I'm left wondering two things: where do they learn these "innovative" problem solving methods, and what the fuck ARE they learning in high school?
Steven Johnson, in his book Everything Bad Is Good For You, would argue that they are learning these "innovative" problem solving methods from video games, television and the Internet. (I think he has some articles about it online as well.)
I'm going to be VERY interested to see the results of this year's use by Disney of the cinea encryption. (All or most of Disney's screeners that were sent out this year contained the encryption; as far as I can tell no other companies used it this year for academy screeners.)
I want to know the following after this season is over:
1. Were Disney's films pirated less than others? 2. Did academy members actually watch Disney's films? (Certainly my boss didn't, b/c they were less convenient.) What will the effect of that be on nominations? 3. What are the other companies going to do next year, now that they've let Disney do the test run?
My boss is a member of the academy, and he has yet to watch any of Disney's screeners this year, as they all came with the encryption. This means that he can only watch them where we set up the (extraordinarily crappy) cinea player. He doesn't really have the technological expertise to setup the player by himself at home, so we just set it up in the office. Which means he doesn't watch any of Disney's screeners. Oh well.
Actually I guess technically they are DVDs, since they do in fact have the video_ts folder on them.... of course all it includes when you play the discs on a normal player is a screen that says you need the cinea player to play the disc. Then the real content is included in a special folder with 128 bit encryption, iirc.
Let's see... pretty much the entire nyc film industry, as well as anyone else working as a so-called "freelancer." (Obviously this does not include those doing unionized work for the industry.)
I don't know what Apple's plan is, but I really doubt, once the final release comes out, that they'll want people hacking the OS to run on non-Apple hardware. Not b/c of the lost profits from selling the OS, but for two reasons.
1) afaik Apple has always made most of their money from hardware sales!
2) and I'd think Apple would be very worried about it tarnishing their image to have people running the OS on random pc hardware where it will crash, etc. Apple's OS runs so much better than Windows at least in large part b/c they control most of the hardware. You can say that people will expect the hacked version to crash, but your average friend or co-worker or whatever will think less of Apple if they see the system crashing more often.
The below is very much over-simplified, but I just want to point to what I see as bigger implications of this.
Cringely is basically saying that the phone and cable companies are soon going to start putting their own VoIP services at higher QOS than competing VoIP. i.e. I'm afraid that the major broadband ISPs will give preference to their own protocols over whatever innovation is coming from elsewhere on the 'net. There is no reason to think that the cable companies, etc. won't apply this same technique to areas beyond voip. Their own video services, for example. By giving their own services bandwidth priority over "everything else," they are effectively blocking new and innovative services, and subverting the end-to-end principle that made the Internet such a place for innovation. In other words, the reason there is so much innovation on the Internet is that the network itself is "stupid." It does not discriminate between protocols. So anyone can design something and get it out there without having to get permission from some gatekeeper, like a cable ISP. If the cable ISPs start giving their own services priority, this means that the network itself is no longer content neutral. Thus "unofficial" / "unapproved" services (those to which Comcast doesn't give higher QOS) are at a disadvantage. This is REALLY bad not just for competition / innovation, but also because it gives control over what people can do over the Internet to some bodies in the middle, rather than on the ends. To take it to the logical extreme, imagine an Internet where you can quickly and easily access Comcast TV (tm), Comcast Radio (tm) and Comcast Phone (tm), as well as services from approved partners Microsoft EntertainMe (tm) and Disney MakeMeStupid (tm).. but other bandwidth-intensive applications run very slowly because Comcast gives priority to itself and its approved partners. So if some random company comes up with a more innovative voip or video service than Comcast, or perhaps some great service that allows political activists to work together, they will not be able to effectively get it out there because their packets will be given lower priority than those for Comcast's own services. This is one of the reasons that I am really worried about the increasing dominance of the cable companies in the world of broadband ISPs.
I think what would make the most sense is for everything to be initially flagged "nofollow", and then have the ability to mark comment as "not spam", which would remove the nofollow attribute. For this to work, though, they must initially be flagged nofollow, so as to prevent spidering.
In case no one's noticed, I might point out that the main point of advertisements is not to blatantly make you go out and buy the product. Or they do try to do that, but only on the most superficial level. They don't actually expect that to appeal to most people. Particularly to the type of intelligent consumer that they really want to attract. The main point of advertisement is simply to get the product name in your head so that when you want that type of product, you subconsciously think, "Oh, I've heard of that brand... they're probably reliable."
So you can say all you want that commercials don't affect you, but it is really quite impossible to know for sure whether or not ads are affecting you.
This may be a bit OT, but anyways... it's true that traditional ads are slowly going the way of the dinosaur. This is happening with or without the help of tivo. Tivo and co. are actually helping to bring in a different form of advertising that will be one of the things replacing traditional ads.
There will be more product placement (see "reality" tv), "branded content", interactive product placement with "couch commerce", targeted ads (geographic & demographic), ads within video-on-demand programming & within video-on-demand menus. Also more rich-media web ads, more web & traditional sponsorships, more shows that ppl want to watch "live" (sports, certain "reality" shows), more long-form advertising stored on the tivo's hard drive. Especially more shows that cost less money to produce (i.e. "reality" shows & talking heads). Just to name a few of the directions that I suspect advertising will go in.:)
Maybe the ISP integrating "those services" (VOIP, others undoubtedly to follow) into their service is a "win for the customer" on that specific service. But I worry that it could well put a damper on innovation of new Internet services. If individuals and companies are unable to innovate w/ new services b/c only the established services are given good QoS by the major ISP (Comcast, for example), then this is a Bad Thing in the longterm.
I can't comment specifically on the BBC, but my impression of public media in the U.S. (PBS, NPR) is that, while still far better than commercial media, they are becoming more and more like the commercial media. For lack of enough money reasons and to obtain a larger audience (and thus more money). If this is true of the BBC too, does it mean the license fee is not enough, that they are becoming more commercial b/c w/ the increasing costs of programming, they need more money? (I gather that the license fee is one of the reasons why the BBC is purportedly much better than U.S. public media, which receives very little in public funding.)
Ironically, IMHO the more that public media comes to resemble commercial media, the more they strengthen the argument of those that say gov't shouldn't subsidize public media. The whole premise of the subsidy is that it is subsidizing a unique and *different* media for purposes of diversity, democracy, etc.
Because I suspect there is some confusion, it should be pointed out that the long defunct consumer Sony Betamax format and the still very widely used professional Sony Beta(cam) SP format are two entirely different formats.
I just want to point out the other side.. that there is also the possibility of censorship by the cable company when there is no real competition. If everyone ends up getting broadband from one cable provider or an oligopoly of a few, those providers have the ability to decide you can't run any servers, you only get x upload bandwidth, your screening of Disney's movie (if, say, the cable company buys disney) will receive a higher QOS than a movie from some other company, etc. All of these either are already happening or really could happen.
While I certainly understand the concern about government censorship, if I'm not mistaken in this case we're talking about the government forcing the companies to allow other companies to use their pipes. While this may or may not be fair, there will be compensation (obviously the companies using the pipes will pay), and it should force competition... which is a Very Good Thing for the above reasons. And it doesn't seem likely to me that this type of regulation would cause government censorship... (the reclassification as "telecommunications" would allow government spying, but that's not really anything new.)
I think the above post makes a really important point. While I wouldn't go so far as to say that the DoD's goal of redesigning IP would be to "remove network capabilities" from certain users, it could unintentionally have that effect.
It seems to me that the more you rely on QoS type systems to "assign network capabilities to different users," the more likelihood that other new uses will be unsupported. Lawrence Lessig writes about the fact that there has been so much innovation on the Internet because all services are treated equally. If the government or cable companies or AOL are able to effectively choose what they want to support by giving everything "unimportant" low priority, it could really hamper future innovation on the Internet.
At least those were my thoughts while reading the article. I'd love to hear other peoples' opinions on that.
Clearly these electronic voting machines have serious problems. But it is also clear that electronic voting is going to happen, whether we like it or not. So what would be necessary for a reliable electronic system to include?
The most important issue seems to be a paper trail. But the machine simply printing a paper trail internally is useless, as the voter would never know if it actually reflected his/her vote. (As someone else pointed out, the machine could just display one thing on the screen while recording and printing a paper copy of something else.)
So what if the machine printed out a receipt for the voter, the voter can look at it to verify that it is correct, and then must drop the receipt in a box on the way out? Those boxes would be used for manual recounts, as well as a random sample of checks to make sure that the machines are recording the votes correctly.
Just a thought... It just seems to me that the voter must see the actual piece of paper that will be used for the recount...
This might be a bit OT, but I just thought ppl might be interested in this paper I wrote about these issues (www.duke.edu/~mag10/mp3.html) awhile back for a school / symposium presentation I was doing.... Its a bit out of date now since it was written in late April / early May, but I'm still very curious about input from others on it...:-)
I just talked about the way the industry was changing and possible ways these changes could benefit the artist as well as the consumer (and of course the fact that the industry is being ridiculous by trying to _prevent_ it from happenning!)
I've been a huge fan for years and spent hundreds of dollars on your concerts, cds, and t-shirts. But I'm VERY worried right now about what your actions could do to the Internet in terms of turning it into more of a police state type thing.
I definitely support the right for artists to get paid, but what if you could lead other artists with less power into a music distribution system where people can pay directly to the band a small amount for each song they acquire however they acquire it (through napster or whatever). There wouldn't be a way of _forcing_ people to pay, but I strongly believe that for the right price most people would want to support their favorite artists so that they can continue to make music (i.e. $1 per song maybe). Wouldn't such a system (better for both the artists and consumers, while not necessitating authoritarian control of the Internet!) be FAR better than trying to control the inevitable availability of music on the Internet?
see my paper I'm writing on this at www.duke.edu/~mag10/mp3.html for more info, or orangealley.com for a possible system.
Yes. I am an American, and I agree with what this Austrialian AC says.:-) By far the most important thing we need to do is work on educating people - elementary through adult ed! (so the adults can then help their kids, b/c obviously games and TV don't cause ppl. to kill e/o.
But see my post here for my thoughts on the issue of gun control (I tried to post it before and netscape decided to nicely crash.) They aren't permanent beliefs. I listen to reason. I'm sure there are many holes. Feel free to correct me. Preferably nicely.:)
I have thought about the issue of gun control a lot b/c I tend to be a staunch supporter of peoples' liberties, BUT thus far the conclusion that I have come to from my life experience and from all the statistics I've seen and all I've read (including all the posts on this/. thread) is that I am for gun control. Call me a hypocrite, but here's why I think guns should be controlled.
I believe that in guns the bad simply outweighs the good. See discussion from one of yesterday's censorship threads - there are limitations to your freedoms. You have the right to your freedoms so long as they don't interfere with other peoples' rights to life, for example - note "yelling fire in theater, causing riot" example. I believe that the PRIMARY PURPOSE of guns is to do physical harm, and your liberty to have guns in our current-day society is outweighed by other peoples' rights to live.
No, guns themselves don't kill people. Yes, people would still die if guns didn't exist. BUT guns make it _much easier_ to kill ppl (detachment, physical distance, etc.), so yes, a lot of people die b/c of guns.
Just b/c I am against guns does not mean that I am against violent video games, rope, bottles, etc. Those do NOT have a PRIMARY PURPOSE of doing physical harm.
Yes, "career criminals" will still have guns. But the issue is not about planned murder, it is about rage killings mostly.. and there is the common argument about "acccidental killings" by kids, which is certainly something worth trying to prevent, but probably accounts for a very small percentage of the gun deaths. The rage killings however are _not_ a small percentage. And somone cited that most are actually "b/t criminals", but where that statistic comes from AFAIK is that most of the assaulters and victims of rage killings have had some kind of criminal record in the past - i.e. drug violations, etc. NOT that they are necessarily active criminals engaged as a drug dealer, in the Mafia, etc.;-) Most of the rage killings AFAIK _are_ from ppl getting in a "rage" over their wife cheating, etc., and they happen to have a gun. It happens for obvious reasons that a lot of these ppl do have criminal records from the past, but those are _not_ the ppl. who would have the guns if guns were much harder to get. The ones that _would_ still be able to get guns are the career criminals.
Additionally, the argument that you need guns to "protect" from getting robbed, etc., is BS. Proven statistic (don't have it offhand, but can find it if need be.... AFAIK it is commonly accepted as fact by both "sides" on this issue): You are _far_ more likely to be severely injured or killed in a burglary, etc., attempt _if_ you own a gun in your house.
And yes, of course banning guns is not going to immediately make all guns in the U.S. disappear, but as mentioned earlier, in the long term the ppl. who aren't "career criminals" won't have them, so it will help very significantly with the rage killings, etc. (very significant portion of the gun deaths - anyone know the number offhand.. I've seen it but can't find it now)
As someone mentioned, its just like U.S. and USSR... ever see Wargames? nuclear escalation... well its the same thing. like the other poster said, you have a gun, I need a gun to protect myself.. next it'll be bombs (see discussion from some thread yesterday where the limits to your liberties were discussed, in specific relation to bombs). Do you want everyone to be allowed to have an H-bomb "to protect themselves". Sure there are laws existing on the books that would punish ppl for setting off an H-Bomb, but is that really going to deter anyone who was going to set one off anyway!? There is an immediate danger posed by someone having an H-Bomb, and likewise by someone having a gun. Primary purpose of both is to do physical harm....
And I want to note that probably the best argument I've heard _for_ allowing free access to guns is for purposes of a revolution someday.... I don't expect most ppl to necessarily agree with me here, but I can say why this reason doesn't make me agree that guns should be allowed - this is b/c my personal beliefs are that it is not right and I _could not_ kill anyone under any circumstances, no matter how unjust they are being and how many other people they are having killed, and I believe and it is supported from history that it _is_ possible to have non-violent revolutions... by no means easy, but possible, and the chance of that is better than killing anyone IMHO. But its interesting to note that this argument about needing guns for revolution is the only one that makes any real sense at all to me, yet it is rarely argued by the gun-rights supporters...
Ok, now I'm ready for the flames... if anyone actually made it through the whole post, put the secret keyword "notaflame" in your reply so I know you actually read my post so could make an informed reply.:)
I haven't used either CyperPatrol or the crack, but if I understand correctly it _does_ reveal the password for the software in addition to the crack's main purpose of revealing the list of censored sites. This means that Mattel has a very legit (in the public eye anyways) reason for censoring any sites with the crack software. If CyperPatrol allowed users to get that crack software, the users would be able to get around the filters, making the program useless.
SO what someone should do, if that is the case, is to make a version of the crack that only decrypts the list, and does not reveal the password. That way Mattel has no excusable reason for censoring sites with the crack software. They still probably will try, since they have a problem with people seeing the list of blocked sites, but I should hope that they wouldn't be able to get away with claiming that this new version of the crack allowed people to view pornography!
Regardless of whether you yourself explicitly wish to do violence, you remain a leftist. You remain convinced that democracy and liberty are "mistakes" to be "corrected"
No, but what you're not understanding is that not all leftists - in fact, very few indeed - are believe that democracy and liberty are mistakes. I full-heartedly believe in democracy and liberty and work as hard as I can to preserve them! I also believe there are ways our country could be a better place (within our democracy!). I certainly don't think we should use violence to achieve it. Neither do most leftists. And certainly AFSC does not.
I have seen the AFSC website and "social justice" is specifically mentioned! Well, the only means of imposing "social justice" on a free nation are violent means.
This is not the case. AFSC promotes working towards social justice through non-violent means. I assure you that it is possible to make the world a more just place without violent means. It may not become 100% just, but it can become better anyway. That is what AFSC tries to do.:)
Well just provide some proof! I admit that I might be wrong on that point, but I certainly won't take your word for it after all the other things you've said. Do you have some sort of proof? I really would appreciate it as that's something I don't know too much about. Thanks.:)
I think I've figured out why you're posts don't make any sense. The problem is your understanding of the word left-wing. You seem to assume that all people who are left-wing (as opposed to being right-wing) are extremists that promote violence, communism, overthrow of the government, etc. This is not at all the case. Neither I, nor Quakerism, nor AFSC support violence or overthrow of the U.S. government at all. They are not opposed to democratic government. Just because you have some left-wing ideas, does not mean that you support Stalin, etc.
And just to clear things up once and for all, I absolutely guarantee you that Quakers and AFSC do not support violence. You are simply wrong about that. I'm sorry. In fact, they, more than any other religion or even organization are absolutely opposed to violence.
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I'm left wondering two things: where do they learn these "innovative" problem solving methods, and what the fuck ARE they learning in high school?
Steven Johnson, in his book Everything Bad Is Good For You, would argue that they are learning these "innovative" problem solving methods from video games, television and the Internet. (I think he has some articles about it online as well.)
I'm going to be VERY interested to see the results of this year's use by Disney of the cinea encryption. (All or most of Disney's screeners that were sent out this year contained the encryption; as far as I can tell no other companies used it this year for academy screeners.)
I want to know the following after this season is over:
1. Were Disney's films pirated less than others?
2. Did academy members actually watch Disney's films? (Certainly my boss didn't, b/c they were less convenient.) What will the effect of that be on nominations?
3. What are the other companies going to do next year, now that they've let Disney do the test run?
My boss is a member of the academy, and he has yet to watch any of Disney's screeners this year, as they all came with the encryption. This means that he can only watch them where we set up the (extraordinarily crappy) cinea player. He doesn't really have the technological expertise to setup the player by himself at home, so we just set it up in the office. Which means he doesn't watch any of Disney's screeners. Oh well.
Actually I guess technically they are DVDs, since they do in fact have the video_ts folder on them.... of course all it includes when you play the discs on a normal player is a screen that says you need the cinea player to play the disc. Then the real content is included in a special folder with 128 bit encryption, iirc.
alright, I'll bite.
Let's see... pretty much the entire nyc film industry, as well as anyone else working as a so-called "freelancer." (Obviously this does not include those doing unionized work for the industry.)
I don't know what Apple's plan is, but I really doubt, once the final release comes out, that they'll want people hacking the OS to run on non-Apple hardware. Not b/c of the lost profits from selling the OS, but for two reasons.
1) afaik Apple has always made most of their money from hardware sales!
2) and I'd think Apple would be very worried about it tarnishing their image to have people running the OS on random pc hardware where it will crash, etc. Apple's OS runs so much better than Windows at least in large part b/c they control most of the hardware. You can say that people will expect the hacked version to crash, but your average friend or co-worker or whatever will think less of Apple if they see the system crashing more often.
Speaking of Windows crashes in public environments, there's a Public Computer Crashes group on flickr. And also another one. :)
The below is very much over-simplified, but I just want to point to what I see as bigger implications of this.
Cringely is basically saying that the phone and cable companies are soon going to start putting their own VoIP services at higher QOS than competing VoIP. i.e. I'm afraid that the major broadband ISPs will give preference to their own protocols over whatever innovation is coming from elsewhere on the 'net. There is no reason to think that the cable companies, etc. won't apply this same technique to areas beyond voip. Their own video services, for example. By giving their own services bandwidth priority over "everything else," they are effectively blocking new and innovative services, and subverting the end-to-end principle that made the Internet such a place for innovation. In other words, the reason there is so much innovation on the Internet is that the network itself is "stupid." It does not discriminate between protocols. So anyone can design something and get it out there without having to get permission from some gatekeeper, like a cable ISP. If the cable ISPs start giving their own services priority, this means that the network itself is no longer content neutral. Thus "unofficial" / "unapproved" services (those to which Comcast doesn't give higher QOS) are at a disadvantage. This is REALLY bad not just for competition / innovation, but also because it gives control over what people can do over the Internet to some bodies in the middle, rather than on the ends. To take it to the logical extreme, imagine an Internet where you can quickly and easily access Comcast TV (tm), Comcast Radio (tm) and Comcast Phone (tm), as well as services from approved partners Microsoft EntertainMe (tm) and Disney MakeMeStupid (tm).. but other bandwidth-intensive applications run very slowly because Comcast gives priority to itself and its approved partners. So if some random company comes up with a more innovative voip or video service than Comcast, or perhaps some great service that allows political activists to work together, they will not be able to effectively get it out there because their packets will be given lower priority than those for Comcast's own services. This is one of the reasons that I am really worried about the increasing dominance of the cable companies in the world of broadband ISPs.
I think what would make the most sense is for everything to be initially flagged "nofollow", and then have the ability to mark comment as "not spam", which would remove the nofollow attribute. For this to work, though, they must initially be flagged nofollow, so as to prevent spidering.
So you can say all you want that commercials don't affect you, but it is really quite impossible to know for sure whether or not ads are affecting you.
This may be a bit OT, but anyways... it's true that traditional ads are slowly going the way of the dinosaur. This is happening with or without the help of tivo. Tivo and co. are actually helping to bring in a different form of advertising that will be one of the things replacing traditional ads.
:)
There will be more product placement (see "reality" tv), "branded content", interactive product placement with "couch commerce", targeted ads (geographic & demographic), ads within video-on-demand programming & within video-on-demand menus. Also more rich-media web ads, more web & traditional sponsorships, more shows that ppl want to watch "live" (sports, certain "reality" shows), more long-form advertising stored on the tivo's hard drive. Especially more shows that cost less money to produce (i.e. "reality" shows & talking heads). Just to name a few of the directions that I suspect advertising will go in.
Maybe the ISP integrating "those services" (VOIP, others undoubtedly to follow) into their service is a "win for the customer" on that specific service. But I worry that it could well put a damper on innovation of new Internet services. If individuals and companies are unable to innovate w/ new services b/c only the established services are given good QoS by the major ISP (Comcast, for example), then this is a Bad Thing in the longterm.
I can't comment specifically on the BBC, but my impression of public media in the U.S. (PBS, NPR) is that, while still far better than commercial media, they are becoming more and more like the commercial media. For lack of enough money reasons and to obtain a larger audience (and thus more money). If this is true of the BBC too, does it mean the license fee is not enough, that they are becoming more commercial b/c w/ the increasing costs of programming, they need more money? (I gather that the license fee is one of the reasons why the BBC is purportedly much better than U.S. public media, which receives very little in public funding.)
Ironically, IMHO the more that public media comes to resemble commercial media, the more they strengthen the argument of those that say gov't shouldn't subsidize public media. The whole premise of the subsidy is that it is subsidizing a unique and *different* media for purposes of diversity, democracy, etc.
Because I suspect there is some confusion, it should be pointed out that the long defunct consumer Sony Betamax format and the still very widely used professional Sony Beta(cam) SP format are two entirely different formats.
Hope this helps.
I just want to point out the other side.. that there is also the possibility of censorship by the cable company when there is no real competition. If everyone ends up getting broadband from one cable provider or an oligopoly of a few, those providers have the ability to decide you can't run any servers, you only get x upload bandwidth, your screening of Disney's movie (if, say, the cable company buys disney) will receive a higher QOS than a movie from some other company, etc. All of these either are already happening or really could happen.
While I certainly understand the concern about government censorship, if I'm not mistaken in this case we're talking about the government forcing the companies to allow other companies to use their pipes. While this may or may not be fair, there will be compensation (obviously the companies using the pipes will pay), and it should force competition... which is a Very Good Thing for the above reasons. And it doesn't seem likely to me that this type of regulation would cause government censorship... (the reclassification as "telecommunications" would allow government spying, but that's not really anything new.)
I think the above post makes a really important point. While I wouldn't go so far as to say that the DoD's goal of redesigning IP would be to "remove network capabilities" from certain users, it could unintentionally have that effect.
It seems to me that the more you rely on QoS type systems to "assign network capabilities to different users," the more likelihood that other new uses will be unsupported. Lawrence Lessig writes about the fact that there has been so much innovation on the Internet because all services are treated equally. If the government or cable companies or AOL are able to effectively choose what they want to support by giving everything "unimportant" low priority, it could really hamper future innovation on the Internet.
At least those were my thoughts while reading the article. I'd love to hear other peoples' opinions on that.
Clearly these electronic voting machines have serious problems. But it is also clear that electronic voting is going to happen, whether we like it or not. So what would be necessary for a reliable electronic system to include?
The most important issue seems to be a paper trail. But the machine simply printing a paper trail internally is useless, as the voter would never know if it actually reflected his/her vote. (As someone else pointed out, the machine could just display one thing on the screen while recording and printing a paper copy of something else.)
So what if the machine printed out a receipt for the voter, the voter can look at it to verify that it is correct, and then must drop the receipt in a box on the way out? Those boxes would be used for manual recounts, as well as a random sample of checks to make sure that the machines are recording the votes correctly.
Just a thought... It just seems to me that the voter must see the actual piece of paper that will be used for the recount...
I just talked about the way the industry was changing and possible ways these changes could benefit the artist as well as the consumer (and of course the fact that the industry is being ridiculous by trying to _prevent_ it from happenning!)
I've been a huge fan for years and spent hundreds of dollars on your concerts, cds, and t-shirts. But I'm VERY worried right now about what your actions could do to the Internet in terms of turning it into more of a police state type thing.
I definitely support the right for artists to get paid, but what if you could lead other artists with less power into a music distribution system where people can pay directly to the band a small amount for each song they acquire however they acquire it (through napster or whatever). There wouldn't be a way of _forcing_ people to pay, but I strongly believe that for the right price most people would want to support their favorite artists so that they can continue to make music (i.e. $1 per song maybe). Wouldn't such a system (better for both the artists and consumers, while not necessitating authoritarian control of the Internet!) be FAR better than trying to control the inevitable availability of music on the Internet?
see my paper I'm writing on this at www.duke.edu/~mag10/mp3.html for more info, or orangealley.com for a possible system.
But see my post here for my thoughts on the issue of gun control (I tried to post it before and netscape decided to nicely crash.) They aren't permanent beliefs. I listen to reason. I'm sure there are many holes. Feel free to correct me. Preferably nicely. :)
I have thought about the issue of gun control a lot b/c I tend to be a staunch supporter of peoples' liberties, BUT thus far the conclusion that I have come to from my life experience and from all the statistics I've seen and all I've read (including all the posts on this /. thread) is that I am for gun control. Call me a hypocrite, but here's why I think guns should be controlled.
I believe that in guns the bad simply outweighs the good. See discussion from one of yesterday's censorship threads - there are limitations to your freedoms. You have the right to your freedoms so long as they don't interfere with other peoples' rights to life, for example - note "yelling fire in theater, causing riot" example. I believe that the PRIMARY PURPOSE of guns is to do physical harm, and your liberty to have guns in our current-day society is outweighed by other peoples' rights to live.
No, guns themselves don't kill people. Yes, people would still die if guns didn't exist. BUT guns make it _much easier_ to kill ppl (detachment, physical distance, etc.), so yes, a lot of people die b/c of guns.
Just b/c I am against guns does not mean that I am against violent video games, rope, bottles, etc. Those do NOT have a PRIMARY PURPOSE of doing physical harm.
Yes, "career criminals" will still have guns. But the issue is not about planned murder, it is about rage killings mostly.. and there is the common argument about "acccidental killings" by kids, which is certainly something worth trying to prevent, but probably accounts for a very small percentage of the gun deaths. The rage killings however are _not_ a small percentage. And somone cited that most are actually "b/t criminals", but where that statistic comes from AFAIK is that most of the assaulters and victims of rage killings have had some kind of criminal record in the past - i.e. drug violations, etc. NOT that they are necessarily active criminals engaged as a drug dealer, in the Mafia, etc. ;-) Most of the rage killings AFAIK _are_ from ppl getting in a "rage" over their wife cheating, etc., and they happen to have a gun. It happens for obvious reasons that a lot of these ppl do have criminal records from the past, but those are _not_ the ppl. who would have the guns if guns were much harder to get. The ones that _would_ still be able to get guns are the career criminals.
Additionally, the argument that you need guns to "protect" from getting robbed, etc., is BS. Proven statistic (don't have it offhand, but can find it if need be.... AFAIK it is commonly accepted as fact by both "sides" on this issue): You are _far_ more likely to be severely injured or killed in a burglary, etc., attempt _if_ you own a gun in your house.
And yes, of course banning guns is not going to immediately make all guns in the U.S. disappear, but as mentioned earlier, in the long term the ppl. who aren't "career criminals" won't have them, so it will help very significantly with the rage killings, etc. (very significant portion of the gun deaths - anyone know the number offhand.. I've seen it but can't find it now)
As someone mentioned, its just like U.S. and USSR... ever see Wargames? nuclear escalation... well its the same thing. like the other poster said, you have a gun, I need a gun to protect myself.. next it'll be bombs (see discussion from some thread yesterday where the limits to your liberties were discussed, in specific relation to bombs). Do you want everyone to be allowed to have an H-bomb "to protect themselves". Sure there are laws existing on the books that would punish ppl for setting off an H-Bomb, but is that really going to deter anyone who was going to set one off anyway!? There is an immediate danger posed by someone having an H-Bomb, and likewise by someone having a gun. Primary purpose of both is to do physical harm....
And I want to note that probably the best argument I've heard _for_ allowing free access to guns is for purposes of a revolution someday.... I don't expect most ppl to necessarily agree with me here, but I can say why this reason doesn't make me agree that guns should be allowed - this is b/c my personal beliefs are that it is not right and I _could not_ kill anyone under any circumstances, no matter how unjust they are being and how many other people they are having killed, and I believe and it is supported from history that it _is_ possible to have non-violent revolutions... by no means easy, but possible, and the chance of that is better than killing anyone IMHO. But its interesting to note that this argument about needing guns for revolution is the only one that makes any real sense at all to me, yet it is rarely argued by the gun-rights supporters...
Ok, now I'm ready for the flames... if anyone actually made it through the whole post, put the secret keyword "notaflame" in your reply so I know you actually read my post so could make an informed reply. :)
SO what someone should do, if that is the case, is to make a version of the crack that only decrypts the list, and does not reveal the password. That way Mattel has no excusable reason for censoring sites with the crack software. They still probably will try, since they have a problem with people seeing the list of blocked sites, but I should hope that they wouldn't be able to get away with claiming that this new version of the crack allowed people to view pornography!
no, through working to get laws changed (lobbying, non-violent protests, stuff like that). Ok, enough discussion for me for now. I need food. ;-)
No, but what you're not understanding is that not all leftists - in fact, very few indeed - are believe that democracy and liberty are mistakes. I full-heartedly believe in democracy and liberty and work as hard as I can to preserve them! I also believe there are ways our country could be a better place (within our democracy!). I certainly don't think we should use violence to achieve it. Neither do most leftists. And certainly AFSC does not.
I have seen the AFSC website and "social justice" is specifically mentioned! Well, the only means of imposing "social justice" on a free nation are violent means.
This is not the case. AFSC promotes working towards social justice through non-violent means. I assure you that it is possible to make the world a more just place without violent means. It may not become 100% just, but it can become better anyway. That is what AFSC tries to do. :)
Well just provide some proof! I admit that I might be wrong on that point, but I certainly won't take your word for it after all the other things you've said. Do you have some sort of proof? I really would appreciate it as that's something I don't know too much about. Thanks. :)
And just to clear things up once and for all, I absolutely guarantee you that Quakers and AFSC do not support violence. You are simply wrong about that. I'm sorry. In fact, they, more than any other religion or even organization are absolutely opposed to violence.