Sooner or later India and China will have a larger say in global economics, and their positions on these topics will carry more weight.
Which is exactly why the US is so gung-ho about this stuff.
The sooner they can convert the governments of the emerging powers to the stupid side, the stronger the protection of the MAFIAA's business model will be when those countries do dominate the world market.
Unlike things like the "do not fly" list(s) where you aren't (officially) allowed to know if your name is on the list or not -- at least if the information is commercially available you can buy it yourself and find out what big brother knows (and presumably doesn't know) about you.
You can also use that info to judge the effectiveness of whatever disinformation you use to protect yourself. For example, a good friend of mine had a fake id made up with her real name. But it had a bogus age (younger than her real age, she is a woman after all), bogus address and bogus SS# (or maybe DL# I forget). She was tired of all the clubs that swipe the magstripe to "check id" when in fact they are "swiping" your personal information.
This use had the unexpected side-effect of creating a completely bogus "identical twin" in a surprisingly large number of these commercial databases with the same name and same town, but otherwise completely different info. In some databases like the address lookups on yahoo and other places, her "twin" is the only entry - her real info isn't there. At the very least, this twin should confuse any stalkers (she's had a few before this development).
I think you and I are in agreement -- I say that this "neo-patronage" can only work for small niches. You say it is apart from the mainstream channels. Sounds like two sides of the same coin.
Sky Press defines Neo-Patronage as, "an honor/trust based system of financial support for an artist that comes from the artist's collective audience, rather than a single individual or organization. The sum of all patron contributions becomes the means and incentive for the artist to continue his or her work."
I think they have the same problem that the MAFIAA has (love that name for the copyright cartels, which I just recently saw here on./) - they are both denying fundamental aspects of human nature.
The MAFIAA want to deny the fundamental urge of people to "share cool stuff" - and that the internet makes sharing so easy and so ridiculously cheap that everyone can share.
Sky Press are denying both the fundamental urge of people to "get stuff for free" and to "get good value for their money."
Sky Press appears to believe that art, or ultimately content of any sort, should be a charitable action. The artist gives away the fruits of his labor with no strings attached and the audience gives money to the artist with no strings attached.
I just don't see that working beyond very small, fairly insular, niches. I believe that ultimately such a model will result in a "neo-tragedy-of-the-commons" where lots of people take copies of the artist's work, but all, or almost all, will rely on "the other guy" to give money in support of the artists further work. Ultimately there won't be enough "other guys" to make the effort worthwhile - that's simply human nature - people don't like to pay for something they've already received for free.
Sky Press criticizes the original system of patronage for exercising too much control over the artist's work. If you believe that art has no measurable value, then Sky Press would be right. But as long as an artist expects to be able to support himself through his works, then they need to have value to someone who is willing to pay him for the creation of those works.
That is not to say that an artist must fully obey the wishes of his audience - but he must at least take direction from the audience as to what projects he should undertake if he wants a reasonable expectation of getting paid. That's human nature -- few people can afford, and even less can accept the concept of simply giving away money to someone because he might or might not create something that might or might not be reasonably entertaining.
Would appear that the writer of the story does what writers do best, not research facts. Appears that they're still using the same old sorry BS of CD sales dropped 30% in whatever year it was. When in fact, what has been shown is that it was singles that dropped ( you know, the things you can't find any more, because people aren't willing to pay 5 dollars for 1 song on a CD ), during that year CD sales actually increased.
So tell him he got it wrong - his web page with email address is at:
lobbying is just another word for legalised bribery democracy has nothing to do with it
Nor does "freedom of speech" - on which grounds lobbying + campaign contributions are usually defended. Bribery of a public official is a crime which should trump any claims to freedom of speech, but somehow in our twisted world, does not.
1680x1050 is horrible resolution for 20" of screen space, but I guess if you value size more than pixels, then this is the laptop for you. I would guess that for some users, particularly gamers, raw pixel resolution may not be your highest priority.
Indeed. It isn't size that matters - its what you do with it that counts.
Now take a look at the guy in the picture in TFA. This guy could jump in with a sidearm and a first aid kit, maybe adding a cell phone if he wanted to get froggy.
You might want to read the article instead of just looking at the pretty pictures. They claim that up to 200lbs of gear can be stowed in the wing itself.
Over the years, since the early days of CD-Rs to modern DVD-+R, there has been on constant - Taiyo Yuden. Their quality has always been top-notch. The worst that has happend with them has been counterfeiting - so if you can trust the merchant selling you TY discs is selling legitimate product, you can trust that you are getting media of the highest quality.
What you can also count on with TY is that you will pay a premium. But compared to some of the 'name' brands like Sony, or Memorex, etc (some of whom often - but not always - produce batches that are just rebranded TY's) it may still be cheaper to buy the spindles of TY's.
For me, the premium of 10-20 cents per disc is well worth it - I never worry about the stability or longevity of the burns I make with TY media.
So if you wanted to mess up the data obtained from these sites, you would need a HUGE movement.
Well - if so many people spontaneously decided to lie to the exit pollers about voting for Bush in the last presidential election as to so thoroughly skew the predicted results, it can't be that hard to spoof a few website demographic collectors.
Forget the Hyatt - look at the Sampoong Department Store collapse. In Seoul in the summer of 1995 over 500 people were killed. No surprise - it was due to a combination of last minute changes (that the original construction firm refused to make) and a general abrogation of responsibility all around (building inspectors were bribed, etc).
My wife, an agnostic like myself, wonders if there is some value in most people having Religion in order to hold the more selfish, destructive behaviors in check.
George Washington thought so, in his Farewell Address he said:
Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
It is pretty well established that Washington himself was at least a Deist, if not agnostic to the point of soft atheism.
(As an aside, here is something very interesting - as I was looking for the exact quote to cut-n-paste into this message, I ran across an article by Michael Novak slamming the ACLU and attempting to justify it with the above quotation from George Washington. Except, Novak misquoted Washington in a fashion that hides Washington's clearly judgemental opinion of the type of people who 'need' religion.)
You can make a computer do many things but if it's not your computer that can end with computer trespassing charges. In this case attempting to cause the computer to accept a transaction the computer's owner would not agree to is hacking.
I think that this is an interesting angle on the situation and am surprised no one else responded.
In this case, my take is that design of the auction system explicitly incorporates the user's computer because it expects that it can give the user's computer a URL and that it will get back the same URL without modification. The server does not do any/enough sanity checking on the URL, instead implicitly trusting that the user's computer will behave as would a computer that was under control of the server.
Since the system has incorporated (co-opted?) the user's computer, I argue that if the user's computer is made to behave other than how the system's programmer expected, that is not tresspassing because while it does affect the system, it is only the user's computer that has been modified.
Although still quite poor, the closest analogy to the real world that I can think of would be two plots of land, each with their own oil wells that ultimately tap into the same underground resevoir of oil - and no special mineral rights contract between the two landowners. If one guy pumps the resevoir dry, it is TS for the other guy.
If I, by mistake, offer to pay $1000 for a Billy Joel CD, when really I left out the decimal point and meant to offer $10.00, there is no obligation for me to actually pay that much money for something clearly worth much less.
The difference here is that not only did you offer to pay $1000, you DID pay $1000. It's a lot harder to get your money back after the fact than it is to simply refuse to hand it over in the first place.
changing price tags at Home Depot and then being like "well, the price tags come off, so you need to sell me this $1299 BBQ for $199."
Seems more like taking the the price tags off, then going to the cashier and saying - "I think this should cost $199 - do you agree?" and the cashier agrees, rings it up and lets you leave with the BBQ. Then a week later Home Depot comes by your house and tries to reposses the BBQ.
It takes two to tango, in this case the seller agreed to the selling price. They have a responsibility to refuse transactions that they don't want to accept. Saying that the sale was automated and thus not subjected to sanity checks ought not be a sufficient defense.
If you want the benefits of automated sales without the risks, it ought to be up to the seller to implement effective precautions. No e-commerce developer with even half a claim to competence would allow the price of a product to be determined by the contents of the URL submitted to the webserver - unless they wanted to on purpose (c.f. cd-wow, they've got a bunch of different URL's to their site and depending on which one you use, you'll see variations of up to a couple of dollars in their prices).
Much like a warrant to search a physical premises, having the police have the power to force you to expose your private data is perfectly reasonable, so long as it is similarly regulated by the courts.
Not in the US, where we suppossedly have the right against self-incrimination. If the key is written down somewhere, they can get a warrant to find it. But compelling testimony that will lead to incrimination is not allowed. Just as a murder defendent can not be compelled to disclose the location of the body, nor can someone be compelled to disclose the password to decrypt "the body."
You should see HDTV commercials. I know it sounds stupid, but I really don't mind watching them that much. HDTV showing all the pointless nature scenes in drug commercials are suddenly not so bad.
Spoken like a true HDTV newbie.
I was like that once. When I first got HD, I would watch anything - as long as it was in hi-def. Even the most moronic sitcoms were great to watch if they were in hi-def.
But that effect wore off after about 9 months. Eventually it wears off for everybody, it will for you too.
Great, thank's for pointing that out. Although irrelevant to the discussion at hand, I'm sure no one knew that and so we are all better off for your participation.
If it was all GPL we wouldn't have to pay $349 for a copy of RHEL, would we?
The GPL isn't about getting stuff for free, it is about getting the source code for whatever software you purchase. Just because software is GPL'd does not mean any joe and his bro have a right to get a copy. They only have a right to get a copy of the source if they are somehow able to put their hands on a binary.
That $349 doesn't just get you the support they offer, but also the actual copy of the product. Unless you know of some other way to get it...
1) CentOS 2) If you know someone who has the RedHat discs, he is free to give you a copy provided he does not give you a copy of the redhat trademarks.
Slashdot Mirror
Sooner or later India and China will have a larger say in global economics, and their positions on these topics will carry more weight.
Which is exactly why the US is so gung-ho about this stuff.
The sooner they can convert the governments of the emerging powers to the stupid side, the stronger the protection of the MAFIAA's business model will be when those countries do dominate the world market.
Unlike things like the "do not fly" list(s) where you aren't (officially) allowed to know if your name is on the list or not -- at least if the information is commercially available you can buy it yourself and find out what big brother knows (and presumably doesn't know) about you.
You can also use that info to judge the effectiveness of whatever disinformation you use to protect yourself. For example, a good friend of mine had a fake id made up with her real name. But it had a bogus age (younger than her real age, she is a woman after all), bogus address and bogus SS# (or maybe DL# I forget). She was tired of all the clubs that swipe the magstripe to "check id" when in fact they are "swiping" your personal information.
This use had the unexpected side-effect of creating a completely bogus "identical twin" in a surprisingly large number of these commercial databases with the same name and same town, but otherwise completely different info. In some databases like the address lookups on yahoo and other places, her "twin" is the only entry - her real info isn't there. At the very least, this twin should confuse any stalkers (she's had a few before this development).
Only 5%? Sounds like they got a very good deal. Most will add 20% to 33%.
Indeed. For example, automobile repair shops routinely mark-up the hardware they install by 50-100%
I think you and I are in agreement -- I say that this "neo-patronage" can only work for small niches. You say it is apart from the mainstream channels. Sounds like two sides of the same coin.
Sky Press defines Neo-Patronage as, "an honor/trust based system of financial support for an artist that comes from the artist's collective audience, rather than a single individual or organization. The sum of all patron contributions becomes the means and incentive for the artist to continue his or her work."
./) - they are both denying fundamental aspects of human nature.
I think they have the same problem that the MAFIAA has (love that name for the copyright cartels, which I just recently saw here on
The MAFIAA want to deny the fundamental urge of people to "share cool stuff" - and that the internet makes sharing so easy and so ridiculously cheap that everyone can share.
Sky Press are denying both the fundamental urge of people to "get stuff for free" and to "get good value for their money."
Sky Press appears to believe that art, or ultimately content of any sort, should be a charitable action. The artist gives away the fruits of his labor with no strings attached and the audience gives money to the artist with no strings attached.
I just don't see that working beyond very small, fairly insular, niches. I believe that ultimately such a model will result in a "neo-tragedy-of-the-commons" where lots of people take copies of the artist's work, but all, or almost all, will rely on "the other guy" to give money in support of the artists further work. Ultimately there won't be enough "other guys" to make the effort worthwhile - that's simply human nature - people don't like to pay for something they've already received for free.
Sky Press criticizes the original system of patronage for exercising too much control over the artist's work. If you believe that art has no measurable value, then Sky Press would be right. But as long as an artist expects to be able to support himself through his works, then they need to have value to someone who is willing to pay him for the creation of those works.
That is not to say that an artist must fully obey the wishes of his audience - but he must at least take direction from the audience as to what projects he should undertake if he wants a reasonable expectation of getting paid. That's human nature -- few people can afford, and even less can accept the concept of simply giving away money to someone because he might or might not create something that might or might not be reasonably entertaining.
It's not the cafffffffffffffffeine. Definitely notttttttt the caffeiiine.
Would appear that the writer of the story does what writers do best, not research facts. Appears that they're still using the same old sorry BS of CD sales dropped 30% in whatever year it was. When in fact, what has been shown is that it was singles that dropped ( you know, the things you can't find any more, because people aren't willing to pay 5 dollars for 1 song on a CD ), during that year CD sales actually increased.
x .html
So tell him he got it wrong - his web page with email address is at:
http://jeffersongraham0.tripod.com/jeffville/inde
lobbying is just another word for legalised bribery
democracy has nothing to do with it
Nor does "freedom of speech" - on which grounds lobbying + campaign contributions are usually defended. Bribery of a public official is a crime which should trump any claims to freedom of speech, but somehow in our twisted world, does not.
Instead, you have to wait around for someone with skill to get that particular itch.
Or for someone with the bucks to pay someone to scratch their itch.
Time - not pun on 40. Geeze.
1680x1050 is horrible resolution for 20" of screen space, but I guess if you value size more than pixels, then this is the laptop for you. I would guess that for some users, particularly gamers, raw pixel resolution may not be your highest priority.
Indeed. It isn't size that matters - its what you do with it that counts.
Now take a look at the guy in the picture in TFA. This guy could jump in with a sidearm and a first aid kit, maybe adding a cell phone if he wanted to get froggy.
You might want to read the article instead of just looking at the pretty pictures.
They claim that up to 200lbs of gear can be stowed in the wing itself.
Over the years, since the early days of CD-Rs to modern DVD-+R, there has been on constant - Taiyo Yuden. Their quality has always been top-notch. The worst that has happend with them has been counterfeiting - so if you can trust the merchant selling you TY discs is selling legitimate product, you can trust that you are getting media of the highest quality.
What you can also count on with TY is that you will pay a premium. But compared to some of the 'name' brands like Sony, or Memorex, etc (some of whom often - but not always - produce batches that are just rebranded TY's) it may still be cheaper to buy the spindles of TY's.
For me, the premium of 10-20 cents per disc is well worth it - I never worry about the stability or longevity of the burns I make with TY media.
So if you wanted to mess up the data obtained from these sites, you would need a HUGE movement.
Well - if so many people spontaneously decided to lie to the exit pollers about voting for Bush in the last presidential election as to so thoroughly skew the predicted results, it can't be that hard to spoof a few website demographic collectors.
Forget the Hyatt - look at the Sampoong Department Store collapse. In Seoul in the summer of 1995 over 500 people were killed. No surprise - it was due to a combination of last minute changes (that the original construction firm refused to make) and a general abrogation of responsibility all around (building inspectors were bribed, etc).
George Washington thought so, in his Farewell Address he said:
It is pretty well established that Washington himself was at least a Deist, if not agnostic to the point of soft atheism.(As an aside, here is something very interesting - as I was looking for the exact quote to cut-n-paste into this message, I ran across an article by Michael Novak slamming the ACLU and attempting to justify it with the above quotation from George Washington. Except, Novak misquoted Washington in a fashion that hides Washington's clearly judgemental opinion of the type of people who 'need' religion.)
You can make a computer do many things but if it's not your computer that can end with computer trespassing charges. In this case attempting to cause the computer to accept a transaction the computer's owner would not agree to is hacking.
I think that this is an interesting angle on the situation and am surprised no one else responded.
In this case, my take is that design of the auction system explicitly incorporates the user's computer because it expects that it can give the user's computer a URL and that it will get back the same URL without modification. The server does not do any/enough sanity checking on the URL, instead implicitly trusting that the user's computer will behave as would a computer that was under control of the server.
Since the system has incorporated (co-opted?) the user's computer, I argue that if the user's computer is made to behave other than how the system's programmer expected, that is not tresspassing because while it does affect the system, it is only the user's computer that has been modified.
Although still quite poor, the closest analogy to the real world that I can think of would be two plots of land, each with their own oil wells that ultimately tap into the same underground resevoir of oil - and no special mineral rights contract between the two landowners. If one guy pumps the resevoir dry, it is TS for the other guy.
If I, by mistake, offer to pay $1000 for a Billy Joel CD, when really I left out the decimal point and meant to offer $10.00, there is no obligation for me to actually pay that much money for something clearly worth much less.
The difference here is that not only did you offer to pay $1000, you DID pay $1000. It's a lot harder to get your money back after the fact than it is to simply refuse to hand it over in the first place.
changing price tags at Home Depot and then being like "well, the price tags come off, so you need to sell me this $1299 BBQ for $199."
Seems more like taking the the price tags off, then going to the cashier and saying - "I think this should cost $199 - do you agree?" and the cashier agrees, rings it up and lets you leave with the BBQ. Then a week later Home Depot comes by your house and tries to reposses the BBQ.
It takes two to tango, in this case the seller agreed to the selling price. They have a responsibility to refuse transactions that they don't want to accept. Saying that the sale was automated and thus not subjected to sanity checks ought not be a sufficient defense.
If you want the benefits of automated sales without the risks, it ought to be up to the seller to implement effective precautions. No e-commerce developer with even half a claim to competence would allow the price of a product to be determined by the contents of the URL submitted to the webserver - unless they wanted to on purpose (c.f. cd-wow, they've got a bunch of different URL's to their site and depending on which one you use, you'll see variations of up to a couple of dollars in their prices).
Much like a warrant to search a physical premises, having the police have the power to force you to expose your private data is perfectly reasonable, so long as it is similarly regulated by the courts.
Not in the US, where we suppossedly have the right against self-incrimination. If the key is written down somewhere, they can get a warrant to find it. But compelling testimony that will lead to incrimination is not allowed. Just as a murder defendent can not be compelled to disclose the location of the body, nor can someone be compelled to disclose the password to decrypt "the body."
You should see HDTV commercials. I know it sounds stupid, but I really don't mind watching them that much. HDTV showing all the pointless nature scenes in drug commercials are suddenly not so bad.
Spoken like a true HDTV newbie.
I was like that once. When I first got HD, I would watch anything - as long as it was in hi-def. Even the most moronic sitcoms were great to watch if they were in hi-def.
But that effect wore off after about 9 months. Eventually it wears off for everybody, it will for you too.
What kinds of schemes might people think up if they're free from any oversight whatsoever?
Gerrymandering.
They want content providers to subsidize their customers, so they can charge less than the service they're providing actually costs them.
And thus make the ISP's own content relatively cheaper since they do not have to pay the same fees that non-ISP content providers would.
Sounds like anti-competitive behaviour and abuse of monopoly control to me.
Great, thank's for pointing that out. Although irrelevant to the discussion at hand, I'm sure no one knew that and so we are all better off for your participation.
Not.
If it was all GPL we wouldn't have to pay $349 for a copy of RHEL, would we?
The GPL isn't about getting stuff for free, it is about getting the source code for whatever software you purchase. Just because software is GPL'd does not mean any joe and his bro have a right to get a copy. They only have a right to get a copy of the source if they are somehow able to put their hands on a binary.
That $349 doesn't just get you the support they offer, but also the actual copy of the product. Unless you know of some other way to get it...
1) CentOS
2) If you know someone who has the RedHat discs, he is free to give you a copy provided he does not give you a copy of the redhat trademarks.