The problem here is not copyright infringement: it's media companies setting themselves up as private police forces, with unchecked surveillance and enforcement capabilities, and no due process. That goes very much against the grain of, well, pretty much every civilized nation on the planet. These are powers that should be reserved for legitimate government, not the private sector.
Don't worry, the *AA are trying to fix that, via making copyright infringement a criminal offense, or passing laws to allow the Department of Justice to file civil suits on their behalf. Those private police forces cost money, so the *AA would much rather put the bill on the taxpayer's dime, and then it *will* be the legitimate government with unchecked surveillance and enforcement. As to due process, we'll see. Of course, there are those in the Department of Justice who agree with wanting to be able to prosecute copyright infringement on a corporations behalf, because they see with dollar-signs in their eyes the new increases in budgets and manpower such actions would confer, not to mention getting to spy on everyone's traffic, because hey, you might be "pirating" something.
If possible, I'd like to keep the *AA member companies footing the bill, because then there is a slight chance they will eventually realize that suing your customers is bad for business. If they get the government to do the dirty work for them, it will be public costs for private gains.
This is because companies don't want to foot the bill for lawsuits, they'd rather have it funded by taxpayers. Of course, the DOJ eats this up, because then they get to demand more money to hire more people for all the investigations and prosecutions they'd be doing, and claim to be "tough on crime". People wouldn't be able to point out the RIAA's actions, because it would be the government going after them.
I don't like the idea of the government getting involved in civil suits on behalf of a third party. What's next, investigating people for adulterous behavior, and then filing divorce proceedings on the spouse's behalf?
I don't want no blasted settlements. I want them to fine the companies involved for the full amount under the law. If that drives them out of business, I say Good Riddance!
I agree, to an extent. The difference is that Microsoft won't sell you Windows 2000 any more, and next year starting in July they won't sell you XP either, whereas I'm typing this on an old Compaq Armada with a P-III 550 and 320MB of ram, running the latest Xubuntu. Sure, the old versions of windows are still capable, but how long do you want to keep supporting them, when you can run current versions of linux?
Personal disclaimer: I used to have my parents running on a linux box, and it was fine, especially since I could ssh in remotely if something needed doing. Then my dad was given a newer machine running XP which they've had for 2 years now, and while it's worked, it hasn't been quite as nice an experience. Next time I'm home for the holidays, I am planning on bringing an extra hard drive, and setting the system up to dual boot, and get them back to linux by default.
...given that all 15 are in the Public Domain, having been published before 1923. In fact, I'm surprised they didn't claim 16, seeing as the 16th was published in 1922.
Everyone in the US has the right to make any of those books into a movie.
It wasn't until in 1908 that Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus established the first sale doctrine, which ruled that copyright does not give the holder the right to control re-sale of items once sold.
Solar, at 40% efficiency would still require covering something like 8% of the land surface area of Earth to meet current-day demands.
You might want to re-check your calculations. Total world energy usage is ~15 TW. Light at surface averages ~342 W/m.
Land surface is 148,939,100 km
(1.5*10^13 TW / [0.4 *342 W/m]) / 148939100000000 m = ~ 0.07%. Let's double it for extra capacity (and because half the planet is in night), and we're still under 0.15% of the land surface area. Your 8% estimate is large by a factor of 50 or so.
Of course, putting the whole thing in space might make more sense. If you really want pie-in-the-sky thinking, covering the moon with 10% efficient solar cells would provide about 86 times the power the world uses now. Getting it all back to Earth would be the tricky part.
Though I also agree we should be using better nuclear reactors.
Only problem is that it turns into 'reasoable doubt' by a jury to get a conviction, a much harder task then in civil cases.
Which means the local DA and the Justice Department will petition for larger budgets, so they can be "tough on crime", and receive more of your tax dollars.
Actually, MAC addresses had to be software settable, in order to be able to run DECnet. That's because DECnet didn't have ARP. Instead, MAC addresses are computable from DECnet node addresses (and I'm showing my age by even posting this).
but the law is called copyright, not distribution right.
Which is really a shame. It should have been called "copy distribution right" or "publication right". If it were, we would very likely would be better off -- no silliness about how running a program involves making a copy and thus invokes copyright law. If you buy a CD, of course you could format shift it to another music player. If you buy a book, you could photocopy the whole thing, scribble notes all over the photocopy, or scan it and ocr it to read on your phone, if that's your thing.
are there any normal usage servers that really come in at 100% CPU usage?
The anti-spam filters at my place of employment (two machines, each with a single 2.6GHz Xeon). That's why we are replacing them with two machines, each using two dual-core Xeons, for 4x the CPU power.
FYI, you can get a 1GB thumb drive for about $25 these days. I just ordered a 2 GB for my brother for Christmas, with tax and shipping, it was $42.43 from newegg.
A far cry from the 20MB "half hight" MFM drive I bought for $500 back in 1985.
Forbidding people from spending their own money cannot fly in the US without a constitutional amendment, as the courts have ruled that "spending money==free speech". Even if public funding were implemented, we would still have to deal with the people who are not the candidates or their parties spending money, often on attack ads against a particular candidate with any mention of support for the opponent.
I don't have a good solution, though bringing back the Fairness Doctrine would help.
More like 1/2. We have about 1/2 million Army soldiers on active duty, and another 1/2 million inactive between the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve. And that's just the US Army, not the entire US military, which is what many civilians think of when someone says "army".
The *ballot* goes in the *ballot box*. This way e-voting machine replaces the pen used to mark the ballot, not the ballot box itself.
Now sure, the machine can keep a total, which can be cross-checked against the ballot counting machine. And both can be checked against a hand-count to audit both machines.
But the voter does not take any form of vote record home.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
-Anatole France
Minor changes:
1. Politicians salaries capped at the MEDIAN income of their consitituents.
3. No contributions without voter registration info attached. If you cannot vote in a given election, you cannot contribute to those election campaigns.
7. Bring back the Fairness Doctorine
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Don't worry, the *AA are trying to fix that, via making copyright infringement a criminal offense, or passing laws to allow the Department of Justice to file civil suits on their behalf. Those private police forces cost money, so the *AA would much rather put the bill on the taxpayer's dime, and then it *will* be the legitimate government with unchecked surveillance and enforcement. As to due process, we'll see. Of course, there are those in the Department of Justice who agree with wanting to be able to prosecute copyright infringement on a corporations behalf, because they see with dollar-signs in their eyes the new increases in budgets and manpower such actions would confer, not to mention getting to spy on everyone's traffic, because hey, you might be "pirating" something.
If possible, I'd like to keep the *AA member companies footing the bill, because then there is a slight chance they will eventually realize that suing your customers is bad for business. If they get the government to do the dirty work for them, it will be public costs for private gains.
This is because companies don't want to foot the bill for lawsuits, they'd rather have it funded by taxpayers. Of course, the DOJ eats this up, because then they get to demand more money to hire more people for all the investigations and prosecutions they'd be doing, and claim to be "tough on crime". People wouldn't be able to point out the RIAA's actions, because it would be the government going after them.
I don't like the idea of the government getting involved in civil suits on behalf of a third party. What's next, investigating people for adulterous behavior, and then filing divorce proceedings on the spouse's behalf?
I don't want no blasted settlements. I want them to fine the companies involved for the full amount under the law. If that drives them out of business, I say Good Riddance!
I agree, to an extent. The difference is that Microsoft won't sell you Windows 2000 any more, and next year starting in July they won't sell you XP either, whereas I'm typing this on an old Compaq Armada with a P-III 550 and 320MB of ram, running the latest Xubuntu. Sure, the old versions of windows are still capable, but how long do you want to keep supporting them, when you can run current versions of linux?
Personal disclaimer: I used to have my parents running on a linux box, and it was fine, especially since I could ssh in remotely if something needed doing. Then my dad was given a newer machine running XP which they've had for 2 years now, and while it's worked, it hasn't been quite as nice an experience. Next time I'm home for the holidays, I am planning on bringing an extra hard drive, and setting the system up to dual boot, and get them back to linux by default.
Why not, if someone was going to run a lab or cafe full of them?
Why?
LAN connections, not Internet. It only has a 40GB internal disk, so you might want to use one network port for iSCSI, ATAoE, or even plain old NFS.
Some people say you were a ferocious killing machine.
Some people say you hunted in packs.
Some people say you're a giant chicken.
</chicken boo>
Or the long term health effects. It may cause pain now, but increase your chance for cancer, much like sunburn.
Everyone in the US has the right to make any of those books into a movie.
Shhh! You want them to try and sink the Internet as well?
It wasn't until in 1908 that Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus established the first sale doctrine, which ruled that copyright does not give the holder the right to control re-sale of items once sold.
You might want to re-check your calculations. Total world energy usage is ~15 TW. Light at surface averages ~342 W/m.
Land surface is 148,939,100 km
(1.5*10^13 TW / [0.4 *342 W/m]) / 148939100000000 m = ~ 0.07%. Let's double it for extra capacity (and because half the planet is in night), and we're still under 0.15% of the land surface area. Your 8% estimate is large by a factor of 50 or so.
Of course, putting the whole thing in space might make more sense. If you really want pie-in-the-sky thinking, covering the moon with 10% efficient solar cells would provide about 86 times the power the world uses now. Getting it all back to Earth would be the tricky part.
Though I also agree we should be using better nuclear reactors.
Which means the local DA and the Justice Department will petition for larger budgets, so they can be "tough on crime", and receive more of your tax dollars.
Actually, MAC addresses had to be software settable, in order to be able to run DECnet. That's because DECnet didn't have ARP. Instead, MAC addresses are computable from DECnet node addresses (and I'm showing my age by even posting this).
Which is really a shame. It should have been called "copy distribution right" or "publication right". If it were, we would very likely would be better off -- no silliness about how running a program involves making a copy and thus invokes copyright law. If you buy a CD, of course you could format shift it to another music player. If you buy a book, you could photocopy the whole thing, scribble notes all over the photocopy, or scan it and ocr it to read on your phone, if that's your thing.
The anti-spam filters at my place of employment (two machines, each with a single 2.6GHz Xeon). That's why we are replacing them with two machines, each using two dual-core Xeons, for 4x the CPU power.
D'oh! s/hight/height/.
And thinking back, it might have only been $400.
FYI, you can get a 1GB thumb drive for about $25 these days. I just ordered a 2 GB for my brother for Christmas, with tax and shipping, it was $42.43 from newegg.
A far cry from the 20MB "half hight" MFM drive I bought for $500 back in 1985.
I don't have a good solution, though bringing back the Fairness Doctrine would help.
More like 1/2. We have about 1/2 million Army soldiers on active duty, and another 1/2 million inactive between the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve. And that's just the US Army, not the entire US military, which is what many civilians think of when someone says "army".
Sigh. This misconception continues to persist.
The voter does not keep the vote.
The *ballot* goes in the *ballot box*. This way e-voting machine replaces the pen used to mark the ballot, not the ballot box itself.
Now sure, the machine can keep a total, which can be cross-checked against the ballot counting machine. And both can be checked against a hand-count to audit both machines.
But the voter does not take any form of vote record home.
I don't understand, what do Eskimos have to do with desktop applications? ... Oh. Intuit! Sorry.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
-Anatole France
Other than to have a gratuitous incompatible format change to force people to upgrade, why do people need a new version of MS Office?
Seriously, I am curious, if you are an Office user, what features are you missing that you would be willing to upgrade for?
Minor changes:
1. Politicians salaries capped at the MEDIAN income of their consitituents.
3. No contributions without voter registration info attached. If you cannot vote in a given election, you cannot contribute to those election campaigns.
7. Bring back the Fairness Doctorine