You can't vote a government out, you can only vote another government in...
Not true in Canada. Citizens can petition to have the government thrown out... plus the opposition can have a vote of non confidence. The second almost happened; the first would have happened except for the fact that Canadians had no viable option to Harper that looked like they could do better.
How long will it take the Somalis to discover that dealing in bootleg CDs is more profitable than attacking ships on the open sea? They can approach the ships and offer them cheap entertainment instead of risking their lives in the hopes that they capture someone wealthy....
There's already a songwriter's guild, and there's also ASCAP. Seems to me that issues like this should go to ASCAP for arbitration, thus freeing up the court system for other issues like protecting society from itself.
I suspect the same responses would fly with s/gun/baseball/. Personally, I don't get passionate about baseball, nor do I expect all slashdotters to do so, nor take offence at those who love/revile the game. Is that sad?
And while I enjoy a bit of target practise, I prefer a long bow (not saying I detest guns, I just don't find them as fun).
What I fail to understand is how you can be accurate with a dumb projectile at 100-nautical miles, especially at sea. Is this simply marketing talk, or can they can they really hit a 100 meter building or other ship from 100 miles away given sea movements and weather?
The thing's going 5,000mph. That means it takes roughly a minute to get from point A to point B, and has enough momentum and mass to just punch through almost anything that could show up between the two points in that amount of time. Sure, it's going to lose some momentum travelling through spume or rain, or a fishing fleet, but not enough to make any sort of a difference. I'm more worried about what ELSE they hit once the thing comes out the other side of the building or ship, if they've miscalculated the amount of energy they need to deliver.
The other issue is that rail slugs cost a LOT less to manufacture, and you don't have to worry about duds (just misses).
Of course, I'd hate to be involved in a friendly fire incident... one of these could likely punch through most standard maritime objects without even noticeably slowing. Use around populated areas would be a nightmare to coordinate.
If they can reduce the cost of these enough, they could just add hellhound skins and send off an entire pack of these... with some of them being used to deliver attack payloads instead of regular supplies. The enemy combatants will be so busy running from/shooting at these things that the actual ground forces should be able to secure an area in relative safety.
They'd need to program in the attack commands first, of course.
Some would say there is a fine line between activism and terrorism... lately however I think the line is finer between authoritative government and terrorism.
That would depend on whether you're an activist or an authoritarian now, wouldn't it? Both have reason to be terrified of the other.
Never really understood why clueless western politicians let China in to the WTO when it was so obvious that IP theft was at the core of their plan to bury the west.
They let China into the WTO so they had some way of at least partially controlling them. You think the Chinese are incapable of sifting through the US Patent Office's public online records without being WTO members?
Well, she may decide to move to Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands, or Tuvalu -- all of which also hold her as their nation's supreme monarch (and have no direct ties to England or the UK).
Of course, the fact that in the past UK monarchs have often lived abroad (and for everyone but the UK, their monarch lives abroad) means that she's not likely to move Buckingham Palace to Tuvalu any time soon. I bet they'd give her better tax breaks than the UK does, however.
Wikipedia says, "The executive branch is the part of government that has sole authority and responsibility for the daily administration of the state.[1] The division of power into separate branches of government is central to the idea of the separation of powers.[2]"
That means that the service is to call the executive branch's attention to issues pertaining to the daily administration of the state.
As a result, specific calls for investigation into other branches of government isn't really their purview -- it belongs to the AG and the FBI.
What IS within their purview is a) calling out hidden clauses in legislation that may otherwise be rubber-stamped, b) raising issues with the makeup, formation, or execution of duties within the administration, or c) anything that will give them good publicity.
A petition to reduce spending within the administration to fall below the amount allotted to the administration via taxation should be taken seriously. A petition to NOT go to war with some other country should be taken seriously. A petition to block SOPA due to clauses X, Y, and Z, which are not in the interests of the People should be taken seriously. A petition to block SOPA because it is unconstitutional should NOT be taken seriously (this should instead go to the other arms of government and the AG -- it will only be taken seriously by the Executive branch if it fulfills c) above).
Sadly, both sides of this argument could be switched to talking about the RIAA and copyright instead of the military, and both sides would make as much sense.
On the one hand, I can't see most members of the armed forces doing what they do if they weren't doing it for an ideal such as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." This doesn't mean that following orders always achieved that, but they invested their heart and soul in risking their lives because their superiors told them it was the right thing to do for the country. If they didn't, they're cold-blooded mercenaries, and such people usually sell out or burn out before too long.
On the other hand, there's my butchering of a famous quote: "I will risk my life and fight for your right to disagree with me." I sure hope Outtascope was fighting for the myriads of Anonymous Cowards in the USA, because if he wasn't, then who exactly was he fighting for? Other Marines? Only his family? For the perpetuation of a specific government? It seems to me, the entire idea was that he was fighting so that Anonymous Cowards wouldn't have to. That some of those ACs would feel that his fighting was not necessary should be beside the point. Just because you believe something doesn't always make it true. And just because the government is using you as part of heavy-handed techniques to prop up an outmoded form of governance doesn't make it true or right. I believe this is the point the GP was attempting to make with his overblown rhetoric.
It seems everyone is jumping to a (likely) conclusion: that the administration is going to do absolutely nothing based on this petition.
Please re-read the submission. It clearly states that the White House refuses to comment on the petition because it requests a specific law enforcement action. This is standard practice... you don't comment on preliminary investigations. Ever. You also don't comment when something specific is demanded that may or may not be legal, but is not within the scope of your arm of the government -- you instead pass it off to the appropriate department and leave it at that.
Of course, they *could* have said "We've passed this off to the appropriate department, as it demands specific action that is outside the scope of the White House." This would have looked just as weasely though, while also requiring them to do something that may be considered an endorsement of action.
Not condoning their response, just pointing out that it isn't as black and white as people seem to assume.
Doesn't this prove Rovio's point? The entire point of that article, as far as I could tell, was not to do with piracy so much as it was to do with treatment of potential customers.
What Rovio has done is chosen to produce a product that can grow a large fanbase, as opposed to a product that has to rely on technical merits alone. It's the same thing Apple has done with their hardware, the same thing sports teams do, and, when it comes down to it, the same thing that's done in fine and performance art circles. Basically, if you work in the realms of intellectual property, you can probably choose to market yourself and your vision in such a way as to create a fanbase. Once you do that, you no longer have to worry as much about piracy, as it will more likely increase that base instead of draining it.
EA titles, for example, already have the fanbase of the fanbase of the brands they market within their games... so since their games are often merchandising themselves, piracy has to be handled differently. They don't have (many) EA fans -- instead, they have merchandise fans that would quickly switch to a different publisher if the other publisher got the distribution rights to the brand they love. As a result, EA profit is much more sensitive to piracy; as a result, they've had to change their profit structure on mobile games to not depend so much on first sale profits, and also to attempt to build more of a fanbase around the EA name.
It is only throwing your vote away if there is only ever one election, and there will be no other elections in the future.
Otherwise if there will be future elections, it can be a signal to other voters and also the candidates. If the 3rd party gets a significant number of votes, the rest of the voters might start to consider that the 3rd party might actually have a chance in the _next_ election.
The other candidates may consider that too and start changing their behaviour. If the behaviour is closer to what those voters want, even if the 3rd party never wins, their goals are better served.
In contrast if 98% of the voters just kept voting for one of the two, why should either change?
If the voters have consistently not been getting candidates they like then obviously their "game theory" and strategies are not working. Whereas the winning candidates are doing better.
It goes even further than this... these days, many politicians don't really have party loyalty. If a third centrist party looked like it was gaining the popular vote, you can bet your electoral donations that quite a few dems and pubs would switch parties in a hurry to be part of the winning team.
But for this, three things need to happen. 1) People need to actually vote 2) Some groups with a large pool of money need to invest it in a third party 3) People need to vote for what they want, not what they want to prevent.
I propose a new party be formed called the Gray Party -- because politics is not always black and white.
The only place I can see where they'd have a case is if someone decided that their blanket ASCAP license covered this and didn't get the one that applies to embedding the song in a repeated performance for branding purposes.
As soon as you attempt to associate a piece of music with a brand (Newt being the brand), blanket ASCAP doesn't apply.
He'd have similar issues if he ran up on stage wearing an LA Raiders jersey every time.
Sorry, but no matter what you say, there are two methods to ownership... by force, or by agreement. By agreement, the corporations own the software. By force the government backs them up.
Just because information *wants* to be free doesn't mean it always *is*.
No matter what you want to happen, there will always be powerful people exerting control.
IIRC, TSA is not allowed on BART property. All screening has to be done off-premises. BART does their own screening. NYPD/NYS has CHOSEN to let TSA do this for them; it's not their remit by default. If NYC residents don't like it, they can get the municipality to revoke TSA's license, and there's nothing anyone outside NYC can do about it.
Actually, in most countries with socialized healthcare, the government DOES make healthcare more affordable. This is due to the fact that since they're footing the bill and are already in debt, they don't want to have to spend more on healthcare than they need to -- because unlike other budgets, it's hard to kick back some of the healthcare budget into perks for government employees without a huge backlash from the electorate.
So what you get is big pharm saying "here are these drugs for $X." and government saying "Not if you want to sell them in this country, they're not. You get our contract only if you sell them for $Y*."
If you buy such a device, it's your property. However, in order to do anything useful, you'll either need to flash the device yourself (this lets you *replace* the software, which is legal), or agree to the software license and then circumvent the software somehow -- and the software does NOT belong to you -- it belongs to the copyright holder, and they let you run it on your device.
If you can reflash (hardware reflash, not software reflash via the software already provided by the manufacturer) the device and install some other system on it, DMCA isn't broken.
Kind of like you can buy a car, but circumventing the on-board software is illegal. Same went for buying a printer and hacking the firmware to let you use any printer cartridge, until this got an exemption for compatibility reasons.
So then the only question is: How does the car know when there's an emergency? And what does it do to ensure the driver actually drives, instead of staying asleep or talking to the person in the other seat?
This sounds to me like maybe "driver" should be replaced with "captian" -- the person who can take control of the wheel when needed, and who is ever-vigilant, even when not actively piloting the vehicle. Also fully responsible for everything that happens with the vehicle. This, in turn, turns autonomous vehicle mode into just a fancy cruise control, as the captain still needs to be aware of everything that's happening.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't vote a government out, you can only vote another government in...
Not true in Canada. Citizens can petition to have the government thrown out... plus the opposition can have a vote of non confidence. The second almost happened; the first would have happened except for the fact that Canadians had no viable option to Harper that looked like they could do better.
...until your AI accidentally says something it shouldn't.
That would be a good match of resources.
How long will it take the Somalis to discover that dealing in bootleg CDs is more profitable than attacking ships on the open sea? They can approach the ships and offer them cheap entertainment instead of risking their lives in the hopes that they capture someone wealthy....
There's already a songwriter's guild, and there's also ASCAP. Seems to me that issues like this should go to ASCAP for arbitration, thus freeing up the court system for other issues like protecting society from itself.
I suspect the same responses would fly with s/gun/baseball/. Personally, I don't get passionate about baseball, nor do I expect all slashdotters to do so, nor take offence at those who love/revile the game. Is that sad?
And while I enjoy a bit of target practise, I prefer a long bow (not saying I detest guns, I just don't find them as fun).
What I fail to understand is how you can be accurate with a dumb projectile at 100-nautical miles, especially at sea. Is this simply marketing talk, or can they can they really hit a 100 meter building or other ship from 100 miles away given sea movements and weather?
The thing's going 5,000mph. That means it takes roughly a minute to get from point A to point B, and has enough momentum and mass to just punch through almost anything that could show up between the two points in that amount of time. Sure, it's going to lose some momentum travelling through spume or rain, or a fishing fleet, but not enough to make any sort of a difference. I'm more worried about what ELSE they hit once the thing comes out the other side of the building or ship, if they've miscalculated the amount of energy they need to deliver.
The other issue is that rail slugs cost a LOT less to manufacture, and you don't have to worry about duds (just misses).
Of course, I'd hate to be involved in a friendly fire incident... one of these could likely punch through most standard maritime objects without even noticeably slowing. Use around populated areas would be a nightmare to coordinate.
Actually, my inner voice had an excited Aussie accent...
It then went on to talk about this mechanical snake it found on the way there....
If they can reduce the cost of these enough, they could just add hellhound skins and send off an entire pack of these... with some of them being used to deliver attack payloads instead of regular supplies. The enemy combatants will be so busy running from/shooting at these things that the actual ground forces should be able to secure an area in relative safety.
They'd need to program in the attack commands first, of course.
Some would say there is a fine line between activism and terrorism... lately however I think the line is finer between authoritative government and terrorism.
That would depend on whether you're an activist or an authoritarian now, wouldn't it? Both have reason to be terrified of the other.
Only the members who hang out at internet cafes and distribute pamphlets full of propaganda....
Never really understood why clueless western politicians let China in to the WTO when it was so obvious that IP theft was at the core of their plan to bury the west.
They let China into the WTO so they had some way of at least partially controlling them. You think the Chinese are incapable of sifting through the US Patent Office's public online records without being WTO members?
For more information:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=related:mBwQLdGHFCUJ:scholar.google.com/&ei=WdwqT6PyBsOviQKsyfjGCg&sa=X&oi=science_links&ct=sl-related&resnum=1&ved=0CC4QzwIwAA
This will tell you all you need to know about why it hasn't been done, direct from the experts in the field.
Short form: the Russians aren't about to take down a "legit pharmacy" just because of abuse of "referral programs".
Well, she may decide to move to Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands, or Tuvalu -- all of which also hold her as their nation's supreme monarch (and have no direct ties to England or the UK).
Of course, the fact that in the past UK monarchs have often lived abroad (and for everyone but the UK, their monarch lives abroad) means that she's not likely to move Buckingham Palace to Tuvalu any time soon. I bet they'd give her better tax breaks than the UK does, however.
What is the purview of the Executive branch?
Wikipedia says, "The executive branch is the part of government that has sole authority and responsibility for the daily administration of the state.[1] The division of power into separate branches of government is central to the idea of the separation of powers.[2]"
That means that the service is to call the executive branch's attention to issues pertaining to the daily administration of the state.
As a result, specific calls for investigation into other branches of government isn't really their purview -- it belongs to the AG and the FBI.
What IS within their purview is a) calling out hidden clauses in legislation that may otherwise be rubber-stamped, b) raising issues with the makeup, formation, or execution of duties within the administration, or c) anything that will give them good publicity.
A petition to reduce spending within the administration to fall below the amount allotted to the administration via taxation should be taken seriously. A petition to NOT go to war with some other country should be taken seriously. A petition to block SOPA due to clauses X, Y, and Z, which are not in the interests of the People should be taken seriously. A petition to block SOPA because it is unconstitutional should NOT be taken seriously (this should instead go to the other arms of government and the AG -- it will only be taken seriously by the Executive branch if it fulfills c) above).
Sadly, both sides of this argument could be switched to talking about the RIAA and copyright instead of the military, and both sides would make as much sense.
On the one hand, I can't see most members of the armed forces doing what they do if they weren't doing it for an ideal such as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." This doesn't mean that following orders always achieved that, but they invested their heart and soul in risking their lives because their superiors told them it was the right thing to do for the country. If they didn't, they're cold-blooded mercenaries, and such people usually sell out or burn out before too long.
On the other hand, there's my butchering of a famous quote: "I will risk my life and fight for your right to disagree with me." I sure hope Outtascope was fighting for the myriads of Anonymous Cowards in the USA, because if he wasn't, then who exactly was he fighting for? Other Marines? Only his family? For the perpetuation of a specific government? It seems to me, the entire idea was that he was fighting so that Anonymous Cowards wouldn't have to. That some of those ACs would feel that his fighting was not necessary should be beside the point. Just because you believe something doesn't always make it true. And just because the government is using you as part of heavy-handed techniques to prop up an outmoded form of governance doesn't make it true or right. I believe this is the point the GP was attempting to make with his overblown rhetoric.
It seems everyone is jumping to a (likely) conclusion: that the administration is going to do absolutely nothing based on this petition.
Please re-read the submission. It clearly states that the White House refuses to comment on the petition because it requests a specific law enforcement action. This is standard practice... you don't comment on preliminary investigations. Ever. You also don't comment when something specific is demanded that may or may not be legal, but is not within the scope of your arm of the government -- you instead pass it off to the appropriate department and leave it at that.
Of course, they *could* have said "We've passed this off to the appropriate department, as it demands specific action that is outside the scope of the White House." This would have looked just as weasely though, while also requiring them to do something that may be considered an endorsement of action.
Not condoning their response, just pointing out that it isn't as black and white as people seem to assume.
Doesn't this prove Rovio's point? The entire point of that article, as far as I could tell, was not to do with piracy so much as it was to do with treatment of potential customers.
What Rovio has done is chosen to produce a product that can grow a large fanbase, as opposed to a product that has to rely on technical merits alone. It's the same thing Apple has done with their hardware, the same thing sports teams do, and, when it comes down to it, the same thing that's done in fine and performance art circles. Basically, if you work in the realms of intellectual property, you can probably choose to market yourself and your vision in such a way as to create a fanbase. Once you do that, you no longer have to worry as much about piracy, as it will more likely increase that base instead of draining it.
EA titles, for example, already have the fanbase of the fanbase of the brands they market within their games... so since their games are often merchandising themselves, piracy has to be handled differently. They don't have (many) EA fans -- instead, they have merchandise fans that would quickly switch to a different publisher if the other publisher got the distribution rights to the brand they love. As a result, EA profit is much more sensitive to piracy; as a result, they've had to change their profit structure on mobile games to not depend so much on first sale profits, and also to attempt to build more of a fanbase around the EA name.
It is only throwing your vote away if there is only ever one election, and there will be no other elections in the future.
Otherwise if there will be future elections, it can be a signal to other voters and also the candidates. If the 3rd party gets a significant number of votes, the rest of the voters might start to consider that the 3rd party might actually have a chance in the _next_ election.
The other candidates may consider that too and start changing their behaviour. If the behaviour is closer to what those voters want, even if the 3rd party never wins, their goals are better served.
In contrast if 98% of the voters just kept voting for one of the two, why should either change?
If the voters have consistently not been getting candidates they like then obviously their "game theory" and strategies are not working. Whereas the winning candidates are doing better.
It goes even further than this... these days, many politicians don't really have party loyalty. If a third centrist party looked like it was gaining the popular vote, you can bet your electoral donations that quite a few dems and pubs would switch parties in a hurry to be part of the winning team.
But for this, three things need to happen.
1) People need to actually vote
2) Some groups with a large pool of money need to invest it in a third party
3) People need to vote for what they want, not what they want to prevent.
I propose a new party be formed called the Gray Party -- because politics is not always black and white.
The only place I can see where they'd have a case is if someone decided that their blanket ASCAP license covered this and didn't get the one that applies to embedding the song in a repeated performance for branding purposes.
As soon as you attempt to associate a piece of music with a brand (Newt being the brand), blanket ASCAP doesn't apply.
He'd have similar issues if he ran up on stage wearing an LA Raiders jersey every time.
Sorry, but no matter what you say, there are two methods to ownership... by force, or by agreement. By agreement, the corporations own the software. By force the government backs them up.
Just because information *wants* to be free doesn't mean it always *is*.
No matter what you want to happen, there will always be powerful people exerting control.
IIRC, TSA is not allowed on BART property. All screening has to be done off-premises. BART does their own screening. NYPD/NYS has CHOSEN to let TSA do this for them; it's not their remit by default. If NYC residents don't like it, they can get the municipality to revoke TSA's license, and there's nothing anyone outside NYC can do about it.
Actually, in most countries with socialized healthcare, the government DOES make healthcare more affordable. This is due to the fact that since they're footing the bill and are already in debt, they don't want to have to spend more on healthcare than they need to -- because unlike other budgets, it's hard to kick back some of the healthcare budget into perks for government employees without a huge backlash from the electorate.
So what you get is big pharm saying "here are these drugs for $X." and government saying "Not if you want to sell them in this country, they're not. You get our contract only if you sell them for $Y*."
*usually, YX.....
If you buy such a device, it's your property. However, in order to do anything useful, you'll either need to flash the device yourself (this lets you *replace* the software, which is legal), or agree to the software license and then circumvent the software somehow -- and the software does NOT belong to you -- it belongs to the copyright holder, and they let you run it on your device.
If you can reflash (hardware reflash, not software reflash via the software already provided by the manufacturer) the device and install some other system on it, DMCA isn't broken.
Kind of like you can buy a car, but circumventing the on-board software is illegal. Same went for buying a printer and hacking the firmware to let you use any printer cartridge, until this got an exemption for compatibility reasons.
So then the only question is: How does the car know when there's an emergency? And what does it do to ensure the driver actually drives, instead of staying asleep or talking to the person in the other seat?
This sounds to me like maybe "driver" should be replaced with "captian" -- the person who can take control of the wheel when needed, and who is ever-vigilant, even when not actively piloting the vehicle. Also fully responsible for everything that happens with the vehicle. This, in turn, turns autonomous vehicle mode into just a fancy cruise control, as the captain still needs to be aware of everything that's happening.