...of any population. Libertarians craz... erm, committed enough to get worked up about putting their finger on a scanner and smiling *for the webcam over the possibility that the info will be used to incriminate them for some made-up-by government crime in the future is a smaller share still (although a large portion dwells on Slashdot). Hence, the impact of travel to Japan will be negligible.
As for the actual issue, any country has a right to know who they let in - if they want to snap a picture when I visit, I will let them. If they want me to verify my indentity by biometric means, I have no problem with that. The risk that the whole procedure will somehow harm me is likely to be far smaller than that of getting struck by lightning while doing backflips in a greased-up bathtub.
...here in Sweden we now have virtually complete 3G coverage, and 3G phones and 3G computer modems are selling like hotcakes. It will catch on in the US as well once you have good availability of broadband-speed solutions (I.e. forget EDGE) at decent flatrate prices.
Still, people arguing over whether an addiction is "chemical" or not are missing the point. The brain is one big electrochemical device - any input can cause addiction, either by direct manipulation via chemicals, or indirect manipulation of reward systems. The difference is largely in attack vector - not in the end result. (Of course, going the chemical route often has more side effects than the indirect route)
That, however doesn't necessarily mean that chemical addictions are worse. Sure, nicotine might kill you at 65, but it won't have ruined your entire life before then. (On the contrary - cigarettes are cool, after all...)
...is one of competition. If steroids are allowed, anyone who wants to compete in any major sport must use steroids. And of course, it won't stop at steroids - there are many more chemicals out there. Which also means that your talk about "safe, supervised steroid use" will mean silch when the next generation of performance-enhancing drugs roll into town. It is no more illogical to ban steroids in Baseball than to ban stealing cash from the bank in Monopoly - even if neither activity directly harms competing players.
As for the argument about banning weight lifting, it would not only be unenforceable to a much larger degree than banning steroids, unlike steroids, it is a technique that is bounded more firmly, and brings less danger and side effects to the user.
Health food is not necessarily the same as healthy food. Basic vegetables, eggs, basic meats etc. aren't really that expensive in any western country - certainly not if the competition is fatty fast food.
You just don't want to do what's right for America!
The quote was bad though - Bush would be more like "we... erm, must spead freedom and democracy to the sand. Family values don't stop at the, uh, Tigris."
Well, it comes down to preference, of course. Do I want to watch "The Shield" or "The Wire" or "Rome", or some local amateur production with sub-standard everything? I'm all for allowing people to be sub-standard, but I'll keep my high-quality stuff, thank you very much. (The paradox here: If present content is so poor, why is the right to pirate that content so important?)
Now for the fun part:
"your side wants to":
"totalitarian"
In what way? I have a feeling you are watering down the word trés beaucoup here.
"police state"
Well, in the sense that there is a police presence, yes.
"identity cards"
I have nothing against identity cards. Makes it easier to, like, identify yourself.
"constant surveillance"
Well, not constant - just enough to prevent rampant content piracy.
"DRM"
Well, I'm ok with DRM.
"informants"
Some, I guess. Most police forces have 'em.
"hefty jail sentences"
Nope, those should be saved for serious crimes.
"show trials"
You serious?
"purely in order that nobody"
I'm ok with some piracy - I'm a big pirate myself - but I want the level to be kept manageable. So that I can have a steady stream of content to pirate (and buy. I buy some stuff, still).
"I reckon people's tastes accommodate whatever's out there."
This sort of explains your entire position. "Well, in our new glorious system, there is only turnip soup available. So you better get used to liking turnip soup!".
I fail to see the problem. In areas where adequate free OSS solutions are made available by the FOSS community, commercial development will cease, and OSS dominate, without gutting the copyright system. In areas where this is not the case, the system will ensure that commercial applications remain available. I would be very surprised if any FOSS effort could, for instance, create a major motion picture, or for that matter a AAA computer game.
"Thus the GP is exactly right, and software itself breaks the current economic model."
Incorrect. This problem (large average cost, low marginal cost) with software, pharmaceuticals, etc. has been known for a long time. That's a large part of the reason why the whole patent system has been put in place to mitigate the problem. It is also the basis for some government monopolies and regulations.
"You know what irritates me about this claim, it's that people (and by this I think you mean all those Mexicans which Americans love to love and hate) have been coming across the border for a long time now. "
Indeed - to a significant degree because US ID requirements are laughably lax. This is also a reason why much opposition to effective, more counterfit-proof ID schemes is in bad faith. Much of the other opposition to effective ID schemes is driven by little more than slogans.
"Do you honestly believe that anything will prevent individuals sufficiently motivated to cause carnage?"
Yes - many things will stop them. The most efficient one is very simple, in the case of assymetrical foreign threats: Don't let them get into the United States. Presto.
"Repressive Nazi overlords and their willing servants in Occupied France couldn't stop bridges from being blown up."
Order in occupied France was reasonably well kept throughout German occupation. The resistance was never a major obstacle to the Germans.
"The British intelligence community couldn't stop IRA operatives from blowing up people."
Again - binary thinking. The relevant question is: Did British intelligence reduce the number of people blown up?
"The Founding Fathers knew damn well what would happen when personal liberties were sacrificed, even in the name of some greater good."
Citizens of all western nations sacrifice lots of personal liberties for the greater good. It's a tradeoff, as with most other things, not a binary choice. Drivers licenses, etc. becoming harder to forge or obtain fradulently is hardly a major blow to any significant liberty. (Except to those who shouldn't have those liberties to begin with).
"And yet, inflation in certain sectors IS through the roof. Notice the price of Oil lately?"
Erm, so you think oil is going up in price because of a general increase in the money supply? While other prices stay put? Please.
"Art, however, CAN. And you get better art if you do. Thus comming back to the original topic of this thread, the RIAA; no marginal cost and no total cost for what they do, their "product" of recordings and marketing would be utterly worthless to the artists if there was no copyright or patent law."
Well, all recordings would be pretty worthless to the artists if the was no copyright - RIAA or no RIAA. Of course, if there were fewer musicians, perhaps that wouldn't be too bad. Plenty of talent playing for fame, pussy and concert proceeds alone. (I'm more worried about TV and movies).
"Thus my argument that we need a better system than mere mindless commerce to make money. And we'd better invent it soon"
Well, you can always go on about how we need a "better system". But unless you give specifics, that isn't really very helpful.
"Why not take on an experiment and do away with bribed politicians to begin with? Limit campaign spending to $15,000/year- and that way we'll see what happens when ANYBODY can afford to be a politician, instead of just the ones being universally bribed through campaign financing."
As political campaigning = speech (pretty much), a ridiculously low campaign funding limit will mean that you will need an even harder government clampdown on all forms of speech and political organization, to prevent various groups from offering "undue support" to campaigns (support = monetary value = campaign funding). (Pure bribery is rare, it should be added - lobbyism is usually more subtle - I.e. you support candidates who fit your "profile" in various ways, including both cash and non-material support). So, there is a tradeoff between government control of all public fora and controlling campaign contributions.
"Except of course that electronic money is the ultimate in Fiat money- universally counterfietable, and infinite in supply. Do you remember the law of supply and demand? What is the value of something in infinite supply?"
Zero. Which is why the Fed, ECB, etc. are very careful to keep supply in check. You would notice if the money supply was suddenly through the roof, because prices would be running wild. (Printing money is indeed an historically popular way of getting cash for the government, but it's not terribly stealthy. The US gets only a tiny share of revenue from the "inflation tax".
"We're used to, and designed our economics around, an assumption of scarcity. That assumption, for more and more goods and services every day, is proving false."
Well, that's not quite true. Patents, IP, etc. are all economic instruments (partially) designed to handle the problem of products with very low marginal cost but large total cost. No, they're not perfect, but certainly better than a "zero-incentive-to-invest" situation. (All product development can't be carried out on a volunteer basis, although initiatives like Linux are neat)
"A true believer in the market would see piracy as just another competing business model for when a service is physically in surplus- the value of copying that service has a natural market value of nothing if you get rid of the laws."
'True believers' should stick to religion. Obviously the market has a problem of handling incentives for creating stuff that is infinitely (or merely easily) copyable. Implying that copyright law, intellectual property rights, etc. exist merely because politicians are universally bribed, and not because they are useful to society is unproven (and somewhat unlikely). Lobbyism might have some significance when it comes to the details, at best.
"Just because something is obsolete doesn't mean it doesn't exist anymore. My parents still have a hand pump in their garden well- but it's rarely used. Likewise, my paychecks are direct deposited, and I spend with a debit card. I rarely even have any coin at all in my wallet anymore- my computer was paid for with bits and bytes, not dollar bills."
Irrelevant - if money is physical or electronic matters little in practice - electronic money is merely a more efficient form of fiat money. It is used as a store of value, a means of transaction and a unit of accounting nonetheless, with no current alternatives in use. (Commodity-based bartering is terribly rare these days)
"Really? When was the last time you saw a baboon using money? When was the last time you saw a stock market in a beehive? So much for the free market being "the way nature works" LIE."
Correct - money is a civilizational advance. Reciprocal bartering (and reciprocity in general) however, has a very long history within our species.
"just another "I want to use guns to oppress my neighbors and take their property" argument."
Using force to take other people's stuff sounds much more like Marx than market economics.
"No, sorry- I'm FOR paying the artist and creating a better model to do so."
Yea, the fact that you benefit personally from your "ethical stance" is merely a happy coincidence. Whoopdido.
The estimated average time before hate speech laws are used to punish those with non-conformist opinion is roughly five minutes. Three recent examples:
It is inevitable, that once the legal space exists to ban people who express non-conformist views, the powers that be will use them. After all, throughout history, repression of people who hold "faulty" opinions has been the norm, not the exception.
"Hate speech law" was first introduced in Europe as a means of fighting direct incitement to violence against various minority groups. This is, not surprisingly, the way hate speech law is currently being sold in the United States (usually as an extra penalty in cases of 'ordinary' crimes).
Over the years, however, the laws were gradually expanded to cover more and more ground, and now in many cases cover (forceful) expressions of mere disapproval of, say, homosexuality, or religion (usually Islam), even when these expressions are completely lacking in incitement to violence. The latest trend is to legislate against those who deny certain historical events, such as the Holocaust or the armenian genocide. Some countries (in the recent EU debates on the subject) now advocate criminalizing those who hold a revisionist position on Stalinist crimes. It will be interesting to see what other historical events that will be added to the "illegal to question" list as time goes on.
I should add that "conformist" here refers to conformism with elite opinion - hate speech law is usually applied aggressively when there is a significant, unorganized popular dissent from elite consensus. This is especially relevant on topics such as immigration, Islam and homosexuality, where elite and popular views are often greatly at odds. By acting aggressively and punishing those who speak out against elite consensus, the status quo can be maintained with less effort compared to a free speech scenario.
It should also be said that there is indeed no reciprocial reason to grant those who speak against democracy and freedom of speech the rights of free speech. In none of the cases linked to above, however, the defendants had advocated violence or the abolishion of democracy. On the contrary, it was the advocates of "tolerance" who moved to squash the democratic rights of their opponents.
It is exactly because of the large risk of abuse relating to speech restrictions (see above) that my personal opinion on the matter is that restricting debate and speech should be an emergency measure only. Usually, though, politicians advocating speech restriction don't bother with theory, reciprocity, etc. They prefer slogans - "we need to stop hate", "hate isn't a right", and so it goes...
The first link merely confirms that Vista implements protection for protected media (I.e. HD-DVD / BluRay), not for other media. In short, it's just like XP, except you gain the ability to play HD-DVD/Bluray. I'm calling FUD. (It also conjures up some bizarre scenario requiring simultaneous HD-DVD watching and medical diagnosis, and even that oddball scenario seems doubtful, as it assumes that content protection degrades everything displayed on screen, and not merely the protected content stream. Is that really true?)
The second one regarding AEC cites the same article as the first one, and after some further googling, it appears to be bullshit as well.
"Apparently this was written by someone who's never sat at a vista machine nor seen the changes at the application level in the way Vista's mixer handles audio from different applications. Acoustic Echo Cancellation functionality works fine in Vista here. As well as being commonly used in "applications like hands-free car phones", it's also commonly used in VOIP systems, and these seem to be unaffected in Vista. How to implement AEC (and we admit that how AEC is implemented at the driver level is different in Vista) is well documented in the DirectShow9 SDK for Vista."
(Sure, just a link, but so is yours. In addition, your source's bizarre hospital-diagnosis mishap example is so plain weird as to discredit him as a source in itself)
"In other words, a consumer who has high-end audio setup thinking that they're going to be able to listen to the latest and greatest in A/V home theater technology will be sadly disappointed. The discs aren't broken, the hardware isn't broken, and no AVI files have been infected, but the end result is the same: Functionality that the user has paid for and reasonably expects to work doesn't. It's been taken away."
There is no device on the market that can play the new high-def protected video/audio formats without compliance with the various DRM standards. XP sure can't, and nor can Linux or Mac OS X. So, please explain how this is a "hidden cost of Vista", and not just a cost of DRM in general? And please don't claim that there wouldn't have been even more bitching if MS had dumped support for DRM in Vista. "OMG!!11 I c4nnt pl3y me n00 CASIN0 ROY4L3 BLuR4Y!!11!!! VISTA SUXXORS!!1!!".
Slashdot Mirror
...of any population. Libertarians craz... erm, committed enough to get worked up about putting their finger on a scanner and smiling *for the webcam over the possibility that the info will be used to incriminate them for some made-up-by government crime in the future is a smaller share still (although a large portion dwells on Slashdot). Hence, the impact of travel to Japan will be negligible.
As for the actual issue, any country has a right to know who they let in - if they want to snap a picture when I visit, I will let them. If they want me to verify my indentity by biometric means, I have no problem with that. The risk that the whole procedure will somehow harm me is likely to be far smaller than that of getting struck by lightning while doing backflips in a greased-up bathtub.
*I speak from experience.
VGChartz aren't halfway as reliable as NPD.
...here in Sweden we now have virtually complete 3G coverage, and 3G phones and 3G computer modems are selling like hotcakes. It will catch on in the US as well once you have good availability of broadband-speed solutions (I.e. forget EDGE) at decent flatrate prices.
...most likely his idea for a game about heterosexual nasal sex targeted at ages 7 and up got squashed by the repressive ratings regime...
http://www.apple.com/iphone/
Youtube is most definitely on the iPhone.
...just head over to http://www.wowdetox.com./ ;P
Still, people arguing over whether an addiction is "chemical" or not are missing the point. The brain is one big electrochemical device - any input can cause addiction, either by direct manipulation via chemicals, or indirect manipulation of reward systems. The difference is largely in attack vector - not in the end result. (Of course, going the chemical route often has more side effects than the indirect route)
That, however doesn't necessarily mean that chemical addictions are worse. Sure, nicotine might kill you at 65, but it won't have ruined your entire life before then. (On the contrary - cigarettes are cool, after all...)
...is one of competition. If steroids are allowed, anyone who wants to compete in any major sport must use steroids. And of course, it won't stop at steroids - there are many more chemicals out there. Which also means that your talk about "safe, supervised steroid use" will mean silch when the next generation of performance-enhancing drugs roll into town. It is no more illogical to ban steroids in Baseball than to ban stealing cash from the bank in Monopoly - even if neither activity directly harms competing players.
As for the argument about banning weight lifting, it would not only be unenforceable to a much larger degree than banning steroids, unlike steroids, it is a technique that is bounded more firmly, and brings less danger and side effects to the user.
Health food is not necessarily the same as healthy food. Basic vegetables, eggs, basic meats etc. aren't really that expensive in any western country - certainly not if the competition is fatty fast food.
You just don't want to do what's right for America!
The quote was bad though - Bush would be more like "we... erm, must spead freedom and democracy to the sand. Family values don't stop at the, uh, Tigris."
Any decent OS (Linux/MaxOSX/Windows) will use idle RAM for caching, instead of just letting it do nothing.
If I had a vote in the US primaries, that is. ;)
How many strikes are that by now?
- Iraq
- Immigration
- CFR
- Plain batshit crazy mood.
- Ballmer
- Erm, why bother?
Well, it comes down to preference, of course. Do I want to watch "The Shield" or "The Wire" or "Rome", or some local amateur production with sub-standard everything? I'm all for allowing people to be sub-standard, but I'll keep my high-quality stuff, thank you very much. (The paradox here: If present content is so poor, why is the right to pirate that content so important?)
Now for the fun part:
"your side wants to":
"totalitarian"
In what way? I have a feeling you are watering down the word trés beaucoup here.
"police state"
Well, in the sense that there is a police presence, yes.
"identity cards"
I have nothing against identity cards. Makes it easier to, like, identify yourself.
"constant surveillance"
Well, not constant - just enough to prevent rampant content piracy.
"DRM"
Well, I'm ok with DRM.
"informants"
Some, I guess. Most police forces have 'em.
"hefty jail sentences"
Nope, those should be saved for serious crimes.
"show trials"
You serious?
"purely in order that nobody"
I'm ok with some piracy - I'm a big pirate myself - but I want the level to be kept manageable. So that I can have a steady stream of content to pirate (and buy. I buy some stuff, still).
"Why are we trying to prove that piracy, an illegal act, is somehow "good"?"
Because Slashdotters pirate like crazy (me included), and hence demand is high for anything that helps us in justifying ourselves?
"I reckon people's tastes accommodate whatever's out there."
This sort of explains your entire position. "Well, in our new glorious system, there is only turnip soup available. So you better get used to liking turnip soup!".
I fail to see the problem. In areas where adequate free OSS solutions are made available by the FOSS community, commercial development will cease, and OSS dominate, without gutting the copyright system. In areas where this is not the case, the system will ensure that commercial applications remain available. I would be very surprised if any FOSS effort could, for instance, create a major motion picture, or for that matter a AAA computer game.
Also, it is unlikely that Gates ever said it. He denies it, and noone appears to be able to come up with an actual source of the quote.
A couple of points:
"Thus the GP is exactly right, and software itself breaks the current economic model."
Incorrect. This problem (large average cost, low marginal cost) with software, pharmaceuticals, etc. has been known for a long time. That's a large part of the reason why the whole patent system has been put in place to mitigate the problem. It is also the basis for some government monopolies and regulations.
"You know what irritates me about this claim, it's that people (and by this I think you mean all those Mexicans which Americans love to love and hate) have been coming across the border for a long time now. "
Indeed - to a significant degree because US ID requirements are laughably lax. This is also a reason why much opposition to effective, more counterfit-proof ID schemes is in bad faith. Much of the other opposition to effective ID schemes is driven by little more than slogans.
"Do you honestly believe that anything will prevent individuals sufficiently motivated to cause carnage?"
Yes - many things will stop them. The most efficient one is very simple, in the case of assymetrical foreign threats: Don't let them get into the United States. Presto.
"Repressive Nazi overlords and their willing servants in Occupied France couldn't stop bridges from being blown up."
Order in occupied France was reasonably well kept throughout German occupation. The resistance was never a major obstacle to the Germans.
"The British intelligence community couldn't stop IRA operatives from blowing up people."
Again - binary thinking. The relevant question is: Did British intelligence reduce the number of people blown up?
"The Founding Fathers knew damn well what would happen when personal liberties were sacrificed, even in the name of some greater good."
Citizens of all western nations sacrifice lots of personal liberties for the greater good. It's a tradeoff, as with most other things, not a binary choice. Drivers licenses, etc. becoming harder to forge or obtain fradulently is hardly a major blow to any significant liberty. (Except to those who shouldn't have those liberties to begin with).
"What kind of inbred, ass-scratching red-state yahoo do..."
A man?
"And yet, inflation in certain sectors IS through the roof. Notice the price of Oil lately?"
Erm, so you think oil is going up in price because of a general increase in the money supply? While other prices stay put? Please.
"Art, however, CAN. And you get better art if you do. Thus comming back to the original topic of this thread, the RIAA; no marginal cost and no total cost for what they do, their "product" of recordings and marketing would be utterly worthless to the artists if there was no copyright or patent law."
Well, all recordings would be pretty worthless to the artists if the was no copyright - RIAA or no RIAA. Of course, if there were fewer musicians, perhaps that wouldn't be too bad. Plenty of talent playing for fame, pussy and concert proceeds alone. (I'm more worried about TV and movies).
"Thus my argument that we need a better system than mere mindless commerce to make money. And we'd better invent it soon"
Well, you can always go on about how we need a "better system". But unless you give specifics, that isn't really very helpful.
"Why not take on an experiment and do away with bribed politicians to begin with? Limit campaign spending to $15,000/year- and that way we'll see what happens when ANYBODY can afford to be a politician, instead of just the ones being universally bribed through campaign financing."
As political campaigning = speech (pretty much), a ridiculously low campaign funding limit will mean that you will need an even harder government clampdown on all forms of speech and political organization, to prevent various groups from offering "undue support" to campaigns (support = monetary value = campaign funding). (Pure bribery is rare, it should be added - lobbyism is usually more subtle - I.e. you support candidates who fit your "profile" in various ways, including both cash and non-material support). So, there is a tradeoff between government control of all public fora and controlling campaign contributions.
"Except of course that electronic money is the ultimate in Fiat money- universally counterfietable, and infinite in supply. Do you remember the law of supply and demand? What is the value of something in infinite supply?"
Zero. Which is why the Fed, ECB, etc. are very careful to keep supply in check. You would notice if the money supply was suddenly through the roof, because prices would be running wild. (Printing money is indeed an historically popular way of getting cash for the government, but it's not terribly stealthy. The US gets only a tiny share of revenue from the "inflation tax".
"We're used to, and designed our economics around, an assumption of scarcity. That assumption, for more and more goods and services every day, is proving false."
Well, that's not quite true. Patents, IP, etc. are all economic instruments (partially) designed to handle the problem of products with very low marginal cost but large total cost. No, they're not perfect, but certainly better than a "zero-incentive-to-invest" situation. (All product development can't be carried out on a volunteer basis, although initiatives like Linux are neat)
"A true believer in the market would see piracy as just another competing business model for when a service is physically in surplus- the value of copying that service has a natural market value of nothing if you get rid of the laws."
'True believers' should stick to religion. Obviously the market has a problem of handling incentives for creating stuff that is infinitely (or merely easily) copyable. Implying that copyright law, intellectual property rights, etc. exist merely because politicians are universally bribed, and not because they are useful to society is unproven (and somewhat unlikely). Lobbyism might have some significance when it comes to the details, at best.
"Just because something is obsolete doesn't mean it doesn't exist anymore. My parents still have a hand pump in their garden well- but it's rarely used. Likewise, my paychecks are direct deposited, and I spend with a debit card. I rarely even have any coin at all in my wallet anymore- my computer was paid for with bits and bytes, not dollar bills."
Irrelevant - if money is physical or electronic matters little in practice - electronic money is merely a more efficient form of fiat money. It is used as a store of value, a means of transaction and a unit of accounting nonetheless, with no current alternatives in use. (Commodity-based bartering is terribly rare these days)
"Really? When was the last time you saw a baboon using money? When was the last time you saw a stock market in a beehive? So much for the free market being "the way nature works" LIE."
Correct - money is a civilizational advance. Reciprocal bartering (and reciprocity in general) however, has a very long history within our species.
"just another "I want to use guns to oppress my neighbors and take their property" argument."
Using force to take other people's stuff sounds much more like Marx than market economics.
"No, sorry- I'm FOR paying the artist and creating a better model to do so."
Yea, the fact that you benefit personally from your "ethical stance" is merely a happy coincidence. Whoopdido.
The estimated average time before hate speech laws are used to punish those with non-conformist opinion is roughly five minutes. Three recent examples:
m
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85ke_Green
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlaams_Belang
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2005/s1398319.ht
It is inevitable, that once the legal space exists to ban people who express non-conformist views, the powers that be will use them. After all, throughout history, repression of people who hold "faulty" opinions has been the norm, not the exception.
"Hate speech law" was first introduced in Europe as a means of fighting direct incitement to violence against various minority groups. This is, not surprisingly, the way hate speech law is currently being sold in the United States (usually as an extra penalty in cases of 'ordinary' crimes).
Over the years, however, the laws were gradually expanded to cover more and more ground, and now in many cases cover (forceful) expressions of mere disapproval of, say, homosexuality, or religion (usually Islam), even when these expressions are completely lacking in incitement to violence. The latest trend is to legislate against those who deny certain historical events, such as the Holocaust or the armenian genocide. Some countries (in the recent EU debates on the subject) now advocate criminalizing those who hold a revisionist position on Stalinist crimes. It will be interesting to see what other historical events that will be added to the "illegal to question" list as time goes on.
I should add that "conformist" here refers to conformism with elite opinion - hate speech law is usually applied aggressively when there is a significant, unorganized popular dissent from elite consensus. This is especially relevant on topics such as immigration, Islam and homosexuality, where elite and popular views are often greatly at odds. By acting aggressively and punishing those who speak out against elite consensus, the status quo can be maintained with less effort compared to a free speech scenario.
It should also be said that there is indeed no reciprocial reason to grant those who speak against democracy and freedom of speech the rights of free speech. In none of the cases linked to above, however, the defendants had advocated violence or the abolishion of democracy. On the contrary, it was the advocates of "tolerance" who moved to squash the democratic rights of their opponents.
It is exactly because of the large risk of abuse relating to speech restrictions (see above) that my personal opinion on the matter is that restricting debate and speech should be an emergency measure only. Usually, though, politicians advocating speech restriction don't bother with theory, reciprocity, etc. They prefer slogans - "we need to stop hate", "hate isn't a right", and so it goes...
The first link merely confirms that Vista implements protection for protected media (I.e. HD-DVD / BluRay), not for other media. In short, it's just like XP, except you gain the ability to play HD-DVD/Bluray. I'm calling FUD. (It also conjures up some bizarre scenario requiring simultaneous HD-DVD watching and medical diagnosis, and even that oddball scenario seems doubtful, as it assumes that content protection degrades everything displayed on screen, and not merely the protected content stream. Is that really true?)
a me-vista-4.html?Itemid=42
The second one regarding AEC cites the same article as the first one, and after some further googling, it appears to be bullshit as well.
"Apparently this was written by someone who's never sat at a vista machine nor seen the changes at the application level in the way Vista's mixer handles audio from different applications. Acoustic Echo Cancellation functionality works fine in Vista here. As well as being commonly used in "applications like hands-free car phones", it's also commonly used in VOIP systems, and these seem to be unaffected in Vista. How to implement AEC (and we admit that how AEC is implemented at the driver level is different in Vista) is well documented in the DirectShow9 SDK for Vista."
http://www.fastsilicon.com/opinions-editorials/bl
(Sure, just a link, but so is yours. In addition, your source's bizarre hospital-diagnosis mishap example is so plain weird as to discredit him as a source in itself)
Hence, I'm calling FUD again.
"In other words, a consumer who has high-end audio setup thinking that they're going to be able to listen to the latest and greatest in A/V home theater technology will be sadly disappointed. The discs aren't broken, the hardware isn't broken, and no AVI files have been infected, but the end result is the same: Functionality that the user has paid for and reasonably expects to work doesn't. It's been taken away."
There is no device on the market that can play the new high-def protected video/audio formats without compliance with the various DRM standards. XP sure can't, and nor can Linux or Mac OS X. So, please explain how this is a "hidden cost of Vista", and not just a cost of DRM in general? And please don't claim that there wouldn't have been even more bitching if MS had dumped support for DRM in Vista. "OMG!!11 I c4nnt pl3y me n00 CASIN0 ROY4L3 BLuR4Y!!11!!! VISTA SUXXORS!!1!!".