This was the original intent of the Copyright ammendment to the constitution -- to ensure that works were made so that they could, after "a limited period of time", be passed into the public domain for all people to enjoy.
Actually, copyright (and patents) derive their authority directly from Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, not any amendment. It's more important an issue than you make it out to be. It was in there even before the Bill of Rights, for goodness sake. Think about that for awhile -- copyrights came before freedom of speech, unreasonable searches and seizures, and cruel and unusual punishment. That really curdles my milk.
Quick review
on
E ~ mc^2
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· Score: 4, Interesting
E=mc^2 is actually a simplified form of the real equation, E=mc^2/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2).
Please don't forget your subscripts! As everyone learns in basic special relativity, total energy, which is kinetic + potential, is
E = m0 * c^2 * gamma,
where gamma = 1 / sqrt( 1-v^2/c^2 ) and m0 is the rest mass.
At v = 0, gamma = 1 and E = m0 c^2, Einstein's famous formula for rest energy. Kinetic energy is given by KE = E - m0 c^2, or
KE = m0 c^2 ( gamma - 1 ).
To see any appreciable effect of velocity, consider the situation where you are going fast enough to double your effective mass (gamma = 2). Solving for velocity gives v = c sqrt(3/4) = 86.6% of the speed of light. Not gonna happen with current technology (outside of atom smashers).
As v -> c, gamma -> infinity and this is Einstein's rationale for saying it's impossible to accelerate any matter up to the speed of light, since doing so would require an infinite amount of kinetic energy. On the other hand, the formula for photons is
E = p c = h c / lambda = h nu,
where p is momentum, h is Planck's constant, lambda is wavelength, and c / lambda = nu is the frequency. Since photons are never at rest (remember the constant speed of light?), you won't see any m's make an appearance here. And just for the record, this last formula explains the photoelectric effect, which is what won Einstein his Nobel, not E = m c^2.
New York technology analyst Richard Doherty said companies have delayed many new products, services and forms of entertainment because of the DVD industry's problems.
``The future of digital delivery has been on hold ever since this case first came," said Doherty, head of The Envisioneering Group. ``They need to know it's going to be protected, it's not going to be ripped off seven seconds after being put on the Internet."
First: yes, companies have delayed products and forms of entertainment. Big deal. Companies delay products all the time for reasons that have nothing to do with tech.
Second: If you know your movie is gonna be ripped because you released a DVD, and you don't want that, don't release the movie on DVD. Don't blame someone else for your shortsightedness. There is no law, statute, regulation, or rule in this country entitling the entertainment industry to release XXX on DVD or Britney Spears on CD -- they do it as a calculated business decision. If they choose to release it anyway, they should (and do) expect it to be copied. Yes, it's against the law, but they know it's gonna happen, and so do courts and juries. Once enough people assume copying as a God-given right (and many younger people don't even know ripping nee copyright infringement is illegal), juries will overturn regardless of the law.
Why do they call it 'common sense', when it's so rare these days?
Believe the patent application. I would have thought by now that people would realize not to trust anything anyone hears, reads, or sees in the media, especially when it's coming from a PR shill.
if condoms lead to more sex... then guns must lead to more killing, no?
Um, no. Let me demonstrate:
Conservatives think sex is bad, condoms or no.
They also think guns are good. Their justification is that people exercise good personal judgment when using guns.
You claim that conservatives believe that people should always exercise good personal judgment.
You then conclude, validly, that conservatives should expect people to exercise good judgment whilst having sex.
Your (unstated) opinion is that it's good to use condoms whilst having sex.
Your other unstated opinion is that you and conservatives should have the same value system.
You conclude that conservatives should expect people to use condoms during sex, in contradiction to their stated platform.
The entire purpose of this 'argument' seems to be to make an attack on their hypocrisy. To what end eludes me.
Although I disagree with conservatives on many issues, the use of condoms being one of them, I find your 'argument', along with the fact that it was moderated highly, quite disturbing.
In case you're wondering, my counter argument would be that conservatives believe that people tend not to exhibit sound judgment where the issue of sex is concerned. While I don't necessarily agree with this stance, I don't find it utterly implausible either. This counter completely invalidates your train of reasoning.
As every educated/.ter should know, piracy IS a crime, only it's not related to theft, but to copyright infringement.
As every educated/.ter should know, piracy IS a crime, only it's not related to copyright infringement, but to crime on the high seas. Real piracy carries a life sentence.
as a juror you're not supposed to do any external research on your own.
This is the scariest thing I've heard in a long time. If I ever get called, I'm gonna do all sorts of research, and to hell with anyone if they think I'm 'biasing' myself. If I'm a juror, I've got a duty to Justice, not to the judge, and not to the lawyers. That means getting informed about everything I can, including to the laws actually on the books, not just the law 'as explained to you by the bench'. It is the duty of the judge to present the evidence of the case fairly to the jury, but I'll be damned if I let anyone else interpret the law for me -- that's my job. And if I think, under my own interpretation, that the law is unfair, I'll invoke my rights and acquit.
Here's a quote, in case you find my opinion misguided:
[I]f they can say upon their oaths that they know the law better than the court does, they have the right to do so, but before assuming so solemn a responsibility, they should be sure that they are not acting from caprice or prejudice . . . but from a deep and confident conviction that the court is wrong and that they are right. Before saying this upon their oaths it is their duty to reflect, whether from their habits of thought, their study and experience, they are better qualified to judge of the law than the court.
Schnier v. People, 23 Ill. 17, 30 (1859), quoted in Howe, Juries as Judges of Criminal Law, 52 Harv. L.Rev. 582, 611 (1939)
Of course, expressing knowledge about my basic rights and responsibilities as a juror will probably get me thrown out. I've only served once, and the case was settled after I was chosen to serve, so I never got to give the lawyers the bad news that they'd have to send me home.
Here's what I don't get, back when Yahoo (tm) wanted to expand its search horizan it used inktomi, then moved to altavista, then to google. If inktomi was so wonderful then why on earth was superceded?
This could be explained by a business change at Yahoo. It may be the case that Yahoo had previously structured their business model to outsource their searching, seeing it as secondary to the rest of their business. Now, they may want to bring search-engine software in-house, and they probably still have people working there who are familiar with Inktomi's tech.
The BSA, a global body that counts among its members Apple Computer, Microsoft Corp, and Intel Corp, estimates the European software industry loses three billion euros ($3.09 billion) annually due to unauthorized duplication of its products.
This type of crap is getting really annoying. It's all BS, and I wish the major outlets would stop reporting it. Nothing is being lost! What's really happening is this: potential revenues are being unrealized. They're even projected revenues (note the word "estimates"?), which means the numbers are BS anyway. The truth doesn't sound nearly as sexy, does it? Much more sensational to say 'lost', 'stolen', and 'pirates are everywhere'. Put them all together for more impact (tell me if this sounds familiar):
"We're losing gazillions of dollars every year because we're surrounded on all sides by terrorist, anti-capitalist, stealing pirates who are trying to destroy our happy, profitable businesses."
I'm fed up. As a result, I'm going to take a brief leave of my senses, and send out a hearty FUCK YOU to Microsoft, the various ??AAs, all of their lobbyists and spin-doctors, and yes, Reuters.
Here's more BS from the article: The industries argue that the lack of a coherent approach to protecting intellectual property in the digital environment has led to the rise of a black market in pirated material.
This is not an argument. Using my trusty BS-argument buster, I see that this kind of statement is actually the fallacy of non causa pro causa. But what is the cause they don't mention? To understand where black markets come from, you have to use economics. Black markets only develop where they are profitable, i.e. where the marginal price is higher than the marginal cost. This never occurs in a free market, but does happen when the market is regulated (take drugs, for instance) or when there are not enough players, which is clearly not the case here. In the case of drugs, active regulation drives up the marginal price artifically (it sucks to go to jail, and part of the price of your dime bag compensates your dealer for the risk they take). In the case under consideration, the marginal cost is being driven up by bad IP laws (which Microsoft and the content industry were so excited about, I might add).
This is the elusive flaw with their argument, and just goes to show that they created their own hell. Now they're complaining about having to live in it. Morons.
What we have here is a simple case of companies using technology to control the market, whereas normal theory states that economics should control technology.
In this case company M sells product X, N sells GC, and S sells P2. Another company L-S comes up with enhancements (MC) to these products which allow competitors to use the products for their own purposes. Note that this is entirely reasonable; for example, consider someone from Stanley buying a screwdriver from Black & Decker and using it to open their mail. No harm there, but they're using the tool for something other than its intended purpose. This is the way Property Rights work: once you buy something, it's yours to do with as you wish.
According to standard theory, company L-S would compete with all the other company 'L-S's for control over the MC market, until the supply and demand curves meet. That is, assuming there are enough company 'L-S's and enough demand, enough supply will be generated so that the marginal cost per unit for the MC market will equal the marginal price, and a free-market condition is reached.
Unfortunately, this is not what's being allowed to happen. Companies M, N, and S are conspiring to use technological means to thwart competition. They see other people (like 'console hackers') who threaten to subvert their product into a tool of their competitors. Company M's suit, in particular, threatens to keep a rival group's product in another market, the 'OS' market, off their hardware. (Didn't we just go through a court case designed to stop this sort of behaviour?) They are attempting to use technology to control the market, instead of allowing the market to make its own decisions about the technology.
I hereby proclaim and declare companies M, N, and S to be willfully anti-free-market and anti-competitive, and they should be penalized into oblivion for what they're doing.
Well said! On the whole, I agree with you. I still have a question, however:
Guns are bad in many cases and should be restricted, but they are not illegal.
Aren't you yourself just now guilty of making a broad generalization? The law doesn't work on "bad in many cases", any more than it works on "probably" or "maybe". A gun, like a P2P client program, is a tool. In the case of a gun, it's a tool for putting deep holes in things, but it's still just a tool (as you pointed out).
I'm curious as to the types of restrictions you would have placed on normal citizens to prevent them from using tools. If your intent is prevention of crime, it won't work -- people will just use other tools to commit their crimes. They're creative that way. If your intent is to limit the damage of crime, so be it, but then I would argue that your restrictions equally limit the good that can come from said tool.
Option A, people who make something always own what they make forever.
Option B, people who make things share what they make with all of humanity.
You are simplifying the situation way too much. Consider:
Option C, people make things and sell them to individuals, who then own them.
Option C is the way business works.
The same arguement which claims we should have software be open source because it benifits the whole instead of one part of the whole is the same arguement we use with file sharing.
Actually, the reason software should be open source (in the long run, at least) is as follows. At least as a sequence of bits, software doesn't suffer from age. As long as you could get reliable hardware to run your bits on, software should live forever, unlike chairs, cars, books, and other tangible goods which need replacing. Once you have software that performs a certain task, it should never need replacing. Furthermore, once you have open source software that does functionally the same thing, no one will be able to make money from selling equivalent proprietary software.
In other words, it's just a matter of time before the following situation develops:
All common and/or interesting software (operating systems, office automation s/w, video card drivers, etc) is open source.
All special-needs software (embedded systems s/w, customer-specific s/w) is proprietary.
Of course, since special-needs is defined by whatever hackers think is boring, most software will eventually be open sourced.
Damn it! Why are they so stupid? This is what cookies are for! They should track my browsing behaviour, find out what I'm interested in, and serve me those kinds of ads.
This is precisely why I block cookies from sites I don't transact business with.
Do you want smarter ads, or do you want your privacy protected from doubleclick et al? Pick one.
I think that these guys are trying to solve a non-problem.
Rarely do I see such brilliance on/.! I give parent poster full marks.
As we all know by now, security is a process, not a goal. People walking away from their keyboards is endemic of bad security practice. This problem can only be fixed by training. New tech like this, while it may have a 'neato' factor, solves the wrong problem. Likewise, having the computer automatically put itself to sleep and ask for a password solves the wrong problem as well.
People are asking the computers to practice good security for them because, and here's the important thing to take away, they are too lazy to practice good security themselves. This problem has nothing to do with intelligence. Anyone smart enough to use Excel is smart enough to follow (blindly, mechanically) a few simple security rules from IT. No, the source of this problem is laziness. Until that problem is addressed, all the neato tech in the world won't prevent people from fux0ring themselves.
I'm not going to boycott someone based on some ideological principle. If someone puts out a good movie, I'll go see it, in the theatre. If an artist makes a good CD, I'll buy it, brand new, from my local retail $tore.
The reason the ??AA don't get my money is that my standards for what is 'good' are higher than 99% of the crap they generate. I'm just not interested. If they can find a way to make me interested, they'll get my money. This is the way most people think. The problem everyone seems to be having is that most people settle for what the ??AA is putting out, and it's not good enough for this crowd's tastes.
So what's your problem? Don't go to the movies. You won't be missed, and you won't miss it. Just don't whine about a useless and impractical boycott for ideology's sake. Heaven forbid, you might actually try doing something about it, like starting your own production house. But OMG, that'd require, like, getting off your ass and going outside. And being slightly intelligent and business-savvy. And dealing with liars, cheats, VCs, and all sorts of other unmentionables. Naw, much easier for you to sit down, bitch about how much life sucks on/., and munch Cheetos.
I am so tired of all this Disney conspiracy theory bashing.
And I'm fed up with Disney apologists. Miyazaki has Disney beat, hands-down, and everyone knows it, not least of which Miyazaki and Disney. Disney is burying this one.
And pitching films to the Academy doesn't mean squat. If they're spending the same time and money on SA as they are on L&S and TP, then they're spending twice the amount for their stuff as for Ghibli's movie. It's very difficult to miss the reasons why, if you bother to spend 5 seconds thinking about it. On top of that, at the end of the day only the Academy cares. If you want some important numbers, I guarantee that the amounts they're spending on general advertisements is way less for SA. In fact, I can't remember seeing a single TV ad for SA, but I see TP ads every day, followed by Ronald the clown screaming gibberish about 'solar sailing' or some crap.
Disney knows they're losing potential revenue hand-over-fist on this one, but it's in their long-term financial interest to bury SA. If you can beat me with financial figures, go right ahead, but until you can, leave me alone.
Group Policy kicks ass. You can completely lock down a machine so that cmd.exe doesn't work no matter what and the only.exe's that do work are the ones you specify. You can let the user specify their Display preferences, but nothing else. Or everything except the Display preferences. The point is, Linux has nothing to compare with this.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but it's called/etc/group, and it was invented long before Windows.
If Linux had anything to easier to compare to this I'd be using it (admins being essentially lazy).
Uh, no, that's users who are lazy. Just because you know how to admin, don't mean you're an admin. I run Windoze at home. Why? Because at home, I'm a lazy user. Says nothing about my day job...
The FACT is no one has a better way to administrate and trouble-shoot end-user desktops than Microsoft right now.
Uh, sorry to burst your bubble again, but that's an OPINION. Another opinion is that you're a troll.
The only thing Hollyweird really comprehends is money... if people keep flocking to the theaters to watch computer generated explosions, well, by golly, Hollywood will keep delivering more of the same.
Thank goodness, some common sense! I haven't seen Episode 2, nor have I seen Nemesis, and I have no plans. I don't buy American-made CDs or DVDs. Go ahead, mod me (-1, Un-american), see if I care.) Not to troll, but I have a growing collection of anime, which I'm happy to say is far better, content-wise, than most of the crap I'm missing on the big screen.
If you think I'm full of it, ask yourself this question: are you any better a person for having spent 90 minutes seeing this flick? Has your world view been improved, do you feel better about life, have you been changed? If not, are you at least happy you've avoided thinking for an hour and a half? Because what you do today will cost you a day of your life.
You don't force users to choose strong passwords. They probably have different opinions about what makes strong mustard, you think they're gonna understand your obscure criteria? You give them strong passwords and tell them to memorize. If they don't like '1mA1uZ@r', you can always give them '$m3L1Y@$5'.
The real issue is that people just cant use computers. What would solve the problem would be some form of transparent biometric authentication.
I'm sorry, but this isn't a solution. Your first sentence says, 'this is a training (i.e., non-technical) problem'. Your second says, 'let's solve it with technology'.
Since I'm a broken record, I will repeat:
You can't solve a non-technical problem with a technical solution.
What you really need to do is train your employees. Anything short of that won't solve your problems.
Disclaimer: I do not carry a gun, nor am I a member of the NRA. Before last weekend, I only shot BB guns and a handgun once on an indoor range. I do, however, plan on purchasing a handgun for personal defense, and obtaining a concealed carry weapon permit.
I think gun control is silly. A gun is a tool, like a car or a table saw. Both cars and table saws have caused deaths; in fact, cars contribute to far more deaths than guns. Notice I didn't say "cars kill people". I don't blame a tool for irresponsible or negligent users of that tool, I blame the person operating the tool.
Because this really is the answer to every problem, let me reiterate:
Banning technology will not stop a sociological problem.
To make this generalization specific:
Banning handguns (assault rifles, machine guns, tac nukes, etc) will not stop crime.
Instead of banning guns, I support qualifications for gun use, similar to drivers' license tests.
You may ask why I suddenly had a change of heart regarding guns (from fence-sitter to non-ban). This past weekend, I attended a four day handgun course at Front Sight, a firearms training institute in Nevada. I did not attend because I'm a gun nut, I did it at the request of a friend. I was there to chaperone a collection of 20 pasty-faced geeks from my alma mater. These students are as close to the typical/. crowd as you'll find.
At this course, the instructors don't use the words 'accidental' or 'unintentional' when talking about guns. They use a different phrase: "negligent discharge". Anyone using a gun should be responsible for the results of that use. Accidents never happen with guns, only negligent or malicious use.
I encourage everyone to take the Front Sight courses. I learned an amazing amount from my experience. I can now take a (loaded) Glock 17 from a concealed holster and deliver two sighted shots to the thoracic cavity on a target 7 meters away in under two seconds. I can also deliver a headshot to the cranio-ocular cavity at the same distance 80% of the time under time pressure (the other 20% end up hitting the forehead or chin). I can do better than that with a few more seconds. And four days ago I couldn't hit the broadside of a barn, and neither could most of the people I was chaperoning.
If you think I'm now a menace to myself and others, you should know that the most important skill I learned was when to use a gun, which is almost never if you use proper conflict avoidance. If I'm carrying, and I'm attacked at the ATM by a robber, I'll just drop my money on the ground and back away. If he walks past the money and draws a knife, I'll shoot him. But I'll only shoot as a last resort.
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Actually, copyright (and patents) derive their authority directly from Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, not any amendment. It's more important an issue than you make it out to be. It was in there even before the Bill of Rights, for goodness sake. Think about that for awhile -- copyrights came before freedom of speech, unreasonable searches and seizures, and cruel and unusual punishment. That really curdles my milk.
Please don't forget your subscripts! As everyone learns in basic special relativity, total energy, which is kinetic + potential, is
where gamma = 1 / sqrt( 1-v^2/c^2 ) and m0 is the rest mass.At v = 0, gamma = 1 and E = m0 c^2, Einstein's famous formula for rest energy. Kinetic energy is given by KE = E - m0 c^2, or
To see any appreciable effect of velocity, consider the situation where you are going fast enough to double your effective mass (gamma = 2). Solving for velocity gives v = c sqrt(3/4) = 86.6% of the speed of light. Not gonna happen with current technology (outside of atom smashers).As v -> c, gamma -> infinity and this is Einstein's rationale for saying it's impossible to accelerate any matter up to the speed of light, since doing so would require an infinite amount of kinetic energy. On the other hand, the formula for photons is
where p is momentum, h is Planck's constant, lambda is wavelength, and c / lambda = nu is the frequency. Since photons are never at rest (remember the constant speed of light?), you won't see any m's make an appearance here. And just for the record, this last formula explains the photoelectric effect, which is what won Einstein his Nobel, not E = m c^2.``The future of digital delivery has been on hold ever since this case first came," said Doherty, head of The Envisioneering Group. ``They need to know it's going to be protected, it's not going to be ripped off seven seconds after being put on the Internet."
First: yes, companies have delayed products and forms of entertainment. Big deal. Companies delay products all the time for reasons that have nothing to do with tech.
Second: If you know your movie is gonna be ripped because you released a DVD, and you don't want that, don't release the movie on DVD. Don't blame someone else for your shortsightedness. There is no law, statute, regulation, or rule in this country entitling the entertainment industry to release XXX on DVD or Britney Spears on CD -- they do it as a calculated business decision. If they choose to release it anyway, they should (and do) expect it to be copied. Yes, it's against the law, but they know it's gonna happen, and so do courts and juries. Once enough people assume copying as a God-given right (and many younger people don't even know ripping nee copyright infringement is illegal), juries will overturn regardless of the law.
Why do they call it 'common sense', when it's so rare these days?
You're a terrorist! Trying to get us to DDoS Waste Management, Inc, part of our critical infrastructure!
Believe the patent application. I would have thought by now that people would realize not to trust anything anyone hears, reads, or sees in the media, especially when it's coming from a PR shill.
Um, no. Let me demonstrate:
- Conservatives think sex is bad, condoms or no.
- They also think guns are good. Their justification is that people exercise good personal judgment when using guns.
- You claim that conservatives believe that people should always exercise good personal judgment.
- You then conclude, validly, that conservatives should expect people to exercise good judgment whilst having sex.
- Your (unstated) opinion is that it's good to use condoms whilst having sex.
- Your other unstated opinion is that you and conservatives should have the same value system.
- You conclude that conservatives should expect people to use condoms during sex, in contradiction to their stated platform.
- The entire purpose of this 'argument' seems to be to make an attack on their hypocrisy. To what end eludes me.
Although I disagree with conservatives on many issues, the use of condoms being one of them, I find your 'argument', along with the fact that it was moderated highly, quite disturbing.In case you're wondering, my counter argument would be that conservatives believe that people tend not to exhibit sound judgment where the issue of sex is concerned. While I don't necessarily agree with this stance, I don't find it utterly implausible either. This counter completely invalidates your train of reasoning.
As every educated /.ter should know, piracy IS a crime, only it's not related to copyright infringement, but to crime on the high seas. Real piracy carries a life sentence.
Of course there's water on Mars! There are already cats and mice chasing each other up there!
This is the scariest thing I've heard in a long time. If I ever get called, I'm gonna do all sorts of research, and to hell with anyone if they think I'm 'biasing' myself. If I'm a juror, I've got a duty to Justice, not to the judge, and not to the lawyers. That means getting informed about everything I can, including to the laws actually on the books, not just the law 'as explained to you by the bench'. It is the duty of the judge to present the evidence of the case fairly to the jury, but I'll be damned if I let anyone else interpret the law for me -- that's my job. And if I think, under my own interpretation, that the law is unfair, I'll invoke my rights and acquit.
Here's a quote, in case you find my opinion misguided:
Of course, expressing knowledge about my basic rights and responsibilities as a juror will probably get me thrown out. I've only served once, and the case was settled after I was chosen to serve, so I never got to give the lawyers the bad news that they'd have to send me home.This could be explained by a business change at Yahoo. It may be the case that Yahoo had previously structured their business model to outsource their searching, seeing it as secondary to the rest of their business. Now, they may want to bring search-engine software in-house, and they probably still have people working there who are familiar with Inktomi's tech.
Disclaimer: I used to work at Inktomi.
This type of crap is getting really annoying. It's all BS, and I wish the major outlets would stop reporting it. Nothing is being lost! What's really happening is this: potential revenues are being unrealized. They're even projected revenues (note the word "estimates"?), which means the numbers are BS anyway. The truth doesn't sound nearly as sexy, does it? Much more sensational to say 'lost', 'stolen', and 'pirates are everywhere'. Put them all together for more impact (tell me if this sounds familiar):
I'm fed up. As a result, I'm going to take a brief leave of my senses, and send out a hearty FUCK YOU to Microsoft, the various ??AAs, all of their lobbyists and spin-doctors, and yes, Reuters.Here's more BS from the article:
The industries argue that the lack of a coherent approach to protecting intellectual property in the digital environment has led to the rise of a black market in pirated material.
This is not an argument. Using my trusty BS-argument buster, I see that this kind of statement is actually the fallacy of non causa pro causa. But what is the cause they don't mention? To understand where black markets come from, you have to use economics. Black markets only develop where they are profitable, i.e. where the marginal price is higher than the marginal cost. This never occurs in a free market, but does happen when the market is regulated (take drugs, for instance) or when there are not enough players, which is clearly not the case here. In the case of drugs, active regulation drives up the marginal price artifically (it sucks to go to jail, and part of the price of your dime bag compensates your dealer for the risk they take). In the case under consideration, the marginal cost is being driven up by bad IP laws (which Microsoft and the content industry were so excited about, I might add).
This is the elusive flaw with their argument, and just goes to show that they created their own hell. Now they're complaining about having to live in it. Morons.
In this case company M sells product X, N sells GC, and S sells P2. Another company L-S comes up with enhancements (MC) to these products which allow competitors to use the products for their own purposes. Note that this is entirely reasonable; for example, consider someone from Stanley buying a screwdriver from Black & Decker and using it to open their mail. No harm there, but they're using the tool for something other than its intended purpose. This is the way Property Rights work: once you buy something, it's yours to do with as you wish.
According to standard theory, company L-S would compete with all the other company 'L-S's for control over the MC market, until the supply and demand curves meet. That is, assuming there are enough company 'L-S's and enough demand, enough supply will be generated so that the marginal cost per unit for the MC market will equal the marginal price, and a free-market condition is reached.
Unfortunately, this is not what's being allowed to happen. Companies M, N, and S are conspiring to use technological means to thwart competition. They see other people (like 'console hackers') who threaten to subvert their product into a tool of their competitors. Company M's suit, in particular, threatens to keep a rival group's product in another market, the 'OS' market, off their hardware. (Didn't we just go through a court case designed to stop this sort of behaviour?) They are attempting to use technology to control the market, instead of allowing the market to make its own decisions about the technology.
I hereby proclaim and declare companies M, N, and S to be willfully anti-free-market and anti-competitive, and they should be penalized into oblivion for what they're doing.
Guns are bad in many cases and should be restricted, but they are not illegal.
Aren't you yourself just now guilty of making a broad generalization? The law doesn't work on "bad in many cases", any more than it works on "probably" or "maybe". A gun, like a P2P client program, is a tool. In the case of a gun, it's a tool for putting deep holes in things, but it's still just a tool (as you pointed out).
I'm curious as to the types of restrictions you would have placed on normal citizens to prevent them from using tools. If your intent is prevention of crime, it won't work -- people will just use other tools to commit their crimes. They're creative that way. If your intent is to limit the damage of crime, so be it, but then I would argue that your restrictions equally limit the good that can come from said tool.
Please explain further.
Option C, people make things and sell them to individuals, who then own them.
Option C is the way business works.
The same arguement which claims we should have software be open source because it benifits the whole instead of one part of the whole is the same arguement we use with file sharing.
Actually, the reason software should be open source (in the long run, at least) is as follows. At least as a sequence of bits, software doesn't suffer from age. As long as you could get reliable hardware to run your bits on, software should live forever, unlike chairs, cars, books, and other tangible goods which need replacing. Once you have software that performs a certain task, it should never need replacing. Furthermore, once you have open source software that does functionally the same thing, no one will be able to make money from selling equivalent proprietary software.
In other words, it's just a matter of time before the following situation develops:
- All common and/or interesting software (operating systems, office automation s/w, video card drivers, etc) is open source.
- All special-needs software (embedded systems s/w, customer-specific s/w) is proprietary.
Of course, since special-needs is defined by whatever hackers think is boring, most software will eventually be open sourced.This is precisely why I block cookies from sites I don't transact business with.
Do you want smarter ads, or do you want your privacy protected from doubleclick et al? Pick one.
Rarely do I see such brilliance on /.! I give parent poster full marks.
As we all know by now, security is a process, not a goal. People walking away from their keyboards is endemic of bad security practice. This problem can only be fixed by training. New tech like this, while it may have a 'neato' factor, solves the wrong problem. Likewise, having the computer automatically put itself to sleep and ask for a password solves the wrong problem as well.
People are asking the computers to practice good security for them because, and here's the important thing to take away, they are too lazy to practice good security themselves. This problem has nothing to do with intelligence. Anyone smart enough to use Excel is smart enough to follow (blindly, mechanically) a few simple security rules from IT. No, the source of this problem is laziness. Until that problem is addressed, all the neato tech in the world won't prevent people from fux0ring themselves.
The reason the ??AA don't get my money is that my standards for what is 'good' are higher than 99% of the crap they generate. I'm just not interested. If they can find a way to make me interested, they'll get my money. This is the way most people think. The problem everyone seems to be having is that most people settle for what the ??AA is putting out, and it's not good enough for this crowd's tastes.
So what's your problem? Don't go to the movies. You won't be missed, and you won't miss it. Just don't whine about a useless and impractical boycott for ideology's sake. Heaven forbid, you might actually try doing something about it, like starting your own production house. But OMG, that'd require, like, getting off your ass and going outside. And being slightly intelligent and business-savvy. And dealing with liars, cheats, VCs, and all sorts of other unmentionables. Naw, much easier for you to sit down, bitch about how much life sucks on /., and munch Cheetos.
And I'm fed up with Disney apologists. Miyazaki has Disney beat, hands-down, and everyone knows it, not least of which Miyazaki and Disney. Disney is burying this one.
And pitching films to the Academy doesn't mean squat. If they're spending the same time and money on SA as they are on L&S and TP, then they're spending twice the amount for their stuff as for Ghibli's movie. It's very difficult to miss the reasons why, if you bother to spend 5 seconds thinking about it. On top of that, at the end of the day only the Academy cares. If you want some important numbers, I guarantee that the amounts they're spending on general advertisements is way less for SA. In fact, I can't remember seeing a single TV ad for SA, but I see TP ads every day, followed by Ronald the clown screaming gibberish about 'solar sailing' or some crap.
Disney knows they're losing potential revenue hand-over-fist on this one, but it's in their long-term financial interest to bury SA. If you can beat me with financial figures, go right ahead, but until you can, leave me alone.
We win, and keep winning. Then someone sends a petition to their congressman. That's the way it works.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but it's called /etc/group, and it was invented long before Windows.
If Linux had anything to easier to compare to this I'd be using it (admins being essentially lazy).
Uh, no, that's users who are lazy. Just because you know how to admin, don't mean you're an admin. I run Windoze at home. Why? Because at home, I'm a lazy user. Says nothing about my day job...
The FACT is no one has a better way to administrate and trouble-shoot end-user desktops than Microsoft right now.
Uh, sorry to burst your bubble again, but that's an OPINION. Another opinion is that you're a troll.
Geordi and Data forging a friendship despite the latter's inability to love
Holy jeezus, I don't know what kinda wierd ST pr0n you've been reading, but now it's official: I'm having nightmares tonight.
With that format, you can devote an entire episode to Worf hurting his back
ROFL. An entire episode devoted to Worf hurting his back. "Pass the popcorn, Ma! The funny-looking dude fell down again!"
or Geordi turning invisible (twice).
"Holy shit, where'd he go? Oh wait, he's back. Oh wait, he's gone again! Man, they think of everything."
Thank goodness, some common sense! I haven't seen Episode 2, nor have I seen Nemesis, and I have no plans. I don't buy American-made CDs or DVDs. Go ahead, mod me (-1, Un-american), see if I care.) Not to troll, but I have a growing collection of anime, which I'm happy to say is far better, content-wise, than most of the crap I'm missing on the big screen.
If you think I'm full of it, ask yourself this question: are you any better a person for having spent 90 minutes seeing this flick? Has your world view been improved, do you feel better about life, have you been changed? If not, are you at least happy you've avoided thinking for an hour and a half? Because what you do today will cost you a day of your life.
You don't force users to choose strong passwords. They probably have different opinions about what makes strong mustard, you think they're gonna understand your obscure criteria? You give them strong passwords and tell them to memorize. If they don't like '1mA1uZ@r', you can always give them '$m3L1Y@$5'.
The real issue is that people just cant use computers. What would solve the problem would be some form of transparent biometric authentication.
I'm sorry, but this isn't a solution. Your first sentence says, 'this is a training (i.e., non-technical) problem'. Your second says, 'let's solve it with technology'.
Since I'm a broken record, I will repeat:
What you really need to do is train your employees. Anything short of that won't solve your problems.I think gun control is silly. A gun is a tool, like a car or a table saw. Both cars and table saws have caused deaths; in fact, cars contribute to far more deaths than guns. Notice I didn't say "cars kill people". I don't blame a tool for irresponsible or negligent users of that tool, I blame the person operating the tool.
Because this really is the answer to every problem, let me reiterate:
To make this generalization specific: Instead of banning guns, I support qualifications for gun use, similar to drivers' license tests.You may ask why I suddenly had a change of heart regarding guns (from fence-sitter to non-ban). This past weekend, I attended a four day handgun course at Front Sight, a firearms training institute in Nevada. I did not attend because I'm a gun nut, I did it at the request of a friend. I was there to chaperone a collection of 20 pasty-faced geeks from my alma mater. These students are as close to the typical /. crowd as you'll find.
At this course, the instructors don't use the words 'accidental' or 'unintentional' when talking about guns. They use a different phrase: "negligent discharge". Anyone using a gun should be responsible for the results of that use. Accidents never happen with guns, only negligent or malicious use.
I encourage everyone to take the Front Sight courses. I learned an amazing amount from my experience. I can now take a (loaded) Glock 17 from a concealed holster and deliver two sighted shots to the thoracic cavity on a target 7 meters away in under two seconds. I can also deliver a headshot to the cranio-ocular cavity at the same distance 80% of the time under time pressure (the other 20% end up hitting the forehead or chin). I can do better than that with a few more seconds. And four days ago I couldn't hit the broadside of a barn, and neither could most of the people I was chaperoning.
If you think I'm now a menace to myself and others, you should know that the most important skill I learned was when to use a gun, which is almost never if you use proper conflict avoidance. If I'm carrying, and I'm attacked at the ATM by a robber, I'll just drop my money on the ground and back away. If he walks past the money and draws a knife, I'll shoot him. But I'll only shoot as a last resort.