One more thing. How do you know that people in China were aware of what was happening there when the govenment assumed its current form? 1 billion people spread out over the largest country in the world, with shitty communication.
And even if they had had it, would it have made a difference? Some might argue that the same thing that happened to China is happening to us - in the US - right now, slowly but surely. Hell, Patriot Act II is coming soon, to a listening post near you.
Two words: "Tianamen Square"
Would you really be seen in a demonstration against a government that will come and waltz a few tanks over you (and the thousands of others) without thinking twice about it. The whole point of the story is that just about anybody with any connections or education at all, is finding ways to fight. I think that means quite a bit considering what kind of stakes they're ignoring.
Millions of Americans were actively opposed to Gulf War II, but they didn't come out on the street - compared to Rome which brought up to five million to bear from all over Italy, New York, with a larger population got barely 500,000 -, because somebody made sure that every protest which exceeded X amount of people got teargassed. Colorado Springs is one example, where the cops didn't even bother making up a valid excuse until three days later.
MP3 sharing is down 80 percent because a couple of people got charged with copyright violation. The stakes: little more than a ruined credit rating.
All I'm saying is that a lot of incredibly brave people are protesting over there, despite the fact that dissenters routinely get shot. That means that the vast majority of them positively hate their regime. I bet you wouldn't be amongst the protestors either, because compared to that level of dedication, 99.99 percent of americans are utter pussies.
Let's see...what's wrong with this sentence (for those of you who didn't read the actual article):
But despite the help of several major international corporations and the use of the most sophisticated equipment, the Chinese government is finding the worldwide web much harder to censor than traditional media.
This seems to me like the most interesting point. If major American corporations weren't helping out, the large scale prosecution that appears to be happening wouldn't even be going on.
As to another comment regarding boycotting international corporations: sure, but that may mean living without television, soft drinks, cars, computers, and clothes. Let's face it, every single product which consists of more than five components has something, or some ingredient that was made in China. And most of the clothes - to pick a random example - which get imported to the US from Europe, and which are made by European manufacturers, are either too expensive or too weird to be worn constantly. The regular clothes (sweater and jeans type stuff) they make over there are pretty bad. That's why they don't send them over here. I know, I lived there for thirteen years.
Also, are you really prepared to start paying three times as much for clothes as you currently are? Every american consumer is at least partially responsible for this situation. The "evil corporate giants" are partially trying to increase their profit margin no matter what the cost but, currently, those profit margins are pretty tight as is.
The problem I have with this article has nothing to do with pr0n or google specifically. What disturbs me most is the clause that "Recent rulings may favor Google in the case, since Booble may be trying to profit from the marketability of the parody." I think it could be proven that literally EVERBODY who has ever parodied anything popular has profited from the parody. Weird Al could get his skin sued off according to this rule, and I like Weird Al!
I agree with you on the WoMD, though it's off topic. Also, I think that those whose vision more or less agreed with what was shown in the movie probably liked it better than those who were envisioning something completely different.
Things on the page sound less stupid than said I know. Once I started actually 'listening' to Robert Jordan books (envisioning what the dialog would actually sound like, etc) I immediately stopped reading them. Actually I had other, bigger problems with them and it was just the last straw. I still read Gibson and consider him a great author, even though his dialog routinely sucks. However, that is part of my point in a way. When you're reading the books, your own mind can put a sort of filter on the language. Even though a sentence is corny, by the time you're 200 pages into a book you're no longer reading actual individual sentences, you're just sort of seeing stuff happening in the minds eye. That makes it easier to ignore the occasional cheesyness. Then you get a single scene which may be quite ridiculous, but because the rest of the book is good it somehow turns out OK, after it's run past a few mental filters. With a movie you're always at the mercy of the director, the script writer, and the actors. Personally, I value the experience of reading a good book over the experience of watching a movie based on a good book every single time. But then again that's just me, and this is WAY OFF TOPIC.
By the way, who said I'm judging anybody? I've put out some pretty mediocre stuff, if you look at the sum total of everything I have ever done, but I don't consider myself worthless. I love Peter Jackson, and I watched all three Lord of the Rings flicks. All I was really saying was that the jumping scene was cornier - though I apologize for the non-PC language if it offends anybody - than anything in my minds eye when I was reading the book.
I seem to recall a time when a cell phone company was offering "Unlimited Minutes". Within a couple of months, there were advertisements for a different cell phone company, saying "our unlimited > their 'unlimited'".
I don't understand why this hasn't happened to ISP's yet. You would think that by and by they would expose each other and "regulation" would be taken care of.
But aside from that, the fact of the matter is that they provide more bandwidth than the vast majority of people could ever use - they have to, else they'd get a bad name - but just little enough to kick somebody who's sharing 56000 mpegs on Kazaa 24-7 in the bean bag.
Frankly, I think I'm against anything that increases the amount of regulation of pretty much anything internet-related, including ISPs.
p.s.: And I could just see this phone conversation:
customer: "How much bandwith do I get!"
representative: "you get 512/128, xx GB/month"
customre: "What is that in Kbps?"
representative: "groan, not again"
customer: "what was that?"
rep "nothing"
cust "so what was that bandwith"
rep "1000 Kbps"
cust "and how much stuff can I download?"
rep "you get 512/128, xx GB/month"
cust "so...how much is that?"
rep..."unlimited"
cust "oh, why didn't you just say so?"
Look at the credits for LotR. We're talking about 100s of professional dreamers, all channeling their combined skills into one magnificent creative act.
And coming up with the gayest, cheesiest jumping-on-bed scene I've ever been witness to. Nothing in the books was nearly that retarded when I was imagining it.
Good one, I wonder what ajs318 eats on a daily basis. I'm giving him 1 in 10 odds it's a diet which actually protects his body from compromisation by virus threats. Not that I'm any better of course.
All I'm trying to say is that any doctor looking at most of our nutrition tables COULD call us complete and utter morons for the shit we put in our bodies. But they don't. They just patiently explain that smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, drinking a fifth of Jack Daniels every weekend, slamming soft drinks, and eating Chicking McNuggets every day might could have a seriously adverse effect on our well-being down the road. Why don't they just tell us were stupid and that we don't deserve to live anyway? Because for some reason, they, unlike us, have gotten over the need to prove to everybody else that they're smarter than them by harking on the one thing they do best.
It's amazing how intelligent every body in the computer community really is, considering less than half of them write in complete sentences.
mike
First off, the plural of virus is viri IF it can be considered appropriate to use Lating vocab and grammar on a 20th century concept. As a person who studied Latin for three years I think that the plural for virus in English is viruses. But that's just nit picking.
Also, I think there are holes in your logic. Which is not to say that I did not find the e-mail insightful or interesting, by the way.
While I agree that MS isn't holding up their end of security responsibilities, I think that I could make an argument that people who want to design malicious code would be more given to target microsoft software. Every hacker I know would rather screw a Windows user - just for being a windows user in many cases - than a UNIX user - unless he's obviously doing something a UNIX user should be smart enough to avoid (which hints at kind of a double standard).
Other good reasons are that if you're designing a virus of any sort, you probably want to see it go big. Even if there are a couple of exploitable holes in Apache, chances are that enough of the Apache admins know what they're doing and so the virus won't make a big splash. On the other hand, even after all these mail viruses, people who administer windows systems frequently still don't know how to cover their bases. So, if you want to write a virus and you want to see it on news-at-nine, you write it for Windows.
By the way, if you install any version of Redhat on your machine, and you don't know what you're doing, and you plug a DSL into it, you'll be owned in five minutes. The difference there is that, while UNIX OS's also place a burned on their users to keep their security stuff updated, they can depend on the UNIX users to actually do it, whereas windows users don't. I'm still running around and cleaning MS-Blast on my older relatives' machines.
In a way, what you're saying is that Windows users should be completely pampered, and that MS should get it right on the first try, whereas Unix users ought to look out for themselves, provided they can find the updates they need to perform somewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
One more thing. How do you know that people in China were aware of what was happening there when the govenment assumed its current form? 1 billion people spread out over the largest country in the world, with shitty communication.
And even if they had had it, would it have made a difference? Some might argue that the same thing that happened to China is happening to us - in the US - right now, slowly but surely. Hell, Patriot Act II is coming soon, to a listening post near you.
Hate to break it to you, but it looks otherwise to me, since the article's gone.
Two words: "Tianamen Square" Would you really be seen in a demonstration against a government that will come and waltz a few tanks over you (and the thousands of others) without thinking twice about it. The whole point of the story is that just about anybody with any connections or education at all, is finding ways to fight. I think that means quite a bit considering what kind of stakes they're ignoring.
Millions of Americans were actively opposed to Gulf War II, but they didn't come out on the street - compared to Rome which brought up to five million to bear from all over Italy, New York, with a larger population got barely 500,000 -, because somebody made sure that every protest which exceeded X amount of people got teargassed. Colorado Springs is one example, where the cops didn't even bother making up a valid excuse until three days later.
MP3 sharing is down 80 percent because a couple of people got charged with copyright violation. The stakes: little more than a ruined credit rating.
All I'm saying is that a lot of incredibly brave people are protesting over there, despite the fact that dissenters routinely get shot. That means that the vast majority of them positively hate their regime. I bet you wouldn't be amongst the protestors either, because compared to that level of dedication, 99.99 percent of americans are utter pussies.
Let's see...what's wrong with this sentence (for those of you who didn't read the actual article):
But despite the help of several major international corporations and the use of the most sophisticated equipment, the Chinese government is finding the worldwide web much harder to censor than traditional media.
This seems to me like the most interesting point. If major American corporations weren't helping out, the large scale prosecution that appears to be happening wouldn't even be going on.
As to another comment regarding boycotting international corporations: sure, but that may mean living without television, soft drinks, cars, computers, and clothes. Let's face it, every single product which consists of more than five components has something, or some ingredient that was made in China. And most of the clothes - to pick a random example - which get imported to the US from Europe, and which are made by European manufacturers, are either too expensive or too weird to be worn constantly. The regular clothes (sweater and jeans type stuff) they make over there are pretty bad. That's why they don't send them over here. I know, I lived there for thirteen years.
Also, are you really prepared to start paying three times as much for clothes as you currently are? Every american consumer is at least partially responsible for this situation. The "evil corporate giants" are partially trying to increase their profit margin no matter what the cost but, currently, those profit margins are pretty tight as is.
The problem I have with this article has nothing to do with pr0n or google specifically. What disturbs me most is the clause that "Recent rulings may favor Google in the case, since Booble may be trying to profit from the marketability of the parody." I think it could be proven that literally EVERBODY who has ever parodied anything popular has profited from the parody. Weird Al could get his skin sued off according to this rule, and I like Weird Al!
I agree with you on the WoMD, though it's off topic. Also, I think that those whose vision more or less agreed with what was shown in the movie probably liked it better than those who were envisioning something completely different.
Things on the page sound less stupid than said
I know. Once I started actually 'listening' to Robert Jordan books (envisioning what the dialog would actually sound like, etc) I immediately stopped reading them. Actually I had other, bigger problems with them and it was just the last straw. I still read Gibson and consider him a great author, even though his dialog routinely sucks.
However, that is part of my point in a way. When you're reading the books, your own mind can put a sort of filter on the language. Even though a sentence is corny, by the time you're 200 pages into a book you're no longer reading actual individual sentences, you're just sort of seeing stuff happening in the minds eye. That makes it easier to ignore the occasional cheesyness. Then you get a single scene which may be quite ridiculous, but because the rest of the book is good it somehow turns out OK, after it's run past a few mental filters. With a movie you're always at the mercy of the director, the script writer, and the actors. Personally, I value the experience of reading a good book over the experience of watching a movie based on a good book every single time. But then again that's just me, and this is WAY OFF TOPIC.
By the way, who said I'm judging anybody? I've put out some pretty mediocre stuff, if you look at the sum total of everything I have ever done, but I don't consider myself worthless. I love Peter Jackson, and I watched all three Lord of the Rings flicks. All I was really saying was that the jumping scene was cornier - though I apologize for the non-PC language if it offends anybody - than anything in my minds eye when I was reading the book.
Regulation is the way to go.
..."unlimited"
I seem to recall a time when a cell phone company was offering "Unlimited Minutes". Within a couple of months, there were advertisements for a different cell phone company, saying "our unlimited > their 'unlimited'". I don't understand why this hasn't happened to ISP's yet. You would think that by and by they would expose each other and "regulation" would be taken care of.
But aside from that, the fact of the matter is that they provide more bandwidth than the vast majority of people could ever use - they have to, else they'd get a bad name - but just little enough to kick somebody who's sharing 56000 mpegs on Kazaa 24-7 in the bean bag.
Frankly, I think I'm against anything that increases the amount of regulation of pretty much anything internet-related, including ISPs.
p.s.: And I could just see this phone conversation:
customer: "How much bandwith do I get!"
representative: "you get 512/128, xx GB/month"
customre: "What is that in Kbps?"
representative: "groan, not again"
customer: "what was that?"
rep "nothing"
cust "so what was that bandwith"
rep "1000 Kbps"
cust "and how much stuff can I download?"
rep "you get 512/128, xx GB/month"
cust "so...how much is that?"
rep
cust "oh, why didn't you just say so?"
Actually, the entire cast was good. And they wouldn't have picked that cast if they had wanted to make a typical Disney movie.
Look at the credits for LotR. We're talking about 100s of professional dreamers, all channeling their combined skills into one magnificent creative act.
And coming up with the gayest, cheesiest jumping-on-bed scene I've ever been witness to. Nothing in the books was nearly that retarded when I was imagining it.
The books were still better. Sorry.
Good one, I wonder what ajs318 eats on a daily basis. I'm giving him 1 in 10 odds it's a diet which actually protects his body from compromisation by virus threats. Not that I'm any better of course. All I'm trying to say is that any doctor looking at most of our nutrition tables COULD call us complete and utter morons for the shit we put in our bodies. But they don't. They just patiently explain that smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, drinking a fifth of Jack Daniels every weekend, slamming soft drinks, and eating Chicking McNuggets every day might could have a seriously adverse effect on our well-being down the road. Why don't they just tell us were stupid and that we don't deserve to live anyway? Because for some reason, they, unlike us, have gotten over the need to prove to everybody else that they're smarter than them by harking on the one thing they do best. It's amazing how intelligent every body in the computer community really is, considering less than half of them write in complete sentences. mike
First off, the plural of virus is viri IF it can be considered appropriate to use Lating vocab and grammar on a 20th century concept. As a person who studied Latin for three years I think that the plural for virus in English is viruses. But that's just nit picking.
Also, I think there are holes in your logic. Which is not to say that I did not find the e-mail insightful or interesting, by the way.
While I agree that MS isn't holding up their end of security responsibilities, I think that I could make an argument that people who want to design malicious code would be more given to target microsoft software. Every hacker I know would rather screw a Windows user - just for being a windows user in many cases - than a UNIX user - unless he's obviously doing something a UNIX user should be smart enough to avoid (which hints at kind of a double standard).
Other good reasons are that if you're designing a virus of any sort, you probably want to see it go big. Even if there are a couple of exploitable holes in Apache, chances are that enough of the Apache admins know what they're doing and so the virus won't make a big splash. On the other hand, even after all these mail viruses, people who administer windows systems frequently still don't know how to cover their bases. So, if you want to write a virus and you want to see it on news-at-nine, you write it for Windows.
By the way, if you install any version of Redhat on your machine, and you don't know what you're doing, and you plug a DSL into it, you'll be owned in five minutes. The difference there is that, while UNIX OS's also place a burned on their users to keep their security stuff updated, they can depend on the UNIX users to actually do it, whereas windows users don't. I'm still running around and cleaning MS-Blast on my older relatives' machines.
In a way, what you're saying is that Windows users should be completely pampered, and that MS should get it right on the first try, whereas Unix users ought to look out for themselves, provided they can find the updates they need to perform somewhere.