Given that NYC claims Verizon failed to perform, shouldn't NYC have already made claim to that $50 million performance bond (before Verizon had a chance to "reduce" it, which I don't understand how they can unilaterally do anyway)?
Jail him is the normal reaction for those who beak laws and cause the deaths of innocents
If that were true, then several current and former Presidents, some of their cabinet members, a bunch of senior military officers, many, many CIA, NSA, FBI and DEA officers, and probably quite a few members of Congress would be in jail right now.
If facebook was censoring other sites, that would be censorship, but they are not.
On the contrary; they are. Think of it this way: Facebook is essentially acting as a web host for its user's content. How is Facebook's censoring any more acceptable than if some entity like GoDaddy or Wordpress did it?
Exactly! I was scrolling through the thread looking for someone to make this point. It's a horrible thing to say, but I agree -- the prospect of Kaine inheriting the Presidency is the best thing about the Clinton campaign.
First, why do you say that Sony lobbied for the laws you're complaining about (it would help also if you articulated those laws with specificity, but then that would make your assertions falsifiable, which I imagine you don't want.)
What, have you been living under a damn rock for the last 20 years? Sony has lobbied for pretty much every recent copyright law. DMCA, SOPA, PIPA, TPP -- you name it, they've lobbied for it. It's nota goddamnsecret, you know!
They're mostly hardware, they have no skin in the game on software protection.
What the fuck are you talking about? Sony operates major movie, music and video game studios in addition to making hardware. And don't even try to feed me some bullshit about "that's some other division" -- they're all owned by the same corporation.
Also, I find it telling that so many seem to switch seamlessly back and forth between characterizing Microsoft as using their monopoly powers to coerce manufacturers into doing things that aren't in their own economic best interest, and characterizing Microsoft and Sony as voluntary co-conspirators
Microsoft is not forcing Sony to install Windows at gunpoint. Sony is installing Windows because they want to install Windows and have entered into a contractual agreement with Microsoft to do so -- that's called a partnership.
That's a false analogy because now you're talking about making a copy.
The correct analogy would be ripping pages out of a book and selling those original pages. And yes, I would complain if I wanted to do that and somebody tried to use the law to stop me. (Consider a magazine, or a reference book -- why shouldn't I be able to rip out an individual article and sell it or give it away separately from the rest?)
I agree that the law is the majority of the problem, but that does not absolve Sony (or Microsoft) of blame. First of all, they lobbied for that bad law in the first place! Second, just because a law enables them to fuck over their customers that way, doesn't mean they are required to avail themselves of that power. Nothing is stopping them from choosing not to DRM the software except their own sociopathic greed.
Would you also complain that you can't extract the firmware of your, say, heart rate monitor, or fridge, or, yes, car, and sell it?
Your question relies on the ambiguity of the word "can't." Would I complain that I can't physically extract the firmware, as an unintended side-effect of the manufacturer designing the item in the most convenient way for them? No. Would I complain that I can't legally extract the firmware because the manufacturer purposefully and maliciously went out of his way to prevent me from doing so? Yes!
(Incidentally, I actually have modified the firmware running my car, so that's not theoretical. In fact, I refuse to buy newer cars than the ones I currently own in part because I'm boycotting the DRM in modern vehicle firmware!)
Whether you must be able to also sell individual bits and pieces of it is rather debatable.
No it isn't; it's a fundamental principle of property law going all the way back to when the concept of property was first invented. If an object is mine, it's mine and I can do whatever I want with it. Disassembly doesn't have to be "explicitly advertised" because it is an intrinsic feature of what property is!
What Sony (and Microsoft) are asking for here is a fundamental change in the status-quo, where things that are nominally "owned" by me nevertheless require some sort of third-party approval for me to use. That is a huge destruction of basic rights, in similar scope and scale as a shift in society from capitalism to feudalism.
Would we have the same discussion about any particular hardware part that comes with the product? Is anybody complaining that a car company is selling cars only as "complete bundle" instead of each part individually?
No, we would not have that discussion -- but not for the reason you seem to expect. With cars or any other product, there's nothing stopping the owner from disassembling the thing and selling off the parts. Unlike a Windows install, the ECU from car A won't contain DRM that makes it refuse to run when installed in car B. (It may or may not actually work correctly, but the point is that you're not disallowed by encryption and DMCA anti-circumvention law from attempting it.)
Sony doesn't want to sell naked hardware, just as a car company isn't interested in only selling you the engine.
I'm friends with a guy who (weirdly) got a full scholarship to DeVry, graduated with a bachelors in three years, and pretty quickly got a good job at Siemens. At the time, the rest of my circle of friends (most of whom went to the state engineering research university) laughed at him for picking a shitty school, but in retrospect he was the smartest of us all...
Granted, it hasn't actually happened yet, but Microsoft clearly would love nothing better than to force you to an Office 365 subscription and to store all your data on OneDrive.
Yep. I went through the curriculum of the top 10 computer science universities in the country, and all of them teach either Java or Python in their introductory programming classes. Only a single one (Stanford) even offered C++ as an alternative.
That's not a problem. The problem is with shitty schools that don't have a non-garbage-collected language required for a class anywhere in their mandatory curriculum. At my alma mater (which is one of the top-10), the required C-based class is sophomore-level and that's fine.
The structure you are currently in, if it was large/complicated enough, was probably designed using structural analysis software written in Fortran (at least the BLAS calls in the solver, if not the UI). Even a Matlab, Python or R program is really Fortran once you get to the inner loops.
No, he wasn't. But since you apparently were, you need to turn in your geek card. It's a Star Trek IV reference:
Kirk: [Explaining Spock's odd behavior] Oh, him? He's harmless. Back in the sixties, he was part of the free speech movement at Berkeley. I think he did a little too much LDS.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but I was under the impression that at least part of the reason Cyanogenmod exists was to make a usable Android that didn't depend on Google Play Services. Also, Cyanogen Inc. (the company commercializing Cyanogenmod) has partnered with Microsoft to promote Microsoft services instead of Google's.
It's a great tool to keep people in your ecosystem. Every time a person goes out and shops for a new phone, they look at all makes and models. If you have a system that defines an upgrade path for users, where they know they'll never be left behind on an antiquated OS, they're MORE likely to upgrade, not less likely.
Third-party Android device makers don't give a shit about Google's "ecosystem." In fact, many such as Amazon and Cyanogen (Inc.) are actively hostile to it.
Well, if you bought a phone with an unlockable bootloader, you can flash whatever OS you want on it. As I wrote elsewhere, even the original Galaxy Nexus from 2011 can get the Cyanogenmod equivalent of Android Marshmallow this way.
But the main "problem" (if you want to consider it so) with Android is that it's a FOSS platform.
No, you've got that backwards: the problem is that phone hardware should be required by law to be unlocked so that their owners can control their property.
Slashdot Mirror
Given that NYC claims Verizon failed to perform, shouldn't NYC have already made claim to that $50 million performance bond (before Verizon had a chance to "reduce" it, which I don't understand how they can unilaterally do anyway)?
If that were true, then several current and former Presidents, some of their cabinet members, a bunch of senior military officers, many, many CIA, NSA, FBI and DEA officers, and probably quite a few members of Congress would be in jail right now.
Somebody mod parent up, please. It's the only relevant post in this thread so far.
What's the point of adding uBlock Origin if you're already using uMatrix anyway?
On the contrary; they are. Think of it this way: Facebook is essentially acting as a web host for its user's content. How is Facebook's censoring any more acceptable than if some entity like GoDaddy or Wordpress did it?
Exactly! I was scrolling through the thread looking for someone to make this point. It's a horrible thing to say, but I agree -- the prospect of Kaine inheriting the Presidency is the best thing about the Clinton campaign.
You'd think that, but they've developed a bad case of stockholm syndrome since he won the primary.
What, have you been living under a damn rock for the last 20 years? Sony has lobbied for pretty much every recent copyright law. DMCA, SOPA, PIPA, TPP -- you name it, they've lobbied for it. It's not a goddamn secret, you know!
What the fuck are you talking about? Sony operates major movie, music and video game studios in addition to making hardware. And don't even try to feed me some bullshit about "that's some other division" -- they're all owned by the same corporation.
Microsoft is not forcing Sony to install Windows at gunpoint. Sony is installing Windows because they want to install Windows and have entered into a contractual agreement with Microsoft to do so -- that's called a partnership.
That's a false analogy because now you're talking about making a copy.
The correct analogy would be ripping pages out of a book and selling those original pages. And yes, I would complain if I wanted to do that and somebody tried to use the law to stop me. (Consider a magazine, or a reference book -- why shouldn't I be able to rip out an individual article and sell it or give it away separately from the rest?)
I agree that the law is the majority of the problem, but that does not absolve Sony (or Microsoft) of blame. First of all, they lobbied for that bad law in the first place! Second, just because a law enables them to fuck over their customers that way, doesn't mean they are required to avail themselves of that power. Nothing is stopping them from choosing not to DRM the software except their own sociopathic greed.
Your question relies on the ambiguity of the word "can't." Would I complain that I can't physically extract the firmware, as an unintended side-effect of the manufacturer designing the item in the most convenient way for them? No. Would I complain that I can't legally extract the firmware because the manufacturer purposefully and maliciously went out of his way to prevent me from doing so? Yes!
(Incidentally, I actually have modified the firmware running my car, so that's not theoretical. In fact, I refuse to buy newer cars than the ones I currently own in part because I'm boycotting the DRM in modern vehicle firmware!)
No it isn't; it's a fundamental principle of property law going all the way back to when the concept of property was first invented. If an object is mine, it's mine and I can do whatever I want with it. Disassembly doesn't have to be "explicitly advertised" because it is an intrinsic feature of what property is!
What Sony (and Microsoft) are asking for here is a fundamental change in the status-quo, where things that are nominally "owned" by me nevertheless require some sort of third-party approval for me to use. That is a huge destruction of basic rights, in similar scope and scale as a shift in society from capitalism to feudalism.
No, we would not have that discussion -- but not for the reason you seem to expect. With cars or any other product, there's nothing stopping the owner from disassembling the thing and selling off the parts. Unlike a Windows install, the ECU from car A won't contain DRM that makes it refuse to run when installed in car B. (It may or may not actually work correctly, but the point is that you're not disallowed by encryption and DMCA anti-circumvention law from attempting it.)
You might want to pick a different example next time.
I'm friends with a guy who (weirdly) got a full scholarship to DeVry, graduated with a bachelors in three years, and pretty quickly got a good job at Siemens. At the time, the rest of my circle of friends (most of whom went to the state engineering research university) laughed at him for picking a shitty school, but in retrospect he was the smartest of us all...
What's crazy is that all this data mining shit is beating open protocols and Free Software (e.g. XMPP). How did it go so wrong?
Granted, it hasn't actually happened yet, but Microsoft clearly would love nothing better than to force you to an Office 365 subscription and to store all your data on OneDrive.
Asus, maybe.
That's not a problem. The problem is with shitty schools that don't have a non-garbage-collected language required for a class anywhere in their mandatory curriculum. At my alma mater (which is one of the top-10), the required C-based class is sophomore-level and that's fine.
The structure you are currently in, if it was large/complicated enough, was probably designed using structural analysis software written in Fortran (at least the BLAS calls in the solver, if not the UI). Even a Matlab, Python or R program is really Fortran once you get to the inner loops.
No, he wasn't. But since you apparently were, you need to turn in your geek card. It's a Star Trek IV reference:
As far as I can tell, Arizona's reputation is almost entirely due to this asshat.
Try buying local ordinances instead. It should be cheaper than buying Federal laws.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but I was under the impression that at least part of the reason Cyanogenmod exists was to make a usable Android that didn't depend on Google Play Services. Also, Cyanogen Inc. (the company commercializing Cyanogenmod) has partnered with Microsoft to promote Microsoft services instead of Google's.
Third-party Android device makers don't give a shit about Google's "ecosystem." In fact, many such as Amazon and Cyanogen (Inc.) are actively hostile to it.
No, you've got that backwards: the problem is that phone hardware should be required by law to be unlocked so that their owners can control their property.