I doubt it. You obviously haven't run into the parents that believe that (a) children should resolve their own problems and (b) their physically agressive child is showing that he is "a man" or is simply showing natural leadership qualities. Fines aren't going to help the parent's attitude in this case.
More than likely, the $500 fine will result in the parents physically taking it out on the child, who will then have even more motivation to beat on someone else. More secretively, without witnessess.
Windows would be simple to secure via the policy editor and logging into a secured domain server at the ISP. No local admin rights for the user - they might screw something up. Everything has to be installed by an technician. Just like most users pay Best Buy to install a CD-ROM drive or whatever at $75 an hour, you would be paying the ISP to have someone (probably remotely) install software and drivers. Updates could be scheduled and applied transparently.
OK, nobody would go for this. Paying extra? Increased costs? What ever for? Windows is supposed to be simple.
Yes, but letting the user that wants web surfing and email - only - install WeatherBug because "it said to click OK" just causes problems. Take away the power to create problems and it isn't anywhere near as insecure any longer.
Only problem is that nobody will use it as a "personal computer" any longer. But, face it, it is not a "personal computer" any longer. It is a "email and web applicance" or a "porn station" or a "video player". Make the average user's computer an appliance that they have as much control over as a microwave oven or a TV set and you have a secure computing platform.
Approved means nothing - just that your card says it has been approved for use and the amount is covered by your account. Period.
Later that day a batch of transactions are sent to the processing company. This is how the merchant gets paid. Why isn't this done immediately? Because there is a per-batch charge on top of the authorization charge. So it makes sense to build up a number of transactions to be sent over at the end of the day.
The batch also allows the merchant to change or void the transaction before it is submitted for payment. It is how restaurants get the tip added on to the charge. What you are signing is something printed from the approval process, not the actual submission of the charge.
Then there is the problem of disclaimed charges. You buy something with a credit card and when the bill comes you call the credit card company and say "I didn't buy that!" They contact the merchant and make him prove that you really charged it. Unless they have records - and often a security camera video of you - they get stuck for the bill. You can always say you didn't really sign that. If they have a record of the charge they have something. You're thinking they can get away without any records and that won't work.
Too bad they don't understand that the Internet is a consequences-free zone.
You can do just about anything on the Internet and are safe from prosecution. Why? Because the Internet crosses international borders and we all know that international law enforcement is just about impossible. No two countries have the same laws, the same penalties or even agree that the same things are criminal acts.
So, Sweden can pass all the laws they want to, but it will have no effect unless every country on the planet agrees that DDOS attacks are a criminal act with at least two years in jail being an appropriate penalty this will have no effect.
What is likely to happen is they will track some stupid show-off bragging script kiddie to Canada where it will be declared that they aren't going to extradite because it would bruise the delinquents ego. Or, the perp will be tracked to Romania where the response will be "So?"
Under the right circumstances, the US would probably even shield a perpetrator.
No, unfortunately for many people the Internet is destined to remain consequences-free for a long time to come.
I don't see this as "US mandated" at all. If Canada wanted to choose some other dates, that would be fine with everyone... except anyone trying to communicate cross-border.
See, the problem has nothing to do with one party making rules that everyone must follow. It has to do with there being a logical reason for the change and elsewhere people figuring out that it will cause more trouble to make the same change than to either do nothing or make some different change.
Personally, I think Arizona (where I now live) is execptionally silly in not following DST at all. Just like there used to be a place in Indiana that didn't follow DST, only instead of the whole state it was just a few counties. But nobody is forcing these places to go along with the new schedule, just like nobody was forcing Canada.
When you are trying to talk with people in UK or Australia where they switch to "Summer Time" on a different schedule, it is difficult. But most people in the US are not faced with this issue so it may not really make much of a difference. Compare this to the number of people trying to communicate cross-border between Canada and the US. With the new schedule it would be a month of insanity rather than just the week between UK/Australia and the US.
We all know that RFID can be read from geosynchronous satellites - they have shown that in lots of movies. Also, those roving satellites that they can move around whereever they are needed. I'm sure you have seen that in movies also.
So, we have a micro-sized RFID chip that will let anything be tracked from orbit, easily and without anyone else knowing about it. This technology will soon be embedded in everything from the clothes we wear to the food we eat. That would be a really simple way to get the tracking devices into everyone, wouldn't it?
Of course we wouldn't want to interrupt our movie-tech fantasy here with even the tinyest bit of reality. So we can forget about RFID having an EXTREMELY limited range and requiring compariatively large antennas to work. No, no. We all need to be extremely concerned about the Government (any government) wanting to track individual citizens. And employers wanting to keep track of people every second of every day so they can be sure they aren't giving any help to competitors or making money outside of their regular job. And how could we be concerned if we bothered to learn about RFID and how it really works. It is much better to read blogs and scary opinions of people that are in the group concensus about how dangerous this is.
Remember, it is much better to be in a group of thousands and knowing they feel the same way about something rather than being the only one with the truth. Why, you'd be all alone then!
The competition is in herding artists, not in delivering content. There logically can be no compteition between selling CDs from Band A and someone else selling CDs from Band B - unless you believe that Band A and Band B are interchangable units each delivering the same unit.
There can't be the kind of competition you are talking about because to most people they are not buying per-unit-weight of commodity music. They are buying Band A's music or Band B's music. It wouldn't matter if this came from EMI, Warner or BMG.
This means the only competition is what kind of a deal Band A gets from EMI vs. the deal they get from BMG. Period. And that has been shaken out so completely that the deals are going to be very very standardized across the industry. They have had years to figure this out.
There is a clear segment of the population that believes in groupthink. If 100 people believe something, especially if those people are in some kind of proximity to a person, in many cases that person will "know" they are correct. More correct than if only 50 people believe the same thing.
This in itself is dangerous. It promotes conformity and sacrifices truth for going with the flow. This is what the core of any "wiki" is.
Putting people together into groups and herding them in the same direction is never a good idea. The "wiki" concept strongly reinforces everyone heading in the same direction and thinking alike. Outliers are "punished" by the group by having their work "edited" to remove non-conformist material.
There isn't anything unique about the "wiki" concept. It has been in effect for thousands of years. The result is always the same. Truth eventually wins and facts win out over concensus. But it is a terrible price in the short term.
The problem is you are confusing analog with digital.
Making analog copies (of a book) is time consuming and impractical.
Making digital copies of a book - like a PDF - is easy and is done all the time. Nobody buy e-books, you just download it for free. Because one person paid for it and decided (conciously or not) to eliminate the profit from any future purchases by making it available to everyone for free.
The problem with digital copies is there will always be someone that is hell-bent on destroying the ability of the original publisher to derive profit from future sales. Happens with software, happens with music and it will be happening more with movies.
Sorry but there is no cost to copy music. Movies maybe, but probably not in the end with better tools and better pirates.
So, the music people can just give up and say it is all there for free or they can try protecting it. Since protecting it with a computer enabled as a player is pointless, it will end up for free anyway. It will always be easier and cheaper to download music than to pay for it.
Movies right now are arguably too big to download or too poor quality if the size is reduced. That is going to change in the next few years. We will see the end of camcorder copies and have only DVD rips. DVD rips with HD content and 5.1 sound run through good compression that doesn't compromise the quality. The end result will be that it takes 30 minutes to download a movie (over fiber) and you get the full 25GB high quality movie. Suddenly, there is no cost to copying movies.
We get to decide as a society that it is either free or it is not. So far, the "its all for free" side is winning. I don't know anyone under 30 that pays for music and very few pay for movies. Maybe a few of them use Netflix but along with a lot of downloading.
Sorry, but I do not agree. Look around - I get about 50 emails a day advertising cheap (pirated) software. There is no DRM or protection used on any of the packages being sold. The ones that have some sort of protection - that really works - are not being pirated.
If you let people pirate, they will pay nothing whenever possible. This produces the effect of "everything should be free" and utterly discourages anyone from making an investment in producing something for profit. Sure, you will get people that are dedicated to their "art" that want to make music for others. And Darwin Reedy will be right up there with her recordings. What you have to decide is do you want Darwin for free or pay for someone else.
I am pretty sure we are headed like a runaway freight train towards Darwin's singing style or anyone else's as long as it is free.
Yes, there are some people that will diffidently say "I don't pirate. I pay for my music." Most of these people are simply deluded in their belief that the Russian mob is paying the artists or some such. Time to face reality folks - music is free today. If you are buying, it is to soothe yourself rather than actually giving money to the artists.
Movies can be had, but usually poor quality and without effective transfer rates. This is changing with camcorder copies being replaced by DVD rips. As the ripping programs get better you will be able to download HD with 5.1 sound eventually. When that happens any pretense of buying quality at the DVD store will be gone.
The problem is you are describing a business that would be built on "enthusiasts" not a mass market. The reason there is a "music industry" in the US is because it is a mass market today. Lots of stores selling lots of CDs.
Compare this to the record shop of the 1930s. Very few record players, very few record shops. Record shops had people that knew their music and would go out of the way to get a customer something they wanted - because they had a very limited market. Contrast this today with asking someone at Best Buy about some foreign band and they will look at you as if you are from Mars.
What piracy is certainly going to do is change the music business away from a mass market, because everyone will have all the free stuff they can handle. You will have collectors and fans that actually go to shows and buy CDs from a few speciality shops who will have dedicated customers. No more mass marketing, no more "record promotion" and probably no more radio airplay.
Yes, you as an "enthusiast" are a whole different market than the one they are serving today. They don't care about you and never will because their entire business is selling to millions of consumers rather than a few enthusiasts.
This exists in the anti-malware world. All people distributing malware lie. Therefore, if your software is identified as malware and you say it isn't, you are lying. Neat, huh?
If you have not experienced this yet, just try getting off some anti-malware program's list. Try. Then try several more times. Go have a few drinks. Come back tomorrow and realize it is fruitless. Be prepared to answer a lot of phone calls and email saying "But it says it is spyware!!!"
Once the threat of spyware has been unleased on the user's mind there is no authority that can reverse this.
There are two ways of a running a planet. One is a closed system - nothing in, nothing out. The people have to figure out a way to have zero impact. Why zero? Because over a long period of time any impact is going to build up. We see it right now with CO2. We are going to see it with waste heat eventually.
The other way is to treat the planet as an open system with a universe of resources out there that Earth is just a very, very small part of.
If you favor a closed system, you need to think about how many people can actually survive in such a closed system with zero impact. Every human over that limit is one too many. And believe me, we are way, way past that level. To return to a sustainable level of resource use the planet can support maybe 200 million people, probably somewhat less. It would take years of killing just to reduce the population to that level, even if everyone thought it was their duty to die for the future of the planet.
And, have you thought about what it would be like living after that? Knowing you and your 2.1 replacement-level-only children were just a few of the really, really lucky ones that made it while everyone else you knew, had ever known or ever might know was now dead?
"Sustainable." Remember that word. Remember what it really means.
Stop all air travel now! Nobody actually needs to fly anywhere when they can take a train or ship instead.
Begin phasing out personal automobiles. Decrease the number of licenses by 10% each year. Make it so that if you want a car you have to fill out 50 page government forms in triplicate.
Cease all power plant construction. Close one plant every year to force conservation.
Gasoline would then be used by farm vehicles, diesel oil would be used by trucks, buses, trains and ships. It would force a reforming of the cities gradually so that people could use some kind of public transportation because there would be no other way. Companies would have to initially have their own buses to pick up employees. The idea of the "two car family" would end within a year or two.
It would be a different world, very quickly. How come nobody is talking about these kind of measures? Probably because this is a far more realistic assessment of what it would take to have an effect and nobody would put up with it. It would be like putting the entire planet at the standard of living of Bangledesh. The economic crash would be incredible but we would all - all those that were left - not have to worry about climate change. We would have bigger worries.
Indeed, we should all understand exactly what these folks want and are absolutely dead-set on acheiving by any means necessary.
Remember that to these people anyone living outside of the domination of Islamic law is an abomination. If you don't think their way, you have two choices: convert or die. Oh, and please don't take my word for it - the Quran is full of such statements.
Yup, the Christian Bible is full of stuff like "do not suffer a witch to live", but when exactly was the last time you found a Catholic priest beheading a Wiccan?
Most of the people in the West have learned that over the past 1000 years it might be better to be just a tad more tolerant while many of those of the Muslim faith are very, very nostalgic for the days when much of the world was ruled by Muslims.
Do you really think the bombings and behadings in Indonisia are because of the occupation of Palestine by Zionists? And the support of these people by Christians? How about the Sunnis killing Shites in Iraq? Is this all because of Palestine? Probably not.
In some ways, the last Christian-vs-Christian religious war was the IRA vs. British Government. But it was pretty isolated. It did involve non-combatants just as todays Muslims are involving non-combatants, as this seems to be a common thread of religiously inspired conflicts.
But do not for a moment believe this is all because of Palestine. There is way, way too much conflict across the planet that is both Muslim-vs-Muslim and Muslim-vs-Christian. Look at Sudan. Look at Indonesia. Many places far from Israel all involving people that would like to justify their struggle by pointing elsewhere.
One of the best ways of getting arrested and released - repeated - is to hang around with drug dealers and users when they are dealing and using.
Sure, you are going to get released most of the time. But it is going to be a significant hassle for you. You got to choose that course when you chose your dealing and using friends.
Yes, the LCD cold-cathode lamp(s) are driven with around 3000 volts DC. This comes from a little tiny circuit board, usually in the lid of the notebook to minimize the length of the high voltage wires. This circuit takes around 12 volts and turns out 3000. The current is very small, perhaps 10ma at most - that is 0.01 amps.
Coming into contact with the lamp power might tingle a little but it is doubtful you would notice it. Any serious current draw on this would completely fry the circuit that steps up the voltage.
It is possible to get 50% of the mains current in a laptop because of a lack of proper grounding. It isn't likely to happen and it isn't going to be a lot of current, but it is possible.
Recycling is a joke. 90% or more of what goes into a recycling container curbside ends up in a landfill. Why? Because nobody wants it, it is contaminated or it is just plain useless. But we all feel better because we're recycling.
We have no idea what happened to the ozone layer. The use of CFCs was thought to be creating the problem. We stopped putting them out as much but not completely. The expected "cure" time was around 20 years. It took 5 years and nobody has any idea why.
The first two words about "unauthorized" games on any platform needs to be this. If you haven't seen Custer's Revenge, you need to understand that this was a completely unauthorized independently developed game for the Atari 2600. It sold out before the Atari lawyers managed to get a TRO stopping sales of the game, it was that popular.
Of course, it was an incredibly lame game. But, it was the first game that really showed what people wanted on a video game - naked women. And men with huge penises.
If it wasn't pulled by Atari the morning it appeared on store shelves, it probably would have been blocked by local or state action. And might have stopped sales of the game console itself. Things are a little bit looser now, but still there is the opportunity for an independent developer to release something so utterly vile as to enrage people.
Because of this manufacturers are pretty careful to make it very, very difficult to release such unauthorized games. This of course means the primary purpose of such mod chips isn't to allow anything except piracy.
The other way is for everyone to steal everything. No more legitimate purchases. Download everything for free - it is out there. You want it - so take it. Period.
The result will either be no more personal computers or freedom from restrictions.
No more personal computers means simply the end of "programmable, general-purpose computing devices" for home use. They get replaced by players and other specific-purpose devices. A game console is a specific-purpose device. If they don't release software to download stuff from the Internet, there isn't any way to do it. You can't make your iPod send email no matter how hard you try.
Freedom from restrictions likely has a raft of other "freedoms" that go along with it. Number one on the list is freedom from promotional advertising of entertainment. If you're not paying, nobody is going to pay to advertise it. Whether or not it means "freedom" from Britney's latest trash or not depends. It might just mean freedom from "professional" entertainment production. If nobody was paying the top tier on American Idol might not be there, but the 2nd or 3rd levels would certainly have lots of stuff on the Internet. Wasn't her name Darwin or something like that?
The primary problem here is "He didn't know he was committing a crime." If we would like the world outside the US and Western Europe to join the rest of the world anytime soon, people have to understand that even if there is no "physical object" it isn't correct to just copy it.
Now, this particular case of enforcement might be a bit over the ability of the offender to pay. However, that is besides the point. The problem is that much of Russia probably doesn't understand. Or, if you pay attention to the Internet, much of Russia probably doesn't care, either.
This isn't just about mega-corporations squeezing the last time from people. This is the whole concept of "intellectual property", rights, restrictions and licensing. These folks probably wouldn't know (or care) what the rules for GPL software are either. So this is not something that does not affect those hating the MPAA and RIAA. It affects anyone that creates something and does not release it completely without restriction to the public domain.
GPL is a restricted and legally obligating license and does not fall under the idea of releasing something completely without restriction to the public domain. Creative Commons licensing is not (usually) the same as releasing to the public domain. BSD licensing is closer but still not the same as "without restriction" in the public domain.
Without some education, these people that just don't know they are doing something wrong will continue and teach children to grow up and violate copyright, the GPL, Creative Commons and every other sort of license you can imagine. Is educating them by sending them to a prison came correct? Maybe not. But just writing it off isn't correct either.
One of the huge problems of the "Internet generation" is almost an utter refusal to accept that anyone over the age of about 30 knows anything of value. I have seen so much that indicates a clear progression:
Discard all previous knowledge about subject in favor of new stuff
Much confusion reigns and bad things happen
Someone makes a decision that to some is faintly reminiscent of the old ways
New stuff is intelligently mixed with lessons of the past, leading to much goodness.
The problem with much of the Internet age is that it step 1 is done immediately without question and by the time step 4 is reached years have gone by.
You need to understand how advertising is bought, sold and viewed.
They sell it based on ratings, which has nothing to do with the content being viewed elsewhere that isn't tracked by the ratings service.
The ads on cable are often substituted by the cable company, who is both buying and selling ad space. This is how you get local advertising on cable channels.
They expect it will be timely, so running the ad for the local car dealer isn't so great when viewed elsewhere in the country and a week after the special being advertised ended.
No way is it going to matter if the advertising is in the content or not.
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I doubt it. You obviously haven't run into the parents that believe that (a) children should resolve their own problems and (b) their physically agressive child is showing that he is "a man" or is simply showing natural leadership qualities. Fines aren't going to help the parent's attitude in this case.
More than likely, the $500 fine will result in the parents physically taking it out on the child, who will then have even more motivation to beat on someone else. More secretively, without witnessess.
Windows would be simple to secure via the policy editor and logging into a secured domain server at the ISP. No local admin rights for the user - they might screw something up. Everything has to be installed by an technician. Just like most users pay Best Buy to install a CD-ROM drive or whatever at $75 an hour, you would be paying the ISP to have someone (probably remotely) install software and drivers. Updates could be scheduled and applied transparently.
OK, nobody would go for this. Paying extra? Increased costs? What ever for? Windows is supposed to be simple.
Yes, but letting the user that wants web surfing and email - only - install WeatherBug because "it said to click OK" just causes problems. Take away the power to create problems and it isn't anywhere near as insecure any longer.
Only problem is that nobody will use it as a "personal computer" any longer. But, face it, it is not a "personal computer" any longer. It is a "email and web applicance" or a "porn station" or a "video player". Make the average user's computer an appliance that they have as much control over as a microwave oven or a TV set and you have a secure computing platform.
Approved means nothing - just that your card says it has been approved for use and the amount is covered by your account. Period.
Later that day a batch of transactions are sent to the processing company. This is how the merchant gets paid. Why isn't this done immediately? Because there is a per-batch charge on top of the authorization charge. So it makes sense to build up a number of transactions to be sent over at the end of the day.
The batch also allows the merchant to change or void the transaction before it is submitted for payment. It is how restaurants get the tip added on to the charge. What you are signing is something printed from the approval process, not the actual submission of the charge.
Then there is the problem of disclaimed charges. You buy something with a credit card and when the bill comes you call the credit card company and say "I didn't buy that!" They contact the merchant and make him prove that you really charged it. Unless they have records - and often a security camera video of you - they get stuck for the bill. You can always say you didn't really sign that. If they have a record of the charge they have something. You're thinking they can get away without any records and that won't work.
Too bad they don't understand that the Internet is a consequences-free zone.
You can do just about anything on the Internet and are safe from prosecution. Why? Because the Internet crosses international borders and we all know that international law enforcement is just about impossible. No two countries have the same laws, the same penalties or even agree that the same things are criminal acts.
So, Sweden can pass all the laws they want to, but it will have no effect unless every country on the planet agrees that DDOS attacks are a criminal act with at least two years in jail being an appropriate penalty this will have no effect.
What is likely to happen is they will track some stupid show-off bragging script kiddie to Canada where it will be declared that they aren't going to extradite because it would bruise the delinquents ego. Or, the perp will be tracked to Romania where the response will be "So?"
Under the right circumstances, the US would probably even shield a perpetrator.
No, unfortunately for many people the Internet is destined to remain consequences-free for a long time to come.
then the answer is Phoenix.
I don't see this as "US mandated" at all. If Canada wanted to choose some other dates, that would be fine with everyone ... except anyone trying to communicate cross-border.
See, the problem has nothing to do with one party making rules that everyone must follow. It has to do with there being a logical reason for the change and elsewhere people figuring out that it will cause more trouble to make the same change than to either do nothing or make some different change.
Personally, I think Arizona (where I now live) is execptionally silly in not following DST at all. Just like there used to be a place in Indiana that didn't follow DST, only instead of the whole state it was just a few counties. But nobody is forcing these places to go along with the new schedule, just like nobody was forcing Canada.
When you are trying to talk with people in UK or Australia where they switch to "Summer Time" on a different schedule, it is difficult. But most people in the US are not faced with this issue so it may not really make much of a difference. Compare this to the number of people trying to communicate cross-border between Canada and the US. With the new schedule it would be a month of insanity rather than just the week between UK/Australia and the US.
We all know that RFID can be read from geosynchronous satellites - they have shown that in lots of movies. Also, those roving satellites that they can move around whereever they are needed. I'm sure you have seen that in movies also.
So, we have a micro-sized RFID chip that will let anything be tracked from orbit, easily and without anyone else knowing about it. This technology will soon be embedded in everything from the clothes we wear to the food we eat. That would be a really simple way to get the tracking devices into everyone, wouldn't it?
Of course we wouldn't want to interrupt our movie-tech fantasy here with even the tinyest bit of reality. So we can forget about RFID having an EXTREMELY limited range and requiring compariatively large antennas to work. No, no. We all need to be extremely concerned about the Government (any government) wanting to track individual citizens. And employers wanting to keep track of people every second of every day so they can be sure they aren't giving any help to competitors or making money outside of their regular job. And how could we be concerned if we bothered to learn about RFID and how it really works. It is much better to read blogs and scary opinions of people that are in the group concensus about how dangerous this is.
Remember, it is much better to be in a group of thousands and knowing they feel the same way about something rather than being the only one with the truth. Why, you'd be all alone then!
The competition is in herding artists, not in delivering content. There logically can be no compteition between selling CDs from Band A and someone else selling CDs from Band B - unless you believe that Band A and Band B are interchangable units each delivering the same unit.
There can't be the kind of competition you are talking about because to most people they are not buying per-unit-weight of commodity music. They are buying Band A's music or Band B's music. It wouldn't matter if this came from EMI, Warner or BMG.
This means the only competition is what kind of a deal Band A gets from EMI vs. the deal they get from BMG. Period. And that has been shaken out so completely that the deals are going to be very very standardized across the industry. They have had years to figure this out.
There is a clear segment of the population that believes in groupthink. If 100 people believe something, especially if those people are in some kind of proximity to a person, in many cases that person will "know" they are correct. More correct than if only 50 people believe the same thing.
This in itself is dangerous. It promotes conformity and sacrifices truth for going with the flow. This is what the core of any "wiki" is.
Putting people together into groups and herding them in the same direction is never a good idea. The "wiki" concept strongly reinforces everyone heading in the same direction and thinking alike. Outliers are "punished" by the group by having their work "edited" to remove non-conformist material.
There isn't anything unique about the "wiki" concept. It has been in effect for thousands of years. The result is always the same. Truth eventually wins and facts win out over concensus. But it is a terrible price in the short term.
The problem is you are confusing analog with digital.
Making analog copies (of a book) is time consuming and impractical.
Making digital copies of a book - like a PDF - is easy and is done all the time. Nobody buy e-books, you just download it for free. Because one person paid for it and decided (conciously or not) to eliminate the profit from any future purchases by making it available to everyone for free.
The problem with digital copies is there will always be someone that is hell-bent on destroying the ability of the original publisher to derive profit from future sales. Happens with software, happens with music and it will be happening more with movies.
Sorry but there is no cost to copy music. Movies maybe, but probably not in the end with better tools and better pirates.
So, the music people can just give up and say it is all there for free or they can try protecting it. Since protecting it with a computer enabled as a player is pointless, it will end up for free anyway. It will always be easier and cheaper to download music than to pay for it.
Movies right now are arguably too big to download or too poor quality if the size is reduced. That is going to change in the next few years. We will see the end of camcorder copies and have only DVD rips. DVD rips with HD content and 5.1 sound run through good compression that doesn't compromise the quality. The end result will be that it takes 30 minutes to download a movie (over fiber) and you get the full 25GB high quality movie. Suddenly, there is no cost to copying movies.
We get to decide as a society that it is either free or it is not. So far, the "its all for free" side is winning. I don't know anyone under 30 that pays for music and very few pay for movies. Maybe a few of them use Netflix but along with a lot of downloading.
Sorry, but I do not agree. Look around - I get about 50 emails a day advertising cheap (pirated) software. There is no DRM or protection used on any of the packages being sold. The ones that have some sort of protection - that really works - are not being pirated.
If you let people pirate, they will pay nothing whenever possible. This produces the effect of "everything should be free" and utterly discourages anyone from making an investment in producing something for profit. Sure, you will get people that are dedicated to their "art" that want to make music for others. And Darwin Reedy will be right up there with her recordings. What you have to decide is do you want Darwin for free or pay for someone else.
I am pretty sure we are headed like a runaway freight train towards Darwin's singing style or anyone else's as long as it is free.
Yes, there are some people that will diffidently say "I don't pirate. I pay for my music." Most of these people are simply deluded in their belief that the Russian mob is paying the artists or some such. Time to face reality folks - music is free today. If you are buying, it is to soothe yourself rather than actually giving money to the artists.
Movies can be had, but usually poor quality and without effective transfer rates. This is changing with camcorder copies being replaced by DVD rips. As the ripping programs get better you will be able to download HD with 5.1 sound eventually. When that happens any pretense of buying quality at the DVD store will be gone.
The problem is you are describing a business that would be built on "enthusiasts" not a mass market. The reason there is a "music industry" in the US is because it is a mass market today. Lots of stores selling lots of CDs.
Compare this to the record shop of the 1930s. Very few record players, very few record shops. Record shops had people that knew their music and would go out of the way to get a customer something they wanted - because they had a very limited market. Contrast this today with asking someone at Best Buy about some foreign band and they will look at you as if you are from Mars.
What piracy is certainly going to do is change the music business away from a mass market, because everyone will have all the free stuff they can handle. You will have collectors and fans that actually go to shows and buy CDs from a few speciality shops who will have dedicated customers. No more mass marketing, no more "record promotion" and probably no more radio airplay.
Yes, you as an "enthusiast" are a whole different market than the one they are serving today. They don't care about you and never will because their entire business is selling to millions of consumers rather than a few enthusiasts.
The problem is rule #1. Spammers lie.
This exists in the anti-malware world. All people distributing malware lie. Therefore, if your software is identified as malware and you say it isn't, you are lying. Neat, huh?
If you have not experienced this yet, just try getting off some anti-malware program's list. Try. Then try several more times. Go have a few drinks. Come back tomorrow and realize it is fruitless. Be prepared to answer a lot of phone calls and email saying "But it says it is spyware!!!"
Once the threat of spyware has been unleased on the user's mind there is no authority that can reverse this.
Wow. Someone who really gets it.
There are two ways of a running a planet. One is a closed system - nothing in, nothing out. The people have to figure out a way to have zero impact. Why zero? Because over a long period of time any impact is going to build up. We see it right now with CO2. We are going to see it with waste heat eventually.
The other way is to treat the planet as an open system with a universe of resources out there that Earth is just a very, very small part of.
If you favor a closed system, you need to think about how many people can actually survive in such a closed system with zero impact. Every human over that limit is one too many. And believe me, we are way, way past that level. To return to a sustainable level of resource use the planet can support maybe 200 million people, probably somewhat less. It would take years of killing just to reduce the population to that level, even if everyone thought it was their duty to die for the future of the planet.
And, have you thought about what it would be like living after that? Knowing you and your 2.1 replacement-level-only children were just a few of the really, really lucky ones that made it while everyone else you knew, had ever known or ever might know was now dead?
"Sustainable." Remember that word. Remember what it really means.
- Stop all air travel now! Nobody actually needs to fly anywhere when they can take a train or ship instead.
- Begin phasing out personal automobiles. Decrease the number of licenses by 10% each year. Make it so that if you want a car you have to fill out 50 page government forms in triplicate.
- Cease all power plant construction. Close one plant every year to force conservation.
Gasoline would then be used by farm vehicles, diesel oil would be used by trucks, buses, trains and ships. It would force a reforming of the cities gradually so that people could use some kind of public transportation because there would be no other way. Companies would have to initially have their own buses to pick up employees. The idea of the "two car family" would end within a year or two.It would be a different world, very quickly. How come nobody is talking about these kind of measures? Probably because this is a far more realistic assessment of what it would take to have an effect and nobody would put up with it. It would be like putting the entire planet at the standard of living of Bangledesh. The economic crash would be incredible but we would all - all those that were left - not have to worry about climate change. We would have bigger worries.
Indeed, we should all understand exactly what these folks want and are absolutely dead-set on acheiving by any means necessary.
Remember that to these people anyone living outside of the domination of Islamic law is an abomination. If you don't think their way, you have two choices: convert or die. Oh, and please don't take my word for it - the Quran is full of such statements.
Yup, the Christian Bible is full of stuff like "do not suffer a witch to live", but when exactly was the last time you found a Catholic priest beheading a Wiccan?
Most of the people in the West have learned that over the past 1000 years it might be better to be just a tad more tolerant while many of those of the Muslim faith are very, very nostalgic for the days when much of the world was ruled by Muslims.
Do you really think the bombings and behadings in Indonisia are because of the occupation of Palestine by Zionists? And the support of these people by Christians? How about the Sunnis killing Shites in Iraq? Is this all because of Palestine? Probably not.
In some ways, the last Christian-vs-Christian religious war was the IRA vs. British Government. But it was pretty isolated. It did involve non-combatants just as todays Muslims are involving non-combatants, as this seems to be a common thread of religiously inspired conflicts.
But do not for a moment believe this is all because of Palestine. There is way, way too much conflict across the planet that is both Muslim-vs-Muslim and Muslim-vs-Christian. Look at Sudan. Look at Indonesia. Many places far from Israel all involving people that would like to justify their struggle by pointing elsewhere.
One of the best ways of getting arrested and released - repeated - is to hang around with drug dealers and users when they are dealing and using.
Sure, you are going to get released most of the time. But it is going to be a significant hassle for you. You got to choose that course when you chose your dealing and using friends.
I believe the same is applicable to BitTorrent.
You're all being stupid here.
Yes, the LCD cold-cathode lamp(s) are driven with around 3000 volts DC. This comes from a little tiny circuit board, usually in the lid of the notebook to minimize the length of the high voltage wires. This circuit takes around 12 volts and turns out 3000. The current is very small, perhaps 10ma at most - that is 0.01 amps.
Coming into contact with the lamp power might tingle a little but it is doubtful you would notice it. Any serious current draw on this would completely fry the circuit that steps up the voltage.
It is possible to get 50% of the mains current in a laptop because of a lack of proper grounding. It isn't likely to happen and it isn't going to be a lot of current, but it is possible.
Do some reading and research.
Recycling is a joke. 90% or more of what goes into a recycling container curbside ends up in a landfill. Why? Because nobody wants it, it is contaminated or it is just plain useless. But we all feel better because we're recycling.
We have no idea what happened to the ozone layer. The use of CFCs was thought to be creating the problem. We stopped putting them out as much but not completely. The expected "cure" time was around 20 years. It took 5 years and nobody has any idea why.
The first two words about "unauthorized" games on any platform needs to be this. If you haven't seen Custer's Revenge, you need to understand that this was a completely unauthorized independently developed game for the Atari 2600. It sold out before the Atari lawyers managed to get a TRO stopping sales of the game, it was that popular.
Of course, it was an incredibly lame game. But, it was the first game that really showed what people wanted on a video game - naked women. And men with huge penises.
If it wasn't pulled by Atari the morning it appeared on store shelves, it probably would have been blocked by local or state action. And might have stopped sales of the game console itself. Things are a little bit looser now, but still there is the opportunity for an independent developer to release something so utterly vile as to enrage people.
Because of this manufacturers are pretty careful to make it very, very difficult to release such unauthorized games. This of course means the primary purpose of such mod chips isn't to allow anything except piracy.
The other way is for everyone to steal everything. No more legitimate purchases. Download everything for free - it is out there. You want it - so take it. Period.
The result will either be no more personal computers or freedom from restrictions.
No more personal computers means simply the end of "programmable, general-purpose computing devices" for home use. They get replaced by players and other specific-purpose devices. A game console is a specific-purpose device. If they don't release software to download stuff from the Internet, there isn't any way to do it. You can't make your iPod send email no matter how hard you try.
Freedom from restrictions likely has a raft of other "freedoms" that go along with it. Number one on the list is freedom from promotional advertising of entertainment. If you're not paying, nobody is going to pay to advertise it. Whether or not it means "freedom" from Britney's latest trash or not depends. It might just mean freedom from "professional" entertainment production. If nobody was paying the top tier on American Idol might not be there, but the 2nd or 3rd levels would certainly have lots of stuff on the Internet. Wasn't her name Darwin or something like that?
The primary problem here is "He didn't know he was committing a crime." If we would like the world outside the US and Western Europe to join the rest of the world anytime soon, people have to understand that even if there is no "physical object" it isn't correct to just copy it.
Now, this particular case of enforcement might be a bit over the ability of the offender to pay. However, that is besides the point. The problem is that much of Russia probably doesn't understand. Or, if you pay attention to the Internet, much of Russia probably doesn't care, either.
This isn't just about mega-corporations squeezing the last time from people. This is the whole concept of "intellectual property", rights, restrictions and licensing. These folks probably wouldn't know (or care) what the rules for GPL software are either. So this is not something that does not affect those hating the MPAA and RIAA. It affects anyone that creates something and does not release it completely without restriction to the public domain.
GPL is a restricted and legally obligating license and does not fall under the idea of releasing something completely without restriction to the public domain. Creative Commons licensing is not (usually) the same as releasing to the public domain. BSD licensing is closer but still not the same as "without restriction" in the public domain.
Without some education, these people that just don't know they are doing something wrong will continue and teach children to grow up and violate copyright, the GPL, Creative Commons and every other sort of license you can imagine. Is educating them by sending them to a prison came correct? Maybe not. But just writing it off isn't correct either.
The problem with much of the Internet age is that it step 1 is done immediately without question and by the time step 4 is reached years have gone by.
You need to understand how advertising is bought, sold and viewed.
They sell it based on ratings, which has nothing to do with the content being viewed elsewhere that isn't tracked by the ratings service.
The ads on cable are often substituted by the cable company, who is both buying and selling ad space. This is how you get local advertising on cable channels.
They expect it will be timely, so running the ad for the local car dealer isn't so great when viewed elsewhere in the country and a week after the special being advertised ended.
No way is it going to matter if the advertising is in the content or not.