If I walk into someone's house and read their financial data, even if they leave it out on the table or in an unlocked cabinet, I will still be trespassing. If I use it for anything, I may be guilty of other crimes, unless he posted it on the front lawn, in which case it was fair game, but I don't think a common server used by both parties but with different permissions counts as a front lawn.
The content is probably not as important as the fact that it was obtained illegally. For an administration that wanted to bring honor back to the government, this seems slightly more hypocritical than usual.
P.S. Is it more cynical that the Democrats are stalemating high-level conservative judges because of their color or that the Republicans chose them on that basis (so that they would be hard to reject)?
Obviously the people who ran Ford in the late 1970's, or Enron, or our government when it exiled the Indians (Native Americans) or interned the Japanese, or many other people and organizations, didn't have respect for others whether or not they spoke profanely. Stopping profane speech won't induce people to have respect for one another - it just means that they will be less able to exhibit disrespect in a less harmful way. Often, its seems the most repulsive acts are justified in terms that don't involve cursing or profanity - they simply speak the cold, clear voice of evil and urge others to follow. Christopher Hitchens wrote an essay about this about 10 years ago - his point was that while PC was not good, the greater threat was from those in government who spoke lies in deceptive language and paraded them as truth. It is very easy to couch contempt or disrespect in nonprofane language; while the use of profanity may offfend others not directly offended by the content, it won't make the lack of respect disappear.
As a bonus, because of the emphasis on speech with potential to shock, there is a danger of inhibiting speech which invokes ideas that are shocking. Sometimes the truth is hard and uncomfortable, sometimes shocking, but necessary. Inhibiting this speech over the air is precisely what the 1st Amendment was designed to protect against - thus the regulations have a measureable risk of doing something bad while little risk of making our society more civil.
Respect is the origin of civility; forcing civility will not induce respect.
The poster probably meant infective - not alive but having the capacity to become active if conditions are correct (if people or other vectors are present, etc.). Viruses can be sensitive to UV light and chemical agents since they don't have a cell wall or lots of enzyme systems to protect themselves from the effects of light or chemicals. Weaponizing viruses is probably a lot harder than weaponizing bacteria because viruses don't normally last long outside of a host, so they either have to be made more durable or more infective - likely the former.
The book in the parent post is interesting and scary. I don't know if I believe all of it, but it wouldn't take much of it to be true to be a whole lot more frightening than Plum Island. Some of the material (about chimera viruses, for example) is supposed to be in the open literature, so it may be verifiable, but I haven't tried.
only if MS intends to kill the iPod by causing its designers/implementors to die laughing...
People seem to want small multiuse devices, not bulky ones with a proprietary format, short battery life, and a high price (you could buy a laptop for nearly as much with a slight increase in size and a large increase in functionality). The iPods work because they are small convenient single use devices with multiple ways to use them - this device doesn't seem to have any of those advantages. While it's foolish to underestimate Microsoft's muscle, I don't see the point in this.
Fair Use means that they cannot restrict your use of content in certain ways - those rights aren't given to them to restrict. Unless they change copyright law (altogether possible), those restrictions are not theirs to impose. They can tell me not to play the music publicly, or to copy it to give to others (P2P, illegal copy sales, etc.), or to use it in other music I make, and they can hold me responsible if I do. (I believe the penalties for P2P are unjust, but the copyright holders do have a right to seek redress). I'm not certain whether EULA's hold up (I don't think shrinkwrap licences are legal, but I don't really know) but they require at least a positive affirmation of an agreement. The music does not have a similar statement of rights - even if you were choosing to give fair use rights in exchange for music use, the lack of an explicit agreement means you don't know what rights you are acceeding. I'm not even sure that's legal (but IANAL).
Bottom line - if you make digital products, they will be copied. Angering your customers means they will do it more and more often, and people will make it easier for them. The methods to prevent copying of music also take fair use rights that belong rightfully to the users of the product. The best way to prevent this is to avoid taking your customers for granted and to the cleaners - which would seem like good sense in the first place.
P.S. (slightly OT) do you think digital music sales (or per song sales other than singles) would have come about without music copying (and, in particular, without P2P)?
Why do people infringe copyrights, particularly on music?
One, they can't use their product in the ways that they would like (and in most cases are legally entitled to). Copy protection and "trusted computing" are designed to protect content by controlling the ways in which people can use it, even though that control is explicitly given to their customers. These "protections" don't stop major copiers (they are copying and selling bootlegs by the carton in Georgia, China, etc.) or people on Kazaa - they do, however, restrict those who buy CDs. Copy protection doesn't hurt copiers, only customers - that isn't a targeting consistent with protecting their rights. It is consistent, however, with taking customers' fair-use rights and selling them back. I guess theft only works one way though.
Two, the music industry has attempted to monopolize access to radio and marketing, and to use that muscle to charge consumers for the privilege of listening to music. Radio is a medium bought and paid for by music companies - thus to get publicity you will likely end up making the music that music companies think sells, or you will end up on college radio somewhere. If that's what you want, fine, but in most things people are expected to strive for the best - the marketing put in place only selects for artists willing to perform sexual acts on music executives. Meanwhile, the leverage of radio allows music companies to drive their market - to create, rather than respond to, demand. You hear what we tell you, and you buy from us, or nowhere. The music industry wants to tell its customers what they will listen to, rather than responding to their customers' desires.
The difference between copying music and copying the output of others on/. do is that the music industry has spent fifty years screwing its customers in a variety of ways, while most other business have not. Most businesses actually try to benefit their customers and employees, not hurt them - thus most people want not to screw them. Those businesses have spent their time trying to find something that other people need and trying to do it well. Most businesses haven't spent years tailoring copyright to their benefit and their customers' detriment as the music industry (and the movie industry as well) has.
The music industry's collusion and attempts to monopolize market hurt their customers and their own employees, and depend implicitly on their ability to change copyright law at their will and on the inability of their customers to get their product any other way. Napster and bandwidth killed that, and gave their begrudged customers the ability to get what they wanted on their terms (and without payment). This means exists for other goods as well, but in most cases it is not used - some because bandwidth isn't big enough, and in other because people are willing to pay for what they get and unwilling to disobey conscience. When the copyrights of most businesses are infringed, people find them deserving of protection and undeserving of having their product copied without permission because the people who copied the output could have gotten it justly and legally by other means (like paying for it), and that the terms of the exchange they could have made were fair, and so the copier is being unfair by exacting his own. The music industry has imposed (by its manipulation of copyrights and its collusion in pricing) terms its customers don't want - they want the music, just not at the terms given. Most businesses respond to the market, because they must compete with others - because of collusion the music industry has been able to ignore its customers. Copyright infringement on the scale the music industry has instigated is a response to the lack of market accountability of the industry. It's a bad response, but a response that cannot be ignored.
Nobody is refusing the knowledge that others deserve to be paid for their work - it's the idea that others deserve to be paid for my rights and while colluding on the terms and
How do you reinforce the concrete houses for CA building codes and/or stability from earthquake/natural hazard, etc. I haven't RTA, but it seems like extruding rebar isn't feasible, nor is building the rebar on site and pouring the concrete over it (that would negate the extrusion part of the machine). How do you build stable houses using this technology? Or would they already be stable?
as referred to in/. posts on the killing of Hubble, Hubble doesn't have a safe way down - it doesn't have rockets to get out of orbit in a controlled way. Thus, there has to be a mission to do so since Hubble is (I think) in LEO, and will fall on its own (but perhaps not safely) if it isn't deorbited. Since a Shuttle run already has to be done, why not just fix Hubble (with the eqipment they already have) and put the rockets on so that when Hubble dies, they can deorbit it safely (while also getting more out of it)?
The marginal cost to fix Hubble is thus even lower than the difference between running a Shuttle flight and not running it, since a shuttle mission already has to go there and prepare it to deorbit anyway - the marginal cost is then the cost of the extra time in space needed to add the extra equipment.
I'm not sold on Mars, but I won't shoot it down just because GWB is asking for it. The Hubble decision, however, makes no sense - maybe it's like school districts threatening to cut football if they don't get a new tax levy, or maybe NASA's management is just that stupid. I don't know.
Spammers cost everybody (but particularly/. users) money and time that they would not spend, while copying music costs a small group of people (RIAA-affiliated labels, mainly) money. That alone ensures that fewer people will oppose the same methods to pursue spammers than oppse them to pursue music copiers.
Music copying probably costs someone money, but it doesn't have to, while spamming always costs someone (usually multiple someones) tangible resources (time and money). People argue back and forth about theft vs copyright infringement (including me), and the same distinction applies here. Spamming causes actual monetary damages, while copyright infringement imposes potential ones (and the loss of control of a work by its creator).
Spammers sell what very few of us want or appreciate (even if they were honest businesspeople, which they aren't) and lie to do it. The interests of many are aligned with their pursuers as a result. The labels of the RIAA have attempted to monopolize access to the marketing and sale of music, and have used their muscle to raise their prices while attempting to take by fiat the fair-use rights of their end users. The lack of sympathy of music customers for the RIAA labels is a result of what music labels have done to them; the ubiquity of music copying is a direct result of this as well.
This doesn't justify the differences in opinion, but it may be an accurate explanation as to why people feel differently about the two causes.
Some ISPs fought the RIAA because much of their customer base would have little need for their bandwidth with the conditions the RIAA would impose on digital-only music, and so the ISPs would have lost customers. Thus ISPs backed their users because that's where their money comes from, not the RIAA (the RIAA is essentially imposing costs on them, while their users are a benefit to ISPs).
In this case some ISPs will support this - those where their high-bandwidth users aren't spammers. Those populations will support this stance, as spam costs them money and time. For some, however, the ISP makes lots of money from pink-list spammers and will be less supportive of this, since their money comes from spammers and if they turn them out, the ISP's business goes away. A few may oppose this on general principle, but spammers (who only pay their host system for bandwidth) are more likely to cost them money than music copiers (who have to pay for their bandwidth at both ends - or rather the person who has the song and the person copying it both pay for their bandwidths) and would thus also provide a principle on which to oppose spammers.
People and corporations do what's in their best interests. In this case, the interests of spam pursuers and ISPs are aligned. The interests of the RIAA and MPAA and ISPs are not so; thus the ISPs respond differently.
the problem is that the ISS (as others have said) requires 25 flights for servicing and completion, meaning those deathtraps are going to have plenty of time to kill astronauts with or without Hubble. As a bonus (as someone else said here) the orbit of the ISS presumably renders repairs even less safe than those to Hubble - thus the ISS is less safe, both on a per-mission and (by far) on an overall basis.
the other problem is that Hubble can't be knocked out of orbit safely - it doesn't have that capability (it doesn't have thrusters - someone else on this thread). Thus someone is going up there, whether just to knock it down or to add thrusters and repair it. Once that happens, the marginal cost of returning Hubble to working order versus bringing it down is not so large, and doesn't incur nearly as much of a cost to the astronauts as the the ISS will (for less science output, since its mission had to be altered drastically for the Russioans to help put it up).
My dislike of GWB and his policies doesn't matter in this case.
My point was simply that even if there isn't a monetary cost to the economy from spammers, there are other costs which are not insignificant.
There may be a monetary cost, anyway. Organized crime pushes money around - the money doesn't disappear in any of its transactions, even money laundering (where it disappears but comes back elsewhere in a different form). Spammers stealing bandwidth to make money selling individual products is similar, though with less severe consequences to the "end users". The money of the intermediaries which could be used for useful transactions is not used for investment, but for current consumption (as well as the money that the sC^Hpammers make). Investment drives growth in the economy, not consumption - spamming removes money for investment, and thus slows the economy eventually.
The economy depends on choices - the ability to choose where your money goes, and the willingness to take the associated risks. When people's money is spent without their consent (like the gov't, but on a smaller scale, and with less social benefit), they are less likely to trust the market with their livelihood, because it rewards those who do ill. The market works because it has both societal benefits (useful products) and economic benefits. Spammers and their ilk diminish the useful content of the market - if they become a prediction of things to come, then the social benefits of the market (and the social backing for it) will likely decrease.
I thought duct tape solves everything....
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Security Warrior
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· Score: 1
now I have to learn another fundamental force? Darn you to heck!
does that mean that organized crime should be considered an economic boon?
Capitalism relies on people having choices on where to spend their money. In that, spammers are like other businesses - you don't have to buy from who they represent, and if you choose to you get what you deserve, What is bad about spam is that it spends the money of others without their consent. Direct mail, TV, and raido ads all are paid for by the users and listened to by people who chose to be there for the most part. Spammers lie (rule #1), cheat and steal to use bandwidth they don't pay for to spread their word. The people who own those computers, the admins trying to debug them, etc. all pay the costs for the spam. If they weren't busy trying to prevent the unauthorized use of their computers, they could do something useful (and which they choose) with their money and that of their investors rather than either give it to spammers or admins.
Money taken from others may enter the economy, but since it was gotten at no cost (the spammers didn't pay for bandwidth, but only got money for their spam) they likely see it as less valuable; their ill-gotten money thus drives up the costs of the tings they buy for others.
Spammers take resources and money from others. This devalues both the choice that underpins capitalism and the valuation of goods. Moving money around is not a good end in and of itself. (Can you say "tech bubble", or "Great Depression"?)
If the will among Americans is present, then we will go - whether it's Bush, his successor, or someone else calling the shots. Part of the reason politics come in to play is because the people may not want to go to Mars - whether that is derived from selfishness, self-interest, the mistakes of NASA, diagreement about methods, or something else is an exercise for the political consultants among us.
If we want to go, then the Democrats will lose position by criticizing Bush and the Republicans on this point, will lose votes, and will either change their position or continue to lose votes. If Americans don't want to go to the Moon or Mars, then Pres. Bush's initiative will not survive. While some of the criticism of this plan is partisan (based on nothing other than the party suggesting it), part of the criticism is of GWB's willingness to fund and support what he wishes to do. Empty promises do good only to the lucky few who receive the bounty of gov't funding that comes from such projects. While changing project plans in midstream is always a bad idea, there may be legitimate reasons to do. Locking in methods and funding for the long term may be a bad idea.
Politics is in this decision, and will or should not leave. The people suggesting and proposing to implement this are our representatives, and if they don't listen to those who elected them, they will be no longer. Implementation of this may be fixed once we decide to do it, but the decision on the plan needs to be subject to politics, because without the will of the people to go to Mars, we shouldn't go.
some but not all abbreviations are acronyms - acronyms are only those abbreviations not pronounced as words; for example, ASPCA is not an acronym but MADD is. This also implies that some abbreviations (not all) are pronounced as the individual letters rather than as a single word.
of course, that only moves the question to whether SCO is an acronym or simply an abbreviation....and brings up the separate issue of whether I am once again humor-impaired...
instead having to work to overcome my desire to watch TV (Law+Order, Discovery before they became the Makeover Channel, etc.), the MPAA and broadcasters will do it for me. Thanks guys.
I guess it takes an advanced degree in stupidity to make a business plan that renders you irrelevant and sends your money elsewhere. At least I understood the Enron thugs - they were competent thieves. Apparently the people coming up with these ideas could only aspire to competency.
You have to sell product. I don't have to buy it.
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Losing Control of Your TV
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· Score: 2, Insightful
What don't they get? The RIAA screwed its customers, so now its customers (and potential ones) are returning the favor. If the music industry hadn't screwed its customers over in the first place, copyright infringment would be a small problem with little import to their profitability. Instead, they made copying into a problem that they can't control - every time a Napster dies, ten Kazaa's rise to take its place.
You'd have figured the MPAA and its members would have learned from this - when you have digital media, your audience will rob you blind unless you treat them well. Copying your work is tedious but trivial - thus if you give your customers a reason to do so, they will. When people can't do what they want with their TV and its content (time-shift, copy to disc for personal use, etc.), then people will find a way around the MPAA's restrictions, and then the MPAA is stuck playing a losing game.
The movie and music companies act like foreign dictators with their own private armies and Swiss bank accounts. Don't they remember what happens to tyrants? (Here's a clue - they don't have to worry about collecting retirement benefits.) The worse the dictators treat their people, the harder it is on them when their time comes up (as it always does). What makes these people think that they are immune to this? Even worse, unlike countries with despots, I can walk away from them. So can everyone else. As the parent said, eventually the movie companies will control 100% of nothing. How are they going to pay off^H^H^H^H^H^Hmake campaign contributions to legislators to protect their (nonexistent) market without any money?
I don't know how it works but triboluinescence is distinct from nuclear fusion - it's probably a chemical reaction of molecules in crystals generated by mechanical energy that emits light. I don't believe triboluminescence results from nuclear fusion.
I don't know if the humor was intended or not, so excuse my humor detector if so...
I'm hoping we'll improve on past history and learn from it (hope against hope).
Besides, I'm guessing Autozone, IBM, Daimler-Chrysler, and Red Hat may be able to get more lawyers together than Rome had soldiers in its army - one hopes that they can finish SCO more quickly than Rome finished Carthage.
I wasn't thinking of that; it makes sense to some degree (more crime is likely to make life harder on the police who are likely to have less time to deal with individual threats). I've never lived in an area like that (I lived in Boston, and other than stupid high schoolers playing games with knives, and theft, we didn't see that much crime on campus; I lived in suburban NJ, so I didn't worry there), so I don't know how to deal with it.
when the SCO body's has no pulse, videotape the dismemberment and ship the body parts to be incinerated. If you have the money, ship the ashes into space; barring that, place them in a lead-lined container and drop them in the deep Pacific.
SCO should looked at like Carthage; not only should they be annhilated, but the ground out of which they sprung should be salted over so that nothing else will ever come from it again. The more companies that think that SCO's business plan is a good idea, the less legitimate companies with legitimate claims will be able to seek relief, while more companies will be inhibited from doing useful saleable work. Nuke 'em till they glow, and then nuke 'em again, just to be sure.
There a lots of nice things in Cincinnati, but lots of things that annoy when I go there. Hence, my post. The tax doesn't affect unless you go there, in which case you will pay a little for them. Not a big deal; I just don't like stupidity.
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If I walk into someone's house and read their financial data, even if they leave it out on the table or in an unlocked cabinet, I will still be trespassing. If I use it for anything, I may be guilty of other crimes, unless he posted it on the front lawn, in which case it was fair game, but I don't think a common server used by both parties but with different permissions counts as a front lawn.
The content is probably not as important as the fact that it was obtained illegally. For an administration that wanted to bring honor back to the government, this seems slightly more hypocritical than usual.
P.S. Is it more cynical that the Democrats are stalemating high-level conservative judges because of their color or that the Republicans chose them on that basis (so that they would be hard to reject)?
Obviously the people who ran Ford in the late 1970's, or Enron, or our government when it exiled the Indians (Native Americans) or interned the Japanese, or many other people and organizations, didn't have respect for others whether or not they spoke profanely. Stopping profane speech won't induce people to have respect for one another - it just means that they will be less able to exhibit disrespect in a less harmful way. Often, its seems the most repulsive acts are justified in terms that don't involve cursing or profanity - they simply speak the cold, clear voice of evil and urge others to follow. Christopher Hitchens wrote an essay about this about 10 years ago - his point was that while PC was not good, the greater threat was from those in government who spoke lies in deceptive language and paraded them as truth. It is very easy to couch contempt or disrespect in nonprofane language; while the use of profanity may offfend others not directly offended by the content, it won't make the lack of respect disappear.
As a bonus, because of the emphasis on speech with potential to shock, there is a danger of inhibiting speech which invokes ideas that are shocking. Sometimes the truth is hard and uncomfortable, sometimes shocking, but necessary.
Inhibiting this speech over the air is precisely what the 1st Amendment was designed to protect against - thus the regulations have a measureable risk of doing something bad while little risk of making our society more civil.
Respect is the origin of civility; forcing civility will not induce respect.
The poster probably meant infective - not alive but having the capacity to become active if conditions are correct (if people or other vectors are present, etc.). Viruses can be sensitive to UV light and chemical agents since they don't have a cell wall or lots of enzyme systems to protect themselves from the effects of light or chemicals. Weaponizing viruses is probably a lot harder than weaponizing bacteria because viruses don't normally last long outside of a host, so they either have to be made more durable or more infective - likely the former.
The book in the parent post is interesting and scary. I don't know if I believe all of it, but it wouldn't take much of it to be true to be a whole lot more frightening than Plum Island. Some of the material (about chimera viruses, for example) is supposed to be in the open literature, so it may be verifiable, but I haven't tried.
only if MS intends to kill the iPod by causing its designers/implementors to die laughing...
People seem to want small multiuse devices, not bulky ones with a proprietary format, short battery life, and a high price (you could buy a laptop for nearly as much with a slight increase in size and a large increase in functionality). The iPods work because they are small convenient single use devices with multiple ways to use them - this device doesn't seem to have any of those advantages. While it's foolish to underestimate Microsoft's muscle, I don't see the point in this.
Fair Use means that they cannot restrict your use of content in certain ways - those rights aren't given to them to restrict. Unless they change copyright law (altogether possible), those restrictions are not theirs to impose. They can tell me not to play the music publicly, or to copy it to give to others (P2P, illegal copy sales, etc.), or to use it in other music I make, and they can hold me responsible if I do. (I believe the penalties for P2P are unjust, but the copyright holders do have a right to seek redress). I'm not certain whether EULA's hold up (I don't think shrinkwrap licences are legal, but I don't really know) but they require at least a positive affirmation of an agreement. The music does not have a similar statement of rights - even if you were choosing to give fair use rights in exchange for music use, the lack of an explicit agreement means you don't know what rights you are acceeding. I'm not even sure that's legal (but IANAL).
Bottom line - if you make digital products, they will be copied. Angering your customers means they will do it more and more often, and people will make it easier for them. The methods to prevent copying of music also take fair use rights that belong rightfully to the users of the product. The best way to prevent this is to avoid taking your customers for granted and to the cleaners - which would seem like good sense in the first place.
P.S. (slightly OT) do you think digital music sales (or per song sales other than singles) would have come about without music copying (and, in particular, without P2P)?
Why do people infringe copyrights, particularly on music?
/. do is that the music industry has spent fifty years screwing its customers in a variety of ways, while most other business have not. Most businesses actually try to benefit their customers and employees, not hurt them - thus most people want not to screw them. Those businesses have spent their time trying to find something that other people need and trying to do it well. Most businesses haven't spent years tailoring copyright to their benefit and their customers' detriment as the music industry (and the movie industry as well) has.
One, they can't use their product in the ways that they would like (and in most cases are legally entitled to). Copy protection and "trusted computing" are designed to protect content by controlling the ways in which people can use it, even though that control is explicitly given to their customers. These "protections" don't stop major copiers (they are copying and selling bootlegs by the carton in Georgia, China, etc.) or people on Kazaa - they do, however, restrict those who buy CDs. Copy protection doesn't hurt copiers, only customers - that isn't a targeting consistent with protecting their rights. It is consistent, however, with taking customers' fair-use rights and selling them back. I guess theft only works one way though.
Two, the music industry has attempted to monopolize access to radio and marketing, and to use that muscle to charge consumers for the privilege of listening to music. Radio is a medium bought and paid for by music companies - thus to get publicity you will likely end up making the music that music companies think sells, or you will end up on college radio somewhere. If that's what you want, fine, but in most things people are expected to strive for the best - the marketing put in place only selects for artists willing to perform sexual acts on music executives. Meanwhile, the leverage of radio allows music companies to drive their market - to create, rather than respond to, demand. You hear what we tell you, and you buy from us, or nowhere. The music industry wants to tell its customers what they will listen to, rather than responding to their customers' desires.
The difference between copying music and copying the output of others on
The music industry's collusion and attempts to monopolize market hurt their customers and their own employees, and depend implicitly on their ability to change copyright law at their will and on the inability of their customers to get their product any other way. Napster and bandwidth killed that, and gave their begrudged customers the ability to get what they wanted on their terms (and without payment). This means exists for other goods as well, but in most cases it is not used - some because bandwidth isn't big enough, and in other because people are willing to pay for what they get and unwilling to disobey conscience. When the copyrights of most businesses are infringed, people find them deserving of protection and undeserving of having their product copied without permission because the people who copied the output could have gotten it justly and legally by other means (like paying for it), and that the terms of the exchange they could have made were fair, and so the copier is being unfair by exacting his own. The music industry has imposed (by its manipulation of copyrights and its collusion in pricing) terms its customers don't want - they want the music, just not at the terms given. Most businesses respond to the market, because they must compete with others - because of collusion the music industry has been able to ignore its customers. Copyright infringement on the scale the music industry has instigated is a response to the lack of market accountability of the industry. It's a bad response, but a response that cannot be ignored.
Nobody is refusing the knowledge that others deserve to be paid for their work - it's the idea that others deserve to be paid for my rights and while colluding on the terms and
How do you reinforce the concrete houses for CA building codes and/or stability from earthquake/natural hazard, etc. I haven't RTA, but it seems like extruding rebar isn't feasible, nor is building the rebar on site and pouring the concrete over it (that would negate the extrusion part of the machine). How do you build stable houses using this technology? Or would they already be stable?
as referred to in /. posts on the killing of Hubble, Hubble doesn't have a safe way down - it doesn't have rockets to get out of orbit in a controlled way. Thus, there has to be a mission to do so since Hubble is (I think) in LEO, and will fall on its own (but perhaps not safely) if it isn't deorbited. Since a Shuttle run already has to be done, why not just fix Hubble (with the eqipment they already have) and put the rockets on so that when Hubble dies, they can deorbit it safely (while also getting more out of it)?
The marginal cost to fix Hubble is thus even lower than the difference between running a Shuttle flight and not running it, since a shuttle mission already has to go there and prepare it to deorbit anyway - the marginal cost is then the cost of the extra time in space needed to add the extra equipment.
I'm not sold on Mars, but I won't shoot it down just because GWB is asking for it. The Hubble decision, however, makes no sense - maybe it's like school districts threatening to cut football if they don't get a new tax levy, or maybe NASA's management is just that stupid. I don't know.
Spammers cost everybody (but particularly /. users) money and time that they would not spend, while copying music costs a small group of people (RIAA-affiliated labels, mainly) money. That alone ensures that fewer people will oppose the same methods to pursue spammers than oppse them to pursue music copiers.
Music copying probably costs someone money, but it doesn't have to, while spamming always costs someone (usually multiple someones) tangible resources (time and money). People argue back and forth about theft vs copyright infringement (including me), and the same distinction applies here. Spamming causes actual monetary damages, while copyright infringement imposes potential ones (and the loss of control of a work by its creator).
Spammers sell what very few of us want or appreciate (even if they were honest businesspeople, which they aren't) and lie to do it. The interests of many are aligned with their pursuers as a result. The labels of the RIAA have attempted to monopolize access to the marketing and sale of music, and have used their muscle to raise their prices while attempting to take by fiat the fair-use rights of their end users. The lack of sympathy of music customers for the RIAA labels is a result of what music labels have done to them; the ubiquity of music copying is a direct result of this as well.
This doesn't justify the differences in opinion, but it may be an accurate explanation as to why people feel differently about the two causes.
Some ISPs fought the RIAA because much of their customer base would have little need for their bandwidth with the conditions the RIAA would impose on digital-only music, and so the ISPs would have lost customers. Thus ISPs backed their users because that's where their money comes from, not the RIAA (the RIAA is essentially imposing costs on them, while their users are a benefit to ISPs).
In this case some ISPs will support this - those where their high-bandwidth users aren't spammers. Those populations will support this stance, as spam costs them money and time. For some, however, the ISP makes lots of money from pink-list spammers and will be less supportive of this, since their money comes from spammers and if they turn them out, the ISP's business goes away. A few may oppose this on general principle, but spammers (who only pay their host system for bandwidth) are more likely to cost them money than music copiers (who have to pay for their bandwidth at both ends - or rather the person who has the song and the person copying it both pay for their bandwidths) and would thus also provide a principle on which to oppose spammers.
People and corporations do what's in their best interests. In this case, the interests of spam pursuers and ISPs are aligned. The interests of the RIAA and MPAA and ISPs are not so; thus the ISPs respond differently.
the problem is that the ISS (as others have said) requires 25 flights for servicing and completion, meaning those deathtraps are going to have plenty of time to kill astronauts with or without Hubble. As a bonus (as someone else said here) the orbit of the ISS presumably renders repairs even less safe than those to Hubble - thus the ISS is less safe, both on a per-mission and (by far) on an overall basis.
the other problem is that Hubble can't be knocked out of orbit safely - it doesn't have that capability (it doesn't have thrusters - someone else on this thread). Thus someone is going up there, whether just to knock it down or to add thrusters and repair it. Once that happens, the marginal cost of returning Hubble to working order versus bringing it down is not so large, and doesn't incur nearly as much of a cost to the astronauts as the the ISS will (for less science output, since its mission had to be altered drastically for the Russioans to help put it up).
My dislike of GWB and his policies doesn't matter in this case.
you'll only have to look at him once.
after the first mistake, he doesn't have to worry about shooting himself in the feet. Lower legs perhaps, but not feet...
My point was simply that even if there isn't a monetary cost to the economy from spammers, there are other costs which are not insignificant.
There may be a monetary cost, anyway. Organized crime pushes money around - the money doesn't disappear in any of its transactions, even money laundering (where it disappears but comes back elsewhere in a different form). Spammers stealing bandwidth to make money selling individual products is similar, though with less severe consequences to the "end users". The money of the intermediaries which could be used for useful transactions is not used for investment, but for current consumption (as well as the money that the sC^Hpammers make). Investment drives growth in the economy, not consumption - spamming removes money for investment, and thus slows the economy eventually.
The economy depends on choices - the ability to choose where your money goes, and the willingness to take the associated risks. When people's money is spent without their consent (like the gov't, but on a smaller scale, and with less social benefit), they are less likely to trust the market with their livelihood, because it rewards those who do ill. The market works because it has both societal benefits (useful products) and economic benefits. Spammers and their ilk diminish the useful content of the market - if they become a prediction of things to come, then the social benefits of the market (and the social backing for it) will likely decrease.
now I have to learn another fundamental force? Darn you to heck!
does that mean that organized crime should be considered an economic boon?
Capitalism relies on people having choices on where to spend their money. In that, spammers are like other businesses - you don't have to buy from who they represent, and if you choose to you get what you deserve, What is bad about spam is that it spends the money of others without their consent. Direct mail, TV, and raido ads all are paid for by the users and listened to by people who chose to be there for the most part. Spammers lie (rule #1), cheat and steal to use bandwidth they don't pay for to spread their word. The people who own those computers, the admins trying to debug them, etc. all pay the costs for the spam. If they weren't busy trying to prevent the unauthorized use of their computers, they could do something useful (and which they choose) with their money and that of their investors rather than either give it to spammers or admins.
Money taken from others may enter the economy, but since it was gotten at no cost (the spammers didn't pay for bandwidth, but only got money for their spam) they likely see it as less valuable; their ill-gotten money thus drives up the costs of the tings they buy for others.
Spammers take resources and money from others. This devalues both the choice that underpins capitalism and the valuation of goods. Moving money around is not a good end in and of itself. (Can you say "tech bubble", or "Great Depression"?)
If the will among Americans is present, then we will go - whether it's Bush, his successor, or someone else calling the shots. Part of the reason politics come in to play is because the people may not want to go to Mars - whether that is derived from selfishness, self-interest, the mistakes of NASA, diagreement about methods, or something else is an exercise for the political consultants among us.
If we want to go, then the Democrats will lose position by criticizing Bush and the Republicans on this point, will lose votes, and will either change their position or continue to lose votes. If Americans don't want to go to the Moon or Mars, then Pres. Bush's initiative will not survive. While some of the criticism of this plan is partisan (based on nothing other than the party suggesting it), part of the criticism is of GWB's willingness to fund and support what he wishes to do. Empty promises do good only to the lucky few who receive the bounty of gov't funding that comes from such projects. While changing project plans in midstream is always a bad idea, there may be legitimate reasons to do. Locking in methods and funding for the long term may be a bad idea.
Politics is in this decision, and will or should not leave. The people suggesting and proposing to implement this are our representatives, and if they don't listen to those who elected them, they will be no longer. Implementation of this may be fixed once we decide to do it, but the decision on the plan needs to be subject to politics, because without the will of the people to go to Mars, we shouldn't go.
some but not all abbreviations are acronyms - acronyms are only those abbreviations not pronounced as words; for example, ASPCA is not an acronym but MADD is. This also implies that some abbreviations (not all) are pronounced as the individual letters rather than as a single word.
of course, that only moves the question to whether SCO is an acronym or simply an abbreviation....and brings up the separate issue of whether I am once again humor-impaired...
instead having to work to overcome my desire to watch TV (Law+Order, Discovery before they became the Makeover Channel, etc.), the MPAA and broadcasters will do it for me. Thanks guys.
I guess it takes an advanced degree in stupidity to make a business plan that renders you irrelevant and sends your money elsewhere. At least I understood the Enron thugs - they were competent thieves. Apparently the people coming up with these ideas could only aspire to competency.
What don't they get? The RIAA screwed its customers, so now its customers (and potential ones) are returning the favor. If the music industry hadn't screwed its customers over in the first place, copyright infringment would be a small problem with little import to their profitability. Instead, they made copying into a problem that they can't control - every time a Napster dies, ten Kazaa's rise to take its place.
You'd have figured the MPAA and its members would have learned from this - when you have digital media, your audience will rob you blind unless you treat them well. Copying your work is tedious but trivial - thus if you give your customers a reason to do so, they will. When people can't do what they want with their TV and its content (time-shift, copy to disc for personal use, etc.), then people will find a way around the MPAA's restrictions, and then the MPAA is stuck playing a losing game.
The movie and music companies act like foreign dictators with their own private armies and Swiss bank accounts. Don't they remember what happens to tyrants? (Here's a clue - they don't have to worry about collecting retirement benefits.) The worse the dictators treat their people, the harder it is on them when their time comes up (as it always does). What makes these people think that they are immune to this? Even worse, unlike countries with despots, I can walk away from them. So can everyone else. As the parent said, eventually the movie companies will control 100% of nothing. How are they going to pay off^H^H^H^H^H^Hmake campaign contributions to legislators to protect their (nonexistent) market without any money?
I don't know how it works but triboluinescence is distinct from nuclear fusion - it's probably a chemical reaction of molecules in crystals generated by mechanical energy that emits light. I don't believe triboluminescence results from nuclear fusion.
I don't know if the humor was intended or not, so excuse my humor detector if so...
I'm hoping we'll improve on past history and learn from it (hope against hope).
Besides, I'm guessing Autozone, IBM, Daimler-Chrysler, and Red Hat may be able to get more lawyers together than Rome had soldiers in its army - one hopes that they can finish SCO more quickly than Rome finished Carthage.
I wasn't thinking of that; it makes sense to some degree (more crime is likely to make life harder on the police who are likely to have less time to deal with individual threats). I've never lived in an area like that (I lived in Boston, and other than stupid high schoolers playing games with knives, and theft, we didn't see that much crime on campus; I lived in suburban NJ, so I didn't worry there), so I don't know how to deal with it.
when the SCO body's has no pulse, videotape the dismemberment and ship the body parts to be incinerated. If you have the money, ship the ashes into space; barring that, place them in a lead-lined container and drop them in the deep Pacific.
SCO should looked at like Carthage; not only should they be annhilated, but the ground out of which they sprung should be salted over so that nothing else will ever come from it again. The more companies that think that SCO's business plan is a good idea, the less legitimate companies with legitimate claims will be able to seek relief, while more companies will be inhibited from doing useful saleable work. Nuke 'em till they glow, and then nuke 'em again, just to be sure.
There a lots of nice things in Cincinnati, but lots of things that annoy when I go there. Hence, my post. The tax doesn't affect unless you go there, in which case you will pay a little for them. Not a big deal; I just don't like stupidity.