Although a Canadian citizen, and not in a good position to fight this, I am absolutely infuriated at the RIAA et al. The DeCSS is now the only item on my web page and I now have absolutely zero qualms about illegal MP3 trading. I will for the rest of my life do my best to make sure that not one penny of my money will go to those greedy bastards. I have been involved in promoting live music since 1981, and am in utmost sympathy with actual artists creating work. I have NO sympathy for corporate leeches stealing their money and mine.
Re:Any evidence of stories being squelched?
on
AOL Nation
·
· Score: 1
Matt XVI said: (NB ALL rights are individual rights)
This may be true, but corporations are considered individuals by the law... with none of the responsiblities that come with those rights. This is the problem. The government has created an imbalance by creating an immortal 'individual' with all the rights that that entails, and none of the responsiblities. As someone who believes in the free market, I find this repugnant. The WTO is being used to further the rights of corporations, without adressing the concerns of us mere mortal individuals.
As far as your comment of lowering trade barriers goes, good for you. If you believe that buying the cheapest goods possible, made by someone making a daily wage less than you spend on coffee, Yippee. Me, I work as hard as I can to make enough money that I can buy (relatively expensive) goods made by people who make as much as I do. If the WTO helps even the playing feild for people making a living wage, YAY!.... That however does not seem to be the goal.
Finally... I wish the people I do share dealings with would do "future" shares - basically betting that the share price will fall, as I had some money I'd quite happily put on MS's shares falling. Oh well... It'll be interesting to see the affect on MS's main competitors
It's called shorting, and if they don't do it, find a competent broker.
(You might want to avoid the irony of demanding increased Patent Office funding and lower taxes simultaneously, though)
If increased Patent Office funding increases the GNP, then a lower tax rate might end up having a net increase in government revenue. no irony there. A secondary effect might also be that by spending a dollar at the Patent Office, they save two in court costs (judges salaries court room time etc.) A more efficient government doesn't need as many taxes.
I like the idea of Karma, but I would like to see another method used as well. I would like to be able to add certain registered users to a personal upfile. This would give posters I recognize as being insightful/funnny/informative, on a regular basis a +1 for me and me alone. I'm not a coder so I'm not sure how many cycles this would add to the server on each page request, so I'm not even sure if this is feasible.
One reason I like this, is that it makes it easier for me to browse at +2 if I know that I'm more likely to see posts that add to my slashdot experience.
The other reason I like this is that it would be relatively easy to implement a system of sharing personal plus files. This would cushion people who get moderated down because of personal problems with individual moderators; person I like moderated down due to personal problem, then auto +1 by my plus file = not net gain or loss. It also gives an added incentive to write good posts. If more people browse higher, we're less likely to respond to trolls without thinking.
In over ten years of lurking and joining communities like this I have noticed that the people who post well once usually do so often. Those who are just being destructive, eventually grow up, or fade away. moderating up, instead of down focusses(sp? (yeah I could cut and paste and use a spellchecker, but I'm lazy)) our energy on behaviours we want.
There are a lot of intelligent people here whose opinions I enjoy reading. Some of them I agree with, and some I don't. Both teach me something and make me think. Both are valuable.
While reading the comments that started this thread, I felt very saddened. Here were many people giving a tribute to someone who enriched a lot of lives, and some people couldn't be mature enough to just shut their mouths. I was reading at +1 so I didn't see the truly awful ones, but I did see some responses (including quoted bits), and I was just saddened. Good Luck to the Slashdot crew at figuring out some method of resolving this one.
Government intervention in cases like this is about trading individual freedom off against freedom for everyone. In many cases, it could be in _your_ self-interest to do X, but if everyone did X, we'd all be worse off. So the government has to step in and forbid X. In this particular case, you're trading off individual freedom to encrypted communciations, against freedom for everyone from terrorist attacks, crime and the like.
NO. I am giving up the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and being deprived of a means of communication as a result. This is really scary stuff. The old Soviet Union would have done something like this. Stopping a form of commmunication because they can't tap into it! My god , what would you say if they decided to bar the internet, because to many people were using high power encryption. Your attitude that bureaucrats have the right to decide these things boggles my mind. Do you not understand your own constitution? For gods sakes, I'm a Canadian, and I seem to believe in the US Constitution more than you do!
Sorry for the rant. It just really upsets me when I see someone choosing safety over freedom. That way leads to Dictatorship. Freedom is not safe. In a free country, if there are too many poor people there are repercussions. They start using guns, they start striking out. In a free country, people start noticing and maybe start fixing the poverty problem.
A Dictatorship tries to stop the expressions of rage. They take away the freedoms of a few for the comfort of a majority.
Freedom is not easy, and some fools are willing to give it up for comfort. It makes me sad.
Maybe you don't agree with the tradeoff that the government has made - it gives too much emphasis to the group and not enough to individual freedoms. But in other cases, even you depend on the government to restrict people's freedom. What if everyone decided to apply your 'I know what my best interest is, dumbass' principle to serve their own 'best interest' by, say, stealing? It's in the 'best interest' of individuals, but not of society as a whole.
The difference between preemptive silencing of a technology and making theft/rape/murder illegal, is that one tries to stop an act from happening, the other defines a consequence to the action. I am perfectly free to kill someone, if and only if I am willing to risk the consequence. If I was forced to always have a camera onthat would instantly paralyze me if I tried to break the law, some people would feel that because this made society safer it would be an acceptable curb on their freedom. I don't.
As far as guns go, I again disagree with you. The situation in Kosovo, and other multi-generational conflicts has nothing to do with the weaponry involved. These people would be killing each other with spoons, if they didn't have guns. It has to do with hate and economics, and power. Not guns. In countries with lots of guns and education but little class conflict (Switzerland as an example) there are few problems with guns. In countries with many guns, but with lots of class conflicts and widely varying education levels (USA, and South Africa come to mind) there are insane levels of violence.
As far as I am concerned being barred by one of these cyber censors would be a bonus. Of course I'm not job-hunting!
Seriously though; why should the onus be on the ISP to disclose a third party's censorship of their net block. They don't have to disclose that they are cut off from the people inside MY firewall. The real problem is that these idiotic censorware programs don't work. They just plain don't work.
Our real job is to make sure they really really don't work, and this gives me a wonderful idea.
There are probably enough sysadmins and webmasters here on Slashdot that we could probably do it. The idea is if we can figure out the method that they use to choose to block netblocks. Then we break their rules. all of them. If they end up blocking enough sites, they become useless.
The first time I read Wired, it blew me away. The graphics, the ideas, and most of all the references to things online. I would take it home and dial up using my 2400 modem, and explore the internet. Not the web ; the internet. I learned about Veronica, and Archie. I learned about MUDS. I learned that I could go online with my crappy 286 and have access to computers all over the world.
As the internet exxpanded and changeed so did Wired. many of the people who only remembered the late 90's Wired, will not mourn it's passing, but I think that many people will/have mourned for the passing of the Wired that they remember. My Wired died the first issue that Nicholas Negroponte failed to have the back page. I almost never agreed with him, but I always had to figure out why. I liked that.
I never really enjoyed HotWired though. It never gave me a community to join, even by proxy. This seemed to be the real problem with Wired. They never in their heart of hearts appreciated the bi-directionality of the internet. They always thought of it as a many to many broadcast medium. The truly succesful sites have been many with many projects....
I remember when I got my first copy of "Let them Eat Jellybeans" when it came out. I lay down in my room with the poster that came with the album, and read the lyrics as I played the song. I examined the pictures. I didn't just put it on in the background.
Later when I became a DJ and I was playing actual LP's, I would sometimes choose which song to play on an album just by looking at the texture of the vinyl....
The physical experience of bringing a record home and seeing the entire package has always been very important to me. This may explain why I don't have any MP3's on my hard drive, but I have a complete database of my music collection....
Why did I get the sneaking suspicion that this essay is a bait for all the wannabe essay writers. I know my first thought on reading it was that I could do better...maybe I should put together something and submit it.
If Cmdr. Taco et al wanted a whole raft of submissions, I can think of no better way than to post an 'essay' like this one.
Unless it's a corporation saying "work for 50 an hour, work for somebody else for the same wage... or starve". Non-coercion? In the absence of labor laws (and other such regulations), the corporations become The Law, and coercion remains part of the equation.
Of course in the absence of the laws that allow corporations to absolve actual human beings of responsibility, (limited liability being the sole reason for the existence of corporate charters) corporations would not exist either!
Since there are no businesses in a socialist world, everyone is forced deal directly with the government for their needs, a violation of that principle.
Actually...there are businesses in a socialist world. Just not corporations.
I have found this thread rather interesting, as I got into Linux mostly because I found a lot of resonances between the way the Free Software/Open Source movement actually worked, and the theoretical works of Kropotkin like Mutual Aid
Slashdot Mirror
Although a Canadian citizen, and not in a good position to fight this, I am absolutely infuriated at the RIAA et al. The DeCSS is now the only item on my web page and I now have absolutely zero qualms about illegal MP3 trading. I will for the rest of my life do my best to make sure that not one penny of my money will go to those greedy bastards. I have been involved in promoting live music since 1981, and am in utmost sympathy with actual artists creating work. I have NO sympathy for corporate leeches stealing their money and mine.
here
Matt XVI said:
... with none of the responsiblities that come with those rights. This is the problem. The government has created an imbalance by creating an immortal 'individual' with all the rights that that entails, and none of the responsiblities. As someone who believes in the free market, I find this repugnant. The WTO is being used to further the rights of corporations, without adressing the concerns of us mere mortal individuals.
(NB ALL rights are individual rights)
This may be true, but corporations are considered individuals by the law
As far as your comment of lowering trade barriers goes, good for you. If you believe that buying the cheapest goods possible, made by someone making a daily wage less than you spend on coffee, Yippee. Me, I work as hard as I can to make enough money that I can buy (relatively expensive) goods made by people who make as much as I do. If the WTO helps even the playing feild for people making a living wage, YAY!.... That however does not seem to be the goal.
Finally... I wish the people I do share dealings with would do "future" shares - basically betting that the share price will fall, as I had some money I'd quite happily put on MS's shares falling. Oh well... It'll be interesting to see the affect on MS's main competitors
It's called shorting, and if they don't do it, find a competent broker.
(Acroread doesn't work on glibc systems yet.)
That's odd it seems to work on mine....
oops, just checked, that would be because I have the compatiblilty libraries for libc5. It works anyways, and on Mandrake 6.0
(You might want to avoid the irony of demanding increased Patent Office funding and lower taxes simultaneously, though)
If increased Patent Office funding increases the GNP, then a lower tax rate might end up having a net increase in government revenue. no irony there. A secondary effect might also be that by spending a dollar at the Patent Office, they save two in court costs (judges salaries court room time etc.) A more efficient government doesn't need as many taxes.
nuff said.
I like the idea of Karma, but I would like to see another method used as well. I would like to be able to add certain registered users to a personal upfile. This would give posters I recognize as being insightful/funnny/informative, on a regular basis a +1 for me and me alone. I'm not a coder so I'm not sure how many cycles this would add to the server on each page request, so I'm not even sure if this is feasible.
One reason I like this, is that it makes it easier for me to browse at +2 if I know that I'm more likely to see posts that add to my slashdot experience.
The other reason I like this is that it would be relatively easy to implement a system of sharing personal plus files. This would cushion people who get moderated down because of personal problems with individual moderators; person I like moderated down due to personal problem, then auto +1 by my plus file = not net gain or loss. It also gives an added incentive to write good posts. If more people browse higher, we're less likely to respond to trolls without thinking.
In over ten years of lurking and joining communities like this I have noticed that the people who post well once usually do so often. Those who are just being destructive, eventually grow up, or fade away. moderating up, instead of down focusses(sp? (yeah I could cut and paste and use a spellchecker, but I'm lazy)) our energy on behaviours we want.
There are a lot of intelligent people here whose opinions I enjoy reading. Some of them I agree with, and some I don't. Both teach me something and make me think. Both are valuable.
While reading the comments that started this thread, I felt very saddened. Here were many people giving a tribute to someone who enriched a lot of lives, and some people couldn't be mature enough to just shut their mouths. I was reading at +1 so I didn't see the truly awful ones, but I did see some responses (including quoted bits), and I was just saddened. Good Luck to the Slashdot crew at figuring out some method of resolving this one.
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Domain Admin (DA3732-ORG) domain-adm@IMAGINE-INC.COM
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NO. I am giving up the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and being deprived of a means of communication as a result. This is really scary stuff. The old Soviet Union would have done something like this. Stopping a form of commmunication because they can't tap into it! My god , what would you say if they decided to bar the internet, because to many people were using high power encryption. Your attitude that bureaucrats have the right to decide these things boggles my mind. Do you not understand your own constitution? For gods sakes, I'm a Canadian, and I seem to believe in the US Constitution more than you do!
Sorry for the rant. It just really upsets me when I see someone choosing safety over freedom. That way leads to Dictatorship. Freedom is not safe. In a free country, if there are too many poor people there are repercussions. They start using guns, they start striking out. In a free country, people start noticing and maybe start fixing the poverty problem.
A Dictatorship tries to stop the expressions of rage. They take away the freedoms of a few for the comfort of a majority.
Freedom is not easy, and some fools are willing to give it up for comfort. It makes me sad.
Maybe you don't agree with the tradeoff that the government has made - it gives too much emphasis to the group and not enough to individual freedoms. But in other cases, even you depend on the government to restrict people's freedom. What if everyone decided to apply your 'I know what my best interest is, dumbass' principle to serve their own 'best interest' by, say, stealing? It's in the 'best interest' of individuals, but not of society as a whole.
The difference between preemptive silencing of a technology and making theft/rape/murder illegal, is that one tries to stop an act from happening, the other defines a consequence to the action. I am perfectly free to kill someone, if and only if I am willing to risk the consequence. If I was forced to always have a camera onthat would instantly paralyze me if I tried to break the law, some people would feel that because this made society safer it would be an acceptable curb on their freedom. I don't.
As far as guns go, I again disagree with you. The situation in Kosovo, and other multi-generational conflicts has nothing to do with the weaponry involved. These people would be killing each other with spoons, if they didn't have guns. It has to do with hate and economics, and power. Not guns. In countries with lots of guns and education but little class conflict (Switzerland as an example) there are few problems with guns. In countries with many guns, but with lots of class conflicts and widely varying education levels (USA, and South Africa come to mind) there are insane levels of violence.
Don't ban the symptom, cure the disease.
Seriously though; why should the onus be on the ISP to disclose a third party's censorship of their net block. They don't have to disclose that they are cut off from the people inside MY firewall. The real problem is that these idiotic censorware programs don't work. They just plain don't work.
Our real job is to make sure they really really don't work, and this gives me a wonderful idea.
There are probably enough sysadmins and webmasters here on Slashdot that we could probably do it. The idea is if we can figure out the method that they use to choose to block netblocks. Then we break their rules. all of them. If they end up blocking enough sites, they become useless.
Active resistance can and should be used!
The first time I read Wired, it blew me away. The graphics, the ideas, and most of all the references to things online. I would take it home and dial up using my 2400 modem, and explore the internet. Not the web ; the internet. I learned about Veronica, and Archie. I learned about MUDS. I learned that I could go online with my crappy 286 and have access to computers all over the world.
As the internet exxpanded and changeed so did Wired. many of the people who only remembered the late 90's Wired, will not mourn it's passing, but I think that many people will/have mourned for the passing of the Wired that they remember. My Wired died the first issue that Nicholas Negroponte failed to have the back page. I almost never agreed with him, but I always had to figure out why. I liked that.
I never really enjoyed HotWired though. It never gave me a community to join, even by proxy. This seemed to be the real problem with Wired. They never in their heart of hearts appreciated the bi-directionality of the internet. They always thought of it as a many to many broadcast medium. The truly succesful sites have been many with many projects....
I remember when I got my first copy of "Let them Eat Jellybeans" when it came out. I lay down in my room with the poster that came with the album, and read the lyrics as I played the song. I examined the pictures. I didn't just put it on in the background.
Later when I became a DJ and I was playing actual LP's, I would sometimes choose which song to play on an album just by looking at the texture of the vinyl....
The physical experience of bringing a record home and seeing the entire package has always been very important to me. This may explain why I don't have any MP3's on my hard drive, but I have a complete database of my music collection....
Why did I get the sneaking suspicion that this essay is a bait for all the wannabe essay writers. I know my first thought on reading it was that I could do better...maybe I should put together something and submit it.
If Cmdr. Taco et al wanted a whole raft of submissions, I can think of no better way than to post an 'essay' like this one.
Unless it's a corporation saying "work for 50 an hour, work for somebody else for the same wage... or starve". Non-coercion? In the absence of labor laws (and other such regulations), the corporations become The Law, and coercion remains part of the equation.
Of course in the absence of the laws that allow corporations to absolve actual human beings of responsibility, (limited liability being the sole reason for the existence of corporate charters) corporations would not exist either!
Since there are no businesses in a socialist world, everyone is forced deal directly with the government for their needs, a violation of that principle.
Actually...there are businesses in a socialist world. Just not corporations.
I have found this thread rather interesting, as I got into Linux mostly because I found a lot of resonances between the way the Free Software/Open Source movement actually worked, and the theoretical works of Kropotkin like Mutual Aid