Take it one step further. With Bittorrent you're rarely in a position to transfer the entire file to one person, especially on popular torrents like newly released movies. What you're really doing is uploading small chunks of the film to different people, something that everyone here has no trouble understanding but seems to be a hopelessly complicated concept for much of the older generation.
Now the question is, what does copyright apply to? The entire film or all the little bits that make up the film? I don't think any sane person could claim it's the latter, because practically that would make every sequence of bits someone's intellectual property. Even if we couple that idea with a context how do we legally define the context? The name of the file those bits are a part of? And what happens if I encrypt or compress those bits? What if I mix them with bits from other sources? There's just no way to make this definition work. So if I'm not distributing the film in its entirety, if I'm not even distributing large parts of it to the same people, then I think you could argue that distributing it over Bittorrent doesn't violate any IP laws.
Lets say I have a counterfeit bag, some expensive designer one. If I sell that bag to someone, or even give it to someone, I've distributed counterfeit goods. But if I cut that bag up into hundreds of little pieces of fabric, then distribute those pieces to hundreds of different people, have I broken a law? What if I do this 10 times with 10 bags, over thousands of people, have I distributed 10 bags to people? I don't think so. Even if you could reassemble those pieces into an original bag I still haven't given a bag to any one person.
Even the law itself defines infringement to be "any secondary transmission by a cable system that embodies a performance or a display of a work which is actionable as an act of infringement". How can anyone claim a small segment of the billions of bits that make up a movie embodies it? Without the rest of it, they're nothing. Even if you argue that a person could extract a single frame from them, then a simple encryption pass would turn them into truly random noise. At least, until you have the whole file to decrypt.
Sure it's all technicalities, but isn't that what law is?
Look at it from their perspective, 'good friends and allies' don't launch covert military operations into your country without at least informing you first. Maybe the US had good reasons not to, but it's not very fair to pull something like this then turn around and point fingers when the operation doesn't go quite as planned.
Maybe it really does have something to do with a breach of the dev network, if such a thing even exists. If they throw PSN back online without properly patching this hole they're just opening it up to a fresh attack.
It's not even a ruling, it's a 'suggestion' from a government consumer rights watchdog that has no legal power by itself. Courts in Finland will take it into consideration, but nothing's been legally decided yet.
I do think death is being overused, especially the kind mentioned in TFA where the presumably dead character makes an inevitable return with some half backed story about how he survived. Case in point, SGU when Rush was left on the planet. SGU when the team on the planet was left behind. SGU when Telford was left behind on the alien ship. SGU when... well you get the picture.
But more than anything I hate the sheer amount of garbage on TV these days. 5 different shows about pawn shops is 5 too many. Well, at least having nothing interesting on TV has given me a new appreciation for spending my free time on other things. I guess that's worth something...
Reprocess it and use it again. In fact there are reactor designs that breed Pu-239 from depleted uranium as part of their normal operations. That Pu-239 is separated on site and simply put back into the reactor, meaning the reactor as a whole produces more nuclear fuel than it uses. The extra fuel is simply put into non-breeder reactors at the same plant.
See all of these stereotypical problems have been solved years ago. The only things keeping us from putting those solutions into practice is public perception and cost. I'd love to see all these old first generation nuclear plants dismantled and replaced with generation III or IV designs, but no, we've decided to stick with coal and wait for that magical solution that's always "less than 10 years away".
Once they perfect railguns too they can start selling off the obsolete weapons to some developing countries. Makes a great excuse for another preemptive war; keep that military budget humming along!
Pick up the gun.
I don't want to mister, you'll shoot me. ...pick up the gun.
I.. I don't want no trouble mister...
Pick it up...
BANG BANG BANG
You all saw it, he had a gun.
Wind and solar provide variable power. Which is fine so long as you have sources of continuous power running in the background. There's really only a few possibilities for this backbone; fossil fuels, hydro, geothermal and nuclear. Hydro and geothermal are very location-sensitive, fossil fuels are running out and create a lot of pollution, nuclear is expensive. But you gotta pick one, so which will it be?
Thanks to public perception, we're still picking fossil fuels, but one day relatively soon nuclear will become the cheaper option. It's inevitable that the price of fossil fuels will continue to rise as supply dwindles and demand grows. Eventually we'll have to make the switch to another continuous source of power, maybe fusion will show up in time, but somehow I doubt it.
Buy a barge, fill it up, float it to the middle of the Pacific and scuttle the ship. I think the international community can make an exception this time, all things considered. Other 'viable technical solutions' carry their own risk, and those risks will be continuous over the next 5 years or more, near population centers instead of out in the middle of the ocean.
I'd wager none, it would take all of 2 minutes to fill one up with a jerrycan and drive it off the track. I believe that was the point, and it's a valid one isn't it?
It's happening here in Germany too. The CDU just lost a state in the west (Baden-Württemberg) for the first time in 58 years, and they lost it basically to the Green Party which managed to triple their support because of what happened in Japan. Not to mention the anti-nuclear protests going on in cities across the country.
Speaking to people around me it's clear very few people actually know anything about nuclear power, outside of what they pick up in the 6 o'clock news. Most have no idea that there's even more than one type of reactor, much less that there's some pretty significant safety differences between them. It just amazes me that in an age where nicely summarized information on any topic is just a few clicks away people don't at least invest one or two hours of their lives to educate themselves before they form an opinion on something. If someone knows even just a little about pebble bed reactors, nuclear reprocessing, molten salt reactors, safety deficiencies in the old Mark I light water reactors at Fukushima etc, and they're still against nuclear power then I can respect that. Just make an effort, that's not too much to ask is it?
I think they're probably looking ahead too. If it's ok to have an app that warns about DUI checkpoints, why not one that warns you about speed traps? Why not one that ties into your phone's GPS and automatically fires off an audio alert when you're nearing a photo radar van that someone else tagged? Apps like this could be made very user friendly, and police departments could stand to lose a lot of money to them.
For anyone who doesn't already know about it, I'm sure there will be spectacular pictures of the auroras on SpaceWeather as the CME hits us over the next couple of days.
That's pretty neat and all, but who's liable for damages when a self driving car causes an accident? Obviously the insurance should cover this, but insurance is assigned to persons. Do my rates go up if my self-driving car decides to glitch out and rear end somebody? If so, then I really do have to pay attention to what's going on, and we end up with a glorified cruise control system that's even more likely to put you to sleep, because now there's no interaction at all. If I'm not liable then who is?
Almost as good as the fact that the PATRIOT act was extended under the "Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act", a topic that has absolutely nothing to do with the PATRIOT act in the first place.
The only problem with this approach is it tends to generate a lot of bad publicity for the game too. Suddenly the internet is full of first hand accounts of how buggy and unstable your game is, which might well cause other people to decide not to buy it. You could end up losing more sales than you gain.
I suppose you could have the game throw up some kind of anti-piracy notice before crashing out, so people at least know it's related to the fact that they pirated it. But this might also make it easier for crackers to disable the checks, since they now have a common point from which to backtrack through the program to find the triggers.
Anyway, if there is any time in your life where you can afford to be a snotty, spoiled, idealistic person rebelling against stuff, it's when you're a snotty little teen (and if you think these guys are even mostly teens, I think you're wrong). As soon as you're of age to be truly held accountable or persecuted and you have responsibilities and things to lose (your physical freedom, access to your cash, your home, your family, your job, your reputation, etc) -- you start falling into line. Idealism is a young man's game.
This is called maturity. I didn't realize this when I was young. I thought a big part of maturity was caring enough and having the will to change things for the better. Boy was I wrong. We all like to pretend it's not like this, but the truth is you're considered mature when you've given in to the status quo. You've accepted the world for what it is, realized there's not a damn thing you can do about it and decided to just try to make the best of it for yourself and your family.
It's sad really. I think we could all do with a little more of those 'immature' rebellious tendencies we had when we were going through "that phase" as teenagers. But without millions of others standing by your side, ready to do the same, you just end up making life difficult for yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
Take it one step further. With Bittorrent you're rarely in a position to transfer the entire file to one person, especially on popular torrents like newly released movies. What you're really doing is uploading small chunks of the film to different people, something that everyone here has no trouble understanding but seems to be a hopelessly complicated concept for much of the older generation.
Now the question is, what does copyright apply to? The entire film or all the little bits that make up the film? I don't think any sane person could claim it's the latter, because practically that would make every sequence of bits someone's intellectual property. Even if we couple that idea with a context how do we legally define the context? The name of the file those bits are a part of? And what happens if I encrypt or compress those bits? What if I mix them with bits from other sources? There's just no way to make this definition work. So if I'm not distributing the film in its entirety, if I'm not even distributing large parts of it to the same people, then I think you could argue that distributing it over Bittorrent doesn't violate any IP laws.
Lets say I have a counterfeit bag, some expensive designer one. If I sell that bag to someone, or even give it to someone, I've distributed counterfeit goods. But if I cut that bag up into hundreds of little pieces of fabric, then distribute those pieces to hundreds of different people, have I broken a law? What if I do this 10 times with 10 bags, over thousands of people, have I distributed 10 bags to people? I don't think so. Even if you could reassemble those pieces into an original bag I still haven't given a bag to any one person.
Even the law itself defines infringement to be "any secondary transmission by a cable system that embodies a performance or a display of a work which is actionable as an act of infringement". How can anyone claim a small segment of the billions of bits that make up a movie embodies it? Without the rest of it, they're nothing. Even if you argue that a person could extract a single frame from them, then a simple encryption pass would turn them into truly random noise. At least, until you have the whole file to decrypt.
Sure it's all technicalities, but isn't that what law is?
Look at it from their perspective, 'good friends and allies' don't launch covert military operations into your country without at least informing you first. Maybe the US had good reasons not to, but it's not very fair to pull something like this then turn around and point fingers when the operation doesn't go quite as planned.
Maybe it really does have something to do with a breach of the dev network, if such a thing even exists. If they throw PSN back online without properly patching this hole they're just opening it up to a fresh attack.
It's not even a ruling, it's a 'suggestion' from a government consumer rights watchdog that has no legal power by itself. Courts in Finland will take it into consideration, but nothing's been legally decided yet.
I do think death is being overused, especially the kind mentioned in TFA where the presumably dead character makes an inevitable return with some half backed story about how he survived. Case in point, SGU when Rush was left on the planet. SGU when the team on the planet was left behind. SGU when Telford was left behind on the alien ship. SGU when... well you get the picture.
But more than anything I hate the sheer amount of garbage on TV these days. 5 different shows about pawn shops is 5 too many. Well, at least having nothing interesting on TV has given me a new appreciation for spending my free time on other things. I guess that's worth something...
Reprocess it and use it again. In fact there are reactor designs that breed Pu-239 from depleted uranium as part of their normal operations. That Pu-239 is separated on site and simply put back into the reactor, meaning the reactor as a whole produces more nuclear fuel than it uses. The extra fuel is simply put into non-breeder reactors at the same plant.
See all of these stereotypical problems have been solved years ago. The only things keeping us from putting those solutions into practice is public perception and cost. I'd love to see all these old first generation nuclear plants dismantled and replaced with generation III or IV designs, but no, we've decided to stick with coal and wait for that magical solution that's always "less than 10 years away".
So how many terrorists have these cameras caught?
Once they perfect railguns too they can start selling off the obsolete weapons to some developing countries. Makes a great excuse for another preemptive war; keep that military budget humming along!
...pick up the gun.
Pick up the gun.
I don't want to mister, you'll shoot me.
I.. I don't want no trouble mister...
Pick it up...
BANG BANG BANG
You all saw it, he had a gun.
Wind and solar provide variable power. Which is fine so long as you have sources of continuous power running in the background. There's really only a few possibilities for this backbone; fossil fuels, hydro, geothermal and nuclear. Hydro and geothermal are very location-sensitive, fossil fuels are running out and create a lot of pollution, nuclear is expensive. But you gotta pick one, so which will it be?
Thanks to public perception, we're still picking fossil fuels, but one day relatively soon nuclear will become the cheaper option. It's inevitable that the price of fossil fuels will continue to rise as supply dwindles and demand grows. Eventually we'll have to make the switch to another continuous source of power, maybe fusion will show up in time, but somehow I doubt it.
Buy a barge, fill it up, float it to the middle of the Pacific and scuttle the ship. I think the international community can make an exception this time, all things considered. Other 'viable technical solutions' carry their own risk, and those risks will be continuous over the next 5 years or more, near population centers instead of out in the middle of the ocean.
This string of puns is off to a rocky start...
I'm not so sure, I think we should head over to our correspondent Some Fucking Guy to find out what the Internet thinks about this, Some?
I'd wager none, it would take all of 2 minutes to fill one up with a jerrycan and drive it off the track. I believe that was the point, and it's a valid one isn't it?
Might be worth nothing that the UK has already rejected this idea.
It's happening here in Germany too. The CDU just lost a state in the west (Baden-Württemberg) for the first time in 58 years, and they lost it basically to the Green Party which managed to triple their support because of what happened in Japan. Not to mention the anti-nuclear protests going on in cities across the country.
Speaking to people around me it's clear very few people actually know anything about nuclear power, outside of what they pick up in the 6 o'clock news. Most have no idea that there's even more than one type of reactor, much less that there's some pretty significant safety differences between them. It just amazes me that in an age where nicely summarized information on any topic is just a few clicks away people don't at least invest one or two hours of their lives to educate themselves before they form an opinion on something. If someone knows even just a little about pebble bed reactors, nuclear reprocessing, molten salt reactors, safety deficiencies in the old Mark I light water reactors at Fukushima etc, and they're still against nuclear power then I can respect that. Just make an effort, that's not too much to ask is it?
I think they're probably looking ahead too. If it's ok to have an app that warns about DUI checkpoints, why not one that warns you about speed traps? Why not one that ties into your phone's GPS and automatically fires off an audio alert when you're nearing a photo radar van that someone else tagged? Apps like this could be made very user friendly, and police departments could stand to lose a lot of money to them.
I had to go look up "money laundering" in a dictionary...
For anyone who doesn't already know about it, I'm sure there will be spectacular pictures of the auroras on SpaceWeather as the CME hits us over the next couple of days.
God how I miss Stage6...
That's pretty neat and all, but who's liable for damages when a self driving car causes an accident? Obviously the insurance should cover this, but insurance is assigned to persons. Do my rates go up if my self-driving car decides to glitch out and rear end somebody? If so, then I really do have to pay attention to what's going on, and we end up with a glorified cruise control system that's even more likely to put you to sleep, because now there's no interaction at all. If I'm not liable then who is?
Almost as good as the fact that the PATRIOT act was extended under the "Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act", a topic that has absolutely nothing to do with the PATRIOT act in the first place.
Fucking hilarious really.
The only problem with this approach is it tends to generate a lot of bad publicity for the game too. Suddenly the internet is full of first hand accounts of how buggy and unstable your game is, which might well cause other people to decide not to buy it. You could end up losing more sales than you gain.
I suppose you could have the game throw up some kind of anti-piracy notice before crashing out, so people at least know it's related to the fact that they pirated it. But this might also make it easier for crackers to disable the checks, since they now have a common point from which to backtrack through the program to find the triggers.
YEAH! I bet that justice system BURNS don't it guys? Oh that justice system burnnns!
This is called maturity. I didn't realize this when I was young. I thought a big part of maturity was caring enough and having the will to change things for the better. Boy was I wrong. We all like to pretend it's not like this, but the truth is you're considered mature when you've given in to the status quo. You've accepted the world for what it is, realized there's not a damn thing you can do about it and decided to just try to make the best of it for yourself and your family.
It's sad really. I think we could all do with a little more of those 'immature' rebellious tendencies we had when we were going through "that phase" as teenagers. But without millions of others standing by your side, ready to do the same, you just end up making life difficult for yourself.