This was inevitable if the US wanted to keep its place as one of the leaders of the internet. The web wants to be free, and if the US had decided to make sites accountable for libel, the sites would all just move out of the US. It's becoming harder and harder to find countries with governments sympathetic to freedom of information. If the pirate party ever got off the ground, I could see a massive opportunity for people to create sites that share information in the way that YouTube did before it got bought by Google. That is, without real worry about copyrights.
Imagine being able to watch a lower quality version of a DVD before you decided to buy one. Not happening with our lobbyists, but with a different set of lobbyists...
Poster is right, and by now, I think bloggers should be noticing that they need to stay anonymous when releasing such sensitive information. Build a http://travelingforever.com/index.php?option=com_c ontent&task=view&id=21&Itemid=45DemocraKey, and post to a blog. Staying anonymous is becoming more and more important, even to those in supposedly "free" countries. It's so easy to protect yourself, I wonder why more whistleblowers aren't doing it.
Such a simplistic view of religion shows you don't know very much about it.
I'm not Christian, but if you really think that Christians are moral because of a fear of hell, you haven't read the Sermon on the Mount. Rather than take some stereotype of what a Christian is to a Atheist, why not take from their teacher, who taught pacifism and compasion as a method for creating a better world. In this world.
Either way, let's protect freedom of thought. Putting the mechanisms into place to monitor and police thought and speech is not a good thing. For those of you who haven't heard yet, the DemocraKey solves a whole lot of these problems. And it's free.
They're trying to play the good guy all the time, and most people eat it right up, while ignoring the facts.
Facts about Google
They own the search records of everyone who uses their engine
They have permanent records of millions of emails
Their Adsense campaign could potentially be used to track web users
Their Analytics campaign is getting a whole lot of valuable information about websurfers for free
They submit the influence of questionable governments when profitability comes into question
They stand to benefit from the loss of net neutrality (Raises the cost of entry to become the next Google. Think, people! Brin is doing his "last minute" campaign as a ploy. If the net neutrality really affected the BILLIONS of Google's dollars, would he have shown up in a t-shirt and jeans? And acted like he didn't know how lobbying really works in the US?)
Am I the only one who sees the MAJOR threat of Google's monopoly on the flow of all information on the net? They will be more evil than Microsoft ever was. Microsoft never had so much power, and this much sainthood. Ladies and gentlemen, get your tinfoil hats.
I've seen this one coming from a mile away. Anyone with a high speed internet connection and a couple of computers (or a botnet) can data mine the entire MySpace directory. You'll get a whole lot of information from MySpace, since people are so willing to spend rediculous amounts of time looking for "friends". The real value of MySpace is in the consumer profiles they build from all your friends and the keywords you guys are into. When miss teen bopper picks that crappy song to play in her MySpace, you can be sure a record company somewhere is making a note of that. MySpace is a goldmine for marketers.
Also, what about Google Analytics? Think about that one. Google already has access to most of the world's search habits. Their search cookie expires in 2038, and that means anyone who doesn't have a clue about clearing cookies (everyone not a geek) will have a record of their searches traceable to their common ip adressess. Now with the inclusion of Analytics, Google has access to which pages people visit through sites. This is extremely dangerous. A rogue government could steal this database or force google to release it, and then they'd have a really worthwhile database. Think about it.
My $0.02? Do a search for "DemocraKey" while you still can.
Google should have created its own set of commandments when it stated that it would do no evil. Now they're falling down a slippery slope for sure. DMCA censorship in the US at first, Tianamen Square Censorship in China at first, and then where do we say that their power to control the flow of information is out of hand? When do they decide their ability to be persuaded by governments into using their large user base for misdeeds has become evil?
Google, create your commandments now, or you will be destroyed by people who aren't willing to back down to government misdeeds.
On a side note, a search for "DemocraKey" shows up in google china. For how long is to be determined... a week and running...
Open Source is really a threat to most governments. Open source software gives everyone equal access to the same tools, regardless of social class. It threatens the entire model of top-down hiearchy, as open source is a means for equalizing all access to information and exchange of information. Anyone can put together an Apache webserver and begin experimenting with having their own website, for free. No need for expensive schooling, as information is freely available to teach yourself. This will become a "problem" for places like the US, where we utilize the leverage of patents and trade secrets to maintain our superiority in the global marketplace. As places like India and China quickly become more technologically saavy, our economic model becomes threatened. One of the biggest keys in the future will be the regulation of the internet, and the censoring of information. I believe the best thing for the global society is free and anonymous access to all (public) information on the net.
Make your own DemocraKey, and help spread the technology for free and anonymous access to all information.
Putting up some censored text does nothing to stop snooping and web tracking. This is a more important problem we have facing the global society.
Between the US and China there has been a rediculous number of infringements on human privacy and freedom of speech. I think the best way to stop the NSA and China's insistence on snooping and restricting is for as many people as possible to start participating in an anonymizing service, like the EFF's TOR Project. It wraps every web request in encryption and then routes it through other servers so noone can tell what the other person is looking for. I wrote a tutorial on putting this anonymizing software on a hidden volume in a USB key for those people who want to be able to surf the web, without big brother tracking them. Make your own DemocraKey, and let's take away every government's ability to regulate thought.
Between the US and China there has been a rediculous number of infringements on human privacy and freedom of speech. I think the best way to stop the NSA and China's insistence on snooping and restricting is for as many people as possible to start participating in an anonymizing service, like the EFF's TOR Project. It wraps every web request in encryption and then routes it through other servers so noone can tell what the other person is looking for. I wrote a tutorial on putting this anonymizing software on a hidden volume in a USB key for those people who want to be able to surf the web, without big brother tracking them. Make your own DemocraKey, and let's take away every government's ability to regulate thought.
I've never bought a song from iTunes or Napster or any other online music store. It just does not make economic sense. With iPods holding at least 5,000 songs, filling up an iPod would cost $5,000. Having all my music portable just is not worth $5,000.
The music industry has become too greedy, taken too much advantage of me as a consumer. They think that just because they spent $20 million dollars on a music video and promotion I'm going to be willing to pay $20 for a CD. It just isn't happening. I buy CD's because I want to be entertained, want to hear a story told through music. Not because I saw an awesome music video.
The music industry just needs to get back to fundamentals. Focus on gathering talent and then letting the talent speak for itself. For too long they've been resting on the idea of throw money at slight talent and let the promotion do the rest of the work. Once there are artists worth paying for online I'll be happy to pay. Not $20 for the cd, though, and not $15 for mp3 format. There just isn't enough value there to justify the price. Plain and simple.
With all the litigations coming from the music and movie industry, it just doesn't make sense for a company to try to own the P2P software.
Instead, companies should develope and release the software for free, into the wild, and create a profitable market using the network itself. It's time for a really creative person to figure out how to release a lasting P2P client/network and make a profit from it in a really untraditional way.
Like utilising all the traffic to build models for what people are searching for. Selling the information to marketers. Letting people sell content through P2P networks, whatever. I'm not the one to create the next fix for P2P, but it is out there, and I'll be the first one to use it.
Microsoft has released a faulty product. They chose to rush to market and be the first, and they ended up with an inferior product. They must refund everyone's money who bought a product which didn't perform as they said it would. Simple as that.
Getting litigous is the only way to make sure Microsoft does not take advantage of consumers by selling products which do not perform as advertised. With their market share and their financial resources they ought to be able to make a functioning product. Not an overpriced POS paperweight.
The four hundred dollars for an xbox 360 is a whole lot of money and a whole lot of work for the average customer. They should get their money's worth, it's only fair.
Slashdot Mirror
This was inevitable if the US wanted to keep its place as one of the leaders of the internet. The web wants to be free, and if the US had decided to make sites accountable for libel, the sites would all just move out of the US.
It's becoming harder and harder to find countries with governments sympathetic to freedom of information. If the pirate party ever got off the ground, I could see a massive opportunity for people to create sites that share information in the way that YouTube did before it got bought by Google. That is, without real worry about copyrights.
Imagine being able to watch a lower quality version of a DVD before you decided to buy one. Not happening with our lobbyists, but with a different set of lobbyists...
Poster is right, and by now, I think bloggers should be noticing that they need to stay anonymous when releasing such sensitive information. Build a http://travelingforever.com/index.php?option=com_c ontent&task=view&id=21&Itemid=45DemocraKey, and post to a blog. Staying anonymous is becoming more and more important, even to those in supposedly "free" countries. It's so easy to protect yourself, I wonder why more whistleblowers aren't doing it.
Such a simplistic view of religion shows you don't know very much about it. I'm not Christian, but if you really think that Christians are moral because of a fear of hell, you haven't read the Sermon on the Mount. Rather than take some stereotype of what a Christian is to a Atheist, why not take from their teacher, who taught pacifism and compasion as a method for creating a better world. In this world.
Either way, let's protect freedom of thought. Putting the mechanisms into place to monitor and police thought and speech is not a good thing. For those of you who haven't heard yet, the DemocraKey solves a whole lot of these problems. And it's free.
One word you may want to Google in the future... "democrakey"
They're trying to play the good guy all the time, and most people eat it right up, while ignoring the facts.
Facts about Google
Am I the only one who sees the MAJOR threat of Google's monopoly on the flow of all information on the net? They will be more evil than Microsoft ever was. Microsoft never had so much power, and this much sainthood. Ladies and gentlemen, get your tinfoil hats.
I've seen this one coming from a mile away. Anyone with a high speed internet connection and a couple of computers (or a botnet) can data mine the entire MySpace directory. You'll get a whole lot of information from MySpace, since people are so willing to spend rediculous amounts of time looking for "friends". The real value of MySpace is in the consumer profiles they build from all your friends and the keywords you guys are into. When miss teen bopper picks that crappy song to play in her MySpace, you can be sure a record company somewhere is making a note of that. MySpace is a goldmine for marketers.
Also, what about Google Analytics? Think about that one. Google already has access to most of the world's search habits. Their search cookie expires in 2038, and that means anyone who doesn't have a clue about clearing cookies (everyone not a geek) will have a record of their searches traceable to their common ip adressess. Now with the inclusion of Analytics, Google has access to which pages people visit through sites. This is extremely dangerous. A rogue government could steal this database or force google to release it, and then they'd have a really worthwhile database. Think about it.
My $0.02? Do a search for "DemocraKey" while you still can.
Google should have created its own set of commandments when it stated that it would do no evil. Now they're falling down a slippery slope for sure. DMCA censorship in the US at first, Tianamen Square Censorship in China at first, and then where do we say that their power to control the flow of information is out of hand? When do they decide their ability to be persuaded by governments into using their large user base for misdeeds has become evil?
Google, create your commandments now, or you will be destroyed by people who aren't willing to back down to government misdeeds.
On a side note, a search for "DemocraKey" shows up in google china. For how long is to be determined... a week and running...
Open Source is really a threat to most governments. Open source software gives everyone equal access to the same tools, regardless of social class. It threatens the entire model of top-down hiearchy, as open source is a means for equalizing all access to information and exchange of information. Anyone can put together an Apache webserver and begin experimenting with having their own website, for free. No need for expensive schooling, as information is freely available to teach yourself. This will become a "problem" for places like the US, where we utilize the leverage of patents and trade secrets to maintain our superiority in the global marketplace. As places like India and China quickly become more technologically saavy, our economic model becomes threatened. One of the biggest keys in the future will be the regulation of the internet, and the censoring of information. I believe the best thing for the global society is free and anonymous access to all (public) information on the net.
Make your own DemocraKey, and help spread the technology for free and anonymous access to all information.
Amnesty International's solution won't work.
Putting up some censored text does nothing to stop snooping and web tracking. This is a more important problem we have facing the global society.
Between the US and China there has been a rediculous number of infringements on human privacy and freedom of speech. I think the best way to stop the NSA and China's insistence on snooping and restricting is for as many people as possible to start participating in an anonymizing service, like the EFF's TOR Project. It wraps every web request in encryption and then routes it through other servers so noone can tell what the other person is looking for. I wrote a tutorial on putting this anonymizing software on a hidden volume in a USB key for those people who want to be able to surf the web, without big brother tracking them. Make your own DemocraKey, and let's take away every government's ability to regulate thought.
Between the US and China there has been a rediculous number of infringements on human privacy and freedom of speech. I think the best way to stop the NSA and China's insistence on snooping and restricting is for as many people as possible to start participating in an anonymizing service, like the EFF's TOR Project. It wraps every web request in encryption and then routes it through other servers so noone can tell what the other person is looking for. I wrote a tutorial on putting this anonymizing software on a hidden volume in a USB key for those people who want to be able to surf the web, without big brother tracking them. Make your own DemocraKey, and let's take away every government's ability to regulate thought.
Mod Parent up! We need to get encryption out there to everyone. Programs like tor help.
The music industry has become too greedy, taken too much advantage of me as a consumer. They think that just because they spent $20 million dollars on a music video and promotion I'm going to be willing to pay $20 for a CD. It just isn't happening. I buy CD's because I want to be entertained, want to hear a story told through music. Not because I saw an awesome music video.
The music industry just needs to get back to fundamentals. Focus on gathering talent and then letting the talent speak for itself. For too long they've been resting on the idea of throw money at slight talent and let the promotion do the rest of the work. Once there are artists worth paying for online I'll be happy to pay. Not $20 for the cd, though, and not $15 for mp3 format. There just isn't enough value there to justify the price. Plain and simple.
Instead, companies should develope and release the software for free, into the wild, and create a profitable market using the network itself. It's time for a really creative person to figure out how to release a lasting P2P client/network and make a profit from it in a really untraditional way.
Like utilising all the traffic to build models for what people are searching for. Selling the information to marketers. Letting people sell content through P2P networks, whatever. I'm not the one to create the next fix for P2P, but it is out there, and I'll be the first one to use it.
Getting litigous is the only way to make sure Microsoft does not take advantage of consumers by selling products which do not perform as advertised. With their market share and their financial resources they ought to be able to make a functioning product. Not an overpriced POS paperweight.
The four hundred dollars for an xbox 360 is a whole lot of money and a whole lot of work for the average customer. They should get their money's worth, it's only fair.