Considering how the US government acts, I'd imagine that there's a good case for calling it a terrorist organisation... Good news! It's now illegal to pay taxes in the US!!;)
This is not about breaking the law. The law says you can "opt out" of going through the x-ray scanner and be hand searched. The hand search is very time and labor intensive so it might slow down the lines at the airport on the busiest flying day of the year.
It's called a protest.
I know that, and you know that, but I doubt very much that the government would be overly bothered by the fact.
The government want opt-outs to be as humiliating as possible. If they were to say something along the lines of "law abiding citizens wouldn't want to bring our transport system grinding to a halt", they can imply that protesters are no better than criminals.
Am I cynical to think that the government will want to paint this as inciting an act of terrorism?* I'm just hoping that Joe Public isn't that stupid. Yet.
* I imagine that such a protest will cause the system to slow to a crawl, harming the law abiding citizen's ability to travel or somesuch.
From the reports I've been reading, it wasn't even a bomb. To be fair, we're probably overdue for the next power grab against our rights, and they usually seem to start with a good scare...
In this case, I'd be more worried about the companies that are transmitting sensitive information over unsecured wireless networks than I am about Google. If Google can pick up such information by accident, then less trustworthy types can probably pick up similar information intentionally. Unfortunately I expect that such companies are going to get off with no repercussions as everyone gets distracted by going after Google.
How about: *Proposal* in UK To Track All Browsing, Email, and Phone Calls?
I guess it depends how cynical you are about the law-making process. Whilst I'm yet to make my mind up on the current government, I can definitely see why some people make the jump to thinking that this is as good as done. It's not as if the previous government particularly cared about our rights after all.
I find a car analogy comes in handy at times like these;)
Something recently broke inside the latch on my glovebox recently. Nissan couldn't replace the part that broke, so I managed a fix by replacing the part with some appropriately bent wire and superglue.
This would be a hack using available resources.
Maybe we should ban satellites from taking pictures too. I mean, some of them images contain images of me, my house, and my car. This should also include private satellite images, as if anything I trust the private hoarding of images by corporate or government bodies much more damaging than a publicly available resource.
Or we could just accept that there shouldn't be a problem with images of public space in the first place...
Combine this with the government's need to keep everyone afraid. Now they can arrest almost anyone as a terrorist. And those few people that don't buy into the government hype and don't smell of fear? They obviously don't listen to Big Brother, so they must be terrorists too!
Well, you have to be 13 to have a Facebook account. They have Facebook accounts. So they must be 13, and hence teenagers, even if they're only 10 and 12. Seems perfectly clear to me.
I like to be modded up as much as the next person, but Insightful? Jeez, I was trying for Funny.
That's ok, you were then modded Funny for being insightful into your mods.
Personally, I'm still waiting for a +5 Cynical.
If the software is controlling a UAV, and the UAV subsequently crashes and is recovered by the enemy, does this count as distributing the the modified binaries?;)
I strive for accuracy. The licence may appear to be a tax, and have many things in common with it, but from a legal point of view, it is different in much the same way as the BBC is a public body, not a governmental body. Don't pay it and you won't be charged with tax evasion. You will be charged with not paying your TV licence. It's remarkably similar, but calling it a tax is technically incorrect.
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and is genetically identical to a duck, it's not a duck if you decide to call it something else?
There's *no difference* because it happens to be that songs can be copied for free. All that means is a transaction cost has been eliminated.
Then why are you saying that there should be a difference?
If you make and sell hammers for a living, your customers give you money, they get a hammer, and the trade is done. If they want to make changes to the hammer, that's up to them. If they want to make another identical hammer for themselves, that's their own choice. If you want to make more money, you make and sell more hammers. If you want to have money for when you're too old to make hammers, you save it whilst you can.
You on the other hand, are arguing that songs should be treated differently, purely because they're easier to copy. It would be as if the hammer-maker only made the first hammer, went around forbidding anyone else to make hammers, and kept demanding that everyone should keep paying them for that first hammer forever and ever.
The problem is that the song belongs to the public.
Copyright is basically a trade whereby a person doesn't keep their story/song/etc locked up in their head, and instead releases it to the public. In return, the artist is allowed a monopoly over the reproduction of said story/song/etc for a limited period.
At best, the artists in question are attempting a breach of contract by taking the monopoly part of the trade, and then failing to accept the release of the art into the public domain. It's generally accecpt that it's unacceptable to steal in such a way, so why should we let these artists get away with such theft?
Nah, give them the exact same deal.
Give them a single copy of the same video file that has been given to the download stores. Then require them to spend money on putting the equipment in place to distribute said file, applying the DRM to the file as necessary. Then make them pay for every time someone uses the service. The system I'm envisaging is one where a customer can walk in with a USB key, plug it in, buy the movie, and have it transfered to their key.
Now Wal-Mart/Target are getting the same deal as the download stores. They've been required to spend money on technology and equipment in order to offer the same product as the download stores. And guess what, they're not making any money from it. All because a couple of meters away there's the full product (with none of the messing around) for a couple of dollars more.
As far as I can tell, a big part of the reason for having an iPod is meant to be because it looks stylish. Basically, the whole point is for it to be seen. If you're going to start trying to disguise your iPod, wouldn't it be a better option to just get a cheaper and/or better music player from another company?
Pizza stores sometimes have this. There's usually "No Delivery charge", however, they also have "Walk in specials" where if you go and pick it up yourself, you save some money. If there's not distribution (delivery) charge, then the stuff downloaded off bittorrent should be much cheaper than what you can get the same product for at the movie store.
The walk in specials would be similar to downloading the movie over HTTP - Your bandwidth goes towards downloading your copy to you. With bittorrent, not only do you download to yourself, but you have to upload to others, hence the having to deliver someone else's pizza at the same time as picking up your own walk-in special.
I don't know how it is with other ISPs, but mine includes uploads as well as downloads when figuring out how much of my bandwidth allowance I've used. Assuming that I seed a 1:1 ratio, this means that the bittorrent distribution model doubles my bandwidth usage (or more if bittorrent has more of an overhead than HTTP, which I suspect it does).
Part of the P2P model is that we (the customer) do the majority of the distribution work. Will BitTorrent suitably compensate us for our work, say by giving us substantial savings over other methods of buying the films? Or will they try to get a free lunch out of us so to speak?
I a parallel would be if the local pizza company offered to sell you a pizza for half price, but only if you delivered a pizza to another customer whilst you're at it.
The whole point of having a computer is to free yourself from paper. So why would you take a step back and try to digitally emulate a system that is antiquated? A computer offers endless opportunities for organizing and storing data, I see this as a step back.
Sometimes the UI has to take a step back because there are users out there who find it hard to take the step forward.
I agree that it's a bad idea to limit your thinking to physical metaphors if you can reasonably think in a similar way to the way a computer works, but then this probably isn't the right desktop for us. If however there's someone new to computers who doesn't want to or is unable to relearn their dead wood system, I think the option of such a desktop would be great for them.
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it."
Shouldn't that quote be that if you write the code cleverly in the first place, you're too smart to debug it?
Slashdot Mirror
Considering how the US government acts, I'd imagine that there's a good case for calling it a terrorist organisation... Good news! It's now illegal to pay taxes in the US!! ;)
This is not about breaking the law. The law says you can "opt out" of going through the x-ray scanner and be hand searched. The hand search is very time and labor intensive so it might slow down the lines at the airport on the busiest flying day of the year.
It's called a protest.
I know that, and you know that, but I doubt very much that the government would be overly bothered by the fact.
The government want opt-outs to be as humiliating as possible. If they were to say something along the lines of "law abiding citizens wouldn't want to bring our transport system grinding to a halt", they can imply that protesters are no better than criminals.
Am I cynical to think that the government will want to paint this as inciting an act of terrorism?* I'm just hoping that Joe Public isn't that stupid. Yet.
* I imagine that such a protest will cause the system to slow to a crawl, harming the law abiding citizen's ability to travel or somesuch.
Owl does not enable user to fly.
From the reports I've been reading, it wasn't even a bomb. To be fair, we're probably overdue for the next power grab against our rights, and they usually seem to start with a good scare...
In this case, I'd be more worried about the companies that are transmitting sensitive information over unsecured wireless networks than I am about Google. If Google can pick up such information by accident, then less trustworthy types can probably pick up similar information intentionally. Unfortunately I expect that such companies are going to get off with no repercussions as everyone gets distracted by going after Google.
How about: *Proposal* in UK To Track All Browsing, Email, and Phone Calls?
I guess it depends how cynical you are about the law-making process. Whilst I'm yet to make my mind up on the current government, I can definitely see why some people make the jump to thinking that this is as good as done. It's not as if the previous government particularly cared about our rights after all.
I find a car analogy comes in handy at times like these ;)
Something recently broke inside the latch on my glovebox recently. Nissan couldn't replace the part that broke, so I managed a fix by replacing the part with some appropriately bent wire and superglue.
This would be a hack using available resources.
Maybe we should ban satellites from taking pictures too. I mean, some of them images contain images of me, my house, and my car. This should also include private satellite images, as if anything I trust the private hoarding of images by corporate or government bodies much more damaging than a publicly available resource.
Or we could just accept that there shouldn't be a problem with images of public space in the first place...
Combine this with the government's need to keep everyone afraid. Now they can arrest almost anyone as a terrorist. And those few people that don't buy into the government hype and don't smell of fear? They obviously don't listen to Big Brother, so they must be terrorists too!
Well, you have to be 13 to have a Facebook account. They have Facebook accounts. So they must be 13, and hence teenagers, even if they're only 10 and 12. Seems perfectly clear to me.
I like to be modded up as much as the next person, but Insightful? Jeez, I was trying for Funny.
That's ok, you were then modded Funny for being insightful into your mods. Personally, I'm still waiting for a +5 Cynical.
If the software is controlling a UAV, and the UAV subsequently crashes and is recovered by the enemy, does this count as distributing the the modified binaries? ;)
Ah, but these are American horses. They'll have enough trouble pulling themselves up the hill. ;o)
Paint stripes on a horse and it still isn't a zebra, even if you can't tell the difference.
And yet you do exactly that by taking what is basically a tax, and painting on the words "It's not a tax, it's a license fee!"
I strive for accuracy. The licence may appear to be a tax, and have many things in common with it, but from a legal point of view, it is different in much the same way as the BBC is a public body, not a governmental body. Don't pay it and you won't be charged with tax evasion. You will be charged with not paying your TV licence. It's remarkably similar, but calling it a tax is technically incorrect.
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and is genetically identical to a duck, it's not a duck if you decide to call it something else?
There's *no difference* because it happens to be that songs can be copied for free. All that means is a transaction cost has been eliminated.
Then why are you saying that there should be a difference?
If you make and sell hammers for a living, your customers give you money, they get a hammer, and the trade is done. If they want to make changes to the hammer, that's up to them. If they want to make another identical hammer for themselves, that's their own choice. If you want to make more money, you make and sell more hammers. If you want to have money for when you're too old to make hammers, you save it whilst you can.
You on the other hand, are arguing that songs should be treated differently, purely because they're easier to copy. It would be as if the hammer-maker only made the first hammer, went around forbidding anyone else to make hammers, and kept demanding that everyone should keep paying them for that first hammer forever and ever.
The problem is that the song belongs to the public.
Copyright is basically a trade whereby a person doesn't keep their story/song/etc locked up in their head, and instead releases it to the public. In return, the artist is allowed a monopoly over the reproduction of said story/song/etc for a limited period.
At best, the artists in question are attempting a breach of contract by taking the monopoly part of the trade, and then failing to accept the release of the art into the public domain. It's generally accecpt that it's unacceptable to steal in such a way, so why should we let these artists get away with such theft?
Nah, give them the exact same deal.
Give them a single copy of the same video file that has been given to the download stores. Then require them to spend money on putting the equipment in place to distribute said file, applying the DRM to the file as necessary. Then make them pay for every time someone uses the service. The system I'm envisaging is one where a customer can walk in with a USB key, plug it in, buy the movie, and have it transfered to their key.
Now Wal-Mart/Target are getting the same deal as the download stores. They've been required to spend money on technology and equipment in order to offer the same product as the download stores. And guess what, they're not making any money from it. All because a couple of meters away there's the full product (with none of the messing around) for a couple of dollars more.
As far as I can tell, a big part of the reason for having an iPod is meant to be because it looks stylish. Basically, the whole point is for it to be seen. If you're going to start trying to disguise your iPod, wouldn't it be a better option to just get a cheaper and/or better music player from another company?
check out my webpage, it's on a server embeded under my skin and shares power with my pacemaker.
/.ing of something so close to your heart? ;o)
Do you really want to risk the
Pizza stores sometimes have this. There's usually "No Delivery charge", however, they also have "Walk in specials" where if you go and pick it up yourself, you save some money. If there's not distribution (delivery) charge, then the stuff downloaded off bittorrent should be much cheaper than what you can get the same product for at the movie store.
The walk in specials would be similar to downloading the movie over HTTP - Your bandwidth goes towards downloading your copy to you. With bittorrent, not only do you download to yourself, but you have to upload to others, hence the having to deliver someone else's pizza at the same time as picking up your own walk-in special.
I don't know how it is with other ISPs, but mine includes uploads as well as downloads when figuring out how much of my bandwidth allowance I've used. Assuming that I seed a 1:1 ratio, this means that the bittorrent distribution model doubles my bandwidth usage (or more if bittorrent has more of an overhead than HTTP, which I suspect it does).
Part of the P2P model is that we (the customer) do the majority of the distribution work. Will BitTorrent suitably compensate us for our work, say by giving us substantial savings over other methods of buying the films? Or will they try to get a free lunch out of us so to speak?
I a parallel would be if the local pizza company offered to sell you a pizza for half price, but only if you delivered a pizza to another customer whilst you're at it.
Graham Walker (website) is a well known Big Issue seller around my area of the UK, and to my knowledge he's been online for a while now.
The whole point of having a computer is to free yourself from paper. So why would you take a step back and try to digitally emulate a system that is antiquated? A computer offers endless opportunities for organizing and storing data, I see this as a step back.
Sometimes the UI has to take a step back because there are users out there who find it hard to take the step forward.
I agree that it's a bad idea to limit your thinking to physical metaphors if you can reasonably think in a similar way to the way a computer works, but then this probably isn't the right desktop for us. If however there's someone new to computers who doesn't want to or is unable to relearn their dead wood system, I think the option of such a desktop would be great for them.
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it."
Shouldn't that quote be that if you write the code cleverly in the first place, you're too smart to debug it?