it. For those of us who don't use their phones a lot, this generally works out a lot cheaper. You also don't need a credit card, or even a bank account, to use a phone, which can be advantageous to the young.
Measuring memory usage on Linux isn't a simple business. Frequently memory usage appears much greater than it is, due to a number of reasons. For instance, if 10M of libraries was shared between 10 processes, then a process manager would report 90M more memory than was actually being used.
Flying costs are a small proportion of $500'000, but I can see how the living expenses of several people would quickly reach that sum; I wasn't aware the hijackers were unemployed. In addition, I didn't read your original post carefully enough the first time, and got the wrong 'gist'. If I understand you right, you were pointing out that $500'000 was a relatively small amount of money for such large scale devestation. At first, I thought your point was the opposite.
What's your source for this? Box-cutters and flying lessons alone wouldn't add up to that amount of money, which rather leads me to suspect that the majority of that $500'000 is just a figure plucked out of the air to scare people.
I'm afraid this argument wouldn't, and hasn't, cut it in court. The ISPs advertise "unlimited broadband"; by definition, this means broadband without limits. If the ISPs set download limits, then clearly it is not broadband without limits, and thus is is certainly not "unlimited broadband". QED, it's false and misleading advertising.
Likewise, I couldn't claim that my restaurant offered a free meal if only the service was free and the food was not. I couldn't claim that a car was "all red" if it had a big blue stripe down the side. If the ISPs want to sell their product on the merit of being able to stay online indefinitely, then they have to be more specific. They cannot falsely claim that their product is unlimited, if it indeed has limits.
If you sell an unlimited product, and then find you don't have the capacity to deliver on it, it's your own damn fault; not Bittorrent's, not the user's, but yours. The ISPs have no-one to blame but themselves.
ISPs shouldn't offer "unlimited" services if they don't intend to give their customers unlimited bandwidth. If I have a 200MB/s pipe, and I promise each of my 1000 subscribers 2MB/s, then clearly I'm promising more than I can deliver. It's no use advertising an unlimited internet service, and then complaining when your customers take you up on your offer.
The only thing Bittorrent impacts is ISPs overpromising. That's it. It's not going to kill the internet. It's not a menace that should be stamped out. Bittorrent doesn't magically use more bandwidth than the ISP allows you. It's just another protocol.
The problem lies at the door of ISPs, not Bittorrent.
Whilst it's not wise to take anything for granted, it should be noted that the DRM that has not been cracked offers no new content over formats that have less protection (e.g. CDs, DVDs). With the weakest link in the chain broken, there's less incentive for people to try and crack the stronger links. Once (if?) the chain is whole again, I suspect we'll see an upsurge of people hunting for the next weak link.
I was about to say the same thing. 128kbit AAC files don't quite seem up to 'Audiophile' standards.
And what's to stop certain companies extending this by making sure that only signed software can be run? Nothing, technically speaking, and economically speaking, if a company wishes to retain dominance over the market, this would be a very profitable thing to do. I work by the mantra: if a technology can be abused, it will be abused.
Because no-one's ever locked themselves into a specific proprietary system, before. It's happened in the past; it'll happen in the future.
The sole job of hardware manufacturers, as with any corporation, is to make money at the cost of the competition. And Trusted Computing is a marvellous opportunity for them to do that at the cost of the consumer.
I'm not sure that's a point of view I understand. If content holders aren't losing money through copyright infringement, then what's the point of creating restrictive technologies that have a huge potential for abuse, to control a problem that has no economic cost?
Even moving away from the RIAA and other similar organisations, doesn't allow one to escape their shadow. DRM is useless without Trusted Computing, as without Trusted Computer the key is hidden in software, and relatively trivial to discover. Likewise, Trusted Computing will only be effective if the majority of users have Trusted hardware; only then does it become profitable to exclude those who don't/refuse to have it.
And here the problem arises. With Trusted Computing, the control is taken away from the user and placed in the hands of the company that produced the hardware. This eliminates free market economies in the tech sector, effectively preventing any real competition. If, say, Microsoft controls the hardware of your computer, they're only going to allow Microsoft vetoed hardware to run on it - for 'security reasons' of course. Anyone wanting to run software on such a machine would have to get it digitally signed by Microsoft. Economically, that's the most profitable option for them to pursue, and historically, companies like Microsoft have aggressively tried to crush competition using any means necessary. No wonder Trusted Computing is so attractive an idea to such people!
Trusted Computing means no less than the gradual, but eventually complete, removal of competition in the software industry. In my opinion, this is the worst possible scenario for digital rights, and far worse than having the occassional piece of software or music illegally downloaded.
And as I've also pointed out, just because a person illegally downloads files, doesn't make him less likely to purchase content. As the BVI found out, people who download movies illegally buy just as many DVDs as the average person. Copyright infringement doesn't mean the end of paid-for content, but Trusted Computing does spell the end for a free software industry. I'll take the lesser of the two evils, myself.
I don't mean that at all. The members of an RIAA buy music rights off musicians, spend a lot of money marketing these pieces of music, the reap the revenues that the music brings in. They're publishers and promoters; they'll get your music onto CD and into the shops, and onto the radio and onto the TV.
But the business of publishing and promoting music is in danger of becoming obsolete. The first of these, publishing, is the most easy trend to spot, as it's happening right now. More and more music is being sold over the net, distributing music over the net, at least compared to traditional CD mass manufacture, costs virtually nothing.
Okay, so publishing doesn't matter. The next part, promoting, is slightly more complex. With products such as cars, houses or computers, the buyer can't experience every feature of the product before buying it, so salemen have an opportunity to selectively summarise for the customer. With music, there's no need; you can listen to the entire song on the radio, on a friend's CD, online, or using those headphones at highstreet music stores. When people buy music, they already pretty much know whether they'll like it or not. You can't convince a person to buy music that he thinks sounds awful, no matter how much you promote it.
Thus, the job of the RIAA is not to selectively summarise the good points of their artist's albums, but to tell people about them, to put the music on the radio, in stores, etc. etc. The more people they expose the music to, the more people they'll find who like the music, and the more people will buy the music. So the RIAA's job boils down to matching up music with people, finding out what music people like, and then giving it to them.
Whilst that may have been a big help in the past, now we have relational databases and bayesian algorithms that can do a far better job. A user tells his player what tracks he likes, and the player works out from what everyone else likes, what music he is most likely to buy. Combine that with word-of-mouth, and you get a far more efficient distribution channel. Hence, the RIAA's days are numbered.
To quote Churchill: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
Governments are always monopolies - unless you put up no barriers to (im)migration, which has it's own problems. Monopolies are always bad, but sometimes the alternative is worse. I don't believe that's the case with DRM.
Apple are a niche player; whilst you could make an argument that they have a monopoly over iPods, because this is a relatively small proportion of the industry as a whole, their monopoly is only going to affect this small proportion. A large player, such as Microsoft, has the capability to do far more damage, and has done so, in terms of interoperability, web standards, and IM protocol dispersion.
My most of my content is bespoke, custom made for the customer, and thus my monopoly isn't vital to my existance. But even on the content which benefits from a monopoly, I can't see myself needing that monopoly for
Maybe it's time to re-evaluate the worth of these materials, then. The recording industry claims that online music is no cheaper than CDs because the distribution cost is small in comparison to the total cost. The majority of the cost of music, apparently, goes toward promoting it. According to the executive chairman of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI):
It's common knowledge that the music publishers get the lion's share of the revenue. If they're removed from the distribution chain, and I think it's really only a matter of time before they are, I suspect music will get a lot cheaper. It's artificially high priced right now, and the recording industry want to keep it high priced.
And why do those laws exist? Because politicians, representing a majority, put them in place.
I'm a professional content producer myself. I make my living off copyrighted material I produce. But that doesn't change the fact that Trusted Computing and DRM is the worst idea ever to crawl out of the depths of the tech industry. There needs to be a balance between the needs of content producers, and the public at large. DRM and Trusted Computing short-circuit the normal legal proceedings. They prevent copyrighted material from falling into the public domain, turning a temporary lease into a permanent one.
DRM can ensure that a piece of data is forever kept from the public domain. The public are lending their metaphorical lawnmower to these large corporations, and these same corporations are planning never to return it. Copyright infringement may not satify the definition of theft, but Trusted Computing certainly does.
This is why monopolies are bad. Ordinarily, DRM and Trusted Computing would be a non-issue. These are devices that remove economic value, after all. Thus, a Trusted Computer is inherently less valuable than one without. In a market devoid of monopolies, with educated consumers, the idea of Trusted Computing would never get off the ground. Why would anyone buy a computer that does less than those of its competitor?
But, alas, consumers are often lacking in knowledge about technology, and the hardware, software and publishing monopolies seek to expand their own wealth at the expense of society. The only thing for me to do is to vote with my feet, and encourage others to do the same. In the end, it's in society's best interests to stop this Trusted Computing scam before it gets off the ground, so I remain hopeful.
No, I'm saying that releasing a movie in stages whilst simultaneously trying to convince people they should have it as soon as possible encourages copyright infringement. I said nothing about this being right or not.
This is a ridiculous statement. Any group of entities has to have a trustworthy majority, otherwise group cohesion breaks down. Prisoner's dilemma, tragedy of the commons, etc. etc. A society wouldn't be able to function without the majority being honest the majority of the time.
Of course. And they'll fight to preserve their business. But this will come at the expense of consumers. Being a consumer myself, I'd rather see organisations like the RIAA adapt or die, rather than try and erode my legal rights in an attempt to prop up their outdated business model. Let's be honest, a sufficiently large relational database could do a far better job at selling music to consumers.
Why stop at "steal"? Why not "terrorism"? It's an equally inaccurate word to use, but rather more forceful. Copyright infringement isn't stealing, because it doesn't deprive the author of their content.
Nor am I surprised that these corporations are fighting back, but they're protecting their bottom line by trying to remove our digital rights, both through laws like the DMCA, EUCD, and through technology, such as Trusted Computing. Personally, I rather like the rights I have, and I'll vote accordingly.
Only because it was agreed that, by law, authors should have a temporary monopoly over their work. You have these rights not because they are natural and self-evident, but because they are granted to encourage creativity and reward artists.
Even if we restrict the argument to recent creations, the issue is still muddied. For instance, Hollywood spends millions promoting a movie in the weeks up until its release, the goal being to ensure people will really, really want to see the movie. Hollywood then delays the release of the movie outside the US, and is somehow surprised that people, eager to see the film, resort to illegal distribution channels. What did they think would happen?
And then we have the cost of music and MP3s. The record industry releases WMAs and AACs for the same price as songs on a CD, at a lower, lossy bitrate, with DRM that prevents them from playing their music on their MP3 player. With such an offering what did they expect people would do?
These large content holders have consistantly taken decisions that, economically, encourage copyright infringement. Psychologically, the RIAA and MPAA's immoral behaviour means that they find it difficult to then appeal to people's sense of morality.
I'm not saying that copyright infringement is right, of course, just that it comes as no particular surprise given the actions of the major content holders. Traditionally, one solves these problems by adapting to the market and giving consumers what they want. The RIAA/MPAA are instead taking the Knut approach of trying to turn back the tide.
Further, it's debatable whether this mass copyright infringement is actually harming the content industry by any significant amount. In a recent interview by the BBC, a representative from the British Video Association was asked the question "Why have the anti-piracy trailers at the beginning of DVDs?". Their reply:
A rather suggestive quote, wouldn't you say?
I feel I must jump in here. Copyright is a temporary monopoly granted by the government, that allows authors to make money off their work before it enters the public domain. Patents are another such device which temporarily grants the inventor a monopoly over their design.
It's important to distinguish between the illegal, the immoral, and the economic costs. If I copy a Britney Spears album without paying for it, then this is very likely illegal. But if I had no intention of buying the album, then the economic costs to the author are zero. The morality of copying is more complicated, and I'd hesitate to make a firm judgement.
How long copyrights should exist is a further problem. Copyrights should promote the maximum amount of creative endevours, without constraining future artists. The ideal copyright will allow an author to recoup his development costs, if without copyrights he would not.
I can't quite see the benefit of having copyrights lasting 70 years after an author's death. Once the author is dead, what money he makes is of little issue, and thus this extra 70 years adds no extra content and deprives the public domain of 70 years of creativity. Copyrights are clearly longer than it would make sense for them to be.
Is it immoral to illegally copy a dead artist's work? Is it immoral to illegally copy an out-of-print work? Is it immoral to illegally copy a piece of work you would not have bought at full price? Where is the line drawn?
It depends who you talk to - the IRA saw Britain's control of Northern Ireland as an occupation. However, this wasn't really a view connected with reality, and I'll agree that the Palestinian situation is quite a bit worse.
"Two decades of crushing occupation" is going to breed more hatred, and make it more difficult to change.
Certainly. But that doesn't mean that it's an easy solution. Just giving Palestinians citizenship and voting rights won't stop the violence. Doing this and setting up years of negotiation and cease fires and diplomacy will work, eventually. But it'll take a lot of work.
Both sides are as bad as each other.
I'd prefer to go a step further, and say that the problem is unreasoning faith, and by implication, religion itself.
This strikes me as a hopelessly naive point of view. Northern Irish militant republicans had full voting rights, and full British citizenship, but that alone didn't prevent them from resorting to violence. Palestinian terrorists hold a more extreme view than the IRA ever did - the IRA never called for the destruction of Britain, for instance - so what makes you think that Palestinian terrorist organisations will be content with pursuing their goals democratically?
Whilst it's easy to say that only of Muslims are extremists, I'm curious as to what proportion of Christians, Buddhists or Hindus hold similar extreme views.
Security will get better, just like it did with physical banking.
Not going to happen. Electronic funds are easier to secure than physical ones. I can encrypt a piece of data such that no-one can feasibly decrypt it before the heat death of the Universe. I can't secure a physical item that well.
Currently, 12% of the Japanese population don't use physical money anymore, according to the Japan Research Institute. That's expected to rise to 33% by 2008. Whilst I agree that paper money is going to be around for quite some time, perhaps not as long as one might think.
Not at all. Whilst I've read up on language design and theory, and considered the relationship between types and inheritance, closures and functions, classes and objects; I had never before considered the connection between classes and read-write lexical scoping. Whilst I might be able to glean such insight by spending a few weeks reading code written by Haskall gurus, with an argument I gained such insight in an hour of posting. That's pretty efficient in my book.
No they aren't. Science itself is one big argument. Scientists propose new theories, and other scientists argue against them. Without Darwin arguing that maybe all creatures on Earth weren't created 6000 years ago, and Einstein arguing that maybe the ether was a stupid idea, and Galileo arguing the Earth went around the sun, and without Schrödinger arguing how silly quantum physics was, because that would mean a cat would be both alive and dead - where would we be now?
Arguments are the best way of learning, assuming that they're not argued blindly without paying heed to the opposing side. Without argument, without debate, everyone would blindly agree and there'd be no technological progress. The very computers we use to communicate are a product, nay, a triumph of the human ability to argue.
Frankly, the ability to argue and question and debate seems, to me, to be the single most important trait human beings have. If only it were exercised more.
And if arguments are for time wasting - why are you involved in one now?