There's a world of difference between leasing time on a privately owned mainframe (and arguably at that time owned software) with competetive alternatives, and the potential of world in which no individual owns either and everyone leases from Microsoft. (The latter in fact presents, I think, an irresistable possibility for the company.) Think the difference between a world in which I can buy a vehicle new, buy used, lease or rent and one in which the only option is to lease from Ford.
"When there are 6+ billion people on the planet, do you really want someone to 'run the numbers' to determine if your life is worthwhile?"
When phrased that way you're right. It does seem 'the impossible dream'. For the foreseeable future mankind's fate will remain in the hands of those who assassinate Arch Dukes or fly jetliners into buildings.
"Tell that to England (IRA bombings) or Israel, which seem to function just fine."
Do they? I guess it depends on the definition of 'fine'. England is passing laws that'll soon have Orwell popping vertically from the soil. They're well on the way to replacing eternal vigilance with eternal surveillance. I don't know enough about Israel but it doesn't appear "a place I want to live". It's the only country that for me consistently conjures the mental image of a uniformed official brandishing an MP5. Though I agree completely with your last paragraph, it illustrates a more civilized response to the real threat of terror.
Both the grandparent's oversight and your post's quick moderation point to the danger here. Discussions of this sort invariably degenerate into Democratic vs. Republican party arguments. Bush's administration is carrying on Clinton's work, War on Terror vs. War Against Drugs. All dministrations for decades have been actively finding ways to route around the Constitution.
I'm sorry, that post was either an incoherent rant or an illogical ad hominem. No conspiracy was ever proven true? After the fact the name changes to 'history', possibly part of your confusion. Or are you perhaps simply pre-defining 'conspiracy nut' to mean 'those who believe in the unprovable', rendering your statement a tautology and devoid of content? Statements such as "there's no proof that you can give to conspiracy theorist, that will convince him he is wrong" suggest the latter. Given the strength of your statement though I'm guessing nothing I write will convice you otherwise.
Doesn't work if their stock trades on an American exchange. I work in Canada for a Canadian company and we're obliged to adhere to SOx because our stock trades on Wall Street. Thank you Enron, for making your dishonesty international.
"As a 13 year old, I figure I represented the "market" a lot more accurately than I do in my wiser (and more bitter / broke) years."
For a while I was a memeber of a Halflife clan, one which is still very active and supports multiple servers. Not one member was under 20, most were middle aged professionals with families. Don't kid yourself about 'target audience'.
The other 'other' side: the broadcast airwaves belong to the public. This public utility is held in trust by the government and licensed to corporation under a commitment to serve the public. The content providers want to lock them down, essentially charge us a license fee through hardware to access what we own. "Enhancing legal protections" indeed. Better idea, get off the air. I can live a very long time without seeing another episode of "Everyone Loves Raymond".
"Do you really, truly in your heart think that the analysts, the MPAA and the WSJ reporter all really think this, or do you accept the more logical explanation that it was referring to making copies for distribution?"
What I really, truly believe is the analysts structured questions and processes to skew towards results that ensured return business with their clients, the MPAA, and that the WSJ, hard core representatives of business interests, would argue for making lampshades from infant hides if the initiative was backed by a large enough industry. One thing I found very interesting, once making it past the WSJ's adverts and cookie assault, was:
"This time, the survey specifically asked consumers how many of their pirated movies they would have purchased in stores or seen in theaters if they didn't have an unauthorized copy, giving studios a different picture of their true losses."
Now with that I agree completley. I'll make every effort to find a good movie discovered by download but most simply aren't worth the bits they rode in on. People don't buy them because they're crap, not because they got a zero-package reduced quality version for free.
"So are the universities (and all networks, by extension) supposed to sniff every packet and look for "copyrighted material" so it can take whatever action the industry think is "appropriate"?"
What's yet to penetrate public perceptions is: Yes. Exactly. Precisely. The only way universal DRM can work is by monitoring every packet transfer. It's insane how much we as a society are giving up to preserve these niche market middle-man pricks.
The whole concept of "times of conflict and war" is a canard. The US has been in near continuous military action - "times of conflict and war" - since World War 2. It's not what the Founders intended. Beyond that though, the moderation on a post arguing strongly for universal government surveillance of citizens and an effective elimination of freedoms and rights taken as core for 200+ years currently sits at +5 Insightful. It's incredible, and infinitely depressing, how many people actually want this.
Seeing this as primarily a Rep/Dem issue will continue your country's slide into despotism, taking a good portion of the free world along for the ride. The Clinton Democrats laid the foundations for the current Republican abuses in the very well marketed War on Drugs. Nothing will change until people start thinking beyond 'less filling - tastes great'.
Too bad, I did the courtesy of reading yours even after:
(b) It was kept around for safety..
That was contemporary claim, long disproven. The number of deaths did indeed decline because people were driving much fewer miles. An oil embargo was on. Deaths per million miles driven, the accepted standard, was within statistical variance, and had been steadily falling for half a century, which supports the gist of the argument I was making. Re: 55 vs 65 the speed limit was 75 before the embargo and for the previous 50 year was set by the 85th percentile, the speed below which 85% drove voluntarily based on conditions. Speeds had increased slowly thoughout the history of the automobile until Carter forced the 55. The 65 most of your country still adhered to last I did any traveling within was part of the same legacy of shifitng the criteria from roadway to social engineering.
Re: the Income Tax, according to the History of Income Tax in the US on Infoplease:
" In 1868, Congress again focused its taxation efforts on tobacco and distilled spirits and eliminated the income tax in 1872. It had a short-lived revival in 1894 and 1895. In the latter year, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the income tax was unconstitutional because it was not apportioned among the states in conformity with the Constitution.
In 1913, the 16th Amendment to the Constitution made the income tax a permanent fixture in the U.S. tax system.
Perhaps we can quibble about it being the wrong war but the priciple was correct. A temporary government act stretched well beyond its intent. Any deviance from perfect accuracy you can blame on the poster being from one of those other English speaking countries, not the US. The irony is you disgreed with every one the specifics and supplied corrections which supported the intent. Clever.
There are many examples of goverment programs and statutues which quickly morphed well beyond the original intent. Income tax was a temporary measure to fund World War 1. The 65 mph speed limit began as another temporary measure to reduce gas consumption during an oil embargo by Middle East producers in the 1970's. Now it's a major law enforcement revenue stream under the rubric 'safety' and some countries are even contemplating permamently tracking all vehicles for compliance to speed limits. The RICO statutes were passed to regulate intersate commerce and are now the foundations of a mass of laws the American Founders would never have dreamed. Copyright, distorted immeasurably beyond it's origins into a means to regulate the flow of information (wake up if you don't believe that's what DRM not only is, but requires.) The laws created to support the war on drugs alone should be more than enough to convince anyone that, for whatever reasons, government continually strive to expand its power. You don't think something as powerful a single, mandatory way to track an individual's history won't be abused? We're 'utilitarianing' ourselves straight to hell.
I was on the Internet in the early Nineties, back when the only access was via a portal on the GUI BBS I subscribed to and users still complained about the '.edu' season when student got access via school networks. This is in Canada. So no blinders, Republicans and Democrats are all the same to me and Gore had what to do with Internet adoption in Canada?
Copyright is an abstract social concept. It has no 'rights', citizens do.
"When someone creates something, he puts time and money behind it, develops it and he should have a chance to earn money that way."
A very, very wide gulf exists between those two statements. What content providers are claiming is the right to mandate governement regulation and intervention over, in effect, all data transfers to protect a business model built on digital storage of their product in order to maximize profit. That's stretching the word 'rights' to the extreme limit. I don't think they have that right. Want to release your product in an easily replicable form? Fine, bear the consequences. The sacrifice required of society to protect these so called rights far outweigh the benefits to a select minority. Sony, Disney and Warner can't be allowed to shape the direction society takes, any more than GM, IBM or Standard Oil should. Once we get over this insane celebrity worship phase (FFS, you're electing actors!) the quicker it'll all turn around.
That was informative for the ten or twelve who thought Gore's claim entailed a youth spent before an amber screen crunching protocols. It also sets the record straight, finally, about Eisenhower. Thanks. For the rest of the us though, of course no one thought Gore was laying claim to the Internet's technical underpinnings. Gore has taken ridicule for expanding making "it a point to be as well-informed as possible on technology and issues that surround it" into "I took the initiative in creating the Internet". Brushing away the spin, to the vast majority of the voting public, the audience it's safe to assume Gore was addressing in the Blitzer interview, the Internet is the World Wide Web, a coupling of components which "came into being well before Gore's first term in Congress began in 1977" and a creation of the European agency CERN. How did Gore impact that? Gore rightfully takes abuse for a moment of public and ridiculous hubris.
Once thing I can thank you for is demonstrating how, like so many others on all sides, the authors of Snopes don't feel it necessary to rise above their political beliefs in the performance of their duties.
Since the original intent was to 'spur innovation in the Arts and Sciences', tell me again why the people who "corrected the artist's singing flaws during editing, the people who created the cover art, the people who advertise and market the album, etc. etc. etc." should be protected by copyright laws inflated with criminal penalties?
"The only way a wikipedia article about him will be used is to subject him to more ridicule. Wikipedia did the right thing."
Should Slashdot do the same now, including your post? By your definition, there's only one way that Wiki article could be used, and since you're using it...
Slashdot Mirror
There's a world of difference between leasing time on a privately owned mainframe (and arguably at that time owned software) with competetive alternatives, and the potential of world in which no individual owns either and everyone leases from Microsoft. (The latter in fact presents, I think, an irresistable possibility for the company.) Think the difference between a world in which I can buy a vehicle new, buy used, lease or rent and one in which the only option is to lease from Ford.
When phrased that way you're right. It does seem 'the impossible dream'. For the foreseeable future mankind's fate will remain in the hands of those who assassinate Arch Dukes or fly jetliners into buildings.
Do they? I guess it depends on the definition of 'fine'. England is passing laws that'll soon have Orwell popping vertically from the soil. They're well on the way to replacing eternal vigilance with eternal surveillance. I don't know enough about Israel but it doesn't appear "a place I want to live". It's the only country that for me consistently conjures the mental image of a uniformed official brandishing an MP5. Though I agree completely with your last paragraph, it illustrates a more civilized response to the real threat of terror.
The Teflon Suit strategy, you can't be held to account for something you didn't say. Sounds like Corporate at my company.
Both the grandparent's oversight and your post's quick moderation point to the danger here. Discussions of this sort invariably degenerate into Democratic vs. Republican party arguments. Bush's administration is carrying on Clinton's work, War on Terror vs. War Against Drugs. All dministrations for decades have been actively finding ways to route around the Constitution.
I'm sorry, that post was either an incoherent rant or an illogical ad hominem. No conspiracy was ever proven true? After the fact the name changes to 'history', possibly part of your confusion. Or are you perhaps simply pre-defining 'conspiracy nut' to mean 'those who believe in the unprovable', rendering your statement a tautology and devoid of content? Statements such as "there's no proof that you can give to conspiracy theorist, that will convince him he is wrong" suggest the latter. Given the strength of your statement though I'm guessing nothing I write will convice you otherwise.
Doesn't work if their stock trades on an American exchange. I work in Canada for a Canadian company and we're obliged to adhere to SOx because our stock trades on Wall Street. Thank you Enron, for making your dishonesty international.
As I recall it was because Lewinsky was to testify for the first time the next day.
For a while I was a memeber of a Halflife clan, one which is still very active and supports multiple servers. Not one member was under 20, most were middle aged professionals with families. Don't kid yourself about 'target audience'.
"Slow Motion Corpses" might have been enabled. It's intended to get exactly that reaction. UT is more the Cartoon end of the FPS genre.
The other 'other' side: the broadcast airwaves belong to the public. This public utility is held in trust by the government and licensed to corporation under a commitment to serve the public. The content providers want to lock them down, essentially charge us a license fee through hardware to access what we own. "Enhancing legal protections" indeed. Better idea, get off the air. I can live a very long time without seeing another episode of "Everyone Loves Raymond".
What I really, truly believe is the analysts structured questions and processes to skew towards results that ensured return business with their clients, the MPAA, and that the WSJ, hard core representatives of business interests, would argue for making lampshades from infant hides if the initiative was backed by a large enough industry. One thing I found very interesting, once making it past the WSJ's adverts and cookie assault, was:
"This time, the survey specifically asked consumers how many of their pirated movies they would have purchased in stores or seen in theaters if they didn't have an unauthorized copy, giving studios a different picture of their true losses."
Now with that I agree completley. I'll make every effort to find a good movie discovered by download but most simply aren't worth the bits they rode in on. People don't buy them because they're crap, not because they got a zero-package reduced quality version for free.
What's yet to penetrate public perceptions is: Yes. Exactly. Precisely. The only way universal DRM can work is by monitoring every packet transfer. It's insane how much we as a society are giving up to preserve these niche market middle-man pricks.
Along with a 15% processing charge. It's not a loss of rights, it's a market opportunity.
The whole concept of "times of conflict and war" is a canard. The US has been in near continuous military action - "times of conflict and war" - since World War 2. It's not what the Founders intended. Beyond that though, the moderation on a post arguing strongly for universal government surveillance of citizens and an effective elimination of freedoms and rights taken as core for 200+ years currently sits at +5 Insightful. It's incredible, and infinitely depressing, how many people actually want this.
Seeing this as primarily a Rep/Dem issue will continue your country's slide into despotism, taking a good portion of the free world along for the ride. The Clinton Democrats laid the foundations for the current Republican abuses in the very well marketed War on Drugs. Nothing will change until people start thinking beyond 'less filling - tastes great'.
Point taken. This is, after all, Slashdot and 'corrections' needn't be correct themselves if expressed in the appropriate tone.
(b) It was kept around for safety..
That was contemporary claim, long disproven. The number of deaths did indeed decline because people were driving much fewer miles. An oil embargo was on. Deaths per million miles driven, the accepted standard, was within statistical variance, and had been steadily falling for half a century, which supports the gist of the argument I was making. Re: 55 vs 65 the speed limit was 75 before the embargo and for the previous 50 year was set by the 85th percentile, the speed below which 85% drove voluntarily based on conditions. Speeds had increased slowly thoughout the history of the automobile until Carter forced the 55. The 65 most of your country still adhered to last I did any traveling within was part of the same legacy of shifitng the criteria from roadway to social engineering.
Re: the Income Tax, according to the History of Income Tax in the US on Infoplease:
" In 1868, Congress again focused its taxation efforts on tobacco and distilled spirits and eliminated the income tax in 1872. It had a short-lived revival in 1894 and 1895. In the latter year, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the income tax was unconstitutional because it was not apportioned among the states in conformity with the Constitution.
In 1913, the 16th Amendment to the Constitution made the income tax a permanent fixture in the U.S. tax system.
Perhaps we can quibble about it being the wrong war but the priciple was correct. A temporary government act stretched well beyond its intent. Any deviance from perfect accuracy you can blame on the poster being from one of those other English speaking countries, not the US. The irony is you disgreed with every one the specifics and supplied corrections which supported the intent. Clever.
There are many examples of goverment programs and statutues which quickly morphed well beyond the original intent. Income tax was a temporary measure to fund World War 1. The 65 mph speed limit began as another temporary measure to reduce gas consumption during an oil embargo by Middle East producers in the 1970's. Now it's a major law enforcement revenue stream under the rubric 'safety' and some countries are even contemplating permamently tracking all vehicles for compliance to speed limits. The RICO statutes were passed to regulate intersate commerce and are now the foundations of a mass of laws the American Founders would never have dreamed. Copyright, distorted immeasurably beyond it's origins into a means to regulate the flow of information (wake up if you don't believe that's what DRM not only is, but requires.) The laws created to support the war on drugs alone should be more than enough to convince anyone that, for whatever reasons, government continually strive to expand its power. You don't think something as powerful a single, mandatory way to track an individual's history won't be abused? We're 'utilitarianing' ourselves straight to hell.
I was on the Internet in the early Nineties, back when the only access was via a portal on the GUI BBS I subscribed to and users still complained about the '.edu' season when student got access via school networks. This is in Canada. So no blinders, Republicans and Democrats are all the same to me and Gore had what to do with Internet adoption in Canada?
Copyright is an abstract social concept. It has no 'rights', citizens do.
"When someone creates something, he puts time and money behind it, develops it and he should have a chance to earn money that way."
A very, very wide gulf exists between those two statements. What content providers are claiming is the right to mandate governement regulation and intervention over, in effect, all data transfers to protect a business model built on digital storage of their product in order to maximize profit. That's stretching the word 'rights' to the extreme limit. I don't think they have that right. Want to release your product in an easily replicable form? Fine, bear the consequences. The sacrifice required of society to protect these so called rights far outweigh the benefits to a select minority. Sony, Disney and Warner can't be allowed to shape the direction society takes, any more than GM, IBM or Standard Oil should. Once we get over this insane celebrity worship phase (FFS, you're electing actors!) the quicker it'll all turn around.
Friggin' intellectuals...
Once thing I can thank you for is demonstrating how, like so many others on all sides, the authors of Snopes don't feel it necessary to rise above their political beliefs in the performance of their duties.
Since the original intent was to 'spur innovation in the Arts and Sciences', tell me again why the people who "corrected the artist's singing flaws during editing, the people who created the cover art, the people who advertise and market the album, etc. etc. etc." should be protected by copyright laws inflated with criminal penalties?
Should Slashdot do the same now, including your post? By your definition, there's only one way that Wiki article could be used, and since you're using it...