This marks the first time that I can recall where an appointed official who's job is to regulate the public's airwaves in the public's interest has openly said that they are not interested in doing what is best for the public, but a narrow constituency in the media companies.
There is no sane argument that DRMed content is good for the public at large, seeing as DRM infringes on rights enshrined in the Constitution itself. In fact, the only constitutional DRM is that where you, the owner of the computer/media box/etc. hold the private key.
This person should resign immediately and so should the idiot who appointed her to the position.
The concept that we're ever going to "run out" of oil is just so spectacularly dumb it boggles the mind.
A finite resource over an infinite time will run out. That is a straw-man argument anyway. Peak Oil is about not having enough oil to run the economy, not running out completely.
First, gas prices will rise modestly, into the $3 - $4 range. Industries that can switch away (trains instead of trucks, etc) will start to do so. More people will choose hybrids, more people will ride the bus. It won't be enough, and gas prices will continue to rise over the course of a year or so, probably into the $5 - $6 range. People will start driving even less. More hybrids and motorcycles will be sold. SUV sales will dry up significantly. Trains will continue to subsitute for trucks. Venezuela's massive heavy oil deposits will become profitable to operate. This will cause the rise to dampen, but not stop. Let's say over the next two years the price will rise to $8/gallon. New condos in large urban centers will become more attractive, and more will be built. Many more people will telecommute and take mass transit to work.
Based on your response I think you live in an area where mass transit is readily available. In many areas this isn't the case. I grew up in one such area. In many cases these people really have no choice but to pay whatever the prices are. Some people will have the capital to move to a cheaper area, but some simply won't.
You also speak of new construction in urban areas. New construction is done mostly by machines that run on... oil. Increased oil prices = increased construction prices for those new condos. This is what we call massive inflation.
Your lifestyle will be somewhat different. You will have to pay more for gas, but you will buy less of it.
Of course. I never said any different. I'm just saying my lifestyle will be very different. I will buy gas so long as I can afford it. Sooner or later I will buy only what is necessary for me to continue to work. At last, it will not be worth the gas to get back and forth to work.
What you describe is a massive retooling of our economy, transportation industry, and the demographics of the nation in a very conservative estimate of 20 years. I think it can be done, but only if we get ahead of it now. My linking to the article doesn't mean I endorse every position on there. In a best case scenario, we're going to have some serious economic problems on the horizon. In the worst, Mad Max.
The rest assumes that the market cures all and that there is always a viable alternative for any resource. You are certainly free to believe whatever you like, but I'm going to take the safe road and learn from the history of Easter Island.
I'm sure you know DVDs have DRM as well. Of course, it has been broken (and I don't know if you're subject to the DMCA or similar laws in your locality).
I'm just curious to know if the DRM is broken on HD-DVD/Blu-Ray you would buy, or perhaps you just think the new DRM is so incredibly overbearing you will refuse to buy. You could make the case that distributing floppy disks with the write-protect window open is a very crude form of DRM (easily circumvented).
What I meant was that your CLEC partner with Speakeasy might have been complaining. Since your circuit is serviced by Speakeasy, your CLEC (COVAD, possibly Version based on where you live, even though I didn't think Speakeasy had a partnering agreement with Version) might have put pressure on Speakeasy to get you to stop using your connection as per your TOS.
The only problem I have is that (and its not even them) the ILEC often works on lines and doesn't give a shit if they break anything serviced by a CLEC. I've had to call a few times when my DSL was out. Of course, you know Speakeasy isn't too quick on the draw since they have to call the CLEC (in my case COVAD) who has to call the ILEC (AT&T) to get a linesman out to check the lines.
I don't know where you live or who your CLEC is, but I have a computer hooked up to my TV that does nothing but run BitTorrent 24/7/365 and I haven't gotten a call. My connection is probably completely saturated in the up direction a good 95% of the time. Perhaps it is your CLEC who is complaining.
There are some experimental settings IIRC that try to search your LAN for peers and use those instead of going to Australia. I don't see how much this would help unless you had a massive LAN (think university). If not, what is the chance that you and your roommate are going to try to download the same file at approximately the same time?
On an ISP scale, you _never_ want to get to the point where you are using 100% of your bandwidth, because the network will slow down to a crawl.
There are 2 ways to fix this problem:
1) Buy more bandwidth (and appropriately raise prices if need be) 2) Be up front about the fact that you'll be throttling P2P apps; don't hide it in section 1, paragraph 2, subparagraph r, clause 7 of the TOS.
Also, ISPs often throttle even when congestion is low. Throttling because you don't want to actually deliver the service you agreed you would is different from throttling because you want to make sure VoIP is working correctly.
I can't speak for the GP, but I think its a tad bit misleading and unethical to advertise your service as "always on, blazing X down/Y up speeds so you can download music, movies, etc in a snap" and then turning around in the TOS and saying something to the effect of "don't actually use your connection or we're going to throttle the hell out of you".
There is one US ISP I know about which doesn't do this crap -- Speakeasy. I use them at the moment, but can't afford them anymore. Its just a shame that we have to pay $50-60/mo to get nothing while people in Europe (and especially S. Korea) get more for less.
The original reason why laws were written down is so that the citizens can know what is legal and illegal. That way they would presumably know the penalties for illegal activity which would serve as a deterrent to crime.
If the laws or contracts are written in anything other than common English that any random person could reasonably understand, then there is no benefit at all to having written them at all. Lawyers exist almost solely because laws are not written in common English, but in Lawyerspeak. Some of the stuff they come up with is harder than reading Perl! They perpetuate their existance by writing laws in Lawyerspeak, which means you likely will need a lawyer for very mundane issues such as taxes (which, they're in with the accountants on increasing the size of the tax codes), landlord issues, etc.
Perhaps if more EULAs were written in common English, more people would read them and refuse to install software that asked for the equivalent of a first-born child.
The only bad part is that when you outlaw alcohol, only outlaws will become alcoholics... or something to that effect.;-)
I think drinking is one of the single stupidest things anyone could ever do. I also believe the drinking age should be lowered to 18, possibly 16. I also believe you should be able to buy crack at your local store. The problem comes when you think your beliefs regarding morality should be imposed on others.
I've seen that same font distortion when browsing the web using Firefox under Fedora Core 4. This was in web pages, mind you, not anything that got screwy when I printed or exported to PDF.
The wikipedia article that a sibling poster attempted to link to has the full controversy.
If you assume an incredibly strict interpretation of the Constitution and all relevant statutes, the GP has a point. I don't know the exact statutes regarding how states are admitted into the union, so I can't lend creedence to any beliefs that my home state wasn't such until 1953.
A similar incident happened recently in congress when a bill was passed and signed into law even though both the House and Senate did not pass identical versions of the bill. The courts say so long as the Speaker and Senate leader (not sure if this means pro-tempore, majority, or VP) sign off on the bill, it can be cleared for the president.
Lets say there are only two candidates in the race, one Republican and one Democrat. Is it then morally acceptable to vote for one or the other, or must I leave that race blank?
I think we can all agree the Clinton administration might not have been Republican by today's standards, but buy the standards of yesteryear. Even by the outdated 80s standards, they weren't what you'd call a traditional Democratic administration either.
one of the biggest problems currently is the out-of-print but still protected work that will quite literally disintegrate before anyone is legally allowed to make a copy for posterity.
That is one of the major questions that begs to be looked at by Congress. Using a previous example, Windows 1.0 will, if I'm not mistaken, be placed in the public domain in 2080 (1985 + 95). I don't think MS (or whatever derivative corporation exists at the time) will be too big on keeping the source to a 95-year old OS anywhere. Assuming there are no other copies of the source anywhere else, it will not matter if the source lapses into the public domain as no one will be able to get a copy.
Software is especially precarious in this way. I don't need the master recording of a song to be able to distribute and change that song, but if I don't have the source to a program, all I can do is distribute a binary. I think this is a very important and fundamental issue with copyright law that Congress has not fully thought through.
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This marks the first time that I can recall where an appointed official who's job is to regulate the public's airwaves in the public's interest has openly said that they are not interested in doing what is best for the public, but a narrow constituency in the media companies.
There is no sane argument that DRMed content is good for the public at large, seeing as DRM infringes on rights enshrined in the Constitution itself. In fact, the only constitutional DRM is that where you, the owner of the computer/media box/etc. hold the private key.
This person should resign immediately and so should the idiot who appointed her to the position.
He could at least try to duplicate his famous sig.
The concept that we're ever going to "run out" of oil is just so spectacularly dumb it boggles the mind.
... oil. Increased oil prices = increased construction prices for those new condos. This is what we call massive inflation.
A finite resource over an infinite time will run out. That is a straw-man argument anyway. Peak Oil is about not having enough oil to run the economy, not running out
completely.
First, gas prices will rise modestly, into the $3 - $4 range. Industries that can switch away (trains instead of trucks, etc) will start to do so. More people will choose hybrids, more people will ride the bus. It won't be enough, and gas prices will continue to rise over the course of a year or so, probably into the $5 - $6 range. People will start driving even less. More hybrids and motorcycles will be sold. SUV sales will dry up significantly. Trains will continue to subsitute for trucks. Venezuela's massive heavy oil deposits will become profitable to operate. This will cause the rise to dampen, but not stop. Let's say over the next two years the price will rise to $8/gallon. New condos in large urban centers will become more attractive, and more will be built. Many more people will telecommute and take mass transit to work.
Based on your response I think you live in an area where mass transit is readily available. In many areas this isn't the case. I grew up in one such area. In many cases these people really have no choice but to pay whatever the prices are. Some people will have the capital to move to a cheaper area, but some simply won't.
You also speak of new construction in urban areas. New construction is done mostly by machines that run on
Your lifestyle will be somewhat different. You will have to pay more for gas, but you will buy less of it.
Of course. I never said any different. I'm just saying my lifestyle will be very different. I will buy gas so long as I can afford it. Sooner or later I will buy only what is necessary for me to continue to work. At last, it will not be worth the gas to get back and forth to work.
What you describe is a massive retooling of our economy, transportation industry, and the demographics of the nation in a very conservative estimate of 20 years. I think it can be done, but only if we get ahead of it now. My linking to the article doesn't mean I endorse every position on there. In a best case scenario, we're going to have some serious economic problems on the horizon. In the worst, Mad Max.
The rest assumes that the market cures all and that there is always a viable alternative for any resource. You are certainly free to believe whatever you like, but I'm going to take the safe road and learn from the history of Easter Island.
I'm sure you know DVDs have DRM as well. Of course, it has been broken (and I don't know if you're subject to the DMCA or similar laws in your locality).
I'm just curious to know if the DRM is broken on HD-DVD/Blu-Ray you would buy, or perhaps you just think the new DRM is so incredibly overbearing you will refuse to buy. You could make the case that distributing floppy disks with the write-protect window open is a very crude form of DRM (easily circumvented).
I'm coming around to nuclear power, but only because if we don't get with the program, we'll be living in the stone age.
What I meant was that your CLEC partner with Speakeasy might have been complaining. Since your circuit is serviced by Speakeasy, your CLEC (COVAD, possibly Version based on where you live, even though I didn't think Speakeasy had a partnering agreement with Version) might have put pressure on Speakeasy to get you to stop using your connection as per your TOS.
Finally I can build the computer system from Swordfish!
I use their 1.5/384 offering.
The only problem I have is that (and its not even them) the ILEC often works on lines and doesn't give a shit if they break anything serviced by a CLEC. I've had to call a few times when my DSL was out. Of course, you know Speakeasy isn't too quick on the draw since they have to call the CLEC (in my case COVAD) who has to call the ILEC (AT&T) to get a linesman out to check the lines.
I don't know where you live or who your CLEC is, but I have a computer hooked up to my TV that does nothing but run BitTorrent 24/7/365 and I haven't gotten a call. My connection is probably completely saturated in the up direction a good 95% of the time. Perhaps it is your CLEC who is complaining.
There are some experimental settings IIRC that try to search your LAN for peers and use those instead of going to Australia. I don't see how much this would help unless you had a massive LAN (think university). If not, what is the chance that you and your roommate are going to try to download the same file at approximately the same time?
On an ISP scale, you _never_ want to get to the point where you are using 100% of your bandwidth, because the network will slow down to a crawl.
There are 2 ways to fix this problem:
1) Buy more bandwidth (and appropriately raise prices if need be)
2) Be up front about the fact that you'll be throttling P2P apps; don't hide it in section 1, paragraph 2, subparagraph r, clause 7 of the TOS.
Also, ISPs often throttle even when congestion is low. Throttling because you don't want to actually deliver the service you agreed you would is different from throttling because you want to make sure VoIP is working correctly.
I can't speak for the GP, but I think its a tad bit misleading and unethical to advertise your service as "always on, blazing X down/Y up speeds so you can download music, movies, etc in a snap" and then turning around in the TOS and saying something to the effect of "don't actually use your connection or we're going to throttle the hell out of you".
There is one US ISP I know about which doesn't do this crap -- Speakeasy. I use them at the moment, but can't afford them anymore. Its just a shame that we have to pay $50-60/mo to get nothing while people in Europe (and especially S. Korea) get more for less.
The original reason why laws were written down is so that the citizens can know what is legal and illegal. That way they would presumably know the penalties for illegal activity which would serve as a deterrent to crime.
If the laws or contracts are written in anything other than common English that any random person could reasonably understand, then there is no benefit at all to having written them at all. Lawyers exist almost solely because laws are not written in common English, but in Lawyerspeak. Some of the stuff they come up with is harder than reading Perl! They perpetuate their existance by writing laws in Lawyerspeak, which means you likely will need a lawyer for very mundane issues such as taxes (which, they're in with the accountants on increasing the size of the tax codes), landlord issues, etc.
Perhaps if more EULAs were written in common English, more people would read them and refuse to install software that asked for the equivalent of a first-born child.
Its easy to change font settings in Firefox if you so desire.
... Options ... Content ... Fonts & Colors.
Tools
I like to change to 15pt font. You can also change the font at any time with "ctrl +" and "ctrl -".
"handlebars," "vibration," and "chocolate"
Sounds like a fine night at home with the wife!
I agree.
... or something to that effect. ;-)
The only bad part is that when you outlaw alcohol, only outlaws will become alcoholics
I think drinking is one of the single stupidest things anyone could ever do. I also believe the drinking age should be lowered to 18, possibly 16. I also believe you should be able to buy crack at your local store. The problem comes when you think your beliefs regarding morality should be imposed on others.
More correctly, they shouldn't, but do.
I might be able to afford to do that if it didn't mean leaving all but 1 or 2 offices out of 20 or so blank.
I've seen that same font distortion when browsing the web using Firefox under Fedora Core 4. This was in web pages, mind you, not anything that got screwy when I printed or exported to PDF.
The wikipedia article that a sibling poster attempted to link to has the full controversy.
If you assume an incredibly strict interpretation of the Constitution and all relevant statutes, the GP has a point. I don't know the exact statutes regarding how states are admitted into the union, so I can't lend creedence to any beliefs that my home state wasn't such until 1953.
A similar incident happened recently in congress when a bill was passed and signed into law even though both the House and Senate did not pass identical versions of the bill. The courts say so long as the Speaker and Senate leader (not sure if this means pro-tempore, majority, or VP) sign off on the bill, it can be cleared for the president.
Question:
Lets say there are only two candidates in the race, one Republican and one Democrat. Is it then morally acceptable to vote for one or the other, or must I leave that race blank?
You do understand that monied interests writing the bills is tending to be the rule rather than the exception these days, right?
Free and fair elections.
Who's ready for safe fun?
I think we can all agree the Clinton administration might not have been Republican by today's standards, but buy the standards of yesteryear. Even by the outdated 80s standards, they weren't what you'd call a traditional Democratic administration either.
one of the biggest problems currently is the out-of-print but still protected work that will quite literally disintegrate before anyone is legally allowed to make a copy for posterity.
That is one of the major questions that begs to be looked at by Congress. Using a previous example, Windows 1.0 will, if I'm not mistaken, be placed in the public domain in 2080 (1985 + 95). I don't think MS (or whatever derivative corporation exists at the time) will be too big on keeping the source to a 95-year old OS anywhere. Assuming there are no other copies of the source anywhere else, it will not matter if the source lapses into the public domain as no one will be able to get a copy.
Software is especially precarious in this way. I don't need the master recording of a song to be able to distribute and change that song, but if I don't have the source to a program, all I can do is distribute a binary. I think this is a very important and fundamental issue with copyright law that Congress has not fully thought through.