Or the hiding behind AC to bash a fairly legitimate (but completely off topic) post. Besides, if you're so smart, what does it mean, smart guy?! Seriously, what the hell does it mean, if anything (besides being funny at a decreasing rate)?
10 reply to AC
20 bang head against wall
30 goto 10
More cases with windows cut out so people can pj33r your boxens innards, but have it lit with a neon tube so it resembles a futuristic UFO or something! Oh! Oh! Or like...paint flames on the side! Or better yet...the Quake 3 or HalfLife Logos! That would hot!
The Honda Hotrodders have their "Go faster stripes" and "Go faster chrome", and the UberClockers have their "Go faster windows", "Go faster neon tubes", "go faster flames", and "Go faster logos of popular first-person shooters"
Am I the only one who finds the whole UberGamer attitude a bit tiresome? If I'm ever on another server and someone advises me to "suck it" or "bend over and take it" after a kill, I'm going to lose it. I mean...I know we should be tolerant, but I just don't swing that way! But hey...whatever frosts your flakes, you crazy UberWinGamers! The attitude disgusts me. I can only play a few rounds before getting fed up, and going into "ok...just one more round you stupid punks" phase for another hour or so.
This has all hit very close to home, as one has moved into the dorm to replace someone who moved out. Immediately, he starts ragging on my setup! "That mouse is so small...terrible for gaming!" (Logitech RF wheelmouse. Haven't had a problem yet). I calmly had to explain to him that as an ECE major, I frequently have to do things that don't involve rail sniping, and most of the time, I'm in a text editor or CLI. "Wow...see you have one of those 'don't type on me' keyboards" (MS Elite). Never had a problem switching weapons, but it sure helps my hands not feel like they're going to explode following a night of programming!
Attention UberWinGamers: There's a whole big world out there, and being able to run around and use a sniper rifle like you would a pistol isn't going to get you very far!
This arrogance about connection speed absolutely fries me. 13 year olds salivating for the Flavor of the Month FPS might be a tempting demographic and market, but it'll be a long time until there are enough of them on broadband to compete with the analog market.
Attention UberWinGamers: Having a broadband connection does not...I repeat NOT make you special, 1337, or better than anyone else. It just means that you live in an area deemed to be marketable by the powers that be, and your parents were willing to part with their money to provide you with a low ping. If you were any good, you wouldn't need it, anyway!
This isn't a personal issue to me...I'm on a sweet University setup (except when I go home to the old dialup on breaks...naggna-happen there), but everyone should be at least a little wary of this technological elitism.
Donzens of posts deserving of a '-1, Redunadnt' have stated "why should companies 'dumb down' games for dialup users...screw them! They should move to a better place where they can have good ping!!" Isn't there something wrong with that statement? Enough people higher up the thread than I have given the connection method distribution percentages, and dialup has by far the highest usage. Don't these people deserve a good gaming experiance? Don't you think that the gaming companies are going to cater to the largest possible audience to make more money?
That's about all I have before I start getting preacy, and remember...I'm just mad at the UberWinGamer crowd. There are plenty of good, respectable gamers out there. You know who you are!
Heh...I'd gladly pay less than $2/month to make it legal. It'll make me stop feeling like one of the slimy warez d00dz I'm so fond of launching triads against at every opportunity. If you're not paying for it, it's piracy, and that makes several tens of millions of people slimy warez d00dz! But it's ok, because I use it so that makes me a warez d00d, too!
I know I'm asking for it Karma-wise, but it had to be said!
Is it just me, or is giving Napster your credit card information a Very Bad Thing. Think about it...once they have your credit card information, they have everything about you. By They, of course, I mean the RIAA and company. Fork over your information, and Napster suddenly become a little less anonymous. Lets take it step by step:
*We know that the RIAA and musicians can track who is downloading what on Napster.
*You give Napster your financial information.
*We know that the RIAA and certain musicians can muster superlative legal power.
*Is it so impossible that they can get this information from Napster to "ensure that their requirements are being met"? Sure, there are probably laws about this kind of thing. Hell, there are alot of laws...millions. Has this stopped anyone with enough money yet? No!
*Lets say you download more of a certain album than the lawyers or tracking services would like you to.
*Suddenly "NapGuy986" becomes "Joe "Evil" Pirate of 123 Main Street, Your Town, USA. Phone Number 867-5309 Goes to F University, drives a Honda, penchant for very progressive magazines." and so on and so forth.
I don't know about you, but I'm not paying for this thing unless I can drop by CVS and have them cut a money order for $2 for the pleasure.
Right, I'm an Electrical and Computer Engineering major, and the SGI lab is definatly locked up; need a swipe card to unlock it (Not a GWorld). I was in there on a tour awhile back, and it was nice...all kinds of different workstations, and an Onyx deskside. The plate on the door says "Biomedical Imaging" or somesuch.
Didn't the Dakota and the Aston, et al get cable modems because they're not (yet?) wired in fibery goodness? How does that work, policy and policing wise?
10. All data, programs, and files placed on or contained in the University computer systems are subject to the University's copyright, patent, and privacy policies.
Damn it all...and I was going to publish that stupid CD database from CS135 (Ada95 class).
One of these days I'll figure out how to get access to the Silicon Graphics lab in Tompkins.
Whatever is on the other end of this fiber cable is fast, but good luck getting someone at ResNet to tell you what it is or how it's set up.
At least they upgraded the Gelman lab to P3s, DVDs, and Zip250s.
Back on the third floor of Mitchell, we didn't have to worry about the school network policy...half the time, there was no network for them to police (Especially just after ResNet office closing friday afternoon...no CounterStrike that weekend!)
What's that about Napster? It still works on my box and connection.
Insert obligatory plug for free data encryption tools and secure protocols here
This message was brought to you in compliance with the "Slashdot Encryption Reference Requirement" stating that encryption and its merits must be invoked when discussing anything plausably relevant to it
-----Obligatory Encryption Related Post Sig------
When cryptograph is outlawed...and so on, and so forth
------End Obligatory Sig------
I hadden't realized that all existing software and hardware companies had either turned evil, or had been aquired by them, leaving absolutely no alternative for geeks but to work for an evil organization. Have to read The Wall Street Journal more, eh? And I caught the analogy...lets try to keep the patronizing to a minimum, shall we? If there weren't well meaning people offering theories that, while admittably not completely and meticulously thought out, researched, and cited but present a different approach than "F*** THE MPAA", there would be no posts for people to make obscure references, condecending remarks, and flex their egos on this anonymous forum where anyone can sound like a scholor with a few hyperlinks and weak insults.
Your welcome:-)
But anyway, good point with the foreign labor. Extra points for not saying "Japan", too...India and Russia are much more chic references, and Japan has had DVD and digital media long before we did. Russia and India are really variables as far as technological saturation goes. In both cases, the largest groups who can really afford it are the government officials and the engineers themselves. Everyone else is just struggling to survive, and have more pressing issues to deal with than the government messing with their media. Their governments are messing with them enough already, especially in Russia, they probably wouldn't notice, anyway.
It's past my bed time, so I'm going to regroup my bug-addled brain, have some apple juice with my medicine crushed up really tiny and mixed in, and come up with a few more half-baked but hopeful solutions for arrogant nay-sayers to shoot down. (wow...hope *and* solutions in ONE post, and on SLASHDOT...)
"Behold ye corperations in thine ivory towers, I am The Consumer, thy God, and thou hast forsaken me"
Washington DC News Channel 8 did a quick little spot for this just now on their evening news, leading the story with one of their computer icons with the words "Computer Hackers!" underneath it. Although "Hackers" weren't mentioned in the rest of the spot, the story did a predictable ammount to "put the fear" into the consumer, and further blacken the name of true hackers everywhere.
They suggested disabling javascript in email (many times [redundantly] refuted here), as well as announced a patch from Microsoft. Doing the usual through job, they neglected to mention the forwarding vulerability of this; something the Java disabiling won't help
And here I thought it was just a bug...good old media setting the record straight!
You wouldn't believe me if I said I came up with that on the spot, but that's pretty much what I was thinking when I was replying, and reading other, similar stories. Maybe I passivly picked it up somewhere and it popped back into the forground. There used to be a time (waaay before I was around) when businesses understood they owed their existance and livlihood to their customers. And yes, hopefully one of these days slashdotters will realize that the issues at hand are much larger than being allowed to trade music freely. In fact, everyone should count themselves lucky if that's as far as it goes!
Right, copy protection. Copy protection isn't that insidious. Anybody has the right to protect what is theirs. The problem comes when the controlling entities gain too much power, and start to erode personal freedoms and liberties in favor of their own interests. Want to copy protect your DVDs? Fine, logical, but why restrict their use to certain computer platforms and regions? Don't people all over the world have the same rights to watch DVDs? Don't Linux users? Why willingly restrict your user base? It was a suit, not an engineer that made that decision, and that decision seems to irk people more than the copy protection aspect of it. I paid good money for this DVD-ROM, and a healthy portion of that money went to the MPAA. Why, then, isn't the drive useful for its intended purpose? I addressed this "how much is too much" point in an all-together too long reply a few threads up.
I take it you've never, ever, EVER used a service, enjoyed it, then got angry when they started charging more for it, or altered it in a way as to make it less enjoyable?
Case in point for me...Kozmo (www.kozmo.com). Kozmo is nothing short of the greatest thing there is (tm). You place an order on their website, and in half an hour or so, a guy on a bike brings you your snacks, video/DVD rentals, magazines, books, and now steaks, pasta dinners, household goods, medicine. Reasonable prices, too...not nearly as inflated as you might expect for something so convenient. But then they upped rental prices on new releases. They cost more to Kozmo to get, so fine. They started charging sales tax (they must have always, but it went unoticed); that's the law, so fine. They start charging your credit card right away instead of once a month; must be some good reason, but no more food if you're out of money, not great but fine. They instituted a minimum order price; don't want your bikers running around the city for a bottle of soda, makes sense so fine. They started charging for delivery after 3, and don't guarantee speedy delivery anymore; hmm...all these add-ons are starting to stack up. Suddenly this is becomming an expensive proposition. We always tip the delivery people...with so many add-ons, should we still do so? There's no way of knowing if they get any of that, so we still do. Add a little more! Kozmo is still a great thing...good source of DVD rentals, and best source of Red Bull and Sobe, not to mention boxes of Krispy Kreames, so like the salivating dogs we are (mmm...chocolate Krispy Kremes), we keep going (points for the prosecution, I know).
The point is (about time, right?), if you let someone chip away at something you like, eventually you'll look at it and say "WOW...what the hell happened?" (like I did on returning to school after winter break and discovering the delivery charge...believe me...I was MAD). You're less likely to notice something if it happens a little at a time (boiling frogs example from The Pragmatic Programmer), but eventually, it's going to hit. The recording industry wants to shut down media sharing? I agree that musicians should be paid for what they do, so fine. Napster, et al have created much more revenue than they've taken away (how much do artists get out of that, anyway), observe my recently inflated CD collection. Little changes. So they want to tag and track everything? Fine. So Microsoft wants to implement content control at the bare metal? Fine. Encrypt everything each step of the way? Fine. Get the hardware makers involved, and make everyone get the new 'improved' gear if they want the flashy new TV and digital sound? Wait a minute. Register every piece of digital media with a central agent? Hold on, you mean I can't send "baby's first steps to grandma without somebodies permission?". Encrypt the raw output, and require implanted decrypters, special permission, and a major credit card to hear anything but static? Wake up one morning with chips in your eyes and ears?
What the hell happened?!
It's not about communism. It's not about a free ride (but lets not kid ourselves...who doesn't like something for nothing?), and its not about screwing over artists. It's about precident, control, implied guilt, and limitations. Yes, I agree that the record labels have a right to recoup their investment, and even more so, the artists have a right to be paid. The question is, how much control are we willing to give them? At what point have we given them too much? If we allow control over one thing, what is to stop control over something else? Email, web pages, printed material, hardware. "You let the record companies get away with it, so why can't we?". Digital Convergance (I'm sorry...I really am, but it helps my case) will have you believe you don't own that scanner you bought with your valuable marketing information. What if you ISP, or their upstream provide, or their upstream provider, decided they own the content they're providing (see? content providing), and want a cut of the action. For awhile, Yahoo! owned whatever you posted to their Yahoo! Clubs. You should have heard the arguments in the photography clubs.
One of these days, corperations will realize that they are nothing without consumers. The government (I know...I know...lobbyists, payoffs...) will realize that corperations are trying to take its place.
"I AM ABOVE THE LAW! (*glues down his comb over*)" --Record Exec in "Chef Aid" episode of South Park
"Behold ye corperations in thine ivory towers, I am The Consumer, thy God, and thou hast forsaken me"
It has been proven time and time again that the Suits are only concerned with money. They'll destroy the planet, manipulate the government, erode our rights and liberties, lie, cheat, steal, and sue, all in the name of the noble cause of money. The suits, however, are not the Creators. Somebody has to make this stuff (in this case, information control systems), and it sure isn't going to be some Market Droid or talking head.
What about the engineers?
Anybody with the ability to create this kind of system must be able to see the terrible implications of its use. Who, being of sound mind and technological intellect would voluntarily work to the potential end that this paper has predicted? Maybe I can say this as a mere undergrad not yet out in the workforce, but there must be some sort of job consiousness in everybody. Am I completely wrong? Will engineers do anything for the right ammount of money, or will there be, as the revelation of what's going on spreads, a mass exoudus of geeks from the likes of Sony?
This of course raises questions about those who work for military contractors, or whoever built that god-awful singing fish, but is there a possibility here? It should be clear just from reading Slashdot that there are multitudes of technologically mided people with a social and political awareness. If people refuse to build the system, there will be no system to worry about. They're not implanting music-decrypting chips in our ears yet, so there's still time!
That's a mind trip right there...an extrapolation of the article could be that all audio and video output is ecrypted at the exit point (as well as points along the way from leading-up developments), and you'll be required to have surgically implanted decrypters in your eyes and ears to determine if you're eligible to see or hear whatever is being played, and subsequently bill you for the pleasure. Anyone not subscribing to this system and undergoing the surgery would see and hear encrypted noise.
Damn it all...I would have had that Onion article reference first if it weren't for an "invalid form key" error attached to the "submit" button...that's for nothing, slashdot!
Any following posts refering to this article may consider themselves redundant. Now, on to business!
Huzzah and kudos, as well as mad props to Despair, Inc. for being one of the few companies with a sense of humor in these dark times of the MPAA, carnivore,:CueCat, the DMCA, the PTA, NASCAR, lawyers, Natalie Portman naked and petrified, Lego Mindstorm, TiVO, and any other obligitory slashdot references I might have missed. But damn, Imagine A Beowulf Cluster of These:-( Things! They Are More Than Welcome To Join My SETI@Home or distributed.net Team!
The Onion may be the premier parody newspaper, but Despair, Inc is a corperation...they're not supposed to rip on people like Microsoft, Apple, and Fry's Electronics. That wouldn't be Politically Correct of them!
Anyway, I have to go re-hang my Pessimism poster...the blue stuff that was holding it to the wall dried out and it fell. I didn't think the damn thing would stay up, anyway.
This is Matt signing off, and hoping the rest of your day doesn't suck.
Excellent analogy. We have plenty of that kind of thing on the 'net without gimmics like this. I had to adjust my little sisters AOL mail settings so she wouldn't get so many "Bare-ly legal Teen Dripping SlutZ" every day. It helped, but half of them come from AOL subscribers, who need to be filtered individually. There should be a law about this. Eventually some distressed soccer mom is Suburbua is going to hit AOL for a megabucks corruption of a minor suit, and hey...ISPs are responsable for things that pass through them and not the greasy porn czars, eh, RIAA?
...Ah yes, the fateful day during spring reading week when I realized I could get cheap technical books on eBay! Then the fateful several days when I realized that shipping these large volumes would cost roughly what I paid for them! A signifigant portion of my (already low) net worth was distributed in money order (and later, paypal) form across the country, and a good time was had by all, especially when it came time to figure out how to get them all (15 or so) home for the summer!
Slashdot Mirror
WELL...you'd better let him OUT!
..........wait a minute, nevermind, sorry.
bash$ echo 'Finger me for my public key' > ~/.signature
Or the hiding behind AC to bash a fairly legitimate (but completely off topic) post. Besides, if you're so smart, what does it mean, smart guy?! Seriously, what the hell does it mean, if anything (besides being funny at a decreasing rate)?
/home/your/base/*
10 reply to AC
20 bang head against wall
30 goto 10
bash# chown -R us
More cases with windows cut out so people can pj33r your boxens innards, but have it lit with a neon tube so it resembles a futuristic UFO or something! Oh! Oh! Or like...paint flames on the side! Or better yet...the Quake 3 or HalfLife Logos! That would hot!
The Honda Hotrodders have their "Go faster stripes" and "Go faster chrome", and the UberClockers have their "Go faster windows", "Go faster neon tubes", "go faster flames", and "Go faster logos of popular first-person shooters"
Am I the only one who finds the whole UberGamer attitude a bit tiresome? If I'm ever on another server and someone advises me to "suck it" or "bend over and take it" after a kill, I'm going to lose it. I mean...I know we should be tolerant, but I just don't swing that way! But hey...whatever frosts your flakes, you crazy UberWinGamers! The attitude disgusts me. I can only play a few rounds before getting fed up, and going into "ok...just one more round you stupid punks" phase for another hour or so.
This has all hit very close to home, as one has moved into the dorm to replace someone who moved out. Immediately, he starts ragging on my setup! "That mouse is so small...terrible for gaming!" (Logitech RF wheelmouse. Haven't had a problem yet). I calmly had to explain to him that as an ECE major, I frequently have to do things that don't involve rail sniping, and most of the time, I'm in a text editor or CLI. "Wow...see you have one of those 'don't type on me' keyboards" (MS Elite). Never had a problem switching weapons, but it sure helps my hands not feel like they're going to explode following a night of programming!
Attention UberWinGamers: There's a whole big world out there, and being able to run around and use a sniper rifle like you would a pistol isn't going to get you very far!
This arrogance about connection speed absolutely fries me. 13 year olds salivating for the Flavor of the Month FPS might be a tempting demographic and market, but it'll be a long time until there are enough of them on broadband to compete with the analog market.
Attention UberWinGamers: Having a broadband connection does not...I repeat NOT make you special, 1337, or better than anyone else. It just means that you live in an area deemed to be marketable by the powers that be, and your parents were willing to part with their money to provide you with a low ping. If you were any good, you wouldn't need it, anyway!
This isn't a personal issue to me...I'm on a sweet University setup (except when I go home to the old dialup on breaks...naggna-happen there), but everyone should be at least a little wary of this technological elitism.
Donzens of posts deserving of a '-1, Redunadnt' have stated "why should companies 'dumb down' games for dialup users...screw them! They should move to a better place where they can have good ping!!" Isn't there something wrong with that statement?
Enough people higher up the thread than I have given the connection method distribution percentages, and dialup has by far the highest usage. Don't these people deserve a good gaming experiance? Don't you think that the gaming companies are going to cater to the largest possible audience to make more money?
That's about all I have before I start getting preacy, and remember...I'm just mad at the UberWinGamer crowd. There are plenty of good, respectable gamers out there. You know who you are!
Yup yup...chess is the same way.
"Chess, huh? I kind of suck, and I haven't played in months..........but I'll kick your butt any day"
Heh...I'd gladly pay less than $2/month to make it legal. It'll make me stop feeling like one of the slimy warez d00dz I'm so fond of launching triads against at every opportunity. If you're not paying for it, it's piracy, and that makes several tens of millions of people slimy warez d00dz! But it's ok, because I use it so that makes me a warez d00d, too!
I know I'm asking for it Karma-wise, but it had to be said!
Ok...this is what I think is going on.
Napster is offering One Billion Dollars. To the average human, that sounds like a hell of alot of money. Wow...A Whole Billion Dollars..Just Imagine!
To the RIAA (non-humans), that's a drop in their Bucket of Relentless Riches +2.
So Napster is saying "Here...we're going to give you a whole Billion Dollars if you leave us the hell alone".
The RIAA can say "Ha ha ha...we PISS on your measly billion...begone with you!!"
At which point, the RIAA looks like huge bastards.
Napster can then say "See? We tried to be nice...tried to appease them, but they shot us down"
Film at 11, and suddenly everyone in the world finally sees what greedy jerks the RIAA et al are!
Personally, I like that.
Is it just me, or is giving Napster your credit card information a Very Bad Thing. Think about it...once they have your credit card information, they have everything about you. By They, of course, I mean the RIAA and company. Fork over your information, and Napster suddenly become a little less anonymous. Lets take it step by step:
*We know that the RIAA and musicians can track who is downloading what on Napster.
*You give Napster your financial information.
*We know that the RIAA and certain musicians can muster superlative legal power.
*Is it so impossible that they can get this information from Napster to "ensure that their requirements are being met"? Sure, there are probably laws about this kind of thing. Hell, there are alot of laws...millions. Has this stopped anyone with enough money yet? No!
*Lets say you download more of a certain album than the lawyers or tracking services would like you to.
*Suddenly "NapGuy986" becomes "Joe "Evil" Pirate of 123 Main Street, Your Town, USA. Phone Number 867-5309 Goes to F University, drives a Honda, penchant for very progressive magazines." and so on and so forth.
I don't know about you, but I'm not paying for this thing unless I can drop by CVS and have them cut a money order for $2 for the pleasure.
Right, I'm an Electrical and Computer Engineering major, and the SGI lab is definatly locked up; need a swipe card to unlock it (Not a GWorld). I was in there on a tour awhile back, and it was nice...all kinds of different workstations, and an Onyx deskside. The plate on the door says "Biomedical Imaging" or somesuch.
Didn't the Dakota and the Aston, et al get cable modems because they're not (yet?) wired in fibery goodness? How does that work, policy and policing wise?
10. All data, programs, and files placed on or contained in the University computer systems are subject to the University's copyright, patent, and privacy policies.
Damn it all...and I was going to publish that stupid CD database from CS135 (Ada95 class).
Yeah...Hail to the buff, huh?
One of these days I'll figure out how to get access to the Silicon Graphics lab in Tompkins.
Whatever is on the other end of this fiber cable is fast, but good luck getting someone at ResNet to tell you what it is or how it's set up.
At least they upgraded the Gelman lab to P3s, DVDs, and Zip250s.
Back on the third floor of Mitchell, we didn't have to worry about the school network policy...half the time, there was no network for them to police (Especially just after ResNet office closing friday afternoon...no CounterStrike that weekend!)
What's that about Napster? It still works on my box and connection.
Insert obligatory plug for free data encryption tools and secure protocols here
This message was brought to you in compliance with the "Slashdot Encryption Reference Requirement" stating that encryption and its merits must be invoked when discussing anything plausably relevant to it
-----Obligatory Encryption Related Post Sig------
When cryptograph is outlawed...and so on, and so forth
------End Obligatory Sig------
I hadden't realized that all existing software and hardware companies had either turned evil, or had been aquired by them, leaving absolutely no alternative for geeks but to work for an evil organization. Have to read The Wall Street Journal more, eh? And I caught the analogy...lets try to keep the patronizing to a minimum, shall we? If there weren't well meaning people offering theories that, while admittably not completely and meticulously thought out, researched, and cited but present a different approach than "F*** THE MPAA", there would be no posts for people to make obscure references, condecending remarks, and flex their egos on this anonymous forum where anyone can sound like a scholor with a few hyperlinks and weak insults.
:-)
Your welcome
But anyway, good point with the foreign labor. Extra points for not saying "Japan", too...India and Russia are much more chic references, and Japan has had DVD and digital media long before we did. Russia and India are really variables as far as technological saturation goes. In both cases, the largest groups who can really afford it are the government officials and the engineers themselves. Everyone else is just struggling to survive, and have more pressing issues to deal with than the government messing with their media. Their governments are messing with them enough already, especially in Russia, they probably wouldn't notice, anyway.
It's past my bed time, so I'm going to regroup my bug-addled brain, have some apple juice with my medicine crushed up really tiny and mixed in, and come up with a few more half-baked but hopeful solutions for arrogant nay-sayers to shoot down. (wow...hope *and* solutions in ONE post, and on SLASHDOT...)
"Behold ye corperations in thine ivory towers, I am The Consumer, thy God, and thou hast forsaken me"
Washington DC News Channel 8 did a quick little spot for this just now on their evening news, leading the story with one of their computer icons with the words "Computer Hackers!" underneath it. Although "Hackers" weren't mentioned in the rest of the spot, the story did a predictable ammount to "put the fear" into the consumer, and further blacken the name of true hackers everywhere.
They suggested disabling javascript in email (many times [redundantly] refuted here), as well as announced a patch from Microsoft. Doing the usual through job, they neglected to mention the forwarding vulerability of this; something the Java disabiling won't help
And here I thought it was just a bug...good old media setting the record straight!
Heeeyyy...wait a minute.....
You wouldn't believe me if I said I came up with that on the spot, but that's pretty much what I was thinking when I was replying, and reading other, similar stories. Maybe I passivly picked it up somewhere and it popped back into the forground. There used to be a time (waaay before I was around) when businesses understood they owed their existance and livlihood to their customers. And yes, hopefully one of these days slashdotters will realize that the issues at hand are much larger than being allowed to trade music freely. In fact, everyone should count themselves lucky if that's as far as it goes!
Right, copy protection. Copy protection isn't that insidious. Anybody has the right to protect what is theirs. The problem comes when the controlling entities gain too much power, and start to erode personal freedoms and liberties in favor of their own interests. Want to copy protect your DVDs? Fine, logical, but why restrict their use to certain computer platforms and regions? Don't people all over the world have the same rights to watch DVDs? Don't Linux users? Why willingly restrict your user base? It was a suit, not an engineer that made that decision, and that decision seems to irk people more than the copy protection aspect of it. I paid good money for this DVD-ROM, and a healthy portion of that money went to the MPAA. Why, then, isn't the drive useful for its intended purpose? I addressed this "how much is too much" point in an all-together too long reply a few threads up.
I take it you've never, ever, EVER used a service, enjoyed it, then got angry when they started charging more for it, or altered it in a way as to make it less enjoyable?
Case in point for me...Kozmo (www.kozmo.com). Kozmo is nothing short of the greatest thing there is (tm). You place an order on their website, and in half an hour or so, a guy on a bike brings you your snacks, video/DVD rentals, magazines, books, and now steaks, pasta dinners, household goods, medicine. Reasonable prices, too...not nearly as inflated as you might expect for something so convenient. But then they upped rental prices on new releases. They cost more to Kozmo to get, so fine. They started charging sales tax (they must have always, but it went unoticed); that's the law, so fine. They start charging your credit card right away instead of once a month; must be some good reason, but no more food if you're out of money, not great but fine. They instituted a minimum order price; don't want your bikers running around the city for a bottle of soda, makes sense so fine. They started charging for delivery after 3, and don't guarantee speedy delivery anymore; hmm...all these add-ons are starting to stack up. Suddenly this is becomming an expensive proposition. We always tip the delivery people...with so many add-ons, should we still do so? There's no way of knowing if they get any of that, so we still do. Add a little more! Kozmo is still a great thing...good source of DVD rentals, and best source of Red Bull and Sobe, not to mention boxes of Krispy Kreames, so like the salivating dogs we are (mmm...chocolate Krispy Kremes), we keep going (points for the prosecution, I know).
The point is (about time, right?), if you let someone chip away at something you like, eventually you'll look at it and say "WOW...what the hell happened?" (like I did on returning to school after winter break and discovering the delivery charge...believe me...I was MAD). You're less likely to notice something if it happens a little at a time (boiling frogs example from The Pragmatic Programmer), but eventually, it's going to hit. The recording industry wants to shut down media sharing? I agree that musicians should be paid for what they do, so fine. Napster, et al have created much more revenue than they've taken away (how much do artists get out of that, anyway), observe my recently inflated CD collection. Little changes. So they want to tag and track everything? Fine. So Microsoft wants to implement content control at the bare metal? Fine. Encrypt everything each step of the way? Fine. Get the hardware makers involved, and make everyone get the new 'improved' gear if they want the flashy new TV and digital sound? Wait a minute. Register every piece of digital media with a central agent? Hold on, you mean I can't send "baby's first steps to grandma without somebodies permission?". Encrypt the raw output, and require implanted decrypters, special permission, and a major credit card to hear anything but static? Wake up one morning with chips in your eyes and ears?
What the hell happened?!
It's not about communism. It's not about a free ride (but lets not kid ourselves...who doesn't like something for nothing?), and its not about screwing over artists. It's about precident, control, implied guilt, and limitations. Yes, I agree that the record labels have a right to recoup their investment, and even more so, the artists have a right to be paid. The question is, how much control are we willing to give them? At what point have we given them too much? If we allow control over one thing, what is to stop control over something else? Email, web pages, printed material, hardware. "You let the record companies get away with it, so why can't we?". Digital Convergance (I'm sorry...I really am, but it helps my case) will have you believe you don't own that scanner you bought with your valuable marketing information. What if you ISP, or their upstream provide, or their upstream provider, decided they own the content they're providing (see? content providing), and want a cut of the action. For awhile, Yahoo! owned whatever you posted to their Yahoo! Clubs. You should have heard the arguments in the photography clubs.
One of these days, corperations will realize that they are nothing without consumers. The government (I know...I know...lobbyists, payoffs...) will realize that corperations are trying to take its place.
"I AM ABOVE THE LAW! (*glues down his comb over*)" --Record Exec in "Chef Aid" episode of South Park
"Behold ye corperations in thine ivory towers, I am The Consumer, thy God, and thou hast forsaken me"
It has been proven time and time again that the Suits are only concerned with money. They'll destroy the planet, manipulate the government, erode our rights and liberties, lie, cheat, steal, and sue, all in the name of the noble cause of money. The suits, however, are not the Creators. Somebody has to make this stuff (in this case, information control systems), and it sure isn't going to be some Market Droid or talking head.
What about the engineers?
Anybody with the ability to create this kind of system must be able to see the terrible implications of its use. Who, being of sound mind and technological intellect would voluntarily work to the potential end that this paper has predicted? Maybe I can say this as a mere undergrad not yet out in the workforce, but there must be some sort of job consiousness in everybody. Am I completely wrong? Will engineers do anything for the right ammount of money, or will there be, as the revelation of what's going on spreads, a mass exoudus of geeks from the likes of Sony?
This of course raises questions about those who work for military contractors, or whoever built that god-awful singing fish, but is there a possibility here? It should be clear just from reading Slashdot that there are multitudes of technologically mided people with a social and political awareness. If people refuse to build the system, there will be no system to worry about. They're not implanting music-decrypting chips in our ears yet, so there's still time!
That's a mind trip right there...an extrapolation of the article could be that all audio and video output is ecrypted at the exit point (as well as points along the way from leading-up developments), and you'll be required to have surgically implanted decrypters in your eyes and ears to determine if you're eligible to see or hear whatever is being played, and subsequently bill you for the pleasure. Anyone not subscribing to this system and undergoing the surgery would see and hear encrypted noise.
Crap...the iMac is supposed to come with a monitor?
/me packs it back up and hauls back to that shady looking computer-shoppe
Nothing especially lementable happened today, but according to mine:
"After losing $1 billion and its logo in 1999, the GO Network announces "an opportunity to create a very clear proposition" (2000)
Those managers can say the silliest things sometimes!
Damn it all...I would have had that Onion article reference first if it weren't for an "invalid form key" error attached to the "submit" button...that's for nothing, slashdot!
First off, I'd like to submit this link to The Onion, and their article "Microsoft Patents Zeros and Ones"
:CueCat, the DMCA, the PTA, NASCAR, lawyers, Natalie Portman naked and petrified, Lego Mindstorm, TiVO, and any other obligitory slashdot references I might have missed. But damn, Imagine A Beowulf Cluster of These :-( Things! They Are More Than Welcome To Join My SETI@Home or distributed.net Team!
...the blue stuff that was holding it to the wall dried out and it fell. I didn't think the damn thing would stay up, anyway.
Any following posts refering to this article may consider themselves redundant. Now, on to business!
Huzzah and kudos, as well as mad props to Despair, Inc. for being one of the few companies with a sense of humor in these dark times of the MPAA, carnivore,
The Onion may be the premier parody newspaper, but Despair, Inc is a corperation...they're not supposed to rip on people like Microsoft, Apple, and Fry's Electronics. That wouldn't be Politically Correct of them!
Anyway, I have to go re-hang my Pessimism poster
This is Matt signing off, and hoping the rest of your day doesn't suck.
http://www.ionet.net/~timtroyr/funhouse/beer.html Check out the "Turing Machine" submission, or BrainF***
Excellent analogy. We have plenty of that kind of thing on the 'net without gimmics like this. I had to adjust my little sisters AOL mail settings so she wouldn't get so many "Bare-ly legal Teen Dripping SlutZ" every day. It helped, but half of them come from AOL subscribers, who need to be filtered individually. There should be a law about this. Eventually some distressed soccer mom is Suburbua is going to hit AOL for a megabucks corruption of a minor suit, and hey...ISPs are responsable for things that pass through them and not the greasy porn czars, eh, RIAA?
What a wonderful world
...Ah yes, the fateful day during spring reading week when I realized I could get cheap technical books on eBay! Then the fateful several days when I realized that shipping these large volumes would cost roughly what I paid for them! A signifigant portion of my (already low) net worth was distributed in money order (and later, paypal) form across the country, and a good time was had by all, especially when it came time to figure out how to get them all (15 or so) home for the summer!
...I really should go to bed....