I'm sorry, but I just can't take seriously any ruling made by the "Harmonization Office." Is that the same German ministry that issued the mandate about being especially nice to children? Oh well, we all know he's just going to eventually sell the domain to Google anyway. Resistence (to the cash) will be futile.
Suppose that I am a criminal, unrelated to the criminal activity that the police are investigating. They search my house and find some evidence that they weren't looking for.
But that's not a good analogy. First, let go of the notion of the police not knowing what house someone/thing is in, and yet somehow getting a warrant anyway - that's not going to happen. To make your analogy mean anything, a judge would have to issue a search warrant for your whole neighborhood. On the other hand, you have the very real possibility of multiple people using an access point or proxy. If you want your analogy to work, try this:
The police know that someone is running a gun smuggling operation out of a neighborhood that is served by one road. They don't know who, or which house, but they know that perhaps the vehicle being used has to be large enough to carry a certain payload, or leave a certain type of tire track, etc. So, the issue is considered serious enough to set up a roadblock. When they see a vehicle that matches the sought-for description, they've got probable cause for a search. And then you drive along with a bail of marijuana or a stack of kiddy-pr0n in the back seat of your car in plain view. There's plenty of precedence about how plain-view observations by a law enforcement officer who is in reasonable pursuit of something else don't violate search-and-seizure mandates. I think that bumping into packets carrying your illegal gambling operation's traffic while doing the narrowest search that the ISP can allow doesn't make your illegal gambling traffic off limits from prosecution.
I would say that illegal copying of movies and music proves the cost of these media to be, in fact, more than the market will bear.
When you steal something, you're not participating in the market. When you opt not to purchase something at the offered price, thus reducing the demand, then you're participating.
Free speech is the right to express your opinion; expressing someone else's opinion as if it were your own is being a shill and is already illegal in many contexts, such as in a courtroom
But you're assuming that you know what's in the blogger's mind. What if I personally DO have the opinion that I'm backing, and I've proven to be very effective at representing that opinion. And further, that I've convinced a good number of like-minded people that, since I'm good at it, I could be MORE good at it if I didn't have to also hold down a day job. Getting donations that add up to more than X dollars, and being financially supported while you go about using your time to express your own opinion in a public context - there's nothing ethically wrong with that, and should be nothing legally wrong with that.
Oh, and if you've broken any laws we don't like, even if you weren't in the US
Well, you can rant all you want, but the whole point is that these guys are the primary money behind a company that was doing financial business in the US contrary to US law. It's not exactly a mystery.
Is it just me, or does the concept seem inherently more complex and fragile than a multi-pixel sensor with light cast on it?
And how can this possibly deal with the equivalent of a range of shutter speeds in front of a standard sensor? Perhaps it's a matter of how many times the pixel is exposed to the same part of the lens' projection in repeated scans... but that just seems clunky, and that much harder/slower to re-assemble into a stored image.
And it doesn't stop the megapixel chest thumping - it just starts up megamirror arguments, instead.
So this guy is up for 101 years for spamming, but some dirt bag that molested his daughter-in-law for 6 years only serves a 4 year sentence.
OK, so you didn't read the article. Can't you at least read the summary? Spamming, yes... and dealing with stolen bank account info, fraudulently misrepresenting himself as another company, and witness intimidation, etc. This is someone who's a lot farther along than just some spam monkey, and his actions involved untold thousands of people. So you shouldn't be talking about him getting less time, you should be talking about the child molester getting more.
The Government will close down the "target" and cause more problems then actually attacking anything would cause.
Really? If the transit officials in Madrid had known what was going to happen, and emptied those trains before hundreds of people were killed or injured and substantial destruction was done, that would have been more damaging?
Nobody is saying that the technical people would be those responsible for handling marketing and distribution.
Right. Marketing and distribution people would be. And if the handful of marketing and distribution people that work for two different independent film companies get together over a few beers and decide that they could both keep more money working for their production and creative people by... sharing lawyers? Oh no! It's a trade association! Eeeeeevil.
Actually, I'm sure the people making the films would be more than willing to deal with theater chains etc themselves and get a bigger cut of the profit, if it were not for the fact the MPAA has effectively monopolized that area.
Sorry, but I just don't buy that. Not for a second. It's a full-time job for huge teams of people to deal with the distribution side of things. How many hours would a motion-capture artist like to take away from doing, creating, improving, and perfecting her craft so she can... what? Deal with negotiating a 2% better deal if certain freight methods or download schedules are altered? Work out release date schedules with other allied creative teams so they won't steal each others' thunder while still making sure they have a chance at hitting the film festival circuit just right?
This is the same thinking as the programmer that hates the fact that there have to be sales people who deal with customers, and assume that if they just quit their job and started their own private shop, that reality would somehow go away. More than anyone else, creative people are best left to being creative - and people who like to swing deals, wrassle with lawyers, make payroll, understand taxes, etc., should be left to their own thing. I'd much rather see a movie made by movie makers that got to spend their entire work week actually making movies.
The irony! You can use your own argument against youself, and should: "We must preserve freedom, so we need to steal our entertainment - something we do not need, and which is a luxury - because now that it's easier to do, we especially don't feel like paying for it."
Your rhetorical excesses (um, including Godwin, not "Goddard," unless you're making some rocketry allusion that I'm missing, here) are way off base.
Your argument is since a trade association is one way to help facilitate the production of good movie/tv content, we should put up with anything the current monopolistic trade associations do?
Oh, please. First, you're welcome to attract funding, hire writers, talent, studio people and facilities, and make/release a movie any time you want, distributed by any means you want, and at whatever price (or lack of) that you might want to offer to your prospective audience. The web is full of productions like that, right? There is no barrier to entry, at this point. And if you don't want to allow a production company that happens to be an MPAA member from getting your dollars, just don't buy the work those hundreds (thousands) of people produce. But then have the intellectual honesty to not rip it off, either.
So in fact, the MPAA adds no more to the creative or distribution process than, say, Wal-Mart.
Uh huh. It's called "an economy." The guy that changes the oil in the car that a set lighting technician drives to work doesn't directly "add to the creative process" either. Nor does the person who grows the food that tech eats. But you don't get well-made, expensive, technically fantastic work without an economy of specialists. If you really think that the lighting technician should be equally concerned with (or would be any good at) raising the money needed to keep a staff of several hundred people working, fed, insured, and in a studio with paid electric bills and working equipment, then you are wildly, spectacularly out of touch. Out of curiosity, what do you do for a living? Do you do everything that goes towards the production of what it is that pays your way through life? Or do you specialize, so that you can be better and more efficient at things at which you excel?
So while I fully appreciate your comment, the MPAA doesn't appear to serve as the voice of the creative community, unless you're counting the creative accounting practices that some people say are typical of MPAA members
The point is that without smoothly getting movies into distribution, the movies won't make nearly as much money. The people making the movies have zero interest, in most cases, in actually dealing with theatre chains, HBO, Apple, NetFlix, etc... they want to make movies. The people who provide them with big hunks of probably-going-to-be-lost cash to make the films in the first place only do so because they understand (and have relationships with) the distribution end of the cycle. Of course there are smaller production people who put together self-financed indy films that succeed... but those are rare, and the people that make them are usually very quick to get right on with bigger-budget work that's financed, again, by the sales side of the industry.
You're right that the MPAA isn't a guild of camera operators, or a society of screenwriters. But the people who derive their livings from the making of movies that only make money through sales/distribution by entities that ARE the MPAA's members... they all know that if the studios and all of the other components can't make up for their usual losses with the occasional financial success, then no one in that entier food chain has a job. Writers, accountants, actors, lighting techs, wireframe animators - none of them. MPAA isn't their "voice" per se, but the parts of the business that actually collect the cash that pays all of these people are part of the MPAA - just like the other sub-professions have their own associations.
Case closed. Give it up, MPAA, your days are numbered. Just like Windows, soon you won't be needed anymore.
Ah, because "Serenity" (since that's the movie in quesiton) would have been just as good if made collaboratively by a bunch of volunteers with little or no budget and no expectation of making enough money to pay back good acting, writing, animation, and other talent? Who do you think the MPAA is, anyway? It's a trade association populated by the companies that moviemakers, actors, writers, tech people and all the rest choose to work for. People compete to work for these companies, and to make projects that will be well received and which will reward the risks taken.
You may have no use for the trade association these creative people support, but you'd better also have no use for films as good as Serenity. No money, no Serenity. You don't "win" anything by ripping off the very people that you're hoping will scrape together the money, talent, and time to make another movie you'll like.
I don't know the technical name for it, but eating the ultra lean rabbit meat is known to cause malnutrition and eventual poisoning and death.
But see, the thing is... the average Kim Joe in NK is already starving/malnurished. The place is a culinary hell-hole, that way. The Stalinst way they run their agriculture is having (shocking!) the same results that it did under Stalin: mass starvation and death, unless you're in the military. Eeesh, what a place. And the people there seem to really believe that they're about to be attacked by the rest of the world (or, the US, anyway), and that their current suffering is just part of their war-posture sacrifice. Incredible what the in-house propoganda machine can get away with in the complete absense of a free press, anything like modern media, and anyone who might tell it like it is fearing for their lives.
Why? Why are we "ripping off" the artists that we claim to respect? Honestly, I don't think I am. For the most part, the artists make pennies on the sale of a CD. And I'm not even "stealing" a full CD. Just a song or 2
Is that how you'd explain it to the artist, face-to-face? You know, the artist that chose to do business with the publisher/promoter handling her work? As so many people point out, there are plenty of other choices for artists. And many of them choose to let professionals handle their business matters and their publishing. They choose that arrangement. You are telling her that you know better than she does, and so despite her having presented her work in a way that involves you buying a tune from iTunes, or a CD from Amazon, you're deciding that the buck-and-change she'd make is something she doesn't deserve. That's fine - maybe she doesn't. But you can't have it both ways. You can't say you respect the artist, but then look them in the eye and tell them that you're going to reach around the offer they're making and just take their work without paying what they ask. That's total intellectual dishonesty. Show some integrity and either don't listen to her music, or consume it in the way she's choosing to sell it to you.
If 1 in 100 people does something bad with a gun, we all still get guns. If 1 in 100 people (probably less actually) illegaly copies and uploads or sells a movie or song, we all get super restrictive DRM. Apparently greed is more important than safety.
Oh, please. In the US, there are untold millions of firearms in private posession. Only a miniscule fraction of those are every use to do "something bad," and most of those are used by someone who stole it or has it illegally. As a ratio, many more people do "something bad" in their disregard for the copyrights of the artists that they claim to respect. We have untold millions of people who've ripped off their entertainment - and that's a significantly different scenario. Incidentally: if you "do something bad" with a gun, it's likely off to jail with you. If you do it frequently or badly enough, it's a lifetime there, or the end of your life. You certainly don't get to go legally owning another one once you've done your felony time.
Not really a good analogy, and not at all fantastic. The firearms industry is one of the most heavily regulated in the country. Manufacturers, dealers, repair shops, owners, shippers, airlines - they all have a myriad of laws, regs, and practices they must follow to stay legal. I'm guessing that's not part of you world, or you'd know that.
how would you guard the ability to do that against a potential attacker that's heavy on resources, time & motivation
And, presuming that your clients (at least, the more or less sane/rational ones) are using your service because they actually are fearing that they'll wind up dead - because of some scrap of information and its availability/not - aren't you facing another problem? Someone who's willing to kill someone for information might not worry too much about personally threatening you, too. And just like the timed safes in the convenience store don't stop stick-ups for cash, I suspect that you might have hard time convincing some mobbed-up bad guy that you can't personally delete everything your customer had stored about some Russian pr0n operation. Rambling a bit, here, but the point is that such a service would be considered insurance against (or revenge against) someone/thing threatening. That's potentially dangerous waters to be playing in, I think. Only lots and lots of cash would insulate you from that, and I can't imagine you'd have too many customers with enough budget for it that wouldn't have already made some provisions along these lines. Personally, I think it's better as a novel/movie than a business plan!
So you're saying the blogger is incorrect about the compatability standards?
That's exactly what I'm saying. Every example he cites is factually incorrect. Things like image tag form submit functionality worked fine in previous versions, and works fine in the new version. He's probably got some 3rd party toolbar installed that's blocking that behavior... but the point is that he didn't even check before ranting. If you scan the rest of that article's slashdot commentary, you'll see that people (even normal MS bashers) consider IE7 to be a huge improvement, and consider that blogger to be maliciously (or carelessly) off base.
Consider that the drive I bought at Costco 10 years ago (500MB) costs on the order of 500 to 1000 times more (that's almost two magnitudes) than storage today, and that Microsoft continues to charge at the same rate -- they even seem to adjust for inflation.
Do you really think that what Microsoft does and sells is the same thing as storage density? They have people, producing and supporting an enormous range of products and services. Unless you're suggesting that what it costs to employ and retain people has gone down by 500-1000 times over the last 10 years, I don't really think you're rationally comparing two useful things. Are you in IT? Have you reduced what you charge for you services by that much in the last 10 years?
Geez..where they heck do you live where you get that kind of hassle just to go in a bar???
Well, I don't go into bars much at all any more, and if so, I never get carded. Where you see this is local DC-area spots that are popular with the early-20's audience. They have such a problem with underage drinking, and local laws that shut down places that permit it, that they do this sort of thing. The bouncers don't get to see who you are, they simply get a response from the card swipe that says whether or not it's a legit card - and they, of course, still have to eyeball the customer to make sure it's a facial match. But the bars only have to ask, and the local PD will deliver one of these units for use at the door. Apparently it's really cut down on underage drinking, but you just know it's not exactly stopping it outside of bars. I mean, nothing stops a 20-year-old that wants beer. Nothing.
It's all quite irrelevant because they don't run your ID numbers anyway. They just use it to match your name to your picture. None of these asshats will be able to recognize a professional fake ID, so the whole thing is worthless anyway.
Look, even bouncers at bars are starting to have equipment that, with an ID-card-swipe, can get back a simple up/down legitimacy test for an ID. Not just a display of the magstripe contents, but a bounce off of the databse that issued it. When the ID someone's carrying doesn't pass the smell test, it just means a little more of a check, that's all. But as time goes by, there will be virtually no state/federal ID token that can't be tested for legitimacy more less instantly. That doesn't mean the TSA worker is going to be lookign at your credit history - it just means it will be hard to present a state driver's license that looks good AND connects to a testable record in the state's database. Believe me, I don't want to have to rely on a security guard's personal evaluation of a card, visually, to determine if the person carrying it is or ain't an at-large For Real Bad Guy.
As has been stated, requiring ID does NOTHING for security because the hijackers all had ID.
But you're conveniently ignoring the fact that things have changed, in the past 5 years (and will continue to) with regards to how easily one can get ID. It's not like we can only choose one thing to improve, and all we could opt for was making it harder to get on a plane without ID. We're also making it harder for scammers to get legitimate IDs, and making it harder for criminals to pass off forged IDs. It's going to take a while. But to suggest that because those jackasses were able to easily get IDs means that, thereafter, anyone will always be able to do the same - that's just BS, and you know it.
Now, can some crazy person with legit ID still be a problem? Of course. But we're certainly seeing more of a problem with people who travel specifically to cause trouble than we are with people who don't.
You need to more, or perhaps get to know anyone in any role at all related to law enforcement (bonus points for making in friend in counter-intel). When you catch someone you know is a bad guy, you are usually presented with a giant wake left behind that person as they move about, do business, etc. Where does he go? How often do his transactions coincide with another pattern? Does he use disposable phone? What numbers has he been calling with those phones? Etc. The whole point is to get your toe in the door of these cells, and follow the trail. Usually it leads to financers, trainers, suppliers, and other partners.
You can't do much to stop the "home grown" variety, obviously. But when someone you know about is traveling to the US from another country, that indicates a bit more involved of a process, with the prospects of a larger group to pursue.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, but I just can't take seriously any ruling made by the "Harmonization Office." Is that the same German ministry that issued the mandate about being especially nice to children? Oh well, we all know he's just going to eventually sell the domain to Google anyway. Resistence (to the cash) will be futile.
$4995 is still a heck of a lot less then a full time DBA
Um... how does paying for the license get around needing a DBA? It's not exactly an either-or.
Suppose that I am a criminal, unrelated to the criminal activity that the police are investigating. They search my house and find some evidence that they weren't looking for.
But that's not a good analogy. First, let go of the notion of the police not knowing what house someone/thing is in, and yet somehow getting a warrant anyway - that's not going to happen. To make your analogy mean anything, a judge would have to issue a search warrant for your whole neighborhood. On the other hand, you have the very real possibility of multiple people using an access point or proxy. If you want your analogy to work, try this:
The police know that someone is running a gun smuggling operation out of a neighborhood that is served by one road. They don't know who, or which house, but they know that perhaps the vehicle being used has to be large enough to carry a certain payload, or leave a certain type of tire track, etc. So, the issue is considered serious enough to set up a roadblock. When they see a vehicle that matches the sought-for description, they've got probable cause for a search. And then you drive along with a bail of marijuana or a stack of kiddy-pr0n in the back seat of your car in plain view. There's plenty of precedence about how plain-view observations by a law enforcement officer who is in reasonable pursuit of something else don't violate search-and-seizure mandates. I think that bumping into packets carrying your illegal gambling operation's traffic while doing the narrowest search that the ISP can allow doesn't make your illegal gambling traffic off limits from prosecution.
I would say that illegal copying of movies and music proves the cost of these media to be, in fact, more than the market will bear.
When you steal something, you're not participating in the market. When you opt not to purchase something at the offered price, thus reducing the demand, then you're participating.
Free speech is the right to express your opinion; expressing someone else's opinion as if it were your own is being a shill and is already illegal in many contexts, such as in a courtroom
But you're assuming that you know what's in the blogger's mind. What if I personally DO have the opinion that I'm backing, and I've proven to be very effective at representing that opinion. And further, that I've convinced a good number of like-minded people that, since I'm good at it, I could be MORE good at it if I didn't have to also hold down a day job. Getting donations that add up to more than X dollars, and being financially supported while you go about using your time to express your own opinion in a public context - there's nothing ethically wrong with that, and should be nothing legally wrong with that.
Oh, and if you've broken any laws we don't like, even if you weren't in the US
Well, you can rant all you want, but the whole point is that these guys are the primary money behind a company that was doing financial business in the US contrary to US law. It's not exactly a mystery.
Is it just me, or does the concept seem inherently more complex and fragile than a multi-pixel sensor with light cast on it?
And how can this possibly deal with the equivalent of a range of shutter speeds in front of a standard sensor? Perhaps it's a matter of how many times the pixel is exposed to the same part of the lens' projection in repeated scans... but that just seems clunky, and that much harder/slower to re-assemble into a stored image.
And it doesn't stop the megapixel chest thumping - it just starts up megamirror arguments, instead.
So this guy is up for 101 years for spamming, but some dirt bag that molested his daughter-in-law for 6 years only serves a 4 year sentence.
OK, so you didn't read the article. Can't you at least read the summary? Spamming, yes... and dealing with stolen bank account info, fraudulently misrepresenting himself as another company, and witness intimidation, etc. This is someone who's a lot farther along than just some spam monkey, and his actions involved untold thousands of people. So you shouldn't be talking about him getting less time, you should be talking about the child molester getting more.
The Government will close down the "target" and cause more problems then actually attacking anything would cause.
Really? If the transit officials in Madrid had known what was going to happen, and emptied those trains before hundreds of people were killed or injured and substantial destruction was done, that would have been more damaging?
Nobody is saying that the technical people would be those responsible for handling marketing and distribution.
Right. Marketing and distribution people would be. And if the handful of marketing and distribution people that work for two different independent film companies get together over a few beers and decide that they could both keep more money working for their production and creative people by... sharing lawyers? Oh no! It's a trade association! Eeeeeevil.
Actually, I'm sure the people making the films would be more than willing to deal with theater chains etc themselves and get a bigger cut of the profit, if it were not for the fact the MPAA has effectively monopolized that area.
Sorry, but I just don't buy that. Not for a second. It's a full-time job for huge teams of people to deal with the distribution side of things. How many hours would a motion-capture artist like to take away from doing, creating, improving, and perfecting her craft so she can... what? Deal with negotiating a 2% better deal if certain freight methods or download schedules are altered? Work out release date schedules with other allied creative teams so they won't steal each others' thunder while still making sure they have a chance at hitting the film festival circuit just right?
This is the same thinking as the programmer that hates the fact that there have to be sales people who deal with customers, and assume that if they just quit their job and started their own private shop, that reality would somehow go away. More than anyone else, creative people are best left to being creative - and people who like to swing deals, wrassle with lawyers, make payroll, understand taxes, etc., should be left to their own thing. I'd much rather see a movie made by movie makers that got to spend their entire work week actually making movies.
The irony! You can use your own argument against youself, and should: "We must preserve freedom, so we need to steal our entertainment - something we do not need, and which is a luxury - because now that it's easier to do, we especially don't feel like paying for it."
Your rhetorical excesses (um, including Godwin, not "Goddard," unless you're making some rocketry allusion that I'm missing, here) are way off base.
Your argument is since a trade association is one way to help facilitate the production of good movie/tv content, we should put up with anything the current monopolistic trade associations do?
Oh, please. First, you're welcome to attract funding, hire writers, talent, studio people and facilities, and make/release a movie any time you want, distributed by any means you want, and at whatever price (or lack of) that you might want to offer to your prospective audience. The web is full of productions like that, right? There is no barrier to entry, at this point. And if you don't want to allow a production company that happens to be an MPAA member from getting your dollars, just don't buy the work those hundreds (thousands) of people produce. But then have the intellectual honesty to not rip it off, either.
So in fact, the MPAA adds no more to the creative or distribution process than, say, Wal-Mart.
Uh huh. It's called "an economy." The guy that changes the oil in the car that a set lighting technician drives to work doesn't directly "add to the creative process" either. Nor does the person who grows the food that tech eats. But you don't get well-made, expensive, technically fantastic work without an economy of specialists. If you really think that the lighting technician should be equally concerned with (or would be any good at) raising the money needed to keep a staff of several hundred people working, fed, insured, and in a studio with paid electric bills and working equipment, then you are wildly, spectacularly out of touch. Out of curiosity, what do you do for a living? Do you do everything that goes towards the production of what it is that pays your way through life? Or do you specialize, so that you can be better and more efficient at things at which you excel?
So while I fully appreciate your comment, the MPAA doesn't appear to serve as the voice of the creative community, unless you're counting the creative accounting practices that some people say are typical of MPAA members
The point is that without smoothly getting movies into distribution, the movies won't make nearly as much money. The people making the movies have zero interest, in most cases, in actually dealing with theatre chains, HBO, Apple, NetFlix, etc... they want to make movies. The people who provide them with big hunks of probably-going-to-be-lost cash to make the films in the first place only do so because they understand (and have relationships with) the distribution end of the cycle. Of course there are smaller production people who put together self-financed indy films that succeed... but those are rare, and the people that make them are usually very quick to get right on with bigger-budget work that's financed, again, by the sales side of the industry.
You're right that the MPAA isn't a guild of camera operators, or a society of screenwriters. But the people who derive their livings from the making of movies that only make money through sales/distribution by entities that ARE the MPAA's members... they all know that if the studios and all of the other components can't make up for their usual losses with the occasional financial success, then no one in that entier food chain has a job. Writers, accountants, actors, lighting techs, wireframe animators - none of them. MPAA isn't their "voice" per se, but the parts of the business that actually collect the cash that pays all of these people are part of the MPAA - just like the other sub-professions have their own associations.
Case closed. Give it up, MPAA, your days are numbered. Just like Windows, soon you won't be needed anymore.
Ah, because "Serenity" (since that's the movie in quesiton) would have been just as good if made collaboratively by a bunch of volunteers with little or no budget and no expectation of making enough money to pay back good acting, writing, animation, and other talent? Who do you think the MPAA is, anyway? It's a trade association populated by the companies that moviemakers, actors, writers, tech people and all the rest choose to work for. People compete to work for these companies, and to make projects that will be well received and which will reward the risks taken.
You may have no use for the trade association these creative people support, but you'd better also have no use for films as good as Serenity. No money, no Serenity. You don't "win" anything by ripping off the very people that you're hoping will scrape together the money, talent, and time to make another movie you'll like.
I don't know the technical name for it, but eating the ultra lean rabbit meat is known to cause malnutrition and eventual poisoning and death.
But see, the thing is... the average Kim Joe in NK is already starving/malnurished. The place is a culinary hell-hole, that way. The Stalinst way they run their agriculture is having (shocking!) the same results that it did under Stalin: mass starvation and death, unless you're in the military. Eeesh, what a place. And the people there seem to really believe that they're about to be attacked by the rest of the world (or, the US, anyway), and that their current suffering is just part of their war-posture sacrifice. Incredible what the in-house propoganda machine can get away with in the complete absense of a free press, anything like modern media, and anyone who might tell it like it is fearing for their lives.
Why? Why are we "ripping off" the artists that we claim to respect? Honestly, I don't think I am. For the most part, the artists make pennies on the sale of a CD. And I'm not even "stealing" a full CD. Just a song or 2
Is that how you'd explain it to the artist, face-to-face? You know, the artist that chose to do business with the publisher/promoter handling her work? As so many people point out, there are plenty of other choices for artists. And many of them choose to let professionals handle their business matters and their publishing. They choose that arrangement. You are telling her that you know better than she does, and so despite her having presented her work in a way that involves you buying a tune from iTunes, or a CD from Amazon, you're deciding that the buck-and-change she'd make is something she doesn't deserve. That's fine - maybe she doesn't. But you can't have it both ways. You can't say you respect the artist, but then look them in the eye and tell them that you're going to reach around the offer they're making and just take their work without paying what they ask. That's total intellectual dishonesty. Show some integrity and either don't listen to her music, or consume it in the way she's choosing to sell it to you.
If 1 in 100 people does something bad with a gun, we all still get guns. If 1 in 100 people (probably less actually) illegaly copies and uploads or sells a movie or song, we all get super restrictive DRM. Apparently greed is more important than safety.
Oh, please. In the US, there are untold millions of firearms in private posession. Only a miniscule fraction of those are every use to do "something bad," and most of those are used by someone who stole it or has it illegally. As a ratio, many more people do "something bad" in their disregard for the copyrights of the artists that they claim to respect. We have untold millions of people who've ripped off their entertainment - and that's a significantly different scenario. Incidentally: if you "do something bad" with a gun, it's likely off to jail with you. If you do it frequently or badly enough, it's a lifetime there, or the end of your life. You certainly don't get to go legally owning another one once you've done your felony time.
Not really a good analogy, and not at all fantastic. The firearms industry is one of the most heavily regulated in the country. Manufacturers, dealers, repair shops, owners, shippers, airlines - they all have a myriad of laws, regs, and practices they must follow to stay legal. I'm guessing that's not part of you world, or you'd know that.
how would you guard the ability to do that against a potential attacker that's heavy on resources, time & motivation
And, presuming that your clients (at least, the more or less sane/rational ones) are using your service because they actually are fearing that they'll wind up dead - because of some scrap of information and its availability/not - aren't you facing another problem? Someone who's willing to kill someone for information might not worry too much about personally threatening you, too. And just like the timed safes in the convenience store don't stop stick-ups for cash, I suspect that you might have hard time convincing some mobbed-up bad guy that you can't personally delete everything your customer had stored about some Russian pr0n operation. Rambling a bit, here, but the point is that such a service would be considered insurance against (or revenge against) someone/thing threatening. That's potentially dangerous waters to be playing in, I think. Only lots and lots of cash would insulate you from that, and I can't imagine you'd have too many customers with enough budget for it that wouldn't have already made some provisions along these lines. Personally, I think it's better as a novel/movie than a business plan!
So you're saying the blogger is incorrect about the compatability standards?
That's exactly what I'm saying. Every example he cites is factually incorrect. Things like image tag form submit functionality worked fine in previous versions, and works fine in the new version. He's probably got some 3rd party toolbar installed that's blocking that behavior... but the point is that he didn't even check before ranting. If you scan the rest of that article's slashdot commentary, you'll see that people (even normal MS bashers) consider IE7 to be a huge improvement, and consider that blogger to be maliciously (or carelessly) off base.
Consider that the drive I bought at Costco 10 years ago (500MB) costs on the order of 500 to 1000 times more (that's almost two magnitudes) than storage today, and that Microsoft continues to charge at the same rate -- they even seem to adjust for inflation.
Do you really think that what Microsoft does and sells is the same thing as storage density? They have people, producing and supporting an enormous range of products and services. Unless you're suggesting that what it costs to employ and retain people has gone down by 500-1000 times over the last 10 years, I don't really think you're rationally comparing two useful things. Are you in IT? Have you reduced what you charge for you services by that much in the last 10 years?
Geez..where they heck do you live where you get that kind of hassle just to go in a bar???
Well, I don't go into bars much at all any more, and if so, I never get carded. Where you see this is local DC-area spots that are popular with the early-20's audience. They have such a problem with underage drinking, and local laws that shut down places that permit it, that they do this sort of thing. The bouncers don't get to see who you are, they simply get a response from the card swipe that says whether or not it's a legit card - and they, of course, still have to eyeball the customer to make sure it's a facial match. But the bars only have to ask, and the local PD will deliver one of these units for use at the door. Apparently it's really cut down on underage drinking, but you just know it's not exactly stopping it outside of bars. I mean, nothing stops a 20-year-old that wants beer. Nothing.
It's all quite irrelevant because they don't run your ID numbers anyway. They just use it to match your name to your picture. None of these asshats will be able to recognize a professional fake ID, so the whole thing is worthless anyway.
Look, even bouncers at bars are starting to have equipment that, with an ID-card-swipe, can get back a simple up/down legitimacy test for an ID. Not just a display of the magstripe contents, but a bounce off of the databse that issued it. When the ID someone's carrying doesn't pass the smell test, it just means a little more of a check, that's all. But as time goes by, there will be virtually no state/federal ID token that can't be tested for legitimacy more less instantly. That doesn't mean the TSA worker is going to be lookign at your credit history - it just means it will be hard to present a state driver's license that looks good AND connects to a testable record in the state's database. Believe me, I don't want to have to rely on a security guard's personal evaluation of a card, visually, to determine if the person carrying it is or ain't an at-large For Real Bad Guy.
As has been stated, requiring ID does NOTHING for security because the hijackers all had ID.
But you're conveniently ignoring the fact that things have changed, in the past 5 years (and will continue to) with regards to how easily one can get ID. It's not like we can only choose one thing to improve, and all we could opt for was making it harder to get on a plane without ID. We're also making it harder for scammers to get legitimate IDs, and making it harder for criminals to pass off forged IDs. It's going to take a while. But to suggest that because those jackasses were able to easily get IDs means that, thereafter, anyone will always be able to do the same - that's just BS, and you know it.
Now, can some crazy person with legit ID still be a problem? Of course. But we're certainly seeing more of a problem with people who travel specifically to cause trouble than we are with people who don't.
maybe they could have caught 5 of the 19
You need to more, or perhaps get to know anyone in any role at all related to law enforcement (bonus points for making in friend in counter-intel). When you catch someone you know is a bad guy, you are usually presented with a giant wake left behind that person as they move about, do business, etc. Where does he go? How often do his transactions coincide with another pattern? Does he use disposable phone? What numbers has he been calling with those phones? Etc. The whole point is to get your toe in the door of these cells, and follow the trail. Usually it leads to financers, trainers, suppliers, and other partners.
You can't do much to stop the "home grown" variety, obviously. But when someone you know about is traveling to the US from another country, that indicates a bit more involved of a process, with the prospects of a larger group to pursue.