I don't say things like this very often, but that is by far the stupidest, most illogical thing I have ever read on/.... and that says a lot.
Otherwise the place would be 99% full of copied, stolen software.
How, exactly, do you come to that conclusion? GPP said that eBay doesn't even look to see if there is any evidence that the product for sale is illegal -- eBay just shuts down the auction. If the content producer has evidence that the product is "copied [and/or] stolen", then yes, that's a good thing. However, if the auction is for a legally purchased item that the seller just didn't like, then what right does the content producer have to shut down the auction? What if the item is out of print? Do you seriously think that the only place we should be able to purchase software, music or movies is from authorized retail stores -- no secondhand sales? What do you think that would do to prices? No, this is most definitely NOT a good thing. Your argument that eBay would otherwise be a warez market is pure bunk.
Either you limit resale, or you limit copying.
Or you all get jobs as bricklayers.
Choose.
That's a false dichotomy. There will always be those who have no ethics. However, there will also always be those who do, and for better or for worse, those who try to live ethically will continue to subsidize content production. You are making a really huge leap of logic (illogic?) between limiting content and putting content producers out of business. Think of it this way...(warning: bad/. car analogy coming up!) would you buy a car if you knew that you would never, ever be able to sell it to someone else when your needs changed, when you wanted to upgrade to a newer, more reliable model, etc.? Part of how we justify the purchase price of a new (or used, but new to us) vehicle is knowing that we will recover some of that cost at resale. While there certainly is a quantitative difference between the purchase price of a car and the purchase price of a CD or DVD, I am nevertheless more likely to purchase a CD/DVD/software knowing that if I am unsatisfied with what I have purchased, I can easily sell it on Amazon/eBay/Craigslist/whatever. Or on the flip side, I might take a chance with an unknown artist by purchasing a sufficiently low priced secondhand CD, find I really like the artist, and then buy more NEW CDs, when otherwise, I might not have bought anything by them. In either case, I would argue that limiting resale might actually harm first sales because I am less likely to purchase something if I am afraid I might get stuck with something I am not be happy with.
...b.s. on the statistic in TFA that says Americans receive more instructional hours in school than Japan. I don't know about Singapore, Hong Kong or Taiwan, but I grew up in Japan. Their school year was longer (IIRC, they got about 1 1/2 months off for summer) and Japanese kids left for school around 7:00 or 7:30 and got home around 5:00 or 5:30. Oh, yeah...that was six days a week, as well -- they went to school on Saturday. Fortunately, I was on an Air Force base there, so I just did the normal American five-day-a-week, 8:30-3:30 school day. I remember thinking as a kid that the schedules the Japanese kids were stuck with must have really sucked.
I did something similar. I bought some aluminum rack cover plates and a sheet of steel so I could try to make a rack-mount case. It's not sturdy enough for the face plates to actually hold the PC in a rack (so it has to sit on a shelf) and I never built the top of the case (so all the innards are exposed), but it's been running like a champ for about seven years now.
I don't move my desktop often, but it does happen. I once had to take my desktop to a database programming class because stupid Windows required a reboot after installing an ADO component, my VB/Oracle project required the ADO component to work, and the college PCs had something like Deep Freeze installed so that all changes were rolled back at reboot. Solution? Bring my desktop to class to demonstrate the project. It was a PITA, but I got an "A"
I wish I had known Perl and Linux back then...or had a laptop. Or both:)
Sure they do -- just like./'ers read the millions of comments above arguing about whether or not this is an ex post facto law (it's not, but IANAL, etc.).
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. (emphasis mine)
No court order was given to search the communications of God and NSA only know how many people, nor was there any description of what/whose communications were to be intercepted. Therefore, Congress had no authority to decriminalize the telcos' actions in cooperating with an illegal request. The wiretapping was illegal when it was done. Congress LATER enacted a bill to provide immunity from what the telcos had already done. Rescinding that bill is not enacting an Ex Post Facto law.
Nice play on emotions. Too bad there's no valid logic to bolster the emotional appeal.
Allow me to explain.
So you're equating bugging...
From GPP's post: "The CIA folks should get to join...in jail." The CIA was torturing people who have never been convicted in either a civilian court or a military tribunal. So much for "innocent until proven guilty"! And you bought right into it. When the telcos started delivering communications to the Feds without judicial oversight, they became guilty of breaking the law, too. Is gassing someone for their ethnicity equivalent to aiding and abetting illegal wiretapping? Of course not. But both are violations of the law, and both should be punished under the law. The punishment should reflect the severity of the crime (gassing > waterboarding > illegal wiretapping), but it's completely stupid to argue that, since wiretapping is not nearly as evil as gassing families of Jews, those who assisted with the wiretapping should receive a "get-out-of-jail-free" card.
...Al-Qaeda operatives...
Ummm...alleged Al-Qaeda operatives. Refer to my comment above.
Furthermore, Nazi Germany did, in fact, use similar tactics to rile up the German people against the Jews -- identify a bogeyman, play on the people's fears, then stir up a nation to villify an entire race of people. Read the comments here on/. about racial profiling to see if the same thing has happened in the U.S. Or better yet, watch the TSA's propaganda, excuse me, "training videos" that flight instructors have to watch every year if they want to remain legal. When I watched them, I wasn't sure if I should laugh or be horrified that they essentially are telling flight schools/independent instructors to be suspicious of people of Arabic heritage.
I agreed that one of the incidences (home chemistry lab) was completely uncalled for. I then argued that two of the other claims (MIT student at the airport and moonite displays) were not nearly as serious as O.P. implied and that those two incidents certainly did not suggest what O.P. claimed they suggested. Nor did I agree that they were "completely over-the-top, inappropriate abuses of power". I argued that the fourth (e-mail) and fifth (GPS tracking) incidents were completely reasonable.
Come on, you have MIT right there in the city...It's the price you pay for having a local crop of geniuses.
I would probably agree if the MIT student had answered the ticket agent when asked what the circuit was. However, she didn't; she walked away, which I would argue makes something otherwise only nominally interesting a lot more suspicious. Whether or not anyone *really* makes a bomb with blinking LEDs, it doesn't take much imagination to see how a CSR might think it wise to call the cops in this case. I think a swarm of cops surrounding the student at gunpoint was probably more escalation than warranted, but I can also understand how the report from the CSR to the dispatcher and ultimately to the cops could get escalated at each step in the process.
And just because there's a culture of fear doesn't mean I have to knuckle under- I still have the right to be goofy...
Dude, I hate the paranoid culture we live in as much as anyone else on/., but no, actually you don't. Ever see those signs at the airport that say it is a Federal Offense to make "jokes or remarks about bombs or explosives"? Your right to be "goofy" ends right there. I can understand someone engaging in civil disobedience to highlight how mindless some of our policies have become. But you'd better be very aware that "being goofy" and not "knuckling under" at the airport might very well cause you more grief than you expected. Expecting people who have been, well, brainwashed, to think anything out of the ordinary is suspicious to laugh along with your antics is simply wishful thinking, sorry.
It's not the poor stiff at the helpdesk who sets policy; it's the extraneous middle manager five levels up who doesn't give ${rodent}'s ${anatomical feature} about how difficult it is for the working-class saps, so long as he can tell his SoX auditor that they are abiding by a secure policy. BTDT, got the T-shirt.
Did you actually read the links you provided or do you just like making over-the-top sensationalist comments?
re: deleting spam e-mail: yes, for work e-mail accounts used by municipal (and presumably state -- the article is a little vague) employees within the State of Massachusetts only to remain in compliance with FOIA laws. In other words, if you subpoena the muni, they have to be able to provide the e-mails requested for a period of two years. IOW, not anywhere near as big a deal as you implied, because this doesn't affect private e-mail accounts. IMHO, transparency in the government is a GOOD THING.
re: LiteBrites: if you leave an apparently improvised electronic circuit of unknown purpose abandoned in public places, the cops may very well investigate to determine if it is a public hazard (i.e., a bomb). While I think they probably went a little over the top in this case, your implication is that if you leave a LiteBrite on your front porch, the police are going to come arrest you. Somehow I suspect that even the police in Massachusetts aren't that inane. Considering how many business put flashy-blinkies in their windows and on the streets in just about any town in the country -- including Massachusetts -- I think you are blowing that event waaaaaay out of proportion to claim that it is "illegal to leave Lite Brites out."
re: shirt with LEDs on it: yeah, the reaction to this event was probably a little over the top as well, although I think it is fair to say that Star Simpson didn't exactly display good judgment either. Considering the culture of fear that the government has cultivated, you don't have to be a genius to think that waltzing into an airport with a homemade circuit on a breadboard with a wad of putty in your hand, then walking away when the ticket counter agent asks about the device might raise concern about what you are doing. I don't condone all the paranoia, but given that such fear exists (and, groan, is encouraged), what she did was simply stupid. Furthermore, I have seen lots of t-shirts (and tennis shoes) with LEDs integrated into them that wouldn't raise an eyebrow, so again, what you are implying ("you can't wear shirts with LEDs!!!") is not really true.
re: chemistry at home: okay, yeah, I agree with you on this one. That was just stupid of the government and most likely, in my non-expert (i.e., IANAL), opinion, an abuse of power.
re: GPS tracking: yes, with proper court oversight -- which was part of the ruling in this case -- I don't have a problem with that. The moment it happens without judicial review, however, it becomes an abuse of power.
I can't speak for everyone, but my opposition to universal healthcare is that I have yet to see a proposal that satisfies all of my concerns. Socialist policies -- although all warm and fuzzy and humanitarian in theory -- fail to address one major flaw: if people don't have to work to take care of themselves because the government will do it for them, then who is going to pay the bills when everyone is staying at home expecting a government handout? TANSTAAFL, and all that.
If the dealer installed it, why wouldn't you expect the warrenty to be valid.?
1) Because the engine manufacturer explicitly said the old engine wouldn't be covered by the warranty because it had reached end-of-life.
2) Because the dealer (Dell, Compaq/HP, Acer, etc.) is not the "engine" manufacturer (Microsoft), and you are expecting the "engine" manufacturer to honor the dealer's warranty.
ANyways, there are a lot of products where XP is the default OS. so your analogy is just plain wrong...Netbooks with XP as the default.
Exactly. I was about to post the exact same thing, but I saw you beat me to it.
Whether or not you agree that Vista or Windows 7 is better than XP is irrelevant. Microsoft has said they no longer will support versions of Windows before Vista. While it may not be wise for Microsoft to try to force the market to upgrade, it is still their right to discontinue support for older versions of their products, and honestly, I can't really blame them for deciding to drop XP support. C'mon -- the code is what, seven years old now?
I pay approximately 17 USD a month for an unlimited 10/10 Mbit/s up/downstream (upgrade to 100/10 for 33 USD a month) [in Sweden].
As an answer to grandparent, yes I regularly reach topspeed but I guess it would be harder if you have a high bandwidth connection.
Meanwhile I have a smokin' 720Kbps down/320Kbps up "broadband" DSL line for something like $70 USD per month (including static IP). And the ISP's here Stateside want to redefine broadband to even lower data rates. U.S. ISP's consistently sets low standards and then fail to meet even them.
Slashdot Mirror
Depends on the flavor of the religion you are talking about. Those of us with a Pentecostal background rather enjoy rock music
No, it's because he is CORRECT .
Otherwise the place would be 99% full of copied, stolen software.
How, exactly, do you come to that conclusion? GPP said that eBay doesn't even look to see if there is any evidence that the product for sale is illegal -- eBay just shuts down the auction. If the content producer has evidence that the product is "copied [and/or] stolen", then yes, that's a good thing. However, if the auction is for a legally purchased item that the seller just didn't like, then what right does the content producer have to shut down the auction? What if the item is out of print? Do you seriously think that the only place we should be able to purchase software, music or movies is from authorized retail stores -- no secondhand sales? What do you think that would do to prices? No, this is most definitely NOT a good thing. Your argument that eBay would otherwise be a warez market is pure bunk.
Either you limit resale, or you limit copying.
Or you all get jobs as bricklayers.
Choose.
That's a false dichotomy. There will always be those who have no ethics. However, there will also always be those who do, and for better or for worse, those who try to live ethically will continue to subsidize content production. You are making a really huge leap of logic (illogic?) between limiting content and putting content producers out of business. Think of it this way...(warning: bad /. car analogy coming up!) would you buy a car if you knew that you would never, ever be able to sell it to someone else when your needs changed, when you wanted to upgrade to a newer, more reliable model, etc.? Part of how we justify the purchase price of a new (or used, but new to us) vehicle is knowing that we will recover some of that cost at resale. While there certainly is a quantitative difference between the purchase price of a car and the purchase price of a CD or DVD, I am nevertheless more likely to purchase a CD/DVD/software knowing that if I am unsatisfied with what I have purchased, I can easily sell it on Amazon/eBay/Craigslist/whatever. Or on the flip side, I might take a chance with an unknown artist by purchasing a sufficiently low priced secondhand CD, find I really like the artist, and then buy more NEW CDs, when otherwise, I might not have bought anything by them. In either case, I would argue that limiting resale might actually harm first sales because I am less likely to purchase something if I am afraid I might get stuck with something I am not be happy with.
...b.s. on the statistic in TFA that says Americans receive more instructional hours in school than Japan. I don't know about Singapore, Hong Kong or Taiwan, but I grew up in Japan. Their school year was longer (IIRC, they got about 1 1/2 months off for summer) and Japanese kids left for school around 7:00 or 7:30 and got home around 5:00 or 5:30. Oh, yeah...that was six days a week, as well -- they went to school on Saturday. Fortunately, I was on an Air Force base there, so I just did the normal American five-day-a-week, 8:30-3:30 school day. I remember thinking as a kid that the schedules the Japanese kids were stuck with must have really sucked.
I did something similar. I bought some aluminum rack cover plates and a sheet of steel so I could try to make a rack-mount case. It's not sturdy enough for the face plates to actually hold the PC in a rack (so it has to sit on a shelf) and I never built the top of the case (so all the innards are exposed), but it's been running like a champ for about seven years now.
I don't move my desktop often, but it does happen. I once had to take my desktop to a database programming class because stupid Windows required a reboot after installing an ADO component, my VB/Oracle project required the ADO component to work, and the college PCs had something like Deep Freeze installed so that all changes were rolled back at reboot. Solution? Bring my desktop to class to demonstrate the project. It was a PITA, but I got an "A"
:)
I wish I had known Perl and Linux back then...or had a laptop. Or both
Yeah, I was interested until I saw that. $700 is a deal breaker. It's cool, but it isn't that cool.
I live in Alaska, you insensitive clod! EVERYTHING costs more to ship than to build!
Point taken.
Wish I had mod points. Much as I despise the telcos for their complicity, you have raised a really good point.
Sure they do -- just like ./'ers read the millions of comments above arguing about whether or not this is an ex post facto law (it's not, but IANAL, etc.).
How about this:
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. (emphasis mine)
No court order was given to search the communications of God and NSA only know how many people, nor was there any description of what/whose communications were to be intercepted. Therefore, Congress had no authority to decriminalize the telcos' actions in cooperating with an illegal request. The wiretapping was illegal when it was done. Congress LATER enacted a bill to provide immunity from what the telcos had already done. Rescinding that bill is not enacting an Ex Post Facto law.
Sometimes it's tough to do the right thing. Life's not fair, Santa Claus is really your mom and dad, etc. News at 11:00.
Allow me to explain.
So you're equating bugging...
From GPP's post: "The CIA folks should get to join...in jail." The CIA was torturing people who have never been convicted in either a civilian court or a military tribunal. So much for "innocent until proven guilty"! And you bought right into it. When the telcos started delivering communications to the Feds without judicial oversight, they became guilty of breaking the law, too. Is gassing someone for their ethnicity equivalent to aiding and abetting illegal wiretapping? Of course not. But both are violations of the law, and both should be punished under the law. The punishment should reflect the severity of the crime (gassing > waterboarding > illegal wiretapping), but it's completely stupid to argue that, since wiretapping is not nearly as evil as gassing families of Jews, those who assisted with the wiretapping should receive a "get-out-of-jail-free" card.
...Al-Qaeda operatives...
Ummm...alleged Al-Qaeda operatives. Refer to my comment above.
/. about racial profiling to see if the same thing has happened in the U.S. Or better yet, watch the TSA's propaganda, excuse me, "training videos" that flight instructors have to watch every year if they want to remain legal. When I watched them, I wasn't sure if I should laugh or be horrified that they essentially are telling flight schools/independent instructors to be suspicious of people of Arabic heritage.
Furthermore, Nazi Germany did, in fact, use similar tactics to rile up the German people against the Jews -- identify a bogeyman, play on the people's fears, then stir up a nation to villify an entire race of people. Read the comments here on
I agreed that one of the incidences (home chemistry lab) was completely uncalled for. I then argued that two of the other claims (MIT student at the airport and moonite displays) were not nearly as serious as O.P. implied and that those two incidents certainly did not suggest what O.P. claimed they suggested. Nor did I agree that they were "completely over-the-top, inappropriate abuses of power". I argued that the fourth (e-mail) and fifth (GPS tracking) incidents were completely reasonable.
I fail to see the cognitive dissonance
A little?
I have a tendency towards understatement...
Come on, you have MIT right there in the city...It's the price you pay for having a local crop of geniuses.
I would probably agree if the MIT student had answered the ticket agent when asked what the circuit was. However, she didn't; she walked away, which I would argue makes something otherwise only nominally interesting a lot more suspicious. Whether or not anyone *really* makes a bomb with blinking LEDs, it doesn't take much imagination to see how a CSR might think it wise to call the cops in this case. I think a swarm of cops surrounding the student at gunpoint was probably more escalation than warranted, but I can also understand how the report from the CSR to the dispatcher and ultimately to the cops could get escalated at each step in the process.
And just because there's a culture of fear doesn't mean I have to knuckle under- I still have the right to be goofy...
Dude, I hate the paranoid culture we live in as much as anyone else on /., but no, actually you don't. Ever see those signs at the airport that say it is a Federal Offense to make "jokes or remarks about bombs or explosives"? Your right to be "goofy" ends right there. I can understand someone engaging in civil disobedience to highlight how mindless some of our policies have become. But you'd better be very aware that "being goofy" and not "knuckling under" at the airport might very well cause you more grief than you expected. Expecting people who have been, well, brainwashed, to think anything out of the ordinary is suspicious to laugh along with your antics is simply wishful thinking, sorry.
Wrong.
It's not the poor stiff at the helpdesk who sets policy; it's the extraneous middle manager five levels up who doesn't give ${rodent}'s ${anatomical feature} about how difficult it is for the working-class saps, so long as he can tell his SoX auditor that they are abiding by a secure policy. BTDT, got the T-shirt.
Did you actually read the links you provided or do you just like making over-the-top sensationalist comments?
re: deleting spam e-mail: yes, for work e-mail accounts used by municipal (and presumably state -- the article is a little vague) employees within the State of Massachusetts only to remain in compliance with FOIA laws. In other words, if you subpoena the muni, they have to be able to provide the e-mails requested for a period of two years. IOW, not anywhere near as big a deal as you implied, because this doesn't affect private e-mail accounts. IMHO, transparency in the government is a GOOD THING.
re: LiteBrites: if you leave an apparently improvised electronic circuit of unknown purpose abandoned in public places, the cops may very well investigate to determine if it is a public hazard (i.e., a bomb). While I think they probably went a little over the top in this case, your implication is that if you leave a LiteBrite on your front porch, the police are going to come arrest you. Somehow I suspect that even the police in Massachusetts aren't that inane. Considering how many business put flashy-blinkies in their windows and on the streets in just about any town in the country -- including Massachusetts -- I think you are blowing that event waaaaaay out of proportion to claim that it is "illegal to leave Lite Brites out."
re: shirt with LEDs on it: yeah, the reaction to this event was probably a little over the top as well, although I think it is fair to say that Star Simpson didn't exactly display good judgment either. Considering the culture of fear that the government has cultivated, you don't have to be a genius to think that waltzing into an airport with a homemade circuit on a breadboard with a wad of putty in your hand, then walking away when the ticket counter agent asks about the device might raise concern about what you are doing. I don't condone all the paranoia, but given that such fear exists (and, groan, is encouraged), what she did was simply stupid. Furthermore, I have seen lots of t-shirts (and tennis shoes) with LEDs integrated into them that wouldn't raise an eyebrow, so again, what you are implying ("you can't wear shirts with LEDs!!!") is not really true.
re: chemistry at home: okay, yeah, I agree with you on this one. That was just stupid of the government and most likely, in my non-expert (i.e., IANAL), opinion, an abuse of power.
re: GPS tracking: yes, with proper court oversight -- which was part of the ruling in this case -- I don't have a problem with that. The moment it happens without judicial review, however, it becomes an abuse of power.
"It is better that a hundred unjust men should go free than that a single just man should be punished unjustly." --Plato
I can't speak for everyone, but my opposition to universal healthcare is that I have yet to see a proposal that satisfies all of my concerns. Socialist policies -- although all warm and fuzzy and humanitarian in theory -- fail to address one major flaw: if people don't have to work to take care of themselves because the government will do it for them, then who is going to pay the bills when everyone is staying at home expecting a government handout? TANSTAAFL, and all that.
If the dealer installed it, why wouldn't you expect the warrenty to be valid.?
1) Because the engine manufacturer explicitly said the old engine wouldn't be covered by the warranty because it had reached end-of-life.
2) Because the dealer (Dell, Compaq/HP, Acer, etc.) is not the "engine" manufacturer (Microsoft), and you are expecting the "engine" manufacturer to honor the dealer's warranty.
ANyways, there are a lot of products where XP is the default OS. so your analogy is just plain wrong...Netbooks with XP as the default.
See answer #2 above.
Exactly. I was about to post the exact same thing, but I saw you beat me to it.
Whether or not you agree that Vista or Windows 7 is better than XP is irrelevant. Microsoft has said they no longer will support versions of Windows before Vista. While it may not be wise for Microsoft to try to force the market to upgrade, it is still their right to discontinue support for older versions of their products, and honestly, I can't really blame them for deciding to drop XP support. C'mon -- the code is what, seven years old now?
Any Slashdotters who have experience with 'unschooling?'
Sure! I've been unschooling for 21 years...ever since I graduated from high school.
I pay approximately 17 USD a month for an unlimited 10/10 Mbit/s up/downstream (upgrade to 100/10 for 33 USD a month) [in Sweden]. As an answer to grandparent, yes I regularly reach topspeed but I guess it would be harder if you have a high bandwidth connection.
Meanwhile I have a smokin' 720Kbps down/320Kbps up "broadband" DSL line for something like $70 USD per month (including static IP). And the ISP's here Stateside want to redefine broadband to even lower data rates. U.S. ISP's consistently sets low standards and then fail to meet even them.
All of which is irrelevant because Childs released the passwords to the mayor in July of '08. That leaves an awfully long time for S.F. to have changed the passwords and gone through the configs with a fine-toothed comb.