intellectual property law gives apple a legal monopoly on what apps you can buy for your iphone. This is a government granted monopoly.
No it doesn't. The only thing limiting what apps you can buy on your iphone is APPLE. Jailbreaking an iphone is not a DMCA or any other kind of "intellectual property" violation.
Here's a clue for you: oligopoly != monopoly.
What government enforced oligopoly would make the iphone useless if Apple had not been able to make a business deal with one of the oligopolists?
Fine. Is it censorship if EA choose not to publish my game? Is it censorship if a Warner Music refuses to publish my music? Is it censorship if the Penguin Group refuses to publish my book?
Wooooooooosh!! None of those are government enforced oligopolies. But, if they were, just like if the SFGate were, then yes it would be also be censorship.
Other than being pro-healthcare reform I don't think Stewart's pushed any particular political viewpoint this year. Frequently it seems like he has to really stretch when he skewers Obama and friends, but I think that, other than Biden, that's mostly because Obama and his circle don't seem to run their mouths the way others have and therefore just aren't such easy targets.
But in this case you are just using the legal system in the worst possible way: To screw someone out of a legitimate outcome. If you were fighting an illegal ticket, or something the company legitimately did wrong it would make more sense.
Wow! The same legal system that would fuck him if he just bent over and took it can also be used to fight back? What blasphemy! He plays by THEIR rules and still he's the bad guy?
Ever consider that 100% enforcement mechanisms are inherently illegitimate in the first place? Society runs on slack, the less tolerance of slack the less life is worth living (and the less efficient everything is too). Yeah, 1 out of a million times someone gets killed because the slack was used when it should not have been. That doesn't mean that destroying all the slack is a legitimate response.
Heroin is pretty fucking toxic. We're not talking Marijuana toxic here (I'd rather cigarettes and weed be gone too, though cigarettes are more like alcohol but with EVERYONE that drinks being a huge alcoholic drinking contaminated booze). We're talking a chemical with no benefit, that makes you literally need it all the time to even stay on a normal level once you're hooked; and if you cut it off completely after a certain point, you die from withdrawal.
Here's a good ranking of the relative danger levels of various drugs. In fact, it was so good that the guy who published it was forced to resign from his job as chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in the UK because it didn't jibe with current politics.
Or you could, of course, opt out of the anonymous stats reporting.
Not if you want to schedule recordings via their barely capable but better than nothing website.
Plus, I think you'll find that "opting out" doesn't stop your tivo from reporting your viewing habits, it just stops tivocorp from doing anything that would alert you to the fact that they have that information. As in, they won't send you tailored commercials but they still have all the information it would take to do so. That's almost universally the way these "opt out" things work.
I recorded some movies on HBO on my Verizon DVR then later cancelled the HBO and kept the DVR. Then when I went to watch the movies, I could not. I paid for the service but I can't watch the movies I already recorded because I don't *keep* paying? Well, at least I know it wouldn't do any good to switch to Comcast... I think I need to do some research...
Although I hate to admit it - tivo. Despite the absolutely craptastic nature of their interface (it was great like 10 years ago, but hasn't kept up at all) at least on verizon fiostv they are great because verizon never sets the "do not copy" bit, so you can pull all your recordings off your tivo - hbo, cinemax, hdnet, anything but pay-per-view (which tivo doesn't support recording in the first place). I have a perl script that just regularly polls my tivo and downloads anything new to my linux box. Apparently tivo doesn't count these downloads as viewing of the programs either, so my tivo isn't even snitching on my viewing habits either. As far as they know I never, ever watch tv.
It may also work to use the firewire port on the verizon set-top box, if it has one - I haven't tried it since I don't have a set-top box, but typically the firewire stuff is limited by the exact same "do not copy" bit as the tivo uses to decide if you can copy too.
Well, number one it's a huge obvious anti-trust issue. Microsoft is already a convicted monopolist. Google isn't without its own political influences. You do the math.
Then you should stick to cash, it is already designed to authenticate itself and not require attachment to any particular identity.
And that attitude is exactly why the merchant agreements prevent them from requiring ID. The more barriers to use, the less likely the cards are going to be used and if the cards aren't used, Visa and the rest don't make any money.
Besides, if requiring ID to use a credit card become pervasive, the crooks would just start forging IDs. It isn't like cashiers whou have to process thousands of them each shift are going to be qualified to tell the difference between a real ID and even a half-assed forgery.
You can't hire some chump off the street to come an and make random cuts on your mice,
Who said anything about "some chump off the street?"
Research requires control - meaning the scientist controls every aspect of the research. Every aspect.
Lol, you've now categorically eliminated the job title of lab assistant. I couldn't have demonstrated the silliness of your position any better myself.
In a way, it's a lot like the "Free software" debate. Most people don't give a crap if their software is "Free" or not, and don't even think about how having a healthy Free software ecosystem may benefit them (regardless of what they choose to use themselves). But if it all disappeared and there was no alternative but proprietary software from big corporations, they'd realise what they'd lost. But explaining it beforehand? There's just no interest.
Hell, can drop the "free software" part of that and just leave in the "healthy ecosystem" and it would still be just as true.
The one thing that makes absolutely no sense in all this is that copyright gets extended when new laws come out.
You are far too kind in your analysis. I say that copyright extensions are wholesale theft on such a massive scale that it dwarfs all the piracy that ever has, and ever will happen. When copyright is extended every single piece of work from the minute and arcane to the titans of their genres is stolen from every single member of the public. Compared to all of that, a few billion downloads on the internet is a drop in the ocean.
If they are distributing the work, then it is still readily obtainable from them... I have no qualms with copyright holders charging money for their stuff, nor paying fees to access it, what I have a problem with is stuff that the copyright holder abandons, but still holds onto the copyright for and there is NO legal avenue through which to obtain it.
What's the difference between abandonment and charging a million dollar fee per copy?
Gotta disagree. The "scientist" who can't handle the "grittier" parts isn't really a scientist. If you're doing a thesis about pulling the wings off of flies, and you've never actually pulled the wings off of flies, then you're a fraud, plain and simple.
Except that's now what the research is about. They do research about how to heal the fly or re-attach the wings or make prosthetic wings. You might as well argue that any research on rats is fraudulent if the researcher didn't build the cage the rats are kept in.
Then find someone suited to the work. Society turns its nose up at people who torture animals and pull the wings off of flies, but a job like this sounds like a win-win situation - the sociopathic tendencies get directed somewhere useful where they won't harm anyone and regular people don't get turned off from high-level science just because they can't stomach some of the grittier parts.
As data storage and transfer have grown so much in the past two decades that "bits" have ceased to be a useful unit of measure.
That's ridiculous. Your premise is that bits, which are roughly one order of magnitude smaller than bytes, aren't meaningful units of measurement because most throughputs are way faster than they used to be. That's like arguing that meters are not a valid way to measure distances because men have now been to the moon, or liters aren't a valid way to measure liquids because so many more people have seen an ocean now. Two words - metric prefixes. If bits won't do it for you, try out megabits or gigabits or even terabits.
If an ad said "This car gets 400mpg", the average person would expect it to mean 400mpg averaged over a tank not an instantaneous value at some point in time.
So... you propose a new disclaimer for ISP services - "15Mbps downhill in a hurricane."
Already there are 20+ people decrying that line. The summary is super-misleading. Seems to me that if you have enough time to write one of those screeds about it, you ought to spend 60 seconds to at least scan the article first. Here's what it really said:
Finally, if you're a high-bandwidth user of Verizon's smartphone data services, the company will soon hunt you down and throttle you. (The company has long had a maximum transfer limit on monthly data plans.)
OK? They never sold their wireless plans as unlimited, unlike their fiber internet product. Verizon is pretty douchey, but at least not that way.
I didn't see a change in stories that are available. World, News, Politics, Business, Stats, Opinion, KAL's Cartoons.... maybe the archives are not accessible?
It depends on the individual articles. They are not clearly marked. You click on one and maybe you get the actual article and maybe you get the paywall.
Slashdot Mirror
intellectual property law gives apple a legal monopoly on what apps you can buy for your iphone. This is a government granted monopoly.
No it doesn't. The only thing limiting what apps you can buy on your iphone is APPLE. Jailbreaking an iphone is not a DMCA or any other kind of "intellectual property" violation.
Here's a clue for you: oligopoly != monopoly.
What government enforced oligopoly would make the iphone useless if Apple had not been able to make a business deal with one of the oligopolists?
Fine. Is it censorship if EA choose not to publish my game? Is it censorship if a Warner Music refuses to publish my music? Is it censorship if the Penguin Group refuses to publish my book?
Wooooooooosh!! None of those are government enforced oligopolies. But, if they were, just like if the SFGate were, then yes it would be also be censorship.
Then your claims of "censorship" are even more absurd. Is it "censhorship" if the SFGate refuses to publish a cartoon that I might draw up?
If they are part of a government mandated oligopoly on newspapers than yes it is censorship.
Other than being pro-healthcare reform I don't think Stewart's pushed any particular political viewpoint this year. Frequently it seems like he has to really stretch when he skewers Obama and friends, but I think that, other than Biden, that's mostly because Obama and his circle don't seem to run their mouths the way others have and therefore just aren't such easy targets.
But in this case you are just using the legal system in the worst possible way: To screw someone out of a legitimate outcome. If you were fighting an illegal ticket, or something the company legitimately did wrong it would make more sense.
Wow! The same legal system that would fuck him if he just bent over and took it can also be used to fight back? What blasphemy! He plays by THEIR rules and still he's the bad guy?
Ever consider that 100% enforcement mechanisms are inherently illegitimate in the first place? Society runs on slack, the less tolerance of slack the less life is worth living (and the less efficient everything is too). Yeah, 1 out of a million times someone gets killed because the slack was used when it should not have been. That doesn't mean that destroying all the slack is a legitimate response.
The list is at least partially empirical - based on the number of people showing up in the hospitals in britain because they ingested that drug.
Heroin is pretty fucking toxic. We're not talking Marijuana toxic here (I'd rather cigarettes and weed be gone too, though cigarettes are more like alcohol but with EVERYONE that drinks being a huge alcoholic drinking contaminated booze). We're talking a chemical with no benefit, that makes you literally need it all the time to even stay on a normal level once you're hooked; and if you cut it off completely after a certain point, you die from withdrawal.
Here's a good ranking of the relative danger levels of various drugs. In fact, it was so good that the guy who published it was forced to resign from his job as chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in the UK because it didn't jibe with current politics.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/nov/02/david-nutt-dangerous-drug-list
To be fair the problem there was your DVD recorder refusing to record rather than something from verizon refusing to give you a copy.
I have one word for you: Galleon
First thing I tried, waaaay too buggy and cumbersome.
Or you could, of course, opt out of the anonymous stats reporting.
Not if you want to schedule recordings via their barely capable but better than nothing website.
Plus, I think you'll find that "opting out" doesn't stop your tivo from reporting your viewing habits, it just stops tivocorp from doing anything that would alert you to the fact that they have that information. As in, they won't send you tailored commercials but they still have all the information it would take to do so. That's almost universally the way these "opt out" things work.
I recorded some movies on HBO on my Verizon DVR then later cancelled the HBO and kept the DVR. Then when I went to watch the movies, I could not. I paid for the service but I can't watch the movies I already recorded because I don't *keep* paying? Well, at least I know it wouldn't do any good to switch to Comcast... I think I need to do some research...
Although I hate to admit it - tivo. Despite the absolutely craptastic nature of their interface (it was great like 10 years ago, but hasn't kept up at all) at least on verizon fiostv they are great because verizon never sets the "do not copy" bit, so you can pull all your recordings off your tivo - hbo, cinemax, hdnet, anything but pay-per-view (which tivo doesn't support recording in the first place). I have a perl script that just regularly polls my tivo and downloads anything new to my linux box. Apparently tivo doesn't count these downloads as viewing of the programs either, so my tivo isn't even snitching on my viewing habits either. As far as they know I never, ever watch tv.
It may also work to use the firewire port on the verizon set-top box, if it has one - I haven't tried it since I don't have a set-top box, but typically the firewire stuff is limited by the exact same "do not copy" bit as the tivo uses to decide if you can copy too.
Well, number one it's a huge obvious anti-trust issue. Microsoft is already a convicted monopolist. Google isn't without its own political influences. You do the math.
It worked with Anders Hejlsberg.
A year ago it was reported that H-1B workers OUTNUMBERED unemployed techies!
You seem to be confused. That ain't all that bad -- break it down to the smallest numbers to see why: 1 H1B worker and 0 unemployed techs.
Its not really all that meaningful a metric anyway, but I'd say the time to worry is instead when the number of unemployed outnumber the H1Bs.
Then you should stick to cash, it is already designed to authenticate itself and not require attachment to any particular identity.
And that attitude is exactly why the merchant agreements prevent them from requiring ID. The more barriers to use, the less likely the cards are going to be used and if the cards aren't used, Visa and the rest don't make any money.
Besides, if requiring ID to use a credit card become pervasive, the crooks would just start forging IDs. It isn't like cashiers whou have to process thousands of them each shift are going to be qualified to tell the difference between a real ID and even a half-assed forgery.
You can't hire some chump off the street to come an and make random cuts on your mice,
Who said anything about "some chump off the street?"
Research requires control - meaning the scientist controls every aspect of the research. Every aspect.
Lol, you've now categorically eliminated the job title of lab assistant. I couldn't have demonstrated the silliness of your position any better myself.
You have to maintain the infrastructure for taking that million dollar payment.
Which has zero effect on actually making that content available.
In a way, it's a lot like the "Free software" debate. Most people don't give a crap if their software is "Free" or not, and don't even think about how having a healthy Free software ecosystem may benefit them (regardless of what they choose to use themselves). But if it all disappeared and there was no alternative but proprietary software from big corporations, they'd realise what they'd lost. But explaining it beforehand? There's just no interest.
Hell, can drop the "free software" part of that and just leave in the "healthy ecosystem" and it would still be just as true.
The one thing that makes absolutely no sense in all this is that copyright gets extended when new laws come out.
You are far too kind in your analysis. I say that copyright extensions are wholesale theft on such a massive scale that it dwarfs all the piracy that ever has, and ever will happen. When copyright is extended every single piece of work from the minute and arcane to the titans of their genres is stolen from every single member of the public. Compared to all of that, a few billion downloads on the internet is a drop in the ocean.
If they are distributing the work, then it is still readily obtainable from them... I have no qualms with copyright holders charging money for their stuff, nor paying fees to access it, what I have a problem with is stuff that the copyright holder abandons, but still holds onto the copyright for and there is NO legal avenue through which to obtain it.
What's the difference between abandonment and charging a million dollar fee per copy?
Gotta disagree. The "scientist" who can't handle the "grittier" parts isn't really a scientist. If you're doing a thesis about pulling the wings off of flies, and you've never actually pulled the wings off of flies, then you're a fraud, plain and simple.
Except that's now what the research is about. They do research about how to heal the fly or re-attach the wings or make prosthetic wings. You might as well argue that any research on rats is fraudulent if the researcher didn't build the cage the rats are kept in.
On the other hand, someone has to do those jobs.
Then find someone suited to the work. Society turns its nose up at people who torture animals and pull the wings off of flies, but a job like this sounds like a win-win situation - the sociopathic tendencies get directed somewhere useful where they won't harm anyone and regular people don't get turned off from high-level science just because they can't stomach some of the grittier parts.
As data storage and transfer have grown so much in the past two decades that "bits" have ceased to be a useful unit of measure.
That's ridiculous. Your premise is that bits, which are roughly one order of magnitude smaller than bytes, aren't meaningful units of measurement because most throughputs are way faster than they used to be. That's like arguing that meters are not a valid way to measure distances because men have now been to the moon, or liters aren't a valid way to measure liquids because so many more people have seen an ocean now. Two words - metric prefixes. If bits won't do it for you, try out megabits or gigabits or even terabits.
If an ad said "This car gets 400mpg", the average person would expect it to mean 400mpg averaged over a tank not an instantaneous value at some point in time.
So... you propose a new disclaimer for ISP services - "15Mbps downhill in a hurricane."
Already there are 20+ people decrying that line. The summary is super-misleading. Seems to me that if you have enough time to write one of those screeds about it, you ought to spend 60 seconds to at least scan the article first. Here's what it really said:
Finally, if you're a high-bandwidth user of Verizon's smartphone data services, the company will soon hunt you down and throttle you. (The company has long had a maximum transfer limit on monthly data plans.)
OK? They never sold their wireless plans as unlimited, unlike their fiber internet product. Verizon is pretty douchey, but at least not that way.
I didn't see a change in stories that are available. World, News, Politics, Business, Stats, Opinion, KAL's Cartoons.... maybe the archives are not accessible?
It depends on the individual articles. They are not clearly marked. You click on one and maybe you get the actual article and maybe you get the paywall.