No way...No doubt that it is preverse, but the only thing that should be illegal is is what the neighbor did to the baby - and maybe if you just watched it and jerked off instead of trying to stop it that should probably be illegal..
But if you were to talk about it or draw a picture. Why should that be illegal?
My theory that I just came up with is that repressed people don't like being reminded that they are capable of doing fucked up shit - therefore they try to repress it in themselves and others - the only thing is, most people don't worry too much about this stuff and would either say "wow, that's really imagistic and nasty, is that really the kind of shit you're into?" or "don't say such horrible things you nasty jerk, you scare me" - but the person who goes absolutely apeshit trying to make it illegal to say those sort of things - that's the person you stay the fuck away from and keep them away from your kids too because they've got some sort of sociopathic hidden tendencies and a severe issue with trying to control others...A recipe for the type of person who would actually do ALL of the things you listed in your little sicko story.
SO what...So what - Obscenity is in the eye and mind of the beholder - there is no universal standard for obscenity anymore than there is a universal standard for ugliness.
And what is a "healthy individual," and who gets to make that call? You?
The most famous quote I know about obscenity is one of a justice saying something to the effect of "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." - that is absolute bullshit that proves my point, and thinking like that should NEVER be the basis for laws.
Maybe there are people who would find artistic beauty or other aesthetic thought provoking art out of seeing drawn photos of babies being raped by rabbits...It should NEVER be illegal to draw, paint, or produce any sort of images that aren't real.
If people don't like them or feel that they are obscene then they can exercise their free will not to look at them they can bitch and complain about morals religion and other completely subjective personal choices, they can go on TV to try to rile up the public with assholes like Bill O'Rielly and whine whine whine whilst ignoring real problems - but to try to pass laws? Fuck that.
Attempting to restrict imagination and art is a REAL crime - drawing pictures of distasteful and nasty shit isn't.
This is definitely true in that they should not be relied on as a primary or sole backup, but they can be used as a second backup that is easier and quicker to restore.
The IT dept that I run does cross server backups to DLT tapes, as well as backups to a NAS.
The DLTs are taken offsite and stored in a fireproof safe and would be used for something catastrophic, but the NAS backups are used if we need to restore a file here or there because somebody does something stupid.
This way somebody doesn't have to bring in the DLT tape, mount it and restore that way - although I still (as a test) do a restore from DLT a couple of times a year just to make sure everything is working as well as the logs and my perception tells me it is. Unfortunately when I do these test restores it's only files and not restoring the entire system, so other than knowing that it works well for files and expecting that it would work properly for restoring from bare metal I haven't had to actually do it (which I am not complaining about - but I would like to go through the process in a non-critical situation to really know, because you really don't know if your backups are worth anything until you try to restore them).
Does anybody know if I could test such a full restore in a a virtual environment?
This is why people have to stay vigilant. The same people who organized these protests, etc - they shouldn't sleep on this one, because I think it's quite likely that whoever took that provision out probably made a phone call right before doing so to big content and said something like the following:
"listen mate, i'm gonna have to strike that provision of the bill - the time just isn't right, but don't worry - we'll backdoor it later after the furor dies down."
The way some of you are discussing this leads me to believe you have very rigid beliefs about what makes one libertarian; rigidity that I don't see associated with other parties/political theories.
Do all democrats believe one thing? Do all democrats truly represent democracy well? Do all republicans truly believe in a true republic? Shit, Lincoln was a republican, compare his politics to that of the GOP of today...
And the guy that brings up Ron Paul makes my point, because Ron Paul wasn't a libertarian candidate; he's a republican (even though he holds a lot of core libertarian values).
Basically, in this day and age in America the party a candidate associates his/herself with doesn't mean that much, in that it certainly doesn't mean that that person holds to an encyclopedic manifesto of party beliefs and positions - it's not like it used to be....people seem to have this idea of libertarianism that is rigid and sounds like an encyclopedic definition, (EG a definition of theory, but not of practice) - that any candidate who is a libertarian either wants to put everything up for sale or is crazy and can't win - I think that many people hold libertarian values, and from the years I have spent on Slashdot I would say that a large number of the people who comment here have a strong libertarian bent (not necessarily the libertarian party, but libertarian as in beleiving strongly in personal freedom).
My feeling (especially in these times) is that with any school of thought, you should take what you want, what you believe - and leave the rest...Of course, the media and the government don't seem to like this, because they want people to be easily pigeonholed and thus easily manipulated....
About right now I find it hard to believe that the US would not be better off had someone other than Obama or McCain been elected - I'm not saying any candidate is perfect, but certainly had Ron Paul won we would have someone who isn't in the pocket of big business and big money/industry and someone who does more than provide lip service to respecting the constitution.
As has been said many times before, until we get away from these two big money political parties there isn't going to be any real change; and not only that, things seem to progressively be getting worse for just about everyone.
How about if Obama does a thorough review of all of his OWN policies, to see if they match up with all of the shit he promised he'd do when he was campaigning and the constitution...
People don't realize everything that is inherent in a "cashless society." It's bee the wet dream of scum like David Rockefeller and all of the types who have their yearly meeting at Bohemian Grove because it gives any entity (basically the state and corporate power, which will have pretty much have completed their merger once banking is nationalized) the ability to completely control you.
With it will come biometrics - your biometrics (whether it's an iris scan or vein scan or whatever the current state of the art is when we get there in a few years) will be like your credit card. You can be stripped of all ability to do anything with just an entry in some databases.
For any benefit anyone thinks this may provide, the downsides are orders of magnitude worse, and the upside?
People may think that fraud will be a thing of the past - but it won't, fraud will always exist - as long as any person has access to any machine there will be fraud and mistakes; only this will be way worse because you won't have cash to hold you over while your investigate it - and likely if your money or access has been taken or wiped out it likely will not be as easy to get that fixed - depending on who fucked you and why.
So I agree with you, I hope we never have a cashless society, and it's one of the issues (like complete filtering/censorship of the internet, banning of the right to own firearms, and the undermining of the constitution) that I believe is worth fighting against, whatever it takes - because these are the only things standing between the people and complete slavery - and if we lose these things completely in the US, then America no longer truly exists.
Bats are falcons, and falcons are dogs - so get it right......Now dogs can't survive in space unless they have a Russian name, and that is only until they run out of food, water, and air.
If you are correct about this, then it's just another thing that illustrates why it absolutely needs to see the light of day.
Do you have a source or something other than assumptions and intuition for your information on this? I do think you're probably right, but the way you're stating it as fact makes me wonder whether you have a source for this or are just extraordinarily confident in your assumptions.
By claiming "national security" with this (and some of the other things he has done) Obama shows he is willing to abuse executive power just like Bush was - he seems to be an entirely different person than the guy who spoke of "limiting executive power" and ushering in an era of transparency.
He needs to be called on this, because while Bush and Cheney could get away with telling congresspeople and the general public to "fuck off," Obama generally cannot do that without losing his image and alienating his base. I want to hear him try to justify some of the things he has done...
- I wouldn't discount the role of IRC/Undernet; also, I wouldn't worry about losing access to this technology, there will always be a way to get around, bypass, obfuscate any attempt to stop the free flow of information - there will be new technologies.
The brilliance of the tech and engineering community will never be overcome by the ignorance of corrupt governments and their corporate bedmates.
They can make things difficult, they can put the fear into people, they can pass laws that nobody wants that can hurt people, but none of this will stop progress in the end.
I agree with you about the point of technology, but I don't know where you got the idea that I said anything resembling "centralization is bad," because I said nothing of the sort.
I do think that any sort of attempt at centralized governmental control/regulation over the internet or bittorrent, most definitely IS political and is of great concern to me and many others - it's in the news practically every day; net monitoring is going on in a lot of western "democracies" and is being pushed heavily where it isn't already being trialed.
So is what you were getting at more like (to use an analogy) "dolphin safe tuna?" You know, you can feel good about buying this tuna because we didn't kill dolphins? But it would be more like "Feel free to download, this is an "artist safe download" and it has an MD5 to verify or something?
If that is what you're talking about then that's not as bad as what I was envisioning they way I read your post, but I also have to say that voluntary licensing programs can become mandatory and it seems like that is the method by which unpopular legislation gets passed, you know..start out voluntary, people get used to it, gradually make it mandatory.
I guess I am just so concerned about freedom on the net. I think that every government (especially these western govts like UK/US) really badly want control over the internet, it's the only source of unfiltered information and unregulated collaboration and organizing potential - Governments seem to be increasingly intent upon control of information and the citizenry, and when you take the commerce that goes on online and potential taxes into account I feel it is only a mater of time before these dastardly evil statist types get their tentacles all over the net. I feel that the net is our only hope right now to protect those freedoms we still have, and to have sources of information that aren't corporatized/propagandized.
The artists are free to do as they choose, and let's point out that the majority of the fight against this isn't coming from artists, it's coming from industry protective groups who spend a lot of the time they aren't using fighting against this technology to do things to financially and artistically rape, rob, and exploit artists on behalf of their clients, large multinational media conglomerates.
Now I am not saying people should just download whatever and fuck the artists - but I think that the majority of downloads are not lost sales, and that a lot of people who download stuff still purchase music, movies, and software. I know I do - most of my downloads are authorized live music downloads, though i do download out of print things and some commercially available things too - with those if I like them I buy them, if I don't they get deleted. Software is the same way, though I rarely if ever download software that is pirated because most of it is filled with malware and most software has free trials. A portion of my job consists of writing code, etc - and I have had my work taken and used without my consent before, and it was extremely frustrating....so I especially try to make sure to support independents in every way - whether it is music or software or what have you. I think a lot of people do the same, they likely have their own personal code of ethics related to this sort of thing.
Well, I am not sure if this is specifically what spliffington was referring to, but one of the things that makes things like pro tools or sonar or reason or any of that stuff so powerful and innovative is the ability to work with individual tracks in a gui - cutting and pasting down to the millisecond level, taking sections and looping them or pasting them into several other areas within a song.
So for an example: Let's say you have a performance where the drummer isn't using any sort of metronome or click track to keep time and there are natural variations in his timing - in this performance when it is captured in one take it sounds great, because it doesn't sound sterile or robotic...
Now, let's say you want to use that same recording in a multitrack recording editor, and lets say while playing with it in the software you decide you like the first four beats and want to loop them a few times before moving on and sort of change the song - now this natural slightly off time variation may not sound so great because instead of fitting nicely in with the swing of the original unedited song, the fact that it is off time becomes much more pronounced because the off time beat is coming out in places where it doesn't work so well everywhere that loop (which you have just cut and pasted into different areas of the new track) is inserted, that offtime beat comes up. Now, in addition to that, you also have the issue of it not syncing perfectly with the bass track and stuff.
You could then probably go down to the individual beats and chop those out, but that may be a lot of work and may not end up sounding so good.
I am so tired of this sort of sensationalized reporting.
It's all part of an agenda, as I see it, about the "horrors of p2p technologies."
So let me get this straight, (at least, according to the headline).
"File Sharing" actually "breached" Obama's helicopter. How did file sharing accomplish such a feat? Did file sharing hire some elite spies? Maybe some mossad agents?
What I think is that a company that manufactures products to snoop of file sharers has a great headline to promote their business.
What the article REALLY amounts to, is that some defense contractor fucked up by not following security procedures. if he had left them on a table at McDonalds the outcome could have been the same.
People are talking about how stupid and ineffective this sort of censorship legislation is, and that is so true - it IS ineffective for what the government says they want to do it for - but I don't think they really even give a fuck about that - what it WILL be INCREDIBLY effective for is enabling this increasingly authoritarian government's control over the internet - it will put in place a framework by which they will be able to censor the internet.
This is coming to every western country I'm afraid, and it will never be called what it is - it will only be introduced and supported as a way to "protect the children" or "stop terrorism," but in essence the real goal is to put a choke hold on what governments consider extremely dangerous to their interests: The free flow of information in real-time and the ability for anyone to organize and communicate instantly in so many different ways.
I seem to remember reading this email (or one exactly like it) quite some time ago; is there that little to discuss in this bastion of tech intelligence and free thinking that we're recycling old Bill Gates emails?
Don't get me wrong, I think it's interesting...just not interesting enough to read again.
Surely we can do better - with how Vista turned out for them he MUST have some newer ranting emails for us to discuss....
Economic hegemony is, in large part what I was referring to...At a time when that's the last thing we need to be doing. Couple that with the institutionalized corruption, the genuinely shady stuff, and our monetary policies we're not in great shape.
The idea that "America is great and can and should impose it's will upon the world" is bothersome as well, but it is primarily the economic side of it and all that that entails that destroys these empire building nations from the inside out.
I agree that we've got nothing on what Persia and Rome had historically, nor our friend upon which "the sun never sets," but they all started somewhere.
I know this was in a book or movie I saw - It may have been 1984, the TV in everyone's house monitored them...I can see it now, every TV will be required to have a little cam behind the glass or right at the top like a lot of laptops do now.
What will it take for people to stand up and say "no?!?!
Where is the line? Or are they just going to continue to implement this stuff so incrementally that people get upset, but not enough to stand up - and before you know it everything you do, say or think is monitored.....
So basically, all of the the talk of transparency was lip service, either that - or they have been made aware of what the content of those emails will show.
Obama is showing hypocrisy in record time, he's barely been in a month. It's not like he is reneging on a campaign promise, it sure makes it seem like practically his ENTIRE stated message about transparency in government was total bullshit.
I wanted Ron Paul, and I think that anybody who understands how our government really functions these days, the constitution, the lessons of history as they relate to empires and our debt based Federal Reserve manipulated economy who got a chance to hear his message likely did too...
Unfortunately I think the current state of the economy and it's effect on the day to day lives of most Americans is spec-fuckin-tacular compared to where it's headed - We're following the path of the Weimar Republic here, and guess how that turned out...
I live right next door to independence hall - it's literally something I see when I walk outside of my home every morning; I see that, and the eternal flame which burns at the mass graves of al of the unknown revolutionary solders buried in Washington Sq....it's really sad, and sadness is what I feel every time I see these reminders of our history and founding...our empire is crumbling and most of the people on the street don't even know what the word "empire" means and how it applies to America today and are more interested in some Hip Hop MTV retard beating his girlfriend or what happened on TV last night. We don't need to be an empire, empires always end one way.
After Obama won (and out of him and McCain) I figured he would be better choice out of the two because at least he was saying he wanted to limit executive power and was all about openness, etc, etc ad infinitum - I knew the guy was a politician, but given the passion with which he seemed infused with he seemed to have some integrity....I guess we'll see how much he really does....
Right now think the best thing people can do is support the states rights movement - 20 states are taking action to formally remind the federal government of the limits of their power under the 10th Amendment, 20 states are re-asserting sovereignty under the 10th amendment - There is some great stuff going on in New Hampshire also - it seems they really do want to 'live free or die' there...; PA rep Sam Rohrer is heavily active in promoting these resolutions , and it's very important:
If you are concerned about what the federal government is doing - make sure to support the resolutions, in the state, in the house and senate by contacting your reps.
This is fucked that he's been locked up all this time.
I think (as I said back when this happened) that there is a lot more to this story; there were obviously political and interpersonal machinations going on that led to this situation.
I would be tempted to say that he probably should have handed over the admin passwords and walked away, but then I remembered that he did offer to do just this, but only to give them directly to the mayor - but by the time you are being ambushed in a conference room by your boss, some douchebag traitor subordinates and a cop, your future employment at said job is probably already compromised so you might as well get out - but the fact that it went to this level and that he WAS willing to release the password to the mayor AND the fact that he was willing to go to jail over this tells me that there is probably more to this.
I wish I could remember more of what I had heard right after this occurred - because I seem to remember hearing something about him knowing that something shady was going on - that someone was compromising the network or something like that and/or that it had gotten personal and that this non-technical supervisor had it out for him or something...
After everything I read at the time from people who knew this guy and had more information about this than what they've read in articles I had come to the conclusion that something integral to this situation stinks to high hell.
It was apparent that some people found him arrogant, but hey - that isn't a crime and sometimes in this industry as many of us know, if your technical skills are way above the average skill of the people working around you sometimes that does get mistaken as arrogance - because it can be trying fixing fuckups and explaining things all of the time - sure, it would be best if everyone who had technical skills had interpersonal skills to match, but that isn't often the case.
Additionally, I don't see where he even broke the law. The network never went down, he simply refused to hand over passwords to non-technical employees - he didn't "take control of the network illegitimately" and if they wanted to fire him for not complying with management, then yeah - but pressing charges and keeping the guy in jail for 7mos - and then we have a DA that proves his fucking case by entering active logins and passwords into evidence?
Does anyone know where to where to mail Terry Childs? I'd like to send the guy some books or something - it must suck really bad to be in jail....
"They are trying to own who we are, and sell our own culture back to us rather than innovate said culture."
Best sentence in your post IMHO, and a sentiment that is as worrisome on it's own (for other reasons) as this entire debacle is.
You make some great points - but I will add the following:
DO you think it would even be possible to pass such a law? Our country (in the US) is broken, and unfortunately I think we're in for more of the same from our new president in this respect.
No matter how right or wrong it is to reform these laws, the powerful interests which own our country, much of our pop culture, our resources, and 96% of our politicians won't allow it - and I haven't seen anything in the past month or so restore constitutionality and rule of law.
So, for once the big corporations have something that they can't control - the control has been taken from them.
If you're talking about the Pirate bay trial, I don't think the outcome should be a given...there is the argument that Google does the same thing as TPB, and remember that this is Sweden, not the US. - but with that said with how long it has taken for it to come to this and all of the pressure on Sweden I am thinking they may not get a fair trial..I hope they do...
The typical pirate response to your statement about people "trying to justify" downloading - it goes something like this:
I don't need to justify it, justification is a foregone conclusion - I sleep soundly. I've done no wrong - and anybody who has ever driven 1mph over the speed limit or broken any other law can't say shit about "b b but you're breaking the law" - maybe, maybe not, but I don't care if I am. I pay for software, I pay for music from independents, I download things, if I like them then I go buy them, if not they end up deleted.
Ever notice how it's always the industry groups and rarely the actual artists who are fighting this? One reason is because the industry groups want the artists for their own private economic rape sessions.
In a way downloading is a new type of consumerism and a new type of economic corporate/civil disobedience....I think a lot of people feel like as long as they are supporting the artists when they actually download and keep something, then they feel like everything is good and the only one getting screwed are those who are responsible for everything that is wrong with our culture and economic system.
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No way...No doubt that it is preverse, but the only thing that should be illegal is is what the neighbor did to the baby - and maybe if you just watched it and jerked off instead of trying to stop it that should probably be illegal..
But if you were to talk about it or draw a picture. Why should that be illegal?
My theory that I just came up with is that repressed people don't like being reminded that they are capable of doing fucked up shit - therefore they try to repress it in themselves and others - the only thing is, most people don't worry too much about this stuff and would either say "wow, that's really imagistic and nasty, is that really the kind of shit you're into?" or "don't say such horrible things you nasty jerk, you scare me" - but the person who goes absolutely apeshit trying to make it illegal to say those sort of things - that's the person you stay the fuck away from and keep them away from your kids too because they've got some sort of sociopathic hidden tendencies and a severe issue with trying to control others...A recipe for the type of person who would actually do ALL of the things you listed in your little sicko story.
SO what...So what - Obscenity is in the eye and mind of the beholder - there is no universal standard for obscenity anymore than there is a universal standard for ugliness.
And what is a "healthy individual," and who gets to make that call? You?
The most famous quote I know about obscenity is one of a justice saying something to the effect of "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." - that is absolute bullshit that proves my point, and thinking like that should NEVER be the basis for laws.
Maybe there are people who would find artistic beauty or other aesthetic thought provoking art out of seeing drawn photos of babies being raped by rabbits...It should NEVER be illegal to draw, paint, or produce any sort of images that aren't real.
If people don't like them or feel that they are obscene then they can exercise their free will not to look at them they can bitch and complain about morals religion and other completely subjective personal choices, they can go on TV to try to rile up the public with assholes like Bill O'Rielly and whine whine whine whilst ignoring real problems - but to try to pass laws? Fuck that.
Attempting to restrict imagination and art is a REAL crime - drawing pictures of distasteful and nasty shit isn't.
What are you talking about? I'm in America, and we need to find someone to blame for the flat first....
Then, maybe we can fix it..Got any nails and a hammer?
This is definitely true in that they should not be relied on as a primary or sole backup, but they can be used as a second backup that is easier and quicker to restore.
The IT dept that I run does cross server backups to DLT tapes, as well as backups to a NAS.
The DLTs are taken offsite and stored in a fireproof safe and would be used for something catastrophic, but the NAS backups are used if we need to restore a file here or there because somebody does something stupid.
This way somebody doesn't have to bring in the DLT tape, mount it and restore that way - although I still (as a test) do a restore from DLT a couple of times a year just to make sure everything is working as well as the logs and my perception tells me it is. Unfortunately when I do these test restores it's only files and not restoring the entire system, so other than knowing that it works well for files and expecting that it would work properly for restoring from bare metal I haven't had to actually do it (which I am not complaining about - but I would like to go through the process in a non-critical situation to really know, because you really don't know if your backups are worth anything until you try to restore them).
Does anybody know if I could test such a full restore in a a virtual environment?
They'll just backdoor it later.
This is why people have to stay vigilant. The same people who organized these protests, etc - they shouldn't sleep on this one, because I think it's quite likely that whoever took that provision out probably made a phone call right before doing so to big content and said something like the following:
"listen mate, i'm gonna have to strike that provision of the bill - the time just isn't right, but don't worry - we'll backdoor it later after the furor dies down."
The way some of you are discussing this leads me to believe you have very rigid beliefs about what makes one libertarian; rigidity that I don't see associated with other parties/political theories.
Do all democrats believe one thing? Do all democrats truly represent democracy well?
Do all republicans truly believe in a true republic? Shit, Lincoln was a republican, compare his politics to that of the GOP of today...
And the guy that brings up Ron Paul makes my point, because Ron Paul wasn't a libertarian candidate; he's a republican (even though he holds a lot of core libertarian values).
Basically, in this day and age in America the party a candidate associates his/herself with doesn't mean that much, in that it certainly doesn't mean that that person holds to an encyclopedic manifesto of party beliefs and positions - it's not like it used to be....people seem to have this idea of libertarianism that is rigid and sounds like an encyclopedic definition, (EG a definition of theory, but not of practice) - that any candidate who is a libertarian either wants to put everything up for sale or is crazy and can't win - I think that many people hold libertarian values, and from the years I have spent on Slashdot I would say that a large number of the people who comment here have a strong libertarian bent (not necessarily the libertarian party, but libertarian as in beleiving strongly in personal freedom).
My feeling (especially in these times) is that with any school of thought, you should take what you want, what you believe - and leave the rest...Of course, the media and the government don't seem to like this, because they want people to be easily pigeonholed and thus easily manipulated....
About right now I find it hard to believe that the US would not be better off had someone other than Obama or McCain been elected - I'm not saying any candidate is perfect, but certainly had Ron Paul won we would have someone who isn't in the pocket of big business and big money/industry and someone who does more than provide lip service to respecting the constitution.
As has been said many times before, until we get away from these two big money political parties there isn't going to be any real change; and not only that, things seem to progressively be getting worse for just about everyone.
How about if Obama does a thorough review of all of his OWN policies, to see if they match up with all of the shit he promised he'd do when he was campaigning and the constitution...
I agree.
People don't realize everything that is inherent in a "cashless society." It's bee the wet dream of scum like David Rockefeller and all of the types who have their yearly meeting at Bohemian Grove because it gives any entity (basically the state and corporate power, which will have pretty much have completed their merger once banking is nationalized) the ability to completely control you.
With it will come biometrics - your biometrics (whether it's an iris scan or vein scan or whatever the current state of the art is when we get there in a few years) will be like your credit card. You can be stripped of all ability to do anything with just an entry in some databases.
For any benefit anyone thinks this may provide, the downsides are orders of magnitude worse, and the upside?
People may think that fraud will be a thing of the past - but it won't, fraud will always exist - as long as any person has access to any machine there will be fraud and mistakes; only this will be way worse because you won't have cash to hold you over while your investigate it - and likely if your money or access has been taken or wiped out it likely will not be as easy to get that fixed - depending on who fucked you and why.
So I agree with you, I hope we never have a cashless society, and it's one of the issues (like complete filtering/censorship of the internet, banning of the right to own firearms, and the undermining of the constitution) that I believe is worth fighting against, whatever it takes - because these are the only things standing between the people and complete slavery - and if we lose these things completely in the US, then America no longer truly exists.
Yes they are.
Bats are falcons, and falcons are dogs - so get it right... ...Now dogs can't survive in space unless they have a Russian name, and that is only until they run out of food, water, and air.
I love the scientific method!
If you are correct about this, then it's just another thing that illustrates why it absolutely needs to see the light of day.
Do you have a source or something other than assumptions and intuition for your information on this? I do think you're probably right, but the way you're stating it as fact makes me wonder whether you have a source for this or are just extraordinarily confident in your assumptions.
By claiming "national security" with this (and some of the other things he has done) Obama shows he is willing to abuse executive power just like Bush was - he seems to be an entirely different person than the guy who spoke of "limiting executive power" and ushering in an era of transparency.
He needs to be called on this, because while Bush and Cheney could get away with telling congresspeople and the general public to "fuck off," Obama generally cannot do that without losing his image and alienating his base. I want to hear him try to justify some of the things he has done...
"The Scene" does almost everything through FTP."
- I wouldn't discount the role of IRC/Undernet; also, I wouldn't worry about losing access to this technology, there will always be a way to get around, bypass, obfuscate any attempt to stop the free flow of information - there will be new technologies.
The brilliance of the tech and engineering community will never be overcome by the ignorance of corrupt governments and their corporate bedmates.
They can make things difficult, they can put the fear into people, they can pass laws that nobody wants that can hurt people, but none of this will stop progress in the end.
I agree with you about the point of technology, but I don't know where you got the idea that I said anything resembling "centralization is bad," because I said nothing of the sort.
I do think that any sort of attempt at centralized governmental control/regulation over the internet or bittorrent, most definitely IS political and is of great concern to me and many others - it's in the news practically every day; net monitoring is going on in a lot of western "democracies" and is being pushed heavily where it isn't already being trialed.
So is what you were getting at more like (to use an analogy) "dolphin safe tuna?" You know, you can feel good about buying this tuna because we didn't kill dolphins? But it would be more like "Feel free to download, this is an "artist safe download" and it has an MD5 to verify or something?
If that is what you're talking about then that's not as bad as what I was envisioning they way I read your post, but I also have to say that voluntary licensing programs can become mandatory and it seems like that is the method by which unpopular legislation gets passed, you know..start out voluntary, people get used to it, gradually make it mandatory.
I guess I am just so concerned about freedom on the net. I think that every government (especially these western govts like UK/US) really badly want control over the internet, it's the only source of unfiltered information and unregulated collaboration and organizing potential - Governments seem to be increasingly intent upon control of information and the citizenry, and when you take the commerce that goes on online and potential taxes into account I feel it is only a mater of time before these dastardly evil statist types get their tentacles all over the net. I feel that the net is our only hope right now to protect those freedoms we still have, and to have sources of information that aren't corporatized/propagandized.
The artists are free to do as they choose, and let's point out that the majority of the fight against this isn't coming from artists, it's coming from industry protective groups who spend a lot of the time they aren't using fighting against this technology to do things to financially and artistically rape, rob, and exploit artists on behalf of their clients, large multinational media conglomerates.
Now I am not saying people should just download whatever and fuck the artists - but I think that the majority of downloads are not lost sales, and that a lot of people who download stuff still purchase music, movies, and software. I know I do - most of my downloads are authorized live music downloads, though i do download out of print things and some commercially available things too - with those if I like them I buy them, if I don't they get deleted. Software is the same way, though I rarely if ever download software that is pirated because most of it is filled with malware and most software has free trials.
A portion of my job consists of writing code, etc - and I have had my work taken and used without my consent before, and it was extremely frustrating....so I especially try to make sure to support independents in every way - whether it is music or software or what have you. I think a lot of people do the same, they likely have their own personal code of ethics related to this sort of thing.
A "torrent distribution license?"
Are you fucking kidding me?
Fuck that, I don't want the state anymore in my life then it already is.
You're basically advocating censorship with that approach; that is exactly how it would be used.
In addition to being disgusting from a pro liberty standpoint, that sort of centralized control is antithetic to the entire point of the technology.
I think you're really on to something there....
Because we'd also know who did it..EVERY SINGLE TIME!
Then president Zem could have Zem executed...
Problem solved.
Well, I am not sure if this is specifically what spliffington was referring to, but one of the things that makes things like pro tools or sonar or reason or any of that stuff so powerful and innovative is the ability to work with individual tracks in a gui - cutting and pasting down to the millisecond level, taking sections and looping them or pasting them into several other areas within a song.
So for an example: Let's say you have a performance where the drummer isn't using any sort of metronome or click track to keep time and there are natural variations in his timing - in this performance when it is captured in one take it sounds great, because it doesn't sound sterile or robotic...
Now, let's say you want to use that same recording in a multitrack recording editor, and lets say while playing with it in the software you decide you like the first four beats and want to loop them a few times before moving on and sort of change the song - now this natural slightly off time variation may not sound so great because instead of fitting nicely in with the swing of the original unedited song, the fact that it is off time becomes much more pronounced because the off time beat is coming out in places where it doesn't work so well everywhere that loop (which you have just cut and pasted into different areas of the new track) is inserted, that offtime beat comes up. Now, in addition to that, you also have the issue of it not syncing perfectly with the bass track and stuff.
You could then probably go down to the individual beats and chop those out, but that may be a lot of work and may not end up sounding so good.
I am so tired of this sort of sensationalized reporting.
It's all part of an agenda, as I see it, about the "horrors of p2p technologies."
So let me get this straight, (at least, according to the headline).
"File Sharing" actually "breached" Obama's helicopter. How did file sharing accomplish such a feat?
Did file sharing hire some elite spies? Maybe some mossad agents?
What I think is that a company that manufactures products to snoop of file sharers has a great headline to
promote their business.
What the article REALLY amounts to, is that some defense contractor fucked up by not following security procedures.
if he had left them on a table at McDonalds the outcome could have been the same.
People are talking about how stupid and ineffective this sort of censorship legislation is, and that is so true - it IS ineffective for what the government says they want to do it for - but I don't think they really even give a fuck about that - what it WILL be INCREDIBLY effective for is enabling this increasingly authoritarian government's control over the internet - it will put in place a framework by which they will be able to censor the internet.
This is coming to every western country I'm afraid, and it will never be called what it is - it will only be introduced and supported as a way to "protect the children" or "stop terrorism," but in essence the real goal is to put a choke hold on what governments consider extremely dangerous to their interests: The free flow of information in real-time and the ability for anyone to organize and communicate instantly in so many different ways.
I seem to remember reading this email (or one exactly like it) quite some time ago; is there that little to discuss in this bastion of tech intelligence and free thinking that we're recycling old Bill Gates emails?
Don't get me wrong, I think it's interesting...just not interesting enough to read again.
Surely we can do better - with how Vista turned out for them he MUST have some newer ranting emails for us to discuss....
Economic hegemony is, in large part what I was referring to...At a time when that's the last thing we need to be doing. Couple that with the institutionalized corruption, the genuinely shady stuff, and our monetary policies we're not in great shape.
The idea that "America is great and can and should impose it's will upon the world" is bothersome as well, but it is primarily the economic side of it and all that that entails that destroys these empire building nations from the inside out.
I agree that we've got nothing on what Persia and Rome had historically, nor our friend upon which "the sun never sets," but they all started somewhere.
Just like what they did with the Patriot Act...
I know this was in a book or movie I saw - It may have been 1984, the TV in everyone's house monitored them...I can see it now, every TV will be required to have a little cam behind the glass or right at the top like a lot of laptops do now.
What will it take for people to stand up and say "no?!?!
Where is the line? Or are they just going to continue to implement this stuff so incrementally that people get upset, but not enough to stand up - and before you know it everything you do, say or think is monitored.....
So basically, all of the the talk of transparency was lip service, either that - or they have been made aware of what the content of those emails will show.
Obama is showing hypocrisy in record time, he's barely been in a month. It's not like he is reneging on a campaign promise, it sure makes it seem like practically his ENTIRE stated message about transparency in government was total bullshit.
I wanted Ron Paul, and I think that anybody who understands how our government really functions these days, the constitution, the lessons of history as they relate to empires and our debt based Federal Reserve manipulated economy who got a chance to hear his message likely did too...
Unfortunately I think the current state of the economy and it's effect on the day to day lives of most Americans is spec-fuckin-tacular compared to where it's headed - We're following the path of the Weimar Republic here, and guess how that turned out...
I live right next door to independence hall - it's literally something I see when I walk outside of my home every morning; I see that, and the eternal flame which burns at the mass graves of al of the unknown revolutionary solders buried in Washington Sq ....it's really sad, and sadness is what I feel every time I see these reminders of our history and founding...our empire is crumbling and most of the people on the street don't even know what the word "empire" means and how it applies to America today and are more interested in some Hip Hop MTV retard beating his girlfriend or what happened on TV last night. We don't need to be an empire, empires always end one way.
After Obama won (and out of him and McCain) I figured he would be better choice out of the two because at least he was saying he wanted to limit executive power and was all about openness, etc, etc ad infinitum - I knew the guy was a politician, but given the passion with which he seemed infused with he seemed to have some integrity....I guess we'll see how much he really does....
Right now think the best thing people can do is support the states rights movement - 20 states are taking action to formally remind the federal government of the limits of their power under the 10th Amendment, 20 states are re-asserting sovereignty under the 10th amendment - There is some great stuff going on in New Hampshire also - it seems they really do want to 'live free or die' there...; PA rep Sam Rohrer is heavily active in promoting these resolutions , and it's very important:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8bbrXnYJOo
If you are concerned about what the federal government is doing - make sure to support the resolutions, in the state, in the house and senate by contacting your reps.
This is fucked that he's been locked up all this time.
I think (as I said back when this happened) that there is a lot more to this story; there were obviously political and interpersonal machinations going on that led to this situation.
I would be tempted to say that he probably should have handed over the admin passwords and walked away, but then I remembered that he did offer to do just this, but only to give them directly to the mayor - but by the time you are being ambushed in a conference room by your boss, some douchebag traitor subordinates and a cop, your future employment at said job is probably already compromised so you might as well get out - but the fact that it went to this level and that he WAS willing to release the password to the mayor AND the fact that he was willing to go to jail over this tells me that there is probably more to this.
I wish I could remember more of what I had heard right after this occurred - because I seem to remember hearing something about him knowing that something shady was going on - that someone was compromising the network or something like that and/or that it had gotten personal and that this non-technical supervisor had it out for him or something...
After everything I read at the time from people who knew this guy and had more information about this than what they've read in articles I had come to the conclusion that something integral to this situation stinks to high hell.
It was apparent that some people found him arrogant, but hey - that isn't a crime and sometimes in this industry as many of us know, if your technical skills are way above the average skill of the people working around you sometimes that does get mistaken as arrogance - because it can be trying fixing fuckups and explaining things all of the time - sure, it would be best if everyone who had technical skills had interpersonal skills to match, but that isn't often the case.
Additionally, I don't see where he even broke the law. The network never went down, he simply refused to hand over passwords to non-technical employees - he didn't "take control of the network illegitimately" and if they wanted to fire him for not complying with management, then yeah - but pressing charges and keeping the guy in jail for 7mos - and then we have a DA that proves his fucking case by entering active logins and passwords into evidence?
Does anyone know where to where to mail Terry Childs? I'd like to send the guy some books or something - it must suck really bad to be in jail....
"They are trying to own who we are, and sell our own culture back to us rather than innovate said culture."
Best sentence in your post IMHO, and a sentiment that is as worrisome on it's own (for other reasons) as this entire debacle is.
You make some great points - but I will add the following:
DO you think it would even be possible to pass such a law? Our country (in the US) is broken, and unfortunately I think we're in for more of the same from our new president in this respect.
No matter how right or wrong it is to reform these laws, the powerful interests which own our country, much of our pop culture, our resources, and 96% of our politicians won't allow it - and I haven't seen anything in the past month or so restore constitutionality and rule of law.
So, for once the big corporations have something that they can't control - the control has been taken from them.
If you're talking about the Pirate bay trial, I don't think the outcome should be a given...there is the argument that Google does the same thing as TPB, and remember that this is Sweden, not the US. - but with that said with how long it has taken for it to come to this and all of the pressure on Sweden I am thinking they may not get a fair trial..I hope they do...
The typical pirate response to your statement about people "trying to justify" downloading - it goes something like this:
I don't need to justify it, justification is a foregone conclusion - I sleep soundly. I've done no wrong - and anybody who has ever driven 1mph over the speed limit or broken any other law can't say shit about "b b but you're breaking the law" - maybe, maybe not, but I don't care if I am. I pay for software, I pay for music from independents, I download things, if I like them then I go buy them, if not they end up deleted.
Ever notice how it's always the industry groups and rarely the actual artists who are fighting this? One reason is because the industry groups want the artists for their own private economic rape sessions.
In a way downloading is a new type of consumerism and a new type of economic corporate/civil disobedience....I think a lot of people feel like as long as they are supporting the artists when they actually download and keep something, then they feel like everything is good and the only one getting screwed are those who are responsible for everything that is wrong with our culture and economic system.